A Hero's Throne Part 10

They stared intently at each other in the darkness, two players at a game of chess.

"You spoke of questions I must answer," Ealdstan said. "Before you leave."

"They are few," the king replied. "Here is the first: my very deputies seek to pull my imperial body apart. What aid or resources will you give to enable me to appease them?"

"What aid can an earthworm give a lion? I am as you meet me." He opened his palms and arms in a gesture of openness.

"Nothing, then."

Ealdstan clasped his palms together.

John shifted his weight. "Arms, then. I want some of your warriors. Any amount, and on any terms you dictate. Even a small number of your supernaturals would be worth a large number of my own men."

Ealdstan's eyes dropped thoughtfully.

"Whatever you lose in human resources, I promise to return tenfold in my own best men."

"No." Ealdstan's head rose. "No."

The king's flinty face studied Ealdstan's. Then, with sudden speed, he rose and kicked his chair away. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a torch that one of his retinue was carrying and flung it to the ground before the old wizard. It flapped and flared in the darkness.

"So, it seems that we will hardly be stopping at all," John bellowed to his company of men. "But know now, old leech," he said, stepping closer to Ealdstan. "You are removed from the gracious kindness of this nation's kings!" John thrust a finger beneath Ealdstan's bearded chin. "No more will you sap the lifeblood of this nation!" he shouted, spittle flying from his lips. "By thunder, if I could remove you bodily from this sphere, I would, had I the power. But since I have not, due to your hollow support, I hereby exile you to your hollow realms. Lift your head but an inch into the daylight and I promise by these hands, there will be swift punishment!"

And with that he turned and stormed off, his robes billowing behind him. He grabbed a lit torch from one of the servants and led his party away. They scrambled after him anxiously, with only the briefest of backward glances at the immovable and impa.s.sable Ealdstan.

The sounds of the group departing faded into nothing, and then the lights themselves disappeared. The noise of the chisels had stopped. Everyone in Niergeard had paused to witness the meeting, watching from the darkness.

"Humph," Ealdstan grunted, heading back to the Langtorr. Breca walked beside him, ready to attend his need. "That's him dealt with. But are things really such on the continent, I wonder? No doubt a visit would be prudent. I will open the sea tunnel. Breca, ah, Breca, before I forget-send a couple of your men to follow the good king and his men out; find what path they used here. Then tell them to seal it."

* III *.

Freya pushed herself up from the table, drool chilling the corner of her mouth. The notebook was beneath her. She flicked back through the pages to see all she had written. There had to be over a hundred pages of description and conversation-all different time periods and people she'd never heard of. Where was it all coming from?

"Please, I need another break. I need some food and some sleep. How-how long has it been this time?" She looked at her wrist.w.a.tch; the hour hand was just a little farther on. But had two hours pa.s.sed or fourteen? It felt like fourteen.

"Are you sure you can't go again? We're on a fairly tight schedule."

"No, please . . . how long has it been? I-" Freya tried to stand, but her legs were like rubber. She braced herself by holding on to the table and lowered herself into a crouch.

Vivienne was up and at Freya's side. "I'm sorry. Yes, you could use some rest-we both could. It's just-you understand the importance, don't you?"

She helped Freya up, supporting her weight on the back of a metal chair. Then she unfurled one of the bedrolls.

"Find anything yet?" Freya asked.

Vivienne's head jerked up. "Yes, lots, of course."

"Anything that will help us . . . ?" Freya almost said destroy this place, but stopped herself in time. The visions had done nothing to a.s.suage her distrust of Ealdstan.

"Yes, this is all very helpful. Invaluable, in fact. It gives us some context for what is going on here, at least. Whether by design or circ.u.mstance, Ealdstan has kept us in the dark."

"Any word on Daniel? I'm worried about him."

"I have not strayed from this spot, and Daniel has not poked his nose in here, no."

"Are you worried about him?"

"I don't believe so."

"Vivienne . . . when are we going to talk about Gad?"

"Not right now-go ahead and rest. We'll talk about it later. Just sleep now."

Freya let her leaden eyes shut. And as she drifted into a thankfully dreamless sleep, she tried to think about why she felt she had been in this position before.

* IV *.

Gretchen Baker stood on a sand dune, sniffling, sighing, and wiping back tears that the fierce, salt-laden wind did nothing to abate.

She knew she wasn't the most attractive girl in the school. She wasn't even in the top twenty-five (of twenty-eight), but there was no need for everyone else to continually ridicule and tease her. If they could just let her alone, she could cope and get through with no friends. Then she'd leave the highlands and go to university in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or maybe even-and it gave her a thrill just to think about it-London. Anywhere, so long as it was away; and a long way away at that.

It wasn't just that she was unattractive; it was that she was conspicuously so. She was big, that was the main thing. Not fat, exactly, but tall-a good four inches taller than the next tallest in her year-and with a blocky form that fell from her wide shoulders straight down. Like a brick privy, she'd constantly heard herself described. The curves that had been promised her during her p.u.b.escence had yet to be delivered. And her face as well; blocky, jowly, with a prominent brow that buried her eyes in a squint, and a jutting jaw that gave her a permanent frown. She was constantly being picked out and victimised. She was like a celebrity in the school-an anticelebrity. If anyone thought of a clever new prank or needed the object of a dare, she was found at the b.u.t.t of it. Always.

The girls were bad enough. She had finally, consciously given up on being fully accepted by the girls a little over two years ago. All they ever did was pa.s.s blame to her and use her as a scapegoat for their own insecurities and frustrations. She finally understood that and avoided them with some success.

But the boys' cruelty stung. She didn't know why; there was no real reason why it should. It wasn't like she fancied any of them. Today there had been some sort of dare or initiation the popular group of boys had started. It involved coming up to her and asking her out on a date and seeing how long they could stay serious. The first time it happened, she had almost said yes. One of the group had broken away and come up to her and quietly asked if she wanted to see a movie over the weekend, his head slightly hung, his eyes steadily holding her gaze. She was just about to open her mouth when he burst into theatrical laughter and ran back over to his group, saying, "I couldn't do it! I couldn't keep a straight face!"

She shrugged and shook her head and carried on into the hall to eat her lunch, but then it happened again, and again, and again. Even boys who weren't in the popular group came up to her just to laugh and guffaw in her face, so as not to be left out. It was a performance art to the benefit of their peers and the other girls in the school who sat around and coyly ate their own lunches, t.i.ttering at the spectacle. The teachers pretended not to notice.

Gretchen, flushed and fuming, eventually finished her sandwich and stormed off to the girls' toilets. She hid for the next twenty minutes in one of the stalls until lunch was over. The rest of the day she buried her face in her books and notes, ignoring the laughs and whispers behind her.

After an eternity, school ended and she came here, a place most teens seemed to ignore. It took half a mile of tromping through tall gra.s.s to reach the sandy bowl of a bay. From her favourite spot atop one of the dunes above, she could look out at the sea and imagine all the places that weren't here, and which one of them was her real home. Where was she meant to be? Where did all the big people live? She considered Sweden, the United States, even Germany, perhaps. But for some reason, she really liked the idea of Canada. She imagined living there in a cabin surrounded by forest, at the foot of a towering mountain.

She'd marry a big, rugged man who didn't have to be goodlooking, so long as he had a big, bushy beard, and he'd teach her the ways of the wild, and she'd butcher and cure the elk and deer and wildlife that he'd manage to hunt and trap in the forest. Cooking them up for him at night, they'd sit across from each other at a rough wooden table and after grace he'd lean over, put his big, rugged hand over hers, and tell her he was the luckiest man in the world to be married to her. And she'd put her other hand on top of his and say with a smile, "You're right."

Some days she'd tell herself things would be great, if she could just wait for Canada. Other days, like today especially, she'd kick and slap herself for being so impractical and stupid. There was no place for her anywhere. Canada didn't exist. Not her Canada.

She ducked down with a gasp when she realised someone was on the beach. She had been looking at an odd-looking, long piece of leathery flotsam that was lying against a rock when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Swimming up out of the ocean was a man.

At first she thought he was a seal by the way he raised his head above the waves and then dove back under, but as he drew farther and farther into the bay, she became certain that this wasn't the case. Mostly because he was completely naked.

But not naked in a bad way, Gretchen reflected. His hair was jet black and shoulder length in an out-of-fashion sort of way, but it was slick and wavy, and would have looked good any way he wore it. His face, as much as she could tell from here, bore strong features and a square jaw. He had a slight, almost feminine figure, but the tautness in his legs, the bulkiness in his shoulders, was all male. From the side, he looked impossibly thin, but when he turned to face her, his outline began with very wide shoulders that tapered down to a narrow, flat waist, and then bloomed again to display two powerful legs.

He crossed to the rock and the long piece of leathery something that was blowing against it. He was carrying something silver in his mouth and his hands that he dropped at his feet, and then he crouched above them. Gretchen couldn't quite see, with his form partially hidden by the rock, but presently some bluish wisps of smoke appeared and the man sat back, relaxed and satisfied. He had made a fire.

He raised his head to the dunes now, right to where she was, and Gretchen drew back slightly. She was lying on her stomach with her chin on her arms, trying to make as small a shape on the horizon as possible. She thought it highly unlikely that he would be able to see her at this distance, but then he raised his hand and waved at her.

She pulled back and looked around. Maybe he was waving to someone behind her.

There was no one else in sight. She peeked out over the edge of the dune again. The man raised a hand and beckoned for her to come down.

Something about him-besides the obvious, she told herself-made her want to obey, and so she stood up, brushed herself off, and awkwardly descended the slippery face of the white dune. The man stood, clearly relaxed and waiting for her to join him. She could tell she was blushing as she approached, and she swore at herself under her breath.

"Latha Math," he said in Gaelic.

"h.e.l.lo," Gretchen replied. "What are you doing?"

"Fishing," he said, again in Gaelic.

"In the ocean? By hand?"

The man shrugged and bent over the small fire he had made out of driftwood. He blew on it a few times and rearranged the wood. Gretchen took the opportunity to look him over a little more closely. His skin was hairless, white and gleaming, like something new from nature-an early spring sprout or a recently blossomed flower petal. It looked soft and luminous, tender and delicate.

She shook herself as she realised he had just said something. "What?"

"I asked if you're hungry," the man asked.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose so," she said, not actually knowing if she was hungry or not.

The man reached across to what turned out to be a couple of midsized mackerel. He moved his strong hands quickly over them, running his thumbnail here, bending the head back there, sliding his fingers underneath here, and in a matter of seconds he had produced a small pile of offal and two glistening fillets. He tossed them into the fire on the face of a long, flat rock.

Gretchen had never seen anyone prepare food in this fashion, but he obviously knew what he was doing. And then she watched while he bent over the fire and licked his fingers, palms, and wrists clean of the scales and slime that cleaning the fish had left behind on him. It was slightly sickening but also, Gretchen felt with a terrible stir inside of her, an awful compulsion.

"Aren't you . . . cold?" she asked eventually, as the fish started to bubble merrily. "Swimming like . . . that?"

"The sea is my true home. One's true home is never cold," he answered. "Ah, lovely," he said, sliding a stick under one of the mackerel fillets and lifting it up. "Here you are, eat up," he said, pa.s.sing her the stick.

She accepted it, her hand brushing his. In their brief touch, she found his skin warm, indeed. She held the sizzling fold of meat on the stick, then brought it up to her face and nibbled gingerly at it. It was still pretty hot, and at first she got a mouthful of hot grease and flesh, but as it cooled quickly in the wind, she found it very succulent and flavourful. She ate it all, savouring it to the last bite, and then, following the other's example, she ran her tongue along a runnel of juice that had spilled down the side of her hand.

The man was less dainty in his enjoyment of the fish. He took it straight from the fire with his fingertips and tossed it between his palms as it cooled, and then quickly tossed the chunks that fell off of it into his mouth, where he chewed it with wide, biting chomps. The fish all gone, he once again set to cleaning his hands with his tongue. Now finished, he smacked his lips and gazed l.u.s.tily at the pile of entrails, bones, and fish heads he had discarded earlier.

"Well, thank you very much," said Gretchen, rising and making to leave. She wasn't about to stay and watch anyone eat that, no matter how- "You're not going, are you?"

Gretchen frowned. "I thought I might."

"Why don't you come home with me? I'd like to introduce you to my family, and I know that they'd love to meet you."

"I don't know," Gretchen said. "Is it far?"

"It's as near as the ocean spray on your face!" the man said, standing abruptly. He bent and picked up the long, leathery thing that was still flapping against the rock and shook it out. Gretchen now saw it was a leather jacket, some type of suede thing. The man fussed with it for a while and then wrapped it around his shoulders and clutched it around his waist. It didn't seem to have any sleeves, pockets, or belt-it seemed to be all tailored from one piece. It was very odd, and more properly a cape than a coat.

"What's your name?" Gretchen asked.

"Call me rn glas."

"Ron Gla.s.s?"

"Yes, that will do. What's your answer?" He held out his hand, and as Gretchen looked into his large, dark eyes, she knew that she would be going with him. She placed her hand in his.

But instead of leading her away from the water, he turned away from her and hooked her arm over his shoulder. "Hold me around here," he said. "Both arms, tightly. Don't let go, whatever happens."

"What are you doing?" she called as he led her out into the ocean.

"Are you holding tightly?" he called back.

"Yes."

"Very tightly?"

"Yes!"

"Then here we go!"

He leapt so powerfully that at first, Gretchen thought they were flying, seeing the seawater in the bay blur beneath them, but midair, something astonishing happened. The leather coat flapped out and then wrapped around him, head to foot, clinging to him like a wetsuit or a second skin.

Then they were falling, and Gretchen had just enough time to take a quick gasp of air before her head plunged under the water. She felt the man rippling under her, propelling himself with a vigorous and apparently highly effective jack-knife action. He b.u.mped and shook against her so powerfully she felt that she would have to let go, but just as she felt the air in her lungs start to expire, he surged upward and their heads broke the water.

Gretchen got the shock of her life when she realised that the shoulders she held on to were not that of the attractive young man, but that of a sleek, whiskered seal. At first she thought it was just a trick of the eye, that the hood he wore was only made up to look like a seal, but then the head turned, rolled one large puppy-dog eye toward her, gave a wink, licked its nose, and then turned and continued carrying her away from the sunset.

* V *.

Alex and Ecgbryt were profoundly disheartened. They had visited no less than four sleeping chambers, only to find them raided and their occupants slaughtered. They did not talk to each other-they had nothing to say. Their spirits were as low as the short tunnels they had to crouch through and as smothering as the narrow cave walls around them. They felt smothered. Alex took to openly swearing at every b.u.mp and jolt that a rocky outcrop or low ceiling gave him. He felt that the tunnels themselves were outrightly hostile, reaching out and hitting him when opportunity arose.

They were utterly soaked. Water dripped from the walls when it didn't cascade around them. At times they had to wade, hipdeep, along freezing streams, and it was absolutely impossible to get dry afterward. There was nowhere to rest that wasn't slippery with slime. Alex decided he was going to raise serious objections to continuing their quest after the next stop on their map, which was bound to be another ma.s.sacre scene.

They came to a staircase that curved upward. They mounted its steps and Alex gratefully found each one to be drier than the last. Perhaps he could convince Ecgbryt to stay and have a proper night's sleep this time.

The stairs brightened as they turned. The walls transitioned from rough-hewn stone into smooth slabs, lit by the ambient glow of daylight. The breeze brought a smell to their nostrils that surprised them-the salty, moist scent of the sea-and their ears soon discerned the rhythmic rise and fall of waves. The sound was nourishment to Alex's soul and he felt his pulse quicken. An eagerness leapt into his breast founded on . . . he didn't know exactly what.

They pa.s.sed a window, which blinded them both. Ecgbryt clapped a hand full over his eyes as he pa.s.sed it. Alex was forced to look away but then turned back when his eyes had adjusted. It was a typically overcast day by the ocean and not particularly bright. The water was all that was visible apart from a few jagged rocks it washed against.

Wiping the tears caused by the stinging light from his eyes, he followed Ecgbryt upward. They pa.s.sed other windows, which allowed more views of the ocean surrounding them, but so far they had no indication of what was inside the tower they were circling.

Then they came to an archway that a stiff wind blew through, creating a low, hollow whistle. From one side of it, they could look down into a chamber that fell beneath them, nearly as far as they had climbed-roughly fifteen metres, Alex judged. Stairs led down, curving against the wall, and above them, the tower appeared to be open at the top since a pale silver disc of sky was visible. The walls were as straight and flat as the day they were carved, but slits and strangely angled windows were placed at odd points in the tower that served to create some sort of complex wind tunnel.

The entryway into the chamber looked down on the sleepers. There were eight of them lying upon the customary plinths at the bottom of the tower.

"They look to be unharmed," Alex said in wonder. "It's hard to say exactly, but they look . . . fine."

"There, see," Ecgbryt said, pointing to the base of the steps. "Bodies. Bones, some weaponry. They are yfelgopes!" he exclaimed, excitement instantly mounting in his voice. "There must be a hundred of them. This is where their murderous path ended!"

Alex peered around Ecgbryt's shoulder. What he first thought was rocky debris was in fact a pile of bodies, reminiscent of pictures of holocaust camps.

He swallowed and started into the chamber, but Ecgbryt held him back.

"Hold. They may have perished by some sort of trap," Ecgbryt said. "I don't see how the yfelgopes would be so foolish as to awaken the knights, even accidentally."

They stood there for a moment, pondering their next step.