The Codex Lacrimae (57 page)

“But,” Clarinda asked, confused. “Why aren't you pleased? Isn't it a good thing that Andvari's escorting us?”

“My dear, Child,” Vestri said patiently as his three brothers led the way down the path, “once Andvari won back his ring and gold after the Asgardians imprisoned Loki, he swore that nothing would get him to leave this seaside cottage short of the end of the world.”

The dwarf looked appraisingly at Aurelius. “I suppose we might have to take a closer look at you, after all.”

Then he turned and led the way up the path to join the group. Ratatosk dangled upside down from a nearby rain gutter and peered at the Hospitaller and Norn.

“Ah, don't let Vestri's comment go to your head, Kid,” the squirrel said cuttingly, “you've been so incompetent with the Codex that you'll be dead or hanging in one of Hela's prisons before you get a chance to threaten Creation. I don't see what taking a closer look would do for anybody — I keep looking at you, and I see only a boy hurtling toward his doom.”

“Ratatosk,” Clarinda reprimanded heatedly, “that's uncalled for!”

“Says she who won't even tell him the first thing about what she knows!” the squirrel shot back. “You're becoming more of a Norn than you think, Clare, and you're not even realizing it.”

Aurelius glanced at Clarinda, a pit opening in his stomach.

“Know about what?” he asked her. “What's he talking about?”

“What do you think I'm talking about, you ninny?” Ratatosk groaned, speaking in an insulting tone as if to a child. “The size of your fat head? How the links in your chain mail shirt are more tightly woven than your thoughts?” He shook his head in disgust. “Santini, Santini, Santini — that a talisman like the Codex should fall to an imbecile such as you. The World Tree groans. Don't you get it? She knows — or suspects — more than what she's telling you about the Codex Lacrimae! Are you so lovesick that you can't see the truths in front of your eyes?”

“Ratatosk, that's enough!” Clarinda said, her voice shaking with something beyond emotion. The creature stopped speaking. In spite of the dark anger kindling in him at the thought of her withholding something important, even Aurelius felt a compulsion emanating from her tone that made him want to comply with whatever she wanted.

The squirrel dropped from the overhang, landed lightly, and then stepped back a couple of paw lengths to consider her.

“That was good, Clare,” he said, his whiskers twitching in amusement (or nervousness), “and I'd have to say that you're almost there — I'll make sure to let Mimir know the next time I see him — but, even with a Norn's Voice of Command, it takes a bit more to stop one of Yggdrassil's Guardians.” He peered at her again, and cocked his head. “Still, a respectable effort. Respectable, indeed, and I offer an apology to both of you as a way of showing that respect.”

“I don't care about your apologies, Ratatosk!” Aurelius snapped. “You both know something about the Codex — or, more to the point, something about the Codex and me — and you're keeping it a secret?” He glared at Clarinda. “What is it, and why haven't you mentioned it?”

“Servius…,” she hesitated, torn between what she knew she could reveal and what had to wait for the appropriate moment. She wondered if Ratatosk were correct — was she becoming more of a Norn than she realized? Her thoughts returned to the council at Mimir's Well, and she recalled the importance of
time
; its arcs and trajectories had to be respected, no matter the irritation it might cause a young Hospitaller knight.

“We don't have time to discuss this right now,” she said, staring at him frankly. “No matter what the squirrel says, I'm not trying to be a Norn, I —”

“Clarinda — you need to tell me what you know! Everybody keeps talking about me as if I'm not here, but I am! I don't understand any of this, and I need to!”

“Speaking of catching up,” Ratatosk observed dryly as he leapt back up to the gutter, swung around on his tail, and pointed with one paw at the departing group, “unless you know the way to Glittertind — and how to get past the Crystal Caves and Dark River without Andvari's help — I'd recommend
hurrying
up!”

Aurelius looked at Clarinda, not sure what to say. He felt torn between fury at her and the entire mystery of the Codex, while remaining apprehensive about meeting the dwarvish sorcerer.

“Let's go, Servius,” she said simply, realizing that he was angry and conflicted about a variety of things, but unable to help him in this place. “I
know
that you want to know these things,” she said, “but, for your part, you've got to realize that I've been in these places longer than you. For the mysteries around the Codex, there are some things that need to be told in their proper place and time.”

Ratatosk started to say something, and she cut him off with a short hand gesture.

“Even the squirrel would admit that he talks way too much, but in this instance he's correct. We've got to see this through, no matter what people say about anything. Let's keep them in sight, and after we meet Andvari, you and I will make some time for this. There
are
some things I haven't told you that I've learned about the Codex Lacrimae, but we can't discuss it now.”

“Again, what do you mean, haven't told me?” he persisted, his face flushing and tone obstinate. “I just told you that we're going to have this out now. Things from your books?”

There was a heat in his voice that couldn't be ignored, and somewhere close she felt the sudden thrumming of some kind of power.

“No, more reliable sources, I think,” she said, striving for a Norn's calm as she resisted a defensive notion to step back from him. “I had a chat with Grimnir, Mimir, and the Norns before I went after you in Niflheim….I haven't told you what they said.”

His face grew a deeper red. “That's just it, Clarinda. No one's telling me anything, and you knew it? We had plenty of time to talk — last night on the couch? Even during the hike through the caves this morning!” He shook his head. “How many other secrets are you keeping?”

She stared back at him without flinching, even though she felt that he was justified in his anger. There were reasons that she couldn't say anything about the council, but he wouldn't understand until, literally, the time was right.

“We might have had time,” she said instead, “but that was all before Andvari broke a routine he's kept for centuries. I promise you we'll talk, but let's do it when we're underway and can get some time to ourselves.”

Hoping that her commonsensical tone would break through his anger, Clarinda strode past him and made her way up the path, turning at the top of the hill by the back of the house, exasperated. All of Urd's calming techniques seemed useless when confronted by his hurt and anger. That look made her feel guilty, which made her feel angry, which completely flummoxed her and made her tone short and cutting. Why did he have to be so handsome, even in the midst of a smoldering fury? Couldn't he understand that she didn't have a choice here? She couldn't tell him about the council, because for all the things she didn't know, the one certainty she had was that the timing of that meeting couldn't be altered, nor discussed. Not yet.

“Well, Santini? Even if you think this is a dream, are you just going to sit there by the water having a tantrum until you wake up, or do we see this through to the end?”

Aurelius took a deep breath, striving to overcome the indignation he felt toward her and all the things he was supposed to be taking in stride: the physical translation into this world, the revelations of Old Nick and Hela about his family, and, finally, hovering always in the background, the predictions by everyone about the Codex Lacrimae.

Only Clarinda's frowning, concerned face answered these private frustrations, and her presence had its own set of complications that he didn't want to think about.

He held onto his anger and walked hurriedly past her, ignoring the sounds of whatever fruits seemed to be dropping from the trees nearby, but welcoming the sudden silence in the world.

“Fine,” he muttered tonelessly. “
Basta
.
We'll do this your way for now,
Norn
.
Let's go meet the wizard. Maybe he'll have some answers for us — no, for
me.
I'm getting really tired of everyone else knowing more about me than I know about myself!”

Clarinda said nothing, her face suddenly paling as she let him walk past her.

She, too, had been apprehensive when thinking about all the different possibilities for the situation here. She'd been so focused on getting Santini back to Mimir's Well — guiltily enjoying the time she could spend with him while doing so, that she'd disregarded the urgent warnings of Mimir and the Norns.

Staring at him from the top of the hill, however, as he fumed and deliberated about what to do with Ratatosk's revelation, she thought she might have to start respecting what others were saying about the Hospitaller.

Hela gave him the kiss of Death, Satan posed as his long-lost uncle, and you ignored all that because Santini has a handsome face and pleasant personality? Fool!

Clarinda looked at the grounds around the path. Dead birds lay everywhere — the gulls, finches, bluethroats, and blackbirds that had been such a musical part of the landscape, now lying under the trees and on the pavement of the waterfront, severed from life and silenced forever.

Ratatosk was watching her, strangely silent for a moment as he leapt onto her shoulders and took the familiar position around her neck.

“Since you're going to ask me, I'll answer: yes, I did see him begin to glow like a star when he got angry. That effect's called — for want of a better term — the ‘Codex Light.'” The squirrel paused. “I suppose we'd best pray that there's never a ‘Codex Dark,' eh?”

Clarinda started to reply, but then another prophetic vision overwhelmed her, its force and images so intense that she leaned against the quarterstaff so as not to fall to her knees.

A waking vision. She was in a snow storm on a boat that rocked wildly upon some tempestuous sea. A dark shadow with flaming red eyes rose before her and Aurelius — some kind of dragon? — its fanged head so gigantic that it reared into the heavens themselves.

Lightning flashed, and the vision shifted back to the moment she'd first seen back at Caesarea; in that burst of white energy she saw the glade of the
Sviddengen
,
deep in the heart of a forest, where hundreds of dwarves lay dead and Clarinda's companions stood bound against trees. A madman with a long, cruel dagger danced there, screaming in frustration at a blacksmith who hammered steadily at a glowing object on an anvil while a dwarf hovered closer and closer to his prize. A dread deeper than any she'd yet felt filled her at the sight of the incandescent device, knowing somehow that it held as much peril for Creation as the Codex Lacrimae.

The Codex. The thought of it brought a flood of fragmented images.

She and Genevieve lay in waterlogged coffins while Khalil led his
bedouin
tribe from Saladin's camp and into the desert wastes. Fatima's face appeared, then, in a stable somewhere fiercely hugging to her a...Huntsman of Muspelheim? The Arabian woman lurched, then, falling to a knee as the stable transformed into a forest glade and she staggered backward from a different, shadowed man, impaled by a screaming sword! Clarinda tried to open her eyes, stop the vision, because the Norns, her sisters, were screaming, dying, and it was her fault. She clung to the staff, determined not to yield to the dream, but unable to completely distance herself from the rage of Skuld, who looked up at her as she died, and shouted accusations that chilled her soul:
I name you Fool's Daughter! The arrogance — how dare you? Why didn't you listen to us? Your actions have all but assured a future where the Norns die!”

Actions? What actions? Skuld, how can you be dying? If the Future dies, where do the Present and Past belong? Skuld smiled, turning into a skull that became Hela who, dressed as a nun and walking through the crowds of the Krak, gently touching everyone with a caress that imparted the bubonic plague. Satan himself danced beside her, continuing a game begun in Hela's Citadel, but this time the contest involved killing as many Hospitaller knights as possible; Clarinda saw the Devil leading a boy by the hand, whispering runes of murder into his ear.

Clarinda sank to a knee, still holding the quarterstaff, tears now flowing from her eyes. She couldn't stop this, and she didn't want to be Urd. Who could live with this foreknowledge? She was barely suppressing the grief she still felt at losing her father. These visions of the future — or was it happening now, across the Nine Worlds? — they were too much. How did Urd do it? How could she bear it?

Skuld's accusations echoed while another vision showed thousands of Hela's
Wilde Jagd
marching, advancing on the Krak beneath the wings of a dragon. Somehow
the Norn's angry and despairing voice gave Clarinda the determination to rise to her feet. She'd not let any of this happen if it were within her power to prevent it. She knew that Skuld blamed her for doing something — or
not
doing something — but the Venetian girl refused to meet her end kneeling on this waterside, cowering against the force of visions that were still assaulting her as a result of Santini's unwitting destruction of the birds here.