Obsidian

by Suzie Wilde

  When she was ready, she joined them, but all she could tell them was that they must be determined and brave. Water needed no words; its purity and force had swept away doubt. She was ready to face whoever had summoned her. Understanding would come later: Vallas ruled Fate.

  They walked for the rest of the day, made solemn by the waterfall; even Rakki, who gravely led the way. The ground was going slowly uphill and at the far end of the valley they came to a steep drop. Bera gasped. Another world spread out before them: scores of farmsteads leading towards the smoking mass of a mighty settlement.

  ‘Smolderby,’ said Faelan, though it was obvious.

  ‘Where’s the bay?’ asked Heggi.

  A sea fog was lying low over the water. A sudden breeze swelled in and it lifted like a veil. Hanging for an instant in the blue distance were three long dragonboats.

  13

  ‘Another day and we’re there,’ Faelan said.

  ‘Is it called Smolderby because the sea’s on fire?’ asked Heggi.

  ‘It’s not fire,’ Bera said, certain that it soon would be.

  She glanced to the north at the glimmering redness, and away before Heggi noticed.

  Faelan winked. He knew she was trying not to frighten the boy.

  ‘It’s not smoke,’ he said. ‘It’s steam rising into the air.’

  Heggi let out a fart of scorn. ‘So the sea is a kind of stew?’

  ‘It’s where hot water meets cold,’ Faelan said. ‘There are hot water springs all over Ice Island, even under the sea.’

  Not only hot water. Bera’s scalp prickled. ‘At the birthing…’ she began.

  Faelan waited for her to finish but her throat ached with tears she would not surrender to.

  ‘I miss Valdis too,’ said Heggi, surprising her.

  He gave her a fierce hug, then ran ahead with his dog.

  ‘I was trying not to speak of the vision,’ she said.

  Faelan rubbed his chin where a beard was starting. ‘We’re nearly there and I’m wondering why you have not asked me who it is you’re going to meet.’

  ‘That’s because I already know,’ said Bera, sure it was the humpback, Crowman. ‘But do you?’

  Faelan picked up his bag. ‘Of course. But I was told that if you knew, you wouldn’t come.’

  Her stomach lurched. ‘Those dragonboats – I’m not meeting sea-riders, am I?’

  His look made her apologise at once. He would not be taking her to the Serpent King and yet… he was vile enough to have some power over Faelan, with his serpent cross.

  Black clouds bunched like a fist while they were exposed in the middle of the open plain. Gusts made wild wind-horses prance and skite, their manes and tails streaming, and then became a constant air song, whistling shrilly through spiny trees and in grasses. Faelan’s hat blew away.

  ‘That storm’s coming fast,’ Bera said. ‘It’s a bad place for it to find us.’

  ‘That’s why I have a hood. I’ve been here before.’ Faelan pulled the greased wool down to his eyebrows.

  She glared at his covered head and then pulled a blanket from her bedroll and got Heggi to hold two of the corners, making a rough booth over them both. Rain hit. The wind shrieked like the ancestors in Seabost and was as vicious. A violent blast made Heggi stagger and he lost one end. The sodden blanket flogged them until Bera managed to grab it again. The two of them clung together. Her hair was soaked and stung her eyes, so she kept them closed with her back to the weather but it managed to drench her.

  They waited for the cloudburst to pass and then made a run for shelter through driving rain. It was an old sheep hut that rattled and sighed, buffeted by wave after wave of squalls, but better than their sodden blanket, which Bera and Heggi stretched out between them and twisted from both ends to wring the water out.

  Faelan shouted, ‘When the wind eases we’ll make for Smolderby.’

  Bera nodded. A night in wet clothes and no fire would be deadly.

  The settlement was a distant smudge through misty rain when they set off. It was hard to walk in clothes that weighed like lead. The air grew chill as winter. A few wild horses stood bunched, enduring the biting gusts that drilled through to Bera’s wet skin. There was no shelter in sight. It was as if the island was trying to shake her off.

  Heggi refused to get under the blanket. ‘I want to keep moving.’

  ‘It will be worse very soon,’ Bera said.

  Faelan joined them this time, with Rakki sheltering between their legs. They all huddled together in a ripe fug of wet wool and dog. A downdraught of icy air blasted them, followed by hailstones that dropped straight down from the sky. The blanket wasn’t thick enough and Bera’s scalp was battered. When she tried to bunch it up she took the full force of hail and sleet in the face, blinding her, so she quickly burrowed underneath again as best she could, trying to hold on with freezing fingers.

  The wind rose a notch or two and small twisters formed across the steely water of the bay. Rising white shapes like wraiths, spiralling in a dance of death, began to move closer. They were coming to get her and carry her out to sea over the long waves; out, out, to the deeps beyond the whale roads. A secret part of her welcomed them in. But she was a mother! She must refuse its promise and run. Bera pulled away into the open and hit a wall of air. She staggered, desperate to escape the wraiths. The others grabbed and anchored her but the wind was a ghastly scream and none of them could move further. Heggi’s mouth was forming words in the shriek and whine of spiteful gusts and the drumming beat of ice stones big as toads on hard earth. She shouted and her spit hit his face. Bera couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand upright; they were all bent against the wind, being pushed backwards. Faelan tried to take Heggi but she clasped him tight against her body. He meant to help – but she would never entrust him to someone else, as she had on the passage from Seabost.

  Lightning.

  She saw their little group as if from above: a knot of sheer misery on the open plain. More lightning, Thor’s hammer striking the ground in savage spikes.

  Thunder.

  Then rain; rain that should be kinder than hail but coming sideways in sheets that snatched at her skirts and lashed her legs like whips. Bera planted her feet, knees slightly bent, bearing down to stay grounded, as she had on the Raven. She kept her arms round Heggi’s head and he held tight, lurching in the squalls that were punishing, savage, vicious and personal. Faelan was too slight to keep them steady. Out here, alone, they were certain to be charred by a thunderbolt.

  You’re the Valla.

  Bera found the locked self inside her that she had once packed away on the sea passage. The self who had shattered a Drorgher like stamping on ice by unleashing her strong will. She drew up her own strength into her eyes and then hurled it at the elements.

  The wind dropped and she was giddy in the silence. The high, dark clouds scudded out to sea, taking the thunder with them.

  ‘You’re hurting my hand,’ said Heggi.

  That night the mountain began to melt. Bera woke to a sense of dread and looked inland, where the dull redness had turned into a funeral pyre of the gods. It was still so far away from them that she could feel no heat but Hel was flexing her muscles in warning. The smoke that poured from the cone was a writhing black serpent against the flames that reached up to swallow the stars.

  ‘Has the worst begun?’ Faelan whispered.

  He was so close that she felt his breath.

  ‘My obsidian bead is linked to it somehow.’

  ‘What is it doing?’

  She turned so that he could feel its heat and his face was above hers, lit by distant flame.

  ‘Will we live, Bera?’

  She was unable to speak, for many reasons.

  He looked unbearably sad. ‘First light, we’ll set off again. I would have liked a longer time with you.’

  Bera looked away. In that moment she realised that she had been trying to make him love her. It wasn’t planned; she was unused to approving looks
from any man and mistook that craving for love. He would be a friend for as long as they lived, but nothing more.

  Now Bera knew what a city looked like. It was surrounded by farmsteads and then row after row of homesteads with smallholdings, markets, wash houses, hot tubs and tradesmen. It was like kicking an ants’ nest. Folk scurried busily, pouring round them, intent on their own affairs, chattering. Besides the constant smell of sulfur there were other layers: fresh bread and dung; herbs and sweat; tanned leather, hot metal and blood. There were at least three forges and Bera felt a pang for preventing Dellingr from coming. She’d had no idea it was like this, though. Such plenty.

  Faelan was heading for the bay at city speed. First they passed through a smart area where jewellers worked in fine gold and silver. Then there was cheaper jewellery in lead or copper before they hit the wynds, which pinched folk to move tighter and faster. Bera’s breaths were short and shallow against the stench. She kept tight hold of Heggi’s hand. A heap of leather offcuts marked where boots were made and repaired, with hanging straps, sheaths and scabbards. Next door was a maker of punches, awls and creasers, then a bone-carver showing skates and tools; decorated combs, brooches and pins; rings, gaming pieces and every size of needle and spindle. A woman was spinning yarns of every hue. The distant hum became a loud buzzing. Outside a baker’s shop was a small child pulling a piece of string taut. It had small bones along it and the noise probably kept flies away.

  It all terrified Rakki, who pressed himself so close that she kept tripping over him. Heggi slowed, gawping at a woman with her dress round her ears, squatting in a corner to relieve herself. Bera pulled him away, terrified of losing Faelan in the crowd. Here, his black hair wasn’t so strange and sometimes she lost sight of him and then struggled to keep up. Sudden shouts and running feet, different bells and coarse laughter confused her. She lost sight of the sky and was thrown off her bearings. Her wet clothes chafed under her armpits and she had blisters. Bera longed to be way out at sea, with clean sharp air and the cries of seabirds, not pressed in this reeking throng that snatched away any Valla skill. Well, courage would have to be enough.

  At last the smells grew sweeter as they passed cup- and bowl-makers supplying food sellers. There were also stalls packed with all kinds of plants and seeds, from green through to bright red. Bera could not name any by sight except possibly dill.

  Then the tang of salt and a gull scream welcomed them to the bay, with a row of ramshackle shanties at the tideline. Faelan gestured towards a newer wooden hut that reminded Bera of her first home. He opened the door and went straight in. They hurried to follow. Bera searched the gloom for the Crowman but it was too dark. She closed her eyes to get them accustomed, then opened them again. Blue-slatted light showed no one else was in there. The smells of pitched wood, fish oil and old rope brought back a yearning for her father and the boats he built. She wished she had her time with Ottar again.

  ‘We’re to wait here,’ said Faelan.

  ‘Can I go and explore?’ asked Heggi.

  When Crowman came, Bera needed to speak frankly. ‘Just this shore and don’t let Rakki chase off. Put this bit of rope round his neck.’ She took a short length off the bench and handed it to him.

  Faelan warned Heggi to stay at their end of the bay. ‘That’s where all the trading’s done, further down there, see? Where the smoke’s drifting? There’s tough men that side.’

  ‘Off those dragonboats?’

  ‘Stay where we can see you,’ Bera said.

  She followed them out of the sea door and walked to the end of a rickety wooden jetty. Heggi and Rakki jumped down onto the beach with a rattle of slatey shingle. They raced towards the sea, luckily in the right direction. Faelan stood beside her, watching them. She had no special sense of danger but the city had confused her. Out in the bay, billows of steam wafted in thick veils, showing and then hiding the dragonboats.

  ‘Sea-riders?’ she asked. ‘Those aren’t warships though.’

  ‘Those are only the usual trading pirates, from Dyflin.’

  The sea fret whispered onto the shore.

  ‘I can’t see Heggi now.’

  Bera listened hard, then swept her arms about as if she could clear the mist away. Faelan caught her wrist and held it. Two people, close and secret, in a white cloud. She had the strange sensation of falling.

  There was hollow barking and then the plash, plash of short oars, sounding loud in the smoky fog. A small round boat emerged, tarred black, rowed by a single person, with a silver halo of hair. Easily mistaken for a boy.

  ‘You’re right,’ Bera said. ‘If you’d told me who it was I wouldn’t have come.’

  14

  ‘I’ll fetch Heggi,’ Faelan said, and left.

  Egill walked along the small jetty, unsmiling, unrepentant. Dressed in finer clothes.

  ‘Bera.’

  The warmth in her voice touched the quick of Bera’s need for a friend. As it always had.

  ‘Did you send for me?’ she asked.

  ‘I hear you have a baby girl now.’

  ‘Was it you who sent the rider with poison mead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you doing here, then?’

  ‘We need you.’

  They circled round each other. Bera struggled to recognise the frightened, half-mad creature she had last seen in this strong, assured boy. Except she knew for certain that there was a girl’s body underneath. There were so many times in the past that Bera had wanted to throttle Egill and yet there was an innocence about her that made friendship possible. She had a shared understanding of Bera’s aloneness that made her leaving Bera to go off with Hefnir an even worse betrayal; yet somehow it was possible to forgive. Her fluid magic had the same effect on everyone. As for trust, though… surely none could exist after that.

  Bera wanted to prick her calmness. ‘How many of your new friends know you’re a girl?’

  ‘Still black and white, Bera? I can be whatever I choose – though I suppose at some point they’ll start wondering why I’m not growing a beard.’

  ‘That’s not all they’ll wonder about, unless you’ve changed. Like who your real friends are.’

  ‘Is it a sin to want to be happy, Bera? In the land I love?’

  ‘You’re not in Iraland now, are you?’

  ‘I came back for you.’

  ‘What makes me doubt that?’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I? Not Iraland, with its holy waters and proper, decent folk. Prayers, plainsong.’

  ‘Come inside.’ Egill drew something from under her tunic, touched her forehead and lips with it and pushed it away again. Bera tugged it out. This cross was made of black wood: the vertical bar longer than the one across and writhing round both, the serpent.

  ‘The serpent again!’ Bera was angry. ‘What are you doing with this and not a Thor hammer, Egill? What secret faith do you belong to? The Serpent King’s?’

  Egill was trampling on her trust in Faelan, whose serpent cross was so similar.

  ‘You understand things of power, Bera. This is mine.’

  ‘This is no Valla necklace! You understand nothing, as ever! Even I didn’t, until recently.’

  ‘Tell me then.’

  Bera only knew the black and amber beads balanced each other somehow but that sounded slight. The suffocating city was muffling any new skill she had too. She did not want to tell Egill, who was certain to deliver some warning and somehow weaken it further.

  The door flew open and Heggi burst in.

  ‘I’m starving!’

  Egill laughed. ‘You haven’t changed, I see.’

  Faelan explained they had to eat at a tavern and after the promise of meat, Heggi allowed him to grip his hand as he led them through a different, rougher part of town. Egill brought up the rear, so Bera couldn’t get lost. It managed to be even more crowded and putrid than the wynds. Egill told her they were passing the place where graves were dug and leather tanned by the same men. The reek was almost visible
and Bera squeezed her nose and breathed through her mouth. Then they were in narrow twittens where hard-faced women herded animals with skitters towards their slaughter. There was the rust of butchered flesh and runnels of blood, dung heaps picked over by mired pigs and dusty chickens, and gutters full of everything that seeped away from the rotting glut of life. Even when they were clear of the shambles and she let go of her nose, the air was foul with the breath of pinched folk bartering, shouting. The din! But there was no joy or laughter, no song of fellowship, no sense of belonging. This stale, drab bustle would turn to panic and violence when the eruption started. It was getting closer. Bera felt the beating of Hel’s heart of flame. And the rats were running. She felt like a rat herself: their little party, scuttling through twittens before the slow drunks in doorways could swing at them. Rakki was scared of the bristling cats that arched and spat at him.

  Then they were gone. No Faelan, no Heggi, no dog.

  A hand clasped her ankle and Bera fell, knocking her breath away as she was pulled into a passageway. Filthy hands were all over her, scrabbling at her brooches and rings, in her hair. A hand smelling of fish and something earthier covered her mouth. Bera gagged. She kicked out and tried to shout but the person clasped her face so tightly that she could hardly breathe. Fingers slid up her thigh and she tasted the hot bile of outrage, as she had once before. She fought hard but this time there were too many of them. Her disgust vanished and Bera bit hard, tasting blood. Someone yanked her hair and pulled her head away. She kicked and elbowed herself free; leaped to her feet and got her sword out.

  She was in a dead end, shanty huts all round her, facing a tattered mob of urchins, as feral and starved as the cats. Children. Their eyes looked huge in their grimy faces, weighing up their chance of more theft. Where was Egill?

  They closed in stealthily, as if they were playing bully-bully.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Bera growled.

  And then Rakki was there beside her, snarling, followed by Egill, sword raised.