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Prologue
Finnmark, 1350
On the third day, it started to rain blood. At least, that’s what it looked like to Ivar Skarde as he surveyed the sky from inside the cave. A brilliant red sunrise lit up the clouds to the east, saturating the horizon, just as rain began to fall. Each shimmering droplet reflected the sunrise in such an otherworldly way that it could have been beautiful if Skarde had been in the mood to see things as such.
But he wasn’t. The plague was spreading north throughout Norway, and it was only a matter of time before it would reach him too, in the desolate, cold and blurry border between his home country and the Kingdom of Sweden. Though the Sámi people he had been living with didn’t rely on the grains in which the disease spread (of course, at the time they had no idea it was caused by rats which would often feed on the grains), Skarde didn’t feel safe. Death taunted him at every corner. He wouldn’t rest until he could somehow be free from the threat of death forever, whether it came from the plague or something else.
Skarde used to be a warrior for King Magnus VII. A formidable one. Death was present at every battle as the king levied his crusade against Novgorod, and it was one that Skarde would always conquer, without fear, even as many of his comrades succumbed to it in violent ways. But that all changed when he almost lost his life, an errant sword during the battle of Orekhov. As Skarde lay there bleeding outside the fortress, snow falling on him like tears, he lost consciousness. Became one with the dark. And there he saw things so horrible, that when he woke up in the infirmary, he had a new appreciation for death, one born out of fear. Fear that when he died, he would be sucked into the black hole, the endless void, of pain and suffering for all eternity.
It took ages for him to heal back in Norway, and when he finally did, the black plague was spreading throughout Oslo. Skarde took the opportunity to leave, to head north, up and up and up, hoping to leave all the death behind him, the death he felt was coming for him, like it had lost its chance and wanted a rematch.
Eventually, Skarde heard things on his travels up north. That many of the Sámi people hadn’t converted to Christianity, that some of them were shamans, that the mystical legends of the frozen north were true.
That there were things you could do to cheat death—forever.
So Skarde went to them. The Sámi people were not a monolith and their religious practices, even language, differed between regions and tribes, and many were distrustful of a former soldier for the king, especially since monarchies had tried to wipe out their ways. But eventually he found one tribe that took him in. This tribe lived in the low mountains, keeping a small herd of reindeer for food, clothing and transportation. They also practiced animism, their own form of witchcraft, and harbored a supposed connection to the underworld.
Seppo was the leader of the group. Though Skarde didn’t speak their language, Seppo seemed to understand what Skarde wanted. But Seppo wouldn’t give it to Skarde so easily, not something so heavy, that came with such a price. Skarde ended up living in a cave by himself, set apart from the tribe, for a year before Seppo deemed Skarde ready. In that time, Skarde had picked up on the Northern Sámi dialect that the tribe spoke, allowing him to converse with Seppo, who told him the following: A noaidi, a mediator between the human world and the saivo, the underworld, would come for him one day and take him on a journey. This would happen after three things happened on three days:
The first day there would be a small earthquake, a sign that the underworld was waking up.
The second day lightning would strike the ground, as Tiermes, the God of Thunder and protector of humans, would try and warn Skarde, or anyone foolish enough to go against the laws of the world, that they were making a mistake.
The third day, the sky would rain blood, signifying the sorrow and pain that was to come.
This was the third day, rain against a red sky. Yesterday there was a lightning storm that struck a pine tree in the distance, blasting all the branches off of it until all that was left was a charred pole. The day before that, the earth shook for a minute. At first Skarde was convinced it was just a reindeer herd stampeding nearby, but after the lighting and the blood rain, he knew that his time had come.
He stared at the rain falling for a moment, that blazing red sunrise permeating the crisp white snow, making it look blood stained, then he turned around to get his fur hat and coat, preparing for the journey.
