Storm at the Edge of Time (8 page)

“This is my house,” Arni said proudly. Jamie was not impressed and, by the wrinkling of Tyaak's nose, she guessed that he wasn't either. She hoped that whatever code of politeness the Kreeth had would at least keep him quiet.

Pushing aside a leather hanging, they stepped through the low doorway. Inside, the rectangular stone
house was all one room. Along one wall ran a built-in stone bench with bedrolls of blankets and furs. Most of the light came from the hearth in the center of the floor and from the smoke hole in the roof above it. Leather curtains were pegged firmly over narrow windows.

“Looks like Mother's out, and Father's sure to be with the Earl.” Arni added proudly, “He's not only Thorfinn's skald, you know, he's also his cousin and friend.”

At the moment, Jamie was more interested in whatever was in the iron pot that stood on a tripod over the fire. At the first whiff, she'd realized how ravenously hungry she was. Trying to warm up, they crouched by the glowing coals while Arni ladled a steaming mass into three clay bowls. Jamie cautiously poked at hers with a carved bone spoon. Some sort of mush with chunks of something else in it. Fish? Gross, she thought, but hungrily spooned in mouthfuls anyway.

After a couple of helpings, Jamie put down her bowl and asked, “This great-grandmother of yours, was she really a sorceress?”

“Oh, yes. But surely even in your times, you know the story of Eithne and the magic banner.”

“Surely we do not,” Tyaak grumbled, “and surely we do not want to, either.”

“But you should anyway,” the younger boy insisted. “After all, she seems to be your ancestor too.”

Arni put down his bowl and sat up rather stiffly. His voice became high as he switched into singsong chant. “Now, after Earl Ljot's death, his brother Hlodvir took charge of the earldom and ruled well. He married Eithne the Sorceress, daughter of King Kjarval of Ireland
and his Orkney bride, and their son was Sigurd the Stout. After Hlodvir's death, Sigurd became a great chieftain and ruled Caithness as well as Orkney, defending them against the Scots. Every summer he went on splendid Viking expeditions as well, plundering in the Hebrides, Scotland, and Ireland.

“One summer it happened that a Scottish earl challenged Sigurd to a fight and, as his mother, Eithne, was a sorceress, he consulted her, saying that the odds against him were heavy.

“‘Had I thought you wanted a safe life,' she taunted him, ‘I would have raised you in my wool basket. But fate, not wiles, will rule your life. Take this banner. I have made it for you with all the skills I have. It will bring victory to the man it is carried before, but death to the one who carries it.'

“The Earl took the banner, finely worked with the figure of a raven. He gathered what men he could for the battle and sailed to meet the Scottish earl. The moment the two sides clashed, Sigurd's standard-bearer was struck dead. The Earl told another man to pick up the banner, but before long he too had been killed. In the end, Earl Sigurd lost three banner carriers but won the day.

“Five years later, Sigurd's allies in Ireland called on his help against King Brian. Sigurd came to Ireland with many long ships, but when the armies met, no one would carry the raven banner, so the Earl had to do it himself. And as his mother had foreseen, he was killed.

“Now, after the death of Sigurd—”

“Enough!” Tyaak said. “No more confusing names
and impossible coincidences. It is a stupid, unlikely story anyway.”

Arni seemed to droop a little; then he stuck out his lip stubbornly. “It is a fine story. Maybe I didn't tell it as well as my father does, but I'm still learning.”

Jamie shot Tyaak a dirty look, then assured Arni, “No, you told it very well. It's just that we'd heard all we needed to know. But I bet no one would cany the banner after that.”

“They certainly wouldn't. It still hangs in Earl Thorfinn's hall, and his armies cany a different banner into battle.” The boy shot a defiant glance at Tyaak. “I can take you to see it if you don't believe me.”

“I believe that the same banner hangs there. What I do not believe is that it is magic.”

Jamie smiled wickedly. “Well, if you don't believe in magic, how do you explain sitting here centuries before you were born?”

Tyaak shrugged. “Urkar possesses very powerful technology, whatever he chooses to call it. But he sent us here to find a particular object. And if we do not find it and bring it to him, he has no reason to use that technology to send us back.”

Before, Jamie had shunted that thought aside, but now it wrapped her with the coldness of Orkney's wind. Clutching her cape more tightly, she whispered, “So we might have to stay on this bleak eleventh-century island forever?”

Tyaak nodded, and Jamie thought he didn't look as arrogant as before. He looked scared—about as scared as she felt.

This is a fine place!” Arni had begun to protest, when a dark figure stepped through the door. “Arni! You've been gone a whole day longer than your message said. Where have you been?”

“Mother!” Arni jumped up. “I, uh … I went to gather roots for Isgard the Healer on the mainland and got cut off by the tide. I stayed with these good people, and they came over here to return the visit. But we've got to go now and deliver the roots. Ill be back.”

Quickly he hustled the others to their feet and out the door, past his exasperated-looking mother. “Follow me,” he whispered. “Isgard's house is on the upper edge of town. Might as well start checking roof beams there.”

Jamie felt like an idiot, walking from house to house looking under each roof like some eleventh-century housing inspector. She'd have thought more people would object, but all the concern and conversation she
picked up were about the news the riders had brought earlier.

Finally her fingers were so cold, she asked for a break from beam inspection, and for some information. “Look, Arni, have I got this anywhere near right? King Harald of somewhere …”

“Norway.”

“Right. King Harald of Norway is paying a bunch of people to attack your Earl Thorfinn because Thorfinn killed another earl named Rogenvald. Right?”

The boy nodded. “Right, except that the paid fighters are joining former followers of Rogenvald who want to avenge his death. Last year Thorfinn surrounded a house where Rogenvald was staying and burned it down. Then he disguised his own ship with Rogenvald's shields so he could sail into the enemy's harbor and jump out and kill more of his people.”

“Sounds pretty sneaky to me. Maybe your Thorfinn deserves to have people after his head.”

Arni looked shocked. “But Thorfinn only attacked Rogenvald for revenge because before that Rogenvald had set fire to a house where Thorfinn and his wife were staying and they only escaped by leaping through a second-story window and rowing across the Pentland Firth at night.”

Jamie shook her head. “Oh, and I suppose that Rogenvald only did that to avenge something else which—”

“Young Arni,” said a deep voice behind them, “you are telling the story backward, but the gist's right. Soon you should have it in proper skald fashion like your father here.”

The man looking down at them was huge and not the least bit handsome. His nose was a great beak, and on either side dark eyes glinted under shaggy eyebrows. His wild black hair was tufted here and there with gray. Altogether he was not a person to be ignored.

“Earl Thorfinn!” Arni exclaimed, bobbing his head. “My friends here are … not locals. I thought they needed to know all about your great deeds.”

“And so should everyone,” the big man boomed, “in Orkney, Scotland, and beyond.” He bent toward them and winked. “Particularly since we are about to add a new verse. Come, all three of you must join us in the great hall tonight for feasting, drinking, and storytelling. Then your friends will have more stories worth spreading when they return home.”

He straightened up and slapped the man beside him on the shoulder. The little gray-haired man staggered but kept smiling as if he were used to it. The Earl continued: “Even dead, that little weasel Rogenvald keeps pestering me. But come this spring, we'll finally put him and his minions to rest, and you, Arnor, and your son, too, can sing about it. In the meantime, though, we might as well enjoy ourselves!”

With a huge bark of a laugh, the Earl strode down the road. Arnor looked at his red-haired son, then cast a questioning glance at his two companions.

“Friends of mine from the mainland,” Arni sputtered.

The skald squinted more closely under Tyaak's hood. “And from a bit farther away, too, I suspect. But the Earl has invited all three of you. Come early enough
to get a place.” With one more glance at his son's friends, he hurried after the Earl of Orkney.

Arni whistled with relief. “I don't know how long I'm going to be able to juggle these stories about you.”

“Then let us find that stick and get out of here,' Tyaak said impatiently. “Should we not be looking more in that direction?”

“Why that way?”

“It just seems—Because we have not as yet.”

“Those are the big official buildings down there—the church and the Earl's residence.” Arni puffed up a little. “As the skald's son, I see quite a lot of those places, and I've never noticed any carved beam end like the one we want.”

Jamie tried to pull her cloak even closer; the sun seemed near setting, and it was getting very cold. “I still think it's stupid to look only for roof beams. It could be a soup stirrer or a fence post or—”

“No, it's high up. My magic tells me that much. Yours would talk to you, too, if you'd only listen.”

Tyaak snorted, and Jamie kept silence. She supposed she'd be willing to listen if there were only something to hear. But all she had was a vague picture in her mind of what the staff should look like. Urkar hadn't even told them which of the carvings was here, but she imagined it was a bird—a black bird. That was just a wild guess, though.

“All right,” Arni said, “let's head Tyaak's way. The Earl's feast will be starting soon, and we can check out the beams in the church on our way.”

At the gate of the churchyard, however, they ran into Sven Havardson and several other boys.

“Well, if it isn't the failed swordsman turned sorcerer,” Sven said wryly. “Worked any great spells lately?” Then he looked at Arni's male companion. “Would this be a demon you've conjured, and are taking to meet the priests?”

Hand dropping automatically to his dagger, Arni squeaked, “No! He's a merchant's son from … Constantinople.” He turned to Jamie and Tyaak. “Come, we don't want to be late to the feast, not after the Earl himself invited the three of us.”

He started hurrying down the road, then stopped and looked back at the group by the gate. “I've given up on the idea of magic—a waste of time. But if I did learn, I wouldn't bother conjuring demons, I'd start by turning the lot of you into something that suits you better—sea slugs, maybe.”

With a confident stride, Arni continued down the road. “Pretty good,” he muttered to Jamie and Tyaak. “I put them off the scent and put them in their place at the same time. Knowing I've got magic is almost as good as knowing how to work it.”

They came to the Earl's hall. Again, Jamie was not impressed. All the stuff she'd read about medieval times had certainly glamorized things. At the moment, though, any place out of the cold and ceaseless wind looked good.

The building did have a wooden door, though—pretty impressive, Jamie admitted, for a place that hardly had any trees. Once they stepped through, the heat hit her numbed face like a volley of needles. Blinking, she looked around. The room was hardly a grand cavernous hall. It was built a lot like Arni's house, except
for being several times longer and wider, but the thick stone walls with narrow shuttered windows looked the same. Built-stone benches along both walls were already filling up with guests, mostly men but a few women. They all had long hair, worn either braided or loose.

Arni led them to the back of the hall. The air was thick with smoke—and with smell. The pungent tang of peat smoke mixed with smoking grease from the pig roasting in the central fire pit, and to this was added the locker-room odor of crowded bodies that weren't bathed often. Jamie decided that the good thing about being cold here was that your nose couldn't smell much. Beside her, she noticed Tyaak pull his cape in front of his face and mutter something about “reeking Humans.”

They settled into a corner of the far wall where they could see the length of the hall without being in the way. On either side were other rooms, curtained off. As they watched, the room filled with people. Their laughing, chattering voices swirled into the thick eye-stinging smoke, which was having difficulty finding its way out the hole in the roof. Women moved back and forth among the guests, pouring drinks from fat pottery jars.

Suddenly the curtain to their left was thrust aside, and Earl Thorfinn strode into the room, followed by his skald. Room was made for them on the benches, and the drinking and loud talking began in earnest. After a while someone called for a song, and a young man with a harp began a raucous piece that Jamie suspected she wouldn't have been allowed to listen to back home. Then there was a call for a story, and Arnor began
chanting a tale about some ancient earl who apparently died when he scratched his leg on the poisoned tooth of an enemy whose severed head he had tied to his saddle. Gross, Jamie decided, glad she couldn't catch all the words in these singsong chants.

Instead of trying, she began looking around the long smoky room. Battered round shields hung on the walls, each painted with a different design. High above the door on the far wall hung a banner, a red background with a black raven. She caught her breath. This must be the magic banner Arni had told them about.