The Codex Lacrimae (45 page)

E terzo
,
there was indignation at Hela's behavior! Although healed now, Santini's wound had been horrific — a slash that cleaved through muscles, exposed part of his spine, and forced Clarinda to push hard against internal organs with all of her strength just to keep his body from falling apart. Modgud shouldn't have been allowed to collect a ‘payment' when one of the Norns was accompanying a visitor to Hel! Even if she weren't technically Urd yet, Clarinda knew that leeway existed for a Sister of Fate to bring ‘guests' through Hela's domains so that the sinning person could see firsthand the nightmares that awaited if ways weren't changed.

Besides malice — and possibly testing Santini to see if he could muster the power of the Codex — Clarinda couldn't see any reason for the attack by Modgud, and the pointlessness of it irritated her to no end.

Finally, there was Hela's greeting of Santini and all that her words betokened.

Nine centuries until Death comes to claim him, Clarinda? Even your bones will be dust in a forgotten grave by then. He's going to spend some time here, living in Hel? The Queen of the Dead bows to him? Has he really killed that many people? What do I even know about him at all? He saved us from the
Fossegrim
,
but if he'd listened to me and not touched the River Perilous in the first place, we wouldn't even be here! Same thing goes for grabbing Hav's little “gift” and transporting us to Hel.

“You would know, had you come by the normal paths and not by those of the Codex.” Hela smiled, and a chill passed through Clarinda.

“We didn't come here because of the Codex Lacrimae,” Clarinda riposted. “Santini touched a gift from a
Nøkken
.
”

“Are you sure?” Hela mused. “I've never heard of a
fossegrim
being able to transport through the worlds. That's why they remain in the seas and waterways.”

Clarinda was suddenly uncertain. She'd assumed that the coincidence of Santini touching the leather envelope and their appearance in Hel were related. She'd not even considered the possibility of the Codex Lacrimae at work because the Dark Book wasn't here.

Or was it?

She looked at Santini and wondered, and then Hela spoke again.

“Enough of this. Come, Children — there's someone who'd like to speak with you. We sensed your arrival and I came to give proper greeting.”

In a flowing movement of her swirling black cape, Hela stepped between Clarinda and Aurelius and put her arm possessively through his. He looked to Clarinda, and she gave a slight nod. She was touched that he sought her guidance when Hela was certainly doing all she could create tension between them, and then got angry at herself for feeling anything agreeable toward him. Even if he'd used the Codex Lacrimae unwittingly, it was still his fault that they were in Hel.

“Come,” Hela repeated, and she began leading them back the way she'd originally come. Clarinda stooped and retrieved Santini's sword, coming up behind the two from his side so that she could return it to him hilt first. He appeared grateful for the opportunity to disengage himself from Hela, and took back the falchion. As he did so, he looked at his hand, and — after quickly re-sheathing the sword — flexed it in appreciation.

“Yes, you're completely healed, Warrior,” Hela said. She'd neared him to retake his arm, but Aurelius moved to take Clarinda's hands in his own.

“You're still freezing,” he observed, “and you look a mess. All this blood…,” he murmured.

He turned to their host. “She needs to get cleaned up and something warmer than my cloak,” Aurelius said, not liking the way that Hela had greeted him, but obviously not intending to overlook the advantages of the respect that she'd accorded him.

“Of course, Warrior,” Hela said. “Just ahead, there are warm fountains and fresh clothes.”

They resumed following her as the wolf paced beside them.

“It's your first time here, so I think that some guidance is in order,” Hela offered. “This tower is part of a larger citadel that overlooks the Hvergelmir, a great waterfall that flows from one of the glaciers in Niflheim. Modgud usually can be found at the crystal bridge that spans one of them, the Giöll River.”

“She's a guard, or sentry?”

“There was no need for Modgud to attack us,” Clarinda interrupted. “I might not fully be a Norn, but Urd said that you usually give more respect to us than what I just saw.”

Hela stopped. “You're completely correct, Merchant's Daughter, and I offer an apology with only this explanation: the Codex Light around Master Santini would've drawn Modgud to whatever part of this realm he appeared in. While I don't know as much as I'd care to know about it, I
do
know that it's partly a creation of the Dark Elves. Modgud's death was a particularly excruciating one at that kind's hands. She'll never forgive, nor forget, I'm afraid.”

Clarinda didn't know what to say – she saw no such aura around her companion!

“What does that mean?” Aurelius asked irritably. “Everyone I meet in these lands,” and he looked pointedly at Clarinda, too, “including you, seems to know something about the Codex Lacrimae and me that I'm unaware of. I just saw the book for the first time a few hours ago.”

Hela smiled. “I believe there's much I can teach both of you, if you'll let me.”

“Do you enjoy the views from this place?” She asked, changing the subject in a soft voice that possessed none of its earlier, hissing intonations. She brought Santini to one of the side windows in the long gallery. Both Norn and Hospitaller glanced at her. The cowled robe somehow had slipped off one shoulder, and they saw that she had extraordinarily long, braided black hair. “The windows of this hall are the
Vinduene Illevarslende
,
my ‘Windows Portentous.'”

Clarinda's irritation with everything about this place deepened. Was Death flirting with Santini? And was it her imagination, or was Hela's skin becoming less white, even-tanned, and supple as they spoke?

“We couldn't see much outside except snow and darkness,” Aurelius responded, clearing his throat uncomfortably as he, too, seemed to notice the transformation in Hela.

The youth turned toward one of the windows and observed that the blizzard still raged. He blinked, then said in alarm, “There's someone out there!”

“Really?” Hela murmured as the knight moved closer to the window. She moved close against him, which made Clarinda roll her eyes and step protectively toward the other side of the knight. Was he a complete idiot that he didn't see Death making some kind of move on him?

Snow swirled around the figure that hovered in the air outside. Clarinda looked through the window. The shadowed form drifted to the glass and looked back at the group. The apparition of an adolescent boy — brown-skinned, with tousled dark hair — glared at Aurelius and shouted something that couldn't be heard above the storm's din. The young man pressed his hands against the window, slamming them repeatedly in an attempt to enter.

Aurelius backed away, ignoring Hela's words as the sight of blood in the chest area of the boy's desert kaftan recalled memories of five years past.

“He's the one from Mecina,” Aurelius muttered. “The first one.”

“Yes,” Hela observed, “He was the first of the brothers to come over the wall. He did it on a dare, wanting to show his brothers that he could kill the
nazaros
,
the Christians. You widowed many wives that night, Servius Aurelius Santini, but you also took a multitude of mothers' children.” She paused and smiled. “‘Butcher,' indeed.”

Hela placed a hand upon his shoulder as she spoke. Santini flinched, but didn't move, and Clarinda bit her tongue at the impulse to defend him. Here was part of his past, drifting through the blizzard-filled space outside Hel's citadel for all to see. Clarinda had killed in the past, too, so she reserved judgment on any deaths meted out by Santini.

For his part, he continued to watch the boy try to get inside the gallery, wanting to cover his ears to not hear the scratching on the thick window panes, but not able to muster enough energy to lift his hands. He began to feel that perhaps he did belong here. If he just trusted Hela and let her lead him where she would, there might be a way to finally atone for the sins of the past, the killings at Mecina. What was the use of fighting her? Could one really resist the inevitability of Death?

More young men had joined the first, all clad as if shielding themselves from a desert sun rather than this winter clime. One of the bodies was without a head, another next to him missing an arm, and all who hovered in the blizzard were covered with blood that wetly absorbed the snow drifting onto everything else.

“It was dark. I had to stop them.” He said distantly, unable to tear his gaze from the window.

“Of course you did.” Hela gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. He looked at her, confused. Why hadn't he seen her beauty before now? She'd let her dark robes fall slightly open, revealing an azure gown that was cut to the midriff. He averted his eyes from her exposed cleavage, and released her hand as he moved away from the window.

“Still,” Hela said musingly, “a strange night for a priest, wasn't it? Killing seventeen people within a few hours?”

“They would've taken the fortress!” Aurelius said. Then he tried to get away from the window of the dead, glancing in spite of himself at another as he began to move more quickly. “Of course they would have, my dear,” Hela said, approaching him. The black robe was still open to her waist, and he now saw in the woman's face a striking resemblance to Clarinda! The real Clarinda came to stand by his side, muttering something under her breath in Italian about the unbelievable audacity of some harlots. “But, these deaths are all in the past, you must now look to the future.”

They continued to move down the gallery. Now the deaths portrayed in the windows were not only Aurelius's own. Through one window there fought many Viking warriors. They were clad in furs and rushing onto a seashore from longboats with curved, vertical prows that resembled great dragons. The townspeople from a nearby burning village put up a furious defense.

“Your family has long served me,” Hela noted beside him.

“What?”

“That Viking is one of your ancestors,” she clarified. A monk was crawling away from the monastery when the Norseman appeared again at the doorway and hacked downward at the struggling monk. “Given your forebearer's attitude toward the clergy, I believe that he'd be very surprised at your vocation.”

“This must have been a couple hundred years ago,” Aurelius murmured, watching as the slaughter continued in the town. He knew that one part of his family line was Norwegian, but until this moment, he'd never given much thought to the those earlier ancestors. He felt a flush of anger flow through him as he looked at the still, mutilated form of the monk on his monastery's porch.

He strode quickly from this window, trying to get to the door that he saw at the end of the gallery. At another portal, a deserted town had smoke rising from many of the structures. Bodies were visible in the gaps between the buildings, and men whose faces were muffled by the wrappings of many cloths pushed carts of corpses down a cobbled lane and out of view. Aurelius began to run, but he couldn't keep the activities in the windows from his vision. Over there lay a field of skulls upon which walked a wailing woman.

Through here a soldier smashed a child into a wall.

In the window ahead, an old woman lay upon a straw-filled mattress, her body a mass of purplish, festering sores, and fevered color that could only be the plague.

He passed a younger man on his hands and knees in a field vomiting blood.

When he was almost at the end of the hall, he halted in some surprise to see that Clarinda had kept up with him, but Hela somehow stood directly in front of them. The dark queen's robes parted again, doing little to hide the voluptuous figure beneath. She radiated a sensuality girded all around with the peril of true death. She smiled.

“Why do you run?”

Clarinda shook her head in disgust.

“Don't run, Aurelius,” she warned. “She and her kind thrive on fear. Don't give her the satisfaction.” She looked Hela up and down with a disapproving look on her face, and then caught Santini's glance of surprise at Hela's half-clad form. “Hey! Eye's up here, Santini! And while you're at it, could you stop — I don't know — ‘
courting
death?'”

“Clarinda…,” Aurelius said, returning his attention to her with a flush of embarassment.

She continued, seeing that her words were lowering his tension and making him momentarily forget the nightmarish visions in the windows. “How about, stop ‘flirting with death?'” She'd caught her breath and leaned on her quarterstaff. “Or, I guess you could try for the ‘kiss of death,' which, literally, might take your breath away.” Clarinda nodded toward Hela. “She's becoming more beautiful by the minute, so that even I'm feeling compelled to notice. Must be like how one feels right before a
vampyr
strikes, eh?”