“No!” he snapped.
“I thought you’d want to be out there…searching for whoever did this.”
“After I know if she’ll live or die,” he said in a cold, vacant voice.
“Of course, Lord Luka,” said the woman.
“She will not die,” muttered the healer. “She took a heavy blow from a blunt object. She will be concussed, but she will recover.”
The panic singing in his veins scaled back a notch. “Who did this?” he snapped.
The healer shrugged, her eyes saying, “that’s your job” better than if she had voiced the thought, and Luka’s glare turned cold. He snapped his fingers at the Trohtninkar Tumuhr who’d spoken to him before, and she leapt to his side.
“Yes, Lord?”
“Your name?”
“Brigitta.”
Luka nodded curtly. “Brigitta, who keeps the queen’s calendar?”
“Owd had that privilege this month.”
“Is she here?”
Brigitta twisted and craned her neck, glancing at those present. “No, I don’t see her.”
“Find her,” he snapped. “And bring me a copy of the queen’s schedule for the day.”
“Yes, Lord,” said Brigitta with a curtsy.
Thoughts whirled around his head. Who could have done this? A spy sent by my brother? An assassin? One of our own? There were no answers, but it didn’t stop the cycle of thoughts from repeating.
The healer hummed under her breath and felt the queen’s neck. She nodded to herself, dug in her bag and withdrew a small glass vial that contained a glistening purple gel. The healer removed the vial’s stopper, and the foul stench of manure and vomit shoved its way into the close confines of the room. She dabbed her finger into the concoction and smeared it under the queen’s nose.
Suel grunted, then groaned, and his panic withdrew another step.
“That should revive her in a short time,” said the healer. “The damage from the blow is not serious, and I have woven a kaltrar to obliterate its effects within a few days. She will have a headache, and thus may be on the grumpy side for a day or two.”
Luka shook his head. “Insufficient.”
“My lord, head injuries are complex. Anything more I do comes with a risk—”
“Do I look like a man interested in excuses?” he snapped. “Or do I look like a man who might take his displeasure out on your family?”
The healer’s mouth fell open, and she bent over the queen once more.
His panic had retreated, but fury burned in its place. When he found the person or persons responsible for this treachery, their pain would be colossal.
“Lord,” called Brigitta, jostling her way through the crowd. “Lord, I have the schedule, but Owd’s room is empty! She emptied her room!”
“Owd,” he hissed, and his angry glare fell on the crowd blocking Brigitta’s passage to his side. “You there!” he shouted. “Let the woman through!”
Brigitta rushed to his side and handed him a page ripped from the queen’s schedule book. He grabbed it, his gaze already scrambling over the page.
Vuhluntr! he raged. The man had had an appointment not half-an-hour ago. Without Freya to seal the bargain, he’d demanded a considerable price in gold and gems. He’d also demanded an exemption from taxation for life.
Luka’s eyes dropped to the face of his queen, tracing lines of her cheeks, her lips, her eyes. Instead of finding comfort there, the queen’s slack features only fueled his rage. “Brigitta! Take my place here.”
“Yes, Lord Luka,” she said and knelt at his side. “I will watch over her, you have my word. No more harm will befall Queen Hel while I draw breath.”
“If it does, drawing breath will be beyond your means,” he snapped, but his mind was already on to other matters. Where would the smith hide? Was this Owd complicit in the assassination attempt? Where would they go? With my brother’s army at the gates, how could they expect to escape? He bolted upright and snapped his fingers at the guards. “Message to the gate captains! Be on watch for Vuhluntr or Owd or both!”
How would Vuhluntr try to get to my brother? Which gate? Would he risk the North Gate and the fighting there, or would he try to slip out of one of the sieged gates and beg for asylum? Luka’s eyes crawled over the throne room. “Kramr!” he shouted. “Where is the sword Kramr?” The only answers were blank looks.
He stormed from the room, pushing men and women alike to the ground in his haste. Once he was clear of the crowd, he bolted toward the smithy, but both it and the quarters assigned to Vuhluntr were bare. With a curse, he turned away and ran toward the North Gate.
Sprinting toward the gate, he saw them—Vuhluntr and a beautiful Isir who resembled Freya in some ways—standing in the shadowed mouth of an alley at the edge of the crowd of citizens who watched the battle for the gate, and wrath burned hot in his veins. He slowed and ducked into the doorway of a closed shop. “Oolfur!”
The prayteenk ripped through him, but for once, the pain of it couldn’t touch him. His gaze bored a hole straight through Vuhluntr’s face, and he longed to see agony spelled out there. I will take my time with him, he promised himself.
He whirled into the street, fifteen feet of pustulant half-man, half-wolf. The crowd of citizens reacted with awe and terror, but Luka ignored them, his gaze glued to the traitorous couple. Suel may want to dispose of the woman herself. I will disable her but leave her life intact. Vuhluntr…Vuhluntr is mine, as I promised him he would be.
He dashed toward them, his lengthened limbs and muscles consuming the ground at a titanic pace. He was almost on them when Vuhluntr glanced his way.
The first glance was quick—on Luka, then away—but his whole head snapped around after that, and his eyes widened with pure terror. Without a word to his companion, Vuhluntr lunged into the crowd. She cried out and took a step forward.
With a mental curse, Luka shifted his gaze to the woman and stretched his taloned hand low on his left side. As he brushed by her, he ripped at the hamstrings of her right leg, and she screamed as she fell to the ground.
Luka roared to clear the crowd and slammed into them without pausing, flinging those who didn’t move fast enough to the side, not caring if he killed them or not. Vuhluntr darted glances over his shoulder, and each time his gaze swept over Luka, he put on another burst of speed.
He was no match for an oolfur, and he knew it. With a panicked cry, Vuhluntr plunged up the steps to the battlements, ignoring the angry shouts of the fighting men he jostled.
Luka eschewed the stairs and leapt from the ground to the stone wall, driving his talons into the cracks between the granite blocks that made up the wall. He jumped again, and a third time, and then stood atop the battlements as Vuhluntr cleared the last few steps. With a roar, Luka dashed toward the smith, saliva already drooling from his mouth.
Vuhluntr drew the sword he’d been commissioned to forge for the queen, and it rang like a musical instrument as it cleared the top of its sheath. Brilliant white-gold light shimmered along Kramr’s surface and seemed to collect in a ball at its tip, rivalling the afternoon sun in brightness, its golden hilt reflecting both the light of the sun and its own blade, the polished steel blade emblazoned with a dragon from tip to ricasso. The beast was carved and plated with a bluish-hued metal. Vuhluntr charged away from Luka, using the sword to bash the queen’s fighters out of his way.
With a growl, Luka leapt after him, fifteen feet of wrath and bloodlust. The queen’s men recognized him and fell away, clearing a path for him. His eyes never strayed from Vuhluntr’s fleeing form, but the smith’s gaze danced everywhere, looking for an avenue of escape, a place of safety.
Vuhluntr reached the edge of the right gate, and the knot of archers firing down into the rebel troops assaulting the portal blocked his path. He spun in a full circle, his eyes snapping from place to place, but found nowhere left to run, nowhere to go.
A vicious smile contorted Luka’s lupine features.
; Vuhluntr cried out in fear and darted toward the edge of the wall, reversing Kramr and taking a two-handed grip. When he reached the lip of the wall, he didn’t slow, but neither did Vuhluntr leap; he just stepped out into the air, spinning to face Luka as he fell.
Kramr’s bright blade slashed out, tossing reflected sunlight this way and that, and slid into the giant metal hinge that supported the top of the rightmost gate. The blade sliced through the thick iron as if it were nothing more than cloth, but Vuhluntr’s fall slowed considerably.
“NO!” Luka screamed, and it was all he could do to keep himself from jumping after the smith, though to do so would mean fighting Meuhlnir’s troops single-handedly.
Suddenly, everything stopped—arrows froze in mid-flight, Vuhluntr’s descent halted, and he hung frozen, without a sound.
“What is all this?” a voice demanded.
Thirty-two
“What is all this?” asked Luka. His voice echoed away into the nothingness that surrounded us. The actors from Luka’s memory surrounded us—the queen’s men who were defending the gate, Vuhluntr hanging in midair from the sword buried into the massive iron hinge, the rebel troops ramming the gates below. “What is this?” demanded Luka. “How have you done this?”
I looked down at myself, half expecting to see the body of an oolfur, but I was myself. Luka stood beside me, and at the same time, the oolfur from Luka’s memory stood before us. “This is one of your memories,” I said.
“That much I know. How have you forced me to return to this place, this time? I do not wish to relive this day!”
“I have gained the ability to…well, I call it ‘dipping’ into a slowth and skimming the memories there.”
Luka scoffed. “And since you have this power, it fills you with the need to show it off? To abuse my mind with your new toy?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I had no idea you’d even be aware of this.”
“You planned to plunder my memories…to…to steal my thoughts?” Luka’s voice quavered at the edge of suppressed rage.
“No. This is how I tracked you. I dipped into your slowth and saw you running through the Herperty af Roostum. That’s how we followed you here.”
“And now? Are we still there—in the Herperty af Roostum? Do we still lie locked in battle?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Yowt—that is, a friend of mine mentioned that at one point while I was experimenting with this, I phased out, whatever that means.”
Luka’s eyes narrowed. “Why this particular memory?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t choose it. Sometimes, I’m swept away by a strong memory in the slowth.”
Luka shook his head. “This is an invasion of my very mind, Hank!”
Anger sang in my veins. “Yeah, must suck about a tenth as much as someone kidnapping your child, your wife. You know what having someone act against your family feels like!”
“I did what I must. Paltr, Huthr, and Meuhlnir were conspiring to—”
As he spoke the words, a…a pressure built in the back of my mind, the weight of his memory clamoring for attention. “That’s not what I mean at all! In this memory, the one we…watched, whatever. When you thought someone had harmed…her, you were livid, heartbroken.”
Luka scoffed.
“Don’t deny it! I felt it, same as you did. And speaking of your brothers, I’ve experienced your regrets, the feeling you had of having no choice!”
“Yeah? What of it?” he said, sounding petulant.
“You’re not the iceman you pretend to be. You love Hel.”
“Never claimed otherwise,” grunted Luka. “Answer me this: what do you hope to gain here? Do you hope to learn dire secrets with which to unseat the queen? A telltale weakness that will give you an advantage?”
I sighed. “No, Luka. We’ve learned how to kill you now. We killed Vowli, didn’t we? If I do nothing to change what’s coming, you will learn firsthand how easy it is for an oolfur to lose his life to the unique set of skills my companions bring to bear.”
Luka scoffed. “Talk.”
I shrugged.
“What do you want? Why not let it happen? Why drag me into my own memories?”
“I didn’t know I could drag you here. I had no intention of dragging you along. I’m trying to gain an understanding of your behavior. To—”
Luka burst out laughing, tears of mirth in his eyes. “To understand me? Oh, Hank, you do make me laugh at times.”
“Yeah, laugh it up, but keep in mind that my desire to understand you is all that is keeping you alive.”
Luka smirked and fluttered his hand. “Believe that at your peril, Hank. My time in Mithgarthr taught me things Vowli never learned. And what makes you think Vowli stayed dead?”
I shook my head. “I saw his body. You and Hel didn’t—”
“Queen Hel!” he snapped.
“She’s not my queen.”
Luka shook his head in disgust and held his hand out plaintively. “You are Isir, and Hel is the queen of the Isir.”
“Not anymore. Not since she was deposed. Not since Meuhlnir and the others banished her—” I gasped at the strength of the memory my words had evoked. Before either of us could say another word, the memory swept us away.
Thirty-three
Luka raced back toward the palace, his long stride outpacing with ease the queen’s forces falling back from the northern gates. Vuhluntr’s treachery, coupled with his cowardice, had turned the tide of the siege. Kramr’s enchanted blade had sliced through the right gate’s hinge as if it were made of paper, and that was all the opening Meuhlnir and his cronies had needed. Fear tickled his belly at the idea of open warfare in the streets of Suelhaym, but a sense of excitement burbled there, too.
He darted a look over his shoulder at the red-hot gate on the left side that was warping and buckling. The right gate hung at an angle, the top hinge sliced clean through. Luka had waved all his soldiers back, knowing the North Gate was lost the second the hinge had given way.
Karls and thralls scattered in the streets, getting out of Luka’s way, and running for cover. No one had expected the gates to fall. Luka didn’t even think the rebels had considered the gates would fall.
With a rending crash, the power of the strenkir af krafti ripped the left gate open, and the troops led by his brother poured through it. Loyalist forces reversed direction, rushing toward the gate as if by an incipient miracle they could contain the breach.
Fools! Luka thought. We’ve lost the outer city! He howled and roared at them but didn’t dare stop.
From the walls, the Isir defending the city poured power down into the street at the attackers inside the gate. The stones there hissed and cracked with it, but Meuhlnir’s forces charged, wrapped inside a shield of crackling power, and fell on the defenders with a savagery that, until that point, they had always avoided.
Isir fought Isir, cousin on cousin, brother on brother, and likewise, the karls. Blood ran in the street, hissing on the power-saturated cobbles. The sound of the fighting rang and echoed in the street, pursuing Luka like hunting dogs after a rabbit.
What sounded like the death knell of the empire chased him away from the fight. Screams of Isir dying in magical flames; the butcher-sounds of blades striking through flesh, only stopped by thick bone; Isir and karls alike begging for mercy, begging for quarter; the sound of his brother screaming battle commands and calling down lightning. Luka longed to stop, to turn and seek Meuhlnir out, but someone had to warn the queen. And perhaps they could salvage the day…a counter-strike from the palace…or a unit of oolfa hiding in the city, hammer to the anvil of the palace walls with his brother’s forces caught between. But none of that would happen unless he got back to the palace in time to organize a response.
He bounded toward the palace, hoping against hope that the queen was awake and functioning. Luka howled as he ran, raising the alarm with the oolfa who remained in the city.
&nbs
p; Racing into the palace, brushing aside the guardsmen who stood in his path, he sprinted to the throne room, and as he caught sight of the doorway, he began the prayteenk back to his human form.
He burst through the door as the change finished, sliding on bare feet. Queen Hel sat on her throne, her head in her hands. That worthless healer stood to the side, and Brigitta stood behind and to the left of the throne, holding a pitcher of mead and a mug.
“My Queen!” Luka rasped. “We must get to a proo and escape! The northern gate has fallen!”
The courtiers in the room gasped, but the queen only crossed her legs and reclined into her throne.
“Did you hear me, my Queen? They come! The rebels come!”
Hel sighed and lifted her head. Diamond tears glittered in her eyes. She shook her head.
“My Queen—”
“No, my Champion,” she said, her voice cracked, hoarse. “It is done.”
“No, my Queen! We can fall back—”
“It’s done!” she snapped. “I’m tired, my Luka. This place…” she waved her hands to encompass Suelhaym. “This place is over for me. I’ve been abandoned. Tricked. Thrown away. I hadn’t the heart to tell you sooner…”
The bitterness, he thought. Her malaise. “Who has done this, my Queen? I shall rip their organs out for your dinner. I shall—”
“My Champion,” she breathed, and though a smile creased her face, tears fell from her eyes to make tracks down her cheeks. “I will protect you in what’s coming, but I don’t have the heart to continue the fight. We’ve lost the war. Forces have conspired against me, betrayed my trust, broken their promises…” She shook her head. “No more.” Her voice was almost inaudible, but Luka heard the terrible sadness in it, the queen’s complete lack of hope.
“I don’t understand, my Queen. Who has betrayed you? Vuhluntr? I will catch up to him and—”
“No. No one as inconsequential as the smith.”
“Then who?”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me, dear one. But if we continue this war, it will lead only to a bitter defeat for everyone. Everyone everywhere. A dark power will reign over the universe, and it cares nothing for us. We were lied to, my Champion.”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 127