The Last Light of the Sun

His father had killed people, raiding with Siggur Volganson, and here at home.

Bern hadn’t done anything so … direct. Instead, he’d stolen a horse secretly in the dark and was now heading, for want of anything close to a better idea, to see if woman’s magic—the volur ’s—could offer him aid in the depths of a night. Not a brilliant plan, but the only one that had come to him. The women would probably scream, raise an alarm, turn him in.

That did make him think of something. A small measure of prudence. He turned east towards the risen moon and the edge of the wood, dismounted, and led the horse a short way in. He looped the rope to a tree trunk. He was not about to walk up to the women’s compound leading an obviously stolen horse. This called for some trickery.

It was hard to be devious when you had no idea what you were doing.

He despised the bleak infliction of this life upon him. Was unable, it seemed, to even consider two more years of servitude, with no assurance of a return to any proper status afterwards. So, no, he wasn’t going back, leaving the stallion to be found, slipping into his straw in the freezing shed behind Kjellson’s house. That was over. The sagas told of moments when the hero’s fate changed, when he came to the axle-tree. He wasn’t a hero, but he wasn’t going back. Not by choice.

He was likely to die tonight or tomorrow. No rites for him when that happened. There would be an excited quarrel over how to kill a defiling horse thief, how slowly, and who most deserved the pleasure of it. They would be drunk and happy. Bern thought of the blood-eagle then; pushed the image from his mind.

Even the heroes died. Usually young. The brave went to Ingavin’s halls. He wasn’t sure if he was brave.

It was dense and black in the trees. He felt the pine needles underfoot. Wood smells: moss, pine, scent of a fox. Bern listened; heard nothing but his own breathing, and the horse’s. Gyllir seemed calm enough. He left him there, turned north again, still in the woods, towards where he thought the volur’s compound was. He’d seen it a few times, a clearing carved out a little way into the forest. If someone had magic, Bern thought, they could deal with wolves. Or even make use of them. It was said that the women who lived here had tamed some of the beasts, could speak their language. Bern didn’t believe that. He made the hammer sign again, however, with the thought.

He’d have missed the branching path in the blackness if it hadn’t been for the distant spill of lantern light. It was late for that, the bottom of a night, but he had no idea what laws or rules women such as these would observe. Perhaps the seer—the volur—stayed awake all night, sleeping by day like the owls. The sense of being in a dream returned. He wasn’t going to go back, and he didn’t want to die.

Those two things together could bring you out alone in night approaching a seer’s cabin through black trees. The lights—there were two of them—grew brighter as he came nearer. He could see the path, and then the clearing, and the structures beyond a fence: one large cabin, smaller ones flanking it, evergreens in a circle around, as if held at bay.

An owl cried behind him. A moment later Bern realized that it wasn’t an owl. No going back now, even if his feet would carry him. He’d been seen, or heard.

The compound gate was closed and locked. He climbed over the fence. Saw a brewhouse and a locked storeroom with a heavy door. Walked past them into the glow cast by the lamplight in the windows of the largest cabin. The other buildings were dark. He stopped and cleared his throat. It was very quiet.

“Ingavin’s peace upon all dwelling here.”

He hadn’t said a word since rising from his bed. His voice sounded jarring and abrupt. No response from within, no one to be seen.

“I come without weapons, seeking guidance.”

The lanterns flickered as before in the windows on either side of the cabin door. He saw smoke rising from the chimney. There was a small garden on the far side of the building, mostly bare this early in the year, with the snow just gone.

He heard a noise behind him, wheeled.

“It is deep in the bowl of night,” said the woman, who unlocked and closed the outer gate behind her, entering the yard. She was hooded; in the darkness it was impossible to see her face. Her voice was low. “Our visitors come by daylight … bearing gifts.”

Bern looked down at his empty hands. Of course. Seithr had a price. Everything in the world did, it seemed. He shrugged, tried to appear indifferent. After a moment, he took off his vest. Held it out. The woman stood motionless, then came forward and took it, wordlessly. He saw that she limped, favouring her right leg. When she came near, he realized that she was young, no older than he was.

She walked to the door of the cabin, knocked. It opened, just a little. Bern couldn’t see who stood within. The young woman entered; the door closed. He was alone again, in a clearing under stars and the one moon. It was colder now without the vest.

His older sister had made it for him. Siv was in Vinmark, on the mainland, married, two children, maybe another by now … they’d had no reply after sending word of Thorkell’s exile a year ago. He hoped her husband was kind, had not changed with the news of her father’s banishment. He might have: shame could come from a wife’s kin, bad blood for his own sons, a check to his ambitions. That could alter a man.

There would be more shame when tidings of his own deeds crossed the water. Both his sisters might pay for what he’d done tonight. He hadn’t thought about that. He hadn’t thought very much at all. He’d only gotten up from bed and taken a horse before the ghost moon rose, as in a dream.

The cabin door opened.

The woman with the limp came out, standing in the spill of light. She motioned to him and so he walked forward. He felt afraid, didn’t want to show it. He came up to her and saw her make a slight gesture and realized she hadn’t seen him clearly before, in the darkness. She still had her hood up, hiding her face; he registered yellow hair, quick eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something but didn’t speak. Just motioned for him to enter. Bern went within and she pulled the door shut behind him, from outside. He didn’t know where she was going. He didn’t know what she’d been doing outside, so late.

He really didn’t know much at all. Why else come to ask of women’s magic what a man ought to do for himself?

Taking a deep breath he looked around by firelight, and the lamps at both windows, and over against the far wall on a long table. It was warmer than he’d expected. He saw his vest lying on a second table in the middle of the room, among a clutter of objects: conjuring bones, a stone dagger, a small hammer, a carving of Thünir, a tree branch, twigs, soapstone pots of various sizes. There were herbs strewn everywhere, lying on the table, others in pots and bags on the other long surface against the wall. There was a chair on top of that table at the back, and two blocks of wood in front of it, for steps. He had no idea what that meant. He saw a skull on the nearer table. Kept his face impassive.

“Why take a dead man’s horse, Bern Thorkellson?”

Bern jumped, no chance of concealing it. His heart hammered. The voice came from the most shadowed corner of the room, near the back, to his right. Smoke drifted from a candle, recently extinguished. A bed there, a woman sitting upon it. They said she drank blood, the volur, that her spirit could leave her body and converse with spirits. That her curse killed. That she was past a hundred years old and knew where the Volgan’s sword was.

“How … how do you know what I …?” he stammered. Foolish question. She even knew his name.

She laughed at him. A cold laughter. He could have been in his straw right now, Bern thought, a little desperately. Sleeping. Not here.

“What power could I claim, Bern Thorkellson, if I didn’t know that much of someone come in the night?”

He swallowed.

She said, “You hated him so much? Thinshank?”

Bern nodded. What point denying?

“I had cause,” he said.

“Indeed,” said the seer. “Many had cause. He married your mother, did he not?”

“That isn’t why,” Bern said.

She laughed again. “No? Do you hate your father also?”

He swallowed again. He felt himself beginning to sweat.

“A clever man, Thorkell Einarson.”

Bern snorted bitterly, couldn’t help it. “Oh, very. Exiled himself, ruined his family, lost his land.”

“A temper when he drank. But a shrewd man, as I recall. Is his son?”

He still couldn’t see her clearly, a shadow on a bed. Had she been asleep? They said she didn’t sleep.

“You will be killed for this,” she said. Her voice held a dry amusement more than anything else. “They will fear an angry ghost.”

“I know that,” said Bern. “It is why I have come. I need … counsel.” He paused. “Is it clever to know that much, at least?”

“Take the horse back,” she said, blunt as a hammer.

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t need magic to do that. I need counsel for how to live. And not go back.”

He saw her shift on the bed then. She stood up. Came forward. The light fell upon her, finally. She wasn’t a hundred years old.

She was very tall, thin and bony, his mother’s age, perhaps more. Her hair was long and plaited and fell on either side of her head like a maiden’s, but grey. Her eyes were a bright, icy blue, her face lined, long, no beauty in it, a hard authority. Cruelty. A raider’s face, had she been a man. She wore a heavy robe, dyed the colour of old blood. An expensive colour. He looked at her and was afraid. Her fingers were very long.

“You think a bearskin vest, badly made, buys you access to seithr?” she said. Her name was Iord, he suddenly remembered. Forgot who had told him that, long ago. In daylight.

Bern cleared his throat. “It isn’t badly made,” he protested.

She didn’t bother responding, stood waiting.

He said, “I have no other gifts to give. I am a servant to Arni Kjellson now.” He looked at her, standing as straight as he could. “You said … many had reason to hate Halldr. Was he … generous to you and the women here?”

A guess, a gamble, a throw of dice on a tavern table among beakers of ale. He hadn’t known he would say that. Had no idea whence the question had come.

She laughed again. A different tone this time. Then she was silent, looking at him with those hard eyes. Bern waited, his heart still pounding.

She came abruptly forward, moved past him to the table in the middle of the room, long-striding for a woman. He caught a scent about her as she went: pine resin, something else, an animal smell. She picked up some of the herbs, threw them in a bowl, took that and crossed to the back table for something beside the raised chair, put that in the bowl, too. He couldn’t see what. With the hammer she began pounding and grinding, her back to him.

Still working, her movements decisive, she said suddenly, “You had no thought of what you might do, son of Thorkell, son of Frigga? You just stole a horse. On an island. Is that it?”

Stung, Bern said, “Shouldn’t your magic tell you my thoughts—or lack of them?”

She laughed again. Glanced at him briefly then, over her shoulder. The eyes were bright. “If I could read a mind and future just from a man entering my room, I’d not be by the woods on Rabady Isle in a cabin with a leaking roof. I’d be at Kjarten Vidurson’s hall in Hlegest, or in Ferrieres, or even with the Emperor in Sarantium.”

“Jaddites? They’d burn you for pagan magic.”

She was still amused, still crushing herbs in the stone bowl. “Not if I told their future truly,” she said. “Sun god or no, kings want to know what will be. Even Aeldred would welcome me, could I look at any man and know all of him.”

“Aeldred? No he wouldn’t.”

She glanced back at him again. “You are wrong. His hunger is for knowledge, as much as for anything. Your father may even know that by now, if he’s gone raiding among the Anglcyn.”

“Has he? Gone raiding there?” He asked before he could stop himself.

He heard her laughing; she didn’t even look back at him this time.

She came again to the near table and took a flask of something. Poured a thick, pasty liquid into the bowl, stirred it, then poured it all back into the flask. Bern felt afraid still, watching her. This was magic. He was entangling himself with it. Witchery. Seithr. Dark as the night was, as the way of women in the dark. His own choice, though. He had come for this. And it seemed she was doing something.

There was a movement, from over by the fire. He looked quickly. Took an involuntary step backwards, an oath escaping him. Something slithered across the floor and beneath the far table. It disappeared behind a chest against that wall.

The seer followed his gaze, smiled. “Ah. You see my new friend? They brought me a serpent today, the ship from the south. They said his poison was gone. I had him bite one of the girls, to be sure. I need a serpent. They change worlds when they change skin, did you know that?”

He hadn’t known that. Of course he hadn’t known that. He kept his gaze on the wooden chest. Nothing moved, but it was there, coiled, behind. He felt much too warm now, smelled his own sweat.

He finally looked back at her. Her eyes were waiting, held his.

“Drink,” she said.

No one had made him come here. He took the flask from her hand. She had rings on three fingers. He drank. The herbs were thick in the drink, hard to swallow.

“Half only,” she said quickly. He stopped. She took the flask and drained it herself. Put it down on the table. Said something in a low voice he couldn’t hear. Turned back to him.

“Undress,” she said. He stared at her. “A vest will not buy your future or the spirit world’s guidance, but a young man always has another offering to give.”

He didn’t understand at first, and then he did.

A glitter in her coldness. She had to be older than his mother, lined and seamed, her breasts sunken on her chest beneath the dark red robe. Bern closed his eyes.

“I must have your seed, Bern Thorkellson, if you wish seithr’s power. You require more than a seer’s vision, and before daybreak, or they will find you and cut you apart before they allow you to die.” Her gaze was pitiless. “You know it to be so.”

He knew it. His mouth was dry. He looked at her.

“You hated him too?”

“Undress,” she said again.

He pulled his tunic over his head.

It ought to have been a dream, all of this. It wasn’t. He removed his boots, leaning against the table. She watched, her eyes never leaving him, very bright, very blue. His hand on the table touched the skull. It wasn’t human, he saw, belatedly. A wolf, most likely. He wasn’t reassured.

She wasn’t here to reassure. He was inside another world, or in the doorway to it: women’s world, gateway to women’s knowing. Shadows and blood. A serpent in the room. On the ship from the south … they had traded during the banned time, before the funeral rites. He didn’t think, somehow, they would be troubled by that here. They said his poison was gone. He felt whatever he had just drunk in his veins now.

“Go on,” said the seer. A woman ought not to watch like this, Bern thought, tasting his fear again. He hesitated, then took off his trousers, was naked before her. He squared his shoulders. He saw her smile, the thin mouth. He felt light-headed. What had she given him to drink? She gestured; his feet carried him across the room to her bed.

“Lie down,” she said, watching him. “On your back.”

He did what she told him. He had left the world where things were as they … ought to be. He had left it when he took the dead man’s horse. She walked about the room and pinched shut or blew out the candles and lamps, so only the firelight glowed, red on the farthest wall. In the near-dark it was easier. She came back, stood over against her bed where he lay—an outline against the fire, looking down upon him. She reached out, slowly— he saw her hand moving—and touched his manhood.

Bern closed his eyes again. He’d thought her touch would be cold, like age, like death, but it wasn’t. She moved her fingers, down and back up, and then slowly down again. He felt himself, even amid fear and a kind of horror, becoming aroused. A roaring in his blood. The drink? This wasn’t like a romp with Elli or Anrida in the stubbled fields after harvesting, in the straw of their barn by moonlight.

This wasn’t like anything.

“Good,” whispered the volur, and repeated it, her hand moving. “It needs your seed to be done, you see. You have a gift for me.”

Her voice had changed again, deepened. She withdrew her hand. Bern trembled, kept his eyes tightly closed, heard a rustling as she shed her own robe. He wondered suddenly where the serpent was; pushed that thought away. The bed shifted, he felt her hands on his shoulders, a knee by one hip, and then the other, smelled her scent— and then she mounted him from above without hesitation and sheathed him within her, hard.

Bern gasped, heard a sound torn from her. And with that, he understood—without warning or expectation— that he had a power here, after all. Even in this place of magic. She needed what was his to give. And it was that awareness, a kind of surging, that took him over, more than any other shape desire might wear, as the woman— the witch, volur, wise woman, seer, whatever she would be named—began rocking upon him, breathing harder. Crying a name then (not his), her hips moving as in a spasm. He made himself open his eyes, saw her head thrown back, her mouth wide open, her own eyes closed now upon need as she rode him wildly like a night horse of her own dark dreaming and claimed for herself—now, with his own harsh, torn spasm—the seed she said she needed to work magic in the night.

“GET DRESSED.”

She swung off his body and up from the bed. No lingering, no aftermath. The voice brittle and cold again. She put on her robe and went to the near wall of the cabin, rapped three times on it, hard. She looked back at him, her glance bleak as before, as if the woman upon him moments ago, with her closed eyes and shuddering breath, had never existed in the world. “Unless you’d prefer the others see you like this when they come in?”

Bern moved. As he hurried into clothing and boots, she crossed to the fire, took a taper, and began lighting the lamps again. Before they were all lit, before he had his overshirt on, the outside door opened and four women came in, moving quickly. He had a sense they’d been trying to catch him before he was dressed. Which meant they had …

He took a breath. He didn’t know what it meant. He was lost here, in this cabin, in the night.

One of the women carried a dark blue cloak, he saw. She took this to the volur and draped it about her, fastening it at one shoulder with a silver torque. Three of the others, none of them young, took over dealing with the lamps. The last one began preparing another mixture at the table, using a different bowl. No one said a word. Bern didn’t see the young girl who’d spoken to him outside.

After their entrance and quick glances at him, none of the women even seemed to acknowledge his presence here. A man, meaningless. He hadn’t been, just before, though, had he? A part of him wanted to say that. Bern slipped his head and arms into his shirt and stood near the rumpled bed. He felt oddly awake now, alert—something in the drink she’d given him?

The one making the new mixture poured it into a beaker and carried it to the seer, who drained it at once, making a face. She went over to the blocks of wood before the back table. A woman on each side helped her step up and then seat herself on the elevated chair. There were lights burning now, all through the room. The volur nodded.

The four women began to chant in a tongue Bern didn’t know. One of the lamps by the bed suddenly went out. Bern felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. This was seithr, magic, not just foretelling. The seer closed her eyes and gripped the arms of her heavy chair, as if afraid she might be carried off. One of the other women, still chanting, moved with a taper past Bern and relit the extinguished lamp. Returning, she paused by him for a moment. She squeezed his buttocks with one hand, saying nothing, not even looking at him. Then she rejoined the others in front of the elevated chair. Her gesture, casual and controlling, was exactly like a warrior’s with a serving girl passing his bench in a tavern.

Bern’s face reddened. He clenched his fists. But just then the seer spoke from her seat above them, her eyes still closed, hands clutching the chair arms, her voice high— greatly altered—but saying words he could understand.

THEY’D GIVEN HIM BACK his vest which was a blessing. The night felt even colder after the warmth inside. He walked slowly, eyes not yet adjusted to blackness, moving away from the compound lights through the trees on either side. He was concentrating: on finding his way, and on remembering exactly what the volur had told him. The instructions had been precise. Magic involved precision, it seemed. A narrow path to walk, ruin on either side, a single misstep away. He still felt the effects of the drink, a sharpening of perception. A part of him was aware that what he was doing now could be seen as mad, but it didn’t feel that way. He felt … protected.

He heard the horse before he saw it. Wolves might eat the moons, heralding the end of days and the death of gods, but they hadn’t found Halldr’s grey horse yet. Bern spoke softly, that the animal might know his voice as he approached. He rubbed Gyllir’s mane, untied the rope from the tree, led him back out into the field. The blue moon was high now, waning, the night past its deepest point, turning towards dawn. He would have to move quickly.

“What did she tell you to do?”

Bern wheeled. Sharpened perceptions or not, he hadn’t heard anyone approach. If he’d had a sword he’d have drawn it, but he didn’t even have a dagger. It was a woman’s voice, though, and he recognized it.

“What are you doing here?”

“Saving your life,” she said. “Perhaps. It may not be possible.”

She limped forward from the trees. He hadn’t heard her approach because she’d been waiting for him, he realized.

“What do you mean?”

“Answer my question. What did she tell you to do?”

Bern hesitated. Gyllir snorted, swung his head, restive now. “Do this, tell me that, stand here, go there,” Bern said. “Why do all of you enjoy giving orders so much?”

“I can leave,” the young woman said mildly. Though she was still hooded, he saw her shrug. “And I certainly haven’t ordered you to undress and get into bed for me.”

Bern went crimson. He was desperately glad of the darkness, suddenly. She waited. It was true, he thought, she could walk away and he’d be … exactly where he’d been a moment ago. He had no idea what she was doing here, but that ignorance was of a piece with everything else tonight. He could almost have found it amusing, if it hadn’t been so thickly trammelled in … woman things.

“She made a spell,” he said, finally, “up on that chair, in the blue cloak. For magic.”

“I know about the chair and cloak,” the girl said impatiently. “Where is she sending you?”

“Back to town. She’s made me invisible to them. I can ride right down the street and no one will see me.” He heard the note of triumph enter his voice. Well, why not? It was astonishing. “I’m to go onto the southerners’ ship—there’s a ramp out, by law, it is open for inspection— and go straight down into the hold.”

“With a horse?”

He nodded. “They have animals. There’s a ramp down, too.”

“And then?”

“Stay there till they leave, and get off at their next port of call. Ferrieres, probably.”

He could see she was staring straight at him. “Invisible? With a horse? On a ship?”