The Crimson Sky

by Joel Rosenberg

  Her water-darkened hair hanging stringy down her neck and shoulders, Freya bent to adjust one of the balks in the fire, sending sparks flying up the chimney. An ancient cast-iron poker stood propped against the wall next to the hearth, but she didn’t use it. It would take more heat than a wood fire could generate to hurt her, just as it would have taken more cold than that of even the bone-chilling waters of the Gilfi to make her uncomfortable.

  She must have liked the warmth; she tucked her legs underneath her and sat back on the thick gray rug that lay in front of the fire.

  “Where is this vestri of yours?” she asked. “I’d like to talk to him for a while, if you’ve no objection.”

  “It’s fine with me.” Ian didn’t argue the point of ownership. “He’s down at the stable, settling my horses in for the night.”

  Silvertop had made no protest, which was just as well—for the mare and the gelding pony. Ian wouldn’t have considered putting a stallion in with him, but, Silvertop aside, Ian wouldn’t ever have considered riding an uncut male horse. Silvertop’s father was Sleipnir, which made him one-quarter Aesir, and tougher than nails.

  “Well, that’s just as well.” She looked up at Ian. “I understand what you want and why.” She shook her head. “But I’m sorry, the answer is going to have to be no.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A Farewell

  Thorian Thorsen looked from one face to another. “I have your word, then, each of you. That you’ll make no attempt to follow me?”

  He met young Thorian’s gaze unblinkingly. He would be the key.

  “You have my word, Father,” he said. “I… if I thought there was another way …”

  “You would argue it out with me here and now, and not give me your word and then break it.” His lips grew tight. “I’ve broken my solemn oath, once. It’s not something you want to live with.”

  Well, that was a lie, but it was a lie that would be believed. Breaking his oath of loyalty to the House of Steel had bothered him on a daily basis for years, until one sunny morning he had woken up next to Karin and fully realized that there were things that were not only more important to him than honor but far more important.

  If that made him inferior to his father and his father’s fathers, well, then, so be it.

  You preserved what of your honor you could, but you had to decide where honor ended and more important things began. Orfindel had not deserved what was being done to him, but Thorian del Thorian had freed him in what he had thought of as a moment of weakness, and with his oath and honor broken, stealing His Warmth’s gold was merely, what was that phrase? Frosting on—no: icing on the cake. Yes, it was but icing on the cake, as was the rest of it.

  Young Thorian nodded. “Yes. I would argue it with you, or I would not swear. I will stay here.”

  Jeff Bjerke was twiddling with his moustache. “I don’t like it, but I don’t see any alternative. You’ve got my word, Thorian.” Jeff clasped hands briefly with him, then dropped down to the couch, avoiding looking at him.

  “Not me; I’m not going after you.” Billy Olson shrugged. “Pinky swear,” he said, raising his little finger. “I’m a waiter, not an idiot, or a hero,” he said. “Not that there’s a lot of difference,” he went on in a low mutter.

  “No.” Maggie’s eyes were wet. “I’m not going to promise, not—”

  “Maggie.” Thorian del Thorian took her in his arms and held her tightly.

  It was a pity; it would be wonderful to bounce her and young Thorian’s child on his knee. A boy, another Thorian, would have been wonderful, but somehow he knew he would have been equally happy for it to be a girl. “Watch out for him,” he said, quietly, then bent his head close. “Do not wait too long before you let him ask to marry you,” he whispered. “Life is too short, my svertbror; grasp for the sweetness when you can, and grip it hard.”

  She clutched him more tightly and didn’t answer him for a moment, but then she pushed him away and nodded. “I promise,” she said, her quirked smile making it clear that she was agreeing to both of his requests.

  She looked first to one side, then the other, then turned back to Thorian. I’ll watch out for her, too. she mouthed, and made that strange X sign over her left breast, as though she was promising to cut it off if she broke her word.

  Thorian del Thorian nodded. “Perhaps I shall see you all later,” he said.

  He turned and walked out the door, down the stairs, and out into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Flesh Of Ymir

  The answer is going to be what?

  Ian hadn’t thought that his fingers were trembling as he set his coffee cup down, but it rattled on the floorboards until he let it go.

  The firelight cast her face in unsteady light and dark shadows as she looked up at him from where she sat on the rug. She looked vulnerable, somehow, which just didn’t make sense considering what she was saying.

  “I’m sorry, Ian, but it’s not a good idea. It’s too dangerous.”

  Dangerous? The Scion was going to die otherwise—and horribly, at that—leaving his son fatherless. And without the Scion and the Dominions running interference with the Sons, sooner or later one would manage to get to the Thorsens. “If you want to talk about dangerous, look at the situation that Torrie is in. Or the Scion.”

  “Ian…” Arnie held up a hand. “Hear her out,” he said. Getting hysterical and angry won’t help you any, his headshake and frown said.

  “Ian,” she said, with a smile, “my Silver Stone…” She shook her head. “You should know what you’re asking, but you don’t. This isn’t just something valuable, or even unique—like, oh—”

  “Like Mjolnir,” Arnie said.

  “Like Mjolnir,” she nodded her head. “Or Gungnir, or the Dagda’s Kettle, or Morrigan’s Shield, or…” she gestured to where Giantkiller’s scabbard hung on a peg, “… other items forged of myth and legend, as well as matter and magic and energy.”

  “Trivial little things,” Ian said.

  “Now, now, my Silver Stone, don’t fuss so. Gungnir and Mjolnir can break mountains, and your Giantkiller can kill the unkillable. That isn’t unimportant—unless you put it in the context of the necklace.” Her hand went to the base of her throat, fingers spread. Her nails weren’t long, but they weren’t bitten off at the quick, either. “I wore it once, here,” she said. This time, there was nobody here to remind her of how she had gotten it. “Imagine that, Ian. Seven gems, and in them, squeezed off in a direction that makes them manageable, enough matter and energy to remake the universe, to begin it again, all fresh and untouched, sweet and new.” She licked her lips, once. “But the time wasn’t right for that, then. Do you think it is now?

  “No, of course you don’t.” She shook her head. “But there will be a time. Creation and destruction are just two sides of the same coin. Ymir the Giant, the first of all, nurses on the milk of the cow Audumla, who licks salty stones into the form of man: Buri. Buri’s grandsons murder Ymir, and create farmland from his stinking flesh, crimson seas from his blood, mountains from his bones and the vault of heaven itself from his skull. One of his eyelashes survives, to be forged into Gungnir; a fingernail is preserved, as Tyr’s Shield; his wrinkled brain becomes the clouds. All for this.” It seemed as if she thumped her hand only lightly on the floor, but crockery rattled in the cupboard, and Ian’s mug danced on the floor. “All for everything you—and I, Ian, and I!—have ever seen, ever known.

  “That is fine with me, every time I sniff the sweet morning air, or fasten my legs about a lover’s waist.” She cocked her head to one side. “But how do you think Ymir felt about it?”

  Ian didn’t have an answer, and besides, it was a rhetorical question. Of course this giant didn’t want to—

  “I think,” Arnie said, into the silence, “at least I hope, that he was ready, that he had grown tired of being Ymir, and that he was ready for it all to start again, ready for flesh to become land, blood seas, and everythi
ng he thought and felt and knew just ashes in the wind.” The flickering flames made his wrinkles tiny black canyons, twisting across the landscape of his face.

  “As do I, Arnold,” she said. “For the other choice was that he was robbed of what he was, what he could have been, what he was supposed to be.

  “Shiva the Destroyer is Brahma the Creator, Ian,” she said, turning back to him. “They’re one and the same, or both of them are cruel imposters, destroying that which is not ready for the end to create that which is not ready to be.

  “You chose well, when you put two of the gems in my hand, because of what I am.”

  “And what are you, then?”

  “Oh,” she smiled, “I’m many things. I’m Freya, an old fertility goddess, in retirement. Or you can think of me as Vishnu, wreathed in wilting flowers, the Brisingamen emerald the Kaustubha that he wears on his chest, next to the shrivatsa mark—or any of his other forms: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha—but not Kalkin, for Kalkin has yet to come.” There was suddenly a tight black curl of chest hair over her left breast; she touched it, and it was gone. “Or perhaps I am Kalkin, my time come at last, and Arnold here is Lord Rama; lowering himself to be servant and charioteer to you as Arjuna.

  “Or maybe I’m Ishtar and Inanna and Astarte, and always a woman because women have to understand creation and preservation and destruction and renewal, because we prepare to do that in our own bodies monthly, and have to hold that which we are and we create within, instead of sticking it out into the world, like the point of a sword or … other things. You blush charmingly, my Ian, but I see that you take my meaning.”

  “But what does that have to do with—”

  “No,” She held up a hand, and her manner was no longer warm and charming, but cold and imperious. “I’ll not allow you to pretend not to know, not in my presence. Two of the gems are safe right now, hidden by me, protected by me, and by the strong arm of my companion,” she said, reaching up and taking Arnie’s hand in hers. She pressed it briefly to her lips, then let it go. “For me to let one of them out of my hands—”

  “But it’s only one. You’d have the other. And without the other…”

  “Without the other what? Without the other, the universe can’t be destroyed and reborn?” Her voice rasped. “Are you so very sure? Could not six of them be enough? Or five? Or three? What is the critical mass that is necessary to build a monobloc? Ian, tell me, and tell me how you know that the diamond and ruby each hold but a seventh of it.”

  It was too much for Ian. How did you develop a sense of proportion that allowed you to let a kid’s father die when just your word could save at least one life and maybe more? There was that old Talmudic saying that Zayda Sol used to quote, about he who saves the life of one it is as though he saved the whole world, but wasn’t the opposite true, too? If you murdered somebody, if you let somebody die when he could live, wasn’t that the same as if you murdered the whole universe?

  Snatching Giantkiller from the peg where it hung, Ian fled from the cottage and out into the night. Arnie called out to him, but he ignored him.

  “Let him go, Arnie,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Harbard’s Ring

  If you waited long enough, if you gave yourself enough time, enough patience, the inky darkness of night would lift, if only a trifle.

  But a little was enough to navigate by, at least down the road.

  By starlight, Ian made his way through the night down to the path to the dock, where a long cable, thick as a strong man’s wrist, dripping with spray, reached out over the black Gilfi. A windlass—powered by Silvertop, perhaps, although Freya was easily strong enough to turn it—would pull the flat ferry barge across to the other side, where a quick road could take him up and north and into the Dominions.

  Finding the Old Keep would not be a problem; there would be watchers on all the roads.

  And what would he say?

  Hey, I’m sorry.

  She said no.

  She said that you and your son weren’t important enough to her, to risk one of the Brisingamen jewels that I put into her hands. She has to take the long view. After all, we all die, sooner or later. If we don’t die young, we all become orphans, sooner or later, and your turn to die and the Heir’s turn to be orphaned have merely come sooner than later, so why the fuss, why the problem?

  Go gently, and if your son goes gently, too, why, all is eventually dust and ashes, reborn only in the rebirth of the universe itself, so why cling to life?

  Let it go, Scion; it’s of no importance.

  And neither, of course, is the life of my friends. Why, in another hundred years, they’ll all be dead and forgotten, so why should you or I worry if there are Sons out to drink their blood. It’s not like their lives matter or anything. Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’re going to do to save their lives, why, don’t bother.

  None of it matters, if you can look at things from a properly distant perspective.

  Shit.

  “Ian Silver Stone,” the vestri’s voice was quiet behind him.

  “Yes, Valin?” ‘Is there anything I can do?’ If I hear him ask that one more time …

  “Is there anything that I might do, to help you? Your animals have been fed and watered, and bedded down for the night; your clothes have been fully washed, as has her shift that she rinsed only briefly in the gray river. I can prepare food, or—”

  “Or maybe you can just shut your fucking mouth and stop bothering me for a fucking minute.” He’d said that in English, but the dwarf took the meaning from his tone of voice, anyway. Valin, tears in his eyes, backed away, and then turned and ran back toward the cave that served as stable.

  Oversensitive little shit, wasn’t he? Ian shrugged. Not my problem. It was just hurt feelings—and if lives were trivial, to be disposed of easily, what were the feelings of a dwarf?

  Fuck. “Hey, Valin …” He ran after the dwarf. “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I mean,” he called out in Bersmal, “this one regrets his currish behavior, as it reflects badly on his father,” who deserves worse, “his sept, clan, and Folk.”

  And everybody who knows me, really, Valin, knows that I’m not really such a fucking asshole. I’m an entirely different sort of asshole, honest.

  The dwarf ran faster than Ian could have, but Ian followed his thudding footsteps along the riverbank, past the outcropping where he stumbled and almost fell, barely getting his left leg underneath him, scraping his right ankle hard in the process.

  Shit, shit, shit. It was his own goddamn fault, too. If he hadn’t run out into the night, like a little kid having a tantrum, he wouldn’t have been down by the river in the first place, and insulted the—

  It was his fault, again. Couldn’t he do anything right?

  He had struck out with Freya, and then he had hurt the pitiful little dwarf’s feelings, cut his own ankle open on a piece of rock, failed the Scion—let’s see if there’s anything else I can fuck up tonight.

  He more hopped than limped toward the cave.

  A brass lantern hung in a niche at the entrance to the cavern, and just inside, dozens of round bundles of hay were stacked atop a rough pallet high enough to rub against the ceiling. A long hooked pole had been stuck in one of the hay bales; he slung Giantkiller’s belt over his shoulder, and used the pole as a staff and crutch. He was afraid to look down at his ankle—his foot was already warmly wet, and it hurt like a sonofabitch.

  Leaning heavily on the staff, Ian hobbled down into the cavern, following the sounds of sobbing past the first turn, past the wooden stalls where the mare and the pony stood, munching on hay and looking bored, past a final turn to where the dwarf was busily engaged in trying to squeeze himself into the juncture between cave wall and floor, and where Silvertop stood snorting, one large, liquid eye watching Ian with unconcealed irritation.

  Silvertop was a huge horse, easily the size of a Percheron or a Clydesdale, although built
along more slender lines—still, his legs seemed thicker and his untrimmed hooves larger than they should have been.

  Save for the white blaze across its forehead and its long, ragged mane, he was black like the raven, but there the similarity ended: Silvertop’s black was not glossy or oily or shiny, it was the black of night, the black of coal, the black of hell.

  Silvertop snorted heavily, whipping straw and dust and dried manure up and into the air hard enough that Ian had to momentarily cover his eyes with his forearm to protect them. One massive hoof pawed at the stone, striking sparks that set the straw smoldering—although the blacksmith’s hammer and iron shoes had never touched Silvertop.

  It was unlikely that Silvertop was very angry—he had not bitten off Ian’s head, after all.

  That was always a good sign.

  It was something the horse was physically capable of—those thick teeth could bite through a small tree; Ian had seen it do just that.

  “I am sorry,” Ian said, to both of them. “I would say that I meant no offense, no harm, but that would not be true, Valin—I meant to strike out, to wound, to hurt your feelings, simply because I am hurt and confused. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  It was important that both of them believe him, at least it was important to him. Ian had thought he had earned the Aesir horse’s respect, although its affection was beyond him—and Ian was, still, grateful to Valin for having brought the warning, and he did respect his courage.

  It was important…

  Harbard’s ring pulsed against his finger, painfully hard once, twice, three times.

  Valin straightened, wiping with the back of his hand against the puzzled expression that had his face all wrinkled. Silvertop stopped glaring and snorting, clopped over to a stone bin filled with some grain that Ian didn’t recognize, and began to chomp at it, idly.