The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 2) (5 page)

She glared at him and said:

"You shouldn't do it, she's not a fake."

"Are you going to believe her?" asked Magnus, throwing his arms in the air.

"Whilst Gunborga was giving birth she put me in a trance as well. She needed another woman who knew how to recite the chants and Gunborga prepared me because she knew that she wouldn't survive the birth. The
seidkona
made me see things, brother," Lyra whispered.

"What did she make you see, and what are you so scared of?"

"It will be one of us, Nagorno. But I saw something that I don't understand: Gunnarr will rise from the dead and will disrupt everyone's lives. Urko's, Lür's and yours."

Magnus stared at her, not believing a word.

"How convenient, how come he doesn't disrupt your life?"

Lyra sighed, and that sound has caused me endless pain.

"Never tell anyone what I just saw, Nagorno. Never tell father or Urko."

"Fine, tell me."

"When Gunnarr rises from the dead, I won't be there to protect the family."

He was quiet, taking in the implications of what he had just been told. Quite simply, I refused to believe it.

Lyra wasn't going to die.

Never.

I would always be at her side to protect her and make up for the bad things that happened to her.

They looked at each other for a long time, just a few centimeters separating them. Then Magnus rested his arm on her shoulder.

"So I'll be there. I'll never stop looking out for the members of this family.

Lyra looked away.

"That's not what I saw."

I was listening, with the infant in my arms, but Gunnarr was also listening, and if it wasn't for the fact that I knew it was impossible, I would have sworn that he understood each and every word of what was said that day...

... and I don't think he will ever forget.

"Adriana, you couldn't imagine the things that you can believe when a child as exceptional as Gunnarr appears to be a possible longevo. They were happy times for me, watching him grow year after year.

Every morning there was a reason to get out of bed, and Gunnarr gave it to me. He brought joy to the farm, nobody could resist his charm. He was always willing to work, ever since he was a boy. For years I suspected that some old slave woman had told him I was on the verge of exposing him and he was so grateful that he survived, that every sunrise was a reason to celebrate.

He woke up before anyone else, fed the animals, helped my father with the fish that had been caught and accompanied his uncle Magnus to the port to trade. Lyra taught him about the runes that Gunborga had carved and he began to carve stones. Before long there wasn't a single object on the farm that didn't have his mark on it. All of our daggers had some protection spell on them, the shields, the horns we used to drink from, even the back of the chair I sat on to preside over the banquets.”

"Look, father! I always hit the tree trunk and I don't even have to look. Uncle Magnus has trained me, he's better than you with axes," he said one day as he threw two small axes at a tree where he trained every morning."

"Why do you use both hands for everything?" I asked him, trying to hide my fatherly pride.

"The question is that we walk on two feet, we listen with two ears, we see with two eyes. Why do you all use just one hand, as if you didn't have another?"

"Not everyone has your ability," I repeated for the umpteenth time.

"I can see that, but don't try and hold me back just because the rest of you can't match my skills, father," he said laughing, with that squeaky, broken adolescent voice.

“That's how extraordinary Gunnarr was. For centuries, until Medicine convinced me that it was impossible, I thought that he had two brains. Possibly a bright one and a dark one. He learned how to write with both hands at the same time, different texts, different languages. He finished his tasks fixing the boats before anyone else because he used different tools simultaneously.

But Gunnarr also had a side to him that was impossible to tame, which soon began to cause problems for everyone. It happened when he had seen twelve winters. He was already taller than me, and ever since then he has been known as he is now, as a giant. He didn't blend in anywhere, which was possibly the reason why he attracted the
berserker
."

"
Berserker
? I'm not familiar with that term, Iago," Dana said, interrupting me, not understanding what I was talking about.

I sighed, tired of stirring up old memories and kept staring at the fire. Then I stood up and went over to one of the bookcases, pulling out the
Gesta Danorum,
the first chronicles of Denmark, written by Saxo Grammaticus in the 12th century. The thick book hid an archaeological treasure: a bronze plaque of a warrior in combat with a man, half bear, half human. I held it out and Dana studied it in awe.

"It belongs to the Vendel Period, it was found in Öland. I know what you're going to ask me and the answer is yes, the false copy is behind glass in the Museum of History in Switzerland. This is the original. I always kept hold of it, even though it was a bad memory for me, the first serious conflict with my son."

"Carry on," she urged.

"The
berserkir
were a class of warriors, or rather mercenaries, who fought in combat as the personal guard of the kings of the north. They were highly sought after in times of war, but no one wanted to know anything about them following the battles. They were associated with a strange bear cult. They drugged themselves with a mushroom that was very common in those birch tree forests, the
amanita
muscaria
, and they entered into a violent kind of frenzy where they couldn't distinguish friend from foe. I saw them fight on several occasions, and it's true that they had a supernatural strength. Their wounds didn't affect them and they remained standing for longer than is humanly possible, but once the effects had worn off, they fell into a stupor and often died from dehydration. They had no home and lived off the hospitality of the
jarls
, the men who were free like us, and tended to take them in during times of peace.

I think I remember his name was Skroll. He wasn't a man, he was a demon. And I'll always remember him as such."

"A demon? Why, what did he do?"

"He took the bright part from Gunnarr and gave us back the darkest longevo of all."

7

Melted in black

ADRIANA

"Iago, the sun's coming up," I interrupted, looking out the bedroom window.

Some fluffy white clouds were clearing in front of us.              

"Today you have to spend the whole morning in the Altamira Neocave. Why don't you leave Gunnarr's teenage years for another time and finally tell me why he's come back?"

Iago stirred uneasily.

"What else do you want to know? Isn't what I told you enough?"

"No, Iago. I think you'd finish quicker if you told me what happened at the battle of Kinsale."

"Kinsale..." he repeated with a lost look over the Cantabrian sea. "If you knew everything that was lost in these very waters, further north..."

"That's exactly what I want you to tell me. I understand the stress you're going through after seeing Gunnarr again, but I'm not sure if you're reacting as you should. I'm not even sure if you're reacting at all. Tell me what happened in Kinsale, that's the only way I can help you."

"Maybe I don't want to, Dana. Maybe it's one of those memories that I don't want to share."

"God damn it!" I shouted, standing up. "We always end up at the same place, there's always something that you don't want to tell me. But this time it's important, you have a furious thousand year old son roaming Santander, and we have no idea of his intentions. Do you want to brush this one under the rug as well?"

Iago looked at me with those composed eyes of his, but he didn't even bother to answer me. He did that a lot, that thing where he refused to argue, not wanting to get into a discussion.

"Fine, Iago. So there's nothing else to talk about. I'm going to MAC to work," I said, with a tired look.

"I'll come and pick you up at noon. If you want we can go for lunch at the Posada del Mar and discuss this more calmly," he said, trying to make an effort to patch things up.

"Whatever," I said. I knew that there was no way to drag him out of his silence.

But, as always, Iago was way ahead of my thoughts.

"Is it too much for you?" he wanted to know, pulling me towards him and wrapping me up in the Scottish blanket.

"What do you mean?"

"I asked you before whether these kinds of situations are too much for you, so much so that you wouldn't want to take things any further with me. I asked you whether you could handle being on the sidelines of my past, even if it was for your own safety," he ran off, as if the lines had been written in his head for quite some time.

I thought about his words. We often over-analyzed our differences. They were so obvious that it was hard enough to ignore them on a daily basis.

"Do you want me to be honest, Iago?" He sat up.              

"There is such a huge disparity between your past and mine that we can only really focus on living in this present. But if your past catches up with our present, such is the case with a son retuning in search of some kind of retaliation, our precarious balance gets completely thrown of course."

"That's the thing, Dana. That is exactly the thing. The past always comes back to haunt a longevo."

"Fine, Iago. I get it. I'll step to the side, I'm not a part of this," I said, standing up, not wanting to argue anymore.

I walked out of our house and got in the car, heading towards the museum.

I made small talk with several colleagues and turned down several invitations to breakfast at the BACus. I closed the door to my office to shut out the hustle and bustle of my colleagues. I needed silence. After an all night vigil in the 9th century, my reflexes were minimal.

I concentrated on the Catalog of items from the Bilbat, the Archaeological Museum of Alava. The year before we had signed a collaboration agreement with them and they had given us a good amount of Paleolithic items. The temporary exhibition had come to an end and it was getting near the time to return the items that were on display, although we weren't planning on returning all the originals. Some spears and various personal ornaments would stay with us.

During that year with Iago I had become a renegade archaeologist. The MAC continued with its discreet prestige thanks to its exhibitions, but Iago continued with his task of recovering items from all the periods he had lived through.

The difficult question of how to falsify them, now that neither Lyra nor Nagorno could do it, was a matter I preferred to stay away from, and the fewer details I knew, the better, so as not to put my national and international Archaeological career in jeopardy. If the falsifications were ever brought to light, my name would never be associated and I would always claim ignorance. However, it was pretty obvious that a person forced to invent official false identities ever since the first records of time were started would have all sorts of contacts in the falsification underworld.

Although that wasn't my main concern that day. I couldn't stop thinking about the whole Gunnarr situation. What didn't fit in there, in that whole scenario? What was out of place?

And then I realized what it was. Gunnarr had said "Hello, father" in front of me. If the longevos' legendary reservations to share their secret was true, why hadn't Gunnarr been more careful about hiding the fact that Iago was his father in front of me, if he didn't know who I was?

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up because I could feel danger. Brutal and intense like an electric shock.

I have to call Iago, I have to warn him
.
Gunnarr's reappearance isn't a coincidence, he knows about everything that's been going on
.

But I didn't have time to dial Iago's number, because right at that moment I heard a noise from behind me.

A wooden-sounding click that came from a huge cupboard behind my desk. That cupboard, in which, a year before, Iago and I had discovered a tunnel that ended at the rocks, twenty meters below the rug I was standing on right now. The tunnel which we suspected that Jairo del Castillo had escaped through after Lyra rammed him with the Big Bastard and made him jump off the cliff. The same one that we had cemented over some time later, trying to put an end to that era, of the reign of Nagorno in those domains.

It all happened so quickly, just like most important events in life happen. I didn't have time to turn around. I can only remember a huge hand and a wet rag —not even clean or new—, crushing my nose, my cheeks and my mouth, forcing me to breath that citric smell, so sweet that I gave into it without putting up a decent fight.

Then blackness, like in one of those old films where they kidnap the leading lady by leaving her unconscious using a rag soaked in chloroform.