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Varrick called out, “Chessa, please come here. I have something for you to see.”
Chessa, who was speaking with Laren, looked up, saw that Cleve was seated perfectly still, and walked quickly to Varrick. “Aye, my lord?”
“Here,” he said simply, and handed her the burra.
Chessa cocked her head to one side as she accepted the strange looking spear that wasn’t at all a spear. It looked to be naught more than a simple stick of wood with strange markings on it. Suddenly she gasped and tossed the wooden piece into the air, then caught it again with three fingers. It was very light. Strange, because it looked heavy, but it wasn’t. “It’s very hot,” she said, and tossed it back and forth from her right to her left hand, as if it were naught but a feather. “Very hot indeed and it weighs nothing. Why is that? It looks heavy, as if I wouldn’t be able to lift it, but it isn’t.”
“Look at the markings on it, Chessa.”
Suddenly the wood was different. She dropped it to the earthen floor. “I’m sorry, but it became so very cold, painfully so. I couldn’t hold it.” She frowned at Varrick, then leaned down and touched the burra. It felt warm to the touch, not hot or frigidly cold. She picked it up again and studied the circles and squares on it. “It’s very old,” she said. “I feel that it’s older than this promontory upon which this fortress rests.” She frowned in confusion at her husband. “Cleve, this is very strange. I touch these circles and these squares and my fingers seem to sink down into the wood, yet they don’t, not really. But I can feel how very deeply they’re carved, and you know, it’s not like they’re really carved at all, for they’re smooth and deep and there doesn’t seemed to be an end to them.” Then she was silent, looking down at her fingers as they traced each pattern very slowly. Suddenly she turned white, her eyes wide and deep with fright. Cleve jumped to his feet and grabbed that damned heathen stick from her hands. He tossed it to Varrick. It was difficult, for it was so very heavy. Then he took Chessa in his arms. “It’s all right, Chessa. What happened? Can you tell me?”
Her face was against his shoulder. She said, “I saw my mother, Naphta. I saw her as clearly as if she were here, standing before me. She was so real, Cleve, and then she smiled at me, and I knew I was very small, no more than a babe. She was so very real, Cleve, so very real.”
Cleve felt his flesh grow cold, felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He didn’t like this—not the damned darkness, black and impenetrable in the morning, the raging wind that had shaken the fortress, or the roiling waters that had seemed nearly alive, wanting to engulf the fortress and swallow all within. He didn’t like this burra that had touched something strange in Chessa. He suddenly very much wanted to leave.
But he couldn’t. This was where he belonged. Kinloch was his birthright. But he didn’t like this, any of it. To soothe Chessa he said, “You are your father’s daughter. He is a wizard. It’s natural that you would have some affinity for things old and sacred. It’s not important, Chessa. Now, I would like for us to fetch Kiri and see the land. I have memories and I would like to see if they are anything now as they were for the small boy.”
Varrick said nothing. He gently placed the burra in a lined scabbard, then tied it to his waist with a strap of leather that was also painted with red and blue circles and squares. It looked as old as the burra. It was leather and it was still strong, no hint of fraying or decay to be seen. It made no sense. Cleve hated things that made no sense. Men were helpless enough as it was, but with this, all this unexplained magic, this confusion of senses, the fact that the damned burra weighed no more than a feather to both Varrick and Chessa. “I will have your brother Athol show you the land, Cleve. The boy knows every glen and hillock. He will take care. There have been few attacks by the Picts or the Britons. The Scots are the ferocious ones but they usually don’t bother us. We must always be on guard against the outlaws and the thieves, homeless men who roam the land and steal and murder. The Scot king, Constantine, encourages them, at least against us. We fight back, naturally. My men are ferocious warriors. They show no mercy. You must have at least a dozen men with you if you ride south. I am pleased that you want to learn all about what will be yours one day when I am dead.”
Varrick gave them horses to ride. Cleve had ridden a pony before he’d been taken from Kinloch and then learned to ride again only after he’d come to Malverne. He was comfortable enough astride the raw-boned bay stallion, but he would have preferred to walk, something he couldn’t do, for Kinloch lands stretched far to the west and to the south. Chessa was at her ease on a mare with white stockings who kept tossing her head, making Kiri laugh. Laren rode well and she looked thoughtful. As for Merrik and the other Malverne men, they looked uncomfortable. They looked wary, as if they expected demons to rise from the dark waters of Loch Ness and attack them.
Several of Varrick’s men, all of them with their faces painted with blue lines and circles, garbed in bearskins, rode at their rear, eyes alert. Varrick had told him they were Pict warriors and owed their loyalty to him. Their leader, Igmal, as evil looking as the Christian’s devil, had very white teeth, a blue-painted face, and a ready smile. Kiri ordered him about and he would smile that evil-looking smile and throw her into the air. Such a contrast, Cleve thought. Silence within the fortress and at least a bit of an occasional smile without, smiles that Kiri brought, no one else. He wondered if Kiri would lose her smiles soon enough living here. He wouldn’t allow that.
Chessa pulled her mare close to Cleve’s, saying, “Look at the mist coming toward us, like a tide, and you know it won’t stop until there is naught but chill and gray and no sunlight. This place is savage and as pure as the sweetest music, but it is summer and this mist will take getting used to. Ah, but the green, such a deep pure green, just like in Ireland, where it rained all the time as well.”
“It isn’t Norway,” Cleve said. “Do you find it beautiful, Chessa? Truly? Can you make your home here?”
“Aye, I find it splendidly untamed, yet the sheep and the cows graze so peacefully, and the birds, Cleve, there are so many birds. Mirana would be blissful were she here, so many birds. I can’t begin to identify them all and I’m trying so I can tell her all about them. Aye, Scotland is a perfect place. And why shouldn’t it be? It is our home now.” She paused a moment, then added, “Cayman won’t say anything to me. Neither will Argana or her three sons. They don’t treat me badly, but I know they don’t want me here. None of the women will speak of anything but cooking and weaving and dyeing. Nothing at all. All fear Varrick.”
“You don’t.”
“Nay, but then again, there is my father, the greatest magician the world has ever known. It would be cowardly of me to fear him.”
“Tell me the truth, Chessa. Is your father really a magician? Did he really renew King Sitric? Did he really then just disappear leaving you to be raised by the king?”
“I would have told you,” she said, turning to smile at him. “I just didn’t think of it. So much has happened since we’ve come together. Too, I’ve been silent for so very long. Merrik and Rorik know, of course, and all the people of Hawkfell Island and Malverne. King Sitric is my father. He is also the magician, Hormuze. He killed the old king and then became the king himself. My father’s only magic is his brain. He understands people, understands what makes them do what they do. There’s nothing more to it save that he wanted to wed Mirana. She looked very much like my mother, you see. But since she was already wedded to Rorik, my father had to settle fo
r Sira. Unfortunately, she pleases him greatly. Four sons, yet she hated me for no reason save, naturally, that I hated her.”
“I remember thinking that you and Mirana looked alike, not really your features, but when you and she both smiled and nodded, you know, with your head to the side? I’ve been a fool.”
“Oh, no. It’s just that no one ever speaks of it. It will remain a miracle wrought by the powerful magician Hormuze. That Varrick believes him great makes me want to giggle. Your father amuses me, but he is dangerous, never forget that.” She touched her hand to his sleeve, saying again, “Never forget he is dangerous.”
“No, I shan’t, but you mean more than just danger, don’t you?”
“Aye, but I can’t really explain it.”
“Think of that burra, Chessa. When I held it I felt only that it was heavier than it should be. I could barely pick it up it was so heavy. When you held it, it was as light as a mote of dust. And the heat and cold. Surely that’s magic of a sort. My father was pleased that you reacted to it the way you did. It was light for him as well. There is something there, as much as I hate to admit it.”
She was frowning, looking out over the loch, at the smooth water, darker now beneath the blanketing soft mist, so very gray and fine that there were patches of blue sky that shone through it. But it would keep coming until there was naught but the soft blurry gray and it would become colder, this summer mist that lived in this land. There were several small boats with men aboard fishing. They were very close to shore as if the men feared going out beyond the shallows. She shivered, pulling her woolen cloak more closely. “How did it work? Was I just thinking of my mother and my brain brought her forth? Since my father isn’t a wizard, then why would the burra be light to me? Why would I see my mother?”
“Like Ragnor of York, I have great respect for your brain, Chessa, but to bring forth your mother? I don’t think so. I think it was something Varrick did—cast some sort of spell. Perhaps he has the ability to look just a bit into your mind and he saw your mother there.”
She shivered and it had nothing to do with the mist that was now swirling lightly around them. It was as if the mist caressed them. It wasn’t wet now or chill, it was there, as light as a lover’s fingers touching them. They were nearing the far south end of Loch Ness. Low hills spread out around them, sheep grazing on them. Buzzards and falcons flew overhead. Gulls dove into the loch. There were barley fields being tended by slaves. There were thick stands of trees. Huge boulders lay in piles as if tossed there by a mighty hand. “Varrick’s lands go on forever,” Cleve said. “He told me that this is called Falcon Ridge, a name he gave it when he called the birds to him and three falcons landed on his outstretched hand to welcome him.”
“They will never be your lands, brother.” It was Athol and he jerked on his stallion’s reins, making the horse rear up on his hind legs. “These are my lands. Go back to Norway. You have become a Viking like those men who come to trade in Inverness. We are different here. We are Vikings, yet we are more, more than you can imagine. You are too ignorant to know anything. You aren’t welcome, despite the words my father now mouths to you. He doesn’t know you even though it was his seed that filled your mother’s womb. Go away, Cleve of Malverne. There’s nothing for you here.”
Cleve studied Athol’s face. Nearly a man, he thought, with passions boiling too close to the surface, too much passion and not enough control. He said, “I wonder whether when you reach your man years you will gain control and perhaps a bit of wisdom. Many men never do. I know you feel displaced. I can’t blame you for that. I am new to you. Like everyone else you believed me dead. But I’m here now and you will have to make the best of it.”
