Forged in Blood and Lightning: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (Descendants of Thor Trilogy: Book One)

by S. A. Ashdown

  As he waited for an answer, he got the worst suntan of his life. Come on, come on. ‘I can’t believe I’m so impatient to meet my end,’ he muttered, dreading Espen’s inevitable rage and the threat literally plastered next to the gate. He was surprised when he heard a different voice over the intercom, accompanied by the strange accent he couldn’t place. It must be Theo’s uncle.

  ‘Yes? State your name and your business.’

  ‘It’s a long fucking story, okay? I have Theo, he’s comatose. I swear I didn’t do anything.’

  Nikolaj appeared instantaneously on the other side of the iron gate, clocking Theo. The bars parted before the Elf as if he were Moses dividing the Red Sea.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  33

  The Satyr’s Portal

  Lorenzo gawked at the inverted herbal wood hanging down from the beams in Hellingstead Hall’s kitchen, infusing the air with heady, aromatic scents that made him sneeze. Nikolaj laid Theo out on the table, a varnished picnic bench repurposed as an operating table of sorts, as the Elf darted around the kitchen gathering jars crammed with dried compounds and random implements. None of these accumulations seemed helpful. He had expected Nikolaj to epitomise Espen’s lethal serenity, not to flap around the kitchen like a clumsy juggler.

  ‘Damn it. It’s no use!’ Nikolaj threw one of the jars across the room, and it disintegrated as it smashed into a cupboard. ‘I can’t cure terminal brain cancer!’

  ‘I’m not sure he could either,’ said Lorenzo, instantly regretting it when Nikolaj drew himself up. He was willowy but powerfully built, and furious. ‘Sorry. Where’s Espen?’

  ‘Espen?’ Nikolaj repeated. ‘Oh Jörð, Espen! He’s on his way to the hospital!’ For the first time, Nikolaj really looked at Lorenzo, assessing his level of guilt and responsibility for his nephew’s condition. ‘You’re that vampire, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lorenzo said, feeling behind him half-heartedly for the kitchen door; Nikolaj didn’t come across as judgemental as Espen either, just curious. Besides, guilt acted as good motivation to see this through. ‘But I didn’t know this would happen. I like Theo, he was only trying to help.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with warlocks. Give them a pointy stick and they can’t resist waving it around.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We? We will do nothing. There is only one way to save him now.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘None of your business, Dökkálfar.’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘There’s no time for that now. Help me get Theo into the garden. I can’t risk teleporting with him, and you’re quicker on foot. Hurry.’

  He looks like he can move fast enough to me. Nikolaj disappeared around each corner as Lorenzo followed, almost careering into the armchair in the drawing room as they headed out a rear corridor with narrow, concrete stairs, and out the back door. In a patch of elm trees, about as vast as a football pitch, Lorenzo slowed, close to toppling over due to Theo’s dead-weight acting against his rapid deceleration.

  ‘You can go now.’

  ‘He’ll be okay?’

  Nikolaj glowered at him, arms held rigid against his long waist. ‘Don’t test me. Go and find Espen and tell him what’s happened. Tell him I’ve taken Theo to Alfheim.’

  ‘Alf-what?’

  ‘Go!’

  But Hellingstead Hall had its own attractions, namely Raphael. At a safe distance, Lorenzo hid in the branches, in awe at the gold dust tarring the terrain of the estate. Raphael had explored this home of his, masking his location by advertising it everywhere. Frustrated, Lorenzo sneaked back through the elms, tracking Nikolaj, who smelt like a peculiar blend of rosemary focaccia and seafood. He found them, Theo a wreck on the ground, drenched in drying blood, and scars rough like mountain ranges on his neck and arms. From his vantage point, he looked fragile to Lorenzo, a lad wrenched from a car crash, as feeble and killable as every other regular human he’d come across and fed from.

  The urge built in the back of his throat. Somehow, he’d resisted biting Theo, although the warlock’s blood stained Lorenzo’s clothes. He hadn’t really thought about his hunger until now. Until he thought of feeding from Raphael. That hunt required the long game; the boy had proven his superior abilities. But he had time. He had let Jean-Ashley go. He had nothing else to do.

  Other than find Espen. Resolving at last to go, he slid down from his perch, landing with a thud, in time to see Nikolaj open the portal. Two elms began to crack the soil, their roots forming into brittle hooves. It made Lorenzo think of a giant satyr’s feet, entrenched forever in the ground from a witch’s curse. Espen could do that to me.

  The branches crunched and warped, the leafy tops stooping over to brush against each other, shaped like cobras charmed from their baskets, leaving a swirling gap in the middle, the fabric of space-time warping its thread.

  Lorenzo didn’t choose to launch himself into to the vortex along with Nikolaj and Theo. In the last weeks, all the physics he’d ever learned had been reduced to a black hole of superstitious nonsense. Whatever this ‘Alfheim’ was, it offered the chance to discover why Nikolaj had been so unfazed that Lorenzo was unharmed by daylight, calling him a Dökkálfar – whatever that was – a term he hadn’t heard once, not even from Penny, who was constantly boasting about the breadth of her knowledge. Or maybe it was because, as annoying as Theo was, Lorenzo did like him. Whatever the reason, his arms pumped as he propelled through the trees, desperate not to be left behind.

  END OF PART THREE

  Interlude: Nikolaj

  SON OF ASH

  I left Alfheim once. The reasons outnumber the leaves on a tree. I yearn to return. The reasons outnumber the trees in a forest. I, Nikolaj – son of Ash – kindred of the Sarrows, return with my nephew dying in my arms and seeking the Eternal Spring to save him – and all the Nine Realms. I can’t say that last part, not even aloud to myself; the trees are neither deaf nor dumb in my land. They are the spies of the Fae, our allies, our past enemy. There isn’t time to tame them, to entrust them with secrets too easily eavesdropped upon.

  A half-human, half-Elf, ex-Gatekeeper, kneeling before my chieftain, shielding my nephew’s face with my cloak sleeves from the prying eyes of the congregation. The hut is crowded. We’d arrived ahead of schedule in entirely undesirable circumstances. All the gifts I had prepared were left behind in Midgard, land of humans, an insult in itself. Empty of offerings, early too.

  ‘I, Nikolaj,’ I begin, ‘son of Ash…’ I bow my head, chilled by the feel of Theo’s frigid body. The rush-littered floor has collected the dirt of a hundred feet, marring the poor boy.

  Malik speaks, his beautiful daughter perching on a stool by his leather-booted feet. ‘Nikolaj, we are grieved by the manner of your entrance. The Ekklesia have yet to grant your request to bring a Midgard-born to Alfheim.’

  ‘A hundred apologies, Lord Malik, one for each kinsfolk present. The Arrow of Fate has shot from her bow with no thought for her quarry. Theo’s life is at stake.’

  Malik lingers on the young man unconscious before the dais, perplexed and sympathetic. His daughter’s soft groan moves him a little, but still he replies: ‘The lives of men are not the concern of the Sarrows, son of Ash.’

  ‘There are mitigating circumstances.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Complicated,’ I say, wincing at the murmur of displeasure rippling through the crowd. Evasion is a great dishonour. My only choice is to appeal to the renowned benevolence of Lady Sayen, the ‘sweet one’. As Daughter of the Tribe, her authority is second only to Malik’s. Her face is radiant as the full moon, her pointed ears hugging the contours of her head. Her short, dark hair matches her father’s and she smiles like a pixie.

  ‘I am Sarrow and he is my kin. He is a Clemensen, as am I. My heritage is complicated, but Theo is not. He is a simple soul who sacrificed himself to help another, to save the life of a good woman – a mother – a c
ause he could not refuse after his mother, Isobel, died tragically when he was a boy. His great-great grandfather, Jacov, accepted me into his family as his own son despite my mother’s adultery. He is one of us as I am one of them. Please, I humbly beg your permission to heal my nephew… and descendant of Thor.’

  I let Theo’s pitiful face tilt towards the dais, as the crowd lean in and gasp, amazed by the resemblance to the god. A partial appellation, an obscure path to our joint heritage. It swung the tidal current of the Ekklesia Assembly in our favour at last.

  Malik is nothing if not democratic. Sayen’s hazel eyes fix onto her father, drawing vibrancy from the earth and the azure sky, a slice of it visible through the small hole in the roof. ‘If it weren’t for Nikolaj, we may still be fighting with the Fae to this day – or be half-starved wraiths! Daddy, the motherless warlock is from too noble a heritage to die at our feet, is he not?’

  A sigh of defeat from the chieftain and it is done. I don’t need a guide to locate the Eternal Spring, but Malik sent a nurse with us, whom I’d known as a girl. ‘A long time, Pipaluk.’

  ‘Not since the Great War,’ she says, her smile matching my own. ‘I go by Pipa now.’

  We do not stand around. The forest is as dense and perilous as I remember, trapping the heat of the Orlog like an oven. Only here, we risked cooking in the semi-tropical microclimate and wouldn’t smell like scones by the end of it, hauling Theo behind us in a cart. The huts are far behind us, and I squint into the inky blackness. ‘Was it always so dark here?’ I ask. I am not startled by the occasional shadow straying across our path; the forest is home to many animals, my favourite of all – the deer.

  ‘Malik made a deal with the mountain-folk. We don’t hunt in this part of the forest anymore. It’s a good barrier between our section of the Fork River and the mountain tributaries.’

  One thing I hadn’t missed was the politics.

  The rushing water becomes deafening and the stand of trees thins out. We veer along the riverbank, crossing the stone bridge that leads to the foot of the mountains, tracing the lumpy terrain until we locate the steaming pool near the split in the river, surrounded by caves and waterfalls. Theo is getting heavy, and with some envy, I recall my strength when I had been Gatekeeper. Combined with my Elvish side, it had given me fearsome endurance – I am a waning moon compared to that man now.

  ‘This way,’ Pipa calls over a bare shoulder, the rest of her sleek form clad in animal skins. But we both know where we’re going. The draw is inescapable. The frothing water dances in the daylight, crystal blue and glacial. Pipa sighs at the wondrous sight, the warm, hanging scent of honeysuckle in the air. But I dread it. I dread throwing my nephew into that cauldron, standing by to watch him sink, to watch him drown. He must breathe the water in before he suffocates if it is to heal him. Tenderly, I lay him on the rocky poolside and say an old Elvish blessing. Pipa joins me. I kiss his forehead and roll him, cringing as his tangled mass of muscle and bloody limbs plops into the water. ‘Go, and may the light of the Nine Realms be with you.’

  IV

  Black Widow

  THEO | NIKOLAJ | AVA

  34

  Drowning In Memories

  How to get to Anna, when swallowing a single drop of water would cause me to forget everything. Who I am, who I love, who I’ve lost. What choice but to keep wading through the marshy slopes of the riverbank, ready to swim in the syrupy current. Persephone and Hecate had warned me, chuckling together as schoolgirls pulling a prank on the new boy. They’d taken my hair and promised Anna’s soul. The cost was my own.

  Don’t swallow a drop. I swam into the Lethe, one gnarled finger of the River Hades’ five, joining at the sinewy palm of the Underworld. Orpheus had been in my position – almost – attempting to lead his lover back to the world of the living, cautioned not to look back at her – which he did of course, and promptly lost her forever. In this case, I fixed my sight on Anna, petrified and alone on that boat, which seemed to float away from the shore the farther out I swam, the featureless ocean distorting distance.

  I’m coming! I called to her in my head, betting that if the goddesses could read my thoughts, so could she. A dumb bet really, considering I hadn’t won a game of chance in my life. Absurdly, as my arms and legs fought the waves, I dwelt on my bad luck. It was with a boy’s naivety I’d assumed Father and Uncle had won the games we played by either skill or fate – it hadn’t occurred to me that magic had weighted the dice or arranged a pack of cards a certain way. I wasn’t so sure anymore. As I matured, the men I had idolised toppled like toy-soldiers from high horses, their untarnished uniforms suddenly tainted by imperfection, their idiosyncrasies small chips in the paintwork.

  Uncle Nikolaj had enjoyed playing the general. We would line up the redcoats and march the men into imaginary battles. I often led the cavalry, while Father lined up the ships. The battles soon blossomed into complicated wars, a good grounding in military tactics. Jörð! They were teaching me to fight a war! What war? Presumably if it was Ragnarök we were already fucked, and it made as much sense to lay down in a field somewhere and watch the planetary bodies explode across the sky, a final and epic firework display.

  I began to sink. I strained as the water churned into quicksand, murky and brown. Then I yelled. I was not alone. Corpses, half-bone, half-flesh, bobbed up and down, rotting buoys in an ocean of death. Men who’d tried to swim this channel before. I looked back. Big mistake. The shoreline’s ragged smile mocked me from far away, Hecate spinning my hair into the peculiar dress on her lap, her giantess form as looming from this position as it had been when I’d sat by her feet. My hair was thinning into an endless rope.

  Soon my fate would be cast.

  ‘Help me, Anna!’ I shouted. ‘Yes, over here! Use the oars!’

  I grabbed at the paddle as it slid past my fingertips. On the second attempt, I caught it and pulled myself out of the waves enough to tap her cold skin. ‘Our bargain is fulfilled,’ I shouted, ‘I’ve reached her!’

  Hecate stopped her spinning and smiled, changing the direction of the fabric as Anna exploded into a million golden stars, showering the night sky with her light. I knew in my gut that she had made it. I laughed, giddy with winning, so valiant that I failed to realise her weight was no longer supporting the oar and I splashed into the muddy swells. This time they claimed me. As I struggled, weeds caught my ankles and sucked me under the surface.

  Don’t breathe, I thought, don’t swallow a drop. But of course lungs open as eagerly as buds in May, clawing for sustenance, whatever brand of it that was required by this replica body of mine. The memories filed past, one by one, falling off the edge of my consciousness. I clawed at them, desperate for their return. And, one by one, the years rewound, days, months, lost into oblivion. It was the irony that made me gasp, jiggling my ribs into laughter, drawing the poison into my soul; the irony that as I was forgetting, I was remembering Ava.

  We cheer as Theo roars out of the water, coughing, spluttering. I lunge for him and pull him out, pounding on his chest to dislodge the water still in his lungs. It’s comical how the liquid spurts from his mouth, tinged with blood, an absurd fountain. ‘Theodore, my boy!’ I hug him to my chest, and he gasps into the fabric of my damp cloak. I let him pull away. He sits back, soaked. For a time, his mind is muddled. ‘Theodore,’ he repeats slowly, as if this name is new to him. He pauses. ‘It’s Theo, actually.’ Then he laughs and bends double, clutching his sides. ‘My name is Theo!’ he shrieks. ‘I’m the—’. He clocks Pipaluk and halts, thank Jörð. ‘I quite forgot.’

  35

  Dökkálfar

  Pipaluk lived with her parents in a small hut. They gave up their bed for me, relaying between my side and the cooking pot, ladling out bowls of vegetable soup, so good it fried my taste buds. Uncle Nikolaj clearly had mastered his kitchen skills here, which explained why he sucked at using modern appliances like toasters and microwaves – Alfheim lived in blissful ignorance of electricity.


  After surging from the Eternal Spring, I’d licked through the forest like flame, crackling with energy, until we reached the huts nestled together around the communal hearth. Now, as Nikolaj and Pipa retold the story, how Lorenzo had delivered me to my uncle, and had been sent to inform my father of our whereabouts, the exhaustion caught up with me. Resurrected once more, the Gatekeeper had to re-establish itself in me. I held out my bowl once again. Nikolaj plucked it from my grasp and plonked in down on the earthen floor. ‘Sleep, Nevø. You must recover before we return through the portal.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve slept for eternity.’ And yet I yawned as Pipaluk pulled the soft blanket over the hay-stuffed bed, and it was only then I noticed her necklace, silver with the Sarrows’ tribal crest, exactly like Nikolaj’s. Too tired to focus, I drifted into dream, Pipa remaining at her post.

  Dusk drew in while I dreamed in memories, vivid childhood recollections stirred by the churning waters of the Lethe and restored to me by the spring. Ava linked the bright and colourful scenes together, smiling at every turn. I could smell her strawberry shampoo and the softener on her clothes. Once we had sat near the grassy cliff-bank and she had let me play with her hair, rich like chocolate, and silky as her rosy cheeks. ‘When I grow up,’ she’d announced, ‘I’m going to make it all the colours of the rainbow.’ I followed the point of her finger out to sea, the beautiful shimmering arc of light curving in a magical slide across the sky. I smiled, twirling her hair around my narrow wrist. She had no idea I had conjured that rainbow for her.

  Shouting roused me, and I hugged the blanket around my shoulders as I stumbled in the dark towards the wooden door. Outside, a fire roared in the clearing. Elves rushed about, all speaking at once. I found Nikolaj, and he wrapped his arm around me.