Ross Lawhead (37 page)

Alex put his hands up against it and cleared his mind, thinking only of being
between
. He had no intents or aims in life; he was open to all options. He was standing at the crossing of all paths.

He visualized this last thought as standing in a country road with signs pointing in all directions.

It took a few moments before he felt his hands sinking into the stone. It was harder now that he was older and had a purpose in life, but his heart and soul were still open to new callings. Once his arms were through the stone, it was easy. He visualized himself being between the stones now. He stepped forward and, with a sensation like moving through water, he was through and into the hidden chamber of Morven.

It was much like the others he had been in. A simple octagonal room with a ceiling, perhaps lower than others. Silver lamps lined the walls, throwing their ancient light on the stone plinths and the eight sleepers that lay on them.

Except that these warriors were no longer sleeping—they were dead. They had been dressed in full plaids and sporrans and had been armed with two-handed claymore swords and
sgian dubhs
, but now their corpses were mangled, eviscerated, picked-over. Flesh had been torn from bone, joints separated, and the pieces scattered.

It had been a one-sided slaughter. Looking at the centre of the chamber, he saw the fragments of the stone-coloured oblong egg that the dragon had hatched from. It had been easy to see what had happened as the infant dragon hatched and fed first on one body and then the next, probably over the course of a couple weeks, maybe more. The trolls, attracted to the area by its atmosphere of evil, had set up in the cave and it had killed them too. As lucky as he was to escape with his life, it was a marvelous stroke of fortune—for him and the entire country—that Alex had come across the dragon now while it was still an infant and not a fully grown adult.

But who placed the egg here? Across the chamber, the wall, which was supposed to be enchanted like the one he had passed through, had been torn down—or rather, knocked through. Its stones lay strewn across the floor.

A hand clamped around Alex's foot and he started. He swallowed and looked down in horror—one of the dead bodies' arms was gripping his boot. It was connected to a shoulder, a torso, a head, and nothing else. The mangled face of the highlander moved and Alex heard the words, in Gaelic,
“Fuasgail sinne.”
Release us.

The spirits of the dead men were still in their bodies—they had not been released from their contract of immortality yet. They had lain here all this time, waiting for the battle, and for them the fight had never come, only a painful, prolonged death. With a lump in his throat, Alex pulled his foot gently out of the knight's hold and strode to the wall where the horn was hanging. He blew a strong note on it, and the air seemed to grow warmer; a wind moved through the tunnel with a sound like a sigh of relief.

For a moment there appeared before Alex's eyes the silvery outline of a man in old highland gear with a gleaming sword in his hand.

“Buidheachas
,” the figure said, looking Alex in the eye.

“Slàinte agad-sa,”
Alex replied.
“Slàn leat
.”

The apparition smiled and then faded. The lamplight returned to its full brightness, and the chamber was still.

Alex set about rearranging the bodies on the stone slabs as best he could—there would be no more honourable burial place than this cavern, where the lights would burn for all time. It was gruesome work, but after a while he managed to place the bodies and weapons in respectful order.

He stood for a time looking at the torn-down wall and wondered who had made it and where they had come from. The largest part of him wanted to follow it and track down whoever had done this, but he knew that wasn't the prudent thing to do. Instead, he left back through the wall he had entered by, went through the cave, and stepped into the open, still-drizzling air.

As he walked down the mount and back to his Rover, he pulled his phone from his pocket and rang his associate.

After relaying what had occurred, omitting no detail, his associate said, “The bleed has started—but it is hard to tell the extent, even yet. We must go to Niðergeard—that is where we will find answers.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
Quick Blood

1

Before . . .

“I don't understand,” said Freya. “What
should
we be looking at?”

“A vast underground lake, nearly big enough to be called a sea—its surface completely smooth and still, for no creature stirs it, nor the slightest breeze moves across it. But not this—this dark emptiness!”

Swiðgar took several steps forward and descended down a sand-and-stone slope, which ended after several feet in a flat, black, dry, cracked mud floor. “It's gone. The Slæpismere is gone!” he exclaimed in a harsh whisper.

“What does that mean?” Freya asked.

“It means that the hidden world is already feeling the affect of evil spreading in this land,” Swiðgar answered. “They have already started claiming victories—decay has set in. This is why our task is of such import.”

“What's that?” asked Daniel, pointing along the dry bank. There was some sort of wall that extended into the empty lake. They walked over and investigated.

“It is a pier,” said Ecgbryt as their torches revealed it more in detail. On the far end, several wide, flat-bottomed boats dangled lengthways from a chain that was still attached to a metal pillar. Swiðgar gave one of them a push and it gave a couple tragicomic swings before scraping to a halt.

“Well, let's get started,” said Ecgbryt. “We must go on if we are to keep the pace.”

Walking along the dry lake bed was much easier than picking their way along the rocky tunnels now above them. The ground was basically flat, sloping gently downwards.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Ecgbryt, “of the fight we had with the Danes off the Isle of Wight? A glorious battle! I arrived in one of the nine new ships built in the Northman's fashion that Ælfred ordered built, along with many of the Frisian warriors that fought with us on that occasion. Have I ever told you about the fearsome Frisians? Are they still as famed in this day as they were in ours? I remember a ballad about them that starts thus . . .”

Ecgbryt recited his ballad and then continued his long monologue about his battle and almost every ballad he knew relating to it. It soothed them all to listen, and Ecgbryt to talk. When he stopped they took a break to rest, and that's when Daniel, moving away from the torchlight to relieve himself, noticed a light shining up ahead.

“Does anybody else see that?” he asked.

“I think that it's on top of something,” Freya said. “I think that there's a hill up ahead.”

They had been walking an upward slope after having journeyed quite a long way down into the dry lake bed. “No, not a hill,” Ecgbryt said. “Not a hill exactly—it's an island!”

2

The weary travelers circled the dry island to find an easy way up that didn't involve scaling sharp rocks and boulders. The ground underfoot crunched and shifted as they came upon a stretch of land made up of loose stones and gravel. In their own torchlight, they could see that this created a kind of ramp-like path up towards the island. “It's a beach,” Freya said, laughing slightly. “Or at least, it used to be.”

They mounted the top of the ramp on an ascent of fine, powdery sand. The light was stronger and grew from a point just below a small rise.

“Shh!” hissed Daniel. “Listen!”

They all heard the singing now; many voices in chorus— melodic, but indistinct. It sounded strange to them, after all this time of walking in the silent dark, but there it was. They proceeded up the rise, alert, ready for nearly anything.

But they weren't prepared for the smell. It was a homely smell of warm food and wood smoke—some sort of stew, at a guess. The singing had given way to an amiable chatter. The travelers rounded the mound, drawing closer, and Freya immediately wondered if it might all be some sort of illusion meant to confuse them, for as they came around the base of the mound, they saw a group of people sitting around a large fire, their hands moving vigorously in industrious work.

Creeping closer, Freya counted eight women, all of them ancient, sitting in a circle around a modest campfire, working on a long piece of grey patterned cloth spread across their laps. At one end, two old ladies worked spinning machines—turning a large pile of thin, wispy material into spools of thread, which were placed onto a loom that was operated by two others. This loom spewed a fine fabric from its top that was gathered by another who stretched and pulled the cloth. The cloth then crossed the laps of two other women, who placed the woven fabric into large embroidery frames where they added borders of an elaborate swirling pattern. The finished cloth then entered a large stack of long rolls that were piled behind the group. Because of the darkness, Freya couldn't make out how many rolls of cloth there were, but she had the impression of quite a large number, as its production had apparently been going on for some time.

The last old lady flitted around the others to help—toting spools to the loom, fixing the frames in different places, and doing whatever else needed doing. She also paused occasionally to stir the large pot on the fire at the centre of the circle.

Freya and Daniel and the knights watched in silence for a few moments and then entered the circle of light cast by the fire. They stood between the weaving machine and the embroiderers. Freya felt a tingle of anticipation as she drew breath to speak.

“Hello,” she said.

All of them continued, oblivious, except for the old woman at the large pot. She stopped stirring and turned towards them. “Well, hello there, sweet child,” she replied. “Where did you spring from?”

“Um, we've been traveling. We saw the light and came here.

We thought you might be able to help us.”

“Who's ‘us,' deary? Who is ‘we'?”

“My friends and I. We—oh!”

The old woman tilted her face so that the light from the fire fell on it more directly. Her eye sockets were empty and puckered— blind. Glancing quickly at the others, she could see that all of the women were blind. Haltingly, nervously, Freya introduced herself and the rest of the group to the weaving women.

“Very pleased to meet you, I'm sure,” said the old lady. “Now, I must ask you an important question. Think carefully before you answer: would you or would you not like to have some good, hot stew?”

Freya grinned. “Yes, please,” she said.

“I can hear your smile,” the old woman said. “I daresay you have answered correctly. Come then, all of you. Come get some eats!”

“Freya,” Daniel whispered, “I'm not sure that we should.” He looked cautiously around at the group of ladies. Although they had not stopped working, it was obvious that they were all paying attention to what was going on. “Not until we find out—you know—if they can be trusted or not.”

“Young boy—Daniel, is it? What is there to worry about? Why not trust us? What reason is there for suspicion?”

“Well, for a start, you know my name. Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asked.

“Weaving, my dear, weaving.”

“Why?”

“There must always be weavers—and gatherers, and combers, and spinners as well. It is the way of humanity. The first thing that man understood when he knew things as God knew them was that there must be weaving. And so here we are. We weave.”

“But—what is it?”

The old woman smiled, showing a full mouth of healthy white teeth. “All the known and unknown stories of the world may be told through our tapestry. We roll up the past, weave the present, and spin the strands of the future. It's all one to us.”

“But you can't see,” Daniel blurted.

The old woman waved a wrinkled hand. “Don't need to bother with that no more. Gets in the way more often than not. All we have to do is feel and then move our hands. Now, are you satisfied enough to chance a taste of my stew?”

“I would,” said Ecgbryt, pushing his way into the circle.

“As would I,” said Swiðgar behind him, “and thank you for your generosity.”

Daniel said nothing but followed the knights and Freya and stood in front of the big pot. Smiling, the old lady gathered up some clay bowls and spoons that were lying on a low stone table nearby.

“My, you're a strong thread, aren't you? You and the girl both. Such a shame though . . .”

“What?”

“Well, in tough times, when the fabric wears thin and weaker threads break, the stronger threads have to pick up the slack.”

Daniel frowned as he was handed a bowl of steaming stew.

“So, can you predict the future?” Freya asked. “Because of your weaving?”

“Oh no,” said the woman. “None see the future. But when you've lived as long as I, you get to know the pattern. All the threads follow their own paths, but each is affected by those around them. Each strand is small in itself, but all are great together. A very many threads seen together will give you a pattern or a shape, but even that will only be small in the larger work.” She spooned up another bowl and passed it to Freya. “The threads go here and there and make all manner of twists and turns, but it is always to a purpose, though it may not seem that way to the thread. To the thread all that happens feels accidental, but those as sees more, knows better.”