Morginthax stepped forward. She held out a goblet for me. It was filled with red liquid.
I took it and looked at it. I looked up at Rhean.
She tapped her fingers on the shield where the Serpent Skull was prominent. “Euryale’s poison. One from her many snakes. It will kill you in two days. It will eat out of your gut, Opar. It won’t be painful, not too badly, but one moment, you will see your belly falling out. If you fail, you will not escape.” She leaned forward. “Your sons drank it already.”
The treacherous Hel-spawned bitch.
She lifted the gauntlet. Morginthax stepped near, and the vampires had hands on their swords.
Rhean smiled. “I can make it pleasant for you, Opar. I have appetites for your kind, the kind who have hunted ours for long decades, and lost. It is exciting. I can make it pleasing, if you like, though, I was just dressed.”
I was enraged, jealous, and still intrigued.
To hide my confusion, I lifted the goblet. “And how will my sons and I survive this vile thing?”
“You will be given an antidote,” she answered. “Euryale has a long history of poisoning elves. She knows how.” She lifted a clear bottle of pale blue liquid. “In this, you must trust us, as we trust you. She will keep hers.” She eyed me as she put away the bottle. The vampires surrounded her and drew their swords, looking at me with morbid fascination.
I drank down the goblet’s contents.
It was bitter, raw, and poisonous. I could feel it surging inside my veins. Then, it settled as a cold ache in my guts.
Rhean smiled and got up. Sensuously, she pushed through her vampires, all four of whom stepped aside, bowing. She lifted the gauntlet. “My offer stands, Opar. Let us seal out sweet deal with love.”
I took the gauntlet and eyed it.
I hesitated and looked back at her. She placed a hand on my hand and slid closer. The darkness in her was suffocating, intoxicating, and my heart beat hard as she came close to me. Her fingers brushed my face.
I fought it.
I fought the temptation.
I fought it with all my power. I could just … leave. I could simply go. I could do it so easily. I just refuse her. I just tell her no. And fly away, with the gauntlet.
I leaned forward instead.
She tiptoed up to me, and her lips combined with mine. I pulled her to me.
Her eyes shot open in shock and then terror. She tore herself from me. The vampires and Morginthax looked on, confused.
I grinned at her.
I pulled on the gauntlet.
The power coursed in my veins. It was nothing, if not divine. The memories of the past, of old ages, when the Nine Worlds were young, flashed past my eyes. I saw, for a moment, a vision of an underground room, one that was scarred by battle. There, a red-haired corpse lay, corrupted, dead. Over her, stood a woman of dark-haired beauty, a mark of a grinning mask on her forehead. A beastly warrior, ax and shield high, was eying a short woman with snakes for hair, wielding two swords. Her eyes were bitter pools of pain.
Spells to kill her and her kind slowly, I thought. Teach me.
Many spells went past my mind. They were a jumble of memories. They were flashes of terrible battles. I saw Morag, Father, fighting a terrible creature of the night, a being dark as coal with four swords. I saw him forcing the thing down to the corner of a library after a terrible battle, and I saw him pushing his hand through the being’s chest.
I saw what he did. I saw the braid, thick with winds of Gjöll, the sharpest flows of the young ice, and the thickest currents of the oldest rivers.
He released it in the black heart of the foe. I saw the heart freezing and spewing sharp tears of ice, steadily, ripping into the flesh, filling the insides of the thing. I saw Morag, screaming at the creature, and I knew it was the one that had once killed Mellina, my mother. I saw the thing crawling away, ice falling, tingling, clinking, ever ripping new wounds to his skin, until it would die, slowly ripped apart.
Heart of Ice. A slow death, demon, Morag yelled after it.
Slow was fine with me.
Rhean was stepping back and back from me. Her eyes commanded me. They commanded me to flee, to run, to go to my knees.
I felt red rage and snarled away her commands.
I reached for her so very fast and grasped her hair. I rammed my gauntlet into her chest, through it and grasped the old, cold heart. “All mine, and I won’t share,” I laughed. I braided together the spell and released it. I felt her shuddering with horrible pain. Then, I slapped her across the room.
“Maskan!” she screamed, as she got up, holding her chest, bright tears of ice trickling from it.
“Die slowly, bitch,” I laughed, enraged and full of vicious cruelty. I let my face change to my own.
“It is Maskan!” she howled and spat ice. “Kill him! Fast!”
I laughed and turned to her vampires. I lifted my shield and banged my ax on it. I grinned at them. “Come. Scare me.”
They tried. They reached out and forced their will on me.
I roared, suddenly brimming with rage, and grew to my full size, stepping on one so hard, he fell apart. I lifted my shield against the other three. They called for darkness. They called for fire and ran through the darkness to attack me from behind.
Their spells struck me and died. The darkness dissipated around me. Lisar’s guard made me invulnerable to magic.
I lifted my gauntlet, and laughing merrily, I braided together a blizzard. It was thick, powerful, and whirled around me, turning the market into wintry scene in but moments. I saw a vampire fall on his face, dragged by the wind. I stepped to him and hacked him in half.
I saw another, spewing snow, trying to get his bearings, and I kicked him so hard, he was twisted in two.
The last one was backing off, and off, calling for fire, trying to see in the snow.
I thickened the spell around him, and he froze. I walked to him, watching Rhean who was scuttling back, her eyes huge with horror, ice in the corners of the eyes, her mouth, and chest spewing crystal clear bits of it. It was painful and deadly spell, and she knew it.
I put the ax on the vampire’s forehead.
I grinned at Rhean. “You will wish it was so simple as this.” I pushed the ax down and grunted. The skull was split. The vampire died. “Like killing sheep.”
She shuddered and fled, turning into a cloud of crows.
“Run, Rhean! I shall find your corpse, love!” I called out after him, my heart suddenly broken, as I held my face. The curse would haunt me forever. I could marry a million women, or jotuns, and bed each one of them, but Rhean had cursed me profoundly. I’d kill her. I’d likely visit her grave after and weep.
“Maskan,” I heard a voice calling.
I turned. I didn’t see Anja anymore. She had been taken away.
But I saw Morginthax.
She stood behind me, and she was swaying.
“Go away, dog of Rhean,” I snarled.
She chuckled and shook her head. “There was a day in Malignborg, jotun, when I played a silly game with a stupid girl and fell victim to her tricks. Dana, may she have died badly. I shall not play such games with you, jotun, and no, I am not Rhean’s dog.”
She ran at me.
I laughed at her face and lifted my ax and shield.
She shifted. First, her beautiful, golden skin twisted, and I saw a rotten, burned skin filled with battle wounds. I saw hideously punctured eye and then two pale lamps of cruelty in her skull-like face as she leaped.
She grew. She changed.
She twisted in the air, and a skeletal, rotten, serpentine, thirty-foot-long creature of death came for my life. It missed a few claws, but what it had were sharp and long as swords. Its skull, elongated and large as a horse, was filled with deadly fangs, and the tail was thrashing the air behind it. It had one wing, and still, it could fly.
It had been a dragon.
Now, it was something like a lich, and a terrible guard of Euryale.
She crashed over me, and its fang came for my face, its claws sunk to my armor and flesh, and I screamed as I hacked the ax at the skull.
It hit the snout squarely and pushed the skull aside, and molted fire scorched rock and snowy, rotten wood around me. It was no magical fire, but dragon fire.
It could kill me.
We rolled around and around, and I held on with all my life. I pushed the shield into its mouth, and it nearly tore my arm off. The claws were deep in my shoulder and leg as it tried to tear the limbs off.
I wept, cried, and then raged as I pushed the ax to the skeletal chest and summoned a spell. A storm of ice shattered against it and tore out skin, organs, and scales. The bones withheld the assault.
It laughed. The front claw pushed my shield aside, and the tail whipped around to grasp my ax. “Let’s have that gauntlet, jotun. I’ll take the arm too.”
It was pulling me apart, and then, cursing, and bleeding, I considered Bolthorn.
It would grant me no wishes. It expected a great boon, but not this one. This one was a dead one.
I tried to listen to the Black Grip.
I couldn’t. The pain was too much.
Instead, I shifted. I shrunk, and a ferocious wolverine thrashed under the dracolich, which roared in surprise. I jumped on the foreleg and scrambled for the back.
The tail whipped up and down, and I howled as it struck my back, tearing off skin and fur. The skull was turning about and looking at me, golden, dirty, rotten scales crackling. It opened the maw as I jumped for the skull.
I shapeshifted and turned into white bear.
Without Black Grip, the beast I changed into had already been huge, fifteen feet tall and deadly with claws the size of a dagger, strong enough to break a company of spearmen.
With Black Grip, the power was much more powerful.
I grew into a twenty-foot-tall, terribly heavy ball of claws, fangs, and anger.
I crashed into the head, the neck, and tore into the rotten face.
Morginthax screamed with anger, and together, we fell to the floor, breaking Rhean’s seat. I pummeled, ripped, and tore at her. A great gout of flame tore from her mouth, and she tried to push me away, but her claws were drawing sparks off the stone, her forelegs were crushed under her and me, and I clamped my jaws around her neck and bit down so hard, the scales flew in all the directions. I felt, heard, the bone cracking and ripping. I roared, tore with savagery, and trashed the great beast.
There was a cracking sound, a snap of bone, and I came up, holding a huge head, devoid of life.
I dropped it and shapeshifted into myself.
I was looking around. The market was empty. It was quiet.
I laughed. I held my ax high and screamed, full of primal joy. “Maskan Ymirtoe! Maskan Ymirtoe is the master of the dead! The head breaker, the undead breaker! Who rules the Dome? Here, Rhean, look!” I lifted something to the darkness, where Rhean would be watching while she slowly died.
It was her bottle on antidote.
“See this! A thief, and a king!” I yelled, and poured it to my mouth, and felt the poison dying inside my guts. “And let sons of Opar die with you! I piss on them!”
And then, something happened.
Horns were braying all over the cavern. I heard them echoing across the undersea. I heard chanting, and terrible, harsh laughter. It suddenly seemed the entire land was filled with sound.
I hesitated and took steps away.
And I noticed movement.
I turned to the great throne of a woman with snakes for hair.
I noticed one of the snakes was moving. It was swaying and twisting as it turned to look at me. Then another, and slowly, a hundred more. A sea of snakes was moving, slithering over each other. An arm turned, so the palm was no longer up. It was an exquisite arm, as was the other one, this one holding a long sabre. Two other pair of hands curled from the sides, and the throne, that was an undead gorgon, stood up.
A black as night creature, it looked down and not at me. It was dressed in nothing. It had black wounds, black bones showing here and there, and some of the snakes were cut.
I took a step back.
“Well done, jotun,” it whispered. “For decades, I have hidden and let others do what I loved to do, once. Killing, jotun. I love slaying. I love scheming well, but killing is the crown on any good scheme. I am the one who stole the Eye of Hel, I am the one who defied Hel and the gods themselves, and the one, who caused Hel’s War. It was I, my sister Stheno, and Cerunnos Timmerion, but I thought it up. Hel’s thing I am now, friend jotun, but you shall not cheat me at the last leg of this journey. I shall obey the Hand’s order, and gods willing, I shall have a unlife of my own, after. You will not stop me from ruling Midgard and then, one day, Aldheim.”
She lifted her head, and those eyes glared at me.
Like staring down to bitter brightness of the Lifebringer itself, the pain was terrible. It tore through my eyes, it stabbed at my thoughts. It purged me of bravery, and I felt my skin itching, stone rolling down my brow. I stumbled away and hacked back with my ax.
She was laughing, mocking, bitter, horrible slayer of hope. I missed and missed again.
“No spells on you, I know,” she was whispering. “We do it the old way.”
I felt her moving, and moving around me, but I dared not open my eyes. I felt a sabre stabbing my side, then cutting my leg, and I fell away from the cut and found a leg which I tripped over. I felt her powerful foot on my chest, and her fingers on my throat.
“Open them!” she roared. “Open the eye, one is enough!”
I slashed my ax at her, but she blocked it and threw me across the room.
I got up, panting.
I was struck in the back, and I fell. I felt snakes slithering around me, slithering around my limbs, around my throat. “You cheated jotun, did you? You cheated. A thief, are you? My venom’s not good enough for you, is it? Here.”
I felt fangs in my arm. They tore through my skin, and I felt the burning pain as I was infected with death. I pushed at her, desperately, with all my strength, and then pulled suddenly. She fell over me, and I tore myself off the snake’s grasp. I felt the cold lump of pain in my guts again, this time, much more painful.
I rolled, shapeshifted into the owl, and flew away in panic. I flapped my way up to the darkness, dripping blood, and finally, dared to look around.
I didn’t see her.
I saw Dome. I saw the lights. I heard horns.
Then, I saw the hundred thousand statues turning. They were not really statues. They were draugr, all the dead that had been collected by Rhean and Balic’s wars. They were turning, moving, answering the call to war. Black on black, their skin painted in black, their armor painted in black as well, led by old, terrible kings, young, dead, once great champions, the legions and companies of the dead were forming for war. This was what Opar had meant when he had told me I didn’t understand. This was an army to end Midgard. They began marching for the west, a tromp of their feet echoing, old and new standards swaying.
They were singing.
“Sword to the man, ax to the boy, a whip for the lass, and spears for the mass.
Together, we shall see, oh, we shall see, all their lives pass.
Ho, here is old Corinol the King, and there, the rotten Sur, who stole the queen’s ring.
There marches Tarn the Slasher, and Ular the Wedding Crasher …”
They marched to the drums, horns, and flute, a black mass of death, no longer silent. With them, rode red riders of the old Tenginell king and, in that army, marched dead wolves, bears, and even rotten jotuns. Savage draugr in dark furs were leading a train of siege, drawn by huge, skeletal mammoths. They marched under the sea for the west, and I knew, somewhere near Illon, they would begin their war on the living.
I shook my head and felt the poison in my veins. I flew away, far away, and found a way out, one where water was dripping.
“Come, Maskan!” I heard a voice call
ing. Euryale was screaming, from the top of her voice, enraged by my escape. “Come to Mara’s Brow! Bring yourself there, Maskan, and beg on your knees, boy! Perhaps I’ll give you your life back! Perhaps I don’t need to! I will take the fort, Black Grip or not, Anja’s power or not! I will take it, and I will get inside!”
I had the Black Grip.
They still had Anja. Euryale would rip what remained of her mind out to make her theirs. Rhean would make her one of hers, if she survived that long.
And I?
I had to summon help. We would all risk whatever was inside that stony hole in Mara’s Keep.
***
I flew all that night and found a certain village. It was Warthill. I had to stop to ask directions, and it was hard, since so many people in Falgrin were fleeing what they heard was a war coming. Many were going to Mara’s Brow, others to the mountains, and then, finally, I located a small village in the edge of the Blight, not far from Mara’s Brow.
I flew around it. It was a simple affair of drab halls. Hunters and few farmers would call it home.
I saw movement, and then, many blond men emerged from the halls to watch me. They saw me, even through the night, and held hands beneath their cloaks, clutching axes. I landed and shapeshifted.
There were many.
Some were female, just slightly shorter than the males. They were no men, but the Sons of Ymir, Ymirsons, the commoners Opar had set to save, and yet, who would not have understood the shameful decision.
They watched me, their foe, nearly forty of them.
I swayed, felt the poison in my gut, and exerted my will, pushed the pain away, and stood up straight. I pulled out a sack.
“The clans have been feuding forever,” I yelled out. “We have hunted and killed each other. It is time we fight for something truly worth dying for.”
One of them, a man, a jotun, really, with a scar across his face, took a step forward, holding his ax. “Our king is out there, finding the enemy. He is—”
“Your king,” I said simply, “betrayed you. Your kin, his closest family and few others of your clan, worked with Hel’s minions, and he gave up his sons as their prisoners. Only Asra survives. She and I, we shall marry.”
Sons of Ymir Page 29
