Fire and Lies (21 page)

R
une stared at the ceiling for as long as he could postpone the day. The first of morning's light flooded his room. Sighing, he rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow along with his discouragements.

“Rune?”

The click of his sitting room door accompanied Geirolf’s voice. Rune gave a grunt that confirmed he heard.

“Rune,” Geirolf called from the doorway.

“What did she do now, Geirolf?” Rune spoke into his pillow, muffling the words.

The question stopped Geirolf in his place, leaving him stunned at the random question.

“I just thought you’d like to know,” Geirolf said upon entering the room, “she’s released the prisoners.”

Rune turned his body around, throwing the pillow to the floor as he sat up, his mouth agape.

“She what?”

“She gave the order first thing this morning,” Geirolf said. “Bergen complied and granted her request after she made mention of frying his balls off with that lightning of hers.”

“Son of a—”

Rune threw the furs off his bed and scoured the floor for his trousers all the while unleashing a slew of curses.

“She’s in her sitting room enjoying her breakfast if you’re looking to have a word,” Geirolf offered as he watched Rune force a boot on the wrong foot followed by the other, not bothering with the laces.

“She?” Rune seethed as his second boot forced him to take a seat. “Oh no,” he said. “I’ll not play steward to that…that… Where’s Bergen?”

Geirolf repressed a smile, but held a gleam in his eye.

“With the lady.”

Rune’s foot hit the floor with a thud and Rune sat, staring at Geirolf.

“Should I have Torunn make up a place setting for you?” Geirolf asked, mustering his most innocent sounding tone. “They’re dining in Kallan’s solar.”

Rune sat for a long moment, contemplating his next move. After that moment, he laced his boots.

“Take word to Bergen. Have him meet me in the war room immediately.”

* * *

On the landing between his bower and the war room, Bergen forced the grin from his face. He didn’t doubt that Geirolf had not failed to mention Kallan’s additional company at breakfast and wallowed gleefully at the range of assumptions Rune would have made in the last hour. Preparing for an ambush, Bergen blew a sigh and pushed the door of the war room open.

With a strut that defied Rune’s station, Bergen sauntered across the stone floor to the center tables were Rune poured at maps and letters. Bergen hated this room. The high ceilings entombed the room in a ceremonial glow that permanently harbored the oppressive arrogance of the elite authority belonging to the crown and his brother.
Thank Freyr for that
, Bergen thought. The hearth crackled behind the table, adding to the room's stuffiness.

“Where are they?”

The room carried Rune’s voice with a cold that made Bergen ache for the warmth of his bed and the nearest wench.

“Who?” Bergen asked naivly, putting as much discomfort on Rune as the room bestowed onto him.

Rune peered up from the table with the same fitful eyes from their childhood, rather than the pompous glare of a king.

“Don’t play this game with me, Bergen. I know too well you had something to do with this. The whole thing reeks of conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy?”

Rune straightened his back, preparing for battle.

“Perhaps you’ve made more enemies than you’ve realized,” Bergen suggested.

“Bergen—”

“Why don’t you ask her?” he asked, his irritation diminishing his better intentions. Rune slammed his fist to the table.

“Damn it, Bergen! Why couldn’t you leave this alone?”

Sincerity blanketed Bergen’s face, forcing the cold of his black eyes still as they burrowed into Rune.

“You didn’t have to see her writhing with agony when I told her she wasn’t allowed to speak to her kin…or you.”

Rune huffed.

“Clearly you have no idea what horrors that girl harbors,” Bergen said, forcing back a smirk.

“I don’t—”

Bergen watched the fire burn in Rune’s eyes as he scrambled to keep his composure.

“I watched it burrow its ugly head into her for nearly an entire moon!” Rune said.

“Clearly, the message was lost on you.”

A cool annoyance settled over Rune as he glared at Bergen from across the room.

“Since when do you care for the Seidkona who bestowed that mark upon your brow?”

“Since you forced her under my guard, where I’ve watched the Seidkona break from the torment of her own benevolence!” Bergen said, eternally amused by the rage he evoked in Rune.

They both huffed and spent their best glowers for the occasion.

“And what of you?” Bergen asked, easing back on his own temper. “When did you come to care for the queen who slaughtered our people?”

Refusing to answer the question posed, Rune stomped to one of the windows. The sky stretched beyond the forests in the north. He listened to Bergen’s footfall as he came to stand at his side, where he always seemed to be.

“I understand why you refused her council,” Bergen said. “But to ban her from seeing her own kin… That extends to a branch of cruelty—”

“Until I can determine which of her kin has lent aid to Borg’s cause, I suspect all of them,” Rune said, refusing to let Bergen finish that accusation.

“And now?”

Rune met Bergen’s eye.

“The old woman is innocent,” Rune grumbled, displeased.

“Gudrun?” Bergen asked.

“We call her by name now?”

With a furrowed brow and their game forgotten, Bergen and Rune exchanged frowns and returned to the view.

“Gudrun is a seer,” Rune said suddenly. Bergen snapped his gaze from the window.

“Did—”

“I already asked,” Rune answered before Bergen could get the question out.

Sadly, Rune shook his head and gazed at Bergen.

“She couldn’t See,” he said.

Bergen furrowed his brow and returned his attention to the view.

The sky was clear and free of both fog and cloud that morning.

“What would cause a seer to not See?” Bergen thought aloud.

* * *

Kallan moved her arms with the trained efficiency of a swordsman as she wielded her Seidr in and up and around, surrounding herself in strings of gold while taking great care to thread the strands of Seidr in between the fronds and plants in the solar. While Daggon studied the progress of Kallan’s position and her improved form, Gudrun scrutinized the blue flames Kallan coddled in her palms that fed the golden threads.

As Kallan finished gliding through the kata, she extinguished her flame, released her Seidr, which settled around her, and straightened her posture beside the table laden with breakfast trays.

“And you say the Naejttie had found it?” Gudrun asked gravely.

Kallan was quick to nod.

“Halda said they found the Seidi years ago.”

“And when she spoke,” Gudrun asked, “whatever she said doubled the Seidr in size?”

Kallan nodded.

“Never mind the Seidr,” Daggon interjected. “You said the animals were twice their usual size?”

“Thrice,” Kallan corrected.

Daggon blew a breath of incredulity.

“Could you make out what she said?” Gudrun asked. Kallan shook her head and Gudrun gave a displeased hum, pulling her thoughts inward.

As they ate their breakfast around the table, Geirolf and Torunn listened quietly to Kallan’s tale of the Seidi filled with giant plants and animals. Kalla recalled how she and Rune had met a Naejttie who led them to a Seidi, and how her words procured a fountain of Seidr and bilrost formed.

“What is it, Gudrun?” Daggon asked, eager to hear the silent dealings Gudrun amassed in her head.

After a while, she sighed.

“A Seidi is an area of sacred ground,” Gudrun explained. “To find one is…” She ran through a collection of choice words and debated saying ‘impossible.’ “…rare,” she finished.

Slowly, Gudrun began as if systematically selecting each word.

“Centuries ago, there were more Seidi before the Vanir went through and destroyed them all. Fearing the Aesir would gain further access to the Seidr, they buried them. I haven’t seen one myself in nearly a thousand years.”

“Where do they come from?” Torunn asked.

Gudrun sighed again, her mind still preoccupied with something she didn’t dare give voice to.

“Kallan was right to call it a spring,” Gudrun said. “Like new mead bursting old water skins, the Seidr builds until it bursts from the thread lines beneath.”

Daggon thought for a long moment, watching carefully as Gudrun pursed her dry lips. She was holding back and skirting around too much to be honest. There was something she was intentionally not saying.

Gudrun tried a different approach when four blank stares looked back at her.

“When the snows thaw and the ground can’t hold the excess supply, springs emerge, seeping from the main water source. Travelling clans in the Southern Deserts dig wells down to that water supply. The Seidr is the same.”

“So there was a surplus of Seidr,” Kallan concluded, “causing it to overflow and spill out into the Seidi.” Kallan furrowed her brow. “But where would the excess Seidr come from to cause a spring to emerge?”

Before Gudrun could scrounge up an answer, the door of Kallan’s sitting room whined open, drawing their attention to Bergen, who slogged across the sitting room toward the solar.

“Well?” Torunn asked, too eager for Bergen to reach them.

He shrugged, pursing his lips.

“He refuses to see her,” he said.

The room filled with simultaneous sighs.

“Alright,” Kallan said, puffing up her chest with a bout of readiness. Gudrun and Daggon exchanged a pair of grins. “Dismiss the castle’s staff.”

“What?” Geirolf barked as Torunn spat, “Are you mad?”

“Just for a day,” Kallan said. “Leave Rune to his keep…alone.” 

“The castle gets mighty cold this time of year, Kallan,” Geirolf said.

Kallan grinned with a slyness worthy of Bergen.

“That’s the idea.”

“Kallan, you don’t know what you ask,” Torunn said.

“Don’t I?” Kallan asked, maintaining her grin. “Have I not my own keep to run?”

Gudrun returned to her meal. Daggon stretched his arms up over his head as he leaned back in his chair.

“Hold off,” Bergen cut in as Geirolf and Torunn moved to rebut.

All attention turned to Bergen. Everyone was silent for the moment as he mulled over Kallan’s proposition. After a moment, he met Torunn’s eyes and nodded.

“Do it.”

“Bergen—” Geirolf said.

“The entire staff?” Torunn interjected.

“The moment he goes to sleep tonight, let the fires burn out,” Bergen said without a glimpse of humor.

Silence permeated the room as they looked from one to the other.

“Well…” Torunn broke the indecision with a heavy sigh as she pushed herself up from the chair. “I have a lot of work to do, if tomorrow we’re doing nothing.”

With a prolonged groan, Geirolf followed Torunn’s lead and forced himself to his feet. “I’ll pass the word among the barracks.”

With matching grins, Kallan and Bergen watched as they took their leave.

“What will you have us do, Bergen?” Daggon asked when the door latched behind them.

With a grin that seemed to widen by the minute, Bergen looked to Daggon.

“Go pick some fights in the barracks. That’ll keep Rune running all day.”

A
chill gnawed Rune’s bare shoulders. Half-asleep and disgruntled, he pulled at the furs, slapping the edge of the blankets as he yanked them higher. Buried deep within the pocket of warmth, Rune groaned with a stubborn irritation that wouldn’t ebb. The unmistakable snap of cold bit the top of his head left exposed to the open air.

He tried to remember if he had been hunting with Bergen, and tossed the idea from his head before foraging for a more reasonable explanation. Wallowing in his bad temperament, he recalled the evening prior and, in a torrent of temper, Rune whipped off the pile of furs and stomped to his feet, clenching his teeth against the cold that pierced his flesh.

Eager to purge his miserable mood at the first passerby, Rune looked about and grew more irate at the abnormal lack of people present. His eyes shifted to the cold hearth and its pile of white ash void of flame and heat.

Too cold to emerge from the blankets without a shirt, Rune grabbed a fistful of furs from his bed and yanked them violently over his shoulders, grumbling a slew of curses under his breath as he stomped to his sitting room.

The second hearth, as cold as the first, stoked his rage all the more.

“Torunn!” he bellowed, then listened.

The corridor was unusually quiet.

Ready to fire off at the first person he saw, Rune stomped to the door and ripped it open then stopped. The hall was empty.

The usual warmth and laughter that always seemed to ascend from the Great Hall with the myriad of scents from the kitchens was oddly absent. Hunger clamped his stomach and Rune realized the lack of smells from the Great Hall probably meant a lack of breakfast.

“Torunn!” he roared again and waited.

Echoes reverberated down the hall past Kallan’s room.

Kallan.

Rune narrowed his eyes into threatening slits he wished her to see and, crinkling his nose, slammed his door. He wasn’t sure how she had done it, but he had a suspicion forming in the depths of his gut. Aside from Lorlenalin’s palace brat, he was the only one left in the keep. Deciding he would deny her the glory she sought, he tightened his grip on the furs and stomped back to his bedchamber.

With more fuss than he would have cared for, Rune started a fire and found some clothes. With a fresh slew of curses, he grumbled loudly down to the kitchens, where he confirmed the absolute vacancy of the keep. He rummaged through a collection of bags, located a handful of apples and some dried meats, and returned to the Great Hall after grabbing an extra two helpings of mead.

Back in his room, the fire crackled, fighting back the chill. Rune dumped the armload of food and drinks onto his bed and passed through the back door of his bedchamber, across the landing to the war room. Within five minutes, he had found the wax, the charts, the maps, and a collection of sealed letters containing the most recent reports of Gunir’s imports and exports.

“Joren!”

Nothing but echoes answered.

He began filling his arms with sheets of blank vellum and a bifolium.

“Geirolf!”

Silence.

With a huff, he collected the last of his supplies and stomped back to his room. Beside his food, Rune dumped his maps and sealing wax, and reviewed his progress. Then he stomped to his window and stared out over the barren courtyard.

The battlement doors were closed. The barracks, too quiet. Even the workers constructing the stables had abandoned their work.

“Bergen!” Rune projected over the deadened courtyard.

His echo was the only reply.

Pulling his head back inside, Rune scowled at the pile on his bed. The fire had died down some and he scowled at the thought that he would have to haul armloads of firewood up from the cellars.

Rune gazed again out the window and furrowed his brow. A lone speck, cloaked and suspicious, glided across the stone yard.

Quietly shuffling to the window, Rune took great care to stay hidden in the shadows of his room. At once, he recognized Kallan’s dainty step. Fruits and meats from the kitchens filled a large basket she clutched protectively. A few vegetables confirmed she had also raided the castle gardens. Snarling, Rune made note to scold her later for her thievery as he watched her slip through the battlement doors.

Disgruntled, he abandoned the window and set to work, sorting through his provisions and the day’s work.

* * *

Silence and solitude made up Rune’s day. The only disturbance was that of a random though frequent skirmish below between Ottar and Daggon. Pleased to have found somebody, Rune made haste to the courtyard only to find Daggon standing alone in a mass of disgruntled upheaval that Rune had to contain.

He walked the keep once, searched the barracks and the stables where the horses were his only company and promptly gave up, all the while knowing Kallan was somehow behind this. More than once, Rune stood from his table and headed for Kallan’s chambers, each time forcing himself back to his work with a bottle of mead. Too often, he found himself glaring at the window.

Pulling the furs closer, he gulped down an exuberant helping of mead and slammed the bottle back to the table as he pretended to look over the maps.

He ignored the passing afternoon that darkened too slowly into the evening, and often pulled at the furs around his shoulder, throwing his head back for another bout with the drink. By mid-day, he had eaten through the fruit and the meat. By the final hour of the day and the seventh mead, long after the sun settled behind the horizon, hunger forced Rune’s head up from his work.

He pushed aside the map and leaned back in his chair with a tip of the inebriate. The waxing half-moon was bright this night. Forcing himself to his feet, Rune made his way across the room and quietly closed the door behind him. At the double doors of Kallan’s sitting room, Rune stopped. Light emerged from the crack and he entertained the thought of breaking down her chamber door and unleashing his pent-up irritation on her.

“Should have let the damn thing kill her,” Rune grumbled.

Balling his fists, he forced himself down to the kitchens for more meat and mead.

Rune descended into the dark kitchens, blackened by the late hour. Fumbling to the storeroom, he scuffed about with the slight tip of a drunk and dragged his hand along the table for direction and balance. With the bang of the door, he punched the wall, released a series of choice words he reserved for the occasion as he limped into the buttery. Upon finding the mead, he threw back his head and drowned his curses in one long sequence of gulps.

Plopping down onto a stool, Rune sighed and dropped his head back onto the wall. The kitchens were black save for the single strip of moonlight that poured in from the gardens. He stared at the rafters hidden in the dark and threw back another gulp.

“Bad day?”

The sweet affection of Torunn’s voice jolted Rune from the stool.

“You!” Rune growled, wincing through the dark and still clutching the bottle. “Where is everyone? I’ve spent my day getting nothing done! The only one who’ve I’ve been able to find is that giant brute of a captain, who insists on picking fights with Ottar, who won’t sit still long enough to ask where everyone is! Where is Bergen? Where is Geirolf?” Rune slurred loudly, granting Torunn no time to answer. “Where’s my food?”

He could hear Torunn’s unimpressed sigh through the dark and he squinted to see better, impatient for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and cursed himself for not bringing a light.

“Bergen and Geirolf are hunting,” Torunn said patiently. “Your food…” She looked at the shelves of the buttery and turned to the larder abundant with food. “...is beside you.”

“Where’re the cooks?” he slurred, already unsatisfied with whatever excuse she would give.

“Home,” Torunn said.

“I am your king!” Rune barked. “What is the meaning—?”

“We were given orders by another, who was granted the power by you.” Torunn’s eyes sharpened as if daring Rune to challenge her and Rune secretly wished his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness after all.

“And so, in following her orders, we followed yours,” Torunn said.

Rune grimaced as he threw back his head to take another mouthful of mead. His unyielding frown remained on Torunn as he drank.

“I want to speak to them now,” Rune said. “Now!”

“No one is here to accept your summons,” Torunn said. “Except Kallan.”

“I rescind my order!” Rune said, thinking ahead.

Torunn’s eyes narrowed into slits.

“Kallan has already given us instruction to ignore that order were you to give it.” Her nostrils flared with her breath. “And we wouldn’t want to disobey our king, now would we?”

Rune threw the flagon across the room. Mead splattered on the walls. Torunn held her eye unwaveringly on Rune.

“Mind your temper with me, Son of Tryggve,” she said. “I maintained your father’s tantrums centuries before you were born.”

“I’ll not have her,” Rune said. “I will starve before I accept her summons.”

“You just might,” Torunn said.

With a whirlwind of temper, she spun on her heel and ascended the steps to the Great Hall, leaving Rune alone in the kitchens to brood.