Some of it was obviously bloody.
Apparently, none of that bothered her. Perhaps she, like the dead, coveted such treasure. It looked like that was the case.
She kneeled down and let some treasure drop through her skeletal fingers. Coins and jewelry fell with metallic clinking sounds to the floor. She was nodding to herself as she spoke. “Enough to buy an army.”
Army? She was thinking about hiring mercenaries. “But no army to be had, eh?” I asked. “We are stuck.”
She picked up a ruby the size of her hand, and stared at it with a squint. “Most of it comes from Svartalfheim. It’s the place for riches, the land below.”
“Below,” I agreed and walked to stand in the middle of the room. “I heard of Below. Svartalfheim is close to Aldheim, Ittisana said.”
“And so,” Shannon whispered, and I saw she clutched Famine, the black dagger of Hel, “I shall do as you ask, my lady. I will hate it, I will weep in my strange dreams, since I cannot weep while awake, and I’ll do it. May they all forgive me.”
“Shannon?” said, wondering if there was someone else there in the room. I paced across the red carpet, trying to see into the room, but saw no one.
She got up, and turned to look at me. She nodded, as if noticing me for the first time, and put away her dagger, though reluctantly, it seemed. She glanced around her study. “How do you like it, Ulrich?”
I looked around. It was splendidly furnished and richer than any king’s, no doubt. And yet, it was, like the rest of the north Himingborg, dead and lifeless, bereft of joyful laughter and life, save for the mice, spiders, and rats. The room would have been cozy enough, like a forgotten and dusty living room, if not for the dark spirit living in there, and I felt sorry for thinking like that. “It is nice, I suppose,” I said instead, and hoped she didn’t search my thoughts. She moved to the bed, and sat down. It was made, never used. She let her hand rest on it and she smiled as she looked at it. While she had said she dreamt, perhaps she needed no bed to do so. The obvious conflict of Shannon enjoying the silk-draped bed and her inability to use it made my heart ache. I also noticed a heap of plates, and smelled mold and a whiff of rancid meat in the room. There, on a side table, dinners had been served. She still ordered them, but left them to molder on the desk. Her eyes turned that way and she smiled.
“Pitiful?” she asked and stared at the table. “It is hard to let go. I miss food and drink.”
I nodded and gazed into her eyes. “Don’t let go.”
“Oh,” she answered and got up from the bed. “Why not?”
I squared my shoulders. “They say you still …drink.”
She stopped and her eyes looked deep into mine with near hypnotic intensity. “And I assume you mean blood?”
“Like Kiera,” I said, holding my position.
She chuckled. “Ah, but you are something else. Thak eats flesh, any flesh. Ittisana as well. But your Shannon, your friend mustn’t drink blood. I drink it. It is full of life, and life I crave. I need it not, but it is pleasurable.”
“Pleasure,” I murmured and Shannon looked annoyed. It was dangerous to annoy the Hand of Hel, but I had decided to speak my mind, and so I would.
She pushed her hair back, the skeletal hand and the fingers white and unsettling, and I couldn’t but help stare at them. Hel had taken away her Bone Fetter, and left her with the curse of Rot in that hand. I wanted to be nowhere near it. “Pleasure, Ulrich. Are you so cruel that the dead cannot enjoy at all? They do find pleasure. We do. I do. We love, we gossip, we laugh and we …”
“Kill,” I ended for her and kept going, before she lost her temper and killed me. “I wish your pleasures were familiar to me.” I looked down, and waited. There she was, her eyes gleaming in the semi-dark, her savage eyes staring at me. She said nothing, but pulled out a chair, where she reclined, staring at me. I felt a tingling sensation as she wove together a spell, and the torches set on wall sconces flared to life around me. I squinted and held a hand over my eyes, stumbling back, until my hands found a chair, which I pulled at. “I assume I can sit in your presence?” I bit my lip, not sure where my unhappiness would take me.
She was my friend, I reminded myself.
She snorted. “I’m the Queen, Ulrich. Don’t assume anything. But you may sit. I would not want to give you more to complain about. I hear you complain plenty.”
“I complain a lot, Shannon,” I said, and added. “My Queen.”
She adjusted her dark robes. “I have missed it, for some odd reason. Your surly nature that is. You had a surprise in Haven?” she asked me, though the question was rhetoric, because she knew all about it. The dead had swarmed the Haven, against their past laws, and had torn the floors and ceilings out, searching for similar ways to breach the city. There were bound to be more, and so, Shannon was fortifying the Shining City. She was groping for her chest, her eyes flickering for the wound that had once killed her.
Did it hurt? I wondered.
She had had her heart broken, literally, when Thak saved her from Euryale by thrusting the Eye of Hel in her hand and splitting her heart with her own sword. He had sent her to Helheim, but there she was now, the Queen of the Draugr, the Hand of Hel and still, there was a bit of her old self behind those red eyes and pale skin.
I waved my hand that way. “We fought them off. We managed it, barely. Had little time for reading, though.”
“I hear you more than managed,” she smiled viciously, and made me frown. She looked at me steadily until I nodded in agreement, and she went on. “I hear your artifact saved you all.”
I fidgeted. I had no idea what Thak or Ittisana might have told her. “It was strange, Shannon. It had been rebellious before, but it was beyond my control. It was so powerful.”
She sighed and seemed pleased. “You are lucky. We have hundreds of artifacts looted from the fallen armies and the city, but only some useful ones. Gods know what artifacts Stheno has, or the dragon.”
I shrugged. “The dragon probably raided Euryale’s tower before it left. Took everything with it, eh?” I faltered and cursed. “The Dark Prayer?”
She said nothing and nodded.
I cursed. The mirror had allowed Euryale to travel across the land, though it drained maa’dark mightily. And Dana had used some part of it, a smaller mirror to open a door for Euryale when she had betrayed Shannon. “I hope the dragon doesn’t know how to use it.”
“He does,” she said. “At least he cannot use it to cross worlds. But did you find anything before you were rudely interrupted in Haven?”
I hesitated, and wondered what she meant. She had news, that was for sure. Hopefully good news. I spoke, “We were looking for books. Maps. Found one. I suppose Ittisana has it. They tried to teach me about arts and mysteries of the world, but I ended up learning little. Except how to kill a hundred elves.” The thought of the burned elves made my belly churn, no matter what they had wanted to do with us.
She sighed. “We are going to have many such attacks soon. My husband is infiltrating the city as best he can. Hannea is there, with her spell, looking like the Hand of Life, and he is collecting many swords under his banners. He gave a speech the other night. A draugr heard it. He claimed to smite down the common threat to their life with a brutal hand. He said he’d chase me to Helheim and back, if he had to.” She smiled coldly. “In truth, he wants to be cured of the Rot. I hear it is already eating at his chin. It was a fine chin; I remember it well when he claimed me for that one night. He’ll be uglier than the draugr soon. He’ll be here shortly.”
I rapped my fingers on the chair. “The Regent probably worries about the visage in the mirror, but he is fighting for their survival, as well,” I said harshly and her eyes turned my way with a glimmer of amusement. “I’m sorry,” I added, “but he will not let you purge the elves and bring … Hel’s justice in Aldheim.”
“Ah, my speech,” she said. “I did promise it, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I muttered. “But will you
really murder millions? Is not the Horn enough?”
She said nothing.
I shifted nervously. “You say nothing.”
“I know nothing, Ulrich,” she whispered. “I said what I said. I hate the elves. So does Hel. Hel hates everyone.” She clutched Famine on her belt and went quiet.
I shook my head at her dilemma. “She demands things from you.”
She nodded. “She has given me a lot as well. As for the elves, I know not. I will think about it.”
I knew she would not promise me anything and pressed on. “Even if you changed your mind, you hate them, as you said. You have an agenda to kill them. A terrible agenda you—Hel’s thing—no longer see as murder and evil. If you promise me not to wage war on them, your undead impulses might demand you kill them anyway. I don’t like this situation. I’m to help you, but you cannot promise—”
“I don’t make promises anymore, Ulrich. Never again. As for my … impulses? They might indeed make me change my mind, should I make a promise,” she said humorlessly. “I think it might be just to purge the bastards from Aldheim.”
“The Horn,” I said sternly. “The Horn, Shannon. I beg of you. Return it to Hel, no matter whatever else she demands. That should satisfy her, yes? Then hide, until things change.”
She instinctively clutched the blade again. She sat there, before me, struggling with an answer. It was a long struggle, one where she opened her mouth many times, and in the end, she finally shook her head. “I will. I will get the Horn. And then, I’ll fight against what I, and Hel, wants to do and try to do as you say.”
“How much time do we have?” I asked, relieved and filled with a glimmer of hope.
She waved her bony hand, as if to say we had all the time in the world. In truth, she didn’t know.
“And how do you plan to keep the city?” I added.
She murmured something and actually looked offended. “You saw what I did to Til Safiroon?”
The arch-mage. “Yes, I did,” I said neutrally, and didn’t say what I meant to say. I meant to call her a cruel bitch. “It was unnecessary.”
She grimaced. “No, it wasn’t. All that war I make, all the terror I spread, all of it makes perfect sense. The stories they tell to each other of death and grotesque murders? That makes them fearful, no matter how many there are up there. They count their swords and spears and then they hear how a part of the city was destroyed by the draugr. They think they’ll need more swords. They hear stories of the flaying of the living, and of armless corpses hanging from beams, and they will want to gather more spears. They are terrified I have a plan to trap them, to destroy them with some horrible surprise. Didn’t I release Hel’s Seed, and raise their dead allies in front of their eyes? No, Ulrich. All the women and children and elves who do die, die for a purpose that serves us. We are running out of time. And I am giving us some.”
“When you have the Horn, how will you get it to Hel? I—”
“I will deal with it,” Shannon said thinly and I shut my mouth. We stared at each other uncomfortably, and there was no old Shannon, not then, to argue with. Her eyes were like a wild animal’s and fear made me hold my breath.
I noticed I was doing it, and forced out a cough. “I signed up to your war, your side, because you are my friend. I signed up, so I could help you and perhaps Aldheim. I thought the goal was to please Hel, and she might let you go. Let the Nine Worlds go!”
“She will let them go,” she hissed, “She will.”
“Perhaps you should return the Horn to Asgaard,” I said, braving much. “Perhaps you can find the gate, and return it.”
She stared at me. “And betray my maker? I already promised I’d give it to her as soon as I get it. Don’t push further, friend.”
“Very well,” I said.
She sat there quiet, contemplating my words. Surely she had heard them before, especially as I spoke to Kiera, but now she was clearly making up her mind on something. On my life, on her plans? I’d find out in a bit.
“I know not,” she said softly. “It is on the table, Ulrich. Everything is possible,” she said. “But first, we need the Horn. Nothing else matters. Do you agree?”
I sighed. “Yes.”
She flickered in the air, vanished, and then I felt her presence behind me, and a hand on my shoulder. “Horn it is, and you will trust me with the rest. Know I do not willingly wish to slay millions. And I know Hel might prefer things I do not. Let me think on it.”
“Yes,” I said, though I was unsure if I trusted her.
She leaned to my ear, her hair spilling on my shoulder. “Your job is to help get your party to Scardark.”
“They know the place,” I interrupted her. “Ittisana lived there. Thak, I think, is from there as well. I’ll tag along. Why—”
“Thak is from there,” she said. “You will help them. I trust you. I trust you, because you tell me plain when I’m wrong, and do not hide your frowns or complaints. I trust you, because we are both still of the Ten Tears. Ulrich, your nobility gives me comfort, and to know you are out there, fighting for me, a man so just? A man who saved me once and twice before?”
I smiled softly. “Are you manipulating me?”
She squeezed my shoulder. “A bit. But trust me in this. I might be the dead Queen of Aldheim, Hand of Hel, but I can still be reasoned with. Reason with me after we have the Horn.”
“Where,” I asked her, “is the gate to Nifleheim, so we can return the Horn? Or the one to Asgaard, if you decide to—”
“Patience,” she said and moved to stand next to me. “We have news. Plenty of news.”
“I saw someone rush out of the gate,” I said. “What did they tell you?”
She hesitated. “They? He. He told me what I needed to know. He gave me hope. A longshot in the wind, but still possible. What are you willing to do for the Horn?”
I shut my mouth as soon as I opened it. “I’ll not kill innocents. I’m not a draugr.” I hesitated. “And I’m not sure I’ll kill Dana. But I’ll help with the plan, as long as I don’t kill people who don’t deserve it.”
She rubbed her face. “Deserve it? This is war. Nothing is more important than the Horn. Not your honor, not a thousand innocents, and gods know what they are. Innocents, or just weak?” She slammed her hand on the arm of her chair. “And Dana is not innocent.”
I growled back. “She is weak, then. And I don’t go out to kill the weak, either. I’m not going to be an assassin. I’ll do much, but not everything. I’m not Strife.” Strife, the elf who had been twin to her first husband. The evil bastard had been everything she had loathed.
“Strife?” she whispered. “You know how to hurt me. I’m not Strife either. Everything I do has a higher purpose.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t.
She glowered at me for a while and then spoke. “And will you refuse to help them, if the situation—”
“It’s situational,” I said stubbornly. “I’ll help with the Horn. But I won’t be an animal.”
She looked away, and if she were alive, I was sure she’d cry. She couldn’t. Instead, she waved her hand. “Very well, Ulrich. So be it. We have to be careful with you, anyway. If the dragon catches you, it will scourge your mind. It will peel it open like it would an egg, and there are no secrets with that thing. So, I’ll not share the full plan with you.”
I stared at her. “Why? Because I’m not a lapdog to Hel?”
“Be careful,” she said and pointed a bone-white finger my way. “Do not push too far. Yes. Partly because you don’t trust me. Partly because of what I just said. It’s been inside my head. That dragon. Only Kiera will know the full plan.”
“I take it her mind cannot be ripped apart by the beast?”
“No,” she said. “Here it is. You shall go to Svartalfheim. You’ll help us gain the Horn. And I shall not tell you how we get into Scardark. In there, you shall not hold back and will help us in every way you can, unless,” she sneered, “it goes agai
nst your honor. But it won’t. Not in Scardark.”
“Will you at least tell me about the Horn? Where is it?”
“Hear for yourself,” she said and turned. She snapped her fingers and a shadow moved. Out of the darkness walked a curious looking svartalf. He had silver hair, he was quite short and had golden eyes. Many kinds of daggers hung from his belt, and he was wearing black, studded leathers. His skin was black as night, and he smiled widely as he approached me.
“He needs to know you,” Shannon said. “Show your true face.”
He snapped his fingers and in an eye blink, his skin was white as snow. “She is right. Best show myself as I truly am. No secrets amongst friends, eh?” Around his finger there glowed a small golden loop and I guessed he had an artifact. Probably many. He walked near Shannon, and I got up and backed off so I could see both, unsure how one greeted a svartalf. The svartalf bowed with the grace of a dancer, and I returned the gesture with much less grace.
“I am Ulrich,” I said. “And—”
He waved his hand. “I know who you are.” His eyes went to the Bone Fetter burning in my forearm. There was a look of covetous greed on his face, which he quickly hid. Did he covet the fetter?
No. He saw me as a useful toy.
“And to make this fair, who are you?” I asked and glanced at Shannon with worry. “And why does the Queen trust you?”
The elf snorted and sat down on the desk, his dagger getting caught on the edge. He wrestled it off the belt, and kept smiling at my fetter. “A human who can see the fiery rivers of Muspelheim,” he snorted. “A human who Sees the Shades. A miracle.”
I laughed. “No miracle. Euryale—”
“But then,” he interrupted, pricking the dagger on his thumb, drawing blood. “I’ve seen another. When they came back from this horrible mess, there was another.”
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