The Codex Lacrimae (44 page)

“Don't you feel it?”

He smiled. “I can't feel my feet or hands, but we need to keep moving.”

“
Grazie
,
” she said, accepting his offer and moving closer to him as he put an arm protectively around her shoulders.

The silence returned between them, this time for a longer duration. She was feeling too comfortable in his arms, thankful and excited by the closeness they had with one another, but distrusting how good it felt. Still, her practical side didn't want to lose the warmth he was providing!

“Thank you for warming me,” Clarinda said softly, leaning appreciatively into him.

“Uh, you're welcome,” Aurelius said, realizing how good she felt and not knowing what to do. He flushed, recalling the vows that he intended to take, but still not moving away.

She noticed his embarrassment and smiled at him, relaxing for the first time since they'd met. There seemed to be a chink in his armor, a vulnerability she hadn't noticed before.

Aurelius glanced at her and looked quickly away as they continued down the corridor. It was the first time he'd seen her smile, and the knight found that it transformed her entire face. She was truly beautiful, capable of merriness that he hadn't thought possible from what he'd seen of her in their short time together. But, remembering again that he was going to become a priest, he was about to lift his arm from her shoulders when they heard a clicking sound behind them.

Tip, tap, tip, tap, tip….

As he began to turn, something pushed sharply into Aurelius's back that felt like the sharp jab of a blade. The impact was of such force that he slammed into the panes of the window. Grunting at the collision, he tried to spin defensively against the assault, but his legs were swept out from under him and he crashed onto the floor.

As he attempted to gain his feet, a robed figure advanced upon him with an enormous, iron-spiked cudgel in its hand. Clarinda swung her quarterstaff only to be blocked by the attacker, who swept under her guard and butted her backwards. She landed in the middle of the floor between the walls, then scrambled to her feet, quarterstaff at the ready.

Aurelius, too, rose, unsheathing his sword.

The figure stopped at the sight of the blade, its cowl slipping down. Gorge rising in his throat, Aurelius faltered at the sight of his opponent. He faced a robe-covered skeleton! Long blond hair cascaded from an ivory skull, highlighting a silver tiara, and the thick brown robe was cinched at the waist by a belt of blue-glowing crystal.

Tip, tap.

The white foot bones clicked upon the marble flooring and the grim figure advanced a step upon the Hospitaller and Norn. Aurelius swallowed hard and raised his sword.

“Stay…” his throat was dry and the words came hoarsely. He took a breath as pain started to flare through his body. “Stay back,” he said more firmly and tried to reach the agonizingly painful area on his back with his injured hand. He withdrew it, drenched in blood.

“Aurelius, you're hurt,” Clarinda said. “Your back's a mess.”

“
Ingen våpen her
,
” rattled the skeleton with a female's voice through grinning teeth. “There are no weapons here. None beside my own. You should be crossing into Hel over the Giöll River, not through Hela's abode. You should've come over the Crystal Bridge. You broke the rules.”

Tip, tap.
The skeleton advanced again.
Tip, tap.

“Whichever path you took, though,” she continued, “you are here. The
Blod
Betaling
— the Blood Payment — it must be made.”

“I said to stay back!” Aurelius shouted. He retreated with sword raised, noting that his boots were leaving a smeared reddish trail on the floor.

Tip, tap, tip, tap.

The skeleton moved quickly toward Aurelius and he swung his blade. He struck true, a two-handed swing that caught the attacker's body on the shoulder. He might as well have been hitting a statue because, without a visible reaction to the strike, the skeleton continued her clicking steps and moved hard into the knight. Gripping his throat with a bony hand, she drove him into the wall. His back exploded into a mass of painful fires, and darkness began to cloud his vision. Pinned, he struggled to raise his sword, but the corpse's other hand was upon him like a vise, cracking his hand as she squeezed. His blade slipped from limp fingers.

Clarinda brought the quarterstaff down on the skeleton's head with a tremendous effort, but it bounced harmlessly off the tiara, and forced Clarinda to take a step back.

“Modgud.” A female's voice echoed across the vast gallery, piercing the dead air with a startling vibrancy. Aurelius and Clarinda couldn't see anyone who might have spoken.

“Mistress,” rattled the skeleton, the black cavities of its eye-sockets less than a hand-span from the knight's face, “they're in your hall without crossing Giöll Bridge. The Norn may pass, but he's made no payment. Payment must be made. I am charged with collecting the
Blod Betaling
.
”

“Release him.”

Modgud obeyed, releasing its grip and stepping backward a few paces. Aurelius tried to remain standing, but dropped to his knees, inhaling raggedly as he began to go into shock.

Clarinda came to his side, pulling open his tunic.

“It's bad,” she said, dropping the quarterstaff, and bunching what cloth she could back into the wound. She pulled both halves of the garment into the bloody gash.

“We need to get him stitched!” she yelled, intensely aware of how close she was to his body as she tried to cover the wound by putting her hands all over his dense muscles and warm skin.

Idiota!
She thought angrily.
How callous a sea-girl am I, that I'd even think such things at a time like this?

“Warrior, pay Modgud.”

Aurelius, grateful that Clarinda's efforts seemed to be stopping the blood flow, sought the source of the voice. A figure stood some hundreds of cubits distant. From such an expanse, the person should have been shouting to make herself heard; yet her voice was almost conversational in tone and volume.

“My blood isn't for the taking,” he gasped.

“Call off your guard and get some help!” Clarinda shouted. “I'm a Norn, Hela, and request this of you by the Nine and Fated Three.”

“Well-phrased, Child,” the distant woman said, “but unnecessary. The
Blod
Betaling
is already taken.”

They could see her moving toward them then, and as she drew closer Aurelius saw that Hela wasn't alone. An animal like a large dog padded beside the woman.

Hela was clad in a flowing hooded cloak of deepest ebony. She soared across the white marble like a black-plumed raven sweeping upon its prey. As she got closer, a coldness radiated from her that made the frosty air of the gallery seem warm. Half of her face was visible in the shadow of the cowl, and eyes black as pools of night glared at him from a gaunt, pockmarked face of alabaster complexion.

Another pit of dread opened in his stomach as he took in her animal companion — at almost a meter high, the wolf was gigantic and monstrous. Its fanged maw slavering, the wolf loped easily beside Hela, fixing hungry yellow eyes on the bloodied knight.

The two figures stopped a few paces from them.

“Modgud doesn't miss,” the woman continued. “You've somehow arrived here without dying, but she's opened your back. Those so wounded do
not
recover from her touch.”

“He must pay in blood,” the skeleton reasserted. She'd crossed her arms firmly across her chest, the ribcage visible through the material of the brown robe.

“However,” the white-skinned woman said, “if you let her take the blood that she's let, you'll heal and be allowed to pass into Hel.”

“God willing, I have no intention of going to Hell,” Aurelius replied.

“You're already here, my friend.” Hela hissed in the way of a serpent given the gift of language. “Let her have the blood. You've no need of that which has been lost. Trust me, the healing will keep more from flowing.”

Her words, despite the manner of their utterance, somehow gave him confidence.

“
Bene — sia fatto
,
” he agreed, in no condition to argue. “Let it be done.”

The woman nodded at the skeletal warrior. Modgud moved next to the knight, her bony forearm pushing Clarinda out of the way. When she withdrew her hand, her white fingers were even more stained with blood than his own had been.

“Giöll's Price has been paid. Go on your way, Traveler. May you find rest and peace in Hela's Home.” The skeleton bowed first to Aurelius and then to her dark mistress.

“Thank you, Modgud. As ever, you've done well. Return to the river.”

The skeletal figure moved away, her bones clicking again upon the stone floor.
Tip, tap. Tip, tap.
Then Modgud vanished into the white of the hall like a nightmare fades in daylight.

Aurelius straightened. As promised, both the pains in his back and that of his face and hand were gone. He looked at Clarinda, who returned attention to his back and saw that even the torn cloth had been fused into a single piece again.

“I can't see your back,” she said, “but the tunic's back to normal.”

Ignoring the cold, Aurelius pulled his shirt up, and Clarinda leaned forward, touching the area where she'd just been desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood. She ran a hand along his smooth flesh, marveling at the fact that there wasn't even a scar. She'd also never seen so muscular a man....

“Clarinda?” he asked. “Is there something wrong?”

She became aware that her hand still rested on his warm shoulder blade. Mortified at the lingering, she pulled her hand away, yanked down the tunic, and cleared her throat.

“It's fine...it's all fine back there...I mean, on your back. There's no wound anymore. It's like there was never even a cut there.”

He smiled weakly at her. “
Grazie, mia amica
.
” He nodded at the blood all over the floor. “I thought this was it.”

“Not yet,” she smiled, and turned to the woman in black, regaining her composure by not looking at him.

“Hela, I'm Clarinda Trevisan — I've been told by the Norn, Urd, that I'm her future incarnation, although I'd like to believe that Fate can be changed.” She bowed. “Greetings, and we ask for safe passage to Niflheim and thence to the Roots of Yggdrassil.”

“The roots of the World Tree?” Aurelius asked, confused.

“It's the only way out of Hel,” Clarinda whispered. “Bow.”

Aurelius followed her direction, and bowed low.

The woman acknowledged both of their courtesies with a nod and clasped her hands behind her back.

“
Vellkomen
,
Norn — now that I've seen you, I almost might believe that Urd chose well in selecting you.”

She turned her attention to the Hospitaller, and her welcoming smile was a ghastly thing.

“And you are Servius Aurelius Santini, the Son of Jotunheim, Walker Between the Worlds, Doomed Knight, and Codex Wielder for the next nine centuries.”

The Queen of Death bowed to him.

“
Vellkomen
to my home, Lord Aurelius — you will visit often, even live here for some time, but I give you my word that I'll not take you as mine until almost a thousand years hence.”

Chapter 5

A Walk in Hela's Halls

Disconcerted and dismayed by Hela's words, Aurelius tried to think of something to say, but Clarinda spoke first.

“Where did you get
those
predictions from?” the Venetian girl asked. “There's nothing like that in the manuscripts I've been reading — and I've read almost everything I could get my hands on about the Codex Lacrimae.”

Aurelius looked at her, stunned. “You have?”

“Not a word from you,” she said, keeping her eyes focused on Hela. “Not right now.”

Clarinda was furious!
Primo
,
she was annoyed at herself for starting to feel any kind of attraction toward Santini when she knew very well that it was possible the rumors about the Battle of Mecina were all true.

Secondo
,
she was still galled at what she'd learned about the Codex Lacrimae reading by Mimir's Well — information that, while disturbing, wasn't as much as she'd have expected considering the Norns all-powerful role in the Nine Worlds. If even
half
of the myths about the tome were true, then it was a work of almost pure evil. How could even so highly a reputed knight and obviously clever young man like Santini manage its power? The Dark Book was so powerful that it was reputed to rival the cosmic forces wielded by Odin the All-Father himself!