Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  “Freeze right there!”

  Luka wanted to laugh at the icy control in Jax Ritter’s voice, at the suppression of fear it showed. He bore down on his hostage’s wrist, delighting in the sound of the bones grinding, grinding, and finally snapping. The trooper screamed, and the pistol clattered to the floor.

  “Turn him loose!” ordered Jax.

  “Not likely,” he said, forcing the words from his twisted throat, past a tongue more suited for lolling than speaking.

  “Do it now!”

  Luka shrugged. “‘Kay,” he grunted. Moving casually, he released the man’s wrist and made as if to withdraw the arm he held across the trooper’s chest. At the last moment, he dug his claws into the man’s flesh and ripped great furrows across his chest, flinging the blood at Ritter’s eyes.

  Jax ducked behind the wall to his left, and as he did, Luka sprinted for the doorway beyond which the trooper hid. He slid into what was the dining room, his bulk requiring him to squeeze through the door on all fours. Jax stared at him in surprise, then Luka was on him, punching, head-butting, kicking, driving the man down toward the floor. He had something special in mind for Jax. A gift, of sorts, for Jensen.

  A chair crashed across his back, and he almost laughed. He whirled and backhanded Melanie Layne into the far wall.

  Whirling back to Jax, he kneed the trooper in the face, and with a wrenching snap, broke his neck. He danced back into the kitchen. The last trooper alive was on his knees, crawling toward the door to the dining room, the Glock held awkwardly in his left hand. The pistol swerved toward Luka, its tip jittering back and forth.

  With a roar, Luka leapt across the room and snapped his jaws closed over the man’s left wrist, then tore his jaws away, rending the man’s flesh, tearing his tendons, breaking his bones. The man screamed, and Luka slashed his throat with a backhanded strike.

  Making sure both troopers in the kitchen were dead, he took a pair of handcuffs off one of their service belts and went back to Melanie Layne. The brave old thing, he thought. Pity she has to die. He snapped the cuffs around her wrist, and everything froze.

  Forty

  The memory shook me, the casual, cold way he’d killed the troopers as if they meant nothing. In a way, though, the memory also relieved me. At least all the signs of torture I’d seen on Jax when I’d arrived that night were posthumous.

  “What’s the matter, Hank? Don’t you want to see the rest of it?”

  “No. I’ve seen it enough in my nightmares.”

  Luka scoffed, but there was something in his eyes…a lack of the brazen confidence he usually displayed.

  “Is this the man you pictured you’d be? Is this really the man Suel wanted?”

  “Don’t talk about her,” he snapped. “Don’t you call her by that name! You’ve no right! Besides, what I’ve done, all that I’ve done, I’ve done for her.”

  “Yeah, that’s clear to me now. You love her.”

  Luka shook his head, “Of course I love her!”

  I nodded. “You do what you do to try to…I don’t know…to try to make her happy.”

  “Her happiness is more important than anything else. She’s been…she’s been hurt badly…by those she loved. By my brother. By Sif, Yowrnsaxa, and Frikka. By her own sister!”

  “She believes that, yes.”

  “Believes it? It’s what happened! I was there!”

  “You were both manipulated by the Plauinn. They used their abilities to read the skein of fate, to predict what those people would do. Then they told one or both of you how they would act and used it to manipulate the events to their liking.”

  “So you say.”

  I sighed. “This is pointless. Tell me one thing, Luka.”

  “What?” he asked after a significant pause.

  “Are you the man you wanted to be?”

  He met my gaze with tired, red-rimmed eyes. “Who is?”

  “If things had been different, who would you have become?”

  “How should I know?” he snarled.

  “Think back. Recall the man you were before these people started telling you how your brothers were conspiring against you.”

  He dropped his gaze. “What of it?” he asked in a sullen voice.

  “Can you imagine that version of yourself acting as coldly as you did in those memories?”

  “What does it matter, Hank?” he asked in a voice that broke on my name. “What possible difference would that make to you?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Are you going to answer the question?”

  Luka looked away and crossed his arms over his breast. “No, I was not like this before we killed… Before.”

  “And was your queen?”

  Luka looked me in the eye, and I could see the raw pain in his gaze. He shook his head.

  “Do you still believe I have Hel spirited away somewhere?”

  Luka turned his head away and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Let me prove I don’t! Let me prove I’m telling you the truth!”

  “Can you?”

  I nodded. “I can.” I flipped us into my memory stream—my slowth.

  Forty-one

  In the distance, a woman screamed and screamed. Her echoing cries spoke to the sort of anguish few people live long enough to tell others about.

  A fluid as viscous as honey surrounded us, and colors flashed around us like lightning in a severe thunderstorm. Gravity—or something similar to it—tugged us in conflicting directions, first one way, then another, then yet another. It was like being on the world’s best rollercoaster, but without the fun.

  “What is this place?” Luka murmured.

  “This is Owraythu’s realm. Owraythu, the Plauinn.”

  “That word means ‘chaos.’”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s what the Plowir Medn call her. Her brother is Mirkur. Before you say it, I know it means ‘darkness.’ The name suits him.”

  Beside me, Luka shook his head and off in the distance, the woman’s screaming ramped up a notch. “Is that…is that Suel?” he whispered.

  “So someone told me.”

  “I must go to her!” Luka slashed his arms and legs against the viscous fluid, trying to propel himself toward the screams.

  “Hang on there a minute, champ,” I said. “If you rush over there, you’ll be giving yourself to Owraythu. Something tells me she’d enjoy punishing you, too.”

  “I can’t sit here and listen to her scream!”

  I nodded and stopped the timeflow of the memory. The screaming halted abruptly, and the colors froze in mid-flash. “Is this better?”

  “Does she still suffer?” he demanded.

  “This is one of my memories, Luka. I’m not sure how it all works, but these are things inside the slowth I can see. This particular one is not only one of my memories, but a memory of a dream. I don’t know if she is suffering at present or not.”

  Luka shook his head in disbelief. “You seem to have gained many new skills since the last time we spoke. Who taught you all this?”

  I waved my hand in the viscous fluid. “I’ve had a few teachers.”

  “You speak the Gamla Toonkumowl with a fluency few people not raised to it could match. You can do things… That bear form you have is quite impressive. How do you make such a complete change?”

  “Somehow, I don’t think I’d teach you, even if I could. A number of these abilities came from reading a puntidn stavsetninkarpowk.”

  “And where did you find a bound-spellbook?”

  “Long story, and one that doesn’t matter right now.” I swept my arms out to the side, setting myself adrift. “This place…this realm, this is where Hel is.”

  “Or was,” added Luka.

  “Or was.” I shrugged. “The point is, I don’t control this realm. I don’t even know how to get here outside of memory.”

  “Yet this is where I must come.”

  “I understand that’s how you feel. Someone told me that were I to come h
ere and confront Owraythu head-on, I would lose—that Owraythu would gobble me up. I don’t imagine you would fare much better.”

  “Then why have you brought me here?”

  “To prove to you that I am not behind Hel’s disappearance. The Plowir Medn must have brought her here when they teleported her away from the battle—from Haymtatlr’s robots.”

  Luka glanced at me with distrust twitching in his eyes. “And why should I believe all that? You’ve learned many, many things—you admit this yourself. Why should I believe this memory is anything but an illusion to gain my trust?”

  “Think about it, Luka. Back in the Herperty af Roostum, you are about to die in the same way we killed Vowli. I’m on top of you, pinning you beneath a weight you can’t move, and I have you between my jaws.” His eyes grew hard at the reminder. “I don’t need your trust.”

  “So why?”

  “Because if the Plauinn have their way, the universe will all look this way. Because the Plauinn see us as inconsequential, as things to be used and discarded when we become inconvenient. Because the Plauinn are a far greater threat to my family than you and Hel could ever be.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “If it is as you say—”

  The surrounding fluid conveyed a jolt to my body like that of a train pulling away from the station. Hel screamed, stopped, screamed, stopped, like the stutter of digital audio run amok. The fluid jerked again, and everything settled back to the way it was.

  “What was that?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “I don’t like it. Something is—”

  The jerk came again, stronger this time, and I felt it in my bones. Again, Hel’s screams came to us in the manner of stuttering audio, but instead of falling silent, the stuttering ended, and we heard each agonized shriek in its fullness.

  “Something’s wrong,” Luka muttered.

  FURIOUS QUERY. WHO DISTURBS THIS ONE’S REALM?

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered. “Owraythu!”

  WHO DARES MANIPULATE THE TIMEFLOWS?

  The fluid around us jerked once more, this time slamming into our backs like a strong wave at the beach.

  SMALL ONES? DENIAL! PROVIDE THE IDENTITY OF YOUR MASTER, OF THE ONE WHO BETRAYS MY TRUST! HIS LIFEFORCE WILL DISSIPATE! HIS PROGENY WILL BE BROKEN, SCATTERED ON THE TIMEFLOWS!

  Fear grasped my mind in its icy grip, and I flung us away—out of the memory. Unlike before, the change was not instantaneous. I had the sense of something pursuing us, something reaching for us, pulling us back.

  Behind us, someone or something grunted.

  “Run!” screamed Hel.

  “My Queen!” shouted Luka.

  “Run!” she called again and shrieked the way an animal being burned alive would shriek.

  The sense of something behind faded, and we were out.

  Forty-two

  It was as if no time had passed; the others still sprinted toward us, and Luka still lay beneath my massive bear’s body. I drew my fangs out of his flesh and rocked my weight back off him. I chanted the triblinkr to return me to human form in my mind.

  Luka lay before me, not moving. “My Queen,” he whimpered and began his own prayteenk.

  “Hank! What are you doing? We have to kill him!” yelled Jane.

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to kill him.”

  “What?”

  “There are things you don’t understand yet, Jane. Things I’ve learned… Things about Luka and Hel that mitigate—”

  “I have to save her!” Luka yelled and whirled to his feet. “How do I get back there! Take me back there, Hank!”

  “No, Luka. Going back there now is pure folly. She’d be waiting. We have to—”

  With a snarl, Luka whirled and sprinted away.

  “No!” screamed Jane. She cocked her arm back to fling her spear at his retreating back.

  “No, Jane,” I said. “Haymtatlr, can you stop Luka from using the preer but leave them functional for everyone else?”

  “I can.”

  “Then please do so.”

  Jane took a few steps in the direction Luka had fled.

  “Let him go, Jane.”

  “Let him go? Are you insane?”

  I shook my head. “You heard Haymtatlr. He can’t get away again. Besides, I… I gave him a lot to consider. I took him to where Hel is being tortured by Owraythu. I don’t think he’ll give us any more trouble. At least not until—”

  “When? When did you have this little heart-to-heart?”

  “Just now. While we were in his memories…or his dreamslice…whatever you want to call it.”

  “You’ve lost your mind.” She turned to Althyof, who was staring at me as though I’d painted my face with feces and announced to the world that I was the king of the dust mites. “He’s lost it.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “The Plauinn have been manipulating Luka and Hel for centuries. They’ve… The Plauinn have betrayed them—and us—time and time again. A race of people who can peer ahead in uhrluhk and see how someone will act spent years manipulating them, lying to them, twisting their views of the world. The Plauinn used their knowledge of urhluhk to make Luka and Hel dance like puppets on a string. Their version of the universe is a dark, cold place—one filled with betrayal by everyone they loved.”

  “And that makes it okay?” Jane demanded.

  “No, and it doesn’t lessen their culpability for the crimes they’ve committed. But it explains some of it.”

  “He’s lost his mind,” she said to Sif. “He’s gone ‘round the bend. Gone cuckoo.”

  Sif shook her head. “No, dear,” she said, putting a hand on Jane’s arm. “Besides, we must see to your son.”

  “But…” Her eyes stared in the direction that Luka had fled.

  “He’s focused on Hel, now,” I said. “And only on Hel. He’s heard her screaming in agony, and all he wants is to make that agony stop. We should… We should help him.”

  “Now, I know you’ve lost your mind.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll help him alone if I must. Kuhntul told me that if Owraythu breaks Hel’s mind, we will face even more of a threat from her than we can imagine.”

  “And if we free her, who’s to say the pair of them won’t turn against us?”

  “No one,” I said. “But we can deal with that later, and I think we’ve grown into a match for them, anyway. Right now, we need to go get Sig.”

  Jane lifted her hand, palm up, in the direction Luka had run. “And the guy who knows where our son is just ran off, and you let him.”

  I took my wife by the shoulders and made her look at me. “I can find him,” I said. “The same way I found Luka.”

  “So, what are you waiting for?”

  I nodded once and dropped my hands. I found his slowth amidst all the others that twined and snaked through the room and slid forward along its length. When I’d gone far enough to account for the distance to Luka’s proo, I dipped into my son’s slowth and picked out his location. I spun a new proo and sent its terminus to the point where Sig emerged in the other realm.

  I met Jane’s eyes. “Let’s go.”

  “A moment,” called Veethar. “I’m coming with you.”

  Mothi had already retrieved his axes and strode toward the proo with a stern expression etched into his face. “I go as well.”

  “And I,” said Frikka.

  Yowrnsaxa already had her shield strapped on and moved to stand with Mothi.

  John smiled his sad smile and came to stand at our side.

  I glanced around, seeing the resolve in their faces. Sif looked torn, her gaze meeting mine and flitting away to where Meuhlnir struggled to stand.

  “Meuhlnir,” I said. “Old friend, rest and focus on healing. We will need you at full strength soon enough.”

  Sif sent me a thankful smile as Meuhlnir grunted and fell back against the wall.

  “I could use my ring,” said Jane.

  Meuhlnir shook his head. “No. Don’t waste your str
ength on me. You may need it for your son.”

  Jane nodded, but looked as if she’d eaten something sour, rotten.

  “Right,” I said. “A word of warning. The land on the other end of this proo looks like a battlefield.” I reached out and touched the proo.

  Forty-three

  I emerged from the proo into a billowing bubble of greenish-gray vapor that burned my nostrils as I took a breath. The ground was stony, barren. In the distance, craggy peaks reached toward the granite cloud-filled sky like taloned fingers. Between me and the mountains, smoking ruins of what were once buildings and rusting hulks of mechanized armored vehicles of a strange make I’d never seen before dotted the macabre landscape, as though broken and scattered by a child in the throes of a tantrum. In the far distance in the other direction, a smooth gray sea stretched toward the horizon. The others popped in behind me, each grimacing first at the smoke, then at our surroundings.

  A mechanical shriek came from the direction of the sea and reached an ear-splitting volume in the space of a heartbeat. Something throbbed in my chest with a syncopated rhythm in sympathy with the vibration rumbling up through the soles of my feet. On the other horizon, a searing white light blossomed like a giant flower of death, and the earth growled as if a thousand earthquakes had kicked off, followed by the sounds of shifting ruins and corroded vehicles of war vibrating apart.

  “Kleymtlant,” said John.

  “No, surely not,” I said. “As bad as Kleymtlant is, it’s a paradise compared to this mess.” I swept my hand toward the horizon and the white blossom of flame and radiation that still hung there. “Plus, all the radiation in Kleymtlant is old—millennia old.”

  John turned toward me and nodded. “It is. Yet this is Kleymtlant. Consider those mountains. They are familiar, no?”

  I glanced at the crags thrusting into the sky. A few of them did seem familiar, but they were much sharper than those near the Herperty af Roostum, and I said as much.

  John smiled joylessly. “Yes, I imagine this is how they looked far in the past. I know this land, Hank, and this land is Kleymtlant.”

  Shaking my head, I scanned the ground for Sig’s slowth and led the others to the southwest, away from both the high-pitched shriek and the death flower on the horizon, threading through the enigmatic bubbles of acrid fog. Whatever the conflict was, whatever it was about, the people fighting it had no qualms about destroying their planet, and I wanted us all out of there as soon as possible.