by Jeff Wilson
Edryd closed his eyes, emptying all of his senses except for his ability to perceive the dark, and looked at his enemy. There was something there, but it was not a draugr. It was an impotent shaped pattern that posed no physical threat. Edryd stood up. The illusory draugr remained a few feet in front of him. He could hear it rumbling in anger. When Edryd opened his eyes, the image of the creature was still there, but as he began to walk it retreated each time he advanced. As Edryd moved further from the Ældisir, the illusion began to seem less real. This was the art of Seiðr. He knew this from what he had read in the book that he had taken from Seoras. It was a form of shaping, and Edryd hoped that like shaping, it would be harder for her to maintain as the distance between them increased.
Edryd heard a chilling scream of frustration as the illusion disintegrated, a despairing noise that had seemed both real and audible, but he had to doubt his senses, given the specific brand of sorcery that this creature practiced. She was coming now, slowly, but she was coming. Edryd began to walk toward the towers in the middle of the city. He easily stayed ahead of the Ældisir, recovering some of his strength while moving forward at a comfortable pace.
Passing the ring of towers, Edryd walked to what he now knew was the center of the ceiling of the domed underground chamber. It was fully morning now, the sun having just cleared the mountainous peaks to the east. He took a seat on the top step of the stairs and waited. He was calm at first, until he realized that in this place, his perceptions were confused. He could still sense her approaching, but the harder he tried to accurately fix her location, the more disoriented he became. He had good reason to hope that this disrupting effect was even more of a problem for her.
The Ældisir stopped at the edge of the encircling monoliths, sensing that something was wrong here, and recognizing that she had been led to this spot. A turbulent wind began to churn in the air where the draugr stood, making the outlines of a female figure briefly visible amidst thickening clouds of dust. The wind died down more suddenly than it had begun and the fragments of dust and earth settled back to the ground revealing a woman. A woman Edryd recognize as his mother.
The wind had been real, a touch of showmanship by the draugr. The woman was not, she was an image awakened in his mind by means of Seiðr. Edryd understood now why she seemed familiar. It was more than the fact that she was appearing to him in the form of his mother. It was because she had done so before, when she had cut him free aboard the smugglers ship. This Ældisir had followed after him obsessively for years, observing his every move. Upon learning what she was, Edryd had escaped her unwanted warding only with Aelsian’s help.
“I want to help you, Aisen,” she said.
“I don’t want your help,” Edryd replied, looking away, unable to bear her presence.
“I am not here to hurt you,” she said, sounding wounded and still speaking in his mother’s voice. This was anything but comforting. She could hardly have chosen anything to say that would have unsettled him any worse or that he would have believed any less. This woman was death. Not merely some apparition, but death itself, walking among the living and corrupting and destroying all of the things that she touched.
She came no closer for the moment, either unable or unwilling to cross the boundary marked by the circle of towers. “Stay away from me,” Edryd warned dumbly, having nothing with which to threaten her. The command seemed to provoke instead of deter. The Ældisir forced her way past the imaginary line between the two towers nearest to her, and as she did this the image in his mind disappeared. The Ældisir struggled to take form once again. When it did coalesce in a series of halting stages, Edryd could still recognize the face of his mother, but it was weaker, less substantial, and it more closely resembled the almost forgotten memory in his mind that the draugr was drawing from.
Edryd remembered the light that Seoras had summoned in the chamber. The image of his mother was like that. The Ældisir was having difficulties with her art, and Edryd could dare to hope, had become a little less dangerous. She advanced silently, and as she did she continued to become more solid, more vital and real. She might have been struggling, but she was not wholly weakened. He could not afford to let her get close. Edryd descended the stairs.
“Stop!” she commanded in the voice of his mother, affecting an expression of genuine concern for an endangered child. “What you are doing is dangerous.”
Edryd ignored her warnings and the voice faded from his mind as he descended further down the steps into the darkness. He had opened himself to the dark, and guiding himself by the positions of the towers and the memory of previous trips into this orphic expanse, he made it to the bottom safely. Avoiding the pitted basin on his way to the far edge of the chamber, he settled in with his back against one of the carved panels on the wall and waited for the Ældisir. She came, descending each step slowly. She didn’t seem to know where he was, and she could no longer make him see any illusions, but he could now see her with clarity. In the perfect darkness that existed in the depths of this place, she was somehow darker still, a female form whose edges were sharp and clearly defined.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, the Ældisir turned and looked for him. He could see no features on her form, but he could discern dimension, and the outline of her shape, and so he knew that she was staring at him. Edryd didn’t know what a being such as this, an immortal returned, had to fear, but he could easily discern that she was frightened. Edryd shifted his perspective, seeing himself now as if from a few feet away. This is why he had come here, in hopes that he could be freed from the confinement of the warping of the dark that enveloped him.
He had expected to see a widening in the cracks in his concealing shroud, disrupted by the influence of the construct towers. What he saw instead was nothing of the sort. There were no angry red fissures and there was no darkness—there was no shroud at all. In its place was a pure white aura, intensely agitated by flowing lines of energies directed at him from the four functioning towers. He understood now why the Ældisir appeared so dark. His aura was permeating everything and filled the air itself, but it could not touch the draugr. Its light flowed around her, incompatible with what she was. He could appreciate why she seemed so frightened, and now that he understood it as well, she was not half so terrified or frightened as he was himself.
On previous occasions, Edryd had felt an overwhelming pressure while in this place. This had been an internal effect, triggered by an interaction with the construct towers, which had been contained and held in check by the presence of the shroud. Without the shroud in place, there was no pressure. Making the supposition then that if he tried now, he would be able to shape, Edryd also recalled the premonition that if he were to try to do so in this place that it would destroy him. He had a sense that he stood now on a precipice risking unimaginable disaster. Edryd began to walk towards the Ældisir. She remained frozen where she stood, whether in fear, or stubbornly blocking his path, Edryd could not tell.
Eventually he could go no further without forcing his way past her. Edryd took another step, and that is when he saw the object she held between the fingers in her right hand. She raised her arm, preparing to push the dart into his flesh, but Edryd caught her wrist. The Ældisir screamed in pain and agony. What he had caught hold of was nothing with any true substance, and he was not holding onto it with his actual hand. He had broken through the darkened shell that held the soul of this creature, and it was his own aura that held her fast.
He would have let go then if he could. In something very much like the bond he had forged with Seoras, he could see into the Ælidisir’s soul, and could feel her torment. He could feel the accumulated pain of years spent anchored to this world, trapped in a death that would allow her neither the simple joy of life nor the promise of transcending to the next existence. Most of all he could feel the pain of what she knew was about to happen.
Edryd tried to shut it out but he had already been pressed into a forced accord with the soul of this undead c
reature. He could find himself, with difficulty, but when he did he saw that the pure blackness which held her was now expanding to engulf him as well. This is what she feared most. It had happened before. It would crush the life out of whatever she touched, leaving tattered screaming traces behind imprisoned alongside her. It was easy now to understand why draugar avoided contact with living things. Edryd had gained insight into what it was that was happening, but there was nothing to be learned from the Ældisir that suggested any means by which he could prevent it.
The constriction continued to progress. The pure dark extending from the draugr had engulfed his arm now, and was spreading up his neck and across his chest. He realized this was wrong, it was not enveloping his body; it was swallowing his aura. This malleable thing, whatever it was, it was not physical in nature. It was something in a sense akin to the shroud, in the same way that being wrapped in a warm blanket was like being stuffed into a cloth sack before being drowned in a river.
The Ældisir knew that she was watching his death, and because she knew it, Edryd knew it too, through a bond that had been forged between them. He was having increasing trouble distinguishing his thoughts from hers. She was feeling pain and failure. He was struggling vainly to make it all stop and feeling the dread that came with knowing it was useless.
Edryd did not stop struggling, but he did try to calm his emotions. He needed to think clearly and use what time there was to study the draugr and find some weakness. Edryd could see her now in the way that she had once been, the way she tried now to still see herself. She was tall, at least as tall as he was, and young and beautiful. Worked through with intricate braids, her dark black hair fell past her shoulders. Her skin, a dark even shade of basaltic grey, had a warm vitality, and her eyes were an intense absolute green that evoked depths to which Edryd was bereft in all his limited experience of any adequate comparison. He knew that she was sorry for what was happening. Not just for him, but also for reasons of her own. Like so many others, she had wanted him to do something for her, something impossible.
Edryd saw that he was nearly enveloped now, and he abstractly realized that his body had gone still, having ceased its breathing. There was something he had not tried. He could make one last attempt to shape, but he still felt somehow that if he did the result might be far worse than what he was facing now. Edryd pushed the idea away as he continued to resist, prepared to endure for as long as he could. And then the balance to the struggle began to change. Edryd’s aura expanded, straining against the piece of the dark that this demonic envelopment was composed of, and as Edryd exceeded its capacity to contain him, the unnatural confinement began to grow thin.
The Ældisir noticed too. An unthinkable hope ignited inside her and she began to assail the weakened walls of her cage. Edryd’s aura continued to build. He discovered that he was only tenuously connected to his body which now lay unmoving on the ground, near to what would soon become a permanent and irretrievable death. This twisted shred of the dark that had imprisoned the Ældisir might prove to be a weapon strong enough to kill him, but it was nowhere near sufficient to contain his aura and hold his soul. Edryd felt powerful beyond comprehension.
And then the Ældisir broke through. He was still connected to her in that moment and he shared the unimaginable joy she felt at her freedom. The prison that held her had been unable to hold Edryd, and having lost her as well, it could not continue to hold itself together. It broke apart in a violent explosion, generating an unimaginable torrent within the currents in the dark that flowed through the chamber. The corrupted remnant of a construct that it had once been, dissolved into the barrier realm from which it had been formed, sending reverberations in all directions.
Chapter 21
The Sigil Blade
Edryd remembered some of what had happened, but none of it remained clear. He was unsure how to reconstruct the exact order of events which had left him lying on his back on the stone floor of the chamber. As he stood, Edryd saw a loose arrangement of objects scattered on the ground beside him. It was only then that he thought to wonder how it was that he could see anything at all. He followed the traces of illumination back to their sources, sconces carved out of the rock and recessed into the walls at even intervals along the edges of the chamber, sending cold blue light throughout the room. He couldn’t guess what fueled these lights or what had caused them to ignite.
Abandoning this mystery, he looked once more at the objects on the ground, taking the time needed to categorize what he saw. The unusual items rested upon and were partially obscured within a strange low mounded pile of dust. Edryd sorted through the fine grains and retrieved one of the objects, a small metal needle. He dropped the item with far less care than he had picked it up, as if he were afraid it might burn him. He realized what it was. It was the weapon the Ældisir had attacked with during the struggle. These loose granules of material he had been sifting through were the creature’s desiccated remains.
Ignoring his revulsion, along with the urge to frantically dislodge the thin layer of decomposition that adhered to him from head to toe, Edryd bent down and carefully cleared the pile of dust away. If there was any danger in touching the remains, surely he had already been completely exposed. Edryd found a scrap of leather with a series of sockets. It held one more needle, with spaces for four others. He rolled this up and placed it in a pocket inside his coat.
There were a few pieces of jewelry, one of which stood out. It was a golden band shaped tightly to the dimensions of what he supposed had been the Ældisir’s arm. Edryd couldn’t imagine how the bracelet could have been worn. It was too narrow to be pulled on or off, and it was perfectly smooth with no evidence anywhere of a break in the piece. It would have had to have either been forged in place, or placed on her arm as a child for her to grow into as an adult. Something about the object seemed hollow, as if it were an empty vessel with no openings. Believing it to be important, Edryd tucked the golden band away inside his coat beside the leather bundle.
At the bottom of the pile was an accessory that would have been worn by a woman over her clothing. It was a looping cord of golden braid that crossed in the front and was designed to be fitted around the shoulders. It was connected in the back to a pair of crossed sheathes, in which two thin knives were held firmly in place. It was designed so that the hilts were positioned down and to the sides so that the two knives could easily be drawn from concealment. This was the equipment of an assassin.
Edryd removed the weapons, the blades of which were perfectly transparent, each an identical match to the other. He marveled at their beauty as they picked up and filtered the blue light along gracefully curved edges. They were not made of glass, or crystal; they were entirely composed of something else, an otherworldly material more beautiful than either. The knife handles were decorated using thin golden threads, which wound through and around tiny faceted designs, providing for a firm grip. All of the other surfaces were smoothly polished and more clear and pure than the cleanest water.
The blades measured out to the length of Edryd’s forearm. The two knives were impossibly light, and though they appeared delicate, they resisted any attempt at flexion when he tested them. Edryd ran his thumb across the cutting edge on one of the knives, and confirmed that it held as sharp an edge as any finely honed steel blade he had ever used. Feeling like he was committing sacrilege, Edryd cut through, unthreaded, and then discarded the golden braid that had held the sheaths. With the blades returned to their housings, which he discovered could be detached from one another, Edryd hooked them, one on each side, between his hips and his belt. He would have preferred a sword, but at least he was no longer without a means of defense.
Satisfied that there was no purpose to remaining in the chamber any longer, and still as fearful of this place as he had ever been, Edryd ascended the spiraling stone stairway. As he neared the surface, the lights in the chamber died away. Edryd shivered, trying hard not to wonder what the extinguishing lights signified, feeling as
though the chamber had chosen to accept him and was now going dormant while it awaited his return.
He was well away from the ruins before he even thought to try. He first confirmed that his aura was plainly visible. There was no longer any trace of the concealment that had once protected him. If as Edryd believed, the shroud had been blocking his attempts to shape, interfering with everything but his ability to passively observe changes in the patterns of the dark, it would no longer be an obstacle to him. Edryd tried to touch the dark, believing in his heart that he would be able to alter its shape. His aura intensified with his efforts, but he could no more grasp the shifting currents of the dark than he could hold onto the rising gusts of air that travelled up the forested slope which he was descending. The dark flowed around him as though he were a minor obstacle of little account, remaining unchanged by and oblivious to his vain attempt to bind it to his will.
The failure made Edryd desperate. He quickened his pace and did not slow until he reached the causeway, where he half expected to see the tall draugr still raging on the opposite shore. But there was no one on the other side. The water was deep now, reaching up to his waist in places as he made his way across. Upon reaching the other side he collapsed. He needed rest, if only just for a short while. He took the opportunity to try once more but the results were the same.
Edryd could see his own potential strength. It seemed incredible that he had proven so inept at putting this power to use. Nothing had been made better. He was no stronger than before, and now he was also exposed and would be unable to hide from his enemies. He didn’t properly understand how, but he had destroyed one of the draugar. Perhaps there was hope that he could defeat the other as well. Seoras could be of some help, if he could be trusted. Edryd noticed then that his connection to Seoras was gone. However the link had formed, the confrontation with the Ældisir in the chamber had obliterated it.