C. Dale Brittain (62 page)

Eirik stopped abruptly. “Here are the men for whom we just made the offerings,” he said in a half-choked whisper.
 
Roric too recognized them.
 
He forced himself to look closely at the men whom he and Valmar had killed, resisting the urge to stumble on unlooking and the feeling that there was no use any more in doing anything.
 
These men bore their death wounds but they were more solid than any of the others they had passed.

“Eirik!” one croaked.

The renegade king began walking rapidly.
 
“Are they less misty because they’ve been dead such a short time,” Roric asked himself aloud, trying to find the question interesting, “or because of the songs sung for them?”

“The songs, of course,” growled Eirik.
 
He seemed either more excited than Roric to be here in Hel—or more frightened.
 
“Don’t you know that the dead never truly fade away as long as their songs and stories are remembered?
 
Those others, those that were almost gone—
 
None must have remembered them.”

“Why do they keep looking at us like that?” Roric muttered.

“Because we are alive,” said Eirik shortly.
 
“Keep walking.
 
Weren’t you ever taught not to go near a burial mound at night?
 
The dead, even the dead who live on in story, want life.
 
Anyone alive who lingers too long near them, or near the passage that leads from every burial mound down to Hel, will have the life drained out of him.”

Roric reminded himself that he had sought this death deliberately, the one way out of dishonor, even though he realized now there was no honor here.
 
The glory and praise of the songs, which might keep the dead more solid for a little while more, was still only glory in lands under the sun.

Had he indeed saved the lords of voima?
 
Death should be gone again from their realms, but they might still be so weak from their fight with the dragon that neither Wanderers nor Hearthkeepers would be able to rule earth and sky—in which case both their realm and mortal realms would end, either by slow decay or sudden cataclysm.
 
And he knew in the coldness of his heart that even if one or the other of the forces of voima rallied, fate could not ordain their unending power.
 
Eirik was right that there was only one force to whom all came in the end.

As they walked the silence of the halls seemed to alter, just the tiniest amount, but there began to be for the first time sounds as though voices were shouting a very long distance away.
 
It was heard in no passage when they entered, but it built behind them as though they themselves were giving voice to the dead.
 
Roric, experimenting to keep the sense of futility away, discovered that if he held his charm high the effect was intensified.

They kept on walking.
 
He was intensely aware of the blood coursing through him, of the air entering and leaving his body with every breath, and it seemed almost obscene among these shadowy wights.
 
They felt it too, for their eyes kept turning to them, and several spoke Eirik’s name clearly, rising on their elbows for a better look, as well as mumbling behind them when they had passed.
 
At one point the renegade king reached for his sword, but he was carrying a singing sword, and at the sound of the first wild and sweet notes the dead began to sit up.
 
Eirik slammed the blade back in the sheath and pushed Roric to greater speed.

They turned a corner and saw a gray figure whose body was a strange mix of solidity and mistiness.
 
His bloody chest, punctured as though by spears or dragon teeth, was vividly clear, but his face beneath a misty crown was almost invisible.
 
His sword too was clear, a long triangular blade and a hilt set with jewels.

“This must be a king out of legend,” said Roric in wonder.

“King Thaar, I think,” said Eirik in an undertone, “who killed the dragon many generations ago up in my kingdom—the dragon who first built up the hoard by the sea.
 
Look at his wounds—they’re just like in the stories.
 
And this must be the sword Irontooth.”

“Then even someone remembered in the stories,” said Roric slowly, “will not stay solid here forever, because only a few aspects of his life will be remembered.”

“If he’s got no face at least he can’t try to talk to us,” said Eirik grimly.

They could have walked for an hour or for a week.
 
Here Roric felt no weariness, no hunger, even though still alive.
 
The cycles of waking and sleeping, eating and drinking, which ruled mortal lands had no existence here.
 
He almost decided that these passages would never end, that they would wander past rows of the dead until earth and sky themselves passed away.

He kept looking around as they walked until he realized that he was looking for Karin and Valmar.
 
If he did not find them it should mean they still lived and were safely home in Hadros’s court.
 
Karin they would forgive quickly enough when it was clear that he himself was gone.

But if he stayed here she would arrive some day, gray like all these people, growing more misty as her grandchildren slowly forgot her, at best able to croak his name in recognition.
 
He summoned again the vision of her smile beneath a brilliant sky.
 
He had intended to die for her, his sister, his lover, his life.
 
But being here, surrounded by the dead and not dead himself, he more than anything wanted her with him—or rather to be back under the sun with her.

Roric stopped so abruptly that Eirik, walking behind, slammed into him with a solidity of flesh and bone alien to these halls.
 
Before them lay Gizor One-hand.

He was handless even in death.
 
“Roric,” he said through lips that did not move.
 
“Roric,” and started slowly to rise.
 
No one else among the dead, not even those for whom Eirik had sung the songs, had tried to stand up.

Eirik was gibbering at his shoulder.
 
“I know that man.
 
I cut off his hand, years ago.”

“And I killed him.”

“
You
are not dead,” said Gizor, half crouching now.
 
“You have the breath and blood of life in you.”

“And do you plan to take them from me, wight?” asked Roric.
 
He hooked his thumbs into his belt, and his voice echoed and reechoed down the silent passages.

“Yes, of course he does!” blurted Eirik behind him.

“No,” said Gizor.
 
“No.”
 
His eyes, gray and hungry, flitted over them.
 
“A wight could not draw the life from a man before he reached his fated end.”
 
His voice, the only voice that had spoken clearly more than a word or two, became so faint it was almost intelligible as he straightened up.
 
“But it is good to see, No-man’s son, that there is still life beneath the sun.”

The two mortals backed away warily.
 
“You tried to frighten me with a children’s tale,” said Roric to the outlaw king, in an undertone and between his teeth.
 
“There has never before been a living mortal here.
 
Why should the dead be ready to attack the first ones they see?
 
And I have never believed that story about burial mounds.
 
They are places of glory, where we honor the dead.
 
But why,” with a sudden thought, “did Gizor call me No-man’s son?
 
Why did he not call me by my father’s name?”

“Did you think the dead knew anything, Slut’s-get?” replied Eirik, but the insult sounded hollow, especially in a whisper.
 
“Why should they in dying gain any knowledge they did not have in life?”

Gizor was standing now, still eyeing them with dead gray eyes.
 
“You are not planning to avenge yourself on me here in Hel?” Roric asked boldly.
 
He reached over and tugged at the sword at Eirik’s belt, and again a few notes of the songs of voima rang out before Eirik smacked his hand away.

Seeming to become more solid at that sound, Gizor swayed on his feet.
 
“There is no vengeance in Hel,” he said slowly and expressionlessly, “any more than there is honor or voima.
 
But you defeated me using what I taught you myself.
 
My memory and honor live with you and in the only place they
can
live, in mortal realms.”

Roric nodded gravely, then turned to walk on.
 
But there was a faint rustling behind him.
 
He looked back.
 
The wight was following them.

“Faster,” hissed Eirik.
 
“He won’t keep up.”
 
But Gizor did keep up, staying about ten feet back.
 
The murmuring of the awakened voices of the dead grew slowly louder, and when Roric, against his will, glanced back again he saw that Gizor had been joined by other shadowy shapes.

He found himself walking faster and faster and glanced at Eirik to see how he was taking it.
 
But the outlaw king now looked thoughtful and was muttering to himself.
 
“So they do not attack the living.
 
Perhaps a living man could become their leader.”

Roric stopped and turned around.
 
“Why are you following us?”

“I thought you might need a guide,” croaked Gizor.

“And where will you guide us?” asked Roric.
 
“As you must know,” making himself chuckle, “Hel has to be vaster than the earth itself to hold all those who have ever died, and living men would not want to wander its halls forever!”

“I can take you to the lords of death,” said Gizor expressionlessly.

“So the dead will guide the living if asked,” muttered Eirik as if in calculation.

“Then take us there!” cried Roric.
 
He had already spoken once to Death, but it was either find something different among these endless halls or else lie down himself until he too faded away.

Gizor went before them, shuffling, and more and more of the dead rose as they passed and closed ranks behind them, continuing that faint mutter that had become like a conversation where one could not quite catch the words.

Again they walked through halls that all seemed the same, glowing with the same faint light, for a distance and a time that seemed to stretch out endlessly.
 
But it was not unchanging now, for as living men passed through more of the halls of Hel more of the dead broke from their apathy to follow them.
 
And then they turned a corner and saw a gigantic chamber before them.

Its ceiling was high, its spaces vast.
 
It was wide enough that in the center spread a sunless sea, and on the shore stood a dark tower, its windows not squares of light but of even deeper darkness.

Gizor and the rest of the dead fell back as Roric and Eirik continued warily forward.
 
As they approached the tower they could see within its darkness a mist just a little denser than mist should be.
 
Shining in it were two points of light like coals almost burned out.

Eirik dropped to his knees.
 
“I serve you, lord,” he said as though the words were wrenched from him.
 
“I have always sent men to you, and now I come myself.”

“With a little help from me,” muttered Roric.

Faint and cold behind them, from all the passages they had traversed, came the muttering of the dead who had seen the living walk by.
 
Gizor One-hand and the other shadowy shapes massed together.
 
“You come here alive in blood and breath,” said the voice from the mist, colder than any of the voices of the dead.
 
“You have brought life to Hel where life has never been.”

When Eirik did not answer, Roric said to the glowing eyes, “I warned you what would happen if you tried to take over the realms of voima.
 
For we are more than living mortals—we are mortals who have walked where only the immortals go.”

“You are the only power that all must obey in the end,” Eirik was still murmuring.

Roric ignored him.
 
He stood with a hand on his hip, and a line from an old story flashed through his mind, “The hero faced down the lords of death themselves.”
 
But he was not a hero, and in spite of his own bold words the one to whom all came in the end could never be faced down.

“The dead should fade, forgotten.”
 
Again the voice in the coils of mist sounded uncertain.
 
“If they did not, Hel itself would not hold them all.”

“And I have started to waken them?” said Roric.
 
“And does
this
”—he held high his charm—“bring a hint of voima even to the dusty halls of death?
 
Shall I test more fully the effects of the Wanderers’ singing sword?”