Storm at the Edge of Time

by Pamela F. Service

  Suddenly the curtain to their left was thrust aside, and Earl Thorfinn strode into the room, followed by his skald. Room was made for them on the benches, and the drinking and loud talking began in earnest. After a while someone called for a song, and a young man with a harp began a raucous piece that Jamie suspected she wouldn’t have been allowed to listen to back home. Then there was a call for a story, and Arnor began chanting a tale about some ancient earl who apparently died when he scratched his leg on the poisoned tooth of an enemy whose severed head he had tied to his saddle. Gross, Jamie decided, glad she couldn’t catch all the words in these singsong chants.

  Instead of trying, she began looking around the long smoky room. Battered round shields hung on the walls, each painted with a different design. High above the door on the far wall hung a banner, a red background with a black raven. She caught her breath. This must be the magic banner Arni had told them about.

  Was it really magic? Jamie tried to look at it the way Urkar had showed them, to look past the surface to the real thing. It did seem to be moving, like a bird flying into a sunset sky. But that could just be an effect of the rising heat and smoke.

  Just looking at it made her feel tingly, though she could be making that up because she knew it was supposed to be magic. Still, there had to be something to this magic stuff, no matter what Tyaak thought. He just didn’t want to admit that humans could do anything special.

  Jamie looked over at Tyaak. Leaning against a door jamb, he was fast asleep. Now that he wasn’t scowling and his porcupine hair was hidden under the hood, he wasn’t really bad-looking—if you could ignore the old-avocado color. She ought to be angry at him for caring so little about human culture that he fell asleep here, but she was getting groggy herself. This whole weird day had been cold and exhausting. She was glad someone had started carving the roast pig, though it would be a while before any was passed their way.

  Arnor seemed to have switched to a new tale, but the monotonous rhythm was the same. Something about two guys named Brusi and Einar who seemed to spend a lot of time fighting each other. She couldn’t keep them straight, and it was too much trouble trying. It was too much trouble even keeping her eyes open in the warm smoky air. She let them close and let the skald’s voice wash over her in warm meaningless waves. Wash into silence.

  In the distance, a bird screamed. A raven. No, a person. Several people.

  “An attack!”

  “Rogenvald’s men!”

  “Sound the alarm!”

  Chapter Nine

  Jamie’s eyes flew open as screams and shouts erupted around her. Shields and weapons were yanked off walls. With a ferocious yell, Earl Thorfinn, wielding a huge ax, barged out the front door; others shoved and pushed to follow him. A few leaped over the crouching children and headed for other exits.

  “Let’s get out too!” Arni yelled over the clamor as he thrust aside a door curtain. “They might set fire to the place!”

  “No!” Jamie shouted, pointing back at the raven banner. Suddenly she was seeing it for the first time, really seeing it. It pulsed—not with heat but with power. Power flowed through it like steady waves of flame. But even that was not what froze her to the spot.

  It was the black wooden pole from which the banner hung. Like a long black serpent, it twisted with power of its own, older, deeper power, and the bird carved at its head seemed to unfurl its wings. Its beak opened in a silent scream.

  “The staff!” Jamie cried, grabbing the other two. “There! The banner’s hanging from it. We’ve got to get it!”

  The hall was nearly empty now, but one of Thorfinn’s men suddenly stumbled back through the doorway, another warrior raining sword blows on his upraised shield. Gripping his battle-ax, the first man fought back. Beyond them, the street was lit with tongues of flame.

  Ignoring it all, Jamie raced toward the raven staff. Jumping on a stone bench at the end of the room, she tried to leap for a rafter. Just out of reach. Tyaak jumped up beside her, roughly grabbing her around the waist and boosting her to his shoulders.

  Teetering precariously, Jamie clutched a rafter with one hand and with the other reached toward the banner. Still it was out of reach—inches away. She could almost feel its smooth wooden shaft fitting into her palm. She stretched farther, her fingers tingling with strain.

  The whole banner shuddered and broke loose from the wall. Like iron to a magnet, the shaft flew to Jamie’s outstretched hand. Her palm burned with its cool dark power as she fearfully clenched her fingers around it.

  As Tyaak lowered her to the bench, several more warriors burst into the hall, stepping over the body of one of the earlier fighters.

  “It’s here!” a dark, bearded man yelled. “The magic banner. What a trophy!”

  A taller man with a long blond mustache looked straight at Jamie. “There! Take it from them!”

  The darker man ran forward. Jamie shrank back, and Arni jumped up beside her. Brandishing his dagger like a sword, he whispered to her, “Don’t fight while you’re holding the banner! Remember the curse.”

  The man grabbed for the dangling cloth, and Jamie let him wrench the whole thing from her. Her hand burned with its loss.

  Another warrior charged through the door and came at the blond warrior, who ducked and brought his own sword up under the new man’s shield. With a cry, the newcomer fell to his knees, slumping forward into a spreading pool of blood.

  “Hurry!” the blond man yelled at his companion. “We’ve got what we want.”

  Just then another man burst in, saw his dead fellow, and with a yell of rage threw a spear. The banner-carrier took it full in the chest and toppled over like a felled tree.

  In an instant, Arni leaped down and tore the prize from the dead man’s hand. The blond warrior rushed at him. Quickly Arni jerked the banner from its shaft and flung the cloth in the man’s face.

  Clutching the staff, Arni dashed toward a back door. As Jamie followed, she saw the mustached blond tear the banner away just in time to meet sword on sword with the warrior who’d thrown the spear.

  Arni led them through a maze of rooms toward another open door. Just as they neared it, a torch was hurled through, catching a pile of straw bedding on fire. Escape was cut off.

  “A window!” Tyaak yelled. He fumbled with a shutter, then, breaking through, led the others out.

  The street was full of people yelling, running, and fighting. Several buildings were on fire, and smoke billowed in blinding clouds through the air. Jamie had absolutely no idea where they were. Arni, too, stood undecided, then headed up the street where the fighting seemed lightest.

  “No!” Tyaak yelled. “This way! Follow me!”

  Midnight-blue hair streaming behind him, he charged past a couple of Vikings swinging axes at each other. Arni looked at Jamie, shrugged, and followed. Just as Jamie passed the warriors, she heard an ax crash into a skull. If there was a scream, it was lost in the general noise.

  Tyaak turned a corner, then abruptly dodged down a narrow alley between two houses. The alley opened onto a lower street. There were fewer people about. A woman carrying a crying child ran past them, and a goat galloped out of another street, chased by a cursing man with a rope.

  Without a pause, Tyaak darted across the street and into another alley. Just then, a voice behind them cried, “There! Get them. Get it!”

  Jamie saw several men running down the street toward them. Their leader was the tall Viking with the long blond mustache.

  “We don’t have—” she started to yell. Then her eyes locked with his. Cold, dark eyes. And she knew they did have what he wanted.

  Like a hunted deer, she turned and dashed after her companions, yelling, “They’re after us—after the staff! They know what it is!”

  Ahead of them, part of a burning building peeled off and collapsed into the street, blocking the way. Arni started to turn right at an alley, but Tyaak yanked him left. They rushed down the narrow lane, only to skid to a halt: It opened onto the ed
ge of a cliff. The only light came from the burning village and a cold scrap of moon glimpsed through wind-shredded clouds. But the dark emptiness in front of them was as unmistakable as the crashing of waves below.

  Grabbing at a stone wall behind her, Jamie fought a wave of dizziness, trying to think calmly. They’d gone too far to be above the causeway here. But that wouldn’t matter anyway, since the tide must be in now.

  That didn’t seem to bother Tyaak. He turned and trotted down a path sketched along the cliff’s edge. Arni followed, clutching the staff like a spear. When Jamie heard the hoarse cries behind her, she followed as well, keeping her eyes on her feet and away from the dark, yawning drop beside her.

  A glint of light caught her eye; she looked up to see a torch bobbing up the path below them. A torch and several figures. Beyond them, dark against the dark sea, was the slim outline of a ship. This must be the spot where the raiders had landed, defying Viking tradition and the winter sea.

  The three fleeing children slowed and stopped. They were trapped. “The sea is the only way now!” Tyaak yelled over the wind. Unfastening his heavy cloak, he let it drop and leaped off the cliff. With a wild Viking yell, Arni did the same.

  Jamie watched them vanish into the sucking, booming dark. Voices were coming at her from above, lights from below. Fearfully she remembered the eyes of the blond raider, eyes that opened onto power, dark destructive power.

  Fumbling with the clasp of her own cloak, she shrugged it from her shoulders. If she had to die ten centuries before she was born, she’d rather go in a clean, natural way like drowning.

  She sprang from the cliff, and for a moment fear was gone. All the world was wind and glimmering moonlight. Then came the cold concussion. She slammed against water harder and colder than iron, then sank into directionless darkness. Currents pulled at her, tumbling her over, spinning her around. They left her no sense of direction, no clue as to which way was up—and escape.

  She was going to die. There was no fear now, just anger. She was going to die for some failed hereditary duty, while her closest family would never know how or why.

  Out of the darkness, something grabbed her. Some horrid sea thing, but she hardly cared. It pulled her, and waves of air broke over her face. Gasping through the spume, she drew in deep breaths. The thing that had grabbed her was a hand, Tyaak’s hand. His hair floated like inky seaweed around his dark face.

  She tried to ask about Arni, but then didn’t have to. In the moonlight she could see his darkened red head bobbing not far away. Clutched in his hand, the black staff glowed like a water serpent.

  “Swim,” Tyaak urged them. “Swim to the main island.” Jamie, still confused in the darkness, had no idea where that was, but the Kreeth boy kept tugging her in one direction until she quit treading water and moved into a regular swimming stroke.

  It was cold. Soon she could barely feel her arms and legs moving. Then, through the surging whitecaps and the tangle of her own hair, Jamie made out a black cliff looming closer and closer.

  Rocks smashed against her feet. She tried to stand, but the waves rolled her over, throwing her against the shore. Her hands tore at sand and rock, trying to hold on. Slowly she dragged herself upward. Other arms reached for her, pulling her into the knife-cold air. Several stumbling steps, and she was huddled in the sand beside the other two.

  For a long minute, all they could do was shiver. Then Arni said, “Got to get off the beach, head for the circle. If some of those raiders weren’t just avenging Rogenvald but were after this staff, they might not give up.

  Remembering the blond raider, Jamie forced herself to her feet. Weakly they scrambled to the top of the cliff. Once free of its shelter, they were hit by new volleys of wind that cut like steel through their dripping clothes.

  Pushing through the gusts, they stumbled over dry, flattened grass. There were no trees or rocks, just open rolling land—open to the wind, to the night sky, and to any eyes that might be seeking them.

  The raiders had boats. If they believed they could still lay hands on the staff, they could row over here, Jamie thought, and hunt the three of them. They could even steal horses from a farm and ride them down. She had to hurry, hurry.

  Her legs had almost stopped obeying. They buckled at nearly every step, and the wind was rising. It was a struggle just to stand against it.

  “Here,” Tyaak’s voice called. “Some sort of shelter. We can rest here. Arni thinks a storm is coming.”

  Low, broken stone walls. An old shed or something, Jamie thought as they staggered into it. In the back enough roof was left to hold off some of the wind and the rain that was now flying with it like tiny spears.

  The three huddled together, listening to the raging night. At least this rain should put out the fires in the village, Jamie thought. Poor Arni. He was probably worried sick about his family and friends. At least hers were safe, even if centuries away. She reached around Arni’s shoulder and found Tyaak’s arm already there. They shivered together.

  “Arni, Jamie,” Tyaak said after a while. “Can either of you, uh, do that thing Urkar did with fire?”

  “Start a fire by magic?” Arni whispered. Then, with renewed spunk, he added: “Suddenly you believe in magic?”

  “Of course not. But somehow Urkar was able to make a fire back there, and we could certainly use one here.”

  “But he said some magic words,” Arni protested, “and I don’t know any.”

  “Maybe we can use the staff,” Jamie suggested. “It’s magic.”

  Tyaak snorted. “Oh indeed. Just say, ‘Stick, give us a bonfire—and some roast meat, while you are at it.’ Sony, it was a stupid idea.”

  “No,” Jamie said, “the idea’s great. It’s just that we don’t know how to use the staff. But, hey, Arni, you were right about the staff being high up, close to the roof.”

  “It was you who saw it.”

  Jamie was silent a moment. “Yes, and when I did, it looked exactly as I’d imagined it would. Maybe I hadn’t just imagined it. Maybe I’d known what it would look like.”

  Tyaak just grunted. Briefly Jamie thought about what had happened afterwards—about yearning for the staff and feeling it shoot toward her. She shied away from the memory and quickly spoke to Tyaak.

  “Well, at least you were right about the part of the village where we should be looking.” After a thoughtful moment she added, “In fact, not only did you sort of lead us there, you led us through the fire and the streets and even the water afterward. Aren’t you kind unusually good at that?”

  Tyaak said nothing.

  Jamie looked toward his huddled shape. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve felt your power before and it was something like that.”

  “I do not want to talk about it.”

  “You’d better, though. You probably saved our lives.”

  After a long pause, Tyaak said gruffly, “I had been training as a navigator. I was good at it. My father said so, everyone did. But it is a complex skill. Some people are good at languages, others have a way with engines—I just had a knack for the mathematics and instrumentation used in navigation. Then once, on a training mission, our little ship developed a core disphasing, and most of our systems were damaged. It was up to me to navigate back to the nearest base. It was difficult with some of the equipment out, but I did it. We survived. It was only afterward that I discovered that our entire navigation system had been out. I had done it totally … on instinct.”

  “So, did you tell anyone?” Jamie asked.

  “No! It terrified me. No one should have been able to do that. I was afraid it was some primitive, demeaning Human skill I had inherited from my mother. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Well, now you know you needn’t worry,” Arni said. “Most normal humans couldn’t do it either.”

  “Why not shut up,” Tyaak snapped, “and do something about a fire.”

  “Won’t,” Arni said, crossing his arms.

  Jamie was too cold to be stubbo
rn. She picked up the staff and poked its tip into the grass at her feet. “Look, let’s all three hold this thing and think about fire. Then at least we can imagine being warm.”

  Jamie didn’t know what the others were thinking about, but she imagined the fires they sometimes had in the family room. Her parents would be reading; her brother would be studying, stretched out on the floor with the cat on his back. The picture made her achingly homesick, so she switched to a summer campfire. Blazing at first, so you had to keep turning yourself like meat on a spit, one side to the flames, the other to the cold dark pine woods. Then dropping to dancing yellow flames in which you could see dragons, dancers, and fantastic cities. Finally came the coals, glowing embers like newborn jewels, perfect for roasting marshmallows and stretching toes toward to soak up the last of the warmth.

  She could almost feel it again, warming the tips of her toes and slowly spreading its healing warmth upward. She sighed and opened her eyes, and still the embers glowed at her, smug and fierce like the eyes of dragons.

  “We did it,” Arni whispered.

  “How?” Tyaak said, but no one gave an answer. The fire grew from embers to a small patch of cheerily dancing flames. The lack of fuel didn’t seem to bother it at all.

  “You know,” Jamie said after a time, “we should be giving some thought to this. Is it us, is it the staff, or is it both? If we can …”

  Her words dried up. In the stormy darkness beyond their shelter, there was something darker. A shape moved toward them.

  Their fire glinted in its eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  Staring in terror at the thing, Jamie slowly realized it was not one of the Viking raiders. It was a horse, a shaggy gray horse. Her eyes flicked to its back, but it carried no rider.

  The horse, however, was staring just as hard at her. Its eyes in the firelight were bright blue. With a snort, it took several steps closer and roughly butted each of them with its head. Then it nudged the staff at their feet.