Biting my lip, I ran my fingers over the red book. The leather was so soft it almost felt like a living beast, something with a heart and a spirit. The spine was ridged, its bumps like the curves of ribs beneath skin. My fingers stopped at the top and, slowly, I slid the book from the shelf.
It was heavier than I’d expected, and it fell open when I pulled it into my arms. The pages were thick and creamy, covered with tight black script.
I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I gasped for air. Stars, what a thing of beauty! Gently, I ran my fingers over the dark, even letters. They were all so lovely, in their own way, like black tree trunks standing against fresh snow. And they were so even, so neat, that it was almost difficult to believe they were the work of a man with a brush and a little pot of ink.
Some of the patterns repeated themselves, I noticed, the way some trees split the same way, or grow the same low curves in their branches. Carefully, I flipped the pages and watched the curves and lines parade across the page.
What had Nøkkyn found in this book? What secrets did those black lines hold? I bit my lower lip, remembering his story about the war of Agoria, how he tricked his enemies into attacking the upstart province. Was that the kind of knowledge Nøkkyn found in these books, stories of trickery and deception?
I flipped a handful of pages, then stopped. A small rip stretched across the top of this page, half hidden by the book’s spine. Its rough edge caught under my fingertip. I slid my nail into the rip and tugged downward, my heart in my mouth. The thick page parted like water, soundless and smooth.
My hand dropped the length of the book as the paper peeled away like an onion skin. My heart hammered so loudly I worried the guards outside the room would hear it booming like thunder. At the bottom of the book, the page gave way with a soft whisper, almost a sigh, and the paper fell fluttering to my feet.
I froze. What in the Nine Realms had I just done? This book was worth more than my family’s holding, perhaps more than our entire village. And I’d just pulled a page from it.
Trembling, I closed the red cover and slid the book back onto the shelf. Then I crouched to examine the page I’d freed. It looked exactly like all the other pages, a mute forest of winter trees, their branches bare and foreboding.
But it meant something to Nøkkyn, this book. Perhaps even this very page. It may contain secrets, or some further deceptions he’d use to terrorize his kingdom.
I picked the page up between two fingers and carried it to the low embers of the fire. Carefully, I lay it atop the ashes, then rocked back on my heels. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, and I had enough time to fear I’d smothered what little life was left in that fire with the heavy page of writing. Then the edges of the page curled up and blackened. A moment later, small, dark spots appeared in the heart of the page.
Then the fire caught, and the entire page lit at once in a dazzling rush of light and heat. I flushed with dark pleasure. That page may have been important. Crucial. It may have held some secret treasure of King Nøkkyn’s. And now it was naught but ashes.
I realized I was smiling as I came to my feet and stalked the bookcases once again. I could have thrown entire books in the fire, yes, but their absence would be noted. Pages, though. Mere pages would be much harder to notice. Already the red book was back on the shelf, its diminishment invisible.
And there were other books whose spines were marked by an absence of dust, who must have been pulled down recently and consulted. Or enjoyed, for all I knew. I could picture Nøkkyn in here, sitting on his gilded leather chair before a low, glowing fire, a book open on his knees.
I pulled a narrow blue volume from the shelf. It opened neatly in my arms, and I slid a fingernail down the spine. Such a fragile thing, paper. So easily torn and burnt.
“You took something from me, Nøkkyn,” I whispered to the small room. “I’ll take something from you.”
I worked at destroying Nøkkyn’s library until the sconce on the wall burned low, and I worried I’d lose the light. Then I carefully re-fastened the collar around my neck and curled on the rug before the fire’s low embers, sighing in contentment. For the first time since Fenris and I had emerged from the Ironwood to view the charred embers that were once my family’s home, I felt at peace.
THE MONSTER AND THE PRISONER: CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was only half-asleep when the door opened again. Torchlight flooded the chamber, making me rub my eyes. Two guards stood at the door, their faces impassive. I recognized the taller guard, the one who had unwittingly shared his intimacy before me, but he did not meet my eye.
“Bring her out,” Nøkkyn’s voice barked.
I stood as they approached, my fingers nervously trailing around the bottle sewn into the bustle of my dress. I tried not to look at the bookcases, at the dozens and dozens of volumes I’d defaced, as they marched me through the room.
The hallway was dark; it must have been night. King Nøkkyn stood before me, wearing an enormous cloak and a thin, studded circlet on his black hair. He looked more regal and imposing, somehow, and I struggled with the sudden urge to kneel.
“Little Sol.” His thin lips curled into a smile. “Tonight you die.”
I swallowed hard as my gut curled in on itself. Nøkkyn turned away, sweeping down the corridor with his majestic, fur-lined cloak swirling behind him. Fenris is here, I told myself as the guards pulled me after him. Fenris will find me.
But where are they taking me?
The dungeons flashed through my mind, with their fetid smell and lurid torchlight painting the hard stone walls. I remembered thin hands reaching through bars, calling out to me as I left the sea cell. My stomach lurched, and my feet stumbled across the stone corridor. The tall guard caught my elbow and kept me from crashing to the ground.
“Where are we going?” I whispered.
He shook his head, his blank eyes focused far ahead. I curled my arms around my chest, as if I could hold myself together. Even remembering the twisting, blackened pages I’d burned last night brought me no satisfaction.
Perhaps Nøkkyn would be true to his word. Perhaps I would at least die a quick death.
The guards, one on either side, led me through twisting corridors and down wide, stone flights of stairs. Nøkkyn swept ahead without looking back, and I’d almost given up hope when we turned a sharp corner and faced a pair of wide wooden doors that were open to the night sky. The moon hung low, full and luminous, over the jagged walls of Nøkkyn’s fortress. Its white light shone cold on the row of rotting skulls.
For a heartbeat I was too relieved to move, until the tall guard took me by the elbow again and pulled me through the door. Only then did my gaze drop to the crowd assembled in the courtyard. And to the enormous pile of split wood in the center, with a tall stake at the summit.
A pyre, I realized. My funeral pyre.
My entire body felt numb as the guards led me down the steps and into the crowd. Torches flickered on the walls of the courtyard, casting uneven bars of shifting light across the crowd. Faces passed me in a blur, most of them turning away as I met their gaze. I searched frantically for Fenris’s pale eyes and high cheekbones, his soft lips and ember hair, but I found nothing.
Had Fenris been captured? What if he was the one in the dungeons, in the sea cell, watching as the ocean swallowed the iron grate?
Or maybe he’d abandoned me to my fate. Perhaps the bread and the mead was a different sort of message, a parting gift. Or something to dull the pain of my execution.
I didn’t start to panic until my feet banged against the rough edge of the piled firewood. Without thinking, my back stiffened and my legs froze. The guard’s grip around my elbow tightened, but we did not move.
“My subjects!”
Nøkkyn’s voice echoed off the stones of the courtyard. The crowd shuffled, turning. Nøkkyn’s black-clad figure stood on a dais beside the pyre. He was so close I could have spit on him; for a moment, I was sorely tempted, although the thought
of another gag gave me pause.
“I give so much to you,” Nøkkyn said, spreading his arms in a magnanimous gesture. He was so high above the crowd that the torchlight barely touched him. Illuminated by the cold glow of moonlight, he looked pale and terrifying, like a monster from one of Bard Sturlinsen’s stories.
“And I ask so little from you,” he continued, nodding benevolently at the crowd.
Most of the men and women gathered at his feet shifted uneasily, or stared at the cobblestones. The guard gripping my elbow kept his eyes focused high, perhaps on the distant towers of the fortress. Or on the swollen moon suspended in the dark sky.
Nøkkyn shook his head and clucked his tongue in disapproval. “And yet, there are times when even my most reasonable agreements are violated. Times when I must act to restore the order which underlies our entire kingdom.”
He turned his dark eyes to me. “You see before you a peasant girl, daughter of slaves, from a mud farm in the wilds of the Ironwood. To save her family from starvation, I generously agreed to allow her to accompany me here. To this castle.”
His arms spread wide again, as if he were overwhelmed by the enormity of his own gratitude. My mouth felt dry. I wanted to scream the truth, to tell about ashes and burial mounds, to let these people know how exactly Nøkkyn had fulfilled his promise to take care of my family.
But I bit my tongue. The people in this courtyard already knew. They lived in the castle. What was it Queen Angrboða had told Nøkkyn? I’ve seen the evidence of your superior negotiations. Their skulls are all rotting on iron stakes lining this castle’s walls.
“This girl,” Nøkkyn continued, spitting out the word girl as if it were a curse, “saw fit to defy me. Me! Her king! She ran into the woods with a monster.”
His thin lips parted, forming a terrifying smile. “And tonight, she will learn what happens to those who defy the king.”
Nøkkyn nodded at the guard, whose grip hardened around my arm until I could feel my skin bruising under his fingertips. I squirmed, and the firewood clattered under my bare feet. Frantically, I turned to the crowd, searching for Fenris’s soft lips and gentle smile. The guard with the beet-root nose leered at me. Brunhild stood in the crowd, her eyes on the stones beneath her feet. And, standing beneath the farthest torch, I saw Svensen, the man who’d taken me from the scorched ruins of my family’s farm.
The guards dragged me up the pile of split wood to the stake at the top. I didn’t realize I was pleading to be let go until the taller guard gagged me with a strip of dirty cloth. Nøkkyn’s voice filled the air again.
“This girl defiled herself,” Nøkkyn shouted. “She defied her king to lay with monsters! Before her head can decorate my castle, she must be purified. By fire.”
The crowd in front of me blurred as my eyes swam with tears. The guard yanked my arms behind me and tied my hands together behind the stake. Dimly, I realized the knots were loose.
Of course, they weren’t really worried about me running away.
I screamed when the guards stepped back, but the sound was swallowed by my gag. The dry firewood shifted and hissed under their feet, and they descended the pyre in wide, quick steps. I turned my face to the round circle of the moon. How could it be the same brilliant full moon that had shone on Fenris and Týr, on our lovemaking? Was Fenris under this same moon tonight, somewhere far away, beneath the cool shadows of the Ironwood forest, wrapped in the circle of Týr’s arms?
Light flared before me as the tall guard dropped a torch to the firewood. For a moment nothing happened, and I had enough time to wonder what they would do if the fire didn’t light. Then a tendril of delicate orange flame leapt upward, licking the wood, spreading and growing. A moment later, a flush of heat brushed my cheeks.
I turned away. The crowd had fallen silent, and the soft crackle of burning wood filled the air. It was a comforting sound, like the promise of warmth on a cold winter morning, the gentle reassurance of light in the darkness. Coils of smoke drifted through the air, curling gently around each other. I watched them float into the darkness and dance across the moon’s wide white face.
From the far end of the courtyard, half hidden by a rough wooden stable, a fluttering of golden sparks floated upward to join the smoke.
Spiraling pillars of woodsmoke obscured my vision. I coughed into the gag. Blinking to clear the torrent of tears unleashed by the smoke, I scanned the sky. The sparks had vanished; perhaps they’d been nothing more than a figment of my desperate imagination. The air thickened, stinging my eyes. Waves of heat washed over me. I focused on the corner of the courtyard where I’d seen the sparks.
Something dark and massive emerged from the shadows behind the stable, something so enormous it blotted out the skull-lined ramparts of Nøkkyn’s castle. Fenris’s pale eyes opened, shining like twin moons against the ebony sky. His gaze fixed on me. His massive maw opened. A roar split the night, shaking the very stones of the courtyard.
The crowd screamed and shattered. Another sound rose above the deep, shaking roar and the crowd’s terrified clamour. Laugher. From his dais above the courtyard, King Nøkkyn was laughing.
“The bastard of the Ironwood shows himself at last!” Nøkkyn bellowed. “Guards! Kill the monster!”
Swords hissed from their scabbards and iron crashed against stone. As the smoke swirled around my head, blades flashed in the torchlight. Fenris moved quickly, surging toward the pyre, and the swords followed. Fenris spun, bared his teeth, lowered his jaw. Someone screamed from the chaos beneath me.
Wood clattered, and a blast of heat swept over me. I spun to see King Nøkkyn’s face, his eyes wild, his lips pulled back in a snarl. He’d leapt from his dais to my funeral pyre. He scrambled up the pile of firewood. His wild, black eyes pinned me as smoke crept out from between his feet in thin, white tendrils. I stared in horror as flames began to curl around the black hem of his cloak.
Then he stood beside me. I flinched, trying to pull away. Nøkkyn sank his hand into my hair and yanked my head back. I gasped as his pale visage loomed above me.
“You’re mine, bitch,” he snarled.
His breath washed over me, hot and acrid as the smoke. He pulled off his cloak and threw it to the hungry flames.
“I claimed you,” Nøkkyn growled.
Silver flashed against the night sky, so bright it may have been a sliver taken from the moon itself. Nøkkyn’s dagger. He brought the blade down and pressed it against my throat as delicately as a lover’s caress. The metal felt cold after the hungry heat of the fire.
“You’ll die now, little Sol of the Ironwood,” Nøkkyn whispered into my hair. “You’ll die as my property. My whore.”
The blade pressed into my neck. My vision blurred, then reddened. There was no pain, only a sense of pressure, of weight, as though the Ironwood mountains themselves were collapsing upon my windpipe.
Then darkness fell from the sky.
Smoke rushed into my lungs as the pressure on my neck vanished, ripped away. I saw the flash of Nøkkyn’s pale face and the bright silver gleam of his blade as he tried to fend off the monster. Fenris’s bulk descended, and King Nøkkyn vanished into my husband’s jaws.
The king’s muscular, black-clad body seemed like nothing more than a child’s plaything caught between Fenris’s fangs. Fenris raised his head and shook his muzzle. Even above the merry crackling of my own funeral pyre, I heard Nøkkyn’s spine snap.
Nøkkyn’s limp body fell to the cobblestones with a wet slap. Blood spurted thickly from at least a dozen massive, fist-sized holes his chest; in the torchlight, the dark liquid spreading across his lifeless body looked almost oily. Absurdly, as my head spun from the smoke, I remembered the white feather mattress waiting for us in the secret shelter of our cave. Ashes flew past my vision, floating on the heated air like the tiny down feathers our lovemaking released from that mattress.
My breath stuck in my throat, although I was sucking as hard as I could on the wet fabric of the gag. The courtyard ech
oed with shouting and the clang of metal. Several torches rushed at Fenris’s flanks, but my vision wavered before I could see if they found their mark. Dimly, I realized Fenris was moving. His jaws sank to the pyre and opened. Blood streaked his massive white teeth.
“Sol,” he whispered.
I pulled at the rope tying my hands together, but the knots didn’t budge. The world spun. My chest felt tight, as if I’d been buried alive beneath Nøkkyn’s mountain throne. Dimly, I wondered if my throat had been slit. Was that why I couldn’t seem to breathe?
Fenris opened his mouth and closed his jaw around me. His teeth bit into my arms and legs as he pulled me, along with the rough stake, from the fire.
The stars whirled crazily in the velvet sky as Fenris turned away from the fire. My lungs ached, and I gasped for breath. Everywhere, everyone was screaming. How could the world hold so much screaming?
I twisted my head away from the fire and saw the wall of Nøkkyn’s castle. Rotting skulls grinned at us from atop the iron spikes. They were so tall, I thought. Even taller than Fenris.
Fenris’s mouth closed around my body, and he sank toward the ground. The metallic rasp of blood filled my nostrils, noticeable even above the swirls of smoke from my funeral pyre. A low rumble radiated from Fenris’s chest.
He leapt.
THE MONSTER AND THE PRISONER: CHAPTER TWELVE
Stars rushed down to meet us. The breath was forced from my lungs as Fenris leapt the wall of Nøkkyn’s great fortress with me clenched in his jaws. He screamed as we crested the wall and tilted downward, a long, low sound which echoed around my body. We landed hard in the darkness, sinking to the ground.
Fenris’s mouth opened with a long groan. I rolled to the ground, gasping for air. My lungs burned, and my vision swam. We appeared to be in a dark canyon, stark with pale moonlight and deep shadows. I thrashed against the stake tied to my back, pulling frantically at the rope which bound my hands.
The Complete Fenris Series Page 31