The Song of the Ash Tree 03 - Already Comes Darkness

by T L Greylock

  “You need care,” Raef said, suddenly angry.

  “And what good will that care be when Hati and Skoll swallow the moon and the sun?” Siv remained calm. “Do not choose me over all of Midgard, Raef. If we do not save the world, it will not matter if I go to the last battle with broken ribs or with all my strength.”

  “I do not know how to save the world,” Raef shouted. “I am helpless against this fate. It is madness. What can one man do in the face of the end of all things?” His eyes burned with tears of frustration and Raef turned his back on Siv and Vakre and strode into the pines that lined the river.

  His steps took him to the waterfall and he let himself take refuge in its thrumming rhythm, in the blurred rush of water where the fall was strongest, in the steady, delicate trickle where streams of water found their own paths down the glistening rocks and icicles. After a time, he stretched out a hand and let the water play across his fingers. For a flashing moment, no more than a heartbeat, Raef felt the tumbling water in his veins, felt the strength of the river even while winter kept it chained, felt what it might be like to exist only as a drop of water, constantly moving, following the curves of the world on a path etched out by every other drop of water, destined to roll into the sea and drown. A bleak, yet beautiful life.

  Raef drew back his hand and studied the droplets that ran down his fingers to pool in his palm. The fate of those droplets had changed the moment he came to the falls, the moment he thrust his hand into their existence. He tipped his head back and poured the water onto his tongue, thinking of Finnoul and her relentless belief that Raef had come to Alfheim for a purpose. His arrival had been an accident, an unforeseen consequence of Eira’s decision to keep him alive, and yet he had taken a place in Finnoul’s rebellion, had disrupted the flow of Alfheim’s future just as he now disrupted the waterfall.

  “What was it all for?” Raef murmured as he watched the moonlight play across the water. “Fate,” he said, looking up at the stars, “I do not fear you. I do not fear what lies ahead. I defy you.” The last words were whispered but never had Raef felt such conviction burning in his heart.

  When he returned to the riverside camp, Siv was asleep. Her face was free of pain and for that Raef was glad. Vakre was hunched by the river’s edge, filling skins with the clear water. Raef squatted next to him.

  “Take care of her,” Raef said. “Perhaps rest is all she needs. I will return with the second dawn.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “In search of an answer.” Raef rose, settled a hand on Vakre’s shoulder, then walked away.

  The horse was tired, but she pricked her ears when Raef approached and waited patiently while he cinched the saddle and drew the reins over her head. Raef stroked a hand down her nose.

  “Are you ready, friend?”

  As if in response, the horse bobbed her head and snorted into Raef’s gloved hand. He pulled himself up into the saddle and turned her away from the river.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Raef came into the valley from the east, just as Fengar had done before him when the lord of Solheim had sought refuge from the war in the furthest reaches of Vannheim. Riding through the night had brought Raef to the eastern entrance to the valley in the late morning and he stopped to water the horse and give his own body a period of rest. The climb would come next, but he granted himself a long, sun-drenched moment at the edge of the river that split the valley in half. To the north, across the water, rose the slope to the eagle’s nest, the hidden fortress of Vannheim. But that was not the steep climb ahead of him. Raef looked over his shoulder to the southern summits, to a ridge where he had flown, once, the ridge where he had watched the smoke-colored kin breathe her last.

  He was not sure what drew him to return to that place. And even then, with his destination in sight, he could not escape the feeling that he was wasting precious time. That he should have continued on to the Old Troll without further delay. But the decision was made and could not be unmade, and so, after steeling himself for the climb, Raef pushed his doubts into the deepest recesses of his mind and, leaving the horse tied to a tree, he began his ascent.

  The way was easy at first, a gentle trek through tall pines. The snow cover on the sheltered ground was thin and Raef’s strides ate up the ground. Soon the way grew steep, the trees more scattered, the ground slick beneath Raef’s boots. When he crossed the tree line, he cast a quick glance over his shoulder toward the eagle’s nest. The deep bowl was in full sun, the steep walls bright with the light’s reflection. Taking two deep breaths, Raef pressed onward, attacking the bare, ravine-carved slope above at a run that soon made his thighs burn and his lungs cry out for respite.

  Only when shadows flitted across his vision and a stumble nearly sent him sprawling did Raef realize he was dizzy and weak with hunger, not having eaten since the previous day. He collapsed in the snow and dug out his skin of water, but his shaking hands caused him to spill more than he swallowed. Raef set the water skin aside, closed his eyes, and forced himself to slow his breathing, to command his thundering heart.

  When he had regained his lungs, Raef pulled out the small ration of food he had taken from his pack. The crumbly cheese broke apart as he opened its cloth wrapper, but Raef brought the cloth to his mouth and ate like a dog, his tongue snatching up every stray piece. The strips of dried venison took more time, more patience, and Raef resolved to continue his climb at a slower pace while he tore at the meat and chewed.

  The sun beating down on his back as he climbed on soon had him soaked in sweat but Raef knew that if he stopped for any length of time again, the winter air would need only a moment to chill him. He could not risk that.

  He could see his destination in his mind, a narrow crest of stone, a shoulder between the heads of two peaks. Enough room for one man and a loyal dragon-kin to wait for death. The ground would drop away on either side. A perilous place but one that held claim over a piece of his heart.

  When at last he reached the top of the ridge, Raef was drained and he dropped to his hands and knees on a slab of granite, the tip of his nose brushing the stone as he sank down. To his relief the air had gone still. There were no cruel winds whipping over the ridge.

  “Perhaps there is a goddess yet in Asgard who still watches over the world of men,” Raef murmured to the cold stone. At last he gathered the strength to raise his head, to see what was left of the smoke-colored kin.

  The snow had come to cover her, he remembered, but snow never lingered in exposed places for long and any trace of the storm that had descended on the peaks after her death was long swept away. Her body remained, the grey skin still stretched over the bones, the sunset eyes still masked by eyelids. The cold had kept the teeth of decay at bay. But tears flooded Raef’s eyes at the sight of her so shrunken, so bereft of life and strength.

  Raef knelt at her side and stretched out one hand until it came to rest on her nose. The cold he found there startled him, though he had known it would be that way. Yet he could think only of the first time they had met, when she had been set to watch him while he awaited his audience with the Guardians, of how she had stretched out her nose, both curious and tentative, to smell his outstretched palm. Her warm breath had tickled his fingers.

  “Why?” Raef whispered. “What brought you here? What brought me to Alfheim when I should have died on the seas?” He ran his fingers down her neck to her chest, remembering how he had felt her heart go still. “Would that you could help me now. That you could tell me what it is I must do. If I can do anything at all. This fate is as old as the void at the beginning of all things and I am but one drop of water waiting to drown in the sea. And still, I will try, though I expect nothing for myself in return. Because I do not know any other way to live.” Words sprang to Raef’s mind unbidden, the Allfather’s words, as he spoke to Raef about foolishly hanging himself upon Yggdrasil, all because he knew no other course.

  Those words seemed to Raef a seed in his mind, but he felt blind to whatever m
ight grow from it. Raef sighed and sat close to the crook of the kin’s neck, his knees tucked up to his chest. “I killed one of your ancient cousin,” he told her. An involuntary shiver coursed down his spine and Raef knew he could not linger. As he stood, his boot brushed against the kin’s outstretched foot, the impact jarring loose one of the talons from the sunken joint. Raef picked it up and stroked a finger along its curved length until he reached the tip. It was as long as his hand and deadly sharp. “Perhaps I have come in vain, for I will return to Vakre and Siv no wiser. But you have granted me a final gift and so I do not count it a wasted journey.” Raef tucked the talon into his empty food pouch and leaned down to touch the kin one last time. “Farewell, friend.”

  The descent passed quickly as Raef tracked the sun through the western sky. There could be no rest, no fitful sleep, not if he meant to return by dawn as he had promised, and so Raef, after filling his water skin once more, mounted the mare and turned her back the way they had come, first east, through the valley, and then south to the river where Vakre and Siv waited.

  He beat the sun, returning to the small camp near the waterfall when night still held sway. The horses greeted each other as Raef approached, waking Vakre. The son of Loki held the mare’s bridle while Raef, stiff and weary, dismounted.

  “How is she?” Raef asked, looking at Siv who slept beside the dying embers of a fire.

  “No worse.” Vakre’s gaze searched Raef’s face. “Did you find what you sought?”

  “I am no closer to understanding how I might change fate, if that is what you mean. But Odin sacrificed himself for something even he did not understand.” Raef met Vakre’s gaze. “Are we not made in the Allfather’s image? Do we not share the follies of his heart, the strength of his anger, even his hunger for knowledge? We are weak of body and spirit when compared to the gods, but my course is laid before me and I know no other.”

  Raef let Siv sleep, even drifted into a half-sleep himself, until the sky lightened. They shared the last of their bread, dry and stale, and half the cheese they had remaining. Vakre heated water over the fire and they drank to warm themselves from the inside. Siv gave no complaint when Raef helped her onto the horse, though her lips tightened and her face grew pale. She smiled, though, when Raef showed her the smoke-colored kin’s talon.

  “I would have liked to know her,” Siv said, returning the talon to Raef. She held to his waist more tightly than she had before, but she gave no sign of weakening as they rode north to curl around the double forked end of the fjord.

  They made good time in the daylight, their route made easy by a wide valley. Prevailing winds had swept the snow into hulking drifts as tall as farmhouses, leaving swaths of frozen ground clear. The empty land around them was uninhabited, a bleak part of Vannheim home to little but rocks and stunted trees. The good soil for farming lay to the west and north at lower elevations, and the waters of the fjord were a great distance away. Looming to the east, the highest peaks in Vannheim and the vast glacier stretched over those slopes were the only landmarks, the only means to gauge distance and location. The summits were shrouded in cloud, as they nearly always were, Raef knew, but their sharp shoulders, their bald faces, their jagged silhouettes, were known to him, as were their smaller brothers and sisters clustered at their feet.

  Raef pointed toward the northeast, at a finger of glacial ice that delved lower into the foothills than any other. It dipped in and out if sight as they crossed the rough terrain.

  “When we are level with the Serpent’s Tongue,” he said, “the fjord will no longer obstruct our passage west. We will find gentler terrain and, with the gods’ help, a farm with meat and bread to spare.”

  They rode on, Raef with one eye on the Serpent’s Tongue, watching it draw closer, but his mind was on Siv, who had grown quiet and seemed to lean more heavily on him. He slowed his horse to a walk, hoping to give her a respite from the constant jarring of their faster, ground-eating gait. It would come again all too soon.

  But he was too late. Siv, her eyelids fluttering as she slipped into unconsciousness, began to slide from her perch behind Raef. Twisting, Raef caught her around the waist and halted the fall, but one look at her face told him the fever had come. With Vakre’s help, Raef settled Siv on his lap, her head cradled on his collarbone, his arms encircling her as he held the reins, her fevered brow warming his neck, his cloak pulled around them both. They rode on, for there was no place to turn back to, and they would find nothing but darkness if they lingered.

  They turned west when they drew even with the Serpent’s Tongue, but Raef, consumed by the fever that burned in Siv, felt no relief at their progress into the lower lands away from the mountain plateau. The closest farms were still out of reach and Raef’s sleepless night was wearing on him, but they pressed on until the light began to fade, lengthening the shadows across the glen they rode through. They chose a grove of oaks, tall and proud, to shelter them and Vakre lifted Siv from Raef’s lap, then began to build a fire. He kindled the spark with his hands and they wrapped Siv in all three blankets they carried, laying her as close to the flames as they dared. Neither Vakre nor Raef spoke until the sun dropped out of the world, leaving them among the blues and purples of twilight and the first stars. The moon, a fat crescent, hovered among the black branches of the oaks above them.

  “You should go on,” Vakre said. He sat apart from the fire, though whether he was simply warmed by his own heat or he wanted to distance himself from the flames he had come to loathe, Raef was not sure.

  The words were an echo of those in Raef’s mind but he did not respond.

  “Take what food we have. I can hunt with Siv’s bow. There is fresh water here. If she does not worsen, I will take her to the closest farm. Then, if it is not too late, I will follow you.”

  “I will not leave her.”

  Vakre was quiet for a moment. “Would you choose her over all of Midgard?”

  “Do not ask me to make that choice, Vakre,” Raef said, his voice sharp though it was Vakre’s words that had cut. “There is no certainty of success. I do not know what I am looking for. I do not know if the Old Troll will show me anything.”

  “Will you wait here, then, by her side? Wait for Black Surt’s fires? If the red rooster has crowed, Heimdall will soon sound the Gjallerhorn. Staying with Siv will not save her.”

  “And leaving will?” Raef shook his head. The truth in Vakre’s words hounded him. “Do you know what I fear most?”

  Vakre met Raef’s gaze, unblinking. “What?”

  “I fear achieving the impossible, only to discover that I alone have eluded Ragnarök, that I am left to walk Midgard in isolation, that I will save this world that I love and take no joy in it because to live in this world alone would be the worst fate imaginable. And I fear that is the unknown future the Allfather spoke of.” Raef stood and turned away from the too-hot fire.

  “I cannot save Midgard, Raef,” Vakre said, his voice filled with a sad certainty. “I know it in my bones, in the very air I breathe. And Siv,” Vakre hesitated, his gaze shifting to Siv’s face. Her forehead was damp with sweat as she dreamed a fever-dream. “It was your fate Odin One-Eye could not comprehend, Raef, your runes he touched and could not read. I do not know what lies ahead. I do not know if this is folly and madness. But I know you.”

  Raef closed his eyes, as if shutting away the world could delay the moment he would have to say goodbye to Siv, for Vakre spoke as Raef’s own heart did.

  “She will forgive you.”

  Raef turned back to Vakre. “We never found a priest. And now it is too late.” He glanced to the stars, bright in the velvet sky. “Perhaps it will all be too late,” he murmured before returning his gaze to the light of the fire and Vakre’s waiting eyes, then went to his mare and lifted the saddle onto her back.

  “The world is full of hope, Raef, though we are often too blind to see it. Remember that.”

  “Let it fill the hearts of others,” Raef said. “I claim none for myse
lf.” He could not look at Siv as he drew the reins over the horse’s head.

  He was in the saddle when the wolf song shattered the night and the earth began to tremble. The mare reared up and Raef slipped backward, tumbling from the saddle as the shuddering ground lurched up to meet him. So violent was the shaking that Raef could not stand, though he tried to crawl to Siv’s side.

  “Raef.”

  Vakre’s voice was calm, his eyes on the sky, his face full of dreadful anticipation and Raef, ceasing to fight against the heaving ground, followed Vakre’s gaze.

  The moon was gone.

  The wolves went silent, their song of triumph echoing into the gulf of darkness in the sky.

  “Hati has come.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Raef waited. Waited for the gaping hole in the sky to descend and swallow him. Waited for the wolves to strike. Waited for the stars to fall. Waited for the end of all things.

  But there was only silence. The earth grew still, the vibrations diminishing into nothing, leaving Raef pressed against the ground, waiting, his fingers reaching for Siv’s hand. The fever held tight; Siv did not stir.

  “Skoll will not be far behind his brother,” Vakre said.

  “We ride together.” Raef stood and went to quiet the horses. He dared not look at the hole in the sky where the moon should have been lest he lose his resolve; instead he fixed his attention on saddling Vakre’s horse and tried to ignore the fear storming through his heart. “No one should be alone.”

  To Raef’s relief, Vakre did not argue and they were soon mounted once more, Siv on Raef’s lap. They rode hard, as though if they went fast enough and far enough they might discover the moon in a different part of the sky, but there was no escaping this, Raef knew.

  As the dark hours passed and the ground flew under them, Raef did not look to the sky, did not look over his shoulder, though he longed to see the first glimmer of dawn behind the eastern hills. In his mind he saw the sky grow bright with the sunrise, saw the first lining of gold spread over the horizon, saw the waves of pink and purple, faint and timid at first, then bold and brilliant as the light danced with the clouds. Raef clung to the hope of sunlight as a dying warrior does his sword, but he did not pray, did not ask Odin to bring the sun once more. Odin had his own battle.