XXVI – Queen of Hearts #2

Windar and Nork kissed amidst the festive cheers of the village.

The bridal chamber welcomed them as husband and wife, and although their paths had never crossed, it was love at first sight—yet not of the kind found in tales and legends where the young woman is rescued by the handsome prince, nor anything of the sort.

It was hatred and resentment that brought them together, a desire for revenge and knowledge of something more than a handful of lands, and a feverish thirst for power.

He, with his round body, short legs and prominent belly, of low stature, lacking any singular beauty, had but recently relinquished his ambition to become the royal sorcerer when his brother inherited the throne.

He had been preparing for it ever since the god Bragi revealed to him in a dream that he was the bearer of the Naamclënt seed, but his father, who feared sorcery, found a way to banish him from the realm and give him the future he desired for him.

Thus, dawn found the two misunderstood princes embracing. Windar’s head rested upon Nork’s shoulder, and in whispers they united their aspirations.

It required but a few weeks for them to discern in each other a faithful life-long companion, and together, within the secrecy of a private adventure, they dreamed of a world ruled by different laws and contrived the means to bring them to pass.

'After all, I do not think I should hate him so much,' said Windar, picking up the brass box again to keep Wendor’s ring. 'I shall make compost. Thanks to his coercion, I met the love of my life.'

'I had been keeping this,' said Bolet, handing her a small notebook.

As she leafed through it, Windar recalled the day Nork had introduced her to his friends, Tregor, Pokrak, Bolet and Marzota, with whom he used to practise magic behind his father’s back.

These were the first spells and notes the six of them—inseparable—had made together when they settled behind the walls of Old Minister in a small room in the attic where, to their hearts’ content, they set up their sorcery laboratory.

Nork had given her life new meaning. He had become the first man she could admire and be loyal to. Magic bound them together, but not just the magic of mixing potions and reciting spells, but the magic that arose between them every time their bodies touched.

They imposed their own rules, where neither good nor evil existed to separate them from their dreamt-of future.

And so they caused the first victim—the one who had been marked from the day they joined hands in the name of Frey and Freya—to draw his last breath.

At the foot of his bed they found the lifeless body of Wendor, naked and drenched in sweat, and the sands of the ministerial hourglass turned black.

Four days later, whilst in Korkolat the king suffered the same fate, at the foot of Alfredo’s monolith, Windar offered her blessed blood and, amidst cheers, Nork was crowned. The fate of both kingdoms took a new course.

Windar drew the candle nearer to her and took from the floor the ribbon of a gold medal, tied to the chain of a rattle.

After untangling it, whilst jingling the bells before discarding them with a grimace, the thought crossed her mind of how she was going to cease now, if not even Renger’s birth had stayed her progress.

The medal was somewhat tarnished, but when she turned it over, the inscription was still legible: 'Hugnork, guest of honour, kingdoms of Korkolat and Utmia.'

'Keep this,' she said to Bolet. 'It shall remind us that healing comes only through illness.'

His son Renger had but lately been born when the Prince of Kerkion, Rolen, upon an unofficial visit accompanied by one of the lords of his kingdom—an old friend of Pokrak’s—arrived in Old Minister.

'It is time to clean the rusty anchors of the thrones so that the new generation may set sail,' he had told them, and they, eager to share this vision of the future, offered their services.

The spell achieved its purpose, though it was misused, and the neighbouring kingdoms to the west, Korkolat and Utmia, paid the price with a livestock epidemic.

That would have brought dire consequences not only to Old Minister, but to the whole of Móntria, had it not been for Tregor’s plan.

They secretly wrought the cure and dispatched wheat enchanted therewith, feigning that the land of the ravens was blessed, so that no one would suspect aught.

The two kingdoms were delivered from the winter famine, and thus the executioners became heroes.

Word spread and all eyes turned southwards.

Nork and Windar could not have been happier; they had forged the family they had always desired.

Renger grew up encompassed by their love as they travelled in quest of lore.

The kingdoms welcomed the saviours with jubilation and even whispered that Alfredo himself had brought them together to rebuild the empire.

Yet they did not desire dominion, only the lore that Móntria proffered, as though a private library lay within the hollow of their hands.

The caw of a raven perched upon the statue of Alfredo, towering above them, roused Windar from her reverie and made her realise that dawn was approaching.

She cast aside certain matters without a second glance.

'The journey into the future must be light,' she thought. Until she discovered a pile of papers wrapped in a white cloth, which she skimmed through and kept one: the kingdom’s census, where the figures showed that in just five years the population had tripled.

Prosperous Old Minister was the place where all folk desired to dwell; even the sun seemed to have fallen in love with its lands and had persuaded winter, in its mercy, not to carpet the fields with snow.

'These ship plans might be useful to us,' interrupted Bolet, who was perusing the cast-off items as if he found it hard to part with them.

Windar shrugged. What did it matter if she kept them? They dated back to when they had signed the Treaty of Kuentinston and had been on the verge of having their own fleet to trade with the island. She was certain that by the next day, the ships of all the kingdoms would belong to them.

She had almost finished; all that remained was the black box lying a few steps in front of her.

Before stretching to pick it up, to give herself strength, she stroked Nork’s head; he was watching her from beside her.

She loathed what came over her every time she had it in her hands.

Feeling vulnerable to the past made her feel as though she were missing out on all that the present had to offer.

Angry at those memories and at herself, she uncovered it whilst swallowing her nostalgia.

She slipped her hand within and grasped a black fabric until the openwork pattern etched arabesques upon her skin.

Her widow’s headdress, which she had grown weary of wearing for over ten years, reminded her why she was there this day, and of all she had endured whilst striving to fill the void she was certain would accompany her to the grave.

Ten years into their marriage, Windar and Nork believed they had the world at their feet.

They knew they were powerful because they were so in the eyes of their people, who had learnt to respect the first non-raven king to sit upon the throne.

With a mastery of magic beyond measure, they also considered themselves invincible, and they were, until that morning on the first day of autumn.

Alone in her bed, she awoke agitated, drenched in sweat, urine and tears, and amidst her uncontrollable anguish, she told Marzota how Odín had appeared to her in her dreams. So clear and real, before her very eyes, the supreme god tore Nork’s heart from his chest with his own hands.

The eventful festivities of the preceding night had ended late, and the castle was yet asleep when the queen raised the alarm.

They searched for the king for many hours; no one had seen him depart, and the only clue they found was in the attic, where they observed that the bag in which he was wont to carry his books and conjuring instruments when they travelled was missing.

With Windar at the head, they departed the realm to comb the surrounding lands, and it occurred to Bolet to employ a raven as a guide to fly over the terrain.

That day, ere dusk did fall, amidst papyrus scrolls and inkwells, in a glade of the forest near a rock cave overgrown with honeysuckle, surrounded by deep bear tracks, they found the body of Nork, King of Old Minister, a tuft of silver hair clutched in his fist, his breast torn open, his ribs ripped asunder, and his heart missing.

They did not need to search for the culprit. Windar, with the mutilated body of her beloved in her arms, swore to take revenge upon the Father of All, even as she had done with her own father.

The morrow thereafter, following the rite wherein she was proclaimed regent queen of the heart-torn Old Minister, they raised the pyre at the foot of the statue of Alfredo to hold Nork’s funeral.

Scarce words of farewell were uttered, and Windar requested that the small company assembled there depart and leave them in privacy.

Night was falling when Tregor, Bolet, Pokrak, Marzota and she, robed in long white vestments, gathered about Nork to consume his body in fire, yet first they swore allegiance to the night.

Bolet perceived that his queen was lost in that sad memory, and to aid her to emerge from it, he held up the scar that ran across the palm of his hand for her to see. Windar smiled at him, showed him hers, and reached into the box for the slender dagger, which she tucked into her neckline.

They had never imagined having to do such a thing, nor that it would work. Windar had placed a golden vessel upon her husband’s forehead, and they passed the dagger between them to offer their blood. She was the last to do so; as she bled profusely, she swore: