by Suzie Wilde
They walked along the shore until they saw the sluggish flow of lava, which tumbled over itself into the sea with a hiss of melting snow and ice. Even at this distance, the heat pushed them back and made every burn hurt more. They tried the other direction, which was devastated, and decided Hefnir could only use the same gully, filled with boulders and difficult.
‘There is no other way,’ Bera said.
‘I expect he’s probably fallen,’ said Heggi, ‘that’s all. He’ll be waiting for us up there somewhere.’
They sharpened their knives on a stone, took a stick each and then Bera sent him over to the left-hand side, while she took the right, the side nearer the lava flow. She climbed the gully, beating rocks with the stick and calling, though her scalded throat hurt badly. Once she thought she heard a reply but it was only a gust carrying Heggi’s voice over to her, sounding like his father. They both called over and over. It was hopeless and Bera stopped.
A blackbird began to sing. Its lovely song in so unhappy a place was a sign and only when she felt that spark of hope did Bera realise how deep her despair had been. This was a true hope, in her heart, not her mind, and not for Hefnir but for the world. The blackbird had returned, telling the world it was there, alive, and restored Bera to her true self.
There was a sound of excited clapping. Her skern was leaning against a rock, looking as if they were on a summer’s day hunt.
It just came to me. What your Valla gift is. You are knowledge, that’s your part in things. Hope.
‘Folk always say my knowledge brings the opposite.’
Knowledge is itself hope. He’s over there.
Her skern airily circled a long finger then pointed at two tall boulders, leaning together like drunkards.
Bera had noticed them on the way down but they were hard to reach. Only the fact she knew Hefnir was there made her cut and slash through blackened stumps. When she was closer she could see where a body might have crashed through from above and then slid down. There was a trail of blood leading down into a gap between the boulders. She pushed her way closer.
Hefnir was propped against the rock, his head on his chest. She squeezed through a tight opening and went to him but he did not stir. Bera knelt and put a finger below his ear. There might have been a slight flutter – or was it her own heartbeat? His eyes were closed and his face deathly. Had her skern found him too late? She put her cheek to his lips but could feel no breath.
‘Hefnir?’
Bera rested her head on his chest and listened for a heartbeat. Nothing. But Hefnir’s skern was not there. Had he taken on the new belief and revoked his skern? She turned his hand and studied the blue veins that coursed over his wrist, where Cronan had his serpent tattoo. Wrong arm. She took the other, with a sense of dread. Hefnir had the same tattoo, freshly stained. It shocked and disgusted her. What had he done to earn it that Egill had not…? What had Cronan said? It was the mark of Brid. Perhaps Egill’s Fetch was telling her about Brid in the dream so that she would understand Hefnir and save him. Whatever the truth, whatever he now believed, Bera was a healer. She held the unblemished wrist again and pressed. Was there a tiny movement? There… and again, there. Slow, weak, but a heartbeat.
‘Come on, Hefnir!’
She took the leather flask from her belt, tipped his head back and let some water flow down his throat. He coughed and his eyes flickered. He smiled.
‘Hefnir!’ She had to rouse him. ‘Where are you hurt?’
He tried to turn, then fell back. She pulled back his jerkin that side and gave a small cry. The wound itself was bad enough but its edges were angry welts that spread towards his chest and back. It did not look like a sword cut.
‘This is poison.’
Hefnir licked his lips and she gave him more water. Waited.
‘Wolfsbane. Not axe. He…’
‘Don’t speak that vile name.’
‘Not all bad. Serpent – benefactor…’
‘Shh, now. He can’t hurt us anymore. You killed him.’
He closed his eyes to deny it. ‘Hel… got him.’
Let him think so. ‘Then you tried to reach the beach?’
‘Earth shook, fell. Head.’ He raised one finger.
‘I do know where a head is.’ Bera smiled.
His eyes smiled back.
She carefully parted his matted hair. ‘There’s a gash but it’s your poisoned wound that worries me. I have a remedy, I think.’
The only true remedy for wolfsbane from Iraland or the Abbotry would be growing next to the plant but she hoped the dried leaves from the farmstead would help, if any were left.
‘Too late. Stay.’
‘I can’t, Hefnir. Your son is searching for you. He needs to know you are safe.’
‘I’m dying.’ His eyes pleaded. Was it her he wanted or any company in death?
‘I will cure you. You have to trust me. It’s my duty to heal.’ She got to her feet.
‘Wait!’ He weakly gestured her closer. ‘Please.’
It took him a while to gather his strength to speak. ‘Must say… sorry.’
He should say it to Heggi. His eyes clouded and his head fell back. Who told her hearing was the last sense to fail?
‘You will not die.’ She stayed brisk. ‘I will send Heggi to watch over you and then I shall return with a remedy.’ She quickly crossed her fingers. ‘I’m leaving you the water, here, in your hand. Feel it? Then you’ll feel better and we will get you back aboard the Raven.’
He did not flicker at the name.
‘I will be very fast, Hefnir. Don’t you dare die before I get back.’
Outside, she let her tears fall. The poison had been in his body a long time. Would he die before he had the chance to make his peace with Heggi? She prayed to every past Valla healer to give her their skill and that Faelan’s plants might work. But was it only to give Hefnir time with Heggi? She couldn’t say. Death was bringing her no closer to understanding what she felt about her husband.
She shouted for Heggi and heard an answer. He had to go a long way down to scramble back up and she lost sight of him but kept calling, so he would find her. When he did, she could see from the brave set of his mouth that he was braced for bad news. She quickly told him his father was alive and he burst into tears.
‘He’s very sick, though,’ Bera said.
‘Where is he?’ Heggi asked, looking all round them.
‘It’s how we missed him. He must have crawled into that tight crevice over there for safety. You’ll have to squeeze through. Stay with him, Heggi. If he falls asleep, wake him. He must not slip away into darkness. Talk to him, but don’t make him answer. It tires him.’
‘Where will you be?’
Hiding the fact there may not be a remedy.
‘I shall do my best to save him and that means making a purge, like before.’
He nodded. ‘But be as quick as you can because I might run out of things to say.’
An ordinary boy’s concern. They seemed already at peace, father and son, simply in the blood-tie. Would Heggi forgive her so easily? She had to save Hefnir as the first step. She was almost too frightened to put her hand into her deep apron pocket. She found the crofter’s salve, nearly all gone, and right at the bottom a few crumbling, black, dried-up leaves. Not enough.
How like the Serpent to lie, even at the last, and say it was a clean blow through the heart instead of the coward’s way. He must always have planned to use wolfsbane.
Bera returned with the mashed salve, trying to sound bright. She daubed some onto the wound then tore long strips of cloth from her skirt to bind it. Hefnir did not stir throughout, and Heggi flinched for him. Then, somehow, they had to get him down to the boat. And so she and Heggi slashed and trampled a path down to the beach. For the first time in days, the air was clear and bright enough to see their way. They took the oars from the boat and lashed a small sail to them, making a rough sled to lay Hefnir on. They dragged it back, tugged and pushed Hefnir through the
gap and rolled him onto it. Luckily, he was still in the deep swoon. Then they battled and barged the sled down to the beach. Hefnir was like a ghost by the time they came to a stop beside the Raven.
‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’ Heggi’s voice was hard and tight. ‘You’re not to burn him.’
She remembered they had banked the fire to seal his wounds.
‘I won’t, Heggi. You’re right, he’s too poorly. We must get him aboard the Raven.’
‘Why? Why keep moving him?’
Bera believed that Ottar’s skill made the Raven lucky; that the vessel’s seaworthiness would heal. Its iron nails would keep them from harm. Everything aboard was shipshape and orderly. It was a world she understood and, if he stayed alive long enough, so would Hefnir.
‘We have to, Heggi. It’s our only chance to save him – but if he dies, he would rather be on a boat, out on a sea path. As would I.’
33
‘I said we have to lift him, Heggi.’
His eyes were wide. ‘But it will kill him!’
How to explain? ‘All right. I believe in the power of boat-song and Hefnir does too. It is his blood, as much as mine.’
Bera acknowledged for the first time their shared flesh in their baby, Valdis.
Heggi said nothing but went and stood by the boat.
She joined him. ‘Do you feel Raven’s boat-song, Heggi? Put your hands on the hull, here. Look at Ottar’s work. If you feel, you’ll understand, and help me risk it.’
He nodded.
First, the horror of searing Hefnir’s wound. It was best done quickly. Hefnir was already in a deep swoon, but Bera got Heggi to put a piece of wood in his father’s mouth and then hold his shoulders down. She took a burning spar from the fire and held it to his cut side. They all screamed with the agony of it. The smell was stomach-turning and Heggi stumbled away, dry-retching and groaning.
Hefnir somehow stayed alive. His underlying strength must have been greater than she thought. Bera used the block and line to winch the rough sled aboard. Her guts wrenched, sharing Hefnir’s pain precisely as they hauled him up. Then she and Heggi moved the rollers, one after the other, to take the boat into the shallows, pushing with their shoulders, tired to their bones. It was a long, slow job but the Raven was launched, with Hefnir aboard, looking deathly.
Bera thought it would be all right now, but then Heggi kicked the hull and stepped back ashore.
‘I don’t want all this,’ he blurted. ‘I can’t… I miss Rakki so much. And you and he might…’
‘I shall do everything I can to save your father.’
‘I didn’t mean that!’
Bera dare not leave the boat to drift but she reached towards Heggi.
‘Leave me alone,’ he shouted. ‘You left me with the Serpent. Your enemy! You left me.’
This again, and again. Of course the anger was still inside and had to vent.
‘Heggi, you’re my own precious son.’
‘No, I’m not. You’re as bad as him! You just say it when you want something. Ever since you had that baby you’ve been different.’
‘That baby is your sister.’
‘She isn’t! I hate her! She hates Rakki. She’s not my sister! You love her and you don’t love me.’
Her skern had told her to learn to love the male of the species a lifetime ago, and she did love Heggi – in a different, sweeter way, not the furious pain and longing that began with the birth. Valdis was her flesh and her bone, her sinews, guts and every indrawn breath of her, like her skern. It wasn’t willed, it just was.
Valdis is no ordinary baby.
‘As a Valla I hated her.’
And you fear her still.
Not simply because Valdis was the next link in the chain – Bera was going to die, anyway – but because Obsidian had revealed that the chain of Vallas could enjoy being vicious destroyers. Now her distinct feelings as a woman and a Valla were clear, but had nothing to do with her choice. If Egill’s death had not stopped the eruption, Bera must die. But where was Obsidian?
‘We need to talk honestly, Heggi, but this is not the time. You can see the ice cap up there, can’t you? When it blows there will be no safe place, except possibly right out at sea. We have to be strong and all you need to know is that I love you.’
‘I hate you.’
‘I love you.’
‘I don’t care!’
‘All right, listen. Sometimes in life you have to do your duty and put aside everything and everyone you love. You can’t do what you want to do but what you have to do. It’s what being a Valla means but in every life someone has a moment like this. You will. It took me an age to understand it but I was ready to die to save everyone; to save your life and all the animals and all the people who breathe. That seemed to me a better thing than sparing our feelings for a few hours or days before our world ended.’
‘It hasn’t ended,’ he mumbled, sullen.
He kicked some pebbles and for a moment Rakki was there, chasing them. The loss was in that moment greater than all the creatures in the world.
Bera brushed it away. ‘Egill may indeed have saved us. She told me she had been born for that moment and perhaps she was. Now we have to go on. I hope you can forgive me in time and until then I shall look after you as I always have done, even when it seems I’ve turned my back.’
Heggi gave her a look of ice-blue steel, his father’s boy. ‘It didn’t seem anything.’ He clambered aboard. ‘You did turn your back and you know it.’
Bera pushed off with an oar. Heggi took up the other and they pulled out to sea in silent rhythm, like a corpse boat.
Bera left Hefnir undisturbed on his sled and covered him with his own bed roll, hoping familiar smells might soothe him. They lashed him amidships where there was the least boat movement. He was in the grey world between life and death. There was no more she could do for him until she had the right plants. Were they growing in the Abbotry, or Iraland? If the poison came from the medicine garden at the Abbotry there was just a chance that Faelan’s farmstead was near enough for the remedy to work.
Heggi was rubbing his eyes with his fist and then with the ragged end of his tunic.
‘You’ll make them worse,’ she said.
‘They really hurt and I can’t see very well.’ He was less angry now he needed her.
‘Once we’re under way, you can keep them closed. There’s fresh water aboard, so we’ll bathe them now and that will stop them smarting so much.’
Bera bathed her eyes too, and they were less sore, but as they were making ready to leave there was a red line across her vision. Her skern had warned her about blindness right at the start. She had been blind in both eyes and mind at times. The red line suggested her sight was damaged for good but that was a worry for later. She stood at the helm, faced to windward and breathed clean air for the first time in days, it seemed. On board the Raven, nothing could destroy her joy.
She clapped her hands. ‘Let’s get cracking!’
It was exhilarating to be in charge of Ottar’s boat, her lines sleek again; proper, as her father would have said. And to be completely in charge, with only Heggi as crew. The wind was fair, so they set the sail for the south and east. There was no point doing anything now except trusting to Fate. Bera felt the boat-song in her bones. In the blood. In the bones. In the heart.
When they got out into open water Heggi tugged her arm. He pointed behind them.
‘Look!’
Beyond the headland the dark dragonboat of the Serpent King was cutting through the water towards them with warlike speed. The red line in her sight made it look faster.
‘They must think we have the Serpent aboard!’
‘Are they coming to get me?’ asked Heggi.
‘Why would they? It was your uncle that was bargaining. They probably think we have him, so will trade for his life and then get back to Iraland fast.’ She hoped once they saw he was not aboard they would leave them alone.
‘What if it is
me they want, though?’
‘No, Heggi. There’s nothing here for them: no Serpent King. No Obsidian.’
Heggi moved away.
He is afraid and needing you to prove your love.
‘But they will have me to deal with if they try to take you!’ she added, too late.
He shrugged and went to sit near his father. Bera knew she would not win him over with one speech that sounded false. And, of course, they must have been lying in wait for the Raven for a reason. Her scalp was burned, so she had no idea if her instinct for danger was still there. Did they want the Serpent? The tattooed crewman either left him to die or didn’t care and sailed without him. Surely they were only heading back to Iraland. She willed it. Both boats needed to head south but why didn’t they leave more sea room? With a full crew to keep the sail trimmed and its war lines, there would be no outrunning a dragonboat.
Bera kept on the wind and concentrated on the feel of the Raven. The helm sang true, now the rehogging was gone, like the ring of crystal with a flick of a fingernail. Her clever father. This may have been his finest boat – and he would have known it – yet he offered to bodge something quickly to help her save their enemies.
The dragonboat was closing. She squinted her eyes and the red line in her sight showed the sea-riders were at a ramming angle. Bera followed the sun’s path over the waves. There was something strange about it; instead of flickering at the surface, it seemed to glow up through the green water to meet the red line.
It’s not the sun.
Nor was it a red line but a river of flame; a sea current that was the breath of a fire serpent.
‘It looks like the burning that flowed down the mountain.’
That’s exactly what it is. Lava.
Bera let out a throat-ripping roar of anguish. It confirmed all the stifled fears that she had tried to persuade herself were left on the shore behind her.
The chain of eruptions was only starting: the red line was one of the scorching links that went under the sea to set the world ablaze. The lead weight settled in her chest again. She had failed in every possible way. Poor Heggi. Empty words. She could not stop the sea-riders from taking him, nor save his father from dying. Suddenly that was a small thing.