The Rot

by Siri Pettersen

  Neither of them had thought they’d ever meet again. Least of all Naiell. And that’s how it would have remained, had they not made one fatal error. They’d let him keep the dead bird. Their stupidity had been his salvation.

  They’d laughed at him, not understanding why he wanted to keep a carcass. A mangy bag of feathers. A companion that would rot. Laughed but allowed it. Perhaps because it had seemed pathetic.

  And with that they’d brought about their own ruin. They’d given him a weapon. Something he could use, even if they killed the raven rings. He had the beak.

  It had taken him a thousand long years. A thousand. Just to find someone who could reach him. Who could help him find raven rings that still held traces of the Might. He’d never forgotten. Never given up. And now the day was upon him. Naiell was here, in the city. He could smell him. It was the smell of fear. Of the end.

  The church stood there like a burned-out promise, one of its walls tagged with red spray paint. We are all blind.

  BETRAYAL

  Hirka sat on the roof and looked out across the city. It felt treacherously alive. Cars zipped around, people walked, big cranes moved blocks of stone to build more houses. Bigger houses. Death was invisible to those who weren’t looking for it. It rested in asphalt. Crawled in gray grass. Gnawed at bare trees that couldn’t find enough sustenance to grow leaves.

  But it was also cunning. Death gleamed in the apples that never rotted. The rot was here, and it always would be. It was as Graal had said. She couldn’t save this world. She might be able to save some people, a life or two, but time was running out. Its days were numbered.

  It felt wrong to abandon it for a place where the Might still existed. Surely everyone here deserved the same chance? Were they all doomed to die for something Naiell had done a thousand years ago? It just wasn’t right.

  She fiddled with the roll of tape she’d found next to the broken window.

  Was there a way of getting humans through the raven rings? How many of them was there room for in Ym? Could the eleven kingdoms accommodate the inhabitants of this world? A chill ran down her spine. She remembered Allegra’s hungry look when she’d seen the stones.

  And they’re common where you come from?

  And if it were possible … If Mannfalla could accommodate as many humans as ymlings, what would they do there? The same as they’d done here?

  The thought was more unbearable than letting them die.

  So she’d choose plants over humans? Animals that couldn’t speak over animals that could? What did that say about her?

  She’d probably find out that evening.

  She glanced over at the church. She could only see the spire from here. It was idyllically situated, surrounded by trees that would soon be in leaf, but beneath them, humans lay rotting. And everything would only continue to rot. She didn’t know what would happen, but she knew that evening would in all likelihood be her last.

  She and Naiell each had their own plan. He thought she didn’t know what he was willing to do. He thought she’d built him an army. What would he do when he realized? And what would Graal say when he saw the forgotten? If they came, that was. And would Rime be there?

  The sky blazed behind tall buildings, the sun turning the river red. Soon evening would be upon them. Soon everything would be uncertain. If she survived the evening, she would leave this world. For another she didn’t know. Last time she’d cried. Struggled to come to terms with it.

  This time everything was different. There was no council to overthrow. No halls to tear down. And she wouldn’t be sad to leave.

  She’d wanted out of this world ever since she’d arrived. Nothing could be worse than this place, which was slowly dying in a whirl of flashing lights and screeching cars. She wasn’t human. She was Dreyri. She was half-blindling. It terrified her that she’d embraced it so wholeheartedly. Maybe it had something to do with Graal’s promises. Vague words about power over life and death. About power over the Might. Was she even more stupid than the ymlings? Had she simply found another seer to follow?

  She tugged at the shells hanging from the end of the ties on her bag. They were indistinguishable from the ones found here. What else did all worlds have in common? Where were the roots of everything that was the same? Of all the hundreds of worlds she’d seen on the map? Was there anything there?

  The red faded in the sky. It was time.

  She found the end of the tape and tore off two strips. They stuck to her fingers, impossible to put down, so she attached them to her arm. She pulled her knife out of her boot and laid it against her forearm. Lengthwise, so the tip stuck out from her elbow when she bent her arm. It wasn’t protruding quite far enough, so she pushed it up a bit and bent her elbow again.

  Better. Enough to wound, but not so much that it could be seen.

  She wrapped the tape around the hilt and attached it to her arm. Tested it. It held. The two strips of gray tape kept the knife in place. They’d have to. She pulled her sleeve back down. Put the rest of the tape in her bag, got up, and climbed back through the roof hatch. She dropped down onto the floor and went to find Naiell.

  “Time to go,” she said.

  He was standing at the window, surrounded by half-spoiled food. He’d eaten. A lot. He was still wearing Stefan’s clothes, but he’d never seemed less familiar.

  He cocked his head and looked at her. Eyes white as blank paper. Without words. Without meaning.

  “Bring what you need,” she said. “We won’t be coming back here.”

  “I don’t have anything here that I need.”

  “Me neither.”

  She looked around the dusty loft that they’d been living in for the last few days. Dirty. Moldering. Rusted metal parts strewn everywhere. She found herself wondering whether the parts would make something if she put them together. Could she repair it?

  She’d never know.

  She walked out and heard Naiell follow. She wanted to implore the Seer to make sure the knife wouldn’t be seen, but there was no point. The Seer was right behind her. He was the one she needed protection from.

  She had only herself to rely on.

  The church was more desolate than she remembered. A burned-out ruin. Someone had tried to cover the roof with plastic, but it had blown off in several places. The gate was locked with a chain, and tall metal fences with yellow signs and striped tape stood in front of it. Not much of an obstacle considering the stone wall surrounding the churchyard wasn’t any taller than Hirka. She climbed up.

  “Where are they?” Naiell asked. “Where’s my army?”

  “We’ve talked about this, Naiell. I told them to wait until Graal was inside. They’re out here. Hidden in the streets.” She looked around, hoping she was right.

  She could see the outline of a man under a streetlight nearby. It looked like he was tossing a coin. She nudged Naiell and nodded toward the figure. “There’s Isac. They’re here.”

  Naiell grinned and jumped over the fence. He paused on the other side, studying every detail. Every gravestone. Every corner. He was anxious, keeping his guard up. She knew he’d never have come had there been any other option.

  There was no way out of the human world without Graal. Without his allies in Ym, who had the Might and the knowledge to open the stone way. All the same, Naiell hesitated, and she couldn’t blame him. The humiliation he’d let his brother suffer had been festering for a thousand years. Unforgivable cruelty, committed in the belief that they would never see each other again.

  The church door was locked, but that didn’t matter. There were plenty of ways in. Hirka walked around the side. There was a strange smell. She thought back to when she’d set fire to the cabin before traveling to Ravnhov, but this was something else. Burnt wood mixed with something artificial she couldn’t place. Something sharp. That was one of the reasons she’d chosen this place. It was abandoned yet familiar, and the fire would mask the smell of the forgotten from Graal.

  Many of the tall windows we
re broken and covered with plastic. She pulled herself up onto the nearest ledge, peeled back the plastic, and climbed in.

  It was dark inside. The air felt close. Water dripped down from the plastic on the roof. Where it had been blown back, she could see right up at the clouds.

  Wet leaves clung to the pews. The front rows were nothing more than charred kindling. Soot stained the walls. Shards of colored glass were strewn across the floor. The windows must have shattered. One of the chandeliers had fallen down and lay broken over the back of a pew, arms pointing every which way.

  The area around the altar was the worst. The door she’d used to access the tower was gone. All that remained was the hole in the wall, barred by fallen beams. The altar was bare. A book lay open on the floor, its pages black. Wordless. Hirka crouched down and turned a page. It disintegrated between her fingers.

  She looked up at the altarpiece. It had melted. She saw no god. No faces. Nothing at all.

  It was here that everything would end.

  She walked along the aisle toward the door. Jay had lain here. Her mum and little sister over there. All dead now. Someone had tried to clean up the blood, but traces of it still remained between the stones.

  Hirka unlocked the door and let Naiell in. He walked to the front of the church and sat on the altar where Father Brody had lain. “This was your house?”

  “No. I just stayed here.”

  It seemed so long ago. There was so much she hadn’t known back then. Everything was different now. She was a different person. No longer unaware of what was hunting her. No longer the girl hiding in the bell tower, afraid of being tailless. Of being a child of Odin. She was much stronger now—but somehow more vulnerable than ever.

  “Come,” Naiell said.

  Hirka steeled herself. She knew what was coming. The show for Graal. The pretense of exchanging her for Rime, and for Naiell’s freedom. But pretense or not, it would be fraught with peril. Naiell wanted her dead. She was the progeny he’d done his utmost to prevent. She’d have been dead already, had she not been what he assumed was an ignorant hostage.

  That said, there was still a tiny chance she was wrong. She couldn’t know for sure that Naiell was as bloodthirsty as she suspected. She wouldn’t know the truth until the brothers came face to face.

  She smiled. Father Brody had always said that people found their true selves in the church. Showed their true nature.

  Hirka walked over to Naiell and sat down next to him. The difference in size between them chased her heart even farther up her throat. She carefully bent her arm, feeling the knife taped there. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.

  She gazed up at the ceiling. The arches were broken and sticking up into the sky like claws. She could see stars, far above. Were they holding their breath, just like her?

  Couldn’t they just come already? Graal and Rime? Couldn’t this just be over? She looked at Naiell. “Are you scared?” she asked.

  “Would you be?” he hissed.

  “I don’t know. Depends what had happened, and I don’t know much about that,” she lied.

  “He lost. That’s what happened.”

  That pretty much sums it up.

  Wasn’t that what Graal had said?

  Naiell got up and pulled off his shirt. He threw it on the floor and beat his palms against his chest. A strange, ritualistic act. Affirming that he was strong and ready for anything. He walked over to the burned-out corner and started tearing away the boards covering the hole in the wall. An escape route, in case something went wrong.

  “Maybe a mountaintop would’ve been better.” Hirka was unable to hide the contempt in her voice.

  Naiell came toward her. She forced herself to stay where she was. He jabbed a claw at her. “You know nothing about my brother. It’s called being sensible, Sulni.”

  “If I know nothing, it’s because you haven’t told me anything,” she said.

  “I’ve told you enough that you ought to fear him.”

  “You’ve told me enough about him that I ought to fear you.” As soon as it was out of her mouth, she bit her lip. His eyes gleamed. White amid all the charred black.

  “You’re right,” he said. “If you had any sense, you’d fear me more than you do.”

  “You must have done something awful to be this scared,” she muttered.

  “I’m not scared!” He swept toward her. She leaped to her feet and backed against the wall.

  “I used to tell myself that, too.”

  She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She had too much on her mind. But now wasn’t the time. She knew that. She was about to destroy everything she’d planned. But still it came out. “If you’re so scared of facing the consequences, you should never have done what you did!”

  Naiell bared his canines but didn’t reply.

  “She’s right, brother.”

  Hirka looked at the door. It was Graal, standing in the opening between the church hall and the vestibule. She recognized the outline of his long coat. His wild hair.

  He came closer. Took off his glasses and stuck them in his jacket pocket. She heard a hiss from Naiell. Catlike.

  Another figure appeared behind Graal.

  Rime.

  Hirka clutched her chest. Her lips started to tingle. Her body remembered. His swords stuck up behind him. His white hair had been tied back. Some of it hung loose, framing his face. It was all so familiar that she wanted to scream.

  He looked at her. Inside her. She could hear him thinking her name. She forgot all the plans she’d made. Only one thing mattered.

  Hirka started to move toward him, but then she was pulled back. Naiell had a firm hand on her shoulder. “Now, now. We’re here to make an exchange, remember?” His claws stuck through her tunic. Sharp against her skin.

  Rime drew one of his swords, but Graal raised a hand to stop him. “Wait. She’s smarter than that.”

  Her deadborn father started to make his way along the wall on the outside of the pews. He walked slowly, up toward the altar. His eyes fixed on Naiell, just behind her.

  Hirka was pulled back. Naiell wanted her farther away. He moved in the opposite direction of Graal. Toward the door. Even with her in his claws, he didn’t feel like he had enough of an upper hand to stay put.

  Rime swung his sword through the air, adjusting his grip. “Have you ever known pain, Seer?” His voice was sharp as his steel.

  “In almost three millennia? I’d say so,” Naiell replied derisively. He was holding her so close that she could feel his breath on the back of her head.

  “Not like this,” Rime said. “Not like you’ll feel if you lay a hand on her.”

  Hirka dragged a hand over her face. Dear, sweet Rime. Her hero. Her idiot. He still thought he was here to save her, when in reality, it was the other way around.

  Naiell laughed and moved his claws up toward her throat. Hirka swallowed and tried to shut out the images of food she’d seen rotting in his hands.

  “Look at yourself, Graal. You look like them!” he said. “You’ve changed. How could you?”

  Graal reached the altar and stopped. “After a thousand years, the question is rather how you’re still the same.”

  Naiell snorted. “You sound like them, too.”

  Hirka caught a whiff of something under the charred smell. Sweet. Half-rotten.

  “They’re here,” she whispered to Naiell. He loosened his grip.

  Two humans came through the door. And another three, right behind them. Then even more. Hirka wanted to cry with relief. The forgotten were here. Salvation. Scores of them. Familiar and unfamiliar faces, all affected to varying degrees by the rot. Some emaciated and wearing worn clothes. Others still healthy. They spread out along the walls. Between the pews. Twenty. Thirty. More entered through the gap in the wall where Naiell had removed the boards.

  Isac came through the broken window, dropping down onto the floor a short distance away.

  Graal met her gaze. She could see coal-black doubt in his
eyes. An unspoken question.

  Have you betrayed me?

  She held his gaze and shook her head, hoping he would understand.

  Rime drew his second sword. She knew him so well. Saw him reading the room. Planning his moves. He had no way of knowing who was friend and who was foe. She could only hope he didn’t act rashly.

  The forgotten filled the church, one by one. Pale in the dark. A nightmarish mass. Even more were coming through the gap in the wall. A steady stream between the gravestones. The dead walking over the dead. There had to be almost a hundred of them.

  Naiell grinned at her. As if they were allies now. He had his army. He was no longer afraid. He was surrounded by those he thought would protect him.

  Hirka tried to move away from him, but he gripped her arm. Wanted her close. That was what she’d feared. He pulled her out into the aisle. They had to be the most morbid couple that had ever stood there.

  “So, brother,” he spat. “Shall we talk about getting me home?”

  He was so proud. So overinflated. He was the Seer. Accustomed to unconditional adoration. “I’ll be merciful and have them kill you as soon as you get me back to Ym.”

  “You never were the brightest spark, Naiell. Who’s going to force me? You?” Graal smiled. He’d longed for this moment longer than anyone could know. Hirka remembered all the lines on his back. Each a reminder of injustice.

  Naiell raised his arms out to the sides and slowly spun in the aisle. Displaying himself. Muscles rippled across his bare chest. He looked like the altarpiece Hirka knew was still there somewhere. Behind the ashes. “Have your eyes failed you? Me and my army!” he shouted.

  “My army,” Hirka said.

  Naiell turned toward her. She pulled away from him, took a deep breath, and repeated herself. “My army, Naiell. Not yours. Mine.”