The balloon tires squealed as I slid the cart into the garage and flipped the door switch. I lurched out of the cart, drawing both Kunknir and Krati in one smooth, long-practiced movement, but the oolfur had given up, and the door rumbled closed without incident. I turned, holstering my pistols, and stepped through the door to the hall, which I had closed when I left, but now stood open. I pulled it closed behind me, wishing I could lock it, but there were no locks on any of the interior doors.
“Here he is, Mom! I told you he took a cart.”
“Everyone in the dining room!” I shouted, walking fast, and taking Sig by the arm.
When everyone had gathered, I told them about the oolfur. All eyes tracked to John, who stood off to the side, eyes half-lidded, a queer expression on his face. “I was here the whole time,” he muttered. “And besides, I can’t do that anymore. And I wouldn’t if I could.”
“It wasn’t John. I thought…well, maybe it was Luka.”
“It doesn’t matter who it was,” said Veethar.
“Veethar’s right. What matters is that one is here, and that means the Dark Queen will know we are here.”
“Worse,” I said. “It means she might already be inside—that damn army might already be inside the compound. We need to watch for them; we need a way to scout without putting ourselves in danger. Like my dreams.”
“Frikka, can you—” asked Meuhlnir.
“I can’t see things like that. I can only see future events, and usually, events far into the future.”
“Can you make those bird-brain dreams happen at will?” asked Jane.
“No, not that I know of, but there might be something that can help…in here,” I said patting the scroll case I’d found in Kuthbyuhrn’s hoard.
Althyof squinted at me. “Yes, there may be, but there is no guarantee of that.”
“Do you know of another way?”
Althyof shook his head.
“I do,” said Jane. “Security cameras. Monitors.”
I held up the guide. “Security station.” The guide issued three long pulses into my palm. “That’s a no go. What other way can I say it?”
Jane shrugged. “Haymtatlr—”
“Will he help us?”
Jane shrugged again. “I can ask him.”
“And if he will, can we trust him?”
She held up my phone, and we all stared at it for a moment, waiting for the telltale chirp that never came.
I flipped open the scroll case and shook out the scroll.
“It’s not a good idea, Hank,” said Althyof. “There’s no telling what that puntidn stavsetninkarpowk contains. It could be anything—including something meant to cause you harm.”
“To what purpose? Why would a runeskowld in antiquity lay a trap for someone he’s never met?”
“Who knows?” said Althyof with a shrug. “Tverkar can be grumpy, as you well know.”
“I imagine creating a puntidn stavsetninkarpowk is no easy task. It seems like overkill if your intent is to express your grumpiness at someone you’ve never met. Can you imagine any runeskowld you know doing such a thing?”
“Well…no, but that’s—”
“Then we can assume it away. What’s the purpose of having this thing if I never use it?” I said.
“I told you this would happen. Did I not? Did I not tell you to bury this grimoire, to banish it from your thoughts?” Althyof threw up his hands.
“You did, but circumstances change. If that army is bearing down on us from somewhere in this base, we’re in trouble. Tell me, Althyof, can we stand against such an army?”
“Well…”
“So what other choice is there?”
Althyof scoffed, a sour expression on his face. “We can leave—retreat to the Fast Track Travel Network and rocket north, lose ourselves until the Dark Queen tires of this game and turns on the preer of her own free will.”
“She will never give in,” sighed Sif.
“No,” said Meuhlnir. “She will not stop, not this time.”
“Again, what other choice is there?” I asked.
Meuhlnir shook his head.
“Yowtgayrr, have I missed something?”
The Alf shook his head, his expression one of reluctance. “But this grimoire, Hank. My people have tales of these things. They can release great power, sometimes more than the reader can handle.”
“So Althyof has told me,” I said. “I’m willing to try. We can’t stumble around blind. We need an edge, and this is the only way I can think of to get it.”
Fifty-eight
I wanted to go off somewhere, to try the grimoire on my own—just in case it was too much for me—but Althyof and Jane forbade it. Althyof, I could ignore, but my wife? No way.
“When you come across something you think will help, stop reading…if you can,” said Althyof as we pulled mattresses from the beds and arranged them on the floor of the dining room—all to protect me from bashing my head in if I had a seizure or something.
“What do you mean, stop reading if you can?” demanded Jane.
“It’s okay, hon. When I read the first page, the first kaltrar that bound the grimoire to me, I couldn’t stop reading until the end of the thing. But, isn’t it true, Althyof, that there would be no reason to write the rest of the grimoire with the same compulsion?”
“I have no idea, and neither do you. Stop trying to sugar-coat the risk for your wife,” he snapped.
“Does reading the kaltrar invoke them?” she asked.
“No, probably not.”
“Probably not?” She whirled to face me. “And this is our best option? This venture into the unknown?”
I shrugged. “I can’t think of anything else, can you? Besides, we’ve been through all this. We have to know what’s coming. I believe this grimoire contains something that will help me learn the trick of looking into the future—maybe without the limitations Frikka spoke of. I don’t know what makes me think so, except Kuthbyuhrn’s cave was where I learned so much—”
“Yeah, while you were dying, you idiot.”
“But I didn’t die, Jane.”
She raised her hands to shoulder height and let them drop, irked by the whole thing. “And since you didn’t, every foolhardy thing you can think of will also not kill you?”
“Well, it won’t kill me much,” I said with a smile.
She shook her head. “Try not to die more than you can handle, in that case. Remember that Sig and I are here waiting for you.”
“I know, Supergirl. I could never forget.”
She kissed me on the cheek, and I sat on the pile of mattresses. I sucked in a deep breath and unrolled the scroll, past the now-blank first page without looking at it. With a glance at Althyof, I drew a deep breath, and he nodded.
I looked down at the scroll, and the runes jumped from the page, squirming like baby snakes. At first, what I saw written there made no sense, it was as if I’d suddenly forgotten how to read the runes at all—they were just shapes, just squiggles, just a child’s scribbles. But then the meaning became clear, and something wrenched loose within me, something that scalded, that seared, something that cut me apart and welded the pieces back together in the wrong order. My hands lost feeling, and the scroll dribbled into my lap.
I could no longer see my friends clustered around me, and yet I could see them as if from three separate angles, three separate viewpoints. My eyes slipped closed, and yet I could still see the surrounding room.
“Mom! What are those?” Sig pointed up at me and yet away from me at the same time, toward a smoky black shape on the other side of the room.
“I don’t know,” said Jane, looking at me and looking away at the same time. “Are they…are they supposed to be birds?”
I wanted to reach out to her, but my body was lying on its side on the mattresses like so much lost luggage.
“Is that…is that Hank?” Jane asked.
Althyof squinted up at me before turning to look at the me t
hat was lying on the mattresses. He turned his head to the side and looked up at me again, eyes narrowed.
“I think it must be him,” he said. “I think—”
He kept talking, but I didn’t hear what he said next—there was a feeling of immense gravity, and I slid through the wall of the dining area into the kitchen and out into the hall at the same time.
The part of me that was in the kitchen drifted near the ceiling as would a helium-filled balloon in a gentle current of air. The part of me that drifted into the hall zipped along like I’d been shot from a cannon, racing down the hall, streaking past doors so fast the colors seemed to blur and melt into the institutional gray of the walls.
“What is this?” I asked.
“What did he say?” Jane asked.
That part of me that floated in the kitchen slid through the ceiling into a dust-filled stairway that stood in darkness and despair while spiders spun great webs dedicated to the dead. I rocketed upwards, not slowing my ascent until solid stone encircled me.
The other part of me streaked to the end of the hall and then zipped right through the door at the end, through a large room bordered with what looked to be shops and stalls. At the same time, I was back in the dining hall, looking up into Jane’s concerned face.
I continued to rise through the stairway until I passed into a crawl space filled with pipes and torso-thick cables. I rose and rose, passing through the insulated barrier at the top of the crawl space and out into the darkness of solid rock.
At the end of the shopping area, there was a bright, sunshine yellow door, and I passed through it like rays of sunlight passing through mist. Beyond the door, another hallway stretched away into the distance, this one bearing yellow, green, and brown doors.
I didn’t want to keep traveling through the bleak darkness of solid stone. I wanted to be out in the light where I could stretch my eyes, see the sun, the sea, anything other than oppressive darkness. Got to get out! As soon as I’d completed the thought, the trapped part of me popped out of the stone into the sunlight high above the mountains which served as the gravestones for the Herperty af Roostum. I continued to rise, the horizons stretching away from me in every direction.
I twisted through one of the yellow doors and into a room filled with four-by-four-foot squares of what looked like polished crystal. Along one wall a series of consoles stood, festooned with switches, buttons, and sliders. I wanted a closer look, and with no feeling of movement, I was closer to the consoles, looking down at them with wonder.
Jane cupped her cool palm against my feverish-feeling cheek. “Hank, what’s happening? What can we do?”
I opened my eyes and smiled at her.
Below me, the mountains ran in a large circle, and the old caldera of the ancient volcanoes that had spawned the lava tubes we’d used to sneak into the complex glared up at me like empty eye sockets. In the plain nestled inside the circle of mountains, a large army moved at speed toward the facade of the cyclopean building carved into the mountain in the center. A bear-woman and an oolfur ran snarling and howling at the army’s head. “They are coming!” I shouted.
Far away, I heard myself shout, and I reached down with insubstantial fingers and flipped a switch on the console. Power hummed through long-quiet circuits as one by one they cycled up, gulping power the way parched men drink water. The four-by-four squares of crystals lit, painting images of these halls of the dead in the air.
“Down the hall,” I said through my mouth trapped in the dining room. “In the last red door, find the yellow door opposite. Go through and find the first yellow door. Go now!”
As in my dreams, a mastery of the glory of flight filled me, and I swooped down from the austere, wind-swept heights above the mountains, imagining a set of talons at the end of my legs. I tucked my wings and made my black-feathered body into the shape of a missile, diving at my enemies. I shrieked my defiance, my hatred at the evil gathered on the plain below me.
The yellow door behind me banged open, and Meuhlnir, Althyof, and Yowtgayrr charged into the room. The Tverkr raised his hand and pointed at me. “There,” he said.
Meuhlnir’s eyes strayed to the squares of light blazing from the floor and up to the pictures they painted in the air. “Look,” he gasped.
I experimented with the controls on the console beneath me, using my imaginary hands to twiddle dials, press buttons, and move sliders. The airborne images swirled and changed, dancers in my ballet. One of them tightened and focused on an oolfur moving up a roadway, his eyes dancing from rolling door to rolling door.
The oolfur at the head of the army looked up as I arrowed down at the bear-woman in the fore. “Up!” he snarled in a gravel-filled voice. The bear-woman looked up and saw me as I snapped my wings out, cupping the wind, breaking my frantic speed, and I extended my taloned feet, aiming for her eyes.
With a roar, the bear-woman swept a huge arm skyward, her own claws bared. She jerked her massive head to the side, but it was no use, I was too close to miss.
My razor-sharp talons did their work, emerging from her torn and bloodied face dripping with gore. The oolfur howled a dirge of acrimonious anguish, and the bear-woman screamed and roared in misery and maniacal rage.
A cup of cool steel rested against my lips. “Drink,” said Sif. “Hank, drink!”
I opened my mouth and let the cool, sweet liquid splash across my palate. “More,” I croaked when the cup ran dry.
I moved a slider to the left on instinct, and the image of the oolfur zoomed out. I flipped a switch next to the slider and a map, of sorts, appeared superimposed over his image.
“Look!” said Meuhlnir. “He’s close!”
I zipped through the wall toward the street, emerging fifty feet in the air, almost right on top of the oolfur, and imagined talons once again.
In the dining room, I lurched to my feet, unsteady, but determined. I pushed Jane and Sif’s restraining hands away and stumbled out into the hall.
I banked in a tight circle, flapping my black-feathered wings in a frenzy, fighting gravity for altitude, fighting the wind for speed. Two sets of feet pounded in my wake, and snarls and growls reached me over the roar of the wind. Up! I thought, and in a flash, I emerged, thousands of feet in the air. I circled, gazing downward with a hawk’s eyes, searching for my target yet again.
I swam higher, up near the ceiling of the roadway’s tunnel. The oolfur below me sniffled the air, aware of my presence by means I didn’t understand, but unaware of my location. I swept downward, wings tucked, talons out, coming at him from behind. Right before I struck, I shrieked a mocking crrruck, and as he turned his head, I lanced his right eye with my talon.
The oolfur roared as I hit the switch that opened the rolling doors. Kunknir and Krati seemed to leap into my waiting hands, and I squatted low, peering under the rising door.
He growled deep in his throat and swept his claws, lightning-quick, in a vicious half-circle that would have killed me had I been a flesh-and-blood bird. As his arm slashed through the air at me, I thought about being as solid as steam up near the ceiling, and in less than a heartbeat, I was.
Below me, the bear-woman roared and snapped at the air, lost in a barmy birse, blood streaming down the side of her face from the three long rips I’d put in her skin. The oolfur that was with her—Luka, surely—glared up at me, pointing and shouting something lost in the wind. I banked hard to the right, just in case he was hurling a kaltrar at me. Standing on my wingtip, I tucked my wings and fell toward the plain once more.
Gunfire thundered from where I knelt inside the garage, and the oolfur whirled to face the new threat—me, or the physical part of me, anyway. As he did, I plummeted at the top of his head, as swift and silent as falling ice. At the last moment, I snapped out my black-clad wings, thrusting my talons out in front of me, stabbing toward the beast’s ears.
As the door rose toward its zenith, I emptied Kunknir into the oolfur’s torso, aiming at his vital organs. I squeezed Krati’s trig
ger as fast as I could, peppering his body with .40 caliber rounds. For the first time, I saw my other-self, a black raven the size of a bald eagle, and our eyes met for the briefest of moments. It was as disorienting as gazing into a hall of mirrors.
My talons latched onto one furry ear, and I squeezed hard, rending the flesh as I beat my wings for altitude. There was no way I could lift the beast, and I wasn’t trying; I wanted to rip the ear from his head.
I reloaded Kunknir, not giving a damn about how much ammunition I had, still firing Krati. Mothi screamed a war cry behind me and charged around the carts, well out of my line of fire. His axes gleamed in the soft light of the roadway. Sif raced behind him, shouting for Meuhlnir, her shield strapped to her arm, her vicious axe held ready.
The ear shredded in my talons, and I was flying free. I saw Jane come up behind the me that bore pistols and I crrrucked a hello. In a blink, I was up near the ceiling again, watching the oolfur sweep around and grab at the space I’d been a moment before. This form was too small—there was no way I could do enough damage to an oolfur as a mere bird.
As I plummeted toward the army below me, my feathers thickened and grew, and my tail stretched out behind me. The bear-woman looked up at me and cringed away, ducking her head. The army panicked, units broke apart, and men dashed this way and that, as the shadow of a bird the size of a small plane drifted over them. My shadow.
Jane stepped to my left, shield up to protect us. “Kill that bastard, Hank,” she hissed.
I fired as fast as I could, rounds streaking into the oolfur’s pustulant flesh, exploding out the other side, and spraying blood on the ground. The creature whirled back toward me, and Mothi leapt forward slashing his double-bladed axes at the beast’s long legs, going for crippling strikes.
Veethar and Frikka stood to my left, watching the oolfur through narrowed eyes. “It’s Vowli!” yelled Veethar, jerking his sword from its sheath. He pointed at the oolfur and yelled, “Vaykya!” in a voice charged with command. The oolfur yelped and stumbled, weak-limbed.
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