ABOUT PRISON MADE OF MIRRORS Aithne is a warrior kidnapped from her homeland during a Viking invasion and forced to marry her captor. Shortly before the raid that claims his life, she becomes pregnant with a child whom she believes cursed. Spurred by the dark sorcery she learns from relics her late husband’s mother left behind—including a magic mirror— Aithne descends into a madness that threatens not only her child’s life but also the lives of everyone around her. Exiled by her mother, Brenna is taken in by a clan of dwarves who treat her like their own. They soon learn that no one is immune to Aithne’s lunacy—not even the prince to whom Brenna was once betrothed. Brenna must face and conquer death itself if she is to save the land that rightfully belongs to her, and to break her mother’s terrible spell on the man she loves.
CHAPTER ONE Once there was a place of seemingly endless forests and temples hidden in those forests—sacred spaces marked by groves of hallowed trees, springs, and stones. Once bonfires blazed, the celebrants danced and sang, and hooded spirits in the shadows presided over the act of creation. The Goddess loved a man with a stag’s antlers and a goat’s legs, and their love replenished the Earth with the seeds of life. They imbued all worshippers with their essence, so the forest floor came alive with bodies writhing in ecstasy, wild in the wood. Now there was this place, a dead world enslaved by an interminable cycle of frost. The mountains expressed displeasure at their abandonment here, for they constantly belched sulfurous black smoke. In want of sunlight, she might have leapt from the highest window in the chieftain’s longhouse and dashed her brains on the rocks below. Only her swollen belly kept her from it. Whenever the handmaid turned her back, Aithne climbed into the window, determined to end it all, but each time she lost her nerve. She wanted no part of her husband, least of all his child. Yet her own life still held some ostensible value, though she could not express what that value might be. In the fjord, flames lapped the elegantly curled prow of Chieftain Arild’s wooden long-ship. It was a beacon announcing to the gods his imminent arrival in Valhǫll, somewhere beyond the vicious and glacial gray sea. They fed everything to the flames— his weapons, even his gold—and left her with nothing but his land and the child in her belly. That night, the rest of the household and the tribe comprising the village mourned its lost ruler. His widowed wife, herself the chieftain now, gave birth alone. Only a midwife whose name she did not know attended her. In that other place, the tribeswomen eased each mother’s pain with songs or chants, words of encouragement the Goddess herself might whisper. Here, no mantra existed to alleviate her grief; with the birth of this child, her life was no longer her own. Teeth clenched, she squatted over the birthing tub, her muscles straining to force out the child. Her thighs quivered, and she screamed for Danu to bless her with an end to her labor; be it through the child’s delivery or her own demise, she no longer cared which. At last, it ended, yet she still wished for death. The midwife cleansed the child and held it to its mother’s breast: a girl. The woman then daubed Aithne’s brow with a damp cloth and drew a bath for her. Three days later, Aithne resumed her daily activities. On the ninth day, the midwife approached her for the child’s name, so the territory might have something to celebrate in this dark time. “Brenna,” said Aithne and nothing more. The midwife, her face shadowed with disappointment—no doubt because Aithne had chosen an Érainn name and not an Íslenska one—walked out of the room and down the stairs to address the gathered villagers. A chorus of grumbles reached Aithne’s ears. That accursed woman, that outsider, would give them a girl. But under the law, even girls inherited their father’s
land, and so his daughter was still the heir and eventual ruler. Their grousing quieted as they returned to their drinking horns and their war stories. There is something wrong with me, Aithne thought. I am a woman. I am a giver of life. And yet I feel nothing for this child. Brenna fastened her tiny red mouth around Aithne’s nipple and began to suck. And Aithne, appalled by this most tender of acts, wept in solitude.
Aithne was, before his assault on her village, the most beautiful woman in her tribe and renowned throughout Ériu. She had still jealously guarded her beauty, though her people defined it differently, and bore proud battle scars all over her body. They made her even more attractive to her lovers, who admired them with their fingertips and tongues. In her homeland, women fought and hunted; here they hoped, in most cases, only to marry and raise children, their livelihoods dependent on their beauty. Plunder had brought Arild and his warriors south, a year ago now, to the lands of their enemies, Aithne’s people: tall like their Northern invaders and equally ferocious in battle, the women no less so than their male counterparts. Arild’s men rode on horseback up the hillside as if part of some terrible Wild Hunt, ghost-pale and shouting in an unintelligible foreign tongue. They thought themselves an imposing sight with their golden adornments, their swords, and shields. They knew nothing of the sort. The village chieftain had received warning of an impending attack from settlements along the sea cliffs that spied the Viking long-ships in the distance. He had left a day earlier to ride to Tara and ask the High King of Ériu for assistance. Perhaps the invaders expected the tribe to be vulnerable without him. More likely, Aithne had concluded, knowing the chieftain as she eventually did, Arild simply had no idea what he’d gotten his warriors into. For all his arrogance and his peoples’ bellicose nature, he had the battle sense of a goat. The village appeared by design to be silent, deserted, ripe for pillaging. Even the chieftain’s house, beckoning Arild and his avarice with its size and potential for riches, stood defenseless. Arild dismounted and entered the large wooden structure, unaware of the invisible eyes all around him. When he emerged carrying an armload of gold jewelry, iron and bronze weapons, clothing dyed in various colors and sparkling with gold, and containers of salt, discordant trumpets blasted from each corner of the village. The tribe that swarmed into battle from behind houses and trees was naked but for the gold torcs around their necks and the bracelets on their arms. Their skin painted blue and their bleached hair arranged in deadly spikes, they prided themselves on terrifying most of their enemies into submission before a single thrust of a weapon. In battle, “human” was a word that no longer applied to them. The Víkingr fancied themselves the most feared of all warriors, with their finely crafted weaponry and their mad They did not anticipate the archers hidden in the trees and the shadows of buildings, whose arrow fletchings were the black feathers of the war goddess’ ravens. Unfortunately, the Víkingr were as formidable as the tales preceding their arrival had claimed. Most of Arild’s warriors survived, deflecting the arrows with their shields, to battle the throng of sword-wielding Érainn flooding the square.
Aithne, standing as tall as Arild, with blue swirls of paint adorning her ruddy skin, struck a concussive blow against the shield he gripped in a defensive stance. His balance disrupted, a momentary panic simmered behind his eyes, but he was no novice. “I have lost men this day. I will at least return home with a bride.” Despite his alien words, Aithne knew by the way he leered at her naked breasts that he had suggested something abhorrent. She spit in his face, but Arild laughed and wiped it away. He liked passionate women, he told her once she learned the language of these ice people. He did not know how soon she would wilt like a dead flower. The sweet smell of burning fruitwood rose behind her. The Víkingr were setting fire to every structure in the village, starting with the chieftain’s house. In the square, amid a growing pile of Érainn bodies and beneath a clear sky so beautiful it seemed a mockery, lay everything of value to the tribe. Arild’s warriors bound the youngest and most attractive villagers with rope and assembled them into a line that would march to the longships. They beheaded those who posed a threat—most of the men, and all of the useless—the elders. Everything she had known, everything she had loved, gone in an afternoon. Arild took advantage of the opportunity and swung his sword. Not hard, or Aithne would have lain dead at his feet, but with enough force to send his intended message. Crimson liquid dripped into her eye until she could no longer see. The pain sapped what remained of her strength. She fell to her knees, then onto her side, her left eye weeping blood. Arild’s words sounded muffled and far, far away, as if she lay beneath the sea. Someone wrapped linen around her head and hoisted her over his shoulder. She watched from her right eye as Arild and several of his warriors fought off the tribesmen who, screaming and slashing their swords, followed in an attempt to win her back. Archers, she thought deliriously, where have the archers gone… One by one, her would-be champions fell. “Or a thrall, if that wound does not heal to my satisfaction.” Arild, walking behind her, smiled as if she should be grateful for his mercy in not killing her. Aithne closed her eyes and slipped into merciful unconsciousness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Loring has been, among other things, a DJ, an insurance claims assistant, and an editor. Her short fiction has been published widely both online and in print; she has worked with Crystal Lake Publishing, DarkFuse, and Crowded Quarantine, among many others. Longer work most notably includes the contemporary/sports romance series The Firebird Trilogy and the critically acclaimed novella Conduits. She lives in Philadelphia, PA with her husband, their turtle, and two basset hounds.