The Hills of Home (The Song of the Ash Tree Book 2) (5 page)

“So we have come to that.” Finnoul came to stand in front of Raef. “Have I not saved your life?”

“Perhaps.” It was not a kind answer, but it was the truth.

“I could have you on your knees before the Guardians in but a moment. The flight would not take long.”

“You could. But you will not.”

Finnoul was silent for some time. “I can show you how to cross the boundary. I can help you journey back to Midgard.”

“I must earn it.”

Finnoul acknowledged this with a small nod. “I am bound to my cause, Raef. Surely you would not blame me for using any means to further it.”

“I would do the same. But I do not see what use I am to you.”

“You say you do not know how or why you came to Alfheim. I wonder if there is a reason you landed on our shores, if you have some part to play.”

“What do you mean?”

Finnoul seemed about to speak, but stopped herself. Instead, she gestured for Raef to follow her and they entered the mountain hall.

It should have been dark and bleak in the hall of stone. The door opened into a room that soared up into the mountain. Beams of light shone down from above, bringing warmth to the grey walls, and the pillars were covered with small pieces of colored glass that reflected onto the polished floor, a vibrant mosaic in celebration of light. Finnoul did not linger in the hall of stone and glass, but continued on, passing through one of six arched doorways that led out of the hall. The doorway took them up and they climbed a steep staircase that wound around in wide spirals until it opened up onto a terrace. Finnoul would have carried on, but Raef hesitated, his bruised body worn from the many steps. He put one hand to the stone and the other to his ribs.

“You are in pain. Forgive me. I should return you to Ylloria.”

Raef took a deep breath. “No. She said after nightfall.”

“Very well.” Finnoul chose another door and they were climbing again, this time in tight circles. Light was scarce and the walls pressed in close. Raef was glad, for his head was swimming and the lump on his temple pulsed with every step. He stayed close to the inner wall and kept his eyes on each step as he passed it by. He did not want to look up and see how far they had to go.

When at last they emerged into the light, Raef was dizzy and sweat trickled into his eyes and down his nose. He wiped it away with his arm but the motion threw him off balance and he swayed into Finnoul. The alf caught him with a firm grip under Raef’s arms.

“Steady.” Finnoul lowered Raef to the stone floor, stretching him out. Raef kept still, his eyes closed until the pounding in his head retreated. When he opened them, the room came into focus. Above him, a domed ceiling was punctured by a single round hole. A shaft of light hit the floor two steps away from Raef, its width the height of a man. It was the only source of light and the rest of the round room was poorly illuminated. The only entrance to the room was the door they had come through. Raef raised himself up on one elbow.

“What is this place?”

“I have asked myself that many times.” Finnoul offered Raef a hand and helped him back to his feet. “Look closely at the walls.”

As Raef’s eyes adjusted, he began to see shapes and colors, all faded by time. Figures dressed for battle, dragon-kin diving from the sky, other creatures Raef did not recognize. Raef’s gaze followed the drawings upward and saw they stretched from the floor up to the hole in the dome.

“What are they?”

“Some scenes are known to me, pieces of our history. Others, I am not so sure of.”

Raef caught sight of a figure riding an eight-legged horse. He carried a mighty spear and was missing an eye. “Odin.” Raef stretched out his fingers until they grazed the stone.

“All the gods are depicted in some form.” Finnoul let Raef wander around the walls for some time. Raef saw images of Thor crushing giants with his mighty hammer, Mjölnir, of Odin hanging himself on the gnarled branches of Yggdrasil, the world ash tree, of Tyr, lord of battle, offering his hand to Fenrir’s teeth, of Freyja riding her boar across a battlefield strewn with corpses, of Frigg veiled on her tall throne. And of the Valkyries riding across a night sky, sparks flying from the hooves of their horses. His gaze lingered on the nine fierce faces, remembering their unrelenting fury in battle and the cold eyes that had stared into his. Finnoul broke into his memory. “There is one scene I wish to show you most of all.”

Raef joined her in front of a battle scene. Half the figures were small and hard to make out, but their opponents were much larger. “Giants.”

“Yes. But it is not just my people who oppose them.” She pointed to a group of warriors riding horses and wielding spears.

“Who are they?”

“They are men, Raef. And they fight alongside my people.”

“How can you be sure?”

“There are no horses in Alfheim. Nor have there ever been. And we do not fight with spears. This is a weapon of Midgard.” Finnoul turned to look at Raef. “We were allies, once.”

“And you think we shall be again. That I have been sent here to aid your rebellion. What if I was sent here to end it?” Raef turned away. “The drawing means nothing. Do not pin your hopes on it. Or me.”

Finnoul did not seem dispirited. “No Midgardian has set foot on our lands in thousands of years. Your presence here at this time cannot be void of meaning.”

Raef snapped. “It can.” His voice rang off the stone walls. “I have my own war to fight and it is not this one. I have to find a way home.”

Finnoul’s face stiffened and her chin rose. The eyes that had been so open and honest closed off. She could have taken a place beside the Guardians and Raef would not have questioned it. “Then go.”

SIX

T
he descent was
less painful to Raef than the ascent, but he would have welcomed the pain in exchange for the guilt that owned his mind. He had spoken the truth to Finnoul. The rebellion would live or die with or without him and Raef had a responsibility to return home, to avenge his father. How he would do so without Finnoul’s aid, Raef could not fathom, but he would not abandon Vannheim and he would not renounce the vow he had made in sight of the gods. The alf was mistaken and clung to something Raef could not give her. And yet Finnoul had been a friend when it would have been easier to turn her back.

The main hall was as they had left it but light had bloomed in one of the other passageways. Fearing the Guardians had discovered Finnoul’s hidden home and had sent someone to kill the rebel leader, Raef ventured into the passage. The light was faint and flickered as a fire would, but it did not grow more distant. The tunnel was straight as an arrow and Raef, pausing every few steps to listen, felt as though he were headed into the heart of the mountain.

The air grew warmer the further Raef went. It was not the dry heat of a fire, but the damp warmth of steaming water heated for a bath. Here and there a trickle of water ran down the wall, staining the stone. At last the source of the light was revealed. A single torch was set deep into a recess in the wall. It was all but spent but no end to the tunnel was in sight. Raef took the torch and continued on, the floor of the tunnel now sloping downward beneath his feet. The descent became steeper and then at last the tunnel came to an end.

The room was small and roughly hewn from the mountain. Every other surface Raef had encountered had been smooth, but these walls were ragged and unpolished. In the dim light of the torch, the room at first appeared to be empty, but then Raef looked up.

Suspended above him, seemingly floating in the air, was a sword. The blade was dark in color, the steel folded time after time into deep ribbons, and its shape was different from the curved blades Raef had seen the alfar warriors carry. The hilt shone in the feeble torchlight, a glimmer of the moon in darkness.

Raef reached up until his fingers curled around the hilt, and it was then he saw the sword was cradled by four silken threads, visible only from the right vantage point. The delicate strands bore the sword’s weight with ease. Raef could not begin to guess what they were made of. Raef extracted the sword from its sling and tested the edge. Sharp. Deadly. It was lighter than swords he had trained with, and the balance different.

The torch gutted out when Raef was only a few steps into the tunnel. He cast it aside and found his way easily enough in the dark. When he emerged, clouds had covered the sun and the colors in the main hall had dimmed. Finnoul stood with her back to Raef, gazing out a window on the far side of the hall. She turned at the sound of Raef’s footsteps and did not at first notice the sword held at Raef’s side.

“I thought perhaps you would need a way off the mountain,” Finnoul said. Her voice was pleasant but less lively than before and she did not smile. “Where were you?” Raef held up the sword and let it be his answer. Finnoul’s eyes widened and she closed the distance between them with quick steps. She stretched out her hands as though to take it, but then withdrew them. Her eyes did what she did not permit her fingers and roamed over the elegant blade.

“Take it,” Raef said.

Finnoul shook her head. “You found it.”

“In your home.”

“A home I have borrowed from the clutches of time. I am not its master. How did you find this?”

“I followed a light.” Raef pointed to the doorway he had taken. “Down there.”

“A light where none should be.” Finnoul’s brow furrowed. “You saw no one?”

Raef shook his head.

“A gift, then, from the ancients of Alfheim and perhaps from Freyr. I have never seen its like. Daegon will have a sheath for it. Come, we will return to the forest.”

Wind whistled across the ledge outside the hall, heralding a coming storm. Dark clouds swirled above and already the stone was spattered with drops of rain. The dragon-kin appeared at once and Raef had barely found his balance on its back when it pushed off, tucked its wings, and dove. They skimmed the sheer face of the mountain, taking a straighter course than they had on the way up. Rain pelted Raef from above, fat drops that soon soaked his hair. The air had cooled and Raef felt his skin prickle under his light shirt as they rushed through the sky.

The ground loomed ahead and the dragon-kin spread its wings wide just in time, halting their free fall. They soared above the trees for a moment, as lightning split the sky and the first roll of thunder crashed through the clouds, but before they could drop in beneath the trees, a second dragon-kin, then a third, rose up to meet them.

“Finnoul!” The rider’s voice was nearly lost to the wind. “They have taken Annun and Thannor.”

Finnoul’s dragon-kin veered to the right so hard that Raef nearly lost his seat. Whatever speed the creature had shown, it was nothing compared to how they raced over the treetops. The world was a blur around Raef.

“I thought you said the Guardians did not feel threatened by you,” Raef shouted into the wind.

“They do not. But not all who follow them are so blind.” Finnoul said nothing more and it seemed to Raef the dragon-kin was urged to even greater speed. Raef looked over his shoulder and saw four winged shapes following them. The dense trees gave way beneath them to open land and a narrow lake. The dragon-kin dropped down close to the lake’s surface, so close Raef felt he could touch the water, then spiraled upward as they reached the far shore where a cliff reared up out of the water.

“How do you know where to go?”

“There is only one place he would bring them.”

The scream came from above, winged fury plummeting to meet them. Finnoul’s orange dragon-kin twisted and launched itself up to meet the attacker, letting forth a scream of its own. Raef clung on but the impact of the two beasts colliding was too much and suddenly there was nothing but air beneath him. He began to fall back to the earth, the dark sword somehow still in his grasp but useless to him now. Above him, the dragon-kin were locked in battle and the storm raged. Raef closed his eyes and waited for the ground to swallow him, but a dragon-kin swooped in and grabbed his foot. Dangling now, Raef was lowered to the top of the lakeside cliff. The dragon-kin released him and Raef dropped to the stone, contorting his body just in time to avoid landing on his head. Above him, the sky battle continued as Finnoul’s companions engaged other dragon-kin.

“Midgardian!” The voice pulled Raef’s gaze from the sky and he whirled around to see three alfar advancing on him. Behind them, two figures were on the ground, bound and still. Raef brought the dark sword up and began to circle to his right. “Would you throw your life away for these traitors?” The closest alf sneered and drew his sword.

Raef did not respond but continued to mirror their movement.

“They deserve death,” said another. “Since the beginning of days, traitors have been thrown from this cliff. You will not deny us our right.”

“What has Finnoul promised you, Midgardian? Is it worth your life?”

At last Raef spoke. “It is.”

The first alf came from Raef’s left in a smooth, fluid attack. The strange sword sang in the air as Raef met the advance, but the unfamiliar weight and shape propelled the blade ahead of what should have been well-timed footwork. The blades glanced off each other and only a desperate dodge kept Raef from losing an ear. He recovered just in time to duck under the second alf’s slicing sword and, though his momentum carried him behind his opponent, he lashed out and was rewarded with a cry of anger and pain.

The third attack was fast and furious and drove Raef backward toward the edge of the cliff. His opponent fought with precision, his face expressionless. Every attempt Raef made to change his direction was met with vicious defiance until at last he was but steps away from falling into the air.

The knife flew so close to Raef’s ear he could feel it and at last he had a reprieve. The alf staggered back, the knife buried up to the hilt in his chest, and Raef did not hesitate. Unimpeded, the dark sword found a home in the alf’s belly and Raef ripped through the flesh until the body fell away, nearly severed in two.

Raef looked around and saw the two remaining warriors were close to death. One choked on his own blood as it poured out around the knife in his throat. The other bled violently from the wound Raef had given him, a wound Raef knew he would not survive. Above him, a dragon-kin roared in triumph and then landed on the cliff top. The rider jumped to the ground, a pair of knives ready to finish the work he had started. Only when he was certain his victims were dead did he look at Raef.

“You do not belong here.” Aerath was soaked through, his pale, blue-streaked hair dark with rainwater. “They would have killed you.”

“I am grateful for the life you have saved.”

Aerath seemed not to hear, his gaze now on the sky. Only two dragon-kin and their riders remained, higher now than they were before. Raef could not tell if Finnoul was one of them but the look on Aerath’s face said she was. He went to mount his creature again, but without warning the beasts broke apart and one began to tumble to the earth, one wing madly trying to slow its fall, the other weak, feeble, and only half-extended. As it plummeted and then disappeared behind a rise, Raef saw that the wounded dragon-kin was not orange, that Finnoul still flew.

The alf was not unscathed, though. She brought her dragon-kin to a gentler landing than her opponent, but she bled from a gash on her arm and the orange beast was riddled with slashes. Finnoul did not speak, but raced across the cliff top and over the rise the injured dragon-kin had fallen behind. She stopped at the top and did not go farther. Aerath knelt to examine the dragon-kin’s wounds but he stood at Finnoul’s return. She bent over the bound captives, whose chests rose and fell in gentle breaths, oblivious to the storm around them.

“Gone,” Finnoul said.

“He survived that fall?” Raef found that hard to believe.

“The dragon-kin, no. But Lorcan is gone.”

“Who is Lorcan?”

Finnoul’s mouth tightened. “You would call him a captain. He fights for the Guardians.”

Aerath broke in. “He fights as he should. As is right.”

Finnoul did not look at Aerath but Raef saw her jaw harden. “He sees what the Guardians will not. He understands as few do what I and those who follow me have undertaken.”

“You have undertaken death, Finnoul,” Aerath said. “The Guardians have ruled for uncounted years and they must continue to do so.”

Finnoul met Aerath’s glare at last and Raef saw pain in her eyes. “Then why are you here, Aerath? Why did you save him?” She glanced at Raef.

“Your folly is not his. He has no place in your rebellion.”

Aerath’s words echoed his own but they sounded wrong to Raef’s ears. Raef looked at Finnoul. “I do not know what strength I can give you, but I know what it is to fight against unwanted rule. I will help you if I can.”

Finnoul’s shout was joyous and her grin wide. Aerath looked away as Finnoul clasped Raef’s forearm.

“You have said nothing of my promise to you,” Finnoul said.

“My words would mean little if I gave them for a price.”

“Nonetheless, I will show you the way home.” Finnoul knelt again before the unconscious alfar. “We need to get them to safety. Take Thannor.” She hoisted one over her shoulder but before Raef could follow with the other, Aerath stepped in front of him.

“I cannot promise that I will help you a second time.” The rain had eased up and the clouds were thinning, letting grey light filter through and reach Aerath’s face.

“I know.”

“Then you put your life in her hands?”

“My life is in my own hands, Aerath. But I believe she is right.”

“She seeks to destroy everything we know.”

“She seeks freedom. And I know you see it. As you see the way she looks at you.” Aerath’s cheeks flushed with color and he turned away. Raef walked to the orange dragon-kin, who looked ready to fly once more despite the damage it had sustained. Finnoul waited on its back, Annun resting in front of her. “Is it safe to travel with them like this?”

Finnoul grinned. “We are capable of flying slowly when we must.”

The journey to the underground cavern was peaceful and uninterrupted. As the dragon-kin floated through the damp air, Raef watched the sky change around them, a burst of purple and orange revealed behind the wake of the storm. Underground, Ylloria’s medicine burned his tongue but the heat was welcome after the chill of the storm. Food was passed and Finnoul found Raef a pair of blankets. They ate in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts, until Raef’s eyelids grew heavy and he felt the strong pull of sleep. He drifted off to the sound of water dripping and under the light of the stone stars twinkling above.