by Lentz, P. K.
The Path of Ravens
~
P.K. Lentz
Text copyright © 2015 P.K. Lentz
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
1. Abyss
2. Cave
3. Hades
4. Myriad
5. Escape
6. Savior
7. Portal
8. Mountain
9. Native
10. Valley
11. Ares
12. Neolympus
13. Medea
14. Ravens' Pass
15. Slayer
16. Red Clouds
17. Attendant
18. Frostfall
19. Blue-skin
20. Gaeira
21. Heimdall
22. Asgard
23. Freya
24. Essa
25. Odinn
26. Yggdrasil
27. The Black Pool
28. Wellspring
29. Deluge
30. Folkvang
31. A Changed Woman
32. Odinn's Price
33. Hel Comes
34. Procession
35. A Baleful Embassy
36. A Brother's Petition
37. To Vanaheim
38. Of Hel and Hodr
39. Homecoming
40. Of Midgard
41. The Answer
42. Hunger
43. A Vision Revealed
44. Farewell to Peace
45. By Odinn's Command
46. Of Loves and Oaths
47. A Battle Torn Host
48. A Changed Man
49. The Lame Smith
50. A Man of Asgard
51. The Gathering of the Great Host
52. The First Battle of Ragnarok
53. Enemy of Life
54. On Hel's Chariot
55. The Second Battle of Ragnarok
56. Pyres
1. Abyss
With the Great Host of Asgard I stand, ready for battle. To my left and right are peerless Einherjar, mighty Valkyriar, and every man and woman of the Aesir and Vanir capable of wielding ax, spear, or sword. Leading us is Tyr, son of the All-Father Odinn. Two more Odinnsons stand among us. A fourth has fallen already to our innumerable, world-devouring foe.
It will devour this world next, should our Host fail. We know not from whence our enemy came. It knows no reason, no purpose but the annihilation of life, and its onslaught has made allies of the bitterest foes. Within the ranks of the Great Host this day are towering frost giants and the undead thralls of the exiled sorceress Hel, forces more accustomed to challenging Odinn's rule than heeding it. My own people stand with the Host, too, wanderers between worlds, mistrusted Interlopers in these eight realms. Of all who were summoned this day, only the fighters of Svartalfheim have declined to take the field. The sons of Odinn have sworn that once the threat is past, they shall be made to pay for their refusal.
If the threat passes, and if any sons of Odinn survive it. If Odinn himself survives. Those things are hardly certain. For I have drunk of the Well of Mimir, and its waters granted me four visions of the future. One thus far has come to pass. Three remain. The worst of them.
It was not always thus. I was not always sworn to serve Odinn and Asgard. A short while ago, I had not yet heard of Baldr or Tyr, of Freya or Loki, for I was not born of their folk, the Aesir and the Vanir. Two lives have I lived, in two worlds. My second life has brought me here, to a battle which may be the last this world ever knows, its Ragnarok.
It was a short while ago, but seems an age, that I had sight in both of my eyes. I did not know at the time of my second birth in a place called Hades that my name was Thamoth. I had no name then, no past, no inkling of who I was or what path I would tread.
***
My first breath sends fire down my veins. Muscles tighten inside the limbs of a body I did not know until this moment that I possessed. The pain drags me up from an abyss of nothingness into—what?
I know not.
Pain fades, body remains. Owning flesh is familiar, yet there is something alien about the arms and legs and head that seem not to have been mine until mere heartbeats ago.
Mind is just as new as body. But I do have thoughts, and I sense that I am not new to thinking. I just have not done it lately. Long ago, perhaps, before—
Sleep? Oblivion? Something must lie beyond that abyss from which I came. But my freshly functioning mind cannot delve deeply enough to retrieve from it so much as a broken shard of memory.
I know I must have a name, but it is lost somewhere in that pit from which I came.
I know I must have a home, but I cannot think what it is called or what it looks like.
I have a mouth. Warm, heavy breaths rush past its dry lower lip. If I tried, I think I could speak. I know words.
One stands out from all others. Wellspring.
It causes my newly started heart to skip a beat, though I cannot guess why. Is this my first memory?
The other words which fill my head are different somehow. Their forms, their sounds, are alien, yet I grasp their meanings anyway. A vague sense tells me that these other words did not arise with me from the abyss. Here, at the surface, wherever here is, the words of an unfamiliar language waited, embedded in the tongue that goes with these unknown limbs, this flesh and blood and bone and breath that are mine and yet not mine.
I have eyes. I open them.
2. Cave
The red surface before me teems with dark, flitting shapes. I lie on my back, and the shapes are shadows set to dancing by the flickering red light cast on an irregular surface. Rock. I remember that I have a head and that heads are attached to necks which can be turned left and right. I employ that function to take in more of this place where my body finds itself.
I am not alone. Just beyond what I may now conceive as arm's reach, I see another man. The harsh red glare lights his profile as he sleeps serenely with arms by his sides. On my other side the same sight is repeated. All around me lie the dark, still forms of men, all similarly dressed, with arms and legs bare and torsos covered by dark armor, feet clad in high-laced sandals.
I do not know my name or where I have come from, but I gather based on their garb that these men are warriors. Reason, which I also find I possess, tells me that if I have awakened among warriors, I must likewise be one. Such conjecture fails to ring either true or false. I do not know myself.
I lift my head a little, finding it heavy, and see that the red light is cast by torches bracketed to the distant walls of a large cavern. Their flames are not the color I think fire should be, though I may be wrong. Over their hissing I hear another sound which I recognize as the echoing footfalls of someone moving toward me. Newborn instinct compels me to spring up and defend myself, but I am not yet capable. My new limbs are leaden.
A red-lit figure enters my field of vision, towering over me. I angle my eyes to look up at the arrival and find it to be a man similar in appearance to those lying inert around me. He crouches, putting his face over mine, and his upside-down smile suggests that he is pleased.
He sets a hand on my chest. I see it rather than feel it, since like him and all the rest, I wear a stiff breastplate.
"Welcome," he says. He whispers it, but the cavern turns it to a shout.
The spoken word sounds oddly foreign to me, but I understand it. After licking my lips and drawing fresh breath, I am able to answer.
"To where?" I return in the same tongue as he.
His smile fades. "A cave. Full of dead people. And a witch." He points. "We are not to disturb her."
The strangeness of his answer imbues m
e with the strength to sit up—almost. My new companion quickly slides an arm under my back and lends welcome assistance. Looking in the direction he pointed, past a dozen irregularly-spaced sleeping warriors, I see a woman sitting in a red-lit alcove. She is naked, her bare skin decorated with the finely painted characters of some arcane script. She kneels and gently sways, head lolling back and forth. Now and then her body jerks violently, as though a hot ember has landed on some part of her.
A second ago, I might have asked my companion how he knew she was a witch, but having seen her myself, there is no need; I would have guessed. I also would not dream of disturbing her, with or without his warning.
Something else my companion has said piques my more immediate interest.
"Dead?" I ask. I turn my gaze back to the cavern floor around us and know instantly that he is right. These men and a few women around me are not just sleeping.
He nods grimly. "One by one, we return to life." I surmise from his tone that he is only slightly less mystified by the occurrence than I. "I say return, but..." He hesitates, mouth twisting in thought.
Guessing the cause of his hesitation, I finish for him: "These bodies are not our own."
My companion's eyes, pink in the unnatural firelight, suggest I have stolen his thought. "We all felt thus."
I accept the hand he offers to help me rise and take another look around the cavern at the warrior-corpses on the floor. All lie on their backs, heads facing a common direction, arms straight by their sides. Someone has deliberately laid them—us—out. There are more than twenty bodies at present, but large swaths of empty space suggest there were at one time many more.
I draw the conclusion that the missing bodies already have risen and are the others to which my companion refers.
"Where did the rest go?" I ask.
He brings my attention to a dark spot at one end of the cavern. "The tunnel. I am to wait for four of you to rise. You are the second. When we number five, four will leave while the last remains here to greet the next batch of four, as I have done."
"Second?" My eyes sweep the chamber, but the only other presence to catch my eye is that of the witch, who frightens me and thus does not long hold my gaze. She is lost in her trance, and I wish it to remain that way. I see nothing else of note, but the cavern is large and its walls alive with pulsing shadows capable of hiding much.
"This way." My companion leads me toward the tunnel mouth. "I don't suppose you have a name," he asks as we pick our way over and between corpses. His hopeless tone tells me what answer he expects.
"No," I tell him, fulfilling expectation.
"None of us did. One man knew a few words in some other language than this one we seem inclined to speak. Another had visions of the sea."
"I know such a word," I inform him, proudly. It is a stupid thing to be proud of. "Wellspring. Does it have meaning to you?"
He ponders for the space of a few steps. "I understand it," he concludes. "A place to get water. Does it mean more to you?"
"I know not," I admit. "I suppose it must."
We reach a boulder not far from the black tunnel mouth. There, in its shadow, sits a figure clad as we are, in armor. Its back is against the big rock, greave-shielded shins drawn up beneath a pensively drooping chin. The chin is delicate, as are the limbs. A female.
She looks up, our eyes meet, and I freeze. Even in the faint crimson glow, and even in these bodies which are not our own, I know her.
Syllables form on my tongue. I cannot resist speaking them.
"Ayessa." The sound fills the cavern.
Like all the dead I have seen, she is physically beautiful. Her hair, which is tied back, is of some dark shade. Her eyes, their color unidentifiable in the low, flickering light, are wide and reflective over smooth cheeks that glow softly pink in the torchlight. It is not the face of the Ayessa I once knew, even if I cannot recall what other face she once wore. It is not her face that I know, not even her eyes, but it is her, of that I am sure. It is some power other than sight which informs me, something within her which screams out to me and makes me want to weep. With joy, I think, but maybe something else, too.
The woman I have named as Ayessa stares up at me, cold and confident. She evaluates me as a stranger might, her look containing no recognition. I blink a few times and realize that she is a stranger. We have no memories, and so what else can we be but strangers to anyone, including ourselves?
Yet I know her, I feel certain. Not only that. She is important to me... or was.
"Is that her name?" our male companion asks excitedly. "How do you know it?"
"That is her name," I say. "I know no more than that." The admission deflates me.
Our guide grabs the woman's arm and urges her to her feet, making her face me. Frowning, she complies. "Look at him," he insists. "If he knows your name, then maybe you know his. Think!"
She looks, and I think I catch a glimmer of something in her red-lit eyes, but she only shakes her head.
"Speak that word of yours to her," our companion suggests.
My chest constricts. I swallow to prepare my throat to speak the word which I suddenly feel certain must pertain to her: "Wellspring."
Ayessa's expression does not change, but a minute movement draws my eyes downward, where I see both hands ball into fists. Her jaw tightens. A heartbeat later, she relaxes, slowly shaking her head once more in defeat.
"Ah, well," our companion sighs. "At least one of us has a name. Perhaps another who has gone ahead will have one for me."
"Crow."
It is Ayessa who says this, the first word I have heard her speak. It is in the other language, the fragmentary one which has come up with us from the abyss, not the alien one in which we are comfortably and fluently conversing. I only stare at her red lips in wonder, picturing a black bird, until she answers our companion's quizzical look.
"Your hair," she explains to and of him. I look again and notice what I had not bothered to until now, that the man's hair is long and sleek and darker than Ayessa's. His appearance does call to mind that of the bird she named. Ayessa adds, in a tone just short of insult, "That, and you won't stop cawing."
The target of her annoyance laughs, a sound which graces the ears in this place of the dead. "Crow," he muses. "I suppose it will do until a better one comes along."
He turns sharp, appraising eyes on me. I know his intent and stop him with a raised hand.
"I will take no name," I tell him. "None other than the one which is truly mine."
Crow shrugs and yields to my wish. Ayessa resumes her seat. It is she who must be the one to give me my name, as I gave her hers. But for now, her lips remain sealed.
There is not much else for us to talk about, we whose present lives can be measured in minutes. And so we sit silently, each delving blindly into the abyss within, endeavoring to drag forth whatever might drift into reach. That is what I do, at any rate, with no success. I am compelled to stare at Ayessa, but manage to resist, mostly.
It is not long before the painted witch in her alcove spasms and groans, which Crow tells me is the sign of a new awakening. We scan the cavern floor and see a corpse begin to stir. Crow brings him to join us. He is a big man, a head and a half taller than me, with arms as thick as Ayessa's thighs. He has no name and no memory, and looking into his dark eyes stirs nothing inside me.
We require only one more to make our five, and within a short while we have him. After the customary non-introductions, Crow instructs that man in the task which had been his until now: wait for four more to rise, do not bother the witch, and pass along this task to the last among you.
For Crow, myself, Ayessa, and the hulking one, the dark tunnel mouth awaits.
3. Hades
The tunnel winds sinuously up and up on a gentle incline. In exerting ourselves, we begin to notice how warm it is. Beads of sweat slide down my temple from my hair which, unlike Crow's, is cut short. Hissing red torches line the rough walls, but their wide spacing gives u
s long stretches of total darkness to traverse. When there is light, I look past the sweat-sheened shoulder of Crow, who marches in front of me, toward Ayessa. I stare at her and reach deep within for understanding of what she might mean to me. Nothing comes, but I sense, I feel, that in another existence, in other flesh... I loved her. If that is so, and as we walk I grow ever more certain that it is, then I must find a way to awaken the same feelings that surely must dwell within her.
I know even less how to accomplish that than I know what lies at the end of this tunnel that twists and turns and bears us ever upward, never forking or offering us a choice of this way or that. We have been told, second- or third- or ninth-hand, that we are to ascend. Not one of us suggests doing otherwise. The only other choice is remaining below, and even forgetting the presence of the witch, our desire to know who we are, why we are here, and where here is, is too great to consider refusing.
The air in the tunnel grows hotter. A faint wind pushes fresh, dry heat into our faces. I am about to make this observation to the others, the first words that any of us will have spoken in a long while, when we round a bend and behold what can only be the end of our journey. It is an oval of light, bright and steady unlike that of the torches. We pause, bunching up in the tunnel, damp shoulder to damp shoulder.
Ayessa is first to venture forward. We follow, fanning out two and then four abreast as the tunnel broadens. The new light is a pale pink streaked with other colors: purple, white, orange. A sky? I possess no clear memory of having seen the things called sunrise and sunset, but somehow I know of them. Is that what this is? Hope quickens my step. We all move faster, eager to see and learn.
The tunnel floor steepens and becomes jagged, and we climb. Displaced rocks tumble down behind us. Reaching the slope's crest, we stop.
And we stand and stare, struck with awe.
When I am again able to think, I know with certainty that even if, as I suspect, I have lived once before, or even a hundred times before, nothing in my experience resembles the vista before me. The luminous expanse of colored streaks is indeed a sky, but spread under it is a barren, cracked plain of black rock across which rivers of fire slither like glowing veins or the branches of a skeletal, burning tree. All around that plain, towering mountains rise up, some spewing flame from fang-like peaks. It is as if some great fire-serpent rose up from the depths to swallow a mouthful of the earth but stopped halfway, leaving the land stuck in its petrified maw forever ruined.
