Dolor and Shadow (56 page)

* * *

The black forest battled the Seidr light from Kallan’s hands. Repeatedly, Kallan directed the flow of her Seidr through the seed. Repeatedly, she tried once more.

She had managed to tame the Seidr that naturally flowed through the earth beneath her feet and pulled from the waters as she came to streams and lakes, but the Seidr in the air, always there without structure or elements to direct its flow, was still too far from her reach.

With another attempt, Kallan failed again and started over, pushing every bit of Seidr she could collect into the seedling in her hands. After several minutes, she opened her hands.

“What are you doing?”

Kallan jumped and dropped the seed to the forest floor. Flashing Ori a grimace, she gathered her skirts and kneeled, pulling apart each blade of grass and upturning each crumpled leaf in search of the apple’s seed.

“What are you looking for?” Ori asked.

Refusing to entertain his inquisition, Kallan shuffled through the mulch and grass. His armor rustled as he walked and dropped to his knees in front of her. After a moment, he was silent again and she risked a glance up from her work. Kneeling and hunched on the ground before her, Ori pushed his fingers through the pine needles, leaves, and earth as she separated the grasses.

“What are we looking for?” he asked, searching the ground.

“A seed,” she said, feeling the cold in her voice scrape her throat.

Ori froze and set his impenetrable, cold stare on her. Pausing, Kallan glanced up. His eyes, cloaked with grief, forced a sudden wave of discomfort through her and she hated him more for it.

“What were you doing out here so far from camp?” he asked after she resumed her search.

She didn’t answer.

Ori shook his head with an affectionate chuckle. “You still find every moment to run off alone, don’t you?”

Kallan’s hands paused on the grass. “What do you know of me?” she said through the hate that dripped from her words.

Sincere hurt shone from the black of Ori’s eyes. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

Kallan’s cold eyes remained unaltered.

“I thought that the drugs had suppressed your memory,” Ori said, “but you don’t remember.”

Her palms tingled with the temptation to set him ablaze right there.

“And what, Dvergr, am I supposed to remember?”

“The halls of my father that flowed with rivers of silver, and opals so abundant they could be cut right out of the rock face. Veins of elding so hard, only our smiths could shape those ingots…” Solemnly, Ori seemed to search for the glimmer of someone he once knew within Kallan’s iced eyes. “And mines so deep, our labyrinths descended into the earth beyond the roots of Yggdrasil down to the gates of Helheim. Do you remember nothing?”

Kallan hesitated, forcing a civil composure.

“What I remember…are the cold weeks I spent bound by your elding chains that burrowed into my wrists. And that pungent tang that robbed me of my senses, my reason…my will to live as I dangled at the end of a leash! Days spent cowering in the shadows while I was forced to endure those insipid rhymes meant to torment me!”

Kallan sat back on her heels, forgetting all thought of the seedling lost to the forest floor. “The boot of your comrade smashing my face, crushing my hand, and breaking my nose, and the constant stench of bat buried in the bowels of the caves where you kept me chained like a Slider rolling in its own filth! That,” she spat, “is what I remember.”

Ori’s face fell, weighed heavy with a loss Kallan dismissed without a care. It was with a disheartened voice that Ori spoke, each word carried by his hope.

“We were lost in the mazes of Nidavellir’s mines, chased by the dragons we had found. Your father and mine had exhausted the realm’s army in search of us…and when they found us, you insisted the dragons were there.”

With widened eyes, Kallan listened, enslaved by the sudden colors of forgotten memories that merged one into the next until the colors became unblemished images she could identify.

“He scolded us…we argued and stood our ground.” Ori spoke with a stronger voice that commanded her audience. “We insisted the dragons were real.”

The pictures were clearing and Kallan remembered her father standing before them, glaring as he so often did in those mines. She saw the browns and tans and blacks of the fur cloak he always wore and the leather of his boots, the silver sheen of the sword hilt at his side.

“How…” she tried to ask, muddled with images that struggled to refine themselves.

“Before the war,” he said.

Kallan narrowed her eyes, staring beyond the Dvergr where the images formed as she forced the memory.

“There was a prince,” she said, “and dragons, deep within the chasms of the Svartálfaheim mines…in Nidavellir.”

Ori sat patiently while Kallan pushed through dozens of memories, countless memories that fought to surface. She could see the mines again, streaked with their rivers of silver. She could hear the echoes of her laugh resonate through the caves, and the warm, black eyes of a boy, with a pale face untouched by the warmth of the sun. The black of his hair gleamed in the torchlight. As they crawled through the labyrinths, he cried out from somewhere in her memory.

“Kali! He’s here! I’ve found him. I’ve found him! Look, there’s his tail!”

“He’s there! I see him, Ori! Catch him! Catch him!”

Her forgotten words echoed from within her head and she could hear, so clearly, the dormant memories awakened.

“By all the fires of Muspellsheim,”
her father had roared.
“Kallan, that’s a newt!”

“
It isn’t a newt, Father! He’s a dragon! I saw him myself climb out of the fire!”

Daggon’s laughter had boomed from behind as the young princess had tried so desperately to hold onto the gray Northern newt.

Eyolf had done well to hide his grin beneath the mass of his black beard.

“Ori, stop telling her they’re dragons! Daggon, stop laughing!”

“But he could be! He could be! Sometimes the dragons are real!”
Little Kallan had shrieked and the memory faded.

“Ori,” Kallan whispered, still kneeling on the ground in the grass, and the Dvergr smiled. Narrowing her eyes, Kallan studied his face through the dark for a hint of the boy she had forgotten.

She didn’t see the shadows move behind Ori, nor did she see the wild black of the crazed eyes flash as Motsognir’s scout launched from the blanket of night. By the time Kallan rose to one knee, coddling a blue flame, Ori had unsheathed his sword and stood, impaling the scout, who slumped to the ground. The prince wiped the blood from his blade, panting with even breaths.

“Were you looking to save me?” Ori asked, taking a step toward Kallan.

Ori moved and a second Dvergr lunged with raised sword from the shadows. In a torrent of black hair and ebony eyes, he charged then stopped only inches away. A single arrow shot clean through his heart interrupted his advance, and he fell to the earth with the look of victory frozen on his face.

Kallan and Ori whipped around as Rune lowered his bow to his side.

“They’re here,” Ori said between breaths.

Rune nodded and the Dvergr grinned.

“I’ll be blaming you for this,” Ori said, pointing at the bodies with his blade.

“I figured you might,” Rune replied with a tone that radiated his respect. “Kallan,” he called, offering her his hand. “Come.”

His gentle voice coaxed her and she took his hand. With a heavy numbness, she slid her hand into his as he pulled her to her feet. With a slight tug, Rune urged her to follow and led her into the darkness, back to the horses and camp.

“Rune,” Ori called. “Take care of her.”

With a contented smile, Rune nodded and tightened his grip on Kallan’s hand, guiding her back to the banks of the river.

Lost beneath the forest floor, unbeknownst to them all, a single seedling lay among the forest mulch. Its tiny stem had swollen and broken free from its prison shell. Four tiny apple leaves stretched themselves out like little arms reaching toward the heavens for light.

* * *

Smoke and ash billowed into the air as Rune rolled up the beds. After saddling the horses, they were off, riding hard down along the lake’s edge. They transitioned between full gallops and light canters, and stopped only long enough to rejuvenate and heal the horses with Idunn’s apples. Through the night, they rode with little said between them until the sun rose over Midgard and spilled its light onto the lake.

Mid-day came and went as the tip of the lake narrowed into the wide river that drained Lake Mjerso.

Rune turned the skewered salmon steaks he had propped over a fire.

Kallan stared into the flames. “Salmon.”

“Again,” Rune said.

Kallan hugged her legs into her chest, resting her chin on her knees. She released a weary breath.

“I miss Gudrun’s
flado
.”

Rune’s eyes grew wide. “Oooh,
flado
,” he exclaimed at the thought of sweet, golden creams molded into beautiful bowls and topped with preserves.

“Yeah!” Kallan’s face lit up with excitement. “Gudrun makes the best
flado
from the juice of Idunn’s apples. She calls it Idunn’s Nectar.”

“You know what I miss?”

“What?” Kallan asked, giving an alternating tap with her feet.

“Cook’s boiled blood pudding,” Rune said and Kallan puckered her lips with relished delight.

“Gudrun makes that with cloudberries,” she beamed. “Oh, and blood cakes with imported sugared pears drowning in mulberry sauce.”

“Boiled pork,” Rune said. “And—”

“—Black Soup,” they both exclaimed.

Kallan sighed and looked to the stars. “Lingonberry jam,” she said.

“With boiled pork.” Rune bobbed his head and hungrily licked his lips then dropped his gaze to the skewers of unseasoned salmon propped over the fire.

Kallan dropped her chin back to her knees.

“I hate fish.”

They watched the salmon and waited until Rune took up each skewer. Quietly, he passed a stick to Kallan and, in a daze, she peeled off the skin of her fish as her thoughts filled and emptied with memories of silver streams that riddled the mines of Nidavellir.

The wood fire crackled.

“We’re not stopping for long,” Rune said as Kallan picked off another piece of fish. “Ori may have managed to divert Motsognir, but Olaf can’t be far behind.”

Kallan rotated her fish as she lost her thoughts in the mazes of Svartálfaheim caves.

“So my thinking was this,” Rune continued, “I can head out when I’m done here and hand myself over to Olaf.”

“What?” Kallan said, jerked from her thoughts.

Rune shrugged.

“Astrid will ride faster if he’s only carrying one of us,” he said. “So I figured you could take him on ahead to Alfheim.”

“Are you mad?”

A smile stretched Rune’s face. “Now that I have your attention,” he said, “what’s really on your mind?”

Kallan chuckled lightly, shaking her head after tossing her meal’s carcass onto the fire that devoured her fish bones.

“I can see them,” she said.

The fire whipped its flames into the air.

“Them?” Rune asked.

Kallan leaned back against the pile of saddlebags. Astrid crunched on the grass behind her as his bridle jingled.

“Have you ever had the pleasure of seeing Nidavellir?” she asked, staring past the fire into her memories.

“The Dvergar city within Svartálfaheim?” he asked.

Kallan lifted her eyes from the flames.

“No.” Rune shook his head. “But I know someone who was once imprisoned there.” Kallan quelled her questions for later. “He spoke of their mazes, their labyrinths…their culture.”

Kallan nestled her chin into her knees.

“The Svartálfaheim mines,” she said, “were sculpted around the metals and stones flowing through the ground. Endless streaks of silver and black glisten in the fire’s light…a majesty I’ve not seen duplicated since.”

Kallan paused, allowing herself to get lost in the beauty known only to those halls.

“And those metals…” Kallan gasped at the memories Ori had awakened. “I would watch for hours as Volundr wielded the silvers and blacks of their elding.”

Rune straightened at attention.

“Volundr,” he exclaimed. “The Smith?”

Kallan smiled and nodded. “
Gramm
’s maker.”

“By the fires of Muspellsheim,” Rune said, leaning back on his bedroll.

Kallan watched him through the flames.

“My father could only tell us tales,” he said, staring up at the stars.

Kallan shuffled herself around, stretching out on her stomach and staring off into the darkness with her chin resting on her arms. Sleep was beginning to find her and she closed her eyes in submission.

“What I wouldn’t give to see him work,” Rune said.

The fire crackled as she listened to Rune shuffle into his bedroll. Dreams came quickly as she drifted off in thought of raw opals twinkling from beneath the earthen walls.

“Kallan?”

“Hm.” She could feel his eyes on her and she smiled, allowing the comfort of his vigilance to sooth her.

“When we cross into Alfheim tomorrow…” Rune paused. “Will you go with me to Gunir?”

“Hm hm,” she agreed with a smile, allowing her own petty desires their moment as she drifted off to sleep.