“My wife speaks of you fondly,” Harald said. “She speaks of you with more adoration than she did with Ragni.”
“We don’t need to talk about that, though, do we?” Brand said, and nibbled at some bacon. “You do understand… it is awkward for a man to discuss his affairs with the husband of the beloved. It simply isn’t in accordance with the rules of courtly love.”
“There is something between you and her that really makes for compatible humors,” Harald said. “There is something there.”
Brand took a big gulp of mead. “I do love her,” he said, “but I do think that I am performing your duty for you. You are her husband; and yet you do not deliver what she wants… what the animal in her needs.”
“I do have an affinity for the common and the whores among us,” Harald said. “My wife knows this and does not care; nor does she get jealous of those grubby women who serve me. The whores among us are always so delighted to have a highborn as a client. Especially one such as me, who—dare I boast?—is handsome.” He paused. “I do sense some tension, some unspoken fury in you and I believe that the feeling is against me. So therefore I must ask: What is this tension, Brand, between you and me?”
“Harald,” Brand said, “I do not know what it is in Varda that you mean.”
Brand set the remains of breakfast before the fire, stood up, and walked out the door into Oskir.
At twilight, Harald and Alysse—and Brand, having gathered his bravery—made their way across the snow to the Golden House. It was a huge longhouse—not especially tall, but wide and sprawling with several wings. The outer walls were painted golden and trimmed with white; the painting was redone every year to keep up its beauty.
The King’s Guard was not at the door. In fact, the door was slightly open and creaking in the wind. A foul odor of rot billowed out of it. Lady Alysse covered her nose with her sleeve. “I will stay outside,” she said. “I’d rather suffer in the cold…”
Harald nodded and kissed her hand. “Yes, lady love.”
Together, Harald and Brand stepped through the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The windows of the Golden House had purple curtains, and the floors were layered in precious beeswax. Gold-lined candelabras once spread light through the king’s residence, but now remained unlit, the wicks of their candles crumpled and black. The same nervousness Brand had felt in the witch’s house returned, deep in his gut. He pressed on through it and led Harald into the huge throne room.
The walls were painted a lush green. The windows here were of fine glass, and the ceiling was higher than in any other longhouse in Oskir. A harp sat here, and a lute on a stand. Bearskins and deer skins lined the way to the High Throne. And there, on that large throne of yew, sat High King Sven; but it wasn’t entirely Sven. In fact, only the jewel-studded High King’s Crown on its head proved it was Sven.
It was a corpse: not a corpse you could distinguish features from, but instead a long-dead corpse. Sven’s body bore such extensive rot that only Ulfr devil-craft could have advanced it that far. It was not wet, but instead dry and crumbling. In its sockets there were no eyes, yet Brand felt that it was staring at him.
“You have requested audience with the king, and he shall hear your requests,” said a female voice. Only then did Brand see that, in the corpse’s wiry black fingers, it grasped the Idol of the Great Mother, and that the idol’s golden lips were moving.
A sense of dread fell over Brand, but he forced himself out of its control. “I came to speak to the High King,” Brand said. “Not a demon.”
“I am not a demon,” the Great Mother said. “I am of this mortal world like you. Your customs are different from mine and that of my people. But in your arrogance—in your unwavering belief that you are right and good—you humans came to my land, and drove out my people, and destroyed my shrines.” With a crack, the idol broke out of the corpse’s fingers and floated up into the air. “Now—even if I cannot fully bring my people back—I can rain death upon you through my daughter… I can bring back the trolls to the Ice Shelf and have them rebuild my Grand Shrine.”
Brand removed his cloak and drew his sword. Harald followed.
“A fight is what you want?” the idol said. “Is it a fight really what you need, boy?” Its little golden arm stretched outward. “Arise, champion!”
With a crack, the corpse stood up.
“None have dared oppose the High King,” the idol said. “I have appointed him Sovereign of Badelgard, and even Lord Sigmund Blackhelm has dared not steal the throne.”
“Then Sigmund is a traitor to goodness!” Harald said.
Brand threw his cloak at the idol. It missed and drifted to the tile floor.
Harald stepped toward the corpse. “By the customs of our forebears… I, Harald Riverhall, challenge you, Sven Oster and High King, to a duel,” he said and drew out his ancestral sword. “We duel to death.”
A shimmering blade appeared in dead Sven’s decrepit hand. It was curved, unlike those of Badelgard warriors, and forged with ornamental markings; it was an Ulfr blade like Brand had sometimes seen on display in marketplaces.
The corpse-king cut with its blade and Harald parried narrowly. It stepped forward and hacked down, and Harald just barely deflected the blow.
Brand picked up his cloak, leapt, and tossed again. It fell around the idol, which crashed to the ground. Brand wrapped it tight as a loud, shrill scream issued from its mouth. Due to the power contained within, his heart was pounding out of control. His breath turned to short, shrill rasps.
“I must… I must go!” Brand said.
“Why must you go?” Harald demanded as he knocked aside another quick cut. “Do not betray the House Riverhall!”
But Brand was already running away, the woolen cloak fluttering the idol’s high pitched screams echoing through the winter air.
Down in the low-town was a blacksmith. Once, while Brand was studying at the Skalds’ College, Gunnar worked there. Now, he was coming to old Hennard with an altogether different request: a request which the old man never had before, and which Gunnar—bless his soul—never had the misfortune of doing.
The Idol of the Great Mother kept screaming. “Let me go! Let me go at once!” it said, and did not shut up when Brand struck it and or whispered blasphemies to the Great Mother. The Oskir citizens gawked at him as he lumbered down the steep steps to the low-town.
At last he reached the shore of the river that led into King’s Falls. He reached the blacksmith a few seconds later, and saw that Hennard was working at something, pounding away with his hammer. When the shrill screeching of the idol reached his ears, he looked up at Brand.
“Dear Hennard!” Brand shouted as loudly as he could. “You are a good man! Please, melt this idol down into gold.”
The screaming reached a pinnacle and Brand’s ears began to throb in pain at the volume. He could hear nothing but the screaming sound of the idol.
Hennard’s mouth formed the words, “What?”
Brand tossed the idol into the flames of the forge. Little by little, as the gold melted away, the screaming faded; until finally, there was no sound but the rushing wind and the thunderous pounding of Brand’s own heart.
Brand raced back to the Golden House as fast as his legs could carry him.
When he got to the throne room Lady Alysse was crying as she stooped over Harald’s bloodied body. He had taken a puncture wound deep in the chest. Blood was spreading across the wooden floor.
A few inches from him, a crown sat amid a pile of black ash. That was all that remained of the High King: his greedy crown of gold, and his blackened remains. It was the end of his life, and all he had to show for it.
“Curses!” Alysse said, choked with tears, as she knelt over the corpse of Harald. “Curses have fallen upon me and the Line of Riverhall. But death was the punishment of the High King! That honorless, evil scum just vanished… burst into a pile of black dust, but not before he murdered my husband.”
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Brand knelt beside her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It will be all right.”
“I never bore him a child,” Alysse said. “I never even was intimate… and yet… I loved him, and admired him more than words can express.” She kept crying. “Will he turn into one of them? The darklings? Like that woman you invited to our hall?”
“I don’t think so,” Brand said. With the power of the idol gone, perhaps her dark curse over Badelgard had lifted. “And even if he does die, we must give him a proper burial,” he added.
“In the cemetery outside Oskir,” Alysse said, “where all the noble warrior-men are buried.”
She picked up the crown that the corpse once wore and placed it on Brand’s head. Never—not in a thousand lifetimes—did Brand think he’d wear the jeweled gold-and-velvet crown of the High King. It was utmost dishonor to do so. A lowborn would never have a claim to the throne, not even if he were made a housecarl. Brand laughed.
“It looks good on you,” Alysse said. “Perhaps you are of noble birth.”
“I am not, I assure you,” Brand said. “My friend Gunnar was, even though they called him ‘Whoreson.’ Magnus Blackhelm was his father. I am just Brand son of Gutlaff, a swineherd; and I am happy with that.”
“You are housecarl now,” Alysse said. “My housecarl and the father of the Riverhalls. I regret that marrying you is not possible, love. But when our noble house is reestablished, you are welcome to it at any time, in any state of health or mind.”
“That means everything to me,” Brand said as he picked the crown off his head.
He cast the cruel object onto the floor.
The next day they placed Harald’s body in a coffin and began an all-day procession to the Church of Vana. The stone church had windows of colored glass that depicted mountain peaks, warrior-maidens, harps and other things sacred to the goddess of victory. At the double doors, two towering statues of valkyrie warriors stood guard with stone spears. The people of Oskir, dressed in peasant browns and grays, gathered to watch the nobleman die. They did not know Harald as Brand knew him—a strange man, and a luxuriant man, but perhaps one of honor. Honor, because without his diversion, a corpse would still sit on the throne and the Great Mother’s eye would still be over Badelgard.
Alysse followed the procession sadly, dry-eyed because there were no more tears to be shed. Brand did cry a little, though it was unfitting for a man. Funerals always made him cry; he was a housecarl, now, but a sensitive musician at heart.
At the end of the procession, the gray skies opened up, and a drizzle began. There was winter rain in Oskir sometimes, but after prior events, Brand had thought it would never rain again.
Tidings turned for the worse almost immediately after the funeral. Someone came with the news that the Wildsaber clan and the Blackhelm clan—acting in unison—were riding to Oskir to put Sigmund Blackhelm on the High King’s throne.
Captain Erik and the River Guard stood watch outside the Riverhall baronial longhouse while Sir Brand shivered and bit his fingers in fear. “We should go,” he said. “I don’t think the Wildsabers like me. You, they don’t mind as much; but Kenna does not like me… she does not like me being a housecarl. Not at all.”
“Kenna is a she-wolf, and that’s putting it nicely,” Alysse said. “Like a she-wolf, she must be hunted to protect the herd: the people of Badelgard.”
“That is poetic,” Brand said. “Perhaps you should be a skald and not me.”
“Lies,” Alysse said, and hugged him tight. “You are the poet and musician. You are the bringer of joy and mirth, and the bringer of fear and contemplation.” She buried her nose in his kirtle. “Oh, how I love you, Brand.”
“And I you,” Brand answered her. “And I you.”
At dusk they came: a thousand men, riding through the Golden Gate on warhorses like a battalion of hell. Lord Sigmund Blackhelm—his hair the flame red of his father, Magnus—rode at the fore, girt in chainmail and carrying a greathelm in his huge hands.
Brand watched from a high perch. He watched as they poured through the gate. Further back in the host was Kenna Wildsaber, riding on a white horse; and her girls behind her, riding on ponies. Stenn was not there; it served her right, and, in truth, it served Stenn right too.
“I should not dishonor the dead with insults,” Brand told himself, and sprinted back to the Riverhall guesthouse.
It was only a matter of minutes before the host had gathered together outside the Golden House. And it was only an hour before Brand’s bad feeling was proven true; a host of a hundred mounted warriors, plus Lady Kenna, rode up to the Riverhall guesthouse. The only thing protecting Alysse and Brand was a line of twelve River Guards blocking the door.
“Do you wish to arrest us?” Alysse asked, standing in the Guard’s shadow. “If so, what are you terms? Speak, she-wolf; or can you only bark and bite?”
Kenna’s eyes narrowed. “I will only speak to the lord of the household.”
“Harald is dead,” Alysse said. “And you have no right to arrest me.”
Kenna smiled. “If Sigmund Blackhelm is High King and vests me with authority,” she said as a dark smile crept over her features, “then I can do anything I want and you have no choice but to listen.”
“And has he vested you with authority?” Alysse asked.
Kenna’s smile faded slightly. “He wants to speak with you and Brand so that you may tell him what happened to the High King.”
Lord Sigmund Blackhelm, earl of Trowheim, sat in the throne with the High King’s Crown on his lap. “Tell me, boy, what has happened to Sven.”
Brand stood with Alysse before the throne without the River Guard, at the total mercy of Sigmund’s soldiers.
“Sigmund,” Brand said, choosing not to address him by the proper title, “Do not call me a boy. I am a man and have seen much evil in my time.”
The sharp, stinging pain of a lash hit Brand. He yelped and recoiled. He looked back and realized that Sigmund’s torturers, wearing black masks and black robes, stood behind him; and hooked to their belts were more instruments than just whips: clippers, thumbscrews, and more. It was no matter.
“I repeat myself,” Sigmund said. “Tell me, boy, what has happened to the High King.”
“I am not a boy,” Brand said.
The pain was sharper this time, and more acute; and there was a loud cracking sound as the whip dug into flesh. But this time, Brand didn’t yelp.
Sigmund’s expression grew stern. “Tell me—”
“Sir Brand!” Alysse hissed.
Sigmund glared at her, then looked back to Brand and said, “What happened to the High King?”
Brand pointed to the pile of black powder on the ground. “By the time I got to Oskir with the Riverhalls, he was not Sven anymore. By the time I had ridden to Oskir, he had turned to a demon. He was possessed by the Idol of the Great Mother. I melted it in the forge, and he collapsed.”
“He called the High King a demon!” Kenna’s voice said from behind.
Alysse looked back and hissed, “Shut it, she-wolf.”
“Quiet!” Sigmund roared.
The whips cut into Alysse’s dress and she fell to her knees with a sharp cry.
Sigmund looked intensely at Brand. “The king’s attendants tell me that you brought that idol to him,” he said. “Is this true?”
“Yes,” Brand said.
Alysse looked up at him, apparently in disbelief at his foolish honesty. The whips struck him again, and tears of pain formed in his eyes; yet, he did not buckle under.
“Have you not, therefore, committed treason against the High King?” Sigmund said.
“Call it what you will,” Brand said. “He asked for the idol, and I gave it to him.”
Sigmund frowned. “Let him be hanged.”
“He is lowborn!” Lady Kenna shrieked. “He must be tortured first.”
Alysse stood up and turned around, fiery-eyed with anger. “Sir Brand is my housecarl. He is,
therefore, not lowborn. He will not be tortured, and—by the Green Dragon—” She turned around to face Sigmund. “Do not let him be executed. He does not deserve it.” She fell to her knees and knit her fingers together. “I beg of you, Sigmund. If there is any goodness in that heart of yours, please let Brand live. He does not deserve to die. He is a good man; and an honest man, and he said he did as the king asked.”
“You have moved me, woman,” Sigmund said. “And I will compromise.”
“Thank you, milord,” Brand said.
“He will still be executed,” Sigmund said.
Brand gasped and his heart shuddered.
“However,” Sigmund said, “As housecarl, he will not face torture. He is not lowborn as Lady Kenna says. He will be hanged tomorrow at sundown.”
“And what about the southern whore?” hissed Lady Kenna.
“Seeing she and her husband have parted ways, I strip her of her noble titles,” Sigmund said, “and I exile her from Badelgard. She has a month to leave, and—as the new High King—I will lower the Drawbridge enough for her proper exit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They were hanging two people today, and had two nooses tied on two platforms. Brand prayed to the gods silently, asking that the good Lady Vana would grant him rest, and, above all, entry into the Hall of the Slain. At a younger age, he would have asked for revenge; but he had learned that vengeance takes care of itself, and the evil ones always destroy themselves. At least, that was how things were in songs and ballads.
The hangman was addressing a large crowd of lowborns—like a sea of gray and brown—that had gathered to watch the execution. “One of these dying today is a traitor to the High King and to his sovereign realm. His actions led to the poisoning of the king’s soul; his transformation into a monstrosity; and, in time, his death. Let this be a lesson to all of you! No man may cross the High King and live. And now that Sigmund is High King of Badelgard, let it be clear to one and all that any who cross him will have a similar fate, and—for the lowborns—far worse. These two are highborn—”