Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “I heard the reaver come up behind me,” Leif said lazily. “So I found this place to hide and wait for it. Which seemed to work out quite well.” He kicked the body again. “But if you don’t want to trust me, then I’ll be happy to sleep the rest of the night while you keep watch.” He sauntered past them back toward the crevasse.

  Freya whirled and grabbed Erik’s shirt. “Why did you stop me?”

  “You were giving him a reason to hurt you, and he might have tried to kill you right here and now,” Erik signed. “He’s a soldier. He slaughters reavers for a living, and he seems just as comfortable with killing his own men as killing the enemy. I’d say it would be bad luck to make someone like him angry.”

  “But he betrayed us! He’s actually hoping that we die out here. He said so!”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s over now, either way. And tomorrow we’ll go our separate ways and it won’t matter anymore.”

  Freya shoved him. “You could have died! I could have lost you too.”

  He nodded and wrapped his arms around her for a moment. Then he pulled back and signed, “You haven’t lost anyone yet. Katja is alive and safe, and the sooner we get back with the rinegold, the sooner she’ll be herself again.”

  “You’re right.” Freya exhaled and dug her fingers into Erik’s shirt, feeling the heat pouring off his skin. “Come on. Let’s go find someplace to sleep the rest of the night, away from these bodies.”

  Chapter 12

  Wren sat in the dining hall, luxuriating in the heat of the braziers. The guards sat at the far end of the room finishing their mead and wandering off to bed one by one. She was starting to think about going back to her own room when she saw Halfdan pass through the hall. He paused a moment to talk to one of the old guards, then nodded at her, and left. She started to wave, but he was already gone.

  She yawned.

  It had been a long day sitting in the snow with no one to talk to but the Allfather and the deranged woman in the cell, who occasionally grunted or growled or snarled behind the steel door. Halfdan had come out in the afternoon with a plate of cold meat and kept her company while she ate, telling her more about Ragnar and the other malcontents who were so eager to complain about the plague but were never about when Leif called for volunteers to venture outside the walls of Rekavik.

  After sunset, Wren had stood shivering in the deepening shadows, casting uneasy glances down at the locked door of the cell and out at the locked door of the castle wall. She knew no one could come inside during the night, that Katja would be safe until morning, but it took her a long moment’s worrying to make up her mind to go back inside and leave the beastly Katja alone, out in the cold and the dark.

  When Halfdan stepped out of the dining hall, Wren stood up and gathered her blanket around her shoulders again. She picked up a few cold lumps of fish from her plate and left. Outside the snow was falling again, but there was no wind inside the castle walls, so despite the noisy gusts up on the roof and out in the streets, the courtyard was quite silent. Rounding the corner of the building she saw the sunken entrance to the cell, and she felt all over again what a lonely, desolate place it was. No torches or braziers glowed there, and even the starlight couldn’t fall near to it because of an overhang in the roof above.

  “Well, lord, if you wanted to punish her for some crime, you’ve dreamed up a hell of a way to do it.” Wren shook her head as she trudged down the steps to the dark steel door and peered through the barred window. “Katja? I’m going to push some fish in there to you. No biting, please.”

  One by one she poked the meat through the bars with a single, shaking finger, but the prisoner did not cry out, did not crash against the door, did nothing at all.

  Wren sighed and turned to go, and found a young boy sitting at the top of the steps wearing nothing but a thin cotton tunic. He stared at her with a blank expression, and then suddenly smiled. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” She gave him a little wave and a smile. “I’m Wren.”

  “Rolf.” The boy stood up and backed away from the steps to let her come up beside him.

  As she moved closer to him, and around him, she realized quite suddenly that he wasn’t standing in a shadow. He looked dim because he was dim, his shade only half-visible in the moonlight falling upon the aether mist on the ground.

  The ghost called Rolf dropped his gaze to his bare feet. “You’re new here.”

  “That’s right.” Wren stepped back from him, partly to see him better and partly to avoid accidentally touching him, or passing through him. She had stumbled through a ghost once before in Denveller and was in no hurry to repeat the sensation. “I’ve come to help the queen. I’m a vala. Well, an apprentice, sort of. Except my mistress is dead, so I suppose I can’t be her apprentice anymore, and if I’m not an apprentice, then I am a vala after all.”

  “Oh.” Rolf stood very still, not swaying in place, not shuffling his feet. His hands hung at his sides, perfectly still.

  Wren paused, then said, “Have you come to tell me something, or are you looking for someone?”

  The boy grinned. “It’s not like in the stories, you know. Being dead, I mean. I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to find something I lost, or tell people secrets about treasure, or that their friends are going to hurt them.”

  “Oh, I know, I just thought that maybe you came here for a reason,” Wren said.

  “Well, I heard about the reaver in the cell,” he said quietly, his eyes straying to the steel door. “They were talking about it at the alehouse up the lane, so I came to see.”

  “Haven’t you seen reavers before?”

  “Yeah, lots.” The ghost shivered. “But always running or fighting, or dead. I’ve never seen one just sitting in a room before.”

  “Oh. Well, now’s your chance.” Wren waved at the door.

  The boy grinned and silently descended the snowy steps and then stood in front of the cell, and then he pushed his head through the door. Wren looked away, not wanting to think too much about what it would be like to have her body and her head in two different places.

  “Huh.” Rolf came up beside her. “It’s just sleeping on the floor, like a rabbit. I thought it would be meaner.”

  Wren flashed a nervous smile at him and started pacing away toward the outer wall of the castle. “So, Rolf, how long have you been—”

  “A ghost? I don’t know.” He pouted thoughtfully. “A while. Since before the reavers came. I died of the cold one winter, I think, in my sleep.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. Are there lots of ghosts where you come from?”

  “Not too many. I’m from Denveller. There’s a lake there, a warm one. We don’t get much aether there.”

  “That’s too bad. Ghosts tell the best stories. All about battles and the raids in Alba. And the really old ones’ll tell you about the gods and the monsters.”

  Wren turned to pace along the edge of the wall for a bit and then turned again back toward the cell steps. “My mistress used to tell me those sorts of stories. But she liked the ones about Lady Hel, and the dead gods, and the sagas about the blood feuds. She said I needed to know them to be a vala. I needed to know about death, and the evil things that people do to each other, and why.” Wren paused and stared down at the gray door of the cell in the shadows. “She’d tell me the stories at night, when it was too dark to crush herbs or clean fish or mend clothes.”

  “Was it scary?”

  Wren nodded. “I hated those stories. They were all blood and curses, and souls being ripped out and guts on the floor, and fire, and ice, and screaming. She had a terrible voice, my mistress, sort of raw and broken. Like she was drowning or dying. And I had to listen to it every night, in the dark. I hate the dark.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “These ghost friends of yours. Have they ever told you about Bloody Tyr?”

  “No,” Rolf said. “But I’ve heard people say that name before.”

 
“Tyr was the king of the gods in the old days. He loved war, and battle, and slaughter. He was the first one to fight the demons of the earth, to tame the earth, so that men and women could live here.” Wren swallowed. “Tyr drank the blood of the dead, and ate their hearts, and wore their skulls as a necklace. He had no love for anyone, no loyalties, no friends. The other gods feared him, feared his strength and his power and his pride. Tyr was fearless.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “Woden happened to him. When Fenrir came to Ysland, not even Tyr could defeat it in battle. But young Woden was already wise in the ways of battle and magic, and he forged a magic chain to bind the demon wolf. The chain was made of a fish’s claws, and a bird’s fangs, and a snake’s horns.”

  Rolf grinned. “But those aren’t real!”

  “Don’t be stupid. Of course they aren’t real, not anymore, because Woden used them all up for the magic chain,” Wren said quietly. “But to bind the demon Fenrir, someone had to hold the wolf down and Tyr was all too eager to do it. So while Tyr held the wolf, Woden bound its legs. But the wolf grabbed Tyr’s arm in its fangs, and Woden saw his chance. He bound the wolf’s maw shut with Tyr’s hand still inside its mouth, and so the war god was forced to tear his own hand off to escape. And this meant he was no longer fit to command the gods, and Woden took his place as king.”

  “Oh. I always thought Woden was a nice god.”

  “He is, but he’s cruel when he needs to be.” Wren squatted down at the edge of the stairs to gaze into the black cell through the narrow bars of the window in the door. “They say that Bloody Tyr screamed for three days after Fenrir bit off his hand. The wolf’s venom was in the wound, burning him up, until Woden found an herb to cure it. But Tyr’s scream sank down into the earth, and sometimes, if you sleep on the ground with your head on a stone, you can still hear the war god screaming in agony.”

  The ghost shuddered and sat down beside her. The wind rose suddenly, whipping through the narrow space between the outer wall and the castle, hurling snow and howling over the stones, and Wren felt her hair flying wild around her face and snapping in her eyes. But Rolf’s hair lay perfectly still on his head.

  The boy said, “I heard screaming like that, once. The digger screamed. We could hear it here, every day.”

  “The digger? You mean Ivar’s Drill?”

  “Yeah. It went on and on, day after day, growling and shrieking. The sounds echoed across the bay for leagues.”

  Wren glanced toward the east, toward Mount Esja, but all she saw was the castle wall.

  “And then it finally stopped, and the monsters came.” Rolf sighed.

  “I know. Skadi said that Fenrir climbed up out of the pit and killed the king right in front of her.”

  The ghost looked at her with a faint furrow in his brow. “That’s not what I heard. I heard the king fell in the hole, and Fenrir came out later.”

  It was Wren’s turn to frown. “So, then, were the workers trying to pull the king out when Fenrir killed them all?”

  Rolf shook his head. “No, that’s not right. Here, let me get someone.” The boy turned away as though to stand up, and simply faded into nothingness.

  Wren stared at the empty spot where the ghost had been a moment ago, and then she sniffed and stood up, stretching her back.

  “Found him,” Rolf said.

  Wren started and spun to see the boy leading a young man through the cold stone wall beside her.

  “This is Arn. He was there that day at the pit when the king died. He saw it. Tell her like you told me, Arn.” Rolf nodded.

  The ghost of the young man named Arn was tall and handsome, with a small and serious mouth and worried eyes. He wore rough wool trousers, sealskin boots, and nothing else. Wren’s first thought was that he must be cold. Her second thought was that she needed to stop staring at his chest, and his arms, and his…

  “I was there,” Arn said. He gazed into her eyes as though he could see through her flesh to her own ghost itself. “I was there that day on the mountain when it happened. I saw it. I saw it all.”

  Wren blinked and nodded and tried to focus on what he was saying. “Right, the drill, the king. Right. So what happened?”

  “We stopped drilling when the tunnel got too hot,” Arn said. “The king was standing by the pit, talking to the foreman about what to do next. The queen and her guard were nearby, and I was near the drill. We heard the buzzing first, for many long moments, and then the flies swarmed up out of the pit like a storm cloud. They washed over the king in a wave, wrapped around him until all I could see were the whites of his eyes. He tried to beat them away, to crush them, to get away, but still they clung to him. A few men tried to throw a tarp over him. I don’t know what they were thinking. But everyone else just stood there and watched. Like me.”

  “Why didn’t you help him?” Wren asked.

  Arn shook his head. “It sounds foolish, I know. They were only flies. But you didn’t see them. No one has ever seen such a thing. They covered him like bees on a hive, like pitch on a stone, and he was screaming. Not yelling or cursing like a man in battle, or angry, or drunk. He was screaming like a child trapped in a nightmare. It just went on and on. And then he fell into the pit.”

  Wren swallowed. “And then Fenrir came out?”

  “And then the king climbed back out,” Arn corrected her. “The flies were falling off him like snow or ashes, all dead. But the king, he was growing bigger and taller, right in front of us. His arms getting longer, his face twisted and stretched like a hide being tanned from the inside. I saw the hair growing out from his face and hands. His clothes tore apart and hung off him in tatters. And all the while he roared at us, and snarled at us, and stared at us with those yellow eyes.”

  The girl felt her face twisting into a frown as she realized the truth. “The king was the first reaver? King Ivar is Fenrir?”

  “Not the real Fenrir, obviously.” Arn went on gazing into her eyes. “But just as terrible and monstrous, I’ve no doubt. The change came over him and was gone again in the time it takes two waves to sweep a beach clean. One moment he’s a man, and the next he’s a beast with claws and fangs, with tails and mad eyes, all covered in fur, white and black and red as blood.”

  “Like a summer fox,” Wren whispered.

  Arn nodded, and took a step closer to her.

  Wren glanced down at his bare chest and then back up at his dark eyes. “And then?”

  “Then the king grabbed the nearest man and tore him in half, ripping his arms off and splitting his chest open, spilling his guts on the ground with buckets of blood.” Arn paused. “But we didn’t falter. Every man grabbed a hammer or pole or pickaxe, and we ran at him. I don’t know what anyone else was thinking, but I was thinking we should push him back into the hole. I don’t suppose I thought we could actually kill a demon like that. The king killed another man, and then another, and then he hurled the bodies at us, knocking us to the ground. He roared at us, and I stared up at him and I thought, well, this is it. This is the end for me. But the beast turned and bounded off across the mountain.”

  “It left you alive?”

  “The king did.” Arn paused. “The queen didn’t. We were still picking ourselves up off the ground, still covered in the blood and bodies of the three dead men, when the queen’s viper struck.”

  “She ordered your deaths?”

  Arn nodded. “There were only four of us left, and the bastard slit our throats and split our hearts and left us there to rot in the sun.”

  “What bastard? Who killed you?”

  “Leif Blackmane.”

  “Nine hells.” Wren covered her mouth and whispered, “Freya.”

  The corner of Arn’s mouth fluttered as though he wanted to smile but couldn’t quite remember how to. “It’s the strangest thing, but as I lay there, breathing my last breath, I saw something. I could almost swear I saw the dead foreman stand back up again, and walk away.”

  Wren barely heard him. />
  Oh, Freya.

  “And that’s the end of it,” said Rolf. “What do you think of that?”

  Wren stared at the dead man. “Why haven’t you told anyone? People need to know this. People need to know what really happened. Why did you wait? That was all five years ago. Five years! Think of all the people who’ve died since then!”

  Arn suddenly looked ill and turned away, but Rolf glared up at her. “Hey! Don’t you yell at him. He’s only been out of the grave for a month, and he’s the first of the men who died that day to wake up. Don’t you know anything? You might lie in the ground a day or a year or an age before you wake up, if ever. So you back off! You leave him alone!”

  “S-sorry, I’m sorry.” Wren pushed her hair back with trembling hands. “I do know that, I know all about it, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Thank you. Thank you both, so much.”

  “Come on, Arn!” Rolf turned and stomped away, and vanished at the edge of the yard. Arn gave her one last sad look and faded into the shadows.

  Wren sighed as the smooth muscles of the ghost’s chest disappeared. Then she glanced up at the starry sky and said, “Allfather, I know that you and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I’d consider it a great kindness if you got off your drunken, whoring ass and saved Freya!”

  She sniffed and marched back down the steps to the cell door and peeked into the darkness through the bars, and for the first time she noticed the flakes of rust around the edges of the door and the stains around the handle. Frowning, she grabbed the handle and shook it, but the door held soundly in its stone frame.

  “Woden, I am your true and faithful vala, and I plan to serve you a very long time. So, in case you’re looking for some reason why you should bother with your daughter Freya, who is a very lovely person by the way, you should know that I’m prepared to make some very generous sacrifices to you just as soon as I have something to offer up. Maybe a seal, and some rabbits, and a pheasant. And you’ll watch over her, and maybe shove Leif off a cliff, all right?”