Blackie patted her hand. “He’ll be fine. He was having a migraine induced by that noise, his ears are really sensitive even in human form.”
Linn nodded, reassured by this. She looked toward where Merrick was still sleeping. She’d let him rest as long as possible.
“What about me, then?”
“You have a hangover.” Blackie grinned when she glared at him. “Sorry, but you should have seen yourself last night, staggering and slurring. You were drunker than a skunk.”
“And just how...” Linn paused in thought.
“The power level in that room was off the charts. You were in there a long time, absorbing it. I think you got an overdose.” He sobered, the silly grin dropping away. “I was afraid it would hurt you, or even kill you, if you didn’t come out.”
Linn rubbed her head again. It was really hurting now. “I didn’t even realize it. Yeah, it felt funny, and I knew the power level was high, but...”
Blackie shrugged. “It was pretty subtle at first, yeah. But you were glowing after you came out.” He squinted at her. “You still glow, a lot brighter than normal.”
“I fixed the problem, I think. But I don’t think I fixed Mac’Lir’s problem.” She told him.
“How come?”
Linn turned over her palm and showed him the feather. It was flaring with a white light, pulsing with every beat of her heart. “Something’s happening, Blackie, and I don’t know what.”
Chapter 16
They both stared at her mark for a moment. It was kinda pretty, Linn had to admit, but she would prefer it on someone else.
“Do you...” Blackie asked slowly, “feel a direction?”
“Not really,” Linn shook her head. “But maybe if I stand up and move around?”
“I’ll wake Merrick.” Blackie got up.
“And I’ll fix breakfast.” Linn muttered. She pulled her pack out and spread a selection of water bottles, protein bars, and trail mix out on the flat column. Merrick looked a little bloodshot in the eyes.
“Sorry to wake you.” Linn held out a water bottle to him.
“Ungh.” He chugged the bottle and took a deep breath, then another. “Okay, I’m better.” He sat on the other side of the column and took a protein bar. “I suppose a hot breakfast is out of the question.”
“We’re roughing it.” Linn kept her face expressionless.
He looked around and chuckled. Blackie wolfed down his food.
“Why are you not in a hurry?” he asked Linn.
“Because practically the first thing Bes taught me was not to start on an empty stomach.”
“And how did he teach you that?” Merrick chased his protein bar with another water bottle and a handful of trail mix.
“By sending me out with no breakfast until I could catch my own.” Linn remembered that. It hadn’t been as easy to get a rabbit as the books made it out to be. She had been very hungry by the time she had one, late that evening.
Blackie was positively bouncing. “Are you ready now?”
She looked around the area, and picked up a scrap of wrapper. “Now I am.”
“Bes teach you to police your camp, too?”
“No, that was Grandpa Heff, when I was 7. He tanned my hide.” Linn rubbed her backside in reminiscence.
“You are not a normal girl,” Merrick proclaimed with a strong note of approval.
“Nope.” Linn started to walk toward the other side of the room, paying attention to her hand.
The fog was clear on the end of the room where they had come in. Linn could see the low archway of the tunnel mouth from here. They were perhaps halfway down the room, although... she turned and looked downward. There was a slight slope, but she couldn’t see how far it went.
“That way.” She pointed into the mist.
The boys followed her. Linn walked slowly, unwilling to rush into the unknown. Look how much trouble it had almost gotten her in already. Her head still ached. They proceeded down the wide main aisle. The columns she had originally thought were random did have a pattern. They were aligned in curving rows branching off the main aisle. Some were short, but more were tall. She took a detour.
“What are you doing?” Blackie crouched beside her. He’d stayed in human form this time.
“I want to figure out what these are, and maybe why some are different sized.” Linn pulled out her pocket knife and scraped off the frost.
“But...” He started.
“No.” Linn hit something metal, and chiseled off a lump of ice. “Black metal. Like the one over by the small room, but frosty. The short ones aren’t frosty. Why?”
Blackie didn’t answer, and she stood up and started to chip at the top. “I’m not running into the problem, this time. I need to know what this place is, and why we’re here.”
“Shouldn’t you be following your feather?” He pulled out a bigger knife and started to help her, and Merrick joined on the other side. Linn smiled down at the ice. He was giving in.
“When I see...” Linn felt the ice she was chipping at loosen, and with almost numb fingers, she lifted it away.
“Holy...” Merrick bit off whatever he was going to say. Linn just gasped, and Blackie was silent. They all stared at the face in the coffin.
It was still, calm, and very pale. A sheet of what looked like glass formed the top of the box he laid in.
“I wonder who he is... was.” Linn said finally.
“I think I know where the glass coffin came from in Sleeping Beauty.” Blackie murmured.
“What about the glass slipper?” Merrick asked.
Linn shot him a dirty look. This was no time for a joke. “That’s a mistranslation. It’s a fur slipper.”
She turned away from the man in the glass coffin and kept walking into the mist. Merrick caught up with her. “No glass? my childhood fantasies are shattered.”
Linn snorted. “Maybe it had glass beading.”
“So what is this place?” Blackie was looking all over at once, a sign he was spooked.
“Cryostasis.” Merrick and Linn said it at the same time.
“Jinx.” He grinned at her. She rolled her eyes, but let him talk. “Frozen and sleeping, would explain why Mac’Lir said he had been asleep, not just gone.”
Blackie nodded. Linn held up her hand for them to stop and shut up. They silenced immediately, and she smiled a little. She had them well-trained already. She listened hard. Silence. She became aware that she could actually hear their hearts beating, over her own.
“Um.” Linn took a deep breath. “I think that overdose made everything more... more.”
“What?” Merrick sounded confused.
Linn explained as they walked, about the room, and being drunk on power when she came out. “I think it's still affecting me. I can hear heartbeats.”
“Oh, is that all?” Merrick flashed a grin at her. “I can do that when I'm a wolf.”
Linn stuck her tongue out at him. So she missed what Blackie saw. “Hey, look at this!”
He'd swerved off the main aisle and was standing next to one of the columns. It was defrosted, and the lid was off, leaned up against it. “Maybe this is the one Mac'Lir was in.”
“It's the only one we've seen that isn't operational.” Merrick agreed, looking inside it. Linn was looking at one of the other coffins.
“Guys...” She breathed, finally, getting their attention away from the empty column. They came to see what she was looking at. The frost on this column was disturbed, almost the entire top cleared, with delicate crystals reforming over the glass. They didn't obscure the face of the beautiful girl inside, though. She was almost Linn's age, Linn decided, although with an immortal appearances could be deceiving. She lay on her side, like she was sleeping, wrapped in a blue cloak like she had lain down for a nap. Her blonde hair cascaded around her.
“I thought Snow White had black hair?” Blackie broke the long silence.
“Sleeping Beauty was blonde.” Linn muttered.
“
Neither. This must be Niamh of the Fair Hair.” Merrick took a half-step back. “Look.”
He pointed, and it took Linn a moment to realize what he was showing them. There were deep grooves in the frost that had accumulated around the base, and blood, in the grooves and droplets of it scattered and frozen into the ice.
“He tried to get her out and couldn't.” Merrick whispered, and Linn knew he was seeing it in his mind's eye, Mac'Lir clawing desperately at the icy coffin, trying to awaken Niamh and release her. She put her hand on his shoulder. His face was showing how shaken he felt at that mental image.
“So now we know why he sent us.” Linn wasn't sure they would be able to succeed, but this was definitely technology, and she had done all right so far.
Merrick shook his head. “No.”
“What? You don't want to get her out?” Linn was confused.
“I mean this isn't why he sent us. What does your feather say?” Merrick took her hand and looked at it. The mark was as bright as it had been.
“I don't really know. Maybe since I OD'd on the power? It's been bright since I woke up after that.” Linn was sure it hadn't been that bright before.
“Move around. Does it still tug at you? I'm sure he wouldn't have sent us, and said it was to save the world, if it was for his daughter. Not Mac'Lir.” Merrick nudged Linn back toward the main aisle, chivvying her away from Niamh like a sheepdog more than a wolf.
“All right, all right, I'm going.” Linn had to admit she did feel it, still tugging toward the depths of the mist. She looked back toward Niamh's coffin. They'd come back. She wasn't about to leave Mac'Lir's daughter, with his blood showing how hard he'd tried to get her out. Blackie caught up, and the three of them kept going.
The room widened, Linn thought, or the mist got thicker, it was hard to tell. She wondered, given the Sanctuary library shape, that of an eye. Maybe the beings called gods liked symbolic shapes? This could be a leaf, with the columns forming veins. She started to feel like she could see movement in the mist. It was making her jumpy, and she wasn’t the only one. They were walking in a tight group, now, and when Merrick stopped abruptly, pointing, she jumped.
“Look at that.” He led the way to the column. It was lumpy, unlike all the others, with something poking up from the top. Linn could see when they got near that it wasn’t in the coffin, or on it, but leaning up against it. A spear, with a leaf-shaped head, and under the frost, other things, although it was hard to make them out, white with the slow ice-build up.
Blackie pulled his pack out and started rummaging in it.
“What are you doing?” Linn asked curiously.
“Hang on... Aha!” He held up a small hatchet triumphantly. “This will be quicker than pocket knives and fingers.
“Wait!” Linn jumped toward him, but he had already swung full force, with the hammer side of the tool downward.
He was right, it did work better than the knives. The ice cracked, and some slid off at his feet.
“You idi-” Linn strangled her anger and lowered her voice from the shout. “You could have broken it. You might have killed whoever is in there. What were you thinking?”
She would have said more, but he wasn’t listening to her. He was standing very still, looking over her shoulder at the coffin. She’d pushed in-between him and it, before he could hit it again.
“What is it? Is something waking up and coming after me?” Linn was unnerved by the look on his face. Blackie shook his head.
Merrick spoke. “I think you ought to look at this, Linn.”
She turned around and looked down, into the face of a man she had never met. Gray, grizzled, with a beard that reached down to the hands folded over a small potbelly. But the significant feature was the leather eye-patch over one eye, with scarring showing as a clue to what did... or didn’t... lie behind it.
“Odin.” Blackie breathed, finally breaking from his trance. He stepped close, next to Linn. Leaning over the glass, he put his hand on it, over the tranquil face. “This is... this is fimbulwinter.”
“That was a legend. About the whole earth, and the reign of the ice giants-” Linn broke off. This was a cold place, of ice, and sleep... Maybe he was right.
Blackie looked around. “They are all here, then.”
“Most likely.” Linn looked at the rows of coffin columns. “All the gods who grew tired of life, retreated here, to sleep.”
“I wonder if they dream.” Merrick, standing on the other side, mused, looking down into the Norse god’s face.
Linn opened her mouth to say something about being frozen, and then closed it again. She knew the immortals were different. Just how different, she wasn’t entirely sure.
“We need to keep going,” she finally said, “this isn’t quite it.”
She was sure they were close, though. They returned to the main aisle, and when she moved, Linn could feel the tugging get stronger. She also started to see flickers out of the corner of her eyes, movements in the mist. That had stopped while they looked at Odin, she was sure. Was something following them, or was the slow movement of the fog around them playing tricks with her head?
Silently, they walked on. Linn turned her head to look behind them, and couldn’t see the far side of the room any longer. They were surrounded by the mist. She thought it was beginning to get brighter in front of them, though. She shivered, and then wondered if that was the chill, or tension.
It was much brighter, now, and she could see that there were lights, framing an archway. It wasn’t, they discovered as they walked up to it, in the wall of the room. Instead, it gleamed in solitary splendor, as they discovered, circling it.
“This is it.” Linn looked at her hand. It was back to being a faint glow, now they had reached their destination.
“What is it?” Blackie looked up. The top of the arch was just to the roof of the room. The fog seemed to hold back from it, leaving them standing in a circular open space, but Linn couldn’t feel any breeze.
“I think it’s a doorway.” Linn had noticed that none of them seemed inclined to walk through the arch. Blackie and Merrick had followed her lead in walking around it.
“A doorway to where? The high plane?”
Linn shook her head, getting closer to one of the legs of the arch. It was made of smooth metal, she thought, with an iridescent finish, and no markings at all. Tentatively, she reached out to touch it. It was warm, she thought, surprised, resting her whole hand on it. When it lit up, she jumped backward in surprise.
Slowly, symbols she knew from the computer and machine screens glowed to life on the arch, until the whole thing was alive with energy. It was vibrating, and she backed away, finding Blackie and Merrick right with her. She stopped at the edge of the mist, and watched as the empty air in the archway shimmered. Like a curtain, golden lights spilled from the top of the arch to the floor, shimmering. Then an image appeared.
“It’s a holograph.” Blackie said, taking a step forward. “How cool.”
The image was pretty amazing, Linn had to admit. A dragon’s head, metallic brown, the one eye showing closed, his chin resting on the floor as though he were asleep. Had it been real, on the other side of the arch, it could not have fit through it. The dragon’s skull was too big. Linn had a flash of insight.
“Oh.”
Merrick looked at her. “What is it?”
“Hang on a minute.” Linn walked back to the arch and knelt, looking for something. Failing to find it, she walked around the back, seeing the same image as the front. Perhaps the front was the back? Hard to tell orientation, but the back wall of the room was only ten feet behind her, with no columns to block movement through the arch, if it were a doorway, so this could well have been the front. At the other leg, she repeated her search. Merrick was right on her heels. Blackie was on the other side, for all she knew staring at the dragon still.
“What are you looking for? I could help look.” Merrick offered.
“No... I need you to keep an eye out.” L
inn bent down. It was hard to make out the metal surface with the lit symbols on it. She wasn’t sure touching it would shut it back down, and didn’t want to try, lest she start something.
“For what?” He sounded mystified, but looking up, she could see him turn slightly away from her and start scanning the area.
“Because I’m sure there’s something in the fog.” She looked back down. Aha!
“You saw that too?” He took a sideways step as she slid the computer case out of the stash place and onto the floor.
“I wasn’t entirely sure. But it bothered me.” Linn opened the computer and pressed the button. She rocked back on her heels to wait for it to boot. “I’m glad you saw it too.”
Blackie, just out of sight, made a noise. Linn jumped up, and Merrick turned just as Blackie walked around the column, looking angry.
The anger would be for the knife-blade to his throat. Held by a tall, thin man dressed in what Linn thought were Norse clothes, the knife pressed at the skin, and Linn could see Blackie was practically on tip-toes to try and keep away from it, his eyes very wide. He didn’t dare shift, she guessed, with the threat on him.
Linn took a deep breath, and spread out her hands to her sides, showing them empty. She hoped they didn’t look threatening, and was afraid they did, the sturdy Merrick behind her, no doubt glowering over her shoulder.
“Who are you?” Linn broke the silence after a long moment. “And what do you want?”
Chapter 17
The man frowned, his dark brows drawing very close together. Linn wondered how long he had been out of his coffin. There was no place else he could have come from. He spoke in a guttural language.
“I don’t understand you. Great. Stuck with a madman and no way to communicate. Blackie, don’t move!”
Blackie stopped his wiggle and glared at her. Linn glared back. Then she switched her gaze to the strange man, who had long black hair, tied back, a thin, clean shaven face, and vivid green eyes. She looked into the eyes for a moment, seeing a flicker of emotion cross his face.
The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) Page 13
