Nikolaj scoffed at my pathetic attempt to mask my discomfort as a threatening growl, but he soon lost his smug look when I chased him through the temple with a series of slashes, narrowly missing banging my sword against the statue of Thor. Talk about blasphemy.
A fury built and he rallied. I aimed at him with a downward chop, but he dragged, blocking my sword and slicing my wrist. The skin ripped like perforated paper. I kept going, the injured vein mending as I hop-footed back a few paces, keen to avoid being turned in a circle and ending up trapped in the corner with the cliffs behind me. If he was going to beat me, I’d be damned if he’d have such a nice view doing so.
Healing so quickly supercharged my sense of invulnerability, which buoyed my mood enough to break the dance we’d fallen into, twirling together as if we weren’t trying to draw blood. I had to get him back. Where could I trip him?
Fighting, he was every inch the Elf and as inhumane as a demigod at war on a Trojan battlefield. The scenes Nikolaj had recounted from the Iliad popped into wordless thought, and I remembered him telling me that Achilles’ armour covered every body part except his heel. It seemed a sweet blow to use that against him now. To punish him for telling lies instead of stories.
His arm and stride length were problematic. I retreated while forming a plan, acting distracted and nervous, allowing my glance to dart to different points on his tall body. Uncle Nikolaj didn’t allow me pause, and harassed me, forcing me to duck as the point neared my cheek. Going for the face wasn’t funny, even if I could heal. I feinted a blow to his non-dominant side, and he responded with a sharp quarte parry, aiming to intersect my weapon and knock me off balance. But in the nick of time, I swapped to his newly-exposed dominant side, wounding him. It wasn’t a bad injury, but it made his eyes flash bright green.
He hissed so loudly before the returning blow that I anticipated it. I dodged, mirroring his previous parry and doing what he’d aimed to achieve, disarmed him, and kicked his sword across the floor. The clang of the metal hitting the marble reverberated around the temple. Our eyes met for a blink, and he melted in the air, reappearing in a crouch by the fallen blade. But I’d gotten there first and was standing behind him. Meanly, I stamped on his heel and as he lifted his head, I placed the sword at his throat. ‘Any confessions before you die?’ I asked, investing my question with as much melodrama as I could muster.
‘Don’t be so dramatic, Nevø. So you beat an old man.’ He gently pushed the steel away from his jugular and rose, shaking out his foot as he turned to meet me.
‘You’re a sore loser.’
‘No,’ he denied, ‘I’m a proud uncle. It appears anger makes you stronger.’ I smiled. ‘Of course, I wanted to take you to see my homeland, and therefore it was in my interest to let you win.’
I tutted and walked away while he tended to his wound. He wouldn’t attack from behind. The point was made. The fight was over.
‘When can we go?’ He had to make arrangements, of course. His kinsfolk would need to approve his request and give him permission to open a portal capable of transporting a non-native through to Alfheim. I twirled the longsword in my hands, wondering which chieftain he’d petition.
‘I’ll see to it, Nevø.’ He joined me at the gold-painted steps between the stained-glass windows, where the immense painting of Thor slaying the giants hung. In front of the steps stood an idol of Thor with flaxen hair, riding his silver chariot. Every thundercloud has a silver lining.
‘Interesting that you took inspiration from King Arthur.’
‘Come again?’ I asked. Nikolaj nodded to the burns on my arm, which had formed into mini scars. ‘Oh, you mean melding with the sword. Isn’t that the aim of every fencer?’
‘Not literally.’
I shrugged. My fingertips slotted into the grooves of the hilt, moving over the brass surface as if it were water adapting to the pressure of my grip. It was a peculiar sensation.
‘Do you remember the story of the sword, Theo?’
‘Excalibur? The Sword in the Stone? The Lady of the Lake?’
‘What do you think those tales are if not metaphors?’
I wasn’t really in the mood for education. A glass of water and an energy bar, followed by a hot bath – yes. Nik read the disinterest on my face and reformed his question. ‘What if I told you that the Lady of the Lake is also known as the Queen of Sicily?’
I was awake again. The cogs in my brain snapped into gear. The little I knew about stregoneria witchcraft resulted from Uncle Nik’s travels to Europe and his teachings about the traditions found abroad – and my run-in with Penny’s coven. One of those facts was that stregoneria originated – allegedly – in Sicily.
‘Don’t tell me we’re talking about Diana. She’s the Queen of Sicily, right? According to myth?’ My gut twisted thinking about the party Penny had ensnared me in the night before. ‘But if the Lady of the Lake gave Excalibur to King Arthur, that means the goddess Diana—’
‘Gave the sword to a Gatekeeper – Arthur, the head of an ancient line connected to ours. His queen, Guinevere, was Norwegian, as was Arthur’s mother – a Clemensen ancestor. When it was necessary, Arthur and Guinevere retreated to her homeland in secret in order to protect their offspring, after matters became a little ‘political’ in England. In this case, Excalibur is a metaphor; Arthur was invulnerable whilst it was in his possession. What does that remind you of? I led you to the book that talks of it.’
‘The Anchor’s friend. It protects me.’
What is Thor if not another name for Lucifer? Those were Penny’s words, her way to gel over the cracks between our religions, the thing I’d cited as the reason why I couldn’t spearhead her – or was it our? – coven. I’d denied her on the basis that I was Asatru. And here I was standing in a Norse temple, – although I was quickly becoming conscious of the Italian elements in the design – discovering that it was their goddess, Diana, Lucifer’s bride, who’d handed over the mysterious object that protected me from death. The one, I presumed, still in Father and Uncle Nik’s possession. ‘That’s what the key is for, isn’t it? The one you left me. Whatever the Anchor’s Friend is, it’s behind a lock.’
Nikolaj patted me on the back. ‘Soundly deduced. You see now why foreign vampires in league with Italian witches – in Hellingstead – just as you’ve come of age, my dear nephew, is a disturbing development for us.’
Maybe my father and uncle had not been at home arguing all night. Maybe they’d known exactly where I’d gone. If they did, the question remained why they didn’t intervene, unless I had once again been sent on a fact-finding mission that suited their purposes and not my own. I couldn’t even go down that road. I had to believe they couldn’t predict my every move that accurately. One thing was for sure, my uncle had artfully manipulated the conversation’s direction into a subtle warning.
‘Yes,’ I said, defeated. I’d spent all night hiding my secret identity from the coven. Was it even remotely possible that Penny knew why Clemensens were special, or suspected it? Did she want me to unite my Gatekeeper powers with her so she could use them? Did anybody know about the Gatekeeper’s existence? Father had implied that we’d managed to keep it a secret down the generations, but who was to say that was true? What if there were people out there looking for us – for me – or even knew exactly where we were?
The paranoia bubbled, churning my thoughts into an acrid soup. I swallowed and forced my attention back to my uncle. ‘What is it, anyway? You said Excalibur is a metaphor for the Anchor’s Friend. So what is it that stops me from dying?’
‘An amulet,’ Nikolaj replied, as if it were obvious. ‘An amulet that has a habit of going missing.’
23
The Queen Of Sicily
On our way out of the temple, we passed the tapestry woven by my grandmother, Elsa. She was spared becoming the Gatekeeper because Uncle Nikolaj was still alive when she’d come of age, thanks to his Elven blood, and the world’s magic preferred to inhabit male bodies. Ther
efore it was my father who’d inherited the ‘gift’ when he’d turned twenty-one, and not Elsa.
The rendering of Freyja tugged like a finger wrapped around my aorta. I halted, absorbing the intricate detail of her necklace, something I’d never really examined before. Several shining gold and silver beads adorned a thin, golden rope. It was the piece in the middle of her jewellery that stood out: a square medallion with a central piercing big enough for the rope to twist through. I squinted at the minuscule markings Elsa had stitched onto the medallion. Runes.
My uncle watched me closely with a wry smile that answered my question before I’d asked it. I said, ‘That’s it. The amulet. That’s what it looks like.’
‘Minus the beads. And it’s a little bigger in real life.’
‘So if Diana gave Arthur the amulet, and Freyja had it too, does that mean Freyja is Diana, in a different incarnation?’ I felt Nik’s fingers in my hair, massaging my head. I was used to his physical affection; he’d often told me that Elves were naturally prone to grooming their families, reminiscent of chimps picking bugs off each other, but I’d yet to forgive him for whatever it was he still wasn’t telling me.
‘Try not to overthink it, Theo. Let your preconceptions go and you’ll see the connections everywhere, like a child spotting animals in random conglomerations of cloud.’ He retrieved his fingers from the tangled mess he’d created and smoothed down my hair, which needed a good brush, even though I’d tied it back for the fight. ‘That’s not to say your presumption is incorrect, however.’
I groaned. ‘Another non-answer, Onkel? Come on, give me something here.’
‘I thought I had.’ His puzzlement seemed genuine. We’d gotten somewhere, I suppose, but I was fed up to his pointy ear that information was being drip-fed into my bottomless pit of ignorance. ‘Mythical matters are difficult to pin down. Chronologies are tricky to separate, especially with obscure details. On the face of it, there’s little to connect Diana and Freyja, except they’re both goddesses associated with fertility. A Gatekeeper might see things from an altered perspective. If in doubt, Nevø, ask it.’
He meant the thing inside me, the magic. Unfortunately, ‘it’ appeared to enjoy drip-feeding me answers too. It hadn’t escaped my notice that the way I asked it questions, and why I did so, could change how it responded to them.
I closed my eyes, thinking of Ava’s lyrics, drawing air through my lungs. Father had taught me to meditate years ago, but I hadn’t practiced often, and it was an art that required fine-tuning on a regular basis. But the fight had discharged a lot of pent up energy. For the first time in days, I felt calm. Is Freyja Diana? I asked it.
The reply, when it came, was terse. Names are nothing but theatrical masks. Meaning upstages persona.
I interpreted aloud, for Nikolaj’s benefit as well as my own. ‘I think it’s saying that the exterior of the goddess is irrelevant. She wears costumes to suit her purpose.’ Again, my thoughts turned to Lorenzo, his reverence as he lit those candles. ‘The Holy Trinity is similar, and is another way for the Orlog to manifest in different guises, to communicate with us. I’m assuming.’
Do the streghe know about Freyja’s necklace?
And it spoke. Our children’s minds and motives aren’t for our ears. A father doesn’t see the desires and knowledge of his offspring as letters traced into their brain matter. He sees it in their behaviour, their decisions. Only Theo can see the content of Theo’s soul. Magic isn’t a substitute for understanding.
I was bummed; mind-reading would’ve been handy. Apparently, in its truest sense, it didn’t exist. Unless both parties choose to create a psychic link. The clarification came from nowhere and bubbled in my mouth, a sherbet dissolving on the tongue along with a high-pitched tone ringing in my ears. That was new. It had never come that close to speaking through me.
‘I think I need to Anchor myself,’ I said. We locked the immense temple doors and descended back into the heath as it was warming up outside, the sun infusing the earth with heat on a rare, cloudless morning. Evidently, winning the fight and learning a few truths about my heritage had a knock-on effect on the weather, revelation giving potency to the earth’s star, drying up the sky.
‘Do you need my help?’ Nik asked, when I handed him the keys to the temple. I debated it. No, I was determined to be independent, whatever the risk. After last night, I was keen to find Raphael, and when I was Anchored, I could see the gold dusting he left in his wake.
If Raphael knew I was the Gatekeeper, as he’d suggested, it meant he was a danger beyond imagining. He hadn’t proclaimed himself an enemy or a friend but was watching over me nonetheless – a role similar to a Guardian’s – but I was sure he wasn’t wrapped up in the Praetoriani. But the Praetoriani was only one division within the Praefecti; Raphael could’ve crawled from anywhere like a cockroach scurrying out of the cracks.
It was too frightening to consider how powerful they might be, if they’d sent someone like Raphael to deal with me. When it came to that kid, Father’s wards were flimsier than paper.
I had to gather some intel before I entrusted his existence to my family. I needed my own cards to play if I were to have any hope of persuading them to share what they knew, what they were keeping from me. ‘No thanks, Onkel. I know how to do it. I’ll be fine.’
He didn’t argue but paused to grip my forearm. ‘If you’re not back within the hour, I’ll come looking.’
I let it go. An hour was enough if Raphael had returned to the estate. Besides, I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I needed the coma of sleep, to escape my concerns. The mystical creature I shared a body with eroded my energy quicker than the waves wore away the cliff face. An hour was all I had left.
24
Snow White And The Photographs
There was a snag; the golden dust left in Raphael’s wake had blown like dandelion seeds across the fields and woodlands of the estate, so I couldn’t discern a clear trail. The beacon of light that had led me to him for the first time was now apparently switched off. Did the sun burn it away, or was Raphael concealed somewhere?
I checked the redwood first, climbing up the branches to get a better look, a taxing task when I’d had so little sleep. He wasn’t home, anyway. Had our little tiff driven him from his nest? Only the gods knew that. Maybe he was running errands. I was curious about what those errands might be.
From the lowest branch, I leapt onto the grass, grateful for my new Gatekeeper strength, praying that Raphael wasn’t at the Praetoriani headquarters reporting to some official. If he’d glimpsed the ancient essence fused with mine, if he knew my true identity, he was dangerous indeed. One word – just one – willing or not, said to the wrong person, at the wrong time. The thought taunted me as I meandered through the lavender garden, uphill from the duck pond.
That fragrance, and the memories of my mother came sweeping back as always, love and grief like twin arrows puncturing the soft underbelly of my heart. I plonked down into the thick, flowery rows and hugged the stalks closer to me. Mum, where is Raphael?
The grief for a lost parent never abates, not for a child, and not for an adult who missed out on a parent’s love. Soft words, an impression of a kiss, these things live on in the memory, heedless of passing years. A waking mind can imagine many things, a heavy dent on the edge of the bed, a protective hand slipping into your own. I hated opening my eyes, knowing the empty space I’d see, even if my heart felt convinced Mum was there.
Yet I rarely spoke to her in my thoughts, or aloud. Some days, I stopped before the urn holding her ashes after we’d performed a ritual blot in the temple. I usually said a word or two; a whispered hello, and a made-up blessing that welled into tears.
She didn’t speak back. The dead are quiet creatures, at peace or lost in torment, plagued by a conscience ignored during life, but now freed from mortal greed. As the Gatekeeper, I was responsible for guarding the veil between the physical and the unseen realms, a syphon for the magical energy necessary
to animate all life, to distinguish it from inert matter. However, my focus was trained on Jörð, and I found I couldn’t behave like the god Janus and look both ways. I envied those who could until I considered my life getting any weirder. No thanks.
Mum, can you hear me? I hope you can. I believe that you must hear me, otherwise what’s the point in having a soul that survives death if you can’t feel your loved ones still living on Earth? That would be a true hell. I picked at the lavender buds that were so vibrant in my Anchored vision.
The Anchor’s Friend. I swivelled my head, listening to the breeze raking through the silver birches and rippling over the ponds. Maybe I can find it while I’m Anchored. The amulet, maybe only an Anchored Gatekeeper can see where it is.
It was a decent guess. The tiny clues I stumbled upon were trickier to follow than Raphael’s golden ‘droppings’. Locating the amulet was tomorrow’s task, post-sleep. Father’s aptitude for squirrelling important things away was legendary; finding that acorn required focus and energy.
I’d told Raphael he could use the abandoned cottage, and after Lorenzo’s attempted break-in and the meeting at the church, he might have retreated there. Bees hummed pleasantly in the warm air as I passed the orchard and the box gardens and approached the cottage, an oversized Wendy-house choked by vines. An appropriate hide away for a Peter Pan impersonator, I thought, noticing someone had the second-floor mullioned windows ajar, enough to allow air circulation and dislodge the dust that must be inside.
It wasn’t dusty at all. I stared at the gleaming cedar table piled with paint pots and sketchpads, and the ordered stack of creamy white canvases propped in the corner. Framed paintings adorned the thick walls, rough seas and sailing boats, the glass protecting them shiny and unmarred. In the kitchenette on the other side of the corridor, an hourglass shaped vase brimming with wildflowers rested on a spotless counter, a lively splash within the shut up shrine. Acorns, walnuts, and hazelnuts filled pottery bowls thrown and painted by my mother’s hand, flanking the vase on either side. At that moment, a squirrel shinned up the cupboards and hovered over the nuts, soon joined by another.
The Descendants of Thor Trilogy Boxset: Forged in Blood and Lightning; Norns of Fate; Wrath of Aten Page 18