An Apprentice to Elves by Sarah Monette
He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be chosen.”
“Well, you certainly won’t if you think like that,” Alfgyfa said, exasperated. “What pup would want a headful of can’t and daren’t and won’t?”
Canute stared at her with a strange dawning look on his face. Belatedly, Alfgyfa wondered: was this flirting, not bullying? Was he trying to flirt with her?
Was he insane?
Anyway, she had bread to score. She turned and headed back inside, but stopped just inside the door and said over her shoulder, “Pick a name. It might just come in handy. You wouldn’t want to be in a hurry and accidentally wind up calling yourself Ulfwulf or something.”
His jaw was still hanging open when she shut the door.
* * *
By the time the council broke, the evening meal was ready—and every single wolf who had originally been in the Quiet Chamber had found his or her way into the kitchens in order to beg for scraps. Even Viradechtis, who wandered in last and flopped down companionably beside Ingrun and Tryggvi. Tryggvi had been exiled from his choice spot beside the fire by the arrival of Mar.
There was always a little wolf fur in the heall food. You learned to eat around it after a while.
After carrying in the roasts and loaves and stew with the help of the thralls, the women brought around the first horns of ale. They then took their places and were served ale in turn. This is what women do, Alfgyfa thought, and tried not to compare it to meals in Tin’s household, because there was no point.
Alfgyfa was seated with Kathlin, Gunnarr, and Kathlin’s three daughters. Esja was only four years younger than Alfgyfa. When not perfecting her skills of huswifery, she preferred horses to all other topics of conversation—so Alfgyfa’s worries about being disdained were thrown away. They had a wonderful time comparing the qualities of Lampblack to those of Esja’s rusty dun mare, Coppergilt. Olrun was mostly engaged in sneaking Kothran bites of food under the table. Jorhildr probably wound up feeding even more to Kothran, but that was because she spent the meal fussing with the food on the plate she shared with her mother, and most of what was meant to go in her mouth wound up on the floor.
The more frightening but also more thrilling part of dinner for Alfgyfa was the opportunity to spend time with her grandfather. She sat and ate bread she’d kneaded herself and let Gunnarr pick and choose the best bits to go on the wooden trencher that she shared with Esja. The food was very different from the food in the alfhame.
Spring onions were much prized, and featured in a salat with soft greens and goat cheese and beets that everyone was careful to divide up so all who wanted it got a share. There were no mushrooms at all—when Alfgyfa asked, Kathlin said that they were more a food for autumn—and enough kinds of game that Alfgyfa could have eaten her fill just by taking a single taste of everything. She’d forgotten how the wolfheall dined: on tithed food given by local jarls in exchange for the wolfcarls’ protection, on the truck gardens and dairy beasts and hens kept by the heallwomen, and on the game the wolves brought down.
There was hare and coney; venison from elk, reindeer, and red deer; bear; and even the last of the previous year’s potted seal, traded up from the coast and not used entirely before winter ended. Brokkolfr and Randulfr liked it, and the wolves ate it as enthusiastically as they ate everything, but nobody else seemed to eat it out of anything except a sense of duty. Maybe they were all sick of dining on it heavily over the long winter, because Alfgyfa found it perfectly palatable—gamey, maybe, but it had been poached in its own fat until it was as rich and soft as duck.
There were piles of berries and clotted cream as well, and butter and cheese for the bread, and horns of ale until Alfgyfa had to turn them away lest the heall start spinning. And with Gunnarr quizzing her about everything from her apprenticeship to her marriage prospects (no, thank you, but she hoped she hid her horror at the idea), she felt that she needed to keep her wits about her.
Alfgyfa’s family, except her father, were seated at the foot of the high table, and Gunnarr held the central place of honor. Isolfr was seated at the top of the table with the rest of the wolfheofodmenn—all the way on the other end of the heall and so out of earshot and no refuge, though he smiled encouragingly down at Alfgyfa every time he caught her looking at him. But after the first few minutes, Alfgyfa was unexpectedly not uncomfortable. And quite honestly having a challenging time reconciling her father’s tales of Gunnarr as a distant and threatening figure with the courtesy and attention he was lavishing on her.
It made her feel disloyal, which she did not like.
She tried to remain on her guard. But Gunnarr seemed truly excited to meet her, and his enthusiasm was contagious. And here was the konungur of all the Northlands, obviously working very hard to get to know her, Mastersmith Tin’s strange apprentice, and she couldn’t help but be flattered and pleased. She couldn’t help but respond.
He was full of interested questions about her smithing—she was doubly wary there, but he didn’t seem disapproving at all—and the svartalfar, and every detail of her life and apprenticeship. She didn’t know how to tell him she had no intention of getting married, but thankfully, Kathlin caught Alfgyfa’s eye and chose that moment to bring the conversation around to the problem of diplomacy.
Kathlin set her bone-handled knife aside—the carbuncle in the hilt winked in the light that filtered in under the eaves and what came from the whale-oil lanterns that hung from the rafters. She accepted a horn from one of the servers, but rather than drinking, she cradled it in both hands and frowned thoughtfully at Alfgyfa for a long moment before saying, “So, niece. What are your plans with regard to the aettrynalfar and getting them to reconsider a diplomatic mission from the svartalfar?”
Alfgyfa glanced quickly over to make sure that none of the svartalfar was within earshot. Tin was at the head of the table by Isolfr, and the rest were seated in a group across the long fire pit—Alfgyfa surprised herself by feeling a pang of loneliness as she caught sight of Pearl and Idocrase bent together, dissecting some small creature in their dinner with obvious scientific curiosity. Master Galfenol sipped her wine and seemed to dream into the fire.
Even with their ears, they’d be hard put to pick out her words from across the raucous wolfheall. Girasol was the only one she might have worried about, but he was under the next table over, wrestling with painfully patient Amma while carrying on some complicated conversation with her in a language he might have made up on the spot. He wasn’t listening.
She lowered her voice anyway and said, “I am not aiming so high as that.”
Gunnarr nodded, suddenly focused. She wondered if he’d put Kathlin up to asking. “Then what do you hope to accomplish?”
“I made friends when I was a child, and alfar are loyal. They will remember me and welcome me, and I think they will listen. My hope is to persuade them to persuade their masters—not to change their minds, because the alfar do not do that, but to reconsider the premises of their initial refusal.” Long years of listening to the arguments of the Smiths and Mothers had taught her the framing and circumlocutions that allowed the opposing party to agree without losing face—vitally necessary in all arguments among the svartalfar, for otherwise both sides refused to budge, and the disagreement festered and grew until it became a feud.
Alfgyfa had never experienced a feud among the svartalfar, but she had heard the stories.
“Conditions,” Gunnarr said.
“Yes.”
Gunnarr’s smile was tight, but not cruel. Merely understanding. Expedient. “Conditions you don’t think the svartalfar will like.”
“I know the svartalfar won’t like them,” Alfgyfa said. “But they may be willing to accept them.”
Gunnarr placed the tiny legs of a quail on her trencher, one for her and one for Esja.
“I am so full, Grandfather—” Alfgyfa said. Esja was already nibbling on the crisped skin of her piece.
“Look how small that is,” he replied, demonstrat
Would you know more? Alfgyfa thought—the skald’s chant—and her eyes sought Skjaldwulf. He was bent over in joyous argument with Vethulf, gray-shot locks straggling from the tail into which he’d carelessly bound back his hair.
She looked back at Gunnarr. “There was a quarrel, many of our generations ago, and even several of theirs. The aettrynalfar still hold a grudge. As do the svartalfar. And thus they will not treat with each other.”
“What were the grounds of this quarrel?” Gunnarr asked, eyes bright. He was a jarl of the Northlands. He understood quarrels.
“A particular way of working stone,” Alfgyfa said carefully, because she wasn’t fool enough to drop the word troll into a crowded heall, especially with wolves everywhere to pick the idea up and carry it farther. “I do not see any harm in it in truth, but the svartalfar consider it unclean. And it was more than that. The aettrynalfar rejected many of the traditions of their foremothers”—and she could not explain to Gunnarr what an unforgivable crime that was—“and it came to the point that the svartalfar exiled them.” She couldn’t explain that to Gunnarr either, that Nidavellir was more than a thousand years old, that the svartalfar put down roots like the mountains they lived under.
“You say the svartalfar found this way of working stone unclean,” Gunnarr said, aiming unerringly for the one point Alfgyfa wished least to discuss. “One works stone with a hammer and chisel. I can’t think of a way for that to be clean, unclean, or anything else.”
“The alfar work magic into stone as they do into metal,” Alfgyfa said. “The way the aettrynalfar do it is not the same as the svartalfar way, which has been handed down from mother to daughter for too many generations to count. I see no harm in the aettrynalfar way, but I cannot tell you more.” It was a bitter thing to admit. The need to know how the stone-sculpting worked, what it might show her about metal-working, fretted at her.
“And which side, granddaughter, do you judge right in this ancient quarrel?” He roared with laughter at the look she gave him. “I will not hold you to your answer.”
She lowered her voice as far as she could and still have him hear her. “If they came asking for my support, I would choose the aettrynalfar.”
“Your childhood friends over your teachers?” Gunnarr said.
“Curiosity over tradition,” she snapped before she could catch herself.
“Hah!” His bark of laughter turned heads all around them, but when others looked at them curiously, he did Alfgyfa the service of merely shaking his head and saying, “My granddaughter scored a point,” without indicating which granddaughter or what that point might have been.
Alfgyfa hoped the dim light hid the rising heat in her face. She busied herself with the quail’s leg—which was, in fact, delicious—and Gunnarr asked Esja a question about Coppergilt.
The food was cleared away some little while later and boards brought around for hnefatafl. Gunnarr invited her to play, but she said, “I would prefer to watch, my lord.”
She barely knew the rules; the svartalfar did not play, although they had games of their own. But she watched as Vethulf wandered over to play with the konungur and a board was set up between them.
It had eleven squares to a side, making a board of 121 spaces. In the center squares were set the twelve red men surrounding their hnefi—“fist”—the bearded king piece occupying his castle. At the edges of the board—but not in the corners—were set the twenty-four white pieces, the attackers. The board was walnut, Alfgyfa thought—probably the heall’s best, brought out to honor the konungur. The pieces were carved whalebone, either bleached or rubbed with ochre for their color.
Pieces moved along the ranks in either direction, and play began with the attacker, whose goal was to keep the hnefi from “escaping” their siege by reaching any of the four corner positions. Captures were made by flanking the enemy’s foot soldiers, and the attacker could win by surrounding the hnefi in all four directions.
Alfgyfa would have been hard-pressed not to think of Siglufjordhur as she watched her grandfather choose red.
“If only the rules were so simple,” she said to Kathlin, leaning over. If only there were things that they could know the Rheans would not do.
“Indeed,” Kathlin agreed, still cradling her horn of ale. “The game must be fair. War makes no such promise.”
EIGHT
In the morning, Randulfr took up the pack Otter had prepared for him, and he and Ingrun began their run south. Randulfr and Ingrun alone could cover the ground much more quickly than any larger group. A wolf and a man traveling together need carry little beyond a bow and arrows, firestarters, water skin, and suitable clothes. Perhaps some dried fruit for the man to chew as he ran. He didn’t even carry maps or written instructions of any sort. But in Randulfr’s memory—safely stowed—was more detailed news of troop strength, logistics, and strategy to deliver to Fargrimr. Viradechtis had already reached to tell her daughter Signy to remain at Freyasheall only so long as it was not in danger of being besieged.
Gunnarr Konungur’s plan for the Freyasthreat and Fargrimr and his men was for them to fall back in advance of the Rheans, to act as scouts, and perhaps—if practical—to lead the Rheans in the directions where they could do the least damage. That way, when the Northmen had assembled their army and were ready to move, Signy would be able to tell Viradechtis where the Rheans were and perhaps even give an idea of their strength with good confidence. The army could save ground and time on maneuvers. They hoped.
Alfgyfa was among those who saw Randulfr off. She then picked up her own, smaller bag for a much more local sort of journey.
Viradechtis insisted on escorting Alfgyfa to the entrance to the aettrynalfar warrens, but would go no farther. It was as unprepossessing a hole in the ground as Alfgyfa had ever seen, muddy and narrow, and she was nervous enough that she had half a mind to follow the konigenwolf on a run through the woods instead. But this was her duty, and she had volunteered herself for it.
She had invented it. To back down would be worse than craven.
The hole had not seemed so tight and dirty and dark when last she came here. She clearly remembered how she used to dash in and out of the caverns as if through the front door of the heall itself. Now, as she hunkered down and put her hands on her knees, peering into the darkness, she couldn’t make that freedom reconcile with what she saw.
Slippery leaves covered the stone at the cavern’s edge. To the uninformed eye, it would seem just a rock-floored, triangular gap between the roots of a great oak. A brown toad hopped away from her as she sat down and slid on her behind into the cavern, skidding down slanted rough stone for perhaps twice her own height. Within ten paces of the entrance, it was black as a clouded night—black as a cavern, she thought, amused at herself—and she had not brought a torch or a lantern.
But this was not her first adventure in the dark, and she had even thought before leaving Nidavellir that she might come here and see Osmium and the others while she was home. And although she’d apparently been remembering it wrong, she had remembered that these caverns were still wild, unlike Nidavellir and even the remains of the troll warren. So she had asked Tin for the silver to forge chains and bails, and for the teardrop stones she’d imagined braiding into her hair. She’d supplemented the rubies in her chain hairnet with stonestars, which didn’t give a strong light, but certainly gave enough that she could see what she was doing. They wouldn’t go out, either, which put them at a big advantage over torches or lanterns.
They also made her visible from a long way away, but she wanted the aettrynalfar to see her coming.
In other circumstances, she’d find the chain either embarrassing or dangerous (not what you wear on a midnight run through the woods with the wild trellwolves, for instance), and when they got back to Nidavellir, she’d probably melt
She located the low, flat opening she sought—only so high as the span of her arm from elbow to fingertip, but several body lengths wide—and dropped to all fours and crawled under the overhanging ledge that protected it. Here, she found the smoothed stone where bellies had rubbed, and lay down to wriggle into the dark beyond. It was more like swimming than crawling, pushing herself along on elbows and knees. She kept her head low, cautious of the roof.
The rock was warm, and a soft summery breeze drifted past. It might have led her to believe that she was crawling out rather than in—it was easy to get disoriented in the dark—but beyond the twinkle of the stonestars all was still and black.
And it was tight. Fearsomely tight, even for someone who was used to a world built for people half her size. She was not thinking the word “stuck,” but she couldn’t quite keep the echoes of it away as she wiggled and pushed and just barely didn’t scrape her ribs up the sides of the passage.
Brokkolfr and Kari had come through here, she reminded herself firmly, and even if Kari was slighter than she had grown, Brokkolfr was heavy-boned and strong. Even a smith’s muscle wouldn’t make her broader than him.
The scrape of her trousers and tunic on stone echoed in the empty limited spaces around her until it became like the rustle of an endless forest. She struggled on a few more heartbeats, the breath of the cave moist and warm in her face. Then space opened around her. The roof lifted away, and she planted her hands, raised her shoulders, and dragged the rest of her through the narrowest place into a cavern big enough that her lights were lost in it.
Bats overhead, sleeping away the long hours of summer daylight, stirred and settled. She cracked her back, arched this way and that to stretch, and exhaled deep relief, then started looking for the first of the markers. The aettrynalfar had no wish to make it too easy for men to visit, but they had bowed to necessity and trade and their desire for the taste of fresh-pressed cider enough to set out a series of elegantly stone-wrought pillars to guide surface dwellers into their warrens, rather than letting them wander into the potentially deadly maze of limestone awaiting those who took a wrong turn.