Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  “Betrayer,” I whispered and tried to push Frikka’s hands away, but I had no strength.

  She reacted as if I’d slapped her, head jerking back, eyes popping wide open, a perfect expression of startlement etched on her face. She bent forward at the waist and wailed silently, her mouth stuck open, red gold tears pouring down her cheeks. Even so, she kept her hands pressed to my side, doing whatever traitorous act she’d been doing before.

  My blood burned in my veins as if it were laced with boiling acid, searing the inside of my veins, burning my tissues, but leaving my nerves intact so I could suffer through every little thing.

  I had to get away from her, had to stop her putting whatever poison she had in my veins. I knew I had to or I would die. I was already too weak to struggle to my feet, to retreat physically—too weak to make her stop. The cloak was overloaded, pain was my entire world, and my vision was growing dim.

  The cloak! But I couldn’t twitch the edges of it forward, not with the gash through my chest and abdomen. I couldn’t activate it, couldn’t twist my fettle and get away from Frikka. The activation word! What is it? I racked my mind, trying to remember the word Althyof had taught me.

  “Oh, Hank,” cried Frikka. “Forgive me. I’m a weak old woman.”

  Vakt! That was it. “Vakt,” I muttered and turned into smoke.

  The relief from the burning pain washed through me as if I’d died and gone to heaven. I moved away from Frikka, and though her eyes tracked my every movement, she stayed where she was, looking dejected, broken.

  I didn’t have long—a few seconds—and I wanted to get back to Sif so she could save me from whatever Frikka had done.

  I almost made it, passing Jane and Sig who were running to where Frikka knelt. Skowvithr watched me, or the smoke that represented me in that plane, and glanced at Jane and Sig. Go with them, I shouted at him in my mind.

  My fettle untwisted, and I appeared standing, but collapsed flat on my face, not even putting out my arms to cushion the fall, as soon as my weight hit my muscles. Yowrnsaxa saw me appear and cried out. Sif rushed to my side and rolled me over.

  “Dammit, man, can’t you go a day without my help?” she muttered. Behind her, the bear roared, and something crashed into the wall of the cave.

  The pups charged over to me, whining and crying, trying to lick my face and getting in Sif’s way. She pushed them away. “Get back and let me work, you can lick him after I’ve made sure he’ll live,” she said in a stern voice. “If I can.” The puppies sat down and watched her as if they understood her perfectly.

  She was muttering, shoving something into my side and it felt like the hot iron Frikka had been using. Jane and Sig ran over and hovered behind Sif. Sig’s eyes filled with tears and he turned to Jane, pressing his face against her shoulder. Frikka stood behind them, head down, red gold tears raining on the clay floor in silence.

  “She…Frikka…” I whispered.

  Veethar strode up to his wife, face writhing with rage. “What did you do?” he hissed.

  Frikka sobbed, head hanging.

  Jane pushed Sig away, but with a gentleness that belied the rage etched into her face. She turned, slipping her axe out of her belt. In two quick steps, she stood in front of Frikka, the blade of her axe shaking. “What did you do?” she screamed.

  Frikka glanced at her, and another sob burst from her. She hung her head again, unable or unwilling to say anything in her defense.

  “Stand away,” snapped Veethar, the ring of command in his voice.

  Jane barely glanced at him. She lifted the axe, and Veethar stepped between my wife and his.

  “No,” he said.

  “You bitch!” Jane yelled. “What did you do?” Her voice was filled with tears—tears of anger, tears of betrayal and frustration, tears of fear for me.

  Yowrnsaxa ran to her side, putting her arm around Jane’s shoulders. “Come away, dear,” she said.

  “She…she…”

  “We will sort all that out later, dear. Your son needs you more than your anger.” Yowrnsaxa’s voice was soft and yet hard as nails. She pulled Jane away with a firm, but gentle pressure.

  Jane let herself be led away, and Frikka sobbed all the louder. The bear roared as if angry that people were ignoring him. “Will someone kill that goddamn bear?” yelled Jane.

  A hard expression settled on Veethar’s face as he glanced at Frikka, and her sobbing became uncontrollable as she sank to the ground, the very picture of desolation. He spun on his heel without a word, barely sparing me a glance, his face set in ugly, grim lines. “Kverfa!” he called, trying to dispel the force that had reanimated the bear. “Ayta!”

  The bear roared and sent someone flying to land in the water. Mothi.

  “Snooith aftur til mirkurs tautha!” shouted Veethar.

  “What’s he saying?” I croaked, for some inexplicable reason, it seemed like the most important question in the world.

  “Return to the darkness of death,” muttered Sif, still busy with something at my side that had gone thankfully numb. The bear stopped roaring every other second, for which I was thankful.

  “Kvild, ow kowthu!”

  “Rest, Great One,” Sif translated.

  “Great One?”

  Sif shrugged. The sounds of battle had stopped.

  “Ivirtyeva thehta rityi, sova, kvilt.”

  “Leave this realm, sleep, rest,” Sif murmured. Somewhere in the cave an immense weight crashed to the ground.

  “Why didn’t he do that before?” I asked in a cross voice.

  Sif shrugged. “Shush now, Hank.”

  “But I’ve got to—‍”

  “You’ve got to do what I say, now, Hank,” she snapped in a voice as hard as iron. She looked at me before shaking her head, wearing a grimace. “I’m putting you under.” She turned and dug in her ever-present medical bag. She pulled out a stoppered glass container that held a noisome-looking grey liquid and held it to my lips. “Drink, Hank. Two swallows.”

  I shook my head. “I need to—‍”

  “Oh, for the love of Isi! Svepn,” she said, touching my forehead with her finger.

  It felt as if she put a glob of snow the size of her fingertip on my forehead. The cold wetness spread, covering my forehead, the top of my head, my whole head. Before it progressed further, I slept.

  Twenty

  The pain faded, in fact, all sensation disappeared, leaving me floating in a pool of cold, apathetic numbness. I opened my eyes, and to my shock, I hung in the air above the heads of my family and friends. My body lay on the floor of the cave, Sif bent over me, listening to my chest, looking worried. Yowrnsaxa knelt next to her, pushing a linen cloth into my side. Blood and pus smeared my face, and my eyes were closed.

  The bear roared, but he sounded far away, unimportant. I glanced at him, and instead of a rotting, pestilent corpse, the bear glowed with life: magnificent coat of waxy brown hair; clear, intelligent eyes; healthy skin and claws; full belly.

  “Get out! Why did you disturb us?”

  I shook my head and blinked hard to clear the vision, the dream from my eyes.

  “Just leave! Leave my cave!”

  “Can’t do that, now can I? That’s me, down there.” I pointed at my blood-smeared body.

  “You! You stuck me! With that…with that red thing!”

  “In my defense, you were trying to kill all of us.”

  “You invaded my home. That short one sang his dirge that pushed the lantvihtir out of their home and into mine.”

  “We’re traveling to the other side of the mountains. When I’m awake, you are dead.”

  “I’m not dead!” roared the bear.

  I forced my eyes away from Sif and looked at the bear. Yowtgayrr danced around him, but he looked misty, fuzzy. As I watched, the bear lurched at him, swiping the air with his paw, and missing.

  “If you stop attacking, Yowtgayrr will stop fighting you.”

  “And these?” The bear gestured toward its back where Mot
hi’s axes protruded from his thick skin. “The one that stuck these here…he’s insane.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Be glad you’re not a Svartalfar. What’s your name?”

  “Name? Why do you want my name?” The bear peered at me with open suspicion.

  “So we can have a civilized conversation. My name’s Hank.”

  “Hank?” the bear said, making it sound like a cough. “What sort of name is that?”

  “My grandfather’s name.”

  “Oh, a thousand pardons.” I never knew a bear could look sheepish, but he pulled it off. “My name is Kuthbyuhrn.”

  “What sort of name is that?” I asked with a smile.

  “It isn’t the name of my grandfather,” said the bear gravely. “But it is a name of respect. It means ‘God bear’ in the old tongue.”

  “Old tongue? The Gamla Toonkumowl?”

  “Is there another?” The bear had stopped fighting Yowtgayrr, and the Alf stood to the side with his weapons held ready, eyes darting between Kuthbyuhrn and my bleeding form. “What’s that female doing to you?”

  “Trying to stop me from dying, I’d guess.”

  The bear glanced at me and somehow managed to appear concerned and sheepish at the same time. “You stuck me with a magic spear.”

  “As I said, you were trying to kill us. See the woman there? The one who is crying? That’s my wife. The boy is my son. I couldn’t let you hurt them.”

  “No, of course not! This has been a grave misunderstanding. The lantvihtir lied to me. I should know better than to trust them.” Kuthbyuhrn glanced behind me. “Uh, I don’t want to alarm you, but the female may have decided to kill you.”

  I turned and looked. Sif held a short-bladed dagger to my right side, halfway between my armpit and the bottom of my rib cage. She leaned forward and slid the blade into my skin, and I screamed…

  Twenty-one

  …And opened my eyes wide. My body convulsed and arched until only my heels, palms, and the back of my head still touched the ground.

  “Hold him!” shouted Sif.

  Skowvithr grabbed my shoulders and pressed me to the floor with gentle pressure. Veethar squatted and grabbed my knees.

  Fire burned in my side, and I had an almost irresistible urge to vomit. “What…” I moaned.

  “Shush, now,” said Yowrnsaxa. “Let Sif do her work.”

  “Blood has filled the right side of your chest, Hank, and is keeping your lung deflated. If I don’t purge the blood, your chances of surviving this are quite low.”

  Somewhere above my head, the undead bear—Kuthbyuhrn, a voice in my mind said—made a strange sound, almost like a horse blowing air through its nostrils, but sounding distressed. Then it clacked its teeth.

  “Someone kill that damn thing,” spat Mothi.

  “No.” I took a long, slow breath. “Kuthbyuhrn was lied to.”

  “What’s he talking about?” cried Jane.

  “The thing seems content to sit and watch,” shouted Yowtgayrr. “He’s stopped attacking.”

  “Yes, I told him you’d stop fighting him if he did.”

  “He’s delirious,” said Yowrnsaxa.

  I tried to shake my head but only managed to turn my head to the side before the world fell away again.

  Twenty-two

  The sun burned down on me from overhead, but a gentle breeze cooled my face. I opened my eyes and gasped. I was high in the air, in a wide clearing, and surrounded by a sea of treetops, all swaying in the wind.

  “Awake at last?” asked a voice filled with gravel.

  “Yes,” I said. “Where am I?”

  “You hang from Iktrasitl.”

  “What…what am I doing here?”

  “No time to chat,” said the voice. “I’m on an errand of utmost importance.” Something skittered away up the trunk of the tree somewhere behind me—claws rasping on bark.

  I tried to turn but had no leverage. I seemed to hang from a branch of the tree by my neck. Far, far below me, a mist encircled the tree trunk like the skirt of a Christmas tree.

  “Don’t bother yelling for the Witches,” said a raspy voice from behind and to the right of me. “Those three bitches—‍”

  The wind gusted and tore the words away. The wind was bitter and cold. As the wind died, an earsplitting scream of anger echoed out over the sea of trees.

  “That damn squirrel caused that roar,” said the raspy voice. “He won’t be happy until the two go to war.”

  “Who…”

  “The eagle and the dragon, of course. Just wait, the squirrel will go running down the tree like a horse, and the damn dragon will roar. Then, back up comes the meddlesome squirrel with another insult for the eagle and it all starts as before. It’s interminable!”

  “No, I meant to ask who you are.”

  “You may call me Owsakrimmr.”

  “Why can’t I turn?”

  “You hang from the Tree, Aylootr.”

  “Oh, not that again.”

  “It’s a noble name, a respectful lucre,” said Owsakrimmr, sounding a little offended.

  “My name, however, is Hank. What is this? A dream?”

  “If you like…if that’s what it seems.”

  “It’s not about what I like… What is this?”

  “You hang from the Tree of Life. You hang from Iktrasitl. I’m naught but the Tree’s midwife.”

  “Why? Why am I here? Who are you, Owsakrimmr? I don’t recognize your name.”

  “It is no matter. The three bitches at the foot of the tree have wrapped your runes with mine, and so we journey together for a time.”

  Somewhere, far below, or far away, a bear roared.

  “The three bitches?”

  “The Nornir: Urthr, Verthanti, and Skult. They live far below, at the base of the tree do they sew. There Urthr dug a well, and from it, they draw the water that feeds Iktrasitl.”

  “So, if I’m dreaming about Yggdrasil, you must be…”

  “I am only Owsakrimmr. Stuck here, left to simmer. The same as you, there’s nothing we can do.”

  From above, the rapid-fire sound of claws skittering down the bark of the tree rattled. “Ratatoskr, leave them in peace, take a short rest. A little time of quiet would be best.”

  “No time, no time!” called the gravel-filled voice I’d first spoken to.

  “For my sake, do me this favor! Give us blessed silence to savor!”

  “Ha!” yelled the thing on the trunk without slowing.

  “He’ll drive me insane,” sighed Owsakrimmr. “He’s such a pain.”

  “Why are you here? In the tree, I mean?”

  “Why are any of us here? The three bitches tied me to this bier.”

  “What I mean is: are you hanging here like I am or—”

  “I am…”

  Twenty-three

  “I am certain, Jane,” said Sif in soothing tones. “Once this blood drains, his breathing will ease. Then, I’ll be able to treat the wound. I know my craft, dear.”

  Jane sobbed, sounding more than sad, more than exhausted, and I began to hear other sounds from the cave: a fierce, whispered argument between Veethar and Frikka, Meuhlnir and Mothi talking quietly about Kuthbyuhrn, the undead bear’s chuffing.

  I tried to lift my hand but only succeeded in twitching my finger.

  “He moved, Mommy,” said Sig in a tear-choked voice. “He’s…”

  “Alive,” I croaked.

  “Don’t speak, Hank,” scolded Sif.

  I tried to open my mouth, to tell them I was okay, but instead, I drifted…

  Twenty-four

  A gust of wind blew aside the black veil that covered my eyes. I sat with my back to a massive tree’s trunk, and five women sat around a small campfire a short distance away.

  The tree I rested against shimmered with runes carved into its bark. Someone, maybe one of the women, had gouged through many of the runes with a chisel, giving what would otherwise have been a majestic sculpture the air of graff
iti.

  “Kuhntul, his veil!” The voice rasped like glass on rusted metal. “Don’t let him read the runes, girl!”

  I tore my eyes away from the runes and stared at the women around the fire. One of them pointed at me, and one was rising—Kuhntul, dressed in immaculate white.

  “Why am I here?” I demanded of the women. None of them turned, except Kuhntul, and her expression was grim.

  “They are deciding, Tyeldnir,” said Kuhntul.

  “For the love of God, why can’t anyone call me by name?” I snapped.

  “Which?” Kuhntul’s eyebrow lifted, and her expression was one of interest.

  “Hank! Call me Hank.”

  “No, no. You said: ‘for the love of god.’ I meant which god?”

  I scoffed. “Take your pick.”

  “Oh, I have. I picked Roonateer long ago when Skult taught me to read the runes.”

  “These runes?” I asked, turning to look at the tree. “Who has been vandalizing the tree? And who is this Roonateer?”

  “Kuhntul! Do not let him read the runes!”

  “I know, Mother Skult. But don’t worry, he can’t read the runes. He barely grasps the Gamla Toonkumowl.”

  “Still.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Gazing at me, Kuhntul rolled her eyes.

  “These runes are what you might call fate or destiny. What we call uhrluhk.”

  “Why are they defaced?”

  Kuhntul cocked her head to the side. “Because uhrluhk is not fixed.”

  “How can destiny not be fixed?”

  Kuhntul’s brows crinkled and her lips pursed. “Because we…that is, because each of us… Uhrluhk is…”

  “Either explain it, Kuhntul, or cease your prattling.”

  “Yes, Mother Urthr.” Kuhntul bowed her head meekly. “The Nornir carved these runes in the past, and when they carved them, they were true. Then, as the subject—or some other person—changed uhrluhk, the Nornir struck the incorrect runes out and carved the correct runes elsewhere.” She looked at me critically. “Do you see?”

  “No. How can someone change the destiny that the Nornir carved into the tree? It’s destiny, right? It’s what is supposed to happen in that person’s life.”