Sorcerer's Luck

by Katharine Kerr

“Hey, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.” He grinned at me. “They’re Odin’s birds.” He paused, thinking. “That leftover roast chicken in the fridge. It’s been there too long anyway.”

  Tor got out the chicken carcass and shredded the remaining flesh into a bowl. When he took the bowl outside, I stayed at the window. As soon as he walked into the back yard, the ravens flew, squawking in excitement. He started scattering the chicken onto the lawn. The birds swooped down and landed into a rough semi-circle at the edge of the yard, waiting. He finished distributing the flesh and left. They hopped forward and began to feed. They squabbled among themselves, cawing, occasionally pecking at each other over a particularly good piece, I supposed, but when the largest raven hopped forward, no one interfered with its choice of morsel.

  Tor came back upstairs and stood at the window to watch.

  “That big one?” he said. “She must be the matriarch. The female ravens are bigger than the males.”

  I realized that I’d half-expected him to think that the large raven was Odin himself in bird form. Maybe I’d been thinking it.

  “I didn’t know they travelled in flocks,” I said.

  “They usually don’t. It’s got to be an omen.”

  Once they’d finished feeding, the birds rose and flew off. They headed east and disappeared into the darkening sky.

  After dinner Tor went down to the library room to find some dictionaries he needed for his work on the rune riddles. I thought about watching a movie on my laptop, but I would have had to put the charge on Tor’s card, where he’d see it and bitch. Instead I decided to do some drawing. I fiddled around with some sketchy bits of landscape, got some unsatisfying scribbles, and remembered the ravens.

  I had a clear picture in my mind of the birds sitting in the backyard while the matriarch watched from the stone wall. I got the ravens down on paper, but not the view from the kitchen window. As I drew, the backyard changed. The birds seemed to be sitting on the crest of a hill. Instead of the Japanese maple, a dead, twisted live oak tree stood to one side of the scene. The ravens were watching not Tor with the bowl of food but something hanging on a stick.

  Or a thing impaled on a stick. Under my unwilling fingers the image developed beyond my power to control it: a wolf’s head impaled on a long pole, stuck in the ground and positioned so that the head seemed to look downhill.

  “Yuck!” I said aloud.

  I was tempted to tear out the sheet and wad it up. What stopped me was my memory of a passage in one of the old sagas, where Egil the Hunchback killed a mare and stuck her head on a pole in order to drive the king and queen of Sweden out of the country. I carried the sketchbook downstairs to show Tor. I found him sitting on the floor in the library in front of a shelf full of thick leather-bound books.

  “Would you look at this?” I said. “Maybe I’m just being silly, but I think it could be important. It just kind of came to me.”

  He took the sketchbook, stared at the drawing, and swore under his breath.

  “The nidhing pole,” he said, “but I’ve never heard about a vitki using a dog or wolf before. That doesn’t make it any less ugly. Maybe uglier.”

  “Uh, is that its name? I remember reading about it.”

  “Nidh is the Norse word. It means scorn. It’s an ancient way of insulting and shaming an enemy, but if you’re a nasty son of a bitch like Egil, you can use it as a curse. You cut off a horse’s head and jam it onto a high pole so that it looks in your enemy’s direction. Then you invoke the goddess Hel to follow the horse’s gaze and pour out black evil upon the enemy and his family. It’s a real powerful spell, and nothing anyone should mess around with unless they’ve been seriously wronged. Like, someone murdered a member of your family—that kind of wrong.”

  “Nils feels wronged over a lot less than that.”

  “He sure does.” Tor handed me back the sketchbook and scrambled up. “And he’s the one who turns into a wolf. Huh. I told you those ravens were an omen.”

  “Do you think Nils is working the curse on you?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to see if I can figure out where it is. We’ll have to go look.”

  “Oh, squicky!” A second thought made me catch my breath. “And dangerous.”

  “Maybe. I’ll take the guys along, the guys you met. We have a pact. When I really need them, they come with me to the place where I need them. And I’ll do the same for any of them.”

  “Your warband.”

  He laughed and nodded. “I guess you could call them that. We look out for each other.”

  But you lead, I thought to myself. I’m willing to bet on it.

  Tor called his guy friends immediately, then spent the rest of the evening casting the rune staves and studying the results. I did more drawings of the same scene from different angles in the hopes of giving us landmarks. Eventually the drawings and the runecasts came together in Tor’s mind.

  “Up in the Claremont Hills in the nature preserve,” he told me. “On the high ridge so the head can look all the way down at us.” He smiled with a grim twist to his mouth. “Near Grizzly Peak Boulevard. Appropriate.”

  Early the next morning Billy and JJ arrived in Billy’s white Land Rover. Aaron, JJ told me, had an important development meeting at his job. His “help person” had already made arrangements to be there with him, which made changing the meeting time impossible.

  “He’s got Asperger’s really bad, then,” I said.

  “Some people would call him autistic,” Billy said. “We don’t, us guys, I mean. He just can’t deal with people sometimes, like in business meetings.”

  “Those are hard enough for anyone to deal with,” JJ said. “I don’t see how anyone stays awake.”

  “Sheer willpower!” Billy grinned at him. “Well, let’s go see what the Evil Uncle’s shit on now. Don’t you worry, Maya. Tor will clean it up.”

  It finall dawned on me that when his friends called him the “wizard,” they weren’t just making a joke. They believed in his sorcery. And in mine—Billy studied the drawings I’d made with his eyes narrowed in genuine concentration. Watching his belief made my stomach twist. Tor quirked an eyebrow in my direction. I could practically hear him thinking, you’ve got talent for this.

  “I might know where this thing is,” Billy said. “I hike up there, and that tree’s a pretty spectacular ruin. The oak blight epidemic killed it. What do you bet that’s the place?”

  “You could fool me.” JJ flashed him a grin. “I’m a city boy, myself.”

  We all piled into the Land Rover, Tor in the front with Billy, JJ and me in back. Tor kept my drawings in his lap, but he stared straight out the windshield the entire time. The set of his shoulders made me think he might be casting some kind of spell, scrying for danger, probably. Billy drove way too fast for my taste. He swore at slow drivers on the freeway, changed lanes, muttered profanities. I tried to ignore the driving. Tor never moved or said a word.

  Some miles before we reached the Caldecott Tunnel, Billy turned off the freeway onto a side road. At first it led through a residential area, but the higher we climbed, the sparser the houses became. Once we drove into the Preserve itself, the road petered out to a dirt track. The Land Rover bounced and jounced around while JJ swore under his breath and I clutched at the seat and the arm rest on my side. Tor stayed so still and focused that he seemed to be riding on a private cushion of air.

  The particular dirt track we were following ended in a grove of live oaks. Billy parked the Land Rover facing downhill. “In case we need to make a fast getaway,” he said.

  “Probably we won’t,” Tor said. “I’ll try not to start any fires.”

  None of us laughed. We all got out, and I spent a moment tucking my slim-leg jeans into my hiking boots. Ticks were the big summer hazard up in the dry grass of the hills. Billy and JJ treated their own ankles the same. Tor merely stared uphill as he stood a little apart from us with my drawings rolled in one hand. I remembered the flies a
t our backyard picnic and figured that the ticks would leave him alone.

  It was quiet up in the hills under the midday sun. Now and then I heard a insect buzz, and the long grass, pale gold and dead here at the end of summer, rustled as we tramped through it. The noise of the freeway and the vast urban spread of the Bay Area lay a long way downhill in a sea of silence. We’d only gone about twenty yards up when I began to sweat, the cold clammy sweat of spent élan. I waffled, wondering if I should interrupt Tor’s concentration, but he turned around, smiled at me, and sent a wave of élan my way. I pretended to be out of breath so I could gasp as I captured and swallowed it.

  “Rest break,” Tor said. “Maya’s not used to this.”

  “Neither am I,” JJ said with a grin. “Not that I expect any sympathy.”

  It took me a bare two minutes to absorb all of the élan. I felt it flow through my body in a sweet tide that restored the strength in my legs. As we started trudging up the steep slope ahead, the ravens returned. Cawing to one another, the flock swirled out of the eastern sky and flew around us in a wide circle.

  “Whoa!” JJ said to me. “This is like your pictures.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure is.”

  Tor tipped his head back and cawed in return. Unlike most people’s clumsy attempt at bird calls, he sounded like a raven. They understood him and took off, heading south-east, but slowly, flapping around us, settling only to rise up again, until they could be sure Tor followed. The rest of us didn’t matter. That was obvious from the way the matriarch looked only at him before she called to the flock. We clambered up through the high grass and outcrops of rock, past a scattering of trees, and finally saw ahead the twisted oak of my drawing. With one last outburst of shriek and caw, the ravens settled on the branches, black and shiny among the rust-colored clusters of dead leaves.

  Just on the downhill side of the tree stood the ten-foot high scorning pole, jammed into the ground and topped with the head of a Husky or Malamute dog. The dog’s body, a dark blot on the pale grass, lay nearby.

  “Maya, get back!” Tor snapped. “You don’t want to look at this.”

  Too late. I’d already seen that Nils had bound her paws together with wire, slashed her sides, and rammed something sharp and metal up her female parts. Black blood crusted her fur, which meant she’d been alive for the torment. I nearly vomited, turned my back, and staggered a few steps away. JJ and Billy walked over to join Tor.

  “Shit!” Billy said. “He didn’t just kill her. The slimy bastard! Jesus!”

  “Yeah,” Tor said. “Well, she’s running free in the other world now.” He raised his hands above his head. “May someone call her home!” His voice rang over the silent hillside.

  In the profound silence I felt a presence, an answer though not in words. I shuddered. JJ returned to stand beside me. He wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve and took a deep breath. “I don’t even know what to say,” he said. “What kind of twisted nutcase would do that to an animal?”

  “A twisted nutcase, yeah. I hope he rots in hell.”

  From behind us I heard Tor speaking in a language that I didn’t recognize—much like Icelandic, but the cadence rolled and dipped in a different way. JJ cocked his head to one side and nodded in recognition. “Old Norse,” he murmured. “He uses that to invoke the ancestors.”

  Tor called out one sharp word. Billy said, “One two three!” I heard them grunt. Curiosity got the better of me, and I glanced over my shoulder just as they pulled the pole free of the earth. Even with two of them holding it, the heavy pole swayed, unbalanced by the dead thing at the tip. Tor muttered something and shook the pole. The head came loose and dropped beside the body with a sickening little thud. I watched the ravens rather than think about the dog’s slow death. In the tree branches the shiny black birds shrieked and cawed. Some sprang up and flew, swooping low to return and settle.

  “What I don’t get is, where are all the flies?” Billy said.

  “Nils cast an aversion spell,” Tor said. “Huh. That’s why the ravens came to fetch me. I’ll dispel it, and then they can take what’s rightfully theirs.”

  They laid the pole down in the grass. Tor raised his hands again and spoke, in Icelandic this time. As we were leaving, I glanced back and saw the ravens settling around the dog’s corpse to return her substance to the cycle of life.

  On the way home I kept brooding about the poor dog, a female at that. Had Nils meant her horrible death to rebound onto me? Since Tor and I were sharing the back seat, once we got onto the freeway and smoother riding, I asked him.

  “What else?” he said. “I dispelled that, too. And deflected the curse back to him.” His voice dropped to a growl. “We’ll see how he likes that.”

  When we reached our building, Tor invited Billy and JJ in, but Billy had to get back to work, and JJ needed to return to the graduate library—to allow his thesis to continue driving him insane, was how he put it. I practically ran up the stairs to our flat. I wanted refuge from the cruelty I’d seen. I flopped onto the couch and stared at the beautiful Chinese vases and the masterpiece of a jade mountain. Tor paced back and forth in front of the west window.

  “I understand one thing now,” Tor said. “Why he didn’t use a horse’s head. It’s too public up there. He killed the dog somewhere else and brought her up with him. He couldn’t have gotten a dead horse into his SUV, and killing a live one in the open?” He shrugged. “Someone would have noticed. The park rangers if no one else.”

  “They would have found the pole eventually, wouldn’t they? Despite that spell, I mean.”

  “Oh yeah. Aversions don’t make people blind. But if we’d left it, it could have done a lot of harm. Look. I agreed to stay on defense, right? We both felt sorry for crazy old Nils. No more. He tried to hurt you. I want to send him howling like the coward he is. I want to terrorize him so bad that he’ll stay away from us forever. The full moon’s nearly here. I’ll make my first strike once it’s over. Assuming he hasn’t made one on me first.”

  I’d been raised to value compassion as the One Great Thing, the lesson every sentient creature needed to learn from incarnation. But the scene I’d witnessed rose in my memory—the tortured dog on the mountainside—and warned me that Nils had slipped over the edge into dangerous madness.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s fine with me.”

  The image of the dead dog on the mountain haunted me. When Tor made lunch, I could barely eat. How could anyone do that to an animal, especially a dog, who would have loved its owner? As my mind kept bringing up the ugly scene, pieces of a different puzzle finally fell into place. Hiking in the Catskills, a rare blood disease, and a werewolf here in California who just happened to run across Tor in the local wilderness?

  “What is it?” Tor laid his half-eaten sandwich down on his plate. “You look kind of strange.”

  “I just realized something. Nils isn’t going to attack us at the full moon. He won’t be able to.”

  “What? Why —”

  “Because he has to be the lycanthrope that bit you. Anything else would be too much of a raw coincidence. Didn’t you tell me that the wolf came right up to you? In daylight? He must have been tracking you.”

  Tor looked at me for a long moment, then laughed with a sharp bearish chuff. “Of course,” he said. “Revenge, and he’d been watching, waiting to see where he could get at me.”

  “What I wonder is how he knew you’d be on Mount Tam. I mean, he must have gone over there before the full moon. He couldn’t drive in wolf form.”

  “I’d scattered Dad’s ashes up there the year before.” He shoved his barstool back and got up. “He loved the mountain, and he had a favorite place, a kind of hollow on the mountain side, and in the rainy season there’s a stream and a lot of ferns. That’s where he wanted to rest.”

  “Is it near where you got bitten?”

  “It is where I got bitten. Nils must have been watching, must have known.” Tor went very very still. His voice growl
ed when he spoke. “The bastard.” He stood with his head thrown a little back, his hands curled into fists, his mouth tight and thin, his eyes narrow with rage, and yet his body stayed quiet, tense but quiet, like a sword blade. “I’m going to get my revenge on this guy. It’s not enough to just drive him away. I—” Tor broke off and looked my way. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m terrified, that’s what!”

  “Don’t be. He’s not going to be able to—”

  “Not of him. Of you!” I was shaking, so chilled and sick that I couldn’t lie. “I’ve never seen you—I’ve never seen anyone look like this, say things like this. Tor, please!”

  “I’m sorry.” He spoke quietly. “But if I don’t make him pay for this, I’m not going to be able to live with myself.”

  In that moment I understood everything I needed to know about the old sagas.

  “Honor,” I said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Damn right! He profaned my father’s grave. He’s going to pay for that. And for threatening my woman, he’ll pay again. And incidentally, for what he did to me, he’ll pay a third time. Fucking right he’s going to pay in full.” He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “And no, I don’t want you to help me. I blew it once, dragging you into this. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “I want to watch. I want to be there.”

  “No.”

  “Tor, I’m afraid of what he might do. I want to see. I might be the one who’s got to pick up the pieces afterwards.”

  He blinked at me.

  “Well?” I got up and faced him. “Don’t I have to take care of you when you’re in bear form? I’ll do the same if you’re exhausted from whatever it is you’re planning. I’ll need to know what happened.”

  He stared at the floor for a long moment. “Okay,” he said. “You can come down and watch when the time comes. Once the moon starts to wane.”

  He turned and strode off downstairs. I heard him slam the door at the bottom. I went into my bedroom and checked the writing desk. The green lion lay on his back, dead in a circle of hovering ravens. Tor stayed downstairs all afternoon, and I was too afraid to go down and ask him what he was doing there.