The Codex Lacrimae (41 page)

Liquid hands clutched his ankles and began to drag him toward the watery horde.

He again hacked downward with the mattock, severing the wrists of all those gripping him. More screams erupted from the nearing
strömkarlen
as he stumbled onto shore.

The girl was next to him, her quarterstaff raised and warm hand lightly touching the underside of his arm.

“We've to get out of here,” she urged as they retreated from the
bellowing creatures.

“
D'accordo
,
” Aurelius agreed. “By the way, you were correct about the water.”

“You
think
?” The girl replied sarcastically. “Let's back away a bit further, and then I'll get us over to that tree where the prisoner is.”

“How?” Aurelius asked. “I was going to use those boulders, but we can't get near them.”

The
strömkarlen
and
nixies
were seemingly everywhere in the river, but none left the boundary of the bank to pursue the young people. Both Aurelius and Clarinda halted at the entrance to the glade, where they could observe the frustrated water creatures without risking even a splash from them.

Then the
nixies
moved to the front, singing in harmonies that soothed and completely overwhelmed the storm-watered crashing of their male brethren. The music was that of the sirens, ancient and melodic, and immediately affecting Aurelius in its promise of returning him to times and lands long thought lost. Hypnotized, he began moving forward, taking a tentative step toward the group of
nixies
beckoning to him — he watched, amazed, as the face of one of the elementals took the face of his younger sister, Constanzia, who he'd last seen five summers ago when he set sail for the Levant.

She's...what? Thirteen now? Is this what little Constanzia looks like these days?

The girl beside him slapped him hard in the face.

Stung, Aurelius turned from the
nixies
,
partly angry that his view of the present-day Constanzia melted away as the sprite dove back into the crowded river, but mostly relieved that his newfound companion had saved him from stepping forward any farther.

“They're water elementals,” Clarinda shouted, “like sirens of the deep! If you listen to them too long, you'll walk into the water and drown!”

There was still music in the air, but it changed dramatically.

They heard the strains of a fiddle whose chords pierced all the singing and roaring of the water elementals.

At the new sound, some of the
strömkarlen
collapsed into the river, enabling Aurelius to see the opposite bank. An obese, redheaded man stood there, vigorously playing a fiddle. The instrument's discordant and sinister music drifted across the river in a hauntingly beautiful melody, compelling the young Hospitaller and Norn to approach.

“Evremar of Choques?” the girl exclaimed, her voice hoarse with rage. “What are
you
doing here?”

The fiddler completed a measure and then grinned at Aurelius's companion.

“Ah, Clarinda Trevisan! So good to see you again, my dear.” He pursed his lips together, obviously enjoying the moment. “In these lands, though, I'm afraid it's not ‘Evermar,' but ‘Old Nick.'”

Aurelius glanced at her, surprised. “Clarinda? I've heard that name before — we've met somewhere!”

“Only in dreams,” she replied cryptically, and then reached beneath her tunic to clasp a necklace. “Hold on, we're getting out of here right now!”

“
D'accordo
,
” Aurelius agreed, sensing a great malevolence in the fiddler. He seemed purely evil.

She tightened her grip on his sleeve, but nothing happened.

“Again,” Aurelius repeated, “I said, ‘
d'accordo
,
' but how are we going, and what about that prisoner?”

Clarinda glanced at her chest, confirming that she was indeed holding the ruby and emerald gold necklace. She clenched it in her free hand and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Why won't it work now?” she muttered desperately.

Old Nick leaned slightly toward the river. “Oh,
Fossegrim
!” he shouted. “Be a good fellow and retrieve those two, would you? While you're getting them, I'd also take that hand-axe; it seems to work too well against your kind.”

Aurelius still held the mattock, but the speed of the next event overtook any chance he had of defending himself with the tool.

The water in the center of the river began to circulate in a widening, spinning vortex whose current sucked some of the
strömkarlen
and
nixies
into its center. Winds began to increase around the whirlpool, and suddenly a waterspout erupted upward from the river.

“There they are,
Fossegrim
— do my bidding and bring them over here next to the Dark Elf!”

Whistling a tune, Old Nick gripped the fiddle by its neck and slung it over his shoulder as he turned his back and casually began strolling to the area of the prisoner and stool.

The
fossegrim
's size dwarfed all the water elementals in the river before it strode from the bank. The elemental reached Aurelius and Clarinda with the fluidity and momentum of a crashing wave, opening its arms and becoming again a torrent of water in the moment of its deluge.

The waters of the
fossegrim
rushed devastatingly into the glade, a tempest that collided into them with such force that it disarmed and hurled Aurelius and Clarinda against the stand of beech trees. Then the
fossegrim
swirled in a sharp bend back toward the river and Old Nick. Sweeping up the young Hospitaller and Norn in its foaming, sprawling current, they bobbed atop the huge waves like corks tossed through rapids. They gasped for breath, but by the first intake of air they found themselves on the other side of the riverbank and lashed against trees, in the area where they'd both first seen Old Nick and his prisoner.

The
fossegrim
,
in giant
strömkarlen
form again, bound them to silver oaks with ropes of running water. They were right next to the other prisoner — a tall, elfin figure who'd been unconscious, but startled awake by the cold waters rushing into the forest.

Sliding about in the mud at the base of his tree, Aurelius strained against the bonds, but soon relaxed and gave up.

Kjenner du navnet mitt?
an enraged voice gurgled in his mind with such roaring that Aurelius thought his head would split.
Do you know my name?

Sensing the
fossegrim
had
asked, Aurelius shook his head and whispered “no.”

“Hmmm? What's that?” Old Nick said as he returned to his stool, his weight making a squelching sound in the mud. He farted enormously and chuckled, then peered at Aurelius with squinting eyes. “Did you say something?”

“What do you want, Evremar?” Clarinda gasped. “How did you get here?”

“Not really going to speak with you at the moment,” Old Nick replied dismissively. “So be quiet. I need to appropriate something and return to Earth.”

“You mean Midgard?” Clarinda corrected.

“No, I mean Earth.” He shook his head in feigned commiseration. “You poor Norns. You might have to memorize every way through the Nine Worlds, the names of all the boughs on Yggdrassil, and the placement of each thread in the Skein of Fate, but from my perspective they're
all
parts of a whole.” He shook a finger from side to side, and clucked reprovingly at the girl. “And, I believe that I told you not to speak. You know, you're not a guest in my house at Caesarea anymore, and I don't think that you're quite a full Norn, yet. As your father did on that shipwreck, you could die here if you're not careful,
Signorina.”

“You killed him!” Clarinda shouted. “It wasn't only Kenezki, it was you, too!”

“Of course, it was Kenezki, you little tramp.” Old Nick clucked again. “I don't do things directly — much more fun in getting people to do the work for you.” He nodded at the
fossegrim
,
who'd been standing to one side of the three prisoners with arms crossed over its broad chest.

An explosion of water blew from the magical creature's “hand” and into Clarinda's face, slamming her head back into the tree trunk. She was unconscious before her chin slumped onto her breastbone. The elemental reformed its hand and returned to a posture of guarding the prisoners and standing at the ready for Old Nick's next command.

“Good, good,” Old Nick commented, smiling approvingly as he leaned forward on the stool and put an elbow on his knee. “I've been wanting to do something to that witch since she upset some plans I had back at Caesarea. Now you and I can talk, I think.
Fossegrim
,
please do the same to Volund here, so Master Santini and I might have a bit of privacy.”

With the same hand, the creature blasted the struggling elf three times before he fell as silent as Clarinda against his tree. Meanwhile, the
strömkarlen
and
nixies
— confined to the riverbank as the
fossegrim
was not — screamed in frustration and blithely sang their tunes of enchantment, the noises creating a ghastly, hellish symphony.

In spite of the peril, Aurelius couldn't help but watch the towering
fossegrim
with macabre fascination. The gigantic, silent being seemed to be a living river. The flowing water of its face circulated around flaming eyes of the deepest sapphire, and while the spaces for its nose and mouth were similar to those shadowed areas that marked the
strömkarlen
,
the
fossegrim
's power somehow made its features more defined than its brethren.

A trout popped from the
fossegrim
's shoulder, arced in the air, and plopped into the area where its stomach should be. More fish were visible within the elemental as its roiling waters started to settle, and even a couple of salmon flitted back and forth in its form, heading from head to chest, down legs, and back upward to the top again in a desperate bid to find someway out of the man-shaped trap that loomed over the glade as largely as any trees that grew there. Pebbles and dirt started to settle downward inside the
fossegrim
the longer the creature stood still, the muck of the river bottom steadily drifting through the translucent blue waters of its body until it piled upward in the feet and legs.

The giant seemed to notice Aurelius looking at him.

Kjenner. Du. Navnet. Mitt?
The
fossegrim
again asked silently.
Do. You. Know. My. Name?

Is it ‘Fossegrim?'
Aurelius guessed. He directed his thoughts toward it, but didn't know if the elemental heard him because Old Nick was speaking again.

“Now, I don't see the troublesome item on you, so tell me where you put it and we'll be done with this. There's been simply too much planning and plotting and maneuvering over this...paltry thing, even by
my
standards, which — if you knew me — is saying a lot. I usually
love
a good bit of scheming.”

“I
do
know you,” Aurelius countered, glaring at the man.

“Indeed?” Old Nick smiled sympathetically, “No, I don't think you do.”

“Well, the only ‘Evremar of Choques' I know is by reputation. I've heard that he's a particularly rapacious Templar Grandmaster who's taken over running Caesarea while his lord is back in Europe trying to raise money.” Aurelius spit bracken from his mouth and wiped his lips as best he could against the drenched shoulder of his robe. Everything in the quagmire smelled of rot and grime, like the upended sludge of a river-bottom.

Merely looking at the devastation of this part of the forest would have been enough for Aurelius to guess the man's identity, but he'd been suspicious of him when he'd heard the name Old Nick and saw the fiddle.

He spit again. He wanted the foul taste out of his mouth and realized that he'd reached his own level of tolerance with this man's demeanor and treatment of prisoners. He heard Clarinda shifting and starting to awaken.

Don't look at her again, he'll see a weakness and exploit it.

Aurelius kept his glare on Old Nick. He felt it paramount not to let Old Nick see that Clarinda was coming to, and unsure of why he felt so suddenly protective of her. Not to mention that there appeared to be some bad blood between them, and Aurelius was intrigued by what Clarinda could have done to make such an enemy of the man.

“You
could
be Evremar, I guess,” he continued, “but I've never met him, so I wouldn't know. If you're walking around playing a fiddle and calling yourself, Old Nick, though, on
that
name I might have some ideas.”