Valkyries Calling-Chapter 44: Stone and Storm

Chapter 44: Stone and Storm freēnovelkiss.com

The bishop’s chambers were quiet. Too quiet. Not even the light creak of floorboards nor the muttering of priests in the hall could be heard.

Just the rustle of parchment in his trembling hands, and the hollow thrum of a heart pressed by fear.

It had been over three months.

Three months since he’d sealed the letter with trembling fingers and affixed it with his signet addressed to the Holy Father himself.

Bearing word of a growing apostasy in the North Atlantic isles. A warning. A plea for action.

And yet, nothing.

He paced in small, tight circles, robes dragging like dead leaves across the floor.

“They should have responded by now. Even a rebuke… even an admonishment… Unless—” He stopped himself. His fingers went to his collar, pulling at the edge of his vestment like it choked him.

He had not told anyone. Not truly. The letter had been sent by a trusted courier, a faithful young cleric sworn to silence.

The route was dangerous. Across the channel, through Frankia, past the treacherous passes of the Alps. But he had prayed. He had trusted.

And now he waited.

Waited for a response that never came.

—

Later that week, the bishop stood at court once more, silent among the gathered clergy and nobles.

King Cnut sat upon the high seat, speaking of grain reserves in Kent and raids off the Breton coast.

But he wasn’t listening. He was watching.

Watching the king’s eyes. Watching the slight curl of his lip, the way his fingers tapped idly against the lion-headed armrest.

When the matter of the northern seas came up, passing mention of Iceland, of strange lights in the west and forgotten prayers; the bishop cleared his throat.

“Your Grace,” he said, voice careful, “has there been… any word… from our brothers in the Curia? Concerning the heresies we suspected might take root across the western isles?”

The court fell momentarily still.

Cnut looked at him, not with fury, but with that same half-lidded gaze he gave to his hounds before a hunt. Cool. Knowing.

Then the king smiled. Slowly.

“Rome is a distant land, Bishop. And popes are old men. Their parchment trails move slower than ours.” A pause. “But fear not. The mountains are always hungry. And I’ve found the Alps can swallow letters just as easily as men.”

The words were polite.

The meaning was not.

The bishop felt the blood drain from his cheeks. He bowed his head, murmuring something about patience and divine providence.

He said nothing more for the rest of the day.

—

The alps were a land unaffected by time itself. And earlier in the spring, a truth was buried there.

A cold wind whistled between the pine trees. Snow dusted the rocky ground, though the season had not yet turned fully.

The courier lay facedown beneath a shallow mound of earth, hidden beneath moss and stone.

His horse had been taken. His satchel burned. Only the broken fragments of wax and vellum remained in a distant hearth; somewhere high in the mountains, where Cnut’s long hand had quietly reached and closed.

—

The fire crackled low in the longhouse, smoke coiling toward the rafters like the ghosts of memory.

King Conchobar mac Murchadha sat upon a simple oaken seat, his weathered hands resting upon his knees.

His hall was modest, but well-kept. A remnant of the old ways, a flickering torch amid the twilight of Ireland’s fading kings.

Before him, seated on a cushioned bench near the hearth, was the nun.

Eithne sat silently, her pale hands folded in her lap. A face lined not by years, but sorrow.

Her veil hung loose about her shoulders tonight, as if the fire’s warmth had unfastened her restraint.

She was speaking, quietly, to the queen, but Conchobar heard her all the same.

“The girl had fire in her… not the kind that makes noise, but the kind that endures. For reasons beyond my understanding, the Mother Superior had deemed it fit to her lock her away in her quarters for most of the day. She had an unusually difficult life, but she never once complained.”

The next words caught in Eithne’s throat, causing her to silence herself, and think them through the proplery before giving voice.

“When the Norse came, I feared the worst for her.” She closed her eyes. “I still do. I pray for her. Róisín. May Christ watch over her, and may the virgin Mary shield her from the blades of men.”

The queen, having taken a great liking to Eithne since she was first given refuge in the Petty King of Aidhne’s hall offered a soft, kind smile. “You speak of her often.”

“She was like a younger sister to me.” Eithne’s voice broke slightly. “We weren’t too far apart in years. It was why we got along so well.”

Conchobar leaned forward slightly, his fingers steepling in thought.

Róisín. Again, that name.

A strange name, one not carried by many of the coastal peasant kin. Not among the typical baptisms or saints.

And yet it rang faint bells of bloodlines, of ancestral tales. There had once been a girl named Róisín born into the ancient house of Ui Briúin Bríghde.

A branch of the fabled Kings of Connacht from an era so long past it seemed more myth than history at this point.

Though she was said to have perished with the rest of her family, after that nasty business with the church over a decade prior.

The death of the house was the end of one of Conchobar’s greatest rivals. But if the girl had lived…

“You say she had the blood of kings?” he asked gently, voice more curious than pressing.

Eithne looked up, startled. “She never said so. But… yes. There was something in her bearing. She walked like someone who expected to be followed. Her eyes didn’t flinch from cruelty, not because she was hardened, but because she understood it.” She paused. “Why do you ask?”

And I remember the kings who tried to make her disappear.” He turned to face Eithne fully now, eyes sharp but not unkind. “And if what you say is true… you may have lived beside the last of the Ui Briúin. A spark not fully snuffed.”

Eithne paled. She clutched the pendant at her throat; a crude cross forged of iron shaped like a tree.

“If she lives… if she’s truly alive, and what you say is true, then they’ll come for her. Not just those Norsemen.” She swallowed. “But the ones who swore loyalty to the church. The ones who remember what her blood means.”

Conchobar nodded, then turned to one of his attendants. “Fetch my genealogist. And my best map.”

The queen looked at him, brows rising. “You intend to find her?”

He shook his head. “No. Not yet. But if she’s alive… the storm is coming. We may be in its path. Best we know which way the wind blows before it arrives.”

—

Meanwhile, far to the north, in the windswept tower of fortress built upon Ynys Rós. Vetrúlfr stood atop the parapet overlooking the stormy sea.

The sun had just begun to dip below the horizon, casting bronze light over the water. He watched in silence, a wolf pelt flapping at his shoulders, arms crossed like a statue carved from frost.

Behind him, the hall glowed with firelight. Róisín sat at the center of it, surrounded by aspiring druids who listened intently as she explained the old rites, the forgotten chants, the sacred meanings behind the runes carved into the grove’s central stone.

She was no longer a girl clad in fear. She was the Queen Consort of Ísland and Vestmannaeyjar.

But perhaps more importantly, she was now the arch-druidess of Ynys Rós. A voice resurrecting a buried world.

Vetrúlfr heard the creak of boots behind him. It was Gormr, his húskarl.

“The grove is finished,” he said. “The ironwood gate has been raised. The scholars from Dyflinn have arrived.”

“And the guards?”

“Stag-cloaked and oath-bound. Not one drinks unless you permit it.”

Vetrúlfr nodded once. “Good. It must remain sacred.”

He looked out over the water again, but this time his thoughts turned to the mainland. To London. To Rome. To the rumors whispered in the courts of kings and bishops.

There would be a reckoning soon. He could feel it. And when it came, they would strike not only at his blades, but at her; his wife, his light, his counterbalance. They would not tolerate her sanctum.

Not the Papacy. Not the traitors in the shadows. Not the wolves who donned sheep’s cloth.

But he would not let them have her.

He would bury the world before he buried her.

The wind howled over the cliffs. He welcomed it like an old friend.

“Double the recruitment efforts for the Guardians of Ynys Rós. These are the last remnants of a world the Christians would try to bury. We suffer the same plight. If they were to die here, then so shall we. Ynys Rós must stand as an impenetrable fortress against Christendom.”

Gormr would never disobey an order from high king, and though the reasons Vetrúlfr used were sound for doubling the orders numbers.

He understood the real reason for the King’s worries was because starting today, this island would become his wife’s home away from home.

But Gormr couldn’t fault Vetrúlfr for his sentiment. It was a man’s duty to protect his wife, and the life they had built together.

No man would condemn him if he diverted resources from other parts of the Kingdom to fulfill his duties as a husband, and one day soon a father too.

“It will be done, sire.”

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