A Fire of Roses

by Melinda R. Cordell

  “I still think Varinn is lying,” the berserker said. “To go back to our original premise. Maybe Varinn adopted a much older kid. Maybe Varinn really did kill the queen’s daughter. What’s in it for him?”

  “He’s devastated about the deaths,” Gefjun said. “I’ve seen him. He’s really suffering. And I’ve seen the little boy’s room.” She hadn’t meant to, but she’d passed by and the door was open. “His room has a little small bed draped in black with a stuffed animal on the pillow, and a small cloak on a stand, and wooden blocks on the floor, and pictures he’s drawn on the walls with chalk. This is not the room of a grown-up man, I’m telling you.”

  Some of them were still exchanging skeptical glances. Gefjun puffed out a sigh.

  But just then the seething rush of leathery wings came from outside the prison. Everybody stirred, looking front.

  A guard rushed in. “Gefjun,” he shouted. “Gefjun of Skala. The king needs your help.”

  “How so?” she called back to her messenger as she rummaged through the healing supplies in her rucksack and the medicinal plants she had in little flasks and casks.

  “There’s a strange thing taking place,” the guard cried. “A ship’s been stolen by some unsavory people. They say they’re going to make sacrifices to dragons or something. The king needs your help to find it.”

  Somebody rolled their eyes. “Don’t they know there’s a war on?”

  Then the words sank in, and Gefjun sat bolt upright. “Wait, wait. Sacrifice to dragons? You mean undead dragons?”

  “What?”

  “Undead dragons?”

  “Oh my gosh, those people are doing it again,” Gefjun cried, throwing all her medical stuff back in her rucksack.

  “What people? Doing what again?” her fellow crew members asked.

  Gefjun looked around at them. “Do you remember when everybody on our ships fell down on the decks, asleep? And those grey-robed people came aboard, enchanted us, and were taking us to be sacrificed to the undead dragons?”

  A bunch of odd looks from her fellow crew members.

  “I was fighting in full-on battle, and the next thing I knew, I was suddenly waking up, lying on the deck our ship.” Others nodded. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Nor did I,” others said.

  “I can’t have been the only one who saw everything,” Gefjun said, grabbing up her bag and getting to her feet.

  Then again, she had been the only one of the crew who had gotten to her feet during the whole affair—especially after that man tried to choke her for absolutely no reason.

  Her little puffin friend flew up to her shoulder and tried to offer her another beakful of blue eels. “No, thank you, little guy, I don’t eat eels raw.”

  One of the archers shrugged. “I don’t remember anything from the time I fell down until I crawled to my feet again—when we suddenly found ourselves far down the ocean and being attacked by a completely new contingent of King Varinn’s sailors.”

  Everybody else nodded.

  “So apparently none of you were lying awake and seeing any of this,” Gefjun said, musing. “Look, I’ll tell you more when I get back. The king is waiting for me outside.”

  “Be careful,” someone said as she headed out.

  “I still wouldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw him,” another crew member added.

  Gefjun rushed through the prisoners, her puffin friend nestled on her shoulder under her hair.

  At the mouth of the prisoner’s bay sat a black dragon. She stopped short out of habit, as she’d only recently associated the black dragons with the enemy.

  She thought of her dear friend Rjupa flying her red dragon up at two of Varinn’s black dragons—and how their twin gouts of fire sent Rjupa, in flames, into the sea.

  Gefjun’s heart began to race. She had to stop and put her hand over her eyes at the memory. Rjupa, her dear friend, had survived, only to be thrown into the ocean later by Varinn’s so-called warriors when they took over her ship. They’d flung her overboard with all the rest of the patients that Gefjun had been trying to heal, saying they were too unfit to help row. And Skeggi had run across the ship, screaming, and had flung himself into the water after her.

  They had been so devoted to each other. She’d loved them both, her sword-friends.

  King Varinn is the reason your friends are dead, she thought.

  Not directly, no.

  And here was King Varinn himself, sliding down off his dragon with a concerned look on his face. “Gefjun? Are you all right?”

  And what kind of girl just hops on the back of a dragon with some other man less than a month after her future husband’s been killed?

  She cleared her throat and shook her head miserably. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Where are we going? What do we need to do?”

  “The other dragons are all tied up in battle or in guarding the keep,” Varinn explained, climbing back on his dragon and motioning her aboard behind him. “But we’ve gotten a report of a ship being stolen out of battle for a strange reason. We think it’s Nauma again, stealing a ship for her unholy purposes. And somebody, ahem, recommended you to fly with me just in case something happens.”

  “Somebody? Is it anybody specific?” Gefjun went sour-faced in an instant.

  “Why, er, no, why do you ask?” Varinn asked, trying to look like the picture of innocence.

  She folded her arms.

  He frowned. “Gefjun, please, I need your help. I’m told you know how to fly a dragon, and you can fly it well. Your medical knowledge may also serve us. But we need to hurry before Nauma gets away with the ship she stole.”

  Gefjun dropped the sour look. “I’ll need my cloak.”

  “We’ll fly up to the balcony in front of your room. Run in and get what you need.”

  Now Gefjun understood why the balcony to her room was so spacious. They flew up to it and Varinn’s dragon landed neatly on it, though the wind from her back-winging knocked over a few chairs and a potted plant.

  Gefjun rushed into her room, startling Sóma, who had been deep in concentration over some intricate needlework.

  “My goodness,” she said, jumping as Gefjun burst in through the balcony door and knocking several skeins of floss to the ground. “What is happening?”

  Gefjun threw on her woolen cloak and fastened the brooch. “Another ship’s been stolen. We think it’s for evil purposes.” She wasn’t sure how much she should tell about Nauma. “I’ve crossed paths with this person before. She’s bad news.” Gefjun grabbed her extra bag of herbs and tinctures—she specifically used alcohol-based tinctures so they wouldn’t freeze at high altitudes on a dragon’s back—and rushed back to the door to the balcony.

  “Will Aesa be looking for you?”

  “I don’t know.” Panic struck Gefjun. “Where is Aesa? Wasn’t she supposed to be here?” she demanded.

  “She’s with her sister Dyrfinna,” said Sóma, instantly worried. “Is there something wrong?”

  Gefjun sighed deeply. Aesa was already back with Dyrfinna. Didn’t even spend a full day with her. “No. That is as it should be. Sóma, I’m going with the king on a mission. I should be back later.”

  “Go safely,” she said with a bow.

  Gefjun rushed out the door. She knew she shouldn’t have felt betrayed. She knew that Aesa was better off with her sister. But she still felt crushed as she climbed up on the black dragon.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  15

  WHIRLWIND

  Gefjun

  The black dragon opened its wings and lifted off. Gefjun held on to the forward strap instead of Varinn’s back, as she wasn’t in a mood for romance. How nice that Dyrfinna could kill Ostryg and still get her little sister back right away. Aesa didn’t even say goodbye to Gefjun. Not that it mattered.

  They leveled off high over the world in the cold air. Gefjun secured her bags to the dragon’s side, pulled the woolen cloak tightly around herself, and brooded.

 
; She looked over the great world, the land that bristled with dark forests of spruce and fir trees, the islands scattered all around the shores, the tall mountains that bore glaciers on their shoulders, the gray ocean that faded and merged into the horizon. Such a beautiful land, even more beautiful from the air. She exhaled hard and tried to pull her mind together.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as Varinn turned the dragon toward the sun. “Do you know where the ship is? Generally speaking, of course.”

  “Hedgehog gave me the lay of the land where the ship was last seen,” he said.

  “What are we going to do when we spot it?”

  “I’m going to sing that ship to a stop and send Nauma to the bottom of the ocean,” he said.

  Gefjun could almost hear Dyrfinna yammering on about the importance of laying out several good strategies before rushing off on important missions like this one. Oh, shut up, Gefjun thought, trying to kick her out of her head.

  They traveled high, and soon over the diamond glimmers of the waves appeared the faint shadows of ships, growing darker and more real as they drew closer.

  Gefjun sang her song to sharpen her eyesight, and everything sprang into focus.

  It was a battle between ships.

  Red and black dragons skirmished in the air over the ships, fire raging in the air between them. The red banners waved over Queen Saehildr’s ships, black banners over King Varinn’s ships. With the help of the song that improved her vision, Gefjun could see stones flying in the air, could see the faint lines of arrows and spears arcing over the ships. Three ships rammed one, and a long moment later the crack of the ship’s prow breaking reached her ears.

  King Varinn leaned over the neck of his dragon, looking down at the ships and dragons. A faint roar came to Gefjun even this far away—the noise of battle.

  He squinted to watch. “This is amazing! I think whatever you sang is affecting me, because I’ve never seen with this kind of clarity before. Now look at that,” he added, pointing to the middle of the battle, where the ships were dovetailed together and a faint scrim of tiny people, no bigger than mites at this distance, were milling. “You can see the queen’s forces putting up a good fight, but my forces are moving forward slowly. They’re trying to split your forces in two, and they just might succeed.”

  “I know a lot of people in the queen’s forces,” she said.

  “I know a lot of people in my forces as well. But that’s war.”

  Varinn flew on eastward, sailing high over the fighting, even over the dragons at war well below him. “That’s where we last heard of our ship,” he said, pointing down to where part of his fleet continued advancing. “I was told that it suddenly left the battle, traveling east, and disappeared into a fogbank.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “It is. Suspiciously so. As we travel on, we need to look for a large fog bank on the ocean. Didn’t you say that a fog came down when your ship was taken?”

  “Yes. I guess it was foggy that day.”

  “It might not have been just weather. I suspect a magic worker had conjured up that fog.”

  Gefjun sang again to sharpen her eyes, looking over the ocean. The higher they went, the more ocean there was. It always amazed her how endless the ocean was … how easy it was to lose something, like a Viking longboat, in it.

  The air grew thin and cold, and wisps of clouds blew over them, the mist chilling her face and the backs of her hands.

  “What are Nauma’s people doing with those ships?” she asked.

  “They sacrifice the crew on the ships in order to revive the dead dragons,” Varinn said. “I’ve been told that there’s a place where the dragons take their dead, a highly sacred mountain where their kind go to die. We wonder if Nauma is going to take the people they’ve captured to that mountain. With a mass sacrifice, and all the energy as all those poor souls are torn from the body, Nauma’s crew would have enough magical power to raise the dragons from their holy sleep. The monsters,” he added.

  “Actually,” Gefjun said, surprised by the remembrance, “I’d forgotten this, but when they were talking on my ship they captured? They said they wanted to capture Dyrfinna. Nauma said that if they took Dyrfinna’s ship, there’s nothing that would stop her from coming to them.” She shook her head.

  “So they want Dyrfinna?”

  “I guess,” Gefjun grumbled. As far as she was concerned, they could have her.

  “Is there any connection between Dyrfinna and Nauma’s tribe?”

  “Only that she nearly killed Nauma in a duel. She would have done it, too, but a dragon fight started overhead just when Finna was about to drive home the killing blow. Maybe Nauma wants revenge against Dyrfinna.”

  “That’s a lot of work if you’re only after revenge,” the king said.

  “Is that fog down there?” Gefjun asked, pointing past him.

  “Hm,” said Varinn. “That fog looks interesting.” He brought the dragon down a little, and she sang a little bit so she could see. He squinted, too.

  “That’s very effective. What is that you’re singing?” Varinn asked.

  “My eyesight is bad,” she said. “I have to sing a bit of magic so I can see better.”

  “I haven’t heard of song magic being used for that before,” he said.

  “It helps when I’m sword fighting,” she said. “It sounds weird, but when I sing, I feel my eyes … squeeze a bit, and then I can see better.”

  Varinn brought the dragon down toward the water. It took a while, since they were so high up. The air slowly became thicker and warmer.

  “Most all the song magic I’ve learned is for defense and attack,” Varinn said. “My instructors talked a little about song magic in everyday affairs, but they expected me to be unparalleled in self-defense and in warfare. They put no emphasis on song magic in other areas. I taught myself a little to help grow the roses, but my instructors frowned even on that. They always said I would have servants to tend to those matters.”

  “Well, don’t you?”

  Varinn laughed quietly. “Yes, I do. But what’s the fun in growing roses if you can’t work with them with your own hands?”

  They flew low over the fogbank. Cold wisps of fog reached up into their path, obscuring their way.

  Varinn told the dragon, “Keep us just high enough over the fog so we can see ahead of us and not run into a mountain.”

  Gefjun shivered and drew her cloak closer around her. Moisture collected in beads on her cloak, though they turned to steam on the dragon’s throat and belly, where its heat was greatest.

  Ahead, the very top of a Viking mast, barely seen below the top of the fogbank, stirred the fog and left eddies in its wake.

  Gefjun pointed. “There.”

  “Stay back,” Varinn whispered to the dragon. Even though she and Varinn couldn’t see the ship below, the people in the ship might be able to see the shadow of their dragon on the fog above them. Gefjun twisted around to glance up at the sun. It was an overcast day here above the fog, which was good. However, the sun was hanging behind them—not good. Even if the sun wasn’t directly shedding its light on them, it still could be bright enough to cast their shadow on the fogbank below.

  They wheeled away from the ship’s mast, circling around. Gefjun leaned to the side and looked behind to keep an eye on that mast.

  “It’s so quiet,” Varinn said.

  “When Nauma’s people came aboard my ship, somebody sang something I hadn’t heard before,” Gefjun said in a low voice. “And then everybody on our ship, no matter what side they were on, fell to the deck and slept like the dead. For some reason I stayed awake. So, the people of the ship are probably sleeping.”

  They fell silent as they neared the mast and glided silently past, the dragon not flapping his wings in an effort to not stir up the fogbank. Gefjun leaned over the dragon’s side and listened. Not a sound from the ship below except for the lapping of water on its sides, the bump of the waves on its bottom.

>   Once they’d circled some distance away, Gefjun whispered, “Should we attack?”

  “Can’t set them afire,” Varinn said. “I don’t want to kill the original crew.”

  Good thing Dyrfinna isn’t here, Gefjun thought. She’d be tearing her hair out at our lack of strategy.

  “Are we just going to follow this ship?” she asked.

  “Only until it comes out of the fog,” Varinn said. “Then we can attack Nauma. Or I will. I have these songs that will just blow her away. Literally. But I can’t attack her if I can’t see her.”

  Dyrfinna had talked about how important the element of surprise was until she had gone blue in the face. And now, though Gefjun could hardly believe it, she said, “If we can surprise them, if we can get to them first, that’s the important thing.”

  “I can’t just start singing at them through the fog. I need to know what’s down there waiting for us,” Varinn whispered back.

  “The fox doesn’t wait for the mouse to come out of the snow to pounce on him,” Gefjun said.

  “We’re not foxes. We’re not going to eat this ship. Also, these mice can fire back at us,” Varinn replied, craning his neck to try and see through the fog.

  “Well then, how far do we follow them?” Gefjun whispered.

  Gefjun suddenly heard a murmur from below.

  “Shh!” she said.

  But it was too late. The voice stopped abruptly.

  A single, powerful note rang out from the ship.

  On Gefjun’s left side, a wind rushed up from beneath the fog. The dragon backwinged hard to get back.

  The wind whipped the white fog around in a circle, turning slowly, then faster and faster, until it was a whirlpool of white, whirling and opening and spinning clear air down into the fog.

  Varinn had the dragon backwinging, but the wind was slowly pulling the dragon down and in. Somebody, still obscured by the whirling fog down below, sang a style of song that Gefjun had never heard before.

  The whirlwind in the fog open up, spinning wider and wider. And when the whirlpool of fog reached down to the top of the ocean, then Gefjun could see her, in the center of the whirlwind, standing upon a small rock in the water. She held up her hands at them as if in command.