Dolor and Shadow (10 page)

CHAPTER 11

A thick, heavy cold enclosed within the keep added to the stagnant dampness that enveloped Kallan. Light fought to invade the darkness, casting splashes of sun onto the stone. Lines of water were visible where moisture had collected down the gray walls.

Kallan raised her sword and relaxed her shoulders, despite the gnawing suspicion that she was very much alone. Keeping her senses sharp, she made her way up each step, straining to hear the slightest sound. The warm summer air billowed up the stairs, catching her skirts in the breeze.

At the top of the stairs, slivers of light spilled over the top step onto a platform where a door swung ajar. Kallan flexed her fingers around the hilt, assuring herself that her sword was ready. She stepped onto the platform. As gently as a gust of wind would rustle the needles of a pine, Kallan pushed against the door and entered the room.

An upturned chair lay on its side next to a small table pushed awkwardly into a corner. Droplets of red spattered the floor and mingled with vellum maps ruined with blood. The only movement was the dust visible in the stream of sunlight pouring in through a window and streaking the stone floor.

Dropping her arms with a sigh, Kallan sheathed her sword and moved to the window where she hoped for a better view in which to find her father. A breeze swept across her face as she looked down where the dead littered the ground. She breathed easier once she saw that her father was not one of them. In the west, beyond the hills of Alfheim, pines reached to the clear sky where the edge of the wood became Midgard. Across the extensive plain, grass rippled like the sea beneath the low winds.

Centuries had passed since she had wandered beyond the West Wood where the thin air burned the skin with winds too cold to breathe. From the trees, Kallan looked to the south. Towering mountain peaks guarded Lorlenalin. Her eyes trailed down from the fields streaked with green, to the plains of Alfheim. It was there, in the distance, over meandering lakes and streams, that she saw them: four Ljosalfar, riding for Gunir in the east. She didn’t have to meet the elusive King Rune to know it was him. Her stomach churned as heat climbed to her throat.

“Coward,” she muttered and averted her thoughts to the numerous dead, disposed for his convenience, at the foot of the keep.

Kicking a chair across the floor, Kallan strode from the room as it smashed into pieces against the wall.

“Father,” Kallan called as she plodded down the stairs, filling the keep with echoes.

Her ever-rising anxiety did nothing to quell her nerves.

“Father,” she cried and bit her lip in angst. “F—”

Kallan gasped.

With a trembling hand bathed in blackish red, Kallan’s father, King Eyolf, clutched the side of the keep. Drained of color, his skin was a waxy, yellowing hue. His cold, empty eyes reflected his waning life as the king battled to stabilize his breath through a mouth blackened with blood.

“F—Father?”

The great Dokkalfr shook as he released the door and fell into his daughter’s arms. Taking her sanity with her, Kallan sank to the ground, doing her best to hold him off the cold earth.

Liquid pulsed from his stomach, filling the air with the stench of pungent metal.

“Father?” The word scraped her throat.

Desperate to keep him alive, Kallan fumbled with the pouch at her waist. With a shaking hand, she dug mindlessly among the contents, thinking only of the soft round treasure that could save him. Dread clouded her senses as her trembling fingers found the single gold apple.

Pulling it from her pouch, she held it to her father’s bloody lips and, at once, her mind went blank.

She did not know the incantation.

Words and spells flooded her mind, providing no aid while she held the precious fruit to her father. Hope diminished with every spell Kallan discarded, her desperation rising until her mind was frozen, devoured by a dark void.

Kallan could not feel his heavy body resting in her arms. She could not smell the metallic stench of blood. She could not think.

“K—Kallan.” Eyolf’s white lips trembled as he spoke her name. His body convulsed as he fought to stay beside her, desperate to speak the words that would not come.

Kallan held the apple, her eyes widened in horror, confounded at his idleness, waiting and believing that a single bite would be enough to stay Death’s hand if only she could remember the right words.

The sun’s light warmed her, but Kallan felt nothing. There she sat, until King Eyolf’s breath left him. Still she held him, offering the apple smeared with blood and willing herself to mutter the words she had never learned, the words that could no longer save him.

Kallan did not see the vast clouds move in from the sea in the south as they flooded the skies with a gray chill that consumed all of Alfheim. She did not feel the strands of hair sting her face like tiny whips thrashed relentlessly by winds that raced through the plains carrying the crisp scent of unfallen Nordic rain. She did not hear Daggon’s distorted cries, or feel the earth shake from the pounding hooves of the war-men.

Kallan, daughter of Eyolf, felt nothing. Not when Daggon’s large arm wrapped around her waist and lifted her from her father’s side. Not when he sat her down in front of him, nor when her limp fingers released the golden apple that fell to the blood-soaked earth and came to rest beside her father’s body.

* * *

“It was just an inspection.”

“Dozens swarmed them from nowhere.”

“No notice. No warning.”

“She didn’t see who did it?”

“She had gone into the keep.”

“Stabbed from the back.”

“Found her holding him.”

Kallan couldn’t identify the voices. Countless hands led her to her room then bathed and dressed her. She could not see that Daggon guided her to the courtyard before the Dokkalfar. She could not feel the weight of the silver circlet on her brow or the wind as she stood on the shores, watching her father’s body set ablaze in a ship sent to sea. She did not hear when Gudrun called upon the gods to guide Eyolf to Odinn’s halls. Kallan, daughter of Eyolf, Queen of the Dokkalfar, stood cold, empty, and oblivious to the weight of the signet ring bearing down on her finger.

The room was dark, save for the moonlight that stretched across the stone floor of Kallan’s chambers. Still dressed in ceremonial gowns of white and silver, with faceted blue gems, Kallan stared across her room and out her window, to the north and Gunir. Her blackened wall of ice was complete, allowing her to think again without having to feel anything beyond the heavy numbness pulling down on her body.

She took a step. Her shoulders were stiff, her feet like weights. She could still feel her father’s kiss on her brow from that morning. An invisible blade impaled her and twisted its way into her chest. Kallan closed her eyes and amassed her pain, her hurt, her grief. With it, she built a vast, black wall around memories that would be the death of her. Higher, thicker, colder, she secured the wall until she was numb and hate alone remained on the outside.

Bury the memory. Bury it all.

She pulled in a deep breath, filling her mind with simpler thoughts, safe thoughts, and forced the slew of memories behind the wall where, one by one, time would erase them. Opening her eyes, Kallan took a second step toward the window.

Numbed to the grief she refused to feel, she was free to think again, and replayed recent events.

The reports are always consistent. Rune always reports to the Southern Keep…on every moon. Father—

Her insides screamed and tightened. Her eyes burned as she gulped down a hot ball in her throat. Her hand curled into a fist as she crammed the memories deeper beneath the wall.

“All of them,” she breathed and stifled a sob. “Everything.”

She forgot her father’s goodnight kiss. She forgot his morning hug. She forgot the gleam in his eye that followed her every question. She forgot the warmth of his voice, until the blade in her chest had dulled and the agony eased.

Kallan opened her eyes and took another step toward the window.

After every inspection, Rune meets the Dark One at Swann Dalr in the Alfheim wood.

She absorbed the cold that numbed her grief and slowed her pain to a silent standstill. Kallan built her wall higher.

That is where we’ll strik
e, she decided as her thoughts finally flowed free of pain.

A chill webbed through Kallan’s spine, but she did not shudder. Her iridescent eyes sparkled as she raised them to the moon’s light and knew exactly how to proceed.

A cold, dark smile spread across Kallan’s face.

With the pieces aligned, the plan was perfect, and, this time, King Rune would die.

CHAPTER 12

The acidic venom collected at the tip of the snake’s fang and then splattered onto Loptr’s brow. The poison seared his flesh, and he howled with a rage that shook the rocks that bound him.

The pain subsided and Loptr inhaled sharply, releasing his breath. The snake tied to the stone above his head hissed. Another drop was already forming on the serpent’s tooth, promising another wave of agony.

Loptr shifted his body on the rock bed and winced. Fresh cuts sliced his back and split the old ones. Struggling to lift his head, Loptr searched the black rocks and boulders that made up his earthly prison.

The sudden sound of splintering wood pulled his attention to the large, winged worm that raised his black, stone-like eyes to him. Its jaw moved with lethal precision. Blinking curiously, the worm studied the giant chained to the stones and then returned to his meal of Yggdrasill root. Its large talons clung to the wood that protruded from the mountain’s side.

Loptr pulled his attention from the black worm to the pile of discarded clay bowls. Sigyn was not back yet. She would be back. She always came back. Nevertheless, the venom dripped and Loptr’s hatred grew ever more for Odinn.

The giant gazed at his bonds. Odinn’s words still echoed in his mind.

“Special bonds,”
Odinn had called them.
“Unbreakable.”
He had given Loptr that contemptible grin.
“Made by the Dvergar.”

“And with elding, no doubt,” Loptr grumbled aloud while inspecting the silver sheen that glistened on the black metal.

The worm munched his meal with disinterest.

Loptr had spent the first of several months fighting the bonds that held him. The enchanted metal showed no signs of wear. If anything, it appeared to be stronger, thicker.

“I had them forged just for you with what little remained of your sons,”
Odinn had said.

Raw hate twisted Loptr’s insides with the flood of memories that invaded his senses. He remembered the random adventures spent in Odinn’s company, when they would end the day exchanging women, story, and mead.

Another drop fell from the snake’s fang and Loptr howled, shaking against the pain.
Sigyn would be back soon.

“Sigyn,” he whispered. She has suffered so much already. Odinn had killed their sons. Loptr would be sure to return the favor.

The giant pulled on the chains again, still seething with rage. Another drop of venom fell and Loptr bellowed, trembling against the pain. Again, the pain subsided and only the shadow remained while he lay stretched on the stone, panting. His black hair covered his face like long, menacing fingers. Loptr opened his vivid, green eyes and gazed at the snake hanging above him.

He would find a way to escape and he would see to it that Odinn suffered as much as his beautiful Sigyn.

Yes. Odinn would suffer.