The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age) (11 page)

You do understand it
, the sword told her.
We are here to kill Loki. You’ve known that ever since the dragon took you – but you would not say the words before
.

The others were climbing to their feet, groaning and exclaiming at their escape.

‘Where now?’ Edmund asked.

He was looking at Elspeth. She started – but of course, they had no guide now. Fritha had never been here – should not be here at all, she thought, looking at the girl’s terrified face. She knew the paths up the mountain, but neither she nor any of her people would willingly venture into its heart. No: it was Elspeth who had led them inside
Eigg Loki
, and they
expected her to know where to go. The sword’s voice rang in her head again, but she shut it out for the moment.

‘I think we should explore,’ she said to Edmund. A distant roaring sounded somewhere outside: the dragon, still hunting. ‘Find a safe place where we can rest,’ she added. ‘We can use the sword for light.’
But not for directions
, she told herself;
not until I know it won’t threaten anyone else
.

Cathbar, leaning against the rock wall, looked at the sword with a new wariness, and did not speak to Elspeth as she led the way deeper into the narrow cave. He was wounded again, she saw: a deep cut on his burned face, and a bloody gash on his arm. His silence was hard to bear – but what could she say to him?

The ground was rock, not ice, and the walls narrowed to a tunnel as they walked on, cutting deep into the mountain. Darkness pooled around them, the sword’s light showing only an endless stretch of rough stone to each side. It was absolutely quiet now, their footsteps the only sound. Edmund talked a little to Fritha, asking how she was, but the ice seemed to muffle their voices, and soon they walked in silence.

I did know the sword’s purpose
, Elspeth thought.
It was created to defeat Loki; Cluaran told us that. How could that mean anything other than killing him? And if that’s what I must do, I think I could do it. But not if it means killing my friends!

She glanced at the little group behind her. Cathbar was walking at the back, holding his arm stiffly.

He’s one man
. The sword’s voice whipped through her head before she could block it.
Loki has killed thousands, and if he is freed he means to burn the world. How can you set one life against that?

Elspeth stopped, so suddenly that Edmund collided with her. ‘How can I …?’ she echoed out loud.

Edmund and Fritha looked at her, startled, and she deliberately lowered the sword.

Like this
, she said in her head, and she clenched her hand as if to crush it.
Go! Leave me! You will not throw away my friends’ lives for your plan!

The sword vanished – and they were plunged into darkness. Behind her, Edmund exclaimed and Fritha gave a small cry of terror. There was a moment of silence – then slowly, reluctantly, Elspeth opened her hand to let the clear light spill out again.
I can’t let them walk in the dark
, she told the sword.
But try to control me again, and I will shut you out
.

‘What happened just then?’ said Edmund, his voice not quite steady.

‘I’m sorry.’ Elspeth kept her voice calm. ‘I lost my concentration for a moment. I’m fine now.’

There was something else, though, as they moved slowly on through the stone tunnel. In the darkness, she was sure she had seen drifting white shapes ahead of them, clinging to the walls. Now, in the light cast by the sword, the shapes were gone.

The ground began to slope upward and their steps became
slower. Fritha stumbled, and Elspeth realised she was staggering with weariness.

‘Let’s stop for a while,’ she called, and all four sank gratefully down against the rock wall.

Fritha had a tense, wary look that Elspeth had not seen on her before, like a cat before a storm. Edmund seemed intent on cheering her, asking her questions about charcoal-burning and the way to cure a wolfskin – but not, Elspeth realised, anything about the tales of ghosts and spirits that had so interested him before they came to the mountain. Elspeth was not so sure, now, that those stories were fables. Her father had always scoffed at the sailors’ tales of sirens that enticed a man and then dragged him down – but what of the creatures she herself had met, under the ice? Her clothes had long since dried, but she shivered at the memory. The drifting shapes she had glimpsed in that moment of darkness had looked like the creatures in the lake, and had twined around each other in the same way.

Cathbar spoke, the first words Elspeth had heard from him since they entered the cave. ‘Don’t know if any of you have noticed it, but there’s light somewhere up ahead. Maybe we can give that sword a rest.’

Elspeth could not read his expression, but she felt warm with relief to hear his voice again. ‘I hope so!’ she said fervently, and hoped he might understand.

Now that Cathbar had drawn attention to the light, they all saw it: a faint, greenish tinge to the darkness that showed
up as the smallest gleam on tiny irregularities on the walls to each side. The thought of some natural light cheered all of them, and they clambered to their feet again. The path became much steeper and more rocky, and soon they were scrambling up a series of natural steps, while all the time the greenish light grew brighter. And then they were at the top, in a passage seemingly roofed with ice, for the light appeared to come down through it.

‘We’re under the glacier,’ Fritha whispered.

Elspeth gratefully let the sword fade – and then hesitated. Ahead of her, just as before, was a white, insubstantial form, drifting like smoke … but she would have said it looked human if it had stayed still long enough. None of the others seemed to have noticed it. They pressed eagerly forward, walking abreast of her as the passage widened to a cavern.

Fritha screamed.

The cavern was walled with the writhing forms – there was no mistaking them now. They hung in the air like ice dust, each one human in form, long and thin, with great hollow eye-spaces glowing green in the chamber’s light. They gathered around the travellers like moths drawn to a flame.

‘
Tæl-draugar!
’ Fritha gasped. The creatures from her stories: grave-dwellers who sucked the life from unwary visitors. She flailed at them, but her arms went through them. All four of them had backed into the corridor, but the smoky creatures came with them, clustering about them so thickly that they were losing sight of each other. One was trying to push inside
Elspeth’s mouth, feeling like icy smoke. In panic she called for the sword and it flared in her hand, but its light was dim and faint, overshadowed by the glow that came from the spirits themselves. The things were drawn by it, though – just as the water creatures had been. They drew away from her face and body to cluster around the blade, though none of them came close enough to touch it.

In seconds Elspeth was the centre of a whirlpool of the creatures, and a thousand voiceless whispers breathed a name she had heard before:
Ioneth
. There was no more substance to them than smoke, but there were so many of them … flocking thicker and thicker until she felt she was suffocating under a physical weight. And suddenly the sword was speaking inside her head.
I’m sorry
, the voice said.
I can’t … Oh … so many! So many!

Through her own fear and confusion, Elspeth was aware of a new emotion, keen as a knife-edge:
grief
?

Edmund, Fritha and Cathbar had all vanished: there were just the whirling creatures, the whispered name and the weight of her own limbs … so heavy, suddenly, that she sank down to the ground, her eyes closing.

‘
Opith ther!
’

It was a woman’s voice, low and commanding. The whirling spirits rose and dispersed at the order; spinning back to the cavern walls, writhing over and through each other in their haste to be gone. Elspeth blinked as the last of them vanished into the rock, leaving nothing but an empty chamber,
quiet and dimly lit. The sword faded again as Edmund ran to her and helped her up. Fritha was sobbing quietly, leaning against Cathbar, but she seemed to be unhurt.

‘You are strangers here, I see.’

Elspeth looked up speechlessly at their rescuer. A tall woman was standing in an opening at the far end of the cavern, smiling and holding out a hand in welcome. Her pale grey robe fell to her feet, and her dark hair was plaited and wound in a coronet on her head. She might have been a thane’s wife at home, offering hospitality to guests. But what made both Elspeth and Edmund gasp was that she spoke in their own language.

‘So few visitors come here, not all of us know how to make them welcome.’ Her low, musical voice was warm, and she smiled at them ruefully. ‘I am sorry that the spirits attacked you; they won’t harm you now. Please, let me make amends: come and eat with me. It would be pleasant to have company.’

I found a mountain cave to be my forge, where fire burned beneath the ground.

There was a glacier close by, and at its foot a frozen lake. I saw movement beneath the ice: eyes and mouths and hands beckoning me. The voices called me to join them, become part of the ice; and I was kneeling on the surface, about to break through, when hands pulled me back. My son had come after me, and Ioneth.

She told me the creatures were the spirits of men trapped beneath the ice by Loki, left with just enough life to hunger and pine. Such spirits are everywhere, she said. From the sadness in her voice, I guessed her people to be among them.

Cluaran’s horse was a good one, and the sharp-tasting air of the forest raised his spirits after the oppression of Erlingr’s council. And though that council had wasted valuable time, it would be good to have Ari with him when he reached his destination.

‘Nothing like woodland air to keep a man awake,’ he called to Ari as they cantered between the thick trunks, ‘even if this benighted land does produce nothing but pines.’

Ari merely nodded, urging his own horse to go faster. The pale man had been more silent than usual since they left the council chamber, and Cluaran wondered if he was already regretting his offer of help. No matter: like most of his people, Ari would keep his word, once given.

They left the forest a few leagues to the east of the lakes, so that they could approach at a gallop: the snow fields here were covered in grass in the summer, Ari said, and for a moment Cluaran pictured it purple and yellow with flowers and loud with insects. He had never seen this land when it was not under snow – except for the one time when everything was burning.
That will not happen again
, he vowed.

The lake shore was unusually silent as they approached. Some of the fishermen’s tents stood in their usual places, but there were no fires lit, and most strangely, no men fishing, though it was the middle of the day.

‘Something is wrong here,’ Ari said.

They led the horses for the last hundred feet, and looked around the deserted camp, Cluaran checking the fishermen’s tents while Ari scouted along the edge of the frozen lake. Cluaran had been through half-a-dozen door-flaps and discovered only that their owners had left in too much of a hurry to take their bedding, when he heard Ari shouting his name.

‘Over here,’ the pale man called. ‘Something happened at this spot.’ He showed Cluaran a confused mass of footprints at the lake’s verge. ‘See: three men came from the camp and stopped here, and met a single person coming from the other direction – someone with much smaller feet. There was a scuffle here; I would say a fight. And then …’ Cluaran had already seen what Ari was pointing at: a jagged hole in the ice, much larger and more irregular than the fishing holes. ‘Someone fell through.’

Cluaran was silent for a long time, pushing down the fear that grew in him and wondering if Ari would let him take the next step. But he had to find out. ‘I’ll call up one of the lake spirits,’ he said at last. ‘If someone fell in they’ll know what happened – and whether he’s still there.’

Ari had stepped back with a look of horror. ‘You’ll not speak to those creatures!’

‘I will, if they have information for me.’

‘But they’re monsters – eaters of their own kind!’ Ari’s face twisted in disgust.

‘You mean they used to be people of the Ice once, like you – before the Chained One took hold of them?’ Cluaran spoke gently, but Ari turned his back on him and stalked off, back to the horses. Cluaran sighed and felt in his belt for his knife. He cut his arm, let three drops of blood fall into the water in the jagged ice hole, and stepped smartly back.

There was a boiling in the water, and cloudy shapes writhed about the surface. Cluaran leant forward so that his
cut arm extended over the water, and waited. Presently a thin, greenish arm snaked out of the hole and groped towards his feet; then another. He kept well out of their reach and after a while they both retreated into the pool.

‘Come on!’ Cluaran muttered. He shook his arm so that another drop of blood fell – and before it could hit the surface a skinny figure shot out of the water and lunged straight at him.

Cluaran was ready for it. He grabbed the creature with his free hand and hauled it out of the water, holding it down on the ice as it struggled ferociously. The thing was slimy and almost without substance, slipping through his hands like waterweed, but Cluaran gripped it by the neck and waist and held on. Eventually it subsided, gasping.

‘What do you want?’ it asked sullenly, the voice bubbling in its throat. ‘I will die if I’m kept out here – let me go back!’

‘Oh, I will,’ Cluaran assured it, ‘as soon as you’ve answered my questions. And I’ll reward true answers with blood.’

The water spirit opened huge green eyes. ‘What questions?’

It took a long time to get all the answers he needed, and even with a dozen drops of blood, the creature was weak and half-dry when it had finished. It glared at him when he finally released it, slipping back into the lake with a loud splash which told him how much substance his blood had given it. Cluaran bound up his arm and pulled his cloak over it before he went to the horses: Ari would not want to know those
details. The pale man was still scowling, his lips thin with disapproval, but he listened to the minstrel’s news.