I know I can’t succumb to that inner darkness. I simplycan’taccept my fate, of how likely it is that I’ll fail facing off with the Black Dragon. And if I accept Baldur right now, thanks tofate, then I accept those odds his sister saw in her visions. And I just don’t, because a warrior can’t live that way.
We would only die.
Baldur is quiet now as we head back inside the house. Bjorn still hasn’t woken; even with Mikkel’s surge, roaring back up into his terrible black Wraith, Bjorn is still out cold, snoring to beat the band.
It leaves Baldur and I in an odd, jilted dance now as I fetch black leggings, boots, and a dark plum camisole with a slouchy sweater from my fly-bag so I can get dressed, and he finally dons a shirt. It makes me sad he feels he needs to cover up now around me; although his covering up is minimal, because he leaves the front of his soft lambswool shirt unbuttoned.
Perhaps it’s better this way, though,I think as he heads out of the main room to what I can see are vast kitchens beyond.
He fetches two big bowls of stew and two pints of ale, then returns. We eat in silence at a carved table of white birch. Sitting on opposite sides of the long trestle table on the benches, we eyeball each other as we eat, and the silence stretches. The meal is good, delicious even; but I can hardly taste it, as ashes fill my mouth at what I’ve done.
At last, we finish, and Baldur cleans up. It leaves me with nothing to do as I quietly check on Bjorn.
Before Baldur returns, looking directly at me at last.
“We should head to my artist’s solar so we don’t wake him with what we do next,” Baldur says, as he nods at Bjorn, then gestures to a room I can just see through an ornately arched doorway at the back of the house.
“What are we doing?” I have to ask, though I genuinely have no clue now, as Baldur leads the way.
“Trying to get that False Knight’s curse out of you, of course.” His smile is wry as he steps to the doorway in question, then motions me in.
I enter—into the most beautiful artist’s studio. Though part of what Baldur does for his clan is act as their island healer, creating tinctures and salves and such for their flesh, it’s clear that most of what he practices is his sigildric shamanic art, as I see paintings devouring every wall and timber now.
They’re haunting, beautiful, done in dawn colors and fantastic whorlslike light, midnight blues giving way to bright dawn skies full of white sigils and gold, and a stunning, electric blue that seems to leap off the canvases.
Those canvases are just everywhere; stacked twenty deep, I can hardly see the walls of the studio at all, as Baldur leads me over to an enormous white birch table in the center of the space, next to a towering easel.
Paint is all over the place; speckled on the floors, spattered across the walls and even the ceiling, drop canvases are coated with luscious, vibrant color, and pots of paint and brushes in various stages of use are everywhere.
Though modern oil paint would smell atrocious, acrid and full of chemicals, the entire solar here is filled with the smell of Baldur—a buttery, rich scent that is still somehow fresh and breezy, cool and calming, all at once.
There’s fire beneath it, for sure, but now that I’m in his studio, I catch hints of wintermint, chamomile, and heal-all. It’s a beautiful, intoxicating scent, aromatic and heady.
It makes my head swim, as I feel like I might just get high in this space and lift off, floating up into the air.
“What’s that smell?” I have to ask now, wondering if it’s Baldur’s own scent or something he puts in his paints.
“Wild Icelandic herbs, crushed natural stone and dragonscale pigments, dragonscale oil. Everything I use to create my paints.” He’s casual now as he turns, shutting the door to the large studio. There’s still natural light from a set of ornate skylights high above in the vaults of the arched timber and sod roof, just like out in the main hall, and the river runs through the center of the space here, beneath the massive white table set in the middle of the room.
Since it’s heading towards evening now, Baldur moves around, turning up old-fashioned oil lamps set into beautiful white stone sconces on the walls.
Creating a warming glow in the lovely, intoxicating space.
“Where do you get dragonscale for your pigments, and scale-oil for your paints?” I ask now, my eyebrows rising as I watch him move around in his studio space. Clearing drying canvases from the large, ornately carved table, he likewise makes a space all around the table on the floor, scooting jars full of paints and brushes away.
“Icelandic dragons recycle our dead.” He glances at me frankly as he finishes clearing up, until the table is clean, as well as the floor all around—as clean as it can be. “We don’t burn them on pyres or send them out to sea aflame, or bury them. We use what can be used, giving great thanks to our dead for their life, and how it will nurture many lives to come. Scales become housing material and decoration, skin becomes clothing or sail cloth. Bone is powdered into medicine or made into ceremonial and household items, and meat is fed to the fish around the island to increase their numbers so we can eat them. Fat is rendered into soaps and lamps, and scale-oil is scraped to become things like oil-based paint. I make all my paints and brushes out of our sacred dead, and resurrect my kin upon these canvases, before I paint them into the skies.”
“You practice on canvas before you truly use your power to paint with your magic into the air, like I saw you do at The Vault,” I say now, understanding.
“Yes. Painting with my power in the way you’ve seen me do is complicated. It takes great forethought, practice, and concentration. All of which I pre-render on canvas. Not to mention, they sell well at my live events, which brings money back to the island for my people.” Baldur looks at me deeply now as he comes to stand beside the table. I move forward to join him, feeling pulled there now by his strong, magnetic presence, despite how I rejected him earlier.
“You have all this skill and talent, yet you live like a wild hermit,” I observe as I come to him now, standing beside him at the table. We’re so close we could touch, but he doesn’t reach out to me.
And, curse me, I don’t reach out to him.
Though I want to.
“I have to.” His dark blue eyes are frank now as he watches me under the waning natural light and the warm glow of the lamps. “To hone and concentrate my power in the way I do requires isolation. I enjoy my people; every few weeks, I emerge to bring medicines to town, and have a meal or do some dancing with my kin. I would not be the powerful drake I am today, however, without everything I have done to isolate myself, concentrate my power, meditate to clear my energy, and funnel my passion like a laser into what I must one day become. I have been restraining and honing myself for ages, Rikyava, centuries… all to be the strongest I could be, for you, when you at last came calling.”
