Cleve looked toward Chessa, who was playing with Kiri, tossing her a small leather ball. Laren was speaking with Cayman, Merrik with Varrick’s soldiers who were working on their axes and swords.
Suddenly, with no warning, there was the sound of a great wind. The huge wooden fortress actually shuddered with the force of the wind. There was utter silence amongst the forty-odd men, women, and children in the great hall. No one screamed, no one moved. All stood still as stones, as silent as the immense iron pot suspended from its chains.
Then there was the sound of churning water, so much water twisting and roiling, crashing against rocks and spuming surely hundreds of feet into the air, all that water bulging upward to surge over the fortress, which was surely wrong since the fortress sat high on a promontory.
Varrick rose from his beautifully carved oak chair, its arm posts serpents, but not the sea serpents of the stems of Viking warships. These serpents were like none Cleve had ever seen before. They were magical serpents, knowing serpents who seemed to stare back at the men who beheld them. Varrick stepped up to the raised wooden dais and walked to the huge shuttered windows. He flung them open. Cleve saw that he held some sort of odd-looking wooden stick in his hands, that now he was thrusting it upward, toward the open window. What was that stick? How long had Varrick been holding it?
It was early morning, the sun had been bright one moment, the light mist burned off, yet now, it was black. The light inside the fortress seemed to be sucked out through those shutters into that deep, forbidding blackness. The wind was so powerful that Varrick had to hold onto the clawed post carved into the base of the shutters. Cleve would swear that he saw huge sprays of water rise up before the darkness outside, then heave downward, splashing loudly, spuming outward.
Varrick turned his back to the open shutters and that eerie blackness. He raised his arms. The full sleeves of his black tunic billowed outward. He said, “I have called to Caldon. I must see what has happened. All will be well. Have no fear. Remain within. No one is to venture outside.”
He stepped off the dais, strode to the great front doors, and flung them open. He looked like a man of Cleve’s years, Chessa thought, watching him, certainly not a man twice Cleve’s age, certainly not the man who had fathered Cleve. He looked young and strong and agile as a goat.
Kiri pressed her face against Chessa’s neck, and whispered against her ear, “Varrick is very strange, Papa. What’s a Caldon?”
“Aye,” Chessa said slowly, “very strange. He likes it, Kiri, else he wouldn’t do it. I think Caldon is the name he’s given to the monster that lives in the loch.”
“But it’s morning, Papa. Why is it dark?”
“That,” Chessa said, “is something I can’t explain. Now, sweeting, let’s give your first papa some porridge. Surely all this will cease soon enough. Don’t be frightened.”
“You’re not afraid. Why?”
Chessa was thoughtful. “I’m not sure, but you’re right, sweeting, I’m not. I think it’s all a fine performance, like the ones your aunt Laren gives when she tells us tales of monsters and heroes who become real to us when she weaves her magic. And then her tales are over and the magic with them. It is the same with Varrick.”
“All right,” Kiri said. “I’m hungry again, Papa.”
23
“HOW DID YOUdo it?”
Varrick merely smiled, or at least his lips curled slightly, giving a brief illusion of pleasure. “You should ask your wife. Her father is the most powerful magician I have ever seen or heard of. She knows some of his magic. I can tell this by looking at her, at her eyes—an odd green, her eyes, holding secrets and power. You are lucky, Cleve, for she will protect you from your enemies.”
“If ever she protected me, it would be because she is smart and cunning, not because she cast some curse. Ragnor of York wanted her. William of Normandy wanted her. Now she’s my wife and I just pray that neither man will come to skin my hide, including her father, King Sitric. Now, Lord Varrick, how did you manage that terrifying wind, the utter blackness, and all that thrashing water?”
Varrick picked up that odd-looking stick. Cleve saw up close that it looked more like a carved wooden spear. It wasn’t really a spear, for it was much too short, not more than a foot long. It wasn’t a knife either, for it wasn’t sharpened at its tip. It was wood, but a heavy wood that really didn’t look like wood. There were strange designs on it: circles and squares, in bright reds and blues. “This comes from a Pict chieftain who ruled not farther than a long day’s ride from here, to the east of the loch. I knew it had power, thisburra,for that is what it is called. It comes from the Druids, used for hundreds of years in their ceremonies. It is older than Caldon, older than Thor and Odin-All-Father perhaps. I have studied it for years, learned all its secrets. I let it take my magic and focus it.”
“How did you get it from the chieftain?”
“I killed him and took it. Here, hold it.”
Cleve took theburra.It was heavy on his palm, so heavy that it dragged his arm down with its weight. He couldn’t believe such a small slender piece of wood could be so heavy, yet Varrick had held it easily. He felt something in it, something that made him want to shiver.
“I call it Pagan,” Varrick said. “What do you feel?”
“Nothing, merely that it is heavy, that the man who fashioned it added something to the wood.” He willingly handed theburraback to his father. He never wanted to see or touch the thing again.
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 theburra.
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 theburra.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?”
