I moved closer to hear his hushed words.
“Fell’s name.It was I who gave it to him.Before, when he was young—I am not exaggerating when I say he was the most bitter, most brooding child anyone had ever seen.”The king laughed.“It was absurd.People could feel his anger floating near him and avoided him like he had some terrible catching disease.
“I told him, ‘Enough of this; you have mourned.Now it is time to have a life.You are young, enjoy it.’But he refused.He said people hated him, that they chose a longer route to avoid him.They knew him as a child who had done a terrible thing, you see?So, I said to him, I said, ‘No longer will you be Fell, son of Jarle, the tainted, the haunted.You will be Fell Sulertag.’I knew he liked music, but he did not know this yet—he was too deep in his anger to find pleasure in any part of life.He thought me foolish, but slowly, as I introduced him to others, telling a small lie about his childhood—about him always singing and humming—people began to treat him differently.They called him by his new name.They played music around him.They taught him to treat himself differently.He is now, without any doubt, Fell Sulertag.A more perfect name does not exist for him, do you not think?”
My eyes settled on Fell’s sleeping face.
Arik’s voice rang with smug victory.“Do you doubt me still?”
I could think of nothing to say.Of course, Fell had been a miserable child.How could he not have been?Why had I imagined him cheery and careless?Exactly as he was now only small, with a sad mother and an angry father?I felt stupid.
King Arik held his hands open with glee, asking to hold semi-soothed Halvar.The moment my child was back in his arms, the king returned to his lessons in belief.
“You notice things others do not.Your intuition is strong.You always know when someone is lying.Youalwaysknow when someone is lying.You always know.Yes, you do.”
“Behold!”Arik flourished his arms in the direction he wanted us to look.
He’d shouted at everyone in the hall, demanding we all witness something before several raiders brought out a large parchment and began unrolling it on the floor.At first, his enthusiasm was entirely unmatched, but the longer everyone looked at the map, the more people leaned forward, squinting if they had bad eyes or raising their brows if they had good ones.There were hums and ohs and other sounds of intrigue.
“It is beautiful,” I said, shifting Halvar onto my other hip, and approaching, tracing the wild sea-lines with my eyes.It was.Absolutely exquisite.
Arik grinned and wove through those gathered to stand next to me.“The Isle, Gentlewoman.”
When he pointed at the island, I didn’t believe him for many moments.“It is so small.”
The Isle was maybe half the size of the north, honestly, even less.I considered the possibility that the map was false because the Isle was much larger, surely.But then I remembered how detailed Arik’s map of my childhood kepenhad been and felt it unlikely that, if he had information so precise, he would have such an error on a larger scale.All the same…
Impossible.
It was a little splotch in a grand world of blue.A teeny place with one long stretch of land jutting out to where land from across the sea almost came to meet with it, choking the sea.There was also an even smaller island to the west of it that I’d never heard anyone mention ever.A wide-eyed sea monster rose between my homeland and the secret island.
“Yes, it is small lengthwise,” the king said.“But the soil is very deep, so many people can live there.Norsenlæd has so many mountains where there is only rock and goats to eat.So, the number of people is not multiplied by the…”
I stopped listening—not intentionally—my mind was simply consumed by the size of the world.How much of it was sea.How far the wind must travel.The little cities with eyes painted on them—the same eye that King Arik wore around his neck at all times.
“Truth worshipping cities?”
Arik grinned.“Yes.”
“Have you been to all these places?”
“Ha!Goodness, no.This one, though…” He walked around the map, raiders and courtiers giving him space, and pointed at an eye-marked city.“I have gone this far.This is where I met Jorn.”
My eyes flicked then to the king’s soothsayer.He was calm as always, but his gaze held on the little eye on the map, his face revealing none of what he thought about that city or the turns of his life that had brought him so far from it.There were many cities marked with an eye.Several with the Norsern mark forbreath,which I had come to learn was also the symbol of Hyrold.Only a few were marked by the triangle—a symbol of the vaults, the kepens, and of purity of mind in my homeland.The order had felt like it controlled the whole world when I lived there, but looking at the map…
I remembered the feeling of the wind the night Halvar was born.How sure I’d been that it was talking to me, that I understood Hyrold’s meaning hidden in each waver of air.I hadn’t forgotten that I’d given myself to the force that night, but I felt distant and confused by it.Perhaps that was because I hadn’t slept for more than three hours straight since Halvar came into the world.Perhaps sacred experiences always have a time of doubt that follows them.Regardless, seeing Hyrold’s sigil on the map left me thinking of him.
Are you still there?I thought.Listening?
A breeze coasted in through the open windows and rustled the map.Many Norsern closed their eyes, feeling the rush of air in the way someone of another faith might feel a prayer.
Fell wasn’t celebrating with them, even though he was often the first person in a gathering to pause for the sacred.I could read him fairly well by then.He wasn’t bothered exactly, but he wasn’t pleased.There was something concerning him as he stared at the map, so I felt concerned, and because of that, Halvar started fussing.I wandered off to feed him, but Fell stayed behind, his gaze trapped by the map.
That was the evening Fell began suggesting I study basic combat.I refused several times over.Fighting wasn’t for me, and I had so little time where my mind wasn’t used up by Halvar.The time that was mine was for music or lovemaking or fawning over Dania as her stomach swelled or else teasing Rowan for the green colour his hair suddenly had—it would take a little less than a moon for the lye soap to colour it white like Norsern hair, so there was only so much time for the teasing.
“Please,” Fell said.“Come and watch at least.Let us show you some things.”
It was Fara who convinced me.“You are holding too firm,” she said.“It will keep being a bother to you.If you relax a little, let the idea flow past you, like a river, it will be done with, and you will not have to hear about it so much.”
