Just then, the door to the hall burst open, and rays of firstdawn beamed in. A silhouette stood in the doorway. Its shape left no question — the headpiece worn by Bishop Henrik was unique in Kvenland. He stood for a second, shadow against blinding sun, then collapsed in a heap.
Henrik came to in a seat near the throne, but not on its dais. Mauno was keen that the bishop’s hat should not reach higher than his own head. It was superstition, but also something Hedda might have done. He’d mused about having the hat stolen or destroyed, just to put an end to the matter. Then Henrik regained enough of his senses to begin to babble.
“… all die. Nothing means anything. Haystacks… not haystacks. Those were its toes!”
Mauno stood. “Bishop. Where is your company? Did your One God intervene?”
Henrik looked around the room in confusion, his face a canvas stretched over a ruined frame. Finally, “The Beast! It has come for your Godless lands. Only I will survive. You soulless barbarians will be swept beneath it. Engulfed! So I bore witness in the north. The Sami showed me glyphs… ancient carvings. A whole village gone. So much blood. Not haystacks… Mountains with blades for toes!”
He looked around, begging for understanding and finding only a room full of vicissitude from those who had just begun to put faith in his cross and his beads and the lies that he believed. Scowling worst of all was a pagan girl, on her knees, dressed in black, hands bound at her back.
Tähti spoke. “You are mad, priest. As all who gaze upon the Old Ones are.” Then turning toward the throne, “Mauno. I’ll forgive your insolence once. Return me to my tower. I never trusted your queen to leave me unmolested, either, so I hid away, I studied, and I learned much. I would have kept that knowledge for myself had your daughter not thawed my heart.”
Shock grounded through the room, quick as lightning.
“In defense only of Aili and myself, I have woven magicks that keep all your people out of sight. But every instant I’m away, that veil collapses, and blind eyes turn toward you. As long as I remain here, we are all in peril.”
Mauno was silent. Considered. Decided.
“Strip the witch!”
One warrior grabbed Tähti’s hair. Another cut the black gown off with one long knifeswipe. Tähti’s tiny nipples were revealed. And well below them, something resembling a penis. And below that…
“Abomination!” cried Bishop Henrik, slowly recovering a semblance of nerve.
“So it is a wizard you’ve found us, Aili. This is an ill omen.” Mauno shook his head.
Aili stood stunned in silence.
“Kill it!” shrieked Henrik.
“Good Lalli,” said Mauno, addressing the strapping farmer who had proven his fealty. “Take Henrik to the lake and clean him up. Make him eat something.”
“My King. What of this book the witch brought?” asked Lalli. He was tall and strong, rippling arm muscles gleamed in the morning torchlight. The strength of the fields was in him. His harvest kept them from eating bark by winter.
“Burn it,” said Mauno.
“No!” Tähti screamed. “It… it cannot be undone by fire. There is only one way to be free of the magic in that book. Heed!” Tähti’s lip was split. Blood trickled down cleft chin.
Lalli flipped through the pages in the black leather volume. “It is nonsense. Gibberish from the Arab lands with perverse depictions of Pohjola etched inside.”
“And how would you rid our hall of this evil, witch?” asked Mauno.
“There is but one way. Set it in stone, wrap it in skins, cast it afloat. Only then will its evil latch onto another,” Tähti lied.
“Let it be done,” said Mauno. “As for this thing… I side with the priest. Slay it in the snow. Let its blood not touch the floor of our hall.”
At this, Aili regained her composure. Queen’s blood coursed through the princess’s veins. She stamped before the throne, faced her father, found her voice.
“Mauno! This is my prisoner. Her life is not yours to take.”
The King squirmed on the seat he had barely begun to warm. He glanced at the elder women. In those eyes he observed only contempt. A sliver of his soul missed his wife more in that moment than any that had yet come. But no. Weakness would not do. He rose and spoke, with sneering lip and shoulders slumped.
“Take it to the cellar and toss it to the bats. We must prepare for war. Death comes to our kingdom today!”
Tähti began to protest, but another swift blow brought silence. Then the wizard was dragged away, and Mauno left the hall with an escort and a simulacrum of pride.
Aili stood alone. She gazed up at the chimney as the sootsmoke sucked through it and gold light burned a halo around its edges; then she found her heart and raced outside to the prison cellar.
Tähti sat bleeding in the frozen straw. There was no seeing the bat dung in the darkness, but neither could it be ignored. The stones of the cellar were built around a natural cavern in a hillside, choked in withered ivy and packed with ice. Only a thin sheet of daylight ramped in from the sturdy wooden door, alighting dust particles ached from bat bowels. Then the light departed and all was darkness; already the sound of clashing blades and hopeless fear was resounding from the village outside.
“Tähti,” came Aili’s voice in a fierce whisper.
“What trick is this, Princess? You capture me by force then come to gloat? You sold my fate as surely as you sealed that of your people.”
“My father is a fool, and mayhap you are too. But no matter — my heart still lies with you.”
“You… don’t reject me? You have seen… ”
“Yes. And I only love you the more for it. I would never be parted from you, Tähti. But our world is ending here. Please, come to my aid. I need you now.”
In the darkness, Tähti limped to the door, stumbling over old bones, and nearly retching from the smell.
“Then free me, Aili. I will do what I can to save us.”
“I have no key.”
Silence. Then, “Do you have a knife?”
“Yes.”
“Aili, to do this, I will need blood.”
A moment later, Tähti heard Aili take in a deep and sudden breath. Then a knife blade soaked in Aili’s blood issued through the slit in the door.
“Stand aside, brave princess,” said Tähti.
As Aili backed from the doorway, Tähti saw the strand of light return, stronger now as the sun rose higher in the midmorning sky.
Aili heard a chanting from within the cellar. Then her eardrums compressed as thunder clapped. The wooden door burst into charred rubble from an eruption of crackling blue energy. As the smoke dissipated, Tähti staggered out cold and naked, blinking in the daylight. Aili wrapped her great white cloak around them both. As the warm fur touched their shoulders, she gave Tähti a little pat on the rump. Tähti leaned her bruised head on Aili’s warm, forgiving shoulder.
The two stole to a nearby hut and found winter garb for Tähti. Aili bound her own knife wound with care. Then she stowed supplies in a bag and whistled for her beast. The herding dog obeyed and rushed to her side, and the three crept toward the village outskirts. None were watching. All bodies raced toward the hillcrest to watch the End come.
It was as the Bishop said. There could be no word but Mountain for that which slowly dozed its way across the landscape. Each minute it grew larger and cast its shadow longer. Where warriors crossed its path there looked to be a scuffle of brambles and blood, then nothing. Where sheep stood in its way, bones crunched through reddened wool, then nothing. And still it lurched on, misshapen patches of hillside, flesh stretched wide over the bulk of crumbling castles, eyes of inhuman size popping wide and rolling blind behind thick cataracts of mucous. It was Old. And it was Hungry. Or perhaps it knew nothing of senses, only destroying out of its own unearthly nature.