“He wants to be a king,” said Eyvind. There was a grim ring of old knowledge in his voice.

Rona had gone out; it would take her some time to prepare the secret chamber. It seemed to Nessa that in the soft crackle and hiss of the fire and the sigh of the wind around the cottage, there were whispering voices, an ancient story.

“Talk to me, Eyvind,” she said. “Tell me about Somerled.”

“It is…it is hard for me to speak of this. There is the promise we made to one another as children. It binds me to loyalty; it locks me into a silence that has become a denial of truth. Through every long day, through every dark night I see the same pictures, like the dream you spoke of, falling from a tree: so many pictures. I shrink from them, yet they pursue me. I think I can no longer pretend; I can no longer be blind to this. But I don’t know what to do. The truth is…it is unthinkable, Nessa. He is my brother. Closer than a brother.”

“Tell me, Eyvind. Tell me about the time when the two of you cut yourselves, and swore an oath of loyalty.”

“He was a strange child: wary, proud, very much alone. Ulf brought him to Hammarsby, and I was given the job of…of teaching him to be a boy, I suppose. I didn’t know what to make of him. He had been badly treated. His mother had died, his father had neglected him, and Ulf simply did not know what to do with him. So I—well, I did what I thought was right. Taught him to defend himself. Taught him to hunt, to skate, to swim. I never managed to teach him to enjoy those things, but he learned the skills; if he thinks he needs to master something, he applies himself with fierce dedication. Nobody liked him. He had no friends other than me. I was…sorry for him, I suppose. And I admired him; he was clever. He could do so many things I couldn’t.”

Nessa nodded. There was plenty she wanted to say, but she stayed quiet.

“That was the reason I did it. Swore the oath. He had heard he was going away. Despite himself, he had been happy at Hammarsby. I think it was the first time he had had a friend. How could I say no? So we did it. At first, it did not seem so very important; we were children. But I knew soon enough that the oath was binding. He saved my life; I saw in his eyes, then, that this pledge of loyalty was forever. It has bound me close to Somerled. It has bound me to…”

“To let things pass, when you should have acted on them?”