Blood of the Isir Omnibus

by Erik Henry Vick

  “Wait a minute,” I said pulling Kuhntul to a stop. “I think I know a way to rescue Hel.”

  “Tell us.”

  Forty-seven

  My bones ached as the abstract, random turmoil of Owraythu’s realm twisted and tangled in front of me. I glanced to my right and smiled at the sleek, pitch black fishy form Kuhntul had adopted.

  Remember to observe her slowth this time, Kuhntul said in my head.

  I nodded and forced my dreamslice reflection to adopt the same form as the Tisir. It was a risky plan, but without more time to acclimate the others to their dreamslice reflections, only Kuhntul and I had a chance in this chaotic realm.

  In the distance, Hel screamed and screamed, sounding on the brink of the abyss, at the limit of her sanity. The screams faded into the most horrible grunting sobs I’d ever heard in my life, and it wrenched at my heart.

  Be ready, she said. With a fish-like nod, she shot off into the eddies and swirls of fractalized color.

  I turned and crept away in the other direction. My job was a simple one: distract Owraythu and draw her away from where she held Hel prisoner, then hide as best I could, repeating the process as necessary.

  Ready, Hank! said Kuhntul in my mind.

  I shuddered and brought the realm to what should have been a screeching halt. As with the first time I’d tried to stop this realm, it wound down in a stop-start-stop-start manner, each change accompanied by a fluidic jerk that rattled my bones. Hel’s moaning stuttered as a malfunctioning audio track would.

  With a wrenching crunch, Owraythu brushed away my efforts to stop the realm’s timeslice as if I were no more than an annoying gnat. A scream of pure rage from somewhere in the distance sent shivers racing down my spine. By the sound of her cries, Hel’s torment began anew and with renewed vigor.

  I swam away as fast as I was able, propelling myself with a frenetic snap of my tail fin. More distant screams of rage sounded. I twisted the timeslice of Owraythu’s realm, no longer trying to stop it, just trying to muck things up, to irritate Owraythu, to drive her mad with rage.

  The swirling, abstract shapes and colors stopped, and I plunged headlong into a grim darkness—like a dream in which I could not see. My senses began to report randomly—as if by an abstract fallacy—rain falling on my brow, a cold wind blowing through my hair. I twitched the timeslice, and my head spun.

  No more shrieks of fury reached me, but I had the sense of something coming, a dark, immense thing steamrolling right at me, intent only on crushing me like a bug beneath a tank’s caterpillar treads. I flung myself to the side, shooting off into the darkness as fast as I could go, twitching the realm, creating huge fluidic waves of force and sending them behind me.

  YOU ARE WEAK, SMALL ONE, BUT THIS ONE CONTAINS MUCH STRENGTH, AS YOU WILL SOON UNDERSTAND.

  Panic sank its teeth into my throat. Where is Kuhntul? What’s taking her so long? With sheer desperation, I ground the timeslice to a halt, enduring the bucking hitch with gritted teeth. I glanced behind me, remembering the slowth, and my guts turned cold as my gaze fell upon it, far closer than I’d imagined possible. I flung myself away, shooting into the blackness on a stream of fluid.

  My surroundings jerked and thrashed as if I was inside an immense chew toy being flung about by an overexcited Rottweiler creating his own fun. I had the distinct impression that a vast, dark wave—a tsunami of anger and hate—loomed over me, waiting for the proper moment to crash on my head, driving me into the coral, into the sea bed and rocks, shredding my flesh from my bones.

  Has Kuhntul turned on me? Is this it? Is this my final stand? I lashed out behind me, tearing at the fabric of the realm, trying to create the blackhole-like proo I’d seen Bikkir create.

  UNDERSTANDING. THE POMPOUS ONE IS YOUR MASTER. ACQUIESCENCE, WHEN THIS ONE HAS RENT YOUR EXISTENCE, CONSIGNED YOU TO THE OUTER DARKNESS, THIS ONE WILL PAY CALL TO THE POMPOUS ONE AND HE SHALL CATERWAUL AND VOCIFERATE LIKE THE SMALL ONE THIS ONE TORMENTS.

  I squeezed my eye shut, preferring not to see Owraythu’s face. If I couldn’t see her, maybe this would turn into a dream. I slipped and slid from side to side, pretending at eel-like agility while the massive thing bore down on me. My heart was black with sadness, bloody-red with anger.

  With a burst of inspiration, I chanted the triblinkr I’d learned back at Luka’s cabin. The one that allowed me to slow or excite all the molecules within a specific area. I laid a suppression field behind me, taking the field as close to absolute zero as I could get it. I kept swimming, putting distance between Owraythu and myself, and as I went, I dropped another field in my wake, this time cranking it up as hot as I could get it.

  A loud crunch that seemed to cause the underlayment of the realm to shudder issued behind me, followed by the sound of a bell so large that its ringing threatened to drive me insane. The first field, I thought. I threw my psychic weight at the timeslice and knocked it to a stuttering stop again.

  Owraythu screeched and hissed like two tomcats fighting over a scrap of fish. THIS ONE WILL RENDER YOUR MOLECULES AND FLING THEIR BITS INTO THE ABYSS! THIS ONE WILL CONSUME THE DELECTABLE PARTS OF YOU AND DISPERSE THE REST THROUGHOUT THE UNDERVERSE! THIS ONE WILL—

  Again, the realm shuddered, and Owraythu screamed her wrath at me. She recovered from the second field in a much shorter span of time and dispelled it.

  YOUR PALTRY TRICKS CANNOT SAVE YOU, SMALL ONE.

  Her mental voice rang with the sound of victory, and I got the distinct impression she was close—too close—behind me. There was no way to escape the monster at my heels. I had no more tricks. No more secret kaltrar from my grimoire, no enchanted do-dads to pull my ass out of the fire this time. There was nowhere to hide, and all I was doing was adding seconds to the last moments of my life.

  Then, it dawned on me. I could hear no more cries of anguish.

  Hel had fallen silent, and I hoped she and Kuhntul were out. I had no choice but to fling myself out—back to the Conflux, back to Iktrasitl. It was that or become Owraythu’s plaything.

  Forty-eight

  I jerked forward, flopping onto my stomach as though I was trying to do the breaststroke on dry land. My breath came in ragged gasps, and the chemicals of terror still thrummed in my veins. “Is she back? Is she back?” I yelled.

  “Do not fear, Tyeldnir,” said Kuhntul in a hoarse, exhausted voice. “It was difficult, but here we are.”

  “That’s it?” asked Jane.

  I turned over and levered myself up to my elbows. Jane stood above me, an expression of disbelief on her face. “These Plauinn are so powerful, and all we have to do to beat them is…is to distract them for a moment?”

  Kuhntul came out of the trees, her immaculate white cloak torn, and her long white hair disheveled for the first time in my memory. She pushed at it with her free hand, her gaze shifting between the males of the party. She held another woman under the arms, a thin, exhausted woman who could never have stood on her own.

  “Suel!” cried Sif. She darted forward and slid her arm around her childhood friend—the hatred and bitterness of their adulthood forgotten. “Help me!”

  Yowrnsaxa and Frikka went to her side, taking Hel from Kuhntul and laying her down on the soft loam of Iktrasitl’s forest.

  “To answer your question, Jane, no, that isn’t it. We are in grave danger, should Owraythu discover our whereabouts. We will need every trick, every power we can muster should that occur. Which reminds me…” She turned to me.

  “Yes, I saw her slowth,” I said shuddering at the memory. “The slowth that binds their dreamslice reflections to them is a mere fraction of what Owraythu exhibits in the underverse. And where our slowthar are akin to insulated wires, theirs are like…like a string of tumorous ganglions. Sickening, shuddering things, too huge to take in all at once, they twitch with thoughts, memories…whatever they are, they are immensely powerful. I could feel the force of them.”

  A look of intense concentration settled on Kuhntul’s face. “That’s good.”r />
  “Good? What about it is good?” Jane demanded.

  “Did you try to dip into it?”

  “Are you insane?” I shook my head and laughed. “No, I ran as if my ass was on fire.”

  Kuhntul nodded. “We need to find Luka. We will need him when we face Owraythu again.”

  “Why in the blue fuck would we do that?” I demanded. “I’m not taking anyone back there. Not now, not ever.”

  “Relax, Tyeldnir. She will come here as soon as one of the Maids reports our location.”

  “What?” demanded Jane. “We’ve got to stop them!”

  “She can only come here as a dreamslice reflection. She will be vulnerable here—as much weakened as the Three Maids are here. In the underverse, she is supremely powerful, but here?” Kuhntul shrugged.

  “I’ll go track him down,” I said climbing to my feet and stepping toward the trees.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Jane.

  “No, it would be best if I go alone,” said Kuhntul.

  “And why is that?” demanded Jane.

  Kuhntul looked at my wife with a stony expression. “Because it would.”

  Jane shook her head.

  “This is a conversation best had without extraneous emotion,” said Kuhntul.

  “I won’t say a word,” said Jane, and the two women stared at each other, faces flinty.

  I backed away from the others without a sound. You are both wrong, I thought. It will be best if I go alone. Keri tracked my movements, and I held a finger to my lips. I swear he winked at me before he turned his gaze away.

  Forty-nine

  Using the slowthar, tracking anyone was an easy task. Tracking Luka was exceptionally easy because I had an idea of where he was headed, so all I had to do was glance down and find his slowth every once in a while to make sure I was right.

  Luka had beat a straight-line path from the proo toward Iktrasitl, and it was easy to guess why: he wanted answers, and he thought he could get them from the Nornir.

  Persistent bugger.

  I heard him before I saw him. He ranted and raved in a booming voice: “Tell me where she is! I’ve seen her being tortured with my own eyes, and if you don’t tell me how to stop it, your pain will eclipse my queen’s!”

  A low murmur of response drifted to me on the breeze, and Luka screamed in wordless rage. I increased my pace as there were only four creatures he could talk to—one or all of the Three Maids or Ratatoskr—and I couldn’t imagine any of them responding well to Luka’s demands.

  I came into the clearing as Luka began his advance toward the Three Maids. He leered at them as he advanced, his face a study of fury. The Three Maids looked up at him with expressions ranging from boredom to annoyance, but there was no fear in any of their faces.

  “We should consign him to the life of a stable boy,” said Mother Skult.

  “Yes, a lifetime of shoveling horse manure would do wonders for his patience,” said Mother Urthr.

  Mother Verthanti scoffed. “Kill him and be done.”

  “No,” I said, raising my voice to carry across the clearing. “He has been abused by your kind enough. More than enough.”

  “You,” sneered Urthr. “Do you even know what you could have been? What you should have been?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care!” I snapped. I turned to the oolfur. “Luka, they can’t tell you anything, even if they know, which I doubt. These three are thralls to the more powerful of their kind.”

  “Ha!” sneered Verthanti. “You know nothing.”

  “Less than nothing,” said Urthr.

  Skult stared at me with predatory calculation in her eyes.

  Luka turned to face me. “And can you? Can you offer me more than parlor tricks?”

  Skult got to her feet and turned toward the trees. “What is it I sense?” she murmured.

  “Luka, what I showed you before was nothing but the truth, and now, I can offer far more than a memory.”

  His eyes bored into mine.

  “But we need your help for what is coming.”

  “And what is that?” he snapped.

  I glanced at the Nornir before turning my gaze back to his. “We can talk about that in private.”

  Skult turned to her left and stared into the forest. “That is…familiar.” She turned toward me. “Who have you brought here? Who is it that is so…”

  I ignored her, keeping my gaze locked on Luka’s. “We need your gifts for a project. We have…” I glanced at Skult. “I’ve brought them here, you understand? Your family.”

  Luka squinted past me and lifted his face and sniffed like a wolf scenting the wind. “My brother…his broodmares…his brat…”

  “I’ve brought all of them, Luka.”

  His gaze locked on mine and he tilted his head to the side. “All? Even…”

  “Yes,” I said with a curt nod. “All.”

  “What are you saying?” demanded Skult.

  “Ignore them, dear,” said Urthr. “They are powerless in the face of our—”

  “No,” hissed Skult.

  “What’s this?” whispered Verthanti. “What is this…thing…that is coming to be?”

  “Hurry, Luka,” I said. “We must get back to the others.”

  He strode to my side, then glanced over his shoulder. “I will return, witches,” he said. “And when I do, you will taste my wrath.”

  “What is this?” said Verthanti, springing to her feet. “Sisters! We must hurry!”

  “Whatever are you droning on about?” asked Urthr. “Nothing has changed. Nothing can change.”

  Skult’s gaze leapt to mine from across the glade that contained Iktrasitl. “We should have caused your death!” she screamed.

  “I get that a lot,” I said. I put my hand on Luka’s shoulder and guided him into the woods. “We’ve got to hurry.”

  “Why? Those three are nothing. I can—”

  “Those three are Plauinn, Luka! Technically, they are the dreamslice reflections of three very weak Plauinn. Thralls to the others, but compared to you and me…” I shook my head.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “They don’t seem like much.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  He grunted with amusement. “Were you speaking the truth back there? Have you brought… Is she here?”

  I nodded.

  “How did you rescue her? How did you—”

  “No time to explain,” I said. “And these woods might have ears.”

  He grunted again. “Take me to her.”

  With a shrug, I led him back toward the others. His stride was long, and his eagerness had him stepping past me, then waiting for me to catch up.

  “Can you not hurry?” he asked.

  “Listen to me a moment. Hel has suffered for I don’t know how long. It’s—”

  “It’s been only a few days,” said Luka. “She’s strong. She will be fine.”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea how time works in the underverse. It’s possible that time in Owraythu’s realm is dilated, that—”

  “What are you talking about, Hank?”

  “What was a few days for us may have been—”

  “I know the meaning of time dilation!”

  “Okay. The Plauinn live in the underverse—that’s their reality. There, they are powerful beings—the most powerful beings that exist there as far as I know. When we are there, we are only reflections of ourselves. It’s akin to a dream existence or a memory of ourselves.”

  “Fine. What has this to do with—”

  “Don’t you get it? She’s been trapped in their realm, yes, but only a part of her. Part of her strength, part of her will, whatever.”

  “Where was the other part?”

  “I have no idea. But listen, Luka! She’s hurt, she’s—”

  “She’s a queen! My queen’s stronger than you think.”

  “I’m not disputing that, Luka,” I said in a smooth, even voice. “I want you to prepare yourself that she may
not be as you—”

  “Enough!” he snapped. “Take me to her. Now!”

  I shrugged and led him through the woods. As we came toward the clearing, he peered through the trees before turning a look of disdain on me.

  “You said they injured her!” He turned and sprinted ahead. “My Queen!” he shouted.

  He bolted out of the trees and ran toward Kuhntul, who stood with her back to us. “My Queen! Is it you?” He reached out and laid his hand on Kuhntul’s shoulder.

  Kuhntul turned, some strong emotion on her face, and flipped her brilliant white hair over her shoulder. “Luka Oolfhyethidn, I am Kuhntul, of the Tisir.” Behind her, Sif, Yowrnsaxa, and Frikka knelt in a half-circle, blocking our view of Hel.

  Luka stumbled back, shaking his head. “I thought… My apologies, from behind you—”

  “I am Kuhntul. I am Tisir.”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod of his head, almost a bow. “Hank said Queen Hel is here?”

  “She is,” said Kuhntul. “I helped Tyeldnir when he rescued her. A force held her there.”

  “This Owraythu that Hank speaks of?”

  Kuhntul shook her head. “Well…maybe, but she was engaged elsewhere at the time—chasing Hank. I think—”

  “What of this force? Why do you mention it?”

  Kuhntul pointed at the base of the tree the three Isir women stood in front of. Sif, Yowrnsaxa, and Frikka moved aside, concern etched in each face.

  “She’s very weak, Luka,” said Sif. “As if she’s lost a fundamental part of herself.”

  Since I’d first met her on Mithgarthr, Hel had always been thin. She’d always appeared one meal away from starving to death. It was part and parcel with the changes wrought on their bodies by breaking the Ayn Loug, by turning cannibal in the pursuit of power. But now she looked even worse. Her skin was an ashen gray and stretched as tight as a drum over the bones of her skull and face.

  “My Queen!” he cried, dropping to his knees.

  I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her. Her hair had been lustrous before, and now it hung like dried grass, shriveled and gray. Flakes of skin fell from her cheeks, and her lips were chapped and split. Her eyes were slack, listless.