The Jarl's Son, Chapter 7-2

Coils of Smoke and Shadow, Part 2

---

Hlín was summoned to the house as quickly as possible. For the rest of the night, the Jarl and the læknir both saw to Erik’s early treatment. Following Hlín’s recommendation, he was given haddock soup with garlic and rosemary to help balance his humors; tea of featherfew, ginger, and clove to settle his stomach and keep lingering pain at bay; and he was fed a few bites of stenalderbrød at the Jarl’s behest to help fill his mostly empty belly.  A bath was drawn for him while he was fed, and two house girls came to wash his soiled blankets. They were ultimately disposed of, and new blankets were purchased from the market stalls the next morning.

Gaiur kept her distance in these early hours. Tiredness was part of it, naturally. The last few days saw her working strenuously on little food and less sleep, a situation that wasn’t helped by the recurrence of the nightmare of the burning village. Besides, the Jarl’s people had the situation plenty well in hand. They didn’t need a wilderness wandering stranger who made her company with wolves, ravens, and foxes to be lingering about and getting in the way.

More than this, though, renewed feelings of grief settled into her heart. She was pleased, elated even, that Erik survived his ordeal. The boy wasn’t only spared his suffering, but the destruction of his very soul, if Renald’s assessment of the situation was correct. Likewise, his family had been spared the agony of his loss, and that alone was enough for her to share in their joy. Yet grief is not unlike the hidden knife ready to be plunged into its victim’s heart. It strikes where it will, and is often drawn, unbidden, by the most innocuous of things, such as a pair of bleary blue eyes. Indeed, this was why Gaiur’s heart ached; why she was so quick to slip away.

---

---

Blue eyes.

While trapped in his fitful sleep, Erik’s eyes ever remained closed. It made it easy to imagine their color, easy to place upon him that which was not his.

Blue eyes.

Of course they would be. They were the same as his brother and father, both. They likely matched his mother’s, too, though Gaiur hadn’t once seen her in the past three days.

Blue eyes.

The same color as the sky, and not at all like the earthy hazel of her own lost child.

As she had the night prior, Gaiur spent her night in the training yard with Varro and Hunin. With her cloak ruined and tattered, she had little protection against the chilly ocean air but to huddle up against Varro. It helped, but gooseflesh still formed on her arms and legs. It was just as well, though. The damp cold, carried to her by a steady sea breeze, was oddly welcoming. It brought with it the crash of waves along the shore, the salt scent of the ocean, and the occasional honks of distant sea lions. These reminded her that, in spite of her renewed grief, she was no longer the same woman she’d been when her husband and son were taken from her.

No longer was she Gaiur the cursed, Gaiur the strange, who locked herself away for a year. No longer the trapped girl, barely into her adulthood, who was unable to escape the shackles of her distant rural life. No longer the pariah of Valdun, the village at the world’s frozen edge. The forest and tundras she’d grown up with, the glaciers and permafrost that surrounded her birthplace, these were long behind her now, abandoned half a decade ago when she was set upon her new and difficult path. Difficult, but fulfilling.

Tears had been streaking down Gaiur’s face as she lay against Varro’s warm, furry body. Now she felt no need for them. She’d balked at the destiny that was foisted upon her back in Jötungatt. Though she did accept it, she did so with great reluctance. In truth, it was a reluctance she still felt. She had no wish to be a hunter of the sinister things that lingered in the shadows. All she really wanted was to have her family back, but such things were impossible. Even so, she could no longer deny that she held some pride in her new work, tiresome though it was. After all, it was this very destiny that allowed her to reunite a family and save a child’s life. There was much good to be found in that.

“I thought I might find you here,” a familiar voice said.

Gaiur hadn’t noticed until Marten spoke, but she’d nearly fallen asleep. Sucking breath into her nose, she groaned, stretched her back, and looked up at Marten’s sleep-blurred form through half-lidded eyes. “How is he?” she asked.

“Weak and sore, but alive, thanks to you,” Marten said.

“That’s good,” Gaiur said through a yawn. “Hopefully he’ll recover quickly.”

“He wants to see you.”

Marten’s request drew fresh pain from her chest. She turned away, stared through the slatted fence that closed off the Jarl’s training yard at the nighttime ocean that stretched purple-black to the horizon. Fresh tears, hot against the cool air, rolled down her cheeks.

“I don’t think I can do that,” she said weakly.

Marten was quiet for a long moment. What did he look like right now, Gaiur wondered? Was he angry, or surprised? Did he expect this of her? Would he take her refusal as an insult?

As it happened, no, he didn’t. He simply let out a soft sigh, almost unheard. Then he asked, “It’s because of your son, isn’t it?”

Gaiur didn’t answer.

“I understand,” Marten continued. “I think I’d feel much the same were I in your place.”

She still didn’t answer, and this time the silence between them carried. When Marten did break it, he did so with a clearing of his throat.

“Father plans to hold a revel in the morning,” he said. “A celebration of Erik’s life saved, and a reopening of the city. There will be much in the way of food, mead, and wine, and he’s asked that you be there as our honored guest.”

Her silence continued, but her staring at the night blackened sea did not. A warmth fell upon her hand, the warmth of touch. A rough and calloused touch which gently closed around her. She didn’t need to look to know what it was, but she did anyway. Marten’s hand had closed around hers.

“I hope you’ll join us,” he said. “For Erik, and for myself.”

He left her then, wishing her goodnight as he went back inside. Gaiur fell asleep soon after, her lingering tiredness stronger than the churning emotions that occupied her mind. She rose when dawn came, as did Varro. Hunin was nowhere to be seen or heard. Most likely he fluttered off someplace before sunrise, off on some venture to sate his strange curiosities.

The festivities began not long after sunup, but Gaiur didn’t join them. During the night, Renald came to her in her dreams. He wasn’t summoned, nor did he come to guide her on some new journey through the dreamlands. Rather, he came with a simple request, one spoken with unusual curtness for him - a private meeting during the day, somewhere they could speak without interruption. She obliged him by making her way down into the fjord. Following the trails that wound their way down the cliffs, she came to the water’s edge less than an hour after waking.

Fishermen were already present. They were loading dozens of barrels of smoked and salted fish onto squat aurochs-drawn wagons, far too busy to pay her much mind, particularly since she left Varro behind. Spotting a small, unused rowboat, she pushed it into the calm waters and rowed to the opposite shore. It was rocky and uneven, too much for her to bring the boat onto the shore itself, so she tethered it to a large stone to stop it drifting away. Then she found a quiet nook behind a nearby boulder where she could sit and reach out to her dreamwalking companion.

“I rummaged through your dreams last night,” he said as he sat beside her, watching the seawater lap against the rocky shore. “I was curious about that nightmare you’ve been having. I’d hoped it might come again so that I could see more.”

Gaiur clicked her tongue and limply tossed a small stone into the water. It made a dull kerplunk.

“I don’t want to think about that right now,” she said as she reached down for another stone.

“And I can’t fault you for that, given what I saw,” he said.

She tossed the second stone. “Which was?”

“Your family.”

He paused for a long time, and her grip tightened on the third stone she’d picked up. It was a little shard of slate, its edge sharp enough to cut into the skin of her palm. She didn’t wince, even as she felt the trickle of warm blood seep between her first two fingers.

“That’s my presumption, anyway,” Renald continued.

Her hand trembled, the pain worsening as the slate dug deeper into her palm. Still no wince. Her jaw was too firmly set.

“That young lad, Erik, the Jarl’s son? You struggled to speak his name the other night,” the fox resumed. “He shared the name of your own child, didn’t he? You know, Gaiur, it can be terribly difficult to claw one’s way out from beneath the shadow of tragic grief, but I believe that-”

The slate shard clattered against the stony beach, its quiet impact just enough to halt Renald’s speech. At the edge of her vision, she saw him look down at it. That drew her eye, too.

The stone was a long, jagged oval, almost egg-like in its shape. Its narrow end came to a sharp point. Unsurprisingly, that end was glazed in the red of her blood nearly to the middle of the stone, where the blood smeared from the press of her fingers. Looking at her hand, she tutted at the thumb wide gash it left. It ached and burned and still ran trickles of dark red.

“Gaiur,” Renald said after a protracted silence, “I find that grief is best handled-”

“That’s enough, Renald.”

Stubbornly, he cleared his throat and continued. “Grief is best handled in the company of those who love you.”

Gaiur’s blood boiled. She hadn’t come here to be lectured, but Renald continued on regardless, waxing poetic about the nature of grief and tragedy and how to overcome these things. This time, as she clenched her hands, she felt a fingertip press into the wound opened on her palm. The pain flared, and her anger with it.

“I said stop!” she howled. Her entire body was tense and trembling. A dizzying rush swirled about her head and she could swear that just for a moment, the world around her tinged red.

She closed her eyes, breathed deep, then forced herself to open her tightly clenched fists. The tension in her body remained, but she stepped forward and dunked her bloody hand into the cold, salty waters that lapped on the shore. Finally, she winced, the sting of the salt biting at her gash. She kept it submerged regardless, working her fingertips back across her palm until the blood was cleaned off.

“Gaiur, I…”

Renald’s tone was apologetic, but his words swiftly faded into silence. It was the first time she’d ever seen him fail to find the words he sought.

“I watched them die, Renald,” she said as she bound her hand. “Be it seven years or seven hundred, I can’t just forget that.”

“Nor am I saying you should, but you have a chance here, Gaiur.” Renald padded around to face her, his incorporeal form floating untouched above the water as he sat and looked up at her. “I saw something else in your dream, the face of a man. After a moment’s observation, I realized that I recognized him. Do you know who it was?”

She was silent for a long while, slowly tightening that strip of old linen she’d pulled from her belt pouch around her injured hand. “Marten,” she eventually said.

“Feelings were bound to his visage; nascent, but strong.” Renald sighed, and he faced the opposite shore. “Loss has haunted you for a long while, and the destiny foisted upon you has kept you alone. I may not truly be your guide anymore, but I see opportunity here, a real chance for you to claim the sort of life you’ve longed for.”

Facing westward, Gaiur looked out at the open mouth of the fjord. Not far beyond, it opened to the chop and churn of the northern sea. Open and wide, its cold waters stretched to the horizon and beyond, a vast and empty ocean. How tempting it would be to sail that lonely sea, leaving these wintry lands far behind. Yet Renald’s words found purchase in her mind, for even as the thought of leaving Stenise at her back formed, the image of Marten alongside her came with it.

Renald resumed, pulling her attention and her gaze back to him. “Gaiur, I say this not as a dream guide or some otherworldly familiar, though both of these are true. Instead, I say it as your friend; seize this moment! Do as Marten asked. Row back across the way and join in the festivities, celebrate the life you saved. You’ve earned this chance to start anew.”

Gaiur gazed over the fjord’s calm waters, across to the fishermen who hauled their goods up the trail and into the city above. Even standing on the opposite shore as she was, she could hear the whoops and cheers of the celebrants echo off the fjord’s cliffs. When had she last known such a joy? When had she allowed herself to?

She thought about Renald’s words for a long while, long enough for the sun to climb to mid morning and the fishermen to leave their docks empty. He was right. The weight of the past would not be easily relinquished, but she’d carried her burdens alone for long enough. Climbing back into the rowboat, she returned to Halvfjord’s shore and made her way up into the city proper.

She would return to Jarl Ostock’s home first. Varro would need tending to before she joined the festivities. Yet as she returned to the Jarl’s practice yard, she saw that Varro wasn’t alone. He perked up as she stepped into view, his bushy tail wagging excitedly as Marten laid a joint of venison out for the gray-maned greatwolf.

“You’re back!” he said with exuberance and a wide smile.

Gaiur returned his smile with a soft one of her own, then gestured to Varro. “I came to check on him, but it seems I don’t need to,” she said.

“I heard him whining, so I thought I’d bring him some food,” Marten said, giving Varro a pat on the shoulder. “I think he was waiting for you, though.”

“Meaning Varro, or yourself?” she quipped, smirking.

Marten laughed. “And if I said both?”

“That would please me,” Gaiur answered.

“Then you’ll be joining us for the festivities?” he asked.

And Gaiur nodded, taking his hand with a tender squeeze. “Yes.”

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.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter