The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1)

by Lentz, P. K.

  Not long after, they leaped from Wellspring's deck and fell side-by-side on their backs in hot sand. But they both knew, quite quickly, that this was no lush land of legend. It was a small, rocky island with sparse vegetation, no sign of human habitation, and no life apart from broad-winged, soaring seabirds. Its perimeter could be walked in the space of a day, which is how they spent their second one there. During the course of the walk, they spotted another, larger island to the north and made the choice to sail for it.

  This new island was better suited to life than the first, although there was scant presence of animals and no indication any folk had lived here in past or present. Thamoth took his bow from the ship's hold and fired a few arrows at the seabirds in the hope of tasting something other than fish for the first time in too long. But he always missed, and soon gave up, so that their diet on land did not much change from their time at sea. Fortunately, there was a small lake from which fresh water flowed in a stream down to the sea, and it was beside this body that Thamoth built a small shelter. They did not speak right away of how long they would remain; they simply shared an unspoken understanding that after so much time confined to Wellspring, they should be in no rush to leave. They had, after all, their whole lives to spend.

  The forty days which followed were rather pleasant, though neither could quite put out of mind a yearning for something more. Ayessa in particular became subject to bouts of melancholy. She fought them, in part, by practicing with Thamoth's bow. Before the forty days were up she had become his equal in marksmanship, and finally she surpassed him, at least insofar as achieving what he had not, putting a sea bird over their cooking fire. The prince celebrated his wife's accomplishment as readily as if it were his own, or more.

  It was only a few days later that Ayessa caught him gazing into the setting sun and understood what was on his mind.

  "You wish to leave," she declared. Her certainty was well-justified.

  The prince sighed and forwent denial: "I cannot ask that of you. You are happy here."

  She let a silence settle before saying, quietly, "I'm not."

  Thamoth felt a pang of sadness on her behalf. But he had not time to come up with words of comfort before she spoke again, deepening his sorrow.

  "I've no wish to pass my life here on this island," she said. "No more than I wish to pass it at sea in search of a land we may never find, or which may prove no better than this. I want to go home."

  Thamoth sat a short while in silence, throat constricted, jaw set, eyes locked on horizon. At last, unsure what to say, he rose and stalked off.

  For a day, Thamoth brooded. For him, there were but two options available, he knew: sail on to the west or remain here. Atlantis was lost to him, forever. But not to her. She had chosen exile, and would be welcomed back. Out of pity, Thamoth contemplated sailing her back to the coast, then leaving again on his own.

  Pity's cousin, contempt, made him dismiss it. Was Ayessa so weak of heart, so capricious of spirit, that she could not face the unforeseen consequences of her own choices? And why had she not foreseen them? If Atlantis was so dear to her, if she could not live apart from it, why had she sat there through his building of Wellspring? Why had she set foot upon it in the harbor? Why had she answered him, day after day after day, when he asked her if she would leave with him, Yes,yes, yes?

  And did she love him so little?

  No, it was not his responsibility return her. It was hers to live with the choice she had made.

  Thamoth sat alone thinking these thoughts. Then, returning to their camp, he saw Ayessa's face and his heart softened. The harsh lecture he had planned flew from his mind, and he said instead, "I will take you back, if that is your wish."

  Ayessa kissed his eyes and his mouth, and they stood for a long time in a warm embrace. She whispered in his ear, a quaver in her voice, "No. West. We will go west."

  In his heart, Thamoth knew. He knew she did not mean it. But he could not bring himself to protest, and so once more, days later, with their stock of fresh water replenished, they sailed into the unknown. The island fell out of sight behind them, and for twenty days at open sea, they smiled and were good to one another.

  Happiness did not last. Words again grew scarcer between them. By the fortieth day, they rarely spoke, and by the sixtieth, any words they did share were either cold or heated, never warm. Ayessa, who had long swallowed her regrets, began to voice them loudly. And Thamoth, who had swallowed his words of contempt for his bride, let them freely fly.

  On their seventieth day since leaving the island, with their fresh water two thirds gone, the prince made a simple, brutal observation. "It would have lasted longer had I left you behind on the island."

  "You could always push me overboard," Ayessa suggested bleakly, blankly. Once it had been her custom to meet insult with insult, threat with threat, but of late she had grown increasingly detached.

  "True," Thamoth cruelly mused. "I wonder if you would drown first or be eaten by sharks?"

  Ayessa replied quietly, eyes unseeing: "Either is preferable to the pain you cause me." The prince, finding no answer to this, offered his wife water, which she refused. She asked of her prince, or of the vast ocean, "Can we not find love again?"

  That night they went to bed, as had become their custom, on opposite sides of the small cabin. But sometime during his sleep Thamoth was awakened by her presence at his side. At first he assumed her up to no good, trying to kill him or such, but she only put her arms around him and lay at his side. At first, he permitted it. Then he welcomed it, planting a kiss on her forehead at the hairline before drifting back to sleep, rocked by the hand of the waves outside Wellspring's hull.

  Alone and cold, Thamoth awakened. It took him a moment to note an absence in the bed by his side, another moment to conclude that the warm presence had been no dream: Ayessa really had come to him in the night.

  He looked around and found no sign of her in the hold. For the first time in many long days, Thamoth found himself eager for her presence instead of longing to be freed from it.

  Energized by hope, he climbed to the deck, into the bright early sun. But he did not find her there. Hope died, heart sank. There was no place on the tiny craft to hide, but he hunted again anyway above and below. He screamed her name aloud and in desperation scoured with his eyes every inch of every deep blue wave from horizon to horizon.

  Ayessa was gone.

  There was no question where. She had given herself to the sea.

  No... he had cast her there himself, by leaving her no other choice, no other avenue of escape from this prison crafted with his own hands.

  That day, Wellspring became his own prison, and like a prisoner he paced its deck for hours, making and unmaking the decision to throw himself into the sea after his bride. In the end, though grief tore at his breast, he did not. He forced himself to drink water and eat and stay alive, a shadow of himself, a shadow of a man.

  One day, in a rasping, madman's voice he cried out over the boundless sea, "Ayessa! Death shall be as no barrier to us! I shall come for you!"

  29. Deluge

  While Thamoth lived, he was still a prince. In one of the many dark, endless days before the last drop of his fresh water was depleted, his fevered mind decided what his course must be. If he survived, he would return to Atlantis—her city, their city—and reclaim the throne which should have been his and the palace in which Ayessa should have dwelt in comfort as mother to princes. He would do this in her name.

  But he could not turn back, for the islands they had left were by now far out of range. He could only press on west and hope that land met him. And so he sailed, but did not hope hard, for each day that passed made life and death look more or less equal in his salt-filled, half-open eyes.

  Eventually, after days without water, his strength failed, and he slipped into darkness.

  Some time later, he returned to consciousness, drawn by a familiar sound that made him think for a moment that his exile had been but
a nightmare.

  It was a gull's cry. Thamoth cracked his eyes and saw the bird pass over, wings outstretched against a blue, cloud-filled sky. Dragging his carcass to the rails, he spied distant trees and nearer still, a sandy beach, and he found it in his limbs to guide the ship ashore before blacking out face down in the sand.

  When next he awoke, he ventured inland, sometimes crawling, in search of water. He found it, drinking with cupped hands from a babbling stream. In the days which followed he took little notice of this new land in which he found himself, the one which presumably was the one he had dreamed of discovering. Now he had it in his mind only to return home and seize back his stolen throne, else die trying and thus rejoin his bride. It scant mattered which.

  He was anxious to set sail but knew that he first needed his health, so he ate and drank and rested for days, checked every inch of Wellspring to ensure she was seaworthy, refilled the pots in her hold with fresh water, and finally abandoned the undiscovered shore with scarcely a backward glance. Purpose written firmly in his heart, he cleaved the same sea he had so ruinously crossed once already, the one which had swallowed Ayessa. Each day, he renewed his vow to her, to recapture the city of her birth in her honor, and thereafter to follow her soul through the very abyss of death.

  On reaching the uninhabited islands, he stopped only for a night and then sailed on, the taste of brine in his mouth taking on the metallic tang of blood, that of the usurper Ozymondros who had driven him to this fate. In truth, it was he who had murdered Ayessa, just as he had murdered Thamoth's father and mother and brother.

  There was no evidence, but he needed none. It was simply so.

  He reached the coast north of Atlantis, burned Wellspring as though it were the forever lost body of his love, and entered the city on foot, where he found that none recognized him on account of his unshaven, sun-baked face and wild, haunted eyes. Using such disguise to his advantage, he gathered information. Ozymondros, it happened, was not as well-loved by his people as king as he had been as chancellor. The sea's bounty, already in decline by the time of Thamoth's father's murder, had fallen lower still. Some days, the dockside markets were all but empty, and families starved for lack of fish. Rain came too rarely, turning green fields brown and grazing lands into deserts.

  When the time was right, Thamoth carefully revealed himself to several of those who had been closer to his father than to Ozymondros. They, in turn, spread word to others whose loyalty and secrecy was assured.

  Then, one morning, the earth shook. A crack appeared in the Dome of Kings. The hundred secret backers of Thamoth took this as an omen, and chose it as their moment to act. Within the hour, Thamoth, well groomed and shaven and looking like the rightful heir that he was, appeared before the palace at the head of his hundred fighters, plus three times that number of supporters freshly let in on the secret. He called upon Ozymondros to peacefully yield the throne.

  A crowd gathered, thousands strong. Most of them cheered the prince's return on account of the omen just witnessed and how difficult the earth and sea and sun had made their lives since the present king's ascension. When Ozymondros appeared, guards at his side, it was not to yield but to denounce Thamoth and order his arrest. The order was not immediately carried out; it could not be, for too much of the city had come to the prince's side.

  Still, Ozymondros was not without his own supporters and fighting men, and it was they who yet occupied the palace complex. At noon, with the two sides at impasse, the earth shook again in a second portent . No sooner was the ground steady once more under their feet than Thamoth's men stormed the palace gates.

  Great was the bloodshed, greater than this peaceful city had known in generations, as Atlantean slew Atlantean. For an hour they fought, Thamoth's rebels making their way to the great throne room and seizing it. Thamoth himself chased Ozymondros up a winding stair to the palace roof, and there, with gazes drawn seaward, they froze in terror.

  On the horizon, the ocean had risen in a great swell, a wall of blue dwarfing palace, Dome, king, and prince, and in an instant, both understood: while men had started this conflict, the sea would end it. They both were to be swallowed, along with the city they vied for the right to rule.

  Others saw the great wave, too, and their screams filled the sky. Thamoth tore his eyes from the oncoming doom to look again at the usurper, who remained transfixed. They could not have more than minutes left to live, he knew, and so he made a swift decision. Lifting his sword, he ran Ozymondros through the neck. With that act, the prince's vow was at least partly fulfilled: Atlantis was conquered and the usurper dethroned, even if the new king was never to enjoy a proper coronation.

  Ozymondros, fated to be a great city's last ruler, slid to the stone with blood gurgling in his pierced throat. His killer dropped his bloody blade, threw arms wide and waited for the deluge to take him. He knew that Ayessa was within that wave. The sea was sending her home, into his arms. He would be with her again in the sea, and if it was for men and women to walk the earth again after death, then they would do so side-by-side. So did he swear in his final moments.

  The wave fell upon the city, tearing it asunder so that not one brick yet stood upon another. Half of its bones were strewn across the inland plains, the rest dragged back into the uncaring sea, forever lost

  30. Folkvang

  Amazingly, the great deluge does not crush me on impact. Instead, I am caught up in its irresistible current—drowning! I thrash my limbs in a wild struggle against the inevitable.

  Something is not right. My arms and legs move too easily. The resistance they meet is not that of water. And my world presently should not have direction, neither up nor down, but it does. There is some surface under my back, I come to realize. Something warm and soft cushions my head.

  I let my limbs fall slack. I open my eyes and find they do not flood with stinging ocean water. A woman looks down upon me. My head lies in her lap. I know her, but from where? From a dream or some other life besides the one just cut short by a wall of sea.

  As I stare, I remember. She is Gaeira, a woman of the Vanir: vengeance-seeker, bound by a vow of silence. I have seen her slay giants single-handed. I walked with her through the giants' realm of Jotunheim and across a shimmering bridge into Asgard.

  On a green hillside, I made love to her.

  But—no. I did no such thing. I tear my gaze, until now a blank-eyed stare, away from her face in sudden embarrassment.

  We did not make love. Why did I think we did?

  Memories begin to settle into place. I drank the waters of Mimir's Well. I experienced a vision of my past life, that of Thamoth, exiled prince of Atlantis, husband of—

  I do not wish to think of that now.

  The well has shown me other, more fleeting visions that are not of my past life, I realize. Laying naked with Gaeira was but one of them. There were others...

  I beheld a serpent so vast that a man can stand within its flaring nostril. Its leathern wings fill the sky. Drops of venom that fall from its yellow teeth leave villages aflame in the wake of its flight.

  I saw a swarm of monsters, endless in form, endless in number—the Myriad—rising up in a green land that is not Hades.

  I saw a one-eyed old man falling, falling, falling with nothing to stop him, his doom inevitable. It is Odinn. the All-Father, highlord of the Aesir.

  These visions worry me, but they are not the cause of the knot presently forming in the pit of my stomach. That is—

  "Ayessa..." I say aloud with the lips and voice of Ares' slain son Enyalios. "I must see her." I struggle to raise my head from Gaeira's lap.

  She makes no reply, naturally. The look she casts upon me is complex. Her sharp eyes, more expressive than I recall them in my mind's eye, contain a measure of pity, even if it is of a chill and hopeless variety. In drinking of the Well, I have defied Odinn's will, an act not without consequences. Whatever they might be, Gaeira's look manages to tell me she will not help me to evade them. Quite the contrary
. If required, she will force me to face justice, even if she does not relish the task. I am no son of Odinn like Baldr, entitled to deference from her.

  When I sit upright, Gaeira stands. I climb to own feet, unsteadily. She offers no aid.

  "I will face Odinn," I promise her. "I will pay his price. But first, please... you must take me to Ayessa."

  There is no change in Gaeira's expression, but somehow, in a blink of her eyes, the way she breathes, seemingly insignificant things which I see now are anything but, I detect her answer. She will take me to my last life's love, who is right to hate me. I do not yet know what I will say to her. Fortunately, I have much time to contemplate, for the return path is long. Absent the shining palm of Baldr, it is in total darkness that Gaeira leads me through the twisting passages of Yggdrasil's roots. With nothing on which to fix my eyes, I instead look inward, upon the scenes from my just-remembered past. They bring anguish.

  At length we emerge from the ground, into the World Tree's shadow and thence into light. It is twilight. Baldr's horse is gone; mine and Gaeira's wait. We mount them and ride. Even as dazzling vistas of Asgard fill my vision, my thoughts stay mired in the past. They will remain so, I know, until I have seen Ayessa and—

  Done what? Begged her forgiveness? What else is there, knowing that my cruelty drove her to take her own life.

  Gaeira rides swiftly, but I keep up. I understand now that indeed I was no horseman in life, for like all Atlanteans, I greatly favored sea over land. But Enyalios, I think, must have been a capable rider while he lived, and the skill yet resides in his flesh. It only took me some time to harness it.

  We ride through wood and plain to a stout, gray fortress upon a hill. Blazoned in blood-red across its great wooden gates is the image of a swooping eagle in profile, identical to that which Ayessa wore the last time I saw her. It can only be the hall of the Valkyriar. Baldr told me its name during one of his many stories as we rode: Folkvang.