Ensnared (Knights of Brethren #3)(30)

He motioned me toward the stool.

I wanted to stand and remain alert, but refusing his kind gesture to take the only seat would be rude, so I sat down.

“I know you’re Sir Gunnar, one of the Knights of Brethren.” Eggum crouched in front of the embers and began to stir them with a rod.

Of course my identity had proceeded me into the slums. I couldn’t expect to trespass in this part of town without every single outcast knowing about it.

I might as well get right to the point of my visit. “You served my grandfather.”

Eggum didn’t answer but neither did he deny it.

“I want to know more about my grandfather’s purge, specifically why he accused a group of his domestics of trying to overthrow him.” I let the coins clank through my fingers to remind him of what he stood to gain.

“Your grandfather was a cruel man, just as cruel as your father and your brother.”

I’d heard enough stories to know the legacy of cruelty was true. “I will not disagree with you on that score. But did the people do as he accused them, collude with the jotunn?”

Eggum pushed at the embers. “They secretly met with the jotunn at the forest edge and bargained with him to come out and destroy your grandfather.”

His answer was too rehearsed to be true.

“Why bargain with the jotunn? If the jotunn is so dangerous, why would they want to encourage him to come to their aid?”

Eggum was quiet, still stirring the embers.

“I need to know the truth.” I sensed his answer was pivotal.

He lowered his head, and his response came out a mumble. “They believed he was the rightful heir to the earldom and wanted him to take your grandfather’s place.”

My fingers twisting the coins came to a halt. “Are you telling me they believed the jotunn was my grandfather’s older brother, Sven?”

“’Twas but a rumor.”

Sven had been badly burned and disfigured in a fire as a child and had died. Or at least that was the tale I’d been told.

But what if he hadn’t died after all? Had his family sent him away into the forest as an outcast in order to take the earldom from him?

And yet, how could Sven—my great uncle—be the jotunn? Hardanger Forest had been uninhabitable, dangerous, and haunted by a jotunn long before my grandfather and his brother’s time. Maybe instead of one jotunn, the forest was made up of many madmen. “Do you think the jotunn is Sven?”

“No. I believe the jotunn is a troll who escaped from the underworld and made his home in the forest.” The answer came too quickly, as if he’d spoken it many times over the years. No doubt the answer had once kept him from losing his life with the others my grandfather had purged.

Obviously, my grandfather had felt threatened in some way by the madman living in Hardanger Forest, or he wouldn’t have felt the need to eliminate his servants.

Silence settled around the hovel as I tried to process what Eggum’s revelation meant. Was the mysterious monster of Hardanger Forest my great uncle or someone else altogether?

“I know you’re searching for the sacred chalice.” Eggum leaned forward, his whisper dropping so that I could barely hear it.

“News gets around.”

“The jotunn has it.” Again, the words were barely audible.

I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it. I hadn’t been expecting such news, to say the least. And now a hundred more questions crowded my mind.

Eggum kept his head down. “I was cleaning in the chapel when I saw the priest take it from the altar.”

Was this old beggar speaking the truth? With as much as the chalice had been moved from church to chapel to abbey, I didn’t doubt the chalice had changed locations from Romsdal’s Stavekirche to the chapel in Likness Castle. “You’re sure you saw the chalice?”

Eggum nodded. “The priest put it into a sack and took it with him to the edge of Hardanger Forest.”

“And how do you know the jotunn possesses it?” I kept my voice as low as Eggum’s. If this was true, the information I was receiving was too important for anyone else to know.

“When the priest returned, he didn’t have the bag.”

“Maybe he tossed it in the forest.”

“Or maybe he gave it to the jotunn.”

My blood began to pump with a strange sense of anticipation. Was I getting close to a discovery?

Eggum could very well be deluded and simply spinning a story so I would give him the coins. But if this old servant was right, I’d just made a huge step forward.

“Why would the priest give the jotunn the sacred relic?” I voiced the question, although I didn’t expect Eggum to know the answer.

“For safekeeping?”

What if the priest had known about the possibility that the chalice could bring healing? If he’d believed the jotunn was my grandfather’s brother Sven, perhaps he’d thought the chalice would help restore the brother to sound body and mind so that he could return to Romsdal and take his rightful place as leader. Obviously, that hadn’t happened, and it could very well be another myth surrounding the chalice—just one more of the many I’d heard.

“My grandfather learned of their communication with this jotunn, believed it was his brother, and then hung the priest along with the others?”