An Apprentice to Elves by Sarah Monette
The two-leveled room was sparely but comfortably furnished, with dozens of books on shelves that were part of the walls, and thick horsehair cushions in rich tones strewn over benches raised from the very stone of the floor. A low table divided a sitting area from one with hearth and cabinets. There were two great windows, one on each level. They were shaped, she thought, from rock crystal—clear quartz—and they bubbled out smoothly to give a slightly distorted but panoramic view of the dark, light-jeweled city.
Alfgyfa had been careful to watch her feet on the steps rather than the distance to the ground while climbing, railing or no railing, so it was only now that she realized just how high they had come. The overlook was breathtaking but it would be an enormous pain in the rear to discover at the bottom of the steps that one had forgotten something at the top.
This is Osmium’s house, Alfgyfa thought, a little awed by the adulthood that represented. The alfar in general tended toward smaller households of more closely related individuals than men did—more like the little crofts starting to spring up throughout the Northlands now that the troll menace was ended than the great keeps and heallan and their attendant walled towns that had held the winter country for all known history—but the idea of having a private place, a home just for oneself where one was accountable to no one else, struck Alfgyfa as strange and a little bit lonely—and just a little bit attractive.
“Please,” Osmium said. “Sit. Can I offer you refreshment? I have water, or I can make tisane—”
“Water,” Alfgyfa said; the climb had made her thirsty.
Orpiment settled himself. “Tisane, please?”
Alfgyfa sat beside him on the cushioned bench—better for human anatomy than the basket-chairs the svartalfar preferred—and loosened her boot buckles. Her feet remembered to ache as she pulled them free of the leather, so she pressed the soles by turns with the ball of her thumb and watched Osmium.
There was a basin carved or shaped into the stone countertop. Above it, water dripped—fairly quickly—from something very like a stalactite, until the basin was full. From where she was sitting, Alfgyfa could see that it would overflow into a slot in the wall behind it. For now, though, Osmium dipped water into a stone goblet, which she brought to Alfgyfa, her robes swishing across the surface-trade reed mats on the floor. Alfgyfa accepted it gratefully—heavy, damp, smooth—and forced herself to sip the icy water rather than gulping it. The taste—the sharp mineral tang—was so achingly familiar she could not believe she had forgotten about it until this instant.
“The water comes to your house?” she asked.
“It’s called a quill,” Osmium said. “Because the pipe I am allowed as a single adult is the diameter of a raven’s quill.”
Alfgyfa imagined not being obliged to haul water from the communal wells for every purpose and felt even more awed.
Osmium uncovered a patch of stone on the counter that sizzled when she moved a pan of water over it. Steam rose up, meaning that the stone was hot—was always hot, by the cover. Alfgyfa wondered if the stone-shaping somehow gave it this power, or if more water, hot beyond boiling from the deep thermal springs, was piped up to warm it. Either seemed equally amazing. While the pan came up to simmer, Osmium sorted herbs and bits of dried mushroom into two large mugs. By the time she was done, the water was hot, and she portioned it out.
Osmium returned, gave a mug to Orpiment, and hoisted herself on the table edge so she could face her guests. (And Alfgyfa remembered child Osmium’s desire always to climb higher than anybody else.) The edges of her robes swayed as she kicked her feet idly. Together they sipped and sat in silence for a while—a ritual of relaxation, common to men and alfar, before the business began.
Then Osmium raised her head from the steam of the tisane she’d been enjoying. It still wreathed her face and dampened the black hair that hung in curls across her forehead. Beside Alfgyfa, Orpiment shifted.
“So,” Osmium said. “Tell me what help you need.”
And Alfgyfa tried. But the complex of problems—svartalfar, Rheans, Northmen, wolves, politics, traditions, alliances—kept getting away from her. And the more she tried to explain it, the more she realized that she didn’t have a good understanding of the problem at all, let alone any idea of how to fix it.
“Slow down, Alfgyfa,” Osmium said, and she guessed from the wry lift to the corner of her mouth that Osmium was remembering child Alfgyfa, who had never been able to talk fast enough to catch up with the ideas in her head.
“Maybe,” Orpiment said, “it would be better if you just explained the problem—by which I mean, your problem—rather than also trying to think up solutions.”
Alfgyfa looked at him, surprised and relieved. Of course; one reason you asked for help was because you didn’t understand all the options. She said, “Well, Antimony and the other Masters refused to talk to the svartalfar.”
“That seems reasonable to me,” Orpiment said. “When you consider that they drove our foremothers out to die.”
“Not them,” Alfgyfa said. “Their foremothers too.”
Orpiment made a gesture of irritated acquiescence.
Alfgyfa gathered her thoughts together again and said, “My master, Mastersmith Tin, is among the svartalfar at Franangford. She is not like the svartalfar your people remember.”
“What do you mean?” asked Osmium, raising a hand to forestall Orpiment’s half-formed objection.
“She is my father’s friend,” Alfgyfa said. “She has kept me as an apprentice for seven years. She brought the svartalfar to the defense of the Northmen, when the trolls—driven down on us by svartalfar—would have slaughtered my people and ruled the North of the world.”
Osmium tapped long black nails on stone. “Why does she want to talk to Antimony?”
“She…” Alfgyfa struggled with it a moment longer, then shrugged as much of an alfar shrug as she could manage. “This is the part I don’t really understand. I’m not even a journeyman yet—she only tells me what she thinks I ought to know.”
Osmium coughed, and Orpiment started laughing. “Perhaps the svartalfar’s ways are not so different from our own after all,” he said, his eyes gleaming like quartz in the dark folds of his face.
“She’s worried,” Alfgyfa said, because that sounded better than what she sometimes thought was the truth: she’s afraid. “Because the trolls are gone, I think.”
Orpiment and Osmium shared a look, a look Alfgyfa was perfectly familiar with, even if usually it meant her kind are all barbarians, rather than she is almost certainly insane.
Alfgyfa had never seen a troll, knew them only from stories and the scars on her father’s face. But she understood the terror of them that had ruled both her people and the svartalfar for generation after generation—the terror that had ruled the aettrynalfar, too, even though, so far as she knew, no troll had ever found its way to Aettrynheim. She understood why they were having trouble imagining that the trolls being gone could ever be something anyone would worry about.
But she’d also heard Vethulf talk about the wyvern that had nearly killed him when she was two and how their best guess was that it was a sort of horrible analogy to lost livestock. She’d heard all the wolfcarls tallying run-ins with cave bears, and she knew that number was climbing slowly but steadily. And she knew—how could she not?—that good relations between the svartalfar and the Northmen were fragile, like a spark just barely caught among kindling. If nothing was done to nourish it, it would die.
But she felt she must be careful to give no impression of svartalf weakness. That would be a betrayal of Tin, for the aettrynalfar were not allies of the svartalfar, even if they were allies of the Northmen, and the svartalfar had a whole cascading classification system for degrees of enemy, which ranged from destroy without hesitation to trade with profitably but never, ever trust. In seven years of watching Nidavellir’s interactions with the other svartalfhames, Alfgyfa had not been able to teach herself to identify the fine gradations, but she did kn
“Is it a problem for her?” Orpiment asked, archly. As if idly.
Alfgyfa huffed instead of laughing. “Its failure could be. Or rather, if it fails, it will be a problem for us all. Svartalfar and men alike.” She studied her nails. “We are no longer united against the trolls. And there are those in any group who are always spoiling for a fight. Or just out for their own advantage and unable to consider a compromise for the common good.”
It was a weak blow, but it struck home. The aettrynalfar were far less hidebound than the svartalfar, but they were still deeply cautious compared to Alfgyfa’s people. The aettrynalfar would never have discovered the Northmen by exploring, as Brokkolfr and Kari had discovered them. And she suspected, although she had learned enough caution herself not to ask, that the aettrynalfar were still, if not afraid of the Northmen, then nervous about what their volatile neighbors might wake up one morning and decide to do.
She knew the wolfheofodmenn felt much the same way, trying to keep on top of their wolfcarls and the jarl of Franangford and the crofters who kept creeping farther and farther out from the protection of the keep. We are tired of war, Isolfr had said to her, but we are not certain how to do anything else.
“It is true,” Orpiment said, as if he were edging out onto ice of dubious thickness, testing each step before he slid his foot forward, “that there are things that perhaps we could discuss from a perspective, not of alliance, for that I fear is not to be thought of, but of cooperation.”
“Cooperation is better than the alternative,” Alfgyfa said. “I don’t think the svartalfar imagine for a moment that there is any hope of alliance between…” She stumbled over her words: our two peoples was certainly wrong, but your two peoples almost sounded worse. “Between svartalfar and aettrynalfar, but Mastersmith Tin hopes that there is yet the possibility for change.”
Osmium considered Alfgyfa for a long moment, her dark face and bright bead eyes unreadable, then looked at Orpiment. There was a silent discussion that Alfgyfa had no hope of interpreting; then Osmium looked back at her and said, “As you are my friend and you vouch for your master, I will speak to my dama about the possibility of a meeting. But I cannot say what his answer will be.”
“That you speak to him is all I ask,” Alfgyfa said and picked up her cup to hide a sigh of relief.
NINE
When the message came from Viradechtis, by way of Signy, by way of Hreithulfr and then Blarwulf and finally a young wolfcarl whose name Fargrimr couldn’t think of, Fargrimr was in one part saddened, in one part rebellious, and in one part relieved. For sorrow, he would lose his new home as he had lost the old. For relief, he would not be left to defend a sacrificial keep and delay the Rheans in a siege that might last through winter and would surely end in defeat. And for rebellion, he wanted more than anything to kill the Rheans despoiling his home and his lands and his people, and for a few moments considered sending back a refusal as specific as could be managed by wolf-to-wolf relay. Which was, judging by the message passed along to him, not too damned specific.
That message, at least as it came to Fargrimr, was: We are coming but not fast enough. Evacuate.
Later, when he had fallen back to Freyasheall and could consult with Blarwulf and Hreithulfr, they were able to tell him at least a little more, gleaned from several rounds of back-and-forth between Signy and her mother (and Hreithulfr and Isolfr behind them). When the Rheans came (Franangford said), the Freyasthreat, wolves, wolfcarls, and wolfless men, should flee before them rather than choosing to stand and defend the heall; that Randulfr and Ingrun were returning (one hoped with better information); that reinforcements were coming, though not quickly enough to save the heall; and that Viradechtis and Signy would bring the two armies together when the time came for their reunion.
Fargrimr phrased it to himself in words he could give his thanes, trying to leach the bitterness out of them: Let the Rheans have the heall, take as much as you can, destroy what you cannot take. Fall back, regroup, and save yourselves to fight for another day. Help is coming. We are not defeated.
He could even appreciate the wisdom of Franangford’s plan. But it rankled like a deep-festering thorn.
“Great,” Fargrimr muttered to Blarwulf. “We’re the bait.”
“It’s how you hunt wyverns,” Blarwulf said. “One wolf and one man lure the head out, and the rest of the pack attacks the flank. I suppose Rheans are also a sort of snake.”
“True,” said Fargrimr.
So it was from that point that they began their preparations.
Fargrimr hoped that Randulfr would reach them before the Rheans, but he could not rely on it. And so he and the wolfheofodmenn very quietly began sending north the supplies they would not be able to carry with them. Perhaps they would be of use if they could make it to Franangford by mule-pack in time to help supply the army gathering there. They would most certainly not be of any use left here to be appropriated by the Rheans.
For the time being, Fargrimr, Blarwulf, and Hreithulfr did not make it widely known that they would be abandoning Freyasheall. It was always possible that someone in the ranks might see a way to ingratiate himself with a superior force—or just earn a little coin—by selling information. And there were children, the frail, and the old, those who would be dead weight in retreat but who could not be abandoned. Something would have to be done to protect them before the heall and keep as a whole took to the war, and that problem was easier to manage the fewer people there were taking part in the discussion.
Those who were able for travel, if not able for war, went north with the pack mules. The remainder Fargrimr brought down to the shore in a wagon and put on a boat north to Esternholm with three of his most experienced sailors; he stood by, fretting with uselessness, while Freyvithr said a quick, impassioned prayer over them.
Fargrimr, the priest, the teamster, and the teamster’s four men stood on the sandy shore and watched the boat they had helped push into the water move through the twilight out onto the calm summer seas. Before long, the striped square sail billowed up the mast and snapped taut. The boat skipped away, running before the breeze.
The wind was favorable. The moon was full and rising. With any luck, they would be out of the reach of the slower Rhean ships by dawn. With better luck, the Rheans would never even see them.
Fargrimr glanced at Freyvithr. “Do you think we will ever find out the end of that story?”
Freyvithr gave him a wry, understanding smile. “Maybe the gods will see fit to have a skald sing it for us in Valhalla.”
By the time Fargrimr and the others returned to Freyasheall, it was long past midnight, and when Fargrimr walked into the great hall, he found Randulfr and Ingrun waiting by the fire, Signy sprawled companionably beside them. Randulfr was nursing spiced wine. Ingrun’s paws were bound up in pungent liniment and linen. She was fussing with them in preference to the reindeer bone she might have been chewing, and every few seconds Randulfr reached out with a gentle, sock-clad toe and nudged her nose away from her feet.
The teamster had gone with his cart, in order to see to the animals. Freyvithr excused himself with some comment about finding ale, and Fargrimr strode forward to embrace his brother. It was late enough that this, the social center of the wolfheall, was nearly deserted—Freyasheall was a modern-built heall, and men and wolves slept in more private chambers elsewhere—so once they had made their greetings, Fargrimr just dropped down on the bench beside Randulfr and lowered his voice. “Signy passed along her mother’s advice.”
Randulfr nodded and glanced around. “Have you told them yet?”
Fargrimr shook his head. “Better quick and sharp, like any amputation.” He took a steadying breath. “We can’t l
Randulfr gave him a look as comfortless as charity. “I know it.”
* * *
One more long day passed in quiet planning. Then the brief night was spent in hasty but organized packing, and Fargrimr didn’t explain why. It was fine for the wolfcarls of the heall to know the truth, but he could not exactly tell his men that the order to withdraw had been delivered by a wolf some days before being confirmed by Fargrimr’s own wolf-bound brother.
Still, he gave the orders, and the orders were followed. Nothing of use was to be left behind. Nothing alive was to be suffered to remain within the walls of Freyasheall. New, bright, pride-of-the-seacoast wolfheall Freyasheall. Then, when every scrap of food and fodder, every weapon, every living beast was out of the heall, he sent his people and their worldly wealth outside the walls a furlong or so and bade them wait. Some argued. Some went peaceably. In every eye, he thought he saw suspicion and condemnation. Whether it was printed there to be seen or whether he read it there himself, he could not be sure and could not ask.
In the coming of the cool gray dawn, it was Fargrimr himself who poured the oil and kindled the torch. It was Randulfr, though, who set that torch to the oil-soaked thatch of the roof and lit the spark that would burn Freyasheall to the ground.
There was a pause—a sort of momentary hesitation, as if the flames could not believe their luck. And then a roar, and an enormous wash of heat that stung Fargrimr’s face as a wall of fire leapt joyously up the roof and spat and showered sparks, towering over the brothers. Fargrimr gripped Randulfr’s free arm to draw his brother back. But Randulfr paused long enough to cock his right arm and hurl the torch in a great looping arc, tumbling end over end to describe a glaring orange spiral against the misty sky. It guttered and smoked, but still burned as it fell somewhere among the outbuildings, and Fargrimr knew that they, too, would burn pitilessly.