She grabbed the front of my shirt, and pulled me close. Her bright eyes gazed intently into mine.
“Promise me that we will truly make this journey someday.”
“I promise, Alanna.”
She threw her arms around me, and started to cry. I hugged her, trying to figure out where that came from.
“Alanna?”
“I only wanted an excuse, you great fool. Something to placate my fears, and help me convince myself to do what I already wanted to do. You didn’t have to offer up the price of my soul.”
“Oh? Should I have just made a speech about how badass we are together, and left it at that? I guess we could pretend I didn’t say anything about space travel.”
“Hmpf. It’s too late for that now, my wizard. You’ve purchased yourself one ancient dryad, signed, sealed and delivered. I don’t care if Ra himself appears to challenge us. I am not going to lose you before you make good on your promise.”
Who would have thought an ancient nature spirit would turn out to be a space nut?
Well, I wasn’t going to complain. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the idea of exploring the solar system in a magic spaceship was pretty cool. Not cool enough to tempt me into abandoning all the people in Kozalin who were counting on me, but if I managed to survive Ragnarok it was definitely going on my to-do list.
Right now, though, I needed to make sure I’d survive the next week. Ambushing me on the street hadn’t worked, and assaulting Moon Ghost Hall single-handed would put the guy I’d fought at a big disadvantage. He’d probably send for reinforcements, but if he was trying to be subtle the obvious thing to try next would be poison.
According to Alanna, sneaking into the hall to poison someone’s food wouldn’t be easy. The hall wenches had an innate sense of who was in the building and whether they belonged there that would be difficult to fool, and there was always a group of them in the kitchen. The way they were absorbed and re-created by the hall would make it hard to get one alone to ply her with sneaky tricks, and the hall’s magic would tend to protect them from mind control anyway.
But these guys were supposed to be really good at what they did, so I wasn’t content to rely on the hall’s innate defenses. For all I knew the Lightbringers had figured out how to bypass them a thousand years ago, just in case they ever had a target here. The locals weren’t going to let me set up wards outside my own rooms, of course, and even if they did I wasn’t exactly an expert on magical security. But there was one thing I could still do to give myself another layer of defense.
With my mana sorcery I could actually see the subtle weave of divination magic that pervaded the hall, constantly watching its occupants to find out what they wanted. It took me a little trial and error to figure out how to feed it requests, but it wasn’t that different from using a magic item with an intent control interface. Deciding what I wanted took longer.
The twin redheads who showed up at my door when I was done looked the same as before, but their expressions were a lot more guarded. They hesitated at the door for a few moments before Alanna shooed them inside. Then they glided across the sitting room of the guest suite to the chair where I was sitting, and knelt at my feet.
“We’re… a bit confused, master,” one of them said.
“I can understand that,” I told her. “I think I can explain things. But why are you calling me master? I wasn’t expecting that part.”
“I have to,” she insisted. “I have all these strange memories swirling in my head, that don’t make any sense. I don’t know who I really am, where I’m from or how I got here. But the one thing I know for sure is that we belong to you.”
“Something about… balance, maybe?” The other one said uncertainly.
“That fits,” Alanna said. “The hall’s magic would hardly leave such hellions free to indulge their own whims, and you did want loyalty.”
I sighed. “Not like that. But there’s no good way to change it at this point, so we’ll have to work with it. Alright, girls, what else do you know about yourselves?”
“We’re hall wenches in Valhalla,” the first one said. “We’re supposed to tend to the hall, and keep the heroes happy. We’ve been here a long time, but… but there’s something wrong with our memories. I can remember a week with one man, and a month with another, but the pieces don’t fit together.”
“I don’t understand why I acted the way I did,” the second one said. “One day I’m a vapid slut, and the next I’m a clever poet? Most of it doesn’t feel like me.”
“That’s because it wasn’t. This isn’t going to be fun to hear, but there’s some good news at the end, so try not to let it overwhelm you, alright?”
They exchanged a concerned glance, and said, “yes, master,” in unison.
“Your memories are confused because they aren’t really yours. The hall doesn’t really have a staff of women that work here for hundreds of years. It’s more like… how did you put it, Alanna?”
“A pot of soup,” she said. “The hall is like a mystic cauldron, filled with a broth made from the souls of saucy women. When a wench is needed the hall pours out a measure of soul soup to make her, and when her work is done she goes back into the pot again. It can mix in different ingredients to make the kind of woman it wants, to serve whatever dream or desire an einherjar might have, but it throws away the parts that are forbidden. Parts like understanding how the hall works, or hating the einherjar.”
They went a little pale as she talked, and their hands came together to clutch at each other. But they kept their wits.
“So… the hall made us for you, not five minutes ago?” The second one asked.
“Yes.”
“We’re just some kind of magic puppets?” The first one said, sounding a little panicked.
“No,” I said firmly. “You might not have been born like normal people, but you’re real women now. That’s what’s so disgusting about the whole scheme. You could have real lives, with your own hopes and dreams, and do anything that anyone else could do. What the Hall does basically amounts to killing the staff whenever they aren’t needed. That’s why it’s important for you to understand that I’m going to be needing you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for as long as I’m here. No breaks for you, and definitely no going back in the soup pot. Understand?”
Your average person probably would have fallen apart in hysterical denial at that point, but these two were anything but normal. They shared another of those looks, seeming to draw strength from each other.
One of them licked her lips, and gave me a shaky nod. “Understood, master. I think that will work, at least for now. Thank you. This is… I… are you going to save us, somehow?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Why would you want a pair like us?” The other objected. “If you asked for us, you must know what treacherous bitches we are.”
“You know everything the hall could provide about how to deceive and manipulate men,” I agreed. “Also how to sneak around getting into trouble, how to fight if you have to, and maybe even a little magic if there was any to be had. But you’re perfectly capable of loyalty, too. You just don’t give that out to people who don’t deserve it. Right?”
“You know us better than we know ourselves,” the first one admitted.
Her companion’s eyes narrowed. “You need us for something,” she declared. “Something that calls for those skills. But you weren’t expecting the hall to make us devoted to you. Were you hoping to gain our loyalty with an offer of rescue, master?”
“I was hoping you’d be smart,” I said approvingly. “Yes. I’ve been studying soul magic, and I think I can see how to steal you from the hall. You’d be ghosts if I took you back to Midgard, but I can also grow soulless bodies and bind you into them so you can be properly alive. It will take some work, and I’m sure it would get me in hot water with the gods if they catch me, but I think I can pull it off as long as I chose the right moment to do it.�
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“Freya’s tits! What kind of wizard are you, master? I didn’t think anyone had the power to do that.”
Alanna draped herself over the arm of the chair to lean against me. “Our wizard is the most powerful man in the world, girls. Daniel, you should name your new minions.”
“Minions? Should we just go with Mook One and Mook Two, then?” One of them complained.
“What, like we aren’t going to jump to do anything he says after an offer like that?” the other one told her. “I’ll happily be a minion for a master who can raise the fucking dead. But your dryad is right, master. There’s power in the giving of names.”
“I suppose so,” the first one conceded, and turned back to me. “What will it be, then?”
“Hmm. I know most people here are Nordic, but with the red hair and freckles you two look more Irish. I don’t imagine it matters much to you?”
“You can make us rakshasa for all we care, master. As long as we’re together, and not here.”
“Alright, then.” I put my hand on her head, and looked into her eyes. “You are Caitlyn.”
I turned to the other, and did the same thing. “You are Fiona. Happy?”
“I’ll be happy when we’re out of this fucked up situation, master,” Caitlyn said. “But I like the names. They’re exotic.”
“Exotic is good,” Fiona agreed. “So, what do we need to do for you, master?”
“Some very dangerous assassins are trying to kill me,” I told her. “I need you two to make sure I don’t get poisoned.”
“Oh, is that all?” Fiona said. “That’s easy, master. We’ll just hang out in the kitchen and watch your food being made. Unless you think they’d poison the whole band to get at you?”
“Only the most dire of magical poisons would have any chance of killing our wizard,” Alanna put in. “The faintest taste of such things would kill a hall wench, or even an einherjar.”
“Ah, so they can’t taint the ingredients or the cook is liable to die halfway through using them,” Fiona said. “They’d have to suborn a cook, or tamper with the meal after it’s prepared, or perhaps poison your tankard instead. We’re probably the main targets, then.”
“That will be fun,” Caitlyn said. “Can we have weapons, master?”
“I’ll see what I can come up with. But these guys are way too tough for you to fight unless you catch them completely off guard, so you’re better off avoiding that if you meet one. They can probably turn invisible, or hypnotize normal people into forgetting about them, or something like that.”
Fiona chuckled. “They won’t have much luck hypnotizing us, master. But we’ll keep our wits sharp, never fear.”
“Good. That should buy me some time to deal with my other vulnerabilities.”
I’d been thinking about the fight with the assassin, comparing it to my previous battles, and I couldn’t help but conclude that I’d been making a serious mistake. For the last few weeks I’d invested almost all of my time in projects like building fortifications and gearing up my troops. Things that were important if I wanted to save as many people as possible, from both the monsters and the ice age Loki had brought down on Europe. But none of that would matter if I died.
Wizards in this world get most of their firepower from their equipment, because building powerful spells on the fly doesn’t work nearly as well as patiently enchanting them into a magic item beforehand. But my own equipment was just a haphazard assortment of trinkets I’d thrown together in odd moments. It was woefully inadequate for facing down gods and divine monsters, and with Ragnarok underway it was all too likely that I’d find myself facing that kind of foe before long.
Had I done that on purpose? When I used to play role-playing games I’d often hold back from fully exploiting the rules, just to make things easier on the game master. Games like that usually have all sorts of horrible exploits that a clever player can use to make their character unreasonably powerful, which tends to ruin a game. Had I subconsciously let that habit carry over into the real world, when lives were on the line?
Or was I just afraid of where it would go? Just the straightforward ideas I’d already explored had given me weapons that could break an army. If I really went all out I was going to attract attention, and I might well end up sharing the same fate as Atlantis. I couldn’t see the gods tolerating the existence of a wizard who could actually fight them.
Well, it didn’t matter now. If I didn’t go all out against the Lightbringers they were going to kill me, end of story. So it was time to combine everything I’d learned about magic in this world, and make myself some real gear.
Regrowing my leg took up the rest of the evening, but at least it gave me time to plan. I started out the next morning with another trip into town. This time I wore Alanna in full plate armor form, and a squad of Gustav’s men followed me around everywhere I went. I was still a little nervous about being out in public, and kept a close eye on my surroundings, but I had some purchases I needed to make.
The elves who ran most of the clothing stores in Asgard were better craftsmen than any human, using magic to speed their work and often adding enchantments into the final product. They were also used to selling to impatient Viking warriors, so most of them were prepared to do minor alterations on the spot. That was convenient, since it meant that I could buy new clothing that fit properly without ever letting it out of my sight.
I bought a surcoat first. A loose tunic of dark fabric designed to be worn over armor, that covered my whole torso. Usually they’d be embroidered with a coat of arms, but I had them leave mine blank. It had an elegant little set of enchantments that would make it shed dirt and water, repair minor damage and ensure it didn’t pick up any stains or smells. I had them leave the enchantment unsealed, so I could add more magic of my own, and went on to the next shop.
The hooded cloak that I bought was made of thin, supple leather, with the same utility enchantments as the surcoat. It also had warmth and waterproofing enchantments, and a neat spell that made the edges stick together like Velcro when it was held closed. I got a kick out of the spell that made it flap dramatically in the slightest breeze when it was left hanging open.
After that I found a thin pair of gloves, and a good set of boots that would be a size too big for me if Alanna wasn’t armoring my feet. Then I retreated to my rooms at Moon Ghost Hall to do some serious crafting.
The enchantment factory I built needed its own power stone, a big one like I’d used for my gold factory, and even so it took several minutes to run through its program. It could have been faster, but for once I’d decided to go for quality instead of expedience. So it took its time laying down its enchantments, letting the magic sink deeply into the metal and grow as strong as I could make it.
It started by conjuring a little hexagonal bit of tungsten, maybe half the size of a dime, with a sharp prong sticking out of the back. When the prong was stuck through a sheet of leather or fabric a little single use-enchantment on the tip would make it flatten into a disk, and then the shaft of the pin would shrink until the whole thing was held firmly in place.
The pin was enchanted to store mana, with a decent storage capacity and a power link designed to connect to a conduit enchantment in the fabric it was attached to. The most powerful structural reinforcement effect I could create ensured that the hexagonal plate could shrug off canon fire, and a force enchantment extended out from each face to latch onto the adjacent plate and prevent them from being pulled apart. I estimated that a piece of cloth covered in pins would end up being as durable as several inches of solid steel, and that was the least important of the defensive enchantments.
The wards that covered each plate were more important, protecting it from a wide variety of spell effects and making it quite difficult to push any magic past it to attack the wearer. They covered an area several times larger than the plate, so the fields from adjacent pins would overlap to form a dense web of protection. I figured that would give Alanna a good defense
against whatever fancy spells the Lightbringers might come up with to kill a dryad, once they figured out what they were dealing with.
I was getting pretty annoyed with the way so many of my more sophisticated foes just ignored my force fields, so I put some thought into making a more reliable defense mechanism. What I came up with was a setup where each pin would conjure a little hexagonal plate of tungsten maybe half an inch above itself, and hold it in place with force magic. Anything that hit the floating plate would push it in against a powerful repulsion field, which would also repel any liquids or gases that might get conjured or injected at the point of impact.
The acid-conjuring dagger the assassin had used on me would be useless against that defense, and so would any sort of blunt weapon or explosion. The force effects involved were easily strong enough to bounce artillery shells, although the impact would send me flying. Tungsten is harder than steel, and I added a mechanism to layer some structural reinforcement onto the floating plates, so cutting through them wouldn’t be easy either. A really good magic sword might be able to do it, but the wielder would need superhuman strength to drive it through that kind of resistance unless it had some kind of active spell effect along the edge. A disintegration effect, maybe, or something to weaken molecular bonds.
To guard against that sort of thing, I layered on a powerful dispel effect just outside the floating plates. That would disrupt active spells, making it a lot harder to apply any kind of magic to punch through my armor. Most of the attack spells I’d seen would just fall apart into a harmless spray of mana when they hit the dispelling. The physical energy of something like a fireball or lightning bolt would go through it, but without any magic to control or shape it that sort of thing would be a lot less dangerous.
What else could I do to make this layered defense as impenetrable as possible?
Conjuring tungsten took stupidly huge amounts of mana, almost as much as gold. So instead of recreating the floating plates every time I turned on my defenses I’d have to keep them around. Make each pin grow its floating plate when it was hooked up to a mana supply, and use force magic to keep it snug against the base plate when it wasn’t deployed. Then I had to add a repair function to fix damaged plates, and tinker with their size and arrangement so they wouldn’t interfere with my movement. I ended up making the floating plates just slightly smaller than the base plates of the pins they were attached to, and writing a clever bit of code to make adjacent pins hover their plates at slightly different distances so they didn’t lock together if the underlying cloth flexed the wrong way.
Thrall (Daniel Black Book 4) Page 18