Another switchback, another run of stone slab steps far too tall for his stride and old enough that wear hollowed their lichen-spotted treads. Tree roots crossed the trail, tended like bonsai to serve as runoff diverters. He revised his age estimate for the trail from maybe a hundred years to a thousand. They had to be headed toward one of their own kind, god or demon or djinni.
And an ally of Mother. Of Balkis. Solomon’s Seal, the Star of David, grew closer with each step, bait for Mother’s trap. He kept looking for pit-traps and deadfalls, trip-wires and pressure plates. Military jargon, again. Memories came by fits and starts.
Switchback and switchback, stairs and trail and stairs, and he turned a corner and the dark forest shadows opened out into grass. Which wasn’t natural—trees and brush would have filled that within a decade. The grass led up to a cliff face looming over them, wet weathered smooth dark gray, probably granite or basalt.
With a cave mouth lurking black in the center. The arc of grass rather exceeded a bowshot in depth.
Another place he’d been. Who did he once know, who laired in a cave like a dragon?
A man stood in the shadow and lingering fog of the cave mouth. He’d known they were coming, had felt them on
his
trail,
his
land. He lifted an open hand, peace, and waved them forward. As they walked along the stone-grit path to the cave the man grew, and grew, and grew, the closer they got, where they could read the size of the cave mouth. Not a man. A giant. A brown giant, twelve feet, fourteen feet tall, wearing brown scale armor of an age long past.
Not armor. His skin. Like that bear. Like a dragon.
Close enough to speak, Albert could see dark eyes and pale skin in the eye sockets, pale skin on his palms. More memories woke with the weakening of the Seal.
“Fafnir?”
A smile wrinkled the smaller scales of the face. “Welcome, little Alberich. It has been long and long. Come inside and rest. Sweet mead and a fire and roast boar and a hot bath and a soft bed wait for you. You both look to need them all.”
Albert heard the click of Mother’s trap, arming. He shook his head.
“Lord Fafnir, your halls are known far and wide for hospitality. But we cannot guest with you. My wyrd forbids it.”
Mel stared at him, then stepped sideways while keeping her eyes to the giant and
naginata
at the ready. Close enough for a whisper.
“You shithead, you know how long it’s been since I had a cold beer?” Somehow she made the whole sentence hiss, even the parts without an “s” to sound.
He matched her whisper. “Guest-law. If we take his offer, we’re bound to peace until we leave his lands. And the Seal’s in there.”
Even as he said it, he wondered if Legion had forced his memory back to this. That whole charade in the beginning, accepting bread and salt and then setting the place on fire . . . or, the illusion of fire. Demons saw things that hadn’t happened yet. They weren’t bound by space and time.
Never trust a demon.
“Besides, the beer won’t be cold. Cellar-cool, at most. He’s old-fashioned.”
“Can we kill him and
then
drink the beer? Any rule against that?”
“None that I know of. It’s pretty much traditional, even.”
She stared from him to Fafnir and back again. “Wait a minute . . . ” and stepped away, to a point where Fafnir couldn’t attack them both at once.
“Fafnir. Alberich. Didn’t Siegfried kill a Fafnir? To get the ring and Tarnhelm?”
The giant shook his head. “Siegfried, Siegfried. The little boy liked to brag. He drugged my mead and stole my treasures while I slept. No honor, not like your Alberich. Siegfried made up that tale about me turning into a dragon to guard my hoard. Killing a dragon made him a bigger damned hero, after all. Even bigger than killing a giant. Look at me.”
He waved a massive hand at his chest and down to his feet. “Scales, yes, but do I look like a dragon? Can a mammal turn into a reptile?”
He shrugged. “Anyway, what do I have that you want to kill me for? As if you are up to killing a
mouse,
the condition you’re in.”
Albert remembered he had never liked Siegfried much. Yeah, the boy lied. A lot. And then Wagner added more lies. After all, none of those people were still around to say otherwise. Never let facts get in the way of a good story.
He waved negation at Mel. “Forget the stories. Siegfried told people he forged that sword, Nothung. Lies. I made it, and a good blade it was. Siegfried was a big strong dolt, just about smart enough to build a fire and roast dinner. Only time he ever lifted a hammer, was to bash someone over the head with it. And I never stole the Rheingold, either. I did some work for those Rhine maidens, and they tried to stiff me on the fee. Just like Old One-Eye and the rest of the Æsir, trying to squirm out of a contract once the work was done.”
Again I remember why I don’t like gods. Slimy arrogant thieving bastards, with morals worse even than the men they claimed to rule . . . at least Loki was up-front about it, not a smarmy hypocrite.
Fafnir laughed. “They weren’t maidens, either. Come on in, and I’ll tell you some tales over hot meat and a cool drink.”
Albert shook his head. “The wyrd. We’re not after gold or silver or gems, Lord Fafnir. Nothing valuable. An old iron star, six pointed, a Star of David. It’s cracked. I know it’s in your cave. I can feel its iron. I’ll trade you a blade as good as Siegfried’s Nothung.”
The giant looked tempted, eyeing Albert’s cane and the knife on Mel’s spear. Then
he
shook his head, eyes sad in that scale-armored face.
“Can’t give you the star. It isn’t mine.”
Honor can be such an awkward thing.
Albert twisted his cane, freeing its blade. Mel unsheathed the knife on her
naginata.
Fafnir didn’t move.
“Please stand aside. We’ll be thieves, then, just like Siegfried. As I told you, I’m under wyrd.”
“No. I’m honor-bound to protect my guest.”
Oh, hell. And damnation, too.
Fafnir looked down on them, twice as tall and more, weighing four times both of them together, and armored in scales heavier than that bear’s. Faster. A hell of a lot smarter, a trained fighter. He studied the sword cane and the
naginata.
“Those are good blades. But I doubt if they could kill me, even if Siegfried himself held them. All of us are very hard to kill. And you, you’re both worn ragged. I saw you, coming down the ridge. You needed that cane, that staff, to keep you on your feet. Go away. Leave my guest alone.”
The other side of guest-law. Once you accept a guest, you defend him. Her.
Another voice joined them, from the shadow deep in the cave entry. “Don’t underestimate those blades, Faffy. They killed a full-grown shield-bear a few days back. The Wind Goddess moves as fast as her winds.”
Mother.
Fafnir’s eyes widened, and he stepped back a pace from Albert and Mel. Now Albert could see her in the gloom. Dark face, dark sari-drape of some kind. She held a darker shadow in her hands. The Seal? He felt its whining, sharper now that he could see it and yet weaker. He smelled the sandalwood, the . . . soul . . . of the salamander that had died to crack it. But that soul, that ghost, had led him to one side, separate . . .
Mel pointed the
naginata
into those shadows. “I am a police officer in pursuit of an outlaw. That Seal is stolen property. Your
guest
is wanted for arson in the nighttime, desecration of a holy place and theft of religious artifacts, and murder of an elemental, a salamander, in the commission of a felony. Also, interworld flight to avoid prosecution. I request your assistance in arresting this fugitive!”
Albert doubted if that last charge existed in the laws or customs of any nation.
Fafnir glanced back at Balkis. “
You!
You did not tell me of these things. You stretch the bounds of custom! Once you leave my house and land, I will never welcome you again!”
He turned back. “But, she is my guest. I am sworn. I cannot dishonor my hearth.”
Fafnir stood in the mouth of his cave, in light while his guest remained in shadow. In order to get at Balkis, get that Seal, they’d have to pass him.
Kill
him, an innocent, like that bear.
. . . killed a shield-bear . . .
Albert stared at that shadowy figure, Mother, Balkis. “You’ve been following us.”
He saw movement, a shrug. “Not following, tracking. I have humans to do such things. I told them to keep well away, a day behind, for their own safety.”
Mel growled, deep, a mountain wolf with fur bristling. Then, “The dogs weren’t a day behind . . . ”
That rage still smoldered.
“Not my fault. That was the province governor. He did not understand what was happening, who you were. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t killed the first guard. He would have called the outside post, they would have disarmed the mines, you would have walked out safely. All of those defenses are designed to keep
humans
from walking the path between the worlds.
“There are easier ways from that gate to here. Swimming the river, with the things that live in it, that was foolish. There’s a railroad bridge a few miles upstream . . . ”
She let that hang in the air between them. As always, nothing was
her
fault. It couldn’t be. That wasn’t how the world worked.
I wonder what we would have found if we tried to cross that bridge, Mother dear. The salamander warned us. All things in all, I think we were better off half-drowned.
But he didn’t say that. “He went for his gun.”
Another shrug. “A fool. Because of a fool, ten other men are dead. You can scarcely blame me for
that.
”
As if she hadn’t set up the whole scene. Nothing was
ever
her fault.
Albert felt too tired for anger. “Give us the Seal and we’ll go away. Too many deaths already.”
Another wolf growl from Mel, fangs in the throat and ready to tear. “Speak for yourself. Justice calls for that woman’s blood.”
“I bind the blade you carry!”
That just slipped out. She’ll kill me for it . . .
But all Mel did was glare at him.
“Mother, the Seal for your life.
You
warned Fafnir about these blades . . . ”
She stepped out into the light, dark and beautiful and graceful as always. Yes, she had the Seal in her hands.
“Your word. Your honor. If you think a grubby little blacksmith can match the mind and hand of Solomon the Great . . . ”
She glared down at the Seal. “Three thousand years, this thing has been eating at me. Eating at all of us. Three thousand years of treachery, and you want to
fix
it.”
He saw her grip tighten, knuckles pale on her brown hands. The Seal whimpered. She started chanting in a language he’d never heard before. Her voice rose to a scream full of hate and power. Hairs stood up on the back of his neck and on his arms.
A whine joined her chant, the Seal vibrating like a tuning-fork, growing into a shriek of tortured metal. She raised the Seal over her head and smashed it down point-first on a rock.
“Take it!”
The Seal broke. Albert grabbed at his chest, at the knife-blade pain in his heart even stronger than the blinding flash in his head. The world turned gray, and he felt his bones chill as if damp grave-mould sucked at his soul.
He fought. He kept his balance. Deep in the shadow world, he caught glimpses of Fafnir, of Mother, of Mel standing with her
naginata
between him and the others, death ready for any threat. She glowed, warrior goddess with a glowing blade.
The Seal’s pain faded, the sunlight returned, he could see again. Fafnir was gone. Mother was gone. He stood outside the cave mouth, Mel at his side, the broken Seal at his feet.
The broken Seal at his feet.
One point of the six lay separate from the rest, split off at the intersections of the two interlocking triangles. The breaks leaked tears of power. He could feel them. The blood of the iron, the blood of the spell.
Dying.
Mother’s trick was simply time. She set things up so whatever we did, we’d get here too late. She stalled for time for the Seal to weaken enough. Enough so she could finish killing it.
“I don’t suppose that offer of a cold beer and a hot bath is still open?” Mel stared wistfully at the cave mouth.
Albert knelt and picked up the shards of the Seal. They whimpered in his hands.
“Probably not.
I’m
not going to walk up there and knock on his door. You can, if you want. But I don’t think he’ll chase us out of his lands, either. We have an implied verbal contract, as they say.”
“I’m not sure saving the world is more important than a cold beer. Even without all the other things he offered.”
He wrapped the ancient pieces of iron in dry plastic bags—everything else in the pack was wet and rust would be adding insult to injury—and stowed them. What’s another pound or two on the back, anyway?
When he stood up, his hip told him what, with red-hot knife blades. Another two notches on the pain meter. Why carry that dead weight? Haul it to some place where he could provide burial in consecrated ground? It’s not like he could rebuild Solomon’s work . . .
But it wasn’t dead. It had whimpered at him, like a hound that had been run over by a boar in the hunt, spine broken, but still licking his hand.
Memories. This business of getting memories back had its bad side. He’d had to ease that dog from life, his last kindness to a faithful friend. He didn’t have the forge and hammer and anvil to do the same thing for the Seal.
“Faffy?” Mel’s voice broke into his thoughts. “She called him
Faffy?
Is she screwing him?”
Albert blinked at the image. “Not impossible. Not something I want to think about.”
“Then size
does
matter?”
He glared at her. “You must be feeling better.”