by A. J. Lake
He can’t keep me out, Edmund vowed. Cluaran was right. I will not let Elspeth die, not if I have the slightest chance to save her! Wherever Orgrim tries to hide his thoughts, I will follow.
The blade sliced down on her right hand. Elspeth gasped, but the blade rebounded, skittered off the silver gauntlet.
‘It protects you,’ Orgrim said with a trace of awe. He hauled the iron brazier out of the corner and pinned her legs beneath its feet. Hot coals scattered round her, sparks scorched her knees while Orgrim trod heavily on her sword arm. ‘So let’s try this …’
Suddenly he stopped dead. His face contorted and he spat out strange words.
A small hope flickered inside Elspeth. ‘Edmund,’ she murmured. One last time she tried to lift her arm from the floor. She felt the sword’s power surge in her arm.
Now, Elspeth! Strike once more and we have him!
But before the blade left the flagstone, Orgrim came back to his senses, grinding his foot harder on her arm. Elspeth bit her tongue to stop herself from screaming out loud. She could not move her hand now, she could not even feel the sword that she knew still burned in her fingers.
‘How can he do that?’ Orgrim cursed. ‘A half-grown boy!’ He gave a low whistle, and instantly a huge black bird, which Elspeth had thought was a stone carving, flapped down from the roof and landed on his shoulder.
‘Find him,’ the man said softly. He reached out a hand to push the heavy door ajar and watched the bird go.
‘I think you’ll be ready to offer me your sword now,’ he told Elspeth.
Elspeth’s heart turned to ice. What would the bird do to Edmund? Was she alone?
You are never alone, said the cool voice in her head, but it was faint, like the wind off snow.
Come back! Elspeth called desperately, but there was no reply.
‘Your pale-haired friend is coming to rescue you,’ said Orgrim. ‘Did I tell you I knew him as a child?’
Elspeth stared at him in disbelief. ‘How?’ she croaked.
Orgrim’s lip curled in a smile. ‘Edmund is my nephew. He was always a loyal little fool. He won’t leave you here to die alone. Which serves me well, because there’s one last thing he can do for me before he goes to meet his gods.’
Elspeth cried out and Orgrim laughed. ‘You won’t deny me the sword, will you, when your friend is strapped to the frame?’
He shoved the brazier aside and pulled Elspeth up, twisting her hands behind her as he dragged her to the wall where chains were set in the stone. Suddenly he paused, his eyes unfocused.
‘There,’ he murmured. ‘We have him.’ His fingers tightened on Elspeth’s shoulder, sinking like talons into prey …
Dim torchlight burned in a pall of smoke as Edmund slipped behind Orgrim’s eyes. Elspeth was sprawled on the ground, the blue blade slashing down.
‘No!’ Edmund screamed.
At once Orgrim’s mind responded, pushing Edmund away. He felt the cold grip on his own mind. And a great force as thought-tendrils burst forth like a many-headed serpent, striking, squeezing, twisting. Edmund clung on grimly. The torch-lit room whirled before his eyes.
A bolt of lightning punched through his brain. Orgrim hurled him away. The stone room was gone and Edmund pitched forward, landing on his knees just outside the North Gate.
Edmund scrambled to his feet. He had lost. Tears of rage sprang in his eyes. He swiped them away in time to see a black bird swooping above him. He had seen it before, on the shore by the lake. Watching, watching, taking his master’s eyes to spy on every corner of the kingdom. Orgrim’s raven. The sight of its spreading wings filled Edmund with a burning fury.
You’ll not gloat over me, watching me fail.
In a second he had armed his bow and fired.
Elspeth braced herself.
And Orgrim screamed. He let go of her, clapped both his hands to his face and staggered backwards, shrieking.
‘Dark! Dark! Where are my eyes?’
For a moment Elspeth staggered too. But only for a moment. The crystal sword sprang in her hand, pulling her after the blinded man, and she followed it gladly. Orgrim drew his own blade, but his eyes stared out unseeingly and his face was blank with horror. Elspeth lunged at him once, and he stepped heavily backwards and fell.
Elspeth raised the crystal sword over her head. She was shaking with pain and weariness, but the blade burned with a sudden brilliance, like a shaft of sun.
Orgrim gazed up at Elspeth, his eyes black and dull.
The door of the cell was flung open and Cluaran stopped dead in the opening.
‘Strike, girl!’ The minstrel’s voice rang through the dim room. ‘It’s the sword’s destiny, Elspeth!’ he insisted. ‘This is what it was made for.’
Elspeth listened for the cool voice in her mind, but it was silent. The decision to kill Orgrim or spare him was hers alone.
She shook her head. ‘What about my destiny?’ She turned from the man on the ground and lowered the sword. It faded as she walked away. But Elspeth thought she heard one tiny whisper, on the cusp of hearing.
Cluaran! I have returned!
The sound of the bird’s dying shriek echoed in Edmund’s head and he shuddered as he ran. The houses gave way to grazing land, just beyond the town walls. A steep slope of scree rose ahead, and picking his way over the loose rocks, a long way in front, was the brown-clad figure of Cluaran. Edmund tried to catch up with him, but the minstrel was moving too fast. In another moment he had vanished among the rocks.
Edmund cursed. He could see nothing but stones now. What if he couldn’t find the entrance to the hermit’s cave?
Suddenly he realised he was being followed. Over his pounding heart, he heard the pounding of footsteps. Not now! he railed. He couldn’t be caught by the Guardians now!
He swung round ready to fight, as the large frame of Captain Cathbar lumbered up the hill.
‘All right, lad!’ the captain gasped, mopping his brow. ‘I’ve not come to take you back to the cell.’ He jerked his head in the direction that Cluaran had gone. ‘Just tell me. That skinny fellow up ahead – is he your companion? The man who got away last night?’
He must have seen his answer in Edmund’s face, for he nodded without waiting for a reply. ‘He’s a cunning one, and fast, too. They’re looking for him to the south of town. But I thought he’d likely come for you and the girl.’
‘He’s done nothing wrong!’ Edmund began.
Cathbar held up a hand. ‘I don’t believe he has,’ he said. ‘I told you, the Guardians have been picking scapegoats for a while now, and I’ll not see another good man hanged if I can help it. But I want a word with him. They tell me he was picked up outside Orgrim’s quarters in the Rede House.’ Cathbar’s face was grim. ‘It’s Orgrim your man is spying on, isn’t it? And anything he knows about that snake, I want to know too.’
Edmund had his breath back now. ‘Come on, then!’ he said, and sprinted for the hill.
He had scrambled a good way up the pebbly slope before he saw the stone wall of the cell. It was cunningly built into an outcrop so as to be almost invisible. Cluaran stood stock-still in the doorway, looking into the cave.
Before Edmund could call out, Cluaran stepped aside and Elspeth stumbled out of the cell. The crystal sword hung from her hand, its blade trailing on the ground, its glow barely visible in the light of the setting sun. Her sleeve was torn and her arm was red with blood that trickled down the silvery hand that still gripped the hilt.
As Edmund started towards her she stopped, took one gasping breath and collapsed. By the time Cathbar came pounding up, Elspeth was blinking up at Edmund.
‘What happened?’ Edmund prompted. ‘What did he do to you?’
‘He clutched his eyes and screamed that he was blinded,’ Elspeth whispered. ‘He had sent a raven to find you.’
‘I shot it,’ Edmund told her bluntly, and he remembered the bird’s cold eyes watching him through the leaves all those years ago. He remembered his uncl
e’s laughing brown eyes as he so swiftly discovered Edmund’s every clever hiding place. Edmund grimaced at all the little betrayals. ‘If I had known that bird was nothing but a spy, I would have shot it sooner,’ he muttered. He turned miserably back to Elspeth.
‘Your arm!’ he gasped. Elspeth’s forearm was disfigured with cuts. Not random slashes, for the blood was drying to show a strange spiral that ended with two jagged lines. Edmund and Cathbar gazed at it in horror.
‘It doesn’t hurt much,’ Elspeth said dully, though Edmund saw her turn her head away. ‘Orgrim was doing some kind of sorcery, trying to charm the sword from me.’
‘He has the same symbol cut into his own arm,’ Cluaran called to them from the doorway to the cell. The usual mocking twist had left his face. Instead he looked defeated and troubled. He held one arm across his chest as if he were hiding something in his tunic.
He hesitated, looking intently at Edmund and Elspeth, then at Elspeth’s right hand. ‘You’ve both helped me more than you can know, and you’ve earned the right to hear more. You’d better come inside.’ He paused, then added, ‘You too, Cathbar. You’re caught in this coil as much as they are.’
The stone room seemed very dark as Edmund stepped out of the late-day sun. He peered around with a shock of familiarity. He had seen these shelves of books and instruments before, dimly lit in the red glow of the brazier, the rough-hewn floor stretching into shadow at the back, and, looming out of the shadows, the dull iron of the great triangular frame, its leather straps and cuffs dangling open.
He shuddered, and moved closer to Elspeth. And then he saw the huddled shape at their feet. It was Orgrim, his robes torn, his hands bound behind his back. He were moaning, twisting his head this way and that as if he were trying to find a way out of the blackness that filled his eyes.
‘You’ve bound him!’ Cathbar’s voice behind them was shocked.
‘With his own chains,’ Cluaran agreed. ‘Even blind and weaponless, he still has the power to do harm. I fear that what he’s already achieved will never be undone.’
‘What do you mean? What has he done?’ Cathbar demanded. ‘There’s many of us suspected he was up to something black-hearted, but you’ll never prove it. The king trusts Orgrim with his life.’
‘As to what he’s done, I can’t yet be certain. But if it’s proof of something black-hearted you want, captain, just look around you.’
Edmund watched the soldier’s gaze travel around the cave: to the machine of wood and iron where Elspeth had been strapped; to the sorcerer’s sword that lay on the floor, its blade dull grey now the heat of the fire had left it; to the scars on Elspeth’s wrist, scored through swollen skin; lastly to the man bent double on the floor, his face hidden by a fold of his torn and blood-stained cloak.
Cathbar nodded. ‘Oh yes, we have him now.’
The minstrel bent down to his pack and stowed a small object wrapped in sackcloth that he had been clutching to his chest. He stayed there for a moment, crouching with his head bowed over the package. Edmund saw with astonishment that the minstrel’s face was white, and when he spoke it was very quietly, to someone who wasn’t there.
‘I have found it! But I was nearly too late to save her. I’m sorry.’
Cathbar coughed and Cluaran looked up with a start, as if he had forgotten the others were there. Refastening his pack, he straightened up and crossed to a jutting stone shelf where there was a row of books propped on their spines. Elspeth and Cathbar followed him – but Edmund could not move from the chained figure on the floor. His face was a pale disc in the half-light, stripped of intelligence and arrogance.
Tentatively, Edmund reached out to probe the sorcerer’s eyes. There was nothing but shadow behind them; as if there were no mind there at all, let alone eyes to see through.
‘Aelfred,’ he whispered. The man turned his face away, saying nothing. Edmund left the shell that had once been his uncle, his mother’s treasured brother – the man he was meant to join in Gaul! – and went over to the others, his eyes stinging.
‘This is the one that started it all,’ Cluaran was saying, pointing to a massive book. It was bound in black leather, turned greenish with age and mildewed at the edges. ‘This is the book of necromancy that Orgrim stole from the Rede.’
Elspeth nodded. ‘Aagard told us about it. He said that the book contains spells to summon dragons.’
Cluaran narrowed his eyes. ‘Dragons – and more.’ He ran his finger lightly down the spine, then snatched his hand back as if it had been burned. He scooped up the edge of the cloak and tucked his fingers inside before drawing the book from the shelf.
As he lifted it, another book fell away, smaller than the first. It seemed newer than the spell book but cruder, little more than a sheaf of stiff pages bound together with thread.
Cluaran held them muffled in his cloak. ‘I will show you more, but not in here.’
He pushed past them out of the door. Edmund glanced back at the prone figure of Orgrim. His own uncle, the summoner of dragons.
A low sound was coming from Orgrim, as if he were gasping for breath. Edmund made himself go back. He knelt beside his uncle, searching for something to say. He leaned closer, then recoiled in horror.
Orgrim was laughing.
‘This book contains spells of summoning and binding – and charms like these have power all of their own, even on the page. Don’t come too close, Edmund.’
Edmund had come running out after them. He looked upset, but Elspeth found her gaze drawn back to the crumbling book. Cluaran had set it down on a flat stone a little way from the cave. A puff of dust rose as he opened it, and Elspeth looked at the pages in sick fascination. She could not read, but beneath the tiny, crabbed writing were complicated, spiralling designs that made her think of the marks Orgrim had cut on her arm. In the cloud of dust, the patterns seemed to move on the page. Elspeth shuddered and looked away.
Beside her, Cathbar scowled. ‘I never held with books,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll go see if the man himself will talk.’ He stumped back to the stone cell.
Edmund was looking over Cluaran’s shoulder now. ‘To raise … Torment,’ he read haltingly. His eyes stretched wide. ‘The dragon Torment?’
‘The dragon,’ Cluaran agreed with a sharp look at Edmund. ‘You know of him?’
‘I saw him,’ Edmund said, very low. ‘When the ship was wrecked.’
Cluaran nodded as if Edmund had confirmed something he had already guessed. ‘Torment knows …’ he paused, and tried again, ‘… the sword. It was the sword that imprisoned him in the Snowlands, five-score winters ago. Orgrim must have believed that because he summoned the dragon, he could control it. He really believed he could control an ice-dragon!’ The minstrel’s face twisted and his voice was hard. ‘It is safer to have no knowledge at all, than a little used unwisely.’ He closed the book – Elspeth saw that he still touched the pages as little as he could – and turned to the untidily bound sheaf of papers beside it.
‘These are Orgrim’s own spells,’ he said, ‘the ones he worked with his own hands. On the last pages …’ he stared at Elspeth and Edmund, his face bleak, ‘he was trying to conjure a god.’
‘But that’s blasphemy!’ Elspeth gasped.
‘Which god?’ Edmund exclaimed.
‘Listen, both of you!’ Cluaran snapped. ‘I never thought to tell this to anyone, but you must hear it. It concerns you, Elspeth. And Edmund too, I think.’ Elspeth eyed the minstrel nervously.
‘I’m not talking of the God your monks worship,’ the minstrel said softly, nodding to her, ‘nor any of the gods of this land. Orgrim was trying to summon one of the old gods, from before Wessex and Sussex were kingdoms, even before men walked this land. One of the first rulers of earth, sea and air.’ His voice took on a soft, lilting chant as if he were speaking the words of one of his songs. ‘There was one of them who wished to rule not only the earth, but all things on it. He waged war against his fellow gods to take their power as well, and when he
failed, he tried to destroy what they had created. So they bound him beneath a mountain in the far North, confining his spirit where it could do no harm. His name was Loki, the wily one. And there he stayed, chained with enchantment in a pit of fire.’
Cluaran’s eyes darkened. ‘Men came to live on earth and made new gods – the ones your mother sacrificed to for your safe journey, Edmund, and the one who dwells in your gods-houses, Elspeth. The elder gods faded and died but Loki lived on beneath his mountain, growing in strength and malice. And at last he found a way to reach out to the human minds around him.’
‘Orgrim,’ Edmund whispered.
‘No. The first time was a hundred years ago,’ Cluaran corrected him. ‘It was a black-hearted sorcerer, just like Orgrim. Loki promised him more power than he had wit to ask, in return for freeing him.’ He gazed over their heads, watching something they could not see. ‘The sorcerer raised armies and used the book of necromancy – this book – to summon dragons to march with them.’
‘But there’s no such things as dragons!’ Elspeth blurted out.
Cluaran looked at her, his eyes unreadable. ‘Just because you have not seen something does not mean it doesn’t exist. Since mortals have had the strength to contain them, they have been imprisoned far in the North, where men do not live. Only the darkest of spells can break them free from the ice. When Loki’s sorcerer joined them with his army of men, a terrible war was fought, and nearly lost by the ones who knew Loki would bring only death and destruction. That was when the crystal sword was forged.’
‘My sword!’ exclaimed Elspeth. Instantly, she wished to take the words back.
‘Yes, Elspeth. Your sword. It was created to defeat Loki himself. It will cut through anything, flesh, metal or rock. But by this very fact, the sword is also the only thing that could free Loki, cut loose the chains bound by magic. In forging the sword, we knew we were giving Loki the chance of freedom as well as defeat.’ His face clouded with what looked like grief. ‘The first sword-bearer managed to resist Loki and defeat the sorcerer who had been helping him – but at a terrible cost. We bound Loki once more and the sword was taken to Wessex, until it should be needed again. And now it has come to you.’