Sigrid kept her hands clasped so tightly her fingers already hurt. She did not take her eyes off the altar.
The Satasteinn rose at the center of the hall like a tooth torn from the world. The runes strewn across its surface seemed asleep from a distance. Hrafn stood before it.
When the skjald opened the cut in his palm, Sigrid expected a cry that did not come. Hrafn only stiffened. A brief spasm climbed through his broad shoulders, and then the blood touched the stone.
The stele answered.
It struck her harder than she had expected. Not the miracle itself-she had seen it before, though only a few times. That was not it. What shook her was who stood beneath the miracle.
Hrafn.
Hrafn of the docks, the damp streets, the bad jokes told at the wrong moment, the shoulders always a little tense.
The light emerged slowly. It was born faint, almost shy, and began to trickle through the stone's cracks as though waking from a very ancient sleep. Green, a dark and deep green. Beautiful.
A murmur ran through the hall.
"A fylkirn!" the skjald announced, raising Hrafn's arm. "New blood for the Hird!"
The words struck the high vaults and came back greater. All around, those present answered with the expected decorum: bowed heads, raised hands, prayers, reverence.
"Brother of the Hird," said the cleric.
Hrafn was one of them now.
Sigrid frowned. There was something strange in the man's voice. It had not sounded wrong, only restrained. As if beneath the solemnity there were a note that did not belong to celebration. Not fear, not exactly-something closer to pity.
She had seen people cry there, laugh, collapse to their knees, or even dance then and there. Another man, years before, had stood still, unmoving, staring at the light in his hand as though the Star itself had touched him.
Hrafn did none of that.
He merely nodded. He was led down the steps with stiff movements, as if Salstein itself had been laid across his shoulders.
For an instant she no longer saw the young man coming down from the altar. She saw two little brats running through the docks, stick for sword, stolen broom for mount, salt on their boots, wind in their faces, yelling to each other that they were voroirs, great heroes, anything grand enough not to fit inside childhood.
Back then, elevation was the stuff of saga, something that happened to ancient names, not to people made of flesh and bone.
But now...
When will I see him again?
The question pierced her before she could stop it. From then on, a person's life ceased to belong to them alone.
As long as he was fylkirn, the Hird would decide his fate.
Refusal did not exist as a choice.
The older, more dissolute members of the family sometimes drank too much and found the courage to tell stories that circulated through the filthiest, darkest taverns, where the skjalds' ears were absent-some spoke of eternal servitude. Others, of worse fates.
Even so, almost no one ran.
To be chosen was still glory-and it was the same for her.
"Next," the hersir called.
The word fell over her like a stone. Sigrid lifted her head; it was her turn.
She climbed the steps trying to seem firmer than she felt. Her heart obeyed; her feet, not so much.
"Hand," said the skjald.
She held out her left, then quickly corrected herself, offering her right in too much haste. The man made no comment. He only cut.
The pain came quick and clear. It burned and tore a short, somewhat shameful sound out of her. The blood fell on the runes around the stone.
For a second, nothing happened.
The next second seemed far too long.
Please.
Then the inscriptions pulsed. The light was born again, swifter this time, spreading through the lines, running across the surface, climbing in luminous veins.
The hall murmured once more.
The cleric beside her lowered his head a little.
"Two in a row..." he said, almost to himself.
"A fylkirn," the skjald announced.
The rest blurred somewhat after that. Someone bandaged her hand. Someone guided her away. She saw faces, heard words, received glances. Even so, a part of her remained before the stone, held fast in that instant when the miracle had smiled on her.
* * *
The days that followed were too full to fit neatly inside memory. There were embraces, tears, blessings, congratulations, advice, hands holding hers for too long, eyes lingering on her face as though they wished to engrave it before the road carried it away.
Pride and apprehension walked together through the house. In her family it had always been that way. When her mother spoke little, it was pride. When she smoothed the same folds over and over, it was apprehension.
On the morning of departure, Sigrid found her beside the bed, finishing the tightening of the straps on her bag.
"Hrafn was elevated too," her mother said, not looking at her right away. "You've known him since you were little."
Sigrid nodded. The mention of his name warmed something in her chest and tightened something else.
"The butcher's daughter, Thora, as well... she is..." Her mother's hands stopped upon the cloth. "Complicated."
Sigrid smiled.
"But trustworthy," she finished, her voice lower. "Keep yourself safe."
Now her eyes were wet.
Sigrid felt the weight of that fall upon her harder than the weight of her own baggage. Until then, everything had still seemed half like a dream, as though the ceremony had happened to someone else and the farewell belonged to another house. But no, it was her, it was her bag, it was her mother trying not to ask her to stay.
"I'll go," Sigrid said, taking her hands. "And I'll be back before you've time to miss me."
The sentence came out light, lighter than she felt.
Her mother nodded, but did not smile. She only lifted the edge of the shawl over her daughter's shoulders, smoothed the cloth once, then again, and then drew back.
Sigrid left before the two of them could make it worse.
The street was already alive with farewells.
Wagons creaked on the damp stone. Men hurried with bundles on their backs. Mothers embraced sons with contained force. Fathers feigned firmness and failed only in the eyes. Clerics crossed through the movement, guiding the newly elevated like shepherds.
The caravan looked immense up close. Voroirs, guards, servants, initiates, horses, baggage, provisions, banners.
At the edges, peasants hurried with tools and animals, wringing from the day all they still could before the Star withdrew.
Sigrid mounted the horse that had been assigned to her and took one last look at the walls. The three rings of stone had enclosed the city since before her grandmother had been born. The Third Wall was the outermost, the last.
Crossing that gate always stirred in her a feeling difficult to name, as though she were leaving something behind.
When she passed beneath the arch, the wind touched her colder. Beyond it there were no narrow streets, no familiar rooftops, no comfort in knowing where the world ended.
There was the steel-salt road, the open fields, the dark line of the forests, and the Veil keeping watch high above. Everything suddenly seemed far too wide.
She searched for Hrafn among the files and found him a few places ahead. She urged her horse closer until she rode beside him. He was silent, looking at the road as if trying to see something very far away.
Perhaps the future.
Or perhaps only trying not to look back.
"So this is it," she said.
Her voice came out low.
He turned his head a little.
"It is."
Nothing more.
The caravan began to move. The sound of wheels, hooves, leather, and metal filled the morning. Behind them, the city grew smaller with every step.
Sigrid felt the tightness in her stomach return. Within the walls, the world had always seemed solid, sheltered, as if there were order in everything, even in pain.
Outside them, it seemed too vast...
But the tightness did not come alone. There was something else in her too-hope, bravery, perhaps even ignorance. Whatever they were, they had come with her. As they always did.
Hrafn was there beside her too.
And that, Sigrid thought, already made the world seem a little less vast.