Page 69 of Demon of the Dead


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Valgrind made a defeated noise and plopped down on his haunches, head hanging in a maudlin show of defeat outside the longhouse.

The hand beneath his boot twitched, and he refocused on the shaman. He ground his foot – “Ahh!” – and rested the tip of the scythe against the man’s throat.

He stilled, breathing in quick flutters, blue eyes frightened, without a trace of their usual timeless authority and mystery.

“Now,” Náli said, “clearly, something isn’t right here. By this point, I suspect it never has been. And you, o Lord of the Great Beyond, are going to tell me exactly what’s been going on my whole miserable life.”

The shaman sent him a pleading look. “My lord” – there was a first – “you must understand – the changes that were made” – what changes? – “were all done in service to the bloodline. To protect the realm!”

Náli pressed in with the scythe tip, until a single pearl of blood appeared. The dead could bleed, then. At least here. “Listen to me closely, whoever you bloody are. I don’t give half a damn about the bloodline, and I’m not all that keen on the realm, either. I want to know why I have to live this way, and if you won’t tell me–”

Valgrind growled, a low and threatening sound more eloquent than anything Náli could have given voice to with words.

The shaman glanced between them…and then sagged like a puppet with cut strings. “All right. Fine. I shall tell you. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Fine. I’m well-warned. Start talking.”

~*~

First, the fire was rebuilt, which took some time, and then the damp wood smoked and spit and filled the longhouse with yet more noxious gray clouds. Then tea was prepared, and poured into two wooden cups. Náli let the heat of his warm his palms, but didn’t sip at it. The shaman bolted one cup down straight away and poured another before he finally settled on the stool opposite and took a long, deep breath. Though his physical features remained unchanged, he seemed to have aged a decade since Náli saw him last. Strained and gaunt. When his gaze lifted to meet Náli’s through the smoke, his eyes had gone that same eerie, timeless blue again; the eyes of a man who had seen too much.

His hands shook on his cup, but his voice was steady. “You must understand: when I speak of ‘the bloodline,’ it’s far older than you have ever imagined. The truth of it is something you might not receive gladly.”

“An upsetting truth is better than never knowing,” Náli said.

“Even if it upsets the balance of all you now know?”

He glanced toward Valgrind, who’d coiled up just outside the open doorway, snoring lightly in the wash of pale sunlight. “I’ve begun to think, lately, that I don’t actually know anything at all.” He met the shaman’s gaze again. “So, yes. It’s better. Even if it’s upsetting.”

The shaman nodded. Took a long sip of tea, eyes closing; then opened them once more, cleared his throat, and began. “It’s fitting that your king is descended of the first wolves – of the Úlfheðnar, the strongest and fiercest of the clans in the Early Days of the North. But the wolf-shirts are not the oldest clan in our history.”

“No, that’s the Dreki clan,” Náli said, impatient. He already knew this. “That’s why it’s Dreki Hörgr, and not Ulf Hörgr.”

“Yes, but what do you know of them save the fact they were the first settlers of the Waste?”

“They…had drakes. They bonded with them. Rode them. Just as Oliver has done, and the Drake lords of the South before him.”

“But where did the drakes come from?”

“I don’t bloody know that. Am I supposed to know when the first leaf unfolded at the dawn of time?” Náli huffed. “Can you not dispose of the questions and just get on with it?”

Unperturbed by his outburst, the shaman said, “There is a cavern beyond the ancestral seat. Up high in the mountain passes, never traversed by the men of the North.”

In an instant, Náli’s aggravation was replaced by a cold lick of fear. He recalled waking in a cold ice cavern, the way sealed by iron bars. The Fangs with their filed teeth, and their arena full of snow-buried dead men. They’d found Valgrind and his mother there. Strange glowing sapphires. And a verse etched in runes on the wall.

“What sort of cavern?” he asked, though he already knew.

“One glistening with ice, its light blue with the breath of a cold-drake.”

Náli swallowed with difficulty, and brought the tea to his lips before he could think better of it. It tasted of sharp mint, to his surprise. One sip cleared his sinuses and tingled across his tongue, so different from his usual soothing lavender blend.

“The first Northmen,” the shaman continued, “were not the clans of history. But there were nomads who, in their treks across the Wastes, found the valley you now call Dreki Hörgr. The herds stopped there, to drink and calf and shelter. And it was there, in their hide dome tents, cooking over open fires, that the Northmen saw great silhouettes in the sky, wheeling like falcons, lashing tails like serpents.”

Náli had lost his impatience, and his taste for interruption. The shaman had entered a sort of trance, gaze faraway, voice grown resonant with the telling.

“They flew high overhead, their calls echoing like screams across the valley, and the people were frightened. Elk were snatched – but the herd stayed put and so then did the Northmen. They began to talk of forming a hunting party. The drakes descended with the sun every night, falling north behind the craggy peaks. They must have a den, the humans reasoned. A place where they rested. An expedition was formed, and the nomads trekked deep up into the mountains; a few were lost to rockslides, and narrow, slippery ledges. But at last, they arrived in an open field amidst the mountaintops. A boneyard strewn with the beasts’ wreckage. From the mouth of the cavern the drakes emerged, snarling and snapping, beating their wings so that clouds of ice and snow blinded the men.

“But then a calm, sweet voice called out, and the drakes receded. They bent their heads and bowed before their mistress, docile as lambs.

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