The Codex Lacrimae (32 page)

Fatima stared at him, a fire coming into her eyes, and then she suddenly laughed. “Oh, Khalil, you must be a
very
frustrated man if you believe that.” She looked merrily at Clarinda. “What do you think of that, Clarinda?”

“I'm not even going to discuss the part about more than one wife,” Clarinda said with a smile and shook her head. “As for ‘obedience,' I think I'd make a very poor Muslim, Khalil. Thanks to my father's business, I've too much of my own money and too used to men onboard our ships doing what
I
say.” She paused, reflecting. “No, I've never been one for unquestioning obedience.”

“Obedience to what?” Alexander asked as he climbed over the boulder to join the two on the ridge.

Khalil rose to his feet, brushing the dirt off his robes with some exasperation. He reached downward to help his wife to her feet. “It seems that the entire camp has followed us this morning!”

Alex grinned. “I'm just following Clare, but everyone in the valley seems ready to go.”

The
sheik
muttered something under his breath about there being no peaceful place left on earth to be alone, and by the time he'd rerolled his rug, Fatima was already briskly making her way back down the mountain path.

Alex waited until the
sheik
clambered over the boulder and departed from sight before squatting beside Clarinda. “Good Morning, again,” he said.

“Hello, Alex,” Clarinda replied. “I appreciate the protection, but you could've stayed at the bottom of the hill. They were just coming to pray.”

“We're in the wild lands,” Alex countered. “You shouldn't go unaccompanied.”

“Khalil and Fatima certainly seem to depart from what I thought of typical Muslims.” Clarinda stretched her legs. She smiled. I can't see Fatima being part of any harem, can you?”

“No, not that one,” Alex agreed.

Clarinda looked at the landscape, frowning. “I'm not sure, but I think that Khalil might have been thinking about asking me to marry him.”

“What?”

“I'm joking,” she chuckled, enjoying a momentary return to the teasing ways of their friendship.

“Well, since you brought it up,” Alex said expansively, “in matters of marriage I hope you know that
I'd
still like the first chance at that kind of proposal.” He straightened his uniform and grinned. “I'm a hoplitarch now, you know. Advancing in the world, getting things done.”

Clarinda rolled her eyes in mock admiration, but then realized that he was speaking seriously. So much for kidding around. The tension of his attraction to her was a force that she couldn't ignore forever. She'd already told him many times that her feelings for him were strictly within the bounds of a close friendship, more akin to siblings than lovers, but he remained steadfast in his devotion.

“Alex, please — I love you as a friend, but only as a friend.”

He winced at her bluntness, watching his dreams of a life together come undone by her matter-of-fact words.

“We need to talk, Alex,” she continued, ignoring his pain. She had to tell him everything! “I've had experiences on this journey that you need to know about.”

“Sounds serious,” Alexander commented. He began tossing pebbles down the declivity. She sensed his irritation at her changing the subject from marriage, and felt as he if were preparing to leave.

“It
is
serious, but I'm not sure how much you'll believe,” Clarinda reached out and closed her hand upon his, “or forgive.”

“Forgive?”

“Let me start from the beginning.” She withdrew her hand and positioned herself more comfortably on the ground.

“How familiar are you with the Northmen?” she asked, focusing on the wakening world around them and avoiding his piercing blue eyes. As always, she could feel his need for her as an almost physical thing, and she needed to be undistracted by the effect that her own eyes seemed to have on him!

“I know enough about the Norsemen to avoid them,” Alexander replied doubtfully. “What's this about?”

“Many of the Vikings' descendants…they spread out from Normandy through the rest of Francia, and some even down into Sicily.”

“The Guiscards?”

Clarinda nodded. “And other families. Some of the Norman daughters married into Sicilian families there, and I've become aware of one family in particular – the Santinis – whom I need to talk to you about.”

“Santini...why?” Alex looked at her in exasperation. “Oh, no — come on, Clare. Don't tell me you have a crush on Paolo Santini? Is that why you sent him to Venice, so that he'd be there when you —”

“No, Alex, no.” Even after observing men for a few years now, Clarinda still couldn't believe how quick they were to jealousy. “Please, just listen to what I have to say before you judge it. I've been talking the last few days – well,
weeks
if you count the time in Hagia Sophia with Urd…” Clarinda hesitated, then continued quickly, “I've been in contact with three women from the northern countries. From Scandinavia. They call themselves the Norns.”

“Norns?” Alexander's expression was blank. “Who are they, and where are they? Except for Fatima, Genevieve, and me, I haven't seen you talking to anybody in the caravan the last few days.”

She grimaced. “Maybe in this world, but there are other worlds beyond this one. Eight other worlds, to be precise. The Norns call this place Midgard, but I've been spending most of my time —”

“Clare...Clarinda,” Alexander interrupted, “enough. This is crazy talk.”

“I thought so, too, but I've learned some things in the last couple days. The Norns are the ‘Witches of Fate,' or ‘Weavers of Destiny,' and they're three in number: Urd, whom we would call the Past, but who is better known as ‘Fate'; Verdandi, the ‘Present'; and Skuld, the ‘Future'. They're sisters who observe and guide things in the Nine Worlds from their home at Mimir's Well. That's a pool — sometimes called the Well of Urd — deep in the earth beneath Mount Glittertind where it touches a root of Yggdrassil, the World Tree.”

“What are you talking about, Clarinda?” Alex's voice grew stern in the realization that she wasn't making some kind of joke.

“I've been there, Alex!” Clarinda grabbed the man's forearm, seeking confirmation in his usually adoring eyes. “Time passes differently in the Nine Worlds. For every day we've been on this caravan trip here, I've spent a month studying there!” Clarinda knew that she was overwhelming Alex with information, but now that she'd started talking, she found that she couldn't stop herself. “And, that's not all. Verdandi — the Norn of the Present — she's using Genie's body and features to talk with me here, and sometimes Urd uses...well, she uses
your
form so that even when I'm not sleeping they can keep training me. I know it sounds impossible, Alex, but you've got to believe this: during the past two days, I've spent almost two
months
training with the Norns near Mimir's Well!”

Alexander averted his gaze, the cheeks on his face coloring in anger. “Why are you doing this, Clare? I knew that you were worried about your father, but I didn't know you were so upset. You need to stop — no one can hear you talking like this.”

“Talking like what? You're my friend, and I'm finally telling you —”

“What?” Alex yanked his arm from her. “What you're telling me is
madness
.
” He shook his head. “You're in charge of your father's fleet until you find him, and the sailors aren't going to follow you if they get wind of…,” he interrupted himself and shook his head. “It's bad enough that you make me beg for any sign of affection from you, Clarinda, but now that I've thrown it out there that I want to marry you, did you think you had to go make up some kind of craziness so that I'm not attracted to you?”

“Oh, my God,” she groaned. The man was insufferable sometimes! “You've made this about
you
,
now?” she exclaimed. “I'm going through things I can't even begin to describe, Alex — journeying through different
worlds
,
and I thought that I could count on you to listen...”

“No. Not about this. Clare, you can't go from talking about Vikings to speaking directly with witches. I just don't believe in such things. If I did, I wouldn't be much of a Christian, would I?”

“Alex, don't leave,” Clarinda grasped his arm, unwilling to endure any awkwardness between them, and she could tell that he seemed fundamentally disappointed in her. “I've really got no one else that I can talk about this with...I mean there's a squirrel, a rooster, and a couple of wolves in the Norn Grottoes, but, you're the only — what?”

He flinched and started to pull away at her words.

“Talking animals, Clare?”

“On our friendship, Alex, you've got to
listen
to me — forget about being a ‘good Chrsitian' for a moment and pretend you're hearing a strange story for the first time. Trust me, before I'm done, all of your beliefs about how the world works are going to be more challenged than you know.”

Clarinda rose to her feet again when the man didn't follow suit, unwilling to endure the awkwardness of talking up to him as he seemingly made himself ready to leave. “I'm serious, Alex. I've learned things in the Nine Worlds, even in the time since we left Caesarea. Do you remember when Kenezki wanted to sing a song,
The Lay of Volund
?”

“Clare, the dinner was only a couple days ago — of course, I remember….”

“No, not a couple of days — that banquet was a couple of months ago for me, Alex!”

She looked up at him in earnest, then took a breath to calm herself. She'd learned so much in such a short period, but she needed him to listen to her and not continue to become so…so...
distracted
by his feelings about her, by his expectations of her.

“Something felt wrong when Kenezki talked about Volund,” she said, not waiting to see if he'd comment about the difference in time between the Nine Worlds and here, “so that poem was one of the first things I researched in the Norn Grottoes. Volund was an elvish smith who got captured by King Níthoth and his Dark Queen in Norway and imprisoned at the family's island castle of Sævarstath.

“Dark Queen? Alex repeated.

She took heart. In spite of his doubtful expression, he was listening to her.

“As dark as it gets. The queen told Níthoth to hamstring Volund, to slice the muscles in his legs so the elf couldn't use his natural elven speed to blink out of sight. The maiming worked. They kept Volund in the cellar and forced him to stay at his forge, and make magical rings, swords, and jewels for the next twenty years.”

As she spoke, Clarinda's thoughts returned to the waking dream she'd briefly experienced at Evremar's banquet in Caesarea, when she'd seen Volund, the shadowed figure, and the blacksmith, Ilmarinen, in the mysterious glade. The elf and trickster had been watching Ilmarinen's hammer rise and fall, the iron mallet clanging upon an anvil as someone beyond the scope of her Sight spoke harsh words.

No, not just spoken words, Clarinda knew. These were spoken sigils of ancient power. Runes not physically etched, but orally imparted in that profane spell-casting to whatever was forming beneath the hammer strikes in showering sparks of white-hot energy.

The words splintered into her mind as she thought about them, and she faltered in her account to Alex.

“Clare?”

Dio
,
for how long had she fallen silent?

“
Sí
,
sí
—
mi dispiace
,
Alex.” She took a breath, but knew that the vision was returning. There was something crucial about that moment, and even discussing it was triggering something within her that impelled her to confront the dream's import. “The children…,” she hesitated, remembering the tortured illustrations of the sibling's fates in the tome where she'd read this story. “King Níthoth and his queen had three children, two sons and a daughter. They all mocked the crippled elf over the years whenever they'd come to watch him work in the basement forge, but always they coveted the beautiful things he made. As the decades passed, he came to hate the entire family and vowed to avenge himself on all of them.”

“I can't really blame him,” Alex said, using the clipped tones of his military voice that attracted and repelled her. “Did he ever escape?”

She nodded. “Oh,
sí
— on his own terms, and in a rather terrible way. One day the two teenage sons went downstairs and, while greedily trying to stuff as many precious gems and magical items into their purses at the elf's own invitation, Volund cut their heads off while they bent to their work!”