“You ripped me away from my children.” She leaned on the blade, digging her feet into the floor.
He shook his head. “It had already happened.”
Her sword crept closer, pricking a single drop of blood from his neck. “Because of you.”
She leaned against a force that kept her from driving the sword home. What kept her from him?
Halldór lay on his back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know . . . I was following the prophecy.”
Reiko stepped back, gasping. Prophecy. A wall of predestination. She dropped to the bench again, empty, and cradled her sword to her. “How long ago . . . ?”
“Six thousand years.”
She closed her eyes. This was why he could not return her. He had not brought her from somewhere else. He had brought her through time. If she were trapped here, if she could never see her children again then it did not matter if these were human or demons. She was banished to Hell.
“What do the sagas say about my children?”
Halldór rolled to his knees. “I can show you.” His voice was gentle.
“No.” She ran her hand down the blade of her sword. Its edge whispered against her skin, still sharp. She touched her wrist to the blade. It would be easy. “Read it to me.”
She heard him get to his feet. The pages of the heavy book shuffled.
Halldór swallowed and began to read. “And so it came to pass that Li Aya and Li Nawi were raised unto adulthood by their tutor.”
A tutor raised them, because he had pulled their mother away. He shook his head. It had happened six thousand years ago.
“But when they reached adulthood, they each claimed the right of Li Reiko’s sword.”
They fought over the sword, which he had used to call her, not out of the heavens, but from across time. Halldór shivered and focused on the page.
“Li Aya challenged Li Nawi, saying Death was her birthright. But Nawi, on hearing this, scoffed and said he was a Child of Death. And saying so, he took Li Reiko’s sword and the gods smote Li Aya with their fiery hand, thus granting Li Nawa the victory.”
Halldór’s entrails twisted as if the gods were reading them. He had read these sagas since he was a boy. He believed them, but he had not thought they were real. He looked at Li Reiko. She held her head in her lap and rocked back and forth.
He wiped his brow. For all his talk of prophecies, he was the one who had found the sword and invoked it. “Then all men knew he was the true Child of Death. He raised an army of men and—”
“Stop.”
“I’m sorry.” He would slaughter a thousand sheep if one would tell him how to undo his crime.
He ran his hand across the pages. In all the histories, Li Reiko never appeared after the wall of fire, except in prophecy. He closed the book and took a step toward her. “But the price you asked . . . I can’t send you back.”
Reiko drew a shuddering breath and looked up. “I have already paid the price for you.” Her eyes reflected his guilt. “You will have to find another hero to kill the Troll King.”
His pulse rattled forward like a panicked horse. “There isn’t anyone else. The prophecy points to you.”
“Gut another sheep, bound man.” She stood. “I won’t help you.” Reiko’s arm hurt from the effort holding back a blow. She spun on her heel and walked away from him. “I release you from your debt.”
“But—” He scrambled to his feet. “It’s unpaid. I owe you a life.”
“You cannot pay the price I ask.” She turned and touched her sword to his neck. He flinched. “I couldn’t kill you when I wanted to.” She cocked her head, and traced the point of the blade around his neck, almost, but not quite, touching him. “What destiny do you have to fulfill?”
“Nothing. There are no prophecies about me.”
She snorted. “How nice to be without a destiny.” Sheathing her sword, she walked away from him.
He followed her. “Where are you going?” She spun and drove her fist into his midriff. He grunted and folded over. Panting with anger, Reiko pulled her sword out and swung at his side with the flat of the blade. It connected with a resounding crack. Halldór did not cry out.
She swung the blade again, but the invisible wall of force stopped her. He had to live, but she could hurt him. She turned the blade again, so the flat paddled against his ribs. The breath hissed out of him, but he did not move. He knelt in front of her, waiting for the next blow. His face was red and his eyes shone with religious ecstasy. Reiko backed away from him.
“Do not follow me.”
He scrabbled forward on his knees. “Then tell me where you’re going, so I won’t meet you there by accident.”
“Maybe that is your destiny.” She spun and walked away.
He did not follow her.
Li Reiko chased her shadow out of the Parliament lands. It stretched behind her in the golden light of sunrise, racing her across the moss-covered lava. The wind whipping across the treeless plain seemed to push her like a child late for dinner.
Surrounded by the people in the Parliament lands, Reiko’s anger had overwhelmed her. It buried her grief, and she needed to deal with that before she could make a rational decision. Whatever Halldór thought her destiny was, she saw only two paths in front of her—make a life here to replace the one he had stolen from her, or to join her children in the only way left to her. It was not a path to choose rashly, but the temptation shone brightly.
As she walked, small shrubs and grasses broke the green with patches of bright reds and golds, as if someone had unrolled a carpet on the ground. Heavy undulations creased the land with deep crevices. Some held water reflecting the sky, others dropped down to a lower level of moss and soft grasses, and some were as dark as the inside of a cave.
When the sun crossed the sky and painted the land with long shadows, Reiko sought shelter from the wind in one of the crevices in the ground. The moss cradled her with the warmth of the earth.
She pulled thoughts of Aya and Nawi close to her. In her memory, they laughed as they tried to catch her. Sobs pushed their way past Reiko’s reserves. Each cry shattered her. She wrapped her arms around herself and gave in to the grief. Her children were dead. It did not matter if they had grown up, she had not been there. They were six-thousand years dead. Inside her head she battled her grief. Her fists pounded against the walls of her mind. “No! no no nonono no.” Her brain filled itself with that silent syllable.
All because this man had decided a disemboweled sheep meant he had to rip her out of time. She pressed her face against the velvet moss wanting the earth to absorb her.
She heard a sound.
Training quieted her breath in a moment. Breath stilled, Reiko lifted her head from the moss and listened. Footsteps—probably a man’s—crept across the earth above her. She manifested her armor and rolled silently to her feet. If Halldór had followed her, she would play the part of a man and seek revenge.
In the light of the moon, a figure, larger than a man, crept toward her. A troll. Behind him, at a distance, a gang of other trolls watched. Reiko counted them and considered the terrain. It was safer to hide, but her bones ached to fight. She left her sword sheathed and slunk out of the crevice in the ground. Her argument was not with them.
Flowing across the moss, she let the uneven shadows mask her until she reached a standing mound of stones. She stood in their shadow and watched the trolls. The wind carried their stink to her.
The single troll reached the crevice she had sheltered in. His arm darted down like a bear fishing. When his hand touched nothing but moss, he roared with astonishment.
The other trolls laughed. “Got away, did she?”
One of them poked the others and said, “Mucker was just smelling his own crotch is all.”
“Yah, sure. He didn’t get enough in the Hall and goes around thinking he smells more.”
They had taken human women. Reiko felt a stabbing pain in her loins; she could not let that stand.
Muck
er whirled. “Shut up! I know I smelled a woman.”
“Then where’d she go?” The troll snorted the air. “Don’t smell one now.”
The other lumbered away. “Let’s go. I got some beddin’ to do.”
“Yah, let’s get back while some of ’em are still fresh.”
Mucker slumped and followed the other trolls. Reiko eased out of the shadows. She was a fool, but would not hide while women were raped.
She hung back, and let the wind carry their sounds and scents to her as she tracked the trolls back to their Hall.
The moon had sunk to a handspan above the horizon as they reached the Troll Hall. The night was silent except for the sounds of revelry. Trolls stood on either side of the great stone doors.
Reiko crouched in the shadows. Trolls wandered in and out in drunken stupor. Even with alcohol slowing their movement, there were too many of them.
If she could goad them into taking her on one at a time she could get past the sentries, but only if no other trolls came. The sound of swordplay would draw a crowd faster than crows to carrion.
A harness jingled in the dark.
Reiko’s head snapped in the direction of the sound. Trolls did not ride horses.
She shielded her eyes from the light coming out of the Troll Hall. As her eyes adjusted, a man on horseback resolved out of the dark. He sat twenty or thirty horselengths away, far enough to be invisible to the trolls outside the Hall. Reiko eased over the ground, senses wide.
The horse shifted its weight when it smelled her. The man on its back put his hand on its neck to calm it. The light from the Troll Hall hinted at the planes on his face. Halldór. Her lips tightened. He had followed her. Reiko warred with an irrational desire to call the trolls down on them.
She needed him. Halldór, with his drawings and histories, might know what the inside of the Hall looked like.
Praying he would have sense enough to be quiet, she stepped out of the shadows and stood next to him. He jumped as she appeared, but stayed silent.
He swung off his horse and leaned close. His whisper was hot in her ear. “What are you doing here?”
He turned his head, letting her breathe an answer to him. “I heard them talking. They have women inside.”
He nodded. “I know.” He looked behind them and she saw, for the first time, dried blood covered the left side of his face. He turned back to her. “We should move away to talk.”
She nodded. Something had happened since she left the Parliament lands. She followed him as he took his horse by the reins and led it away from the Troll Hall. Its hooves were bound with sheepskin so it made no sound on the rocks.
Halldór limped lightly on his left side. Reiko’s heart beat in her chest as if she were running. The trolls had women prisoners. Halldór bore signs of battle. Trolls must have attacked the Parliament. They walked in silence until the sounds of the Troll Hall dwindled to nothing.
Halldór stopped. “There was a raid.” He stared at nothing, his jaw clenched. “While I was gone . . . I came back and—” His voice broke like a boy’s. “They have my sister.”
Mara. “Halldór, I’m sorry.” Anger slipped away from her. Reiko looked for other riders. “Who came with you?”
He shook his head. “No one. They’re guarding the walls in case the trolls come back.” He touched the side of his face. “I tried to make them.”
“Why did you come?”
“To get Mara back.”
“There are too many of them, bound man.” She scowled. “Even if you could get inside, what are you going to do? Challenge the Troll King to single combat?” Her words seemed to resonate in her skull. Reiko closed her eyes, dizzy with the turns the gods spun her in. When she opened them, Halldór was watching her. His lips were parted as if he had begun a prayer. Reiko swallowed. “When does the sun rise?”
“In another hour.”
She turned back to the Hall. In an hour the trolls could not chase them. She reached up and began to undo her braid.
Halldór stared as her long hair began to flirt with the wind. She smiled at the question in his eyes. “I have a prophecy to fulfill.”
Reiko stumbled into the torchlight. Her hair hung loose and wild about her face. She clutched Halldór’s cloak to her.
One of the troll sentries looked up. “Hey. Lookie. A dolly.”
Reiko contorted her face with fear and screamed. The other troll laughed. “She don’t seem taken with you, do she?”
The first troll came closer. “She don’t have to.”
“Don’t hurt me. Please, please . . . ” Reiko backed away from him. When she was between the two, she whipped Halldór’s cloak off, tangling it around the first troll’s head. With her sword, she gutted the other. He dropped to his knees, trying to put his entrails back as she turned to the first. She slid her sword under the cloak, slicing along the base of his jaw.
Leaving them to die, Reiko entered the Hall. Mingled in the sounds of revelry, she could hear women crying.
Reiko kept her focus on the battle ahead. She would be out-matched in size and strength, but hoped wit and weapons would prevail. Her mouth twisted. She knew she would prevail. It was predestined.
A troll saw her. He lumbered closer. Reiko held up her sword, bright with blood. “I have met your sentries. Shall we dance as well?”
The troll checked his movement and squinted his beady eyes at her. Reiko walked past him. She kept her awareness on him, but another troll loomed in front of her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I am the Chooser of the Slain. I have come for your King.”
The troll laughed and reached for her, heedless of her sword. She dodged under his grasp and slid her sword up to his neck. She held the point there. “I have come for your King. Not for you. Bring him to me.”
She leapt back. His hand went to his throat and came away wet with blood.
Behind her, a bellow went up at the entry. Someone had found the sentries. Reiko kept her gaze on the troll in front of her, but her peripheral vision filled with trolls running. Footsteps behind her. Reiko spun and planted her sword in a troll’s arm. The troll howled, backing away. Reiko shook her head. “I have come for your king.”
She turned her back on them and walked toward the Hall. She had no chance of defeating all of them, but if she could goad the king into single combat, she stood a chance of leaving the Hall with the prisoners. When she entered the great Hall, whispers flew among the trolls there. In the words around her, Reiko heard the number of slain trolls mount.
The Troll King lolled on his throne. Mara, her face red with shame, serviced him.
Anger buzzed in Reiko’s ears. She let it pass through her. “Troll King, I have come to challenge you.”
The Troll King laughed like an avalanche of stone tearing down his Hall. “You! A dolly wants to fight?”
Reiko paid no attention to his words.
He was nearly twice her height. Leather armor, crusted with crude bronze scales, covered his body. The weight of feasting hung about his middle, but his shoulders bulged with muscle. If he connected a blow, she was dead. But he would be fighting gravity as well as her. Once he began a movement, it would take time for him to stop it and begin another.
Reiko raised her head, waiting for his laughter to die down. “I am the Chooser of the Slain. Will you accept my challenge?” She forced a smile to her lips. “Or are you afraid to dance with me?”
“I will grind you to paste, dolly. Then I will sweep over your lands, bed your women and eat your children for my breakfast.”
“If you win, you may. Here are my terms. If I win, the prisoners go free.”
He came down from his throne and leaned close to her. “If you win, we will never show shadow in human lands again.”
“Will your people hold to that pledge when you are dead?”
He laughed. The stink of his breath boiled around her. He turned to the room. “Will you?”
The room rocked with t
he roar of their voices. “Aye.”
The Troll King turned back to her. “And when you lose, I won’t kill you till I’ve bedded you.”
“Agreed. May the gods hear our pledge.” Reiko manifested her armor.
As the night-black plates materialized around her, the Troll King bellowed. “What is this?”
“This?” She taunted him. “This is but a toy the gods have sent to play with you.”
She smiled in her helm as he swung his heavy iron sword over his head and charged her. Stupid. Reiko stepped to the side, already turning as she let him pass her.
The dust swirled in his wake. She brought her sword hard against the gap in his armor above his boot. The blade jarred against bone. She yanked her sword free; blood coated it like a sheath.
The Troll King dropped to one knee, hamstrung. Without waiting, she vaulted up his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, like Aya riding piggyback. He flailed his sword through the air, trying to bend his arms back to reach her. She swung her sword around to his neck. His bellow changed to a gurgle as blood fountained in an arc, soaking the ground. Around them, trolls moaned in despair.
A heavy ache filled her breast. She whispered in his ear. “I have killed you without honor. I am a machine of the gods.”
Reiko let gravity pull the Troll King down. The moans of the trolls rose to shrieks. She leapt off his body as it fell forward.
Before the dust settled around his body, Reiko pointed her sword at the nearest troll. “Release the prisoners.”
Reiko walked into the dawn with women weeping and singing her praises. As they left the Troll Hall, Halldór dropped to his knees. Mara ran forward, weeping, to wrap her arms around his neck.
Reiko felt nothing. She listened to the rejoicing around her and could not join it. Why should she, when the victory was not hers? She walked away from the group of women.
Halldór chased her. “Lady, my life is already yours but my debt has doubled.”
She knelt to clean her sword on the moss. “Then give me your firstborn child.”
She could hear his breath hitch in his throat. “If that is your price.”
Reiko raised her eyes to him. “No. That is a price I will not ask.”
Word Puppets Page 3
