Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  Suel nodded. “Yes, please,” she breathed.

  Your potential intrigues us. It has been so long since one such as you has graced the universe. Do you not feel your potential? Do you not sense how different you are from these puny beings who surround you? You and the brother, and perhaps one other…you three alone bear the potential to go beyond the petty trappings of this realm, of this plane of existence. I am here to serve as a guide, small one. I visit you to help you rise above your lowly beginnings, to surpass the constraints these petty beings place on you.

  “But…aren’t I one of them? My sister—”

  Yes. Your sister might have the potential, being from the same genetic stock, but the necessary mindset eludes her—the ambition, the single-mindedness—that such a directed evolution requires. No, your sister will remain where she is, tied forever to this realm, to its insignificant events. You, my dear, will outgrow this place.

  Suel shook her head. She always found the arguments convincing, and there was a part of her that already believed it all. The part of her that wasn’t sure grew weaker and weaker every day—as the predictions proved accurate. “But what if I told Freya? What if I mentored her as you mentor me?”

  No matter. Do so if you wish, but I tell you now she will never be a true sister to you, small one. She will never step from your shadow and stand shoulder to shoulder with you against your enemies. In fact, before events here conclude, she will betray you. They will all betray you. All but the brother and the other one.

  Luka and Vowli, she thought.

  The brother and the other, confirmed the voice in her head.

  She meandered down the garden path, her mind reeling with what-ifs and maybes.

  Did your childhood companion not act as I told you she would this day? Did she not sneer in secret? Did she not judge you, disapprove of you? Did she not display her hatred of you for all present to see?

  Suel’s mind replayed the events in her throne room that afternoon: her conversation with Vowli and Luka into which Sif had so rudely interjected herself. The scorn in Sif’s voice, the look in her eye, they still rankled. Who is she to judge me?

  Yes, crooned the voice in her head. Who is she, indeed? You saw her true face this day. Remember it.

  “I will remember,” she promised.

  The thing she still hides from you, however, is her lust for the brother.

  “What? She seems much more interested in Paltr.”

  Mere camouflage. In the darkness, when her secret heart beats true, she lusts after the one you call Luka. The one that will champion your cause, the one who will always stand at your side, ensuring your safety, your comfort before he even considers his own. This one with the ‘cow’s mouth’ seeks to steal him away from you.

  Suel’s mind twisted back on itself. “That conniving little bitch!” she hissed.

  You have little to worry about in that regard. My auguries show he will be forever by your side. It is naught but another example of how much these petty beings resent you, how they plot against your happiness, your very life. In the days that follow, she will join forces with this Paltr to discredit the brother, to drive him from your service if they can. When this comes to pass, will you finally trust me?

  “I…I do trust you,” Suel whispered, almost a whine. “But it’s so hard…these people have been my friends all of my life. They—”

  No! No, they are not your friends. They tolerate you, ingratiate themselves to you in order that they may profit from your position. Do they not all hold choice postings within your palace? Are they not fed and clothed without so much as a thimble-full of work on their own parts?

  “Yes, I suppose that is true.”

  “Sister?” asked Freya from the path behind her. “Who are you talking to?”

  Even she will betray you, small one. Remember that.

  “No one,” said Suel. “Myself.”

  Freya laughed, and the night air tinkled with the sound of glass bells. “You know what they say about people who talk to themselves.”

  “What?” hissed Suel, rounding on her sister with fire in her eyes. “What do they say about me?”

  “Huh?” Freya hesitated mid-step. “What? No, I meant—”

  She wants your throne. She will conspire to depose you before the year’s end.

  Rage boiled in Suel’s veins. “I know what you want, Sister. You want me judged insane so you can sit on my throne and rule in my stead. But I tell you, Freya, it will never work! I will die before I let you take my throne.”

  “Suel, what is this?” asked Freya, confusion reigning on her face. “A joke, Sister. I love you, Suel. I’d never do anything against you.”

  She will ally with your enemies before the year is out.

  “Sure, sure. You and Sif!”

  Freya shook her head. “Sister, you’ve nothing to worry about with us. We all love you. I don’t even want to be empress. It pleases me to support your rule, as is my duty, I might add, as it is your birthright to rule in the first place. I wouldn’t want the pressures you deal with so easily; I’m not cut from the same cloth, I could never do as good a job as you do, Sister. And Sif…Sif has been your truest friend since we were all in pigtails. You needn’t worry about her either. If she speaks out of turn, it is only out of love for you.”

  “Love! Ha!” Suel whirled away from her sister and stomped her foot. “You are all the same. Jealous! Avaricious!”

  “Sister, I—”

  “Silence!” Suel snapped, whirling back to sneer in her sister’s face. “Do not presume to instruct me on the motivations of my subjects.”

  “Friends, Suel. Family.”

  Do you see how she already betrays you in her heart?

  “Silence!” shrieked Suel. “Silence or I’ll have your tongue cut from your head!” She whirled and stared into the shadows of the Queen’s Garden.

  Freya fell silent and her gaze drifted far away as a single tear slid down her cheek.

  Twenty-nine

  Kuhntul fell silent, her gaze far away, focused on the event she’d recounted, tears brimming in her eyes.

  “Who are you, Kuhntul? You speak as if you witnessed those events in the flesh.” For the first time, I glanced down at her slowth, and the size of it amazed me. I bent my mind to dip into her slowth, but I could not—something repelled me.

  Kuhntul shrugged, still gazing away into the distance. “I am Kuhntul,” she said in a lifeless voice. “I am Tisir.”

  “Were you Suel’s Tisir?”

  She guffawed once and turned to meet my gaze. “In a way, I suppose.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No,” she said. “You do not. But it is no matter.” The sound of glass bells tinkled through the forest as she laughed.

  “Your laugh…the way you flirt all the time…your obvious love of Suel…” I mused.

  “Yes?” she said, suddenly solemn.

  “Are you…are you—”

  “I’ve said. I’m Kuhntul, and I am Tisir.”

  “Yes, but you are more than that. Are you—were you Freya?”

  Her face grew slack as she stared at me. Slowly, she shook her head. “I am Kuhntul, Tyeldnir. I need be no other.”

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Okay. Kuhntul it is, but will you promise me one thing?”

  “That depends on what you require of me.”

  “If there comes a time when I need more information than that, will you tell me?”

  She nodded without pause, without hesitation. “Of that, you can be sure.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” she repeated.

  “Pinky-swear?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “You are sometimes quite strange. Do you know that?”

  “Yeah, so people keep telling me.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Yeah, yeah. My big brain makes everyone jealous.”

  She grinned.

  “One more question about the preer.”

  She s
hrugged. “Ask.”

  “Can I dial a proo to point back to this place?”

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t it…I don’t know…outside of…of…”

  “It’s the Conflux, a concinnity of time. It’s neither inside nor outside of anything. Think of it as the scaffold that supports everything else.”

  “Everything except the timeflows, right?”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure that’s true. Would they exist without the Conflux? That answer eludes me.”

  “Well, whatever. As long as I can get back here. When you took the chisel in my dream…”

  She gave me a strange look. “It was your dream, Tyeldnir. Plus, you know how to find it without wasting oxygen.”

  I nodded, and the chisel’s warm bulk rested in my palm.

  “You see?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t let Mother Skult see that.”

  “No, I won’t. Especially not now I understand what she really is.” I pursed my lips and met Kuhntul’s gaze.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Suel gave up on her friends without a fight.”

  “You don’t understand what it is to have others speaking directly in your mind, Tyeldnir. You don’t understand the power of such voices.”

  “I don’t?”

  “It is as if those voices are your own thoughts, your own mind telling you things it has worked out when you weren’t looking.”

  I shook my head, lips wrinkled in a frown. “I’ve had the Plauinn talking inside my mind, I’ve had you mucking about in there. I can tell the difference. Everyone wants me to roll over and pull their cargo, but I won’t do it. I know the difference between what’s right for me and what someone else wants me to think is right for me.”

  Kuhntul’s shoulders twitched up and down. “Maybe, but you haven’t experienced a sustained campaign of manipulation. I’ve always allowed you free choice—to do anything else would be to lower myself to Plauinn levels. You haven’t experienced the Plauinn pouring poison into your inner ear day in and day out.”

  “No, I guess I haven’t, but it still seems that she gave up on her lifelong friends on such little evidence.”

  Kuhntul frowned. “Don’t forget, Tyeldnir, that they convinced her by giving her ‘signs’ that what they claimed was true. They told her partial truths: So-and-so will act thus, such-and-such will happen when so-and-so acts this way. It was all very plausible, very logical. The Plauinn are masters of manipulation, and what you’ve seen from them doesn’t even measure on the same scale of effort.”

  I shrugged and lifted my hands in surrender. “Okay, I believe you.”

  “Do you?” she asked, staring into my face, intensity blazing in her own.

  I nodded, uncomfortable in her gaze. “Yes, I do.”

  “Fair enough,” she said and looked away.

  “Let’s get back to Iktrasitl.”

  “Can you not leave from here? It would be safer,” she said, staring back toward the great tree. “I believe the Three Maids are there, sitting at the Well, watching the tapestry.”

  “Yes, I was hoping so. I want to try something.”

  Kuhntul looked at me for the space of a few deep breaths, her eyes jumping to various points around my face. “That would be dangerous, Tyeldnir.”

  I nodded, meeting her gaze. “Yes, but if I find what I think I will, it will be worth any risk.”

  She shook her head and looked away. “This seems reckless. I don’t like it. Risking yourself in this way is…”

  “I’m more than a little tired of everyone saying crap like that. It’s okay to risk everyone else, but not okay for me to take the risk? Bullshit.” I turned and strode back toward Iktrasitl.

  “Tyeldnir, you don’t realize—”

  “No,” I said with a casualness I didn’t, in truth, feel. “I will not sit by and let others pay for my safety. Besides, if what I think is true, the Nornir represent no danger to me.”

  “That’s reckless! You have no idea if your beliefs are true.”

  I shook my head and kept walking. She followed behind me, muttering to herself, but by the time I’d reached Iktrasitl, she had disappeared, and I had no memory of when she’d stopped following me. I glanced back, expecting to see her standing amidst the trees, but she wasn’t there.

  I shrugged and walked to the base of the tree. The Nornir sat around their fire—the so-called Well of Urthr. The one Kuhntul had called ‘Mother Skult’ lifted her head and met my gaze, then scoffed and spat into the fire. “You again?”

  The slowthar of the Three Maids littered the ground, and the one I recognized as Kuhntul’s. As with the Tisir’s, the Nornir slowthar were of a different scale than the Isir and even that of the ice giants. “Me again.”

  “You can’t be here. Do not look at the runes.”

  “I’ll go where I want and look at what I choose,” I said, without breaking my stride.

  Verthanti stood up and stepped in my path. She crouched and lifted her arms, bending her fingers into claws. “You must deal with me before you pass this place.”

  I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Fine, fine. I’ll tell Mirkur you believe your judgment is better than his.”

  “Mirkur?” Verthanti asked, straightening out of her crouch a little. She glanced at Skult, who still sat next to the fire.

  “Yeah, Mirkur,” I said. “He sent me here. He has a task for me, and—”

  “No, Mirkur would not put the tapestry at risk,” said Urthr. “It is too valuable.”

  “I’ll add your name to the list,” I said with another shrug. “I’m sure he will be very interested in your thoughts.”

  “If Mirkur—” began Skult.

  “Shut your mouth, Sister,” said Verthanti. “This one has an air about him that rankles. A certain smugness.”

  I shrugged again. “Shall I return to Mirkur?” Silence descended on us like a shroud for the space of several heartbeats.

  “What task would Mirkur trust one such as you with?” asked Urthr derisively.

  “One you three couldn’t manage, I guess,” I said, pouring as much arrogance into my tone as possible. “He said I’m to correct an error you three have let run rampant through the timeflows. I’m to erase three certain beings from the tapestry. Mirkur said I needed to do this for him because you three cannot or will not.” I shifted my gaze to each of the Nornir in turn. “He was most upset.”

  “What three?” demanded Verthanti.

  “He hasn’t told us to remove anyone!” said Urthr.

  “I know who,” said Skult with a secret smile. “Though Mirkur has never mentioned them to me, I know the three he despises most. Our master expects us to take initiative, Sisters, as I’ve often said.”

  “No, he expects us to do only his will!” snapped Urthr.

  I shrugged. “Perhaps you should go visit him, ask him for clarification.”

  “Should we?” asked Urthr in a shaky voice.

  “Never!” snapped Verthanti.

  “He would not wish us to do that,” said Skult. “He wishes us to act with independence and sending this mere mortal here to instruct us is his way of punishing us for our lack of creativity in solving the problems of the tapestry. We should—”

  “Enough!” I snapped. “Get out of my way and let me be about my business!”

  The Three Maids turned toward me, one by one, their faces wrinkled with anger, eyes blazing with ire, but Verthanti stepped aside.

  I strode past her as though I owned the place. Urthr muttered as I passed her and Skult, but neither moved to hinder my progress. “Now, Mirkur wants me to address something with an individual Isir, and so you will tell me where her life starts in the tapestry and I will find the correct events and act on them.”

  “Yes?” asked Urthr. “What is the woman’s name?”

  “Suel.”

  Urthr made a moue of displeasure. “Simple enough,” she muttered and walked toward Iktrasitl’s trunk.

  She
led me around the base of the great ash tree, muttering to herself and flicking her fingertips at runes as she went. Finally, she stopped and pointed at an area about forty feet from the ground. “Her life starts there.”

  “Good enough,” I said, stepping past her. “Plyowta. Uhp.” I floated upward—a puff of dandelion on a spring breeze.

  Below me, Urthr hawked and spat. “Change nothing else!” she snapped.

  I shook my head and ignored her. Maybe what Mirkur had said about the Nornir wasn’t far from the truth. They certainly didn’t seem as powerful, as together, as the other Plauinn I’d met.

  After a momentary search, I found the line of runes that spoke of Suel’s birth. I followed the story of her life, smiling at the parts where she played with Sif or Yowrnsaxa, and the parts where she and my friends bubbled with happiness and light-heartedness and innocence. I wanted to find the inciting incident in Suel’s fall—the first time one of the Plauinn poured hatred in her ear. I wanted to eradicate Hel from the timeflow, all right, but I intended to leave Suel in her place.

  But I couldn’t find any mention in the runes of a Plauinn communicating with Suel. In fact, I couldn’t find any mention of the Plauinn in Suel’s timeline at all. I saw the result of their interference, the stories I already knew of Suel’s fall from grace—the assassination attempt, the chastisement of Toemari Ryehtliti, the murder of Paltr—but at no point was there anything mentioning—or even alluding to—an outside influence. From the way her uhrluhk read, Suel appeared to have just gone insane, or turned evil.

  There’s nothing for me to change, I thought with a sinking feeling in my guts. There’s no way to undo all this misery. I shook my head, wondering if the absence was a trick of uhrluhk that Mirkur had caused, a blinding of my understanding of the runes. I floated to a halt, fighting the sinking feeling in my guts, the looming sadness. Can it be that no way to save my friends from all this misery exists? Are we locked in the cycle of this horror?

  I read and re-read the runes depicting Suel’s early life, but beyond erasing her from the timeflow altogether—and the idea turned my stomach—there was nothing I could latch onto, no defining moment that opened her personality to the darkness she now dwelt within. Nothing. No easy answers.