“Do they have inns here?” Withril asked, sounding about as enthused by the prospect as I was.
“Thankfully, no,” Othvin said. “There is a campsite at the market reserved for visiting traders. We’ll set up there, and wait for a matriarch to contact us. No wandering around to explore, though. There’s no law enforcement in Ugrot, and as you may have noticed we aren’t especially well liked here. Most likely no one will bother us as long as we’re in a group, but going off alone would make you a target. Oh, and no killing, no matter what happens. If someone does attack you you’ll have to beat him up with your fists, or else we’ll end up having to deal with all his friends and relatives too.”
“Lovely,” Withril muttered.
“Any other dangers to be aware of?” Telvaris asked. Considering how rarely he spoke that caught my attention, and I realized he was probably asking for my benefit.
“Ah, yes, I almost forgot. This is a rather important area to the andregi, and not just because of the gate. The Halls of Slumber are only forty miles that way, and the residence of the Great Earth Mother is not far beyond. Those of her children who live there actually visit Ugrot sometimes, so it’s possible we might encounter one.
“Most of her sons here had andregi fathers, so they look like the locals only bigger and meaner. If you encounter one, your best hope of survival is to give him whatever he wants while seeming as boring as possible. Don’t bow and scrape too much, or he’s likely to become disgusted and kill you out of hand. Just act like a junior warrior in the presence of a general.
“As for her daughter, well, the Unraveller probably has greater concerns on her mind than an elven trading party. But in the unlikely event that you meet a beautiful woman with long red hair, be polite and entertaining and give her whatever she wants. Do not, under any circumstances, flirt with her. Either she’ll take offense and incinerate you, or she’ll drag you back to the palace and fuck you to death.”
“Wait, seriously?” I broke in. “Why? Is that even possible?”
“We’re talking about someone with divine strength, Vinyil. Of course it’s possible. As for the rest, I wouldn’t dare speculate about the motives of a daughter of Loki. Just hope we don’t meet her, and if we do, try not to irritate her.”
“Understood.”
Mara had never struck me as the type to do something like that. Granted, she’d also been undercover, and she was a pretty decent actress. But I still couldn’t see it. What kind of insanity would drive a woman to act that way?
I was struck by a sudden, terrible thought. Mara had no andregi blood. Her half-brothers did, and all of them were older and probably more powerful than she was.
“Othvin? That bit you explained about andregi mating customs. Is there anything that prevents them from reacting to-”
“Drop it, Vinyil,” he said gruffly. “Some subjects aren’t fit for conversation, especially here.”
Well, fuck. That pretty much answered the question, didn’t it?
Was that why she’d been so desperate to keep the amulet she’d stolen from me? At the time I’d thought she just wanted to use it against the Aesir. But what had she actually said?
‘As long as I have it they’ll never… well, it would be really useful.’
Yeah. Maybe I’d just irradiate Gaea’s palace too, as long as I was here. No, damn it, they were all demigods. Death wasn’t necessarily permanent for them, and besides for all I knew Mara might be there.
I brooded the rest of the way to the market.
This time we set up tents as part of our camp. They were clever folding things that I didn’t dare touch, for fear of making it obvious I had no idea how they worked. The guys got them unfolded into a trio of good-sized domes in no time, of course. They even had a magical heating stone, so we could theoretically cook without violating Gaea’s ban on fires.
After that there was nothing to do but sit back and wait.
It didn’t take five minutes for the first female andregi to wander over for a chat. Given the character of this place I’d half expected her to be covered up like a nun, but the reality was a lot more National Geographic than that. Most of the male andregi in the market didn’t wear more than a loincloth unless they were soldiers, and the women weren’t much different. Not that I particularly wanted to see what they were showing off. Ugh. Hair. Hair everywhere. Not to mention the big, square jaws and brow ridges.
I retreated into one of the tents, trusting Othvin to handle our cover mission. I was going to be busy this evening, but right now I needed to think. Or maybe work. Could I put up a divination ward tight enough to hide enchanting work? Yes, with the tent to anchor the ward it would be easy.
I spent some hours engrossed in an interesting bit of enchantment. Maybe not the most productive thing I could have done, but it distracted me from my worries. I probably would have spent all afternoon at that, if I hadn’t been distracted by Nalvin frantically shaking my shoulder.
“Vinyil,” he hissed. “Come, quickly.”
I followed him out of the tent, and found Othvin trying to pacify a disgruntled andregi who made Brand look puny in comparison. He had to be nine feet tall, with a chest so broad he must have to turn sideways to fit through doors. Damn, his biceps were bigger around than my torso. The tusks protruding from his mouth didn’t fit the rest of the picture, though, and his skin had an odd gray tone to it.
“-don’t care about your excuses!” He was shouting. “You little cocksuckers promised me a ring that can stop dragon fire, and you’re not going to weasel out of the deal.”
“If you’ll just give me a moment,” Othvin temporized.
“I’ve waited two years for this!” the ape man roared. “I’m not waiting any longer. Now cough up my ring before I start cracking skulls.”
Othvin’s gaze fell on me. “Vinyil! There you are. It seems that someone has been bargaining in bad faith with the mighty Korak. Do you have anything on you that will meet his requirements?”
“A warding ring that can withstand dragon fire? Well, yes, actually. But it’s too small to fit on his fingers, so I’ll have to resize it.”
Now he was looming over me instead of Othvin. “Show me.”
I reached into my belt pouch, and made my earth talisman shape itself into a ring of polished obsidian sized to fit an elven finger. Then I took it out, and showed it to him.
He frowned at it. “It’s stone. Won’t it break?”
“It’s enchanted to be unbreakable,” I told him. “It won’t stand up to Thor’s hammer, but you could punch out a dragon while wearing it.”
He plucked it out of my hand, and tried to crush it between his fingers. The pressure put a surprisingly large load on the talisman’s structural reinforcement spell, but not nearly enough to break it.
“Huh.” He tossed the ring back to me. “Fix it.”
“Of course. Ah, it will take me a little time-”
“No tricks, you little shitstain. You sit down right there and fix it. I’ll wait.”
He folded his arms, and stood there glaring at me. Crap.
I wasn’t enthused about giving an enemy my earth talisman, even if it was replaceable. But if we wanted to avoid attention I’d have to play along for now. I took a seat next to the heating stone, and started pretending to enlarge the ring while actually putting a fire resistance spell on it. Fortunately that was a simple effect, and the talisman already had a power source and a good-size energy reserve. So it should hold up well enough to anything he might do to test it.
Then an ugly thought occurred to me. I added a little failsafe, just in case.
It was a little tricky, but I think I managed to make it look convincing. When it looked about the right size I had Korak try it on, and fiddled with minor adjustments until he was satisfied. Then he put it on, and picked up the heating stone.
“Huh. Doesn’t even feel hot,” he noted.
He looked at the stone in his hand for a moment, considering something. Then his lips slowly curled in
to an ugly smile.
“Finally, something that might get the job done. Rendall is going to flip his shit when he finds out he’s not the only one who can pull this off anymore. Fuck, this is gonna be great. You little fudge packers better not go anywhere, now. I’m going to go test this thing out. If it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, I’ll be back.”
He walked away. The elves all watched him nervously until he disappeared around a corner. Then they turned questioning eyes my way.
“Were you really just randomly walking around with a device that can resist dragon fire?” Othvin asked.
I shrugged. “You never know when you might have to fight a dragon. It does a lot of other things too, so I’m not real happy about letting it go. If you’ll excuse me, I need to do something about making a replacement.”
In reality I was planning to steal it back, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud in Gaea’s realm. For all I knew she might be listening.
I finished the project I’d originally been working on, and then turned my attention to making a plausible-looking copy of the ‘ring’ I’d given Korak. An obsidian ring with a good-size power battery, fed by ambient mana. A fire resistance spell, a basic structural reinforcement, and a divination ward of the same design as the one I’d added to my talisman. Korak hadn’t seemed very perceptive, so that should make it look the same to whatever magical senses he might have. But unlike my earth talisman, this ring would quickly run out of power if it was used in a serious fight. Too bad I wouldn’t be able to see the look on his face when that happened.
Of course, I still had to figure out a way to make the switch. The link between the talisman and my control ring would let me find it anywhere, but sneaking into Gaea’s palace didn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe I could catch him out carousing in town, or something?
I looked up from my work to find Telvaris calmly watching me.
“It got dark a couple of hours ago,” he said. “Town’s getting pretty quiet now.”
“Good. I suppose I’ve done all I can here for now. Let me have another look at that map.”
I’d been amused to discover that Tavrin had a detailed map of this part of Skogheim, despite the fact that the andregi had no cartographers of their own and supposedly didn’t let visitors go wandering around. I probably could have done this mission without it, but it was handy to actually be able to see how the area around the gate was laid out.
The map arbitrarily designated one of the poles as North, with the other compass directions based around that. Ugrot was located in a wide stretch of tropical jungle, bounded by a mountain range several hundred miles to the west and an inland sea eighty miles to the east. More usefully, there was a major river than ran past both the town and the Halls of Slumber. That was the landmark I’d be using to find my way on what would hopefully be a short trip. But if I got completely lost I could always go east until I hit the coast, and then follow the river back up to town.
I’d wondered at first how a place like Skogheim could even have nights, but the answer was pretty straightforward. For ten hours out of every day the sun shrank into a tiny ball of fire, shedding only a dim glow across the landscape. The yellow light was a strange contrast to normal moonlight, but with elven night vision it should be more than enough to let me find my way.
Othvin was waiting when I emerged from the tent.
“How’d we do?” I asked.
“We’ll be ready to leave by midday tomorrow,” he assured me.
“That was fast.”
“These little deals don’t take much time to arrange. There are always some matriarchs looking for new jewelry, and word gets around fast when a party of elves comes to town. The andregi don’t do any mining of their own, so we’re their only source of the gems they like. I, ah, apologize about the ring business.”
I waved off his concern. “It’s not your fault. I’ll deal with it, one way or another. So, I’ve got the location, but what exactly does this place look like?”
“Watch for the magic,” he advised. “It’s unmistakable. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
I took another look around, verifying again that there were no andregi watching us. The trees cast deep shadows all around us, but my new eyes could pierce the darkness just fine. We were alone.
I rose silently into the air.
It was a good thing I’d taken the time to figure out how to fly, because I’d never have been able to pull this off otherwise. I threaded my way between the branches of the trees that towered overhead, until I emerged into the somewhat brighter air above the forest canopy.
From there a sea of green stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see. There was no horizon, of course. Instead, in the far distance the ground gradually curved up until it vanished in the haze of endless miles of air. Higher up, more distant lands emerged from the haze to form walls that seemed to merge into a dome high overhead.
That told me that Skogheim’s atmosphere was just like Earth’s, thinning with altitude until it finally faded to vacuum. Air isn’t perfectly transparent, and Skogheim was nearly two thousand miles in diameter. If there was air all the way up the far side would be invisible, and even the sun would probably just be an indistinct bright patch in the sky.
Not that the local astronomy meant much to me at the moment. I scanned the sky for air cavalry, and cautiously rose a few hundred feet when I didn’t find any. From there I could see the river I meant to follow.
I paused to cast a minor enchantment on the top of the nearest tree, basically just a marker so I’d be able to pick it out with my magic sight when I returned. Then I set out for the river.
There didn’t seem to be any air patrols, which I’d hoped would be the case since flying at night is suicide unless you’ve got some amazing night vision. But there could still be watchtowers, or detection wards, or even ground patrols in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I stayed down near the treetops, and kept a sharp eye on my surroundings.
It took about an hour to find the Halls of Slumber, and just as Othvin had said it was the magic I spotted first. As I’d expected by this point it wasn’t a conventional building at all, but rather a vast expanse of strangely mutated plants.
A dense hedge two stories tall surrounded the complex, and inside were wide expanses of odd-looking dwarf trees that grew in dense tangles much shorter than the surrounding jungle. There were a lot of those glowing gourds set up around the entrances to the complex and various parts of the interior, and hundreds of andregi on guard. Not to mention an army of several thousand encamped just outside, ready to respond to any disturbance.
That was fine, though. I didn’t need to fight the army, and the fact that the guards were all standing in bright light made it easy to sneak up on them. I carefully drifted closer, using the taller trees as cover just in case, until I had a decent view of the layout.
Beneath the thin branches of the dwarf trees there were hundreds of long, wandering paths. Lining each path were endless rows of big green pods glowing with magic. I studied the magic on them for a moment, thankful that my metamagic sorcery made it so easy to figure out enchantments just by looking at them.
Yeah, just like I’d thought. They were suspended animation pods. Each one held an andregi warrior in an enchanted sleep, kept alive by the twisted life magic coursing through the trees. It was a strange form of magic, and not very tightly woven either. Wisps of magic leaked out of the trees, forming a haze of distorted enchantment that could have all sorts of unpleasant effects on visitors who were careless enough to fall asleep.
There were wards over the whole place, too. I picked a vantage point near the edge of the warding dome, and spent a few minutes studying it.
Multiple detection wards, mostly focused on spotting humans and divination magic. Barriers to keep out fire, lightning and a variety of curses and attack spells. Several curses that would attach themselves to any human who entered the area, and a holy ground effect that would suppress the
magic of any mage who wasn’t properly attuned to it.
Nothing to stop physical objects from flying over the area, though, and the holy ground effect was tied to physical contact with the earth inside the protected zone. Perfect. I’d hoped that would be the case, since sealing off the plants from natural rainfall would be both a major logistical hassle and a violation of Gaea’s whole back to nature philosophy.
I dropped a perfectly normal-looking pebble on the ground a decent distance back from the edge of the wards, and then backed off and began to circle around the edge of the perimeter.
That trip really drove home how enormous this place was. The hedge just went on and on, an endless wall of green dividing the tangled maze of suspended animation trees from the jungle outside. I kept track of my pace as well as I could, and dropped another pebble every half mile or so.
I passed a section of much bigger paths lined with huge pods, each big enough to hold a dinosaur. Cavalry, apparently. The trees were bigger there as well, and the magical leakage was denser. Strong enough to be dangerous even to waking people, if they lingered too long. Was that an extra layer of defense, or was Gaea just sloppy about her spell work?
I dropped a pebble, and went on.
I passed an area where the pods had been cut down from the trees, and torn open. Thousands of withered brown husks were strewn haphazardly across the paths, and here and there I saw a body lying among the refuse. Perhaps the suspended animation process wasn’t completely reliable?
I shrugged, and went on. Flitting carefully across the treetops, and dropping a marker pebble every so often. Good thing I could fly now, because this trip would have taken all day on foot.
Maybe more. I’d started with forty of those pebbles, but I was down to less than a dozen when I finally found myself back at my starting point in front of the main entrance. That was, what, a fourteen mile perimeter? Something like ten or twelve square miles covered in mutant plants, each of them bearing dozens of those pods.
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 38