by Ross Lawhead
“When you say ‘he made the most sense,’ what do you mean?”
“Well, he said things that I realised I already thought but hadn’t been able to articulate. He said that Ni?ergeard is an oppressive force on this island-they live and operate in secret, making wars in the shadows. And from what I’ve seen here, in these visions, could you disagree? What gives Ealdstan the authority to do what he’s doing?”
“Just because you do not like his methods doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
“But if he’s right, why would he keep it a secret?”
“Getting back to Gad-what about his methods? He killed Swi?gar.”
“In self-defense. Swi?gar was going to kill him. That’s what the whole mission was about! If the four of us went on a mission to kill you, don’t you think you would be justified in defending yourself?”
“What about your methods, then? It seems to me that you have been just as secretive as Ealdstan. Why did you not tell the others the truth about Gad as soon as you rejoined them?”
“What if they’d kept me there?” Freya blurted. She realised that she’d been holding back tears, but now they were rolling down her face. Her voice was thick and full of emotion. It was all coming out. “What if they’d made me go back and try to kill him again? I never wanted to kill anyone. I never have! I only ever wanted to get out, to go home!”
Vivienne waited until Freya’s tears had mostly stopped before continuing.
“But surely, once you were here, once you saw the importance of this place. . surely you saw the vital need for it to be delivered from all threat?”
“No. No!” Freya felt the rage swell up inside her. “I never saw the point. Never! I didn’t ask to get sucked into this world-it never did anything for me. Why should I help it? For all I know, Gad was right. The only thing I know about this place is what I’ve been told, and that’s been precious little. If this place is worth saving”-she motioned around to the dark walls-“then why is the world perfectly happy to carry on without it?”
“Because it stands in the breach, Freya. It stands between the spiritual realm of this world and all others that press in on it.”
“Do you really know that? Or have you been told that?”
“Because I was told it doesn’t mean it’s false.”
“And it doesn’t mean it’s true either.”
Vivienne stared back at Freya impassively. “So what is true?” she asked.
Freya palmed away the tears on her cheeks. “I understand about the dragon. And someone or something made Stowe do what he did to me. But how do I know that Ni?ergeard isn’t responsible for that? Or in any case, more responsible than Gad?”
Vivienne nodded. “You should read these accounts. Like I say, they will provide context.”
“I don’t want context. History. I want to know what’s happening now. Vivienne, we should really go search the rest of the tower.”
“You go ahead without me,” she said, fitting the reading glasses back on her nose.
“You want me to go alone?”
“Why not? We know there’s nothing waiting to spring out at us or it would have already done so.”
Freya stood and moved toward the door. She felt in her jacket for the pocketknife they’d given her. “Vivienne, what do you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something that you’re not saying. You’d rather sit here with books and diaries instead of explore the tower? What’s going on?”
“I would think a young woman would put more stock in learning. Very well, if you wish me to come with you. .” She pushed herself away from the desk.
“No.” Freya tightened her grip on the knife in her pocket. “You stay here. I don’t want you with me anymore.”
“Freya, do you have a trust issue?”
“How could I not? Why should I trust anyone? They’ve never trusted me with the truth. Stay here. Read your books. I’ll be back later.”
She didn’t even have her hand on the door before she regretted her decision. And pushing past the ruined iron door, she felt the first drops from the massive reservoir of panic spill over the walls she had built to keep it out. Senseless fear threatened to overwhelm her completely. She stood in the corridor, drawing a deep breath, drawing herself up. She could live her life in fear, which was no life at all, or she could dig deep, draw up the anger inside of her, and take control of her life.
So there she stood, just outside of Ealdstan’s study, fighting indecision. She knew she needed to explore the rest of the tower, and she would, but should she first try to find out where Daniel was? Frithfroth also; where had he slipped off to? And then there was Gad. Should she try to make contact with him? And how would she do that exactly? Just stroll out of the tower and demand an audience? That thought seemed to physically twist at her gut. To align herself practically with Gad was different, she realised, than philosophically. Was she really on Gad’s side, or was she just against Ni?ergeard?
There were risks on every side. The danger of her situation circled over her like a large, black bird of prey, its shadow of fear occasionally eclipsing the light of any hope, its icy fingers reaching out to snuff even the heat of rage that was pent up inside of her.
But niggling at the back of her head was her secret temptation, which she guarded for herself like a precious thing, kept in a drawer and only taken out to fondle when absolutely no one else was around: she could just leave. She could walk up the stairs, wait for the portal to open-if it would open-and then just leave.
It was a nice, comfortable thought, but she knew it was grown from her fear; the last eight years had taught her that. She actually had escaped Ni?ergeard, against the odds, and yet fear still ruled her life. She was tired of being afraid. Weary. Fatigued. Fatigued-she remembered that word as it applied scientifically, to metal. Most metals were malleable. You could exert pressure upon them and they would bend-like a spoon curved back on itself. You could apply pressure the other way and it would bend back. And you could keep bending and unbending the spoon and it wouldn’t appear the worse for the wear, but then after bending it too many times, it would break-simply snapping in two. That’s what she felt like now-bending so much from all these different pressures, at some point she’d completely break apart.
She wouldn’t let that happen. She refused to bend any longer.
She reached deep inside and grabbed Fear and threw it into the flames of Rage, letting it be consumed, relishing its heat. And then the fear was gone-sublimated into fuel for her fury.
This was the new deal: she would stay angry and she would stay unafraid.
The first thing she would do is search the rest of the tower.
She had taken a lantern from the study, so as to conserve the battery power of her flashlight, and counted the stairs as she went upward, the temperature dropping as she did so. Her fingers felt like icicles and she could see her breath clouding before her in the light of the lantern. The stairs seemed to go on forever, but finally she came to a landing that snaked away into darkness. At the end of the short hallway she found two identical doors, thin like the small, medieval doorways that were in church bell towers. She reached out and pushed gently on the right-hand one. It shifted at her touch.
She slid into the doorway and squeezed past the door and into a very narrow and unlit corridor. It curved around, as all passages did in the Langtorr, but tighter than usual, and Freya wondered how high, exactly, she was in the spire-like tower, and how thick the wall was between her and the cold emptiness outside.
Her lights picked up something sparkling around the curvature of the walls. It was a bobbing twinkle, as if something was coming toward her. She froze. The bobbing light also froze, and she realised that the light was only a reflection of her own. She drew closer and found herself confronted with an incredibly ornate silver doorway, the likes of which she’d never seen before. It was patterned with circular swirls and knot-work that ran all along the edges, framing a burnished surface th
at showed her as only a shadowy shape in the dark.
After admiring the door for a moment, she placed her hand against its centre-she saw a ghostly reflection of her own hand rise to meet hers-and pushed, watching her mirrored self fall away.
The room was lit, which was a surprise, and empty. It was a curved, kidney-shaped space with no windows, but with three large mirrors hanging at opposite ends of the room.
Each mirror was of an ornate, flowing design, with a bulbous, vaguely hourglass shape. There were four odd metal racks in the centre of the room, sort of like coatracks. A golden chandelier in the ceiling fixed with silver lights threw an uncharacteristically warm light on the room. She walked closer to the mirror across from her and stopped in the middle of the room. Something caught her eye and she turned her gaze to the right-hand side mirror.
She leapt aside, and her mirror image also leapt aside.
But it wasn’t her image, not exactly. Freya moved back so her “image” was centred again. It was clearly her, but she was older, maybe thirty, and dressed in fine robes of deep red and burgundy, with bright trim and gold lacing.
She looked confident, self-possessed, a little sad, perhaps, but that seemed to add to her air of wisdom. But it was the crown atop her head that she found most stunning-and disconcerting.
She was wearing the hero’s crown that sat on the throne downstairs-the dragonhelm.
V
Daniel sat down next to Certain Doubt, who tensed instinctively. “Awake so soon? It has been a very short time.”
Daniel nodded and scanned the darkness. He could see almost nothing, just abstract angles where the rock ceiling sloped to meet the floor on various levels.
“You are fully rested? We may depart?”
“No, not yet. Let’s let the others-what’s that over there?”
“Where?” Certain Doubt’s head shifted slightly, giving Daniel the opportunity to shove his sword into the yfelgop’s throat.
The movement was swift, fluid, and vicious. Daniel knew he’d only get one chance, and he had to be exact or the yfelgop would raise the alarm and he would be sunk.
Certain Doubt’s eyes bulged and his tongue worked soundlessly, trying either to breathe or shout, Daniel didn’t know, but his efforts were fruitless, and he died quickly. In that moment, Daniel felt his heart calm and beat steadily. He experienced an awareness of his senses that quite took him by surprise. As the leafleas writhed on the end of his blade, Daniel felt more relaxed and in control than he had felt in days, and it comforted him. He was doing the right thing.
He wiped his blade against the dead creature’s arm to clean it. And then, working quickly and with some difficulty, Daniel propped the body up to make it look, in the low light and at a casual glance at least, that it was still on guard. He was so successful in this that as he rose and cast a last look back, he almost thought Certain Doubt was still alive and he would have to kill him again.
He laughed at himself. That was silly. No one had to kill anything twice-only Gad was the thing you had to kill again, apparently, and he would. He was working toward it. But first things first. And what kind of name was “Certain Doubt,” anyway? “A spy’s name, that’s what.” Daniel thought that Kelm would give them a better story than some weird names. That wasn’t sticky. Not sticky by any stretch.
Moving forward in a crouch, he made his way to each of the other leafleas on watch, killed them, and returned to the site where the rest of the yfelgopes were resting.
This next part was even trickier, but moving systematically, he made a complete circuit. In his left hand he held a bunchedup piece of cloth that he pressed against the yfelgopes’ mouths to smother any noise they made while he was piercing their throats with the sword in his right. Some of them uttered muffled death rattles that made him hold his own breath, fearing they’d wake the others, but most of them died without even opening their eyes.
The last one dispatched, Daniel tried to dry his sword with the cloth but found it too sodden with blood to be of much use for that. He tossed it to the side and sat down to recover. He had hardly dared to draw breath during the operation, and hadn’t used even one of his lucky words, and now he filled his lungs with a deep, regular rhythm.
“Not shaky. Not shaky. Jagged. Not jagged either. Folded down. In a pocket. Calm. Relaxed. Sticky. Length. Length.” The words were balms to his troubled soul. They were direct lines to meaning in his mind; he could almost feel the strings. Yes, strings. Strings in his mind, connecting thought to action to event to consequence. He just had to keep thinking and it would all stick.
Daniel rose. It was time to follow the next mind-string to its end-knot. But what to decide? Take all the heads, or only some of them?
VI
The smell of fresh death followed him in a cloud, making his eyes tingle. He swallowed back bile and rubbed his eyes with the back of a hand. He was exhausted. He had decided on bringing all the heads, in the end. That would be the most impressive, make the greatest impact. And yet it was quite a trick to manage it. There were twenty-eight of them in all; twenty-eight traitorous heads of enemy agents. And it was no easy task getting the heads off of the shoulders. It had become easier after the first few when he knew more what he was doing, but then he’d had to work out some way to carry them all back. He’d struck upon taking a few spears and skewering them onto it, threading them on top of one another like beads on a needle. That took unique skill as well. Then he’d taken all the belts and bands he could find and tied the spears together so that he could drag the heads behind him.
It wasn’t easy work. They kept getting caught on rocks and outcroppings, and he had to stop and free them. It was possible he had lost one or two heads on the way. And if they were smelling worse, at least they’d become less messy, the blood and entrails already long gone.
At least it was easy enough to find his way back to Ni?ergeard; he just had to follow the light and keep himself low, out of sight.
“Sticky. Sticky. Lengthy. Length. Stick. In a pocket. In a pocket. In a pocket.”
When he got to the pile of dust that once used to be the outer wall, he thought he’d announce himself. It would be better not to let any yfelgopes see him without some sort of announcement, especially since he was dragging over two dozen of their heads behind him.
“Kelm! Kelm! I want Kelm!” he called at the top of his voice. He was surprised at how ragged and quiet it sounded.
At first there was no response, and then the terrible idea occurred to him that he might be alone down here in a deserted city. What would he do then? Just as he began to fret in earnest, tears springing to his eyes, a yfelgop poked his head over the top of a roof. Looking around, he saw others as well, standing in archways, leering around the corners of buildings. One or two of them ducked away; a few of them started moving cautiously toward him.
He pulled the heads up onto the pile of rubble and then stopped. His arms ached so badly he thought that they’d just pop off. Yfelgopes were now surrounding him, looking at the heads, looking at him, weapons drawn. Keep it sticky, keep it sticky and folded down, he told himself. He gave them what he hoped was a winning smile and then casually rubbed his eyes. They were so puffy it was a constant effort of will to keep them open.
And then Kelm was there. Right in front of him, lumbering toward him with a puzzled look on his face. And well he should be puzzled, Daniel thought. He obviously wouldn’t have guessed that I could have tumbled to his little pantomime so quickly. Try to pump information out of me by sending some yfelgopes to “break me out” of prison and trick me into thinking I’m their friend and telling them everything I know. You’ll have to get up earlier in the morning than that to catch me out.
Daniel realised he wasn’t talking, just thinking loudly. “Hello, Kelm. I’m back. Did you miss me?”
“Scarcely. I didn’t even know you’d gone. Where have you been?”
“Recognise who I’ve got here with me?” Daniel bent down and hoisted one of the spears up. It
had eight heads on it, each one pierced above the jaw and resting cheek-to-cheek next to the others. Daniel thought that one of them might be Argument. Something started to drip on his hand.
Kelm looked at the heads and Daniel, blankly.
Daniel almost laughed-or maybe he actually did. Kelm was putting on a good act. He really did act like he didn’t have a clue as to who his own double agents were.
“I’ll help you out with a hint: these are the ones that released me from prison.”
If Kelm had said anything at that point-questioned, commented, or even just opened his mouth in surprise-then Daniel might not have doubted himself in that moment. As it was, Kelm just stood, looking at him, his face still blank, his eyes searching for context in Daniel’s expression.
Does he really not know? Daniel asked himself. Or is he that good at pretending? Perhaps Gad sent them, unknown to Kelm. Maybe I’m doing this the wrong way; maybe I should play along. It was like a game of chess, each player making their move, doing the best with what they had. A player with fewer pieces on the board could still easily win, so long as they were smarter than their opponent.
Then Daniel was hit with a brain wave. There was already a lie in play that he could run with. His eyes lit up. “These are traitors, Kelm. They released me, thinking that I would help them to overthrow you, but as you can see, I’m loyal. I present these tokens as offerings to you of my intent. I–I want to help. Do you believe me now?” Daniel gave his best smile again.
Kelm took another moment to study Daniel head to foot. Daniel did his best to stand up to the scrutiny-Keep smiling, head and shoulders back, mind that posture, keep your arm steady, try not to let your knees jiggle, and keep everything, above all else, completely folded down. Stay sticky.