Gods old and dark

by Holly Lisle

  "Something big," the man thrown from the mirror said. "Something bad."

  But Heyr knew the Sentinel wouldn't have the experience to know how big, or how bad. Heyr did. The keth had arrived in Cat Creek.

  Mjollnir, his mighty war hammer, knew the keth and sang a warning on his hip, humming blood and death and destruction to the dark gods, hungry to fly again against the wasting of worlds. Mjollnir remembered the keth from other places, other times, from fair fields and tall cities in worlds that were now airless cinders, lost to the life they had once harbored.

  Heyr knew the keth, too. They were first feeders, moving into virgin worlds and planting the first crops of death and destruction and shaping the energy of their target worlds, carving channels and beds for the river of poisoned energy that flowed from upworld. They were a long way from their chosen hunting grounds here. So they'd been sent.

  Keth were worse even than the rrôn. Hot blood ran through rrôn veins, and mortal rrôn were different from rrôn dark gods. Mortal rrôn hated the rrôn dark gods. But the keth were cold not by the magic of their resurrection rings, but by their very natures. Insectile. Passionless. Mortal keth were different from the keth dark gods only in that they were easier to get rid of. Marginally. Heyr had loathed the keth on every world where he'd stood against them. Bloodless, relentless, free from both anger and hope, and incapable of comprehending grief or fear or loss, they knew only that they had goals, and that they would let nothing stand between them and those goals. Heyr would rather fight a swarm of rrôn alone than a single keth.

  Three of them moved toward town, walking along a side road. He tried to imagine what Cat Creek's farmers and teachers and schoolkids would do if they saw keth, but then he realized it didn't matter. Any who came within reach of the keth would die—the monsters would suck the life from chance-met humans with a touch, then move on. The keth were in no hurry. Why should they be? They had no reason to think any on this world could stand against them. He'd been in seclusion for years, having given up hope. Any other true immortals who remained in spite of the pain—and Heyr knew only of Loki, who had no choice—had done the same. The keth dark gods had every reason to believe the road between them and Lauren lay clear.

  They were following the trail of living magic, probably in the same fashion that Heyr had.

  Heyr said, "The keth are here. Three of them. They've come to destroy Lauren and stop what she's trying to do, and we have to stop them."

  Eric stared at him. "They've come to stop Lauren. Lauren, who has been sneaking behind our backs causing God only knows what sort of problem in the worldchain. Lauren, who is working with her dead-and-magically-revived sister. Lauren, whose parents were traitors, and who is supposed to be our gateweaver but who now looks like she may very well be a traitor, too. She's the one we're supposed to throw ourselves on this grenade for? Why? More importantly…how? We're not warriors, and the keth are gods. Magic works for them here."

  Heyr said, "It works for me here, too—and for you as well, if I give you gifts. I wish I had the time to give you all of them…" He stared at Eric, thinking, Yes, he might do. Maybe some of these others, as well. Maybe, depending how they fought, and he'd know that in far too little time. The little bit of hope that Lauren had stirred expanded. If any of these survived the coming encounter, he might make them an offer that had not been made on this world in a thousand years. "As for why—think of this. Have the keth ever come in search of you?"

  "No," Eric said.

  "Of course they haven't. Because you and your little group here pose no danger to their plans. You talk about trying to hold a line. Well, you've been holding that line for hundreds of years, and the Night Watch has never deigned to come after you. Because while you could matter, you have chosen until now not to matter. None of the Sentinels has ever posed a danger to the Night Watch's plans. At best, you have slowed down their work a bit. At worst, you've kept the damage from dark magic minimized long enough that the population on the world had time to build, giving them a juicier treat when finally it falls. They don't look at you as enemies or threats. You are the subject of their occasional entertainment and common amusement. But Lauren has been weaving her connections of live magic between the worlds for only a few months, and already she has brought to this world a force unlike any that has been here for thousands of years. Because what she is doing is working. She is a genuine threat to the Night Watch and everything they desire."

  He glared down at Eric.

  "You were talking about a fight worth fighting. About being right—about fighting for home and faith and family. This is that fight. She's going to save this world if you can just save her. Can you see now, little man, why she is worth fighting for?"

  Eric said nothing. Heyr had not expected a response, though. He pointed to Pete. "Go. Get her and the child, and drive them away from here. Drive them north. Head to the closest large town, find someplace busy and crowded, and stay there. Leave your pocket-gate behind, and anything else that links you to magic. Be, for a while, invisible. Use no gates and no magic to reach her, and none to see how we're faring here—the keth will be watching for you and her. They don't know who or where she is yet. But if she's here, it will not take them long to find her."

  Pete nodded. He didn't ask questions; he just ran. Good man. He was a warrior, and Heyr hated to send him away—but Lauren would need someone strong at her side if things did not go well.

  He turned to the rest of the Sentinels. A sorry lot, all of them—girls and old women, and men who'd never held a sword. If he'd had his grand idea a day or two earlier, if he'd had a week…But he hadn't, and the best he was going to be able to do was to hand them good weapons and hope they would hold their ground. They would run in the face of trouble, most of them.

  He needed to make sure that any who stayed would fight effectively. Heyr knew he had no hope of winning against three keth by himself. He was immortal in a way they were not—he was unkillable unless they took the whole world with him, or surrounded him, used their mind commands on him, and lured him through a gate. If they outnumbered him and caught him that way, he'd be done.

  But these people could at least provide a distraction to let him get the jump on the keth. The keth were dark gods, not immortals. They could be killed.

  He frowned, thinking. The Æsir had always kept weapons hoards tucked away against need—spelled blades like the one he had given Lauren, weapons with which a mortal could fight a god and hope to win, or at least battle to a draw. Such weapons had not been needed on Earth for a very long time, though; Earth had been edging toward death, and most of the dark gods had moved out of the way of the pending explosion. All the really great battles were being fought on the frontiers—worlds down and away from Earth and its pending collapse. And most of the Æsir had followed the dark gods and the good fighting, and had, not inconsequently, given themselves a reprieve from the hellish, constant pain of being an immortal on a dying world.

  Heyr—in his immortal aspect as Thor—loved humankind and loved Earth. When the majority of the Æsir moved on, he had gritted his teeth and stayed behind. Loki had remained behind, too, bound to the Earth as punishment for killing Balder. The last Heyr had heard, Loki was still maintaining a good hoard of up-to-date weapons. Heyr loved his war hammer, and could appreciate a well-tempered blade; Loki preferred words, but when words wouldn't do, he liked a good machine gun.

  At that moment, Heyr was willing to see things Loki's way. "Give me your gate for a moment," he said to the Sentinel who had moved back into it.

  The man moved out of his way, and Heyr let himself slide all the way into his Thor aspect. He pressed a hand to the surface of the mirror and concentrated on Loki, who'd been playing somewhere in Russia the last he'd heard.

  And there Loki was—stirring up trouble with somebody's stockpiled warheads. Loki felt the gate open, though, and looked up, surprised, from tinkering with something electronic in a bomb casing. And when he saw who stood on the other side of the
gate, a wide grin split his face.

  "Thor!"

  "I need to get into the Æsir hoard."

  "Really? Put together a band of heroes for the last stand, have you?"

  "No. We have keth. And I need to be able to work with what I have."

  "Keth?" Loki dropped the screwdriver into the innards of the bomb and stood up. He turned and to someone outside of Heyr's field of vision, said, "Finish this shipment. I'll be back shortly." Then he turned to Heyr. "I'll open the hoard for you from there."

  "You're coming here?"

  "You have keth." Loki grinned and pressed his hands into the green fire, and Heyr stepped back, and Loki stepped through the gate into Cat Creek. "I owe the keth a bit of payback."

  Like Heyr, he'd dropped his Æsir seeming for human form. Like Heyr, he hadn't bothered to alter much about his old appearance. He still looked like a fox—pointed features, sly eyes. Heyr said, "You haven't changed much."

  "I am change," Loki said, grinning, and added, "And from the looks of things, you haven't changed at all. Tromping around in your god-suit among the mortals, and coming to me for help when things get tricky." Then his grin died a little. "Keth, eh? What the fuck are they doing here?"

  "Live magic has found its way back to this world. I assume they've come to stop that at the source."

  All humor dropped away from Loki, and he stood straight and grew tall, reaching back for the Æsir form he had worn for so long. "After all this time, someone has found the way to revive the worldchain?"

  "Yes."

  "This world might yet be saved?"

  "Yes."

  Loki turned without another word and put his hands flat on the surface of the mirror, and worked the gate around until he'd lined it up with a mound of dirt. He moved the gate forward so that it intersected the mound, and finally moved green fire through earth and stone and metal layers to get to open space. He reached in and started pulling things out and handing them to Heyr.

  "These are good—all automatic, unlimited ammo, nonjam mechanisms. Combination spelled and mundane projectiles: No matter what the keth are carrying, something in here is bound to get through. Shields—slap 'em on your people so they'll have some protection from the incoming. I don't have any idea what the keth are fighting with these days—last I heard the biggest batch of them was eight worlds down—" He paused while he fought something big and bulky through the gate, twisting it at the last minute to make it fit and backing up so that this acquisition dropped onto the wood floor with a heavy thunk. Heyr could hear the wood floor cracking beneath it. "And I didn't think any of them ever came here anymore."

  That was Loki. Nothing shut him up.

  "Until now, they haven't had a reason."

  "Live magic." Loki turned and studied the Sentinels, and looked at Heyr with the disbelief clear on his face. "By nearsighted Odin, Thor, you used to be able to pick heroes. What the hell are you doing here? Scrawny men and little girls and old ladies!"

  "They're Sentinels," Heyr said.

  "They could be town criers for all I care and they'd still—" His expression changed; an eyebrow flicked up and down fractionally, the eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. "Sentinels-capital-S?"

  "Yes."

  "Which explains why the maiden aunties over there didn't faint dead away when I came through the gate. Hello, ladies," he said. "We boys need to go kill keth now, but I'll bed any of you Thor hasn't gotten to once we get back, and those of you he has that he left disappointed." He grinned.

  Heyr rammed Loki in the ribs.

  "Whaaaaat?" Loki turned to him.

  In a whisper, Heyr said, "I just got here yesterday."

  Loki's smile turned wicked. "You just got here…so the whole field is ripe for the plowing?" he whispered back. "In my friend's defense," he said loudly, "I'll point out that it isn't the size of a man's hammer that matters, but what he does with it." Then he picked up a handful of weapons and shields, and started distributing them.

  Heyr muttered, "That line wasn't funny in Asgard."

  Loki laughed. "You never thought so, anyway."

  One of the old women stepped up to Loki and said, "We're fighting, too."

  Loki laughed.

  She insisted. "We've fought before. Recently. A lot of our people died, but not us. We know how to use weapons like these—we've used them downworld. We won't run."

  Heyr liked her. She would have made a good Valkyrie if she were younger, he thought.

  Loki seemed less impressed. But he handed the woman a shield and a weapon, and watched, amusement plain on his face, as she slipped into the shield harness like a veteran. Heyr watched her, too, with less cynicism. The older ones might not be as useless as they'd looked. Jury was still out on the younger ones.

  They armed quickly, and Loki said to Heyr, "Where are Tanngrísnir and Tanngnjóstr? We're going to need them to carry the big stuff."

  Heyr whistled, and from far off heard the great goats bellow a reply. Disguised as his pickup truck, they would meet him in the parking lot. He and Loki grabbed the heavy box, the Sentinels picked up their weapons, and everyone headed out the door. The gate stood unguarded, but the Sentinel whose watch it had been did close the gate by tossing a pebble through it before jogging down the steps after the rest of them.

  Heyr's truck spun into the parking lot on its own, spraying gravel everywhere and skidding to a stop an inch in front of him. He grinned; the goats were eager, and not too resentful of their current shape.

  "Everyone in the back," he told them, and the Sentinels complied. He caught some flashes of fear, and some doubt about this whole mission as well, but these were good people led by a good man. They had a feel for what was important. He knew of battle-hardened warriors who would have stood arguing with him if presented with the same situation, who would have wasted his time in questions.

  These grim-faced people just settled into the truck bed, weapons in front of them and pointed up, and watched as he and Loki loaded the big box into the back with them.

  He jumped into the driver's seat, Loki took the passenger seat in the cabin, and they took off.

  "What's in the box?" Heyr asked.

  "Something I've been playing with. I don't know how useful it will be, but I don't think it will hurt. It's a spell I put together that dampens the energy waves of dark magic and amplifies the energy waves of live magic."

  Heyr glanced over. "We won't be using it."

  Loki sighed. "You have to get over this aversion of yours for progress."

  "You don't know it's progress. It's untried, right? It could prove to be a disaster. It could be our undoing."

  "It could. But it won't. Trust me on this."

  Heyr laughed. "I cannot trust you, Brother Fox. Trust stands outside the door of the hall we share, having been beaten to a bloody pulp by your cudgel, and he will not come inside."

  "Forget Balder, would you? That was then; this is now. And situations have changed. I'm chained to this damned rock forever; I have a vested interest in seeing that it survives. For Sigyn, as well as for myself. There are times when I think I could embrace death readily enough if not for her. But I want her to have her immortality, and I want to share in it with her—even if we must spend it here. She gave up so much for me. She bears this eternal pain for me, in spite of being free to leave at any time."

  Heyr said, "Nonetheless, while we are allies sometimes and friends often enough, we'll stick with the weapons we know will work."

  "Ragnarok still stands between us, doesn't it?"

  Heyr concentrated on locating the keth, searching for them with senses attuned to their presence and their hunger. He didn't waste much thought on Loki's question. "As long as Asgard is a dead cinder, Ragnarok is not an issue. If this girl we fight to protect survives to revive Asgard and Jotunheim and Niflheim and the other upworlds, then things change. Then Ragnarok may yet come to pass. I know the Midgard Serpent still exists, but he and I will not again share a world until my hall is restored to me, and the branches
and roots of the world tree do not wither and die."

  "And yet, I would that you trusted me—that you knew we stood on the same side."

  "We don't. Or at least, we won't. Not at the end."

  They looked at each other, friends who shared a long past and, somewhere very far off, a dark future.

  Heyr added, "And if we succeed in stopping these keth—if we succeed in stopping the Night Watch here and eventually holding them off long enough to reverse the dying of this world—we both take one step back to our own foretold dooms."

  Loki nodded. "And yet, I find myself wondering often if that doom, like other dooms, might not be rewritten. If the future the hag saw was, perhaps, only the shadowing of frontworlds or sideworlds, and not a true telling of the coming events of our own."

  Heyr felt his truck slowing down of its own accord. Tanngrísnir and Tanngnjóstr felt the presence of the keth ahead. They would stop far enough in front of their path to permit Heyr to deploy his warriors. He touched gloved fingertips to Mjollnir, which shivered eagerly at his hip, and said, "And if you could rewrite your own future by betraying mine—though we are friends—I do not doubt for a moment that you would do it."