Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  I reeled into a giant on the other side who cursed and shoved me back. The horned giant balled his fists and squinted at me through narrowed eyelids.

  “The inn?” I demanded.

  “There is no inn on Niflhaymr that will serve your kind. You are repulsive.” He swung his fist.

  I ducked it and twisted away through the crowd, shoving and stepping on pale blue feet as I went. The giant with the horn in his forehead lurched after me but tripped and spilled face first into the street to the laughter and jeers of the other giants.

  Yowtgayrr, I thought. “That’s another one I owe you,” I whispered. I kept running and twisting through the crowd, followed by a wave of angry jeering and catcalls. I glanced over my shoulder, searching for signs of more than vocal disapproval, and when I faced forward, I ran smack into the front of an enormous giant.

  He didn’t move at all, except to sneer down at me, arms akimbo. His nose wrinkled, and he shook his head. He was the biggest giant I’d seen, arms layered in thick thews, ringed in bony scales around his elbows and wrists. His eyes tracked up to mine and widened. “You,” he muttered.

  “My apologies,” I said, climbing to my feet.

  “What do you want? Why have you come back?” The giant glanced around. “And why are you running through the crowd like a child? And since when do you apologize?”

  “I was… I wanted to find an inn, and I—”

  The tall giant laughed and swatted one of his neighbors on the shoulder. “You make me laugh, Luka Oolfhyethidn. Always, you joke. But tell me, why have you returned? I said I would watch for these intruders you warned me about. Have you returned the preer you jumbled to their proper exits? After such a long time without them working, having them hidden has been quite inconvenient for the rest of the city, you know.”

  The other giants in the street cut a swath around us, glaring at the massive giant opposite me, but no one touched us, and no one said a word. “I was mistaken about the others. They mean you no harm.” I’d have to figure out the mess about the preer later.

  He looked at me askance, forehead wrinkled with suspicion. “You were quite sure before. What has changed?”

  “I think—” I bit off my words as a giant shoved me to the side.

  The big giant roared incoherently at the one who’d pushed me and hit him with one massive fist that sent him to the street on his back. Unconscious.

  “Why did you do that, Vefsterkur?” demanded another giant standing to the side. “Do you take the side of an Isir over one of your own kind?”

  The colossal giant—Vefsterkur, I guessed—laughed and pointed a thick finger at the crowd around him. “I did no such thing, you all saw it. I took offense at having my conversation with this little Isir interrupted.” The giants looked away, and Vefsterkur put a large blue hand on my shoulder and guided me through the crowd. “You should know better than to walk in the thoroughfares, Luka,” he muttered.

  He led me to a narrow alley that barely looked wide enough for me, let alone Vefsterkur. The darkened lane smelled of refuse and bodily wastes and stretched away into the growing gloom, winding like a snake’s path. He navigated the place as if he walked the alley often, never slowing, tapping me on the left shoulder when he wanted me to bear left, and on the right when he preferred that direction. At last, he grabbed my shoulder and dragged me to a halt. The giant pushed his hand under his clothing. He withdrew a thick wooden key, which he inserted into a crack in the ice wall to my left.

  He turned the key, and with a clunk, a door opened onto the alley. “Welcome back to my hall once more, Luka, albeit approached from the back way. You no doubt recall the way to the front entrance.” He pulled the hidden door closed behind us and re-locked it with a solid-sounding clunk. “Now, tell me what you want.”

  Though warmer than outside, I’d have guessed the internal temperature was just below freezing. There were no windows visible anywhere, and the interior had been carved from ice—there were still pick marks cut into every surface. The furniture, if it could be called that, was arranged without apparent thought or pattern. A block of ice here, a block of ice there—it seemed more like a scattering of toy blocks than furniture.

  Vefsterkur sat on one of the blocks of ice and waved at another. “Make yourself comfortable, Luka. You know I don’t require formality.”

  “Yes,” I said, eyeing the ice block and trying to figure out how badly it would affect my hips to sit on it. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather stand.”

  “Suit yourself.” Even seated, he had to look down to meet my gaze. “Let’s get on with it.” A harsh, impatient tone had crept into his voice.

  “As I said in the street, more information has presented itself, and I was wrong about the nature of those following me.”

  “Hmmm.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what is their true nature?”

  “Harmless to those that leave them in peace.”

  Vefsterkur pursed his blueberry lips. “Is it so?”

  Something is wrong here. But what? I kept my gaze firmly locked on his. “It isn’t going well,” I said through my animus outside the city. “He suspects something.”

  “Giants are a suspicious lot,” said Althyof. “Remember to act the way Luka would. Brash, confident, irreverent, arrogant.”

  I turned my attention back to the giant. “Do you question my judgment?” I demanded in an imperious tone.

  “I do not question the judgment of Luka Oolfhyethidn, not he who I have known for eons.” He cocked his head to the side and squinted at me in the dim light. “I do, however, question whether you are Luka Oolfhyethidn.”

  “Of course I am he,” I said with a curl of my lip. “Have you lost your wits? Do I not look like myself?”

  The giant grunted and shifted his weight on the ice block that served him as a chair. “I’m sure I haven’t, Isir, and you do look like Oolfhyethidn. Whether you are he is another question.”

  I scoffed and pasted a sneer on my face. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll take my leave.”

  The giant shook his head. “I think not. No, you won’t leave this hall unless you have satisfied my suspicions.”

  I shook my head with scorn. “Tell me what you require of me,” I snapped.

  “Answer me this, Luka, if it is really you: what is the name of that which heralds the day from the east each morning?”

  I thought furiously for a moment. “Shining sunlight.”

  “Sunlight, is it?” he asked with a scowl on his face. He shifted his weight forward as though making ready to pounce.

  The Romans and Greeks had a myth about the Sun’s path through the sky, and I thought the Norse did too, but I couldn’t remember it. I wracked my mind. Something about a horse?

  “Quick,” I said through my animus. “He’s asking me what heralds the day in the east each morning. I said sunlight, but that didn’t satisfy him.”

  Jane and Althyof exchanged a bewildered look.

  “Skinfaxi,” said Krowkr.

  Of course! The horse with the shining mane. “Yes,” I said to the giant. “Sunlight shining from the mane of Skinfaxi.”

  The giant sat back a little, looking mollified to a degree. “And what brings about the darkness of night?”

  Through my animus, I asked, “Krowkr, what is the name of the horse that brings the night sky?”

  “Hrimfaxi,” he said without pausing to think.

  “Thanks,” I said and returned my attention to Vefsterkur. “He of the frosty mane. Hrimfaxi.”

  “Where is it you go?” the giant asked.

  “Go? I am right here.”

  “Yes, but your mind goes elsewhere before you answer. Where is it you go?”

  I forced a laugh. “I go woolgathering.”

  “Woolgathering?” The big giant looked perplexed.

  “Searching my memory. I haven’t thought of these things in a long, long time.”

  He scratched his chin. “Very well. But tell me, what is it that separates my realm from y
ours?”

  I had a vague memory that there was a river in Norse mythology that defined the boundary of the two realms, but I didn’t think that was what he meant. I turned my attention to my comrades outside the city. “Althyof, this one is for you. He asked me what separates Niflhaymr from Osgarthr.”

  “The river Ifing,” said Krowkr.

  “You know the answer, Hank. A proo.”

  “Thanks.” I looked up at Vefsterkur and grinned. “That one is tricksy.”

  “Woolgathering, again?” he asked with a hint of suspicion.

  “Yes, but here’s the answer to your trick question. A proo.”

  He nodded and relaxed back on his icy throne. “Welcome to my home, Luka.”

  “You’re sure now?” I asked lacing my voice with irritation.

  “Yes, I am satisfied.”

  Luka wouldn’t have let it end there. “Then it’s my turn.”

  “Your turn?” asked the giant.

  “Yes, you asked me questions, now answer mine.” It was precisely what Luka would insist on: tit for tat. “Answer my questions, if you can, Vefsterkur.”

  With a small, sour smile, the giant nodded.

  “All the races, all the known klith, all the known stathur…where did they come from?”

  Vefsterkur laughed derisively. “Such an easy one? Do you think me feeble?”

  “That doesn’t sound like an answer.”

  “All are descended from the Plauinn. The worlds split from each other in the Sundering.”

  I scowled. “Any child knows that.”

  “It was your question, Luka,” said the giant in an amused tone. “Do you have one more suited for adults?”

  “What is the real separation between our realms?”

  Vefsterkur cast a confused glance my way. “A proo as you’ve already said.”

  “No.” A sly smile spread on my lips. “The preer are bridges between the two worlds, but that isn’t what I meant. What makes a giant a giant and an Isir an Isir?”

  The giant brought a thick hand to his face and scratched a scaly growth under his chin. “A difficult question, but the answer must be the bits of the Plauinn that have gone awry in the time since the First War.”

  I nodded grudgingly. “Yes, I suppose that will do.”

  “You are satisfied?”

  “No,” I snapped. “I’ve more.”

  The giant chuckled and shrugged as if he didn’t care, but irritation rumbled in that chuckle, and the shrug twitched with the urge to smash my head in. “Ask your riddles.”

  “At the base of a tree, there are three. Do you know of what I speak?” I leaned forward and jutted out my jaw.

  A small smile creased his face. “Your speech amuses me, Isir. But, yes, the Three Maids are known to me.” He sniffed as if he’d caught a scent on the currents of the air.

  “And the tree?”

  “Iktrasitl, of course.”

  “Tell me, if you know. Is the tree real? Where does it lie?”

  The giant’s shoulders tensed, and his eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask this?”

  “I already know. I want to know if you do.”

  He glared at me for the space of a minute or two before shrugging. “At the center, the meeting place. Where the world of the Plauinn once stood.”

  I shrugged. “Very good.”

  “You’re satisfied?” he asked. His nostrils flared, and he sucked a long breath through his nose.

  “I am.” Out of decent questions is what I am.

  “Let me ask you one more.”

  “I guess,” I said. “If you must.”

  The giant nodded and shifted his weight forward to the edge of the ice block. “Is that the blood of a frost giant I discern on your skin, Isir?”

  I stared at him, flummoxed. “What? No. I have no idea what you perceive, but it—”

  “Do not lie to me!” he bellowed.

  “What if it is? Perhaps from the fight in the street.”

  His eyelids squeezed to slits. “I don’t think so, Isir. When you came to me before, you asked for a frost giant to wait in ambush for those that pursued you.”

  “Yes, I remember,” I lied.

  “I sent my lesser son.”

  “Yes.” I wanted—needed—a way out of the conversation, but my mind refused to give me anything but single word answers. “You sent your son with me. He bids me tell you hello.”

  He grimaced and gave his head a slight shake. “I sent my lesser son…with Luka.”

  “This again?” I asked, mind racing a million miles a minute.

  Vefsterkur stood, stretching up toward the ceiling, a redwood with tree-trunk legs. His hands curled into fists. “He was my lesser son, but he was still my son.” His voice had gone cold.

  “Uh-oh,” I said through my animus outside the city.

  “What?” asked Jane.

  “He knows about the frost giant we killed. It was his son. That’s what he meant by ‘tell my father hello.’”

  “Get out of there! Run!”

  “Too late for that.” I popped both of my antafukl to the air above Vefsterkur’s head. “Now, wait a minute, Vefsterkur. I can explain.”

  “I think not,” he spat.

  “Move, Hank!” said Yowtgayrr, and I dove behind the block of ice that was to have been my seat.

  “Who is it who stands before me?” roared Vefsterkur, but whether he addressed Yowtgayrr or me, I couldn’t say.

  I didn’t have enough ammunition to kill the brute, not even with Yowtgayrr’s help. In my mind’s eye, golden runes appeared in the air in front of me. At first, I thought it was Yowtgayrr using one of the Alfar kaltrar, but a strange voice spoke in my head, speaking a triblinkr that seemed more than familiar. It felt more like a memory.

  It was a triblinkr. One I had read in my grimoire. Crawling on my hands and knees back toward the door we’d come in, I chanted the triblinkr.

  The giant took one huge stride and caught me up, but before he could do anything, I finished the triblinkr and felt the power of it snap out toward Vefsterkur. “What is this?” he demanded, standing as still as a stone, fear burning on his face. “Do you curse me, Isir?”

  I crawled away from him, and his head snapped toward the sound, but his eyes looked at a point beyond me.

  “You can’t escape me, Isir.” He chuckled. “Curse me with blindness all you want. I locked the doors, and I have the only key.” He swept his arms in a huge circle around himself, fingers curled into claws. “I will tear you apart slowly, Isir. Your limbs, I’ll peel from your body and beat you with them. I will grind your bones to dust and entomb them with the body of my son. I know this hall like my own hand.” Two long slashes from Yowtgayrr’s weapons appeared across his back, and he screamed in pain. “You must do more than that to end my existence, Isir.”

  My hands fell to the butts of my pistols, but they were the wrong weapons for this fight. Not only did I not have enough ammunition, but they were too loud, and who knew how many other giants would come running to investigate their thunder. I let Luka’s form evaporate.

  I dove on the giant from above, talons extended. With a crrruck to end all crrrucks, I raked my claws across his plane of a forehead. That was great as a distraction, but I needed more than ravens made of smoke to beat Vefsterkur.

  “A scratch!” he boomed with a laugh. “You’ll find I have more resilience than my son.”

  I could do more with my animus than be a bird—I knew from my dream-trip with Kuhntul. They could be anything I wanted them to be. I slid out of my armor and my pistols, tucking everything behind an ice block. I’d been a fish in the stathur that imprisoned Hel, maybe I could also form them into other animals.

  “Here, giant,” said Yowtgayrr, allowing his invisibility to fade—not that it mattered against a blind opponent.

  Vefsterkur’s head whipped to the side. “Who is it who speaks to me? Who has entered my hall unannounced, uninvited?”

  In answer, another set of slashes appeared across
his back.

  He straightened, grimacing with pain. “Whoever you are, you shall not leave this hall breathing. That is a promise.”

  I brought both ravens to the ground, not bothering to fly down, just making them appear there in an instant. I thought about Keri and Fretyi’s mother and reshaped one of my animuses in her image. The other I reformed in the image of a predator from Mithgarthr that always inspired fear—a magnificent lion of smoke.

  I could move them without a sound, but I wanted them to make noise. I wanted them to draw Vefsterkur’s attention away from Yowtgayrr and myself. In the varkr form, I leapt to one of the ice blocks and let loose a howl. In the lion form, I rushed forward in a thundering charge, roaring as loud as I could.

  The giant’s head whipped toward the varkr for a split-second but refocused on the sounds of the charging lion. He set his feet and spread his arms wide. At the last moment before impact, I shifted the animus back to where it had started from.

  Vefsterkur stood waiting for a few moments, then shook his head and extended his arm to feel for the beast. Using the spirit-varkr, I bit his outstretched hand, willing my fangs to be as hard as diamonds, as sharp as edged-steel, and he shouted, jerking his hand to his chest.

  I began the Kuthbyuhrn triblinkr once I’d removed the last of my gear. The frigid air clawed into my joints and bones. With a perfect understanding of my tactic, Yowtgayrr swept in from the giant’s flank, stabbing with his longsword and slicing at the back of the giant’s knee with his long dagger.

  The giant whirled toward him, arms sweeping wide, but Yowtgayrr was already rolling away. I repeated my earlier charge with my animus, pounding paws made from smoke against the ice, making as much noise as I could. The giant whirled toward the sound and set himself to take the charge yet again. My prayteenk reached its conclusion, and I reared up on my hind legs and roared.

  Vefsterkur wheeled toward me, but the sound of the charging animus drew his attention like a package store does a drunk. With the varkr, I leapt at the giant from the side, jaws gaping, and I stepped forward on my hind legs, arms held wide.