Althyof bent and put his hand on my shoulder. “Relax, Hank. There’s time. Does anything stand out? Any way to avoid sending your animus through the preer?”
“The preer…” I murmured. “I… I…”
“Okay,” said Althyof. “Relax a bit.”
The karls had seen the ancient scroll and had come as close as they dared. They stood there, staring at me in perfect silence, with awe in their eyes, and I hated it. They didn’t understand—to them, we were gods, and that onus was one more than I wanted. “Send them on their way,” I said. “Send them home.”
Althyof glanced over his shoulder before hunkering down in front of me. “There’s nothing to do, Hank. They will believe what they want…what they need to believe.”
I shook my head.
“Let’s play a little game,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You pretend not to notice those karls, and I’ll ask you a few leading questions—see if we can’t make sense out of what you read.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Okay.”
“Was there anything on your scroll that might strengthen your animus?”
I rubbed my eye sockets with the heels of my hands. Even my eyeball felt stuffed with irritating, crawling things …ants, maybe. “I… No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “Was there anything that—”
“I think I learned a triblinkr similar to the Kuthbyuhrn one, but…but…it’s different somehow. It feels…more malevolent… They all feel different from the first two.”
“Kaltrar are neither good nor evil, Hank,” said Yowtgayrr softly. “It’s their use that gives them that quality.”
“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. “But—”
“There is risk in great power, Hank,” said Althyof. “Power leads to arrogance, and arrogance leads to corruption.”
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” I said.
“Yes, that’s it.” Althyof stroked his beard with a thoughtful expression on his face. “This new shapechanging triblinkr tempts you?”
“Well, no, not really. I can see its usefulness, but it seems…dishonest.”
Althyof threw back his head and laughed. “In that case, it’s perfect for a runeskowld, since it is a Tverkar art,” he said. “Listen to me, novice. Kaltrar are neither good nor evil, honest nor dishonest. As our Alf friend has already said, it’s the use of the power that defines them.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Hank, I do not guess. Not in this. The kaltrar you learned are not malevolent, and they are not good. They are merely tools you may use or not use as you see fit. But I will say this: that it worries you indicates to me that those kaltrar are in good hands.” Althyof squatted next to me. “Let’s focus on whether they are safe for you to use.”
“Okay.”
“The shapechanging triblinkr seems safe since you already do something similar, although with a different target. Tell me of the other two you can make sense of.”
“The first one…I understand it, but I don’t understand what use it would be.”
Althyof spun his index finger in a small circle.
“It lets me cast a field that manipulates things like the molecules of the air, or water in the sea.”
“Manipulate how?”
“I can either suppress them or excite them.”
“Ah,” said Althyof. “The Alfar do similar things.” He nodded at Yowtgayrr.
“Yes,” said the Alf. “Remember being trapped by Hel inside our shield? I used a kaltrar to cool the air—with little success—by reducing the excitation of the molecules in the air.”
“Ah. I see.”
“You could also put out a flame or boil water.”
“Melt frost giants,” I said.”
“An Alf would not do so, but it is possible,” said Yowtgayrr.
“Yeah, you guys don’t seem to use your gifts much. Why is that?”
Yowtgayrr looked up at the sky. “We prefer not to use the strenkir af krafti to act directly on living beings, except ourselves. Tiwaz granted our power to help us be better servants of nature, not to control nature.”
“I can respect that,” I said.
“Can you remember anything else?” asked Althyof.
“Yes,” I sighed. “It’s one of the worst things I can imagine, though.” I looked down at the ground between my knees. “I can…I think I can create truykar.”
The Alf and the Tverkr exchanged a quick glance without speaking.
“Worse yet,” I said. “I can command them to speak to me, to answer my questions.”
Althyof leaned closer. “That could be useful, if distasteful.”
“How so?”
“I imagine you could ask the remains of the frost giant which proo Luka took.”
I shuddered. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Safer than flinging your consciousness all over the cosmos,” said Yowtgayrr. “But there isn’t much time. His body has almost melted.”
Seven
The frost giant was little more than lumps of smoking, melting flesh. I wished it was too far gone, too melted to be revived. “I’m not sure I should do this,” I murmured to Jane.
“Better than becoming an idiot,” she whispered back. “Well, more of an idiot.”
“Thanks. I love you, too.”
“It’s as they said. It’s not an evil act unless you make it one.”
“One of those slippery slopes,” I said.
She shrugged. “Welcome to life, sailor. It’s nothing but slippery slopes.”
I glanced at Yowtgayrr. The planes of his face seemed harsh, immobile, but when he caught me looking, his expression softened. “It is as you said, Hank. Distasteful. But it isn’t wrong if you don’t chain him to the place of his death, as with the truykar. Release the body afterward.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out through numb lips. I took another to steady my nerves and chanted the triblinkr in nothing more than a whisper. The frost giant’s body stopped smoking first, then reformed the more melted parts. I didn’t dare look at the karls, but I heard the muttering and whispering.
The giant’s first breath was ragged and raspy. When the fingers of his right hand twitched, the noise from the karls swelled. His eyelids fluttered open, and the karls gasped. He drew another breath, eyes rolling toward me. “It wasn’t enough to kill me?” he rasped. “You find you must pull me from the grave as well?”
I glanced at Supergirl, standing at my side. Her face was drawn, pale. “Go on, Hank,” she murmured.
“This won’t take long,” I said. “I need your help.”
The giant shook his head and groaned. “Why…why should I help you?”
I shrugged. “Because you have no choice. But you have my word I will release you.”
“Ask.”
“Where did Luka go? Which of the two proo did he use?”
“Luka?” the giant rasped. “I know no Luka.”
My cop radar pinged. He was lying.
“The Isir that was here before us,” said Jane.
His monstrous black eyes drifted toward her face, then snapped back to glower at me.
“The man that asked you to stay in the grotto?” I asked. “You knew him. You know Luka.”
“By another name, perhaps,” grated the giant.
“Which proo did he travel through?” I asked again.
“In my lands, we know him as Kvethrunkr, though some call him Lochkemant because of his twisting nature.”
“Very educational, but all we need to know is which proo he took.”
The giant’s eyes rolled up to the pale blue sky above our heads. “So ugly here,” he murmured. “So hot.”
“I will release you when you answer my question.”
“The grotto,” mused the frost giant. “Or the shack. One is a trap, one is a knack.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
The giant’s black eyes rolled down to meet my ga
ze. “It’s what you bade me say.”
“What? I didn’t tell you to say anything. I asked you to—”
“You did. The other one brought you to me in the realm beyond. You told me to speak the words I have spoken and to say no more. You said you would deny it.”
I looked at Jane, my confusion echoed in her eyes. “I think you must be confused. Which proo did Kvethrunkr use?”
The giant snickered and shook his head. “This is a silly game. You know the answer already. You knew before you awakened this body.”
“Althyof, do you have—”
“Release me! I have done as you asked.”
“You haven’t,” I said. “You’ve done nothing but avoid doing what I asked.”
“Bah!” The giant struggled to sit up, but most of his musculature was gone—melted away—and he sank back. “When I can, I will get up and set to breaking you puny Isir as I couldn’t while life still flowed in these veins.”
“Release him, Hank,” said Yowtgayrr. “We will get no help from this one.”
I glanced at the Alf, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Exhaustion crept up my spine, and muddy thoughts swirled in my mind. “Last chance to speak in this world,” I said to the giant.
“Kvethrunkr spoke the truth about you, Isir,” he rasped. “Rapscallion. Rogue. Scapegrace.”
I sighed as pain snaked over the back of my head and throbbed in my temples. “He’s never spoken the truth,” I said. “About me or anyone else.” The light seemed to stab at my eye.
“Release me!” the giant boomed. “Oh and say hello to my father. Wish him well… Afterward, he will grind your bones to dust for what you have done.”
I glanced at Althyof, and the Tverkr shrugged. “Go, then. I release you to your death.” As soon as the words left my mouth, the giant spasmed once and collapsed and in gouts of whitish smoke, melted much more rapidly than before. Within minutes, his flesh disappeared, revealing smoking bones, and within another few minutes, they too melted away. In the end, all that remained of the frost giant was a discolored patch of grass and a few tendrils of white smoke.
“That was not what I expected,” I said letting my shoulders slump and closing my eyelids against the brutal light. “I thought the binding would force him to tell the truth.”
“Perhaps he was telling the truth,” muttered Althyof. “If you can learn a triblinkr to assume another man’s image, then others could as well.”
“He said I came to him after he died.”
Althyof shrugged. “There are more things in the cosmos than one man can understand.”
“What do we do now?” asked Jane.
“Grotto or shack, trap and knack. What is a knack, anyway?”
“A trick for deceiving an enemy,” said Yowtgayrr. “A stratagem.”
“Well, if one is a trap, and the other is a trick, it sounds as if we shouldn’t take either proo,” said Jane.
“Yet Luka took one of them,” said Althyof.
“Maybe we should—” I started but swooned before finishing, overcome with dizziness. In a heartbeat, Jane was there, an arm around my waist, taking my bulk as if I weighed nothing at all.
“Remember all those cracks about me overdoing it?” she asked. “When you’ve recovered, I’m definitely punching you with my pretty shield.”
“All talk,” I murmured. “Promises. No action.”
“Move him away from the where the giant fell,” said Yowtgayrr, moving to help. He arrived as my knees gave out and the world faded into the mist.
Eight
I soared above the mountaintops, reveling in the sensation of the cold, crisp air under my wings. Black feathers drank in the sun’s warmth, keeping the frigid temperatures at bay.
I didn’t remember how I’d gotten to the mountains—the last I remembered was flying over an ocean, with…something…chasing me. Another bird? I swayed to my wingtip, cutting a tight turn from the air, eyes hawkish.
But there was no threat. No kites, no…other things in pursuit. I sent a barbaric crrruck echoing from the rooftop of the world and would have smiled if I had lips.
A clearing in the trees widened below me. Icy water streamed through it, fed from a waterfall that came from even higher on the mountain. A crowd had gathered. Men, an Isir woman, a Tverkr, and even an Alf, stood around a big Isir man who lay on the ground.
He looked familiar, that one on the ground.
The woman turned her face up toward me and lifted her hand to point. It seemed I should recognize her, too.
A proo shimmered near them, and somehow, I knew there was another hidden behind the waterfall. A trail led down the mountainside.
Two varkr pups barked and yipped, spinning wildly beneath me. I sent a crrruck echoing down at them, a warm sentiment fluttering in my chest.
Can I be friends with varkr? I wondered. Surely not.
The shimmery proo that stood out in the open drew my gaze as if it hadn’t a care in the world. It seemed to glow as though surrounded by a pale blue aura. I sent another crrruck warbling at it down through the cold air.
To my surprise, an answering crrruck floated up to me, coming from the…from the proo! I spun on a wingtip, tucked my wings, and dropped like a stone. The varkr puppies danced and leapt, yipping at me as I fell. At the last moment, I snapped my wings out, cupped the air, and arrested my plummeting fall.
Reflected in the mirror-like surface of the proo was another raven. A white raven, and it seemed somehow familiar. I flew around the proo, scared to land lest the cavorting varkr puppies suddenly remember they liked bird meat. The reflection of the white raven followed me around to the back of the proo.
I craned my neck, jigging and juking in the air to see behind me. No raven, white or otherwise, shared my sky.
“Oh, hurry up, Hank,” said the reflection of the white raven.
Hank! Hank is my name, I thought with a burble of excitement. I crrrucked a question at the white raven reflected in the proo, cocking my head and tilting my wings just so to make my question clear.
The white bird shook its head as if annoyed. “You’re not really a bird, bird-brain.”
I knew that white bird. Somehow. I recognized—
“Hank! Hurry up. Fly into the proo. Jane’s fears are groundless.”
Jane? The woman! The Isir woman hovering over the fallen Isir man! Supergirl! Does that mean…
“Yes, nitwit. That ‘Isir man’ is you—your real body, anyway. Now, come on! There are things to see.”
I made a noise in my throat, a strange cross between a crrruck and a funny sounding collection of syllables: Kuhntul.
“Finally, your mind is joining the conversation. You can speak, you know. You aren’t limited to those silly raven calls.”
Tired of the pedantic white bird, I flew at the proo, intending to veer away at the last moment, but an invisible something reached out and grabbed me, jerking me into the shiny surface. With a squawk, I was through and swimming in something thick and slimy—a viscous fluid that wasn’t a fluid at all.
The white raven’s feathers melted together, forming large fish-like scales. “This will be easier if you assume a better form for the environment.”
Disparate forces seemed to tug at me from several directions at once, and a cacophony of colors swarmed in the distance. A woman screamed somewhere far away.
“Hurry,” whispered the white fish, her voice brimming with impatience. “We don’t want to be caught by the denizen of this place, Hank.”
She stared at me for several heartbeats. “By the Maids! What are you doing, man? This shape isn’t your only shape! Change!”
I shook my head, the viscous fluid or forces or whatever the hell it was making the movement feel slow, languid.
“Hank… What’s the matter with you?”
I opened my beak to give her a good crrruck, but she reached out with a hand-like fin and snapped my beak shut.
“No! No sound!” she said.
Who knew fish could be simpleto
ns? I thought.
She sighed with exasperation. “No, Hank. I’m not the simpleton in this tale.” She shook her fishy head and muttered something too low for me to hear.
My feathers felt strange. Alarmed, I glanced down at my breast. My feathers were melting, becoming spade-like! My body was changing, too, losing its flight-optimized shape, becoming bullet-like and sleek. It is the shape of a…a… I almost had it. A yellow-fin tuna! My wings twisted and slid down toward my centerline, my shoulders crumbling and reforming.
What the hell is this? Is this a dream? I thought.
“No, silly. Birds can’t dream.”
In the distance, a woman screamed again. Torment filled her voice, but also exhaustion and hopelessness.
The white fish was staring at me intently. “Do you recognize her?” she asked.
I tried to shake my head, but I no longer had a neck. No, I thought.
“That’s Hel. She’s trapped here, and Owraythu is trying to break her mind.”
None of this makes any sense.
“That’s only because you are out like a light and believe you are dreaming,” said Kuhntul.
Kuhntul? Why do I know your name?
“It’ll come to you,” she said.
What are we doing in this place?
“I grew tired of waiting for you to realize you can send your animus through a proo as long as it is open. I grew tired of watching you flail about, reading your puntidn stavsetninkarpowk, wasting time with that silly dead giant. And, you needed to see this place, to see what they are trying to do to Hel.”
I don’t understand.
“Don’t worry. You will. It’ll all come to you as soon as you wake up.”
So, this is just a dream? A…a troymskrok?
“Hardly a troymskrok, Hank. This is the same as when you visited me at the base of Iktrasitl—a dreamslice.”
Oh. I don’t understand what that means.
“It’ll come back to you. Trust me on this.”
I tried to shrug, but with no neck and no shoulders, the movement was lost in a shiver of black scales.
“If Owraythu succeeds in what she’s attempting, Hel will become much more of a problem for you, Hank. She will be more powerful, and she will have the backing of Mirkur and Owraythu, though they will no doubt keep her on a tighter leash.”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 104
