The Raven Lady Read online

  “Onto the grounds,” I added. “I go with the firglas patrols as often as I can. I’m not used to being confined indoors and crave the exercise. And these days I feel like my bearings constantly require correction. I thought we might have it in common. What do you say?”

  IRON AND BONE

  Koli

  “I will go with you,” I replied.

  His unexpected gallantry continued. He was not required to entertain me, and no doubt had many more pressing matters to attend to. Could it be that he still hoped to make an ally of me?

  Doro would approve of my accepting his invitations, I felt certain, and more importantly so would my father. But I was uneasy, and not only because I doubted there was any way of avoiding the forest. I wanted to go with him.

  “Excellent,” he replied, and seemed to mean it. He was livelier today, and I wondered whether the weight lifted from his head had also lightened his mood. The sudden change in his appearance had shocked me. Without the hair, his other features were more prominent—the bones of his face, the high forehead, the musculature along the sides of his neck. And especially his glacier eyes.

  “Are you dressed warmly enough?” the king inquired, eyeing the stretch of forearm left bare by my sleeves.

  “I am used to cold, Your Majesty.”

  “Of course. And your footwear? We will cross some wet ground and slippery stones.”

  More amused than annoyed by his concern, I slid one booted foot forward so that it poked from beneath the hem of my tunic.

  “Excellent,” he repeated.

  In addition to the previous day’s stiff and uncomfortable shoes, I had cast aside the complicated modern clothing in favor of my favorite hunting dress—a simple ankle-length tunic fitted snugly, but not suffocatingly, at the chest and waist by a leather corset. I felt more at ease already.

  The king too was less constrained by his dress this morning, wearing only shirtsleeves, black trousers, and boots. The smooth and snow-white fabric of his shirt could not conceal the lines of his body— the strength of his chest and shoulders. Whatever vices the fairy king possessed, they did not include indolence.

  A company of the firglas—the same fairy race as Treig—had crossed the bailey, where the stables were, to assemble on the drawbridge. They were armed with bows and pikes. As the king and I moved aside to let them pass, I noticed a pistol belted at his waist. I had no direct experience with this type of weapon, though muskets were often carried by Icelandic farmers and herdsmen. Such weapons needed fire and dry powder, and both could be easily interfered with by spells—as the queen of Ireland had discovered in the Battle of Ben Bulben.

  We followed the patrol beyond the gatehouse and onto a forest path, which soon descended away from the castle. It was good to feel my blood moving, as well as the occasional beam of sunlight and the fresh salt breeze against my skin. As in Iceland, the landscape here was a living thing—clouds drifting, air damply swirling, light patterns changing.

  These buoyant feelings melted away, however, once we were surrounded by wooden giants and could no longer see the castle. Nor, with the cloud cover, could I be sure which direction we were traveling. Dark boughs closed over our heads, forming a tunnel like the charred ribcage of some great beast.

  “I understand there are few trees in Iceland,” said the king, seeming to sense my discomfort. He walked abreast of me, and we broke the line of guards exactly in half, with four pairs ahead and four pairs behind. The king had ordered Treig to remain at the castle—maybe to make me feel less like a prisoner. I found myself wishing she had come.

  “That is true, Your Majesty,” I replied. “Few among my people have any memory of them.”

  “Do you find them unsettling?”

  Glancing at him sidelong, I decided he wasn’t mocking me. “Maybe a little.”

  “I confess I do,” he said. “This forest has existed in Faery for centuries, but before my association with King Finvara, I had never seen this many trees together. Certainly not any so ancient. Oaks are sacred to fairies, and I believe these are no ordinary trees.”

  “They speak to each other,” I said.

  Raising his brows, he nodded. “Aye. Do you understand them?”

  I shook my head.

  He glanced up at the canopy of naked boughs. “Nor do I. But sometimes it sends a shiver through me.”

  I was silently marveling at yet another instance of sympathetic feeling between us when the king asked abruptly, “Those birds—do you control them, or . . .?”

  Following his gaze, I discovered my furies moving in the branches. Unlike last night on the tower stairway, I had not been aware that they’d joined us. I often discovered them shadowing me at times of uneasiness. But when I was angry, there was nothing subtle about their arrival.

  I tried to think how to answer him. I could see no harm in the truth. The birds were little threat to anyone, so there was no advantage to being secretive about them, and being as truthful as possible would make my half-truths and deceptions easier to manage.

  “Mostly I do not, Your Majesty,” I replied. “They come and go.”

  He frowned. “Do you know why?”

  I shrugged. “It is said my people are descended from ravens.”

  He considered this as he watched their movements, and I felt oddly gratified by his curiosity.

  “Others in your family have similar guardians?”

  “No,” I confessed. “But there are real ravens living atop Skaddafjall.”

  The Elf King said my ravens were a mark of the gods. Because I had a mortal mother, he believed they were meant to remind me where I come from—much like the mark on my back.

  We walked on in silence, but after a few minutes he asked, “What did you mean by ‘mostly’?”

  I glanced at him, confused.

  “You said that mostly you don’t control them.”

  My eyes traced the fresh scratch on the outer edge of his right ear. Did he think I’d done it intentionally? Would I have, were it possible?

  “My furies,” I murmured.

  He frowned. “My lady?”

  “One of my tutors called them my furies”—I spoke up—“because they appear at times when . . . when I experience strong feelings.”

  “I see,” he replied in a softened tone, and suddenly I knew that I’d gone too far. He was observant, and cleverer than I’d given him credit for. He would be able to read me now, at times when I would least desire it. What had made me tell him?

  He’s too easy to talk to. I would need to be more careful.

  Again we fell into silence, and I thought about how much easier this would be had he been the haughty rake that I had been told to expect. I would have simply watched him from a distance, learning his faults and weaknesses.

  “It is strangely quiet in the forest today,” he said finally. “It’s usually overrun with the fairy folk. Even worse than the castle.”

  I thought about the twig people I’d scared off the previous night. “Has it always been like that?”

  “Aye, my predecessor’s court was lively. I don’t think it much troubled him. As a ship’s captain, I find it disquieting to say the least. My steward, Doro, has served the court for centuries.” I looked up sharply. “He agreed to help me restore some order by discouraging the traffic on castle grounds. We may have him to thank for this peaceful morning walk.”

  Doro was the king’s steward? He had mentioned serving Finvara’s queen—but of course that office was currently vacant. I couldn’t help wondering if Finvara had mentioned Doro to watch my reaction—a kind of trap. I risked a glance at his profile, but his brow was deeply furrowed and I concluded that he was not thinking of me at all. The king was preoccupied. What had made him invite me to join him this morning? Could it be he was trying to take his mind off other troubles?

  I had been at Knock Ma less tha
n twenty-four hours, and the king was besieged. Doro and I had him surrounded, and he had no idea of it. This exile of his subjects from the castle, which Doro had agreed to manage for him—it could easily be made to look like a slight.

  Excitement was what I should have been feeling. Instead, there was a heaviness in my chest. And the mark between my shoulder blades burned.

  “Let us turn from the path here,” said the king, lightening his tone. “There’s a worthwhile view from the top of this hill.”

  He ordered the firglas to continue their patrol of the grounds and meet us again on their return to the castle. Then we started up a rough stairway embedded in the hillside. The stones were moss covered and damp, and I was glad for my sturdy boots.

  When we topped the rise, a little breathless from the climb, the king led me to a rocky break in the trees. A steep cliff was before us, with more forest at the bottom of the drop.

  “It’s a fair prospect, is it not?” he said.

  Wind whipped my hair about my shoulders as I took it in. The clouds had cleared and we could see all the way to the white-capped Atlantic. The view from my tower was similar, but it felt so exposed here—also peaceful and isolated. Between ocean and forested hills stretched a green blanket of farm and pastureland divided by stone fences, country roads, and the occasional white-washed village. There was bog land, too, the color of bread and half-shrouded in mist. A lake that reflected the ever-changing skyscape, and a line of snowcapped mountains to the northwest.

  “It is, Your Majesty,” I replied. A smile of contentment curled the edges of his lips, and his blue eyes danced. The heaviness of a few moments ago had lifted. The view, the fresh air, something had brought about a transformation.

  Love of the sea.

  Returning my gaze to the waves, I breathed in the cold, clean air. Iceland’s elves were not a seafaring people, but our ancestors were. I had never lived landlocked, and was grateful for this reminder that the sea was in fact our close neighbor.

  “On board my ship, Aesop,” began the king, “in the waters near my mother’s birthplace, I have felt the sun hot on my back, and have cooled my skin in an ocean so clear you could see all the way to the white sandy bottom.”

  An image of him leaping bare-chested from the deck of his ship came unbidden to my mind, and my heart jumped.

  “It brings its own sort of joy,” he continued. “But nothing compares to this.” He waved at the countryside before us. These hills and valleys, the villages and farmland and ruins—they were as important to him as the landscape of Iceland was to me.

  “Which is why you gave up your ship,” I said. “To protect it. And you come here to remember that.”

  He turned to look at me—I could feel his sudden intensity and did not meet his gaze.

  “Aye,” he breathed, and there was a note of wonder in his tone. My eyes were finally drawn to him, and again my heart jumped.

  I’ll not be drawn in by a spell.

  I sensed my furies gathering, and the rising fear had me reaching for their aid.

  Wait.

  I steadied myself. Magic always created a charge in the air—it felt like a tickle on the skin. I felt neither the tickle nor the fogginess that accompanied enchantment. I was very much awake and alive.

  Slowly, I drew cool air deep into my lungs. The fear subsided, but my heartbeat stubbornly refused to slow. Finally the king looked away and I let out my breath in relief.

  He cleared his throat. “On the other side of this hill,” he said, pointing, “is another, smaller hill, with a saddle between. There is a barrow marked by a standing stone—you can see it, just there—a monument that predates this forest. The trees grew up and around, leaving bare the stone and the hilltop. If it interests you, we could take a closer look.”

  “I would like that, Your Majesty,” I said, eager for release from the strange tension.

  I followed him to the south-facing side of the hill, where we found a precarious stone stairway, steeper than the previous one. This path was also more exposed than the other, as both the saddle and adjacent hill were clear of trees. It occurred to me it would be a very simple thing to contrive my death in this environment. Although no one would believe such an event to be an accident, and the king was no fool.

  “Have you ancient burial mounds in Iceland?” asked Finvara, leading the way down—and in doing so, placing himself in a very vulnerable position. I was no fool either.

  “We do, sire—Viking tombs. And many legends surrounding them. There are stone ships associated with the goddess Freyja that have stood for centuries. Not even the elves go near them.”

  “So it is here, as well,” he replied, reaching the bottom of the stairs. Then he grinned. “Shall we go closer yet?”

  I glanced at the monolith. I was curious, and the king’s sense of adventure was contagious. “All right, Your Majesty.”

  We continued on to the saddle and then to a footpath that led us to the top of the mound. At its center stood the stone—narrow, but easily fifteen feet high. The stone’s surface was uniformly gray—clear of lichen, moss, and bird droppings.

  “Do you know who is entombed here?” I asked.

  “No one has been able to tell me,” he replied. “When the seal between Faery and Ireland began to fray, many places like this came to be used as doors between worlds. Gap gates were built into some of those doors—in fact there’s a Gap gate inside a waterfall on the east side of the grounds. But neither fairy nor Irishman ever comes so close to this monument.” Again he smiled at me. “Until now.”

  His mood was almost conspiratorial, and I got the sense he had wanted to come here for some time. Could it be that no one else was brave enough to accompany him? It was very like something I would do back home. I had always been loyal and obedient, but I never missed opportunities to defy authority in small ways.

  I had no trouble imagining why this tomb was avoided—the very air here was different. Instead of the bracing wind off the Atlantic, there was a chill breeze that carried a stale smell—like it had come from the inside of a cave. Not like the caves along the coasts of my homeland, with pools of clear, cold water lined with spiny sea creatures and pebbles of every color, but the inland caves, where beasts—and sometimes rarer creatures—dwelled.

  Old bones and musk.

  The bright morning suddenly began to look like twilight as dark clouds crowded the sky, bringing with them a drop in temperature that caused even me to shiver.

  “Sometimes it is for the best such ruins are not disturbed,” I said. “I need not tell you that legends arise for a reason.”

  “No, indeed,” he agreed. He studied me, and mischief glinted in his eyes as he said, “Could it be that you are frightened, Koli Alfdóttir?”

  I felt a tickle low in my belly as he said my name. It was not the tickle of enchantment, but, I feared, of something far more dangerous.

  “Only a fool does not feel fear.”

  Finvara

  I had finally done it. It was barely there, I’ll grant you, but a very real smile curled the corners of those overripe lips. It acted like a ray of sunlight on her features, heightening the color in her cheeks and brightening her dark eyes. In that moment, it struck me that she was beautiful—not for a “goblin princess,” or for an elf woman—by any measure. Her guarded nature, along with her thinly veiled fierceness, had hidden it from me.

  It took me aback, but I’d not spoil the moment for anything, so I grinned at her. “Even a fool such as myself knows it. Yet I doubt that—”

  I broke off, glancing down at the ground between my boots—for it had begun to move. “What the devil?”

  The mound lurched like a ship tossed by a wave, and both of us fell. The earth broke open, stones and dark soil pushing up through the grass. The shadow shapes of the princess’s furies were bursting out of her, their coarse cries filling the air.
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  “The stone!” she shouted, and I glanced up to find the oblong slab tilting over us.

  We scrambled madly over the ground, and a deep groaning of the earth and heaviness in the air made it clear the monument’s fall was imminent. I hooked an arm around her and began rolling down the side of the mound toward the saddle. The massive stone struck the earth beside us with incredible force. Reflexively I clambered farther away, dragging her with me, and then collapsed.

  The princess fell across my chest, panting, her heart hammering against me. She raised her head to look at me, dark eyes wild and questioning. We untangled ourselves and sat up, but before I could speak, a grating cry pierced the air. I felt a sharp pain and jerked away—the lady’s furies were diving at my head, beaks and talons easily finding my scalp thanks to its reduced cover.

  Cursing the beasts, I batted at them with my arms, and dread knifed through my gut. Had she caused this? Was it my death she was after?

  I took hold of her wrist. Before I could question her, she cried, “Draug!” Still wild-eyed, she fought to free herself from my grasp.

  “Nay, lady,” I muttered, tightening my grip, though I did not understand the word she had spoken.

  “We must go!” she shouted. Then she spoke another phrase of Elvish, and a spell seared my hand, forcing me to release her. She crawled toward the saddle as the mound continued to quake, and I looked back toward the wrecked ground where the stone had stood.

  Something was clawing its way out. Skeletal fingers dug through the soft earth. Plumes of vapor hissed from the ground, fogging the air around us.

  We were both on our feet again, poised for flight, and yet frozen by the horrific spectacle. I snatched my pistol from its holster, and the princess reached over her shoulder, grabbing at empty air before spitting a curse and dropping her arm—going for her missing bow, I guessed, and we sure could use it.

  “What do you know of this thing?” I barked.

  “Draug!” she repeated. Her brow furrowed and she shook her head, lips moving in soundless frustration. She fixed her gaze on me and said, “A barrow-wight.”