“In the closet. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” She headed for the bedroom, shedding armor as she went.
Charlee eased herself around Asher, who was standing just inside the door, watching Roar.
Roar pulled in a gigantic lungful of air and let it out. He leaned forward, his fingers entwined. “So that’s that,” he said.
“We’re as isolated now as any humans,” Asher said. “We have to depend upon their means of travel.”
“Why?” Charlee asked, even though she had intended to stay silent and small and unnoticeable. “There are the other halls.” She knew there was one in New Jersey, although she had never visited it. There was another in upstate New York and that was three of them, just in this state.
Roar glanced at her. “All the halls are gone.”
“All of them?” she asked, startled.
“All the halls still held by the Kine. They were all destroyed at the same time.” Roar spoke heavily. Slowly. “The Alfar were using them, using the portals, to their advantage. They had to be taken out of their reach.”
Charlee realized she had sunk down onto the nearest surface—one of the dining chairs. She gripped her hands together much like Roar was doing. It seemed impossible that all the halls, every last one of them, had been deliberately sabotaged, and blown to splinters, just like the New York one. It was incomprehensible that they had all gone. “But…what will you do?” she whispered. Where would they live? How would they organize themselves without a central hall to gather within?
Roar glanced at Asher.
Asher stirred, shifting his feet and dropping his hands to his sides. “How soon?” he asked.
“Six hours. Let them find some sleep, if they can. Lieutenants only.”
Asher nodded and reached into a pocket on his trousers and pulled out his cellphone and began to thumb through it, as he moved over to the sofa and sat down.
Roar gave Charlee an effort-filled smile. “We can’t use Kine technology anymore, but humans have tools that will substitute just as well.”
“A cellphone network won’t deliver you to the next Alfar invasion inside ten minutes, if it’s anywhere but Manhattan.”
Roar nodded. “We are all scattered. Each of us will have to do the best they can, with what they have to hand. Humans, now, will become our critical ally.” Then he grinned, his teeth very white against the dirt and sweat on his face. “Anywhere but Manhattan would be fine by me, though.”
* * * * *
Renmar found his gaze drawing back again and again to the image hanging in the middle of the room, even when his advisors were speaking. It was a fascinating image, and each time he let his gaze fall upon it, a sensation would ripple through him, filling him with uneasiness. He didn’t like how it made him feel, but he seemed helpless to stop himself from looking at the image yet again.
The picture had been captured by humans, as the Alfar had taken the Herleifr hall. The Second Hall, as they called it. Sindri had been very frank about every aspect of Kine life, and some hidden aspects of human life that they had failed to notice before now. The image hanging in the air behind all his advisors had been extracted from the entity they called Online. Renmar did not understand Online at all, but the Myrakar, who were such good interpreters and diplomats, seemed to grasp the concept quite well. Those who were fluent in the humans’ principal languages had conveyed the fact that the humans were speaking among themselves about the Alfar victory, only heartbeats after the fact. They had presented this image to Renmar as evidence, shortly after Renmar climbed the steps to the high dais at the end of the big hall and looked around.
The hall and the complex of connected lesser halls and living quarters were surprisingly grand and elegant. Renmar had trouble believing the brawling, uncivilized Kine had built it, or that they were even capable of conceiving such grandeur.
He looked at the image once more, and his chest tightened. It had been taken out in the round room, beyond the doors of this hall, minutes before the Alfar victory. The Kine had been holding open the portal for their companions to retreat through. There were Blakar and Myrakar bodies at their feet, and more of them clashing with the line of Einherjar holding the gate.
Renmar picked out the tall one again, the Einherjar in the middle of the group. Askr, son of Brynjar. Asher Strand, as he was known to humans. This was the first time Renmar had seen what the Einherjar looked like, although he already was very aware of his fighting prowess, for Asher Strand had been a prickly thorn in his toes for quite a while and the Myrakar had built up an impressive dossier on him for the Lajos to study and absorb. Understanding one’s enemies was always desirable.
Then Renmar shifted his gaze to the woman standing behind him. A human, but she stood with very Alfar-looking knives, held high in the attack position. The Myrakar who had taken the hall had assured him she had been fighting almost as effectively as the Einherjar in front of her. She had been the one who had moved behind the Einherjar front line, ensuring the residents of the hall escaped. It was because of her work that the hall they stood in now had been virtually empty of either Einherjar or humans.
That was another oddity. Renmar had been surprised to learn that the Einherjar gave the humans what appeared to be unfettered access to their halls and portals. It didn’t seem possible that they could be working with the humans, but the evidence suggested that they were partners and did not make use of the hierarchical structure the Lajos employed to organize the Myrakar and Blakar. It was a very strange arrangement indeed.
But that wasn’t what was squeezing at his middle each time he looked at the image. He made himself look again, to sample the feelings it provoked. He didn’t know why, but he knew the answer would be important.
“Has the traitor been found yet?” he demanded.
Pernon broke off, staring at him. He had been saying...something. Renmar dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand. This was too critical. He must follow the line of reasoning through. His instincts were demanding it. “The one called Sindri. Has he come forward for his reward?”
Morolab, standing next to Pernon, touched his eyes gravely. “We believe Sindri may have transitioned, great one.” Renmar knew Morolab took great satisfaction in seeing Pernon upset, but he was hiding it.
“Transitioned?” Renmar repeated, prompting Morolab to explain.
“We questioned one of the few humans we found in the passageways. It was injured, so the questioning did not last long. But it said that it had seen Sindri…fly away.” He added the last with an apologetic simper.
Renmar’s torso seemed to shift and squeeze harder. “He saw a bird?” he pressed.
Morolab didn’t hide his surprise. “Why yes, great one. A big, black bird.”
Renmar couldn’t help it. He turned to look at the image once more, his attention fully upon it, the rest of the room fading away. Was it possible? Could it be...?
“The human, there,” he said, pointing. “I want to know more about her.”
“She is connected with Sindri, great one?” Pernon asked.
“No one was connected with the traitor,” Renmar told them. “Do you not remember your history? Sindri was a Valravn. The Valravn do not make friends, or choose allies. They cleave to their own kind, except there are so few of them left. Sindri may be the last.”
“Then what is the significance of the woman, great one?” Morolab asked. “A human?”
“Find out more,” Renmar demanded. “I want to know everything about her.”
There was a murmur and shuffle among the senior Myrakar who stood at attendance behind his advisors. One stepped forward to speak softly to Cison.
“What is it?” Renmar asked impatiently.
Cison touched his eyes. “Great one, the Myrakar have found other images of this woman, possessed by the Online.”
“Show me,” Renmar snapped.
The Myrakar rushed to obey. Very quickly, a new image took the place of the other one. This image was of the woman’s
face. She was looking over her shoulder, at something that was not in the image. Wind was pulling at her hair, drawing it over her throat. But her face was not hidden and the image was very clear. Renmar was unable to tell if she was one of the more desirable human women. Human esthetics, just like their Online, was incomprehensible to him.
But the image made him draw in a breath that seemed to sear his throat. Now he knew what the first image had provoked in him and why. It was fear. Genuine fear, such as he had not felt in a very long time. “The first image,” he said.
The original image was returned. He looked from the tall Einherjar to the human behind him and thought of Sindri. Renmar stared, feeling almost ill with fright. “Everything,” he repeated. “I want to know everything about her.”
* * * * *
Darwin tiled the pictures on his screen so he could look at them all at once, and sat back to consider their implications. They were all still photos taken from security footage in the Second Hall, shortly before it had been taken by the Alfar.
Oslo. Norway. Why hadn’t he guessed that was where the headquarters for the Kine would be? And under a bloody mountain, to boot. A mountain that sat almost in the heart of the city. It seemed poetic. But when Darwin had wondered where the Second Hall would be, he had only vaguely considered Scandinavia and that was a big place. If he had thought of it at all, he might have guessed Iceland was the location, for that was the other country with the Viking-rich history.
But that was a question that had ceased to be important now. Someone had hacked into the cloud-based archive of the Second Hall’s security cameras and had captured and uploaded a collection of images to their Flickr account. Darwin had caught a hint of their existence only this morning, when someone on one of the Yahoo groups Darwin monitored happen to mention it. It had taken Darwin less than sixty seconds to find the images.
He had picked out the more interesting of them and now had them arranged on his desktop. The monitor was a big one, and Darwin was glad now he had plunked down the money for the bigger size and higher resolution screen. It made the grainy photos look clearer.
Darwin considered the first of the images: Charlee’s tall, slender figure. She wore a traditional apron dress that came down to her ankles. But there were belts strapped around her waist and hips, weighed down with pouches and pockets. And there were two long knife/sword things in her hands. Darwin had never seen anything like them, although ancient weaponry was not his specialty. The most fascinating aspect about the knives—he settled for “knife”—was the expert way Charlee appeared to be holding them. It spoke of practice. Training. She had mentioned that the Einherjar were training her, but she hadn’t revealed that the training was with weapons.
In this first photo, she was facing a small man—he was shorter than her by at least four inches. He was quite bald but had complex tattoos on his head. He was staring at Charlee, and Darwin could feel the menace.
The second photo was only a few minutes later. Charlee and the little man again, but this time, there was another woman in the image. The woman was even taller than Charlee, who wasn’t short. She wore the leather and metal-plated armor the Einherjar favored, her hair was pinned to the back of her head and the long sword she held made the biceps in her arm flex. She looked strong, and she looked very capable. Darwin was reasonably sure that this was Eira, whom Charlee had spoken of, the leader of the Valkyrie, who resented that she could not be a warrior as she had been when she was human. She was staring at the little man, too, and Darwin shivered. If she had been facing him with that expression and those eyes, he would have turned and run like hell. She looked like she was ready to kill him.
Which must have been exactly what she had done. The images the hacker had cropped had missed the vital moment that must have happened between this photo and the next, for the next photo was Charlee and Eira again. They both stood at the foot of what looked like a puddle of black. It had taken Darwin a moment to put together what it actually was: the little man’s clothing, lying on the floor. But where was he if he was not inside his clothing?
The next photo could only have been a few seconds later in the footage. Charlee and Eira had not moved, but they were both looking upwards. Caught in a shaft of light from somewhere overhead was a bird. It looked big and black, and mean, with a long beak....
Something stirred in Darwin’s memory. He frowned and moved onto the next picture. Fighting—lots of it. The Alfar and the Einherjar. In the middle of the round room, Darwin spotted Stefan. He knew who he was from CNN broadcasts and online news sites. Stefan was the leader of the Kine, but he looked like he was surrounded and fighting hard to escape. In the background, Darwin could see Asher and a line of Einherjar, standing in front of one of the milky, cloudy doorways that lined the round room. They had to be the portals that everyone was blathering about online. Darwin was fascinated by the mechanics and possibilities of portals, but he put aside that interest. It wasn’t pertinent to this current search for answers. He glanced at Asher’s face, at the heavy concentration that marked it. His sword was a blur in the image, caught in mid-swing.
Darwin moved on to the next image. Stefan had fallen. There was a tight, dense knot of Alfar—the almost human-looking ones that they called Myrakar—in the place where Stefan had been standing. The Myrakar seemed to be superior to the darker-skinned Blakar, but it had taken dozens of them to take Stefan down.
“Rest in peace,” Darwin murmured. He stirred and looked at the next image. There were very few Einherjar left in the room, which was thick with the light and tan Alfar fighters, who were trying to press in upon the portal Asher had been protecting. Asher stood there, shoulder to shoulder with the few Einherjar left, holding the doorway open against the Alfar. So was Charlee, and Eira, who was just stepping through the portal.
There had been many more images after this one, but Darwin had not downloaded them. They were images of more and more Alfar, filling the round room, with no Kine to be seen. The hacker had logged the last of the security footage at about three minutes after this last image Darwin had taken. Then the feed had simply stopped. But one thing Darwin had noticed, beyond the clearly jubilant Alfar crawling all over the hall, was that the portals had no longer been milky white. They had all been coal-mine black.
He reconsidered all of the photos again, his gaze flickering over them, moving at random. What was the thought that had nearly surfaced, a few moments ago? Why were these images pulling at him, demanding he pay attention? Quite apart from the fascinating fact that Charlee could fight like an Einherjar? He pushed aside his pride in her, and considered the photos yet again. What was it?
The strangest photo in the collection was the one with the bird in it. That just didn’t make sense at all. Never mind that portals and elves and magic had been the stuff of fantasy for most humans, a couple of years ago. The bird thing didn’t fit in with what he knew of the Kine, and all modesty aside, he was probably one of the top ten experts on the Kine these days.
So what was it about the bird? He studied the image again. Looked at the wings, the way they flapped. The elongated beak. The shape of the head. The pure black of the wings. It looked like a crow, or....
Darwin jerked forward, his breath bellowing out in shock. He straightened up on the chair so fast that the wheels nudged backwards under the impetus of his shifting weight, and he grabbed at the edge of the desk to hold himself in place. He stared, but not at the photo. His mind was racing, coupling up facts.
“Fuck me standing....” He whispered it and his lips felt numb. Rubbery. He pressed the back of his hand against them, unable to look away from the photo.
Then he shook his head, trying to clear it, and grabbed the mouse, and clicked through his files until he found what he was looking for. Word opened up and the document displayed.
Underneath it was the modern English translation.
Topple the saintly king and merciful queen,
The raven king shall.
To usher in the king
of kings with the branded bloom,
To face the wrath of the worlds.
He looked at it, marvelling. “She was right all along,” he said to himself. Saintly king...St. Stephen. Stefan. Charlee had pointed out that connection, months and months ago.
He shrank the window so that the photos were showing underneath it and looked at the bird picture once more. “The Raven King,” he pronounced.
He reached out for his cellphone, moving slowly, feeling stiff and achy, like he’d done ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. He thumbed out the text, fumbling and having to delete and re-swype. He didn’t use acronyms or the peculiar shorthand that long-term texters used, because on this occasion he didn’t want her to misunderstand his question.
Hey. Charlee...what is your full name?
It didn’t take long for her answer to come back. It felt like a long century or two past, while Darwin sat listening to his heart thudding too fast and too loud in his ears. But after a minute, her reply popped up and his phone buzzed in his hand, announcing its arrival.
Charlotte Montgomery... :) ...Y? U didnt no that?
Darwin patiently swyped out his response, trying to steady his heart.
No middle name?
He waited. It was the longest wait of his life, and it lasted all of ten seconds.
Rose. My mom’s name. :(
Charlotte Rose Montgomery.
Charlotte Rose.
Darwin rubbed at his neck as his windpipe seemed to close down on him. “Oh god...” he said, but the words all choked up in his tight throat.
* * * * *
Unnur studied the image on the screen, unable to tear her gaze away. The cards had directed her to buy a computer, so she had shelled out hard cash for the best money could buy. Why not? She had more than enough to afford it. Her businesses were booming in a way that was nearly frightening. Penelope, as her new manager, was doing marvelously shepherding them along. Distancing herself from them had not slowed business by one jot or tittle. In fact, business had picked up. That would have made Angelina sniff disdainfully, if she had still been around to see it.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 59