They arrived at their room and went within. Loys immediately noticed all his papers and books were gone.
‘Did you clean this chamber?’ he asked the servant.
‘No, sir.’ The man didn’t seem quite sorry enough about the burglary for Loys’ tastes. He was about to shout at him, to ask him how this had been allowed to happen but, as he began to speak, he lost the thread of what he was saying and instead concentrated on seeing what had been stolen.
‘Is anything else missing?’ said Loys. Beatrice went to the small chest she kept by the bed. The lock had been prised apart.
‘My rings are still here,’ she said.
Loys leaned for support on the wall. Whoever had taken his papers had not even paid him the courtesy of pretending it was a robbery. Beatrice sat quiet and thoughtful on the bed. Loys wondered what her father would do in a situation like this. He would seize the initiative. But how? He had an idea.
‘We have been buffeted by hostile winds for long enough. It’s about time we created a storm of our own.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I am the chamberlain’s man, ordered to perform an investigation,’ said Loys, ‘so I will investigate and I will accuse, and we will see what fear brings us that pleasantness did not.’
17
Bollason sat by the sea’s edge, watching the dark horizon. Behind him stretched the tents of his army, their pennants of ravens and wolves snapping in the breeze. The light was like nothing he had ever seen, the black ocean shining, the sky iron and the air silver-blue.
The dogs of the camp seemed restless, barking and grumbling at the falling sleet. Two gulls tumbled and brawled over the ocean, crying and screaming as if one said it was day and the other night. Nearby a child howled and would not be comforted.
‘Could this be it, Vala?’
‘Don’t call me that.’
The woman beside him was not young but she was very beautiful in the weak blue light.
‘It’s true. I know no one wiser than you.’
‘I have no art, Bolli. Your mother had the runes in her heart, not me.’
‘And yet you saw.’
‘With borrowed eyes. Yes, I saw.’
‘This could be the end time, happening here.’
‘I don’t know, Bolli.’
When she turned to him, she revealed an ugly scar covering most of the right side of her face. It was a burn; no knife or sword destroyed flesh like that.
‘If the god dies here, then what?’
She waved her hand, a gesture between exasperation and dismissal. ‘What always happens. Death, agony, rebirth. Always.’
‘Elifr has tried to stop it.’
‘Elifr is a man. He acts first and thinks later,’ she said.
‘He is seeking to protect you.’
‘I cannot be protected,’ she said. ‘Elifr has a place in the schemes of the gods, and though he moves to frustrate them, he will only bring destruction on himself and those he seeks to keep from harm.’
‘I could protect you, if you’d let me.’
‘I am not the one who needs protection. This is where Odin earned wisdom. This is where he went mad. If he returns here then the city will fall.’
‘Suits me,’ said Bollason. ‘There’ll be riches for us all then.’
‘It must stop, Bolli. I cannot go on.’
‘Go on with what?’
‘Losing my sons for ever. Putting them away, hiding them to keep them from the mad god’s gaze.’
‘Your sons are dead, Vala.’
The woman looked out to sea.
‘I have lived too long,’ she said. ‘The gods think they bless me but I carry a heavy curse.’
‘They do bless you. You are the same today as when I first remember you.’
‘In my appearance, perhaps,’ she said, ‘but I’m tired. I need to do this.’
‘You’re sure the well is where you say?’
‘We saw as much.’
‘Then let me bribe us into this prison and do your work.’
She shook her head. ‘The ritual is long and could bring notice. We need to take control of that place Bolli.’
‘You talk of ritual but you say you have no art.’
‘I have art enough for what I need to do.’ She wouldn’t tell him what would be required of her because he would try to stop her, as the wolfman was trying to stop her. Death — the god’s old price.
Bollason leaned forward and looked up to the black skies. ‘Your answer will be there?’
‘It is as your mother showed me. We are near to the end, Bolli. It will just take a little courage.’
‘If that is all it took then I could ask any of my men to do it. I would do it.’
‘But you cannot.’
‘No.’
‘Only me.’
‘Could my mother have done this?’
‘That was a lore-wise woman. But no. This was not her destiny. It is mine, so she told me when…’
The woman’s voice faltered.
‘She died, Vala. I have been a warrior these fifteen years. I am not so tender as you think.’
She smiled and touched his shoulder. ‘I knew you when you were at your mother’s breast. Your heart is not as hard as you want people to believe.’
‘It is hard enough.’
‘But you follow me out of tenderness.’
‘Yes. And by my mother’s command.’
‘And if your mother had not commanded it?’
‘I would still follow you, Saitada.’ He sat quiet for a while and then: ‘How will you know you are at the place? If we can take command of the prison and you go down into the earth, how will you recognise the well when you see it?’
‘I will know, I’m sure.’
Bollason said under his breath, ‘Mimir’s Well. Odin gave his eye for lore in those waters.’
‘And the fates sit there spinning the fates of men.’
‘That well is called Urtharbrunnr.’
‘They are the same. And different. One magic well has many manifestations, just as the gods themselves take many bodies in the form of men.’
‘So Odin gave his eye. What will you give?’
‘More than that. I am a woman, not a god; the waters will want more from me.’
‘Will you survive?’ he said.
‘My destiny is here. The destiny of the gods is here. I have my part to play.’
‘In death?’
