by Steve Curry
I had to trust Tio Guillermo to pull me out if that started to be a concern. For now, there were questions to answer. Like why weren’t there any guards on the biggest “house” in my mind? Size and complexity alone suggested that this would be the place to look for whatever secrets might be important. Which would have suggested that whatever shrouded my memories would have taken more precautions with it.
Dropping down to my haunches I took a careful look around the ground and steps leading up to that doorway. It wouldn’t do to be surprised by another zombie child or something worse. When no obvious threats jumped up and screamed for my attention, I directed it towards the doorway itself. That’s where I found the first little surprise.
The delicate scrollwork that decorated the wooden crossed beams was not made of a single line but instead was a long ribbon of runes. Like most, it could be interpreted and read as a story or maybe some kind of directions. But it also held a few surprises. I saw runebinds to ward away intruders and another that was some kind of shock or fire. There was one that I thought would probably paralyze or short circuit someone’s nervous system. Since I was not only the intruder but the battleground as well, it made sense that any short circuits would be in my neural network. That was something I thought might be better to avoid.
Sitting there I had to do a little more thinking than I like to engage in. Eachan probably could have blown right past those runes. Maureen even had a better understanding of the way things like that worked than I do. But Eachan and Maureen weren’t there.
But wait a sec. I was in my own head. This was like a dream and we all have some input into our dreams. So just maybe...I rose to my feet and spread them about shoulder width. With my arms at my sides, I turned palms forward and extended each finger individually until I could envision anchoring lines between my spread hands and the ground. A similar visualization grounded my feet and allowed me to “clear” my thoughts enough to try something a little interesting.
I invoked only a single rune but used it over and over. Ansuz, the rune of communication seemed appropriate. After the ninth repetition, I summoned an image of Maureen to my thoughts and then willed her to appear in front of me.
The image in my mind was of her soft smile as she pushed me towards the tent to begin this odd odyssey. What showed up though was something unexpected. She was still in the same clothes, but she looked almost as worn and beaten as I had felt after the bikers got done with me. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her complexion was sallow even in the limited light of the bonfire. The sound of her breathing was heavy and wet even above the sounds of harsh winter winds around that fire. Worst of all, her hair was hanging in limp disarray.
In all the time we’d spent together, I’d seen her hair a shambles from loveplay or outdoor activities, but I’d never seen it limp and listless. There was no shine to her normally glowing and fiery mane. It was dull and lifeless enough that for a moment I thought it was another Draugr.
When she spoke though it was obviously not an evil undead creature. “Mo Croi? How did you do this? Is it something Guillermo did to help you?”
“No elsket, I just needed your insight.” I pointed towards the doorway. “I can read the runes but I can’t figure out how to get past the traps.”
To my consternation, she did not look up at the crossed beams standing a good twenty feet high. Rather she knelt and ran her hands over the steps or maybe just a foot or so above them. “I ken what you mean. The Ogham staves on this are well-wrought. Were ya to trigger them I’d say you might turn your brain to porridge.”
That startled me enough to lean over and look myself. Try as I might though, the steps were bare of any sigil or sign to me. “I don’t see anything there. I was asking if you could help me sneak past the wards on the door.”
Again I pointed at the beams crossing above that doorway. This time the look of perplexity was on her face. “What door? I see wardings on yon box that must contain your memories. But I see no door.”
She looked around for a minute and turned back to me. “We’re in a large room like the feast hall in a castle or summat. There’s a table there in the middle with all manner of phials and containers. I see lots of herbs and crystals lying around the tabletop candle too. There are boxes all over the room.” She pointed to the nearest of the sod houses and huts to show me.
“There seem to be some little folk standing guard around some of the boxes. But I dunnae see wards except here.” She pointed down at the steps right below the runed crossbeams.
“Ok, that’s not what I see. I think we’re both shaping the experience around our own expectations. That’s not necessarily that important. I need to get past those runes and sigils. So what I suggest is, I’ll tell you what I perceive, and you tell me how you would go about getting around the obstacle.” At her nod, I began. First I pointed to various aspects of the environment and told her about the Bonfire, the huts, the hounds and the mounds I suspected were various creatures.
Once she had an idea of how my mind was working we began on the runes. The size of the longhouse got a peculiar or maybe just skeptical look from her. The runes themselves, however, got her full attention. I caught her nodding her listless locks as she seemed to come to an understanding.
“I think I’ve got it Luv.” She bent to peer at her own runes again while she thought about what I’d said. “Aye, this is Uath, the Hawthorne, it’s tied to defenses and fire both. And over here is Tinne the holly, also a defensive plant associated with weapons and warriors. Yon is Straith the Blackthorne which bodes ill in many cases. Yes, I think I see the knot. But can we unravel it?” She stepped away from the “box” she was studying. A few quick steps brought her to the table where she began gathering goods while she coached me.
“You’ll need a way to cleanse the energies around the wards. I would go with Ruis since the elder tree makes an admirable force for purification. There’s some lavender. Obsidian and bloodstone should do for the rest.” She quickly gathered her bottles and bags and returned to kneel by the box.
While she spoke I could actually see the table beneath my own perceived flames. She gathered the various wispy containers and materials until suddenly I could see them solid and real looking. When she placed her finds down near the wards though, all of it just turned to dully glowing coals. I got the gist of it anyway.
Laguz, water, the rune looks a great deal like a golf flag today. I tried that first to wash away the protections. Maureen looked annoyed enough that I considered whether I should have told her about her goods disappearing as soon as she let go. That would have interrupted my runic cleanse though. So with a niggling hint of foreboding, I maintained my galdor and tried to wash the magic away from those runes.
Once more I felt the energy leaking away. With every surge of weakness, it felt like my “flesh” became lighter and less substantial as well. When I looked over at Maureen, she no longer stood but sat on something invisible to my eyes. If she’d looked worn and ragged before, she looked positively haggard now. Her hair had faded to a mere hint of its former color and luster. Her shoulders slumped and her spine bowed with the effort of just staying upright. I could see the puff of mist in the air as she exhaled one laborious breath.
Whether it was harmful for me to wait or not was no longer the issue. I had to get her out quickly.
“Maureen!” I moved closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. My cleansing of runes had accomplished so little anyway I was about to give up. Maybe there was something in these memories to help me, but I could not risk that fiery redhead to find out. “Come on, Guillermo left me a way out. We just need to go back a few steps and find his energy anchor. We get his attention and he’ll drag us out.”
I had actually taken a step before I noticed that she was fighting free of my arms. “No! You have to keep trying. I know you, Magnus, better than you think. If I let you leave now, we may never find out why you’ve so many secrets.”
“Look I’ve got some secrets ok. Apparently som
e from myself as well. But that’s not worth harming you, Maureen. You don’t look well at all so let's get you to the old medicine man.” I couldn’t understand why this was so important to her anyway. Maybe it was just because she herself was so worn down she’d like to know it wasn’t all for nothing.
“Magnus you don’t understand dream journeys. Leaving now could prove traumatic or even impossible for one or the other of us. We’re both invested now and attached to the journey. Maybe we could get out, but it would come at a cost. I will be fine. You just need to get in there and fulfill the quest. Preferably quickly.” She offered a wan smile to encourage me. But the next instant she wavered on her feet and I had to reach out and steady her.
Fortunately, a chopping log was nearby. I led her over to sit on it and turned back to look at the door with rather more frustration than I’m good at containing. Suddenly I had a thought. Those ingredients she’d amassed had come from a table where my bonfire was right? So maybe what I needed was the same thing but from a different perspective!
Almost certain I was on the right track, I hurried over to the fire and retrieved a burning stick about as thick as my wrist and a couple of feet long. Brandishing the burning torch like a sword I ran back to the crossed beams with their runic traps. Maybe I hadn’t found the right rune to wash away the traps. But there was one rune that might do it in a hurry.
Thurisaz is the runic version of a nuclear option. It is one of the strongest runes of the futhark. Shaped like a hammer, it represents Mjolnir the hammer of the thunderer. There are few items to match it in power and sanctity in the Norse belief system. Thor’s hammer is a force of chaos created and constrained to fight the ultimate forces of chaos. As such a representative, Thurisaz held enormous power. Like all chaotic symbols though it held an element of risk. The energy was hard to control and often you released it and hoped for the best.
So, hoping for the best, I took a charging step and shouted the rune at the top of my lungs just one time. At the same instant, I bashed the flaming torch down at the first of the dangerous symbols on the door. “THUR-EEE-SAZ!”
The nuclear option was an uncomfortably accurate description. The energy released rushed out and left me drained and falling to my knees. Of course, I probably should have considered that this was all happening inside my own rather thick skull. There was a scorched meat smell and tearing sensation as well as a cacophony of sound that lifted me from my slumped position and tossed me back some distance into darkness and oblivion.
Score one point for Maureen. I didn’t wake up in the desert tent. Instead, I came to awareness again with my head cradled comfortably in a sweet and inviting lap. Maureen looked down at me with a crooked grin and a shake of the head with it’s dangling flaccid hair. “I dinna mean THAT much of a hurry mo chroi.”
“Shit, we’re still in the dream.” I could dimly see a tumultuous grey sky past her head. Or maybe it was just a swirling fog my imagination had made. “Guess maybe that was a tad impetuous on my part.”
“Hard-headed, heedless and utterly pigheaded. What did I do to deserve you?” At least she was laughing with only a tear or two to show. “On the other hand, you did it.”
She turned my head to see the cross-beams gone and the doorway completely open. There were no scorch marks or any sign there’d been any crossbeams. Then again the front face of the house would likely sag and fall without those supports. At least they would if normal physics applied.
“You blew up not only my Ogham staves but the box itself.” It almost sounded like a hint of pride in her voice. “And made a grand wide hole.”
She lifted me up by the elbow and pointed right at the door to the longhouse. But hey, if she saw a hole that worked for me. Trying my best not to limp I took a couple of steps and pierced the shadows of the doorway to see what was inside.
“Ok mo chroi, I see your bonfire finally. And a circle of menhirs each with a portal such as Taliesin himself might have described.” This time her voice was colored more with awe than pride.
That worked as well. Though what I saw was a long pit of glowing embers and a platform with individual “rooms” marked off by hanging hides and cloths. It was what was between me and the rest of the room that brought me up short. There with a hand on the ax at her cocked hip stood Kara the stormy.
“Warrior you should not be here.” Her voice was stern and crackles of lightning seemed to flicker in her eyes as well as rippling down her mail. “This place is secured from you for a purpose. Secrets dire, secrets dangerous, secrets hurtful all rest beyond. Do not tread where a Valkyrie and the All-Father himself have forbidden.”
You would think that the ax, the lightning or power rippling around her armor would have been the scary part of that scenario. Failing that, well, I’ve been pretty damned wary of the All-father for longer than most redwoods live. But the REALLY frightening thought was, if I was “traveling” inside my own head, were they in there somehow too?? That was enough to make a grown man soil himself no matter what the time period.
I had one “hand” on that tether to pull myself out of the dreamworld. But there was a whole part of me screaming defiance. Kara had taken my free will. She’d used us and discarded us like toys until she felt like breaking the little soldiers out to play with again. For all I knew this was another one of her little games in my head. After all, nobody had more access to our thoughts and souls than the Valkyrie in charge of our destiny. For that matter, even if old one-eye was involved, what right did an old god have to reside uninvited in my head?
Turns out my spine may be slightly stronger than my bowels are weak. I stood to my full if modest height and pushed through the stormy one as if she wasn’t there. Which of course in a place like this meant she no longer was here. There was a faint tingle as if I’d hit my funny bone except this funny bone was the size of my whole body. Maybe I imagined that feeling though as well as the scent of ozone.
The disappearance of that guardian showed many more doorways inside the longhouse. Not exactly doorways I guess. More like partitioned sleeping areas. Along the fire, a quartet of pillars was carved with more and brighter runes now. They glowed in a myriad of colors from pearlescent white to glaring polar blue. Most disconcerting though, was the great scaled torso like a giant snake that stretched between the farthest two of the pillars.
The beast writhed as I watched and muscles as thick as my own torso rippled along serpentine ribs. From the girth of that torso, I had to imagine a head capable of swallowing a small cart along with the horse and driver. Unfortunately, I was proven correct a bare breath or two later. While I watched, that enormous scaled body writhed until a truly monstrous looking head curved around the pillar to peer at me through the smoke above the firepit.
Somehow even a simple Viking warrior knew better than to peer too long into the eyes of the wyrm. I looked away from that dread visage and found more disturbing views to survey. With my attention firmly on the beast’s torso, I was able to see that many of the gleaming scales also glowed with their own runes akin to those on the pillars. These also pulsed not only with light but with the movement of the guardian beast they adorned.
A little voice inside my head said that the really juicy secrets were past those pillars. A much more reasonable voice told me that those secrets could remain hidden for now. If a snow-covered child-sized guard had caused me some grief, then that glowing monstrous apparition would probably consume what little sanity I had left.
An uncommon bit of wisdom took over. I pushed aside the cloth covering the partition closest to me and stepped out into a camp of tall cone-shaped tents dusted in snow. Under the white powder, each of the tents was decorated with simple but graceful bands of artwork. The ground was hard and cold even through the thick soles of leather boots. Flurries of snow swirled around the tail of my heavy canvas coat and the unforgiving cold hard metal of a Springfield rifle cut through thin yellow gauntlets.
I found myself pulling a blanket away from some native American boy,
what we had called skraeling’s centuries ago. I say boy because not only was he young, he was painfully thin and small. The kid might have been sixteen or seventeen years old but he was barely taller than I myself had been at twelve. The fact that I was never particularly tall compared to my Norse cousins just made the kid’s stature more significant. For maybe a second or two I hesitated. There were others nearby and I could pick one of them for the mission.
I was interrupted in that thought by the other Einherjar standing nearby. Lorcan was a true brute. If he missed being six and a half feet tall, it wasn’t by more than a few hairs. His face resembled a side of raw beef. It was raw, red, ugly and painfully textured from some sort of skin condition. One eye tended to wander which made it difficult to be absolutely certain if he was looking at you or something across the room. As ugly as he was though, it was his nature that made him truly repellent.
Lorcan was the type to pull just one wing off of a fly to watch it spin in tortuous circles. I’m pretty sure he burned his own parents to death and probably ate any younger siblings. He was just that kind of guy. We’d never had much use for each other.
The first time we met had been on the field in Valhalla. Without even knowing his name I hated the brute. Rarely do Einherjar take notice of each other in the middle of battle. We’re usually too busy killing or being killed to look around for entertainment. When Lorcan and I met though, well, it took a few seconds but slowly a ring of warriors around us stopped fighting just to watch.
Lorcan was bellowing like some primordial beast and stabbing at me between wild swings of the shaft of his spear. In turn, I was smashing my shield between us and slamming it into him anytime a weapon wasn’t headed my way. In my other hand, a foot-long seax darted and slashed at his legs and belly. I don’t think I was screaming at him like he was roaring at me. All I recall is the grunt as I put everything possible into each shield bash or rip of the blade.