Cold Iron

by Stina Leicht

  “You’ve tired yourself out at the hospital,” Saara said. “You’ve been working too hard.”

  Ilta nodded. “You’re probably right. I just need some rest.”

  Saara paused. “Perhaps I should go in instead.”

  “No!” the king said. “We must know if they can work together. You said—”

  “There won’t be a better opportunity to test them both.” Saara nodded and then turned to Ilta. “The moment we’re back home, I want to see you in bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ilta said.

  Returning to the ritual, Saara rested her hand on the crown of Ilta’s head and said, “Blessings, Lightbearer, Seer, and Healer of the Realm, may the Great Mother, Goddess, and Protector of the Earth, the Father, God, and Guardian of the Sky, and all their servants grant you wisdom.”

  Ilta curtseyed. “Thank you, Grandmother.”

  The small ceremony complete, Suvi stretched herself to her full height and faced the black crevice. A bad feeling lodged itself in the back of her mind. Her heart slammed out an executioner’s beat against her breastbone. Would Grandmother Elizabeth cower from a mere cave? Her mother’s mother had been a great admiral and had commanded a fleet that dominated the known lakes—even parts of the ocean. Suvi tilted her chin up, thinking of the first time she’d danced the Northern Star’s toplines. The dizzy fear of falling clutched her chest as the cave’s frigid ceiling swallowed her. Daylight braved a few yards before abandoning them to the dark. Ilta opened her lantern and a warm glow took over the fight, revealing ripples in the walls. Suvi’s footsteps echoed down the lonely passage.

  “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right,” Ilta said.

  “How much experience do you have with this ritual?”

  “None. But Gran wouldn’t give me this task unless I was ready.”

  Would that I felt the same about Father, Suvi thought. Yet another royal secret I knew nothing about until the last. I wonder what else he hasn’t told me. There were moments when she wished she’d been allowed to be a ship’s captain. Although every bit as dangerous and unpredictable as court, the lakes didn’t lie or vie for power. At the same time, she had to admit to a certain amount of enjoyment in testing her wits against her uncle and others like him. Political adversaries are challenge enough, but now there are to be demons as well? She suppressed another shudder. “Have you ever seen one of the Old Ones?”

  Ilta shook her head.

  “Has Saara?”

  “I don’t think anyone has. Not in more than two hundred years,” Ilta said. “There are stories of them rising from the lakes in recent years, of course. But I’m not sure they should be believed. Everyone knows sailors exaggerate.” She paused before her mouth stretched into a rueful half smile. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  “Oh, I’ve told my share of fish stories,” Suvi said. “Every self-­respecting sailor has. I suspect it’s listed as a requirement in the Laws of Common.” The joke rested uneasy in the anxiety-heavy air, and she trudged another ten paces in silence. She detected an undercurrent of low vibration—the flow of an underground river swelling with melt water. Running a finger along the chilly rock wall, she followed the stone as it curved to the left while the cheerful light of Ilta’s lantern burned back the blackness. A low tune drifted up Suvi’s throat, and she began to hum—until a sharp rock edge sliced a line into her fingertip.

  “What’s wrong?” Ilta whispered. Her voice echoed up the passage nonetheless.

  Suvi put the injured finger to her mouth and searched for what had cut her. Long grooves etched deep into the rock jolted her into wariness. It was evidence of a creature that had braved the cave and made it its home. It’s only an ordinary bear.

  What if it’s still here? What are we to do? Frighten it with a lantern and a ceremonial knife? Taking a second look, she had a sense that the markings were old in spite of their sharpness. She stretched her fingers over the grooves with care and understood by the angles that the creature responsible could not have been a bear, nor any creature whose shape with which she was familiar. A coldness deeper than what seeped out of the rock penetrated her fingers and crept up her arm.

  Revenants. Ghosts. Demons. The Old Ones do not know sleep, nor do they walk alone. She jerked her hand away with a shudder.

  “Getting harder to think of them as mere legends, isn’t it?” Ilta asked in a hushed whisper. The tone of her words said she wished otherwise. Her lantern-shadowed face was an uneasy reminder of bedtime ghost stories.

  Clinging to the protective circle of Ilta’s lantern light, Suvi followed onward. She tried not to notice the increasing frequency of claw marks on the walls in the ceiling and on the floor—clear evidence of battles past. Annoying traditions began to make sense in ways they hadn’t before. Eledore had chosen to forget the Old Ones. Eledore forgot and lived in the shelter of her ignorance, but it was a Royal Guardian’s duty to remember.

  “Do you know of the hero Kassarina Ilmari?” Ilta asked.

  “The first Queen of Eledore,” Suvi said, happy of the distraction. “She’s my ancestor through my father’s line.” She’d been informed of her father’s family lineage from birth. Still, she’d known little else other than the name. Like soldiers, women were not held in high regard in Eledore, unlike Ytlain. It was one of the reasons why Suvi had preferred to study stories of her mother’s ancestors over her father’s.

  “She was more than that,” Ilta said. “She was also the first Guardian of Eledore. Until one hundred years ago, only female members of the Ilmari family were appointed Guardians. Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Grandmother says that Kassarina Ilmari was the first to drive the Old Ones back into the void and bind them there,” Ilta said. “An ancient record transcribed by the first Silmaillia describes Kassarina Ilmari’s journeys throughout the seven nations. I’ve read it. Kassarina, the Silmaillia, and representatives from all the nations sealed every crack in the world, every entrance the Old Ones had used to cross over. This was the first. Kainen seeking sanctuary from the Old Ones came to Eledore from all over the world. Eledore used to be a nation of immigrants.” Her soothing tone echoed off the walls. “It’s the mountains, you see. Stone makes the best barrier.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  Ilta shrugged. “It was Kassarina Ilmari’s powerful domination magic that allowed her to complete the task. It was why she was made Queen of Eledore. Did you know that she was originally a weaver in Ytlain? Her family name was Nilssen. She settled here to keep watch over the mountain. She married an Eledorean baron and took his name because she loved the Eledorean people.”

  “That’s not how Father or anyone else tells it. I was told she was a rich widow and that she was given to the Baron by her father.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it? How history changes over time?”

  Turning left behind Ilta, Suvi entered a cavern enclosed with watery curtains of rock glistening like melting ice. The feeling of harsh inhospitality intensified.

  They reached the end of the oval-shaped cavern and stopped. Like the cave entrance, a crevice split the wall. However, this crack had been sealed with a sickly pale clay and smeared with what looked like old blood. Below the rift was an altar table; in the center of its broad surface lay a small bundle wrapped in badly tanned leather. Feathers and bones had been knotted into the rough twine holding it closed.

  It looks like an offering, Suvi thought.

  Frowning, Ilta reached for the bundle, but as her finger brushed its surface, she stopped. She shook out her hand with a wince. “It isn’t meant for me.”

  “Who is it for? Father?”

  “I think it’s intended for you.”

  “That’s nice. But totally unnecessary. I think I’ll leave it here.”

  The vibration seeping through the rock suddenly strengthened. The renewed force of it set Suvi’s teeth on edge. It was then she understood the tremor was not an underground river aft
er all. It was the presence of powerful magic. Power gushed out of the sealed crevice, leaving a hard and metallic taste on the back of her tongue. It intensified until the magic in the air was so thick that it choked her. The hairs all along her arms and the back of her neck stiffened, and she coughed with a shudder. “How did”—she found she didn’t want to say their name—“did they know it was I who would come and not Father?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s clear they knew.”

  Suvi reached out and brushed one of the feathers with a finger­tip. Its vane clung to her skin like it’d been made of thousands of tiny unpleasant hooks. As if that were the signal sought, the twine parted with a snap, and the wrapping loosened, giving off a musty smell. She leaned closer. Although loath to touch the thing a second time, she gingerly urged the folds open. A toy whistle lay at the center of the package. She recognized the intricate carvings and letters on its surface but had to think of where she’d seen it before. She read her name, spelled out in reverse. It was then she knew they were the mirror image of marks carved into the whistle Nels always kept with him—the toy whistle he had fished out of Captain Veli Ari Karpanen’s coat pocket the day he died.

  The restless dead walk with the Old Ones. Oh, Mother. Suvi felt the blood drain from her face.

  “What is it?” Ilta asked.

  “Nothing.” Suvi grabbed the whistle before Ilta could get a good look at the thing, jamming it into the drawstring pocket dangling from her waist. The toy created an uneasy weight there. “Shouldn’t we start?”

  “If you’re ready.” Ilta tilted her head down and raised her eyebrows. The expression was a replica of the one Saara had given her father.

  It gave Suvi a feeling of rightness in spite of the fear shivering up her spine. “Please. Let’s. My feet are freezing.”

  “All right.”

  Ilta captured her hand with fingers too hot for the chill of the cave.

  She is feverish, Suvi thought. But before she could say anything, Suvi felt her palm fill with prickling heat.

  “Go on,” Ilta said.

  Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, Suvi recited, “In the eight names of the Great Mother and the Father, and by the power of my blood, I command thee to sleep.” Her tongue tingled as she concentrated—domination magic empowering the formal court speech. Dropping Ilta’s hand, Suvi unsheathed the knife at her hip and ran the silver-laced blade against her palm. Blood welled up almost at once. The edge was so sharp, she hadn’t felt the cut. It started to sting as she placed her bleeding palm flat against the wall in the exact place where generations of Ilmari’s had done. Unlike the pale clay seal, there was no stain to indicate the place where blood had been shed, only the Mother’s circle carved at eye level next to the seal. The odd sensation that the stone drank the blood offered gave her a jolt of terror. Her heart sped up. It took an effort of will to keep her hand pressed against the wall. She counted to seventy and then quickly jerked her hand away.

  The circle carving was clean.

  She looked into her hand. A thin pale scar traced a line across her palm. Her father had said that would happen and that it would fade until the next year. Remembering she had the rest of the ritual to finish, she took the bloodstained knife and using both hands on the hilt, swept the point through the air in an arc until she pointed it at the ceiling. “In the eight names of the Great Mother and the Father, and by the power of sacred silver, I command thee to sleep.”

  Although she was following her father’s instructions exactly, something didn’t feel quite right. She got the sense that the darkness beyond the clay-mended cleft now shoved hungrily against the barrier rather than retreating from it. She could sense when a subject was dominated. There was a palpable connection. Whatever it was on the other side felt slippery. It’s like attempting to dominate Nels.

  Ilta shifted backward.

  Suvi concentrated harder on the next set of words, forcing more power into them in the hope that it would help. “By the rocks and earth, I bar thee from this world.” She traced the second half of the circle with the point of the blade, directing the knife now to the floor. “By the heat of the sun-warmed earth I bar you from this world.” She pointed to her left. “By the rivers and sea I bar you from this world.” Reaching the end with some relief, she opened her eyes and moved the blade to her right. She prepared to speak the last part of the ritual. However, she glanced downward, and the words were gone.

  Ilta sat shivering on the floor, curled into a defensive ball. Her arms were wrapped tight around her knees. Her head was tilted to one side. She rocked back and forth, staring up toward the white cleft in the wall with a vacant, wide-eyed expression of horror. She whispered one word over and over. “No. No. No.”

  Suvi scanned the area but no danger revealed itself. A bone-deep chill crawled up from her stomach and settled in her throat. She knelt and gave Ilta a gentle shake. “Ilta, please. You have to wake up.”

  Ilta opened her mouth and screamed louder than Suvi thought possible. It hurt Suvi’s ears. Ilta’s cries bounced off the cavern walls. Unsure of what else to do, Suvi shook her again. Suvi wanted to run but couldn’t bring herself to leave Ilta alone in the dark, no matter how afraid she was. She didn’t trust the cavern. She tried to think of something, anything she could do.

  Then Ilta stopped screaming just as abruptly as she’d started. The moment she did, Suvi could have sworn she heard something skitter in the stone ceiling above them.

  Is that what they mean when they say something is loud enough to wake the dead? Suvi’s mind filled with images of nightmarish creatures with sharp claws bent at unnatural angles. Wake the dead. Oh, no. Oh, gods. Suvi had always thought herself brave, but it was at that moment she knew she wasn’t. She grabbed the lantern and slipped an arm around Ilta’s waist, lifting her. A rock hit the cavern floor. Suvi didn’t wait to see where it had come from. She was too terrified to look. She dragged Ilta through the passage as quickly as she could while her back itched with a sense of menacing pursuit. Panic fueled her strength. It wasn’t until she spied welcoming daylight that her terror began to fade.

  Saara rushed toward them with a swiftness that contradicted her age. “What happened?” she asked, helping ease Ilta to the ground. Ilta let out a small frightened sound. Saara opened Ilta’s fist and pressed it to the dirt. “Feel the earth, girl. Touch the warmth of the sun.”

  “I don’t understand. We started the ritual. I looked back, and she was like this.” Suvi thought, Please don’t ask me to go back in there.

  Her father frowned. “Started? You didn’t finish?”

  “I told you you should’ve sent for Nels in case something went wrong,” Saara said. “Well, it’s gone wrong.”

  “That boy is a defect!” Her father stamped his foot. “Tradition dictates one Guardian. One!” He paced. “You know what this means!”

  Saara said, “It means nothing of the kind. It means we’ve need of your son. He’s her twin. They shared a womb. It’s possible they share their magical talents. Be reasonable, Henrik.”

  “He is not my son! He has no magic! She is not my daughter, either! She doesn’t have the blood to be a Guardian! That whore presented me with another man’s—”

  Something in Suvi snapped. “Don’t talk about Mother like that!”

  “Calm yourself, Henrik! We need both your children,” Saara said. “Together, they have the power. Stop thinking of Sakari’s plots. There are more important things at hand.”

  Suvi watched her father’s face grow red. His hand twitched as if he’d stayed an urge to hit someone. Then he closed his eyes and turned away.

  “Give your father the knife.” Saara stood up. “Stay with Ilta. The fever is getting worse, and I don’t like it. Watch her. See to it she doesn’t hurt herself.”

  Suvi handed off the ceremonial knife without looking at her father. “What might Ilta do?”

  “You just see she’s comfortable,” Saara said, dusting off her skirts. She dug into her pack and
brought out a blue glass vial. “Open this and wave it under her nose. Talk until she answers. When she wakes, make her eat something and then drink some water. She’ll know what to do after that.”

  “What if she doesn’t wake?” Suvi asked.

  Saara frowned. “Then we’ve got real trouble. Best get to it, girl. Your father and I have bigger things to tend to.”

  Suvi watched her father enter the cavern with Saara. She didn’t think he’d ever looked so small. She waited until they were gone before twisting the stopper off the vial. A strong acidic scent hit her with the force of a blow. She followed Saara’s instructions and passed it twice under Ilta’s nose. Ilta sat up all at once with a wince and began to shiver.

  Replacing the stopper, Suvi asked, “Are you all right?”

  Pinching her nose shut, Ilta shook her head. “Oh, gods. I hate smelling salts.”

  “Saara told me to do it.”

  Ilta pushed hair away from her face and glanced around her. “What are we doing out here? Where’s Gran?” She fumbled in her pockets.

  “You collapsed. You’re sick. Saara and Father went inside to complete the ritual.” Suvi paused. She didn’t want to talk about what else had happened until she’d been able to give it thought. What will Father do to Mother? “Did you have a vision? What did you see?”

  The shadow of unease passed over Ilta’s face before she located her pocket watch and checked the time. “I don’t want to think about it. Not yet.” Then she put the watch away, breathed deep, and dug her fingers into the dirt. “Would you mind bringing me Gran’s pack? I’m not sure I can stand.”

  “She said you should have something to eat.” The pack felt heavier than it appeared. Suvi thought of Saara carrying the weight up the mountain, and her respect for the older woman was renewed.

  Ilta scrounged the contents of the patched carpet bag, pro­ducing another blue vial. She checked the label before taking a small sip. “The headaches are the worst.”

  “You get headaches?”