Twenty-Five
“What happens tomorrow?” Mars said as they walked back to the keep, hand in hand. “Do we just make the thing and . . . set it off?” He didn’t know the right words to describe how the Primer worked, having never seen it before, and could only rely on his experiences with conventional weapons.
“No,” Fura sighed as they mounted the steps. “I must find my father’s instructions first. He promised they would be here, though hidden, of course, in case someone else intercepted his message.”
“Like your mother?”
“It was a possibility, I’m sure. But I got to it first.” Fura’s fingers tensed around his as she spoke, and he guessed the memory a sore subject.
“So we find the instructions and then execute. Simple.” Mars nodded to himself, trying to convince his restless mind that for once, this would be true.
They’d just arrived at the hallway on the fourth floor, the doors to Katrìn’s and Askalon’s rooms still shut, the two presumably asleep. Mars’s gaze lingered on the latter door as they passed by. “What about Askalon?”
“What about him?” Fura said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“I doubt he’ll stand idly by while we destroy his dòttra’s legacy.”
Fura darted a look at him. “I’m his dòttra now. He gave me his bond.”
Too tired to argue, Mars nodded. “If you say so.”
Arriving at the doors to their respective rooms, Fura came to a halt and faced him. “I don’t intend to tell Askalon any more of what we’re doing here than I have to.” A smile flashed across her face. “Besides, if he does attempt to betray me, I assume you would be keen on putting him in his place.”
Mars grinned back at her. “That I would.”
She leaned forward and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. “Off to sleep, then. We’re going to need it.”
Yes, we will, Mars thought as he closed the door to his room and climbed once more into the bed. Although their task here should be easy, it wouldn’t be, Mars knew as he drifted off to sleep, ill at ease with the notion. Whether Askalon or something else, there would be a catch. There always was.
Despite Fura’s desire to find her father’s instructions, the first orders of business the following day were food and a bath. Thankfully, the White Keep could offer both. Katrìn, who’d woken first, had made a large pot of oatmeal seasoned with cinnamon and dried pieces of apple. After days of hardtack, it was a kingly meal.
The bath, though, was fit for the Titans. Like nearly everything else in the White Keep, the bathing chamber ran on magic. All Mars had to do was offer a small sacrifice—much easier after finally getting a few hours of real sleep—and the chamber answered with hot running water and scented soap as soft as melted chocolate from the mouths of the porcelain fishes arrayed around the massive tub. Why the bathing chamber was the only place to have such ornamentation in the keep, he couldn’t guess. The adepts of old must have taken their bathing very seriously.
Mars emerged nearly an hour later feeling and smelling like a new person. He had to admit, these relics were handy, and he found himself wondering what it had been like to live in Riven before the Cataclysm, when magic didn’t involve a sacrifice of blood. It must’ve been a paradise. To think, if he’d merely been born at the right time, he could’ve lived like a king, even if he was born on the streets.
He joined Fura and Katrìn in the kitchen once more, Askalon having returned to bed for more sleep. The wound the draugr had inflicted on him was taking a toll. Mars and the two women made their way to Henrik’s laboratory on the third floor. As with the observatory on the Torvald estate, it was crammed full of books and beakers and dozens of other pieces of scientific equipment whose purposes Mars couldn’t guess. He whistled at the sight of such a mess.
“It’ll take us forever to find Henrik’s message in here,” Katrìn said, grimacing.
“We’ll manage,” Fura said, her dauntless attitude in full measure this morning, renewed by a meal and a bath.
They split the room into thirds, each of them taking a section to search. Fura’s included the writing desk, and she started her efforts there. Mars began with the wall-length bookshelf in his section. He was unsure what exactly he was looking for—whether Henrik’s message might be hidden in an artifact or something else—and so he began by examining the books. He touched the spine of each one, feeling for some hint of magic marking the book as an artifact. He read the titles as well—those that bore one, such as the collected volumes of Riven history. Those without titles, he pulled off the shelf and leafed through, more out of curiosity than anything else. Most of these turned out to be personal diaries of Consortium adepts or ledgers from when Skarfell was in operation, filled with accountings of supplies like lumber, cotton, and steel.
He soon came across a book with a familiar symbol on the cover: the bisected circle with two half spheres. Mars opened it and began to read. It concerned the making of artifacts—or vessels, as the Consortium had called them. The first part of the book seemed concerned with theory—where the magic used to fill the vessels came from, how it worked, and even speculations on why the magic behaved the way it did in different vessels. This part, Mars skipped entirely, uninterested, especially as magic hadn’t worked the same since the Cataclysm.
The second part contained instructions for making vessels. To his dismay, the construction seemed to have as much to do with math and science as magic. There was an entire section devoted to geometry and the relative power and weaknesses of various shapes. Triangles, for instance, were the strongest shape, resilient to external forces, both physical and magical. The circle, prone to breaking and bending, was weakest but also the most versatile in its uses. Other shapes, such as the pentagon and the octagon, had various uses—the more edges it had, the more complicated the magic it could hold.
Another section of the book discussed the unique attributes of the various materials used to create vessels—the pliability of wood, the enhancing properties of silver, the shielding quality of iron. It seemed that to excel as an adept, a student had to be as skilled at woodworking and metallurgy as they were at tapping into Rift magic. Perhaps that explained the woodshop he had discovered the night before.
“Find something interesting?” Katrìn asked, hiding a yawn behind her hand. Mars was tired already as well, and it wasn’t yet noon.
“Yes, but not about the Primer.” He showed her the cover.
She nodded. “I’ve read that one.”
Remembering that Katrìn knew how to construct artifacts, a thought occurred to him. “Is this similar to how artifacts are made these days?”
“It’s more than similar. The books used nowadays are mostly copies of the practical applications in that one. Most adepts aren’t allowed to read them, of course, but the architects are, so they can learn to create the physical aspects of the artifacts they then have the adepts empower.”
Like Gellir, Mars thought, picturing the odious little man crafting his objects for Una.
“The new books include additional steps for determining the ratio of the required magical inertia to the force level of the sacrifice offered,” Katrìn added.
“Oh sure, sounds easy.” Mars rolled his eyes.
Katrìn frowned. “You’ve never made an artifact, have you?”
He shook his head. “There aren’t books like these available on the streets.” Whatever book Una had supplied to Gellir must’ve cost her a fortune on the black market. Mars wondered which had cost more—the book or the adept? It was a peculiar, disheartening thought.
“I’m sorry,” Katrìn said, looking embarrassed. “I forget sometimes how lucky I’ve been to grow up with Henrik. But it’s never too late to learn. Here.” She took the book from him and headed for the nearby desk to retrieve an ink pen. Mars followed, looking over her shoulder as she scribbled something in the book—a mathematical formula of some kind. He knew his sums, of course, thanks to Una, but this formula contained strange symbols he’d never seen before.
Katrìn handed the book back to him. “Keep the book—and actually read it, don’t skim. But you’ll need this formula to go with it.” She grinned. “I think you’ll find there’s nothing quite so satisfying as creating an artifact.”
“What does this mean?” He pointed at the flamelike symbol in the formula.
“That stands for kull.”
“Are you serious?” Mars knew what kull was supposed to be—the lifeblood inside each person born in Riven, which was much more voluminous and concentrated in adepts, giving them their power—but he’d never before thought of it as something quantifiable, measurable like liquid in a beaker.
She squeezed his arm. “Don’t fret. It simply means the amount of magic the adept creating the artifact is capable of channeling. We’re all a little bit different. If you don’t know your kull level, there’s an easy way to figure it out. I’ll help you when we’ve got some spare time.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Mars rubbed his forehead, unsure if the pursuit was worth it. If everything worked out, maybe, but if not . . . well . . . there was no scenario in which Mars would be practicing magic freely like Katrìn apparently had with Henrik. Fortunately, she didn’t detect his doubt, offering him an encouraging smile as she returned to her search.
Mars returned to his as well, but his mind began to wander into speculations about shapes and objects and what sort of magical properties might be applied to them. He considered the complicated shape of the compass rose pendants Henrik had made. Mars guessed Henrik must’ve been quite gifted at both magic as well as physical craftsmanship. Realizing this, Mars guessed he was wasting his time look through books. Henrik would’ve used something more powerful for his message. With this in mind, he surveyed the room anew, and a nearby workbench soon caught his attention.
Dozens of objects of various shapes covered its surface, a gyroscope, a sextant, and a set of balance scales among them. Mars had dismissed these as tools, but now he saw them in a whole new light—tools, certainly, but also potential vessels. He walked over to the bench and picked up each object in turn, trying to examine them with his internal senses, the ones connected to the Rift. But no object felt like anything more than it seemed.
Still, he was certain he was on the right path. His gaze fell on a clock sitting on the bookshelf directly across from the desk where Fura currently sat, rummaging through a few of her father’s old journals. The clock bore an elaborate face, one with a brass plate at its center shaped like a nine-pointed star—an enneagram, same as the false brand atop his hand, symbol of service done in the Ice mine.
It was also a complicated geometric shape. One capable of holding complex, sophisticated magic.
Mars knew his hunch was correct the moment he pulled the clock off the shelf and sensed the faint pulse of magic in it. He examined it carefully, certain it was an artifact, but he had no idea how to access it. The magic was there, but trapped, like water flowing beneath a crust of ice on a river.
He carried the clock back to the desk and set it before Fura. “The pendant your father made for you. Does it open only for you?” He pictured the way she’d pressed the pendant to her mouth and spoken some word to it before showing him the Primer formula.
Fura looked up from the journal. “Yes. We have a secret word, one only I know.”
Complicated magic indeed. That explained Henrik’s use of the compass rose for the pendant. “I think there’s something in here. For you.” Mars tapped the top of the clock with his finger. “It’s an artifact, but I can’t reach the magic inside.”
From across the room, Katrìn drew an audible breath and swept toward them. “Let me see it. If it’s what I think it is . . .” She trailed off as she picked up the clock, examining its shape. With a soft gasp, she set it down again a moment later. “Oh, Fura. It’s an Echo.”
“A what?” Mars cocked his head, looking at the clock for something he’d missed.
Katrìn turned to Mars. “It’s powerful magic. And very . . . special.” She took a step back from the table, waving at Mars to follow her. “We should leave Fura alone for this.”
“Why?” Mars looked at Fura to find she had gone completely still, as if time had frozen around her.
“I’ll tell you outside.” Katrìn shooed him, but Mars held his ground.
“Not until we know that thing is safe.”
“It won’t hurt me,” Fura said in a breathless voice. Her skin, pale with shock, turned her eyes a brilliant shade of green as she pulled her gaze off the clock at last. “It’s the message from my father.”
Katrìn smirked. “That’s like calling the sea a pool of water.” She glared at Mars, hands on hips. “An Echo allows a person to trap a bit of themselves in an object. When Fura opens it, it’ll be like her father is in this room with us.”
Mars swallowed. The last time he saw Henrik Torvald, the life was slipping out of the man’s eyes. He turned for the door. “I’ll wait outside, then.”
Fura spoke softly. “No, Mars. It’s all right. Please stay.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Yes.” Fura met his gaze. “There have been enough secrets between us already. Let there be no more.”
Then, without giving him a chance to respond, she placed her hands on the clock and pulled it toward her, whispering that secret word low on her breath. At once the brass plate on the clock’s face began to move, twisting to the right as if by an unseen gear—a gear formed and fueled by the magic contained inside it. Mars felt the stirring of it in the air, coaxing gooseflesh down his arms and setting his palms itching with the need to touch the Rift and draw its power forth.
A substance like smoke or vapor began to pour out of the clockface. It rose into the air, swirling about with purpose, like something alive. All three of them took a step back, giving it room. The smoke coalesced in the area in front of the desk, taking the shape of a man. It was a slow process, like watching an artist shading in a sketch. But once done, Henrik Torvald was standing in the room with them. Or some ghost or shadow of him was, at least. Although the surcoat he wore was brown, the color was dull, almost translucent. So were his skin and hair. Everything except for his eyes. Those were exactly as Mars had remembered them in the moments before the man died, both weary and penetrating.
Aware of his beating heart, Mars took another step back, wishing he could flee.
Henrik’s shadow faced Fura, the magic drawing them together. The way the man’s eyes fixed on his daughter’s sent an eerie shiver down Mars’s spine, a fear that this same gaze would fix on Mars with recognition of a different nature.
“Fura, my dearheart, my darling. If you’re hearing this, then I am gone. And I’m so sorry to have left you behind, and with so little in the way of guidance. And yet here you are.” The voice of this shadow Henrik was much like its form, faded and distant. Still, the words held weight and substance, drawing tears to Fura’s eyes at once. Mars glanced at her, then looked away just as quickly, unable to bear the raw sorrow in her expression.
We are the weapon, not the will.
The refrain didn’t help this time.
Henrik’s Echo was moving on. “I can only hope you have kept the Primer formula safe and yourself as well, and Katrìn, too. My dear, sweet Katrìn.” The shadow seemed to shudder at her name. Mars glanced at Katrìn, noting how pale she’d gone. “I’m so sorry. Both for what I’ve done and what I’m about to do.”
Henrik’s shadow went still for a moment, and Mars felt the air in the room grow tense in anticipation. Nothing good can come from this, he thought. But there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“I brought you here under false pretenses,” Henrik’s Echo continued. “I promised you a better way to use the Primer to destroy all the country’s Ice at once, and while I can give you that, it comes with a terrible price. If you wish to walk away from this now, I understand.” The Echo paused, as if to give Fura the chance to do just that. But anyone who knew her would know that that would never happen. A moment later, the Echo went on. “You know from my use of the Primer in the Skorri mine that it triggers a deadly reaction when it comes in contact with Ice. The amount we used there was minuscule, a few drops, and yet hundreds of miners died in the resulting explosion. So many innocent lives lost.” The shadow paused again, another shudder passing through it. “The weight of my reckless decision to test it there haunts me. I should’ve known better, done better, only . . .” He trailed off for a moment, lost in thought.
When he resumed, he seemed harder somehow, more resolved. “What I learned in that failure is that using the Primer in that manner had been folly from the start. If the Helm, the kith, the very people of Riven had all been willing to eradicate the Ice together, it might’ve worked. We could’ve emptied the mines, made sure people were at a safe distance before deploying it, but I’m afraid Riven is incapable of such unity.”
Mars silently agreed. Their small group struggled to share a unified vision—how could they expect anything else from the entire country?
“I was unwilling to do what needed to be done to destroy the Ice in that manner,” the Echo continued, “and this caused the Wake to turn on me. They had no such compunctions. They would’ve used it without care or thought, deploying dozens of fighters across all nine mines of Riven in a preemptive strike. One that would’ve left Riven and its people devastated. I know, Fura, that you will be unwilling to sacrifice so many innocents to our cause.”
He knew his daughter well, Mars thought, glancing at Fura. Unbidden, the face of the little thief he’d schooled in Geldur Court appeared in his mind. Then he saw Natasja’s mother, then Natasja herself. Giving faces to those thousands of lives made Henrik’s warning all the more disturbing.
“There is an alternative,” Henrik’s shadow said, “one that requires the sacrifice of only one innocent life to save thousands. But the decision won’t be easy. It may, in fact, be impossible.” The Echo paused, the intervening silence heavy as a stone. “Katrìn. She is the key, the final ingredient that will allow us to end the tyranny of Ice forever. Not by destroying it, but by healing the Rift.”
Katrìn? Mars turned his head toward her, fear already taking hold of him. He knew her well enough to know that she would certainly be willing to give anything to this cause, same as Fura. But healing the Rift? Dozens of questions flooded Mars’s mind, but he had no one to ask.
Fortunately, Henrik was far from finished with his explanation. “In order for you to understand, I must go back to the beginning. The true beginning of my quest to create the Primer, which started long before you were born, Fura. Before you were even a thought in my mind.
“The year I married your mother, she brought me with her to the Assembly for the first time. With my elevated status, I was allowed to visit the Archives, a place restricted to all but the kith. Even the Helm are not permitted to read the books kept there. In them, I found personal accounts of the Consortium adepts—both before the Cataclysm and after. I learned the Consortium had been trying to heal the Rift, but their attempt backfired and gave rise to the Ice. I soon began to wonder if the process could be reversed somehow—if the Rift could be brought back to the state it had been in before the Cataclysm. In my youth and arrogance, I believed myself capable of doing it. And so I dedicated all my life and energy to the pursuit.
“The answer to healing the Rift, I discovered, lay in the very nature of its creation—ages ago—the death of the World Raven. Here at Skarfell it died, its rib bones forming the very pillars surrounding the Heart. However, the Rift’s creation was not just by the animal’s physical death, but the sacrifice of its kull, its lifeblood. If I could re-create an infusion of kull of equal measure to Jörn’s, then that lifeblood could be used to restore the Rift. To that end, I began to experiment on creating such a being . . . using human children. And starting before they were born.”
A chill slid down Mars’s spine at the implication in the man’s words. Next to him, Fura raised a hand to her mouth.
“I’m not proud of it,” Henrik’s shadow said, “and my shame of those early days has only grown in the years since. Back then, I wasn’t concerned with the sanctity of human life, not as I am now. My pursuit was purely scientific, I’d convinced myself—attempting to create a vessel, an artifact, out of a human body. The most complicated shape of all. To do that, I began recruiting secret adepts or rescuing them from the black markets when I could. All came to my cause willingly, and some of the women volunteered to give birth to the vessel children, as I came to call them.
“As with all experiments, there were failures . . . many of them. Most of the fetuses died in the womb. And at first, those successfully born didn’t live longer than a few days. That is, until Katrìn.”
At the mention of her name, shock prickled down Mars’s arms. She had been an experiment? Henrik Torvald had bred her like a prized hunting dog? He thought he might be sick. Katrìn, too, looked unwell, her skin sallow and her expression grim.
“Katrìn was born healthy. I had succeeded.” Henrik’s shadow flashed a sad, bitter grin. “You might be wondering why I didn’t go through with it. Why I didn’t sacrifice this baby to the Rift as I intended. There are two reasons. You were born a mere seven days after Katrìn. The first time I held you in my arms, I loved you. And yet you were the same as the vessel child. Small, helpless, innocent. I knew then that I could never go through with it. I couldn’t kill a child. I couldn’t be that monster, despite the monstrous things I’d already done. And when another vessel child was successfully delivered a week later, I knew I had to change my strategy entirely.
“But any possibility of that ended entirely when a fire erupted at the secret compound where I had performed all my experiments, a warehouse in Jakulvik. Katrìn and her mother were still living there when it broke out. Katrìn nearly perished in the fire. To my great sorrow, her mother was not so lucky. Like her daughter, Lena Helgadòttra was fiercely noble and brave. When the fire started, she saved Katrìn first, then returned to the warehouse to save the other vessel child and that child’s mother. But none of them made it back out.”
Katrìn drew an audible breath, the sound rife with tears. Mars resisted looking at her, unwilling to witness the pain she must be feeling.
“After that tragedy, I adopted Katrìn, bringing her to live with us as a playmate for you, Fura. And I loved and raised her as one of my own. And yet my desire to end the world’s dependance on Ice was far from defeated. I turned instead from trying to heal the Rift to trying to destroy the Ice itself—and the Primer, with all its flaws and risks, was the end result. And yet my success with the vessel child remained. Even now, Katrìn has it within her to heal the Rift and end the Ice. But she must make the sacrifice willingly, giving the Rift all her kull, same as the World Raven once did.”
Fura gasped. She ripped her gaze from her father’s shadow and turned it to Katrìn. “Absolutely not. I won’t allow it. I won’t—”
“Fura,” Henrik’s shadow said, and for a moment his voice was so lifelike, it was as if he were actually in the room with them, “I know what you must be feeling and thinking. For I have felt the same as well. It’s an impossible choice. And it’s also not one either of us can make. The choice must be Katrìn’s. She and she alone can do this.
“And yet even as I tell you these things, my heart hopes that there may yet be another option. Katrìn is clever, the smartest pupil I have ever trained. She has a scientific mind and insight. Given enough time, she might find a way to refine the Primer formula so that she may combine its power with her kull in such a way as to heal the Rift without losing her life. That is my greatest hope in bringing you here.”
Now Henrik’s shadow rotated, turning toward the place where the clock had resided on the shelf. He held out his hand, and Mars felt the magic respond. A hidden panel in the shelf slid aside, revealing a small compartment built into the wall. A journal lay inside it. “All of my research, concerning both the vessel child and the Primer, resides in that journal. Guard it with your life, Fura. No one else must know what Katrìn is.”
Henrik’s shadow turned back to Fura, flickering in and out with the movement. Mars sensed the magic weakening. The artifact’s power was like a candle that had nearly been spent—one that would never be lit again.
“I must leave you now, Fura, at least until we meet again in Asvaldur. But first, I beg your forgiveness, daughter, for all the things I once did and for the terrible burden I leave for you now. I love you, Fura, and Katrìn as well. Always.”
Henrik blew Fura a kiss and bowed, a sad gesture to replace the embrace he wasn’t capable of giving in this form. Then the magic went out of the room, and the Echo of Henrik Torvald faded away into nothingness.