Rorick had procured a club from somewhere, and his muscular arms were making mush of troll heads.
Then her vision was obscured by a blue, lumpy troll that reared up before Abagail. He roared and swung his meaty fist at her. Abagail ducked under his arm, twisting her sword around and cutting him deep through the side. She spun around behind him, lancing out with her sword she severed the tendons along the back of his leg.
He shrieked in pain and slumped forward. But Rorick was there, and made a smear of his head all over the stone floor.
Wyrd fizzled by her head, taking out another troll that was about to make as big a mess of Abagail as Rorick was making of the beasts. The green troll tumbled over a table and out of sight.
Abagail turned toward the crowd, backing up beside Rorick. They stood before her fallen uncle, and from time to time she looked back at him to make sure he wasn’t coming too. She was prepared to knock him over the head again if he started to rouse.
Abagail barely had time to register what was the harbinger group and what was the bad guys when a growl nearby made the hair on her neck stand up straight. She knew what it was before she turned to look the beast in the sulfurous green eyes.
The garm. Right from the Otherworld.
The beast was the size of a horse with black coarse hair that covered its body. His bottom jaw jutted out farther than his top jaw, and tusks ran up the side of its head. The garm growled at them, and it was close enough that Abagail could feel it’s breath on her face, and smell the rotten stench that bubbled up from his throat with the noise.
She stumbled, but the beast plodded forward on cloven hooves.
She knocked into her uncle, and then Fortarian started coming to. Faced with the garm, Abagail couldn’t worry about her wayward uncle for the moment.
But with all of his horrible features it was the face of the garm that startled Abagail most. It wasn’t the face of a dog, but yet some strange creature she’d never seen before. Human shaped, but different, more wild, its skin thicker and darker.
Abagail raised her sword and backed up. The garm circled her. Rorick and Leona stayed beside her, and Abagail could feel the wyrd gathering in Fortarian’s hands. She only hoped that he was using it to help them and not to hinder them.
“What do we do?” Abagail asked. “This is a hound of the Otherworld.”
“We pray to the All Father,” Fortarian said. “And hope he spares us.”
Odd sentiment coming from a darkling, Abagail thought.
The garm reared up and roared. Fire spouted from its mouth, but the beast never came back down to the stone floor.
In a flare of fire, the garm dissolved before their very eyes. A white haired lady stepped through the confusion. She crossed her arms over her chest. She wore dark trousers and a long jacket with voluminous sleeves, of which she was tucking her hands inside of. Her hair was long and braided here and there so that the braids intermingled with the loose locks of her hair. The braids were decorated with gems and feathers.
Her blue eyes were cold and held Fortarian fast.
“I knew you once, darkling,” she said, kicking aside the ashes of the garm as she stepped closer to Fortarian. “Before you gave into the shadow plague and allowed Gorjugan to take residence in your body.”
“Mattelyn,” Fortarian said, collapsing to his knees. He clasped his hands before him, raised up to her in pleading. She didn’t seem affected. “Forgive me. I renounce my ways.”
She cawed an emotionless laugh. “So easily? Always the coward, Fort. Faced with death, you will do whatever you can to stave off the icy grips of your damnation. You belong in Hilda’s sick beds for the darkness you allowed into Agaranth. And Mattelyn is my past. I’m Rowan now.”
“I didn’t know at the time—”
“Didn’t know what? That you were opening the way for the darkling gods to make Agaranth their home?”
“He’s telling the truth,” Leona said, stepping forward. There was a waver to the air that Abagail recognized beside her sister as Skuld.
Rowan’s eyes flickered from the wavering form of Skuld down to the hammer Leona held clasped in her hand.
“I’ve seen that hammer before,” Rowan said, flicking a hand to the God Slayer. “Olik carried it.”
“Olik,” Leona whispered, recognition ghosting across her eyes.
Abagail frowned. “That hammer was given to us by my father, Dolan Bauer. Your brother.”
“So it’s Dolan now, is it?” Rowan said. “But he was never a Bauer.”
“What do you mean?” Abagail asked.
“Rowan, there’s no time for this,” a graying man broke in on their not so warm welcome to the harbingers of light. “The frost giants won’t be held off for long. We need to make our escape.”
“Yes, Fen.” Rowan bowed her head to the thin man. “Come along,” Rowan said. “From what the pixie said, you are seeking us out to learn to control the plague. No matter what issues I have with family, or those that adopted our name to escape the wrath of Hafaress, the harbingers of light would never allow an unclaimed harbinger to turn to the dark.”
Abagail swallowed, but didn’t say anything about the name Mattelyn—Rowan—had used for their father. She wanted desperately to ask Leona what she knew about the name, because it certainly looked like Leona knew the name from somewhere.
Abagail fell in line behind the entourage of harbingers. It never occurred to her, until then, why an entire army of harbingers had come looking just for her, but she had to remember to ask. She glanced at Rowan, if she doesn’t breathe fire at me when I try. There was something about the woman that chilled Abagail to the core. Confrontation with the harbinger seemed less desirable than becoming a darkling.
They followed a series of hallways out into the cool winter air. Abagail wasn’t sure how long they’d been kept in the cell, but it was so nice to see the sunlight and the brightness of day, even if the glare from the snow burned her eyes.
“This way,” Rowan steered Abagail to the right by her arm. “There are horses waiting here for you. Huginn and Muninn will take you to a meeting spot. Wait there for us.”
Leona grabbed Abagail’s hand, and together, followed by Rorick and the now corporeal elves, they rounded an icy hill to see several horses waiting for them, and twin girls, both short and thin. Despite being so pale, the girls wore nothing but black. Their black hair and black eyes stood out like coal against their unnaturally white skin.
In her mind, Abagail knew these two. She’d seen them before.
“The ravens,” she said aloud, pulling Leona to a halt. Her sister arranged the hammer on her side and checked the moon scepter on her back.
“What?” Celeste asked.
But the twins were climbing off their horses and making their way to them. They went to their knees before Abagail.
“We’ve been looking all over for you,” the one on the right said. Abagail couldn’t determine if it was Huginn or Muninn who spoke.
“You’ve been looking for me?” Abagail asked, a quiver of recognition skirting through her mind, but she couldn’t grasp it. She knew these two, far beyond just seeing them a few days ago as birds. She knew these two from…before.
“Come with us,” the two of them said. “We must make haste to the meeting place.”
Huginn and Muninn hurried the party to the horses, and they mounted. It had been a long time since Abagail rode a horse, and she was nervous being so high off the ground. But right then her curiosity at what was happening was greater than her fear.
They had ridden for a ways in the snow and the blowing cold before Abagail found her voice.
“Why have you been looking for me?” she wanted to know. “You mean all of the harbingers? And why did I see you as ravens before? Was that you or just my imagination?” I never knew harbingers could shape shift.
The twins didn’t answer.
“Is it customary for an entire search party to come after one harbinger?” she wondered.
&nbs
p; “Times are strange now,” one of them said. “The giants are gathering together for some reason.”
“It’s very strange for them to gather, frost and storm and fire giants alike. All talking. They never talk,” the other said.
“And the darklings taking over this world. And the winter.”
“We need all the fighters we can get. There are so few harbingers coming through Agaranth. The darklings fight for them, why shouldn’t we?”
Abagail looked off to her right into more blinding expanse of snow.
Before long they were coming to a halt. More people were gathered on horseback, and Abagail could only imagine that they were harbingers by the way Huginn and Muninn mingled with them and talked as if they knew one another.
Off to her left a white cloud of snow raced toward them. There was a moment of hesitation in the crowd, but soon the snow cloud melted away to reveal Rowan and the other harbingers, Fortarian in tow.
The two groups of harbingers met, but Abagail couldn’t hear what they were discussing. In time they turned to Abagail and motioning her forward.
“Now we ride to New Landanten, and the settlement,” Rowan told her. “There you will begin your training.”
Abagail nodded but no one seemed to notice because a line was forming, and they were being led away from the clearing.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, Abagail found herself wondering what her father was doing. Wondering where he was. Her stomach turned sour when she thought of him. So many lies he’d told them. So many times he’d held the truth from them. She wondered if he was even her father. At this rate she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d lied about that too.
She’d wanted so long to meet with her aunt Mattelyn, sure that she would make it right, just as Dolan had said. But now that she was here, now that she was riding behind that stern woman in the black jacket, knowing that she wasn’t really her aunt at all, Abagail wondered if she’d know the peace she’d felt before she caught the plague.
She looked at Leona riding stiff and silently beside Skye and wondered what her sister was thinking about. They’d both changed so much, and it appeared they were both at the beginning of their journey.
Abagail turned forward. She couldn’t tell what tomorrow would bring, but she knew one thing, Leona was the only real family she had left. Leona and Rorick her only true friends. She might not know what the future would bring, but as long as she kept them safe at her side, Abagail felt that she could face anything.
Helvegr.
What Now?
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The little boy sat on the edge of the giant well kicking his feet and watching the reflection of dancing leaves across the silvery surface of the well. This was a special well because it didn’t hold water, it held the mystical force of wyrd that all harbingers could control to one degree or another.
The wind was warm, and the sun was cheerful, and the birds sang gaily from the bows of the great Tree at Eget Row that rose majestically out of the center of the well of wyrding.
Despite the lovely day, the boy’s thoughts were dark.
He bowed his bald head, and stared entranced at his ink smudged fingers, as if he could still see the blood on them. For the umpteenth time he rubbed his hands against his white robe, but all that did was add to the plethora of already existing ink smears on his clothing.
“How could I not have seen,” he whispered. “How could I have been so foolish?”
In the distance, over a hill to the north, the lone cry of a wolf drifted aimlessly on the wind.
The little boy shivered.
The giant wolf, Anthros couldn’t reach him here. Not with the ties that bound him to the root of the great tree.
But that’s not precisely true, is it? The voice called into his mind.
The boy closed his eye against a fresh wash of tears.
It’s your fault, he told the voice. This would never have happened—
—if you hadn’t broken the rules. You know full well what you did was just as much your fault as it was mine.
But the boy wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it.
I created him out of love, the All Father thought back at the baleful wolf who had taken up residence in his head some time ago. What came next was your doing.
But your act of love broke the rules of the void. If not for that, I would not have gained access to the Ever After.
The cries were still fresh in his ears. The blood tainted his inky hands.
The liquid wyrd rippled beneath the rim of the well, cresting up to dampen the soles of his feet. He shivered.
“Great All Father, why do you cry?” a woman’s voice asked.
His gaze drifted to the right to where the mermaid, Skuld, rested against the edge of the well. Her glittering green fin flickering just beneath the silver surface. Her hair, long and black, trailed over her bare breast. Her nose was upturned, coming to a point at the end where a delicate horn curved toward the bridge of her nose. Milky pearls gleamed within the coal locks of her hair.
“I must leave this place, Skuld,” he told the norn.
“But why?” she asked him, trailing closer to him. Her blue eyes were worried.
“Can’t you see that?” he asked her.
“My province is the future,” she told him. “Once something has come to pass, it slips from my mind. Besides, the Gods have no fate save Ragnarok.”
The All Father shivered. “I’ve done a terrible thing, and paid a hefty price.”
“What is this terrible thing you’ve done?” Skuld asked him.
The All Father watched a squirrel break from the surface of the wyrd within the well and skitter up the trunk of the enormous tree until he vanished within the lower branches.
“I’ve tried to remove chaos from the void,” he said, wrapping his arms around him as a chill took his small body.
“But that’s impossible. You know better than to try. Greater powers govern the void than you or I,” Skuld scolded him. Not many would scold a god, but the norns weren’t like most. Even still, not many could make a dod feel scolded like the norns could.
“I know,” his head bowed closer to his chest.
“And how did you do this?” she asked.
“By creating the God of Peace. But Skuld, I managed it. I was able to create a completely perfect being with no trace of chaos within him.”
She frowned at the All Father. “And what was the price you paid for this accomplishment?”
The All Father shook his head. A tear traced its way down his cheek to fall glistening to the surface of the wyrd. The tear rested there for a time, like a perfectly tumbled gem before it slipped beneath the surface, never fully mixing with the wyrd. He watched it sink lower and lower like a stone in a pond.
“Does this have anything to do with the destruction of the Ever After I see?” she asked.
The All Father nodded.
Skuld frowned. “Why did you come here, All Father?” her hands dipped back under the surface of the wyrd and tread the silvery liquid. The wyrd sparkled in the sunlight, nearly blinding to normal eyes. The power of the well glowed a reflection in the All Father’s eyes.
“I need to know,” he said.
“Need to know what?” Skuld cocked her head.
“What kind of damage I caused to the nine worlds. I already know what damage I’ve caused in the Ever After. I need to know that mankind is safe from my treachery.”
Skuld frowned. “There is no way for you to know that, only the norns can see the full scope of what you’ve done.”
“Yes, but you could tell me,” the boy insisted.
She was shaking her head no befor
e he finished. “The threads of fate are many, and they are complicated. There’s no true way of knowing which future fate is the true one until choices are made that bring it closer to the present.”
“But I need to know the possible futures my actions brought about,” the All Father said. “Please.”
Skuld inclined her head to stare at the young god. She could see the pain in his eyes, the desperation therein. “Very well, but there is a price to pay to drink of the well.”
“Anything, name it.”
“There is power within you,” she said. “Your eyes hold so much power.”
The All Father looked up into her eyes. She wasn’t hungry for his power, but he understood, to partake of her power he had to revoke a bit of his own power. He waited to see what the norn wanted.
“If you drink of the Well of Wyrding, then you will know many things. You will see many threads of future fates.”
“I don’t—,”
Skuld held up a long finger to silence him. “That you will see, and more. But I could tell you of one who can help you.”
“Who would that be?” the All Father asked.
“Surt.”
The boy recoiled. “Why in Muspelheim would I go there?”
“He’s created a weapon before, did he not? One that could have taken care of your problem?”
“You’re suggesting that—”
“—all I’m saying is if you want to make amends for what you’ve done, then you should be prepared to do what needs doing. Your hatred for darkness is the very thing that will allow darkness to slip through.”
Over the rise of the hill, the All Father heard Anthros let out a baying howl. He shivered, the power of the howl mirrored within him. His eyes fell on a place that he couldn’t see, but he knew all too well. After all, he was the one who imprisoned Anthros there.
“I need to see what I’ve done. I will only make a decision after I’ve seen.”
“Very well, if you only wish to see what your actions have done, that should be easy enough.” Skuld waved a hand at him. “The price for seeing what only the norns can see is one of your eyes.”
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