Chapter 14

Falling backwards through the mirror, Eric tried to grab on to the edge of it, to hold onto the frame and propel himself back through to his injured Sookie. His claws sunk deep into the cheap imitation Baroque-style frame, twisting and bending the metal, but the force of the monster and its shadow minions pushing against him sent him falling through the dark liquid glass.

Something squelched beneath his knees, the monster following him knocking him flat to the ground, pinning him down by his wings and roaring its command out to the others of its kind in this region. Unable to see, Eric turned his face in the mud, pinned by his stupid fucking wings, trying to see where he was, what was around him.

Brown and wet, some kind of marsh or a swamp. Jagged black and brown cliffs. Further in the distance he thought he could see what looked like a castle, doors and windows hollowed out inside the cliff itself, part of the living rock. Creatures scurried and scampered over the sucking wet ground and Eric knew wherever he was, it was a place of the monster’s choosing, a place where Godric and Sookie would not be able to find him.

Struggling under the weight of the beast and its army of shadows, a plan came to him.

His wings.

Eric stopped struggling, his hands free under the membrane of his wings, and he reached into the small of his back with his curved claws, to the place where they sprouted from his back, and exerting as much strength as he could in the awkward position, grimacing and grunting with the strain of it, followed by blinding pain, he tore the offending items out of his back, tipping the monster and its load of shadow creatures into the mud as he used his vampire abilities to soar wingless into the sky, seeing at last the horrors below him.

Crawling through the mud were nameless things, blind worms scaled with jagged armour, cloven-hoofed creatures without hair, their mouths yawning with their load of sharp teeth, others with wings flittering through the sky towards him. Everywhere was mud, anything that tried to struggle out of the earth was drowned in it, the only solid surface the cliffs and the strange hollowed-out castle. Then out of the ground rose creatures made of mud, their bodies dripping with the stuff, their single eyes glaring over the top of their bulbous noses, their long tails and sharp claws cutting a swathe through the boggy ground as they rose from tunnels deep below.

As the mud dripped away, Eric saw patches of hairy skin, some of them with stumps of dead trees growing on their backs, camouflage in this place. One, larger than the others, kept rising up out of the ground, big as a giant. On its bulbous head it wore a crown made of dead wood, the pieces joined with dried mud as it reached out its great hand towards him and Eric darted away, flying higher, trying to see where the portal was, trying to get back through to his Sookie rather than fly to safety.

Trolls.

It had to be.

He knew the stories from when he was a child, sitting with his mother Astrid round the central fire-pit, the dark of winter upon them, pressing its way with its long silvery fingers of ice deep into the longhouse. Eric would shiver even next to the fire, listening to his mother warn him of trolls, of their malevolence and their stupidity.

Eric remembered his mother’s tale of a boy named Ashlad, snatched in the night by the trolls, taken to their sanctuary, their kingdom of mud and earth. In their feasting hall, the boy sought out a wager.

His mother’s voice came clear as day to him.

“Now, Ashlad was a clever and resourceful boy who wanted to get home to his village. He knew that trolls were above all things stupid, that if he used his wits he might survive. So he said to the king of the trolls, “If I best you in an eating contest, will you let me go free?””

Eric settled back near the fire, his head resting by his mother’s knee as he sat at her feet, her hands running through his hair.

“What did the troll say?” he asked her.

“Well, the troll was very greedy and he knew being almost as large as the jotunn his cousins, there was no way this measly scrap of a boy would best him in an eating contest. Thinking he was very clever, he asked the boy what he would get if he won. Ashlad replied, “You may eat me all at once.” Now the troll was too stupid to realise he could have done that anyway, so he agreed, thinking it would make the other trolls respect him for his cleverness. So the troll king had a hundred sheep, two hundred goats and three hundred cows brought out and slaughtered for their feast, roasting them over the fire pit on enormous logs that were as toothpicks to the trolls. All the while the trolls were making their preparations, Ashlad made his own, finding a large sack that he hid under his clothes.”

“Why did he do that?” asked Eric.

“Hush, and you will find out,” his mother chastised him gently. “So the trolls came to fetch him and carried him back to the hall, where he was seated at an enormous feasting table. Ashlad was so tiny he had to sit on the table itself, the lip of the plate reaching up almost to his neck. So when the contest began and the troll began to tear its way through the meat, eating bones and all, Ashlad was able to sneak his food down the open neck of his shirt and into the sack hidden below. Now as you can imagine, trolls can eat prodigious amounts of food, so Ashlad’s belly and his sack were bulging so much that even the troll king with his single eye could make out the boy’s ruse. Thinking again that he was very clever, that he would impress his troll subjects even further, the troll king picked up a great knife and slit open his belly, thinking he could use the extra pocket under his skin to hide more of the food. But of course he bled to death and Ashlad won.”

“What happened next?” asked Eric, his eyes wide.

“They crowned him king of the trolls and his first order was to be carried back to his home. It was far away and he ordered his troll subjects to carry him at night, only when they finally reached his village, the sun was rising. Ashlad was a very clever boy and he knew how long it would take them to journey there, and he knew the old stories his mother had told him. So when the sun rose at last and he could see his village and the end of their journey, the trolls who were carrying him turned to stone under the harsh light, the mud that always covers them setting to stone. If you journey to Ashlad’s village they can still be seen, an army of trolls turned into pillars of stone.”

 

The troll who wore the crown tried to seize hold of Eric once more, the monster from the mirror soaring up on its broken wings, howling, “He is mine!” A bolt of dark magic shot forth from the monster’s hand, blasting a hole in the mud of the troll king who roared and tried to snatch at the beast instead. The monster doubled back, shrieking out to its shadows who flittered towards the troll-king, attacking his eye and  flying into his mouth, the mountain of mud screeching and trying to batt them away. The other trolls came to their king’s aid, but the monster from the mirror seized hold of the ramshackle crown, jamming it down onto his head as he yelled, “I take your power for myself!”

The crown glowed, adjusting itself to its new wearer’s head, the monster opening its gaping mouth as it roared out its triumph, the magic of the troll’s most powerful talisman flowing into its body which began to twist and change, the flesh growing firmer, the head retracting to normal size, the skin regrowing, even the missing hand taking on a new form out of the mud of the land.

Glimmering behind the monster was the portal to the mirror, glittering darkly, splattered in mud. Could he make it? Was it worth trying? What if he was caught?

The monster re-formed, the face changing to look once more like Niall Brigant, though the mismatched skin remained, and the sideburns also. “Now I remember my name!” he yelled. “I am Niall Brigant, former prince of the Fae, now the king of the trolls and all the foul creatures in this land. You will be my army!”

Eric flew higher, ducking and weaving, watching in horror as the mirror portal began to shrink, deciding to take the chance, take the risk, to fly back through it before it vanished. Something hit him hard in the chest, knocking him down to the edges of a muddy brown lake, away from the portal. Strong hands seized him, dragging him down into the water.

Too late he realised. This was more than just the land of the trolls.

A Nokken had seized him, dragging him down into the lake it inhabited to take him to a watery grave. He struggled and thrashed against the brown-skinned creature, its dark claws biting into his flesh harder the more he fought it. If he could get out, he could try for the mirror again –

“Don’t be a fool,” hissed a watery voice in his ear. “The troll-king Niall Brigant is master of the mirror. He would not allow you to pass. You would beat your head upon the glass until you bled to death. This is the only way for you.”

Eric tried to respond, his mouth filling with the muddy water as his voice burbled and got carried away.

“Think it and I will know it,” hissed the Nokken.

Why would you help me?

“Oh yes, that’s right. I am evil, I drown foolish travellers – but I am thinking you will not die, vampire. I would take you to the gods if I thought they would thank me, but they would not allow me past their wards and you neither with your claws and spikes.”

And wings.

“Feel your back.”

Eric obliged, a hand reaching behind himself. The wings had not regrown.

“Blood magic,” whispered the Nokken. “How else have you kept something like your form? You did not have wings when you were turned, so your blood magic has chosen not to regrow them. Handy, yes?”

Eric felt a tiny cheer well up deep inside his chest. Seizing his hands, he ripped out each of the curved black claws, wondering why he had not thought of the before, the pain and the blood nothing to him as his own fingernails were returned to him.

“You may thank me later. You will owe me a debt, and I know your kind – you will repay it.”

Take me to the cave at the edge of the world. There is a door into Faerie there…

“I cannot. This is not your time, Viking, for all the strange and magical land you have just seen. The old places are boarded up, hung with crosses to keep us out, to push out the old magic and bring in the Christ. You would not recognise your world if I took you there. The dragon-ships are gone, so too are the longhouses.  Your people have become Christian and to see it would make your heart weep as it does mine. But you remember the old ways as do I. So tell me, Viking, what do you remember about lakes?”

Portals. They are portals to other worlds.

“And I am older than most. My lake has much magic. I have found someone who will help you.”

The Nokken grasped hold of Eric’s shoulders even tighter, pushing him down to the bottom of his lake, surprisingly the lower they went the more the water cleared and he could see the bottom of the lake was covered in sand. There was a cave, shimmering with an unnatural light, the Nokken pushing Eric towards it.

Wait! Where will it take me? How will I repay you?

“You will rid my country of the upstart king. As for where – why don’t you see for yourself?”

The Nokken pushed him down into the cave, then whatever power lurked at its bottom seized hold of him, dragging him through.

 

Seiglinde stood at the edge of the holy waters of the lake, the sacred grove growing almost to the shores. Carved on a stone plinth at the water’s edge was an image of the goddess, snakes twined around her arms as she wrung the water out of her long, flowing hair.

“Please,” she whispered, holding the carved rune stone in front of her body. “Return him safely to me. And bring me a child of my husband’s get, for all my belly will not swell. Persuade him to take another, to make a child and bring it to me to raise. But above all else, Great Mother, return Godric from the raids on the Gaels, riding on his stallion, unharmed, fierce and free as ever.”

Seiglinde stepped into the waters then, inhaling sharply at the coldness of them, the stone tablet held in front of her, in her other hand she had a clay figure of the goddess herself, her body distended with child as she wished her own would. It does not matter, she told herself. “If it cannot be my child, then let it be Godric’s. Send him to me through your blessing, oh Mother.”

She released her hold on the clay figure and the stone, watching them sink down through the water.

Then the water began to seize and churn, foaming about her legs as though some monstrous beast was tearing the waters apart. Who or what was the goddess sending to her?

A hand, male and strong, began to rise above the churning water, and Seiglinde, unafraid, seized hold of it, pulling the man up and out of the water, a tall man, strong of chest and well muscled, a warrior who had the look of the north to him. Seiglinde smiled at him.

She knew him at once.

“Welcome, son of my husband.”

The goddess had answered her prayers.

Chapter 15