Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  “I have good and bad tidings, my grandchild,” Magnhild said when I was through reliving the occurrences of the past day and a half. She listened intently with only the occasional pointed question for clarification. “On the good side you have your own abilities, and strong ones at that, though they are untrained. The bad side is that someone is sending the spirits of the dead in large numbers to Darlthveit to harass its citizens, to what ends I don’t know, but whoever is sending them obviously has ill intent. I have never seen anything like it.”

  “What can we do?”

  At this, my grandmother sighed and pinched the brow of her nose. Her head picked up as she stared off into space as if she was listening intently. When whoever was speaking to her was done, she shook her head.

  “I know not. You are like me: you can send out your soul with intent and the dead respond to it,” she explained in a level voice. “When you landed and had the stone tossed at you what you inadvertently did was send out an attack on a spiritual level, a messy and uncoordinated one, but an attack none-the-less. You must have injured one or more of the dead attackers to scare off the majority of the rest by just your presence.”

  A strange and alien sense of pride swelled in my chest. I was a warrior twice over! Not just with martial skills, but with whatever strange ability that my grandmother’s blood afforded me. That same skill-and the knowledge that I had its talent- made my stomach feel like curdled goat milk.

  “I can make sachets, oils, and other things that will deter the dead but it won’t stop them. If we could get you trained quickly that would be a solution; you could banish the dead, but training takes time and skipping steps is dangerous.” My grandmother stared into the distance and chewed on her thumb while she contemplated out loud. “What is even more dangerous is whoever is sending the dead and why.”

  “That is where I can definitely help, I might be a better fisherman than tracker but I have some skill with it. If the dead bother me less, then I would be the best person for going after the living who are controlling the dead.”

  “If you went hunting for the living you wouldn’t be able to do what is needed to purge the dead from the village. Even Odin, who gave his eye to see all, cannot be in two places at once.”

  “Then go to the village. My wife sent these,” I pulled my bag around and brought out the beads and herbs, then set them on the table toward her. “Torhild cares not that you are a völva! She cares about Darlthveit and its inhabitants. She is a well-loved, deeply respected, and immensely trusted Jarl. With how much of an uproar the village is in, she would be only happy to tell the citizens that you are not to be harmed or harassed, and that you would be rejoining the village. You could live out your days with old Lokison at the edge of the village and not have to sneak around or be away from him.”

  Magnhild started to shake violently; her whole body trembled as she shook her head from side to side. A repeated and silent “no” kept coming from her mouth while a single tear rolled down her cheek. My heart broke at the sight, even though we were all but strangers to each other. Something at some point broke this strong, fierce woman. I knew who it was too.

  “Grandmother,” I kneeled on the floor in front of her chair, the rushes cushioning my knees from the hard-packed dirt, and gently took her hands in my own. “Grandfather is dead. He cannot hurt us anymore.”

  With an audible crack of joints her head snapped up and she looked me in the eyes, then she looked deeper. Old memories churned in my mind like a winter sea storm. Things I had forgotten about and hid from myself arose from the depths to be ejected onto the shore of my consciousness. Me, as a very young boy, in the middle of a stick sword fight with another boy. My grandfather came over and asked what I was doing. I told him and introduced him to my friend. Kell. His name was Kell. Grandfather’s face turned red and he stomped over to me, in my mind it felt like each time his foot landed on the earth it made it shake a little, but I knew that was an exaggeration. When he reached me he beat me until I was bloody and bruised, the whole time he screamed in a blind rage that he would not have another freak of a völva damaging his reputation again, he would not be argred; unmanned, and dishonored. I had to stop seeing the dead: “They aren’t the truth, they are a curse,” he screamed over and over as his fists rained down. Tears; I remembered tears of anger, confusion, and hate rolling down my cheeks. Tears rolled down my cheeks again at the memories. That was just one of many times; flashes of the others flipped through my head but never touched as deeply as the first. Times when I saw things my grandfather didn’t. Times my grandfather thought I saw something and accused me of lying when I said I hadn’t. Beatings. So many beatings.

  The visions ended and I found Magnhild had pulled me to her so she could hold me and cradle my head against her shoulder and her head against mine. I shook violently with sobs and she shook almost as bad as I did. Our tears intermingled as we both cried without restraint.

  “I’m so sorry that you had to pay for my níô, child. Your grandfather was a cold, cruel man and was always afraid that my being a völva reflected upon him and made him argr.”

  “Being who you are shouldn’t cause you to have a stigma, and you being what you are didn’t make him less of a man. What made him less of a man was how he treated you.”

  “And how he treated you.” She pushed me back gently and brushed the wetness away from my cheeks. I smiled gently at her and leaned my face into her hand. She froze, her breath caught in her throat. “Please... Tell me that you do not have your grandfather’s tendencies.”

  “I only raise my hand to my enemies and those who would hurt the people I care about. If I ever so much as contemplated raising a hand to my wife, the village would turn me out if she didn’t kill me herself first, and that thought has never even found purchase within my mind.” My grandmother sighed in relief as the tension visibly drained from her. “Even when I’ve gone viking I have made sure that the women of the towns we went viking to were unmolested and if any returned with us it was because the women chose of their own free will. Torhild and I were strange in that, even when we brought women slaves back it was because they didn’t wish to stay where they were and we always have treated them kindly.”

  Magnhild nodded and straightened herself up. She turned her head to the side and smiled gently to the air beside her, then leaned her head slightly forward as if she leaned into someone’s hand. With a delicate touch, she fingered the torque around my neck with a soft smile.

  “I’ll go to the village and deal with the restless dead that are harassing Darlthveit,” she said in a resigned tone. “If your wife is as you say and will follow through, it would be lovely to be able to care for Lokison. Now, we need to solve your blindness. If you’re going after the people who are controlling the dead, you need to be able to see the world for what it is.”

  “Blindness, what do you mean? My sight is fine.”

  She put a hand on my head with her thumb between and above my brows.

  “Your spiritual sight, Odin’s sight, the sight of the gods,” she responded with a half-smile. “This will start your training with me Brandur. Are you ready to walk this path?”

  “I’m ready and willing to do whatever is needed to save Darlthveit and protect my wife and child.”

  “Excellent. Now we shall begin. I apologize, this will hurt to fix.”

  A force drilled into my head where her thumb was resting and she started to mumble words in a language I couldn’t understand. Then everything was blackness. I screamed into it.

  Dams were broken within me, channels purged, and the essence of life forced through them all. Her power, and by the gods, she had been blessed by them to have such power, scorched everything in its path and flowed through me, filled me, and then found the source of my own. My own? I have my own! Her energy felt like burning hot knives surging through my body and my own energy felt cool and calm, a deep ocean of blue within my core.

  The burning receded away and I could FEEL my own energy fl
owing through my body, the cool gentle lightning soothing the sore streams within myself. As awareness of my body returned, I found myself on my hands and knees on the floor, my throat raw from the screams, my whole body shaking but feeling a pleasant warmth.

  Then I opened my eyes.

  I looked up and saw my grandmother surrounded in a fog of blood-red with darker, almost black edges that eddied through it, and the haze gave off the tank of sharpness and strength that someone would get from a good sword. I slowly stood up while I caught my bearings.

  The beads and herbs on the table had their own soft glow, and behind my grandmother was a middle-aged woman of full curves, sharp dark eyes, and full lips framed by loose curls of inky black that hung down to the curve of her hips. She was wearing the most appealing, yet ridiculous dress, I’d ever seen; the shiny gold cloth wrapped around behind her neck, down over her breasts, then opened up and formed the skirt. Three belts, one below her breasts, one at her waist, and one at her hips held the slight garment in place. The view was lovely but wasn’t she cold with that much skin showing, even in the summertime? I would’ve expected to see something like that much further south and east. She also wore a torque around her neck, the same as I was.

  “G-great grandmother?!” I stuttered in surprise. “How, how are you?”

  Then I noticed that, though I could see her in her glorious, full colors of deep bronze skin, bright gold cloth and torque, and midnight hair, her edges were soft. Where the firelight shone on her I could see a distorted view of what was behind her.

  “It is a good thing to know that the sight is a bloodline gift,” her voice was as smooth and rich as honey, though oddly accented.

  “Brandur, meet your great-grandmother and my mother, Nantelma,” Magnhild said with a smile. “Now that is done, for the next step and my true gift: locating that which wishes to remain hidden from prying eyes.”

  Magnhild went through the interior door and disappeared. Nantelma and I looked each other over, I warily of her and she bemused with arms crossed and a hip cocked to the side.

  “You impress me. I did not want to bring Magnhild out to you because I knew she would not,” Nantelma praised. “I needed you to be brave, and you were for me. Even though you buried your power, you still were able to use enough of it and your will power to overcome the spell. I am excited to see what you shall make possible now that you can draw on your full strength, spiritual as well as physical.”

  “Thank you for leading me here. So much has changed; three days ago if someone told me I would be having a conversation with my dead ancestor in my maternal grandmother’s home I would have laughed at how ridiculous the notion was. Now... This just feels right. Like I was slowly suffocating and now I am out of the ocean’s crushing weight and back on deck, able to take in a breath.”

  Magnhild came back into our room with a roll of vellum with a piece of terminated quartz hanging from a chain and a basket of other supplies. Nantelma and I stepped out of her way and I helped her unroll the vellum, which turned out to be a beautifully worked map.

  “The detail is incredible; this is the entire region within a week’s march of Darlthveit.” My eyes poured over the painted details, from the fields and patches of woods that Orm and I hiked through, to the foothills we were in, to the great forest of Dreyriviôr that was to the east of Darlthveit, and the farming villages that fell under Darlthveit’s protection to the south. The shape of the coastline alone was as accurate as it was awe-inspiring in its detail.

  With flourished and practiced motions, Magnhild pulled four bowls from her basket and used them to anchor the corners of the map. Feathers went into the top left, water in the top right, a sweet-smelling piece of wood was placed in the bottom right then lit with a stick and the main fire, and the last bowl was filled with rich loam. She held the chain with the terminated quartz attached to it above the map with the termination pointed down.

  “By Odin’s eye, I command the realm of the unseen.

  “By my command, show me what hides between.

  “I seek the evil that controls the dead.

  “I search for the ones whose infection has spread.

  “By Odin’s eye and my command show me!”

  Magnhild spun the quartz over the map while she intoned the incantation three times. Her energy flowed down the chain and into the map, soaking into the vellum like flowing blood into the earth, and the quartz spun faster and faster even though her hand was as steady as a boulder. Shivers went down my back, part apprehension part excitement. I was raised to fear this, but it made my soul sing like being on the ocean did.

  The quartz abruptly stopped and thudded onto the map with a hollow knock. It was nestled in the forest to the east of Darlthveit, south and only a little more west than where we were now.

  “I’ll go as soon as it is light out,” I said excitedly. To be able to finally get my hands on someone, to let my axes taste blood again. The beginning of battle rage danced in my stomach.

  “You should scout first, then go back to the village and report,” Nantelma counseled. “Whoever is sending the spirits of the dead in such a strong force like that is very well trained, and there might be a numerous amount of them. I need to go with Magnhild to help protect Lokison and do my part in banishing those who should not be there, so you will be making the trip alone.”

  “Are völvas usually warriors?” I questioned, then I laughed at myself. “Sorry, it’s just surprising how fast someone can accept the change in their reality. I’m discussing plans of action with my dead great-grandmother.”

  “It helps that those born with the talent of being a völva feel right using it. It grates the spirit to deny it but once you start using it there is no going back,” Magnhild answered, then turned to her mother. “I shouldn’t need assistance in Darlthveit, mother, I have some skill in commanding spirits and even more in setting up boundaries they can’t cross unless invited. I would feel better if you were with Brandur. You help teach him to track spirit energy and watch his back for him.”

  “Mags, you haven’t seen what has happened to Darlthveit. I have. I’ve done what I can to help manage things and I was overrun. I had to seek shelter with Lokison and it was all we could do to prevent his home from being overrun.”

  Eyes narrowed dangerously, Magnhild glared at her mother and took a step towards the apparition.

  “Lokison and you were a part of the defense? The two of you were not able to make a difference?” Magnhild growled. “I thought the two of you stayed out of things so as to not expose Lokison! He is in danger, especially without you there. His talent is healing, not fighting! Why did you not tell me this when you first came!”

  “Because I needed you to hear it from Brandur and bond with our grandson, daughter.” Nantelma was not troubled in the least by her daughter’s rolling thundercloud of blood and black that hovered tightly over the edges of her skin. Just being in the same room as my grandmother angry like that was enough to make my skin crawl and mentally noted that I should never get on this woman’s bad side. “Without mine and Lokison’s assurance that Brandur was safe, you would have been more likely to put an arrow through his eye than to listen to a word he said.”

  “I do not wish or think it’s a good idea for anyone to go after those who are antagonizing Darlthveit alone, but I need you with me too and none of my spirit friends are here at the moment,” said Magnhild. “Brandur, you will need to come with us back to the village. It looks like things are worse than I thought.”

  “What do I need to know about spirit tracking? I’m a good hunter and an excellent warrior. I can do this,” I insisted. “I refuse to stand aside and watch others battle, whether it is with the living or the dead. Please, both of you. If none of the völva are battle-trained, much less experienced against berserkers, I’ll have the physical upper hand. Give me a quick lesson or two on how I pushed the spirit away when I first returned from the sea and that should take care of the dead until the grip of their masters is loos
ened.”

  The two women looked at each other and silently communicated with their eyes. As one they sighed in resignation.

  “Time is too dear, if we don’t catch them by surprise then we might only scare them away, or worse they could increase their assault,” concluded Magnhild. “Here, I have never been able to handle this and it will help you.”

  She went to the corner and grabbed the sword I eyed earlier, then handed it to me. From the size and shape, it was a long broadsword whose length was longer than my arm. Its guard was simple and it had thick arms and a wrapped brown leather grip that matched its simple sheath, and in the pommel, there was a chunk of black stone. The true beauty of the sword showed itself when it was pulled forth. Thin lines that ebbed and flowed, the blending of the dark and bright steel that was the telltale sign of Damascus steel.

  Torhild and I had matching pendants made when we went out viking in our youth, but they cost us a good chunk of our loot. Even as the husband of a Jarl, I had never held something of this much wealth in my hands. Its aura was a thin film of darkness, cool and solid, and I felt it tug the energy in the room.

  “This is a rare weapon, it was brought by Nantelma when she followed her husband home. Its blade cuts the dead as well as the living, much spirit was poured forth into the creation of this.”

  “Yes, much,” Nantelma agreed. “Though it is fitting that you carry it Brandur. Its name is Explauit, which in your language means ‘double-edged.’”

  “I, I don’t know what to say,” I whispered. “It’s a breathtaking weapon”

  “You just need to protect yourself and put it to good use,” Magnhild chided. “Though I will need mother’s torque back if she is to come with me.

  “I hope you can travel well on no sleep because we will be awake until you can create a shield, sense spirits, control your spirit sight, and push away spirits. The sword is helpful and all, but you still need some of the basic training that every völva needs if you are to have a chance.”