Obsidian

by Suzie Wilde

  There is only ever you.

  After eating, Hefnir was his old assured self. ‘Plenty of obsidian here. We’ll spread out and look for decent weights.’

  Egill’s eyes flickered towards Bera. Did she know that they were here to destroy, not to find?

  Bera let them go off gathering. Obsidian was with her. These black shards were only pointers, like iron filings to a lodestone. They sensed the looking-glass, though she did not understand how it had become so powerful. Some craftsman, from Iraland perhaps, had taken its latent force and fashioned it with human skill into… something so dangerous that it must be returned to Hel, along with herself to pay the blood debt for its theft.

  I’m not sure about some of that.

  ‘Does it matter? It’s in the past.’

  She wanted to explore alone so that the landscape could speak to her, even if the words were poison. She had to find the gateway to Hel and enter. She had abandoned her children, so must make this final sacrifice. She thought of Faelan again, desperate to be saved… She had to prove leaving him was right. Was she right to do it alone? Doubt crept in and she began to wonder why they had left her on her own.

  Mirror mirror on the wall…

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  There’s no point exploring when the answer’s on your back. Look in the glass.

  Bera never wanted to see it again. She got Obsidian from its place, fast.

  This time, she was an eagle, soaring in blue sky, looking down on her own winged shadow as it raced across the land far below. She passed over Hefnir and the others and swooped over them, drunk in the joy of flight.

  Stop playing and use the skills.

  Her eagle eyes could see the wind as it curled round the mountain like smoke; she could hear whalesong, lower than sound; she could smell the future in the stench of sulfur. And the future became present as she hovered over a peak. It was no single point of ice but a crown around a central hollow. She peered down through the snow and ice, piercing layer after layer, crust after crust, until there was the black heart of the earth that made Obsidian. It was what she had glimpsed at the birthing and was happening again. Far below her, on the skin of Ice Island, appeared a wrinkle, which became a channel, then a crevasse that deepened and widened and screamed out the pain of a land torn into three plates that should be one. This was what had cracked open as her hip bones shifted to push out the baby, when Bera thought her whole body was being sundered. The centre of these three plates was the gateway to Hel.

  Bera fell back to earth with an eagle shriek. Because she knew where she had to go and wanted it over. This was the place. She tied the glass safely onto her back and made for the high mountain.

  There was a small animal grubbing around the lower slopes where snow lay in drifts. It scuffed and snuffled about, occasionally digging and pouncing. Perhaps the small creature of the night before was this ice bear cub. It surprised her to see natural life, even this far from its home, with such terror before her.

  The bear cub lifted its head. Bera tried to link her mind with it as she had the wolf but there was only the numbing blankness of snow, so she approached slowly and so did the cub. Could you tame a bear if you had it from a cub? How Heggi would have loved it. She closed her mind.

  The cub moved sideways.

  ‘Don’t be frightened. I’m not going to hurt you.’ Though she did not sense fear in the cub’s numbness.

  Bera walked on, holding out her hand, as if coaxing a dog to return. The cub sniffed the air a few more times and moved sideways again.

  ‘Come on, little one. Come to Bera.’

  At last it did, padding sweetly towards her, pigeon-toed. Bera remembered that closing her eyes would link their minds.

  Death rage!

  Her eyes flew open and the early sun appeared between two foothills, making the distance plain. This was no cub but a fully grown ice bear, coming straight at her. Bera stood her ground and opened her arms wide, trying to look big. The bear paused some distance away, raised its nose and swayed its head in big arcs, to and fro. It was thin, which meant it was hungry. It stopped its scenting and fixed its small black eyes on her. Bera held its gaze, willing it to leave her alone, but like a Drorgher, it was intent on one thing: prey. Their eyes stayed locked as the bear moved to its left. Its wide, thick pads made no sound.

  She had no sword. If only Hefnir and the others would notice her long absence and come and kill it. As long as they did kill it. A wounded animal would be out for blood. Finally it turned its head. There were others: two small cubs were stumbling across snow hillocks towards their mother. The bear looked back at the threat to her babies, and the danger increased. Bera screwed up her face, sending out a line of thought to declare who she was. One fierce mother to another. But Bera had left her baby while this one was starving rather than leave her cubs. This mother bear was too far south, searching for food. The world was already skewed.

  Concentrate!

  ‘I need to set this land right again.’

  It wants you to fail. Its anger is brewing and it yearns for violence.

  ‘A bit like a thunderstorm clearing the air?’

  It’s the meaning of sacrifice. In the cycle of the earth there can be no new life without the spilling of blood.

  ‘One in, one out, in reverse. This is Valdis’s time. I was right to fear her.’ Bera gave a rueful smile. ‘Perhaps I did the same to my mother. Let’s hope Valdis proves a better Valla than I ever was, with no mother to guide her either.’

  The bear bent her head to greet her cubs and they scampered about her, raising their faces to be licked. She led them to a high, snow-covered mound and lay down with her back to it. The two pure white bundles tumbled over each other to nestle into the warm blush of their mother’s creamy fur. They began to feed and grew still, their only movement the absent-minded stroke of a small paw while their mother tenderly licked them clean.

  Bera took a few slow paces backwards, then stopped. This bear would be a great prize. She considered how high a price an ice-bear skin would reach. Would the Serpent King accept this pelt instead of Obsidian? Of course not.

  Besides, killing her would mean leaving the cubs motherless and she could never do that.

  True. So she ought to retreat but her duty was to go forward. Once the bears had fed it would be dangerous to stay. But then she calmed in the growling kind of love between the bears – and lingered too long.

  The bear got to her feet, nudged the cubs away, and walked off. They lazed in the small heaps of snow while their mother began making a wide circle. The ice bear would sometimes stop and paw the ground, then reckon Bera with shrewd eyes. The gathering light showed its range and Bera saw that she was in the middle of its circle. Now it was too late to run and her feeling for animals would cost her her life.

  Would dying this way be enough to stop the eruptions? Her vision was clear: to take Obsidian back to Hel and pay with her life. The land was trying to stop that happening. It wanted eruption and devastation. Her skern was right in one way. It was like the old days when she enjoyed the flare of anger that would end in breaking something and leave her feeling better. Yet she had seen the birth of this island, along with Obsidian’s. Both were born in violence and exulted in it. The land was using the creatures that lived on it to make her fail. Bera stood like a stone, her own mind a blank of despair.

  Her skern clutched her scalp. Think, dearest. Do something.

  ‘Save me.’

  How? I’m as insubstantial as the morning mist.

  Bera tried throwing some stones at the bear but they only made her back off for a while, then she returned to her circle; tighter now, with blacker thoughts.

  ‘I don’t die yet, do I? I thought Fate wanted me to finish this.’

  Oh, dearest, you may not have the choice.

  ‘At least I’ll feed the mother bear. I’d rather die like that than at the hands of some coward.’

  Like Hefnir?

  ‘Hefnir! Get him
here!’

  How can I possibly do that?

  ‘You left me in the tower.’

  I have no memory but agony.

  ‘So do I. But now you have to go further.’

  Skerns c-c-can’t. I won’t stretch that far and Hefnir wouldn’t hear me.

  ‘It’s our only chance.’

  B-b-but if the bear attacks and I’m not here you’ll b-b-be…

  ‘A Drorgher.’

  Vividly before her loomed the bruised and blackened face of the chief of the Drorghers from her home village. Would she become like that? No – it would be worse! Her darker Valla powers would rise in their twilight world. Hefnir was her only chance of survival. Her skern had to go, and go now.

  ‘Don’t leave me!’ she cried.

  The pain of unclenching was worse than before. As the invisible cord between them stretched, the agony of lengthening and thinning was beyond endurance. Bera fell down hard, and, while she could will anything, willed him to carry on.

  28

  Her skern was suffering as much, getting thinner and thinner, a wisp. His touch was like smoke. Egill was sitting apart, whittling. He wafted round her head, blowing her hair into her eyes but she absently tucked it behind her ears. His voice was a whisper of sea breeze. He was wracked between returning to his twin spirit and obeying her true command. Life or death. One last try.

  Help us!

  Egill stopped whittling and listened.

  Help!

  ‘Bera?’ she called.

  The skern was too anguished to speak again.

  Hefnir turned. ‘Is she back?’

  ‘Thought she was.’ Egill jerked her head towards the scrubland. ‘I thought she wanted to be alone, to plan the next bit.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Egill stood up, the truth dawning. ‘Quite a while.’

  Hefnir jabbed a tarred brand into the fire, setting it alight. He spoke in the language of Iraland. ‘You two. Come with me.’

  Egill waved her sharpened stick. ‘I’m coming too.’

  ‘What use are you?’

  ‘I love her.’

  Hefnir laughed, and set off in the wrong direction.

  The skern could only mouth at Egill not to follow him.

  Bera had to stay aware, though her skern was stretching away so far her guts were straight, and keep telling the bear that she was not good to eat, that she meant no harm. Neither food nor threat: both were lies. No lies on Ice Island. Worthless words of an idiot. Why not drift away, beyond pain? No! Her duty was to endure, it was all it had ever been.

  She searched inside her for the vital force of the Bera she had packed away when she first thought death would be better than more grief and hardship. She had sent her out more than once to fight death.

  Nothing. That Bera was gone. She was too changed, and dying.

  The bear stood on her hind legs, her breath a memory of seals and fish and blood. Her final reckoning before the attack.

  Bera managed to stand, swaying. Only cowards were killed on their knees.

  Then – release. Bera smiled weakly. They would die as one. Her skern swept round her, cleaved. She stood before the attack, knife in hand, knowing it would be useless. The weight of Obsidian on her back told her the ice bear would kill her; that was what it wanted.

  The bear charged.

  She did not want to die!

  Her head felt thick and blood roared. The world became a red tunnel with Bera at one end and the bear the other. With absolute clarity, almost casually, she sidestepped at the last moment. She was reacting so quickly it felt as if everything was slow, like trying to clap hands underwater.

  The bear was a silent killer, wasting no energy. She made a short circle.

  There was a whooping battle cry, shrill and penetrating. It was Egill, trailing something behind her over the snow. She quickly untied the rope and walked away, leaving a body behind, big enough to tempt. Egill’s singing howl was keeping the bear’s attention away from Bera for now but also attracted the cubs. Would the bear guard the cubs and carcass or stay fixed on her prey?

  The bear looked back at Bera.

  Egill ran. ‘Come on then, you old bear, come and get me!’ Was she brave or mad? She was dangerously close to the cubs.

  Hefnir appeared with a flaming brand and behind him, the crew. This would become a killing field, her only instinct to protect her babies. The mother bear ran at the men, swiping at a crewman with a savage paw. His jaw flew sideways and he was down. She turned, casting about with rage.

  Hefnir and the remaining crewman got themselves between the bear and Bera, leaving the carcass to the cubs, who gambolled towards it, fearless. Their mother paused, her prey strung out and her cubs unprotected. Egill was still screaming like a madwoman. Hefnir held his brand high and the bear backed off, waiting. Then she roared a warning and padded swiftly to the carcass, took it in her huge jaw and dragged it away. Her cubs scampered after her, as if it were a game.

  Bera’s knees gave way and she collapsed on the snow, gasping. She must have been holding her breath since Egill appeared.

  Hefnir threw himself down next to her. ‘Will you not keep going off on your own!’

  ‘You didn’t stop me.’

  ‘Who could stop you when you’ve decided something?’

  Bera rolled over and faced him. ‘I have to do this alone.’

  Egill was there. ‘No, Bera. You always think you do but you don’t. Hefnir left you this time but we’re not going to from now on. Are we?’

  Hefnir said nothing.

  ‘Are you, Hefnir?’ Bera’s voice was soft.

  He had stood between her and death, which was not the act of a coward. Surely she had been wrong about her husband: she mattered to him after all. Did he love her? She needed to think so, here, at the gate of Hel.

  The mountain was spewing ash higher than the stars and the mushroom pall made the day as dark as winternights. Yet Bera could think clearly and her first thought was the Serpent King. He had tried to trade Heggi but his bluff had not worked and she was sure that he would find them and kill to get Obsidian. No matter what happened to her, she had to first make sure that no one else had the chance to gaze into the glass.

  They would not leave the dead crewman for animals or some Serpent outrage but the ground was too hard to bury him. There was plenty of wood here, so they risked building a pyre on the beach. They placed the crewman on top, making sure his knife was with him. He might not turn to ash but Bera hoped it was enough. He was one of the lucky ones, to die cleanly with one swipe of an ice bear’s paw instead of the long starvation that would come if she did not succeed.

  While they waited for it to be hot enough to burn the body, Bera called a meeting.

  ‘We have this fire to send our crewman to his ancestors and as a sign to Fate that this is the place of a Valla’s choosing.’ She turned to Hefnir. ‘It will also be a beacon for anyone watching, so we must start soon.’

  Bera told Egill to send the other crewman as lookout on the headland. ‘He must watch for the Serpent King and warn us if the dragonboat appears.’

  The flames burned white against the darkening sky. There were so few of them now. The gaps between were the whispering souls of Seabost folk, left behind, and the unburied dead of her own home. Bera looked into the heart of the fire, which gave her the words to explain it.

  ‘We have to climb that mountain. The problem and the answer lies with Hel and you must help me, Hefnir. The finest obsidian is useless without life.’

  Hefnir considered her, his eyes hard slits. ‘If this is some trick…’

  Bera stared him out.

  He shrugged. ‘So tell me why it’s so bad.’

  ‘You’re already breathing it, Hefnir. The air is full of poison and more will gush up and stifle anyone downwind of the fumes. The top of the mountain will blow and the rock will be fire. I’ve thought about what happens when ice melts: a torrent will surge down the mountainside into the sea.’
<
br />   ‘Like the dam bursting,’ muttered Egill.

  ‘Worse. There will be such upheaval that a monstrous wave will return to drown this side of Ice Island.’

  ‘Like the strange wave that hit us on the passage over,’ said Hefnir.

  Bera nodded. ‘I think that was a forerunner, showing me what is to come. But there’s even more: this eruption will set alight the whole chain.’

  ‘What chain?’ Hefnir kicked a stone away, for a moment like Heggi.

  ‘I’ve seen the known world and there are mountains of fire under sea and over land.’

  Egill understood. ‘So if all the mountains send up ash clouds there will be no sun.’

  Bera agreed. ‘Without sunlight, nothing can grow. No crops, no animals. The ash up in the sky will form clouds of bitter rain that will burn when it falls. There will be no hiding and no relief. No one will be left alive anywhere.’

  ‘The end of the Vallas,’ said Egill. The edge in her voice surprised Bera.

  She thought of Heggi. How he must despise her, and she deserved it because she had lost his trust, after trying so hard to gain it. More loss, for both of them, who had lost so much. What had begun as a promise to Faelan to stop an eruption had turned into something more: a struggle to stay true to the Valla ancestors when she had begun to doubt them. She was at a threshold, a liminal place, as her skern would have it, between the real world and the next. Present and future. Earth and fire. Old magic, like the blacksmith’s art.

  Her skern was still too weak to give any comfort or advice but she did not need him to tell her the earthly struggle was nearing its end.

  ‘Hefnir. Egill. I need you both. There may be something… at the last… I need you to be there.’

  Bera bound the looking-glass to her tightly, feeling it quicken as she turned her face towards the mountain. The same unanswered question: was it upholding the Vallas’ will or was she Obsidian’s servant?

  29

  Hefnir and Egill made new tarred brands and set them alight. Bera chose the path she had seen from above when she had eagle eyes. A shower of thick ash fell and made it hard to breathe. They had to huddle close and cover their heads until the worst passed. When they set off again she thought someone was following. At first she thought the other crewman had left his post but she gradually became sure the slight figure was the Fetch. But Faelan’s mother was dead – so whose Fetch was this? Hers? Whenever she faced it, there was nothing there. A notion grew that her sight was failing and giving her glimpses of the past instead of what was before her.