A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

Throughout the cruel winters of Hróth, the light died at midday. With its cloak of sea mist fallen, the high cliff known as Hólrhorn could be seen for leagues off the western coast, though few ships ever sailed nearby. Only gulls and rock crabs moved, and even they were quiet.

Below was a black beach, miles long. The waves pared thick snow from its sand and withdrew with a roar, leaving a lace of foam. The coast they washed became a mirror in their wake, reflecting the grim cliffs, the birds, and a bank of grey cloud, all tarnished with copper.

Rock stacks towered from the spindrift. Most called them the Six Virtues of the Sea, but those who still cleaved to the past, who lullabied the frozen lakes, knew them by a far older name.

Thousands of years they had stood guard.

Now they watched the dead appear.

For days, only the rocks witnessed the corpses washing in, charred and broken, released from the sea. Only they saw the entangled pair – one in the holdfast of the other – come ashore to rest at last.

The red sun took its leave. When darkness fell, it fell entire.

So it was until the sky lights woke. Colours sketched the sky, flowed tall and bright, and billowed like sails through clear water, ghosting in shades of blue and green. They picked out the remains on the long beach and reflected in the eyes of a young woman with brown hair. Like the other corpses, she was burnt, the skin and flesh torched from her arms – though her face remained whole, white as ice. Whether it was the water or the fire that had killed her, no one could have told.

Beside her lay the last survivor.

A strong wave rolled in and broke across his back. He coughed seawater, his nose stinging. When he peeled his eyes open and saw the lights, he knew this was not Halgalant.

His fingers were swollen and blistered. The sea had almost wrung him of all strength, but he found the will for one last crawl, to gather the dead woman close and drag her up the beach.

Each inch opened his salt sores. Each one unlocked the agony the bitter cold had kept at bay, drawing raw, tearless groans. When he had gone as far as he could, he collapsed beside her, the woman who had never feared him. With cracked lips, he kissed her brow. He had fought hard to get her home, and it was done. Her bones were safe.

He had only one regret – that he had never known why. Why he had been left alone in the wood.

By dawn, the lights had disappeared, and the seafarer was still alive. He thought of walking back into the sea, letting it take him under this time. Better that than face the fact that he had failed his king. In the songs, nothing was sadder than a knight without a liege.

But his liege had never knighted him, and there were two others who needed his sword. In the North, a wise man who had lived through a war; in the West, a young queen with the snow in her blood. He had to live, to tell them both what all the world needed to know.

The Nameless One could not return, but something else had come.

****

Two days later, a family of Bálva herders pulled their rowboat to the beach, fleeing the plague that had reached their small camp. By the dim light of dawn, they came upon the four hundred and thirteen bodies, burned or drowned or frozen to death – and one man who still breathed.

He saw them from a distance, through eyes scorched dry by salt. Regny lay damp and cold at his side. He had failed to save her from the fire, but she would save him, one more time. He reached for the horn around her neck and set it to his bleeding lips.

The sound was so low and faint, it only pricked one pair of ears. An elkhound came running and barked, licking his face.

‘Hampa, no. Here, boy.’ Footsteps slapped through the sand, then stopped. ‘Fa, someone’s alive!’

Twelve others came running up the sand. He had a few moments to realise his survival was now in others’ hands – he could lie down and sleep, he could let go – before a thick pelt and a fur hat were bundled on to him, and he was gulping water from a birchen flask, swallowing so fast it made him choke.

When they tried to take Regny, he grasped her to him, his voice cracking on his sound of protest.

‘Leave him, by the Saint’s bones,’ an elderly man said in Hróthi. ‘He’s grief-stricken.’ He crouched in front of the survivor, dark eyes nailed on to his. ‘Boy, what in the holy name has happened here?’

Wulfert Glenn mustered the words.

‘Tell Einlek Óthling,’ he rasped. ‘Tell him. The king . . . is dead.’