by Kate Elliott
Ivar hit the ground so hard that his knees cracked. His arms gave out, and his face and chest slammed into the dirt.
He lay stunned in darkness while the incomprehensible dream he’d been having faded away into confusion. Dirt had gotten into his mouth, coating his lips. Grit stung on his tongue. His ear hurt, the lobe bent back, but he couldn’t move his head to relieve the pressure.
As he lay there, trying to remember how to move, he heard a man speaking, but he didn’t recognize the voice.
“I was walking down a road, and I was weeping, for I knew it was the road that leads to the other world, and do you know, Uncle, more even than my dear mother I really did miss my Fridesuenda for you know we’re to be married at midwinter. But I saw a man. He came walking along the road with a black hound on either side. He was dressed exactly like a Lion but with a terrible stain of blood on his tabard. He reached out to me, and then I knew he couldn’t have been any Lion, for he wore a veil of light over his face and a crown of stars. I swear to you he looked exactly like that new Lion, the one what was once a lord, who’s in Thiadbold’s company.”
Gerulf chuckled. “I recall that one well enough, Dedi.” It took Ivar a moment to identify the liquid tone in the old Lion’s voice: he was crying as he spoke. “He shamed you into returning that tunic to the lad who lost it dicing with you.”
“Nay, Uncle, he never shamed me. He just told me the story of Folquin’s aunt and how she wove it special for her nephew when he went away to the Lions. Then he and his comrades offered to work off the winnings by doing my chores for me. It seemed mean-hearted to say ‘nay’ to them.”
“Ach, lad,” said Gerulf on a shuddering breath. “Lay you still, now. I promised your mother I’d bring you home safely, and so I will. I’ve got to get light here and see what happened to the others.”
Ivar grunted and got his arms to work, pushed up to his hands and knees just as he heard other voices whispering in alarm, many voices breaking into speech at once. “Quiet, I pray you,” he said hoarsely. “Speak, one at a time, so that we know we’re all here.”
“I’m here,” said Gerulf, “and so is my nephew Dedi—”
“I can speak for myself, Uncle.”
“Is that you, Ivar?” asked Sigfrid. “I can’t hear very well. My ears are ringing. I had the strangest vision. I saw an angel—”
“It’s the nail he took from Tallia,” said Hathumod, still weeping. “How did it come to be here?”
“Hush, Hathumod,” said Ermanrich. “Best to be quiet so that we don’t wake anything else. I had a nightmare! I was being chased by monsters, with human bodies but animal faces….” He trailed off as, abruptly, everyone waited for the seventh voice.
In the silence, Ivar heard water dripping. “Baldwin?” he whispered. Again, in a louder voice: “Baldwin?” His heart pounded furiously with fear. Ghosts always wanted blood and living breath on which to feed, and Baldwin was the one who had disturbed the skeleton.
“Ivar!” The voice echoed eerily down unknown corridors, but even the distortion could not muffle that tone of triumph. “Come see this!”
Ivar swore under his breath.
Ermanrich gave a hiccuping laugh, blended out of relief and fear. “When we’ve eyes as pretty as yours, maybe we can see in the dark, too. Where are you?”
As out of nowhere they saw a gleam of pale golden light. Baldwin’s head appeared, the soft light painting his features to an uncanny perfection. He smiled as his shoulders emerged, then his torso. It took a moment for Ivar, still on hands and knees and with his head twisted to one side, to realize that Baldwin was walking up stairs.
“You must come see!” Baldwin exclaimed as his cupped hands came into view. A ring adorned with a blue stone winked on one forefinger. He carried a bauble, all filigreed with cunning lacework and studded with pearls. The gold itself shone with a soft light, illuminating the walls of the chamber.
They were no longer in the same place. The stone slab and its ancient burial were gone. The dim alcoves built into the tomb had vanished, replaced by a smooth-walled, empty chamber carved out of rock. Ivar scrambled to his feet, wincing at the pain in his knees. He stared at the walls surrounding them, unmarked by the strange sigils that had decorated the walls of the tomb where they had taken refuge from the Quman army.
“Come see,” said Baldwin without stepping fully out of the stairwell. “You can’t believe it!” He began to descend.
Because he held the only light, they hastened to follow him. Sigfrid took Hathumod’s hand, and Ermanrich walked after them as Gerulf helped his nephew to his feet. Ivar groped around and found the torch Gerulf had been holding before the blue fire had snuffed it out. With the light receding quickly, he scrambled to the opening and descended. Fear gripped his heart, making him breathe in ragged gasps. Had Baldwin been possessed by the spirits of the dead? Or had he stumbled upon an enchantment? Where were they?
Ai, God, his knees hurt.
Twenty steps took him, blinking, into a chamber no larger than the one he had come from but so utterly different that, like his companions, he could only gaze in wonder.
They had found a treasure cave heaped with gold and jewels and all manner of precious chests and bundles of finest linen and silk cloth. Strangest of all, the chamber’s guardians lay asleep, seven young men dressed in the garb of a young lord and his attendants. They slept on heaps of coins with the restful comfort of folk sleeping on the softest of featherbeds. The young lord, marked out from his attendants by the exceptional richness of his clothing, lay half curled on his side, with one cheek resting on a palm. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. His fair hair set off a complexion pink with health. A half smile trembled on his lips, as though he were having sweet dreams.
“Seven sleepers!” exclaimed Sigfrid in a hushed voice. “The church mothers wrote of them. Can it be that we’ve stumbled across their hiding place?”
“I can count!” retorted Baldwin indignantly.
“Didn’t we read about the Seven Sleepers in Eusebēs Church History?” Ermanrich asked.
“Lord preserve us,” swore Gerulf. “That’s Margrave Villam’s lad, his youngest son, the one called Berthold. I remember the day he disappeared. Lady bless us, but I swear that was two years or more ago.” Fearful, but determined, he crossed to the young lord and knelt beside him. But for all his shaking and coaxing, he could not wake him, nor could any of the sleeping attendants be woken despite their best efforts to break the spell of sleep.
“It’s sorcery,” said Gerulf finally. He gave up last of all, long after the others had fallen back to huddle nervously by the stairs, which led up through rock toward the chamber above.
The glowing bauble made the chamber seem painted with a thin gold gauze, but shadows still lay at disconcerting and troubling angles, swathes of darkness untouched by light. “I think we should get out of here,” said Ivar unsteadily.
“What about the Quman?” asked Baldwin. “I can’t run from them anymore.” He knelt and scooped up a handful of gold coins, letting them trickle through his fingers.
Shadows moved along the floor of the chamber like vines caught in wind, twining and seeking.
“Baldwin!” said Ivar sharply as a thread of shadow snaked out from the treasure and curled up Baldwin’s leg. “Move back from there!”
Baldwin yawned. “I’m so tired.”
Ivar darted forward, got hold of Baldwin’s wrist, and shook him, hard, until all the gold scattered onto the floor. “Don’t pick up anything!” The bauble rolled out of Baldwin’s hand and spun over the floor, coming to rest with a clink against a chest of jewels. Shadows writhed at its passage.
“Don’t take anything from here,” said Ivar harshly, turning to stare at the others. The light from the bauble began to wane. “It’s all enchanted. It’s all sorcery! I’ve seen sorcery at work.” The old hatred and jealousy rose up like a floodtide in his heart. He seemed to see Hugh leering at him from the shadows that massed beyond the treasure
, and within the heart of those shadows he sensed a sullen enmity, whispering lies in his heart: Hanna is dead. Liath hates you. “Let’s go!” He tugged Baldwin mercilessly backward and pushed him toward the opening made by the stairs.
Gerulf got a spark from his flint, but it died on the blackened torch stub. A second spark spit and caught, and the torch flared to smoky life. They scrambled up the stairs with Gerulf right behind Baldwin and Ivar at the rear. Cold tendrils washed his back, but they let him go. The pure gold light behind him gleamed with greed and ancient anger.
He stumbled over the last step into the cool, empty chamber where the others waited for him.
“There’s another tunnel here,” said Baldwin, who had gone ahead.
There was nowhere else to go, but quickly they discovered they had fallen into a maze. This was no simple burial tumulus, with a single straight tunnel leading to the central womb where ancient queens and princes had been laid to rest in the long-ago days, but rather a labyrinth of corridors, some low, others so high that Ivar couldn’t touch the ceiling. All wound back on themselves and crossed in a bewildering pattern made more confusing when Sigfrid thought to leave a mark at each intersection so they’d know when they’d doubled back. They discovered quickly enough that they were walking in a complicated circle.
Finally, exasperated, Baldwin grabbed the torch out of Gerulf’s hand. “This way!” he said with the certainty of one whose beauty has always gotten him the best portion of meat and the most flavorful wine.
Taking this turn and that without any obvious pattern, they found themselves smelling air and light and feeling a tickle of breeze on their faces. The torch flame shuddered and licked out, leaving a wisp of smoke. The tunnel sloped upward, but the ceiling lowered until they were forced to crawl, and now Ivar felt dirt under his hands, twining roots and, once, a moist crawling thing.
Baldwin, at the fore, shouted. Ivar heard the others in reply, and then it was his turn to tumble free through thick bushes and roll, blinking, into hard sunlight. He clapped his hands over his eyes, only to remember that he’d lost two of his fingers. Yet the wound no longer hurt. White scar tissue sealed the lowest knuckles where the fingers had been shorn off right at the hand, as though it had been a year or two since the wound was taken. After a while he dared lower his hands from over his eyes to discover that it was a cloudy day, although it seemed as bright as sin to eyes so long drowned in darkness. He laughed weakly into the grass.
Baldwin came and lay down beside him. “Are you all right?” he demanded in a low voice.
“How did you know the way?” Everything still seemed too bright to see, so he kept his eyes under a tent made by his hands.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to get out of there.”
Lying there in tall grass, swept by breeze and taking in heady lungfuls of air, Ivar had a revelation: Everything Baldwin had done, from running away to the monastery to running away from Margrave Judith, all of which had seemed so purposeful and clever and forcefully planned, had actually bubbled up out of a similar thoughtless impulse. Just to get away. It was only luck that Baldwin had succeeded when he had. Truly, God had granted him beauty and luck, but he had been filled so full of those that evidently there hadn’t been room for much else.
“It’s all right, Baldwin,” said Ivar wearily, sitting up. His whole body ached, and he blinked away tears as he lowered his hands for his first good look at their surroundings. “I don’t know how, but I think we escaped the Quman.”
The clouds had the soft gleam of pearls, more light than gray. The seven companions sat scattered in an utterly unfamiliar clearing marked by a stone circle and four large overgrown mounds, ringed by tall trees of a kind that did not grow in the eastern borderlands, where grasslands lapped a thinning forest. The leaves had turned red, or yellow, or orange, a mottling of color across the surrounding forest. The air smelled clean, untouched by the carnage of battle, and it had the sharp clarity of late autumn. It had been late summer when they’d fought the battle at that old tumulus. Yet by the evidence of his eyes, weeks had passed instead of a single night.
There was a long silence in which he heard Baldwin breathing and, behind him, the voices of the others. Sigfrid was singing a hymn, and Lady Hathumod was alternately weeping and praying with frenzied passion while Ermanrich kept interjecting comments, trying to calm her down. Gerulf and Dedi were talking so excitedly to each other that he couldn’t make out their words through the haze made by their peculiar way of pronouncing certain words. They moved out into the clearing, exclaiming over the trees and the sky. The two Lions had been so direly wounded, and he’d thought for sure that Dedi was as good as dead. How could they be charging around now as fresh as spring lambs?
“My lord Ivar!” cried Gerulf, hastening back to him. The old Lion was almost beside himself with excitement; his face shone as though light had been poured into it. “Do you know where we are?”
“As long as we’re well away from the Quman, I don’t care where we are.” With a grunt, Ivar got to his feet, rubbing his backside.
“It’s a miracle, my lord! God has delivered us from the Quman. This is the hill above Hersford Monastery, in western Saony. We can see into the duchy of Fesse from here.”
“Hersford Monastery?” Ermanrich came forward. “That’s impossible. We were in the marchlands—”
“It was summer!” cried Hathumod raggedly. “And he still walked among us.”
“All of our wounds are healed,” added Sigfrid diffidently, sliding up beside Ivar to examine his mutilated hand. “Look at your hand, Ivar. It looks as if you took that wound months or years ago.”
“I’m thirsty,” said Baldwin. “Haven’t we anything to drink?”
“Hush.” Ivar surveyed his six companions and then the clearing in which they stood. The low earthen mounds and the stone circle reminded him vaguely of the great tumulus with its embankments. Hadn’t there been a ruined stone circle at the top of that ancient hill? Yet obviously they no longer stood there. For one thing, Ivar had never before seen a stone circle in as perfect repair as this one was, each stone upright and all the lintels intact. Somehow, in the space of one night, they had traveled from the marchlands all the way to the center of Wendar. In the space of one night, they had traveled from summer into autumn.
Sorcery.
Shivering, he grabbed hold of Sigfrid’s hand and then Baldwin’s. “Come, friends,” he said, seeing that they had all clasped hands, clinging together in the face of so many things they could not explain. “Truly, I don’t understand what has happened to us except that our friend Gerulf must be right. God has saved us from death at the hands of the Quman, so that we can continue to do Her work here on Earth. Don’t forget the phoenix. Our task is just beginning.”
Hathumod burst into tears again, clutching the rusted nail to her chest as if were a holy relic.
“God be praised,” murmured Gerulf, and the others echoed his words, all except Baldwin, who was looking anxiously around the clearing.
“It’s going to be night soon,” said Baldwin, “and I don’t like to think of sleeping out next to these old grave mounds. I don’t like to think what might crawl out of them once night falls.”
“Nay, I don’t fancy sleeping near these old mounds either,” said Dedi with a nervous laugh, and they all laughed, swept up with relief and the release of all those hours of fear and struggle.
“Is there a path that will lead us to the monastery, Gerulf?” Ivar asked, because he’d had the same thought. Yet shouldn’t he trust in God to protect them from evil spirits and blood-sucking wights, given the miracle that had already happened? Still, it never hurt to help God’s design along when you could.
“It’s been a few years,” said the old Lion, scratching his beard, “but I think…” He pointed toward a narrow gap in the dense wall of trees. “I think that’s the path over there.”
They all stood there, then, waiting, looking at Ivar. Somehow, over the course of the battle and thro
ugh that long and bitter night trapped underground, he had become their leader.
“We’ve got a long road ahead of us,” he said. “Come on.”