“What is it?” Snorri posed the question to Kara’s back as she approached the standing stones. It looked as if softly glowing pearls laced the black earth within the ring, forming a rough outline of some explosion within. Kara passed between two of the shards and entered the circle. She went to one knee and scraped at the burnt soil with her blade. It seemed as though the glow intensified around her. A moment later she stood, something shining in her hands, making dark sticks of her fingers.
When she reached us I saw that what she held was neither silver nor a pearl. “Orichalcum.” She withdrew one hand. A bead of metal the size of a fist rested upon the palm of the other, its surface gleaming, lit with its own silvery light, but broken with sheens of colour like oil on water, moving one into the other, a slow dance, mingling and separating as I watched.
“Will it help us fight the Hardassa?” Snorri asked.
“No.” Kara led the way on. “Take it, Tuttugu.”
Tuttugu accepted the over-sized bead. Immediately the light in it died and it became merely shiny metal, like a solid drop of quicksilver.
“A magic was worked in that circle long ago.” Kara took the bead back and the glow returned. “Orichalcum leaks into the world at such sites, though I’ve never heard of it being found in such quantity. Skilfar has a piece.” She held her thumb and finger out to show how small, pea-sized. “One use for it is to assess a would-be v?lva’s potential. It has nothing to say of wisdom, but of affinity for enchantment it speaks volumes. This glow is my potential. Training and wisdom will help me put it to good use, as a warrior hones their strengths into skills.”
“And when Skilfar held it out for you to take?” Snorri asked.
Kara shook her head. “She bid me take it from a bowl upon a shelf in her cave. Though weeks later I saw her pass beneath that shelf and the glow from within the bowl was brighter than when I hold it now in my hand.” She held it out to Snorri. “Try it.”
Snorri reached for it, without slowing his pace, and she dropped the orichalcum into his palm. Immediately it lit from within, so bright it made me glance away. “Warm!” He passed it back quickly.
“Interesting.” Kara didn’t seem disappointed at being outshone. “I can see why the Silent Sister chose you. Jal, you try.” She held the bead for me to take.
“I’ve had enough of heathen spell-mongering.” I kept my distance and hid my hands beneath my armpits. “Last time we did something like this I ended up being stabbed.” In truth I didn’t want to be shown as dull before her. Tuttugu might seem pleased at sparking nothing from the metal—but a prince should never be seen to fail. Especially by a woman he’s hoping to impress. And was that a grin I saw on Snorri’s face as he outshone me, yet again? Aslaug had said the northman sought to usurp me, and now the whispers rose at the back of my mind to confirm it. For a moment I imagined that the Red Vikings had killed him. Would that have been so bad?
“Frightened?” Kara still held the orichalcum toward me.
To change the subject I asked, “Chose him? Nobody chose him—or me. It was accident that wrapped us in the Sister’s curse. A chance escape, a meeting against the odds.” I’d been expendable, a minor princeling left to die in her fire, an acceptable price to pay for ending an unborn. And my “meeting” with Snorri had hardly been planned. I’d run straight into him in a blind terror whilst trying to escape the crack spreading from my great aunt’s broken spell.
“I don’t think so.” Kara said no more as we struggled up a rise. At the top she continued. “The Silent Sister’s spell wouldn’t fit into just any man. It’s too powerful. I’ve never heard of its like. Even Skilfar was amazed—she never said it in so many words, but I could tell. A spell like the Sister’s needed two people to carry it, and to grow its strength from the first seed. Two people—opposites—one for the dark part, one for the light. It wouldn’t be left to chance. No, this must have been planned an age in advance . . . to bring two such rare individuals together.”
I’d heard enough. Opposite to Snorri. Coward to his hero, thief to his honesty. Lech to his fidelity. Magic as mud to his shining potential. All I had to console myself with was prince to his pauper . . . I was glad at least to find myself as suited to sorcery as a paving slab. Magic always struck me as hard and dangerous work . . . not that there are any words you can put before “work” that makes it sound attractive. Certainly not “dangerous” or “hard.”
? ? ?
Our marching order changed as the miles passed. The boy grew weary and fell back with Tuttugu whose burst of energy from being healed now seemed spent. Snorri, Kara, and I, however, shed our tiredness. I found a dark excitement building in me. Each time I trod through the shadows cast by standing stones I heard Aslaug, her message now a simple promise—“I come.” And, although I feared her arrival, the threat of it bubbled through me like black joy, twisting my lips into a smile that might scare me if I had a mirror to see it in.
Cresting a ridge somewhat higher than the rest we paused, and turning back saw the enemy for the first time since the hut. We waited for Tuttugu and Hennan to struggle up to our position.