The Circle of Stone: The Darkest Age

by A. J. Lake

  Flame poured around her, falling away harmlessly to each side, and she knew that Eolande was shielding her for one last time. The giant screamed and buckled, shrinking in on itself. For a moment it dropped to its knees, toppling towards her blade. Then it was a whirlwind of flame, whipping back from her. Tendrils of thick black smoke snaked from it and wrapped around her, reaching for her throat.

  Strike again! cried the voices together, and she brought the sword up in a sweeping stroke, severing the smoke-tendrils as if they were flesh. There was another shriek – and now a cloud swirled around her, impenetrably black, save for the brilliance of the sword in her hand. She carved a path through it – and came face-to-face with one of the stones.

  Elspeth backed away, disoriented. The great slab towered above her, and she put out a hand to steady herself against its rough surface.

  ‘Don’t touch him!’ shouted Eolande.

  The face of the stone rippled. Elspeth brought the sword round to hack at it, and the whole column wavered before her and vanished. In its place was a small human figure: Edmund, his hands raised to fend her off and his eyes wide with terror.

  ‘Help me!’ Elspeth muttered, and closed her eyes as she struck. When she opened them there was nothing but mist in his place.

  He’s weakening! the joined voices urged her. Drive him against the stones!

  But she could not. The sword blazed in her hand, the only solid thing as the world changed around her. The mist became a forest, its trees burning as she struck at them; a tidal wave, crashing down on her head; then a crowd of people with Edmund’s face; her father’s; her own . . . Elspeth could only stand her ground, keeping the sword steady as Cluaran and Ioneth guided her hand. Sometimes she thought she had hit him; more often her enemy simply faded to nothingness as she slashed or stabbed, and reappeared to taunt her in a new form. She heard her friends around her, crying out warning or encouragement, and she could not tell if it was their voices she heard or Loki’s.

  Then there was a piercing cry from Eolande, abruptly cut off. The things around Elspeth were shaped like wolves now, with lolling tongues of flame, ringing her ever more closely as she spun and hacked at them – but at the cry, they vanished. She was back in the stone circle, and Loki was facing her, man-sized and alone.

  He smiled widely, but not at Elspeth.

  ‘Ah, Eolande,’ he breathed. ‘I’ve worn through your charms again. You see, it does no good to turn on me.’

  He turned back to Elspeth, his fiery mouth gaping wider. He stretched out his arms towards her, and from each hand a sword grew, blazing red. Elspeth could feel the heat on her face as he advanced, and hear Eolande weeping behind her.

  ‘And now, little one,’ Loki said to her, ‘we’ll fight.’

  Edmund could bear it no longer. He had stayed at the edge of the fray with the others while Elspeth battled the shape-changer, standing close to Eolande while she kept up her charm of protection, and throwing the shattered stones where he could, for the small help they might give. Loki’s shapes, all of them, kept away from the stones of the circle: when one of them brushed a slab, its outline flickered, became less solid. The flung stones had the same effect, but it was little enough, Edmund thought, against a power that could withstand the crystal sword.

  And then Eolande screamed in pain, and the illusions vanished. For a moment Edmund thought his friend must have struck a killing blow – but Loki was on his feet, laughing, and Eolande crumpled to the ground.

  ‘I can’t protect her!’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t . . . But the flames must not touch her!’

  Loki held two flaming swords, brandishing them in the air as he walked towards Elspeth. She stood awaiting his approach, apparently calm, and Edmund could see that she was watching for her chance to strike. He clutched the stone tighter in his hand: if she should miss . . .

  ‘No,’ Loki breathed, and flung his arms in the air. Flame burst from the sword-tips and spread to both sides of him, forming a ring of fire around Elspeth. And supporting the ring, as the uprights held the hanging stones, were other Lokis; a dozen of them, all laughing with cave-like mouths, all advancing on Elspeth. A dozen silver chains winked red in the fiery light.

  ‘Come, Elspeth.’ The bell-like voice was ugly with savagery, coming from a dozen throats at once. ‘What use is your sword now?’

  And all at once Edmund knew what he must do.

  He ducked between two of the fiery figures, ignoring shouts from Cathbar and Cluaran, and ran to stand by Elspeth. ‘I won’t distract you,’ he said, as she turned an astonished face to him. ‘Keep the sword up – pay me no heed. But if I point to one of them, strike him.’

  Before Elspeth could protest, he closed his eyes, trying not to flinch as he sent his sight sweeping around the fiery circle.

  The overpowering rage took hold of him, but he rode it like a shipwrecked man in the storm-waves, keeping his head above the current, forcing himself to look through one burning gaze, then the next...

  They were advancing on Elspeth, their swords merging into a forest of flame, laughing as she turned from one glowing form to the next. He could feel their heat on his body, singeing his clothes and hair as he dragged himself to the next one in the circle.

  It threw him off his feet. Blindly, holding on to the fiery vision so it could not escape, he reached up and grabbed Elspeth’s hand.

  ‘There!’ he gasped. ‘That one!’

  His whole body shook as Loki felt him and tried to throw him off, but he clung on with all his force. She would only have this one chance. There was nothing in the world but fire and rage . . . and a tiny dark figure, a sliver of brilliant light in its hand, darting straight between the flaming arms. Too late, he felt the monster thrashing out, flailing at himself with his own fires, as the crystal sword pierced his heart. There was a whiteness too bright to see as the world exploded. Then the light winked out like a candle-flame, and Edmund’s sight with it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was four days later, and already the world was different.

  The road east had been almost deserted as they took up their journey, but they saw no armed men, and by the second day carters and pedlars were venturing out again. Near Venta Bulgarum they had met with travellers who swore that the invading Danes were routed, driven off by the king’s men. As Elspeth shook out her bed-roll in the peace of a summer morning, she wondered if Loki and all his works would soon be entirely forgotten.

  No, she thought, watching Edmund as he sat with his face raised to the sunrise he could not see. Not by everyone.

  She still could not understand how he could be so calm, how he could accept the loss of his sight without complaint or anger. She had begged Eolande to restore her friend’s eyes as she and her sister had cured her hand, and when the Fay woman told her sadly that it was beyond her skill, Elspeth had nearly wept with frustration. But Edmund had shown no sign of distress.

  Well, if he would not complain, it was not her place to rail. She had lost nothing . . . not in comparison with Edmund. She looked over at her father, washing his face in the brook, and the sight warmed her until she could almost forget the strange emptiness in her right hand. The sword was gone.

  After she had stabbed Loki – after the ball of white fire which had filled the circle, filled the sky, and vanished without toppling a single stone – a great silence had fallen on her. She was nowhere, floating bodiless in the dark. I must be dead, she thought – but slowly her body had come back: heaviness, and blurred light, and a steady, irresistible throbbing as the threads unravelled from her arm. Strands of light had pulled free from her, streaming into the air. Ioneth’s voice, and Cluaran’s, were in her head again, so twined together it was almost a song; calling a greeting or a farewell. And then they had left her – and she was lying on the ground in the stone circle, a gauntlet of silver mesh slipping off her right hand.

  Afterwards, she had not known how to speak to Eolande of her son’s loss. The Fay woman had stayed with them only long e
nough to help dress their burns; then she had left them for her own people.

  ‘There’s nothing here for me now,’ she said softly, and Elspeth took her hand, feeling her eyes pricking.

  ‘They might come back, some day,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I heard their voices, Eolande. I know they’re still together.’

  ‘It was all he wanted,’ Eolande said. She had been holding Cluaran’s pack, and she pulled a small book from it now, bound in dark leather. ‘This was written by my husband, Brokk: the story of the sword. My son added to it. I mean to finish it, so our people will know what he did for them – and what you and your friends have done.’

  Before she left, she took both Elspeth and Edmund aside and slid a bracelet from her wrist, a finely wrought thing of twisted wood and metal.

  ‘This is all I have to give you,’ she said. ‘But it was made to join the strengths of two peoples, and the charm on it is still strong. If you should ever be in need, place it near one of our doorways. I’ll hear you.’

  Elspeth looked at her doubtfully. ‘But will your people allow that? I’ve seen what they think of our kind.’

  ‘That must change,’ Eolande said, and for a moment her eyes flashed with their old spirit. ‘Twice now we’ve banded together. If we had not, none of us would be here.’

  She took Edmund’s hands and kissed him, and embraced Elspeth. ‘I won’t forget you,’ she murmured.

  Then she drew the doorway in the air, and stepped through while it faded behind her.

  They left the stone circle the same day. Many of the great stones were soot-blackened, and the ground beneath them was scorched and scarred, but that would all fade. Only the gleaming obsidian fragments that had been the dragon’s body would stay, scattered thickly around the central gateways, as signs that a battle had taken place here.

  Cathbar picked one of them up and weighed it in his hand as they walked back towards the road. ‘Something to show my children,’ he said, and slipped it into his pack.

  ‘You don’t have children!’ Elspeth said, startled. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the captain said. ‘But I’ve time.’ He smiled. ‘There’s time for a lot of things now: I think our warring days are over. Though it’s as well to keep my hand in.’ He patted a bow and quiver that hung over his shoulder, and Elspeth recognised them as Cluaran’s. ‘Eolande gave me these before she left,’ the captain said. ‘Told me to make good use of them – and I mean to.’ His face was suddenly sombre. ‘He was a good man.’

  It took them two days to reach Venta Bulgarum, where Cathbar would return to his post. Elspeth could not repress a qualm as they approached the town gates: the last time she had been here, she and Edmund had stolen in like thieves, disguised and in fear of their lives. She moved a little closer to Edmund, and saw the strain on his face. His memories must be worse than hers: it was his uncle who had hunted them then. But as Cathbar strode up to the gate, calling a greeting to the men on guard, it was clear that they were welcome today. Both men started up with cries of joy and recognition, and competed to escort their captain and his honoured guests to the king’s hall.

  Beotrich came out in person to meet them, cutting short a meeting with his councillors. But Elspeth had no eyes for the king, for with him was a man she had never thought to meet again, dressed in the red of a Redesman, but otherwise unchanged from the day she had last seen him.

  ‘Aagard!’ she cried, running to embrace him.

  ‘And so ends all my fretting!’ the old man exclaimed. He held her at arm’s length to look in her face. ‘So many times I feared you could not succeed, and cursed myself for sending you. Forgive me for doubting you – and Edmund.’ He turned to greet her friend, and his face darkened to see Edmund’s blind eyes. ‘I saw something of your battle from afar, but I hoped I had been mistaken about this. It was a heavy price to pay, Edmund: it grieves me that you have had to bear it.’

  Much had happened in the last few days, he told them. Beotrich’s men and the returned soldiers of Sussex had managed to repel the Danish invaders along their coasts, but there were further attacks from the east, where the fanatics had landed in the kingdom of Kent, spreading a religion of blood and fire. And then, two days ago, Wessex men returning from Kent had reported that the army facing them in a burned-out village had suddenly seemed to lose heart. They had stumbled as they ran, stopping and looking around them as if in confusion. The few who still attacked were easily defeated – but most of the men had simply turned and wandered away, some of them weeping.

  ‘We made another discovery that same morning,’ Aagard said, his voice grave. ‘Orgrim was found dead in his cell.’

  Edmund’s shoulders jerked, and he made a small sound in his throat. Elspeth took his hand, but he recovered himself quickly and stood unmoving as Aagard went on.

  ‘There was no violence, Edmund. He seemed peaceful, even; as if whatever held him to life had just left him. That was when I was certain Loki was gone.’

  Beotrich was anxious to honour them both, and to put on the ceremony befitting a neighbouring king. Elspeth found herself, her father and Edmund brought before the King’s Rede, while Cathbar held up the silver gauntlet to the cheers of the councillors. Elspeth’s hand ached at the sight of the thing – but it was no longer anything to do with her, she thought, with a mixture of regret and relief, as Aagard took it and locked it in the chest where she had first found it. It would be hidden once more, kept in trust by the Rede and their descendants, until the day when it was needed again.

  After the ceremony Beotrich asked them to stay and feast with him, but Edmund courteously declined, to Elspeth’s relief. ‘I must return home, to Noviomagus,’ he said. ‘My mother will want to see me.’

  Aagard and Cathbar came with them to the city gates.

  ‘Go well, all of you,’ Cathbar said. He shook Trymman’s hand, then took Elspeth by the shoulders. ‘You did us proud back there,’ he said. ‘I’ll look to hear more of you, Elspeth, in years to come.’ He turned to Edmund. ‘Next time I lay eyes on you, lad, no doubt I’ll be bowing to a king. I’m glad I got to know you as a comrade first.’ His voice was gruff now. ‘And if either of you should want me, call on me. You’re always welcome here.’

  Both he and Aagard raised their hands in farewell, and stood at the gates to watch them walk away.

  And now it was just the three of them, within sight of the town of Noviomagus, camping together for the last time. They sat around the remains of the previous night’s fire, breakfasting on the last of their bread.

  ‘What will you do now?’ Edmund asked Elspeth. He sat close by her, turned to the fire as if gazing into its depths. Only the stillness of his face betrayed his blindness.

  ‘We’ll go back to sea, of course,’ Elspeth said. ‘We don’t need a boat of our own. Any captain in Dubris will take my father as chief oarsman.’ She looked with pride at her father as he banked the fire. She knew that he still grieved for the Spearwa, his ship, but he would never admit it. ‘I started as nothing but a willing pair of arms, and I can do it again,’ he had told her.

  ‘And you?’ Edmund asked. ‘Will you row with him?’ He did not say, Will they give work to a woman? but Elspeth heard the hesitation in his voice, and rounded on him.

  ‘They’ll give work to Trymman’s daughter, and gladly!’ She hoped she was right – but even if they would not, she would not be kept from the sea again. ‘Or I’ll dress as a boy,’ she said. ‘As I did when we came from Dumnonia.’

  ‘That could work,’ Edmund agreed, his voice thoughtful. ‘Though you’d look more like a boy if you cut your hair again. It’s grown past your shoulders now.’

  ‘Well, yours is no better . . .’ she retorted, and stopped. He had turned to face her. His eyes were as blank as before, the dark pupils staring sightlessly into hers, but he was grinning.

  ‘How did you know?’ she demanded.

  There was a movement on an overhanging branch nearby: a sparrow, its head cocked so that its bright black eye loo
ked directly at Elspeth. It fluttered its wings as she looked up, swooped down on a breadcrumb by her foot and darted away.

  ‘I still have the power,’ Edmund said, and his face shone with more than firelight. ‘I won’t use people’s eyes, not without consent, for honour’s sake. But I can borrow animals’ sight, and birds’. It was so dim at first, I wasn’t sure – but it’s stronger each time.’

  ‘Oh, Edmund!’ Elspeth dropped the remains of her bread and threw her arms around him. ‘He can still see!’ she cried as her father came over to see what the noise was about. ‘He’s still Ripente!’ And she punched the air, while Trymman looked down at the two of them in astonishment.

  ‘But what about your vow?’ Elspeth asked, as they scattered the fire and set off for the final time. ‘Can you be king, and stay a Ripente?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and there was certainty in his voice. ‘My father didn’t think so, but how could he know? I promised him I’d become a king, and I will. But I’m not him, Elspeth.’ He spoke calmly, without regret. ‘I can’t be a war-leader, a conqueror. I have other skills, and I must use them if I’m to rule well.’

  ‘We don’t need any more conquerors,’ Elspeth said. He nodded, and they walked together in silence for a while. You’ll be a good king, she thought; a great one, even. She tried to push away the heaviness that crept over her as the walls of Noviomagus loomed closer. And our time together will be over.

  They were expected in Noviomagus. Trymman, who had been striding ahead, dropped back as they approached, and the three of them came to the town wall together. At the sight of them a guard ran inside, shouting, and before they reached the gate a woman was there to greet them.