Grimnir grunted again in acknowledgement, and leaned to the side to pull a mattock from where it had cloven into the tree trunk. “The Northmen know their boats. Here. Try your own skill with a blade. If you’d like to fish, cut a solid length from those shrubs over there with this. The salmon are very big in this stream, and too slender a rod will snap on your first attempt.”
Aurelius looked more closely at Grimnir’s fishing rod and saw now that it was simply a length of hazel-wood, stripped clean of its thin leaves, with a line of horsehair attached to an iron hook that had a bit of partridge feather for a fly.
“Silver salmon run here,” Grimnir repeated, “and there’s some bushes yonder that make for decent rods. I’d appreciate any help with catching dinner.” He raised his hands. “These paws don’t work like they used to — too often the fish are bigger than I expect and come unhooked before I can club them.”
“They’re that big?” Aurelius asked.
“Oh, yes. I’ve caught some at this part of the river over three handspans long.”
Aurelius took the hatchet offered to him, not believing for a moment that the old man was too weak to clobber a fish. There seemed to be a tremendous power in Grimnir that belied every move he made and word he spoke. Aurelius didn’t know why he felt so assured that the old man posed no threat to him, but he felt curiously safe around him and the talking animals.
“Grazie,” he said simply, and walked back to the hazel shrubs, realizing that he was suddenly very hungry. He saw instantly that the shrubs were no such thing at all; before him were ancient hazel trees, so dense that their trunks were wider than Aurelius’s waist. He’d have to climb high into the growth to even reach branches that could be serviceable for fishing!
He groaned — the sight reminded him of the times that Devrone had sent him to forage for blackberries, knowing full well that the most bountiful shrubs were those on the western side of the monastery and accessible only by a half day’s effort of scaling the walls. Aurelius would return at the end of a hard afternoon’s reaping with a couple of basket’s worth of berries, only to be told by Devrone that he shouldn’t have wasted so much time on a frivolous woman’s task and to get back to training with the sword.
Feeling the same flare of temper and irritation that he’d felt ten years ago, Aurelius turned to ask Grimnir if the hazel trees here were the only source of ‘decent’ branches for fishing rods. He stopped short. The old man, animals, and even the fire — all were gone.
Aurelius ran to the campsite, in a glance noting that only the fist-sized rocks of the shore, the moss-covered logs, and grassy sward remained. He knelt at the area of the site where the firepit had been and touched the grey stones; they were cold and untouched by flame or ash. He rose and looked up and down the stream, but saw nothing except the water rushing over cobbles, gravel, and sand.
He began walking toward the boulder-bridge, regret and disappointment replacing the irritation he’d felt at the prospect of trying to reach a suitable branch for his rod. He’d still fish, but now without the company he’d found (and welcomed) upon awakening in a foreign land.
Habit took over his acceptance of the situation. For as long as he could recall, Aurelius had been forced to react to situations that were far beyond his control. From when he was five years’ old and his father told him abruptly that he’d be spending every subsequent summer with Devrone di Magglia — with no explanation ever given — Aurelius had learned that there were some things in the world that were simply inexplicable.
The same held true in this instance: this dream would unfold in its own way, and he’d awaken from it in his own time.
He chuckled at the memory of the talking squirrel, pecking hen, and irritated wolves.
Da Dio, aveva goduto di parlare con quel vecchio! By God, he’d really enjoyed talking with that old man!
He reached the bridge and stood above it, watching the river water speed in a cascading rush through the rapids. Mesmerized by the short waterfall and the salmon occasionally making leaps into the lower river, his mind cast back to the days of his earlier youth.
From the age of five until he’d left on that fateful voyage to the Holy Land at twelve, every summer Aurelius had sailed with Devrone to make landfall at the small village of Falerna, a coastal marina on the Tyrrhenian Sea. From there, a four-day hike through dense forests and into the Pollino Mountain Range took him and Devrone to the doorstep of the monastery Santa Maria di Corazzo and the smiling welcome of Brother Tomas Lombardi.
“È necessario imparare il latino e il greco, Servio,” Brother Tomas told him the first time that they’d met. “You must learn Latin and Greek, Servius. Without them, you’ll be limited in what you can do in this world.”
It was a phrase that Tomas repeated often throughout the years, even after Aurelius mastered both languages well ahead of the timespans allotted by them in their constant management of his training. He never understood the desperate intensity that informed both men’s teaching — Tomas in matters academic, and Devrone in arts martial — but even as a boy of five, Aurelius could sense that there was something akin to fear or rage behind the eyes of the Benedictine monk and the retired imperial naval officer as they mercilessly shaped Aurelius into a scholar and athlete.
The first summer in Calabria had been the most difficult, passing in a haze of pain and exhaustion that made Aurelius dread when the time came to go again the following year. During that initial summer, awakening at dawn to attend mass with the monks, then running through the woods with Devrone before breaking their fast, it seemed to Aurelius that he’d spent most of the time crying and wondering where his parents had gone and why they’d left him with these sadistic instructors.
The rest of the day always alternated between studying in the monastery’s scriptorium with Tomas, or going into the yards to train with Devrone in every sort of weaponry, but especially mastery of the sword. It wasn’t until the third year that he finally stopped asking his mother and father not to send him away. By that time he was eight, and realized that his studies had put him so far past even his teenaged siblings (and parents) that the eight months he was with his family became increasingly uncomfortable, and even a little boring. He’d come to prefer the Calabrian forests, Devrone, and Brother Tomas to spending time with his own family. Then, when he’d turned thirteen, everything had change with the arrival in Sicily of an Uncle Servius whom he’d never met before… .
A salmon leapt from the river immediately in front of him, interrupting his reverie.
The sun rose above the roof of the forest and its light made something glint in the trees across the river. He instinctively tried to snatch at the fish and, in doing so, tossed the hatchet he’d been holding into the rushing water.
The salmon plopped back into the river, but Aurelius ignored it. He stared at the mattock glimmering metallically in the sandy shallows of the riverbed.
The hatchet was real. I was holding it the entire time. He was here. They were all here.
Disorientation closed upon him and he began murmuring Latin declensions, an old grammatical calming trick that he’d not used in years.
It didn’t work. He couldn’t reconcile the sight of the tool — the tangible reality of his encounter with the old man and magical creatures — with his belief that this entire world was but a dream of some kind. A sick feeling began to rise in his gorge.
The hatchet’s real. Grimnir was here. They all were here. How did they disappear?
Something flashed on the edge of his vision, and Aurelius remembered that before the fish distracted him, he’d been trying to see an object in the trees across the river. He squinted, but the angle was wrong and he couldn’t see the thing clearly from this side of the rapids. He’d have to cross the river to verify what the object was, but from his position it looked as if it was a...sword stuck in a tree?
And, below it, is that someone tied to the trunk, and a man on a stool playing a fiddle?
He knew that the runnin
g water was perhaps only four or five hand-spans in depth, but he planned on using the bridge to cross the stream — his feet were relatively dry and he didn’t care for the idea of walking (or possibly fighting) with squelching boots!
First, though, he had to retrieve the hatchet. Its reality was something he needed to think about, and such a thing was easier done with the tool in hand rather than in memory. He knelt at the riverbank, reached out to grab it, when a female voice called from somewhere behind him.
“Don’t touch the water!”
Aurelius turned, a hand on the hilt of his sword, but almost forgot to breathe as he found himself facing a girl of extraordinary beauty. She seemed friendly, and somehow familiar. He couldn’t place her, though, and was certain only that she didn’t come from the Krak des Chevaliers. He knew all the staff and assistants in the castle and would surely have recalled meeting her previously.
She must have emerged from the trees where he’d awakened, and stood next to a gigantic spruce. Were he not struck with an intense attraction to the confidence and beauty in her wide, almond-shaped eyes, he’d have mistakenly thought her staying close to the forest fringe so she could bolt into the woods if he proved a threat. Two things, however, immediately belied that impression: an expertly held, iron-tipped quarterstaff, and the fact that she walked quickly toward him! There was no hesitancy about her at all, but a boldness that made him a little wary even as he admired her beauty.
“Buon giorno,” he finally said, blushing as he realized that he’d been simply staring at her! For her part, she’d cocked her head and looked curiously at him. He could only imagine what she thought of him. He continued speaking to her in the same language with which she’d warned him. He looked around and nodded toward her. “E lei qui sola ? Are you alone?”
“Si, but my friends are nearby should trouble arise.” The girl halted a few paces from him. “I’ve been told the water is dangerous — things live in it: nøkken, strömkarlen, nixies. You need to find another way across.”
“Why?”
She stared blankly at him, and then with irritation asked, “Mi scusi? I know you heard what I said — should I speak...more...slowly this time?” She exaggerated her words. “There are hidden dangers here, and if you touch the water, bad things will happen.” The girl glanced up the shoreline from where he’d come to see if anyone else was in sight, the frown still on her face. “Or, so I’ve been told.”
“No, I didn’t meant that. Of course, I heard you…,” his voice trailed off as he looked again at the stream, unconvinced, but intrigued.
...but, what, Servius? Should you tell her that I think that this has to be some kind of dream, so nothing in it is really dangerous? Is that it?
He looked back the girl. Her tone was assured and she had a presence about her that commanded immediate respect. Her long brown hair was bound in a ponytail and framed an ovaline, deeply tanned face whose most prominent features were the sea-green eyes that boldly met his gaze. She was clothed in a simple white linen tunic and brown breeches, with high, well-worn, and rust-colored boots. Besides the quarterstaff, he noticed that she had a short-sword on her hip and sheathed dagger strapped to the side of her shapely calf.
His cheeks grew hot as he realized he’d lingered too long on admiring her body, and he quickly gave attention to the water. Why are you affecting me so? Her presence was maddening because he’d never felt like this around anyone!
“It seems merely a stream,” Aurelius said, calmly stating the obvious. “I spoke with a man who was fishing here earlier.”
She chuckled. “No, you didn’t. There’s no one else here.” She glanced at the rushing water and the peaceful woods, murmuring half to herself, “No one and nothing. There’s really nothing here. What was Rudyick talking about?”
She noticed him looking at her in confusion and realized he didn’t know about her earlier meeting on the hill. “Um...we were watching you from up there,” She blushed, and then paused awkwardly before continuing in something of a rush, “I mean, we — my...sisters and I...we were trying to get to Alfheim before you appeared, and then you got here early. But, I saw you. You just woke up a few moments ago and walked to the river. You move quickly.”
Aurelius looked hard at her and then to the trees beyond, seeing nothing of the companions she kept mentioning. He again refrained from saying what he thought: You didn’t see them? You’d have me believe that I didn’t see any of them? That I dreamt of meeting Grimnir and his animals? That I had a dream within a dream? I don’t think so, Signorina!.
Instead, he held his silence and focused on the river and the bound figure across the way.
He pointed to the tree, and in some irritation, not caring how strange his question was going to sound, he asked her heatedly, “Well, how about that ? Do you see people over there?”
The girl’s eyes followed his finger and she frowned. “Sí …. Someone’s tied to that tree, and a man’s playing a fiddle?”
“Bene,” Aurelius said sarcastically, “perhaps that means I’m not completely crazy.”
“Don’t just stand there,” the girl urged. “Let’s go help him!”
“I was headed there,” Aurelius said, kneeling quickly to the river and plunging his hand into the water, his hand clasping securely on the mattock, “but I’m not losing this.”
“You fool!” the girl yelled. “I told you not to touch the water!”
“It’s just a river —” Aurelius started to say, and then found that his hand was somehow pinned beneath the icy waters of the rushing stream. He heard something that sounded like the gurgling laughter of many men and a group of maidens singing a song that made him think of the sea.
Is the river starting to run backward? Then strömkarlen and nixies were upon him, and his question was lost in a surge of foaming waves that crashed downward and drove him hard into the cobbles and stones of the riverbank.
Chapter 2
Of Norns, the Brisingamen, and a Dark Elf
A half hour before Aurelius was attacked at the river by an overwhelming force of strömkarlen and nixies, Clarinda Trevisan turned back at the cave entrance and found herself alone.
The forest outside the cave was deep, densely wooded with the slender grey trunks of beech trees, and interspersed here and there with pines whose boughs were laden with purplish cones. A fog layered itself between the trees, swirling thickly around Clarinda’s feet as she moved tentatively forward, unsure which direction to take without the Norns by her side.
She looked left, then right, but her companions were simply gone. Clarinda hesitated. She’d been ascending a now-familiar passage from the labyrinth of tunnels that led to and from Mimir’s Well, and keeping pace with the three Norns as they rushed up the final paths toward the sunlight of another world, trying to arrive in Alfheim for the unexpected appearance of Servius Aurelius Santini in the Nine Worlds.
Verdandi’s abrupt silence in the midst of another training session with Clarinda at Mimir’s Well got the attention of all the women.
“Yes..., I see it now, Verdandi — the Codex Lacrimae awakens,” Urd noted, feeling the tremors of the tome while Verdandi scried the future in the flaming ripples of the underground lake with the white-eyed, All-Seeing of the Sight.
“It’s a Huntsman of Muspelheim...Morpeth,” Verdandi related to them, shaking her head in apparent disbelief at the inevitability of the demon. “He’s confronting Santini at the Krak des Chevaliers. He’s attempting to wrest the Codex from him before the Hospitaller can use it…”
“...but, use it he will,” Skuld continued, her eyes blank whites as she gazed into the pool, “and he comes — Sisters, he’ll be here in mere moments! Sooner than any could foretell. To Alfheim, quickly! He’ll appear near the River Perilous — he must not touch the water!”
Clarinda rose immediately, impelled as much by the desperation in Verdandi’s urgent tone as by the dry voice that sounded next in her mind.
Go, Mimir said, there’s more here tha
n just the Huntsmen at play trapping their quarry. Elder powers have taken an interest in the Codex’s awakening. There’s danger on many fronts in the forests of the Light Elves.
So, the three Norns hiked their skirts and dashed from the subterranean grotto to get to the place of Santini’s arrival before the knight himself did. Clarinda paused long enough only to grab her quarterstaff and then it was a full run uphill to the level of Mount Glittertind that opened onto Alfheim.
Clarinda stood at the cave entrance now, alone, touching the necklace and the triquerta brooch still pinned to her waist, tempted to use their power even if she didn’t know how.
She reflected on how the progress of her training. Back on Midgard, each night when everyone else was asleep in Khalil’s caravan, she’d slip into the Nine Worlds with Urd and learn the entire maze of tunnels over the course of an exhausting month’s time. Upon returning to Midgard, Clarinda discovered that only a single night had passed and neither Fatima nor Genevieve had even noticed her absence.
Three nights of travel across the desert had translated to three months of hard work with the Norns!
The disorientation had been staggering, filled with visits to each of the Nine Worlds and long conversations with Urd, Skuld, and Verdandi. She noticed early on that the other two Norns were wearing the faces of Fatima and Genevieve while at the Well, and when she asked why, Skuld explained that the Norn-training would go easier if she thought herself among friends back on Midgard.
Nights and days blurred one into the other as months passed while Clarinda learned the tasks and responsibilities she’d inherit upon Urd’s death, heard lectures from Mimir about the history of the Nine Worlds and the Norns’ role in them, and read spells, myths, and histories from musty tomes.
The efforts were complex and difficult, but a great distraction from grieving her father’s death.
Whenever she did think about Padre, she remembered her mantra: one thing at a time.
The Codex Lacrimae Page 27
