Verena's Whistle: Varangian Descendants Book I

by K. Panikian

  “I’m going to whistle the fire and see if I can control it. If I lose control, I think I saw a fire extinguisher in the mudroom.”

  “Okay, got it,” Owen replied. “I’m going to move my chair, I think, a little bit away from you. Not that I’m worried. But you know, sparks might put holes in my coat.”

  “Yeah, good idea.”

  I thought about what tone to try. Liquid and lilting, I whistled at the fire. I started low and then let the pitch climb higher. In response, the flames in the pit rose. They were thinner, stretched out, but definitely climbing. I could feel the magic, gold spark stretching back down to the coals below. I added a wild trill and the flames separated from the glowing embers to hover in the air. I changed my tone again into an imperious demand, and the flames condensed into a ball. The ball spun in front of me, bobbing gently. I made my song enticing. The fiery orb and its gold, glowing center, started to drift toward me.

  I noticed Owen take another step back behind me and I stretched out my arm. The blazing sphere hovered over my hand and I felt its warmth through my glove. Actually, it was hot. Quite hot. I started to smell burning nylon. With a shrill command, I sent the ball back to the center of the fire pit and the coals exploded in a flash of cinders and smoke. I fell backward out of my chair.

  Owen was there in an instant, dragging me back further. We sat in the snow and stared at the still-smoking fire pit; the flames were totally out.

  I cleared my throat. “That was really interesting.”

  “Yes,” Owen answered. “The conclusion was especially exciting.”

  It started to flurry and we went inside.

  Chapter 15

  In the morning there was a text from my dad when I woke up: “Call home. Uncle Alex wants to talk to you.” I brushed my teeth and then climbed back into bed and called the farmhouse.

  Mom answered and I told her about the chalet and Owen’s meal last night. She passed the phone to my dad next and he wanted to hear about the snow machines we were using. Finally, Uncle Alex was on the line.

  “Your dad’s going to email this to you too, but I wanted to talk to you first. All of us here spent the whole day skimming the journals for Greek fire references. There are three, all referring to battles on the other side of the portal when Irene was young.

  “I also scoured my memory and I do recall we had a unit of magic users whose sole job was to both create and deploy Greek fire against the besy in battle. They guarded the secret of how to create it closely; it was so destructive, our leaders didn’t want anyone experimenting with it, or using it for nonmilitary purposes.

  “The recipe is not in Irene’s journals, if that is what you’re looking for. I don’t remember her ever speaking of it.”

  I thanked Uncle Alex and hung up, thinking. The idea churning in my head involved barricading the cave with the besy inside and then launching some kind of incendiary substance, such as Greek fire, into it. But if we couldn’t make Greek fire, maybe we could make something similar? Or what about napalm? Can you buy napalm? Probably not. What about a bazooka?

  I got dressed in running clothes, plus a hat and my singed gloves, and went out the front door. It felt like it was in the upper 20s outside and the sky was clear. The sun was just starting to come up and I headed in the direction of the city center. Last night’s inch of new snow covered the sidewalk with a slippery layer, but the road was clear. I found my rhythm, pounding along, and continued thinking about explosive devices.

  Zlatoust was a really hilly city; the vibe reminded me of a ski town. There were beautiful glimpses of snow-covered peaks; cute little shops and cafés, and a tramway running up and down the streets.

  By the time I returned to the chalet, I had a couple of different ideas to run by the guys. I stretched in the entry room and then walked back to my bedroom for my shower stuff. Under the steam, I stretched my hands to the water pouring from the showerhead, but I felt no spark of power. The water felt flat and lifeless as it sprinkled down. I turned to my shampoo bottle and tried to call it to me with a quiet whistle. Nothing happened. I shrugged and picked it up.

  By the time I made it back into the kitchen, Theo was up and pouring a bowl of cereal. I poured my own and told him about the fire experiment from the night before. He was very interested and wanted me to show him right there. I felt cautious though, after the exciting conclusion last night, so I told him we needed to go outside first.

  We stepped out onto the deck and I walked to the railing. I held out my hand and snapped my fingers, making my spark. As it came to life, the gold core blazing, I whistled. The spark grew into a small sphere and as I trilled to it, it danced. I cut off my whistle and the spark vanished.

  I turned to Theo, “Last night the ball was much bigger. I think I can only control flames that are already in existence. I can’t make the fire bigger; I can only direct it.”

  “That’s seriously cool, Very,” Theo said. “What about other stuff?”

  “I played around a little with water and a bottle of shampoo, but nothing happened. I couldn’t feel a gold spark in them so I had nothing to control.”

  “Gold spark?”

  “When I whistle, I feel a gold spark, like a spirit. That’s what I command. But the stuff I tried this morning didn’t have a soul, I guess.”

  “The shampoo bottle I get. But why no spark in the water?” Theo mused. “If the whistle commands the elements, like fire, then it should work on water too.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t command the elements,” I countered. “Maybe it only works on fire.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you need to try a different kind of water. Not something out of a tap.”

  “And,” I added, “I can’t feel anything in the air either, or in the earth.”

  “I’m withholding judgment,” Theo answered. “We need to do more experiments.”

  We went back into the kitchen and I started the kettle for tea. Julian wandered in and headed for the cereal still on the counter.

  “So, the beard thing is definitely happening?” I asked him, eyeing the serious scruff growing on his face.

  “Yep,” he answered.

  “I like it,” Theo interjected. “Makes you look older.”

  “Older,” Julian said, worried. “Like I look old? I’m only 30!”

  “Not old,” I soothed. “Older as in handsome. Like it hides your baby face.”

  “Baby face!?!”

  Theo started laughing. I examined the scruff again. It was coming in darker than the blond hair on his head. He looked a little like a mountain man; the California surfer dude was gone. I should get him a flannel shirt, I decided.

  I made tea and listened with half an ear while the two men ribbed each other some more. They’d started in on Theo’s giant feet when Owen came down the hall. He looked freshly showered; his dark hair combed carefully back from his face and his chin shaved. He nodded at everyone and headed for the coffee pot. His eyes caught mine and he smiled warmly.

  “Morning,” he said quietly. “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah,” I answered him. “You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s this email from Uncle Luke about?” asked Julian, looking at his phone.

  “I asked the family to read through the journals and find all the references to Greek fire. Uncle Alex said there were three of them. I think the email has where in the journals to look.”

  “Greek fire?” Julian asked.

  I let Theo run through the history for Julian and when he finished, I told them I had a couple of ideas for the cave. “But I want to read the diary sections that Dad sent first.”

  “Okay, what should the rest of us do?”

  “I need to get to the post office and pick up the gun box,” Owen said. Julian offered to go with him and Theo wanted to stay and read the journals too. We split up and I headed for the couch with my tea and my phone.

  I pulled up Dad’s email and found my first reference, opened the link to the journal, and started to read.r />
  We tracked the todorats for three days before we finally got close enough to count their numbers. Two males and a female. Marcus circled around them overnight with the cheirosiphone and I knew he would be in place at dawn. The siphon had sufficient fire for two sustained blasts and no more. I knew I would need to take on the third todorat myself. I wondered, not for the first time, why would the mages refuse to train more to use the Greek fire?

  In the morning, as they rose from their sleep, Marcus attacked. He’d crept close enough to spray the two males with the siphon and then he lit the liquid with his magic in one movement. The fire engulfed them immediately. The female charged him and I hit her directly in the center of her forehead with my crossbow bolt. They were all three dead.

  ...

  I asked the mage why could I not train to make the Greek fire. I wished to learn every tool in our arsenal. I knew it was not wise to keep the secret with only the five of them. It should be written somewhere, even if it was not taught to any others.

  I would talk to Marcus in private. Maybe I could persuade him.

  …

  The cheirosiphone did not fire. The siphon was clogged, perhaps. Did I not follow the recipe exactly? Marcus threw the projector out of the way and drew his sword, but it was too late. The bauk was on him. I watched it tear into him, knowing I was too far away.

  I screamed. The bauk tossed Marcus’ body aside and ran toward me. I met it with rage in my heart and after I killed it, I ripped out its teeth and burned them with Marcus’ body on the pyre. He would know I avenged him.

  I stopped reading. I looked over at the other couch and saw Theo put down his phone as well. Our eyes met and he said, “She had the recipe. If it’s not in the journals, where would she have put it?”

  I agreed. “She definitely had it. Email your dad and tell him someone needs to fly down to the storage facility in Seattle and check through the crates again.”

  Theo nodded. I tried to think about what I knew of Aunt Irene’s belongings sent back to the family in 1960. It was pretty much just weapons. Crates of weapons. All weapons.

  I jumped to my feet and ran to my bedroom. I grabbed the nightingale knife from my bedside table and held it up to the light. Theo followed me into the room and I handed him the scabbard to check while I peered closely at the knife.

  After a moment, I found it. At the base of the hilt there was a small indentation. I pressed it and when the button rose, I pulled out a thin, narrow tube. Rolled around the tube was a piece of paper.

  I unrolled it and there it was, the recipe lost to this world for centuries. I scanned it and then handed it to Theo. He snapped a picture with his phone and then read it more closely.

  “I don’t know what half of these ingredients are,” he finally said.

  “Me either,” I agreed. “Can you send that picture to the family, and also the four of us here? Let’s brainstorm. Also, change that email to your dad and tell him we just need one thing from storage – that projector you bought online.”

  “Aha!” Theo said. “I knew I was brilliant.”

  A little while later, Owen and Julian were back from the post office. We updated them and then the four of us sat, staring at the recipe.

  There were five ingredients, and no quantities or instructions for mixing. Naphtha, quick lime, pine resin, sulfur, and saltpeter.

  “It’s written with a pen on modern paper. She must have done it from memory,” I said.

  “Why don’t you tell us your idea for using it? Before we get caught up on how to make it, let’s be sure of the why we need it part,” Julian said.

  “Yes, good point,” I agreed.

  “One idea,” I started, “is to set up a trap near the impact crater in the mountains. We bait it with meteorite pieces, on the assumption that it was the besy that stole the scientists’ crate of meteorites the other day. When the monsters come to snatch the bait, we raze them with the Greek fire. Any survivors will be hurt and disoriented. We pick them off with bows and arrows, and then swords. And maybe guns,” I added with a nod to Owen.

  “There are several problems with this plan. First, what if it wasn’t the besy that stole the crate? We can’t bait a trap with something the prey could not care less about. Second, we know nothing about the Greek fire. How to make it or how to use the projector. What if we set the forest on fire and don’t manage to hit any of the monsters?” I stopped for a breath.

  “My second idea is to attack them in the cave directly. We use the projector to send the Greek fire straight into the cave.

  “There are a couple of problems with this plan as well. One, what if only some of the besy are in the cave when we attack? We already know they’re sending out scouting parties. What if we only get a few of them? Two, what if the cave is deep and while we fry the first few, the rest shelter deeper in the cave, and then come out raging?”

  I paused again. “Basically, I want to use the Greek fire, or some other sort of incendiary weapon, to thin the ranks as much as possible before we engage directly.” I remembered how I felt during the bukavac fight and knew I couldn’t let my cousins risk their lives like that again if we could do it another way. I stopped talking and then waited.

  Theo was the first to respond. “I like the essentials of it. We know the Greek fire works on the besy, per Irene’s journal. We also know that we have a weapon that can shape that fire and direct it,” he said, pointing to me. Owen nodded but Julian looked confused. I’d forgotten to update him on what I’d learned about my nightingale magic last night and this morning. I did it quickly and then let Theo continue.

  “What I don’t like, and I’m sure we’re all thinking this, is that we have no idea how to create the fire, and no time to experiment.”

  “There are modern equivalents, more or less,” Owen pointed out, “like napalm, but stuff like that can’t be bought by civilians. We could probably buy flamethrowers; people use them in farming and land management all the time. But they produce a relatively small stream of fire for only a short distance. The ones that can be weaponized are, again, very restricted.”

  “And,” I circled back around, “we don’t know if modern ingredients, or modern projectors, will work around magic.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “I say we go for it,” Julian finally said. “I don’t know yet if we should do the bait plan or the cave plan, but I think we should try and make the Greek fire.”

  Owen agreed. “This feels like the right call to me too.”

  Theo raised his hand. “I have the strongest intuition. I’ll take point on mixing and experimenting, if you guys want to find the ingredients.”

  “I know quicklime and sulfur will be at any hardware store. Saltpeter, I don’t recognize. Pine resin should be easy enough, I guess,” Julian listed out.

  Owen added, “Naphtha is crude oil. That might be tricky too.”

  “I can be in charge of the ingredients,” Julian said. “We’ll need some basic lab stuff too, like safety goggles and something to mix it in.”

  “In Grandpa Basil’s vision of the Varangian citadel, there was a group of people stirring a big, black pot over an open fire. It smelled like pine and sulfur,” I recalled slowly.

  “Got it. Big, black pot,” Julian said, starting a list on his phone.

  “My dad’s going to ship the projector that’s in our storage unit,” Theo added, looking at his phone, “but we probably want to think about getting more than one. I’ll set up some eBay alerts. It might also be something we can duplicate, once we have the one.”

  Owen jumped in, “I’d like to see the crater and the cave, if we can get up there today. I wasn’t special forces, but I know I’ll have some insights to offer once I see the layouts.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “I’ll take you up.”

  “Then Theo and I’ll head to the hardware store,” Julian said. “We may have to go all the way to Chelyabinsk, depending on how big the store is here in Zlatoust. We’ll see.”


  We all got up from the couches and went in different directions. I grabbed the nightingale knife again from my room and headed for the entry to get my snow pants and heavy coat on. I slipped the knife around my neck, under my coat. I wanted to take my sword too, but didn’t know how to disguise it. I settled for squeezing the smallest crossbow and some spare bolts into a backpack.

  Owen watched me gear up with interest and then copied my cord around the neck for his knife as well. Then, in an underarm shoulder holster he slid a handgun. Another went up his pants leg into an ankle holster under his snow pants.

  “Ready?” I asked and when he nodded, I headed into the garage. “Have you ever driven a snow machine before?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “I think we should double-up on this one then,” I said, patting the blue one closest to the door. “I can teach you to drive it, and Theo and Julian will have the other if they need it.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I took a few minutes to point out the controls and then we strapped on our helmets and hit the trail. The familiar hum of the machine rattled my brain as we sped up the snowy, steep trail. Owen held onto my waist tightly and I slowed down once to point out pair of kestrels circling in the sky above and another time to watch my elk pass by, weaving their way gracefully through the trees. I felt their familiar gold sparks from a distance, winking brightly at me.

  Finally, we got to the part of the trail that split off to the crater. I showed Owen how to strap on his snowshoes. He picked up quickly how to walk in them and we trekked through the snow relatively gracefully. As we approached the crater, I started to move more cautiously. I didn’t see any new prints in the snow, and it was daylight, but my scalp was prickling.

  When we reached the edge of the clearing and I saw that there were no people there, I pulled the crossbow out of my backpack and loaded it. I put two spare bolts in the waistband of my snow pants. Owen pulled the gun from his shoulder holster and carried it in his right hand, pointed at the ground, safety on.