“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
She leaned close, her ice-blue eyes seeming to spin and twirl. With exaggerated care, she put the tip of the chisel on my forehead. “Stop twitching around, Tyeldnir. This is delicate work.”
“Let me up! Don’t you dare—”
She drew a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. She put her left index finger on my forehead, next to the freakish warmth of the silvery chisel. “Svepn,” she said, and a dollop of icy cold appeared where her fingertip had been.
My struggles became weaker and less focused as the icy cold spread across my forehead, over the top of my head and down my neck. I felt a vague pressure on my forehead as she plied the chisel.
“There, there, Tyeldnir,” said Kuhntul. “Trust me.”
As if I had a choice.
Fourteen
My eye snapped open, and Kuhntul was holding my wrists, trying to hold me down. “Let me up, Kuhntul!”
“Hank,” said Jane in an exasperated tone. “You‘re dreaming!”
My head felt as if someone had it in a vice and had cranked it as tight as it could go. I sank back to the bedroll that insulated me from the ice floor and let my eyelids droop closed.
“Bad one?”
“I… To tell you the truth, I don’t know. Kuhntul was in it, and we were giants, walking around outside. She told me a few things, and then at the end there, she…well, I don’t know what she did. Kuhntul put me out the way Sif did in Kuthbyuhrn’s cave. She had the chisel she gave me and was doing something to my head.”
Concern washed across Jane’s face. “But you’re okay now?”
“Headache.” I sighed and pushed myself up. “Where are the others?”
“Still looking—it’s only been about twenty minutes.”
“Seems longer,” I said, shaking my head. I stared down at my hand, focusing on the chisel Kuhntul had given me, wanting to see if I still “had” it or not. Its warm weight came first, then the pale light flickered off its surface.
“What did she do?”
“Nothing.” I put the chisel in my pocket, knowing it would disappear as soon as I released it. “I don’t know. God, my head hurts.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“Can’t. Not after that dream. Who knows what I would dream about next.”
“Me?” Jane batted her eyelids coquettishly.
“I don’t need to dream about you, Supergirl. You’re better in real life.”
“Aw, you say the sweetest things.”
“Plus, in my dreams, you never do the laundry.”
She gave me a look and smacked her lips. “Guess I need to advance the beating schedule again.”
“All talk, no tango.”
“Tango? When were you born, Hank? 1918?”
“Just because you missed the fine experience of the seventies, doesn’t mean—”
“Hey! I was alive in the late seventies.”
I rolled my eye. “As if that counts.”
Jane stuck out her tongue before looking away. “What did she do, do you think?” Her voice had taken on an arcadian quality, but the skin between her eyes wrinkled with tension.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe it was a troymskrok.”
“You’ve never thought that before.”
I shook my head. “She seemed… There was something that felt off—or possibly familiar—about her this time. She started out as a giant, changed to the all-white version, and ended up as a blue-eyed blonde.”
“An Isir?” she asked.
“Yes, in the form of an Isir. She reminded me of Freya a little.” I smacked my palm against my forehead. “That’s it! Her laugh, her glass-bell-tinkling laugh!”
“Um, you know you sound like an insane person right now?”
“Yeah, yeah. In the dream, Kuhntul kept laughing, and it seemed so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. But it reminded me of Freya’s, that wind-chimes-in-a-light-breeze laugh she has.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea. It might be an Isir thing.”
Jane shook her head. “Sif, Yowrnsaxa, and Frikka don’t laugh like that.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps Kuhntul is related to Freya somehow.”
“And Hel.”
I nodded grudgingly. “And Hel.”
“But how could they be related? Hel and Freya are Isir—the only two sisters in their family, I thought. Kuhntul’s a ghost…or whatever she is.”
“She tried to tell me what being a Tisir means—she’s always answering my questions with ‘I am Tisir,’ as if that explains anything.”
‘Well? Don’t be stingy. What did she say?”
“She took great pains to distinguish Tisir from filkya, but I don’t get why. She said their name comes from the Gamla Toonkumowl word for matron, but that it also means ‘lady,’ or…or ‘woman.’”
“Matron, huh?”
“Yeah. Somehow the conversation shifted to the Nornir at that point, and she never elaborated.”
“Matron can mean a bunch of different things. From ‘mother’ to ‘the person in a women’s restroom who hands out towels.’”
“Wow, you visit fancy-schmancy restrooms. But yeah, somehow I don’t think it’s that last one.”
“It can also mean ‘guard’ or ‘attendant,’ the way it’s used in a prison or a girls’ school.”
“Yeah, and I guess that definition matches best. After all, Kuhntul seems intent on guarding us against Hel’s machinations.”
Jane tilted her head to the side. “Does she?”
“Does she what?” asked Althyof from the doorway.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said with a glance at Jane. “Did you find anything?”
“Sure. Lots of things I can’t mention in front of your lady-wife, but also…a proo.”
“Good. It’s getting creepy in here,” said Jane.
“Then keep your eyes shut as we walk to the room with the proo I found.” The Tverkr made a show of looking around. “That Alf still out looking?”
“Both Yowtgayrr and Krowkr are still looking.”
“Ah.” He turned back to the hall. “Alf! Human! Come back!” he yelled.
Yowtgayrr turned the corner and smiled. “I found the first of the hidden preer,” he called.
“What? I found a proo first!” said Althyof.
Yowtgayrr tilted his head to the side, looking perplexed. “If this is a joke, I don’t get the punch line.”
“No joke.” Althyof swept his hand in an arc in front of him. “At least not on my part. I found a proo and returned at once to tell of it. Before you arrived, blathering about being first.”
Yowtgayrr walked toward us, shaking his head. At the other end of the hall, Krowkr appeared, wearing a broad smile. “I’ve found one!” he crowed.
Althyof shook his head and turned my way. “What now?”
“We should have known Luka wouldn’t make it as easy as only having two preer to choose from. I guess I’ll have to send ravens through all the preer until we find the right one.”
“Uh, sure. You’re not exhausted or anything,” said Jane. “Why don’t you carry everyone’s pack, too?”
I smiled and blew her a kiss. “Laundry done, yet?”
She turned to Althyof. “Isn’t there another way of testing these preer?”
“We could go through them, one at a time.”
“That sounds safe,” I said. Jane gave me a look I hadn’t seen since the time I took a straw from the new box by mistake instead of using the last straw from the old box. What thin ice I walked on…
“What if I went through?” asked Jane. “Would the ring protect me?”
“If the stathur’s physical laws are close to ours. If they are not…” The Tverkr shrugged. “Once you are dead, you can’t heal.”
“The animuses don’t take much energy. It’s not like a shape-change.”
Jane shook her head and swept her pack onto her back. “How is it that the sick one of our group has to do
everything?”
Althyof hitched his shoulders. “Isir are stubborn.”
I laughed and got to my feet. “Take me to one of the hidden preer.”
Althyof led us to the proo he’d found. The second I saw the thing, I knew something was…different. On the surface, it looked the same as any other proo I’d seen: thousands or millions of colors swirling, overlapping, mixing to form a silvery, mirror-like surface, but when I looked at this proo there were…things hanging from the edges. They appeared as colored yarn or loose strings of whatever material made up the part of the proo visible to the eye. The string-like things moved as though caught in an ocean current, making me think of seaweed.
“What’s the matter, Hank?” asked Jane.
“Something’s different.” The more I looked, the more things seemed to leap out at me. The proo had an aura of sorts, a shadow made of pure color—a light blue. I stared at it, trying to take the differences in. The whole thing seemed to twitch in time to the beat of some hidden conductor. “It’s…it’s moving.”
“I think you need to rest, Hank,” murmured Jane.
“No, the proo is fixed in place, but the part we can see is…twitching back and forth. And there are loose bits. They remind me of loose strings from a sweater or something.”
Jane looked at the proo before turning her gaze on me. “If you say so.”
“Take me to another one,” I blurted. “I have to see if this is a onetime thing.”
Yowtgayrr led us to the proo he’d found, and everyone walked in silence. I knew the minute we reached the door to the room that the proo inside the new room would be the same as the last—even before I saw it. There was a feeling to the proo that hadn’t been there before.
The glowing ring shimmied and shook as the silvery part of the proo twitched. The stringy parts of it waved to a different rhythm, and the aura rippled between pale green to violent chartreuse and everything in between.
The proo was in the corner, shining like a beacon to a ship in storm-tossed seas. I left the others near the door and walked toward the proo slowly, almost mesmerized by the shifting colors, the twitchy circumference, the waving yarn-like extrusions.
Something was forming in my mind—a word on the tip of my mental tongue. It danced out of reach, but it had something to do with the parts of the proo that were now visible.
“What is it, Hank?”
“I don’t know yet. There’s something…”
Jane came to stand at my side, not speaking, but reassuring me by her presence.
“Syow tyoopt,” I said. My remaining eye tingled the way it always did when enchanted for night vision, and indeed, I intended to charm my vision—but to see deep beneath the surface instead of in the dark.
The mirror-like surface of the proo sprang at me like the image from a pop-up book. The colors no longer seemed mixed—they seemed layered, one atop the other as though a part of some strange topographical map. Shapes lurked in that three-dimensional image, shapes that writhed and twisted to an unknown rhythm, perhaps fighting for dominance. Their forms brought to mind those cyclopean things I’d seen between the terminal ends of the proo—Lovecraftian Great Old Ones skittering around in the spaces between the realms.
“I can see them,” I muttered.
“See who, Hank?” asked Jane in a worry-infused tone. “Is this because of what Kuhntul did with the chisel?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Maybe not, though.”
“Well, at least that’s cleared up.”
“They are…” The Great Old Ones became more organized, synchronizing their movements with one another. “Wait…something is changing.”
“What?”
All at once, the proo cycled through all the colors of the spectrum in a heartbeat—a turbocharged hallucinogenic trip focused on rainbows. The Great Old Ones pulsed and fell still, and my eye went out of focus. Moving together, the undulating tendrils that ringed the edges of the proo curled inward, reaching, stretching, searching for something in the manner of sightless worms. One of them touched one of the Great Old Ones and twitched convulsively as though it had brushed against a live wire, then shriveled and darkened to an ashy gray—like a slug exposed to salt. The Great Old One it had come into contact with reared away from it and shook itself, like a dog shaking off snow, before settling back next to its neighbors. The remaining tendrils curled back toward the edge of the proo and seemed to cower there.
The colors cycled faster, and the Great Old Ones embedded in the proo twitched and pulsed in time. A sound similar to a strong wind whistling through an old keyhole invaded the room, and I got the sense that the noise issued from the mouths of the Great Old Ones. “What are you trying to tell me?” I murmured.
“Hank?” Jane put her hand on my forearm and gave it a little squeeze. “You’re sort of freaking me out, jerkface.”
“What? Oh.” I patted her hand.
The Great Old Ones shuddered to a stop and, as one, swiveled toward Jane. They froze again, pointing at my wife like thick, blunt accusing fingers.
“Step back.” I took a step in front of her, hand on Kunknir. The Great Old Ones shuddered as though laughing at me and squiggled and squirmed until they formed the shape of several runes. “Raidho isaz thurisaz kaunan hagalaz,” I read.
“Loosely translated: ‘Don’t move. Danger, pain, destruction,’” said Althyof.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Not much room for doubt there.”
“Where… Do you see those runes somewhere?” asked the Tverkr, peering into the depths of the proo.
“Yes. You don’t?”
Althyof shook his head, a moue twisting his lips. “Where do you see these runes?”
“Right there… The Great Old Ones on the surface of the proo.” Again, the thick, blunt shapes shuddered as though laughing.
Althyof gave me a critical, assessing look.
“I know how it sounds,” I said. “Doesn’t change the fact that I can see them. There are also tendrils all around the edge. When they brush against one of the Great Old Ones, they die.”
Althyof cleared his throat and shrugged.
“It seems to me,” began Yowtgayrr, “that if Hank sees danger in the surface of this proo, it would be pure folly to ignore it.”
“Unless he’s hallucinating,” muttered Jane.
I turned and cocked my eyebrow at her, a small smile on my lips. “Okay, so dragons, elves, Norse gods, me turning into ravens and bears, growing wings from your shoulders, returning the guts of poor Krowkr here back to the inside of his body—all of that is okay, but me seeing something in the proo is one step too far?”
“Well, when you put it like that…I should have tied you down somewhere a long time ago, crazy-man.”
“Again with the promises… All talk…”
Jane blushed and shook her head.
“Take me to the next one,” I said as eager as a kid with a new toy.
With a start, Krowkr took the lead, traversing a twisting route of hallways that ended in a large, oval room. As with the large hall where we’d fought Vefsterkur, ice furniture was scattered about with no rhyme or reason I could detect, but I didn’t care much about that. The proo pulsing in the center of the oval drew my gaze like a magnet draws iron filings.
The tendrils around its edge were longer and moved with a frenzied, convulsive quality. Great Old Ones twisted and swam about each other in the middle of the proo, playing and cavorting in the manner of kids in a pool. The vision of those Great Old Ones curling and winding in sinuous patterns disturbed me more than the thick, forbidding shapes in Yowtgayrr’s proo.
“Any runes?” asked Althyof.
“No, nothing.” As I watched, the Great Old Ones beckoned, though without arms or faces. I have no idea how they accomplished it, but I felt it, nonetheless. They moved as one, creating a circle in the exact center of the proo before beginning a swirling dance, drawing a circle with their bodies.
“Well?” asked Jane. “What do you see?”
“It’s as if they are drawing me a picture. A circle.” They broke apart, and as with the other proo, formed runes.
“Here we go. Raidho ansuz fehu gebo othala algiz jera.”
Jane swatted me on the shoulder. “Well? What’s it mean, bozo?”
“Could be: ‘Prosperous travel, lucky gift: home, protection, peace.’”
“Yes, but it could also translate as: ‘Travel Isir, expensive or valuable gifts: inheritance, protection, reward,’” said Althyof. “But either way, it’s positive.”
“An invitation?” asked Jane.
The Tverkr shrugged. “Could be. Or perhaps Luka left yet another trick.”
“Let’s go back to the first one,” I said. “I want to see what it says.” We traipsed back to the first proo, and as we entered the room, the Great Old Ones had already begun transmitting runes at us in a frenzy. “Eager this time,” I muttered. “Ansuz laguz uruz kaunan ansuz laguz… It repeats after that.”
“So: ‘prosperity potential willfulness mortality.’”
Jane shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Is it positive or negative?”
Althyof pulled a face. “This isn’t as easy as it looks. Each rune can have many meanings, depending on context. It’s not as cut and dried as you want it to be.”
She shrugged, exasperated. “Then what else could it mean?”
“‘Truth, fantasy, wisdom, knowledge.’”
“That makes even less sense.”
I shrugged. “I can’t change the runes they showed me.” I glanced at the proo and twitched away a step.
“What?” Jane asked, glancing at the silvery thing.
“They are all right there—well, as many as can fit, I suppose.”
“Who? The Great Old One things?”
I nodded. “They’re packed in there like kids at a window.”
She glanced at the proo again, a trifle more uneasily than before. “What are they doing?”
“Watching us. The question is: why?”
Althyof glared at the proo with a shrewd expression on his face. “Seems they have an interest in what we make of their runes.”
Yowtgayrr had been standing there in silence the entire time, looking down at his feet. Without warning, he whooped and looked up at me, eyes burning. “You said the message was already going when we arrived?”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 109
