Hamnet Thyssen’s gaze followed Earl Eyvind’s outthrust forefinger. Hamnet suddenly found himself transfixed, too. How long had those graceful gilded domes, those delicate columns, lain under the water? Had anyone imagined they were there? Had they been there when the Glacier rolled down from the north, too? How long had they been there before that?
“Is it-?” Hamnet asked.
“Yes.” This once, Eyvind Torfinn’s nod was as authoritative as anything Marcovefa could manage. “That is the Golden Shrine.”
XX
And so it was. Count Hamnet realized he’d seen those domes before, in miniature. He needed a moment to remember where. Then he did: in the jewel hidden in Earl Eyvind’s bedpost. How old was that jewel, anyhow?
A moment later, he realized it had to be Eyvind’s, not Gudrid’s, for she said, “It can’t be. Everybody knows the Golden Shrine is only a tale for children-and foolish children at that.”
“That is the Golden Shrine,” Trasamund said. “It must have hidden under the lake all this time-and under the Glacier before that, because once upon a time the Glacier stretched down farther than this.
“True. Once the Glacier stretched down almost as far as Nidaros. I was thinking about that not long ago,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “Hevring Lake melted through and made the badlands off to the west. Thanks to Marcovefa, Sudertorp Lake’s gone and done the same thing.”
“It’s nonsense.” Gudrid’s laugh had a brittle edge. “It’s impossible! Even a fool should be able to see that.”
“Only a fool would say that,” Marcovefa replied. Awe lit her face as she pointed out toward the structure in the emptying lake. “That is assuredly the Golden Shrine.”
“It can’t be,” Gudrid repeated. “How do you know it is?”
“It’s a shrine. It’s golden. It just appeared out of nothing like a miracle.” Ulric Skakki ticked off points on his fingers as he made them. “What more do you want? Egg in your beer?”
“You’re making fun of me!” Gudrid said shrilly.
“When you say silly things, you can expect other people to make fun of you,” Ulric observed. Gudrid glared at him. Hamnet saw that, but he didn’t think the adventurer did; Ulric’s eyes were fixed firmly on the Golden Shrine. “Up till now, going through the Gap and beyond the Glacier was the most marvelous thing I ever did. I imagined it always would be. Now I see I was wrong.”
Hamnet nodded. He hadn’t dreamt he could do anything more amazing than to pass through the Gap and see what lay on the far side of the Glacier, either. He hadn’t even thought the Glacier had a far side; he’d believed it went on forever. Like Ulric, he’d been wrong.
When Gudrid went on protesting that the buildings the emptying lake revealed couldn’t possibly be the Golden Shrine, Hamnet cut her off with a sharp chopping gesture. “Most of us are going over there no matter what you think it is. You can come with us or stay behind-whichever you please.”
“You can’t talk to me that way,” she said.
“No?” He looked at her. “I just did.” He turned away. She went on complaining, but he ignored her after that.
The Bizogots and Raumsdalians who’d come this far had mounted for a last desperate battle against the Rulers. They greeted Marcovefa with thunderous cheers-much of their joy, no doubt, was transformed relief that they wouldn’t die in the next few hours. She blushed like a girl as she waved to them, which only made their cheers redouble.
And they took up a chant: “The Shrine! The Shrine! The Golden Shrine!” It could have sounded better, since some spoke Raumsdalian and others the Bizogots’ tongue. No one seemed inclined to criticize.
Before long, Marcovefa and the ragtag army’s other leaders were also on horse back. The rest of the warriors behind them, they rode east along what had been the southern shore of Sudertorp Lake. It was a shoreline no more, as Sudertorp Lake was a lake no more. Waterfowl flew in wild confusion. Hamnet hoped they would find new nesting grounds.
Even if the Golden Shrine was visible now, he wasn’t sure how anyone could reach it. Sudertorp Lake might be vanishing, but wouldn’t its bottom prove impenetrable ooze that glued men and horses in place and might suck them down never to be seen again?
Earl Eyvind had another thought: “After so very long, how much could have survived in there? I’m astonished the buildings themselves have.”
“Now that you mention it, so am I,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We’ll see, that’s all. We’re here. It’s here, however it got here. We can’t do anything else but find out, can we?” Eyvind shook his head.
“It is the Golden Shrine,” Marcovefa said. “It is as it is meant to be. We will see what we are meant to see, learn what we are meant to learn.”
“What will that be?” Hamnet asked.
She gave him a dazzling smile. “If I already knew, I wouldn’t learn anything, would I?”
Even as they rode toward the Golden Shrine, more and more of it emerged from the lake. The outgoing flood should have wrecked it, but seemed to have left it unharmed. Of course, if it truly had lain under the Glacier for centuries uncounted, that should have ground it to powder. Obviously, no such thing had happened.
When Hamnet Thyssen wondered why not out loud, Earl Eyvind said, “It is the Golden Shrine. If the ordinary laws of nature applied to it, it would be something else altogether. It is the Golden Shrine because those laws do not apply. That is not the only reason, but it is a compelling one.”
“The old man is right,” Trasamund rumbled. That made Eyvind Torfinn look imperfectly delighted at the agreement. Marcovefa nodded without any opinions about his age. He seemed happier then.
“It’s the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet said. “Whatever’s wrong with us, whatever’s wrong with the world, now the Shrine can fix it.”
“An ancient verse says we take no more away from the Shrine than we bring to it,” Earl Eyvind remarked.
Marcovefa nodded again. This time, so did Ulric Skakki. Frowning, Trasamund asked, “What the demon does that mean?” Hamnet would have said more or less the same thing if the jarl hadn’t beaten him to it.
Eyvind Torfinn only shrugged. “The text may be corrupt, and it is certainly obscure. We shall be able to do what the author could not-we shall discover for ourselves what he meant.”
“Seems plain enough to me,” Ulric said. But then he waved his hand. “I may be wrong, God knows. The truth may be hiding under what looks plain, the same way the Golden Shrine hid under Sudertorp Lake. I wonder why nobody out in the lake ever looked down and saw it.”
“It did not wish to be seen,” Marcovefa replied. Talking about a building in that way should have been nonsense. Hamnet had the feeling it wasn’t.
“I suppose it didn’t want to get crushed when the Glacier rolled down from the north, either,” Ulric said, which had already occurred to Hamnet.
“It must not have. Had it wanted that, be sure that would have happened,” she said. Ulric started to answer, then seemed to think better of it. Count Hamnet didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t have known how to answer that, either.
A goose flew up from its nest, wings thundering. Audun Gilli pointed at what looked like a paving stone half covered by lakeside plants. “Isn’t that the start of a road out to the Shrine?” he said.