Beyond Ragnarok

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  “Not directly, no. Even if I had such power, the balance would not tolerate straightforward interference by an immortal. That’s why you won’t see me fight either. No matter the circumstances.”

  Ra-khir quelled a sigh and accepted the answer, even as Colbey qualified.

  “I can remind her of the skills she has. And I will once we’ve finished talking.”

  “We’re done!” Tae said quickly.

  Ra-khir nodded vigorous agreement.

  “Very well, then.” Colbey gave Frost Reaver’s forelock one last playful toss, then headed toward them. Ra-khir and Tae shifted, allowing Colbey a clear path to Kevral. The immortal crouched at Kevral’s side in a defensive position that would allow him to rise and strike in an instant. It seemed more routine than intentionally chosen; surely, Colbey had nothing to fear on man’s world.

  Ra-khir and Tae hovered, anticipating a mystical, educational process they might remember as a pivotal moment in their lives. Yet Colbey did nothing more sensational than remain far too long in a position that should have cramped every muscle in his body. After a few moments, the god ceased to hold Ra-khir’s attention, and his mind and eyes wandered to other things. First, Ra-khir noticed that his horse had returned and grazed among the others. Its coat gleamed in the narrow ribbon of moonlight that struggled through the clouds. Ra-khir resisted the urge to examine the animal more closely. To imply that Colbey had not supplied the finest care would be an insult.

  Ra-khir expected to pace in endless worry while the old Renshai worked. To his surprise, however, he found himself calmer than he had felt in days. Tension seemed to glide from him the moment Colbey shifted his attention to Kevral. He could not fathom how he planned to teach her in silence, yet Kevral’s constant quotations, her unfailing faith in this man turned immortal, would drive her to learn, in explicit detail, whatever he chose to teach. This night, Kevral would live or die on her own merits.

  And the words of Colbey Calistinsson would guide her.

  Chapter 42

  The Battle Within

  United against a common enemy and death, the changes in your life and the differences between people may not seem so large.

  —Colbey Calistinsson

  Agony gnawed at Kevral’s body, and her head pounded a ceaseless cadence that made thought all but impossible. In her dreams, enemies struck from all directions, their hammers battering flesh despite her best defenses. Darkness hemmed her in, and she swung blindly. Her blades cleaved only air, nothing solid. Frustration added its grinding anguish to the relentless pain that dogged every part and every movement. Among a press of so many, it seemed impossible to miss. Even a wild swing should hit something, and she jabbed and hewed with the skill and logic trained into her since birth.

  At her back, a dark, cool void beckoned, promising permanent solace from the pain. She considered its sanctuary for less than a heartbeat. Renshai never fled from suffering or enemies; they fought not despite, but because of, pain. Modi! The war cry barely spurred her against an invisible, soundless enemy that pelted inexorably but never with a killing blow.

  Tendrils extended from the quiet place at her back, caressing her skin with an icy tenderness that soothed her. Come, it called. Comfort, it promised. An end to the pain. I am your answer and your friend.

  Kevral never doubted the goodness of its intentions, yet she ignored its call. Slowly, she could feel it drawing her. She resisted, leaping forward, though the effort slammed misery through every fiber of her being. The battle gained her nothing. Each movement scarcely countered the vacuum that dragged her backward. The agony sparked by each footstep became all-consuming. No rational thought could seep beyond that fiery anguish. Reduced to instinct, she continued to fight, unwilling, even in madness, to end the suffering and let death claim her. Hel would not have her, yet, despite efforts she considered her best, she gained no ground in the battle. Though she labored valiantly, she slipped gradually nearer the void.

  Kevral refused to surrender the fight. Her strokes became frantic, agility lost to exhaustion. She tapped mental strength, dragging it into her body, transforming it to physical power. But little enough remained there either. Her thoughts moved in slowed motion, and she gained only a trickle of fortitude where she had expected a torrent. A whisper touched the battered remains of rationality, a voice she recognized and could not place. Her head throbbed, and she could make no sense of the words, only heard them as random sounds without meaning.

  Kevral’s thoughts crawled, mercilessly slowly, as if through mud. She gathered the scattered pieces of idea, dragging them toward her at a pace that seemed impossibly sluggish. She pieced logic back together with meticulous care, finally managing to make sense of the noise: “This enemy you cannot fight with swords. It is within you.”

  Within me. Within me. The words pulsed with Kevral’s heart, a dull steady drumbeat that left her still with uncertainty. The void loomed larger. She could feel its frigid presence on her back, like a snowman’s breath. Hel’s respite was true and permanent, yet it was Hel. Within me. Kevral’s eyes stung first, then pain stabbed another round through every part. Again, she channeled her mental energy, thrusting it to her body, but this time she explored rather than exhausting it in a moment of physical combat.

  A tearing sound grated through Kevral’s hearing, accompanied by an agony that dwarfed all previous experience. For a moment, she lost everything; even identity eluded her. She felt as if some massive force had ripped her open, exposing her insides to air. Then, abruptly, the pain disappeared. She glided to another world that consisted of only her own inner workings. Nothing seemed quite right. Every part moaned in anguish, needing her assistance. Toxins battered her organs, these not from the Easterner’s arrow, but by-products of her body’s needs and actions.

  Kevral threw herself into the work with all the vigor of a sword practice. She scanned her body, discovering details she never knew existed. Muddled thought gave way to a shining clarity. All the maneuvers she had performed gained a sense beyond understanding, related to the attachments and arrangements of muscles. Lessons, once only words, blossomed into perfect comprehension. Once a confused uncertainty, body systems and functions became a simple schematic. She saw her brain nestled safely in her skull, and the ropelike spinal cord she aimed for when she wished to paralyze an enemy. Her ribs enclosed the all-important lungs and heart, and seeing them gave her the basis for finally understanding the intricacies of the Renshai triple twist that penetrated armor. Now, fluid soaked into her lungs, choking. The heart beat a steady rhythm, still strong despite the venom eating away at its foundation.

  Kevral’s concentration dropped further, to the tangle of intestines. She had seen enemies disemboweled before, a tedious, agonizing death she would not wish on anyone. Still lower, her attention became riveted on the kidneys. She had never known their function and did not believe the healers did either. Experience taught her that a stab there delivered a swift and bloody death. That was all she ever needed to understand—until now. Kevral’s new connection with her own body told her that here lay the source of her problems.

  Kevral drew a deep breath, feeling the air channeling through her lungs and gliding into her blood. She drove all thought and feeling there, becoming one with an organ she had before considered only a place that needed defending from enemy weapons. Now, she prodded. She pounded, squeezed, and stretched. She opened tubules and stroked tiny clusters of cells. She drew the little vigor remaining to her and channeled it to them. She delivered speeches and threats, tenderness and promises. An eternity skulked past before she finally felt a tiny, quivering response. Gradually, a pinpoint of seemingly lifeless kidney responded. A single filter, not enough. Kevral fanned the flame with all the vigor she usually reserved for sword practices. Desperate hope alone stayed her from collapse. The fire grew, consuming a tiny circle around the spark, then bursting into a bonfire that roared to encompass the whole. Kevral managed a cry of triumph that emerged more like a breathless moan.
Then, all understanding left her.

  * * *

  Ra-khir’s fierce whoop of joy awakened Kevral, soaked in a puddle of urine. The absence of pain struck her first. She had grown accustomed to the throbbing and to moving and thinking thickly. The lucidity that followed seemed frighteningly impossible. The realization that she had escaped Hel and still had a chance for Valhalla thrilled through her. When she opened her eyes, she found all of her friends standing over her, excited smiles on every face; and she felt undeservedly lucky.

  Sunshine beamed beyond the row of happy faces, broken by the shadow of the sheltering overhang. Morning dew sparkled in rainbow colors, captured into crevices, on moss, and dribbling from the spiny leaves of those few hardy weeds that managed to poke through rock. The light spread like a halo at her companions’ backs, and Kevral half expected them to break into a bright, Valkyrie chorus. Needing to break a silence rapidly growing awkward, Kevral quipped, “When I wet my bed as a child, I used to get a spanking, not an ovation.”

  Nervous laughter followed.

  “A spanking?” Tae repeated carefully. “Come here, then. I think I can handle that.”

  Tae’s words earned him a heated glare from Ra-khir.

  Memory returned in a rush, and Kevral winced with honest discomfort. “I deserve one, and not for this.” She indicated her soaked bedclothes with a casual wave. “I’m sorry, Tae. I shouldn’t have attacked you. The poison affected my mind, and I just couldn’t think.” She did not bother to differentiate between the archer’s poison and the toxins left by her failed kidneys. It would only complicate the matter. “All I knew was that I had one last chance to die in battle.” She met his gaze earnestly. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “Yes, it will.” Tae shook back his shaggy, black locks without even a shade of doubt in his voice. “And next time you try to kill me, I’ll deal with it again.”

  “No,” Kevral insisted. “I won’t do it again.” Honor forced her to clarify. “And I never really tried to kill you. You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  Tae’s brows shot up. “That’s a testament to my skill and Darris’, not yours.”

  “If I wanted you dead, you would be dead. That’s the Renshai way.”

  Colbey stepped into view from around the overhang. “If you’re going to quote me, at least give me credit.”

  Startled, Kevral bounded to her feet, wet britches clinging to her legs. “You’re here?” The words were shocked from her, not at all the ones she would ordinarily have chosen.

  “Obviously.”

  “A great honor, indeed.” Kevral attempted to make up for her previous lapse.

  “Colbey’s agreed to ride with us to the beach,” Darris explained. “And I’m working real hard to find out why.”

  To Kevral’s surprise, Colbey grimaced. Apparently, the bards tried even an immortal’s patience, although she had never found Darris particularly wearisome. In fact, more often than not, he had remained a quiet, passive observer.

  “We’ve got everything packed and ready to go.” Matrinka smoothed the fur near Mior’s tail as the calico perched on her shoulders. “As soon as you clean up—”

  “—and practice,” Kevral added, glancing carefully at Colbey in the hope he would volunteer to teach.

  Matrinka sighed. Long ago, they had all learned not to interfere with Kevral’s svergelse. “And practice. Then, we’ll go.”

  The party dispersed, leaving Kevral alone to change in private. She did so swiftly, excited to charge into her first practice since the archer’s poison had unbalanced her. Once dressed, she remained in place. Without trees to screen her, she would soon be forced to practice in open sight on the Western Plains; but, for now, the overhang and the cut of the mountains allowed her one last chance for seclusion.

  As Kevral launched into her sword work, her friends’ voices wafted to her on the wind. More than just Darris plied Colbey with questions to which he gave short, clipped answers that often seemed unrelated. He vehemently denied assisting in her healing, although Kevral believed him the author of the whispered sentence that caused her to turn her attention inward. From there, she had relied on the mental training her torke had emphasized; the Renshai’s unique methods of combat and their daily mind-set hinged heavily on those teachings.

  Kevral’s timing remained frustratingly off. Her long illness had weakened her just enough to make her new clarity of thought a curse. She heard the barrage of questions regarding their bearing and destination and Colbey’s evasive replies. From these, she learned only that they would need to travel all the way to the shore of the Southern Sea. Then, all details not directly related to her sword work disappeared. She channeled every part of her concentration to her practice, hacking arcs, jabs, and S-curves through the morning air. Her limbs responded to her commands with an edge of sluggishness that spurred irritation. In tiny increments, the deadly speed and agility returned. Nothing in the world existed but her body and her sword, not even the Renshai-turned-immortal she had worshiped as her ideal since infancy. The one who would lead them to the Southern Sea.

  * * *

  The sage hovered over his table, scribbling notes on parchment in the smooth hand that defined Béarn’s history. Sunlight streamed through the tower’s single window, casting a glare across the crisp paper. The sage blinked his dark eyes, tapping his quill in the ink, and tolerating the too bright light for several moments. Then, with a sigh, he set the pen aside and rose. The familiar voice of the castle rang through his head, providing information his fingers desperately needed to write.

  “Can I get you something, Master?” His apprentice’s voice shattered a long silence.

  The sage stiffened, startled. He had become so engrossed in his work, he had forgotten the young man’s presence. He glanced over to the smaller of the two tables. The apprentice leaned over a practice scroll filled with flowery letters that closely approximated the sage’s penmanship. It always amazed him that the apprentice heard none of the shouts that rolled through the walls of the castle and seemed to quake the room. Yet when he managed to remember back to his own learning years, he recalled that he had been equally oblivious. He could not explain the voice, nor its source; but his master had heard it and his master before him. “Thank you, no. You keep working.”

  Obediently, the apprentice lowered his head, his close-cropped, black hair scarcely dipping with the movement Like his master, he would not tolerate anything near his eyes that might foil the perfection of the most wondrous of sights: words properly lettered on parchment. He clasped his meaty, Béarnian hands behind his thick neck, stretching each finger delicately. Then he returned to his work.

  The sage shuffled to one of the bookshelves lining the walls, his gait stiff and his back permanently hunched. Selecting a tome at random, he walked back to his chair and sat. The castle’s voice reviled his lapse, but he ignored it. He had learned long ago that he could work neither to its approval nor its pace, and he had given up trying. Eventually, all of the important details would find their way onto his scrolls, even if it meant working far into the night.

  The sage knew the truth of Béarn’s current situation, but his job did not allow him to act upon or judge the information. He could not leave his tower. He could only pen down the events as the voices told him. The castle gave him an account honest to the most intricate detail while the descriptions Baltraine delivered bore little resemblance to the reality. Still, the sage did not lay blame. He simply chronicled the prime minister’s accounts and properly credited them.

  The voice raged on, its honesty strangely as bothersome as Baltraine’s obvious lies. The sage wrote, desperate not to criticize, to keep his opinion from his mind as well as his pen. The sage’s job left no place for subjectivity. Yet though he would not judge the words or story, he could not help being made edgy by the castle’s voice. It spoke only truth, but he knew a discomfort in its presence that had not lessened even over the four decades he had held his position. In fact, it seemed to i
ntensify. His mind conjured images of a creature crouched beneath the castle’s foundation, a beast who used integrity and order as a weapon and would one day burst free. The thought seemed madness but the sage had never managed to banish it.

  Setting the book on its edge on the table, the sage carefully ruffled the pages until it stood upright on its own. He shifted it until it blocked the glare from the window, then he took his pen back into his hand. The writing began anew, tales of elves who gradually purged the castle and plotted to end all humanity in a sudden sweep, stories of elfin meetings during which they detailed the havoc they had wreaked on other countries and kingdoms. In the North, the tribal wars had sparked back into killing frenzies. In the East, order floundered beneath a new wave of corruption and greed. Pudar, New Lovén, and Santagithi all wavered as death struck the royal heirs and blame ignited wars of ideology and race.

  The voice filled the sage’s head each day. Every night, he fell into bed too exhausted to contemplate solutions or details: knowledge without power, understanding without the ability to act or delegate. He fell asleep to his own sobs and awakened with eyes sore and nose clogged. Helpless, he watched Béarn sink—and did nothing more than chronicle the details and hope future generations would live to see them.

  * * *

  Three days of fast-paced travel over blistering sand, slogging through tidal marshes, and weaving over dunes that showered mounds of sand to the beach below brought Kevral and her companions to the edge of the Southern Sea. Blue-green water seemed to stretch to eternity, and only the extent of her vision limited how far she could see. Waves rose in towering curls, then whipped open, crashing against the shore and spreading into a thin spray that scarcely coated the sand. Foam engulfed the sand, hiding shells, stones, and crabs. The water receded, sticks tumbling through it, and the beach returned, with more or less flotsam dotting its shore.

  Darris locked his eyes on a process he had never seen before, but his mouth continued to form the many questions he could not resist asking their immortal companion. “Does Asgard have oceans?”