Blood of the Isir Omnibus Read online

  Meuhlnir turned to face me, his expression grave. “Ultimately, to destroy you—either by getting you to become a disciple or by breaking you, mind and spirit.”

  “What happened to the others? Did they become disciples?”

  Meuhlnir scowled into the fire.

  “Are my neighbors his disciples now?”

  Meuhlnir scoffed. “It’s doubtful. Most likely they have become the Midnight Queen’s courtiers. That Black Bitch collects and twists the hearts of the weak-willed like offal collects flies.”

  “Tutor is this Midnight Queen?”

  “Without doubt,” said Meuhlnir with a twist to his mouth. “She allows the Briethralak Oolfur to operate with impunity in the land of her exile. She encourages such depravity.”

  “And she is one of these…what did you call it… She’s a vefari?” I asked.

  Meuhlnir nodded, eyes downcast. “Yes. A very powerful one.”

  “You said ‘in the land of her exile.’ Where is that?”

  Meuhlnir sighed. “Far, far to the north across the Tempest Sea. She was exiled to the island nation of Fankelsi when she was disposed of her empire.”

  “But she is one woman, how can—”

  “Don’t be foolish. The Midnight Queen is a woman of vast power and enormous will. She has been behind the rise and fall of nations, peoples, even empires.”

  “The woman I met was not very old.”

  Meuhlnir laughed and patted me on the arm. “Looks can be deceiving, Hank. At any rate, that is enough talk about these matters for now. You must be starved and exhausted beyond compare. Are you warm enough yet?”

  I leaned back in the chair and nodded. My eyelids felt like they weighed about ten thousand pounds, and it was a struggle not to nod off.

  “Are you in a great deal of pain?”

  I started to nod, but then it struck me. I had a severe case of muscle aches, but for once, my joints seemed content to let me be. “No,” I said, surprised. “I feel okay. Tired, but okay.”

  “Good,” he said, tipping me a wink. He had a twinkle in his eye and wore a knowing smile as he stood up. “Let me invite you to dine in my hall.”

  “Food sounds great,” I said. I didn’t know if I could trust him, but what other options were there?

  He started to walk away and then came back. He lifted my hand from my lap and put it on the wide arm of the overstuffed chair. “Here is more mead,” he said slipping a warm mug into my hand. “In case you are thirsty.”

  I tried to nod, but lethargy overcame me. I didn’t intend to fall asleep. I just wanted to rest a few minutes—quiet time with my eyes closed.

  Meuhlnir woke me with a firm squeeze on the shoulder. “Time to eat, Hank,” he said. “We’ve quite a feast laid out before us.”

  I opened my eyes wide and shook my head, trying to shake off the fatigue that had set on me like a pack of wolves. “How long was I out?”

  “Not long,” he said. “A few minutes.”

  I’d slept longer than that. I had that head-stuffed-with-cotton feeling I always got when I napped too long.

  He watched me as I pushed myself to my feet. “Much pain?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth to say what I always said—"I’m fine”—which was usually a lie. “I still feel fine,” I said, surprised. “I’m not even stiff.”

  Meuhlnir broke into a sunny smile, his wrinkled and cracked face scrunching up with good cheer. “Good. I am pleased.”

  He led me toward the hall opposite the fireplace. “The great hall is just through here,” he said.

  We walked in a companionable silence. I was trying to remember the last time I’d felt so normal, and not having much success.

  At the end of the short hallway, was a room that looked more like it should be in some Viking long house than the quaint little woodsy cabin. Thick wooden pillars lined the sides of the hall, the space between them obscured with thick blue curtains with a gold brocade pattern. There was a long fire pit down the center of the rectangular room and a fire blazing in it. To each side of the fire pit stood two long tables with benches on either side. The benches were padded with thick animal skins. Opposite the entrance was a dais on which stood a third table, much shorter than the other two but made of the same dark wood. Two straight backed wooden chairs—more like thrones, really—sat between the wall and the table, so that people seated at that table would look out and down at anyone seated at the long tables. The roaring fire lit most of the room, but the light was supplemented by candles burning in large chandeliers made from antlers. Three such chandeliers hung from the rafters over each of the long tables.

  Meuhlnir beamed at me as he held out a hand toward the raised dais. “You are an honored guest in my home, Hank. Please sit at my table.”

  I nodded, not sure what else to do, walked to the table, and pulled back one of the heavy chairs.

  “You won’t see much of this anymore,” said Meuhlnir with a melancholy tone, his left hand sweeping toward the large hall. “Few follow the old ways these days.”

  “It’s majestic,” I said.

  He grunted. “You should see it when it is full. Women serving full tables; men shouting and laughing; the mead flowing like water.” He shook his head. “No matter,” he said and clapped his hands.

  Two women came into the room from behind one of the curtains on the left. The first carried a large stoneware pitcher balanced on her hip, and two matching mugs in her other hand. The second carried an oblong platter with a large, roasted fowl arrayed in its center. They put the food and drink in the middle of the table in front of us and left the room the same way they came in.

  “In the old days, we would have butchered a lamb or an elk, and roasted the meat in the fire below,” said Meuhlnir. “Of course, we would have had to feed many more men with huge appetites.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I feel like I could eat an entire elk by myself.”

  “Good,” said Meuhlnir with a chuckle. “Although, I don’t think you know the size that elk can grow to on this klith. Here, they can be two or two-and-half strides at the shoulder—as tall as you!”

  “I don’t think you know the size of my hunger,” I said with a smile.

  Meuhlnir laughed again and took a long pull from his stone mug. The two women were back, each with a platter. One of the platters had bread, honey, and slices of salted fish. The other platter was full of steaming pork. This time the women stood there, looking at Meuhlnir.

  “Hank Jensen, meet my two wives. The one on the left is Sif, and the one on the right is Yowrnsaxa.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  They nodded back to me, and Yowrnsaxa tipped me a wink.

  He turned a critical eye on the feast before us and grunted. Both women curtsied, and one of them said something that sounded a touch disrespectful in a sing-song tongue. Meuhlnir smiled at them both and then waved them away.

  “Rituals,” murmured Meuhlnir. He nodded in the direction the women had come from and disappeared back to. “Those two still appreciate the old ways. Then again, they remember a time when the old ways were not old.” He reached out and pulled a leg off the roasted fowl. “They are wonderful wives.”

  It was larger than most of the turkeys I’d seen back home and smelled somewhat gamey. I grabbed the other leg and ripped it off. The meat was succulent and juicy. It tasted a little like turkey but was obviously some kind of game bird. “It’s delicious,” I said. “What kind of bird?”

  “Mmm,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “These are rare these days, but a flock still migrates to the lake you landed on. They are Svart Mollies.”

  “They are Tasty Mollies, if you ask me,” I said.

  Meuhlnir chuckled. “Yowrnsaxa and Sif will be pleased to hear that. Try the fish—also from the lake.” He grabbed a slice of the salted fish and shoved it whole into his mouth.

  We ate in silence for a while. The food was excellent—one of the best meals of my life, and not just because I was practi
cally starving. Somehow, we drained that large pitcher of mead, but I didn’t feel the least bit drunk.

  After the initial eating frenzy subsided, Meuhlnir glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “To be honest, I did underestimate the size of your hunger,” he said with a teasing smile.

  “Most people do,” I said. “I have Viking blood, after all.”

  He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.

  I flinched, expecting the pain to come rolling in. It was a common gesture, but almost any touch to my shoulders and upper back usually brought on a fit of agony. This time, however, it never came. Maybe I was drunker than I felt.

  Meuhlnir was looking at me wearing a small smile at the edges of his mouth. “You won’t feel those aches and pains while you are in my house,” he said as if he could read my mind.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m used to them by now.”

  “You misunderstood. I mean that you won’t feel the Dark Bitch’s curse under my roof. I won’t allow it.”

  I put down my mug without taking the drink I had intended to take and turned in my chair so that I faced him.

  “What’s more,” he said, his old, rheumy eyes fierce, “It is possible that I can teach you how to block her curse for a limited time as well.”

  I didn’t know quite what to think but figured I might as well give it a shot. After all, I tried everything the doctors wanted me to try, and none of that worked very well. “There won’t be a high bar for success given the things I tried back home.”

  He nodded. “This klith was once like yours. My ancestors believed in science to the exclusion of everything else. They were arrogant and superior, rejecting anything not measurable by their technology. They didn’t see the contradiction in that. Their folly almost destroyed this world,” he said. “They wanted to know everything. It wasn’t enough to see that something worked, they had to know why.”

  I shrugged. “I’m a simple man. If it works, I’m in.”

  Meuhlnir laughed. “Even so, your science tells you that you are sick, no? But they can’t tell you why you are sick or how to get better?”

  I nodded.

  He nodded back. “I have told you why you are ‘sick.’ You’ve been cursed, and you won’t get better until that curse is broken or lifted.”

  I shrugged again. “There’s an expression we use back home. It goes like this: put your money where your mouth is.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that one.” Meuhlnir scratched his bearded chin.

  “Okay, how’s this one: the proof is in the pudding.”

  Meuhlnir looked perplexed. “Why would you store something in pudding? Unless that word doesn’t mean what it used to? A kind of sausage?”

  I shook my head and chuckled. “Not sausage anymore, it’s a sweet dessert. But its use is figurative anyway. I think it came from an older expression. Something like: the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.”

  Meuhlnir eyes lit up. He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder again. “We say something similar: Actions, not words, are a testament to any man’s mettle.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. To tell you the truth, though, I’m sort of confused by this Queen What’s-her-name. Speaking of which, what is her name, anyway?”

  Meuhlnir sobered and bunched his eyebrows. “People here don’t say her name much. Quite a superstition has grown up around the Dark Queen.

  “She was once named Suel. Her empire, which spanned this entire continent and part of the one to the north of the equator, was called Suelhaym—Suel’s home.”

  “I assume, since you said ‘once,’ that her name has changed?”

  Meuhlnir nodded. “Names here can be dangerous. A powerful vefari knows when you use their name. Or can know if they want to.”

  “I see.” I looked down at the top of the table. “So,” I said, “you know when someone speaks your name?”

  “Oh yes. Even when people on your klith use it incorrectly.”

  I looked up, surprised. “People back home use your name? I don’t think I’ve heard it before.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking away. “There was a time in the past when it was considered great sport to…influence the developing peoples on your klith. Some of us came to be known by your ancestors.” He glanced at me and then looked away again. “It is something most of us came to regret.”

  “So, you came to my klith and influenced ‘developing people?’ And somehow, because of that, people in my world still use your name?”

  “Incorrectly,” he said.

  “What ‘developing people’ exist in my world?” I demanded.

  “Truly, this is a topic for a different time.”

  He seemed embarrassed, but it didn’t stop me from pressing him. “Meuhlnir…I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”

  “They say ‘ma-jol-ner.’ As I said, it is used incorrectly.”

  “Mjolnir? Thor’s hammer? Are you trying to tell me your people influenced the Vikings?”

  He waved his hand out at the feasting hall. He wouldn’t meet my eye. “I did not copy the architecture of the Vikings for my feasting hall. They copied ours, just as they adopted our language and changed it to suit themselves.”

  “But that was over a thousand years ago.”

  He nodded, still looking at his lap. “A bit longer than that, actually. We thought it was great fun, and who can say if it was detrimental to your world.”

  “You said ‘we.’”

  He looked up at me and searched my face. “Yes,” he murmured, “my brothers and I, Suel, others.” He shrugged.

  I shook my head. “You must be quite old, indeed.”

  “One of the few benefits of our technocratic past.”

  His skin sagged under his jaw. His hair was white and thin. His fingers were gnarled and had thick joints. “Just how old are you?”

  “A man’s age isn’t as important on this klith as it is on yours.”

  “Meuhlnir, why is your name the same as the name of Thor’s hammer?”

  He chuckled, and some of the tension drained out of the room. “I did say most people used my name incorrectly.”

  “I thought you meant they mispronounced it.”

  “That too,” he said with a grin splitting his face.

  “How did your name come to be associated with Thor’s hammer?”

  “The short version is that my brother often called me ‘pror’—which means brother—when we spoke. The natives misheard what he was saying and came to think of me as Tor. I often carried my warhammer into battle—it has my name inscribed on the head of the hammer. Well, my brother also often explained the blackened craters left by the result of my fondness for lightning as the work of Meuhlnir, which the Vikings took to be the name of my warhammer because of the inscription.”

  “Are you telling me that you are Thor? The God of Thunder? That you cast lightning bolts?”

  Meuhlnir grinned. “That is how the Vikings thought of me. I used to call down lightning at the slightest provocation.” He chuckled. “My wives will say I still do, truth be told.”

  I scoffed. “More magic?” I shook my head. “This is all getting a little bit…”

  “I will show you later. Until then, can you withhold judgement?”

  “And is your brother also a god in the old Norse pantheon?”

  Meuhlnir sobered and pursed his lips. “Yes, all three of them, though only one still lives.”

  “Which one?” I asked, wracking my brain for the names of Thor’s brothers. “Baldur?”

  Meuhlnir shook his head. “No, not Paltr.” His face filled with an old sadness. “Paltr no longer lives.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, ducking my head. “Um, Vidar then?”

  “No,” said Meuhlnir. “Veethar is not my brother, though he is a friend of mine and we often visited Mithgarthr together.” He scratched his beard. “They thought we were brothers? I suppose we did look alike, though I am the prettier of the two.”

  “Mithgarthr? Midgard? I
s that what you mean?”

  “I said it correctly,” he said with a hint of reproach.

  “I read about Norwegian mythology as a teenager, but I can’t remember the names of Thor’s other brothers.”

  “It is no matter,” he said. “It is evident that this mythology is based on our visits to your klith. The Dark Queen often visited, as did Vowli…” Meuhlnir shook his head as if it hurt. “I haven’t thought of that evil bastard in years. He was one of my brother’s first disciples after… or vice versa…”

  “So, it’s not Vowli.”

  “Vowli is not a brother. We knew him at court—”

  It hit me then, and I shoved the chair away from the table and stood up. “Loki?” Anger and rage seemed to flow through my veins without the need of blood. My fists were clenched tightly, for once not causing me pain.

  “Luka,” whispered Meuhlnir. “You said his name in your tale.”

  “I don’t care how it’s pronounced! Are you telling me you are Chris Hatton’s brother?”

  “Yes,” he breathed, head down. “My brother’s name is Luka. We haven’t spoken in many, many long years.” He hadn’t moved. He sat there looking at the table while I towered over him, shaking with rage.

  “Did you have something to do with—”

  “No! Hank, I told you, I came to regret… I took a different path from my brother.”

  “And Luka is a…”

  “Oolfur. Yes. He was known as Loki and eventually as Fenrir the Wolf to the Vikings. My brother founded Briethralak Oolfur—the brotherhood of the wolf—on this klith and with the Vikings on your klith. His actions were…” Meuhlnir grimaced. “The Midnight Queen, Vowli, and my brother broke the Ayn Loug to gain vast amounts of power—power over life itself. This was their downfall. I am sworn…”

  I suddenly felt very tired, too tired to stand. I sank back into the chair feeling a thousand years old. “Sworn to what?”

  Meuhlnir turned to face me. “Hank, there are things I should tell you—things that can’t be rushed like this. I needed to decide—”

  “What?” I sneered. “You needed to determine if I was trustworthy? You needed to decide if you should continue to lie to me?”

  “I never lied to you, Hank,” said Meuhlnir. “Maybe, I…” His face fell, and he couldn’t meet my gaze. “Hank, I… I couldn’t risk helping you get to him if…”