Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3 (7 page)

“She might learn more quickly if she had an inducement,” Erik said.

“She sleeps in silk, eats dainties from the emperor's own table. I've clothed her in a manner befitting a woman of noble birth.” Damian ticked off the benefits he provided for Valdis on his slim patrician fingers. “What more could she want?”

“Something that calls to her with more strength than anything,” Erik said. “Freedom. Promise to free her and I guarantee she will put her whole heart into the effort.”

“Freedom? Bah!” Damian waved a dismissive hand. “My slaves live lives of safety and plenty and, while I demand certain standards, they are not burdened by a crushing load of toil. Isn't that right, Lentulus?” he demanded of his ubiquitous body-servant.

“Yes, master,” came the meek response.

“There, you see. Slave and master alike, we all serve the emperor's pleasure. As a Varangian, you must understand that.” Damian turned back to Erik. “You are familiar with the city, are you not?”

Erik nodded.

“Then you know that not all our citizens are as blessed as Lentulus here. In the pestilential district called the Studion, freemen die of starvation every day. Their women dare not walk the streets without an escort for fear of being molested. Ask the poor if their liberty means more to them than a full belly and peaceful security.”

“Valdis is a freeborn Norsewoman,” Erik said with inborn stubbornness. “She'll not willingly submit to a thrall's iron collar.”

“I've put nothing less precious than silver on her neck.”

“Silver, gold, gems or pearls—it matters not. As long as you count yourself her master, Valdis will feel the weight of iron.” Erik glanced toward her still form. “Give her reason to hope. Assure her she can earn her freedom and she'll serve you well.”

Damian narrowed his eyes at Erik, weighing his words. Finally, he nodded. “When we have accomplished the plan I have set in motion, I will free her. You may tell her so when she wakes.”

Erik's chest expanded. He imagined her delight at this news and her gratitude to him for bringing it to her. Then he realized he didn't know what the Greek expected of Valdis beyond learning his language. “Just what’s involved in this plan of yours?”

“In good time, my large, anxious friend,” Damian said as he poured wine for each of them. He offered Erik a precious Frankish glass of amber liquid. “Sit and I will tell you as much as you may safely relay to Valdis. She will learn the rest when she understands enough of my tongue for me to tell her myself. But we can't chance another episode of the sickness in public before Valdis is fully prepared to move forward with the plan. I commend you for the speed and efficiency with which you removed her from the Hippodrome. It's obvious we need more privacy for her to complete her training than the palace and city streets provide.”

Damian signaled for his body-servant to draw near. “Make preparations to move to the summer villa, Lentulus. We leave the city at dawn tomorrow.”

Then the eunuch turned back to Erik and in a softer voice revealed some of what he intended to accomplish. Erik decided listening to Damian was like skirting a sea of ship-killing icebergs. So much rested beneath the surface of their conversation, and what lay below the Greek's words was surely more dangerous than a floating mountain of ice.

“The hour grows late and Valdis shows no sign of waking till morning.” The eunuch stood, his manner stating that Erik was being summarily dismissed. “You Varangians are famous for your wenching. If you have good-byes to say to anyone in Constantinople, say them tonight, Northman.”

The eastern sky was tinged with rose when Valdis and her escort rode through the massive gate in the last of the concentric landwalls that guarded the great city. Not that they had to worry about the barbaric hordes now, Damian assured her.

The Bulgar-Slayer had seen to that. When Basil II crushed the Bulgars, he gave no quarter. All the defeated soldiers were blinded, except one of every hundred who was left with one good eye so he could lead his ruined companions home. Now Basil II was past leading his troops in battle—the war with passing years is one no man wins, not even God's own emperor—but the collective memory of their stinging defeat was sufficient to keep the heathen tribes from attempting another attack.

Even a Bulgar threat could not dampen Valdis's mood as she won free of the city. She was mounted on a well-mannered gelding heading into the gentle slopes of the foothills and from thence to cool, pine-covered mountains. It might not be freedom, but escaping the suffocating heat of Miklagard in high summer was too delicious not to savor.

“Let me understand this aright,” she said to Erik, who rode a truly magnificent black stallion beside her on the broad road. “After I learn Greek, I'm somehow to convince the world that I'm able to foretell events. Does Damian think me an adept at
seid
craft?”

“No, I doubt he knows of the trolldom practiced by some Nordic women,” Erik said.

“If he did, he'd not ask me to feign it. Magic is powerful and not to be attempted lightly. Does he not realize the danger of dabbling in
seid?
Without a teacher to guide me, I could be lost between worlds. Sometimes, when the spell comes upon me, I half believe that is what happens.”

“He doesn't want you to actually practice the craft.” Erik made the sign against evil. “Just allow the superstitious to believe that you do. Damian will provide you with the secret knowledge you are to impart. Convince others that your revelation comes from a higher power. And in truth it does, for it comes from your master.”

Valdis snorted. “Damian may call himself that if he wishes. He may control where I go and what I do, but my soul knows no master.”

Erik looked away from her in an effort to hide his smile. A graceful willow, Valdis might bend in a gale, but she would not break. She was truly a remarkable woman.

“If you complete the task the Greek sets for you, what you say will be true.” For a moment, he imagined her head on his pillow, hair tousled, her full lips parted in the relaxation of sleep. What would it be like to wake beside this light-gilded creature? He tore his gaze away and leaned down to pat his mount's thick neck. “Once his plan is accomplished, Damian Aristarchus has promised to free you.”

Her breath hissed in sharply. “You mean it?”

Erik nodded. “He gave me his word. Now I'll have no more trouble with your lessons, will I?”

“Of course not,” she answered in crisp Greek with the barest hint of an accent. Her lips curved upward in a feline smile.

As he suspected, she'd been shamming. In no time at all, she'd know all he could teach her and he'd be able to rejoin his century at the head of his hundred pledge-men. The thought gave him much less pleasure than he expected.

“The problem isn't the language.” Her smile inverted into a frown. “The problem is
seid.
I don't think I can do it.”

“No one expects you to truly have the gift, Valdis.”

“You don't understand.” She bit her lower lip. “I already tried my hand at spelling in the Northlands. I think that's why the Raven haunts me, why the powers show their anger by tossing me to the ground and robbing me of reason. A
seid-
woman should use her craft to weave spells of protection, to divine propitious events, to help her people.” Her gaze darted away. “I used the little I knew for my own purposes.”

Erik didn't know what to say. Magic was the province of women. Men who sought power in such ways were deemed effeminate, so he kept himself in willful ignorance of those matters. He rode on in silence.

“I spelled the man I was to marry,” Valdis finally said.

When she turned her unique gaze on him, he felt himself tumbling into her mismatched eyes. Erik could well believe she'd witched a man.

“It was a small thing, really. He was the
jarl's
son. I was just the daughter of a
karl
and not a very prosperous one at that. When Ragnvald visited our farmstead, he tore his cloak on a nail in the cattle byre and I mended it for him. I used several strands of my own hair in the threads to make him notice me.”

“If this Ragnvald was a true man, he couldn't help but notice a woman like you,
seid
-spelling or no.”

She smiled at his fair speech. “At any rate, it seemed to work. Even though his father wanted Ragnvald to settle on the daughter of the
jarl
of Kaupang, Ragnvald's heart wanted me.” Her smile faltered. “Until he saw the price demanded for my witchery. When the fit came upon me before our wedding, he suddenly recalled his duty to Birka and declared he must wed the pasty-faced girl from Kaupang.”

“He was a fool,” Erik said.

Her shoulders drooped. “But you see why I can't pretend to have the Sight. If the gods visited me with this affliction just for a love spell, what might they do if I try my hand at real power?”

“What makes you think love isn't real power?” Erik kneed his mount closer to hers. “Think what love drives a man to do. The Greeks tell a tale of Helen, a woman who was so desirable she caused a war between the kings who were determined to have her.”

Valdis pulled a face. “Why on earth didn't they just ask her which of them she preferred?”

“Sometimes love takes such a hold on a man, what a woman wants is the least of his concerns.”

“Then what the Greeks celebrate is not love—it's dragonlust, the craven desire to possess at all costs.” She sighed and lifted her heavy hair with one hand so the breeze could tease the baby hairs on the back of her slender neck. The sight of that tender skin made Erik's soft palate ache with longing to taste her nape with a kiss.

“You may be right,” he agreed. “But I don't think your malady was caused by the gods. If you had the power to hex someone with it, would you?”

She shook her head. “I wouldn't wish the Raven that stalks me on anyone.”

“I hope the gods are at least as gracious as you. Sometimes, things just happen for no particular reason. I think your falling sickness is one of those things.” Erik pondered the matter as he tugged the stallion's reins, making sure the spirited beast knew who was master. “Now, as to whether or not you should feign an ability you don't possess, if that were a crime, most of the nobility and all the bureaucrats in Miklagard should be imprisoned. But even the gods are not above guile when it suits their purposes. Odin outwits his enemies. Loki changes shape to confound his foes.”

At the sound of his name, the little black dog poked his head out of Valdis's saddle bag. She'd named him Loki, after the trickster godling, because he was such a clown, dancing on his hind legs for treats. The dog hadn't warmed to anyone else. In fact, he nipped Erik when he tried to pet him once, but Loki was clearly devoted to Valdis.

“The Greek has promised your freedom if you pretend to have the Sight,” Erik continued. “Don't you think it’s worth the risk?”

“I suppose it is,” she finally said. “Though truth to tell, I'm not sure what I'll do with my freedom. At first, all I could think of was running away to the North. But I can't go home. My family doesn't need another mouth to feed. That path is closed to me. Mayhap I'll go to the Danes or Iceland.” She cast a questioning glance at him. “Why ever did you come here to this blazing heat when you could go anywhere in the wide world?”

“The Northlands are closed to me as well.”

“Because of your oath to the emperor?”

“No,” he admitted. He hadn't wanted to tell her, but perhaps it was best she know. If he was going to be damned, better to be damned for the truth. “I can't go home because I've done murder.”

Murder.
The word careened around her mind, leaving a shiver of revulsion in its wake.

When Valdis was growing up, the lawspeaker made a long circuit among the villages nestled in the fjords and on the outlying islands of the North Sea, visiting once every three years to remind folk of the "oughts" in Norse society. The law united the people and gave them boundaries so they could live, if not in harmony, at least in respect of each other's rights. Of all the crimes the lawspeaker recited against, only oath-breaking was considered more heinous than murder. It was one thing to issue a defiance and kill a man in fair combat; it was quite another to take a life by stealth without giving the victim a chance to defend himself.

Erik, a murderer?
Valdis swallowed her surprise. He didn't seem the type to stoop to so cowardly an act. Her natural impulse was to put as much distance between them as possible.

Then she remembered how he'd held her through the madness of her latest fit. Everyone else in her life had turned away from her in fear or disgust. She couldn't withdraw from Erik despite his astonishing confession.

“You can't be a murderer,” Valdis said. “The law demands the life of the killer for the life of the slain. If you were truly guilty, you'd have met your end on the wings of a blood-eagle or the garrote.”

He shrugged, his mouth stretched in a tight line.

“Did you flee south to escape justice?” Valdis finally asked when his silence wore her to the breaking point.

“No,” he said. “I went before the lawspeaker willingly and admitted my crime, but he banished me instead of giving me the death I deserved.”

There must have been unusual circumstances. The lawspeaker rarely strayed from the prescribed punishments meted out in the oral code he was entrusted with keeping. “Who did you kill?”

Erik glanced at her, then looked away, frowning at the memory. “My brother.”

Valdis stared at the road rising before her. Of all the betrayals in the Middle Realm, the ones that hurt most came from those closest to a body.
Murder of his own blood.
At least her family had only sold her into slavery. Still, bitterness welled within her. It was an ache that would never go away.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” she asked in a small voice.

“Not particularly.” Erik rose in the saddle, craning his neck to see. The head of the long column disappeared around a hillock. He settled back down. “But I suspect I'll have no peace till I do. A woman is like a leaky roof when she wants to know something.”