The Glorification of the Chosen One

The drum beats.

The horns call.

The moment has come.

*   *   *

The full blood moon hangs high in the always-night sky, above the temple. It is a triple portent.

The full moon.

The winter solstice.

A lunar eclipse, casting the moon an ominous red.

Its light shines down on the writhing bodies below, a light strong enough to illuminate the scene, but without color. Color is brought by the torches that burn, on all sides, in the warriors’ hands, on the walls of the temple.

The flickering light of the torches gleams on spear tips and sword hilts; there is the glint of metal, and gold. Gold is everywhere: the gilt of the two curled horns, whose sound appears to come from far away, though they are at the forefront of the crowd.

Their sound is blaring and constricted at once, a nasal high piping, which can only be designed to wake the spirits of the ancestors. These horns are played by the twins Ari and Arni, the torchlight picks out their blond beards as they tilt their chins to the heavens. They are dressed in long robes of midnight blue, blue caps pulled down tight on their heads, almost across their eyes, for they do not need to see. Not yet.

The high whine of their curled horns is underpinned by the low grunting of the three huge straight horns; bone covered in gold leaf, played by three men in long white robes, they arch their backs to burst each blast into the black sky.

The song of the horns, the three straight and the two curled, seems a cacophony at first, but slowly the complex repetition as the five horns step across each others’ path in sequence begins to infect everyone’s mind with a hypnosis, and this is good. For what is about to happen, they will need to be almost out of their minds.

Behind the musicians come seven dancing women, in the blue braided dress and red braided caps they wear when anyone is born, or wedded, or dies.

They link their fingers, intertwine them as they twist, already half crazed by the music, half crazed by their fear. Emotions streak across their faces; terror and ecstasy mingle on their lips, shine wildly in their eyes.

In front of the musicians, two small old men dance madly, too. Dressed in skins, and fur boots, they are the shamans; their eyes stare blindly into the distance, for they don’t see in this world; they see in other worlds.

*   *   *

There is more gold.

The warriors’ shield bosses, with their shiny orbs; their ceremonial helmets gleam with the golden creatures that surmount each one: the boar, the fox, the raven, the eagle, the golden horns of a bull.

The warriors march slowly, seven on foot to match the dancers, the others come farther behind, as if keeping their distance.

Gold, too, on the walls of the temple; the decoration above the porch shows scenes from the old tales in elaborate designs of tangled foliage, and the rearing horses of the ancestors.

Gold are the monumental hounds, more like dragons than dogs, that sit on top of the pillars on either side of the doorway.

Gold are the finials of the roof beams, the capitals of the columns, and gold are the things that hang in the single evergreen tree that grows outside the temple.

Look closer; these hanging things. They are three skulls, covered in gold leaf. One is that of a foal, two are those of men.

*   *   *

There is one more thing that burns bright with gold; the sled, upon which King Eirikr is dragged toward the stone table.

Four men, two in front and two behind, haul and heave at the sled, sliding it jerkily through the snow. They have only a few feet left to travel, and then Eirikr will have come.

Waiting for him are the two final figures in the ceremony.

Thorolf. The sage.

Dressed all in white, with mad white hair and long white beard, and his one white eye. His other, good eye glares down at the ground, waiting for the sled to appear before him.

Above his head, he holds the golden hammer of the gods.

At his neck, he wears the symbol of the sacred flower, for like Eirikr, he is a disciple of that cult, and worships, and consumes, the magical flower with its three fantastical petals, shaped like a dragon’s head.

The symbol is a curling three-pointed device, one for each petal of the dragon flower.

*   *   *

The final figure.

The executioner.

Chosen by the selection of pebbles from a cooking pot, no one save the warriors knows who he is; he who drew the black stone from among the thirty white.

Robed entirely in red, with a red hood pulled over his head and across his face, he stands with head bowed low.

All he is, is a pillar of red cloth, red like the blood he will spill.

Wait! Look closer still. Something protrudes from the pillar; his forearm, and hand, and in his hand, his sword hand, he clutches a thin, sharp, curving blade, almost as long as to reach his elbow.

*   *   *

The sled is nearly at its place.

King Eirikr rises from the gilded throne upon which he has been riding.

He is covered in a massive fur of fox, and yet, as he stands, he slips the knot at its neck, and lets it fall to the wooden floor of the sled.

He is naked, yet he feels neither the cold of night, nor the deep of winter. His blood is pounding through his body. He tips his chin to the heavens, defiantly.

He is naked but for the narrow gold band gripping his head, the gold bracer of triple design, another symbol of the flower cult, the magic of which even now hurtles around his veins with the rest of his hot blood.

*   *   *

As if in an orgy of orchestrated genius, there is always a moment of silence before the violence and noise of the act itself.

Before battle, as the whole army takes in a breath.

Before the diver leaps into the water, and the sea pounds his eardrums.

Before the storm, the stillness in which a single bird calls.

Before the pains of birth, the brief rest between the spasms.

Before all the other instruments descend in a maelstrom, the faint and strangled chord from the bassoons.

Before the ice breaks, before the tree falls, before the sword lands.

It might only be a fraction of a moment, but that time can dilate, can swell and grow, can fill the world around it with its power, till it lasts for a lifetime.

*   *   *

And so it is with Eirikr.

He arrives.

The horns fall silent, the dancers cease, the warriors stop marching, and across that sudden enormous space float two whisperingly quiet discordant notes, from a pipe perhaps, from somewhere inside the temple.

Into that silence stumbles the figure who has been missing until now.

The queen.

She rushes forward, pushing past the other keening women, falling in the snow, where she lies with her face in her hands, unable to stop the guttural moaning that pours from her mouth.