She pushed herself up and sat. Her stomach rumbled with hunger. “What would you have to fear from wolves?”
His expression was calm. “These are not mortal wolves.”
“Demons? Like Fenrisúlfr?”
A faint smile. “Just so.”
Ingifrith gulped. “There’s a Fenrir sorcerer hunting me.”
He leveled his shining eyes on her. “A pack like this would require a great exchange.” He returned his attention outside. “The wolves are not hunting you. What they are hunting is unknown to me.”
Just then, a scream echoed through the forest. The harrowing sound could have been a cat, a woman, or both, but it was not of the mortal world. The ground shuddered with a struggle, a rough series of shrieks and growls that ended with a gale that rent the forest like a claw. When the sound passed, the wolves began to howl. Their song filled the trees. After some moments, the howling stopped. No birds chirruped. Water tapped on the leaves. A gentle breeze swept through the canopy.
“It is done,” the elf said. “Come.”
They emerged into soft light. The rain had stopped. As Ingifrith took in the landscape, her lips parted in awe. She had never seen trees so old. They perched and snaked over boulders, falls and gorges filled with ferns and witch-hobble. Below, a stream ran through the shadows, swift and deep. The sky, a hundred feet above, glowed pale amid the boughs. Water cascaded in ribbons over crags and splashed into the stream below. Thick, gnarled branches laden with green and yellow leaves, and the dark arms of fir and spruce stretched out at every level like tapestries draped across the interior of a fortress.
The elf headed down a thin, snaking path, making no sound. Ingifrith followed him, taking care not to miss a step and plunge to the earth below. Slowly, as if awakening to the day—or, more likely, coming out of hiding from the hunt—spirits began to drift, dart and swim through the trees with the birds, some of them whispering, others laughing or sighing. Above, several goblins appeared upon a wide bough. One of them held a bow with an arrow nocked.
As Ingifrith followed the elf, a chill swept over her body. The surroundings began to shimmer—a striped maple, a clump of mushrooms growing on a rotting stump, a crow preening on a rock. Suddenly, figures appeared, as if they had been there all along. Fylking. Beautiful warriors in exquisite armor, embossed leather, polished mail, earth-colored tunics, trousers and leggings, boots and cloaks, all bearing weapons. Unlike the time she had seen them gathered around Tower Sor near Merhafr, resplendent and arrogant as the summer sun, their light had dimmed. They were wounded, tired and wary. This was a war camp, a place where they could heal, regroup and hide, trapped as they now were on this world.
The Fylking had hidden themselves so well that Ingifrith had not sensed a breath of their presence in the natural features of the wood. “They’re alive,” she said breathlessly, catching up to the elf.
“Some of them,” he replied over his shoulder.
“Why did the phooka bring me here?”
Not answering, the elf descended a flight of stone steps that plunged to the stream on one side. Tucked into a woven tangle of huge roots and boulders covered in moss, was a stone structure with a large arched opening. A face, half man, half raven, with one eye darkened was carved into the apex of the arch. Light shone in the interior, shining from above. As old as the forest, it appeared to be a temple.
A raven fluttered down from the top of the arch and stood. “We meet again, Demon Tamer.”
“Raven,” Ingifrith returned with a smile.
The dark elf nodded to the Fylking. Something strange passed between them. “I will leave you here,” the elf said to Ingifrith. Touching her cheek, he slipped into the shadows.
The Fylking held out his arm. “Come. There is someone here you need to meet.”
He led her beneath the Allfather’s eye into the interior of the temple. They entered a round chamber with the mosaic of a pentacle stretched across the diameter. A company of Fylking and mortals, men and women, milled about there, discussing something. Though the mood was tense, Ingifrith didn’t hear what was said over the sudden eruption of anxiety in her gut.
This was not what it seemed.
Raven nodded as one of the tall warriors turned. He wore an incomplete compliment of battered armor over dark shades of linen and leather. He had long blond hair, and his armor glinted like silvery fur in the soft morning light filtering into the chamber. His blue eyes pierced Ingifrith as he moved to her side. “I am Wolf,” he said quietly. “Welcome.”
She nodded and mumbled a greeting, but she barely acknowledged him. Her knees were filled with water; her belly, with poison. From the edge of the circle, a mortal man gazed at her with a smile that wasn’t his. He had shoulder-length, tangled blondish brown hair, and a strong, open face. His eyes were also blue, but cold, and impossibly familiar, as she didn’t know him.
The man smiled and came toward her. He stopped in the center of the circle, one hand hidden in a pocket.
“Ingifrith,” Wolf said. “This is Arcmael of House Halstaeg, the Master of Faersc.”
No it isn’t, she thought. This is a trap. Why did the phooka bring me here?
“Ah, Ingifrith Klemet,” the warden said with an empty smile. No one had introduced her, so he must have known about her beforehand. Maybe. He did not deign to reach out his free hand.
She nodded, her heart racing. Standing on either side of her, Wolf and Raven looked at her in question. Wolf stirred. “I’ve heard so much about you!” she said with daft, fake enthusiasm, holding out her hand. “My brother Leo talks about you all the time.”
Arcmael gazed at her hand hanging in the air. A quicksilver flash of darkness moved over his face. “I’m sure.” He pulled his hand from his pocket, his fingers clutching a small piece of torn cloth stained with hate.
Only Ingifrith knew what it was—and now she knew why he had taken it. He was going to use it as an exchange for a summoning. “Moust,” she growled. “You piece of shit.” She threw herself at the false warden, hitting him hard enough to knock him down. She punched him the face and grappled for the cloth in his hand.
The room erupted as the wardens cried outrage and moved to intervene. Someone pulled her off of him. As she struggled, Moust got to his feet. Pain exploded in her face as he struck her with the back of his hand.
Now unmasked, Moust held up his prize and cried out a command that shook the stones and stunned the forest to stillness. At first, no one moved. The Fylking drew swords. Then the wardens scrambled, shouting and screaming as smoke swirled in the center of the pentacle, building into a shape—red, black and pale as bones. A warlord in intricately embossed skins, metal and smoke, surrounded by flames, clad in spells and a flowing gray cloak, towered up through the open ceiling and into the morning. Tilting his face to the canopy of the wood, baring fangs, he rumbled with a low purr, as if pleased by the sensation of earth and air.
“Halogi, High Commander of the Third Sun,” Moust boomed in triumph, holding up the stained cloth for all to see. “By my command, you will destroy the Fylking, take this witch for your pleasure before killing her”—his voice rose to a shriek—“and burn this forest to the ground!”
Halogi plucked the gift from the sorcerer’s hand and brought it to his lips. Then the demon lord roared, his milk-white, slitted eyes striking Ingifrith’s heart to ash as he curled a fist, his long nails tucked, and punched the stone edge of the temple enclosure, shattering it.
Wolf gathered Ingifrith into his arms and fled as the trees erupted in flames.
An Unkindness of Ravens
The High Vardlokk of Chaos stood with his back to the morning sun cresting over the eastern hills. Beams of golden light limned the hardwood trees, but not the ravine, cloaked in magic that made it appear like something it was not.
A camp. Vaethir moved into the ravine, his boots making no sound or ripple in the water as he crossed. He made a cavalier motion with his hand, shattering the spell. The shoed prints of heavy horse
s dented the moss, leaves and mud. He bounded up the bank into the shadow of an overhanging boulder.
The remains of a campfire had been returned to the wilds with the swiftness and skill of men who knew how to cover their presence. Regular folk would not have warhorses, and soldiers would not bother to clean up after themselves.
Rangers.
They had not paid as much attention to the corpse they left on the rocks. As Vaethir approached, an unkindness of ravens lifted up and scattered, squawking. The birds perched around him, eyeing him as they chattered.
The Niflsekt knelt beside his lover’s remains. Stones grated beneath his boots. The wind pressing cool air along the stream did not take away the thick, sweet stench of death; nor did the rising sun warm his heart. He touched Alorael’s face, eyes missing, dark flesh picked apart by the carrion birds. His long hair, scattered on the stones, was as dull as ashes.
What had brought him here? Vengeance?
Vaethir could not bring himself to touch the brow of his dead friend to summon a vision of how this had come to be. Instead, he relived standing on the field beneath Tower Sif in Ason Tae, when he had asked Alorael how he felt focused in this dimension.
Uncomfortable, the elf had replied.
The Niflsekt flared his nostrils at the smell of death. Uncomfortable, indeed. But there was no better way to grieve, to know, than to feel uncomfortable.
A row of scratches rent Alorael’s cheek, just below the bone. Not human. The marks looked like the work of a big cat. Beneath the elf’s throat, the dragon tooth had been removed. Vaethir gritted his teeth. He had given Alorael the tooth over three thousand suns ago, as a gift. Being a thing of another world, it had great power in this dimension. No wildcat took that. Either the rangers took it as a thing of interest, or one of them recognized its value in an Otherworld exchange.
Alorael’s weapons were gone, too. But they would have been taken in any case, being elven blades.
Bothilde’s words came to him, then. One of the rangers is a seer, powerful enough to’ve gained the Master’s attention. He is a Northman with flaming hair. He carries with him a pack full of strange trinkets. I heard tell he escaped a terrible spell, a monster meant to bind him to the Master on threat of death.
A soulcleaver, or so the demon he had tortured on the docks told him, claiming that would be the demons’ fate if they did not obey the sorcerer’s commands. Vaethir had thought that absurd, before talking to Bothilde. It said a great deal about the Northman, that the Fenrir sorcerer had gone to such lengths to hold him.
The knife wound in Alorael’s gut was also strange. No mortal had the skill to get past a dark elf’s guard, not there. Nor could a mortal drive a sword through his spine like a warrior on a battlefield finishing off a survivor. Unless the elf was already dead, or nearly so.
Either that, or very distracted.
The Niflsekt rose to his feet, turning toward the rangers’ unmarked camp. Catching the smell of horse manure, he moved upstream and found where the rangers had tied their mounts. Four of them.
Vaethir returned, moving deftly over the slippery rocks. He alit on the ground before the sheltering boulder. The rangers had left in a hurry. Some urgency had driven them, made them careless. Vaethir knelt uphill of the firepit, now just a smudge in the weeds. He picked up a sprig with long, slightly curling leaves and brought it to his nose.
Rosemary. Used to treat wounds.
He moved toward the edge of the ravine and turned the leaf of a broken maple sapling. Blood. He brought it to his nose, tasted it. Mortal blood.
He stood and swung around, his eyes unfocused. Boot impressions. A fight happened here; the dirt and weeds were crushed and splattered with blood. The elf’s tracks, easily discernable by the tread, were centered around one place. His tracks enclosed another’s—smaller, more supple.
A woman. A good hostage against men.
He leaned down and drew a long, blond hair from a yarrow stalk. The one they call Prederi, Bothilde had said, is tall, blond of hair, angry and capable of anything. He killed my cook with no more hesitation than he would an animal for slaughter. The hair could have belonged to anyone. But Alorael would not get into a tangle like this with anyone.
Prederi was the name of the ranger who had gotten Alorael wounded by a poisoned bolt. He had a heart for Ingifrith Klemet, and Alorael was under orders to find her. Perhaps she was the woman he had held.
The other, he’s an archer, Bothilde had said, spitting on the floor. Hides in the distance behind a bow. They send him out to do their dirty work.
Like putting a bolt into Alorael’s throat from a bog. That ranger was also blond. But he would not have tried to take on the elf in close quarters. On the other hand, Prederi would, if his love was being threatened.
Vaethir stepped over the bank, studying the brush and the mud around the stream. Cat prints mingled with the others, away from the camp. No cat would come near the kind of scene that had happened here. Shapeshifter? Alorael had that power—but then what had put those scratches on his face? Only the woman had been close enough. Did Ingifrith Klemet have the power to shapeshift?
The Niflsekt stood by the stream, his nerves ticking with doubt. The Norn’s wound ached with fire in his gut. He was missing something.
How did Alorael get burned? Vaethir returned to the fire site. On either side of it were prints of hands, a knee, maybe an elbow. Had they thrown him into it? Why do that and then drag him to the rocks?
He returned to Alorael’s corpse, silent in the wake of the ravens as they flew off again. As Vaethir studied the charred threads of the linen beneath the links of mail on the elf’s arms, near his wrists, he felt the odd physical sensation of blood draining from his face. Gently, holding his breath, he plucked a fragment of stitches from the elf’s burnt fingers.
The Norn had knit this. Even just a piece, burned away, felt like her. In a flash, he saw a hooded crow fly into the fire.
Their leader, Bothilde had said, bears the name of the Allfather. A wicked, conniving man he is, spiteful and cold. He wears a crow on his throat that he never removes.
Vaethir knelt there, moving his thumb over the stitches. Then he understood. The ranger named Othin had a new lover now. No longer torn by grief over the Norn, he had moved on. Alorael had not come here after Ingifrith Klemet; he came for the crow, which the Norn had knit for her lover as a gift, a charm with the power of gods, maybe even the power to restore Alorael’s immortality. He had grabbed Othin’s new lover, the witch whore, and held her hostage. Othin had used the crow to force the elf to release her and, after she used her feline wiles to escape, threw the crow into the fire.
Alorael dove after it. And Prederi finished him.
And the fourth? Only a Fenrir sorcerer would have the ability to cast a cloaking spell over an area like this. The Northman seer would not. Which meant the rangers were traveling with Ingifrith’s renegade brother. No doubt it was he who had torn the dragon tooth from Alorael’s neck. He would know what to do with the blades, too.
Now, not only was Vaethir’s friend and lover dead, he now knew why the Norn would not be walking into his trap. The one, shining work of magic that had bound her here was gone, sacrificed to Hel for the sake of a whore.
This backwoods, amateur infested, witch magic stinking, gods fucking planet—
Death swirled around the High Vardlokk of Chaos, a towering maelstrom of wrath and despair. One of the ravens floated down and alit near Alorael’s boot to inspect the flesh above the top of the greave, no doubt intending to taunt Vaethir, as it might a wolf feeding on a carcass. With lightning speed, Vaethir reached out, clutched and snapped the creature’s neck before it had a chance to squawk.
The remaining ravens exploded into alarm, flying up into the trees, where they clamored in warning.
Breathing heavily, the Niflsekt squeezed until blood dripped from the dead raven’s feathers onto the stones. Then he uttered a word from the bowels of the Dark Realms in which he ruled. He dropped
the bird and stood, making a brisk gesture with his hand. After a moment, the raven stirred, shook its feathers and rolled to its feet, silent, its eyes as red as coals.
“Find them,” the Niflsekt snarled through his teeth.
The raven lifted up and flew toward the rising sun, absorbing the light.
News
At the first touch of dawn, birdsong filled the towering boughs of Wyrvith Forest. His thighs burning with fatigue, Leofwine brought up the rear of his companions’ trek through the steepening rises and hollows of the ancient wood.
Two days before, they had wasted no time leaving their camp, heading northeast in the wake of a bird-shaped specter of the Elf King who ruled over the wooded realm. The king had been happy to serve as guide in exchange for the enchanted knife Leofwine had lifted from the dark elf’s corpse. Leofwine neglected to include the details of that transaction.
He found a use for the dark elf’s sword as well, for Magreda was right about the Leopard Clan. Dusk on the day they departed, a feline creature with the bitterness of an old woman’s hate came across the Veil, its sleek coat melting into the dappled shadows of ferns and leaves. Magreda, by some art Leofwine couldn’t quite discern, was able to sense the thing, and even to find the old woman’s scent left on the carcass of a hind, giving Leofwine all the information he needed for the task at hand. Using the sword—and a fine and terrible thing it was—he summoned a pack of werewolves, to which he gave the scent.
Neither he nor Magreda knew if their plan had succeeded. But the old cat did not return.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 75
