We meet few dragons along the way, mostly servants who bow as we pass or guardsmen who nod to us, rather than members of the palace elite. I’m left with a feeling of barrenness as we march on; at last, I see ornate carvings on the walls as we reach some of the palace’s larger, more central halls.
These gables soar higher, the halls not so drafty and the torches interspersed with braziers where better-dressed palace staff take a moment to warm themselves before scurrying about their duties. I feel we’re close to the Jarl’s hall now as we turn a corner, and I finally see a gathering of Blood Dragons in a myriad of buckled leathers, congregating in the hall.
Tall, fierce, and massively muscled, the men and women are of enormous stature and imposing visage. They pull back slightly in deference as I’m escorted into the hall with my guard detail. A few nod, recognizing me as their Hög Skjaldmær.
Others give me a cold stare, that I desecrated one of their holiest—and most feared—heritage sites in their lands.
Jarl Oggi Magnussen waits for us, his Jarl’s hall packed with higher-ups of the Magnussen Clan court. They’ve gathered around his low dais at the far end of the space; as solid and no-frills as the rest of the fortress, the Jarl’s hall is decorated only with ornately carved Blood Dragons in scenes of battle, as we file in through the strong central columns and are led towards him.
I saywe, because Bjorn and Ström are being led in at the same time as me from two doors at the sides of the hall. It’s as if the Jarl had us incarcerated in the three furthest towers of the palace, so we were as far as he could get us from one another, in case our bonded power resonated again, like it did atUnhaemmerten.
And blasted Bjorn’s father a new one.
Dressed in their battle-leathers from the Old Palace, I see Bjorn and Ström have not been hurt, as our guards lead us all in. We’re allowed to come together now at the foot of the Jarl’s low dais. Bjorn, Ström, and I all breathe a sigh of relief as we’re briefly allowed to touch each other and make sure everyone’s okay.
The Jarl clears his throat now, and the entire hall comes to silence. It’s not a big audience chamber; Bjorn’s clan is not large, thanks to their hard life in the snow-capped mountains. I feel the energy of these Magnussen dragons around us roar as they wonder what’s to become of our trio.
One, a king’s potential heir; one, a neighboring Jarl-Heir.
And one who was their own Jarl-Heir—and might have been their Jarl, once.
Bjorn bristles as he comes before his father’s modest three-step dais, and his father bristles right back. Jarl Magnussen sits on no throne of station, just a tall-backed armchair of solid whitesilberskraewood with snarling dragons for the arms and stout legs, two dragons battling as its back.
It’s clear Magnussens do not favor niceties; so much about Bjorn’s curt manner and almost brutal matter-of-factness makes sense now as I wait for the Jarl to speak.
Though as a member of the royal family, I could begin these proceedings, since I outrank him in every way.
“Hög Skjaldmær Rikyava Andersen. Jarl-Heir Ström Eriksson. Be welcome.”
The Jarl’s rough basso voice sounds like he’s been bellowing apart mountains or marshaling armies for centuries as he speaks. A towering man of broad stature, he pushes up from his chair now to give me and Ström each a nod.
Wearing black battle-leathers with a white ice-bear pelt around his shoulders, his golden mane is short and his beard is trimmed. UnlikeBjorn’s long, impressive mane, the Jarl’s hair is cropped in a brush-cut, militaristic style, shaved on both sides with snarling dragons.
His towering, massively built frame stands head and shoulders above anyone else here, however, even a good six inches taller than Bjorn. His eyes aren’t gold and lavender like Bjorn’s, but a combination of gold and black, making his pupils seem penetrating as he stares us down.
The Jarl wears no silver in his beard or rings upon his fingers. He has no adornment whatsoever, other than the dragons shaved into his hair.
One strange, curling white tattoo delves down the left side of his neck, disappearing under his leathers.
Though Jarl Magnussen has welcomed us, he hasn’t said shit to his son. I wonder if Bjorn and his father have spoken at all yet, after Bjorn was captured and his father nearly bit his head off. Rage simmers inside Bjorn, bright like scalding lava. It’s the only thing I feel from him through the dampening of the silver manacles still around our wrists.
As he faces his father, saying not a word.
“Jarl Magnussen.” I begin these negotiations now, because technically, I’m the highest-ranking person here, even though I have had little presence in my Lineage for the past twenty years. “You welcome Jarl-Heir Eriksson and myself to your hall like nobles, but treat us like criminals.” I gesture to the manacles. “Or am I wrong about the manner in which you have kept us these few days, and the magic-binding cuffs we now wear?”
“My treatment of you was fair these past days.” Ice is in the Jarl’s voice now, not backing down from my opening chastisement. “You were discovered desecrating an ancient burial site in Magnussen lands; any person of lesser stature than yourself would be dead by now, Hög Skjaldmær, by our clan laws. Not only that, but you were found there with an Outcast of the Magnussen Clan. Another crime, to permit one such as this Outcast to re-enter the skies he is forbidden to fly, and the land he is forbidden to walk. A crime punishable by death, as per our laws.”
I know Bjorn, Ström, and I are up shit creek as the Jarl speaks. My only hope now is to present the King’s Blood Seal to Jarl Magnussenpublicly, like Captain Olander suggested, and see if we can turn his ear to us.
My hopes are dashed, though, as I hear Bjorn’s low growl. The fury and hatred in it vibrates me to my bones.
As he stares his father down with eyes gone all-gold from his dragon.
“I’m standingright here,” Bjorn says as that growl devours his voice, evidence of a pre-shift into his dragon that he’s holding back so, so hard right now, rather than just go ballistic. The manacles probably also prevent that shift. I glance at him and see him shaking with the need to rip talons and wings through his flesh and fight it out with his father.
For some ancient reason I know nothing about, since Bjorn’s never told me.
“Outcasts will not speak in this hall unless they are spoken to,” the Jarl snaps without mercy now. He stares Bjorn down with a matching golden fire in his eyes, though the Jarl’s is gold-black rather than pure gold, like Bjorn’s.
