Night Bells

  * * *

  The fact that they could all hear Ulla was troubling enough, but his words frightened them the most. Soryn and Arna did not know what Ulla was claiming other than he had found his own human body. Fanndis and Stigg knew that he was claiming to be Olan. Both looked at each other with frowns on their faces. They either had to believe that what he said was true or a terrible lie.

  Fanndis spoke, “Ulla, where is this cave?”

  In the woods, near the northern mountains. I’ve found my body! You must come and help me!

  Two things went through Fanndis’ mind. First, if Ulla was telling the truth and was in fact Olan, then Soryn could potentially have one of his brothers back tonight. Second, if Ulla was not Olan and was someone else, he would have to have some sort of plan if he was meeting with all of them at the place where Olan’s body was hidden. It was a gamble, but they had to go out and find that pig—if only to imprison him until they could make him tell them the whole truth.

  Fanndis tried to remain calm and think through what she thought they should do. She ordered Stigg to saddle the horses (they had acquired Soryn’s own horse, Sable, and a small mare for Arna to ride in the months past). She gathered coats and riding clothes for each of them. Arna gathered water skins for the journey and Soryn sat in the chair by the hearth, silent. He was in too much shock to think about preparing for anything. He just wanted to know what was going on. When everyone else was ready, they stopped and looked to him.

  “Soryn?” Fanndis prompted.

  Arna reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  He looked up with utter confusion in his eyes. Arna held his hand and helped him stand. He followed them all out into the melting snow and mounted his horse. They rode off into the woods towards the north. Stigg rode at the head of the group. Beside them, Ulf ran—blindingly fast—circling to make sure they were all safe. Ulf’s mate joined them further into the forest.

  Hurry! It’s here! Ulla repeated about halfway into the trip to the cave.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” Soryn finally demanded.

  “Talk later, Soryn,” Fanndis ordered over the sounds of hooves and jingling harnesses.

  Soryn glowered and sulked the rest of the way—wanting so badly to know what was going on and feeling left out that no one would tell him. Arna kept looking over at him, trying to comfort him with kind, concerned looks. It took about an hour to reach the cave near the western base of the mountain. Everyone dismounted in front of the cavern mouth. Ulf and his mate, a black-furred wolf, stayed a fair distance away in the tree line. Soryn wondered if they were wary of Ulla, too. A strange, eerie aura hovered about the area and Soryn shivered.

  “Where are we?” he murmured.

  “Come inside, Soryn. I hope everything will become clear to us when we enter,” Fanndis said.

  He looked at Arna, unconvinced. Stigg went first and Fanndis followed. Arna grabbed Soryn’s hand and they, too entered the dark mouth. Ulla sat on his hind legs beside a pile of leaves and twigs.

  Good evening, all. I did not expect you to get here so soon, Ulla said, cocking his head.

  “Why have you brought us here, Ulla?” Fanndis asked, her voice carefully controlled.

  I’ve found my body. Didn’t I tell you? I’m your brother, Soryn, and here is the proof. Ulla tugged with his teeth at the twigs, leaves, and other detritus covering an oddly shaped mound.

  Soryn’s eyes grew wide with surprise and fear when he saw the naked body of a man. Silver-white hair flowed over deathly pale skin. It tangled in great knots over the limbs and muscled torso. Lord Maslyn stepped closer, amazed at the sight before him. It did look like one of his brothers—just grown up.

  “Olan?” Soryn muttered, quietly. He knew it was not Fenris’ body. Olan had a mole below the left eye that Fenris did not. It was the only thing about the twins that enabled others to tell them apart. Though the body had clearly aged and the white hair had grown down to the man’s thighs, Soryn knew it was really Olan.

  “Ulla, if you are telling the truth, you have nothing to fear, but you must realize we cannot turn you back into your human self until we know a little bit more about you,” Fanndis warned.

  Why would I bring you to a body that is not my own and ask you to turn me human? You would know the instant the spell was performed whether or not it was true.

  “You have a point, but I will perform no such magic today—not until I have had a nice long chat with you, pig,” the woman declared, as firm as stone.

  Very well. Soryn…I hope we will be reunited in human form very soon.

  Soryn said nothing—he was too shocked by what he saw on the cavern floor. His very own brother…now a man. Ulla trailed after Fanndis outside the cave. Arna and Stigg eventually exited as well. The youngest Maslyn lingered. He reached out and touched Olan’s cold skin. It was uncanny how the body before him felt so alien and yet so familiar. Arna called for him. Soryn snapped out of his focus and turned around. She gestured for him to come out. Stigg had mounted his horse. Fanndis and Arna were mounting theirs. Soryn ascended to his own saddle in a daze. They left Olan’s body where it was—knowing it would be protected by Ulf and his mate. Ulla spent the trip in silence, trotting alongside the horses.

  When they returned to the clearing around the cottage, they confined Ulla to the kitchen—Fanndis performed barrier incantations to ensure he would not leave. She wanted the pig in one place until she could get the answers she sought. Soryn just watched Ulla, trying to imagine the pig’s personality in Olan’s body—were they really one and the same? Arna stayed in her room researching human and animal transmutation and transference without Fanndis’ permission. She wanted to know what was going to happen to Ulla and the body in the cave. Stigg remained in the front parlor, calling Lord Maslyn to join him.

  Fanndis slammed the kitchen doors shut and put a warding spell all around the room against eavesdroppers. She wanted to know exactly what was going on before she performed any magic either way. In the other room, Soryn and Stigg smoked their pipes and waited for Fanndis to get her answers. By the time the Night Bells rang from the distant village church, Fanndis opened the door, but sealed the pig inside.

  “Soryn, you must not talk to Ulla tonight. I’ve put a stop to your communication with one another through a warding spell around the door. I’m sorry to do this to you, but I must run an errand. I’ll be back and in the morning. I swear I will tell you everything I know—and it is quite a vast amount of catching up that will need to be done. I’m sorry.” With that, Fanndis left the cottage without another word and sped off into the night with Ivan.

  Within an hour, the cottage settled down for the night and Soryn knew he would not be getting any sleep. He knew the barrier spell around the cottage would only work on Ulla, so he got up and climbed out the shuttered window without a sound. Looking around to ensure no one saw, he knocked on Arna’s window. She opened it after the first knock—wide-eyed and anxious.

  “We’ve got to get him out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got to switch him back. I don’t care if he is my brother or not, but I’ve got to know, Arna. I’ve just got to,” he pleaded.

  Arna could not stand to see her friend in such distress. She simply nodded, and grabbed the spell book she had been reading. She knew enough about Fanndis’ barrier spells to weaken it enough to remove the pig from the cottage. Soryn opened the back kitchen door and tiptoed across the floor, grabbing Ulla from his perch on the wooden table. When they got him out, he simply said,

  Thank you.

  In silence, they went to the barn and saddled one horse. Sable was a huge gelding, strong enough to hold two children and a pig. In silence, they rode to the greenhouse. Because Ulf was watching the cave, she knew she would be able to retrieve what the book said was needed in order to perform a reversal transformation. It only took her several minutes to gather the necessary herbs and the
n they were off again, riding in the darkness.

  Don’t head back to the cave, Ulla demanded.

  “Why not?” Soryn and Arna queried in unison.

  You don’t think they’d leave my body there now that I know where it is, do you? They are suspicious of me. They don’t really believe me. I know you two do. I can take you where I think they will have taken it, Ulla said.

  “Where?” Arna asked.

  Start riding to the east and I’ll show you the way.

  With Ulla giving them directions, they traveled to a desolate, barren grove of trees in the eastern woods. There was a large burrow at the base of a giant fir tree that he steered them towards. Summer winds brought in a gentle, freezing rain while they rode. It was a welcome change from the snow. Soryn and Arna were not suspicious about the lack of tracks. If Fanndis had come that way earlier, the rain would have washed away any signs in the snow.

  Down in the burrow, they saw the body—just as Ulla predicted.

  “How did you know she would move it here?” Soryn asked, a nagging suspicion in the back of his mind.

  Remember I can read thoughts? Apparently, your Lady Fanndis forgot that I possessed that power. She let her thoughts slip to this location in her mind. I knew instantly the spot she meant, having visited the same place when I was outside the castle for an errand and a snowstorm started. I used to hide here.

  “Oh,” Soryn said, convinced.

  Arna set about making the casting circle and tracing out the symbols in the proper order. She called forth a small fire and set it in the center of the circle. She asked Ulla to get into the middle of the fire—assuring him it would not hurt.

  “Are you sure, Arna? Are you sure you can do this?” Soryn asked, a sudden terror overtaking him at what they were about to do. He believed in her, but he wanted no mistakes and he was even more convinced that Ulla was his brother then than ever.

  “I can do this, Soryn. I know I possess the power and other than that, it’s mostly following directions. It will be alright,” she promised, laying a hand on his shoulder.

  Arna then gazed at Ulla, held the open book in her lap and closed her eyes. For several minutes, she breathed in and out—slowing her fluttering heart. Then, she chanted the focus words in the book that would help her visualize the end result in her mind. She knew that she wanted to have the original spell reversed and each spirit returned to its home body.

  When the time came, Arna’s brow was bathed in sweat and her eyes were clenched as tight as possible while she fought to keep her concentration. She knew that the process would have started because her mind would not let the image that she had conjured disappear. Never opening her eyes, she focused all her energy on the change.

  Soryn grew very uneasy when a reddish glow surrounded Ulla in the fire and the naked body on the pile of leaves. Something within gave him pause and made him feel that they were tampering with darker magic. However, he saw Arna’s deep concentration and the sweat that ran down her temples. He saw Ulla’s eyes grow dim and dark and a new, brighter light settle over the human body. It only took a minute for the light to seep down into flesh and bone.

  Soryn could not look away from his brother’s body. He did not see when Arna fainted. He only watched and waited for there to be some sign of life in his brother. Slowly, the red light faded entirely and a hum he had not noticed before stopped. All was quiet save for the rain pounding on the snow outside. Darkness filled the burrow.

  “Hello, Soryn,” a voice said—a voice that Soryn could not recognize as Olan’s because of its deepening with age.

  “Olan?” Soryn tried out the name now that Ulla had returned to his former self.

  “It’s quite nice to use my own voice again, little brother, thank you,” the voice crooned.

  Still, Soryn could not see Olan in the poor light and for some strange reason, this frightened him. A dark foreboding overcame him and a fear he could not explain gripped his heart.

  “Olan?”

  “I knew I could count on you. You were never like the others—mother, father, our brother…you understood the world in a more sensible way. I knew I could trust you,” the voice said—Ulla’s voice.

  Soryn backed away. He thought he might make it to the entrance, but then he remembered Arna. Despite the sense of danger he felt, he had to make sure it was truly Olan that stood before him. By some stroke of luck, the clouds above the ground cleared and some of the moons’ light slipped into the opening of the burrow. What Soryn saw filled him with misery.

  There before him stood not Olan, but Fenris. Olan and Fenris were identical except the small mole near Olan’s left eye. He knew as soon as the blue light fell on the man’s face that he and Arna had made a terrible mistake. Just as Ulla exuded an aura of disquiet and confusion, Fenris exuded an amplified aura of utter malevolence. Soryn could not explain it, but it was there all the same—as though his brother were evil.

  “Fenris,” he stated.

  “Soryn,” Fenris returned, smiling wickedly.

  Gone was the impotent Ulla. Gone was the illusion that all was becoming right in Soryn’s world. With the return of his brother, it was as if all his childhood fears had flooded back into him. Fenris had been creepy as a child and was proving to be absolutely terrifying as an adult. Soryn did not know what to do. He could not flee without leaving Arna and he could not grab her in time to get away from Fenris. But then…he was only thinking of Fenris attacking him. “Why would I think that?” Soryn thought to himself. Terrifying or not, it was still his brother before him. Fenris had just tricked Soryn into thinking he was a different brother.

  “Why did you trick me?” Soryn demanded, his voice as steady as he could make it.

  “Trick you?” Fenris said, cocking his head in the same fashion Ulla did.

  “You told me you were Olan!” Soryn screamed—hoping it would wake Arna, but it did not.

  “Ah, that’s where you are wrong. I told you that I was your brother, but I never said I was Olan. You assumed I was him, so I let you believe it. When I talked to you all in the cottage, I told the truth—I had found my body and that it was in a cave. Look around you—doesn’t this look cavernous?” Fenris’ diabolical smile set Soryn’s nerves even more on edge.

  “How did you find Olan’s body?” Soryn demanded.

  “Well, that was easy. Because this location is far nearer the cottage, I was still able to read minds and I could see the place Stigg was picturing in his. My sources told me that your little group had found a body in the woods and I could only assume it was Olan’s if I had already found mine here. So, I traveled quickly—more quickly than you all—to the cavern to the north and I waited. I was lucky that you were all so far behind me or else I might not have made it in time.

  “I waited by Olan’s body—marveling at the fact that while he and I were in animal form, our human bodies had grown into men. When you all arrived, I thought it could go two ways. Fanndis would finally believe my deception and reverse the original spell right away. I wouldn’t have been able to take Olan’s body, but Olan was not but a few feet outside the cave. He would have reclaimed his own body.”

  “What?” Soryn felt confused.

  “The white wolf—that mangy thing—is our brother Olan,” he informed Soryn.

  “Ulf is Olan?” Soryn was fitting all the pieces together.

  “I knew he had taken up with that female wolf and started a pack—I kept tabs very closely on Olan, even if he entirely ignored me. The animal kingdom is a small world, Soryn—it was quite rude of him to shut me out like that. However, since Fanndis did not turn me back on the spot, I knew you and Arna would be fools enough to do it yourselves. You two are entirely too adventurous, you know. I expect Fanndis won’t be too pleased with you when she sees what you’ve done.”

  Soryn felt as though he had died and was merely observing the whole scene as a ghost. He was too surprised and full of fear to be anything but detached and helpless.

/>   “Fenris, Arna is hurt. We need to take her back to the cottage.” Soryn shifted towards her unconscious body.

  “You won’t be taking her anywhere. I have some business to attend to concerning your little witch, here.” Fenris’ voice was full of shadows.

  “Leave her be, Fenris,” Lord Maslyn said from some hidden reservoir of courage in his soul.

  Before Fenris could reach her, Soryn sprang forward—attempting to grab her and carry her out of the burrow. Fenris knocked him back and out of the way. Soryn’s head flew backwards and slammed into the packed dirt of the burrow walls. The last thing he saw was Fenris stooping over Arna’s helpless form before all went dark.