“And what of the bride price? The traditions?”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
He nodded, and he gave it more thought, until he reached a decision that in fact he had already made without knowing it. “I will marry you tonight,” he said. “But I must ask something of you that you will not like.”
She smiled, and when he looked at her then, he decided with finality that she was beautiful.
“What?” she asked.
“I ask you not to fight tomorrow,” he said. “You must leave the battlefield.”
“What?” Her smile vanished. “No husband of mine would ask me—”
“I may die tomorrow,” he said. It was the first time he had spoken those words to anyone, including himself. The only reason he considered them now was out of love, not for Thyra, though he believed he would love her, but for Gyrid, his sister. “I do not want to die,” he said. “But the Norns have already cut my skein, and if I am to reach the end of it tomorrow, then I would ask you to bring word of me to my sister. She will be your sister, too, and I ask you to comfort her, and take my place at her side.”
Thyra looked at him with the same blank expression he had seen earlier that day, and he wondered if he would ever learn to read it, and if so, how many years it would take.
“I know that I can’t make you go,” he said. “And I would not try. But I do ask it of you. Will you grant me this?”
Thyra didn’t answer him for a very long time, but he knew better than to press her.
“I will,” she finally said. “Though I didn’t think I would.”
He laughed. “Neither did I.” He nodded toward the forest. “And now I have a shrine to build.”
So they walked away from the camp together deeper into the Mirkwood, and soon they came upon a great boulder twice as tall as Styrbjörn. It bore a crack right down the middle of it, as though it were a frost giant’s head that Thor had struck with his hammer, and they decided they would make their vows before it. Styrbjörn gathered pale stones in the twilight and piled them up against the boulder to make a shrine, and though they had no honey or grain, he placed a golden ring upon it. When it was complete, Styrbjörn gave his Ingelrii sword to Thyra, and vowed to be her husband, and to honor her above all others, and to let no one speak against her. Then she gave her sword to him and swore the same oaths, and thus they sealed their marriage before the god Frey, who was the father of all the kings of the Svear.
“Now the blood sacrifice,” Styrbjörn said. “I will find us an animal—”
“No.” Thyra looked at his belt. “We already have an offering that will please the gods.”
Styrbjörn looked down, and then he pulled the Bluetooth’s dagger from its sheath. He studied it for a moment, and then he placed it on the shrine, and dedicated the offering of the Christ relic to Thor. He asked for aid from the sky god in the coming battle. Then he shoved the dagger within the split in the boulder and he piled the stones up higher against it, to hide it from the view of passersby.
When that was complete, Styrbjörn and Thyra returned to the camp as husband and wife, leaving the dagger in its resting place. If it was still there, then Sean could easily find it.
“Isaiah,” Sean said. “Can you hear me? Did you see that?”
Yes, Isaiah said. Excellent work, Sean. Excellent.
“Do you have the location?”
We do. I can pull you out of the Animus now. Styrbjörn’s memories are about to end, at any rate.
“They are?” Though Sean had fulfilled the purpose of the simulation, he wasn’t quite ready to leave his ancestor behind. “Why?”
It seems that Styrbjörn will shortly pass on his genetic memories, when he conceives a child with Thyra. We don’t have DNA of his memories after tonight.
“So he didn’t have any more children?”
No, of course not.
“Why of course not?”
I—I thought you knew, Isaiah said. It is a matter of history that Styrbjörn died during the battle of Fyrisfield.
Owen stood in a corridor unlike anything he had encountered in the simulation thus far. Where the Forest and the Path had seemed old, or primitive, this place seemed advanced. The gray walls to either side appeared to be made of a metallic stone, veined with a network of thin, golden lines that spread like circuits. Ahead of them, the hallway ended at the entrance to what appeared to be a bright, cavernous room.
“I don’t think this is an archetype,” Owen said.
“There’s still only one way for us to go,” Grace said.
So the three of them listened and walked carefully down the corridor, which seemed to pulse and shimmer at the edges of Owen’s vision, but not when he looked directly at the walls. Their footsteps made very little noise, even as a deep, resonant sound filled the space around them as constant and noticeable as a heartbeat.
When they reached the end of the corridor, they crept to one side and peered around the corner, into the chamber, and found they were now beneath the dome they had seen from outside. Its shimmering curvature spanned a vast vaulted space suffused with a pale blue light. Directly under the dome, several large platforms bore strange objects and equipment that Owen didn’t recognize or understand. It might have been machinery, or computers, or simply sculptures. Crystalline walkways, staircases, and conduits linked the platforms together into a structure that looked almost molecular. It climbed up into the space beneath the dome, and descended into a silo that had been hollowed out of the mountain beneath them.
“What is this place?” Owen asked.
“Maybe it’s an archetype for a mad scientist’s lab,” Grace said.
“Something like that,” Natalya said. “I think this is the key Monroe is looking for. The Pieces of Eden came from an ancient civilization, right?” She nodded toward the middle of the chamber. “That looks like it was made by an ancient civilization to me.”
Owen turned toward it as a figure walked up from below. She had long dark hair, and her pale skin seemed to glow from within. She wore a silver headdress that might have been a helmet, and her white robes nearly touched the ground. As the stranger approached them, she spoke with the same voice they had heard at the beginning of this simulation.
Owen, Grace, and Natalya followed the stranger to one of the crystal staircases, which they ascended, stepping out over the seemingly bottomless chasm below. Owen gripped the cold handrail tightly.
“Who are you?” Natalya asked the stranger as they climbed.
She guided them from staircase, to walkway, to staircase, up into the highest reaches of the dome, until they attained a platform near the peak of the structure. A kind of bed waited there, its contours shaped and molded from the same metallic stone. It reminded Owen of an Animus, and upon it lay a woman, with the same copper complexion as the archetypes they had encountered. A sheet covered her body from the shoulders down, and she appeared to be sleeping.
“Like the goddess?” Grace asked.
The voice of the stranger, Minerva, entered Owen’s mind with such power it blurred his vision, and the figure of her wavered, and grew large, and burned with light.
She walked over to the contoured bed, and she touched a part of it that looked no different from the rest. But at her touch, pulses of light began to travel the golden veins within the substance of the platform, illuminating it, and this light flowed into the sleeping woman. Minerva then looked back at Owen and the others, and he waited, saying nothing.
Owen wondered if they were supposed to do something, or say something. He looked at Grace and Natalya, who both appeared equally confused.
“How?” Natalya asked. “How did you destroy yourselves?”
“Please,” Grace said. “We’ve come a long way.”
“The Pieces of Eden,” Owen said.
She returned to the contoured bed and stood beside it. Then she gestured with an open palm toward the woman lying upon it.
“But what does this mean?” Owen asked, still b
ewildered by everything Minerva had said. “How do we stop the Trident?”
“But how?” Natalya asked. “How does this collective memory help?”
Owen thought about the Serpent, the Dog, and the third part, which had to be the cliff they had climbed. “But what does that mean?” he asked. “How is that supposed to help?”
Owen didn’t feel any different, and he didn’t know how this simulation could have possibly changed anything for him.
“You never did tell us how you destroyed yourselves,” Grace said.
“Forgot what?” Owen asked.
“We won’t,” Owen said.
The platform fell away from them, along with the rest of the structure and the dome around it, splintering and fragmenting into the pit at the heart of the mountain. Owen remained suspended in the night sky next to Grace and Natalya, surrounded by stars and facing a commanding moon. But those lights slowly faded and died, until he hung in total darkness, unable to even see his friends nearby.
Something tugged on his head. He flinched and reached up to fight it off, but he felt human hands, and the Animus helmet, and then the helmet lifted away.
He stared, confused, and then squinted and blinked. He was back in the Aerie lab. Monroe stood in front of him, and then clapped him on the shoulder. Grace and Natalya hung in their Animus rings next to him.
“What happened?” Owen asked. “Did we desynchronize?” It didn’t feel as though they had. It was the smoothest exit from a simulation he had ever experienced.
“No,” Monroe said. “You didn’t desynchronize. The memory just … let you go.”
He helped the three of them disconnect from their harnesses, and then step out of their rings. Owen rubbed his head and his eyes, and went back through his memories to make sure the simulation was all there, and not fading like the dream it almost seemed to be. But the memories stayed, and in some ways, that made them even harder to understand. The earth apparently had an entire history that no one knew about. An ancient, mythical race had gone extinct. If anyone but Monroe had sent them into that simulation, Owen would have suspected the whole thing was fake.
But it was real.
“Everyone okay?” Monroe asked. “No adverse effects?”
Owen shook his head.
“I feel fine,” Grace said.
“Me too,” Natalya said.
“Good.” Monroe sighed. “In that case, you can tell me exactly what you saw in there. Let’s have Natalya start, and then you two can fill in any details she misses.”
So they all took seats, and Natalya walked Monroe through the entire simulation, beginning with the Forest and the Serpent, and ending with Minerva, and the shield she claimed to have given them. Owen filled in what had happened with the Dog while the other two had gone ahead, and Grace spoke more about their experience climbing the mountainside. Monroe said very little, only stopping them to ask brief questions. When they’d finished, he sat there with his arms folded across his belly, covering his mouth with one of his hands, apparently thinking through everything they’d told him.
“This is extraordinary,” he finally said. “You three have just answered some of the biggest scientific questions that I have ever asked. And to top it off, you’ve had indirect contact with a Precursor.”
“A Precursor?” Grace asked.
“The Isu. A member of the First Civ. Those Who Came Before. We have several names for them.” He shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean we can comprehend them. Think about what it would take to create a genetic time capsule meant to open at a specific time tens of thousands of years later.”
“But Minerva didn’t open it; you did,” Grace said.
“It seems that way …” Monroe said, but left off the rest.
“Is what Minerva said true?” Natalya asked.
Monroe uncrossed his arms and leaned toward her. “Which part?”
“All of it,” she said.
Monroe nodded. “More or less. It all happened tens of thousands of years ago, so we don’t know exactly what happened. What we do know is that we have the Pieces of Eden. We have found some Precursor temples. Others before you have had contact with the Isu in different ways, including Minerva. Their civilization did exist, and it was incredibly advanced. We believe they were destroyed by a coronal mass ejection known as the Toba Catastrophe. So, yes, what Minerva told you is basically true.” He turned to Grace. “There are even some who want to bring the Isu back.”
“The Instruments of the First Will?” Grace asked.
Monroe nodded.
“Who’re they?” Owen asked.
Monroe gestured to Grace in a way that gave her the floor, and she pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her pocket.
“I found this in that book of Norse mythology,” she said. “Isaiah wrote it.”
“What does it say?” Natalya asked.
“It says he doesn’t want to rule the world.” Grace held up the paper. “He wants to destroy it.”
“Wait, what?” Owen had assumed Isaiah wanted to be another Alexander the Great. “Why?”
“He thinks the earth needs to die to be reborn,” Grace said. “It’s a cycle. He says we’ve been preventing this cycle from happening, and there should have already been another great catastrophe. But there wasn’t, because the Assassins and the Templars stopped it. So now Isaiah wants to make it happen another way.”
Owen knew that could easily be accomplished with the Trident. Not only could Isaiah use it to create an army, but he could turn other countries against one another, with their nuclear weapons and bombs.
“So who are the Instruments of the First Will?” Grace asked.
“I’ve only heard rumors,” Monroe said. “But within the Templar Order there is supposedly a secret faction trying to restore another Precursor named Juno to power. From Isaiah’s writings, it sounds like he was aware of them. Maybe even a part of them for a time. But if he was, he isn’t any longer. He’s decided that he wants the power, not Juno.” He rose from his chair. “I’m going to go check on the other two simulations and see how David and Javier are doing.”
“What should we do?” Grace asked.
Monroe glanced around the lab. “You can hang out here, or you can go back to the common room and wait. Then I’ll know where to find you.”
“What about me?” Owen asked. Before he had agreed to go into the simulation of the collective unconscious, Monroe had promised to show him the real memories of his father’s bank robbery.
“This isn’t the time,” Monroe said.
“You promised—”
“I promised I would help you, and I will. But I think you know there are more urgent matters we need to take care of first.”
Owen’s impatience turned to irritation. “But all we’re doing right now is waiting around for Javier and David to find the dagger.”
“Which might happen at any moment.” Monroe strode toward the door. “Besides, I’d rather have your mind clear for what lies ahead.”
“Why wouldn’t my mind be clear?” Owen asked.
Monroe gripped the door handle and paused. “If you have to ask that question, I wonder if you’re ready to get what you’re asking for.” With that, he exited the room, leaving the three of them alone.
Thorvald stood next to the Lawspeaker in the king’s tent. Eric sat in a dark wooden saddle chair, with Astrid at his side, but they were otherwise alone. Javier still hadn’t grown accustomed to the presence of the huge house-bear, and she startled him whenever his ancestor encountered her. A brazier offered orange light and white smoke, which gathered in the peak of the tent before escaping.
“The cattle killed a third of the Jomsvikings,” Thorvald said. “Those that survived held their ground behind their shield walls. The battle ceased with the setting of the sun.”
“Styrbjörn?” the king asked.
“He lives.” Thorvald did not see a need to tell the king what Styrbjörn had done to stop the cattle. Not yet. Thorvald could hardly be
lieve it himself, and for the first time since this engagement had begun, he wondered if their enemy could win. “His army pulled back to the Mirkwood.”
Eric nodded. “Your strategies have been very effective. I commend you both, and I wish to reward you.” He produced two small leather pouches from within his tunic and handed them to Thorvald, who tucked them away.
The Lawspeaker bowed his head. “We serve our people that all might live free.”
“And how would you serve them now?” the king asked slowly, his question weighed down by the words he didn’t say, but fully intended. “Has the time come?”
“Yes,” Thorvald said. “As it came for your brother.”
“I’ve told you.” Eric turned and looked at Astrid. “I don’t want to know anything about that.”
Javier felt Thorvald’s struggle to restrain his anger. The king wanted the bladework of the Brotherhood on his behalf, yet protected his own sense of honor by refusing to speak openly about it, as though he could convince himself it had nothing to do with him. But everyone in that tent except the house-bear knew what he meant and what he asked of them.
Even so, the Lawspeaker did not appear angered by the king’s weakness. “Thorvald will go tonight, and tomorrow we shall see what the dawn brings.”
“Do not wait until dawn to inform me,” Eric said. “Wake me if you must.”
“As you wish,” the Lawspeaker said.
Eric nodded, and then Thorvald and the Lawspeaker left the king’s tent.
Outside, they walked through the encampment surrounded by the sounds of steel against grindstone, and the ringing of blacksmiths’ hammers. They heard laughter, and smelled meat cooking over fires, and the mood about the camp felt high and confident. Their numbers were greater than the Jomsvikings, and Eric’s war band would join the battle the next day. Victory seemed inevitable.
Fate of the Gods Page 19
