Epilogue Guthnyr
EPILOGUE
Guthnyr
On the day of the boy’s tenth birthday, Guthnyr took him to see his father’s sword.
The Dehlgra set sail from Speldhelven with the morning tide, the boy’s mother watching from the quayside as the ancient ship hoisted sail and set her prow towards the east. Upon being asked why she didn’t wish to join this minor expedition, Queen Sygna had protested the weight of correspondence piled atop her desk.
“Besides,” she added, running a hand over the boy’s head.
“It’s time this one learned how to be away from his mother for a time. ”
Guthnyr had merely inclined his head in response. Sygna, for all her myriad gifts as both monarch and warrior, remained a poor liar. He knew her true reason for staying behind and it had nothing to do with letters: she had no desire to set eyes upon the sword again.
To his credit, Feoryn allowed no outward sign of distress at this first separation from Sygna’s side.
Climbing up onto the prow, he turned his face east, features set in a stoic mask.
If anyone noticed the tear that traced across his cheek it could be ascribed to wind.
The sight of the boy’s profile captured Guthnyr for a time, the similarity was chilling, not least in the lad’s expression.
It was a mix of shrewd scrutiny and excitement, his keenness to reach their destination tempered by all the many tales his uncle had told him regarding the perils of the Skyrn Agryr.
Luckily, Ulfmaer smiled today and the Red Waves were calm, but that didn’t prevent Guthnyr issuing a gruff command to his nephew.
“Get down from there,” he said. “Your mother’s like to banish me if you suffer a dunking your first time upon the ocean proper.”
“I want to be first to see the Fire Isles,” the boy said, refusing to shift his gaze from the horizon.
When younger, this lad would hang on his uncle’s every word, but things had begun to change in recent months.
Defiance was more frequent, and so were his many, many questions.
“Why aren’t we rowing? We’ll get there quicker. ”
“Because the wind will do the work for us. Only a fool rows when he doesn’t have to.
As for the Fire Isles.” Guthnyr reached out and snared the boy’s scruff, hauling him back to the deck.
“It’ll be days yet. Now go and help Falk peel onions for the midday meal.
When you’ve done that, fetch your stave. ”
“Practice again?” The boy rolled his eyes. “Even here?”
“Especially here. Can’t call yourself an Ascarlian if you can’t fight on a pitching deck.”
They matched stares for a second until, scowling, Feoryn stomped off to join Falk on the mid-deck.
The old outlaw greeted the lad with a grin and a proffered knife.
The boy set to the chore with habitual skill, peeling onions being one of Guthnyr’s punishments for an overly sharp tongue or excessively slow feet.
“You could ease the leash a little,” Tyrheld said, coming to Guthnyr’s side. “It’s his birthday after all.”
He let out a mirthless grunt and looked to the east, scanning the clouds with an experienced eye that told of rain to come.
“On my tenth birthday,” he said, “my great-grandfather roused me at dawn to make me swim in Linsker Fjord. It was the middle of winter. When I came out crying, he made me swim again.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and she nestled against him, running a hand over the round mass of her belly. “She’s kicking again,” she groaned. “I could bear the pain in my back if only she’d stop kicking.”
“Her father’s strength matched with her mother’s temper.” Guthnyr grinned as he pressed a kiss to Tyrheld’s temple. “Quite the handful she’ll be.”
Tyrheld angled a narrow gaze at her husband. “The queen. Did you speak to her before we left?”
“I did.”
She nudged an elbow to his ribs. “And?”
“And she is far from keen for the commander of her fleet to forsake his duties and depart for lands unknown.”
“When we travelled the Swathe together you promised me all the treasures of the world, or at least the sight of them. I want that, Guthnyr.” She patted her belly again. “I want it for her as much as me.”
In truth, his discussion with Sygna had only partially related to his request to depart her service and sail to the east. The first Ascarlian ship to make it through the fiery barrier of the Fire Islands had appeared off Speldhelven some four years ago.
Named the Ohlnir and captained by the famed Kahlvik Vahrimdorr, she had been guided by a Nihlvarian wayfinder.
Apparently, the voyage was the summation of successive attempts mounted over the course of three years.
Kahlvik bore formal missives from Thera Speldrenda, Queen of All Ascarlia, to Sygna Verunhelv, the Sea Queen of Vorunvahl.
She greeted him warmly and sent him back with missives of her own, including a lengthy personal letter to be shown only to his queen.
Since then, other Ascarlian ships had made the voyage, though little more than a handful since the route remained perilous.
However, Guthnyr knew it was only a matter of time before safer passages were discovered.
As yet, no Nihlvarian vessels had arrived, but he didn’t doubt Deyna would eventually see fit to send an emissary.
He felt certain she still held power in the Citadel, and most likely far beyond.
When he left Nihlvar, the locals had already taken to calling her the Travka Queen.
He thought it likely the name had stuck.
Three queens there were, he mused in faint amusement. Now three queens there are.
“Why?” Sygna asked him flatly. “Why depart my side? Why remove your guiding hand from my son? Why leave my fleet without a leader?”
“Your son is of an age where he needs a queen’s guidance,” Guthnyr replied.
“I’ve taught him as best I can, as you instructed.
But I can’t teach him how to rule. Only his mother can do that.
Regarding the fleet, Gyrwald Audheld is as fine a leader as they could hope for.
Better, in fact, given the way she handled that business in the Mahra Isles.
As for why.” He paused, head crowding with a flurry of memories, something that happened with greater frequency these days.
“I feel there are people I must find. Friends I thought lost to me, but now… Now I feel a change. Ruhlin, Elvine, my sister. They fill my dreams, calling to me. There must be a reason.” Noting the concerned cast to Sygna’s brow, he forced a grin.
“And Tyrheld is ever pestering to see the world. I first wooed her with my tales of far-off lands, after all.”
Sygna had begrudged an agreement to consider his request and provide an answer before the advent of winter. But their conversation had quickly turned to what she considered to be a mission of far greater import. “If you see the smallest glimmer, Guthnyr…”
Upon reaching the Fire Isles two weeks later, he allowed Feoryn a few hours to scamper about the ruins of the city on the shore.
The location of this singularly noteworthy place was widely known these days but still few subjects of Vorunvahl ever came here.
The tale of Velgard’s fate had been told far and wide, and, while those who held most ardently to comforting myths refused to believe it, most chose to let the Exiled King wither into dark legend.
Guthnyr had been here once before, but this was Falk’s third visit and he acted as guide to the boy, showing remarkable patience in answering his unending stream of questions.
When it came time to scale the steep slope beyond the city, however, the outlaw begged off.
“My old knees, my lord,” he said, even though to Guthnyr’s eyes the man remained as hale as ever, despite a fully bald pate and deepening lines upon his face.
The shadow Guthnyr saw in Falk’s gaze as he eyed the slope told the truth of it clearly enough.
Like Sygna, he had no desire to see the sword again.
“Come on, then,” Guthnyr called to Feoryn, currently engaged in balancing his way along the top of the stunted wall. “The climb is steep, mind, and I’ll not abide any whining.”
The cave sat halfway up the slope where the air began to take on the sulphurous taint that marked the more volatile regions of these isles.
The opening was easily missed, partly covered by the bushes Guthnyr had planted here near a decade ago.
They had grown thick in his absence, requiring him to draw Kohrvayl and hack his way through.
Lingering at the mouth of the cave, he paused to strike flint to the oil-soaked rags of a torch.
“Stay close and don’t stray,” he told Feoryn in tones that invited not the slightest argument. “One step in the wrong direction and you’re like to find yourself wandering the bowels of this mountain for the rest of your days.”
His warning was only a partial exaggeration.
Once inside the cave, they were presented with a labyrinth of tunnels, some broad and deceptively straight, others narrow and winding.
It was into one of the constricted passageways that Guthnyr led Feoryn.
For once the boy was content to comply with his uncle’s commands, keeping close to Guthnyr’s side as they stooped, squirmed, and, at one point, crawled their way deeper into the fissured rock.
The torch’s flickering glow played over pointed stone dampened with centuries of dripping moisture, conveying the sense that they had ventured into the many-toothed mouth of some impossibly huge beast. The heat also thickened as they went deeper, stoked by the lava pit Guthnyr knew roiled in the crater that formed the heart of this mountain.
Finally, they came to the cavern. The narrow tunnel abruptly expanded into a broad chamber of many-hued stone.
When kissed by the torch’s flame, the walls appeared to take on an arcane animation, becoming a swirl of red, gold and green.
When he and Sygna discovered this place, she had named it the Rainbow Hall, and Guthnyr thought it entirely fitting.
The chamber floor was mostly taken up with a pool of water a dozen feet wide.
It rippled at the edges, fed by the myriad rivulets of gathered damp streaming from the surrounding walls.
But its surface was mostly flat, reflecting the shifting hues of the chamber like a mirror.
Yet amid the changing haze of colour, there was one that remained constant.
The sword shone like silver, as untarnished as the day Guthnyr had unwrapped it and cast it into the water.
He knew that, should he reach into the pool and draw it forth, the blade would be as keen and unmarked as ever.
Upon his arrival in Speldhelven, Sygna’s first command to him had been to sail to the Fire Isles, there to cast the Sword of the Altvar into a fiery crater.
However, after exploration had revealed this marvellous cavern, Guthnyr had prevailed upon her to leave it here instead.
“I know you fear it,” he had said. “And you are right to do so. But none can doubt its value. If you had seen what it wrought that day, Sygna. In Felnir’s hand it saved us all, including the child that grows in your womb.
One day, this thing may be needed again.
” And so, in accordance with his new queen’s reluctant command, he had cast the sword into the pool in the hope it would never be grasped by mortal hand again.
“It’s…” Feoryn said, his boyish features quirked by a puzzled frown and his tone holding a subdued note of disappointment. “… just a sword,” he finished.
“That it is,” Guthnyr agreed. “But it’s also so much more.
This is the blade your father found in the Vaults of the Altvar.
With this he conquered Vorunvahl, then journeyed across the Swathe to ensure the destruction of the Exiled King.
Have no doubt of it, Feoryn. Your father once saved the world with this sword. ”
The boy’s frown softened, though a reproving scowl remained. “And then he died.”
“Yes.” Guthnyr looked back at the sword, crouching to peer close at the blade.
“For that was his fate. One he knew awaited him, but he wouldn’t shirk it.
There are those in this realm who whisper ill of Felnir Skyrnrak, for much was the blood he spilled in winning the throne.
But never doubt this, Feoryn, in his heart, at the end, your father was a great man. ”
“Can I take it?” Guthnyr looked up, seeing Feoryn take a step closer to the pool. “It is mine, after all. My… inheritance.”
Looking back to the sword, Guthnyr stared even more intently at the blade.
No glow, he thought, sighing in relief. Sygna’s instructions had been very clear: If you see the smallest glimmer, Guthnyr.
If you suspect for one instant that thing yearns for my son’s hand, you will take it and cast it into the molten heart of that mountain.
“No,” he said, straightening. “Your mother thinks it best left where it is for now. As do I.”
Feoryn’s brow creased as he looked up at Guthnyr. “Then why did we come here?”
“Because your mother, our queen, ordered it. And because, it makes a fitting place for me to begin telling you a tale.”
“You’re always telling me tales.”
“Not like this one.” Placing his hand on the top of Feoryn’s head, Guthnyr turned the boy about and gently nudged him back towards the tunnel.
“This one is about how you came to be born, among many other things…” His voice faded as something flickered in the corner of his eye.
Yet, staring into the pool once more, he found no change to the sword.
The torch merely caught a patch of silver, he decided, but found his gaze still captured by the inviolate weapon in the water. If you see the smallest glimmer…
“Uncle?” Feoryn prompted. “Your oh-so important tale?”
“Yes.” Blinking, Guthnyr turned away and ushered his nephew into the tunnel, voice echoing long as he spoke: “However, this tale does not begin with your father. Nor with me, nor with your aunt Thera, or the famed Spear Maiden Elvine Jurest. It begins upon the shore of an island far to the north, where once there dwelt a fisherman named Ruhlin the Quiet…”