CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE ELVAR

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

ELVAR

E lvar woke to a voice, saw a shadow looming over her and reached for a blade.

"Don't panic, chief, it'th me," Sólín Spittle lisped.

"What is it?" Elvar breathed.

"You have a vithitor," Sólín said, looking towards the entrance of Elvar's chamber.

Elvar sat up, saw Ulfrir standing silhouetted in the entrance.

"I must show you something," Ulfrir said.

"What?" Elvar said, splashing cold water from a bowl into her face and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"It is best if you see," Ulfrir said. "Come." He turned away and walked out of the chamber.

Buckling on her weapons belt and snatching up her baldric and scabbarded sword, Elvar hurried after him, Sólín Spittle falling in behind her. She stepped out onto the platform and stood there a moment, was pleased that she did not sway with dizziness, saw Ulfrir walking onto the stairwell carved into the branch and followed him.

"Jarl Elvar," Berak said. He had been standing guard at her chamber door and he fell in beside Sólín.

Elvar caught up with Ulfrir as he reached the trunk of the tree. He turned and waited for her.

"They must stay here," he said, nodding at Berak and Sólín.

"Why?" Elvar said.

"I have something to show you, but it is for your eyes only."

She looked at him a moment.

"I could just command you," she said.

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. "I am trusting you with what I will show you. Trust me when I say no one else can know." A silence passed between them.

"Berak, Sólín, wait here," she said.

Ulfrir turned and walked away, Elvar following, slipping her baldric over her head and left arm, shifting her scabbarded sword so that it hung at her hip. She was surprised when Ulfrir turned left to climb the stairwell that wound higher around the trunk, rather than right, to descend to the great hall's floor.

"Where are we going?" Elvar asked him.

"Up," Ulfrir said.

As they spiralled upwards around the huge tree Elvar saw other chambers around the hall's curving walls, each one at the end of a thick-limbed branch. Some had the soft-glow of firelight, where people had taken up residence in them, others were dark shadows, like black eyes gazing out into the chamber. Elvar saw movement in one of those chambers, the flare of a torch, shadowed figures. She saw Silrie with a handful of others, glimpsed Runa Red-Axe, along with Hjalmar Peacemaker and Estrid Helkasdottir. There were others, but they were cast in shadow. Elvar paused for a moment, but then Ulfrir was disappearing around a curve in the path and she hurried after him.

Meeting to discuss Grend and his fate, no doubt , she fumed. And then Grend was rearing up in her head, looking at her with his expressionless face, only his eyes hinting at what he felt inside. A swirl of emotions at the thought of him. Hurt, that he had deceived her, anger, at the position he had put her in, unease, at what she should do.

He has made me appear weak, has made many doubt me.

Appearing weak is a jarl's greatest enemy , he heard her father's voice whisper.

She knew what she should do.

"Why are you taking me up here," Elvar snapped at Ulfrir, agitated and tired of the mystery.

"This was my home," Ulfrir said. "Orna my wife had her own hall, further north, a great eyrie where you felt like you could see the whole world. All of us children of Snaka had our own halls, but Orna visited me often here. She loved to perch in this tree."

Elvar saw a smile touch Ulfrir's lips as he thought over some distant memory.

"I am sorry," she said.

Ulfrir looked at her.

"Sorry that Orna is dead."

He sighed. "When you brought me back, and I found out that Orna was long dead, it was like the twist of a knife in my belly," he said. "But to hear that she had been brought back, too, like me, that she had felt new breath in her lungs, felt the same wind that blows on us on her face. That she had looked at the same sun and sky …" he shook his head, let out a low-rumbling growl. "I do not know why, but that pain, it is worse."

Elvar nodded. A look of such despair swept his features. In all of her grand schemes she had not thought about the feelings of a god, certainly not cared about them, but looking at him now, seeing a glimpse of the depths of his pain, it was impossible not to feel something.

"I am sorry," she said again. "I know that words change nothing, heal nothing. All that they do is tell you that someone cares, even if only for that moment."

Ulfrir nodded. "You are right, it changes nothing. But, it is still … something."

They walked on in silence and Elvar saw that they were approaching the domed roof of the chamber, branches thinner and denser up here. She felt something upon her face, a gentle caress, stared at the roof, then stopped, gasped.

"It is open," she said. "I can see the sky, the sun." From the chamber's floor she had been able to see some kind of fractured light that rippled across the roof, but she had thought it was more Seier-magic. Now she saw that it was daylight filtering through the canopy of branches, and that sensation upon her face. It was the wind.

"But are you insane," she hissed. "We are open to attack. Lik-Rifa could just fly into this chamber with nothing to stop her but a few branches. We must do something." She felt an overwhelming urge to grab Ulfrir and shake him, to push him tumbling from this great height.

"You told me we were protected from Lik-Rifa here, that it is safer than Snakavik."

"It is safer," Ulfrir said, holding up a hand to halt the words gushing from her mouth. "Walk on."

Elvar scowled at Ulfrir and took a hesitant step on up the spiral stairwell. Her head was almost level with where the roof should be, but instead it was branches, leaves and air. She took another step, lifted her hand to brush leaves out of her way and … hit something. She frowned, pushed at the leaves again, saw that before she touched them her hand hit something solid. There was a ripple of blue light. She pushed harder, but met an invisible resistance, then punched with the bottom of her fist. A crackle of blue light, rippling away and fading.

"It is a Seier-spell," Ulfrir said as he climbed to stand next to her, "much like the protection that we put on the gates and wall at the bridge. Nothing can get through."

"Nothing?" Elvar said.

"Well, sunlight, wind, sound, but nothing of flesh and bone."

"Nothing?" Elvar echoed.

"Nothing, unless you know the words," Ulfrir said. "I crafted this for Orna, so that she could fly to my halls, but could still feel the wind in her feathers and land here, watch the world from this high place."

He touched the invisible barrier with his fingers, blue pulses of light around each fingertip.

" úlfavinur, opinn, " he said, the blue light flared and rippled through the dome and Ulfrir strode on, passing through the leaves and branches. He looked back, peered down to her. "Come on," he said, as he disappeared through the canopy.

Elvar stood there a moment, then followed him.

She stepped into daylight, a cold wind stirring around her, blowing through the branches of the treetop as it reared above the dome of the hill. She saw grass and stone around her, realised that she was standing where the wolves had been when she had arrived at Wolfdales.

" úlfavinur, náinn, " Ulfrir said, and Elvar saw the blue light shimmer for a moment beneath her feet, then it was gone.

"It is back, impenetrable again," Ulfrir said. "The only way back into the chamber now is to walk down the hill and use the front door. Unless you know the words." He grinned at the expression on her face, then became serious. "You understand that I am trusting you a great deal, here. You have heard the words now."

She nodded.

"But my guards can be trusted," she said.

Ulfrir shrugged at that. "They are loyal to you, perhaps. Even so, people talk. Whispers spread, and ears listen." He looked at her intently. "Rotta will have people here, of that I am sure."

"What?" Elvar hissed.

"He is cunning, a deceiver, a liesmith. Lik-Rifa has her own cunning, but she is insane, and impatient. Although perhaps three hundred years in the bowels of Oskutree has taught her some measure of patience."

"Spies in my camp, we must find them, root them out."

"If you can," Ulfrir said. "Until then, speak only what you must. But this is not why I have brought you here." He stepped off the stairwell into what appeared to be thin air, but Elvar saw the slight crackle of blue light where his feet touched the barrier.

"Come, it is quite safe," he said.

Elvar looked down, saw leaves and branches, and air, the ground of the chamber a very long way down. She felt a wave of dizziness, swayed.

"Trust me," Ulfrir said, and Elvar took a step from the branch, stepped out into the air, and felt a firmness underfoot. She walked across the dome to Ulfrir.

"Orna liked to sit in the branches of this tree and look out at all Vigrie," Ulfrir said, and Elvar gazed at the view from the hill. All Vigrie lay before her, rivers glinting in the pale sun like serpents slithering across the land, the dark, green-black ocean of the Iron Wood spread all around the hill of Wolfdale. She saw Snaka's skull and the curving line of the Boneback Mountains, far closer and clearer than she would have thought, could even make out her father's fortress upon the skull. Her eyes followed the fjord out to the sea, took in the coast of Vigrie and estuary of the River Falinn that they had sailed up, her eyes coming to rest on the river full of longships far below, the trees of the Iron Wood thick on the far bank.

"It is … beautiful," Elvar breathed.

"Yes," Ulfrir said. He was smiling, a sharp wind soughing through the branches and sifting his wolf-grey hair. "You see those trees down there, on the far bank of the river?"

"Yes," Elvar said, peering.

"Many of them are ash trees."

Elvar blinked at that. "Ash trees," she echoed.

"Aye." Ulfrir grinned. "Ash trees mean Froa-spirits."

Elvar nodded, a slow grin stretching across her face.

"Froa-spirits will not like a war-host trampling around their trees."

"A warm welcome," Elvar said.

Ulfrir looked at her.

"You have done well," he said, "to raise such a host, to keep it together, to strike against Lik-Rifa and Rotta as you have done. It has been no easy task, to reach this point."

"Well, I have had some help," Elvar said, surprised by his words.

"Heya," Ulfrir agreed with a shrug. "Having a wolf-god at your shoulder may have helped a little." He gave his half-smile. "Although I am thralled to you, so I have no choice in the matter." An altogether different twist of his mouth. "But many would have failed where you have succeeded. It has taken some courage and deep-cunning to get this far. I understand why you gave me my life, why you thralled me. A risk, to anger a god, which is why I say you have courage, but I probably would have done the same in your position. And you are no tyrant, you do not seek power for power's sake. You have a vision."

She looked at him.

"Once, my vision was to climb high, to win battle-fame, to live on in a skáld-song. All to show my father that he was wrong about me. That I am better than he thought." She shook her head. "None of that matters now. I do not like power, I do not like leading. It is a weight about my neck, but for now I must lead, because my vision is to survive, and to do that I must get Bjarn back for Uspa," she said. "And for that to happen Lik-Rifa must die, it is as simple as that. I am no brave saga-hero, I am more a thrall than you, it is the blóe svarie that drives me."

Ulfrir nodded. "I think we understand each other. Perhaps we should learn to trust each other."

A slow smile spread across Elvar's lips.

"Now that would be brave," she said.

He smiled, too. "I have trusted you with the secret of my home," he said. "Outside my family, you are the only one to hear the words that open this rooftop gateway into my den."

Elvar nodded, acknowledging that.

"Is this the only other entrance to your home, then?" Elvar asked him.

"No," Ulfrir said. "There are the tunnels, though we have sealed all except the one we have been using for the night raids, and that is well guarded, both by flesh and blood and by Seier. And there were entrances in those towers," Ulfrir gestured to the crumbling, vine-wrapped ruins that Elvar had seen upon the slopes of the hill when she had first seen Wolfdales from the deck of the Wave-Jarl . "But they are collapsed, and even if someone took the time to dig their way through, there is a Seier-wall in each tower, just like this one." He tapped his foot on the invisible barrier they were standing upon.

"Are they the same Seier-words to open them?" Elvar asked.

"No, I shall teach you them, if you wish. Trust you with the words of power, though we will not use them."

Elvar nodded.

"And I will trust you with another, greater secret," he said. "My father, Snaka, planted this tree, a seed of Oskutree. The first seed of the Jarnvidr, and he gave me this land about it, sowed the Jarnvidr for me to roam within. I built my hall about the tree, dwelt among the woods. But Oskutree is an ash tree, and ash trees have their Froa."

"They do," Elvar said, remembering the Froa-spirit she had encountered at Oskutree.

"The building of my hall, the carving of the stairwell into the tree, the Froa-spirit did not … approve," Ulfrir said. "She resisted. So, at my request, my father sang her to sleep." He strode to the trunk of the tree and laid a hand upon it, stroked a deep line in the bark. Elvar stared, and gasped.

There was a huge face carved into the tree, Ulfrir tracing the line of its jaw. A woman, hard-faced, long hair like vines wrapped around the trunk, limbs of knotted wood winding about the tree.

"Snaka taught me the words to wake her, which I would have sung a long time ago, but then my daughter, Valkyrie, was abducted …" he paused, a twitch of muscle in his cheek. "And war erupted. You call it the Guefalla, the god-war." He spread his arms. "And I died." He shook his head. "It has been a long time, a deep sleep for her, but I think it is time for Gelta to wake." He looked at Elvar. "Are you ready?"

"Why are you telling me this?" she breathed.

"We both fight Lik-Rifa and Rotta, we are on the same side," he said. "I think it is time we trusted each other. And if anything happens to me, Gelta should know you. She should know that you mean her and her tree no harm, otherwise," he smiled, "an angry Froa-spirit is the last thing you need."

Elvar nodded.

"Good," Ulfrir said, and opened his mouth, began to sing.