Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  “No, we can’t. And the party is larger than we expected.” His eyes darted over my shoulder toward the Isir standing behind me, no doubt glancing at Freya and Pratyi.

  “Can we stop this platform using the strenkir af krafti?”

  “To what end? To go back?”

  I shrugged. “Having any option is better than having no options at all, right?”

  He rocked his head to the side, mouth grim. “Whether pursuers wait on the platform behind us or not remains unknown. We don’t know what would happen to us in these tunnels. What did he call them? ‘Lectrics and plasms.”

  “I understand what electricity is, and so do you, God of Thunder.”

  He grinned at that and shrugged with a crooked smile.

  “I’m not sure what plasms are, but I assume it’s a method of transmitting power. Something the Geumlu used. But all of that is academic if we can’t stop the platform.”

  “Can we try without damaging some important mechanism?”

  It was my turn to grin and shrug. “No idea.”

  “I also have no idea, and until we do, it would be reckless to poke at things we don’t understand. That’s a good way to get killed.”

  I gazed into the tunnel’s inky darkness. It struck me as strange that there wasn’t even a light on the front of the platform and no lights in the tunnel at all. “Can she really do it?”

  “Predict the future? Yes, Frikka’s been—‍”

  “No, not that.”

  Meuhlnir’s gaze crawled over my face. “Oh…you mean the dragon in your dream.”

  “Yes. Can the Black Bitch turn into a black dragon? It could be important.”

  He chuckled but sobered after a moment. “In your dream, was it a complete change?”

  “As opposed to…”

  “As opposed to the change the oolfa perform—halfway between man and beast.”

  “She ran at me and changed mid-step. After that, she was flying—a sleek, black-scaled dragon.”

  “And you saw no human features?”

  “No, she was all dragon, I think.”

  “Ah. I doubt it’s within her power. True shape-shifting has certain challenges to it. It takes even more power than what the oolfa do. That’s why, in your experiences with my brother and the Dark Queen, they took on aspects of animals, but remained human in the larger sense—they don’t have enough power to make a complete change. Bigger, stronger, yes, but still mostly human.”

  “Even breaking the Ayn Loug?”

  “Yes, even eating the flesh of men does not grant such power.”

  I remembered my first lesson from Althyof—how he’d intimated that what he did as a runeskowld was beyond the capabilities of what Meuhlnir and the other Isir did with the Gamla Toonkumowl—and nodded. But still, I wondered what was possible with runic magic. Althyof had said that what the Dark Queen did approached what a runeskowld could do. I wondered if she’d had some Svartalf teaching her, though I’d never seen her do anything such as what Ivalti had done. “Interesting,” I said.

  “Is it?” he murmured, one eyebrow quirked up.

  “If she can’t make such a change, then it must symbolize something she can do, right?”

  Meuhlnir stroked his beard. “I hope not.”’

  I waved Althyof over, and he came, a sour expression on his face.

  “You mentioned before that the Dark Queen could do something that approaches casting runes, yeah?” Meuhlnir arched an eyebrow at me.

  Althyof grimaced and nodded.

  “Using your art, is…shape-shifting possible?”

  The Tverkr’s eyes opened wide. “I…uh…” He glanced at Meuhlnir.

  “Or maybe with the Svartalfar version?”

  Althyof cast a baleful glance at me. “Of the two, theirs is the perversion of the true Art. There is nothing a Svartalf can do that we cannot.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Althyof nodded, but his expression was aggrieved. “I think it might be possible.”

  “Think or know?” snapped Meuhlnir.

  Althyof turned his gaze on him, with an air of indolence. “I say what I mean, Isir.” He nodded at me and walked toward the back of the platform.

  “Interesting,” I murmured.

  “Is it?” murmured Meuhlnir.

  Fifty

  What seemed like a long time later, but what couldn’t have been more than five or six hours because none of us got hungry or tired, the tunnel ahead of us began to lighten. With something to focus on, our speed became apparent, and it was fast. We streaked toward the ambient glow in the tunnel ahead, and it seemed we would never slow in time to avoid streaking through the station. As it turned out, there was plenty of time, and the platform slowed as smoothly as it had accelerated to whatever ungodly speed it had attained on our journey.

  The platform came to a silent stop next to the terminal, and the soft, warm light under my feet winked out. “I guess that’s it,” I said with a chuckle. “The ride has come to a complete stop.”

  “Yeah, and the seat belt sign is extinguished. It’s now safe to move around the cabin,” laughed Sig.

  The natives of Osgarthr looked at us as if we’d lost our fool minds, which made us laugh all the harder.

  “Come on,” said Farmathr with considerable impatience, while stepping off the barge. We unloaded our goods to the platform between the tracks but didn’t follow Farmathr as he started toward the stairs. “It’s this way,” he said. “It’s an exact duplicate of the other terminal.”

  “Tell me about this back way. Where does it start?” I asked.

  He turned back to us, torso stiff, jaw clenched. “Why? Does it matter?”

  “It might.”

  He pointed at my chest with a bony index finger that shook with strong emotion. “I’m the one risking his life to help you.”

  “And we appreciate that,” said Jane. “But we still need to ask—so we can make plans.”

  He snorted and lifted his arms and let them fall. “Are you even familiar with the geography of this continent?”

  Veethar nodded. “In a broad-brush sense.”

  “Fine.” Farmathr dragged his hands through his hair but succeeded only in making the snarls worse. “Do you know Tohupur Uhrvaridnar Vik?”

  The words meant “tip of the arrow inlet,” and Veethar said, “Do you mean the inlet on the western coast that looks like an arrowhead?”

  “That’s the one. If you make a straight line east, following where the arrowhead points, you come to a small section of foothills guarded on both sides by sheer mountain faces. Do you know it?”

  “Roughly.”

  “That’s where it starts.”

  “And where is the next FTTN terminal down the line from here?” I asked.

  Farmathr turned to me, jaws clenched. “North of there. A day, maybe.”

  “And how many days from here?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve already said. Ten days.”

  “We should—‍”

  “But travel from the other stronghold is more difficult than from this one. There are dangers—‍”

  “Yes?” asked Meuhlnir, looking down at his feet.

  Farmathr’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click of teeth. “Fine,” he grated. “It will take the better part of another day to reach the next terminus. If the barge works.”

  Meuhlnir held up his hand, gesturing toward the twin platform across the terminal. “No better time to find out than now.”

  Shaking his head, Farmathr stalked over to the other platform and put his foot on it, as if he were a boy testing the water of his favorite swimming hole. Warm yellow light glowed from the floor of the platform, and Farmathr sighed as if he’d been hoping for another result. “Shall we go now, or would everyone prefer to rest?”

  “Now’s good,” I said, and we piled onto the platform. Only Keri and Fretyi seemed to object, and their complaints were limited to sleepy whining.

  Fifty-one

  Traveling by Isi’
s Fast Track Travel Network platforms had several things going for it, the most important being it did not hamper sleep, and by the time we reached the next terminus, everyone had caught up. Almost everyone jumped and jittered, invigorated by too much sleep to the point of skittishness. Even Althyof seemed antsy to get out of the tunnels of stone and back into the world above. We crowded off the platform, more than a little stiff and ready to move.

  The terminal was not as immaculately clean as the previous two. A thick layer of dust swathed the tile floor of the departure area, and the air carried the scent of a car that had been shut up and left in the sun for a few years. There was another tunnel leading north, but there was no rider platform.

  “End of the line, I guess,” I said.

  “Then can we finally ascend to the world above?” asked Farmathr.

  “We should eat,” said Yowrnsaxa. “Cold food again, unless…” She cast a hopeful look at Farmathr.

  Our guide grimaced and shook his head. “No fire, and we have no time to dawdle. It will be dark soon, and the lands outside are no place to be in the dark.”

  “It seems the janitors have broken down here, perhaps a small cooking fire—”

  “No fire,” grumbled Farmathr.

  “But, still, we must eat,” said Yowrnsaxa.

  “Do what you want!” Without another word, Farmathr stomped up the stairs to the lobby, slamming the door at the top.

  “Touchy, touchy,” said Sif.

  “He’s been alone for a long time,” I muttered.

  Yowrnsaxa sighed and let her shoulders droop. “I suppose we can eat while we walk.”

  She passed out bread and more dried fish, and we ate it sandwich-style while we climbed the wide steps and strolled into the curiously spicy stench of the main lobby. The outside wall bore the same runes as the other lobby we’d seen, but dust filled these. There was a rainbow of doors sprinkled throughout the lobby, but, an electrical fire had charred the pale blue door long ago.

  “No mechanical maintenance men here,” said Jane.

  Farmathr grunted and strode to the far wall. He pressed certain places on the wall in rapid succession, and a low-frequency rumbling filled the room. A section of the wall began to scroll upward with a screech echoing in the darkened room beyond—metal on metal, the same way worn bearings shriek. “Same rules as when we entered. Follow me. Do not linger.” He took up the reins of his horse and slid into the darkness.

  Each holding our own set of reins, we followed him out through the dark room and into the outside air—which, though it held a spicy, unfamiliar undertone and was hot and stuffy, never smelled sweeter.

  “Welcome to Kleymtlant,” said Farmathr in a flat, emotionless voice. He waved his hand toward the western horizon. “Behold what the Geumlu have wrought.”

  The late afternoon light had a peculiar greenish tinge to it. We stood in a shallow cave at the foot of a mountain, surrounded by sand dunes as far as the eye could see. The greenish-gold sand seemed to gleam and twinkle with reflected light. Strange, misshapen rock formations dotted the landscape, looking like lumps of molten stone had been dropped from the sky and allowed to cool. Now and again, two formations met in a rough, elementary arch that looked too heavy to stand. What brush existed appeared stunted and emaciated by the heat and sun. The only sound was the low moaning of the wind.

  “Had we taken my route, you’d have been spared this,” murmured Farmathr. “We must be careful,” he said in louder tones. “There are…things…living here… Horrors. Monsters. Maybe demons, I don’t know. What I do know is that these things eat…uh…flesh and drink blood to survive.”

  “Do they eat people?” asked Sig in hushed tones.

  “People, horses, varkr. Each other. Anything that breathes.”

  “Oh,” said Sig.

  “Don’t worry, little Piggy. Nothing will eat you…not with that stench that wraps you,” said Mothi with a quiet laugh.

  “Look who’s talking,” said Sig.

  “How witty, Siggy-pig.”

  “I know, Cousin Mouthy, I know.”

  “We should move away from this place,” said Farmathr, his gaze never leaving the vista before us. “The things here…they know this place occasionally disgorges people and horses.”

  “Wonderful,” said Jane, swinging up into her saddle.

  We mounted and followed Farmathr, who led us through high dunes that served as foothills for the mountains, making random turns at irregular intervals. The sand shifted and slid toward the ground in wide, avalanche-like paths from the crests of the dunes above, and each noise made everyone jump or reach for a weapon.

  As the light began to die, something screeched into the coming night. My nerves shivered at the sound and goose-flesh erupted down my arms despite the heat. I loosened my pistols in their holsters as the others loosened their weapons. Skowvithr spurred his horse forward, nodding as he passed me, and rode at Sig’s side. I pulled out the spear we’d enchanted and handed it to Jane.

  “For me?” she said, batting her eyelashes. “You’re so romantic, Henry Jensen.”

  “Throw it, don’t poke things with it.”

  “I don’t know how to throw a spear,” she said, shaking her head.

  “It’s enchanted, you don’t need to know how.”

  “And after I’ve thrown it? Do I call a timeout and walk over to get it?”

  “Say ‘aftur’ like Meuhlnir does, and it will return to your hand,” said Althyof.

  The thing screeched again, and it sounded hungry.

  “Cover?” I asked Farmathr.

  He shrugged and waved his hand at the surrounding dunes.

  “Then we rely on speed. Get moving!” I barked.

  Farmathr looked at me for the space of a breath, a funny little half-grin twisting the lower part of his face. His eyes held a twinkle, but I didn’t think it was a twinkle of amusement. He shrugged and spurred his horse up to a canter, taking fewer and fewer turns. The sound of the horses’ hooves echoed out across the desert, but there was nothing to be done about that.

  Another shriek split the air, closer this time. “What is it?” I asked, passing the saddlebags containing the varkr pups to Sig’s horse. They were almost too heavy to carry.

  “One of the things. One of the monsters.” Farmathr shrugged without turning.

  “You don’t seem very concerned,” said Pratyi.

  “They don’t want me. I’ve come to terms with what goes for life here in Kleymtlant.”

  “Well, as long as you are safe…” sneered Althyof.

  “Some kind of…large…reptile, but at the same time…not just a reptile,” said Veethar, intense concentration burning on his face. “I think…”

  “Can you turn it aside?”

  Frikka reached across and took her husband’s reins. She nodded at him as if nothing more exciting than a stiff breeze were behind us. Veethar squeezed his eyes shut. “Syow echkert,” he whispered.

  Riding next to me, Jane made a “give it to me” gesture.

  “See nothing,” I translated.

  The beast following us made a strange, confused noise.

  “Lyktu echkert,” said Veethar.

  “Smell nothing.”

  Again, the beast made the confused noise, but this time, it came with an undercurrent of anger, of frustration.

  “Hayrthu echkert!”

  “Hear nothing.”

  A squall of pure rage thundered across the dunes, and with it, came the sound of the beast sprinting in our direction.

  “Up! To the top of the dune,” I commanded, reining Slaypnir and nudging him in the flank. He snorted and sprang up the hill, hooves churning the loose sand. The others followed suit, Skowvithr taking Sig’s reins and leading him up. On the crest, I whirled Slaypnir around, peering into the sunset for a glimpse of what was pursuing us. Skowvithr didn’t stop at the peak of the dune—he took Sig down the back side and stopped, looking back up.

  Veethar pointed, and I followed his gaze. Sand flew
into the air near the crest of a dune about three hundred yards away, as if something were running across the dune’s face, below the peak. The sand catapulted into the air like the plumes thrown by the tires of a trophy truck in the Baja 1000. The thing zipped across the backside of the dune, still hidden from sight except for the sand thrown by its passage. “Big,” said Veethar.

  “Dragon-big or Meuhlnir-big?”

  Veethar shrugged. “Can’t see it yet.”

  The thing came over the top of the dune and, in a single leap, cleared the valley to the next dune. Its head bore horns similar to a rhinoceros, but with the big horn in the rear, colored in muted greens and golds. A ring of spikes encircled its neck as if it wore a spiked dog-collar. Spikes covered its back, which was also scaled in the same colors as its head. It had eight spiked legs, four on each side, and a long, curved tail that arched up over its back. The spikes on the tail started narrow and then broadened like Mothi’s axe heads and looked sharp enough to take off a man’s head.

  It stood still atop the dune, staring at us with one twitching eye, head cocked to the side. Its gaze moved down our line in spastic jerks and once it reached the end, zipped back to fasten on Veethar. It opened its mouth and yowled like a cat that had been dipped in water, then sprang off the crest of the dune, legs pinwheeling, spitting sand toward the sky. It disappeared down the face of the dune, but the horrific screech didn’t abate for a moment.

  “Mad at you, Veethar,” said Meuhlnir with a small grin.

  “How do we fight it?” asked Jane.

  “All of you get over the crest of the dune,” said Veethar. “I will lead it away.”

  “No, Veethar!”

  “Yes, Frikka!” he snapped. “Do as I say.”

  “No,” I said. “I have a better idea.”

  “Say it! Quickly!”

  “You run, it follows you, we follow it…and kill it. To start, mete out damage at a slow pace, saving energy for a burst to take it down once it gets weaker.”

  “And if it turns on you?”

  “We scatter and fall back together after it chases one of us. Rinse, repeat, profit.”

  “You are a strange man, Hank,” said Farmathr.

  “If you only knew,” said Jane.