The Sword of the Lady (62 page)

″But though he does not make offering to me, the man called Artos comes of blood that bears much might; the blood of the Juniper Lady in which runs wisdom from beyond the world of men, the blood his father shed willingly to stand between his folk and their foes, dying and yet in death winning the victory that brought them peace. The Son of the Bear shall add to that might, for he is fated to great deeds. If he wins his victory, his shall be a line of Kings that lives long in glory and forever in the tales of men. If he fails, all fail with him; and then comes the doom of Midgard.″

The speaker′s head turned, and the folk in the hall bore it as they could, meeting it or turning their heads aside or covering their eyes.

″All of you! If you would stand with the Gods, then I bid you help him. The sword he seeks is more potent than Tyrfing, forged for the hand of a King!″

Only breath disturbed the stillness. ″So, Son of Bear, Son of Raven, High King of a realm called Montival that is yet to be and may never be—is that what you wanted to know?″

Rudi shook his head. ″The Crow Goddess gives me battle fury, but even the gift of the Dark Mother may not be enough against this foe. Will you, lord, give me battle craft to face him?″

The laugh rumbled again, more gently this time:

″Wise is he who asks for wisdom! That gift, at least, is within my power. Watch for the ravens. They will show you the way.″

Rudi bowed for a moment. ″Thank you, lord. And when my victory is won and I sit on the throne of the
Ard Rí
in Montival, always shall you and yours have welcome and honor in my lands.″

Thorlind the godwoman spoke; her voice wavered between fright and firmness:

″Allfather, we thank you also, but be kind to the seeress, who loves you. Please let her go now, gently, without harm—″

She rose and stood before the chair as the
seidhkona
first straightened and then sagged, and caught her as she slumped forward. Love and terror and pride warred in her voice as she spoke:

″Heidhveig, Heidhveig, my teacher, come back to us, please. That′s right—″

The limp form of the old woman stirred, and a hoarse sound came from beneath what was once more a veil. Thorlind′s words grew stronger:

″The vision fades, the voice grows silent. Return now, wise one, where we wait to welcome . . . Can you see the Gate? Raven will lead you towards it. Good, now you′re through—Let′s just get you out of this chair
. . .
″

Bjarni Eriksson moved forward to help her. They eased the seeress out of the
seidhjallr
and into an ordinary chair. Harberga brought a glass of water and held it to Heidhveig′s mouth. The
gydhja
picked up the drum again struck it, the taut hide thuttering:

Swiftly the journey was completed. Thorlind and the men who′d come with them helped their mistress down from the dais and away to her bed in the house. A rising babble of voices rang out with an edge of hysteria in them, until Bjarni leaped up to the dais and roared:

The redbeard′s chin thrust out as his eyes went back and forth over his folk, cold and blue. When silence fell he put his hands on his sword belt and spoke bitingly:

″We′ve heard the words of the High One, through the holy
seidhkona
. He spoke of great deeds—of war and maybe even Ragnarök. Whatever happens, we will meet it—meet it like Bjornings, like free men and women of Norrheim, not like chattering magpies or frightened children! All men die; in the end, even the Gods shall die. The
seidhkona
is old and deserves rest, but she went under death′s shadow to bring us this word. Honor her courage with courage of your own!″

The hall fell quiet again, but there was less tension in it.

″Now go and sleep, and think about what we′ve heard.″

He jumped down and walked to Rudi before he spoke again, quietly:

″And you and I, my friend, will think and then we will talk. There are things I must know, if I am to steer wisely . . . and mine is the hand on the tiller here.″

″And I will tell them gladly, Bjarni,″ Rudi said.

Then he smiled. ″You can see that there′s more than one spoon in this stewpot, and some of them of an exceeding longness!″

 

 

 

Talk they did, and after a night′s sleep they spoke into the next day, when Heidhveig joined them; she looked better than Rudi had expected in body, and less nerve-wracked than many others in Eriksgarth by the fore-seeing.

″You′re well, I hope, Lady?″ he said, rising and bowing as her pupil helped her towards the hearth.

She grinned at him, indomitable. ″At my age, you′re either well or dead. I′m not dead yet. This is just an act to get a handsome young man like you to give me an arm.″

He stepped forward and put an arm beneath her hand; it gripped him like a handful of walnuts. He guided her into the cushioned armchair nearest the fire, with Thorlind on the other side. Despite the light words, he could hear her breath whistle a little between clenched teeth as she sank down into the seat. Thorlind fussed with a rug she tucked around. The old woman pushed her hands aside with a good-natured chiding:

″We′re in front of the
fireplace
!″

″We were telling my story,″ Rudi said, as he took seat again across from her. ″And trying not to let it go back to the beginning of the world, so! Well, you′ll need to know a little of how the Change took us, in the High West—though I was born about this season of the first Change Year. Born on a battlefield, near enough—″

He sketched it in. The details were unfamiliar to them, and what tales had crossed the continent were hopelessly garbled, but the gist of it seemed easy enough to grasp; it was not altogether different from what they or their parents had experienced.

″Lady Juniper!″ the seeress said, at one point. ″Juniper Mackenzie . . . Tell me, boy—she′s short and slight, is she, and with hair brighter red than a fox, green eyes, and a voice like water flowing by moonlight? With a County Mayo brogue she could put on when she wished, that she learned from
her
mother, and you learned from her?″

″You know my mother?″ Rudi said, stopping in an astonishment shared by the others. ″You′ve
met
her?″

Then he smiled and slapped his forehead. ″Oh! From before the Change?″

″Yes. She used to play with the consort Siobhan ni hEodhusa put together for the Principality of the Mists. It was a great loss to the Kingdom of the West when she moved north again. If anyone lived, she would. But you say that nothing is left in California?″ she added wistfully.

″I fear not, except in the most remote mountain parts of the north and east,″ Rudi said gently. ″It was . . . very bad there, from what the Dúnedain explorers have found of late.″

″So Kalk saw in
his
vision, before the Change. So my heart said,″ she said. ″That′s why I and my family moved here, and just in time.″

Then she shook her head and looked shrewdly at Mathilda.

″And your father was Norman Arminger, and your mother Sandra, girl?″

Mathilda nodded warily; her parents had collected enemies, and though they hadn′t spoken often of the old world she′d heard rumors enough.

Heidhveig laughed shortly. ″And Norman ended up cutting himself out a kingdom from the chaos at the sword′s edge?
Why
am I not surprised.″

″He was Lord Protector,″ Mathilda said. ″He died in battle . . . well, to tell you the truth, he and Rudi′s father killed each other in single combat . . . when I was ten.″

″Your sires killed each other?″ Bjarni said, a brow going up.

Rudi spread his hands: ″But not before we′d sworn the oath of
anamchara
. . . which made us as soul brother and soul sister.″

″Ah,″ the Bjorning said. ″Yes, sometimes one duty has more might than another. Also, a fair fight that men chose freely . . . well, that may end a feud, not start one.″

Mathilda nodded and went on: ″My mother . . . Sandra is Lady Regent now, until I′m of age . . . twenty-six that is. A few months less than two years from now. She held things together in Portland after he died.″

″Why am I even
less
surprised at that?″ Heidhveig said dryly.

″You, ah, knew them, lady? You were in the Society?″

″You might say that . . .″ she said wryly. ″But that was another world—literally. I had another name then. I was another
person
then, and not just because I was a lot younger.″

Then, softly for a moment: ″That world went down in ice and fire and terror, before you two were born. Let all the old feuds die with it. From what you say, Norman and Sandra did great things, deeds terrible and grand, that few others could have accomplished. For good and ill both.″

Farther down the hall, Odard Liu and Ritva Havel were playing their lutes, a crowd of appreciative Bjornings surrounding them—they knew the guitar here, and the harp, but didn′t seem to have many lutists. The baron′s voice rose in a song he′d composed some time ago, but with altered words. Mathilda flushed a little to hear it:

″He thinks he′s a troubadour,″ she said apologetically, as cheers greeted the song.

″Well, then he probably is,″ Heidhveig said. ″I′ve heard far, far worse.″ She reached across with the staff and prodded Rudi′s bare knee below the kilt. ″Go on, lad, go on.″

Rudi cleared his throat; more than any women he′d met besides his mother and Matti′s, Heidhveig seemed able to make him feel like a boy again without even trying.

″Well, two years ago—two years and a month, it was Samhain Eve, and that an omen in itself—Ingolf here rode into Sutterdown, the Clan′s only town, having as he thought shaken off the Prophet′s men in the passes of the Cascades. They were waiting for him instead, disguised as harmless travelers, and—″

″That′s a wild tale,″ Bjarni said when it was finished, shaking his head. ″I wouldn′t credit half of it, if it weren′t for the
seidhkona.
Even so, it′ll take a while to settle my mind around it. How large the world is! How little our share of it seems now, that was so broad yesterday!″

She
looked at Rudi: ″The Church Universal and Triumphant, eh? I knew a little about them before the Change. They were . . . strange . . . and obnoxious sometimes . . . but they didn′t traffic with malevolence or try to turn men into less than beasts. They′ve been corrupted, to serve the enemies of humankind . . . and of the Gods.″

″Corrupted by who?″ Rudi asked.

Bjarni shivered a little, and his wife laid a hand on her belly over the child.

″Asa-Loki, ′neath the mountain, chained and raging . . .″
Harberga quoted softly.

Heidhveig nodded. ″As good a name as any. And unless they′re stopped, even one as old as I may yet live long enough to see that One riding with a face of poison to Vigrid Plain, on the last morning of the world.″

Father Ignatius nodded crisply and signed himself. ″Good
will
triumph over evil in the end,″ he said. ″But it doesn′t happen without us working and, yes, fighting for it. Nor is any victory certain until the last days.″

Rudi shivered slightly, staring into the fire where white flames danced over the red glow of the coals.

″I′ve had . . . visions. Some, I think, of what the world might have been if the Change had not come. Some of what might yet be, if the CUT triumphs. Both . . . bad. Very bad indeed. And their common feature that
men
no longer walk the earth, though in some of them things in our shape do. In others, the very soil and air are dead.″

″I′ve seen those too,″ Ingolf said, his battered hands clenching on his knees. ″Only on Nantucket, though. God . . . Gods . . . that was weird! But I saw things in Corwin while I was a prisoner there that were enough to turn your stomach; and things that would make your hair crawl, things that just shouldn′t
be
. They′ve got plans for the world and I wouldn′t want them to come true. Those breeding pits—″ He shuddered.

″Then we must see that they don′t come true,″ Mathilda put in.

Bjarni′s big capable hands gripped the arms of his chair.

″I know that the
seidhkona′s
vision was the truth. Thor′s Hammer, I
heard
it! I′m a true man; I′ll stand with the Gods—which means with you, Rudi—with all my main and my might. But I can′t call on every fighting man in Norrheim to march a thousand miles and more to battle an enemy they′ve never heard of. They′d hoot me off the Thingstone! And—″

He looked at his wife again; love and pain were at war in the glance they shared.