Leofwine hesitated, his feet rooted in two and a half decades of training. There were consequences for defying the Wolf Lords.
Nith paused at the door. “Would you prefer to stay?”
“You don’t understand,” Leofwine returned, tearing his feet from the floor. “The Masters will never let me leave here. I defied them and brought shame to the Order. I’m to be executed.”
She returned to him, her eyes flashing, and he stepped back. “You are to be sacrificed, Adept Klemet, to a demon who keeps me and twenty-one other women here to summon beings from Othin’s Eye by the power of our blood, and at the Wolf Lords’ pleasure.”
Leofwine opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. Sacrificed? This woman was mad. But as she whirled around and left the room, he followed her, his mind crowded with questions, arguments, history and seeming observations, a great noise crowned by an image of the Hanging Tree crouching on the plain.
As he passed through the door, he expected to feel a shiver or hear the hiss of a blade as some Otherworldly guard took note. He felt nothing. The black pool he had felt earlier had spread out of the room and now enveloped the hall. It felt like an old woman, watching. “What did you just do?” he asked.
She closed the door behind him. “I’m protecting you.”
He moved up alongside her as she strode down the narrow corridor. “Nothing will protect me from the Masters,” he said. Sacrificed.
She ignored the comment. “I was born with second sight. The council has entities that watch over the realm and take note of young women with this gift. When I was ten summers, they came for me in the forest, captured me and brought me here. For all my parents knew, I drowned in the river or was dragged off by a wildcat. I never saw them again.”
“Agda must have known you were here. Both she and your father hate the Brotherhood—your father would have let me die from my wounds had your mother not taken me in. I think that’s why she gave me the charm. She knew you would sense it on me.”
She cast him a sidelong glance. “And then what? You mount a heroic rescue?”
Leofwine said nothing to that. It was clear this woman had little more respect for the Brotherhood than her parents did. “Where are you taking me?”
“You must leave here.”
She was mad, but there was no point in defending reason, and he had no choice but to follow her unless he wanted to return to his cell. They moved swiftly through the empty passages. As far as he could tell, they were on the ocean side of the keep, heading south. He was unfamiliar with these halls, but he knew the south entrance well enough. It wasn’t a place he wanted to go. It would be watched.
“The original Archwolf in Ýr was a woman,” she said.
“Queen Regnhild?”
“Not her. Ýr was a rat’s nest of bickering fools under her, and for centuries after, hiring out amateur seers and charlatans to warlords for profit. A sorceress named Maigunn came. She was beloved of Othin, the Magician, who learned his arts from Freya and by the virtue of his wiles and lust for knowledge. Under the Hooded One’s guidance, she built Othin’s Eye and created the Masters’ Council to govern the affairs of the keep and maintain the integrity of the magical arts. The Masters served her, as they did every Archwolf thereafter, until their ambition took hold.
“A Master named Kjolv convinced the council to cast down the Order of the Hooded One and bury its memory, to keep us secret, as it has been for over two millennia. He sacrificed Archwolf Maigunn to a mighty demon summoned to protect this secret. To this day, every Midwinter Solstice, the council makes a sacrifice to this demon, to hold him, so that he will hide and guard us from the outside world.”
Leofwine absorbed this with skepticism. After his long tenure here, he had never learned or so much as sensed the presence of women in the keep, let alone priestesses imprisoned by a demon. There would have been something in the archives to hint of it. If what she told him was true, it would mean the entire history of Ýr had been scrubbed and blotted over with lies and romantic platitudes.
However, it did uphold his theory that Loki worship was just a front. It explained his mother’s strange comment, too. Ýr has a shadow shaped like a woman. Had she actually known about this?
“Why would Kjolv have done that?” he said, still doubtful. “The council wouldn’t have gone along with it. Were the priestesses of your order cruel, tyrannical?”
Her tinkling laugh reminded him of Agda. “Men fear what they do not understand. They seek to control it, and if they can’t, they destroy it. Master Kjolv convinced the council that Maigunn’s power was fickle, unpredictable. That she could bring ruin on the realm in a mood.”
Someone came into sight ahead of them. Wishing he had his cloak, Leofwine ducked his head as two women approached. Nith greeted them and kept moving.
“Were they lovers?” Leofwine asked casually when the women had gone. “Kjolv and Maigunn.”
She threw him a look. “What would that have to do with it?” She tossed her hair from her face. “It was forbidden.”
Now it was Leofwine’s turn to laugh. Nith had power, but she was young and clearly sheltered from the realities of things. “Forbidding love has never, in the history of the cosmos, prevented it from happening,” he said dryly. “Were they lovers?”
A pause. “So it is told. But—”
“Let me guess. She broke his heart.” The priestess said nothing. Leofwine put his face in his hand and rubbed his eyes. It would be this, wouldn’t it? The entire history of the Order of Fenrir melted down and recast because of a lovers’ breakup. Oh Hel, why not. “My mother left my father. She wandered off into the wilds, and you’ve never heard a man say the kinds of things he said about her—you’d think she was a demon bred by Hel to trick and drain the blood from his heart. He never got over it.”
“Was she any of that?” It sounded like a genuine question.
“Of course not. She told me he didn’t appreciate her. He took her for granted, and that was true.”
“Did he harm her for leaving him?”
“No. He just talked about her. Hated her. Loved her.” He paused as he realized once again his mother’s wisdom. “Women are the harbingers of Elivag. Mysterious, inscrutable, whether a mother”—he paused, his heart sinking as he thought of Ingifrith—“a sister, a lover, a queen, or the witch on the edge of town, women take a man beyond himself, bring out the best and the worst in him. That is their power. It’s a rare man who takes it kindly when his shadow is cast.”
Ýr has a shadow shaped like a woman.
They entered an open area where several passages came together. Nith stopped and turned with an air of haughty sadness that made Leofwine feel like a fool for having any opinion on this at all. She said, “You are wise, but ignorant. I’ll show you why my order is kept in thrall to the Masters of Ýr.”
She stood still, her expression calm. She didn’t raise her arms or say a word—no invocations, no magic circle aligned with the winds, no sigils, no spit, blood or sacrifice. She simply lowered her head and then tilted it, gazing up, as if her neck had been snapped by an executioner’s rope.
A chill swept through Leofwine’s body as the Veil parted into a cold, misty realm shining moonlight on the boughs of old thorn trees. And then it came, blotting the moon, breathing mist, the one he had summoned in a moment of rage to avenge his sister.
Fenrisúlfr stepped through, glinting with frost and ash. The massive wolf’s pale eyes glowed as it padded into solidity. It snarled, baring teeth as long as knives. Leofwine felt the heat of its breath on his face. Heart pounding wildly, his mouth dry and his nostrils flared, he stepped back, holding a hand out to placate the beast. All his instincts told him to banish, command and control. Instead, he sank to his knees.
“If you unleash him,” he said, flicking a glance at Nith and back to the giant wolf bristling over him, “you’ll be just as answerable to the gods as the rest of us.”
“And to whom will you answer?” she asked calmly.
“Not you,” he returned. Sigbjorn, Idalisa, five soldiers, a phooka and myself, perhaps, he added silently. As he gazed into Fenrisúlfr’s eyes, he knew he had not done wrong to summon the beast to avenge Ingifrith, whom he loved. “You’ve made your point. Send it back.”
For a moment, she looked defiant, like a child. Then she looked askance. Fenrisúlfr turned, leapt through the Veil on its mighty haunches and vanished.
Leofwine stood and wiped his palms on his thighs. “I suppose you’ll tell me the Masters won’t be aware of what you just did.”
She shrugged and moved toward one of the passages, a dark hole looming beyond the nimbus of her lamp. Leofwine swallowed hard and followed her. As he caught up, he said, “Does the Rule of Exchange not apply to you? Is that why the priestesses are feared?”
“I have a womb,” she replied. “The power of death, life and rebirth.”
“So you create what the Otherworld requires for an exchange?”
“We exchange life. Through me, Fenrisúlfr knew a moment of existence on this plane.”
Leofwine cleared his throat. “You’ll not convince me that any woman, let alone a group of women, with the power to do what you just did, would ever be imprisoned. You could cast down the council singlehandedly.”
“The demon who keeps us protects the council from us as well. His sword drips with the blood of those who’ve tried what you describe. Those who resist his dominion are forced to conceive and bear children with the gift, to continue the lines. Males are given to the Order. Females to the Hooded One. Children without the sight are put to the sword.”
Momentarily putting aside the horror of what she described, Leofwine countered, “Such a demon, with such a purpose, would walk in the Severed Kingdoms and, as such, would be extraordinarily difficult to hold, even with a blood sacrifice. Who is he?”
“His name is Isarvalos.”
Leofwine stopped in his tracks and stared, a terrifying tale from his training with the Master of Demons rising in his memory. Isarvalos, Prince of the Severed Kingdoms, was powerful beyond mortal imagining, a warlord with armies of demons capable of leveling entire realms to blood and ash. Leofwine had often wondered if the Masters invented such beings to sober young apprentices who had shown too much arrogance and bravado. And yet he was being told rather matter-of-factly that the demon had been commissioned by Ýr itself to keep these powerful women under lock and key.
A demon to which Leofwine was to be sacrificed.
“No mortal sorcerer would have the power to summon such a one,” he said. “Was it done by a woman?”
She paused, as if saddened by his ignorance. “The Father of Hel summoned Isarvalos. Some say he did it as a trick on Othin; others, because his standing as the Lord of Ýr had been threatened. It is also told that Maigunn angered him, and that’s why she became Isarvalos’s first sacrifice. No one knows for sure.”
Leofwine wheezed a laugh. “So the only thing keeping the Prince of the Severed Kingdoms under control is Loki? The Trickster?”
“Isarvalos does what is required of him,” she said evasively.
Ahead, the corridor opened to what looked like a cave. The smell of the sea grew fresh and sharp. It wasn’t the entrance Leofwine knew, and his nervousness at this whole endeavor was increasing. He had too many questions, aside from how Nith thought he’d get within a mouse’s sprint from this place without a soulcleaver—or worse—striking him down. He hadn’t been noticed yet, despite her having done very loud things like banishing his bony watcher and summoning Fenrisúlfr as if it were a pet. But being outside the walls within sight of the guards was another matter.
“I’m not going anywhere without my horse,” he informed the priestess, gazing ahead into the night. She ignored him.
They entered the cave. Leofwine’s feet sank into sand. In the dark near the far opening, something moved, a dark bulk of a thing. A horse snorted. Nith’s lamp brightened, illuminating two women, one of them holding Arvakr’s reins. Leofwine’s belongings had been secured to the saddle. The second woman handed him his cloak.
“You really are serious,” he said to Nith, nodding to the women as he took the cloak and pulled it around him.
“You understand the council wants your sister,” Nith said. “Do you know why?”
He stroked Arvakr’s neck. “Ingifrith walks between the worlds. I assumed she did something to threaten them.”
The two women exchanged glances. Nith said, “She summoned a demon powerful enough to cast down Isarvalos.”
Leofwine let that sink into the boiling soup of his anxiety with everything else. “Ingifrith is sensitive; the unseen gathers around her. But she does not have the power to—”
“I saw it, Adept Klemet. In the Eye. She summoned Halogi, High Commander of the Third Sun. What’s more, he nearly killed an Adept sent to question her about you.”
Halogi. As if hearing the name Isarvalos wasn’t enough to stun him, now he had this. If he recalled his lessons on demon hierarchy and history right, Halogi commanded legions of demons like Isarvalos. The Third Sun was one of the most fearsome armies in the Severed Kingdoms. “What Adept?”
“Moust,” one of the other women said.
Leofwine let his breath out slowly. Moust. He gazed up at the keep, his jaw set. If that conniving bastard so much as touched his little sister with a bad look... “How did he find her?”
“By chance,” Nith said. “That doesn’t matter. She escaped him, and now the council is bending all their might on tracking her down. That’s the reason they brought you here. To use your life as leverage.”
“So you want me to find Ingifrith and ask her to enlist the High Commander of the Third Sun to cast down Isarvalos so you’ll be free.” The three women nodded. “A noble mission. I assume Isarvalos prevents you lot from doing this yourselves? Summoning his demise?”
“We did try,” the gray-haired woman said quickly.
Nith shot a glance at her as if to will her to shut up, then added, “We failed.”
Leofwine studied them for a moment and let it pass. He dragged his fingers through his hair. “If Ingifrith has Halogi at her command, I won’t be able to find her.”
“Halogi is no longer in this dimension,” Nith said. “We don’t know what happened, only that something passed between them, an exchange. He is gone now.”
“Do you think she can summon him at will?”
“We don’t know. Maybe.”
“We don’t know how she summoned him the first time,” the gray-haired woman admitted.
In other words, this was not as much a noble mission as a desperate one. Leofwine slipped his foot into Arvakr’s stirrup, grasped the saddle and mounted, glancing up at the heights of Ýr vanishing into the darkness. These women had no idea how he would accomplish this or if it was even possible. But their recklessness was easy to understand. To them, it was a chance that would come only once in a god’s age.
“I’ll not be able to elude the Masters for long once they discover I’m gone,” he insisted.
“They know nothing,” Nith assured him. “We will protect you.”
Leofwine pulled his hood against the cold. The pool she had spun around him had become the night, vast and whispering on the shore. He took a deep breath. He didn’t share Nith’s confidence, though he would be dead already if something wasn’t hiding him. But how long would that last?
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised. He drew Arvakr’s reins around and moved down the rocks to a narrow trail just visible in the fading lamplight. What he would do, he decided, was find Ingifrith and protect her from Moust and his ilk by being there, for once, something he had failed to do when she needed him most.
He glanced over his shoulder. The three priestesses stood in the shadow of the cave, silent as wraiths beneath the expanse of ancient stone. Leofwine faced ahead and gave Arvakr the reins, pressing the beast into a stiff pace, gathering speed.
As Ýr faded behind him, he realized that Loki was ind
eed the Lord of Ýr, and by summoning Isarvalos had all but committed an act of war against the Allfather.
And the Masters who had cast the Order of the Hooded One into darkness had created the very thing they feared.
Ghosts and Foxes
Eastern Ylgr, in the foothills of the Fomor Mountains, was as dark and thorny as the svartr trees that grew to great heights there, in the shelter of the hills. Gaunt and twisted, the trees had deep-colored bark, almost black, and dark green leaves with silver undersides. Where the svartr grew together, an archer had no purchase.
Othin, Heige and Prederi had taken to the thick forests to elude archers, a tactic that thwarted them as well, though Heige had managed to take down one scout early that morning by getting close enough to put an arrow through the thicket at just the right time. Unfortunately, he had killed the man, leaving them with no one to question. But where there was one scout, there were always more.
Someone had been following them the better part of the dreary day—or so Othin sensed. Soaked in rain and tired of the trees, he had begun to doubt his convictions. Heige and Prederi were more polite, though their bleak looks told him enough. Finally, Heige said, “If we are being shadowed, it’s one clever scout. He can’t be close.”
“Are you sure it’s human?” Prederi offered. “Bren was always sensing weird things out here.”
Othin let his eyes go out of focus as he scanned the trees rising up in layers on the side of a steep hill. Mist cloaked the hollows. Bren had taught him to tell the difference between seen and unseen by focusing on physical objects such as trees and boulders. A human would blend in yet not feel the same; an animal would blend in and feel the same; and an Other would stand out like sound vibrating a drum. After long hours practicing with Bren in the tricky wilds of Mimir Forest, Othin thought he had mastered the skill. But that morning, what he’d sensed in the foothills had baffled him: a human who could shift into an animal and back.
“It’s human,” he said, then lowered his voice. “Yet not. Let’s flush him out. No animal calls—and don’t kill him.” He dismounted and wandered until he found a low place at the base of a huge pile of boulders surrounded by brush. Water trickled over the rocks and into a pool. Othin’s feet sank into muck, prompting a snake to slither away in a flash.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 50