The skinned raider’s body lay on the floor, every raw inch of it oozing blood. In the next moment, the bigger man, with golden-red hair and a painted face, roared and reached over his shoulder to grab his battle-axe. It seemed to happen in endless slow motion, but I saw the honed metal blade swing, saw my brother jump nimbly to avoid it, saw the blade slice down through his shoulder, almost severing his arm.
Sigmundur cried out and then the room was filled with more berserkers. Some stood guard outside the door, cutting down my father’s guards as they raced down the hall.
Sigmundur staggered, wailing, but was lifting his own sword in his other hand when the raider’s axe swung again, and then my brother’s head was dropping to the ground, followed by his slowly crumpling body.
From behind my mother’s skirt I heard her harsh, dark, terrible song, saw lightning flash from her hands, striking raiders in their faces, their eyes. They would shriek and fall back, but there were always others.
Someone cut off Eydís’s head and she went down like a mown flower in a field. Her head stayed very close to her neck, and her eyes continued to blink, her hands twitching. A heavy boot shoved her head several feet away, and after a few minutes she was still and her eyes closed.
Tinna was next. She’d always hated fighting and swords, had always tried to get out of practice. Now she stood in her nightgown, her face as white as the linen, and let her sword drop to the ground. A man came forward and grabbed her, throwing her over his shoulder. He started to wade through the bodies to leave the room, but some of my father’s guards attacked him, slashing their swords through his belly so that his guts spilled out.
Another axe cut off Tinna’s head. The biggest man, the oldest one, was shouting orders—he was still alive, though spattered with so much blood that it was making the paint on his face run. He spoke a different dialect from ours, but it was similar enough that I understood the words “Kill them all! Leave none alive! Even the children! Even one alive will curse their magick!”
Háakon sank to his knees, his small hands still holding his dagger. A man ran at him and Háakon automatically slashed out with his dagger, catching the man’s calf. In another second my little brother, too, was dead.
My mother was standing, tall and terrible and radiating power. I saw a lightning bolt shoot through the air and hit the biggest raider in the eye. It exploded and he screamed, dropping his axe and clapping one hand over the ruined socket. As my mother raised her hands again, holding the amulet, he swung his longsword one-handed, faster than I would have thought possible. I felt my mother’s body jerk from the blow, and then very, very slowly, she began to fall backward. I clung to her skirts and squeezed my eyes shut, and she fell right on top of me. My head hit the stone floor so hard, I saw stars and the chaos of the room dimmed for a moment. My mother’s weight was heavy on me, the thick wool of her robe suffocating. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t move. The shouting was muffled. My nose filled with horrible burning scents, of hair, wool, skin.
I don’t know how long I lay there. Eventually there was silence, and still I stayed, though I could barely breathe. Smoke was filling my nose, burning my throat. Finally I realized I truly couldn’t breathe. I pushed experimentally on my mother’s body, but I had to brace my feet and shove hard. She rolled away from me. I opened my eyes. The room was empty of living things. Around me lay the bodies of my brothers and sisters. My mother’s face, still beautiful, rested peacefully several feet away. The hall outside was empty. I heard dim cries from outside. The castle was burning down around me, this room aflame, the heat almost unbearable.
Slowly I got to my feet. I was numb, not thinking, not feeling anything. I felt dead myself—perhaps they had killed me, and I was a spirit now. I had to step over Eydís’s body, had to step over Háakon. If I were a spirit I could have floated over them.
The door to the study was broken in, shattered, and I headed toward it, and then from the corner of my eye I saw a wall move. I looked at it and it moved again, a narrow strip of stone wall next to a cupboard. It swung sideways and I crouched down, my fingers accidentally brushing Sigmundur’s hair, sodden with blood.
A woman’s face peered out, looking terrified. She saw the room and its contents and raised her hand over her mouth to prevent herself screaming. I blinked and recognized her: Gildun Haraldsdottir. She was the wife of my father’s stable steward. A man appeared next to her: Stepan, her husband. His face crumpled with sorrow and horror and he put a hand on her shoulder.
I stood up.
They jumped back in alarm, seeing me standing among the flames and the bodies. Mouth open in shock, Gildun motioned to me to come to her. I started slowly toward her, hardly knowing what I was doing. Something crunched under my foot—it was a heavy gold chain, the one that held my mother’s amulet around her neck. The amulet was gone, my mother’s neck severed. I took another step toward Gildun, leaving the chain where it was.
Urgently they beckoned me. I’d never seen this secret door, had no idea where it led. Now, looking back, I can see that’s why my mother had herded us all in there. Somehow things had happened too fast for her to get us down the escape tunnel, or maybe it could only be opened from the other side. I don’t know. I’ll never know.
Flames flickered along the carpet where I stood. In another moment my nightgown would catch on fire. I didn’t know I was immortal, had just seen my family killed. I knew dying in a fire would be bad. Another step farther and I stepped on something else. I feared it might be someone’s hand—didn’t want to look down. But I did. I was standing on smoldering wool—the stench was terrible. Beneath the flames was my mother’s amulet—or at least, half of it. Half was missing, the half with the moonstone. I quickly glanced around and didn’t see it. I bent down and picked it up, burning my hand, and immediately dropped it again.
“Lilja, hurry!” Gildun’s voice was hushed and scared. “The fire!”
I ripped the hem of my nightgown—it came off in a long strip. I wrapped my hand in it, picked up the amulet, and then kept my gaze focused on Gildun’s face. In five steps I had reached her, and Stepan reached out, grabbed me, and pulled me into the black tunnel. Gildun closed the door behind us and picked up her torch. Stepan held my hand tightly and rushed me along the tunnel.
“Wait!” I needed my hands free. I wrapped the amulet in the strip of cloth and tied it closely around my neck. Then I took Stepan’s hand again, and the three of us ran along this low-ceilinged tunnel, dirt-floored, narrow, smelling of damp and earth.
It felt like we ran for hours. I tripped on roots and stones, and once Gildun had to drag me upright again. Finally we came out right into a huge boulder. A very narrow natural fissure in the boulder was the exit, and it was hidden by dense brush. We fought our way through the brush and I found that we were on a narrow farm road, quite a distance away from the castle. Over my shoulder I saw that the entire structure was alight with flame.
I didn’t know if we were going to run all the way to Aelfding or what, but about a quarter-mile down the road, a farmer, someone I didn’t know, was waiting on his hay cart. Working quickly, Gildun and Stepan tore a hole in the hay, then Stepan picked me up and tossed me up there like a parcel. More hay was dumped on top of me, at least five feet thick, but so loosely that I could still breathe, though just barely.
The farmer clicked to his donkey, and the heavy cart started to move.
The next day the farmer took me to Mother Berglind, and she took me to Gunnar Oddursson’s farm, and I became Sunna Gunnarsson. Lilja and her life were set aside, a closed book I’d never wanted to reopen. I lived there for six years, till I got married. I never saw Gildun or Stepan or the farmer again, had no idea what ever happened to them.
As time went on, I got used to being a farmer’s daughter, and the only sign that I had ever been anything different was the round burn on the back of my neck, where the amulet had burned through the cloth and right into my skin. I hadn’t even noticed it at the time.
&nb
sp; The sun was high in the sky—I had to start now to get back to Aelfding before sunset. Suddenly the back of my neck prickled and I stood quickly, shading my eyes to search the edge of the woods quite some distance away. I saw no one and nothing, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen or heard a single bird, seen a single wild animal in this place. I hadn’t even seen any insects. This was place was worse than dead—it seemed cursed.
I grabbed up my pack and set off for the road. My pack felt five times heavier, my sturdy clogs unbearably heavy and clumsy. Everything was weighted; an oppressive stillness pressed down on me, making my breath thick in my throat. I hurried on. It seemed to me that not even the sun shone as brightly here. There was darkness here, a shadow not cast by any living thing. This place was soaked with horror and blood and evil.
And then I was struck down with pain, doubled over, my pack spilling out of my hand.
I stroked the dandy brush lightly down Titus’s legs, feeling the warm strength there. I wished I’d had all these fancy tools to take better care of Mossy. I’d done the best I could, but she would have been so happy with this fine barn and these bales of timothy hay.
That had all been so long ago. That was then, this was now. I straightened, my hand on Titus’s side. An idea cracked into my brain, like sharp white light, and with astonishment I realized what River had said to me. Then, I was there, in time and distance, a faraway other world, another me. Now I was here, right here, in reality, and this was me now. I was no longer there, no longer that girl. Somehow, I’d never gotten that before.
Maybe what River had meant was that time itself was like a river, moving steadily forward, and you got to be in a new river every day, every hour. All my life I’d felt like—a lake. A lake where everything was contained, forever. All my experiences, all the different people I’d been, everything I’d had, everything I’d lost… I carried them around with me, all the time. They’d made up layer after layer of hardened shell, like layers of shellac on a Japanese box. That shell had protected the withered, half-dead me that could no longer bear to interact with anything or anyone normally.
My time here—not even two months—was gradually stripping away one paper-thin layer of shell at a time. And the wretched, coiled-up me inside was sort of… inflating. Plumping up, like an almost dead flower suddenly drenched with rain. Why was that happening? Why was I letting it, after so long?
On that day, over 440 years ago, I’d lain on the charred ground of my father’s stronghold, weeping in fear and pain. I’d had a miscarriage, my only tie to Àsmundur and my life with him. Then I truly felt that I’d lost everything—my family, my home, my foster family, my husband, my beloved horse, and now my only baby, who had lived without my knowing and had died before I realized it. I had nothing left, nowhere to go. No one to be—not daughter, not wife, not even friend.
When I could walk the next day, I had gathered my things and set off down the road, away from the place of horror and death and loss. I walked until I found a tall, leafy plant with pretty sprays of small purple flowers. I ate a bunch of it, choking down the flowers, the rough, coarse leaves, barely able to swallow them. Our washerwoman had told us that monkshood was fatally poisonous and that we children were never to touch it.
I ate as much as I could, feeling the poison start to burn my mouth. My hands grew numb, and I doubled over again with terrible stomach pains. I cried and screamed and retched for hours before I lost consciousness.
The irony being, of course, that I was immortal, but didn’t know it. After my suicide attempt failed, and I couldn’t even die properly, I had somehow made my way to the biggest town, Reykjavik. I was taken in as a servant by a housekeeper, and introduced to my new mistress, Helgar. That was when my life as an immortal began, and my old life ended, just as sharply and surely as if that monkshood had killed me. I’d grown my first shell.
“If you brush that horse any longer, he won’t have any coat left.”
My head jerked up at the words, and I watched Reyn’s hard, broad back as he carried several heavy saddles down the aisle. It had been Reyn, that night. He’d been one of the raiders out in the hall. He himself hadn’t actually killed any of my family, which was a relief, because I would have to kill him, and it’s actually pretty hard to cut someone’s head off. But he’d been there that night. He was the only other person alive who had shared the horror of that experience with me. And here he was, in Levi’s and work boots. No face paint, no sword at his side. Just a normal guy. A normal, grumpy, stuffed-shirt guy who had shared the experience of my family’s decimation, four hundred years ago.
In fact, Titus had turned his head and was giving me an okaaaay look.
“Sorry,” I muttered to him, dumping my tools and unclipping him.
I led him to his stall, made sure he had hay, and then went back to my room, lost in thought.
CHAPTER 30
Just another smidgen…
I took another slow bite, looking down at my plate, but focusing all my attention on Nell’s dinner roll. I breathed in and out very slowly, concentrating on moving her roll just slightly out of reach, again and again.
Once, twice, three times I saw her reach for it as she chatted with an unresponsive Reyn and a more animated Lorenz, who threw his head back and laughed. Each time Nell’s hand went automatically for where she had left her roll, and each time her fingers closed on air. Frowning, she would take it, break off a piece, then set it closer to her plate.
Then I would edge it out of the way, very, very slowly. Using just my super-duper immortal brain waves. It was an incredible triumph.
I had come in earlier and worked the necessary spells of limitation so that not everyone’s rolls would move, and Nell would have only her roll move, and not her fork or her glass. I had pored over spellcrafting books in the library, and practiced individual bits of the spell for the last two days in my room. I was making white magick: Nothing near me was dying, nothing having its life sucked out. This was me, now, Tähti, utilizing my heritage of incredible magickal power. Of course, I was using it to do something kind of mean. Did that make it not white magick? Did intent matter as much as method? There was probably a class about that in my future.
I was practically aglow with suppressed excitement, and the effort to restrain a cackling laugh was making my stomach hurt. But I was doing it. And Nell was getting a little flustered, a little bit confused. It was such a minor thing, to have one’s roll not where one thinks it is, and yet it’s such a minor thing that an inability to do it becomes very puzzling.
I took another slow spoonful of soup, controlling my breathing, keeping my face still and neutral. Two seats away, Nell’s lovely manicured fingers clicked down on empty table, again. This time she actually stared at her roll, and went through a quick motion of where it should be.
I almost snorted soup through my nose. I felt her look up, glance around the table. As far as I could tell, no one here ever used/misused magick like this. Ever since the smushed stone incident, Nell had made a subtle-yet-obvious show of watching me, not sitting by me, avoiding me. She wanted to make sure everyone knew that dear, sweet Nell was suspicious and didn’t trust me. After all, she’d been here for years. They knew her. I was still a relative stranger.
“Oh, Nas, did you uncover the onion rows this morning in the garden?” Brynne asked. She had another colorful cloth wrapped around her head, contrasting oddly with her woolen Nordic sweater. Lately it seemed that the radiators weren’t quite up to the task of keeping the rooms warm. It was already an unusually cold winter, people said.
“Yep,” I said, and dipped my bread into my soup.
“And did you cover them back up before the sun went down?” Asher asked.
“Yep,” I said, and reached for more sautéed greens.
“There’ll be no more spinach this year, not even in the cold frames,” said Jess in his gravelly voice. I tried to look suitably disappointed.
Nell now had a death grip on her roll, keeping it in one
hand while her smile became strained, her laughter a little too bright.
Keeping as innocent an expression on my face as possible, I ate slowly and listened as people talked about Yule, which was tomorrow.
“We have the Yule log,” said Charles. “It’s been curing in the back barn since last year.”
“We’ll light it at sunset,” said Solis. “How is the cooking team coming along with their plans?”
“It’s me, Charles, and Lorenz,” said Anne. “I think we have it all figured out.”
“All right,” said Solis. “Yell if you need help.”
“I can make cookies, if you want,” said Jess, and Anne looked happy and nodded. The thought of weather-beaten Jess, who looked like he’d been dragged off the street for some social-work program, being a cookie master was funny, and I smiled.
Out of the very corner of my eye, I saw that Nell had finally let go of her roll, leaving it on the edge of her plate.
“The decorating is almost done,” she said, plastering a cheerful smile on her face. “And we’re going to be hanging mistletoe, so watch out!”
Around the table, people smiled and chuckled, including me—even as I gently, gently, shoved Nell’s roll off her plate.
The slight movement caught her eye and she jerked her head to stare at it. Lorenz, across from me, asked me to pass the salt, and I did so smoothly, without losing concentration. I was even able to ask him if people exchanged gifts at Yule.
“We do a ‘secret elf’ kind of thing,” he told me in his accented English. Lorenz seemed to meld generations of Italian notions of perfection all in one person, and I wondered why I didn’t find him more attractive. “We pass out names in a hat, and we each choose one. Then we must give a secret gift to our chosen one.”
I wondered how far Nell would go to make sure she chose Reyn, or he chose her, or both.