“That should make it easier,” Diaval panted, her pupils blown from the magic use.
But as she said that, the monstrous hound struck again, and this time Rose barely had a chance to yell out a warning before its massive paw nearly shredded Soren, and before he could say anything, something hit me hard and I flew backward, rolling over a few times in the muck.
I gasped, trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of my lungs by the blow, but thankfully there was no stinging to suggest I’d been cut. Only a sensation similar to that of being whipped by a dog’s wagging tail. Except in this case, instead of a light sting, I swore that deep bruises were already forming where the tail knocked into me.
“Janneke!” Soren cried out, but mentally I willed him to stay where he was.
“I’m okay!” I said, rolling back to my feet.
The hound was after Rosamund now, but out of all of us, Rose was ready and he stepped backward as the creature came at him. Dodged left, then right, at swiping paws, jumping over a lashing tail, and rolling underneath what I assumed the belly of the beast was. He continued this dance, not even lifting his weapons, but slowly drawing the creature away from the rest of us and toward—toward the Gjall.
“Brilliant,” I said. “Everyone, keep the hound directed to following Rose! I think I know what he’s doing.” Or, at least, I hoped I did.
We created a semi-circle, all of us baring our weapons whether they be blades or magic, and slowly stepped forward, crowding the monster so it had nowhere to go. When it did try to lash out at one of us, the blow was quickly parried and Rose shouted for its attention.
“Good doggie,” Rose muttered. “Keep your eyes on me.”
As far as I could tell, it did. Rose was now standing at the bank of the rushing icy river and breathing hard from all his dodging and dancing around the large hound like a piece of prey might do. The hound’s prey drive was too strong to ignore Rose’s dashing figure, and it too stepped onto the muddy banks.
Rose didn’t dare look behind him at the flowing ice chutes as he tempted the hound to lunge at him one last time, and like any animal obsessed with the kill, the hound fell for the bait. Rose dove to the side as the creature fell into the water which began to run red with blood.
Panting with exhaustion, Rose watched the river for a moment before nodding. “That thing isn’t coming back for a long time.”
All of us regrouped far away from the river, near where Hel’s throne of roots had been.
“Well,” said Seppo. “That was fun.”
“Are you being sarcastic or did you actually think that was fun?” Soren asked. “It’s really hard to tell with you.”
“A little of both,” Seppo replied, shrugging.
“Are you okay, Rose?” Diaval asked.
He nodded. “I … It’s weird. It’s like I have double vision. Sometimes it’s normal and sometimes I’m seeing two very different things all at once.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“If you hadn’t come, we’d have been eaten by that thing,” Soren said. “I couldn’t care less about your lineage. It’s not like my father was a stellar person either. I’m glad you came.”
There was a stunning silence as everyone stared at Soren who began to blush a pretty lavender color. “I do have the emotional and mental maturity not to hold things people can’t control against them, you know,” Soren said. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Of being an emotionally constipated jackass?” Seppo asked.
Soren gave Seppo a withering look but didn’t press the issue.
“We need to keep moving,” Diaval said from where she was crouched on the ground, filling a small bag she had in her hand with the dirt and muck from near the river. “Hel will figure out we escaped Garm in no time. We need to get to wherever she’s keeping Lydian and then get out as fast as we can.”
“How do we know where she’s keeping him?” I asked. “I can’t even see anything but mud for miles.”
“There’s only one place a soul like his would go,” Soren said. “The shore of corpses.”
“You know,” Seppo said. “I wish we were going somewhere pleasant for once. It’s always draugr lair, lindworm nest, shore of corpses, can’t we go anywhere nice?”
“Next time we need to save the world, I’ll make sure to ask the Norns for it to happen in a nicer place, okay?” I said, though I doubted the ancient crones of fate had any care for our small mortal lives.
“So rude,” Seppo said. “Why is everyone so rude to me, Rosamund?”
“You can be uniquely annoying,” he answered. “As your partner, I find it endearing. Many don’t.”
“Will you all shut up?” Diaval was close to shouting. “I’m trying to figure something out here, so we can actually get to the shore of corpses!”
There was something in her tone that had us drop all conversation, and we stood in silence as Diaval fiddled with the bag of dirt from the bank of Gjall.
“Olla silmäni.” The ancient words and the magic they created swirled around us like a breeze as Diaval made a small cut on her hand and let the blood drip into the bag. Coming over to all of us, she held out the bag of mud and passed over her ritual knife, hilt-first. One by one, we all took the knife and made a small cut, letting the blood drip into the bag of muck while Diaval kept chanting the same words over and over again. Her pupils blew up, almost covering her irises entirely, before slowly returning to normal. A flicker of electric blue light danced inside the bag before sinking into its contents.
“Take some of it and smear it under your eyes. Even you, Rose,” Diaval ordered. “It’ll help us get to the shore and hopefully avoid any dangers on the way.”
“Seer’s mud?” Soren inquired.
“Would you prefer to go in blind?” Diaval asked.
“No, ma’am,” Soren replied, a hint of humor in his voice as he, like the rest of us, smeared the muck under his eyes.
The underworld burst to life. No longer was it muck and mud for miles to see but a wild plain where my inner stag could sense the powerful creatures it contained. There were paths in the ground, colored and stained all different shades, twisting and spiraling each way to a distant destination. A field was to our left, the grass grown so high that even Soren wouldn’t be able to see over it, and to the right, there was a thick forest full of undergrowth that held millions of little yellow eyes, staring back at us.
Diaval waited until we were accustomed to the sights before she spoke again. “We go down the red path,” she said, toe tapping the red-stained earth under our feet. “It will bring us through to the shore and the unworthy dead.”
Nervously, we all filed down the red-stained path, only to hear Diaval in the front say, “Oh, and try not to pay attention to anything you see.”
Well, that made the sinking feeling in my gut so much better. I grasped Soren’s hand, and he squeezed it tightly in response.
“You look ashen,” he said. “What happened to you during your trials? I mean, I know they tried to make you kill a version of me, but I’m assuming details were left out.”
I shivered despite the fact I wasn’t cold. With my eyes focused to the ground, I said, “I kept hitting different roots of Yggdrasil, and they all showed different lives I could have lived. Or, well, not showed me them, but I lived them. I didn’t remember anything about this life or what was going on above ground.” I motioned around us. “And each life I was shown, I was told there was a way to escape it. I had to escape it to prove I was worthy, but I still didn’t know what I was escaping to or proving I was worthy about. I knew I had to do it.”
“What did you see, if you don’t mind me asking?” Soren said.
My foot kicked a red rock out of the pathway; it’d now turned from muck and dirt to gravely rocks sharp enough to pierce the skin of one’s foot if they weren’t wearing sturdy boots. “They were all designed to challenge my life and desires. All of them were actual lives a different me was livin
g right now.
“The first one was a life where Lydian never had raided my village. Instead, I’d turned eighteen and you took me to the Permafrost.” I paused, trying to collect myself. “My family dressed me in funeral clothing as if they were sending me to my death, and I was so scared of what you would do.”
Concern flickered on Soren’s face. “Did I do anything to you? Anything bad, I mean?”
I shook my head. “I would scream and rage at you, and you would take the anger and continue on until I was too tired to scream and rage anymore. You told me little things about your life, like your least favorite food and your favorite color.”
“Herring and dark green,” Soren answered, despite the fact I already knew.
“I think I would’ve stayed. I was lulled into the rhythm we created as we traveled. But then a voice told me I had to escape. By root, by fang, and by iron, it said.” I shivered at the last one, the look on Soren’s face when I slashed his eye out and the deep cuts bubbling with blood on my wrists coming back so clear, I could be experiencing them again.
Soren put a hand on my shoulder, holding me close. “It’s okay; you’re back now. That’s all that matters.”
“I ended up using an iron knife my parents hid in my clothes to attack a tree and drink the black sap from it; that was the way out apparently. The second trial was … different.”
If I strained my ears, I could still hear the screams and cries of my family and the people in my village. I could still hear Lydian yelling at me to run and hunting me down like prey.
“I came back to my village as the slaughter was taking place,” I said quietly. “And survived. Lydian made me run so he could chase after me, but I was injured and fell into a ravine. I knew they were close and they’d do horrible things to me … but then I remembered by fang and noticed the albino snake near me, one of the venomous kinds, and I grabbed it and let it bite me so I would die before Lydian ever got his hands on me.”
“Gods,” Soren said. “That must have been terrifying. I’m so sorry.”
“The last one was the worst.”
“What happened?” Soren asked. “Only if you want to speak about it. I understand if you can’t bring it up again.”
I shook my head. “That’s the thing … it wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t horrible, so it was the worst because I had to leave.” My eyes were stinging and I quickly rubbed them before any falling tears could betray me. “I was a normal person in a normal life, but you were there too, also human. My body wasn’t scarred, we were going to have a baby, there was my family all around, and I don’t think the Permafrost even existed.” My voice shook a little. “It was like someone dangling everything I wanted in front of me. And the worst part is that it wasn’t some illusion. The roots weren’t making me see things. I was actually living an alternate life.”
“I’m so sorry, Janneke,” Soren said softly, his hand squeezing mine gently. “I’m so sorry you had to choose.”
“They said that I had to kill you in order to get back. Kill that version of you in a perfect life, and I couldn’t do it.” My voice broke. “It’s my fault we had to face Garm and that we couldn’t reach Lydian. I couldn’t find it in myself to kill you—any version of you. I tried,” I said. “I ended up slashing one of your eyes, but I couldn’t go any further, and so I slit my own wrists in the hopes that I’d wake up back in this world.”
Soren was quiet for a long while, but he still pulled my shivering body close and I leaned into his warmth. His heartbeat, slower than a human’s, began to relax me as the fear and despair from what had happened left my body.
“You’re so strong, Janneke,” Soren said. “I hope you know that.”
“I was so close to giving up, to living in that world forever.”
“And yet you still came home at the end of the day. Like I said, you’re strong. Don’t doubt it.” He kissed my forehead. “I’m still so sorry you had to go through that, and none of us were able to help.”
We were so wrapped up in our conversation that both of us nearly banged into Rose, Seppo, and Diaval where they stood staring into the distance. The path now had a sandy texture to it, and somewhere far away the crashing of waves echoed off rocks.
“Well,” Diaval said. “Here it is, the shore of corpses. Don’t do anything stupid. Walk quietly, stay behind me, and don’t interact with anything.”
I was about to say I didn’t even see anything I could interact with, until right before my eyes, they shimmered into vision. People of all ages tied to the rocks, their bones broken, and ravens picking their faces apart as they lay there helpless. The water crashed into them and deprived them of breath, creeping higher and higher as the tide came in. They screamed, some of them, who had newly bloodied wounds and mostly intact clothing, whose chains weren’t rusted, but most of them moaned in agony with their eyes closed.
We passed by men hung up on crucifixes, trying their best to hold themselves up with their nailed feet so they could breathe, only making the wounds deeper and more painful. Some of their gazes followed us while others stared blankly into space with dead eyes.
The sand below our feet shifted, and Diaval held up a finger to her lips as a giant serpent rose out of the sand. Its scales were dark and shiny, a mixture of black and purple with little veins of green shooting down its long body from the throat to the tail. The creature shook the sand off of its body before turning its giant head to us.
A million cuss words formed in my head, but my mouth was too dry to say anything and fear had closed my throat shut like a trapdoor as the serpent rose high above us. It observed us with unblinking red eyes before turning away and lunging at one of the men on a crucifix. It tore the body off the wooden structure and swallowed it whole, so we could almost see the outline of the condemned man inside of him. But no sooner had the serpent consumed the man than the man was back on the cross, and the serpent slipped away down into the earth.
Diaval lowered her hand, indicating we could speak.
“What,” Soren said, “in the entirety of the nine worlds was that?” He sounded like he’d run a mile, breathless from the fear the creature put in him. I couldn’t blame him. Now that it was gone my heart sped up faster than a storm, and I began to feel faint as I gasped for the breath I’d been holding.
Seppo leaned against Rosamund, who was softly petting his hair and whispering soothing words to the shaking halfling. His eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and he shook his head. “Nidhogg,” he muttered. “Nidhogg.”
“What?” Soren and I asked at the same time.
Diaval rolled her eyes. “You two really need to brush up on your cosmology if you’re going to be the Erlking and the stag successfully. Nidhogg is the serpent that helps chew at the roots of Yggdrasil, and it eats the bodies of the unworthy dead on the shore of corpses.” She scanned the corpse-dotted beach. “It’ll be back. We’re not dead, so it’s not going to attack or eat us, unless we take away one of its treasures.”
I had a sinking feeling in my gut.
“Why do I feel like we’re about to fight the giant, people-eating snake?” Seppo said.
“Because,” Soren huffed, “if we want to free my uncle from this—arguably suitable for him—afterlife, we’re going to need to fight the giant, people-eating snake.”
16
THE CORPSE EATER
THERE WAS A collective groan from everyone in the group. Muscles were still sore and aching, and a few of us favored certain parts of our bodies over others since the fight with Garm. Nobody wanted to get into another battle so soon.
“Maybe if he doesn’t notice us freeing Lydian, he won’t attack us,” I offered, trying to sound optimistic.
“When has our luck ever been that good, though?” Soren asked.
“Just trying to be positive,” I said.
“Well,” Diaval said, “we need to find the ass first. That could take a while.” She motioned to the hundreds of writhing bodies that were chained upon the rocks and pinned dow
n with stakes in the sand.
Rose squinted at the open sands. “We’ll never get it all done in one group. We need to split up.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Rose is right,” Diaval said. “But just in case, Rose, go with Seppo, and Janneke, go with Soren. Pairs are safer than being on your own.”
Seppo raised an eyebrow at Diaval. “And who will you be going with?”
The she-goblin quirked a crooked smile. “Me, myself, and I. Don’t worry, I can take care of myself.”
I nodded. Out of all of us, Diaval did seem the most capable. “So, Soren and I will head toward the shoreline, Seppo and Rose can do the middle, and Diaval can check the back.” I tried to make my voice command-like, similar to the surety that both Diaval and Soren had in their voices when they told everyone what to do, but it lacked something and I tensed in frustration. I kept feeling like I was lacking so many things that I should have known or been able to do, and yet here I was, floundering along like a half-drowned rat trying to swim against the current. The excess energy made my fingers curl into a fist and had me looking angrily for something to punch.
Soren put a hand on my shoulder, and I forced myself to relax. “It’s okay,” he said softly, so the others couldn’t hear as we began our search. “No one expects you to be perfect.”
No one except for myself, at least. But I tried to break away from the poisonous useless thoughts as we walked down the shore of corpses. I kept my eyes glued to the sand, worried every time it rippled of what was lurking under it. Once or twice I swore I caught sight of a flicking forked tongue or a disappearing tail, but the Nidhogg didn’t bother us as long as we didn’t touch those condemned on the shore.
I wasn’t sure what acts one had to do to get put on the shore of corpses—nothing good considering this was Lydian’s current resting place—but even the knowledge that these men and women might be murderers or rapists or something worse didn’t sit well with me as I watched vultures peck out their eyes, only for them to grow painfully back in, or for odd, scaled crustaceans to gnaw at their exposed feet and rip away chunk by chunk which again respawned in painful rejuvenation. Their screams alone had me gripping tightly to Soren’s hand. The screams of dying, tortured men who knew that they would never get the relief they sought wasn’t as terrifying as the men and women and other creatures who’d been on the shore long enough and had a dead, blank stare to their faces like their spirits had been completely severed from their bodies.
Goblin King Page 16
