Even at eighteen, Santini was simply the largest warrior she'd ever seen. He stood a full head taller and broader than Alex, with so many heavily layered and toned muscles that it made her feel protected just being near him. A quiet strength flowed from the knight that she needed in the inhospitable wastes through which they rode. Was it the way he made reassuring squeezes on her arms when they were threatened by a particularly harsh period of pelting hail? She found herself squeezing back at those times to let him know she was fine. What was happening to her? Why couldn't she think straight when she was close to him?
As they rode, the youths were able to share information about their respective adventures since they'd parted in Hela's Hall, but Clarinda found that she had to omit much from her own account because she didn't feel as if riding on the back of a magical creature through a nightmarish land near Hel was the time nor place for discussing the Codex Lacrimae.
She did relay an important bit of information, though. When the howling winds had diminished to a dull roar, she leaned forward until her lips were near his right ear and said, “I was able to retrieve Hav's coral!”
“Really?” he said, but his voice sounded strange. Clarinda wasn't certain if it was the news, or the fact that she was very close to him and practically breathing down his neck. Neither youth moved away, however, and she replied “yes, really,” to him, before adding, “That was quite the stab at Old Nick. I thought you were going to cut his throat.”
“Luck,” he said. “I just brought the sword up and cut the leather strap â but, I don't think a normal blade would kill him, do you?”
“No, but at least we'll be able to surprise Hav the next time we see him” she said, reluctantly backing away to her position. She was glad, at least, that she still got to hold onto the young man as the wild ride through Niflheim continued.
“-ustâ¦until...him!” Aurelius shouted back as the winds picked up again.
“What?” She shouted, leaning forward again, and this time their cheeks brushed each other as he turned to shout again.
“Oh!” He said, awkwardly adjusting his neck and position to move away, but then crashing an elbow into her breasts. “Oh, sorry!” he muttered, then, louder, repeated: “I said, you can just hold onto it until we see him!”
“
D'accordo
,
” she said, smiling at his embarrassment as she returned to her former position. Perhaps he was feeling something toward her, too, if he could get flustered by such things?
They kept riding. As hours passed and Fenris bounded at a fantastic pace through the eerie landscape and frozen, white-gilded trees, Clarinda found herself repeatedly giving silent thanks to Grimnir's gift of the heavy cloak she wore over Santini's Hospitaller robes, and for the winter clothing provided by the Norns.
“We're almost there!” Skade shouted as the group reached a part of the forest densely wooded enough to blunt the slanting snowfall. “I can hear the waterfalls, Fenris!”
“We need to walk from here, my friends,” Fenris ordered, diminishing his proportions at a gradual enough rate that they leapt lightly off him onto the snow-covered escarpment when he'd almost returned to their sizes. Clarinda reluctantly released her hold on Aurelius, realizing that she'd been clinging to his back with arms wrapped around his waist for the better part of three hours.
Light sprang from a glowing orb in Skade's hand, illuminating the area with the color and intensity of a miniature sun. Fenris was again clad only in soaked garments, and Aurelius returned the wolf pelts. The wolf-man looked Promethean in the blazing radiance of the globe as he took the fireball from Skade and led the way into the woods, clots of snow and ice clinging to his beard and thick mane of hair.
“Here, Codex Wielder, take this for the short distance to the
baude
.
It's called a
s'lantar
,
and is of elvish make.” He handed the globe of fire to Aurelius.
Daunted, the knight nevertheless took the magical sphere and grunted in appreciation at its light weight. Flames raged within, pressing against the confines of the glass with a scorching intensity that seemed as if it should sizzle into Aurelius's hand, but he felt only a comfortable coolness radiating from it. Strange but beautiful magic was at work there.
The
s'lantar
's light revealed a thinly populated stand of trees at the base of a mountain, where at least three waterfalls plunged over the sides of a steeply inclined, granite-walled descent. Moss and lichen covered the boulders that framed the great falls and, as Fenris began wending his way up a thin trail, it became obvious that the entire group was going to get very wet from the spray coming off the plunging waters.
“The glaciers that form the boundary between Niflheim and Midgard make these falls!” Fenris shouted against the roar. “Come, quickly! The storm is almost here and we need to be inside when it hits!”
Clarinda took Aurelius's hand when he reached down for her at the first level of boulders, and a thrill of excitement rushed through her body at his touch. She only let go of him a few times during the ascent, thankful for the assistance, as well as the concern on his face when he seemed to recognize the fear of heights she usually tried to conceal.
A vast chalet stood suddenly before them, its great pine decks rising from the cliff face and providing a view from the house over the falls that must be spectacular even in the grey and depressing light of a Niflheimian day. Fenris strode toward a mound of snow that lay banked against the front door and kicked it away until the area before the entrance was flattened. He pushed against a door that opened to a darkened hallway.
“Come in,” Fenris urged, letting Skade walk past him after she'd brushed the snow off her shoulders. Skade lit sconces and passed from sight. “Just a bit more,” he continued, “and then we'll be in more comfortable surroundings.”
The wolf pack dashed off to a lower deck that seemed to go into the falls themselves, heading toward another entrance into the home.
Geri and Freki waited for Aurelius and Clarinda to move inside the doorway, and then followed as they went after Fenris to the base of a stairwell hewn from logs. He and Clarinda threw back their hoods, shut the door, and joined Fenris at the bottom of the steps.
“Welcome to our home,” the man said upon reaching the landing at the top, pushing against the thick-timbered wood of the door that swung noiselessly on well-oiled hinges. A warm, amber light that vied with the glowing orb in the knight's hand spilled onto the granite entryway, and Aurelius and Clarinda gasped in surprise at what they saw in the great chamber beyond.
Chapter 9
The Fenrir-Baude
Aurelius leaned an elbow on the armrest of the couch by the fireplace, feeling a deep relaxation settle upon him that came from being clean and at ease with new friends.
With Clarinda behind her, Skade returned from the kitchen, bearing an enormous ceramic pitcher of honeymead. Fenris was in one of the lower halls, seeing to the needs of the wolf-pack, while the talking animals who usually traveled with Grimnir were asleep in front of the fire. Geri and Freki were lying on their sides, breathing deeply in complete slumber, and Ratatosk (looking slightly ridiculous) lay flat on his back with legs akimbo like he'd just fallen from a tree limb in the forest.
Aurelius murmured his thanks to Clarinda as she brought him a goblet and sat on the couch beside him. Aurelius knew that Fenris would be back shortly, so he took the time to survey the surroundings and to reflect on the last couple of hours.
The area in the
Fenrir-Baude
,
or “Fenris Hut,” to which they'd retired after the meal was in front of the fireplace in an enormous common room, whose high-arched oaken structure was like an upside-down Viking longship. There was a great gaming table and an assortment of distractions, from backgammon and
Gluckhaus
,
to chess and checkers, and Nine Man's Morris. Most of the furniture in the room was built for comfort while waiting out the never-ending winter outside.
Hela's Tempest hit as a blizzard shortly after the group's arrival and thundered upon the building with the sound of a thousand horses' hooves, but all inside were safe and warm thanks to elvish woodwork and dwarvish stonecraft. From sculpted-walnut leather chairs to stone trestle tables thrusting outward from exposed granite, the
Fenrir-Baude
's soundness against the elements seemed more like a mountain fortress than the chalet resort in actuality it was.
The fires were all fully blazing, and hundreds of oil lamps cast light
on a variety of dwarves, elves, and humans. So many folk were milling about the great house, it had taken Aurelius and Clarinda completely by surprise when they arrived. To walk into such a vibrant and relaxed social setting was an unbelievable change from hours of flight in the wastelands.
A bard sang on the corner dais by the southern fireplace, entertaining the crowd, his voice mournful as he chanted the
Lay of Gudrun
,
singing the tale of when Gudrun learns that her brother, Gottarm, had slain her husband, Sigurd. In another part of the room, elves were dancing with each other to harp music played by two of their kinspeople. Dwarves and men conversed at the tables along the shuttered windows, as they drank boisterously or gamed by the central firepit. Aurelius even thought he saw a centaur before Fenris guided them to one of the hallways that led off the main chamber.
There they'd followed one of the many stairwells carved into the mountain until reaching a vast cavern that held great bubbling pools of water fed by volcanic vents.
“Not quite your Norn Grottoes,” Skade had said to Clarinda, coming from another entrance with a stack of carefully folded linen bath sheets, “but I think you'll find the waters here a great comfort after the kind of day we've had.”
Skade placed the broad towels on a boulder whose flat, smooth surface made for a perfect table, and then began to take off her soiled garments.
Aurelius coughed in embarrassment and turned away, saying that he'd be heading off to a more remote part of the cavern for privacy. He didn't wait to hear Skade's response because she already had most of her clothes off by the time he realized she was going to strip in front of everyone. Nor was he going to wait to see if Clarinda would follow the other woman's example!
It wasn't that the Hospitaller was excessively modest â they all needed to take baths, and he'd been in enough public ones in Sicily to have seen naked bodies before â but in his life back at the Krak des Chevaliers, he'd been training seriously to be a scholar and a priest, so there was no place for romantic relationships in his vocation.
Aurelius intended to take the vows of his calling earnestly. If he wished to be a clergy member, that intention meant taking vows of chastity, poverty, and devotion to God.
Within a very short time, however, he'd now met two women who'd confounded all his expectations with the female gender, and he was confused by the emotions he was feeling. In Skade's case, she was a passionate, elemental force who, like a passing storm, seemed unconcerned with anything except following the path of her nature. Aurelius had never seen anyone fight as she'd done against the
Wilde Jagd
,
as sensuous in battle as she was disrobing in the steamy cavern of the hot mineral springs!
Clarinda, on the other hand, made him even more mystified. Usually he was the one in command of situations; especially back at the Krak where he'd clearly defined roles in both the spiritual and military hierarchies. But every time he was around the Venetian girl he felt tongue-tied, awkward, and consciously trying not to stare at her. He'd momentarily felt hurt when she didn't hug him at their reunion in the Niflheimian forest, and then flushed in relieved excitement when she explained about protecting a cloak that wasn't hers. Then, with a closeness that he'd thoroughly enjoyed, she'd spent the next three hours clutching him tightly as they rode upon Fenris's back.
Whenever she was near, he felt anything but normal, and that kind of dependency on somebody else was something completely foreign to him. So, he found himself getting irritated every time he caught himself responding to her in that way. He didn't dare to believe that she was perhaps feeling a similar attraction â a kind of heartache that he felt toward her being returned in equal measure?
So there he was, alone in the corner of the hot springs cavern and intentionally keeping his gaze averted from the two naked women at the nearby pool. Grateful for the privacy afforded by a dense group of stalagmites, Aurelius sank into the steaming waters of his spring and focused on the waterfall spilling into it, willing himself to forget everything for a while and try to wash the soreness from his weary body.
While relaxing in the heat and gazing at the bubbles rising the spring, his eyes lost focus and the Sight came upon him, layering his vision with views of different places and times.
In one moment the youth was half-dozing, and in the next a flood of images cascaded into his mind. Through a haze of heat, he stood with Jeremiah and Khalil near the pool of an oasis, the swords of all three men drawn as they fought a creature of shadow with fire pouring from its eyes and maw. What was old Jeremiah doing with a sword outside the Krak's library, and why was Khalil with him? Aurelius winced as the beast's paw swept into the older scholar, and then another vision was upon him.