by Liz Williams
The Duke did not fancy being responsible for America, personally. Although other people had a rather worse deal.
“Madam,” she said again.
“I have a problem. I have lost something. Someone has stolen it.”
That got the Duke’s attention.
“An ambitious thing to do!”
“Do you know, that’s exactly what I said. And dangerous, though that goes without saying. Obviously, I want it back.”
“May I ask what it is?”
“No.”
“It’s going to be a bit tricky to find it, then.”
“All I know is that the person who took it has fled into the Eastern Quarter of Worldsoul, in the Liminality. So I immediately thought of you. That’s one of your stamping grounds, isn’t it?”
The Duke bowed. “Yes, indeed.”
Astaroth put an arm around her shoulders. “You see, it’s like this… ”
Four
Whispering. Yet when Mercy opened the door, Section C was silent, encased in the gloomy panels of the room. The lamps were still lit, suggesting either that Nerren had not got around to turning them off, or that someone had lit them again, but their light did not touch the echoing shadows of the ceiling. Their bronze fittings gleamed. Occasionally there was a clockwork whir from some piece of equipment. Mercy debated whether to go back and check with Nerren, or proceed, but it did not really make a great deal of difference: something was brewing in Section C and she’d find out what it was soon enough. Hopefully she could sort it out before the Elders arrived. She glanced down at the Irish sword, as if to reassure herself that it was still by her side, and began to walk slowly along the row.
In this part of the Library, the books were all necromantic, and all ancient. Some of the editions were no more than fragments, encapsulated in protective wards and filed face out, so that one could see what one might be dealing with. Many were heavily guarded, glittering or shadowy with spellcraft. The texts here were properly the province of the Northern Quarter, but of course the Library was supposed to be neutral ground, containing Matter from all manner of places. It wasn’t the full body of lore, of course. The Court had its own collection of grimoires and who knew what else besides-Mercy would have given, if not an eye, then certainly an eye tooth to have an hour in the library of the Court. Not that it was ever likely to happen. She lingered over Anglo-Saxon annals, over eddur that were fringed and crackling with ice even in the carefully controlled climate of the Library. She did not touch anything, being careful to walk down the middle of the row. Frequently, she swung around, to see if anything might be following, but there was never anything there. Within a few minutes, she was approaching the end of the row, where the oldest texts of all were held. As she walked, she took note of the unusual silence. In ordinary circumstances, the Library was filled with whispers, scraps and rags and tatters of speech, murmured incantations, soon dampened by the spell filters that constantly flickered, electric-azure, across the high dim ceilings. Mercy glanced up: that was wrong, too. The spell filters were still there, but greatly muted to an occasional dragonfly snap. So something had been through here-perhaps was here now-and diminished the filters’ power as well as silencing the other texts. Why would something do that? The answer was obvious, Mercy thought: to increase the power of its own story.
Mentally, she sifted through the kinds of things that could do that. Dark powers, or one of the angelic lords, perhaps, but Mercy thought that would have been more noticeable. Demons, likewise. Demonic incursions were an occasional occurrence in the Library and the filters were usually strong enough to cope: Mercy quite often came in to find a nasty stain on the parquet, still smouldering. In the event of something really unpleasant, the Elders would occasionally counsel taking expert advice from the Court, whose practice was principally with the Goetic powers of Medieval grimoires and whose knowledge of demons was second to none. But that had been in the days before the disappearance of the Skein; now, with them gone for more than a year and distrust ruling all, the two organisations rarely spoke.
And if you asked her, it had been the Court who had sent those demons in the first place.
However, there were any number of things besides demons and angelic powers, things both known and unknown: a person could not read everything, after all.
Towards the end of the row Mercy paused and sniffed the air, head up like a hound. Something had definitely been here. She could smell wood smoke and snow, a fresh wild scent in the muted, dusty air of the Library, with an astringency running underneath it-pine, fir? Then a chill brushed the back of her neck, a draught of icy air coming from between the books. Mercy swung round, to find herself facing a sheet of paper-but that was wrong, it wasn’t paper at all, but something thicker, the shade of bone and covered with scratched markings. The draught was coming from the text and it was murmuring. Mercy glanced up at the spell filters and saw a blue electric flicker as something shorted out. The sword leaped in her hand. She braced her heels against the parquet floor. Something’s coming through.
Mercy raised her free hand and spoke into her palm. “Nerren? Section C. Incoming. Sorry.”
“On my way,” Nerren said, out of the air.
In fact, Mercy was not sure she was right. Sometimes, storyways took a long time to open up. Sometimes, they took years… Then, just as she thought she might be mistaken, a word in a harsh and unknown tongue spoke out and the storyway opened.
Mercy stood on an ice shelf, looking out over a landscape filled with blowing snow. A river snaked in a series of startling curves, oxbow lakes in their birthing, out to a frozen horizon where a red sun was going down. From her vantage point, Mercy, teeth chattering, heard the crack and roar of breaking ice from the direction of the river. Wind whipped the pins from her hair and took the strands streaming across her face. A black, attenuated shape was racing over the snow on all fours.
Mercy tried to speak the spell-word-emergency override-but her mouth was blistering with cold. The shape was swarming up the cliff: long black limbs whirling. It whistled as it came, singing in the wind. A flurry of blizzard spun up around Mercy’s feet and she staggered back, but not before she swung the sword. Confusion. Glowing bright eyes in a face as white and sharp as a knife, hair as black as her own swirling over a ridged skull. It had sharp teeth, it snapped at her out of the snow and Mercy brought the singing sword down.
She felt the Irish blade bite and exult as it did so. But the thing knocked her to one side, sending her sprawling on the wooden floor of the Library. The temperate air seemed unnaturally hot after where she had just been. The thing had closed the storyway behind it; there was now no sign of that snaking river, the thin pink line of the sunset horizon, the endless waste of snow. Nor was there any sign of what had come through the gap. Mercy looked at a blank parchment, its words stolen and gone.
“Bollocks,” Mercy said aloud.
“There’s no trace of it,” Nerren said, peering into the scrolls of readout spilling onto her desk. The old Library monitor whirred, brass cogs churning and turning as it rolled out data.
“Her,” Mercy said. She was huddled in a blanket in one of the cosier armchairs of Nerren’s study, hands cradling a hot cup of tea. She felt she would never be properly warm again. “Any word from Security yet?”
Nerren frowned. “Not yet. Her? Are you sure?”
“She had breasts. Well, teats. I saw them under the cape. And she was either piebald or tattooed. Or both.”
“But the basic skin colour was white?”
“Yes, white as snow. Black haired.”
“A witch figure,” Nerren murmured. “Baba Yaga?”
“Too familiar. Something else. This wasn’t human. It was a crone, yes, but something else besides.”
“Demon?”
“I just don’t know. C’s one of the oldest sections. Who knows what’s lurking in those pages?”
“There might be a duplicate,” Nerren said. “I’m looking now.”
Mercy cr
aned her neck to look at the former text, which now sat in a humming lead box with a glass panel on Nerren’s desk. “It’s cured skin, isn’t it? Was it human?”
It was Nerren’s turn to look doubtful. “I’m not sure. Might be. But the texture’s wrong; it looks too thick.”
“Ancient, though. Definitely from the north.”
Nerren gave her a curious look. “Don’t some of your relatives come from the far north?”
“Yes. But I’ve never been there myself.” Except just now, with the wind knife-hissing over the snow.
Nerren sat back. “There’s nothing duplicated on the monitors.”
“Any record of the filing?”
“Yes.” Nerren spun the monitor so that Mercy could see. “There.”
Mercy leaned forward, noting serial numbers. “This was one of the first things ever acquired by the Library. It survived the fire.”
“I know. It’s that ancient.”
It wasn’t Norse, as Mercy had wondered. Before that, long before, from lands that no longer existed on Earth, although recent experience would indicate that they were still present somewhere.
“This dates from the Ice Age.”
“One of the oldest things written by humans,” Nerren said. “That is to say-there is older material, texts from the Fertile Crescent. But so little from the northern lands… ”
“A treasure,” Mercy said. “A spell.”
She thought of the thing she had seen; the thing that, mentally, she had started calling “the female.” Part of a story from so long ago that any humanity had surely been leached from her, if indeed she had ever possessed any. Something forgotten, that raged, like so many forgotten things. Something that wanted to be known.
And something that, now, would be.
Five
The grove lay a short distance from the Dead Road. The mist gathered around him as Deed moved along it, not bothering to pretend to walk, just letting the Road carry him forward. Behind, in Worldsoul, the Court lay in the late afternoon light. Darya was still at the Library, hopefully far advanced in the process of beguiling its curators.
A crossroads, fog-wrapped, with the gate-stone rising from the white swirl. Deed stepped past its looming bulk and took the small path off the side of the road. He could smell the grove. Not far now. The path was overgrown with the ghosts of bramble and wild clematis, but Deed spoke a word and the spectral plants parted before him, withering back into the undergrowth. Then he glanced up and there was the grove: the bones arching up, the curve of immense jaws snatched from a sperm whale from the northern seas, inscribed with runes. Beyond were ribs, and at the centre of it, a skull mounted on a plinth as black and grainy as the crossroads stone. Deed bowed his head for a moment before stepping into the grove, not an action he cared to take, but one which was wise. Reaching up, he brushed aside the sprig of mistletoe, not the dull green of the Earthly plant, hanging on apple or oak, but white as snow, the berries veined with red.
The old god was waiting. He could smell that, too.
He came as close as he dared to the skull. The basalt in which it was set had partially grown up around it, but still could not quite dim its light. From certain angles-ones that Deed took good care to avoid-the skull shone like the sun. And so it should, given the fairness of its owner in life. Bright Baldur, slain with a mistletoe dart.
“My lord?” the magician said into the waiting gloom.
He came out of the depths of the grove in a clank of chains, true disir and one of the only and oldest males. Deed, accustomed as he was and knowing that the god was chained, still had to concentrate on standing fast, not running. He despised the weakness, but it was an old fear too deeply rooted to be eradicated by force of will. Loki’s narrow head turned from side to side, the white eyes gleaming. He wore ancient leather armour, still supple, with splits and rents where the sharp bones pointed through: the armour had been made for a man, ransacked in the long-ago when the gods had gone to war. It was hard to look Loki in the face and Deed centred his gaze instead on the disir’s hands, the long fingers and sharp silvery talons.
“You’re so like me,” the disir said, and chuckled. It didn’t sound remotely human and Deed remembered what his old mentor of the Sept had said once: They are beasts in the guise of men. The raveners, the scavengers of the battlefields, the initiators of war. Deed had taken care to keep his ancestry from the old man, and had been hard-pressed to school his face into polite interest when these words were spoken, which he supposed proved the old man’s point. The words rang cold in Deed’s memory and he forced his gaze upwards. Loki was staring at him, the disir’s head on one side.
“Well, now, little named one,” the disir said. “What have you brought me this time?”
Deed reached into the pocket of his coat and drew it out from its leather box. A scrap of flesh, green as mould and still wet. Scales shifted, opalescent in the bone light as the disir held out a taloned hand. The god never snatched. He took the flesh with a mincing, pinching movement and then it was gone.
“Not bad,” Loki breathed. “Rusalka?”
Deed nodded. His pocket still felt river-wet. “From the Northern Quarter, the forests.” The hunter had overcharged, too. Deed was not inclined to argue, at least, not just yet.
“So,” Loki said again. “You’ve brought me a little present. How kind.”
Deed took a breath, wondering if he’d have to invoke the old law, remind the god that an offering required a reply. But the disir took pity on him.
“What do you want, O my descendent? Answers? Or a question?”
“I’ve seen the Library,” Deed said. He felt he was radiating excitement. “As it first was when they stole it, not as it is now. The predictions didn’t lie. It’s there, in the past of the Liminality.”
“We knew that,” the god said, reproving.
“But no one has been able to see it. The Skein kept us out. And now-I saw it, Lord.”
The skull-face of the disir grinned wider. “But what are you going to do about it?”
“Get it back. Bring the Library of Alexandria through, replacing the version that now stands in the Citadel. Place it and the knowledge that it contains under the control of the Court.” Under the control of you. The subtext hung briefly in the air.
“Ah,” said the god. He knew damn well, Deed thought. Generations of preparation had gone into this. He just wanted to hear Deed say it. “How do you propose to do that?”
The Abbot General, at last, turned to face him. “I need your help.”
With the god within him, the Abbot General walked to the edge of the ridge and looked down. Loki was an uneasy rider; Deed felt like a horse whose reins were in a cruel grip. He did not trust the old god not to jerk them at a whim, tearing at the mouth. But for now, Loki’s presence was bearable. Just.
The encampment sprawled along the edges of a lake. It was ice-bound along its shore, but further out Deed could see the gleam of sullen water, greasy with cold. A low range of hills, furred white, ran along the furthest shore. Deed did not know where this corresponded to in Earth’s past: probably Lapland, or northern Russia. It didn’t really matter, this far back along the storyways: the tribes had held much in common.
It would be going too far to call them “tents.” They were stretched hides, tied to poles. The disir did not suffer from the cold, as humans did. There were no fires-they were afraid of fire, an atavistic dread that Deed felt superior in having conquered. The disir ate their food raw, and preferably bloody. At the far side of the encampment, a range of poles each boasted a severed head: some human, some not. One was a wolf’s and Deed could not help wondering if this had belonged to an animal, or one of the clan members.
“See her?” Loki whispered, inside his mind. There was the sound of smacking lips, a lecherous sigh. “Fancy a tumble in the snow, Deed?”
Deed did not. The disir was tall, well over six foot in height, and as gaunt as a goat. Her long face was tattooed in the tribe sigils and she had a l
ong crest of hair, bound with an iron band, on the top of her head. She wore armour of skins, and her person clanked with hoops of silver, lead, and carved coal encrusted with protection runes. At her waist, she wore a small skull with a long snout and sharp teeth.
“Not my type,” Deed said.
The old god laughed. “I can see a little thing inside your mind: half-human, eh? So refined, with those tip-tapping heels.”
“Her name’s Darya. Don’t go imagining any great romance.” He’d have to take better care to school his thoughts.
Loki laughed again. “Does she change when you fuck her?”
“No more than most women.”
The god within nodded towards the tall disir. “She’s the shaman. Or one of them. You can see-she whispers with magic. She’s stolen power from animal totems, mainly bear, wolverine, raven. Anything that likes a fight.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Well, you see,” the god said, “this is nearly forgotten, this story. People have progressed too far.” He made Deed’s head turn, and spit into the snow. “They’ve forgotten these old tales of the old north lands. They remember me-quite well, actually-and the others, but the Vanir-not so much. Frey was fading even in my day. Anything further back from that, forget it. Literally. So you have a storyway on a siding, a tale that no longer grows, changes, moves. All these creatures are just hanging around here with nothing to do. Do you think that’s right, Deed? Do you think that’s fair?”
Deed shrugged. “I remember them.”
“Yes, but you’re not exactly some tribal chieftain, are you? You’re a descendant, partly human, mainly changed. I know you can show the teeth if you want to, and sometimes when you don’t, but there you sit, in your fancy clothes, in your smart office of the Court-not exactly roaming the tundra, are you? Not exactly hunting and gathering?”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Deed, Deed.” The god’s chastisement was like having a slap to the brain. Deed reeled, and only regained his balance on the ridge with difficulty. “Look at the opportunities. There are thousands of the disir, all with raging aggression and nothing on which to vent it except bunnies. What does that suggest to you?”
