seemed to gnaw through the labyrinth of her thoughts. Structures and links were missing from her mind, ways blocked, burned and broken. So other paths had been found, bored through the lattice of ordinary assumptions, building precarious bridges between areas of her mind that had only ever communicated indirectly. Others would have called it madness, but to the queen it was a blessing which she had won through her years of murder and pain.
A realisation sparked inside her. She was the first of magicians, a sorcerer without parallel. She had hidden her intentions even from herself, afraid that knowing her own plans would compromise her with the god. If he knew she was acting against him he would strike. But, deceived, she was safe. While her energies were directed at a false target, the god would think he had time — he might dally, hesitate. And in so doing he had given her the chance to bring the wolf to the cusp of existence in the best possible way — by getting someone else to do it for her. Her visions told her she had even hidden from herself the true nature of the spell and which boy would be used to house the spirit of the god come to earth. Odin had not been able to force this secret from her because she had not known it herself. So the god had not seen the peril he was in until her protector was ready.
She recalled the knot at the throat of the first dead girl — the dead lord’s necklace with its three tight twists, and she knew it had been a message — one thing hidden inside another, inside yet another. It was magic of the deepest depth, magic that works independently of the sorcerer — of her and through her, yes, but it could not really be said to be her doing. This was not spell casting; it was a force she had welcomed in as a child, something that now cast her.
The witch’s thoughts floated free of reason and into the realm of magical thinking, beyond logic and sanity but with the strongest possible connection to reality — the connection of death.
She clasped the rune to her, the one she had etched on the piece of leather. She held it to her lips, touched it with her tongue and breathed in its aroma. The smell was something beyond animal skin. It tasted of tears, funeral pyres and of the staleness of waiting. Loss.
The wolf was coming but needed something to take the final step, a suffering to propel it into flesh and chase the human out. There was something living in the upper caves, the warmth of the air on the witch’s skin told her. It wasn’t a rat and it wasn’t a bird. She looked at the rune on the leather, its meanings spilling into her mind — storm, werewolf, wolf trap. The girl, she knew, had come and now the queen sensed her importance. She was the trap to draw the brothers in. The pieces of the magical puzzle were falling into place. The girl was there, the brother would come, only the wolf was missing. The rune seemed to pulse in her hand. Three in one, a knot of misery, denial and slaughter. Odin was very near. It was time to summon her protector, the dead god’s enemy. It would not be easy. The wolf had grown, she could sense, and was close to his full power. A creature that could stand in front of the master of magic and snap off his head would not respond to a witch’s call. Something more was required to compel his attendance. The witch, whose mind was so linked to the caves that she could feel every movement within them, knew the girl had entered the hoard cave. She would go to her. She touched her tongue to the rune again. This time it tasted of blood.
50
What if there is no air? What if this leads nowhere?
Adisla tugged at the rope with increasing desperation, able to see nothing at all. The passage from the bottom of the pool was long, dark and entirely underwater, and she had gone too far down to turn back. She pulled and pulled, hand over hand, hand over hand, fighting down panic. The ceiling of the tunnel was smooth rock but she kept hitting her head, which forced her to bend her neck down so her shoulders took the impact instead.
She struggled against the urge to breathe in or give up, to hammer at the ceiling and waste energy. Then, abruptly, the passage rose. Air hit her face and she swallowed it down. She opened her eyes to blackness. She could see nothing at all but crawled out onto the rough and potholed floor of a cave. She pulled herself up to sitting and felt something between her fingers, cold like autumn grass.
‘Hello.’
The dead air of the cave seemed to cling to her skin. Dead air. That was the smell — something was rotting. Adisla composed herself and reached for the pouch at her side for the flint, steel and tinder Feileg had taken from the Noaidi. The tinder was useless — she could feel it was soaked — but the flint and steel would work. She took them out, struck them together and the corpses were upon her, rotten faces looming from the dark. In the awful instant of the flint’s flash she saw three dead boys. It was not grass she had touched but hair. Adisla offered a prayer to Freya. She was almost glad of the dark now and shrank back against a wall.
She waited for Feileg to come, holding her knees into herself for the small comfort she could take from hugging something. But Feileg didn’t appear. She had thought her example would encourage him. Had she been wrong? She forced herself to listen to her breathing to make sure time was really passing, that the eternity she felt was in reality no more than a few heartbeats. Feileg still did not come.
She tried to think what to do. Return to the surface, she decided. Adisla felt for the rope and prepared herself for the haul back. It would be easier, she told herself — she knew how long the tunnel was. She took the rope in her hands and tested it. Yes, it was secured at the other end. She could pull herself through. Then she thought of Vali, enchanted and forsaken in that pit. If Feileg was incapable of coming through the tunnel, there was no guarantee another entrance to the witch caves could be found.
A terrible thought struck her. What if Feileg had drowned in the tunnel? Would she find his body blocking her way? Trembling and terrified, she forced herself to think. This was the Troll Wall and the witches had been the death of countless heroes. Who was to say that Feileg would be any different? For Vali’s sake, she had to go on without him.
Adisla steeled herself and searched the boys’ bodies, hoping to find a lamp. She found only the amulets at their necks. She took one. It had done the child no good, but who was to say it wouldn’t help her? Crawling past the boys, she cut her knees on the floor. Never mind, she was going to have to get used to that. When she was sure the corpses were behind her, she struck the flint again. In the brief flash she saw the passage going on and down, and went ahead before striking once more to check her way. She didn’t expect to see anything much, but thought she might at least get some warnings of drops, low ceilings or falls. Nevertheless, she proceeded cautiously, feeling her way forward. It was painful progress and it was slow.
She hoped she would find Feileg again. He had told her that he had a great treasure in the hills. Feileg was naive and didn’t have the guile to lie about something like that. If he said he had treasure, he had treasure. It would be something she could use to bargain with the witches to get them to use their magic to bring Vali back to human form. She could offer her word she would deliver it. But what was the word of a woman? Perhaps Feileg would have been useful: they would more readily accept the oath of a warrior.
She tried to smother her deeper thoughts. For as long as she could remember she had loved only Vali. Now she was terrified of him, and Feileg, with his honesty and kindness, offered her the chance of a simple life away from the affairs of kings and sorcerers. Adisla’s love for Vali had devoured her, Feileg, her mother, everything it touched. But for that love, the Danes would never have come for her and her mother would still be alive, little Manni too. She couldn’t abandon the prince, though, no matter what.
Questions of the heart were for the sunshine and the open air. In the tunnels of the Troll Wall she had more pressing concerns. Adisla had never known such dark. It seemed like a beast smothering her, her flint a little thorn that she jabbed into its belly, forcing a momentary retreat, before its dead weight came down on her again.
How would she call a witch? What would she say? Adisla didn’t know. First, she thought, she needed light. There was plenty of detritus on the tunnel floors. Surely she would come across a lamp eventually? It was impossible to believe that the dead children she had found had spent their whole lives in the dark.
She crawled on and on, her fingers numb from striking the flint. At the end of one cramped fissure the ceiling and the floor came together into a narrow slash in the rock. She crawled forward and pushed her head and arms into it. Then she struck her flint and nearly dropped it in awe.
She did not notice the cavern, the spears of white that dropped from the ceiling, nor the folds in the rock where dead witches seemed to peer out at you. She saw only the blazing gold piled high to the ceiling, splendid as
