Sorcerer's Feud

by Katharine Kerr

“Say what?” Joel blinked at him, then smiled with a wry twist of his mouth. “How I escaped from the drug dealers, you mean.”

  “Exactly that, yeah.” Tor grinned at him. “Welcome to our side of the family. I think you’re going to fit right in.”

  Chapter 14

  When they’d grabbed Joel at the airport, the giants had bruised him pretty badly without even meaning to. He’d made the mistake of struggling with them once they’d gotten him to Jötunheim and earned a few more bruises in the process before the etinwife intervened. Swollen red-like-meat and bluish purple patches marked his arms, his back, and the side of his torso, where someone had kicked him. It looked to me like they’d just missed breaking one of his ribs.

  “They all hurt like hell,” Joel remarked, “but they’ll come in handy now. Where do you think Dad’s druggie friends threw me out of the car?”

  “Not far from here there’s a nature preserve,” Tor said. “I’ll bring up Google maps and show you. You must have wandered around up there all day.”

  “After hiding for hours in the underbrush to make sure they didn’t come back. Uh, is there any underbrush?”

  After the two of them spent some study time with Tor’s laptop, Joel changed back into his dirty clothes. Liv got some dirt and leaves from the back yard and rubbed them into his hair while Tor called the police to tell them that his missing cousin had just staggered up to the door. The police wanted them down at the local station immediately.

  After they left, Liv and I sat at the breakfast bar. I gobbled the leftovers from the dinner she’d cooked for herself and Joel while we exchanged the stories of our recent travels. Her voice had returned to its California norm.

  “I thought my trip was harried,” Liv said. “Nothing compared to yours.”

  “Once I got control of the spirit bear, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “You say that so calmly!”

  “Calm? No! I just haven’t processed it all yet, what happened, where we were.”

  “It could take a couple of days, yeah, and then it’ll hit you.”

  I got up and checked my hands, which had finally stopped shaking. I found a package of cookies and made a pot of fresh coffee. While we waited for it to drip through, Liv took out her cellphone and showed me pictures of her children. After the things Tor had said about them, I was surprised to find them not only perfectly human-looking, but very handsome, three year old fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, Reyr and Sonja. Both had dark eyes like their uncle’s and very pale hair. There was a particularly cute snapshot of them riding a shaggy pony.

  “Tor and I were both that blonde when we were that small,” Liv said. “But our hair darkened as we aged. Theirs will too, probably.”

  “They’re three already? You must have married young.”

  “When I was nineteen, yes. I talked my father into letting me go to Iceland to college, but I hated school, just hated it. I met Helgi, and that was that.”

  Someone pounded on the front door, slow, measured knocks like the drum of fate. Liv put down her smartphone with a sigh. “The police again?”

  “Worse, I bet,” I said. “I wondered when they’d come here to look for us.”

  Tor’s laptop was sitting on the breakfast bar where Aaron had left it. I booted it up and accessed the security cam. A pair of scruffy-looking Frost Giants appeared in the gray scale image. They wore filthy tunics, leather leggings, and wolf skins draped over their shoulders. Against their height, the skins looked like scarves. The giants carried battle axes and glared at the door as if they were calculating how many blows it would take to shatter it.

  “Oh my god!” I said. “I’ll call the security company.”

  “No, don’t!” Liv ran into the living room and threw open the front window. She leaned out and yelled at the giants in Old Norse. I joined her at the window in time to see one of them shaking a fist in her direction. Liv flung up her hands and chanted a galdr. The jötnar duo screamed and vanished—too late.

  “There!” Liv said. “I cursed them.”

  “You don’t mean just swearing at them, right?”

  “Right. Not a huge curse. The boils should go down in a day or two.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.” I laid a hand on my chest to reassure my pounding heart. “They could have so smashed that door in.”

  “As soon as Tor admitted he was feuding with giants, I knew I had to come. He is my brother, after all. But you’ve really got to give them that talisman back.”

  “Don’t worry. I intend to, but that pair weren’t the right guys to give it to.”

  “For sure. Tor needs to do a summoning and get the etinwife to come over. Judging from the printout you left me, she’s the only one of them with a whole brain in her head.”

  Just to make sure I had the rotten thing well hidden, I went downstairs and retrieved the shoebox with the gold plaque from the drawer. I stowed it on the high shelf in the wardrobe in the Burne-Jones bedroom and threw a jacket over it to hide it further. By then it was getting on to nine o’clock. I sank into an armchair while Liv brought us each a cup of fresh coffee. I sipped mine and thanked her.

  “I hope the guys get back soon,” I said. “I’m starting to worry. What if the giants get hold of them on the road?”

  “One of us would know it if that had happened. I bet the police are just being sticklers for protocol.”

  It took me a moment to assimilate what she’d said: one of us would know it. We both had powerful talents beyond the normal. If danger threatened her brother, my lover, we’d know.

  “Yes.” I felt my life settle into its new direction like a plane reaching cruising altitude. “You’re right.”

  Tor and Joel returned some twenty minutes later. After they made the formal police report, Tor told us, they’d had to wait at the local station until Lieutenant Hu could arrive to “discuss” what had happened.

  “To grill us, of course,” Tor said. “But by then, our family lawyer had gotten there, too. Hu had to pull in his horns. Liv, Mr. Rasmussen says hello. I mentioned you were here. Anyway, we’re done with the cops. It’s going to be okay. They’re closing the book on Nils’ death by misadventure. Joel’s case might drag on for a little while, but Joel, you were really convincing.”

  “Thanks. With a dad like mine, I learned to lie early. It comes in handy in the business world, too.”

  Tor started to say more, but Liv held up a hand to stop him.

  “While you were gone,” Liv said, “a pair of jötnar arrived at the front door. Carrying big axes. I scared them off, but Torvald, this is serious. You have got to do a summoning before they come back with a warband.”

  Joel turned pale.

  “Shit!” Tor said. “Yeah, you’re right, but I’m wiped out. I won’t be able to control the structures if I don’t sleep first.”

  Liv fixed him with a glare. “Are you sure you just don’t want to give up the gold?”

  Tor said something nasty-sounding in Icelandic. When she replied in kind, I stepped in.

  “It’s my decision now,” I said. “About the gold, I mean. Not his. And Liv, Tor and I are both totally exhausted. Do you really think they’ll come back tonight? They know that there’s two vitkar in the house now.”

  “Only two?” Liv smiled at me. “I’d say three vitkar.”

  My first reaction: she can’t mean me. My second reaction: what else am I?

  “Thanks,” I said. “Three.”

  Liv turned to her brother. “Can we do a casting?”

  “Good idea,” Tor said, then muttered under his breath. “For a change.”

  Liv ignored the comment. Joel had taken to staring at the ceiling again. Adjusting to the truth about his family was going to be a long, slow process.

  Tor retrieved the red pouch of rune staves from his parka and took a white linen napkin from the kitchen cupboard. He and Liv sat on the floor at opposite ends of the coffee table and spread out the chips of wood between them. Liv drew three, then flipped them over o
ne at a time: Fehu, Thurisaz, Wunjo, but this time, Wunjo stood upright for a perfect outcome. She drew two more and set them either side of Wunjo: Elhaz and Gebo, protection and gift. Once again the siblings mixed up the staves. This time Tor drew Raidho, Eiwaz, and Tiwaz—wagon and yew, movement forward, protected under Tyr’s judgment.

  “We’re safe enough for now,” Tor said.

  Liv nodded her agreement. “I’m tired, too. It’s been a very long day. But tomorrow, Torvald Einar—”

  Joel groaned under his breath and stood up. “Tomorrow is another day,” he announced. “Liv, you take the bedroom. I’ll take the couch.”

  I smiled thanks his way. I too was dreading another squabble in a language I didn’t understand.

  In the end, the etinwife settled the feud. We all slept till about noon. While Tor and Liv collaborated on cooking a massive brunch in the kitchen, and Joel made a string of calls on his smartphone, I went into the Burne-Jones bedroom to consult the alchemical barometer. Under a golden sun, a red lion snoozed on a rock by an ocean. I took that as a good sign. While I stared at it, I felt another mind touch mine: come down to the back garden. Only one person I knew would have called our scruffy yard a back garden.

  I retrieved the shoebox with the plaque from the wardrobe and sneaked down the hall to the stairwell. Everyone remained too busy to notice me. I hurried downstairs and out. The etinwife sat perched on the stone wall, and her grandson, dressed in proper jötunn clothes of baggy homespun pants and a linen tunic, stood beside her. They smiled and waved as I walked over to them.

  “Here you go.” I handed the kid the shoebox. “You get to be the hero who brings the treasure back.”

  “Very nice gesture,” the etinwife said to me, then smiled his way. “Your granddad will like that.”

  He grinned at me and opened the box. Gold flashed as the sunlight hit the surface of the plaque. For some moments he and his grandmother studied their treasure. “It is so beautiful,” he said at last. “We thank you.”

  “Yes, we do indeed,” the etinwife said. “Ours again at last!”

  “How did you lose it?” I said.

  “A vitki stole it from my husband.” She frowned at the memory. “He looked much like your man and his kinsman, but older.”

  “I bet it was my man’s grandfather. All he thought about was money.”

  “It could very well be.” She smiled at me. “He had spells that would draw gold toward him, and this was the only piece of gold my husband had.”

  “The greedy old bastard! I’m so glad you’ve got it back.”

  From the kitchen window upstairs I heard Tor howl in—not exactly rage. Annoyance, maybe.

  “We’d best go,” the etinwife said. “You’ve got a bit of work ahead of you.” She winked at me. “Men!”

  “Yes,” I said. “But don’t worry. I can handle him.”

  A silver mist fell upon them like rain. When it cleared, they’d vanished. More than one feud had ended. They had their gold, and I’d stopped fighting with myself over who I was.

  I sauntered back to the house and Tor. My new life had begun.

  Historical Note

  Otto Rahn, (1904-1939), was a German medievalist, mountaineer, and officer in the Ahnenerbe SS. Although it’s currently fashionable to claim he was the model for the Lucasfilm movie about Indiana Jones, such is hardly the case. His theories about the Grail had nothing to do with the legendary cup of Joseph of Arimathea. Rather, they depended on a close reading of Chretien de Troyes’ Grail poems and Rahn’s studies of the Cathar heresy in Provencal. His book, THE CRUSADE AGAINST THE GRAIL (KREUZZUG GEGEN DEN GRAL in the original German) set forth the theory that the Grail was originally a “stone from heaven,” a meteorite and a Cathar sacred artifact.

  Writing fiction is a strange process. I had no intention, when I started to fill in Maya’s past life as a young Nazi, of bringing any real persons into her story beyond the obvious references to Hitler and Himmler. Rahn somehow shoved his way out of my subconscious mind and into the book. Until I included him, I suffered from “writer’s block” on this particular project. Once I gave in, the words flowed again. What particularly caught my attention were the mysteries surrounding his death.

  He did indeed commit suicide after a stint as a guard at Dachau, and the motive by all accounts was that Himmler had found out about his sexuality. He never could have passed the “racial purity” test, either. However, there was also a persistent rumor that Rahn had gotten himself engaged to some unknown woman just before his suicide and that Himmler was delighted by this. Other sources deny it. Such ambiguities leave seductive openings for novelists.

  Was Rahn a dedicated Nazi? I doubt it very much. As Maya says in my fiction, if the SS wanted to recruit you, you couldn’t just say no. Before he killed himself, Rahn told a friend that he could no longer live in the country Germany had become. The translator of his two books*, Christopher Jones, sums it up nicely when he remarks that Rahn made the mistake of thinking his enemies were his friends. I have to agree.

  * CRUSADE AGAINST THE GRAIL: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the Church of Rome, by Otto Rahn, trans. Christopher Jones, © 2006, pub. Inner Traditions.

  LUCIFER’S COURT: A Heretic’s Journey in Search of the Lightbringers, ibid. © 2008.

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