Queens of the Wyrd Read online

  Sign up to House Whitecastle and get a book for FREE

  OTHER BOOKS BY TIMANDRA WHITECASTLE

  The Living Blade series:

  Touch of Iron

  On the Wheel

  Mother of Slag

  Bloodwitch

  Short stories:

  The Black – The Lone Wolf Anthology, Undaunted Publishing

  Into The Woods – Lost Lore. A Fantasy Anthology

  This War of Ours – The Art Of War. An Anthology for Charity

  On the Dragonroad – Grimdark Magazine #16

  Want to be the first in line for any new release?

  SIGN UP HERE

  Queens of the Wyrd

  Timandra Whitecastle

  If you pirated the ebook, know this: Loki is the God of Mischief, and patron saint of this tale. He despises your laziness, thief, and will hound you forever; when your phone battery runs low and you’re standing in line waiting, when every single traffic light turns red on your commute to work and you’re already late, when you’re on the train but your seat has been taken by someone else – just so you know, that’s Loki’s curse. You can avert it by buying a copy of the next book you were going to pirate.

  Queens of the Wyrd is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Timandra Whitecastle

  Kindle Edition

  This book is dedicated to all warrior queens.

  You know who you are.

  No dragons were harmed in the making of this book

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by Timandra Whitecastle

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Five Months Later

  Acknowledgments

  On all sides saw I

  Valkyries assemble,

  Ready to ride

  To the ranks of the gods.

  Skuld bore the shield.

  —The Prophecy of the Völur

  Chapter 1

  The völur—those wand-wed women—say that at the foot of the world tree, at its deepest roots, there lies a well, a fountain. Three women guard it. The Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. They are one and they are three, just as the world tree is one but also nine. And they are old, older than gods and giants, older even than the gods that came before. The Three have many names—Urd, Verdandi, Skuld—as well as many functions—the Spinners, the Weavers, the Nornir. These are the Fates: one is what was, one is what is, and the other—she is the debt that all must pay.

  Even the gods cannot escape her.

  The skalds say that in the beginning, there was nothing but ice. They say before the beginning was another world tree but it died, wrapped in sheets of ice and cold, and perhaps the Nornir come from that older reality to tend this one, and when this tree dies in the flames of Ragnarok, burned to cinders and ashes, they will plant a new seed in its place by their fountain, and wait.

  For the end of a world pays its debts, but also owes itself a new beginning.

  If you want change, you must invite chaos.

  —Loki

  Chapter 2

  The day Solveig walked back into Lovis’s life was shortly after Midsummer, when the days start shortening into the long dark of winter. It was a long day, perhaps the longest day in Lovis’s life so far, and that meant something; after all, she had been in labor for twenty-two hours once. The day started like any other day in the past five years, but quickly unraveled like a ball of yarn riven apart by kittens. Wyrd bith ful araed, as they say on the fjords of Jormundgandr’s Spine: The fates are inexorable, and all lives are connected in their weave.

  In hindsight, there must have been signs, of course. Omens. Little disruptions in her daily routines that became steadily worse by the hour. For example, Lovis’s wooden baton hadn’t been hanging from the nail when she came in for work, though she’d swear she hung it exactly there the day before, hung it there every crack of dawn for the past five years. But she had been too annoyed at the inconvenience to read that portent, too quick to accuse herself of an oversight instead of seeing the hand of the Weavers. She should have seen change coming in the chaotic patterns of the seagulls in flight, the burst of the beer keg when she tried to tap it, or in the spatter of blood on Tyrbald’s sanded floor.

  Tyrbald’s attunement to omens was probably why he suspected something was up even before Lovis did.

  Tyrbald owned the World’s End, a tavern in a dark back street in the rambunctious port of Cliffside. It was the last house perched on a sheer cliff drop, hence the name, and it was nominally a tavern because one could order beer in it, a copper for a stein of blonde. But what the World’s End actually was couldn’t be expressed. It had to be felt. Lived. And what Tyrbald mostly sold was knowledge, holy communion, and a form of salvation.

  No jolly fat bartender, he. Tyrbald was a wiry man, his body seemed carved out of wood. His head was shaved and his scalp sported a tattoo of the vegvesir, a rune that protects its bearer from ever losing their way in storms or bad weather like a compass, even if they don’t know their way. He called himself a skald, and though Lovis had never seen him perform magic like she had seen other skalds, he was fashioned by his worship of the god Tyr, the God of War, the God of the Congregation, the older god who had been sidelined, supplanted by that “so-called Odin Val-Father.” Tyrbald had been a warrior for decades before he opened the World’s End. He had fought on every battlefield, had seen everything, and had decided that the best way to spend the rest of his life was not in killing people, but in teaching them to truly feel alive. He also read their fates through their fights—two men per fight, one fight at a time—and divined their truth from the spatter of blood in the circle of sand.

  On this particular night, the tavern was filled with a small crowd of men who had congregated around the circle of sand and sawdust over which Tyrbald presided. As he stood in the sole beam of light beneath the hanging whale oil candelabra in the middle of the pitch black room, head bowed, torso bare, lean arms spread wide in prayer, the vegvesir was reflected in the eyes of the men standing around the circle.

  Some nights, the room was filled with the hysterical shouting in tongues more commonly found in the reveries in the sacred groves, a fevered pitch of ecstatic screaming around Tyrbald and the two men who were fighting. Other nights, like this one, it was mostly quiet, a hallowed space filled with the whack of fist against flesh and the occasional grunt and sigh of pain. The men watching didn’t make a sound as two skinny young men went at each other, transfixed by their energ
y, pounding each other as if their opponent’s destroyed body could help them recover from some unspecified trauma. As if the only thing left for them to choose was how they’d die and they chose to die in this fight.

  Tyrbald crouched down beside them as they wrestled to the floor. He frowned at the chaotic patterns in the whirled up sand, his fingers steepled in front of his face in concentration.

  And Lovis? Lovis walked the edges of the circle of onlookers, her baton in hand, all senses humming with the raw energy bleeding over from the fight. Her job was to calmly study that overspill of violence on the men watching. Most men were here to fight, and they waited their turn patiently, watching the other fights. But sometimes, someone would come along who would respond negatively to the burst of energy, and try to pick a fight outside of the circle. They’d disrupt the flow of energy among the congregation, Tyrbald had explained to Lovis, which would shroud the god Tyr’s imparted wisdom; thus, they needed to be removed before their disturbance distracted anyone from what truly mattered: the fight in the sand circle.

  The disruptive man tonight was tall and thin, young with lank hair that fell over one eye, and he stank of ale. To be fair, most of the men in World’s End stank of ale, especially the first-timers who were accustomed to drink for courage. This man, though, smelled wrong. He smelled like he had poured a pint down the front of his tunic just to reek of drink. And reek he did. Not just of ale, but of ego.

  Lovis rounded him twice: the first time he was muttering to the man next to him in a tone discordant with the harmony of the fighters sucking in breaths through their teeth. Lank hair fell over one half of his face, and he was whispering of a vikingr, a raid, the real thing, an opportunity to make a good name and some good coin. He spoke of a siege on the plains of Vigrid, an opportunity for true glory. True purpose. Not this fake shit. The man next to him shushed him and moved to the other side of the sand circle.

  The second time she came around, he was silent, but something about his posture was off. He was staring beyond the fighters, directly at Tyrbald, lips pressed tightly together as though he had swallowed a bitter mouthful of cheap swill. His shoulders were tense, and he seemed hunched over, as though he were a larger guy than he actually was, trying to make himself look smaller.

  Lovis knew a lot about being tall and trying to look smaller than she was. She also knew much about not quite belonging, not fitting in. Born of a giantess and a man, she was over six foot five and built for strength and stamina. She had spent most of her life trying to hide her nature by skulking around in the background.

  She eventually mastered the vital skill of knowing how to become nearly invisible. It was not difficult. There were several ways to do this—be born female and marry the man who most politely ignores you. If you’re not uncommonly beautiful nor ugly, most men won’t see you anyway. They won’t hear you, or listen. To be born a woman means you can blend into the background of any man’s life. Another way was to find a set of extremely charismatic, good-looking friends and simply stand behind them. This had served her best throughout most of her warrior life alongside the other Shieldmaidens, Solveig, Torune, Eira, and even Brunhild. But that was then, and this was now. As a single mother, she couldn’t be invisible. She had to be present. All the time. Which is why she had come here. She found this new way of being invisible, which was to stand as still as possible in the darkness of Tyrbald’s tavern, and watch and wait.

  So she hovered around the stinking man’s elbow in the midnight darkness of the room, and waited. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. The fighters were still beating each other up, one had a bleeding hole in his bottom lip and the other’s eye was swollen shut already. It’d be black in the morning. The strange man twitched, flicked his right hand, and Lovis knew he was about to push his way towards the circle.

  She snatched his wrist, and pulled him off his feet. He lost balance, toppled against her and made to shout, but she already had him in a choke-hold, her other hand clamped over his mouth. She dragged him towards the door effortlessly, ignoring his attempts to break free. He was strong, though, much stronger than she thought the skinny kid would be.

  Maybe that was a sign, too. Maybe she should have recognized his dual nature at that point, but she didn’t give it much thought while she unceremoniously ushered him up the three steps to street level, escorted him to the main road, and then dumped him next to a steaming pile of goat shit in front of a tanner’s shop.

  “And stay out,” she called over her shoulder. “You’re not welcome at the World’s End.”

  He staggered to his feet, fists raised as though he wanted to brawl. “How dare you—you—giantess freak! I have every right to go to whichever tavern I chose!” He swung a fist at her.

  But that fist was very obvious; it had been swung at Lovis for her entire life, and far, far more ably. She simply took a step back, shook her head at the pathetic attempt, and turned away.

  “You can’t just leave me here!” the man continued as he swayed towards her. A small crowd had gathered to look, and a few laughed. His visible eye gleamed with rage. “I belong there more than you.”

  “You will not enter the World’s End again,” she said calmly. “Go somewhere else.”

  “Fight me for it, you coward. You . . . woman. Fight me and prove that you belong there.”

  She started back to the tavern, and he made to follow her, so she turned around to face him, both hands hanging loosely by her sides.

  “Fight me!” he yelled, and behind him the people whooped with laughter. “Prove that you have more right than me.”

  “I don’t have to fight you to prove anything. I’m employed there, and you’re uninvited. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Things change,” the man yelled after her as she turned again and walked back down the narrow alley to the tavern.

  “You just wait,” he screamed. “Things will change and I’ll be coming for you, Lovis Shieldmaiden.”

  She stopped—how did this stranger know her name—and turned, her lips already forming a retort. But the young man was gone.

  Later, so late that it was in fact early morning already and all the fighters had left the World’s End, Lovis told Tyrbald about the incident and asked whether he had seen anything in the sands of that fight.

  He looked at her as she lifted a stool onto the bar so he could sweep the scattered sand and sawdust back into the ring. Tyrbald didn’t look at her the way most people looked at her. He didn’t look intently or suggestively. He didn’t look at her size or her fists to make a judgment of her character. He didn’t look at her face and decide whether she was a murderous monster or simply a nobody, a woman and a mother, with no life or personality besides that role.

  No. He looked at her. And he saw Lovis.

  Just Lovis.

  She took a step back, as though bracing for a kidney punch.

  “I saw many things during that fight,” Tyrbald said slowly. “Mostly pertaining to the men fighting. But other things, too. Greater things. There are boundaries, though. And boundaries cannot be overcome without paying a price. Can you pay the price, Lovis?”

  He gave her a moment to respond, but she said nothing. She knew that the price for glancing at her own future would be to step into that ring with him and fight him. She had heard him say as much again and again, night after night, whenever he stood under the light of the whale oil lamp, and the vegvesir shone on his head. Truth could only be found through battle.

  “But the shape of fate is hard to know,” he said. “Some things the Nornir carve into the world tree. Other things they simply weave together with their thread.” He smiled at her. “Do you really want to know?”

  Lovis decided she didn’t.

  So instead, she smiled back at him, and headed towards the back door to go home. Home to her daughter. To eat breakfast with her, and then sleep through the morning hours, only to get up and do the whole thing again the next night.

  That was her plan, anyway.

  S
he told Tyrbald she’d see him again at midnight, and hurried out the door into the dawn before he could say anything else.

  She had been at work for over six hours. Had been up for sixteen. But her day was not done yet.

  I can’t get no sleep.

  —Every mother, everywhere.

  Chapter 3

  “Mom!”

  Birke’s drawn out wail pierced through Lovis’s sleep, and she could hear her rapid footfalls on the dirt path that ran past the house. But damn, it was hard to open her eyes. It was too early. She managed to crack open a lid, just a slit to see a single slanted ray of dusty sunlight illuminate the darkened room they shared, the remnants of their breakfast together (millet gruel and peppermint tea) still laid out on the table. The angle of the solitary sunbeam said that breakfast was only two hours past.

  Lovis groaned and closed her eye.

  They lived in a small fisherman’s hovel on the northwestern cliff of the island of Grimming. Imagine the realm of Midgard on a map: the very center of it would mark the plains of Vigrid; the hubbub of kingdoms skirting its edges were commonly referred to as Ereb (which means Descent in the language of Cush, since Ereb lay in the west, where the sun sets). Some of those kingdoms were rich with wide lands of fertile fields, and resources and people to till them. They made for good raiding. Others were tiny, settled in pockets that clung to the mountainous southern rim of the island, despite the red desert sands of Akebu sweeping across the White Sea in great clouds and killing their harvests. Still other island kingdoms were scattered around Ereb, the largest of which, Arkaim, lay in the east. Lovis had crossed into Midgard from Jotunnheim through an ancient passageway that lay deep in the Arkaim mountains. She had walked through the bitter Arkaim winter to the coastlands of the Baldras Sea, where she fought on the battlefields of Ereb and there met Solveig. And together, on their vikingr, they had raided as far as the ancient city of Richat in the Akeban desert.