“If we go to war with the Svell, you will.”
She pulled away from me, her voice hardening. “If you’re not back in four days, we’re not waiting.”
“Alright.”
“If I don’t see you on that horizon before the sun sets…”
“Alright,” I said again.
“Sigr guide and protect you.” She drew in a deep breath, looking from me to Aghi before she shook her head, cursing under her breath as she moved around us to go back inside.
Aghi waited for the doors to close before he finally turned to me. I knew what he was thinking before he said the words. “Are you sure about this, son?” His deep voice carried on the wind pushing up from the sea.
I looked at him, searching the eyes I’d come to know so well, now framed by deep lines. He’d taken us in when we came to live on the fjord and when my brother married his daughter, he’d made us his own. He’d opened his home to us when the feud between our people was still smoking like the embers of a fire, threatening to reignite. I couldn’t lie to him. Even if I wanted to, he’d see right through it.
So I answered with the truth we both already knew. “No.”
CHAPTER THREE
TOVA
The All Seer was gone.
I walked the path from the corner of the forest with the bow slung over my chest and two gutted rabbits cradled in my arms, their furs still warm. My eyes were on the treetops, my ears listening for the call of the nighthawk. But it was quiet, the songs of nesting birds and my boots on the fallen pine needles the only sounds. The rune cast still haunted me, my eyes drifting to the mark of henbane on the back of my left hand. But if the All Seer had left, maybe misfortune had, too.
“I couldn’t find you.”
I froze, my fingers tightening around the bowstring as Jorrund appeared beneath the arched branches of flowering maple on the path ahead.
The clusters of blooms had opened early, and I wondered if that was a good omen or a bad one. They were beautiful, pale green blossoms swaying in the wind, but a late frost would strangle them.
“I was worried.”
I could see that he meant it. His hands wrung each other at his back, his smile crooked.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stopping before him. Jorrund didn’t like it when he didn’t know where I was. He didn’t like being reminded that he could lose me.
He took the rabbits and I followed him in silence. The warmth of the earth returning after winter meant fresh meat and green herbs. Both gave me excuses to leave my little house on the outskirts of Liera that at times felt more like a cage than a home.
We came through the door and I hung my bow and quiver of black-and-white-flecked feather arrows on the wall. I lit the candle even though the sun was already rising over the trees and my cold hands hovered over the wavering flame, the heat stinging my palms.
Jorrund watched me as he set the rabbits on the table. His white hair curled around his face, his beard twisting down his chest. He still hadn’t slept and the tiredness pulled at his eyes, making them more slanted than usual. After I cast the stones, he’d spent the early hours before daylight behind the closed doors of the ritual house with the Svell leaders. Their voices had carried almost to the gates as I made my way back into the forest.
“What will they do?” I watched the melting wax drip and pool on the wood where it turned to a milky gold as it cooled.
“Bekan will meet with the leaders of the Nādhir. He’ll make an offering of reparation.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “An offering of reparation?”
He nodded, his eyes leaving mine, and I realized he didn’t want me to see what he was thinking. But I could already guess. Jorrund didn’t want war, but the stones had convinced him that the time had come for it. He’d never say it aloud, but he thought Bekan was making a mistake.
I’d heard of offerings of reparation, but never between clans. It was something enemies did to squelch a blood feud between families before violence took hold as a heritage. It was an offering of peace in the form of a gift.
“When?” I sat down onto the stool, looking up at him.
“We leave tomorrow.”
“You’re going with them?”
“I am.” He paused, looking at the ground. “I’d like you to come, too.”
I pulled my hands back from the flame. “Me?”
He tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth betrayed him, turning down just enough for me to notice. “That’s right.”
“But why?”
“I will need you if I’m going to help repair this. We all will.”
My fingers tangled into each other in my lap, beneath the table. “What does Bekan say?”
Jorrund studied me, his eyes running over my face, but he didn’t answer. Bekan had barely acknowledged my existence in the weeks since his daughter died. Jorrund asked me to cast the stones for the girl, but the Spinners had given a different answer than the one they wanted. Bekan’s only child was taken to the afterlife and there she’d wait for her father until he took his last breath.
Almost the moment I’d spoken the words, I’d felt it. The fracturing of the ground beneath me. In Bekan’s eyes, I was no longer just a Truthtongue. Now, I was a bringer of death. And the ally I’d once had in the Svell chieftain seemed to have turned his back on me.
“What if it can’t be repaired?” I measured my words carefully. Jorrund used the runes the way a healer used remedies, trying one after the other until he got the result he wanted. But the Spinners were more slippery than that. They were shrewd and cunning.
He stood, going to the drying branches of heather hanging from the rafters and inspecting the tiny pink petals nestled in the dark green leaves. He lifted a hand, pinching the tip of a stem from the branch. I watched him twirl it between two fingers before he held it out to me.
I took it, spinning it in the morning light coming through the window.
“This may be the very reason Eydis brought you here, Tova.”
I tucked the bloom into the end of my dark braid. “How do you know it was your god who brought me?”
He looked surprised by the words. I never questioned Jorrund because I didn’t want to give him cause to question me. But the world we’d carefully built together was coming apart. I could see it, and I knew he could, too. “Some god spared you and it wasn’t Naðr. If the god of the Kyrr favored you, you never would have been in that boat.”
I could barely remember it, but Jorrund had told me the story many times. My own people had tried to sacrifice me to their god when I was no more than six years old. He’d found me washed up on shore, a failed ritual sacrifice, but the only thing I could still pull from my memory of that day was the whiteness of the fog. The cry of the wind and Jorrund’s long fingers wrapped around my arms as he pulled me from the hull.
“Maybe it wasn’t the gods at all. Maybe it was the Spinners.”
He looked amused, as if what I’d said was a joke between us. But Jorrund rarely answered my questions about the day he found me on the beach, his words always twisting into something other than an explanation.
“You were huddled in a pile of nodding avens and lupine, your lips blue,” he said softly, the memory playing in his eyes.
I remembered that, too. The sound of water sloshing against the boat. The sharp scent of sour blooms and the serpent’s head carved into the prow. And the cold. The cold was the only thing I remembered clearly.
“I knew when I saw the symbols inscribed on the wood what the boat was. And when I saw those”—he pointed to the stones hanging around my neck—“I knew it was no accident that the sea had brought you to us.”
My hand went back to the flame, my fingers rolling over its heat. There was almost nothing I remembered about my life in the headlands. But there was a strange light that reflected off the sea I could still see in my mind. A pale, white glow that seemed too bright to be real. And the rasping hum of a woman’s voice that still echoed within me. Deep and soft an
d low.
“Your people meant to sacrifice your life to Naðr, but Eydis is merciful. When the Kyrr sent you to the sea, she brought you here. She saw this day coming.”
I swallowed hard, pushing that glimmer of gray light from my mind. Sometimes I felt as if the sting of it still lingered on my skin. The pounding of the drums still sounded in my dreams. I’d left the headlands, but the headlands hadn’t left me. What and who I was was marked into my skin in the sacred staves and motifs with meanings that even I didn’t know. It would never leave me. And because of that, I’d never had a place in Liera except for the one Jorrund had given me.
My hand went to the bracelet around my wrist and I pressed the copper disk between my fingers, trying to conjure the talisman’s protection.
“Hagalaz, Jorrund,” I said. “The cast was clear.”
“The hailstone can mean many things,” he said, but we both knew I was right.
“Only when there are other runes present. It sat in the center. Alone.”
His hands fidgeted nervously. “I believe the time has come for Eydis to use you. Sometimes, it’s the most destructive storm that brings life, Tova. Hagalaz is coming. But I think we will survive it. I think it will make us stronger.”
That was just like Jorrund, thinking he was wiser than the gods and Spinners together. Thinking he could outwit fate. But there was a deep line across his forehead that wasn’t usually there and I wondered if he truly believed what he was saying.
“A spider. Walking the web of fate.” His voice softened. “That’s what the Spinners carved into the Tree of Urðr the moment you were born.”
What little I understood of my marks said as much. Across my left side, a spider stretched over my ribs. But what was carved into the Tree of Urðr could be changed. It could be rewritten. The Kyrr had cast me off as a sacrifice to their god, and it didn’t matter who’d spared my life, gods or Spinners. I was here. There had to be a reason for it and that was what plagued me.
“Will Vigdis betray his brother?” I asked the question that had been on both of our minds since we’d left the ritual house.
“He’s already betrayed him.”
“You know what I mean. Will he try to take his place as chieftain?”
“No.” But Jorrund had given his answer too quickly. He wasn’t sure. He’d dedicated his life to making Bekan the greatest leader in the Svell’s history and he’d used me to do it. But one envious look from Vigdis could threaten it all. And it wasn’t only Bekan’s life at stake. It was mine. It was Jorrund’s. If Vigdis became chieftain of the Svell, the broken ground beneath me would give way to the frozen depths. I knew exactly what the Tree of Urðr would say of my fate then.
“When do we leave?” I asked, knowing I didn’t really have a choice.
He smiled widely, a gleam of pride in his eyes. “Tomorrow. Sundown.”
His robes brushed the ground as he opened the door and when it closed, I went to the window and watched him on the path. The Svell had wanted to cut my throat when their Tala brought me into their village. For years, there was a guard outside my door to be sure no one carried out their god’s wrath upon me. But Jorrund had been sure, and he’d convinced Bekan, speaking on behalf of Eydis.
He disappeared into the trees, leaving me alone in the forest. The little house he’d given me was the only home I remembered. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t summon the faces of my Kyrr family or our home to me. They were like snowflakes, melting before they touched the ground.
I opened the pouch and let the stones fall onto the table, finding Hagalaz and holding it out before me. The rune was a dark one, the wrath of nature and uncontrolled forces. The hailstorm never left the earth unbruised even if it did bring water to a thirsty land.
I turned the stone over in my fingers, watching the sunlight slide over the shining black surface. There was only one way to know for sure what fate was coming, and that was to wait. Because no matter what Jorrund had planned, the Spinners were weaving. They were folding time and every one of us within it.
I pulled the sleeve of my tunic up, tracing the marks on my arm with the tip of my finger. They stretched across my skin from my ankles to my throat. I couldn’t remember getting them, but whoever had pricked them into my skin had done it with precision. The winding, curling fins of a sea serpent, the unfurled wings of a raven. A wolf, teeth bared. The black stains crept over my shoulders, down my back and breasts in intricate, knotted patterns that honored Naðr, the god who’d once abandoned me. They were riddles. A patchwork of secrets. Only a Kyrr could translate them for me, and my people never left the headlands. They were born and buried in the frozen north. But if I never unraveled the marks, I’d never know my story. I’d never truly know myself. And I wondered if that was the punishment the Spinners or the gods had bestowed on me for whatever sins I’d committed on the headlands.
I opened the neck of my tunic, studying the open eye encircled by a garland of oak leaves. It was the only symbol I knew and it was the one that had told Jorrund who I was the day he found me. What I was.
A Truthtongue.
I wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t seen it. Would he have drowned me in the cold water of the fjord? Was this mark the reason my own people had sent me out as a gift to the sea? Maybe it was a penalty for bringing a fate down upon them too dark to survive. Like Vera.
I blew out the candle, taking my satchel from beneath the table. I would never be one of the Svell. I’d known that for a long time. But after all these years, I could still taste death on my tongue. I could still hear the echoes of its whisper and I recognized the shape of its shadow cast around me.
The storm of Hagalaz was coming. And if the Svell perished, so would I.
CHAPTER FOUR
HALVARD
The trail to Ljós was well-worn but silent. Tall, thin trees thickened as we pushed away from the fjord toward the border between Nādhir and Svell lands. Ten years ago, Ljós had been one of only two villages that wasn’t attacked by the Herja. Possibly because it was so small. Or maybe because it was settled into the farthest reach of our territory. You almost couldn’t even smell the sea this far inland, but there was still something about these forests that felt like home.
Aghi rode ahead, watching the slope that reached up to the ridge. The warriors walked in two lines of ten behind him, clad in the old Aska and Riki armors. For many years after we became the Nādhir, the sight had been strange to me. But now, the dark leathers the Riki used to wear seemed strange alone.
Rays of sunlight found their way through the treetops as they walked, their attention on the trees all around us. If Bekan was planning to push across the valley and take Hylli, we would have seen traces of them by now. But the forest was quiet and there was no sign of an army. We’d guessed the Svell could have as many as a thousand warriors if all twelve of their villages were asked to fight. No matter the number, it was more than the Nādhir had, even if we called our youngest and oldest to the battlefield.
“Virki.” Espen rode beside me, his gaze drifting over the shadows as he listed the order of acts in war. “Do you remember it?”
“Yes,” I answered. I’d only been there once, but it was a place I’d never forget. While my brothers went to fight the Herja, I’d been taken to the old stronghold, a hollowed cliff face on a wide river. My mother and I had stood waist deep in the water, peering up against the sunlight as a warrior appeared with the news of victory in Hylli. I still remembered the sound my mother made, her hand pressed to her mouth and hot tears streaming down her cheeks. It was another three days before we learned that both of my brothers had survived.
“The young and old to Virki. Aghi will lead them,” Espen repeated.
I nodded, looking again to where Aghi rode ahead. He wouldn’t like being sent with those who couldn’t fight. He might even refuse if it came to that.
“If defeat is imminent and Hylli is going to fall…”
“Send a messenger.”
�
��Three messengers,” he corrected.
“Three messengers,” I said, remembering. In case one didn’t make it. In case two didn’t make it.
“Aghi will assume leadership of the survivors in Virki.”
“And where would they go?”
“They will leave the fjord.”
I pulled back on the reins, slowing, and Espen turned his horse to face me.
“Leave the fjord?”
“That’s right. And the mountain.”
“Abandon our lands?” The edge in my voice surfaced.
“If Hylli were to fall, it would mean the loss of most of our warriors. We would have no way to defend our lands. Those left would have to settle somewhere new.” He spoke calmly, no trace of frailty in the words.
But the Nādhir leaving was like the idea of the sea rising up to flood the valleys, drowning the land until it disappeared. It seemed like something that could never happen.
“We have to be ready. You have to be ready,” Espen said, his face stern. It was a reprimand—a reminder of who I was supposed to be. He was counting on me to lead after he went to the afterlife to be with those who’d gone before him. He’d watched his fellow clansmen fall in the fighting seasons and then again against the Herja. He’d been waiting a long time for death. So had Aghi. And it was my duty to give him peace of mind once he was there in knowing that I was doing what I’d promised to do.
He turned the horse again, but I didn’t move, my eyes on the reins wrapped tightly around my fist. “Why did you choose me?”
“You were chosen by all the Nādhir leaders. Not just me.”
“But why?”
He looked over his shoulder, to where Aghi and the others were disappearing around the bend in the path. “You are every Nādhir coming behind you. Born on the mountain, raised on the fjord. A child of both Thora and Sigr. The people will look to you, Halvard. They already do.”
“And Latham? Would he follow me?” I asked.
“Yes.” He answered without hesitation. “Latham chose you like the rest of us did.”
The Girl the Sea Gave Back Page 3