Anything but Ordinary (15 page)

a) Here was trouble (so what else was new?)  And …

b) What was standing awkwardly in the small honeymoon suite backing away from his enraged wife (
wife
?) was not, strictly speaking, a man. 

Tamar was swearing fluently in Greek and Arabic and backing The Director into a corner, while he was holding his hands up defensively and trying desperately to placate her. He looked terrified.  Denny was trying hard not to laugh.  It was pretty obvious to him that Tamar was not actually going to hurt the intruder, whom she clearly recognised – she would have done it by now if she were going to. Denny decided it was time to take a hand.  He rose lazily from the bed and casually interposed himself between Tamar and the interloper (phenomenal cosmic powers will make a person feel at ease in almost any situation).

He grabbed Tamar by the arms (no one else would have dared, but Denny had never been afraid of Tamar even before he had his own powers)

‘Who is he?’ he asked quite naturally.

Tamar spat furiously.  ‘νόθος,’ she said.

Denny knew what she had said (she had used this word to describe Askphrit all the time) but this remark, being no more than an insult was not sufficiently illuminating.  He tried again. ‘But who
is
he? Or rather,
what
is he?’

‘Λύκος,’ said Tamar, who seemed unable to revert to English. Denny did not know this word. It sounded like it might be another insult, but he was not sure. 

‘What was that?’ he said calmly.

Tamar took a deep breath; Denny’s calm was translating itself to her. She looked steadily at him and said clearly. ‘I said, he’s a wolf,’

Denny’s face cleared. ‘I
thought
he wasn’t human,’ he said. ‘What does he want?’

‘Ask
him
,’ Tamar said stroppily.

‘I’m asking
you
?’ 

‘I don’t know.’

‘Help,’ interposed The Director. ‘I need your help,’

‘You’ve got a nerve,’ snarled Tamar, turning on him again. 

The Director responded quite mildly. He seemed to have recovered his equilibrium quite rapidly since Denny’s intervention. ‘I suppose you could say that,’ he agreed. ‘But I was only following orders.’

‘Whose orders?’ asked Denny, before Tamar could take off at him again.

‘Why should we believe anything you say,’ she snapped at him before he could answer. ‘You’re a
wolf
.’

‘Tamar,’ said Denny warningly.

She turned on him. ‘No, she yelled. ‘You don’t know – what he did, what’s he’s done.’

‘I think I have a pretty shrewd idea,’ said Denny. ‘Kidnapping, memory modifications, imprisoning a load of people in a disused Djinn bottle.’

Tamar’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve been there?’ she asked aghast. There was no other way he could possibly have known. 

‘Looking for you,’ he affirmed. 

Tamar melted at once. ‘You did?’ I didn’t know.’

‘No, you weren’t there,’ he said. 

The Director interrupted again at this point. ‘
You
were in my facility?’ he asked in surprise. ‘How on Earth …?’

‘Shut up,’ snapped Tamar and Denny together. 

‘It took me
ages
to work it out,’ said Tamar. ‘But you must have figured it out right away. You’d have thought that I, of all people …’

‘Perhaps you felt sort of at home there, sort of familiar you know, but hard to pinpoint.’ said Denny. ‘Whereas I … I just recognised it as a horrible place that I had been in once before. I knew it as soon as I was taken inside.’ He shuddered feelingly. ‘That horrible feeling when you get sucked in – urgh.’

‘Okay, why don’t you tell us what’s going on,’ said Denny turning to The Director.

‘Oh
Denny
,’ wailed Tamar. ‘Can’t we just get rid of him? Surely this can wait until tomorrow?’

‘There is no time to waste,’ said The Director. ‘My new orders are to tell you everything. A terrible war is coming …’

At this Denny looked up alertly.’

‘If we don’t stop it …’ he shrugged helplessly as if words failed him.

‘Terrible devastation?’ said Denny. ‘The world will be swept away in the battle for dominion,’ He was quoting Leir directly.

‘Ah, nuts!’ said Tamar in comic resignation. 

‘What do
you
know about it?’ asked The Director in surprise.

But Tamar had long since ceased to be surprised by anything Denny did or said. It seemed perfectly natural to her that he knew all about it. 

‘Clearly not as much as
you
do,’ Denny told him. ‘I know the Tuatha are preparing for a war. Who is their enemy?’

‘I should start at the beginning,’ said The Director.  ‘You don’t know a good restaurant in these parts, do you? I’m starving.’

*

‘My master is Odin. You have met, I think,’ said The Director wiping barbeque sauce of his chin. He had just eaten, to Tamar’s disgust, five large plates of special ribs. 

‘Then you are Fenrir,’ she said in surprise.  ‘Why didn’t you just
say
so?’ A thought struck her.  ‘Hey, you’re even older than
I
am. Why were you acting so surprised at my age? ’

‘I didn’t remember,’ he explained.  ‘You have experienced the memory modulator. Odin used it on me also. I did not know who I really was for many years, very many years actually. Odin sent me to Earth over a millennium ago, in the form of a man. And I formed the agency in a crude shape even then, to fight the evil underbelly of the magical world in Odin’s name, but he always kept me in the dark.

‘But now, finally Odin has revealed his plans to me and returned my memories.  For, you see, now the final challenge is at hand, the day that Odin has foreseen.  Loki has escaped from Valhalla.’

‘
Loki
?’ oh no, that’s bad.’ Tamar was horrified.

‘It’s worse than you know. You have heard of the Tuatha?’

‘I should say so,’ said Denny ironically.

‘Of course, of course, you said,’ said Fenrir. ‘Well, Loki is the enemy of the Tuatha.

‘That story goes back a very long time.’ he continued. ‘Needless to say, it was Loki’s fault in the first place.’

‘No kidding,’ interjected Tamar sourly.

‘Wasn’t Loki stripped of his power by Odin?’ asked Denny.

‘Not stripped,’ said Fenrir, ‘it was more that he had it hidden from him, and … Well, he’s looking for it, here on Earth. When he finds it, he will go into battle with the Tuatha and, as you said, this world, and its people will suffer the consequences of a battle that has nothing to do with them. My master aims to stop that from happening.’

‘How exactly?’ asked Tamar, getting interested despite herself.

‘With your help,’

‘And this is where we came in,’ said Denny leaning back in his chair. 

‘Why should we?’ said Tamar. ‘After all you’ve done?’

‘Oh, come on Tam,’ said Denny chidingly. ‘Terrible devastation, innocent people caught in the crossfire, Armageddon. You know we
have
to.’

Tamar rolled her eyes.

‘I realise my master has gone about this all the wrong way,’ said Fenrir, glancing apprehensively at the ceiling as if expecting a vengeful thunderbolt from above.  ‘But he doesn’t understand humans too well you see? He understands using his power to achieve what he wants. He does not
ask
for help, he gives orders, he manipulates. But he means well.’

‘You mean he’s proud and arrogant and … All right, all right.’ Tamar held up her hands in disgust. ‘I suppose he
does
mean well.’

‘Would we be any better than he is, if we refused to help just because he hurt our pride?’ asked Denny softly.  ‘You’re better than that Tamar.’

‘No,
you’re
better than that,’ she said. ‘I just know that you’re usually right about these things. Okay then, what do we have to do?’

‘Stop Loki from finding his power.’

‘Sounds easy.’

‘It will not be.  If it were easy, we wouldn’t need
you
.’

This was gratifying to hear, although Tamar would never admit it. 

‘Well,’ said Denny. ‘We need some more facts. Like what is Loki’s power? Where is he likely to be looking for it? We know the Tuatha are inhabiting powerful agents of magic – do you know who they are? How did Loki escape from Valhalla in the first place? – Although I don’t suppose that really matters now.’

‘I think that might have been
my
fault,’ said Tamar hesitantly.

‘You are correct,’ said Fenrir. ‘It was you who opened Valhalla and allowed Loki to escape. However,
fault
is too strong a word. This was foreseen from the beginning. You were merely the instrument of fate so to speak.’ 

‘There you are,’ said Denny showing no surprise at this revelation (it was all too familiar). ‘No one’s blaming you.’

‘I’m always doing things like that though,’ said Tamar. ‘You’d think I’d learn.’

‘You couldn’t have known,’ said Denny. ‘And it’s not important now anyway. What’s important is fixing it. So …?’ he looked at Fenrir. 

‘Loki’s power resides in a pool in a hidden place. Loki lost his powers in the water when Odin and Thor caught him hiding there, disguised as a fish, after he killed Balder. They used his own fishing net to catch him – there’s irony for you.’  He snorted with laughter.

 ‘Like the Holy Grail, if Loki drinks from the water with the cup of Odin (which Loki has stolen) then his power will return (unfortunately) tenfold.’

‘
Tenfold
?’ Tamar snapped. ‘Whose bright idea was that?’

Fenrir shrugged. ‘You can’t argue with mythology,’ he said. ‘
You
should know
that
.’

Tamar shrugged. ‘In my experience, you can argue with just about anything,’ she said.

‘But Loki
doesn’t
have any power at the moment?’ asked Denny.

‘Shape shifting,’ said Fenrir. ‘That’s all.’

‘Shape shifting?’

‘Loki can be either a man or a woman,’ explained Tamar. ‘But he – or she, I suppose – always looks pretty much the same.
I’ll
recognise him all right.’

‘This is wild,’ said Denny. ‘Anything else?’

‘We believe he has Fulk with him,’ said Fenrir. ‘But he’s my problem.’

‘Fulk?’

‘Loki’s wolf.’ said Tamar. ‘Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.’

‘
I
will deal with Fulk.’ said Fenrir. ‘Wolf to wolf.’

And before Denny’s vision there rose the image of two snarling wolves fighting to the death. 

‘So where is this hidden pool?’ asked Denny. ‘Surely all we have to do is get there first and grab Loki before he uses Odin’s cup.’

Fenrir shook his head. ‘There’s the rub, unfortunately,’ he said. ‘It isn’t in a
place
as such. Only Loki himself can find it – because it’s his power and he will be drawn to it. As for us …’

‘We need to find Loki,’ supplied Tamar. ‘Loki will lead us to the pool.’

‘What do you mean, it isn’t in a
place
?’ asked Denny the literal.

‘He means it’s like Hank’s forest or something. Not in the world, but still accessible from the world. They’ll be an entrance somewhere, but we’ll never find it.’

‘Doesn’t Odin know where the entrance is?’

‘Why should he?’ asked Fenrir. ‘They aren’t
his
powers.’

‘But Loki knows where he’s going presumably.’ said Tamar.

‘Yes, but he’ll have to travel the mortal way, and therein lies our only hope.’

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Denny. ‘How can Odin not know where he put Loki’s powers?’

‘It’s
mythic
,’ said Tamar. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense. Besides, I might ask you how come you never know where you left your keys.’

Denny frowned. ‘It’s hardly the same,’ he said.

‘It’s exactly the same, actually,’ said Fenrir.

‘Odin can’t
remember
?’ said Denny appalled. 

‘It
has
been three thousand years,’ said Fenrir defensively.

Denny could have sworn he drew his lips back slightly into a snarl, and his hackles definitely rose a little.

‘Wait until you’ve been hanging around a few more thousand years,’ said Tamar. ‘See how your memory stands up. I know mine’s terrible.’

Denny did not believe this, but he knew a losing argument when he saw one, so he held his peace. ‘The point is,’ he resumed. ‘We don’t know where Loki is, and we don’t know where he’s going. That about sum things up?’

‘We need Jack,’ said Tamar.

Denny agreed, but he also thought – and said. ‘We’re going to need a lot more than just Jack on this one.’

* * *

The honeymoon was effectively over. Neither Tamar nor Denny were particularly surprised about this.

As Tamar said philosophically, ‘It’s always going to be something.’

No one was terribly surprised to see Tamar and Denny back in the middle of their wedding night. Hecaté made some half-hearted disapproving clucking noises, but even she accepted it, in the end, as more or less unavoidable. 

On the other hand, it was good to have Tamar back where she belonged. Tamar herself had been uncharacteristically nervous about coming home. Before the others were told about Fenrir’s revelations, she decided, she would have to do some explaining of her own. 

As it turned out, it was not as bad as she had feared. Much of what had happened was already known, mainly from Dawber. And her friends had some surprising revelations of their own.  It was Cindy, in the end, and in her own inimitable way, who put into words what they all wanted to make clear.

‘Oh, God,’ she said dismissively. ‘If we all fell out every time one of us did something stupid because of a maniac taking over our brains, we’d never speak to each other again. Forgive and forget. That’s what I say.’

Tamar had already been apprised of the Tuatha situation and the probability of her own judgement having been compromised in this way, so this statement was not as unintelligible as it might otherwise have been. But she wondered at the comment coming from Cindy. She also did not miss the glance that passed between Denny and Cindy as she made this remark, but she decided, just this once, that she would never ask.