The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (27 page)

Well, if he would not complain, it was not her place to rail. She had lost nothing . . . not in comparison with Edmund. She looked over at her father, washing his face in the brook, and the sight warmed her until she could almost forget the strange emptiness in her right hand. The sword was gone.

After she had stabbed Loki – after the ball of white fire which had filled the circle, filled the sky, and vanished without toppling a single stone – a great silence had fallen on her. She was nowhere, floating bodiless in the dark.
I must be dead
, she thought – but slowly her body had come back: heaviness, and blurred light, and a steady, irresistible throbbing as the threads unravelled from her arm. Strands of light had pulled free from her, streaming into the air. Ioneth’s voice, and Cluaran’s, were in her head again, so twined together it was almost a song; calling a greeting or a farewell. And then they had left her – and she was lying on the ground in the stone circle, a gauntlet of silver mesh slipping off her right hand.

Afterwards, she had not known how to speak to Eolande of her son’s loss. The Fay woman had stayed with them only long enough to help dress their burns; then she had left them for her own people.

‘There’s nothing here for me now,’ she said softly, and Elspeth took her hand, feeling her eyes pricking.

‘They might come back, some day,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I heard their voices, Eolande. I know they’re still together.’

‘It was all he wanted,’ Eolande said. She had been holding Cluaran’s pack, and she pulled a small book from it now,
bound in dark leather. ‘This was written by my husband, Brokk: the story of the sword. My son added to it. I mean to finish it, so our people will know what he did for them – and what you and your friends have done.’

Before she left, she took both Elspeth and Edmund aside and slid a bracelet from her wrist, a finely wrought thing of twisted wood and metal.

‘This is all I have to give you,’ she said. ‘But it was made to join the strengths of two peoples, and the charm on it is still strong. If you should ever be in need, place it near one of our doorways. I’ll hear you.’

Elspeth looked at her doubtfully. ‘But will your people allow that? I’ve seen what they think of our kind.’

‘That must change,’ Eolande said, and for a moment her eyes flashed with their old spirit. ‘Twice now we’ve banded together. If we had not, none of us would be here.’

She took Edmund’s hands and kissed him, and embraced Elspeth. ‘I won’t forget you,’ she murmured.

Then she drew the doorway in the air, and stepped through while it faded behind her.

They left the stone circle the same day. Many of the great stones were soot-blackened, and the ground beneath them was scorched and scarred, but that would all fade. Only the gleaming obsidian fragments that had been the dragon’s body would stay, scattered thickly around the central gateways, as signs that a battle had taken place here.

Cathbar picked one of them up and weighed it in his hand as they walked back towards the road. ‘Something to show my children,’ he said, and slipped it into his pack.

‘You don’t have children!’ Elspeth said, startled. ‘Do you?’

‘Not yet,’ the captain said. ‘But I’ve time.’ He smiled. ‘There’s time for a lot of things now: I think our warring days are over. Though it’s as well to keep my hand in.’ He patted a bow and quiver that hung over his shoulder, and Elspeth recognised them as Cluaran’s. ‘Eolande gave me these before she left,’ the captain said. ‘Told me to make good use of them – and I mean to.’ His face was suddenly sombre. ‘He was a good man.’

It took them two days to reach Venta Bulgarum, where Cathbar would return to his post. Elspeth could not repress a qualm as they approached the town gates: the last time she had been here, she and Edmund had stolen in like thieves, disguised and in fear of their lives. She moved a little closer to Edmund, and saw the strain on his face. His memories must be worse than hers: it was his uncle who had hunted them then. But as Cathbar strode up to the gate, calling a greeting to the men on guard, it was clear that they were welcome today. Both men started up with cries of joy and recognition, and competed to escort their captain and his honoured guests to the king’s hall.

Beotrich came out in person to meet them, cutting short a meeting with his councillors. But Elspeth had no eyes for the king, for with him was a man she had never thought to meet
again, dressed in the red of a Redesman, but otherwise unchanged from the day she had last seen him.

‘Aagard!’ she cried, running to embrace him.

‘And so ends all my fretting!’ the old man exclaimed. He held her at arm’s length to look in her face. ‘So many times I feared you could not succeed, and cursed myself for sending you. Forgive me for doubting you – and Edmund.’ He turned to greet her friend, and his face darkened to see Edmund’s blind eyes. ‘I saw something of your battle from afar, but I hoped I had been mistaken about this. It was a heavy price to pay, Edmund: it grieves me that you have had to bear it.’

Much had happened in the last few days, he told them. Beotrich’s men and the returned soldiers of Sussex had managed to repel the Danish invaders along their coasts, but there were further attacks from the east, where the fanatics had landed in the kingdom of Kent, spreading a religion of blood and fire. And then, two days ago, Wessex men returning from Kent had reported that the army facing them in a burned-out village had suddenly seemed to lose heart. They had stumbled as they ran, stopping and looking around them as if in confusion. The few who still attacked were easily defeated – but most of the men had simply turned and wandered away, some of them weeping.

‘We made another discovery that same morning,’ Aagard said, his voice grave. ‘Orgrim was found dead in his cell.’

Edmund’s shoulders jerked, and he made a small sound in his throat. Elspeth took his hand, but he recovered himself quickly and stood unmoving as Aagard went on.

‘There was no violence, Edmund. He seemed peaceful, even; as if whatever held him to life had just left him. That was when I was certain Loki was gone.’

Beotrich was anxious to honour them both, and to put on the ceremony befitting a neighbouring king. Elspeth found herself, her father and Edmund brought before the King’s Rede, while Cathbar held up the silver gauntlet to the cheers of the councillors. Elspeth’s hand ached at the sight of the thing – but it was no longer anything to do with her, she thought, with a mixture of regret and relief, as Aagard took it and locked it in the chest where she had first found it. It would be hidden once more, kept in trust by the Rede and their descendants, until the day when it was needed again.

After the ceremony Beotrich asked them to stay and feast with him, but Edmund courteously declined, to Elspeth’s relief. ‘I must return home, to Noviomagus,’ he said. ‘My mother will want to see me.’

Aagard and Cathbar came with them to the city gates.

‘Go well, all of you,’ Cathbar said. He shook Trymman’s hand, then took Elspeth by the shoulders. ‘You did us proud back there,’ he said. ‘I’ll look to hear more of you, Elspeth, in years to come.’ He turned to Edmund. ‘Next time I lay eyes on you, lad, no doubt I’ll be bowing to a king. I’m glad I got to know you as a comrade first.’ His voice was gruff now. ‘And if either of you should want me, call on me. You’re always welcome here.’

Both he and Aagard raised their hands in farewell, and stood at the gates to watch them walk away.

And now it was just the three of them, within sight of the town of Noviomagus, camping together for the last time. They sat around the remains of the previous night’s fire, breakfasting on the last of their bread.

‘What will you do now?’ Edmund asked Elspeth. He sat close by her, turned to the fire as if gazing into its depths. Only the stillness of his face betrayed his blindness.

‘We’ll go back to sea, of course,’ Elspeth said. ‘We don’t need a boat of our own. Any captain in Dubris will take my father as chief oarsman.’ She looked with pride at her father as he banked the fire. She knew that he still grieved for the
Spearwa
, his ship, but he would never admit it. ‘I started as nothing but a willing pair of arms, and I can do it again,’ he had told her.

‘And you?’ Edmund asked. ‘Will you row with him?’ He did not say,
Will they give work to a woman?
but Elspeth heard the hesitation in his voice, and rounded on him.

‘They’ll give work to Trymman’s daughter, and gladly!’ She hoped she was right – but even if they would not, she would not be kept from the sea again. ‘Or I’ll dress as a boy,’ she said. ‘As I did when we came from Dumnonia.’

‘That could work,’ Edmund agreed, his voice thoughtful. ‘Though you’d look more like a boy if you cut your hair again. It’s grown past your shoulders now.’

‘Well, yours is no better . . .’ she retorted, and stopped. He had turned to face her. His eyes were as blank as before, the dark pupils staring sightlessly into hers, but he was grinning.

‘How did you know?’ she demanded.

There was a movement on an overhanging branch nearby: a sparrow, its head cocked so that its bright black eye looked directly at Elspeth. It fluttered its wings as she looked up, swooped down on a breadcrumb by her foot and darted away.

‘I still have the power,’ Edmund said, and his face shone with more than firelight. ‘I won’t use people’s eyes, not without consent, for honour’s sake. But I can borrow animals’ sight, and birds’. It was so dim at first, I wasn’t sure – but it’s stronger each time.’

‘Oh, Edmund!’ Elspeth dropped the remains of her bread and threw her arms around him. ‘He can still see!’ she cried as her father came over to see what the noise was about. ‘He’s still Ripente!’ And she punched the air, while Trymman looked down at the two of them in astonishment.

‘But what about your vow?’ Elspeth asked, as they scattered the fire and set off for the final time. ‘Can you be king, and stay a Ripente?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and there was certainty in his voice. ‘My father didn’t think so, but how could he know? I promised him I’d become a king, and I will. But I’m not him, Elspeth.’ He spoke calmly, without regret. ‘I can’t be a war-leader, a conqueror. I have other skills, and I must use them if I’m to rule well.’

‘We don’t need any more conquerors,’ Elspeth said. He nodded, and they walked together in silence for a while.
You’ll be a good king
, she thought;
a great one, even
. She tried to push away the heaviness that crept over her as the walls of Noviomagus loomed closer.
And our time together will be over
.

They were expected in Noviomagus. Trymman, who had been striding ahead, dropped back as they approached, and the three of them came to the town wall together. At the sight of them a guard ran inside, shouting, and before they reached the gate a woman was there to greet them.

She was slender and brown-haired, her skin almost as pale as Edmund’s. She gave a cry, and ran to embrace Edmund. ‘I had word from Aagard,’ she said. ‘I’ve longed so much to have you back – but oh, Edmund, your eyes . . .’ She gave a sob, then drew back, controlling her face as Elspeth had seen Edmund do in the past.

‘Welcome,’ she said to Trymman and Elspeth. ‘I am Branwen of Sussex. I owe you both more than I can say for your friendship to my son, and for bringing him back to me.’

Queen Branwen made less ceremony of them than Beotrich had, but her hospitality was as generous. The three travellers were given baths and fresh clothes, and a feast was thrown to celebrate Edmund’s return. Only when they were fed and rested did she sit down with them and demand their story. Aagard had told her of her brother Aelfred and his fate, she said – his transformation to the sorcerer Orgrim, his treachery, and
his madness. Edmund passed lightly over that part of the tale, while his mother looked down to hide her tears at the news of her brother’s death. But she gasped to hear of the dragons, and clutched Edmund’s hand tightly as they described
Jokul-dreki
rising from the glacier, and the fire bursting from the mountain. It was already beginning to sound unreal to Elspeth. Cluaran could have told the tale much better, she thought with a pang.

Branwen listened without questions until Edmund spoke of his meeting with his father in the land of the Danes. ‘Teobald told me some of what happened,’ she said softly. ‘But you were there, the whole time?’

Both mother and son wept as he told her of Heored’s murder. ‘He told me to come straight back here, to be with you,’ Edmund said. ‘But I had to help to stop Loki. He’d killed so many, not just my father . . . I swore on that night that I’d pay any price if I could kill him.’

‘And was it worth it?’ Branwen asked softly. ‘The loss of your sight, for vengeance?’

Edmund was silent for a moment. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘not for vengeance. But maybe for peace.’

‘My mother will rule with me, for a time at least,’ he said to Elspeth the next day, as they sat in the meadow outside the king’s hall. ‘She’s reigned here as queen ever since my father went away, and the people love her. There’s no one who can teach me more.’

Edmund seemed more content than she had ever known him, Elspeth thought, despite his blindness – or not-quite blindness. A hound-puppy, a gift from his mother, lay at his feet looking up alertly, and she knew he was watching her through its eyes.

She turned away: just for the moment she did not want to show her expression. Soon, now, she and her father must leave, to seek their fortune in the docks at Dubris. She did not know how to raise the subject. But Edmund turned to her as if reading her mind.

‘I’d like you to stay here with us, you and your father,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Elspeth? Could you make this place your home?’

Elspeth looked around her at the peaceful scene: bushes in blossom, the white geese on the lake; the spacious hall behind them. For a moment she longed to say yes. But she shook her head.

‘We can’t. I’m sorry – I’ll miss you sorely, Edmund. But my father belongs at sea. He can’t be happy for long between four walls. And nor can I.’

Edmund nodded sadly. ‘I thought you’d say so. But in that case I have something else to ask you.’ He had turned to face her, and there was a new quality in his stillness, a suppressed excitement. ‘Would you and your father serve me on your first voyage?’