The Jarl's Son, Chapter 7-1

Coils of Smoke and Shadow, Part 1

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The sun had started to set. Through the single window in Erik’s bedroom, looking out over the western sea, the dull orange glow of early dusk filtered in. Gaiur sat at the foot of the boy’s bed. With careful and steady fingers, she weaved the tufts of troll’s hair into the branch of the birch sapling, creating a net of sorts in the space where the branch’s single body forked into two. Behind her, Jarl Ostock and Marten waited with quiet impatience for her to finish.

Anxiety hung heavy over that room. Desperation had settled into the hearts of Jarl Ostock and Marten both, and it was fueled by the inability of all before her to cure the boy’s cruel affliction. The soul destroying venom of a shadow adder had coursed through the child’s body for months, and it was either by good fortune or wicked intent that he hadn’t been killed by that vile stuff.

Gaiur never had direct experience with one of those loathsome serpents before. Fortunately, she had a knowledgeable friend who could help her. A friend whom she’d very dearly like to call on now, for as she drew nearer to finishing the weave of thick-tendriled moss - and thereby to completing the wand that was key to this ritual - the weight of her own uncertainty increased. Then the moment came. With one last wind and one last knot to bind the moss net to the branch, she reached a hand back and turned to face the Jarl.

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“The jewel,” she said, and he nodded in reply. Reaching out with his still closed hand, he dropped the gem into her palm.

It was an emerald, glistening and green and half as large as her palm. Holding it up to the light that came through the window, Gaiur tilted it back and forth in front of her eye. Transparent, just as she’d requested. With a satisfied grunt, she set it in her lap along with the newly fashioned birch wand.

“Why do you stall?” Jarl Ostock demanded.

A low groan, close in its sound to a growl, rumbled in Gaiur’s throat. Then she huffed through her nose, set the wand and gem on the bed, and stood.

“What is it?” the Jarl asked.

“An impasse,” Gaiur stated flatly as she turned to face him. “The wand is made and the jewel is of the right size and clarity. We have all the tools we need, save one.”

Marten furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?” he asked. “We have the broth made from Hlín’s herbs, and the wand, and the gem. You didn’t speak of anything else.”

Gaiur met his gaze directly. “The ritual,” she said, and her gaze remained unflinchingly affixed to his. It was intense enough that Marten felt compelled to look away, and that the Jarl kept silent despite the ill news she now shared.

“I don’t know how it’s done, but I know someone who does,” she continued.

Jarl Ostock narrowed his eyes, looking at her with undisguised suspicion. “This ‘friend’ of yours is the one you consulted yesterday?”

She nodded.

“And you wish to bring this entity here, I take it,” the Jarl said.

“He’s already here,” Gaiur replied, much to the shock and outrage of the men. Helpful though she’d been, given the cause of Erik’s condition, neither man was particularly willing to trust in otherworldly creatures. Through the hardness of her resolute gaze, she silenced them.

“If you fear malevolence on his part, don’t,” she stated firmly, turning her gaze back to Marten. “He’s been watching over Erik since we left to meet the læknir last night. You can trust him, though he might be…” She paused, pressing her lips into a thin line as she considered how to word this. How could she describe him when his attitude and appearance didn’t lend themselves to sane explanation?

Bringing thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose as if to rub away an oncoming headache, Gaiur sighed and stated, “Maybe it’s best you see for yourselves.”

Closing her eyes, Gaiur breathed in long and deep. She reached out with a push of will and, as she slowly released that long drawn breath, a pinprick of silver light shone just above the sleeping child’s forehead. That pinprick grew into a slowly drifting mote as Gaiur opened her eyes, then to a flicker, and then to a formless glow. The silver shine glided toward the foot of the bed. Each second it glowed brighter, grew larger, and became more distinct. Four legs padded across the woolen blanket. Gray fur filled the once formless shimmering space. A long tail, bushy and bright, swayed back and forth. Two ears, long and pointed, were aimed towards the men. Finally, a vulpine face with eyes like blue sapphires looked up at them, head tilted to the side as if bewildered by their own bewilderment.

“Well it’s about time you called on me,” Renald, the arctic fox who glowed like the full moon, stated matter-of-factly. “I was starting to get such a cramp watching over that poor lad. The space in his mind’s all cluttered up with pain and fright, so the sooner we can release him from the adder’s grip, the better. Did you get everything I asked for?”

Gaiur nodded and motioned to the wand and gem, ignoring the wide-eyed and slack-jawed gawping of the Jarl and Marten.

“These should do nicely,” Renald said as he sniffed and inspected the implements. Then, sitting back on his haunches, he tilted his head back and looked between the still staring men. “I take it you men are the lad’s family?”

While Marten glanced between Gaiur and Renald in disbelief, Jarl Ostock nodded and muttered a weak, “Yes.”

“Good. He’s going to need your help if he’s to make it out of this ordeal with his life.”

Renald spoke these words with none of his usual chipperness. If Gaiur wasn’t already aware of how dire Erik’s condition was, Renald’s change in tone would’ve told her everything she needed to know. Trepidation, however, had seized both Marten and the Jarl. Gaiur didn’t blame them for this. It was doubtful that they’d have encountered a creature of Renald’s like, and as such their shock and unease was easy to understand. Gaiur herself had been taken aback when they first met, but since the broader circumstances of their meeting had been far stranger, she found the presence of a talking, glowing fox easier to accept.

Acceptance didn’t come easily for either Marten or Jarl Ostock, though. Gaiur could see it in their expressions. As they saw it, Renald was a strange spirit that an equally strange woman had brought into their home. More than that, he was a spirit that she brought into contact with the son and brother each man was desperate to save. Even with as helpful as Gaiur had been to now, the distrust of something which was so unknowable to them couldn’t be easily overcome. Not without a push.

“Time’s against us,” Gaiur said. “Uneasy as it makes you both feel, we need Renald’s help to save Erik’s life.” She held an arm out, motioning to Erik’s right. “Sit with him, Jarl Ostock. He needs his father.” Then she looked to Marten, and motioned to Erik’s left. “His brother, as well.”

Like a well aimed thrust of the sword, Gaiur’s words struck true. Marten and the Jarl both took their seats alongside Erik’s bed, and the Jarl wasted no time in taking his son’s hand in his own. The boy flinched and whimpered, and a look of familiar pain fell upon Jarl Ostock’s features.

“He’s grown so cold,” the older man murmured. “That my child should be made to suffer so…”

Gaiur’s hand found the Jarl’s shoulder, but she had no words for him. When he looked up at her, she carried in her mien an unspoken urging for him. Be strong, as only parents can be for their children. As his oldest was being, as he clasped his young brother’s hand firmly and watched with determination for the moment he would awaken. Seeing these in Marten and Gaiur, the Jarl breathed deeply, and all the fear that she knew he felt deep inside melted away from his face. He wouldn’t let it control him, not when his child needed his strength above all.

“Let’s begin,” Renald said from his spot at the foot of Erik’s bed.

Under Renald’s instruction, Gaiur set the emerald into the wand’s net-like weave of troll’s hair moss tendrils. While she didn’t voice it, she did silently wish he’d told her about the need for that sooner. Had she known, she’d have taken more care to leave extra so that she could bind the gem securely. She had enough, though, and while the wand was hardly pretty - the emerald sat crooked in the middle of the black and green troll’s hair weave, which itself was stringy, a bit slimy, and smelled of the particular brine stink of rotting kelp - Renald assured her it would suffice.

The ritual itself was surprisingly simple for her part. With the wand in one hand and a smoking bundle of sage, thyme, and rosemary in the other, she simply needed to pass each of these in slow, alternating motions over the boy’s body. The wisps of acrid herb smoke passed through the wand’s weave, causing its tendrils to spiral and twist into little rivulets. As she did this, Renald’s tail swayed back and forth, and he spoke a simple incantation:

“O loathsome creature of Dark, release your hold upon this innocent as Light burns clean the poison in his Soul.”

Erik flinched, then thrashed. His face contorted and the whimpers he loosed quickly grew into agonized screams. Horrified, Jarl Ostock looked up at Gaiur with eyes maddened by worry.

“We must stop!” he exclaimed. “This magic will kill him!”

“No,” Gaiur barked. “If we stop now, the adder’s venom will surely kill him.”

The Jarl’s face contorted in grief. “My son! He will surely die this day!” he sobbed through clenched teeth and teary eyes.

“I won’t let him!” Gaiur howled! Her limbs were trembling. It took every ounce of her will to maintain the slow and steady rhythm Renald required in the face of the poor child’s thrashing and wailing. Her every instinct told her to drop the tools, to stop the ritual and take hold of this unfortunate boy who reminded her so much of her own! She wouldn’t. She couldn’t! To do so would be to consign Erik to an agonizing death, and she refused to see that happen again.

Renald’s chanting continued, and with it Gaiur heard a whispered prayer. It was Marten, who still clasped his brother’s hand in both of his own and now rested his forehead against Erik’s fingers. Again and again, he whispered prayers to any and every god who would listen. Shelyn, the Mother of Man and Beast. Luthmor, Lord of the Sea and Sky, from which the world was born. The Warrior Craich, revered for his bear-like might and constitution. Beshabba, the Night Walker, she who gifted far seeing to the völva and herb lore to the læknir. Even spirits were begged - bear, wolf, raven, stag, rabbit, aurochs, even the trees of the forests themselves. Anything and everything that might heed him.

Erik’s teeth clenched and ground. Through them, he hissed sobs of unendurable pain! How much longer would this be? A cloud of white-gray herb smoke hung above him now, its form still swirling and curling as Gaiur passed the wand back and forth through it. It drifted over Erik, formless save for the swirls her movement gave it. Only, it wasn’t truly formless. She hadn’t noticed before, so distracted was she by the child’s wails and her own part in the ritual, but tendrils of smoke had reached down to him. They cascaded over his body like a thin sheet, and it pooled around his form, it began to darken from silvery white, to murky gray, to the violet black of midnight.

“I’m afraid I miscalculated,” Renald said quickly, and Gaiur snapped her head in his direction.

He was up on all fours with back legs tensed and front legs splayed wide, as if ready to pounce on prey. Stern vulpine eyes met her own. “Be ready,” they said. “It’s coming.”

She heard the hiss before she saw the shadowy form. The pool of inky black smoke around Erik’s body started to swirl, slow and languid, like a pot barely stirred by a lazy cook. Then a coil of it appeared in the silvery sheen of herb smoke that covered his body. Skinny and pointed it thrashed back and forth like a snake’s tail.

“Voice of Luthmor!” Gaiur spat. She was about to toss the wand and herb bundle aside, but Renald ordered her to stop with a yapping bark! He was already moving, a blur of gray fur and the soft platinum glow of moonlight. With a snap and a growl, his teeth closed around the smokey tail tip, and he pulled!

Now they all heard the hiss. Marten and Jarl Ostock watched with wide eyed shock as the smooth scaled, violet-black body of a snake was slowly dragged from the smoke that blanketed Erik. The shadow adder thrashed and hissed again, but as he tugged and crawled to the foot of the bed, Renald gave a hard yank! Like a whip, the foul serpent was torn free, and the swirling blackness that encircled Erik’s body dissipated as it was drawn into the emerald.

Thrashing on the floor, the shadow adder righted itself and reared. Immediately, the serpent’s body began to grow. It doubled in size, then tripled! Staring at them with glossy eyes of mottled purple, red, and gold, it bared fangs which dripped with tarry venom and-

The shadowy beast vaulted sideways, sent flying by an arc of fire that crashed into its neck about half an arm’s length below its head. Oily blood seeped from the wound Gaiur’s axe tore open, only to evaporate in puffs and billows of the most wretched smelling black smoke. The unearthly adder tried to rise again, but Gaiur already stood above it. With a boot pressed onto its head, she raised her axe high and with one swing, decapitated the serpent.

Not being of this world, the adder died in the same way that all such shadowy apparitions do. Its body dissipated and dissolved, breaking and flaking away into ash-like flecks of black and tiny motes of purple light. A moment later, the body burst into a cloud of these things, which then vanished within the span of mere seconds.

Gaiur’s axe made a dull thunk as she plucked its blade from the floor. A fresh notch was left in the dark wood, a pale scar that remained as the only lingering sign of where the shadow adder died. She then set it down, head first, and propped it against the wall. Both the blackened steel blade and the haft of braided wood sounded dull thunks as she let it lie, and then the room was silent.

Gaiur turned. All eyes save for Renald’s were on her. Marten was visibly impressed. Grinning, he gave her an approving nod. Jarl Ostock, meanwhile, regarded her with a stony-faced expression of gratitude. Failing all else, she’d at least extricated and executed the monster that’d been torturing his child, and he was thankful for that. However, Gaiur’s own eyes fell upon the men only briefly. As she neared the foot of the bed where Renald sat, uncharacteristically preserving the silence, she looked to the only thing left that mattered.

Erik’s body had gone still. His skin was sheened with beading sweat, and locks of his messy dark brown hair now clung to his forehead. He no longer screamed, though, nor did he thrash, whimper, or breath with haggard difficulty. If it weren’t for the smell of his soiled sheets, a natural result of him going unwashed for so long, then all Gaiur would’ve seen was a sweetly sleeping boy. Indeed, even with the unpleasant odor coming from his bed, that was the greater whole of what she and the others saw.

Finally, the boy stirred. He squeezed his eyelids. His youthful face scrunched, his nose in particular. Then he shifted around under the blankets and, with a sleepy groan, his eyes fluttered open. Blue, like his father’s and brother’s.

Thank you for reading.
The Jarl’s Son sees Gaiur the Valdunite return to embark on a new adventure and acts as the follow-up to my dark fantasy mystery tale, In the Giant’s Shadow. The previous story isn’t required reading to understand and enjoy this tale, but doing so will enhance the experience.

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