Consumed by unearthly fire, Skarfr etched an outline on the wall. Only Hlif remained in this otherworld, protecting him, her arms spread out like wings drying – but even she was mute and static while the gods spoke through his stone. Like Brother Kristian’s illuminations, like the stonemason’s mark, like Thorbjorn’s cormorant, the lines made a shape, like and unlike the creations of those three artists.
Skarfr was conscious only of the shaping itself, not of any influences. Blowing through him, the dragon made an image of itself. Four prancing legs, clawed feet and a proudly arched neck. One huge slanted eye in the profile of a head looking back over its right shoulder. Tongue lolling as the mouth breathed fire. One scallop at a time, Skarfr added delicate scales on back, neck and head, as if he were scraping the surface with a penknife to find the gold underneath. Tail swinging between its legs, like a penis, like an arrow, swinging up…
And then Skarfr stopped carving, his hand held in a gigantic, scaled grip, the foul stench of rotted meat rolling over him, a voice old and deep as oceans and centuries rumbling through his mind, ‘That is enough.’
But it wasn’t. Skarfr could see the dragon carved on the wall but he had not finished. There was more he had to say and he struggled, alone against this primeval force unleashed by the tomb, still guarding its lost treasure.
Resonant, scalding laughter ripped through him.
‘You wish to wrestle with me, little one?’
‘Not wrestle but riddle,’ Skarfr told the dragon, drawing on his time with Botolf for all he’d learned of standing his ground and of old stories, dragons and heroes.
More laughter, which surged through Skarfr’s guts like a purge.
‘Very well then. Three riddles. Guess them and you may spoil my creation in whatever manner you choose. Fail and you join me, guarding this tomb.’
Skarfr swallowed. ‘So be it.’
The dragon’s words rumbled like an earthquake, reverberating through Skarfr’s entire body, not just his eardrums.
‘Who grasps the earth,
swallowing wood and water;
fears no son of Embla
but dreads storms and wind;
takes on the sun in
a fight to the death
that repeats when this great one
grows strong again?
Small messenger of the worm’s lair,
guess my riddle.’
Immediately, Skarfr thought of Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent who grasps the earth but on second thoughts, this did not fit and he held his tongue until he had the whole picture. Son of Embla was obviously ‘man’ as all men were descended from the first mother, Embla, made from a tree. The gods didn’t fear man, neither did the powers of nature, and they were all great ones. But the gods wouldn’t fear storms or wind.
‘I have it!’ Skarfr told the dragon. ‘This is a force of nature which swallows up wood and water and fights the sun by making them invisible. But as soon as the wind gets up, the sun breaks through and he is defeated. Fog is the answer!’
The dragon gave a low rumble at defeat and opened its maw, showing two rows of spear-sharp teeth. A blast of yellow smoke preceded the second riddle.
‘What is that wonder
I saw outside
before Dellingr’s Door;
two lifeless ones,
lacking breath
yet blowing briskly
they branded the hilt’s tongue?
Small messenger of the worm’s lair,
guess my riddle.’
Skarfr laughed. These were old and easy riddles for a skald trained by Botolf.
The god Dellingr had sired Day, so this was just a poetic way to say when the imaginary event had taken place, before daylight. And lifeless ones were usually objects being described as if animate, for surely the gods could embue life where they chose. Two means a pair…
‘I have it,’ Skarfr told the dragon. ‘When there is no air squeezed into this pair, they are flat but when filled with air, they make the fire hot to forge weapons such as a sword, the hilt’s tongue. The answer is bellows.’
But there was one riddle left and he should have hidden his elation. The dragon spat sparks as he roared,
‘Who, dressed in black,
travels with swift ease the
eagle path and fish ways, and
carries the wave-rider who is
blind, deaf and dumb,
taking him hearth-wise from the whale road
to where his sword sleeps?
Small messenger of the worm’s lair,
guess my riddle.’
Sweat bubbled up from fear or from the dragon-heat, trickled into his eyes, stinging.
The dragon was in Skarfr’s blood and bone, crooning to him. Black, eagle path, blind man … the words tumbled round Skarfr’s head, making no sense.
‘A bargain must be kept,’ rumbled the dragon’s voice. ‘If you don’t know the answer, you must say so and join me here, immortal.’
Skarfr played for time, deciphering the easy puzzles. ‘Eagle path is the sky and fish ways are the rivers and seas.’ Was it a Valkyrie dressed in black? A man blind, deaf and dumb? What sort of man was blind, deaf and dumb? Was it sweat that blinded? He felt as if the answers were behind a locked door and he’d lost the key.
‘Parts do not make the whole. What is your answer? Well?’
Parts do not make the whole. Skarfr shut his eyes to picture the whole riddle, remembered that skaldic verse so often unravelled from the ending like a skein of wool. The ending. Home where the sword sleeps. Death! Then blind, deaf and dumb made sense. And it was not Death in black, carrying a sea-rover home. It was a messenger of the gods, it was…
‘I know your riddle, great cousin to the serpent who circles the earth.’ A little respect might atone for earlier smugness. ‘Blind, deaf and dumb is the corpse of a sea-rover, dead at sea on the whale road and the one who carries home his spirit so he may rest in peace, is one in black who flies and dives, one in black feathers—’ He drew out the suspense, sure of himself.
The dragon’s eyes gleamed. He was sure of himself too.
Skarfr knew why, as he’d nearly made the expected error. Any other respondent would jump to Óðinn’s bird, the raven, as an answer, despite that bird’s landlocked nature.
‘A cormorant,’ declared Skarfr and knew straight away that he was right, from the flash of fire in the darkened eyes, a wisp of smoke hissing from the forked tongue.
Then the dragon changed tactics, began to croon, hypnotic. ‘Well-guessed, small messenger of the worm’s lair. You are far too gifted for the life you lead. A bargain must be kept,’ sang the voice, irresistible as fishfolk dragging a man down into Finfolkaheem. ‘But you can choose to join me instead.’
So tempting, to let go of all that hurt, to be magnificent, immortal, have purpose…
A screech of defiance drew Skarfr’s eyes to the hole in the roof, where a black bird hurtled down towards him, claws and beak outstretched. His cormorant, coming to take his eyes out. He stood unflinching. As she had given him life, so she could take it. The dragon inside him roared, helpless as the cormorant folded her wings, streamlined her body and dived into the great beast within Skarfr as if she were diving into the sea. He felt their union as she seized the dragon’s tail, merged with him.
Containing their spirits in his own, shaking with effort, he finished his carving, etched his brave cormorant, diving into the scaled dragon in eternal conflict and eternal union.
Panting, Skarfr stood, recovering. Hlif lowered her wand and her arms, shrank to her usual proportions, concern writ as clearly on her face as the runes all around them on the walls.
She walked to him slowly, as if they were in some dream-state and held her hand to his head. ‘Burning,’ she said. ‘You’re burning up. This is what I saw! I’m sorry but I must do this, focus the fire.’
Skarfr thought she meant the dragon’s fire but he was aware now of the chamber they had entered, the rockfall, the fire started by Rognvald’s man. She bent down, picked up a piece of hot charcoal and held it in her bare hand without showing any pain. She approached Skarfr and rubbed it onto his right arm, then pressed the seared flesh against the carving he’d made. He heard somebody scream in agony.
He saw Rognvald and the other men, present again, all looking at him. His head was spinning.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Hlif. ‘But all will be well now.’
He dropped to the ground, unable to speak, hearing voices at a distance, as if from another world, but not those from the past.
‘By the rood.’ Rognvald, swearing. ‘He’s carved the lion of St Mark. It’s wonderful!’
Skarfr could feel the dragon and the cormorant biting some barrier in his head, tearing him open with teeth, claws and beak. He wanted to put Rognvald right but when he opened his mouth, out came a flood of words, undammed, unstoppable.
‘The shroud-pin that broke. An aged man in crewel hues, whose sword he cannot use. No harm to Baldr swore the boulders, bears and all of nature’s blades. All but mistletoe made vows to Frigg his mother not to harm a hair on Baldr’s head. No harm in mistletoe, thought Frigg so young and green-white innocent, so Frigg his mother thought before her fears shaped tears. One hundred hammer-strokes clinked his heart iron-hard, manly, fit for stormy passage and rough seas, for reddening the raven’s claw, an overlap of brothers’ wooden shields sealing out the heady drink of women’s wiles and words that capsized unwary warriors’.
‘He’s moonstruck!’ exclaimed Benedikt, horrified.
‘No.’ Rognvald crossed himself. ‘It’s poetry. And he will be the best skald among us. If he lives.’
‘I’m through to the outside,’ yelled the man whose turn it was to hew at the blockage in the tunnel. ‘The sun’s come out!’
While the drama inside the tomb had been claiming their attention, the blizzard had ceased and the light filtering down through the roof was now gilded.
Within minutes of the first breakthrough in the entrance, a big enough hole had been cleared to allow shafts of sunlight to pierce the chamber, hitting any man who stood awestruck between the tunnel and the back wall.
‘Midwinter Solstice,’ said the Jarl, crossing himself again, as the alignment of the tunnel and the setting midwinter sun displayed the architectural skills of those whose sacred place they occupied.
‘Look,’ yelled the man who’d cleared the tunnel entrance.
One by one, they bent to walk along the tunnel, twenty paces long, and each man gasped as he saw the sunlight hit the great standing stone, alone in a far field, before spearing the tunnel and the chamber in its magical light.
Skarfr was motionless in Sól’s fire, unable to move. Not moonstruck, sunstruck.
Voided, he closed his mouth and sank into black nothing, leaving behind these little humans and the new tattoo that throbbed on his arm. A cormorant diving into a dragon. His spirit creatures.