Iron Frost - Clan of the Rim Chronicles #1

21

CALDER FOLLOWED ME THROUGH the bottom corridors, turning corner after corner and feeling lost. I knew the way I'd found the place before, but I wasn't sure how any of these other corridors were connected. Gulbrand's study was down here too, so I knew we had to be quick for the fear he might catch us.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Calder questioned, "Wherever that is?"

"Well I. . .actually found the place by sneaking through the kitchen the last time, but I know all these corridors are connected so it has to be close."

"You snuck through the kitchen down here without anyone present with you?"

"That was the day Gulbrand found me and burned my wrist, but yes. I had to know why it was forbidden for me to come down here. And I think I just might have found the reason."

Calder scoffed with a shake of his head. "Are you ever going to break your pertinacious ways and listen to what I tell you?"

"No, but you can give yourself a pat on the back for trying."

Finally turning around another corner I noticed the familiar torches on the wall and long curtains. I turned to my right and looked down the far end of the hall. There before Calder and I were the two large wooden chamber doors, and the Norse sign hanging above them.

"There it is," I pointed, walking towards them with Calder following a few feet behind.

"I saw this chamber that day, but Gulbrand found me before I could get close enough to it. I thought it looked familiar but I wasn't sure. I think it's from the past memory the Clan showed me. I'd forgotten about it over the past few weeks but I know the key opens it."

Calder examined the door, running his hand across the wood. "I've never even seen this chamber before, and I've been down every corridor of the bottom wing during my guarding rounds."

"That's crazy, doors don't just appear," I said, before a small light sparked in my brain. "Unless. . ."

"Unless it has been glamoured this whole time," Calder finished for me.

"It wasn't glamoured when I found it. It was like it was purposely there for me to find."

"It's rare, but sometimes if you are connected to the thing being glamoured just your presence will cause the magic to lift," Calder informed.

He looked up at the sign, his eyebrows hitching together as he read it. "Kjærligheten til to hjerter er større som en." The love of two hearts is greater as one."

I handed the key to Calder. "It's on the key, too."

Calder looked it over, and turned his eyes back at the door like he knew what the whole thing meant.

"The key to the heart," he said, my mind not following.

"What?"

He stuck the key inside the lock and turned it, pushing open the doors for both of us to enter.

I knew the second I saw the inside that this room was indeed from the past memory, and my chest immediately tightened.

"This is what was being hidden?" I questioned more to myself than Calder.

"This is your parents' bedroom chamber," Calder mumbled as he gazed around. "This is where it all happened."

I slowly walked over to the rug covering the floor in front of the bed, blood soaked into its material and stained like red wine. My stomach churned and I turned away.

There were still fragments of iron scattered about the chamber that both confused and angered me that no one had cleaned it up, along with broken glass. My crib which had been iced over by Sylvi that horrible day still laid in a heap across the room. It was if it had all just happened. It was a memory frozen in time.

"Why did no one touch anything in this room after it happened? Why didn't they clean it up!" I spoke in exasperation.

"Everyone was so distraught by your family's deaths, they probably could not even enter this room after dragging out their bodies," Calder assumed. "Maybe Gulbrand or the Clan put the glamour over the door to try to forget."

"I don't know how you could ever forget something like that."

I stepped around the mess to reach what little was left of my crib, picking apart the pieces which were still cold to the touch. Noticing something peeking out from under the debris I pushed it out of the way and pulled it free. Soft plush in my hands, I held a small snowy owl. It looked as new as when it must have been given to me those seventeen years ago. Tears pooled in my bottom lids and Calder's footsteps echoed in the silent room as he approached me. He didn't say a word, simply placed a hand on my back and rubbed it gently.

"She took so much from me," my voice shook, refusing to turn to Calder and stood like stone in my place. "The childhood and the family I was meant to have, gone in the blink of an eye. Still an infant without any sense of the world, and she was going to kill me too. She still wants to destroy me and everything I love and hold dear. I can't let her do that. I can't let her win this time, Calder."

"She won't, I promised you that," Calder assured. "We will defeat her. We'll find a way."

"How? How are we going to defeat her when no one knows what the hell to do to accomplish that? You survived with her for sixteen years, and I saw what she did to my parents and my sisters. We both know how powerful she is. She could come in at any moment and cause another massacre. What then?"

"She is not getting into this castle. Not she, not her knights, or her traitors. You have to trust me on that. As your knight I will protect you, and as the captain of the guard I will protect your people. You need not worry of that."

"But I do worry. Every day since I came here I've been worrying, and worrying, and worrying. When do I get to stop?"

"Do not lay your burdens upon yourself. Lay them on me. I will gladly take any fear and heartache on my back and carry them so you don't have to," Calder declared. He pressed a kiss to my forehead and wiped away a tear starting to streak my cheek.

I rubbed my eyes and expelled a deep breath. Calder grabbed my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Come on, let's go before the staff truly starts to panic. We've been gone long enough already," he said.

I shook my head and let go of his hand. "No, I'm not done here. I want to see if there's anything else I can take with me."

Walking over to the two dressers next to each side of the bed I fumbled through my mother's drawer and found a single dried daisy just like the one in the painting I saw.

"I think your mother liked to travel to the ephemeral world during the summer and paint the environment. The flower portrait in the painting room was hers," Calder spoke.

I smiled softly and twirled the flower around before placing it back in the drawer. "It seems so like her," I mumbled.

Opening the drawer Father used next it appeared bare, but noticing a small crack in the bottom I curiously pulled it up.

There like it had been hidden for only me to find, was an old folded piece of paper. I pulled it out and examined it before undoing the folds to see the full picture.

"What is it?" Calder eyed in surprise as he walked over to get a better look.

Laying the paper on the bed we both gazed from above, and I was the first to point it out. "It's a map."

"It's not just a map. It's a guide of the entire realm."

"Why would my father need a map of the entire realm?"

"Maybe for war flanking purposes, distributing his men in different areas to keep watch for my mother's attack. But it has an outlined path that leads somewhere."

Calder ran his finger along the red ink, tracing the GPS my father created until he landed where it stopped.

"Sverdet". The sword," Calder read aloud which was written in Norwegian scribbles all over the area. "What do you think that means?"

My vision poked at the back of my mind, showing me the sword on the pedestal that I touched. I quickly grabbed the map and started for the door with Calder giving me a puzzled look.

"We have to take this to the Clan," I told him. "We have to take it to them now."