SMALL ONE. YOU WASTE PRECIOUS TIME. AND FOR LITTLE GAIN.
I scoffed at that. “Yeah, well, if you gave me a bit of instruction, I wouldn’t have to waste so much time trying to figure out whatever it was you did to me.”
INCONSEQUENCE. CEASE. GRASP THE HOOK.
“What’s going on?” asked Jane.
“What hook? What the hell are you talking about?”
The Great Old One drifted closer, vying for a better look at me. ANNOYANCE. MATTER INTERFERES. It jerked forward the way a kid blowing out birthday candles would, and the floppy hat Althyof had enchanted after I lost my left eye flew off my head. NOW YOU CAN PERCEIVE.
I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, but nothing changed, except I lost depth perception. “What do you expect me to see? Let’s start there.”
VEXATION. DISTURBANCE OF TRANQUILITY. BOTHERATION. EXASPERATION.
“No need to curse… What do I call you, anyway?”
TIME DRIFTS AWAY. EXTRANEOUS QUERY IGNORED. THE HOOK…GRASP THE HOOK.
“It’s not extraneous. How am I to recognize if you are the same…thing…next time?”
INSIGNIFICANCE.
“How am I to know the next blind proo-worm to approach me isn’t trying to undo everything you are trying to get me to do?”
The thing hung in front of me for a few heartbeats, as still as if it were dead. If it had had eyes, I’d have expected them to stare at me without blinking.
THIS ONE IS NONPAREIL. NO OTHER WOULD DARE. YOU KNOW THIS ONE, IN ANY CASE.
“Yield,” I said. “And I don’t know you from Adam.”
CAPRICE.
“It will help my small mind deal with you, okay?”
ACCEPTANCE. THIS ONE MAY BE THOUGHT OF AS “BIKKIR.”
“Bikkir?”
AFFIRMATION. THE WORD MEANS—
“I recognize the word. ‘Builder.’ I’m fluent in the Gamla Toonkumowl.”
IT IS SO.
I couldn’t tell if that was irony or not—so much was lost without facial expression—but I thought it was. “Okay, Bikkir. Tell me what I’m supposed to be doing to avoid wasting time.”
CEASE. YIELD.
“Oh, not back to that again. If you want—”
Bikkir lunged forward again, and intense pain blossomed in my empty left eye socket. I staggered back, Yowtgayrr’s steady grasp keeping me on my feet in the loose sand.
“That’s it!” snapped Jane. “We’re getting away from this damn proo. Hel and Luka had one hidden near our home in Western New York in 2017, it’s probably there now.” She snapped at Althyof. “Don’t just stand there gaping! Get a move on!”
ASPIRATION ACHIEVED. INSTRUCT THE LOUD ONE TO CEASE.
“No,” I murmured. “It’s okay, Jane, he’s finished.”
“Yeah?” she said with heat in her voice. “I’m not finished, and if that bastard expects to go on with his merry little life between the stars, you tell him to keep his damn hands off you.”
AMUSEMENT.
“Not smart.”
“Well, excuse me all to hell!” she snapped.
“No, honey, I mean Bikkir isn’t all that smart. He seems to find this amusing.”
Moving in sharp jerks, Jane found a rock and heaved it at the proo. The rock smacked into the mirrored surface with a bonging noise and disappeared.
NEGLIGIBLE EFFECT. POINTLESS ACTION.
“Get on with it. What do you want?” I yelled the last word, and it echoed up and down the beach.
Undeterred, Bikkir hung motionless. GRASP THE HOOK.
“I already told you! I don’t see any goddamn…” But then I did.
The “hook” as Bikkir called it, appeared to be a tumorous growth in the upper arc of the proo’s surface—almost like a knurl in an old tree. It bore bumps and indentations, as though it were a fancy machined knob in an airplane cockpit.
WONDEROUS PHENOMENON. YOU PERCEIVE IT AT LONG LAST. IN THE FUTURE, CLOSURE OF YOUR OCULAR CAVITY WILL PRECIPITATE ACTION.
I closed my eyeless socket, and the vision of the hook disappeared. “So much for that theory.”
EXASPERATION. THE OTHER OCULAR CAVITY, SMALL ONE.
I switched eyes, and the hook was back. “Oh.”
GRASP THE HOOK. GRASP IT.
I reached toward the proo.
CEASE. CEASE.
“You said to grab it! How do you expect me to do that without reaching for it?”
THINK, SMALL ONE. CLENCH THE HOOK WITH YOUR DREAMSLICE REFLECTION, NOT WITH THE MEANINGLESS MATTERSTREAM MANIFESTATION THAT ENTOMBS IT.
“I don’t suppose you can explain how I’m to do that?”
FRIVOLOUS ORATION. CEASE. PERFORMANCE IS DESIRED.
I sighed. The Great Old Ones weren’t turning out to be all that great. I focused on the knob-like hook and imagined grabbing it with an invisible arm. A tingle swept through me, like a mild electric shock.
SATISFACTORY, THOUGH PLETHORIC TIME HAS ELAPSED. KEEPING A FIRM GRASP ON THE HOOK, MANIPULATE THE APPENDAGE UNTIL ACHIEVING THE DESIRED OUTCOME.
I imagined turning the knob clockwise, and as the hook moved, I felt a tremor rumble through the space between the proo and myself. It wasn’t a physical sensation, more of a psychic one.
SATISFACTORY. EXAMINE THE RESULT.
The proo appeared to be the same, and yet different in a subtle way. After a few moments, it dawned on me. “It’s as if the colors that make up the shiny part have shifted in hue. Is that what I’m looking for?”
SATISFACTORY. THE SMALL ONE’S PREVIOUS ACTION WAS TAKEN WITHOUT DIRECTIVE FOCUS, AND THUS, COROLLARY COLOCATION IS ARBITRARY.
“All I need do is focus my mind on the destination?”
AGREEMENT.
“What if I’ve never been to the place I want to go?”
IRRELEVANCE.
“But how do I picture the place, in that case?”
VISUAL IDEATION NOT REQUIRED. FOCUS IS ALL THAT IS REQUIRED.
“Is this how the Isir move the proo?”
INSIGNIFICANT QUERY. IMPLEMENTATION OF FOCUSED-CHANGE IS DESIRED.
I shrugged wearily. “I wish, just once, you idiots would provide me with an instruction manual.”
INAPPOSITE. IMPLEMENTATION OF—
“Yeah, yeah. Can it, Bikkir.” I decided to start with something easy. Near our house in New York, there was a tract of land the locals called “The Thousand Acre Swamp,” despite the fact that except for a small bog, a perfectly good forest made up most of the thousand acres. I fixed the image of the thickest, darkest part of that forest in my mind and twisted the hook. The psychic tremor rumbled through me again, and again, the proo looked unchanged, other than another one of those shifts in hue.
SATISFACTORY.
“You Great Old Ones are a laugh a minute,” I muttered.
GREAT OLD ONES?
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been calling you. It comes from a writer on my klith—”
IRRELEVANT. GREAT OLD ONES. APT.
I had the distinct impression that Bikkir was laughing at me. “Is the proo where I pictured?”
TERMINOUS AD QUEM.
“You understand that’s not actually an answer, right?” I asked, but Bikkir had already turned and was undulating away from the entrance to the proo.
“Well?” asked Jane. “Do I have to figure out a way to kill the damn thing or is everything okay?”
“Better than okay. I think Bikkir taught me how to control the preer.”
“You mean you might finally serve a purpose,” said Jane with a smile.
“Might as well ask if a bee makes honey. Honey.”
“Don’t try to be sweet.”
“Boo,” said Althyof.
“So where does this thing point now?” asked Jane.
“Thousand Acre Swamp.”
Jane’s eyebrows twitched skyward. “Yeah?”
“At least I think so. Bikkir was a little less than forthcoming.”
Althyof grunted and rubbed his eyes. “No point wastin
g time with more chatter about how we can find out.” He lifted his hand and touched the proo.
“So…should we wait around and see if he survived?”
“In for a penny,” I said and ran the rainbow.
The air in the Thousand Acre Swamp snapped with a fall chill and my skin prickled at the change in humidity. There had been no sensation of traveling across the proo, no telltale psychic surgery performed by blind worms. Boring, really.
Althyof leaned against a tree, stroking his beard. “Well? Are we where you expected us to be?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I glanced up at the sun and pointed south. “Our house is that way.”
Althyof nodded. “Are we sightseeing or is there a purpose to coming here?”
“For one thing,” I said, patting Kunknir, “there is more ammunition here.”
“Okay.”
The others appeared, and Jane was already smiling.
Eighteen
We stood a few paces back from the woods’ edge, watching our house. Someone was inside, but by all rights, the house should have been empty. The way we’d left it…
“Who is that?” asked Jane. “She looks familiar.”
“Looks a bit like…”
“Like who?”
“It’s just a silhouette through a dark screen, but it looks a lot like you.”
“Me?” she asked.
“Yeah, a little.”
“My butt’s not that big.”
“You are perfect in every way, as I am contractually obligated to say.”
“That’s right, and you better mean it, too.”
“What do we do now? I take it that is where you’ve hidden your ammunition?” asked Althyof.
I shook my head. “No, I brought all the ammo I had at the house. That, my friend, is where I’ve hidden my truck.”
“Truck?”
“You’ll enjoy it. Prokkr would go nuts over it.”
“Take me to see it.”
Jane shook her head. “Men are all alike. Cars, cars, girls, guns, cars… We have to find out who is in our house first. We can’t walk in there like we own the place…even though we do.”
“She’s right. I’ll go around to the front and ring the bell. Maybe the bank repossessed the place and resold it.”
“You can’t go, Hank. What if someone is looking for you? For us?”
I shrugged. “We can’t send Althyof or Yowtgayrr.” All eyes turned to Krowkr.
“I’d be honored,” he said, and his eyes shone with reverence.
“No, we can’t send you, either. None of you know anything about this time, this place.”
“But Krowkr can go to the door…in a way.” I fixed him in my gaze and began the triblinkr to assume his form. As the prayteenk began, something in his slowthar caught my attention…a memory or a thought. The images were insistent…they snagged my mind and sucked me in as though I were a leaf caught in a strong wind. I glanced up at the man himself and saw horror shining in his eyes. He shook his head as if refusing the memory…
Nineteen
A blizzard raged, and still, the three young men walked on. The wind shrieked, flinging stinging ice crystals in their exposed faces. Skatlakrimr, the biggest of the three men, led the way, breaking a path through the knee-high snow. Two brothers, Owfastr and Krowkr, followed close in his footsteps, hoping the big man’s bulk would offer them respite from the biting wind.
“Skatlakrimr, we should stop. Make a fire and get warm,” said Owfastr. Beside him, his brother nodded.
Skatlakrimr shrugged without stopping. “Stop if you prefer. Make a fire if you want. I’m going on.”
“Be reasonable, Skatlakrimr. Yarl Oolfreekr will still be there after the storm.”
“Will he?” asked Skatlakrimr. “Come on. We are close. Hoos Oolfsins is just beyond that little hill.”
The “little hill” was more mountain than hill. With a sigh and a glance at his brother, Owfastr shifted his weapons to a more comfortable position and kept walking. Behind him, Krowkr grimaced and trudged on.
None of the men wore mail—not in a blizzard such as this one. Furs wrapped each man, but each held a tightly wrapped wolf skin in his pack, protected from the weather. The legend said they needed a pristine pelt for the ceremony that Skatlakrimr desired more than life itself.
The three climbed the steep hill, Skatlakrimr outpacing the other two. At the crest of the hill, he stopped and looked back at his companions. He waved them on with the impatience for which he was known.
A thick, low-hanging mist filled the valley below. Krowkr shook his head. “That mist is an evil omen,” he murmured. He sometimes spoke above a whisper, though not often, a fact which led many of the villagers to believe he was an aspect of mighty Veethar, the god of silence and vengeance. When he spoke, many of the men in the village listened to him, his young age notwithstanding.
With Skatlakrimr, however, his quiet ways didn’t count for much. The big man scoffed. “Hoos Oolfsins is where we must go. Mist or no mist. He is the last one. You know this, Krowkr.”
“Besides,” said Owfastr, “we have sacrificed to Owthidn, patron of the berserks. Yarl Oolfreekr will welcome us!”
“Somehow, I do not think so,” murmured Krowkr.
“Come, Brother, it’s only a mist,” said Owfastr.
“I sense evil on the wind.”
“It’s only the wind, you fool. And snow. And cold. And mist.” Skatlakrimr turned his back to Krowkr.
“Omens and portents should not be—”
“Owfastr, your brother is talking as a coward would. Speak sense to him. I cannot.” Skatlakrimr climbed down the hill toward the mist shrouded valley.
Krowkr shook his head but said no more.
“He didn’t mean it as an insult, Krowkr. It’s his way.” Owfastr patted his brother on the shoulder. “Let’s go get warm inside Hoos Oolfsins.”
“Yes, warm,” muttered Krowkr.
With a smile, Owfastr set off down the slope after their friend.
“Veethar, grant me strength,” Krowkr breathed. After a moment, he followed the other two down into the mist, eyes tracking ill-seeming eddies and foul-swirlings in the gray mist. “Only the wind,” he sneered. “Only the mist.” Krowkr fingered the silver wolf’s-head pendant Skatlakrimr had insisted each of them buy and wear. He slipped his thumb around to the back side of the silver disc, running the ball of his thumb across the rune he’d carved there. Veethar’s rune.
The three men left the crown of the hill behind them, slipping and sliding down the ice-ridden slope, mouths stretched in rictus grins of discomfort, ice and snow crawling inside their clothes and down into their boots. The sun teetered on the horizon, promising a cold night if the three couldn’t make it to Hoos Oolfsins before darkness fell.
A large cairn of stacked nepheline syenite rocks, each easily as big as Krowkr’s head, loomed out of the mist. The cairn stretched toward the darkening sky, marking the boundaries of Hoos Oolfsins.
Krowkr’s eyes crawled over the ancient rocks, creeping across the swirling patterns in the rock faces—patterns that all mimicked wolves: wolves fighting, wolves eating, wolves mating, wolves hunting. Krowkr slowed to a stop. “It’s not too late, Owfastr. We need not intrude on Yarl Oolfreekr’s lands. We can turn back, make camp until morning, and return home. We can—”
Owfastr cast a glance at his younger brother. “No, Krowkr. This is no time for nerves. Gird your courage, Brother. We’re almost there!”
Skatlakrimr scoffed and spat into the snow swirling at Krowkr’s feet. “Enough of this.”
“Can’t you feel it, Krowkr?” asked Owfastr. “This is our last night as mortals.”
“Perhaps,” said Krowkr, not taking his eyes off the stones that made up the cairn. It seemed—for an instant—that some of the wolves had moved. Perhaps, but probably not as you mean it, Brother, he thought.
Skatlakrimr shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Can we get out of this wind? Eh, Krowkr? Can we go sit by a
fire in the great hall of Hoos Oolfsins? Can we meet the man we came to meet and speak what we came to speak?”
Krowkr shrugged and nodded, resigning himself to what might await them at the end of their foolhardy quest. “Lead on, Skatlakrimr.”
Skatlakrimr smiled. “That’s the spirit. That’s the Krowkr I know.”
As an answer, Krowkr nodded, face set in grim lines, and pulled his furs closer around his face. He followed the other two as they made their way through the swirling snow and screeching wind. He stood behind them as Skatlakrimr drew his axe, reversed it, and pounded three times on the thick yew door of Hoos Oolfsins. Neither his brother, nor his friend, seemed to notice that the mighty Hoos Oolfsins lay in disused disorder, but Krowkr marked it and fingered the rune of Veethar again.
There was no answer to Skatlakrimr’s thumping on the door. No pretty thralls bustled to open the door, to hand them warmed mulled wine, to take their skins. Hoos Oolfsins dwelled in deliberate darkness, swathed in studied silence.
“Should we go in?” asked Owfastr.
To Krowkr, his brother sounded uneasy, maybe even outright scared. “We don’t have to,” he murmured.
“And why not?” asked Skatlakrimr. “Owthidn received our sacrifices, Yarl Oolfreekr will—”
“Who disturbs my rest?” boomed a basso voice from beyond the yew door.
Skatlakrimr stood stone still for a moment, mouth agape, a certain wildness in his eyes. He closed his mouth with a click and swallowed hard. He glanced at Owfastr and pushed the thick yew door open.
Hoos Oolfsins huddled in shadows inside and out. No fires burned in the fire pits that ran the length of the room. No karls sat at the long tables, no thralls served food or poured mead and wine. A single torch guttered from one of the posts near the center of the long hall.
“Come in, fools, and close the door,” snapped a voice out of the darkness. “I cannot die, but I can feel the cold.”
Skatlakrimr’s throat spasmed as he struggled to swallow. He forced a smile on his lips and strode into the room, shoulders thrown back, axe held in his fist, but without strength.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 113