37. Interloper
“Despite my legend reaching heights not heard of since the likes of Ragni the Red, I can’t help but feel, in some small way, something of a false facer.
I walk through crowds who smile and cheer, and I brush shoulders with the rich and powerful. I speak with the brave leaders of fighting brotherhoods who treat me with respect and as if we are equals. Yet I suspect it all for show and that I never really left the stage.
But rather have gone from being a bard on odd evenings to performing at every hour of every day.
Perhaps the truest test of all will come soon. I have met a woman. Sibbe. She is the daughter of the Jarl of Timilir. Thrand has always treated me with kindness and hospitality, but I have long suspected hatred shining behind his eyes. We will soon see how he truly feels when I ask for Sibbe’s hand in marriage.”
Hjorvarth strode through a gloomy plaza that reeked of smoke.
He walked down the row of statues and sculptures, wondering why anyone would put in such effort to make oddly proportioned men, or to so faithfully create weaponry that was too huge to be of any use. He had no love for this cavern city. And in truth hoped more than anything that he would wake, but he drew the bitter conclusion that this had been too long to be a dream.
He would not return to a simple life that he was glad for. He would not wake to see Sam or Isleif. He would never live a day without the weight of knowing he had caused the death of Brolli. He knew it as weakness to have such a fierce desire, to want so badly, to go back to the way things used to be. He had prayed a dozen times to wake the day of the duel on Jarl Thrand’s Estate. He prayed to have stayed, to have forgone the offers of Geirmund and Agnar to ferry him away. He knew he had killed a man who deserved to die, so he should have kept to honour and waited to accept the coming judgement.
Hjorvarth hoped to live through his journey, and if the gods did not will that, then he would make best effort to safeguard Engli instead. He would not allow another man he had sworn to protect to die a bad death.
He noticed something behind a stall. A lovely black-haired woman in a white dress.
“Greetings, my—” Hjorvarth ran as she did, then chased her out of the plaza and into the paved streets. “Wait, I mean you no harm! I have been separated from my friend!” She moved faster than he thought possible, despite her short stride. He lost sight of her now she turned behind one sturdy building and then another.
Hjorvarth slowed to a stop at the middle of an abandoned crossroads: fronted by a set of four stone buildings, each diamond shaped with sheltered porches. A brass lantern hung under each archway, suffusing a smoky golden glow that made the haggard visitor a man of four shadows.
Hjorvarth felt eyes on his back, so searched the overlooking windows.
A shadowed man stared down at him, eyes lambent behind the gleaming pane of glass.
Hjorvarth blinked and the visage disappeared. He frowned as if more annoyed then disconcerted only to see the white-dressed woman stood ahead in the darkness.
“I—” Hjorvarth began but she vanished. He shook his head, then turned away.
A standing corpse blocked his path, grimy teeth spread into a grin. Hjorvarth swung his fist through the air, but it met with nothing. He kicked out and span around, his eyes wild as he searched the silent crossroads. “Show yourself!”
The door ahead of him swung inward. “Engli?” he shouted, waiting for the echo to fade. “Sage?”
Hjorvarth decided to leave the place, only to realise that all four paths looked the same. Endless rows of stone homes adorned by metal. He noticed that all four doors had opened to the crossroads, but he could see no discernible difference between the darknesses within.
“Walk through no doors that are opened for you,” Hjorvarth invoked.
He ran the way he was heading, to a crossroad made the same, with four doors open to darkness. Hjorvarth ran to another crossroad, then another, and another. He changed directions and came to another crossroads. He doubled back, and tried a third direction, meaning to run to the cavern wall, but only ended up at more crossroads, each time seeing the ceiling in the same place and the structures at all sides of him the same.
Hjorvarth bent to his knees to catch his breath.
The three doors he could see swung closed.
He sucked in air as he straightened. He felt hungry and exhausted, cold despite overwhelming heat. “Eleven Elders watch over me in this unholy place. I will brook no trickery of the spirit or the mind. I am a man of the gods. There are no ghosts in this world, only memories that haunt our minds,” he assured himself. “Muradoon rend the divide, and free me of disillusion.”
“Odd words from a spirited man,” came an ancient voice in a language that he did not understand.
Hjorvarth turned. “You are not real.”
A man both broad and short stood in the doorway, armoured in shining steel, gauntleted hand clasped on a masterwork silver axe. “Why do you speak as a goblin?”
“Goblin?” Hjorvarth asked, knowing that one word. “I need to find my companion.”
He left the armoured man behind only to find him standing in the doorway at the next crossroads.
“Keep going,” the stranger suggested. “You’ll surely not succumb to insanity.”
***
Engli crept through the shadowed streets, keeping his tall torch high and ahead of him. Stone walls took to a dull sheen and decorative metal gleamed as darkness melted under the firelight.
Engli felt he was being watched, or followed, no matter how many recesses he searched. He would check behind him often enough, seeing no one, and still feel a presence at his back. He knew, as well, that he had walked long enough to find the plaza, but had seen nothing beyond endless rows of silent houses. There were no doubt dead families in each. A whole city under their feet that everyone had forgotten in Tymir. He considered going in and taking something with him, as proof, but didn’t want to disrespect the fallen by stealing. He wondered if all those he cared about would soon suffer this same fate.
Silence reigned on all sides, broken only by his shallow breaths and timid tread. He felt nervous, but more than that he worried he had turned mad, or that this was all an illusion, so he slowed to a stop, shifted his weight, and hurled the torch off into the darkness.
Silver clanged against stone and the shaft rolled until it stopped amid an abandoned crossroads.
Engli laughed in relief. He would have charged forward were it not for the blue-dressed woman ahead of him. Her hair had been darkened by blood and plastered to her pallid face. Her nose appeared twisted and broken, her cheek scabbed and bruised. “Sybille…?”
“Engli?” Sybille swayed where she stood. “Where’s Grettir?”
Engli could only shake his head. “I’ve gone mad,” he muttered. “But I’m not going to fall for a trick so simple as this!”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“The gods are watching,” intoned a gruff voice from behind.
Engli’s blood froze even though he recognised the speaker. He gripped his axe as he turned, expecting to see the hirsute man who had taught him how to fight.
Grettir’s skull had caved inward. Reddened flesh curled with smoke, blackening, as if burnt by unseen flames. He reached out. “They watched me fall.”
***
The Salt Sage had been forced to his knees, hands behind his back bonded by bone manacles. He had been placed in a cage, also wrought of bone, which stood amid the raised platform of an octagonal amphitheater, wrought from grey stone, with seven tiered benches beginning on the floor above.
Darkness wreathed the ground floor’s tall walls. Dozens of well-dressed corpses watched from the public benches.
The Salt Sage only had view of the royal balcony ahead of him, where a regal man in blue-and-red dress stared down at him, his decayed elbows leaning heavy on the stone balustrade. “This all seems quite unneeded!”
“I would agree,” the King replied with disinterest, shifting his elbows and straightening. He stood squat and short, as did all his people. “Yet I’ve no time nor desire question the sense or actions of a man who forces his way into the realms of death only to then wish to take his leave.”
“I wish to speak with your master,” the Sage said. “This is not a thing you would understand.”
“He has heard you. All said here has reached his ears. And I have given you your judgement. A thousand years you will sit in that cage for violating this place, and then your punishment will be revisited.”
“What of my companions?”
“What of them?” He turned away from the balcony, tattered cloak draping behind him as he made his way to an blood-stained throne of gold and gemstones. “They should have died from the fall, and now they will stay here until the want of thirst remedies this incongruity.”
He regarded a diminutive black-clad man beside his throne. The scribe sat on crossed legs and all around him lay a scattered sea of tattered paper.
“Scribe.” The King raked finger bones against a flaking cheek. “Record—”
“I would speak with your master!” the Sage demanded. “I will not allow this!”
“Allow?” he shouted. “This is my domain! And if you believe that the master is afraid of you—” He paused, then strode towards the end of the balcony. “He has given an answer. He says, I am not who you think I am.”
“Who else would you be?” the Sage snapped.
“He says, existence does not revolve around your family. He asks, why are you in the Quiet Isles? He asks, why do you wish to begin a new war with the Small King? He asks, how did you allow yourself to be so easily tricked? He adds, I took great pleasure in the horror on your face when you stepped through the gate.”
“I am here to save Tymir.”
A chorus of chuckling began from the watchers of the tiered benches. “By my own guess,” said all of those gathered in an eerie and reverberative unison, “you are late. The prospected dead rise ever higher.”
“I was delay—”
“Yes,” the gathered dead agreed. “Dominic of the Karlish Empire caught you on the open sea. All hands lost. It would appear you are making a habit of being caught unawares. Gone from a long swim to a long fall.”
“You destroyed the path?”
“No,” came the emphatic refusal. “Otherworld wizards meddling in my affairs.”
The spectators shared a sigh. “There are too many conflicts. Conflicts within conflicts. Shadow wars, webs woven over webs. I thought I drove them away before they achieved their goals… how was I supposed to know they came only to break a path that is never even used.”
“So set me free, and I’ll be on my way!”
“To what end?” asked the crowd. “Events precede more clearly without your meddling.”
“Because I wish nothing more than to leave this world. So if you want to be rid of me, then let me out of this cage. I am soon to return home. I swear that to you, and I swear, as well, that if you do not set me free then I will—”
“What?” asked the King alone. “I shudder to think, and so your sentence must be extended to eternity.”
“My threat was ill-judged,” the Sage assured lightly. “Let me make a bargain!”
“I am afraid a bargain has already been made,” came the collective answer. “The Otherworld wizards are here for you. I know not where you came from, Interloper, but you have made for yourself very powerful enemies.”
“If Tymir falls the Karlish Empire will conquer this world. They will advance, they will cure death! And without me, Dominic will remain here. He will find you, and he will kill you. He will not rest until he has found me.”
Humour less laughter sounded out in response. “And now you make threats on behalf of other men.”
“Surely you of all people should want war?” the Sage shouted.
“War is bad for business. The more men die the less men are born. My game is the longest of all.”
“So you would cast aside the last region that truly worships you?”
“Those barbarians worship a false name and their own likeness. In the end all men must kneel at the altar of death.”
Ahead of the Sage, a small stone door shuddered as if struck, then swung soundlessly inward. The flame of a silver-wrought torch bayed back the darkness now a huge man strode forward with a masterwork axe in his hand.
The Salt Sage grabbed at bone bars. “Break the cage, Hjorvarth!”
A golden chandelier, hung with lanterns, flickered to life at the top of the eight-sided hall. Golden luminescence flooded into the darkness, revealing the healthy faces of fanciful spectators. “Halt!” ordered the well-garbed King in a regal tone. He had a full black beard and bright blue eyes. He waved towards the ceiling. “If you step further, your companion will die.”
Engli slept above, dangling from a rope wrapped around his feet and the chandelier.
“That is an illusion, Hjorvarth!” the Sage shouted. “Set me loose and we will find Engli. Hack through the bone!”
“You have broken into our realm!” the King decried. The spectators murmured and gasped in shock or horror. “You have attacked one of our guardians, and violated a place most sacred.” He smiled a benevolent smile. “Yet I believe you have been led here by mistake. By this man, here, whom we have rightly imprisoned for his trickery. So if you agree to leave him in our care, then I will allow you and your friend to leave in peace.”
“You are a ghost,” Hjorvarth shouted as accusation. “Your promises have no worth.”
“Would that not put us on equal footing with the robed man, then?” The King chuckled. “In this realm it is you who is the ghost, Hjorvarth, son of Isleif. By happenstance alone did you force your way in here. You will never escape without my blessing. This is my realm, and I rule here. Do you truly wish to die for this man? Do you truly wish for your friend to die for his sake, as well?”
“Hjorvarth,” voiced the spectators in somber unison. “You are in one of the spirit realms. You should have died from your fall, but the man with you has manipulated your arrival so that you are still living. This is a defilement beyond measure, and so I cannot let him go. But if you so wish it, I will send you from here. You will wake the day you visited Timilir, before the duels at Jarl Thrand’s estate. The sons of Gudmund will live again. You can take more caution on the Snake Basin Path. All the wrongs you have committed will be righted.”
“And who would make such lofty promises?” Hjorvarth asked. “Do you—”
“I am known to your people as Muradoon the Spirit Talker. It is not a small thing to usher your spirit back in time, but it can be done. And it would be no less difficult to have you wake before you entered the caverns, or on any other day. So I would leave the timing of your return up to you.”
“And what of Engli? What memories would he have of this?”
“None at all,” the voices answered. “As Brolli would have none of his drowning.”
“And does the Sage suffer in your custody?” Hjorvarth pressed, not truly caring of the answer.
“He will not… but the man is a danger to himself and those around him. He will stay here for eternity, for the betterment of all. And that is a thing that cannot be changed, or bent, or broken.”
Hjorvarth swept a hateful gaze across the elevated spectators. “If that is true why would you fear my intervention?”
“I do not fear you,” they answered in chorus. “I only wish to offer you a chance to live the life you deserve.”
Hjorvarth smiled in wry disappointment. “I stand here living the life I deserve. And I may have no doubts at all that you would happily place me in a dream eternal where all wrong in the world is righted—where I am not a fool or a murderer—but I know for fact that that is not my world, or a lie that I can stomach. And I will not allow those in the waking life to suffer atrocities for the sake of my own happy delusions. I trust no ghosts, and I open my own doors.”
The Salt Sage laughed a joyous laugh as the spectators screamed in anguish. Hjorvarth charged forth with the masterwork axe, passing through dozens of illusory soldiers, paying no heed to the ethereal image of his own white-dressed mother, who watched her son, shaking her head in muted and tearful sorrow.
Silver split bone with a crack.
Hjorvarth woke to find himself falling towards darkness.