The Golden Shrine

by Harry Turtledove

  She looked toward the dam of earth and rock and ice, the dam toward which she’d deflected their spells. When she did, the Rulers’ lead wizard let out an anguished howl Count Hamnet heard clearly no matter how far away the man was. The wizard knew what would happen next, even if Hamnet didn’t.

  Marcovefa chanted in her own dialect. Hamnet understood a word here and there—no more. Ulric knew more of the speech of the folk who lived atop the Glacier. He lost his usual air of studied calm. “She can’t do that!” he yelped. “. . . Can she?”

  “Do what?” Hamnet asked.

  Then Marcovefa did it. She swept both hands upward, then theatrically brought them down. “Now!” she cried—Hamnet understood that with no trouble at all.

  And the earthen dam erupted. All the ice within it either melted or turned to steam. Boulders flew high into the air. One of them came down just a few yards in front of the Rulers’ wizards. Only frantic passes from Marcovefa kept the stones from squashing her and her companions.

  Hamnet Thyssen noticed all that, but only peripherally. Once, a couple of thousand years before, Nidaros, the imperial capital, had stood by the eastern edge of Hevring Lake. Then the Glacier retreated and the weather warmed. The dam of earth and ice that held in Hevring Lake melted and collapsed—and the lake poured out. What had been its bottom was some of the most fertile farmland in the Empire . . . and the lands to the west, for mile after mile after mile, were scabby, wrecked badlands—all that remained after a flood bigger than human imagination could grasp poured through.

  Count Hamnet didn’t have to imagine a flood like that. He watched one with his own eyes. As Marcovefa’s magic melted the dam that had restrained Sudertorp Lake for so long, it burst free. The roar of those rushing waters dwarfed anything Hamnet had ever heard from the throat of lion or bear.

  How high was that frothy, muddy, stone-filled wall of water? As tall as ten men? Twenty? More? He didn’t know, not exactly. He knew it was tall enough and to spare.

  Somehow—sorcerously?—he heard the Rulers’ wizards scream even through that immense roaring. Their leader tried to do something to deflect the doom thundering down on them. Marcovefa clapped her hands once in what had to be admiration for the effort.

  The lead wizard wasn’t strong enough, even with all his friends behind him. Even if he would have had the strength, he didn’t have the time he needed to shape the kind of spell that might have done some good. The wall of water struck him, struck the rest of the wizards, and swept them away.

  In less than the blink of an eye, it smashed into the war mammoths behind the wizards. A few minutes earlier, Hamnet had thought that the line of great beasts was one of the most fearsome things he’d ever seen. Now he had to change his opinion. He got a few brief glimpses of mammoths tossed like bathtub toys on the flood. Other than those, the heart of the Rulers’ armed might vanished without a trace.

  So did all the warriors on riding deer and horses. So did the neat squares of tents that were the Rulers’ encampments. So did . . . well, everything in the path of what had been Sudertorp Lake.

  “God!” Trasamund said—the most reverent Hamnet Thyssen had ever heard him sound.

  Even Marcovefa was impressed. “I didn’t think it would do that,” she murmured.

  “What did you think it would do?” Ulric Skakki inquired.

  “Drown them. That, yes,” Marcovefa said. “But all this? This is more than I bargained for.”

  Hamnet suspected it was more than anyone would have bargained for. There off to his right, less than a bowshot away, Sudertorp Lake was emptying like a pot with a hole in its side. All of them still had to shout to make themselves heard over the roar of the water.

  “God!” Trasamund said again, this time on a different note.

  “What is it?” Count Hamnet asked.

  “The lake will run dry, yes?” the Bizogot said. “No more water here. No more marsh around the edge. What will the waterfowl do when they come here to breed?”

  It was a good question, and one Hamnet hadn’t thought of. After a moment, he said, “Back in the day, the birds must have come to Hevring Lake the same way. Hevring Lake went away, but we still have waterfowl. I suppose we still will once Sudertorp Lake dries out, too.”

  “Mm, you’re likely right,” Trasamund replied. He turned to Marcovefa. “If the Rulers hadn’t broken the Leaping Lynx clan, the Lynxes would all want to kill you for ruining their hunting grounds.”

  “If the Rulers hadn’t broken the Leaping Lynxes and done everything else they did, Marcovefa wouldn’t have needed to break the dam,” Hamnet said. “Sooner or later, it would have melted through by itself, though. They couldn’t have kept their easy springs and summers forever.”

  They’d had them. He thought fondly of all the duck and goose fat he’d eaten near Sudertorp Lake. But Trasamund was right. This hunting ground would never be the same. Even now, waterfowl and shorebirds were flying up in alarm as the meltwater lake drained.

  Ulric pointed off to the west. “A mammoth just washed ashore over there. Must be a mammoth—I couldn’t see anything smaller that far away.”

  “Is it moving?” Hamnet asked. He couldn’t spot it. Maybe he didn’t know where to look.

  “No,” Ulric said, and then, “I don’t know about the water birds, but the teratorns and the vultures and the ravens will feast like never before.”

  “Let them eat the Rulers. Let them eat the war mammoths. Let them raise their chicks on the riding deer,” Trasamund said. “I rejoice that they enjoy this bounty from the invaders.”

  Eyvind Torfinn and Gudrid came up to stare at the spectacle Marcovefa had unleashed. “My, my,” the earl said. “What an amazingly opportune coincidence . . . Excuse me. Did I say something funny?”

  No one answered him for some little while. Hamnet and Marcovefa and the others were too busy laughing. “Don’t you pay attention to anything?” Ulric asked at last. “Didn’t you see the thunderbolts coming down out of the sky? Didn’t you hear them? Or are you blind and deaf?”

  “Neither, I hope,” Eyvind replied with dignity. “But surely those thunderbolts could not have caused—this.”

  “They didn’t.” Hamnet pointed to Marcovefa. “She did.”

  “Probably luck, with her taking the credit for it,” Gudrid muttered.

  “What do you say?” Marcovefa needed only four words to suggest that, if she didn’t like the answer, Gudrid would go into Sudertorp Lake and come out the way Ulric’s distant war mammoth had.

  Gudrid did own a first-class sense of self-preservation. “Uh, nothing,” she said quickly. “Nothing at all. Just—clearing my throat.” She nodded. “Yes, that’s all I was doing.”

  Nobody called her on it. Marcovefa had to know she was lying. But putting her in fear must have been almost as good as pitching her into what was left of Sudertorp Lake.

  Hamnet Thyssen looked back at the lake. Was he imagining things, or was the water level already a good deal lower? “I wonder how long it’ll take to empty out altogether,” he said.

  “If we knew the volume and the rate of flow, it would be easy to calculate,” Earl Eyvind replied.

  “And if a teratorn knew how to play the trumpet, he might end up Emperor Sigvat’s bandmaster,” Ulric said. Eyvind Torfinn sent him a reproachful look. The adventurer took no notice of it.

  Trasamund bowed low to Marcovefa. “This is vengeance. I thank you for it. All the Bizogots thank you for it.”

  “This is better than vengeance,” Marcovefa said.

  “You are a wise woman. No one doubts it.” As if to emphasize that, the jarl bowed again. “But tell me, if you will, what can be better than vengeance?”

  “Victory is better,” Marcovefa answered. “In getting vengeance, you can throw yourself away to no purpose but killing. Here you have vengeance, and you have not thrown yourself away.”

  Trasamund weighed her words. “It is so,” he said at last, wonder in his voice. “By God, it is so!” He bowed even lower t
his time.

  Count Hamnet looked out to the west again. All he could see where the Rulers’ army had been were raging waters. How many miles did the flood already stretch? How many more would it reach? Wandering Bizogots and beasts and perhaps even the odd Ruler who hadn’t joined in this attack would get swept away without ever knowing how or why the dam at the west end of Sudertorp Lake had broken down.

  That would matter to them—for a very little while. In the larger scheme of things, it hardly counted. “The Rulers are ruined. They’re wrecked,” Hamnet said. He liked the sound of that so much, he repeated it.

  Liv and Audun Gilli shyly approached Marcovefa. “Forgive us for not offering help, but—” Liv began.

  “We thought you could take care of it for yourself,” Audun broke in.

  “And we were right,” Liv said.

  “By God, were we ever!” Audun stared in awe at the rampaging lake. He whistled in admiration. “We didn’t know what you were going to do. Whatever it might be, we didn’t expect this.” His wave encompassed the torrent.

  “How could anyone expect—this?” Liv said. Turning back to Marcovefa, she asked, “Did you?”

  The shaman from atop the Glacier shook her head. “I knew we could beat the Rulers. I knew we would beat the Rulers. How? They showed me themselves, when they threw thunderbolts and fire toward me and I sent them into the dam. That showed me the way. I told them they were digging their own graves, and I was right.”

  As Trasamund had before her, Liv bowed to Marcovefa. “I am glad it showed you the way.” Then, to Hamnet’s surprise, she also bowed to him. “If you hadn’t helped keep her safe, and if you hadn’t brought her back to herself, we wouldn’t have won. This is why the Rulers feared you—and had reason to.”

  “It would have been all right without me,” Hamnet said.

  “Yes, I think so, too.” If anyone was less ready to give Hamnet Thyssen credit than he was himself, it had to be Gudrid.

  “I do not.” That was Marcovefa, and not even Gudrid thought arguing with her was a good idea. Sometimes Marcovefa sounded like anyone else. Others . . . Hamnet wondered whether God spoke through her. She wouldn’t have said so. She would have laughed at him. But how else could she seem so knowing, so authoritative? She awed and alarmed even other wizards.

  She’d awed and alarmed the Rulers, and with reason. They’d tried their best to kill her, only their best turned out not to be good enough. When she finally turned the tables, they found out how good her best could be. That lesson wouldn’t need repeating.

  As if thinking along with him, Trasamund said, “With luck, we can deal with the ones who trickle through the Gap now. I think most of the Rulers who were going to come already got here.”

  “And most of the ones who’d already got here got swept away,” Hamnet added.

  “Yes.” The jarl nodded. He smiled. “Amazing how happy one word can make you, isn’t it?”

  “If you have to pick one word, that one’s more likely to than most,” Hamnet answered. Smiling still, Trasamund nodded.

  While everyone else kept looking west and watching the floodwaters rampage across the Bizogot steppe, Eyvind Torfinn chose to look east. He suddenly stiffened, as if transfixed by an arrow. Only his right arm moved, to point out into what had been the middle of Sudertorp Lake.

  Hamnet Thyssen’s gaze followed Earl Eyvind’s outthrust forefinger. Hamnet suddenly found himself transfixed, too. How long had those graceful gilded domes, those delicate columns, lain under the water? Had anyone imagined they were there? Had they been there when the Glacier rolled down from the north, too? How long had they been there before that?

  “Is it—?” Hamnet asked.

  “Yes.” This once, Eyvind Torfinn’s nod was as authoritative as anything Marcovefa could manage. “That is the Golden Shrine.”

  XX

  AND SO IT was. Count Hamnet realized he’d seen those domes before, in miniature. He needed a moment to remember where. Then he did: in the jewel hidden in Earl Eyvind’s bedpost. How old was that jewel, anyhow?

  A moment later, he realized it had to be Eyvind’s, not Gudrid’s, for she said, “It can’t be. Everybody knows the Golden Shrine is only a tale for children—and foolish children at that.”

  “That is the Golden Shrine,” Trasamund said. “It must have hidden under the lake all this time—and under the Glacier before that, because once upon a time the Glacier stretched down farther than this.

  “True. Once the Glacier stretched down almost as far as Nidaros. I was thinking about that not long ago,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Hevring Lake melted through and made the badlands off to the west. Thanks to Marcovefa, Sudertorp Lake’s gone and done the same thing.”

  “It’s nonsense.” Gudrid’s laugh had a brittle edge. “It’s impossible! Even a fool should be able to see that.”

  “Only a fool would say that,” Marcovefa replied. Awe lit her face as she pointed out toward the structure in the emptying lake. “That is assuredly the Golden Shrine.”

  “It can’t be,” Gudrid repeated. “How do you know it is?”

  “It’s a shrine. It’s golden. It just appeared out of nothing like a miracle.” Ulric Skakki ticked off points on his fingers as he made them. “What more do you want? Egg in your beer?”

  “You’re making fun of me!” Gudrid said shrilly.

  “When you say silly things, you can expect other people to make fun of you,” Ulric observed. Gudrid glared at him. Hamnet saw that, but he didn’t think the adventurer did; Ulric’s eyes were fixed firmly on the Golden Shrine. “Up till now, going through the Gap and beyond the Glacier was the most marvelous thing I ever did. I imagined it always would be. Now I see I was wrong.”

  Hamnet nodded. He hadn’t dreamt he could do anything more amazing than to pass through the Gap and see what lay on the far side of the Glacier, either. He hadn’t even thought the Glacier had a far side; he’d believed it went on forever. Like Ulric, he’d been wrong.

  When Gudrid went on protesting that the buildings the emptying lake revealed couldn’t possibly be the Golden Shrine, Hamnet cut her off with a sharp chopping gesture. “Most of us are going over there no matter what you think it is. You can come with us or stay behind—whichever you please.”

  “You can’t talk to me that way,” she said.

  “No?” He looked at her. “I just did.” He turned away. She went on complaining, but he ignored her after that.

  The Bizogots and Raumsdalians who’d come this far had mounted for a last desperate battle against the Rulers. They greeted Marcovefa with thunderous cheers—much of their joy, no doubt, was transformed relief that they wouldn’t die in the next few hours. She blushed like a girl as she waved to them, which only made their cheers redouble.

  And they took up a chant: “The Shrine! The Shrine! The Golden Shrine!” It could have sounded better, since some spoke Raumsdalian and others the Bizogots’ tongue. No one seemed inclined to criticize.

  Before long, Marcovefa and the ragtag army’s other leaders were also on horse back. The rest of the warriors behind them, they rode east along what had been the southern shore of Sudertorp Lake. It was a shoreline no more, as Sudertorp Lake was a lake no more. Waterfowl flew in wild confusion. Hamnet hoped they would find new nesting grounds.

  Even if the Golden Shrine was visible now, he wasn’t sure how anyone could reach it. Sudertorp Lake might be vanishing, but wouldn’t its bottom prove impenetrable ooze that glued men and horses in place and might suck them down never to be seen again?

  Earl Eyvind had another thought: “After so very long, how much could have survived in there? I’m astonished the buildings themselves have.”

  “Now that you mention it, so am I,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We’ll see, that’s all. We’re here. It’s here, however it got here. We can’t do anything else but find out, can we?” Eyvind shook his head.

  “It is the Golden Shrine,” Marcovefa said. “It is as it is meant to be. We will see what we are meant to s
ee, learn what we are meant to learn.”

  “What will that be?” Hamnet asked.

  She gave him a dazzling smile. “If I already knew, I wouldn’t learn anything, would I?”

  Even as they rode toward the Golden Shrine, more and more of it emerged from the lake. The outgoing flood should have wrecked it, but seemed to have left it unharmed. Of course, if it truly had lain under the Glacier for centuries uncounted, that should have ground it to powder. Obviously, no such thing had happened.

  When Hamnet Thyssen wondered why not out loud, Earl Eyvind said, “It is the Golden Shrine. If the ordinary laws of nature applied to it, it would be something else altogether. It is the Golden Shrine because those laws do not apply. That is not the only reason, but it is a compelling one.”

  “The old man is right,” Trasamund rumbled. That made Eyvind Torfinn look imperfectly delighted at the agreement. Marcovefa nodded without any opinions about his age. He seemed happier then.

  “It’s the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet said. “Whatever’s wrong with us, whatever’s wrong with the world, now the Shrine can fix it.”

  “An ancient verse says we take no more away from the Shrine than we bring to it,” Earl Eyvind remarked.

  Marcovefa nodded again. This time, so did Ulric Skakki. Frowning, Trasamund asked, “What the demon does that mean?” Hamnet would have said more or less the same thing if the jarl hadn’t beaten him to it.

  Eyvind Torfinn only shrugged. “The text may be corrupt, and it is certainly obscure. We shall be able to do what the author could not—we shall discover for ourselves what he meant.”

  “Seems plain enough to me,” Ulric said. But then he waved his hand. “I may be wrong, God knows. The truth may be hiding under what looks plain, the same way the Golden Shrine hid under Sudertorp Lake. I wonder why nobody out in the lake ever looked down and saw it.”

  “It did not wish to be seen,” Marcovefa replied. Talking about a building in that way should have been nonsense. Hamnet had the feeling it wasn’t.