My mind turned to my family—my curse, my disability, Supergirl’s suffering, the kidnapping on Halloween, the time they spent in Luka’s clutches. I raced ahead, reading about Hel’s exploits on Mithgarthr. Century after century of depravity, of breaking the Ayn Loug with impunity.
And then I found it—the intersection of her fate and my own. I can erase this moment, I can arrange things so I never met Chris Hatton or Liz Tutor, so that Jax and I never caught their case. I can make things so that Jax and his wife had a million kids…a houseful, anyway. Come to think of it, I can make it so that everyone I love will live a long and happy life. All it will take is a few strokes of the chisel. As soon as I thought of the chisel, I felt its warm weight in the palm of my hand.
Above my head a hawk screamed. I glanced up at it and shook my head. It was an albino hawk—brilliant white feathers, pale yellow eyes. Kuhntul. I returned my gaze back to the runes, and the hawk screamed again.
The hawk alit on a thin branch and uttered a high-pitched keening whistle.
I glanced up at her again, and Kuhntul shook her beak back and forth, back and forth. “And you call me ‘bird-brain,’” I murmured. I looked down at the silvery chisel in my hand and raised it.
“What do you do there?” yelled Skult from her place by the fire.
“That’s between me and Mirkur!” I shouted back. “Go and ask him if you want your answers bad enough. But don’t blame me when he rips your molecules to shreds.”
The branch creaked as Kuhntul shifted into human form, long white hair fluttering in the light breeze. “No, Hank!” she hissed.
“I can make it all go away,” I said.
“No! If you strike out these events, you will be lost—none of these events will have happened, none of what you’ve learned will remain with you.”
“From where I sit, that’s not a bad thing.”
“But it is! Tyeldnir, you are our only hope!”
“Someone else could—”
“No! Believe me when I say this, Tyeldnir… Without you and your family, the universe will become a very dark place. It may save you and your family pain, but the cost will be the infinite pain of uncountable numbers of individuals. I’ve seen what the universe will become if the Plauinn achieve their goals; there is no coming back from it!”
“How can you have—”
“I am Tisir, Tyeldnir. The flows of time are not a barrier for me—not any longer. What Mirkur wants, what the current rulers of the Plauinn want, is a universe remade to their current ideals—and that doesn’t leave room for any races other than the Plauinn. Parsec upon parsec of empty, bleak space! Empty planets, devoid of life, of creativity! That is their goal, Tyeldnir!”
I shrugged. “Someone else—”
“No! No one else can do this. No one else can stand against them! If you do this, we lose everything! Not only for you, for every living creature! All that will remain is the Plauinn slithering about in the underverse, bickering, fighting petty battles one with another, plotting, lusting for power, never creating, never striving for anything new. They’ve gone beyond the desire to create, all the Plauinn want now is to destroy, to reduce matter into energy for their own purposes. If you act on your thought, the universe will die, Hank!”
I turned my gaze back to the line of runes, and part of me wanted to strike it off, to erase my pain, and the pain that my family had endured. A selfish part of me. I closed my eye, blotting out the sight of those hateful runes, but I could still see them—suffer forever, Hel had screeched at me. I curse you! I could wipe it all away…
But the cost was too high. Even if Kuhntul exaggerated, even if she was wrong about the extent of the ramifications of my act—the price was too high. I bounced the chisel in my hand, tossing it up, feeling it impact my palm, tossing it up…and it disappeared without a sound.
Kuhntul sighed with relief. “Oh, Tyeldnir! Thank you! You won’t regret this choice. I will make sure—”
“Kuhntul! Is that you? What are you doing up there?” called Skult.
Kuhntul grimaced. “Nothing, Mother Skult. Watching. Keeping track, as you bade me.”
“Well, come down here! We have other things for you to do, and the mortal is leaving soon, anyway.”
Kuhntul’s grimace deepened. “Nothing I can do, not now,” she said. “She’s seen me, and the time is not yet right to openly rebel. I must go.”
I gazed back at the line of hateful runes. I can always come back, I thought.
“Don’t create a proo where the Maids can see,” whispered Kuhntul, and with a flurry of feathers, she was a hawk and falling toward the ground in a steep dive.
Thirty
I drifted away from Iktrasitl, not bothering to return to the ground. I didn’t want to face the three lesser Plauinn who guarded the tapestry of uhrluhk—because that’s what their real purpose was, no matter what else they said. They kept the tapestry from those of us who could understand, who might use it to do battle with Mirkur and other Plauinn of his ilk.
I sank through the trees some distance away, feeling numb, disconnected from myself. There was nowhere to go, except back to my family and friends. I created a new proo and dialed it to where and when I knew Jane would emerge and skipped across it.
This time, there was no detour into the realm of the Plauinn.
The Herperty af Roostum smelled the same as it had when I’d last been there. Of course, it had only been a few days since we’d been there last.
“Haymtatlr?” I called.
Silence was my only answer. I stood in the dining hall where we’d spent our first evening in the Herperty af Roostum—the place I had sent the proo the others had taken before Mirkur had hijacked me—but the place was empty, lifeless.
“Haymtatlr!” I yelled. “Answer me!” The only answer was the echoes of my shout.
The floor glistened—as clean as it had been on my first visit there. All the chairs crouched beneath the tables, everything shone in the light of the overhead lamps, everything was tucked away, all the bedroom doors were closed…as though no human being had ever set foot there.
I glanced at the proo I’d traveled across—the one from the Conflux. It was the only proo shimmering in the gleaming room. Does that mean I’ve come to the wrong Herperty af Roostum? I wondered. Or did I tweak time by accident?
I crossed the hall outside and into the room guarded by the pale blue door. I walked to the rack of guides and picked one up. The guide vibrated once, signaling it was online and powered up. “Haymtatlr?” I asked, holding the bright orange dumbbell in front of me as I would a microphone. The guide vibrated twice, once short, once long. “That’s not what I meant,” I muttered. “Haymtatlr, can you hear me?”
The guide vibrated once.
Maybe that means he can hear me but can’t answer. In our mad dash after Luka, we had left the place without being sure Hel’s army had cleared out when she had, and I had tracked Luka back to the place… What if Haymtatlr can’t answer me because Luka held something over his head? Something like Jane’s life, hanging in the balance of Haymtatlr’s obsequiousness?
“You can hear me, but can’t answer back? Is that right?”
The guide vibrated once.
“Okay, that’s confusing since it could be a glitch in this guide—a short, making it power off and power up again. Let’s try this: if you want to say yes, give me two short rumbles, and if you want to say no, give me three. Okay?”
The guide vibrated twice, both short.
“Good! Two for yes, three times for no.”
The guide gave me two rumbles again.
“Is there some kind of malfunction or…I don’t know…has someone ordered you not to answer?”
The thing in my hand rumbled four times.
“Four? What’s that supposed to…” Then it dawned on me. I’d asked a question that had no simple yes or no answer. “Right, right. Sorry. Are you malfunctioning?”
Three rumbles from the guide.
“Oka
y, no breakdown. Has someone ordered you not to answer me?”
The dumbbell vibrated twice.
“Is Luka with you?”
Three vibrations.
“Did Luka order you not to answer me?”
The orange device rumbled twice.
“Okay. I get the picture. Is my family safe?”
For the space of five breaths, the guide did nothing at all, then it rumbled three times.
“Lead me to them!” I strode out of the room and walked up the hall toward the orange door that led to the garage. I expected the normal acknowledgement—two vibrations, one short, one long—but instead the thing issued three short vibrations again.
“What the hell? Take me to my family!”
Again, the device rumbled three times.
“Haymtatlr, I don’t have time to play this game! Not if my family is at risk! Do you want something to happen to Jane?”
The dumbbell rumbled thrice.
“But you won’t lead me to her?”
Three shakes.
“I don’t get it.”
The dumbbell vibrated twice, once short and the other long.
I shook my head and opened the door to the garage. “I don’t understand.” I took a step inside the garage, and the guide vibrated rigorously—the signal that I was going the wrong direction. I shook my head and turned back toward the hall. The guide vibrated twice, once short, then long. “You want me to stay in the section?”
The guide gave me two short blasts of vibration.
“Why? I can’t sit—”
I stopped as the guide vibrated four times, and, after a pause, vibrated twice, one short, one long.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Take me where you want to take me, but if it doesn’t lead to saving my family, then take me to them.”
The guide vibrated twice, both short.
“Deal.” I followed the peculiar navigation device’s instructions. It took me down the length of the hall, through the door into the shopping area, and right to the bright, sunshine yellow door I knew led to a security monitoring area from my first experience with my animuses.
“I see,” I muttered. “I can see them from here?”
The guide shook in my palm twice, both of them short. I nodded and opened the door. I walked down the yellow hall and walked through a second yellow door into the security center.
As I came in, the four-by-four squares of polished crystal whined as their circuits cycled up. I walked to the side of the room filled with control consoles. The crystals began to paint images in the air—scenes from all over the Herperty af Roostum. One of them showed Meuhlnir lying crumpled on the floor in the corner of a room I didn’t recognize, his eyes squeezed shut in a grimace of pain. His mail shirt was absent, and the bandages wrapped around his chest were bright red with fresh blood. Veethar squatted beside him. In another holographic window, Mothi stood glaring at someone off screen, his ever-present axes missing. At his side stood Frikka, fury etching deep lines into her face, and John Calvin Black, his lean face expressionless. In a third window stood Sif and Yowrnsaxa, worry etched on each woman’s face, though they faced in different directions. I glanced at another window, and my heart leapt into a gallop in my chest. In that window, Luka stood behind Sig, one arm around his chest, the other grasping my son’s throat. He wasn’t in wolf-form, but he could rip Sig’s throat out, talons or not. Behind Luka and my son swirled the rainbow colors of an active proo.
Stress sang its sickening symphony and distress danced in the darkened domains of my diseased body. The pain would come later, I knew—my Personal Monster™ promised me that. Sif’s concoction worked, and it worked well at controlling the day-to-day symptoms of the dark curse Hel had saddled me with, but stress had a hall-pass to do what it liked, and I could almost feel the diseased cells in my immune system and joints swelling and tearing at the tissues around them.
“Haymtatlr, I’ve got to get there!” On the console next to me, the guide rattled three times, and a light blinked under another holographic projection.
I turned my gaze to that window and breathed a sigh of relief. Jane, Krowkr, and Althyof squatted in the shadows created by a set of the pale blue rectangles that were Haymtatlr’s computing cores. Flanking them stood our two varkr puppies, both with hair bristling and ears up, both staring off camera toward what I assumed was Luka’s position. Another light winked on and off at the base of a holographic projector, and in that window, I saw no one, but after watching it for a moment, I saw or sensed a subtle shifting, maybe just the stir of air currents, but I was willing to bet it showed either Yowtgayrr or Skowvithr’s stealthy movements, or both Alfar working in concert.
“Can I talk to Luka?” I asked.
The guide vibrated twice, and something clicked in the console, then I heard the sounds that accompanied all those holographic projections.
“You hurt him, Uncle, and there will be no place in this universe or beyond where you can hide from me!” snapped Mothi, and my heart swelled at the venom and the promise in his voice.
“Quiet, boy. Do you think yourself stronger than my fool of a brother? Do you think yourself a more accomplished warrior?” Luka scoffed and spat over Sig’s shoulder. “And yet, your father hides from me after his defeat at my hands when last we met. Would you add your own defeat to his shame?”
Mothi made the noise a threatened bear would and took a single step, but even as he did so, John lay a restraining hand on his shoulder, and Luka clamped his hand tighter around Sig’s throat. My heart lurched as my son gagged and struggled for breath. Mothi put up his hands and froze.
“When this is over, Nephew, I may teach you the price of your disrespect, but not until I have dealt with the boy’s father.”
“Then deal with me!” The words exploded out of my chest before I’d considered speaking. “Why is it you always want to ‘deal’ with me by kidnapping someone in my family? Am I that much of a threat to you?”
Luka chortled, but the hand around Sig’s neck relaxed. “You do make me laugh, Hank. Come on in here where we can see one another.”
“I don’t think so,” I snapped. “Let my son go, and I’ll tell you how to find me.”
Luka’s chuckle died, and a surly, hateful expression settled on his face. “You are not in control here.”
“I guess I must’ve walked into the room by now. Strange, it doesn’t feel as if I’ve moved. Not even a single step.”
In the monitor showing Jane, Krowkr, and Althyof, the Tverkr and the Viking desperately tried to hold Jane—to keep her from rushing out of hiding and attacking Luka with her teeth and nails if necessary.
“Tell you what, champ,” I said, pouring disdain and disrespect into my tone. “I’d welcome the chance to smash your face to pieces, but as long as you are taking the coward’s path, I think I’ll stay right where I am.” I put extra emphasis on the last sentence, hoping Jane could hear my message.
“What makes you think I’ll release the boy? Do you not know me by now, Hank? Do you not know I always keep my word?”
Jane stopped struggling against Althyof and Krowkr, letting her head fall back against the server enclosure, her gaze darting around—no doubt looking for security cameras.
“That’s better,” I said, and Jane slumped against the enclosure. “The question, Luka, is if you know me?”
Luka laughed, but it sounded tense, brittle. “Must I kill this child? Do you think it would bother me?”
I sighed. “What is it you want, Luka?”
“Bring her back! I want you to return my queen to me!”
I stood there a moment, dumbfounded. Does he really think I have her? Is this some kind of game? I shook my head and said, “I can’t. I don’t have her, Luka.”
Luka’s eyes narrowed to slits and his respiration increased. He hunched over and put his cheek against Sig’s. “Say goodbye to your father, boy,” he snarled.
“I don’t have her, Luka! But I know where she is.”
“Whe
re?”
“Owraythu has her!”
“Owraythu…who is that?”
“One of the Plauinn. She’s the sister of—”
Luka scoffed, and his expression settled into a sneer. “The Plauinn? You must do better than children’s tales, Hank.”
“They are real, Luka, no matter how much I wish they weren’t. Listen, I can’t get to you—Haymtatlr won’t guide me to you.” Even as I finished, the guide vibrated like mad on the console next to me, but I had an idea. “They—the Plauinn—have been manipulating things to their advantage for a long, long time.” I created two particles as Kuhntul had taught me. “Yeah, Owraythu’s brother, Mirkur, is…” I spun the strenki and the proo between the two particles. “…I don’t know what he is, but I’ll tell you this for nothing, Luka: He’s the type of nut job that makes you look sane by comparison.”
Luka shook his head. “Always with the same insult. Wasn’t everything I told you true, Hank?”
I almost believed he was as hurt as he sounded. I flicked the end of my manufactured proo away. I had no idea if what I was trying would work, I’d never tried to spin a proo to a place I could see but didn’t know the location of. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t make you less of a nut job, does it?”
In the monitor where Jane and the others hid, the shiny, shimmering silver of a proo spun itself into existence. Jane started but grabbed the puppies and herded them over to the proo. As Jane and the others popped through, I held my finger to my lips and mimed talking in a microphone.
“I could almost be insulted, Hank,” said Luka with a sly grin. “But somehow, I think that’s what you want, and you know how much I enjoy frustrating you.”
“Listen, Luka. I can show you where Hel is.”
“How? Are you going to draw me a map?”
“No. I can take you to Iktrasitl. I can show you the line of runes that say: ‘And the Plowir Medn whisked Hel away to the realm of darkness and chaos.’ All that’s code for Owraythu and Mirkur. I can, with another’s help, take you to the place Owraythu is holding her.”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 125
