Obsidian

by Suzie Wilde

  His mouth slanted. ‘You have witnessed bloodshed?’

  ‘In a vision. The woman lost her skern and became a Drorgher.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘The walking dead.’

  He crossed himself. ‘This is why it must be guarded. It can… summon darkness in the soul.’

  Bera was dismayed. Her skern had been right in one way, but perhaps the black stone he guarded was a knife? Was it the very knife Hefnir had spoken of long ago in Egill’s hut? She always believed he had gone to look for it in Iraland, which would explain why he wanted it so much now. Did she dare steal it and risk letting him take it from her before her task was done?

  What is certain is that Hefnir will leave you here if you turn up at the boat without it.

  ‘Still, I will risk the darkness,’ she told the Warden. ‘I must see it.’

  ‘“It” again? You have no idea what “it” is.’

  ‘True. But I know I have to somehow use it. I witnessed an event, something so terrible that nothing could live on Ice Island.’

  ‘You have seen a memory trapped in stone. There was a bad quake here, years ago. Some people are sensitive to the event.’

  ‘I know all that.’ Bera was impatient. ‘I’ve seen the past. This is the future and I need to find out how to stop it.’

  ‘What has that to do with me?’

  Precious time was being wasted. Were the others safe? Was Egill already at the boat with Heggi? The Warden had time on his side. His only duty was to wait.

  ‘Stop quibbling! Just show me the stone and I can work out what to do with it to save your scrawny neck!’

  He gave a long sigh. ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Hel’s teeth! I shall string you up like these carcasses if this goes on!’

  He raised a hand. ‘I meant only that Cronan told me to let you in.’

  ‘When did he? How?’

  ‘By raven.’

  Messengers of Woden. Of course people would use ravens too. Her heart beat wildly at the sign: the hope in the boat waiting for her because she was the Raven, named by Bera in a whispered promise from the ancestors.

  ‘I must see the stone!’

  ‘And so I let you in.’ His hand became a warning. ‘But Obsidian remains in here and the decision whether to show it to you is mine alone.’

  ‘What can I say to persuade you?’

  ‘Nothing. I have given my whole life to the stone. I came here as a child, leaving my dear friend.’

  That was why his voice was so young, because it had never been raised. And there was something of Cronan’s sadness there too.

  ‘You would die for it,’ she said. ‘I understand duty. So please understand that my own duty is to keep folk safe.’

  ‘And you understand nothing about our life here. Can’t you see that this is exactly what we are doing? The Westermen guard the stone to keep the world safe – from itself.’ Truth rang in his strong voice.

  ‘Then I promise you that if this is what the stone tells me, I will leave it here to be guarded forever.’

  ‘Be silent now and allow me to think.’

  There was no day or night inside the tower but with every beat of her pulse, Bera feared it was already too late. She twisted her dress into a knot of care, then caught herself and let go.

  He shook his head. ‘No, my one duty—’

  ‘The event wrenched my guts and the mountains are unquiet,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to explain but my body and this land are one. I gave birth to a daughter as the tallest mountain erupted, making the sky darken and die.’ Bera was desperate to explain what she didn’t fully understand herself. ‘I need the stone to tell me about how feeling all this changed me.’ Saying it aloud made it real. The change was in her, not just in what was happening deep beneath them; so would changing herself calm the earth?

  He touched his face. ‘My face froze during the worst earthquake.’

  ‘With ice?’

  ‘No, a sympathetic tremor that felt like fire and then afterwards… well, it’s hard to eat and I can never smile.’

  ‘So you know that Hel can make the earth ruin our minds and bodies!’

  He thinks Hel is a place.

  The Warden moved away. ‘Come, then. Hurry.’

  Bera’s heart skipped and she took a step. A shooting pain ran up her leg but would have to be ignored. She followed him up a flight of spiral steps that had no rope or rail and became tighter as they climbed. The stone was polished a glossy black, perhaps by hands. Or was it glass? Shadows lurched and deceived and Bera missed a step and was plunged into mid-air, or so it felt, in black nothingness. It took all her resolve to keep going up. But then there was a glimmer of light and they finally stopped climbing. Bera stood at the threshold of a room where there was enough light to see a table. She fought down disappointment. The table was a homely wooden trestle and on it was an ordinary clay bowl, upside down.

  23

  Bera refused to follow him into the room. ‘Don’t waste my time. That is not Obsidian.’

  ‘It has its own properties. Some would say it’s more valuable, differently. Come.’

  ‘As riddling as you,’ Bera said to her skern and took a step forward.

  A howling ache began and she clutched her side. Her skern was gone: not unclasped but missing. Not waving from the threshold, not whispering invisibly, but completely gone, like the unclenching normal folk had at birth. She knew in that moment that he had never left her before, not in the way he was absent now. She had believed he had left her after having the baby but it was not like this torture; this was as though he had never existed. Was this agony what drove the Drorghers out of their graves? Hot tears ran down her cheeks with the pain and fear of it.

  The Warden was at the table, his blank face betraying no feeling for her anguish.

  ‘So come and read the runes.’

  Perhaps it would return her skern to her. Feeling like she was drowning, Bera made it to him. He carefully picked up the bowl, its raw clay the colour of flesh. Underneath was a hen’s egg with brown marks all over it. It reminded her of the stone in the mouth of the skull that Faelan had shown her.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s to keep demons out of the curse bowl, in case any got in before the outside was painted. The egg is inscribed, like skulls found elsewhere in many lands.’

  ‘You’ve never seen beyond this tower,’ Bera said, feeling cruel because she was hurting so much.

  ‘I can read.’ His face was like slate. ‘You can’t read or write, can you?’

  Keeping the bowl rim-side down, he showed her a crude figure, whose body ran all round it, drawn in blood. Bera doubled over as pain shot through her, her guts twisting like the Skraken in the deep.

  He nodded. ‘All savages can understand pictures.’

  She made herself look again. It was a creature, bound by rope or chain. Perhaps a wolf. Fenrir himself, Hel’s brother. Mama used to frighten her, saying that at the end of days all bound monsters would be freed by the host of Vallas. They would unleash Fenrir, the wolf of destruction. Did Vallas bring destruction on purpose?

  ‘This is sometimes called a demon bowl,’ he said. ‘This drawing keeps demons from entering, like your skern.’

  Bera found it hard to breathe. ‘Please. Let him back in!’

  ‘I can’t. The bowl has its own will and you must hold it without him.’

  ‘Give it to me then. Quickly.’

  He turned it the right way up, so that Bera could see a spiral of rune-like words inside it, winding their way from the base to the rim.

  ‘This one came from Ninava,’ he said, ‘or nearby. The effect is the same.’

  Bera tried to grab it before her heart broke.

  ‘Foolish. You will fail the test at the outset and never see Obsidian.’

  ‘What test?’ The lettering was meaningless without her skern.

  ‘You must hold it. The curse written here commands the bowl to break into pieces
if you are untrue. You see the power of words? God created the world by speaking the Word and you can destroy it with lies.’

  ‘I never lie,’ she lied. She dared not take it, not yet. ‘I am a Valla. We make Fate by doing, not saying.’

  ‘You can do nothing without being. God brought us into being by saying the Word: He named us.’

  ‘What is God?’ she sobbed. ‘Help me!’

  ‘Then hold the bowl.’

  Bera stretched out a hand then drew it back. ‘Why test me? Don’t you want me to save our world? I swear I’ll leave the black stone here but please, let me go to my skern and find it!’

  ‘And stay in here forever? I’d rather Cronan and I were both dead if we cannot be alive together.’

  Her guts were on fire. She wanted to smash the bowl for keeping her skern away from her but smothered the thought. ALU, she breathed, trying to find what strength she could. ALU.

  She nodded.

  Bera held her arms out straight, hands cupped, and the Warden placed the bowl onto them as tenderly as if it were a baby. It had blood-heat too. She felt whole again, as if her skern were clasped. She closed her eyes and tried to recall the truth of the vision she had seen, to be a true person, but only the pain in her leg was real. She could feel the throb of her broken heart against the roughness of the clay, but the bowl was lifeless.

  She opened her eyes and saw his mouth twitch.

  ‘It seems you’ve passed,’ he said.

  Bera held the unbroken bowl over the inscribed egg, which she quickly palmed before settling the bowl upside down to hide the theft. The agony worsened. She had to get outside the room, fast. She slipped the egg into her pocket and crossed the threshold. Her skern was there at once, pressed into her neck. Instant and intense, they were whole again.

  ‘The egg doesn’t keep you away,’ she purred.

  All the power against demons is in the bowl.

  ‘Are you a demon?’

  Apparently I am. Better concentrate now.

  Tighter steps wound to the top of the tower. They were dark, oily and nearly invisible and yet the Warden of the stone went up them lightly. Years of practice. Bera dare not look down. Up here, the darkness was almost complete, pressing on the candle flame until it was guttering. Only by feeling the hard surface beneath her feet and the smoothness under her hands could she stay anchored to what was real and now.

  As soon as she joined him he blew out the candle and she was engulfed in the blackest black. It was a solid presence, rather than absence, as if she had entered Obsidian itself. All she could smell was cold stone. Bera breathed into her stomach to make her voice stronger.

  ‘Don’t seek to frighten me. I’ve been in a dark place before, with the worst Drorgher. I won that battle.’

  Had he moved past her and escaped? Her stomach rumbled, which panicked her because it meant they were near mealtime.

  Listen. You can hear him breathe.

  Her skern was right. She stopped breathing and heard a murmur of air from her right.

  ‘What is he waiting for?’

  Another test. I think you have to sense the stone in the dark.

  ‘Then hurry up and tell me.’

  It’s beyond reach, on top of a tower of stone.

  Bera wanted to show the Warden she knew this much. ‘I need a chair, something to stand on.’

  ‘You are not tall enough to see the stone and may not touch it. No one has since the first Abbot, who built the tower within the tower to… protect it.’

  ‘Why did you bring me up here, only to fail?’ She coaxed, ‘Cronan wants you to let me try.’

  Silence.

  ‘If I do reach the stone, will you let me keep it?’

  ‘No.’

  She was furious. ‘Do all you ermites enjoy seeing a woman plead?’

  He sighed. ‘You are no mere woman and I thought you might kill me if I tried to stop you. I have no experience of violence and saw how you subdued the wolf, who does.’

  ‘I would not kill anyone in cold blood.’

  Have you come up here to talk?

  ‘I hate you!’

  You love me. It’s the same thing, upside down. Use that energy to get what you want.

  A tiny thrill inside her knew what he meant. The Warden moved so close that she could feel his breathing, cold in and warm out, and smell the sweet, peppery ensense. Underneath, the sharp smell of fear.

  ‘Is it me you fear… or something else?’ Then Bera knew. ‘You don’t just guard Obsidian, do you? You fear it!’

  ‘The first Abbot went mad. After looking into the stone, he went mad in a way that I wouldn’t choose to be near.’

  ‘I promise you this. If I feel it sending me mad I will kill myself, rather than hurt you.’

  ‘You cannot promise.’ He moved right away. ‘Yet I cannot hinder you. It’s the one request Cronan has made in all the years.’

  So Bera quested upwards, scanning through black for the ultimate blackness of stone, and something twisted slightly in its hollow. Like an oar in its hole. Like an eye in its socket. She had moved it with sheer force of will. The Warden gasped. So he had felt it shift too.

  It is also looking for you.

  Now that she was close to holding it, Bera hesitated. What if the changes she felt in herself were bad? Were all Vallas destined to become darker as their bodies aged – or changed by childbirth – or was it the land that had changed her?

  Go ON!

  Bera knew what she had to do and the act would bring knowledge, and knowledge is power, as Ottar would say. Planting a picture in the wolf’s mind was a new skill, which she could use here. The darkness helped, like closing her eyes. She touched the black bead of her necklace, a shard of Obsidian’s dark light, that had guided her like a lodestone. She was ready. Bera pictured her skern lifting the stone and bringing it down to her. She held her hands out in front of her, as she had for the curse bowl, but was still surprised when almost at once the cold stone lay heavily on them. Its shape was unexpected.

  ‘Obsidian.’ Bera said. ‘I hold it – but now must look at it.’

  The Warden lit the candle but kept his back resolutely turned.

  The stone had roundness but not depth. Not a ball but a scrying-glass.

  Bera moved closer to the candle’s flame and held up the glass. A small face, which she took to be her own, loomed back at her. It looked worried and thin. Nothing else. All that torment for nothing, and she felt robbed.

  ‘There is no danger in this,’ she said. ‘Nor any help.’

  He let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘I had begun to believe in you.’ He opened a shutter. ‘But I am glad it has not sent you mad.’

  ‘Wait! More light will kill any hope of scrying. Let me try again.’

  He quickly closed it. ‘The warders are coming out.’

  Why was the bead still burning her throat? It was making it hard to think, let alone clear her mind enough to scry.

  Try, dearest.

  ‘My necklace is the link to the Vallas. Obsidian is the black bead’s occult twin, like you and me.’

  So look through it, not at it.

  She held the glass up once more and behind her stretched a long line of all her Valla ancestors. There was some property in the glass that made her want to keep gazing at these shadows. She expected to feel deep respect but slowly something was reflected back at her that both enthralled and shocked: she understood that all their dark will was battening on the badness inside her. Who could resist looking – or looking away – once they had? What evil would prey on the world at the command of this dark army of shadows? It was why the glass was kept in blackness and why no one should look into it.

  ‘No!’ Bera dropped the black stone onto the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the Warden cried.

  She felt the Vallas were urging the land’s devastation through her. If it was the stone that revealed the knowledge, then it should show her what upheaval was coming, even if it sent her mad. She kne
lt down and leaned over it so that the black bead touched the glass. It took all her courage. She might first have to face the worst stains of her nature. What if they bloomed, once seen, like squid ink in seawater? Like bad blood in Heggi.

  ‘All right. Let me see beyond. Let me understand.’

  It was immediately worse than she feared.

  She was deafened by fire. Clouds of red and orange billowed and blazed like a sunset above a bubbling, boiling stream of Hel’s vomit, belching and retching molten bronze and copper. Deep within were spouts of burning white, like the heart of a funeral pyre, turning bone to ash, but this heat was beyond anything; even hotter than white metal in the smith’s pourings. The earth’s shrieks were the shifting hip bones of birthing. Bera flinched away.

  You are seeing the centre of the earth, at the birth of Obsidian.

  Then bone-freezing cold and silence. She was in a black vortex, like the maelstrom, but travelling upwards, bursting through the earth’s crust and rushing far, far into space and time… an exquisite trail… unknown words that described a place she had never been. Then drifting, slowly turning, afloat in a limitless sea of stars. Joy. Before her was a perfect sphere, as jewelled as one of the beads in her hands. Blue. A beautiful, fragile sea path that widened to embrace the world. Soundless and still. She cradled it in her gaze, watching coils of clouds and the flickering green waves of the North Lights. These lights had saved her from a Drorgher and the memory came with it. Her Valla ancestors were speaking, sounding like the ravens:

  ‘… from deepest black, through blood red, scorched by the blue flash of an exquisite trail of trillions of dying stars, we are in space and time, until we reach…’

  Her skern was impatient. Study the next thing.

  ‘No! They were saying something important!’

  It’s an ancient echo in space, repeating until the end of time. Watch!

  A burst of orange flame blazed at the top and it was the northern tip of Ice Island. Then a second and third and fourth and fifth flared in turn, like beads on a golden chain. She had predicted this much. But then, horror! The chain of fire spread over the globe, unstoppable. The fires grew in size and number, faster and faster, until the small world split into cracks of flame and the sea path burned orange and became one huge, shimmering blaze that made a sun; a burnished, golden orb encircled by glittering flame that was beautiful and terrible and then…