Martin snapped his fingers at his wife and motioned at Hardy. She sprang to her feet and rushed to the minister’s side, leading him into the room behind the pulpit.
“Take her out,” Martin commanded. He made sweeping motions at the congregation.
Outside, Martin cleared his throat. “Citizens of Roanoke. Brothers and sisters. We are gathered here this afternoon to witness God’s own justice on this woman calling herself Margaret Estridsen. You’ve witnessed her trial, her condemnation, and her sentencing as a witch, a consort of Satan, a malefactor, and a priestess of Evil.”
Margaret thrashed against the militiamen as they looped a chain around her, securing her to the post. Her eyes blazed with maleficence, but she stopped and grinned around her gag as a telltale grunt from the woods opposite her reached her ears.
Martin gazed at her with uncertain fear for a moment but turned his back and walked to the fire burning nearby. He retrieved a torch and set it in the flame. “Stack the wood around her and douse it with lamp oil.”
His gaze met hers. “Harlot, are you prepared to meet the wrath of God Almighty?”
She winked at him and nodded.
Confusion at her utter lack of terror clouded his face, but he shook his head and forced a smile onto his lips. “Good, for you will soon face it.”
The brush in the woods rustled as though a large animal sprinted through it, and Margaret smiled savagely.
Martin paused, then made a “hurry up” gesture at his men. He snatched up his torch and started toward her as his man poured the lamp oil around her feet. Behind her, a wolf snarled, and Captain Martin’s eyes leapt past her and widened with fear. He lurched forward, trying to get close enough to light the wood piled at her feet.
A savage roar split the afternoon as her husband broke from the trees. The women of the village screamed as one and tried to gather their children. The men stumbled back, holding up crosses or making warding gestures against evil.
Around her gag, Margaret laughed.
Captain Martin’s wide-eyed gaze locked on her own, fear dancing there. He pulled back his arm to throw the torch, and Luka roared again, rushing forward at inhuman speed.
Martin tried to dodge, tried to move fast enough, but it was too late. It had been too late when he forced his way into their home that morning, and now, he knew it.
The torch Martin held disappeared, along with his hand and forearm, in an explosion of red mist. He glanced around as if he couldn’t understand what had happened, and Luka roared again.
Margaret enjoyed Martin’s expression as his gaze crawled from the torch clutched by his severed forearm lying at his feet to what she knew loomed behind her. The captain’s gaze darted from point to point, and she imagined what he was looking at: Luka as an oolfur, long limbs, impossible height, suppurating sores, coarse brown fur standing in clumps…and the head of a wolf, of course.
Insanity reigned in Martin’s eyes, and he tried to teeter away, but shock and blood loss had done their work, and he stumbled to one knee, his gaze never leaving Luka.
Her champion, her lover, stepped from behind her and gazed into her face. She jangled the chains that bound her hands and held her to the stake that was to be her place of execution.
Rage that bordered on insanity blossomed in Luka’s eyes, and he snapped his head around to roar and snarl, rooting the villagers to the spots where they stood—like rabbits gone tharn in the face of a predator. Many of the women and children screamed, and the odor of piss filled the air.
He turned back to Margaret and, with infinite gentleness, he took the chains that bound her and snapped them as easily as a child might rip a sheet of paper. He swept up one of the oil-soaked logs at her feet and whipped it into the crowd, knocking man, woman, and child spinning through the air.
Margaret patted his furry arm and removed the wide leather belt that gagged her. She threw the belt at Martin with disdain.
Luka stepped toward the man, snarling.
“No, my Champion. I will deal with the captain myself.”
She stepped to the man’s side and smiled down at him. “I don’t think I shall burn today, Captain, but thank you for the invitation.”
His eyes filled with tears, his face as white as a ghost.
“And as for meeting your puny god’s wrath, I also decline. And you were right, my name is not Margaret Estridsen, though I knew Margaret the First of Denmark rather well. She was such a sweet child. My name is Hel.” She laughed at the terror writ on his face. “Yes. Your pathetic myth of punishment owes its origin to my deeds. Allow me to introduce you to a goddess’ wrath. Alas, I fear you won’t survive it.” She winked at him and raised a hand to point down at his face. “Predna,” she said, and emerald green fire poured down on Martin’s face and neck.
Captain Martin shrieked as the green flames engulfed his face and head. Fat sizzled and popped as his skin melted and curled. He screamed once, and the green blaze raced down his throat as if alive and greedy for his death, burning away his lungs.
The stunned crowd reacted, and panicked screams filled the village square. Mothers scooped up children and bolted toward their homes—as if wooden doors could keep Luka or Hel out.
Margaret kicked Martin in the side. “Do you see what you’ve wrought, you small little man? Do you feel the wrath of your Goddess?” But when she looked down into his face, his eyes had already burst from the heat, and death had freed him.
Luka roared as he chased people down and knocked them to the ground. He threw glances at her with each person he drove into the dirt as if seeking her permission to eat, to drink, to kill.
“My Champion,” she purred, walking to his side. She stroked the coarse fur around his muzzle, stretching upward on tiptoe to reach. “You may kill a few, dear one, if you’d like, but I want most of them alive. Instruct them to pack their things. We shall undertake a long journey into the interior, and they will need supplies.” She glanced at the church. “And that nasty man from the church. I want him along, so I may make him suffer every single day…until he begs me for death.” She smirked. “And even after that.”
Luka glanced down at her as she grinned with a malevolence so pure it could have peeled the paint from the church’s doors.
“We must punish him. We must punish them all, but him most of all. We shall take our time.”
Luka grinned a lupine grin and grunted. “Yes, my Queen,” he grated.
Seventeen
“After that, Luka rounded up all the villagers he didn’t kill outright and herded them into the church, where Hel stood in judgment.”
“What did they do with all those people?” asked Jane. “Or don’t I want to know?”
I glanced around, reading the signs. “Most of them came out of the church, and Luka led them toward the mainland side of the island. Hel walked with them.”
“And the ones that didn’t come out of the church?”
“Some were dead when Hel blasted it with her green fire.”
“But some weren’t.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t bother to answer.
“Most survived. At least that day.”
Jane looked at up me with wide eyes. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“I have no idea. Something that the Great Old One did, or maybe whatever it was Kuhntul did to me with her magic chisel.”
“Aren’t you getting tired of being everybody’s sandbox?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, I am.” I shrugged and frowned. “But it’s not as if I have much choice in the matter, is it?”
Jane sighed. “I guess not. Next time ask to speak with someone’s supervisor. Or at least get a case number for customer support.” She put her hand on her hip and smiled at me, and suddenly, none of it seemed to matter.
“We need to find the mainland side of the island,” said Althyof.
“I believe a path exists over this direction,” said Yowtgayrr. “I believe the island is safe enough now.”
“Yes,” I said
with a nod. “All of this happened years ago. But I don’t think we need to go to the other side of the island. Luka and Hel are years gone, and the villagers with them. Besides, the version of Hel and Luka who were here are not the versions we want.”
“Do you even speak English anymore?” asked Jane.
“You tell me, hon.”
“It’s getting hard to tell. You are becoming fluent in gobbledygook though.”
“I’m glad you noticed. I’ve been studying at night after you go to sleep.”
Jane stuck her tongue out at me and blew a raspberry. “Well, it’s good you’re putting your time to productive use.”
“Someone must.”
Althyof sighed and shook his head. “Not to break up all this flirting, but—”
“Flirting? You call this flirting?”
“In his defense, it does sound similar to Tverkar flirting,” said Yowtgayrr.
Althyof cleared his throat. “Whatever you two call it, if we can simply get past it for a moment… Hank, you said something cryptic about Luka and Hel. Something about wrong versions?”
“Yes, I did. These two…they aren’t… They don’t feel right.”
“Good thing you’ve learned to speak gobbledygook,” muttered Jane.
“What do you mean, Hank?” asked Yowtgayrr.
“It’s as though they don’t…I don’t know… They don’t know me.”
“Wait a minute. I thought you were getting this information from mysterious, magical tracks that only you can see with your magic eyeball.”
“Eloquently put, Jane, and you’re right. But they are more than simple tracks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can see more than only where they walked if I study them deeply enough. I can see what they did, but more than that, I can see their emotional state, their mental state. It’s as if I can almost access their memories. Or maybe I am accessing their memories, and that’s all these tracks are.”
“Ah,” said Yowtgayrr. “We call them slowthar.”
“I’m telling you, Hank, you’ve got a future in the gobbledygook industry.” She glanced at Yowtgayrr. “You, too.”
“And you’ve got a career in the laundry industry.”
Althyof smiled at that one. “So, what you’re really saying, Hank, is that we are in the wrong place.”
“Yeah.”
“So why did the Great Old Ones lead us across this particular proo?”
I shrugged and let out a long breath. “Maybe the Great Old One who needed to mess around inside my head couldn’t get a connecting flight to the other proo. It appears they were waiting for me in the proo. Maybe they needed to know the precise proo I’d travel across. Or maybe they needed me to come here and see all this.”
“Are we done here, then?” asked Jane.
I glanced around the village square, looking for anything new, anything I might’ve missed. It was a sad tableau, both in the present and a few years past. “Yes. There’s nothing else here; a mystery for the next colonization mission Sir Walter Raleigh sends.”
Jane turned and walked toward the forest. “If that’s the case, let’s get out of here.”
We all traipsed along behind her, content to walk in silence. Other than our passage through the woods, every sound I heard was natural, expected. Birds. Small animals. The wind soughing through the boughs above us. Even so, I sensed eyes on me from somewhere. I sidled over next to Yowtgayrr and tapped his wrist with the back of my hand, trying to seem nonchalant.
The Alf glanced at me and flashed a small smile my way.
“Do you… Is there someone watching us?”
Yowtgayrr glanced around. “I sense nothing. No animals, no humans.”
“Okay,” I said. I looked around, trying to use my newfound ability to track people around me, and while the signs of a native population surrounded us, none of them were recent. “It’s nothing.”
We emerged from the woods onto the narrow strand of beach with the proo glimmering in the sun. “It’s strange that this proo was left out here in the open,” I mused.
“Yes,” said Althyof. “Careless.” The Tverkr strode toward the proo, hand already outstretched to make his passage.
But something snagged at my attention, something that seemed off. I stopped walking and stared at the proo, and as I did so, the sensation I had while we walked through the woods—the feeling of being watched—intensified.
At first glance, the proo matched all the others I’d seen since Kuhntul did whatever she’d done inside my head with her magic chisel. But as I stared at it, I recognized three things: the tendrils around the outside edge were actively reaching toward Althyof, trying to make contact as soon as possible; the massive, blind-worm shapes of the Great Old Ones were missing from its silvery surface; and if I looked at it in a certain way and with enough mental effort, I could see where the proo led. “Wait!” I yelled, lurching toward Althyof to yank him back, to pull his hand away from the reaching tendrils.
He pulled his hand back, avoiding contact with the most ambitious tendril by a hair’s breadth. He turned toward me, his expression cross, eyes not quite blazing, but far from peaceful. “What is it? What is it now?”
“The proo has been…manipulated. Or moved. Or glamored, I don’t know.”
Althyof threw a sharp glance over his shoulder. “Seems normal.”
“Trust me on this one, Althyof. It’s far from right.”
Yowtgayrr peered at me through concerned eyes. “Hank, is this—”
“Look,” I said. “How this looks, how it sounds—it seems crazy—but I’m telling you: something’s not right here.”
Althyof lifted his shoulders and let them fall with a harsh gust of breath. “Then what?”
“Give me a minute to study it. Let me see what I can figure out.”
Althyof waved his hand toward the proo in a be-my-guest gesture.
I crept around the proo, peering into its reflective depths. The tendrils lurched toward me as I moved, fluttering as though in a soft current. The surface was flat, glassy. When I’d walked in a full circle, I stopped.
“Well?” asked Jane. “Has someone rearranged the furniture or not?”
I shook my head, not willing to give in to distraction yet. “Syow kaltur,” I breathed.
“That will not work, Hank,” said Yowtgayrr. “The whole thing is made of the stuff that makes up the strenkir af krafti—magic, in other words.”
My eye burned and tingled, watering to beat all. When I blinked the tears away, I gasped at the thing before me.
The proo glowed like a thousand suns—how I imagined the core of a thermonuclear explosion would flash blindingly-white. The tendrils, or what I’d taken for tendrils, reminded me of the reaching arms of truykar—blackened flesh dripping from decaying musculatures. The hands clenched and released, fingers stretching toward us with desperation.
I stared at the center of the proo, no longer trying to see the differences between this proo and the others I’d seen that day, just taking it all in. Something tickled my mind, and the image of a kid tugging my shirt sleeve to get my attention flashed through my brain. “What is it you want me to see?” I muttered. “Seentu myer!”
As soon as the words left my lips, color and shapes exploded from the proo, a barrage of fractal psychedelic images that swirled and swooped and swam in my vision. After a moment of that, the images coalesced, painting a picture of a vast plain of burnt sienna sand under an azure sky. The desert stretched as far as I could see with no clusters of rocks, no cacti, no shantytowns, no trees, nothing. I stood there, gaping at the image, and as I did, a huge bright blue sun jumped skyward from below the horizon, so large it filled close to half the sky. The blue sun flashed through the heavens as if racing from one horizon to the other. After mere minutes, the massive sun set with as much alacrity as it had risen, but darkness didn’t fall. The plain was lifeless, still. I turned in a circle, but everything was the same—lifeless, empty, burnt.
&n
bsp; “Someone has moved the other end,” I said. “This proo no longer connects with Niflhaymr—unless the place has suffered a massive, planet-rending catastrophe.”
“Should we investigate?” said Althyof, but his tone made it clear he didn’t relish the idea.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, that place is lifeless. Burnt, more like it. It’s close to a blue star, and I have an idea the temperature there would bake us in an instant if we were to set foot there.”
“Blue?”
I nodded. “Hot. If Siggy were here, he could tell you the sun’s temperature.” I waved up at Sol’s yellow disc. “This star is almost ten times cooler than a blue.”
Yowtgayrr whistled.
“Who moved it? And why?” demanded Jane. “The Great Old Ones, messing with us again?”
That didn’t feel right. They could have sent us to our dooms at any time if they had the ability to control more than the start and end points of the preer as I suspected they did. “Luka or Hel would be my guess.”
“But you said these were the wrong versions of our favorite couple.”
“We should have them over for a cook-out,” I said with a grin. “But, no, not…well, this is going to get confusing in a hurry, ain’t it? Not the Roanoke versions, the 2017 versions.”
“You know my rule, Hank. No cook-outs with cannibals.” She glanced at the proo and shrugged in exasperation. “So, what? Are we trapped?”
“I don’t have all the answers, hon.”
“Ah! Finally, you admit it. Too bad I don’t have a working video camera to preserve this moment for all time.”
“That is too bad, isn’t it,” I said with a grin. I got that “pay attention to me” sensation again and glanced at the proo. The tendrils looked like harmless tendrils again, but perhaps the zombie-arms image was only a metaphor for how dangerous the things were. As I watched, the blind-worm shape of a Great Old One moseyed to the surface of the proo, as if looking for us. It came toward the surface, its body undulating like an eel swimming toward sunlight. So, they do move, I thought.
The Great Old One stopped its eeling movement and hung there motionless as though it needed to catch its breath. But, of course, there was no air inside the space between the proo ends for it to breathe. It hung there in front of me as though waiting for me to do something. Then, with a wriggle I took for impatience, it thrust its head toward me, as if it could reach out of the proo.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 112