Tales of Old Gods and New

Impostor Apparition-1

Impostor Apparition

The air on the snow-capped mountaintop whirled about itself, stirring up the flakes that dusted the surface of the glacier before rushing down the mountainside, gathering speed but not warmth. It found me in the hollow between the hills out of sight from the temporary village of tents by the river and ran through me like a lance of ice, piercing my gut then melting within me, the cold spreading throughout my body.

The shock of the cold brought me into sudden awareness, but I couldn't make sense of the world around me. I didn't know why I was in the hollow away from the tents, why there was a dead body at my feet. My thoughts kept swimming away from me, hiding behind the beginnings of a headache when I tried to catch them. I didn't recognize the woman sprawled on the stony ground, several pools of blood congealing around her. I felt like I should know her, but I couldn't bring myself to reach out a hand to brush the tangles of hair away from her face.

Something was trying to push to the front of my mind, but it was like a shriek of urgent terror and I kept pushing it back. I was supposed to be doing something, and some part of my mind knew what it was, but if I had to let that horrid screaming fill my mind before I learned just what it was I would rather wait.

Then I heard a man approaching. "Alfreide?" he called, his voice low and only half-awake. The sun had not yet risen and the world was a pattern of grays, but the east was to his back and his outline stood out starkly as he reached the top of the hill. He stumbled down the steep slope, slipping on the frost-coated grass. He had thrown a blanket over his bare shoulders but the knee that hit the ground was bare and he swore briefly, the cold driving him closer to alertness. "Alfreide?" he called again, his tone still inquisitive but edging into real worry with just a hint of self-consciousness at possibly appearing foolish for worrying.

Then he saw the body and all those conflicting shades of emotion clarified into a wail of pure grief. I tried to speak his name but it died on my lips unspoken; I could not remember it. "Sir?" I said instead, then again when he didn't respond. But it was as if I wasn't there at all. Sobs shook his body, and his face contorted in sorrow tore at my heart. I wanted to try to speak again, to touch him, but the control over my own mind slipped and the screaming took over, stoking up the headache but not letting any articulate thought take hold. I cowered at the edge of the hollow, unable to look at the distraught man, waiting for it all to pass.

The man fell silent with such rapidity I feared that what had murdered the woman had come back for him, but when I lifted my gaze from the stony ground and frozen grass I found him with his arms around the still form of the woman but his eyes on a very different woman floating above him.

Or perhaps not so different. They had the same long raven hair, the dead woman's in what had started out as an elaborate weaving of braids now collapsing, the new woman's left loose. The man had pushed the hair back from the dead woman's face and although he had streaked her features with more blood in the process I saw a similarity. The dead woman was a decade or two older, and even in death her face was stern and uncompromising, quite the opposite of the floating woman's beatific openness. If they had been standing next to each other I would have taken them for sisters nearly a generation apart in age, but with one dead and the other floating near the ceiling I guessed I was looking at a ghost and her antecedent.

"Alfreide," the man said, reaching up a hand to touch the glowing face. The ghost smiled back down at him, a melancholy smile, but before his fingers quite reached her there was a clatter of armor and three men came over the top of the hill, one dressed in the armor of a king's guard, the other two in trousers hastily pulled on under nightshirts. Behind them came a woman who was probably of average height but looked tiny in comparison to the towering men.

"Osgar," said the one of the nightshirted men, falling to his knees beside the grieving man and the dead woman. "My God."

"So much blood," the woman said, mindful of the toes of her slippers.

"Who did this?" the kneeling man asked.

"I heard nothing," Osgar said, raising blood-stained hands in despair. "How can that be? I slept only over there." There was a hill between the hollow and the tent, but not a very large one. We were out of sight but the sounds of the camp waking in alarm carried clearly through the cold air.

"The wine, my lord," said the other nightshirted man, not unkindly. "You drank many toasts with the queen's brothers."

"No," Osgar said.

"Osgar has no belly for wine," the kneeling man said.

"Your majesty?" the guardsman asked.

"It's very subtly done," the woman said. "I didn't notice it myself for quite some time, and I notice things."

"She does," the king said, giving her a momentary fond smile. His queen, then, and newlyweds at that to be so pleased at what they knew about each other.

"I don't follow-"

"Alfreide drank the wine," Osgar said.

"All of it?" the guardsman asked, looking down at the body with wonderment.

"She's from the north," the king said.

"He pretends to drink then trades cups with her," the queen said.

"If there had been any sound of a struggle I would have woken," Osgar said.

"And this does not look like it was quietly done," the guardsman said, crouching down to peer at the thickening blood.

"Captain, have the guards surround the camp," the king said. "No one leaves until every tent is searched."

"They may tell any who questions them that they have their orders from me as well," the queen said. "Should it be necessary."

The man nodded and spun on a heel to race up the hill, voice already raised to call to the other guardsmen waiting at the edge of the camp.

"There is no weapon here," the king noted.

"But so much blood," the queen said again.

"I would like to take her body to my tent," the guardsman said as he rose from his crouch. "Perhaps if I clean off some of this blood I can discover the wound. That might give us a clue as to the weapon."

"See to it, Wulfstan," the king said, then rested a hand on Osgar's shoulder. Osgar looked up, his arms tightening around the stiffening body, but then he looked past his king to the woman still floating over him like a canopy. She gave him a gentle nod and he allowed Wulfstan to gather the body up in his arms and carry her away.

"Whatever is this?" the queen asked, and there was a clatter of something made of glass falling against a stone without shattering.

"A box of medicines...?" the king said, squatting beside her to examine what was sprawled half-hidden in the frozen tufts of grass. The floating form kept her gaze locked on Osgar, and he seemed unable to look away from her either. I felt a stab of annoyance. The ghostly form might represent all goodness and light, but what use was it?

I had no eyes to close or lungs to draw a deeper breath, but somehow I stilled my increasingly chaotic emotion-driven thoughts. I still felt odd, swimmy, like I wanted to lie down and let sleep take me, but I forced my mind to focus.

Why was I annoyed? Was something else supposed to be happening in this moment? What was I supposed to be doing? The sense of urgency for I knew not what was driving me mad. I searched my mind again but even though the screaming had gone I had no useful thoughts, no memories, only an ever-growing headache.

"Osgar, do you know what this all is?" the king asked and Osgar finally tore his eyes away from the ghost to see what the queen had found. The queen was holding an empty box, the wood dark with age, the knotted patterns carved on its sides sparking a feeling but not a memory in my scattered mind. It was long familiar, that was all I knew. She moved her hand through the grass, finding glass vial after glass vial, all empty, and setting them back in the box. Then she picked up a bronze bowl no larger than her palm from where it rested on its side against a stone. The bowl was empty, but the inside was streaked with blood. From the way the king kept turning his face away I suspected the smell was intense, musty and coppery as the thick blood dried. The queen seemed less bothered by the gore, more driven by curiosity as she examined vial after vial.

"What foulness is this?" the king demanded.

"I've never seen the like," Osgar said. "What even is it?"

"Blood," the queen said, delicately sniffing at one of the vials. "Look at the labels. Cat, horse, rat, raven. This one says lion, has there ever been a lion in this kingdom? And this one says unicorn."

"Did Alfreide know of this?" The king's anger was rising but Osgar just looked back up at the beatific form smiling down at him.

"You accuse her because she is from the north?" the queen asked. She seemed genuinely curious, but then as a newlywed she would also be new to this court. "But she's lived among you since she was a girl. Your ways are her ways. She told me so herself, just before the wedding. Perhaps Alfreide was murdered because she uncovered it?"

The king looked unconvinced. "But why would a murderer leave it here to be found?"

The queen turned a vial over and over in her fingers. "We should see how Wulfstan progresses," she said at last. "I think it's likely there is no wound. I think all the blood on her came from this bowl. Someone mixed all these bloods together and doused her in it."

"How would that kill her?" Osgar asked.

"Sorcery," the king guessed.

"I'm not sure," the queen admitted. "We shall have to work to discover that."

Osgar looked up at the ghost again and she gave another little nod. I felt another stab of annoyance, again several degrees sharper than her actions merited. What was bothering me about her? Was it her attitude, like the things unfolding beneath her were not rank horror?

The king pulled Osgar to his feet and the queen took his other arm, guiding him over the hill and into the camp. People roused from sleep gathered in whispering groups, looking over their shoulders at the guards standing between them and their tents. The guards stepped aside to let the king and queen with Osgar between them pass, oblivious to both myself and the ghost following. We passed tents in chaos, clothing and objects strewn everywhere, then tents still being tossed by guards who doubtless did not know exactly what they were hunting for.

Then the king pulled back the flap of one of the tents not yet searched and allowed his queen and Osgar to precede him into the brightly lit interior. Wulfstan had laid out the body on a table, a collection of oil lamps and braziers lending as much light as possible to his work. I could not feel it but all of that flame was making the tent uncomfortably hot, judging by Wulfstan's sweaty brow and flushed cheeks. The queen loosened her fur cloak from around her neck.

Wulfstan had worked quickly; the body was already washed and covered in a sheet, the tangled braids left to hang off the end of the table.

"What did you find?" the king asked.

"Nothing," he said. "So much blood but not a mark on her."

"Sorcery, then," the king said, and Wulfstan visibly started.

"The blood, a curse?" the queen pondered. She had brought the box with her and set it on a nearby table. "We found this near the body," she said as Wulfstan examined each vial minutely.

"No, look at her tongue," I said, without a clue why I was so certain, some flash of memory gone before it quite surfaced. Of course no one could hear me.

"I don't really have any knowledge of such things," Wulfstan said.

"There are people I could send for who might," the queen said. The king looked at her with new respect. Definitely newlyweds. Was that why this village of tents had been set up, for a wedding? Murdered at a wedding, why?