“Don’t take it to heart, my Queen. Let me—”
“Have you…” Hel shook her head.
“I am yours, and if I know an answer you need, my Queen, you need but to ask.”
She slid to the edge of her throne and glanced around at the courtiers, what was left of her cadre of Trohtninkar Tumuhr, and the various hangers-on that always seemed to be within earshot. “Come with me, Luka.”
She led him to her private rooms, dismissing the attendants and her Trohtninkar Tumuhr. When they were alone, she turned to face him and sat on a low divan. “Luka… My Champion, has anyone ever… Has…” She knotted her hands in her lap.
Luka dropped to one knee before her. He stretched out a long, graceful arm and touched the back of one hand. “Anything, my Queen. Ask.”
“Has anyone come to you, perhaps on a dark night, or…or…or in a dream, maybe? Has anyone told you events, behaviors to watch for? Things your brother might do, for instance?”
Luka’s face worked through a series of emotions, from fear to anger to shame. “There has been one…person.”
“And has he—”
“She.”
Hel had suspected as much. “Has she told you things that will happen and told you what do about it?”
Luka swallowed convulsively. “Yes,” he whispered. “That has happened many times.”
Hel slid forward and put her hand on his cheek. “And…and was she always right?”
Luka nodded, his eyes never leaving her own.
Hel turned to the side and dashed at the tears welling in her eyes.
“My Queen!” said Luka, his voice filled with sympathetic anguish. “Tell me what’s wrong!”
“It’s…It’s all been…” She shook her head. “All of this—all the fighting, all the hate—it’s been for nothing. Nothing!”
Luka shook his head, his expression cluttered by emotions and confusion.
“They lied to us, Luka. That woman who came to you, she manipulated you to do what she wanted.”
Luka shook his head. “No. My brother and his ilk—”
“No, my Champion, it’s true. The same was done to me. Voices…” Her hand circled aimlessly in the air next to her ear. “They speak to me, tell me things about our erstwhile friends, onetime family. They…they preach to me about philosophies of government…of…of—”
His hands gripped hers. “It is no matter, my Queen. None of it matters,” he crooned.
“No, Luka! It matters because they lie to us! They consciously mislead us, manipulate us! They have a plan for us—for the universe, I don’t know—and it is full of darkness, of pain!”
Luka pulled his head back and stared into her eyes. “I am yours to command, my Queen—right or wrong. But tell me, who has convinced you that these…beings tell us lies?”
Hel’s gaze darted to Luka’s face for a heartbeat and then away. “A Tisir who swore me to secrecy, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve examined the claims, and I find them truthful.”
“Okay,” he said.
She marveled at his ability to accept anything she said as fact.
“What do we do?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s a way we can mend this…”
Luka shrugged and looked away into the shadows.
“My empire must fall to dust. If we… If we win this war with your brother and his followers, it will result in his death—in the deaths of all of them that matter. Uhrluhk, you understand?”
Luka lifted his shoulders and let them drop with a sigh. “If he must die for your happiness—”
“No! Luka, listen. If he dies, if they die…if we are victorious, within a century this world will become a place of nightmares.” She shook her head. “I began this war filled with pride, with anger at the thought that these people…the people I loved…betrayed me at every opportunity. I didn’t see that my actions, that—”
“Shh, my Queen. Shh. There is no point in—”
“But we can’t go on! We can’t continue fighting this war!”
He nodded. “That’s why we retreated to Suelhaym. That’s why we’ve locked ourselves inside the palace and waited.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That’s why you’ve resisted the advice of our generals, of Vowli…even mine.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s why you’ve grown…distant, bitter.”
“Yes.”
Luka smiled at her. “In that case, our path is clear.”
“It…it is?”
“Yes, my Queen. Let’s leave this place. Let Meuhlnir choke on the responsibility of ruling Osgarthr. Let him suffer the thankless courtiers, the greedy merchants. Let him deal with the headaches.”
“But…”
“No buts, my Queen. You don’t owe a thing to any of your subjects that you haven’t given them ten times over. Meuhlnir thinks he knows what’s right? What’s proper? Fine. Let him do it, then.”
Hel turned and locked her eyes on his. “But a queen who…who abdicates her throne…”
“Who cares what others think? Let them tell you to your face…and if they do, I’ll be standing next to you, and it will be the last thing they ever say!”
She smiled at his ferocity. “How is it you always know what to say to me?”
He smiled, but the passion of the previous moment still burned in his eyes. “I only speak from the heart, my Queen.”
“Let’s leave this place, my Champion. Let the rebels have it! We will build something better elsewhere!”
“As my Queen desires,” said Luka and he bent and kissed the back of her hand. “I’m yours to command. I will take care of you always.”
She brushed her fingers through his hair. “I believe you, my Champion.” She disengaged from him and stood. “But I’m still the queen of Suelhaym, and we must do something about that before we are free.”
He nodded. “Command me, my Queen.”
“Yes,” she said. She turned and led Luka back into the throne room and ascended the dais. “Attend me,” she said. “All my forces are to disarm, and then, it is my wish that the palace gates be thrown open.”
Gasps and exclamations filled the throne room.
Sadly, Suel nodded. “The rebels have won. I abdicate as of this moment.” The queen put her hands on the arms of her ornate throne and sank into it. “Find Meuhlnir, if he lives, and bring him and whomever he chooses before me.”
Silence filled the room, and the eyes of the gawking courtiers alighted on her face like moths, like mosquitoes. “Do it!” she snapped. “I surrender. Let this stupid war end here, now!”
Fifty-four
Later that evening, Jane and I lay next to each other in the same room we’d slept in on our first visit to the Herperty af Roostum. Her ribs and back had healed nicely, thanks to the ring Althyof had enchanted for her.
“You can go home,” I said softly.
“What?” she asked from the edge of sleep.
“The preer. You can go home. With Sig.”
With a groan, she sat up and peered at me in the near darkness. “And you?”
I lifted a hand and let it fall back to the bed. “I… The Plauinn—”
“You can’t leave, not while the threat exists.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry, Supergirl, but I’ve got to—”
“Of course you have to stay. We have to stay, to…to help.” She sighed. “Besides, Osgarthr is a nice place—it’s not home—not yet, but it could be. And our friends…the Isir, Yowtgayrr, Skowvithr, Althyof…it wouldn’t feel right to abandon them. We can’t stand by, sticking our heads in the sand back in Penfield, while others fight the coming battle.”
I looked up at her. “But our lives back home—”
She put her finger on my lips. “Doesn’t this—all this—doesn’t it seem as though it’s meant to be?”
It was a thought that had been circling in my brain for a while, and there was no denying it. “Yes. But ‘meant to’
doesn’t mean ‘has to.’ I could stay while you and Sig—”
“You’re lucky my ribs hurt too much to punch you right now.” She said it in a mock-threatening tone, but she laid her hand on my shoulder gently.
“What about Sig’s education?”
“Haymtatlr can teach him,” she said. “He has access to more facts than all the teachers you can name combined.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“That’s why you should leave the hard thinking to me. Besides, you’re going to need us. If Sif can pull it off, that is.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
Jane slid back down into the bed, hissing at the pain it caused.
After she settled down, I waited a minute for her to answer me. “Jane, what do you mean?”
“Shut up; I’m asleep.”
“Come on, you can’t say something like that and go to sleep!”
It seemed she could, but no amount of counting sheep helped me to sleep, not after that.
Fifty-five
Gathering the Isir at the Herperty af Roostum took more than a little doing. We set up an assembly line of sorts: Kuhntul, Frikka, Sif, and Yowrnsaxa created the preer using Kuhntul’s method; I fixed the endpoints, and Meuhlnir and Veethar anchored them in a similar fashion as Veethar’s Vault of Preer back at his estates.
The goal was to gather all the Isir—from those loyal to Meuhlnir and the rebel faction, to those that supported Hel in the war, including the oolfa. No one thought putting everyone in a room and then trotting in Luka and Hel was a good idea, so we started with a Thing for Meuhlnir’s faction. Afterward, the plan was to speak with Hel’s followers, with Hel and Luka present, and give them a choice: reunite with Meuhlnir’s faction and all would be forgiven, or accept exile in another klith, the location of which we would decide in the future.
We held the Thing for Meuhlnir’s faction in one of Haymtatlr’s empty meeting halls—a grand room that would accommodate ten thousand people if it would accommodate one. We had carried benches and tables in from various estates throughout Osgarthr, and there was more food, mead, ale, and wine than the group could have eaten in ten lifetimes waiting in the kitchens. Behind the three tables pushed together at the end of the room, stood my family and friends.
“Klyowthstirkidn,” Sif said, putting a hand to her throat and swallowing hard. With a smile at me, she stepped up on the center table. She held up her hands and waited for the assembled Isir to fall silent. “Isir,” she said, and her voice boomed to the farthest reaches of the vast chamber. “In the invitations to the Thing, we laid out the reasons for calling it.”
No one so much as cleared their throats.
“Years ago, at the end of our war—our rebellion, as some of our friends and family still call it—we made a great mistake. We thought we were resolving things, but we weren’t.”
A murmur of dissent rattled around the room.
“No,” said Sif, holding up her hands. “No, it was a mistake. We thought we could put the queen and her followers out of our minds and they would be content to stay where we put them.” She turned and glanced down at me. “As a result, the people of Mithgarthr suffered. Some of them still do.”
Again, the hall erupted in hushed conversations and half-voiced denials.
“Hear me!” shouted Sif. “I am Sif, and you know I speak the truth! We made a mistake, but now we can set things right! More importantly, we have a chance to heal, to come together again as a people, to build a future!”
I leaned close to Meuhlnir. “Sounds as though your wife should be the next queen,” I whispered in his ear.
He flashed a look of pure shock at me and shook his head.
“We owe this chance to one man!” shouted Sif. “It took one man with the blood of the Isir in his veins, but a man who grew up outside of our folly. An Isir born and raised on Mithgarthr!”
I glanced at John, and he smiled but shook his head. On the table in front of us, Sif turned and pointed at me. I shook my head and held up my hands, palms out.
“Oh yes, Aylootr!” crowed Mothi.
“This one man woke us up from our troymskrok—from our pointless dreaming. He breathed life into my family,” she said, putting a hand on her chest. “He helped us to see things in a new light.” Her gaze traveled to Sig, standing on the other side of Jane, then she turned back to the crowd. “When was the last time an Isir gave birth?” she demanded. “When was the last child born?”
The hall fell silent except for the rustling of the Isir looking around.
“Years and years and years,” said Sif. “When was the last time an Isir did something—anything—significant for anyone not on Osgarthr?” Her gaze darted around the room. “When was the last time any of us did something new?”
“What is this, Sif?” demanded a voice from a man lost in the crowd. “Why do you berate us?”
Sif shook her head. “No, I don’t mean to berate you. I want you to wake up!” She shouted the last two words as loudly as she could, the sound crashed through the chamber like a tsunami. “Hank Jensen and his family have suffered because of our negligence, it is true. But we have all suffered because of those decisions we made in Suelhaym! The Isir have suffered, and the time for suffering is at an end!”
Sif again held up her hands to quiet the room. “Thanks to Hank, we have Luka and Hel in our grasp. Again.” She paused and gazed into the crowd, picking out key faces and locking eyes with them for a moment before moving on again. “We must decide what to do with them, but before we do, we must decide what to do with us. Do we go on as we have, dwindling as a race until there are none left? Or do we seize this chance and embrace life again, allow ourselves to heal? There has been enough mourning! Enough fretting about what might have been! How long are we to leave the throne open, to leave things unresolved?”
In the crowd, many heads nodded.
“We need to unite!” said Sif.
More heads nodded, and a countless number cried out in affirmation.
“We need a leader!”
I glanced at Meuhlnir and winked, and he returned my glance quizzically. Jane took my hand and squeezed.
“Do any disagree? Do any believe the half-life we’ve lived these long centuries is better than the old way?” Sif waited in utter silence for what must have been a minute. “Then, if the old ways are better, we need a leader, and that leader stands among you tonight! That leader who has proven worthy of the honor, of the high office.”
“Who?” cried someone in the crowd.
“Yes, tell us!” The crowd picked up the phrase and shouted it from all over the room
Sif held up her hands, and the shouting died down. “This man,” she said, pointing at me.
“And who is he?” asked someone up front.
I shook my head and turned to Meuhlnir to protest, but he only smiled and shook his head.
“Hank Jensen, as he was known on Mithgarthr, has earned many names since Hel and Luka tricked him into coming here. You may have heard his names bandied about attached to great deeds and courageous acts. My son dubbed him Aylootr for his prowess in battle and for facing a mighty dragon of the air without fear! Others called him Tyeldnir for the weapons he uses, and Valkyosanti for his abilities to choose who lives and who dies with great accuracy when using them. I have overheard many of you speak of Krimnir, the Hooded One, though he wears that silly hat instead of a hood.” After each annoying nickname, a swell of cheering broke out. “And now, I dub him Helpinti—the binder of Hel!”
A cheer went up, and it was deafening. I glanced at Jane, a small frown on my face. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I shook my head and opened my mouth, but Jane put her finger over it.
“You see, you’ve heard of him. He’s been here less than a year, yet the stories about him have spread far and wide. Hank came here not knowing anything about Osgarthr or his heritage. He came here knowing nothing of the strenkir af krafti. In a short time, he’s won allies, not only Isir, but noble
Alfar…and even a Tverkr!”
The crowd laughed at that, none louder than Althyof.
“I’ll tell you something that the stories about Hank don’t,” said Sif in a subdued tone. “He suffers daily from a curse laid on him by Hel. His pain is great, and the curse saps his strength every second.”
I felt sympathetic eyes on me from all over the hall and blushed. I shook my head in silent protest, then looked up at Sif. “No, Sif. This is wrong. I shouldn’t be the leader of the Isir.”
“He says: ‘I shouldn’t be the leader of the Isir.’” Sif shook her head, smiling. “‘This is wrong,’ he says.”
The crowd roared.
I climbed up on the table, ignoring Jane’s tugging on my hand. “Klyowthstirkidn,” I said and felt an uncomfortable pressure on my voice box. “Hear me,” I said, and the crowd quieted. “Thank you, Sif, for the kind words, but you make it sound as though I did all these things by myself. Without Meuhlnir, Yowrnsaxa, Mothi, and you, I’d be a popsicle right now—flash-frozen in that sterk task, or dead to bandits.” She smiled sweetly at me. I turned to the crowd. “In fact, each person behind me has contributed to my survival here on Osgarthr, and I couldn’t have done any of this without them. I’m no hero, I’m just a guy who loves his wife and son.”
“Do you see?” asked Sif, and again the crowd became a sea of noise.
“Sif, this is wrong. Meuhlnir or Veethar—”
“Will not do,” she said. “Ask them.”
I turned, but both Isir smiled at me and waved their hands.
“Mothi, then.”
“That youngster?” cried Meuhlnir. “Plus, he’s grounded!”
Sif repeated his words for the crowd, and everyone laughed. Mothi jumped up on the table and bowed, a huge ear-to-ear grin on his face, but his expression sobered, and he turned to face me.
He cleared his throat and enchanted his own voice. “Aylootr, brave men have surrounded me all my life, and I’d follow you before any of them.”
Sif smiled at her son for a moment. “I say Hank Jensen should be named Isakrim—leader of the Isir. Does anyone wish to speak in opposition?”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 140
