Obsidian

by Suzie Wilde

  He gave his sly smile. ‘I knew you come for me at end.’

  His skern passed her. It was smooth and innocent, the opposite of his foul body. They were not yet cleaved in death and Bera marvelled at the smoky gentleness that watched over such a beast as the Serpent King.

  ‘Not skern – you,’ he grunted. ‘You come for blood debt.’

  ‘You killed my father.’ Her voice was flat with exhaustion. Who was her father to the Serpent, out of so many?

  ‘My sister…’ He tried to sit up but his face screwed up with pain.

  ‘I am a Valla. I know what happened to your sister, and it was worse than you could know.’ It was said in pity for them both, for his skern revealed the sweet child he had once been, who loved his older sister.

  ‘Hefnir is bad man. Liar and coward. But he paid blood debt now.’

  Bera felt dismay and shock, though reason always told her the Serpent would win. She dared to go closer, now he would never move again.

  ‘Hefnir is dead?’ She kept her voice low, for Heggi’s sake.

  ‘I kill him. Through heart with own sword.’

  ‘Where is he?’ She looked around them, in case his body was hidden.

  The Serpent’s gaze shifted. He was reckoning some advantage. What could he possibly want? There was no healing, not with those wounds. Only an axe could sever a leg like that.

  ‘Did Hefnir use your axe?’

  ‘Mountain gave it to him.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Pain bad but I am strong. Long wait for blood to drain. Like reindeer.’

  ‘And?’

  He took some time to answer. ‘Poison on axe. Wolfsbane. Bad death.’ He turned his head, looking for something. ‘Sword.’

  Hefnir’s sword was lying in a pool of blood. The Serpent’s blood – or Hefnir’s? Bera did not want to touch it.

  ‘I am not so stupid as to hand you a sword.’

  ‘You Valla. Fate. You make, and are there at death, like skern.’ He looked straight at his own skern. ‘Yes, I see it. But is not close enough.’ He was panting.

  You know what he’s asking and goodness knows he deserves it.

  She had wanted to kill him. She might have done if he had harmed Heggi. But now she could not. It wasn’t to prolong his suffering; it was because this was not who she was.

  ‘I am a healer.’

  ‘To kill is to heal.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I can.’ Heggi stood beside her with his father’s sword.

  Bera rocked with horror. ‘No, Heggi. Lay it down. He will die soon anyway.’

  ‘He killed my father. He must pay the blood debt.’ His flat voice was deep and hoarse.

  It was the voice of the Serpent King, unmoved by the thought of killing a man. How blind she had been! The bad blood had not flowed from his father but from the other side: his mother’s kin. She would brave anything to stop him becoming like his uncle.

  ‘His death will cancel the debt. Lay down the sword, Heggi. Let your father’s axe wounds be the killing blow.’

  ‘No. I have to.’

  The Serpent sneered to hurt the boy’s pride. He was so easy to read. Heggi would be enraged and the Serpent would get his quick death and the pleasure of knowing his filthy blood was coming out in his nephew. Bera pleaded with Fate to help her but they were at the sharp point of ill circumstance.

  ‘Leave him the sword, Heggi. He can kill himself.’

  ‘He can’t. He won’t.’

  He stood with a straight back, desperate to look older but more obviously a child. Bera doubted he could even lift the sword. She had got so much wrong with him when their lives became joined that she did not want to strip him entirely of his pride. She knew it was all madness: here they stood on a world as thin and crisp as eggshell. If the ice cap exploded, they would all die. Their only chance was to get to the boat and ride out the tidal wave. They had to get to it fast, so that meant making a decision. It was time to understand that duty came in many forms, and who that duty was owed to.

  That’s the girl.

  ‘Give me the sword, Heggi, and move away. I shall avenge my husband and my father but more importantly, I will show mercy and end suffering. One day you may understand.’ Her voice held command.

  If he would gladly pass over the duty he would also step away from his bad blood.

  Heggi slumped. He turned his back to her, though his shoulders were shaking. Bera gently took the sword, which was heavy. She wiped the hilt on her dress and dragged it over to the Serpent King.

  His skern was closer.

  ‘You are dying,’ she said, relieved.

  His eyes glittered, dangerous as ever. ‘I die like warrior, not rat in hole. I wait for you.’

  Bera knew it was true and what she did not have was time. She needed a clear reason to kill any man and found the blood debt was not enough.

  ‘Did you send that man with poison?’

  His lips curled. ‘Meant for bastard Hefnir. Now – kill.’

  And then she remembered the remedy, and cursed. How could she kill someone she could perhaps heal?

  Too late.

  ‘Want me to beg? Kill fast. Please, Valla.’

  ‘Show me how.’

  He slowly raised his hand and felt his neck with two fingers until he found the notch in the collarbone.

  ‘Put point in here.’

  She let the sword tip trail over his body up to the spot and then he carefully got it in place. Her breath was fast and hard and all she wanted to do was run. How had she ever vowed to kill anyone? She felt exposed and afraid. Only the thought of saving Heggi from this duty kept the sword in place. Where would she find the strength? It was surely wrong to use ALU where her purpose was so murky. It should make only good intentions more powerful. She tried to picture her father and Thorvald at her back but failed. That would also be wrong.

  ‘Get body over sword and push down. Very hard. Strong, like Brid.’

  Their eyes met and once again Bera remembered the tall youth who had given his nephew a toy horse, and let him sit on his back to make his mama laugh. Tears for this person, now destroyed, made her falter. She needed a dark kind of courage, so she called on her mother to aid her and touched her necklace, making every bead a Valla ancestor that she summoned to her back.

  Time to end his pain.

  Bera pressed down, holding his gaze so that he would not die at a coward’s hand. His skern joined him at the last, so that their face became one smooth innocence.

  Whereas hers felt stained and black. Bera left the sword in his throat and sank to her knees, thinking she would never get up. Had Obsidian triumphed and brought out the bad entirely?

  She felt an arm round her shoulders and Heggi’s wet face pressed against hers. ‘Thank you, Mama,’ he sobbed.

  32

  Time to get going!

  ‘I can’t, not yet.’

  Bera could not bear the thought of pulling the sword out from the Serpent’s throat. By rights, Heggi should have his father’s sword – but how could she ask him to hold his uncle’s head while she tugged?

  ‘I should try to bury him,’ she said, with no conviction.

  His skern joined him so he will not be hungry yet.

  ‘Perhaps the iron through his neck will hold him, like the beheading.’ Fate had given her Faelan to show her this.

  The cross will stop him rising – if he truly believes in Brid.

  ‘Can what folk believe make itself real? I worried I might bring Drorghers to this place but is it all of us?’

  His serpent body and cross look like the signs at the Abbotry.

  ‘I’m glad it’s Hefnir’s sword that will stay in his throat, not mine.’

  If he did become a Drorgher, there would be no prey for him anywhere, unless they could survive the earth’s destruction.

  Heggi tugged at her sleeve. ‘Can we look for Papa now?’

  Resigned to having to move, Bera wearily got up. They struggled down the
stone-strewn path, helping each other over boulders. Then simply stopped. Bera slapped her cheeks to wake up and got Heggi propped up on a rock before slumping against him. The earth shifted under their feet but what would once have terrified them seemed a small disturbance. They let it pass.

  ‘I think he was mad.’ Heggi’s eyes were streaming.

  ‘Did he hurt you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not like you mean. He brought me presents from all over, when I was little… when Mama was still alive.’

  ‘I understand, boykin. He was the last link with her. The last of your mother’s blood-kin.’ She hoped it really was the last.

  ‘So do you think he was mad?’

  ‘We must try to get down to the beach. It will be safer. We must be nearly there,’ she said – and feared the Raven was probably a heap of ash.

  Heggi rubbed his eyes. ‘But do you?’

  Bera gave herself time to somehow soften his well-found worry. ‘Maybe he had the madness of too much power.’

  Heggi whispered, ‘Papa says it’s in my blood.’

  Ancestors could all pass on bad blood. She had just killed a man after all.

  Vallas exult in destruction.

  ‘Listen to me. We can change what’s in our blood for good or ill. Too much power can turn anyone bad but it’s not catching, like red-spot.’ She was telling both son and skern and needed to believe it was true. ‘But it can be exciting. You must never stay too close to badness.’

  Cleansing water. And thirst! Bera pictured standing behind the waterfall, Faelan’s quicksilver body in a crystal pool that she could drink dry…

  ‘Well, then, why did you let my uncle take me?’

  ‘I wasn’t on the beach, not even in the bay!’

  ‘You came later.’ He pulled away from her. ‘I’m going to look for Papa!’

  ‘No, Heggi, listen…’ How could she ever explain?

  He set off but could only move slowly, which made him curse every blockage, his parents and his own body in the gruff voice that didn’t suit his size. Bera kept with him but he moved away if she came too close. It distressed her to be so apart. Had killing the Serpent made it worse, not better?

  All the way back down she dreaded Heggi finding his father’s body, but there was not even a sign of blood.

  Beyond hope, they found the Raven on the beach and no dragonboat in the bay. The Serpent King’s crew must have abandoned him.

  ‘Cowards to the last,’ Bera said. ‘They’re running back to Iraland now he’s dead.’

  Heggi shuddered but she was too weary to make it better. This side of the mountain was untouched by the fire-spill, as though the eruption had not happened. There was only a layer of ash on the boat. It was like going back in time, to earlier in the day, when they were all alive. Unless you looked at the sky, where flickering, formless lightning pointed at worse to come.

  ‘If the Raven’s all right, Papa might be too. He might be hurting and we just went right past him!’ Heggi’s voice cut like a thin blade.

  What could she say? It was true and she was too exhausted to know what she thought about that.

  ‘We won’t set sail until we know.’

  ‘How will we know? If he’s too hurt to move…’

  ‘Be quiet, Heggi!’

  Bera took one of the leather flagons of water from their boat and threw it to him, then drank from one herself, pouring it down her throat, not caring about the damage. Her insides burned and she collapsed onto the pebbles. It was clear her son had sided with Hefnir. She had not pictured it like this.

  You wanted to be the glorious sacrifice.

  ‘No. It was my duty. I have everything waiting for me at home.’

  And you value everything?

  She tried to picture what a happy family would look like: a kindly mother cooking for a grateful father, two or three smiling children and a dog quiet by the hearth.

  She had no idea. ‘I’ve been robbed of that too.’

  Oh, sweetheart, you always rob yourself.

  Bera was flattened under it all. She let her head loll to one side to look at Heggi. He threw a stone into the sea, making a big splash. He probably wanted to throw it at her. He saw her watching.

  ‘You said you’d fight like a bear once. Like your name,’ he cried. ‘You said you’d do anything.’

  How could she say, I just did; I just killed your uncle? She had not rescued him from Hefnir’s cowardice and must pay the price. There were no words, with the bile-burning of regret that no amount of water could quench.

  His little face was pinched, blackened and creased with worry. There was a deep line between his brows, like his father’s. She had a vision of what he would look like as a man and it was not a good one. Cruel and hard; his frown constant in bitterness. And that would be because of her, not the Serpent King, who would never trouble them again. She opened her arms but he turned away. He was quite right. She must go to him… but she was so, so tired.

  Bera went down to him and touched his shoulder gently.

  ‘Go away!’ He pushed her.

  They fell, exhausted, but then Heggi rolled towards her and pressed into her side. He had seen more than any child should. Bera hugged him but they didn’t fit and bones dug into other bones on bruised bodies. She dared not pull away. How else could she show Heggi how much she loved him? Gradually she heard his ragged breaths grow longer. Her boy had fallen into the bottomless sleep of total fatigue and with that thought she went gratefully into blackness herself.

  It was dark when they next woke. Bera could not remember stoking the burial pyre but the heap of ash was still red-hot in the centre so they used the last pieces of wood to make it flare up again. Heggi hoped it would be a beacon for his father. Bera wondered how long they should wait for him. Or, really, how long to wait for Heggi to think they had waited long enough, for surely he was by now dead. She refused to ask her Valla ancestors for help but some human feeling made her want him alive.

  Bending down out of the ash cloud came Faelan’s burned and blackened face. No, not Faelan: it became the Fetch who was Egill. It came closer until the whole sky was dark and blistered and it whispered knowledge of other beliefs, painting the rune of Brid in gold. Bera knew she was in a dream and tried to learn what the beliefs were, but when she woke Brid was all she could recall. She still had the taste of the words but no detail. Egill had last words for Bera, which would return if she did not chase them and send Egill to her rest.

  A small pinkness in the east might have been sunrise; could have been another eruption. Bera needed to think that they had slept at the right time of day and all the upheaval and oddness was turning into some kind of order, so she chose the hope of dawn. She went to the water’s edge and stared as far out to sea as the murk allowed. She was young and a mother of two. She would be a different kind of Valla. It was time to start.

  ‘You are never there, Mama. So I won’t listen anymore. Not to the ancestors, or the ravens, or crows, or whatever else lost me my son.’

  There was only the washing of waves on the shore. Had she been abandoned by the Vallas? Well, the first act of motherhood was to feed her child. Bera waded further out and scried the water until she saw the fast flick of silver. Happy days with Sigrid. Her skill was still there. Bera caught their dance through the water, plunged, and swept a fish up onto the beach. Her smile cracked her lips and the rusty taste of blood whetted her appetite more. She caught another and collected some driftwood.

  When she got back to the fire Heggi was awake. ‘Bera?’ he called out in his new, older voice.

  She made a decision. She would treat him as a reliable person, not as a childish bundle of care and duty. He would be her helper and friend. Her true second. With that thought came determination.

  ‘I’m back. We will eat and then, if your father has still not arrived, we are going to look for him.’

  There was one full flagon of water left on the boat and they drank their fill, then ate well. They needed something good
inside them – and possibly the smell of cooking would give Hefnir the spur to crawl, or at least shout.

  Heggi looked out to sea. ‘You know the homestead?’ he started. ‘You know Ginna…’

  ‘I don’t know if she’s still alive, Heggi.’

  Hope shines brightest in the darkest night of Hel, as Ottar would say.

  ‘You could have lied,’ he said. ‘To make me feel better.’

  ‘I promised never to lie to you again. Ginna may very well be waiting for her young man to return.’

  ‘So I could have my coming-of-age feast at Brightening!’

  Bera was glad to have given him this small comfort, but how strange the feast of Brightening seemed to her, in such a place and time.

  Hefnir did not appear. A prickle of her scalp made Bera look round – but when she touched her head it was a burst blister. Dismayed that her instinct for danger was not restored, she became brisk.

  ‘Fetch some more wood.’

  ‘Papa would have come if he’d seen the fire already.’

  ‘I’m banking up the fire, ready to clean and seal his wounds.’

  Cauterising. Her skern shivered.

  Heggi’s jaw dropped but he hurried to do as she asked and they laid some seaweed on top to keep it hot.

  ‘Now, Heggi. If your father can’t come to us, we must go to him. If we’re to search properly, we have to split up.’

  ‘What about bears and… things?’

  ‘No living creatures are left. You need to call so your father might hear, so that will work if there is anything else. Look and listen. Use your hunting skills.’

  He began to cry. ‘I wish Rakki was with me.’

  She went to hug him, then remembered her resolve.

  ‘So do I, Heggi, but he would be very frightened. It’s better that he’s with Faelan. Perhaps they’re with Ginna and the puppy Tikki and they’re all waiting for you.’

  ‘If we ever get back.’

  He was right; and Bera had the vision of Rakki bravely struggling on three legs. Even if he did get home, was life worth living without puffin hunting, for a dog? There was no comfort, only courage.

  ‘Chin up. You are my second, Heggi, don’t forget. Let’s see if Hefnir could have come down another way.’