The Children of Wrath

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  “If only—”

  “Stop.” Matrinka arrested that line of thought. “You could have done things differently in hindsight, of course. I saw how you handled her. You did as well as anyone could.”

  *If everyone knew how others would react to what they do, things might go smoother. But they’d be really, REALLY boring.* Mior clambered from Matrinka’s lap to Tae’s, demanding attention with sharp butts of her head against his hands. *Pet me.*

  Tae allowed the animal to distract him. *What if I say ‘no?’*

  *I’ll pee on your bed.* Mior’s happy rubbing seemed incongruous with her words. *I’ll leap on your head in the dark.* She tapped his thigh with an extended claw. *I’ll flip sharp objects into your boots.*

  Tae pretended to consider. *I’ve suffered worse.* Nevertheless, he stroked the calico. “It just doesn’t feel over. Like I could go back and make a plea to the giantess. Like I should try, at least.” His thoughts slipped back to Loki’s citadel and his mad rush to hurl himself between Kevral and danger. The others had reported Rascal’s words: “I seed what happent when he try ta save ya. Now, he’s daid an’ ya’s ‘live. Hain’t no one’s life worth more’n mine.” The idea of placing a price on humans bothered Tae. Once, every life had felt more significant than his own.

  Matrinka shook her head. “Odin’s not known for his mercy.”

  Tae knew Matrinka spoke truth. The cruel gray god had found pleasure in stirring war between societies and watching men die. “I know she’s dead. There’s just something about the way she went that makes me wonder . . .”

  Subikahn waddled to his father, placing a tiny hand on Tae’s knee. He reached for Mior with the other.

  Immediately, Tae shifted to intervene.

  *I’m not going to hurt him.* Mior seemed affronted.

  *I was more worried about him hurting you.*

  Mior stalked into harm’s way. *Maybe I like my tail pulled. Maybe I like my whiskers tweaked.* Subikahn grabbed for Mior’s face, and she back-pedaled instinctively before returning to her stalwart position. *I did that on purpose, too.*

  *Well, maybe I don’t like when you purposely poke my son in the finger with your eye.*

  *If you’re going to grouse at me—* Mior slunk onto Matrinka’s lap, the baby following the movement.

  “It’s because you never saw Rascal’s body.”

  Tae had never considered that.

  “That’s why you need to take a look at the baby before he goes.” Matrinka consoled Mior with a hug and a series of rapid strokes. “Or it’ll never seem quite real. Your feelings about it never quite certain or finished.”

  Tae racked his thoughts for an explanation from Matrinka’s personal history. *She knows this too well.*

  *Grandpapa,* Mior reminded.

  Only then, Tae realized Matrinka had never seen the dead king’s body, though many others confirmed his demise. “Thank you,” he said. He might never come fully to terms with Rascal’s death and with his failure at rescuing her from it. But, at least, he understood his own reaction to it.

  “Take time to grieve, Tae.”

  “I will.” Grasping the ruby in one palm, Tae rose and headed for the door. “Right now, I have a baby to visit.” He stopped with his other hand on the latch. “Can you and Mior speak with elves?” The question sounded ludicrous. “Using your mind talking thing, I mean.”

  Matrinka smiled. “No, it’s different. She can hear their general khohlar, like the rest of us, but she can’t intercept their singular ones. Neither of us can communicate by mind, except to one another.”

  “And now, for Mior at least, with me.”

  Mior sent a concept of the past, how Matrinka and she had learned to share thoughts much the same way Tae and she had done: study and anticipation. She also gave him the realization that the bond would not extend between the humans, though she might agree to translate things silently for them—for a petting price.

  Matrinka’s grin broadened, no surprise at all registering on her features. “It was only a matter of time.”

  * * *

  Colbey flashed into an empty room of his creation, the sparse furnishings toppled, food scattered and smashed. The heel of a boot lay immortalized in a smear of boiled roots, too large for Freya or Ravn. Terror exploded through Colbey and he stood, mind empty of action for the first time he could ever remember. He’s got them. Hating himself for the situation he had allowed to happen, he clapped a hand to his hilt with an animal growl of frustration and rage.

  *There’s a recent magic trail.*

  Colbey did not hesitate. *Follow it.*

  *Into Odin’s trap? Are you insane?*

  *Yes. Completely.* Colbey regretted even that almost intangible delay. *Go! The less time we waste, the less time he has to make or complete said trap.*

  Apparently convinced by the argument, the chaos sword triggered the transport. Light pulsed against Colbey’s vision, swarming through the never-quite-familiar spectrum of color. Each time, he discovered new hues, fresh conformations that made the magic unpredictable. Then he stood upon the steady grasslands of Asgard.

  The sword/staff loosed a sensation that approximated a human groan. The perfect sea of grasses, the regular glaze of the clouds, the steady golden circle of sun bothered Colbey’s sensibilities as well. He swung his gaze over a plain he had left moments before, finding only one new thing. A short distance to his right, Ravn lay, his body arranged in perfect symmetry, arms at his sides and legs slightly parted. “Ravn!” Colbey leaped toward his son.

  *Trap! Magic!* Though mental communication whizzed instantly into Colbey’s mind, the Staff of Chaos shortened to the essentials. Colbey slammed against a barrier, pain flaring across his right cheek and shoulder. Ignoring it, he dashed rightward, skimming his fingers along the invisible magic to detect an end. When he did not find one after several running paces took the boy from his vision, Colbey turned and headed in the opposite direction. That, too, failed him. He gathered his mental presence.

  *Careful.* The sword vibrated in his grip. *It’s a trick.*

  Colbey did not care. Need drove him to rescue Ravn before he no longer could. Once, he had grown close enough to chaos to allow it to drive him even against his son. He had vowed that would never happen again. Logic kept him cognizant; it did no one any good to save Ravn at the expense of the world and Ravn. Yet, the longer he waited, the more Odin could claim or destroy of his son. Colbey threw his mind into Ravn’s.

  A coating dense as cloth surrounded Ravn’s familiar thoughts. The Renshai teachings, the love for mother and father, and the rebellious search for self that characterized most teens beckoned beneath the presence that enwrapped them like a greedy spider. Colbey jabbed for the intruder, drilling desperately through the darkness. As he entered, it enveloped him, stealing purpose and screaming of triumph. It echoed through him, forcing him to abandon his son to address it. Once it had his attention, it dropped him into a downward spiral as strong as any tornado.

  Colbey felt himself falling at a fantastic speed, fueling fear into a bonfire that threatened to consume him even as the winds of his captor swirled wildly around him. Scenery whizzed past in a spectacular, unfathomable blur. The creature that embodied the shroud contained a mental strength that made his own seem puny, and it mocked him with a laugh distinctly Odin’s. *You gave them to me, Colbey. And for that I thank you!* A laugh like thunder shook the world, and it would have quailed any man from reality.

  But Colbey was not any man. Odin’s taunts did not raise the hopelessness or desperate rage they sought, only forthright determination that jerked him from the AllFather’s control. He became suddenly and intensely aware of the energy that drained from him every moment his mind remained separated from his body. He had to act, and swiftly. *There must be an exit.*

  *No way out!* Odin sent.

  The Staff of Chaos remained befuddled. *Nothing. It’s impossible to find anything here.*

  Colbey drove his focus to the passing scenery, closin
g his ears to Odin’s badgering and even to the sword whose opinion he had solicited. Only as he concentrated fully upon it did he recognize the sword/staff’s problem. The same scene zipped past them repeatedly, an endless wheel of corridors exactly alike, perfectly symmetrical and patterned. To the Staff of Chaos, it might just as well have been an impossible maze. *Find the one that’s different,* he instructed. *The one with the exit.*

  Odin’s laughter hammered Colbey’s ears, raw pain. Strength slipped inexorably away.

  *No exit! It’s all dizzyingly the same.* The staff’s frustration became a howl of agony.

  Colbey felt vigor disappearing at a horrifying pace. He forced thought, searching for the logic that might save him when all his sword training could not. Dizzyingly the same. He scrambled after the answer, dropping the reality his mind had previously built, from common sense. Once he stopped looking for the one difference that might signal the exit, he found it among the repetitive corridors. Caught in a circle, he had passed the very exit he sought more than a hundred times. This time, he dove through it.

  Back in his own body, Colbey cursed the weakness his hesitation had cost. His arms felt weighted, and he had to concentrate on not staggering. Odin now stood between himself and Ravn, and hot pinpoints of magic streaked toward him.

  *Move!* the sword/staff screeched.

  Colbey struggled to do exactly that, slowed by the ordeal and its resulting frailty. He dodged aside, only to watch directed chaos slam against something unseen, shattered to sparks that bounced backward in lopsided steamers of color.

  Odin shrieked. “You traitorous bastard! Has chaos caught you, too?”

  Frey’s reply came from Colbey’s right, Odin’s left. The god stood amid the patterns of trees and grasses, steady and fearless despite the threat of imminent destruction. “The sword calling the ax sharp, High One. We’ll counter anything magic, nothing more. A start toward evening the fight.” Only then, Colbey noticed Freya standing in a like position at the other side of the battle. Likely, Frey had released her from whatever trap she was to have served as bait. Sister and brother would need to work together to contain just one of the AllFather’s powers. Colbey locked his knees to keep them from buckling and prepared to face all of the others.

  Red flared across a face that now seemed more godlike than elfin. Though still Dh’arlo’mé’s features, the expressions ill-suited him. “Die, then.” Odin raised his hands.

  Colbey charged. The barrier that had separated him from Ravn disappeared as Odin turned his concentration onto the god and goddess who dared stand against him.

  As Colbey reached him, Odin dropped his hands, magic sizzling with a sound like a waterfall against the fires of Ragnarok. His sword jerked from its sheath, too slow for the Renshai’s usual lightning speed. With Colbey hampered by fatigue, it proved fast enough. The blades slammed together with a force that pitched Colbey backward. He ducked the slash that followed, the breeze of Odin’s passing sword peeling the back of his tunic free, no longer sweat-glued to his spine. The power behind the attack awed him. A single blow would shatter whatever it struck.

  The chaos sword bucked against his control. *Can’t hit law with chaos, remember? It’ll destroy us.*

  A second wind spurred Colbey, the reality of a true battle an excitement nothing could quell. He had not forgotten the sword’s concern, only questioned its word choice. So long as he remained unbonded, the contact would harm Odin and the Staff of Chaos, not himself. He drove in, weaving a Renshai maneuver around Odin’s steady defense. His blade scored a gash across the AllFather’s wrist that the sword fought. God and sword screamed simultaneously.

  Colbey spun in for a wicked stab, only to find Odin’s sword in his path. Back-pedaling, he spiraled in for a different angle. A mental barb from Odin struck the barriers of Colbey’s mind with an impact that flashed abrupt pain through his head. Lurching backward, he lost all control of his attack. He twisted, dodging a surmised riposte, nearly blinded by agony. He felt Odin’s next blitz as a concentration of energy streaming toward his head. This time, Colbey forced his barriers down, accepting the barb through subsequent walls until it struck the back, nearly devoid of power. He barricaded it there, as he had in the past, holding it for release into the vastness of chaos’ world, where it would cancel out an equal amount of disorder.

  But this time Odin followed his first assault with another. A second probe, gently guided, slipped through behind the first, stopping after the first of Colbey’s barriers. The physical battle disappeared as the two grappled mentally, Odin seizing hold of the intensity of emotion that Ravn’s still form had evoked.

  *No!* Colbey struggled to hold his thoughts intact. His mental control surged forward to war, yet he managed only to grip the presence that already held his. Odin’s mental power dwarfed his in the wake of the trap he had barely escaped in Ravn’s mind. The AllFather made slow, steady progress. The bank of emotion crept toward freedom. Colbey knew he had to jettison the piece of his thoughts that Odin gripped or risk losing everything. Once Odin had Colbey’s full consciousness trapped, he could sit back and watch the Renshai’s body die. His mind would follow instantly.

  Colbey settled back to do as he must. Then, his eyes fell on Ravn, rising blearily, Asgard’s grasses smashed to the shape of his body. The thoughts that Odin clung to, with which he adamantly extracted Colbey’s mind from his body, were his love and respect for his son. Without those, Colbey could never feel the depth of emotion that had awakened the day Freya had birthed the baby into his arms, that had grown gradually from unconditional acceptance to an esteem earned by Ravn’s own struggle and exertion. Throughout his mortal life he had yearned for a child, gained the responsibility for a boy swiftly lost to madness and later death. Soon the everything, the very world, that Ravn had become would disappear from him, leaving emptiness in its place. The boy would become as any other boy. And Colbey would never remember, never manage to rekindle, that missing adoration.

  Never! Colbey clung to his love for Ravn, allowing himself to get sucked from his own head. Odin’s excitement grew tangible. Thrust into another spinning void, Colbey caught a glimpse of the infinite and ordered cavern that represented Odin’s knowledge before becoming plunged into a universe that consisted of Odin’s victory, hearing nothing but the AllFather’s words surrounded by ringing laughter: “The only enemy will make/One small lapse; a fatal mistake/Leave the world at the mercy of Gray.”

  In a moment, Colbey knew, all his energy would wring out, leaving not even a spark of life. He had made the exchange he had earlier refused: sacrificing his son to rescue world and son together. He cringed, waiting for the last of his strength to drain. In a moment, the sword would fall from his hand. His body would collapse, then his mind. Odin would destroy the Staff of Chaos, ruin and recreate the world in his image, then the law he did not even realize owned him would stagnate his creation to an oblivion worse than the one before. Leave the world at the mercy of Gray. Colbey knew Odin had no mercy. He never had. At the mercy of Gray. The word indicated the great gray father to most, once even to himself, yet Colbey’s thoughts strayed to the sword he had carried for centuries. Harval, the Gray Blade. Gray meaning neutrality. Suddenly, the prophesy unraveled. I am not the enemy, Odin is. The fatal mistake is his. The mercy my own. Though Colbey never thought he believed in prophecies, this one raised a will that seemed impossible an instant earlier.

  Colbey clung to the clinger, wrapping his consciousness around the other with all the violence with which he had fought it a moment earlier. *Home,* he told the sword/staff, struggling not to broadcast a hint of his intentions. If it knew the details of his battle, that this simple action would destroy Colbey and Odin, both essences in the staves, and much of chaos’ world, the Staff of Chaos would never comply.

  The chaos sword’s understanding flickered to Colbey only as backwash, the concept of strategic retreat. Even as the magic flashed, the staff informed him: *Freya has returned home.*

  Freya! Too l
ate to stop the transport, Colbey redirected. *To her!*

  The array of colors splashed wildly, then concentrated and, suddenly, Colbey was in the safe pocket of chaos’ world he had crafted to house his family. Freya jerked aside as Colbey appeared, Odin materializing beside him. Jolted partially back to his body, Colbey realized nothing remained of his vitality. He collapsed, Odin’s triumph still pulsing against him. *Transport!* He hoped the desperate message reached his wife in time. His world became a black oblivion, devoid of sight or sound. With the last of his strength, he reversed his creation. The walls fell, chaos roaring through the opening and meeting the very embodiment of law. The explosion crashed against Colbey, slamming him with the force of a thousand galloping horses.

  Then every sensation disappeared.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Spring of Mimir

  Those things most desired come at hefty prices.

  —Colbey Calistinsson

  THE warm comfort of spring seeped even into the windowless strategy room where Darris and his friends gathered prior to each search for a shard of the Pica Stone. Béarn’s bard could smell the sweet, loamy odor of growing gardens as well as the mingled perfumes of the myriad flowers that graced the courtyard. Suffused with the excitement the warm seasons always inspired, as well as preparation for their last task, Darris found the wait interminable. He fought the urge to burst into happy song, fingers gliding over imaginary strings while his lute remained in place on his back. He glanced about the group, their moods a strange mixture of joy and sorrow, blithe anticipation and quiet concern. Kevral’s head drooped, her color pale and her hair hanging in limp feathers. It seemed ludicrous to expect her to function as a warrior only a week after childbirth, yet she declared herself ready. When Ra-khir, her staunchest defender, made no protest, the others did not argue either.

  The knight himself looked as haggard as Kevral, the rims of his green eyes swollen and pink. The pristine linens with their crisp gold, blue, orange, and black stood in stark contrast to slumping limbs and tired features. Tae, too, seemed subdued, though it did not blunt his wary scrutiny of a room filling with more elves than ever in the past. Captain had returned with many followers, expressing the need for a larger jovinay arythanik to trigger a spell linked to one fewer participant. His matter-of-fact manner poorly hid his concern for the ability of the magic to function properly.