The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (3 page)

They were approaching the hill in a drawn-out straggle. Eolande would not walk, so Cluaran had hitched her horse to the cart, and the beast now plodded at the back of the group, led by Cathbar. Cluaran strode out in front, as if anxious to make what speed he could. But the minstrel stopped when he rounded the final outcrop. He was standing quite still as Elspeth and Edmund joined him and saw the blackened ground.

The plume of smoke had been hidden by the side of the hill, but now it loomed taller than the hill itself, dark-grey and choking. It rose from a pit in the rock whose sides looked like black glass – and all around, feathery ash lay like drifted snow. Behind the pit, the side of the hill seemed to have cracked open: there was a rubble of charred boulders, some twice the height of a man, and beyond them, a black and empty space.

‘What has he done?’ Cluaran whispered, and rushed forward into the darkness. Elspeth followed him, with Edmund close behind.

The ground underfoot was level, like a passageway. Elspeth groped for the wall as the rock closed in around them, and felt the smoothness of masonry under her fingers. After a moment,
her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. ‘Oh no,’ Edmund muttered beside her, but Elspeth could only gaze in awe and dismay.

Before them was a giant chamber, filled with tiers of seats that sloped down to a central space. To one side, faint light came in through a great rent in the wall, rubble-edged and showing a sliver of pale sky. It lit the circular floor, smooth and flat but now charred black – and the wreckage of a carved stone chair, charred like the ground and the seats around it; split into two halves.

‘The judgement hall,’ Cluaran muttered. ‘I never thought to see it like this.’

‘Nor I,’ said a cracked voice from the shadows. Elspeth spun to see a tall old man, white-haired and even paler than Ari, with brows like two crags. When he spoke again his voice was flat with exhaustion. ‘You failed, then, story-teller; or failed us. I see you have found your children, but what is that to us? Now
our
children are dead.’

‘Not all of them, I think,’ Cluaran said quietly. ‘Erlingr . . . I grieve for this . . . for you. It’s as you say: we were betrayed, and we failed. Now, if you wish, I’ll go – but I would help you, if you’ll allow it. I have medicines and supplies, and there are willing hands among my companions to help you rebuild.’

‘Do as you will,’ the old man said. He walked heavily over to one of the stone benches and sank down on it, dropping his head into his hands. ‘I was wrong, it seems, and I have paid for it – I, and all my people. The monster has
taken his revenge on us, as you said he would.’ He raised his head, his pale eyes almost lost under the overhanging brows. ‘The survivors – most of them – will be in the water-caves. Go to them if you will. I have no help to give them now, no comfort.’

‘But it’s now that they need you most!’ Cluaran cried. ‘Come with me – let them see that you are still alive and strong. That will be the best help they can have: to know that Erlingr still leads them!’

But the old man bowed his head and would not move or speak again. After a while Cluaran turned and left the chamber, gesturing to Elspeth and Edmund to follow him. Erlingr did not look up to see them go.

‘Who is he?’ Edmund asked in a low voice, as they came out again into the grey daylight.

‘Their leader – once,’ Cluaran said shortly. He sighed. ‘I fear that Ari must take that responsibility now.’

The rest of the party had reached the hill. Grufweld and Fritha were leaning exhaustedly on the cart, gazing in horror at the destruction before them, while Cathbar tried to calm the horse, whose nostrils flared at the new smell of burning. Only Eolande, on its back, showed no trace of emotion or tiredness.

‘We’ll leave the cart here,’ Cluaran told them. ‘But bring any medicines or salves.’ He looked up at Eolande. ‘Will you lend us your skill, Mother?’ But she stared at him blankly until he turned from her, shaking his head.

Fritha ran to collect her pack, and Cluaran led them around the foot of the hill, skirting the black pit as widely as they could. The hillside was scarred and blackened in both directions as far as they could see, with the same glassy, black surfaces where the rock had melted. They passed another fall of boulders, and Fritha gave a muffled exclamation, pointing down at one of the rocks. She bent to look more closely – and recoiled, her face white. Following her gaze, Elspeth saw a man’s bare foot.

‘Leave him!’ Cluaran ordered. ‘He’s dead. There will be others we can help.’

Elspeth followed him, feeling suddenly cold. She had not heard any more voices, she realised: not so much as a whisper. What had happened to Ari’s people? Were there really any left? And where was Ari?

Further along the ridge the stink of smoke lessened and the rocks became only soot-blackened. Elspeth found to her relief that they were no longer walking on ash, though the snow had vanished.

Cluaran stopped, listened and whistled. ‘The stream is still flowing,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

Soon Elspeth could hear the faint splash of water – and then, the stamping of hooves on rock. Around the next outcrop, a thin trickle ran into a shallow basin in the stone, and beside it, Ari’s horse was tethered to a bush.

Cathbar tied up their own horse and helped Eolande to dismount. ‘Is there anyone alive here, apart from us?’ he asked, grim-faced.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Cluaran.

The sound of water grew louder as he led them to what seemed at first to be a shallow cleft in the rock. A darker area at the back revealed itself as a tunnel – but before they could enter it, two men appeared, brandishing spears. One of them was Ari.

He relaxed when he saw them, though his face was drawn with grief and shock. ‘These are my friends,’ he told the other man, who went back into the tunnel, shouting something. Ari turned without another word and led them inside.

The tunnel opened into a series of caves. Water dripped from the walls of two of them and pooled on the floor of the third – and every dry spot was crowded with pale-eyed, white-haired people.
There must be a hundred of them
, Elspeth thought: men, women and children; some standing, blank-eyed; others weeping softly, or crying out in pain.
It’s my fault
, she thought wildly.
I unleashed him!
She wanted to turn and run.

‘Some of these are
brent
– hurt with the fire,’ Fritha said, behind her. ‘I have medicine for that.’ She fumbled with her pack to produce a sealed pot, and hesitated, looking wide-eyed at the Ice people. ‘Do you think it will work for them,’ she whispered, ‘as it does for us?’

Edmund came forward. ‘I’m sure of it,’ he said to Fritha. ‘Elspeth and I will help you.’

Elspeth was glad to have work to occupy her. She tried not to look around the crowded caves, but busied herself with
practical tasks along with Edmund: fetching clean water, improvising bandages and splints, and setting up beds for the younger children in the driest areas.

Fritha also seemed overwhelmed at first: Elspeth guessed that she had never been among so many people before. But as the fair-haired girl tended a child with a badly burned arm, hearing his cries subside and listening to the thanks of his mother, she seemed to forget her nervousness. She moved around the caves, speaking to the Ice people to find those whose burns and cuts were the worst, and making her small pots of salve last longer than Elspeth could have believed.

They stayed among Ari’s people for the rest of the day. There was always more to do: as the worst injured were tended and given beds, Grufweld and Cathbar fetched more of their supplies from the cart and scouted with some of the men for other safe caves. Elspeth, moving in a haze of weariness, heard Cluaran talking urgently to his mother, who had stayed at the edge of the outer cave.

‘You could help! I know your skill in these things. At least help me to find the right herbs.’

Eolande went slowly outside, followed by her son and Ari. The pale man stopped in the cave door, and turned to speak to Elspeth and Fritha.

‘We’ll make more burn-salve for you. Thank you for all you’re doing.’

Fritha gave him a nod of acknowledgement, but Elspeth could accept no gratitude, not when she knew this was all her
fault. When one of the women smiled at her in thanks for a cup of water, she felt her eyes filling with tears and had to turn away.

Many of the children they tended were orphaned. When Loki had dropped from the sky the day before, the Ice people told her, he had torn open the hill that housed the judgement hall and sent fires raging through the caves on each side, destroying whole families in their homes, and burying countless others in the rubble. When the men ran out to fight him, the wooden spears had burned in their hands, and the men had followed, their bodies turning to ash. Out of a community of three hundred, maybe one third was left.

My fault
. The words rang in her ears, and she thought she could feel Ioneth stirring in pain.

‘Please tell me,’ she asked one of the women, ‘when Loki . . . when the monster left you, how did he go? And which way?’

The woman looked at her incredulously. ‘It just went! It turned into a big ball of fire and went back to
hel-viti
– to hell. Where else would it go?’

‘It flew to the south,’ put in a soft-voiced girl. Her eyes were very large in her thin face and she cradled her bandaged arm as she spoke. ‘To the sea.’ There was a small chorus of agreement. Some of the children had watched from the mouth of the water caves as the demon became a fireball and soared away. They had watched it out of sight, hoping it would never return.

‘And in the sea, the fire will go out!’ piped up a small boy with a bandage over one eye.

‘It surely will,’ Fritha told the child, hugging him. Over his head, she looked anxiously at Elspeth.

‘He won’t come back here, that’s for certain,’ Elspeth said, trying to fill her voice with confidence.
I’m sure he won’t
, she thought.
He means to go much further than this
.

But wherever he goes, I will follow.

It was a party of five who set off southwards the following morning. Edmund could see that Elspeth was desperate to follow Loki, and Cluaran and Cathbar seemed to share her sense of urgency.

‘I’ve no notion how we’ll fight him now,’ Cathbar said. ‘But if a way comes up – well, I’d rather be on the spot and able to take it. It’s that, or stand by while he goes on burning.’ He had gone out with a rescue party the day before, finding one or two survivors, but many more of the dead.

Ari said he would stay with his people: as Cluaran had predicted, many of them had already started to look to him as their leader, and they left him deep in discussion with the elders about ways to open up new caves for those made homeless and replenish the supplies that had been destroyed.

He shook hands with Cluaran before they left. The pale man looked somehow older, Edmund thought, his face marked with the horror of yesterday’s loss, and maybe with his new responsibilities. ‘I’ll not see you again,’ he said. ‘My place is here now.’

Cluaran nodded. ‘Did we do wrong, Ari?’ he asked. ‘If we had not meddled with Loki, this would not have happened.’

Ari shook his head. ‘We both know he would have broken free, in our children’s lifetimes if not in ours. And the sword . . . Ioneth . . . came to us now.’ His face twisted. ‘Find her again, Cluaran. For all our sakes.’ He turned to Elspeth and Edmund. ‘If the sword returns, strike well,’ he said to them. ‘Wherever you go, and however you fare, our people’s friendship goes with you.’

Fritha and her father, to Edmund’s surprise, chose to stay with the Ice people too, at least over the winter. Fritha’s skill as a nurse had made her valuable to the community already, and she could not bear to leave the motherless children. Grufweld’s trade, charcoal-burning, was less useful to them – the Ice people had little use for fire, except sometimes for cooking – but his strength, and his skills at building and hunting, would be much needed in the days to come.

Fritha hugged Edmund and Elspeth fiercely before they left.

‘You are
vin-fastr
. . . true friends,’ she told them. ‘You will kill this monster, and then you will come back to see us. But if you cannot come . . . I will remember you always.’

‘I’ll come back some day,’ Edmund promised, mortified to find that his eyes were pricking. Before he could turn away Fritha leant forward and kissed him. Edmund felt his face glowing, and the place where her cool lips had touched his cheek burned for a long time afterwards.

Grufweld waved away their apologies for the trouble they had brought on him. Cluaran offered the charcoal-burner a gold coin, given to him by the king for his journey, but Grufweld courteously refused: the nearest villagers had little use for coins, and besides, hospitality was a matter of honour and need, not a thing to be bartered. Cathbar, however, was not to be put off: after pumping Grufweld’s hand repeatedly, he insisted on making him a present of his hunting knife.

‘Least I could do,’ he said gruffly, as they walked away. ‘He lost a good axe back in that fire, as well as his knife – and those Ice folk know nothing about metal.’

And now they made their way across the snow plain towards the coast. They had left all their supplies with the Ice people, taking only the two horses, Cluaran’s gold coin and his remaining bag of silver. The horses were much needed: Elspeth, for all her eagerness to be gone, was not yet fully healed, as Cathbar had feared, and yesterday’s walk had worn her out. Well before noon (though it was hard to judge with the sunless sky), she had begun to stumble almost at every step, and Cluaran had made her ride. The other horse was ridden by Eolande, who sat straight-backed and still, her face empty.

The snow grew thinner as they went, and the trees grew closer on both sides. Around noon they were walking through pines again, mixed with leafless birch and aspen. Where the pines were thickest there was no snow at all, and Edmund was glad to feel the carpet of needles beneath his feet again. He
thought that Cluaran walked with a new spring in his step too, even while leading his silent, blank-eyed mother.