Anything but Ordinary

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘You mean he’s proud and arrogant and … All right, all right.’ Tamar held up her hands in disgust. ‘I suppose he does mean well.’

  ‘Would we be any better than he is, if we refused to help just because he hurt our pride?’ asked Denny softly. ‘You’re better than that Tamar.’

  ‘No, you’re better than that,’ she said. ‘I just know that you’re usually right about these things. Okay then, what do we have to do?’

  ‘Stop Loki from finding his power.’

  ‘Sounds easy.’

  ‘It will not be. If it were easy, we wouldn’t need you.’

  This was gratifying to hear, although Tamar would never admit it.

  ‘Well,’ said Denny. ‘We need some more facts. Like what is Loki’s power? Where is he likely to be looking for it? We know the Tuatha are inhabiting powerful agents of magic – do you know who they are? How did Loki escape from Valhalla in the first place? – Although I don’t suppose that really matters now.’

  ‘I think that might have been my fault,’ said Tamar hesitantly.

  ‘You are correct,’ said Fenrir. ‘It was you who opened Valhalla and allowed Loki to escape. However, fault is too strong a word. This was foreseen from the beginning. You were merely the instrument of fate so to speak.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Denny showing no surprise at this revelation (it was all too familiar). ‘No one’s blaming you.’

  ‘I’m always doing things like that though,’ said Tamar. ‘You’d think I’d learn.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known,’ said Denny. ‘And it’s not important now anyway. What’s important is fixing it. So …?’ he looked at Fenrir.

  ‘Loki’s power resides in a pool in a hidden place. Loki lost his powers in the water when Odin and Thor caught him hiding there, disguised as a fish, after he killed Balder. They used his own fishing net to catch him – there’s irony for you.’ He snorted with laughter.

  ‘Like the Holy Grail, if Loki drinks from the water with the cup of Odin (which Loki has stolen) then his power will return (unfortunately) tenfold.’

  ‘Tenfold?’ Tamar snapped. ‘Whose bright idea was that?’

  Fenrir shrugged. ‘You can’t argue with mythology,’ he said. ‘You should know that.’

  Tamar shrugged. ‘In my experience, you can argue with just about anything,’ she said.

  ‘But Loki doesn’t have any power at the moment?’ asked Denny.

  ‘Shape shifting,’ said Fenrir. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Shape shifting?’

  ‘Loki can be either a man or a woman,’ explained Tamar. ‘But he – or she, I suppose – always looks pretty much the same. I’ll recognise him all right.’

  ‘This is wild,’ said Denny. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We believe he has Fulk with him,’ said Fenrir. ‘But he’s my problem.’

  ‘Fulk?’

  ‘Loki’s wolf.’ said Tamar. ‘Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.’

  ‘I will deal with Fulk.’ said Fenrir. ‘Wolf to wolf.’

  And before Denny’s vision there rose the image of two snarling wolves fighting to the death.

  ‘So where is this hidden pool?’ asked Denny. ‘Surely all we have to do is get there first and grab Loki before he uses Odin’s cup.’

  Fenrir shook his head. ‘There’s the rub, unfortunately,’ he said. ‘It isn’t in a place as such. Only Loki himself can find it – because it’s his power and he will be drawn to it. As for us …’

  ‘We need to find Loki,’ supplied Tamar. ‘Loki will lead us to the pool.’

  ‘What do you mean, it isn’t in a place?’ asked Denny the literal.

  ‘He means it’s like Hank’s forest or something. Not in the world, but still accessible from the world. They’ll be an entrance somewhere, but we’ll never find it.’

  ‘Doesn’t Odin know where the entrance is?’

  ‘Why should he?’ asked Fenrir. ‘They aren’t his powers.’

  ‘But Loki knows where he’s going presumably.’ said Tamar.

  ‘Yes, but he’ll have to travel the mortal way, and therein lies our only hope.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ said Denny. ‘How can Odin not know where he put Loki’s powers?’

  ‘It’s mythic,’ said Tamar. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense. Besides, I might ask you how come you never know where you left your keys.’

  Denny frowned. ‘It’s hardly the same,’ he said.

  ‘It’s exactly the same, actually,’ said Fenrir.

  ‘Odin can’t remember?’ said Denny appalled.

  ‘It has been three thousand years,’ said Fenrir defensively.

  Denny could have sworn he drew his lips back slightly into a snarl, and his hackles definitely rose a little.

  ‘Wait until you’ve been hanging around a few more thousand years,’ said Tamar. ‘See how your memory stands up. I know mine’s terrible.’

  Denny did not believe this, but he knew a losing argument when he saw one, so he held his peace. ‘The point is,’ he resumed. ‘We don’t know where Loki is, and we don’t know where he’s going. That about sum things up?’

  ‘We need Jack,’ said Tamar.

  Denny agreed, but he also thought – and said. ‘We’re going to need a lot more than just Jack on this one.’

  * * *

  The honeymoon was effectively over. Neither Tamar nor Denny were particularly surprised about this.

  As Tamar said philosophically, ‘It’s always going to be something.’

  No one was terribly surprised to see Tamar and Denny back in the middle of their wedding night. Hecaté made some half-hearted disapproving clucking noises, but even she accepted it, in the end, as more or less unavoidable.

  On the other hand, it was good to have Tamar back where she belonged. Tamar herself had been uncharacteristically nervous about coming home. Before the others were told about Fenrir’s revelations, she decided, she would have to do some explaining of her own.

  As it turned out, it was not as bad as she had feared. Much of what had happened was already known, mainly from Dawber. And her friends had some surprising revelations of their own. It was Cindy, in the end, and in her own inimitable way, who put into words what they all wanted to make clear.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said dismissively. ‘If we all fell out every time one of us did something stupid because of a maniac taking over our brains, we’d never speak to each other again. Forgive and forget. That’s what I say.’

  Tamar had already been apprised of the Tuatha situation and the probability of her own judgement having been compromised in this way, so this statement was not as unintelligible as it might otherwise have been. But she wondered at the comment coming from Cindy. She also did not miss the glance that passed between Denny and Cindy as she made this remark, but she decided, just this once, that she would never ask.

  ‘I’m not sure the Tuatha count as maniacs,’ she said. ‘But I see what you mean.’

  Tamar, having gathered everyone together (including Dawber and Slick, who had not wanted to return to the Agency after what he had done in helping Tamar and had begged for asylum) now went over the salient points of the situation as told to them by Fenrir.

  ‘We have two main problems,’ she summarised. ‘We need to find Loki, and we need to find the Tuatha and, if necessary, bang all their heads together.’

  ‘We’ve already tried to find the Tuatha,’ said Cindy.

  ‘So, we keep trying,’ said Tamar. ‘In any case, it’s far more important at the moment, to find Loki.’

  ‘And how are we supposed to do that?’ asked Cindy. ‘You said yourself, we have nowhere to start.’

  ‘I think I might have an idea about that,’ said Stiles.

  Tamar smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We were hoping you would say that.’

  Stiles’s idea, like so many good ideas, was simple in its inception, but would be complicated to put into practice. They would simply need more bodies. Fortunately, that would not
be a problem.

  What he proposed, put simply, was a manhunt.

  ‘You said that he’s headed straight for the source of his powers,’ Stiles said, ‘which reside in a pool, right? Now a pool could also be a well or even a lake but definitely a body of water. And you can bet your life it won’t be an ordinary body of water. Now, no matter what the true facts may be, the fact is that legends build up around such places. We’ve seen it before. It’s like the magic leaks out into people’s consciousness. There are probably a lot of places which fit the bill. I can think of one or two right off. “The Fountain of Youth legend for example, which fits our criteria perfectly, in that it’s a known legend with a supposed location, but which no one has actually ever found. That’s what we need to look for. Personally, I think the fountain of youth is a bit too obvious, but that’s the sort of thing we’re after.’

  ‘Now, the most obvious place to start would be the river Rhine, supposed home of the Rhine Maidens and the Rheingold – which has never actually been found, by humans I mean – has it?’ He stopped to look questioningly at Tamar.

  She shook her head. ‘It hasn’t.’

  ‘The river Rhine is on maps,’ Denny pointed out. ‘ and people take crusies on it … But – that’s not what you mean is it?’ he added.

  ‘No,’ agreed Tamar, ‘he means the Rheingold and the maidens and all that guff.’

  ‘It’s in the right area, more or less.’ Stiles resumed. ‘And it might be that that makes it a bit too obvious. But we can’t afford to eliminate it until we’ve tried it. However, there will be others. Not as famous or as identifiable with the Norse Legends but we should try them all. What do you think?’

  ‘Only women should go to the Rhine Maidens,’ said Tamar. ‘I know – I’ve met them. No man is safe. Cindy and I will go.’ This was as good as an endorsement, and the plan was accepted.

  ‘I’ll get researching other possible sites,’ said Denny. ‘I’ll also have another go at looking for the Tuatha.’

  ‘We need to advertise,’ said Stiles. ‘A manhunt depends on luck; mostly on the chance that someone has seen who you’re looking for and lets you know. “Have you seen this man?” sort of thing. ‘I know it goes against the grain, but we may not have much time here. And we needn’t say who he actually is.’

  ‘I can put the word out to the magical community,’ said Tamar doubtfully.

  ‘Do it,’ said Stiles. ‘But it won’t be enough. You can bet your life that he’ll be avoiding that ilk as much as possible.’

  ‘It’s a good idea,’ said Denny. ‘He’ll never expect it, that’s for certain.’

  ‘We could do with more people,’ said Stiles, ‘as many bodies out looking as possible really. I have a feeling that Denny’s research is going to turn up a lot of possible sites to investigate.’

  ‘The other thing we need is some information on what exactly Loki’s powers are,’ Stiles continued. ‘It might help us narrow down where we need to look. Some possible sites can be eliminated on the basis that they don’t fit with Loki’s known powers.’

  ‘He’s a shape shifter,’ said Tamar. ‘He uses magic spells like a wizard – there’s a fountain of eternal youth in Brittany near Merlin’s Tomb atBroscelainde.’

  ‘Get that down,’ said Stiles to no one in particular. ‘That sounds like a good possibility.’ y

  ‘He isn’t a god,’ said Tamar. ‘He’s part giant and part … oh something else, I can’t remember Odin adopted him as a foster brother and … anyway, technically, he’s not an immortal.’ Stiles was scribbling furiously, there being no volunteers to do this for him, despite his peremptory order. Sometimes he missed being the boss.

  ‘He was an inventor,’ Tamar said. ‘He designed weapons for the gods and other useful things (Thor’s hammer was one of his and the flying ships) not just for the gods though. He gave his inventions to humanity too. Which the gods did not like, but he basically told them to stuff it.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound all that bad,’ said Denny.

  ‘He wasn’t really, he was just shifty, mischievous, you know. They called him the trickster. Until he killed Balder. He crossed a line there and, well … I don’t know what else I can tell you.’

  ‘Any idea what his beef is with the Tuatha?’ asked Stiles. ‘Motive is key in this sort of investigation.’

  Tamar shook her head. ‘No idea at all. It makes no sense to me that they would even know each other. The Tuatha are Celtic gods.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily a problem,’ said Denny. ‘The Vikings conquered the Celts after all and besides, mythologies are always getting mixed up with each other. Look at the Romans and the Greeks, and even the Egyptians got in on the same act. Many of their gods are the same as the Greek gods only with different names. And Hercules was supposed to have visitedAsgard one time. It happens all the time. Mythology is mythology, once you accept that it’s real, then it’s all the same thing.’

  ‘So, the fact that the Tuatha apparently pissed Loki off is not so surprising after all?’ said Stiles.’

  ‘I never heard about it though,’ said Tamar. ‘And I still think it’s weird,’ she added stubbornly.

  ‘Maybe the Tuatha weren’t just Celtic gods,’ said Cindy. ‘Maybe they were also, like um, in the Norse legends somewhere, but like Denny said, with a different name.’ She shrugged; everyone seemed to be staring at her. ‘That’s stupid isn’t it?’ she said, feeling uncomfortable and wishing she had said nothing.

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ said Denny. ‘Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?’

  ‘You can’t think of everything,’ said Tamar with a grin, ‘It is a good idea though. It makes sense, except I can’t think of anyone in the Norse legends, either, who Loki had a grudge like that with. Well, except the Norse gods of course, and they’re all accounted for.’

  ‘You moved around a lot back then,’ said Denny. ‘You once told me there was a lot you missed in history. It probably happened after you moved on.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Tamar admitted.

  ‘Well, anyway, I’ll do some research on it. A grudge big enough to cause Armageddon must have left a trail somewhere. I’ll find it.’

  ‘I know you will,’ said Stiles.

  ‘We could really do with someone else who’s good with computers,’ said Cindy. ‘There’s so much research to do.’

  Er, hello,’ said a hesitant voice from the door. Everyone turned. Fenrir had returned with the rest of Team Alpha (whom only Tamar recognized – although it was perfectly obvious to everyone else who they were) in tow. It was Ray who had spoken. ‘I’m pretty good with computers,’ he said diffidently.

  ‘Ever surfed the Aethernet?’ asked Denny challengingly without waiting for introductions.

  ‘Oh, yes, frequently.’

  ‘Ever hacked the mainframe?’

  ‘Occasionally,’

  ‘Right, you can start on thepossibles for Loki’s power source. Jack will fill you in. I’m Denny by the way. You’ve probably heard nothing about me. I don’t care who you are. That’s Jack over there, don’t let his jolly demeanor fool you into believing that anything he tells you is not an order.’

  Stiles’s face was a grim as human face could possibly be, without being the face of a corpse. Ray gave him a nervous smile.

  ‘Hi Ray,’ said Tamar.

  ‘I’m pretty good at computers too,’ said David coming forward with a sly, cocky look on his face.

  Denny raised an eyebrow. ‘Pretty good?’ he said sceptically. His eyes bored into David’s interrogatively. David stared back defiantly for as long as he could then dropped his eyes.

  Tamar snapped her fingers suddenly. ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Get him out of here. I’m not having that scum in my house.’

  Fenrir did a very passable imitation of an extremely startled man.

  ‘What?’ he began, ‘why …?’

  ‘And I want him voided,’ said Tamar. There was a gasp from the room. To be voided (put int
o the void) was a fate worse than death, as everyone in the room knew very well. Denny grabbed David by the arms as he tried to run. He was stronger than he looked, but Denny managed to hold him, with some difficulty, as he struggled violently to get free.

  ‘On what charge?’ askedFenrir in an outraged tone.

  ‘He’s been genetically manipulating free magical creatures. I saw the data. And I’m pretty sure he’s a spy too, although I don’t know for whom.’

  ‘Hank’s forest?’ said Denny tightening his grip, his face white with fury.

  ‘What?’ said Tamar, surprised in her turn.

  Fenrir appeared to come to a decision. ‘Void him,’ he said, as David let out a howl of protest. ‘We can question him later, if we have time.’

  Tamar instantly made up her mind that he would be questioned as soon as possible – by her.

  There was a long awkward silence after David had been dragged away byFenrir and Denny. A high, thin scream had been heard which cut off abruptly, then silence.

  It wasFenrir who broke the silence; coming back into the room, preceded by a grim faced Denny, he said heartily. ‘There’s always one bad apple in every barrel eh?’

  No one replied. There really did not seem to be anything to say.

  Suddenly, with great relief, Ray noticed Slick and hailed him in surprise. ‘Hey Tony, what are you doing here?’ he looked questioningly at Tamar.

  ‘Yes, I got her out,’ said Slick sighing heavily. He indicated Denny. ‘I think you’ve met Tamar’s husband.’

  ‘Husband?’ He turned to Tamar, who was trying to suppress her laughter. ‘You never said you were married.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘The wedding was yesterday, that’s why I asked Slick to get me out.’

  ‘And he agreed?

  Slick glowered and looked as if he might be about to say something cutting.

  ‘I’m Melissa.’ The owner of that name hurried forward to pour oil on potentially troubled waters. ‘Anything I can do to help, you know.’ She was looking at Denny, whom she had, quite naturally, assumed to be in charge.