They climbed down further, the passage becoming steep.
‘What is an aspect?’
‘There are many wells. Some of wisdom, some of magical power, some unknown to me. All are contained in the well of fate in Constantinople.’
‘What is here?’
The howl of the wolf seemed to squeeze the tunnel in on them.
‘I don’t know.’ Styliane glanced behind her. ‘I am not sure.’
‘You are afraid.’
‘Only a fool wouldn’t be. Now down.’
The passage dropped into blackness, the water splashing down. It was nearly vertical – a shaft more than a tunnel. The stone was damp and crumbly.
Styliane hesitated. Tola did not. She jammed her back into the shaft, pushing into the wall to stop herself from falling. Then she began to wriggle down. Her fear had gone, though the water beneath her sighed and moaned and the stream made the tunnel slippy and her back wet. The effort kept her warm, though she could feel her damp clothes clinging to her back.
The shaft turned again after a little way and, while she still had to dig her legs in to the walls to stop herself from tumbling, the descent was not as steep. The gritty stone was in her mouth, nose and eyes. She wanted to wipe it away but feared that if she let go her grip she would fall. Above her, Styliane came down in a shower of dirt, crying out as her foot slipped momentarily.
The rune light guttered but it did not fail. Now, at the shaft’s bottom, Tola could see the reflected gold of water and feel the pull of the well very strongly. The sensation was more than physical. It was as if her mind was being drawn there. Her thoughts would not hold but seemed to leak from her as she looked down into the bright waters.
‘This is very strange,’ said Styliane, her voice full of fear.
The waters below seemed to breathe like a great animal, glittering like a dragon’s back. They were whispering to Tola, though in no language she knew. They were bubbling with heat. Yes, they were hot.
Down more and still more. Tola had been to this place before, or one very like it, she was sure. The tunnel opened onto a rocky ledge in a large cavern. All over the walls carved snakes slithered in the wavering light. On the ceiling of the cavern was carved the body of a great serpent, its teeth sinking into the roots of a tree. The cavern was flooded with water that steamed and bubbled.
“Hvergelmir!’ said Styliane. ‘This is the source of all the cold rivers. It is a harbinger of treachery. Where are my runes? What is happening to my runes?’
Tola drank in the heat of the well. Why was it hot if it was a source of cold rivers?
She saw that the body of the snake on the ceiling had runes carved on it.
Styliane saw them too and read:
‘Now may every
oath thee bite
That sworn thou hast,
By the water
bright of Leipt,
And the ice-cold
stone of Uth.’
‘What is it?’ said Tola. The words were resonant to her. She saw brother against brother, waves rolling on a wide ocean, blood on the sand of a beach.
‘A Valkyrie’s curse.’
‘This is a place where oaths are broken,’ said Tola. ‘You swore not to harm me.’
‘Yes,’ said Styliane. She slipped her scarf around Tola’s neck and pulled tight. Tola saw white lights flare at the edges of her vision, felt her head bursting with pressure and then she saw no more.
21 A Voice in the Dark
‘What is the stone at his neck?’
Freydis walked besides Gylfa while Loys strode ahead. She shivered. The rune was with her again, undaunted by Loys’s presence. And yet, when he took away that stone from his neck, she felt the symbol trembling within her.
Hers was a violent, flying, stabbing rune but before Loys it was unsure, fazed – though not quite cowed. It was the symbol of the god Tyr, king of war. He had dared to put his hand into the wolf ’s mouth as assurance that it would not be tricked and tied forever. But the wolf was so tricked and tied and Tyr lost his hand, though not his courage. The rune danced forward and back, as Gylfa had danced when she had confronted him for the first time. She had seen that dance many times before – warriors in a battle, lined up against their opponents, goading them to advance – afraid to strike the first blow, afraid to be the first to run. She had fought in Italy against the Normans and had noted that, if you attacked as a line of men were coming forward, they would usually oppose you. Attack when they were dancing back and there was a good chance they’d flee. It was as if their movement was a current. Push against it and be opposed. Push with it and be carried.
‘It is a protection against magic.’
‘Then why does he remove it and retie it?’
‘His own magic.’ Gylfa smiled.
Freydis did not warm to this boy. He had spent a while sulking that she was coming along but suddenly changed his tune and become friendly. She saw him for what he was – a user, though not a very accomplished one. His smile had come too quickly, he was too eager to please. Men like that didn’t last long in the company of warriors.
‘You are from the north?’ he said.
‘As you can tell.’
‘What part?’
‘Hordaland.’
‘They are fierce men there. And ladies.’
‘Not fierce enough. They could not defend me so I took up arms.’
‘You were married!’
Gylfa apparently found this funny. With a mouth like that the boy was lucky to have lived. He’d have swum home on any longship she’d been on.
‘I was better looking in the days when I sat at the milking stool instead of swinging a sword. Ugliness is the fate of old warriors. You’re good looking enough, I notice.’
‘I wouldn’t be interested in tumbling you,’ said the boy. ‘You are a hardy woman and not made for softness, I think.’
‘Who brought it up?’ said Freydis. ‘If I were to choose a man he would be of tougher stock than you.’
‘Give yourself to our leader,’ said Gylfa, nodding ahead to Loys. ‘You would have mighty sons by him.’
‘I’ve had my sons,’ said Freydis.
‘Were they strong men?’
‘Until they died.’
‘If you have grown sons you cannot have long to live. And yet you are strong, I grant you.’
‘None of us has long to live,’ said Freydis. ‘Look around you. Do you expect to get out of this?’
‘I hope to.’
‘Hope is for cowards,’ said Freydis. ‘The warrior seeks only a noble death. How can you go into a battle thinking of life, of old age, a fire and a mug of ale? Think instead of great deeds, strong enemies, a fight worthy of the skalds’ songs.’
‘You are not seeking death,’ said Gylfa. ‘Why come to the chief asking for help? Why not throw yourself into the first battle you see?’
‘I’ve thrown myself into enough battles,’ said Freydis. ‘And I have something to live for beyond glory.’
‘What?’
‘Love,’ said Freydis. ‘It can make cowards of us all.’
‘So you have a man?’
‘I love the lady I serve.’
‘It is to be expected,’ said Gylfa. ‘You have acted like a man too long and now think like one.’
Freydis laughed. ‘As if I could be so stupid.’
They passed an ash-black village, just three houses, all personality burned from them. Freydis recalled her own longhouse – how it had bowed at one end; how the green moss grew on the landward side of the roof, though the seaward side was bare but for snowdrops that grew there in the spring; how her husband had built the door low, which kept out the draughts but made it hard to get the cows in during bad weather. He was away a lot and had never quite remembered to duck enough on his way in. If the h
ouse had burned it would look no different to these.
Loys made them keep walking well into the night. It was very dark but he found his way easily. The boy moaned that it was too cold. Loys told him, rightly, that it would be colder if they stopped moving. The boy said he was hungry. Freydis saw no point in that. They were all hungry, and they would stay hungry. May as well say that he was breathing, though in this place that seemed itself unusual enough to be worthy of comment.
‘What’s that?’ Gylfa pointed ahead, his voice low.
A blur of yellow light was visible through the hazy night air like a daub of paint on a grey wall.
Loys sniffed. ‘Men,’ he said. ‘The town, I think. Death keeps his larder here.’
Freydis thought that an odd thing to say but, then again, Loys was a famous warrior. It was right he should speak poetically.
Freydis peered into the mist.’It’s a watchfire,’ she said. ‘It’s lighting up the city wall behind it.’
‘Do we need to go in there?’ said Freydis.
‘Yes,’ said Loys.
‘How?’
‘We’ll ask. I’m Norman enough still. Say nothing. I will play the high man so they’ll address their questions to me. You …’ he addressed Gylfa, ‘keep your cloak close about you. Do not let them see what you have plundered.’
They pushed forward through the mist. Freydis thought of the fire. It would be good to stop by that for a while, to thaw her bones. She saw Loys tie back on the stone. Immediately her rune lit up, humming. She felt directed, aimed like an arrow. The rune wanted to go inside the town. It was as if she was being tugged that way, so much that it was difficult to think of anything else but going through the gate. She heard a strange music in her head – chiming and rustling like the wind in trees, the breath and stamp of a horse, the crackle of a fire, too close to be the watchfire. The sensations combined within her, sparking the memory of light on water, brown eyes regarding her, the touch of a soft hand, kind words. Styliane.
No, not here. She had fled that destiny, understanding how the lady’s safety depended on staying away from her. Styliane was a creature of the sun, the warm light of the ocean, of olive groves and fountains. She would not be found in this desolate place. The magic was playing tricks on her, Freydis was sure.
Loys shouted something in Norman. Freydis knew enough of the language from fighting in Italy – if ‘Hello’, ‘Look out’ and ‘my people will ransom me’, were enough.
A reply, the voice flat in the soupy air. Loys spoke again. Another reply and Loys gestured them forward. Freydis buried her face in her scarf. She knew she could pass for a man easily enough but she had killed Normans when they had chased her to the woods and superstition made her think some of these fellows may have been with them.
There were four men at the gate, wrapped in so many coats and scarves that they too could have been women beneath, or children, or perhaps even just piles of clothes stood up in place of guards.
Loys spoke to them for a while. She heard a name. ‘Robert Giroie.’
The men nodded and pointed up through the town, gesturing directions. Loys patted one on the arm in thanks. They were through and into the desolation of York, a sweep of black leading down to a grey river under an ash moon.
It was as if the air of the town had been burned, the hanging mist bitter with the taste of cinders. Out of earshot, Loys spoke, low, to Gylfa.
‘There has been a raid by bandits on the town. Most of them are dead but the Normans are looking for survivors. We need to declare ourselves quickly to any who challenge us. The men who captured you are here. I said I was part of Giroie’s troop and they said he had arrived yesterday.’
The boy looked around him, as if he thought someone would leap at him from the night.
‘What shall we do?’ he said.
‘What we are here to do.’
‘Which way?’ said Freydis.
‘On.’
They descended to a bridge over a river, the logs slick with moisture, slippery underfoot. They went carefully, the body of a great church looming above them like rocks from a sea mist. The night was clearer here, the mist low and the round moon sharper. The rune in Freydis pulled forwards. She felt like a thrown spear, impelled to go on. There was movement from her right. Four men were descending from the intact houses on the hillside. They were warriors – one carried a long spear.
‘Keep going,’ whispered Loys.
‘Where?’
‘The church.’
‘We should run,’ said Gylfa.
‘No. At the walk,’ said Loys.
‘It could be Giroie,’ said Gylfa. ‘What if he recognises us?’
Freydis could see panic rising in the boy. She took his arm and walked towards the church – its stout tower rising as if made of shadow rather than stone. That was where she needed to be, where the spear rune wanted to fly.
The men spoke a word and Loys said something in reply. The men passed by behind them, over the bridge.
‘What did they say?’ said the boy.
‘In here?’ said Freydis.
Loys removed the stone from his neck and, though the rune shrieked and keened like an angry wind, now it did not go but clung to its determination to lead her through the door.
‘In here,’ said Loys.
They opened the door of the church. Freydis felt as if her guts were being pulled from her. The rune so much wanted to be free of Loys and go down into the darkness of the church that it was all she could do to keep herself from running. Again Loys sniffed at the air of the church.
‘She’s here,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘My enemy. My friend is here too. And one more.’ He gestured for quiet. Then he moved into the church, carefully and quietly.
She followed him, Gylfa behind. It was very dark, the moonlight dim through a hole in the roof.
Down steps to a crypt. A sudden movement, or the idea of a movement.
Loys exhaled heavily and then was gone. A terrible noise sounded below, a snarling, screaming sound like that of a deer caught by dogs. A man’s voice cried out loudly in Norse. ‘No!’
Freydis came to the edge of the steps. She could see nothing down there. It was flat dark. Still the rune wanted her to go on. It was as if she sat on a tipping ship in a storm. She heard things calling in the dark, saw bright lights that floated without illuminating what was below. There was a stirring wind, hot like fire through trees. She had to go down. The rune impelled her.
She felt her way down. It was wet underfoot and she slipped slightly. Her foot caught something on the floor. She bent to feel what it was. A man’s head but it was light or, rather, there was no resistance to moving it. It had been severed. She was used to such horrors but still it gave her a start. She padded forward on the floor, feeling a hole.
‘Loys.’
No reply.
‘Freydis, don’t leave me. I’m on my own up here.’
‘Shut up, Gylfa.’
‘Freydis!’
‘Do you want the whole town down on us? Be quiet!’
More lights, more noise. Then, in front of her in the darkness, she saw a shape – like an arrowhead, a triangle missing one side, all in flame. Her own rune, the spear, shook and quivered, longing to join its sister.
A rune. She had never seen it in Styliane but it made her think of the lady, of her clarity, her decisiveness, her passion.
‘Styliane?’
She said the word and the rune shot forward, spinning around her with her own rune in a wild dance. She saw the fires of illumination burning, as if banks and banks of candles stretched out before her into the darkness. She saw a wide land beneath her and it was as if she herself was the sun; she felt the hearth fires of the earth stretching out into the ice-black night, she was suddenly warm and the truth became shiningly clear. Sty
liane was down there. These echoes of her were her runes reaching out. The lady was dying.
The rune cast its light over the crypt. There was a hole in front of her where the flagstones had been moved away. The headless body of a big man lay battered and torn beside it. Inside, down there, other runes were calling, bringing with them the memory of Styliane. She saw her lady reclining on her divan in the great palace at Constantinople, walking in the garden of Baghdad, she heard her breathing next to her in their tent in the deserts of the south. Styliane. Down there.
She lowered herself into the hole and into the little space below.
‘They’re leaving me. Oh, Goddess, help me!’ Did Freydis hear her, or did the rune inside her scream out the lady’s distress?
Freydis put her hand to the wall, as if the solid earth beneath her feet was no more than the wood of a storm-tossed ship. She felt as though the floor might crack open and she might fall, down and down into unknown darknesses, to chambers that had never seen light, to depths where she would lie broken, beyond hope of redemption.
It was her voice, Styliane’s.
‘My love,’ said Freydis and scrambled down into the dark.
22 The Price of Lore
Styliane heard the wolf calling all the way down the passage and she knew her time was short. The girl must be parted from the wolf rune as quickly as possible. It was a delicate matter. If she died too soon, the rune could slink off to someone else, or re-enter the world to menace her in twenty or thirty years, by coming again to offer the wolf death.
She loosened the knot at the girl’s neck – only two knots. The third, the one that would stop it from ever being loosened, save with a knife, would cement it as a holy symbol, honouring the tripartite nature of God. It was Odin’s knot, the Valknut, but it was a crossroads too, sacred to her own lady Hecate – a juncture between life and death. It was even a symbol of Christ – three in one.
The girl started to breathe again. She had broken the oath – that was part of the magic, she was sure. The girl had provided the answer herself. This was a snake’s chamber, a backbiter’s temple, a deceptive and treacherous place. The water was hot but it flowed cold – or not so much flowed as writhed and coiled. Nothing was as it seemed. She had wondered why she had made such a solemn oath to Tola. It had seemed such a right thing to do. She hadn’t seen that it would be the source of her magic. Something so profound, so deeply held as the value of an oath could not be violated. And yet she had violated it. The guilt, the shame of that were both an offering to the well and something to smash away her ordinary self, to access things deeper underneath. Already she felt a little madder and a little more in control of the runes than she had before. She could take on this girl, remove the rune, and live safe again.
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