It was the one thing I looked forward to each day. Selig had other business to attend to, so he set one of the White Brethren to escort me. It was well that Joscelin had kept the extent of his fledgling Skaldic hidden, for it aroused no suspicion when we spoke in D’Angeline, and I quickly determined that, unlike Selig, his thanes had no knowledge of our tongue.
Unfortunately, there was little we could do in the way of plotting an escape. The steading was simply too well guarded. Still, we spoke of survival, and kept each other’s spirits from flagging.
Never long on tolerance when he suspected delay, Selig grew impatient for Joscelin’s hands to heal, and sent for a priest of Odhinn who was also a healer to see to him.
"In truth," he confessed to me the night before, "I am curious to see what Lodur will make of you. He is my oldest teacher, and I have great respect for his wisdom."
I should add that by that point, unrest over Selig’s patronage of me had continued to grow and it was commonly put about that I was a witch, sent from Terre d’Ange to ensorcel him, as evidenced by the red mote in my left eye-a sure sign of a witch.
Selig laughed at the rumor. "Lodur’s mother was a witch too, so they said. They said she could cure a man of any wound, mortal or no, if she found him favorable. Truth is, she was a skilled healer. As you are skilled at…other things."
I don’t know what I said to that; something flattering, you may be sure. If I added a touch of defiant spice sometimes, for the most part, I told him what he wished to hear. But so it came to pass that I rode with him and two of his White Brethren to the home of Lodur the One-Eyed, on a shaggy pony Selig had given me as my own to ride.
My first glimpse of the healer was of a wiry old man standing bare-chested in the snow, a fur vest over his scrawny torso. His hair was white and wild. He held a carved staff in one hand, and on the other fist, a raven perched. We saw him at a distance speaking to it, but it flew away at our approach. I thought it was Skaldi magic at the time. Later I learned he’d nursed it broken-winged, and it was still half tame. Lodur glanced up, unsurprised, and I saw that he bore a patch over his right eye; I hadn’t known, then, that he was called One-Eyed.
"Waldemar Berundson," he said calmly, using a patronymic I’d never even heard spoken. Selig, they called him, Blessed, as if the gods themselves had named him.
"This is Faydra nó Delaunay of Terre d’Ange, old master," Selig said respectfully. He dismounted and bent his head to the old man, so I did the same, and noticed that his thanes did too. "She has a companion who has the cold-wounds, that will not heal."
"Indeed." Lodur came to meet us across the snow, moving with a quickness that belied his age. His one eye was a pale, fierce blue, but it did not look unkindly on me. Unlike every other Skaldi male I’d seen, he was beardless, a grizzled white stubble on his leather-tanned face. "You like it, eh?" He saw me looking and stroked his chin, grinning. "I met a girl once who fancied a clean face. Got into the habit, I suppose."
Priests aplenty I have known, but never one like him; I stammered some reply. "No matter," he said casually, and felt me all over with firm hands, an impersonal patting. I stood still for it, bewildered. Selig looked approving. "D’Angeline, eh?" Lodur fixed me with his solitary ice-blue gaze, gazing thoughtfully at my face and my own mismatched eyes. The cold didn’t seem to touch him. "What do they call it, that?" He nodded at my left eye.
"Kushiel’s Dart," I said softly.
"You’re god-marked, then. Like me, you think?" He laughed, pointing to his patch. "One-Eyed, they call me, like the All-Father. Do you know the story?"
I knew it; I’d heard it sung at Gunter’s steading often enough. I could even sing it myself. "He gave his eye in exchange for a drink from Mimir’s fountain," I said. "The fountain of wisdom."
Lodur clapped, tucking his staff beneath one arm. Selig’s thanes muttered. "Me, now," the old priest said conversationally. "When I was a fool apprentice, I took my own eye, offered it with prayer, reckoning to become wise like Odhinn. You know what my master told me?" I shook my head. Lodur cocked his and gazed at me. "He told me I had gained a valuable piece of wisdom: No one can bribe the gods. What an idiot I was!" He chuckled at the memory. Only a Skaldi could laugh at such a thing. "But I got wiser," he added.
"Old master…" Selig began.
"I know, I know." Lodur cut him off. "The cold-wounds. And you want to know what I think of the girl. What can I tell you, Waldemar Berundson? You take a weapon thrown by a D’Angeline god to your bosom, and ask me for wisdom? As well ask the mute to advise the deaf. I’ll get my medicine bag."
Selig stared at me, frowning. I kept my countenance as open as I could, frankly as bewildered as he. All along, I had thought myself Kushiel’s victim, marked out for the awful divinity of his love. It was something else, to think of myself as his weapon.
The old priest fetched his medicines and mounted up behind Selig, spry as a boy. We rode that way back to the steading, through the spectacular forests. Lodur hummed to himself and sang a snatch of song, but no one else spoke. Selig’s brow was dark with thought.
At the hut, Lodur rapped three times on the threshold with his staff and gave a loud invocation before stepping inside. He seemed to bring a clean scent of snow and pine needles into the close, dim air of the hut. Joscelin, engaged in some Cassiline meditation, stared at the apparition.
"Like a young Baldur, eh?" Lodur said casually to Selig, naming their dying-god, who is called the Beautiful. "Well, let’s see 'em, boy." He squatted on his shanks next to Joscelin, examining the swollen red flesh of his hands and wrists. They were cracked and suppurating, weeping a clear fluid and refusing to heal. "Ah, I’ve one of mother’s recipes will do for that!" the priest-healer laughed, digging around in his bag. He drew out a small stoneware jar of balm and unstoppered it. What was in it, I don’t know, but it stank to heaven. Joscelin made a face at it, then looked questioningly at me over Lodur’s head as the old man began slathering his hands and wrists with it.
"He is a healer," I said in Caerdicci, for Selig’s benefit; we kept up the pretence that Joscelin’s Skaldic was inadequate for conversing. "Lord Selig wishes that you become well enough to teach him your manner of fighting."
Joscelin bowed his head to Selig. "I look forward to it, my lord." He paused. "To teach the Cassiline style, I require my arms, my lord; or at least my vambraces. Wooden training daggers and sword will suffice."
"The Skaldi do not train with wooden toys. I sent your arms to my smith, to duplicate their design. You shall have them when we spar." Selig cast a scowl at one of the White Brethren; he’d reclaimed Joscelin’s sword, then, and been annoyed at its loss. "Are you done, old master?"
"Oh, nearly." Lodur worked deftly, winding bandages of clean linen about Joscelin’s balm-smeared skin. "He’ll heal quickly. These D’Angelines, they’ve gods' blood in their veins. It’s old and faint all right, but even a mere trace of it’s a powerful thing, Waldemar Berundson."
If I did not miss the warning in his words, Selig could not fail to heed it. "Old and powerful, and corrupted with generations of softness, old master. Their gods will bow their heads to the All-Father, and we will claim the magic of their blood for our own descendants, to infuse it with red-blooded Skaldi vigor."