I wanted to go off somewhere, to try the grimoire on my own—just in case it was too much for me—but Althyof and Jane forbade it. Althyof, I could ignore, but my wife? No way.
“When you come across something you think will help, stop reading…if you can,” said Althyof as we pulled mattresses from the beds and arranged them on the floor of the dining room—all to protect me from bashing my head in if I had a seizure or something.
“What do you mean, stop reading if you can?” demanded Jane.
“It’s okay, hon. When I read the first page, the first kaltrar that bound the grimoire to me, I couldn’t stop reading until the end of the thing. But, isn’t it true, Althyof, that there would be no reason to write the rest of the grimoire with the same compulsion?”
“I have no idea, and neither do you. Stop trying to sugar-coat the risk for your wife,” he snapped.
“Does reading the kaltrar invoke them?” she asked.
“No, probably not.”
“Probably not?” She whirled to face me. “And this is our best option? This venture into the unknown?”
I shrugged. “I can’t think of anything else, can you? Besides, we’ve been through all this. We have to know what’s coming. I believe this grimoire contains something that will help me learn the trick of looking into the future—maybe without the limitations Frikka spoke of. I don’t know what makes me think so, except Kuthbyuhrn’s cave was where I learned so much—”
“Yeah, while you were dying, you idiot.”
“But I didn’t die, Jane.”
She raised her hands to shoulder height and let them drop, irked by the whole thing. “And since you didn’t, every foolhardy thing you can think of will also not kill you?”
“Well, it won’t kill me much,” I said with a smile.
She shook her head. “Try not to die more than you can handle, in that case. Remember that Sig and I are here waiting for you.”
“I know, Supergirl. I could never forget.”
She kissed me on the cheek, and I sat on the pile of mattresses. I sucked in a deep breath and unrolled the scroll, past the now-blank first page without looking at it. With a glance at Althyof, I drew a deep breath, and he nodded.
I looked down at the scroll, and the runes jumped from the page, squirming like baby snakes. At first, what I saw written there made no sense, it was as if I’d suddenly forgotten how to read the runes at all—they were just shapes, just squiggles, just a child’s scribbles. But then the meaning became clear, and something wrenched loose within me, something that scalded, that seared, something that cut me apart and welded the pieces back together in the wrong order. My hands lost feeling, and the scroll dribbled into my lap.
I could no longer see my friends clustered around me, and yet I could see them as if from three separate angles, three separate viewpoints. My eyes slipped closed, and yet I could still see the surrounding room.
“Mom! What are those?” Sig pointed up at me and yet away from me at the same time, toward a smoky black shape on the other side of the room.
“I don’t know,” said Jane, looking at me and looking away at the same time. “Are they…are they supposed to be birds?”
I wanted to reach out to her, but my body was lying on its side on the mattresses like so much lost luggage.
“Is that…is that Hank?” Jane asked.
Althyof squinted up at me before turning to look at the me that was lying on the mattresses. He turned his head to the side and looked up at me again, eyes narrowed.
“I think it must be him,” he said. “I think—”
He kept talking, but I didn’t hear what he said next—there was a feeling of immense gravity, and I slid through the wall of the dining area into the kitchen and out into the hall at the same time.
The part of me that was in the kitchen drifted near the ceiling as would a helium-filled balloon in a gentle current of air. The part of me that drifted into the hall zipped along like I’d been shot from a cannon, racing down the hall, streaking past doors so fast the colors seemed to blur and melt into the institutional gray of the walls.
“What is this?” I asked.
“What did he say?” Jane asked.
That part of me that floated in the kitchen slid through the ceiling into a dust-filled stairway that stood in darkness and despair while spiders spun great webs dedicated to the dead. I rocketed upwards, not slowing my ascent until solid stone encircled me.
The other part of me streaked to the end of the hall and then zipped right through the door at the end, through a large room bordered with what looked to be shops and stalls. At the same time, I was back in the dining hall, looking up into Jane’s concerned face.
I continued to rise through the stairway until I passed into a crawl space filled with pipes and torso-thick cables. I rose and rose, passing through the insulated barrier at the top of the crawl space and out into the darkness of solid rock.
At the end of the shopping area, there was a bright, sunshine yellow door, and I passed through it like rays of sunlight passing through mist. Beyond the door, another hallway stretched away into the distance, this one bearing yellow, green, and brown doors.
I didn’t want to keep traveling through the bleak darkness of solid stone. I wanted to be out in the light where I could stretch my eyes, see the sun, the sea, anything other than oppressive darkness. Got to get out! As soon as I’d completed the thought, the trapped part of me popped out of the stone into the sunlight high above the mountains which served as the gravestones for the Herperty af Roostum. I continued to rise, the horizons stretching away from me in every direction.
I twisted through one of the yellow doors and into a room filled with four-by-four-foot squares of what looked like polished crystal. Along one wall a series of consoles stood, festooned with switches, buttons, and sliders. I wanted a closer look, and with no feeling of movement, I was closer to the consoles, looking down at them with wonder.
Jane cupped her cool palm against my feverish-feeling cheek. “Hank, what’s happening? What can we do?”
I opened my eyes and smiled at her.
Below me, the mountains ran in a large circle, and the old caldera of the ancient volcanoes that had spawned the lava tubes we’d used to sneak into the complex glared up at me like empty eye sockets. In the plain nestled inside the circle of mountains, a large army moved at speed toward the facade of the cyclopean building carved into the mountain in the center. A bear-woman and an oolfur ran snarling and howling at the army’s head. “They are coming!” I shouted.
Far away, I heard myself shout, and I reached down with insubstantial fingers and flipped a switch on the console. Power hummed through long-quiet circuits as one by one they cycled up, gulping power the way parched men drink water. The four-by-four squares of crystals lit, painting images of these halls of the dead in the air.
“Down the hall,” I said through my mouth trapped in the dining room. “In the last red door, find the yellow door opposite. Go through and find the first yellow door. Go now!”
As in my dreams, a mastery of the glory of flight filled me, and I swooped down from the austere, wind-swept heights above the mountains, imagining a set of talons at the end of my legs. I tucked my wings and made my black-feathered body into the shape of a missile, diving at my enemies. I shrieked my defiance, my hatred at the evil gathered on the plain below me.
The yellow door behind me banged open, and Meuhlnir, Althyof, and Yowtgayrr charged into the room. The Tverkr raised his hand and pointed at me. “There,” he said.
Meuhlnir’s eyes strayed to the squares of light blazing from the floor and up to the pictures they painted in the air. “Look,” he gasped.
I experimented with the controls on the console beneath me, using my imaginary hands to twiddle dials, press buttons, and move sliders. The airborne images swirled and changed, dancers in my ballet. One of them tightened and focused on an oolfur moving up a roadway, his eyes dancing from rolling door to rolling door.
The oolfur at the head of the army looked up as I arrowed down at the bear-woman in the fore. “Up!” he snarled in a gravel-filled voice. The bear-woman looked up and saw me as I snapped my wings out, cupping the wind, breaking my frantic speed, and I extended my taloned feet, aiming for her eyes.
With a roar, the bear-woman swept a huge arm skyward, her own claws bared. She jerked her massive head to the side, but it was no use, I was too close to miss.
My razor-sharp talons did their work, emerging from her torn and bloodied face dripping with gore. The oolfur howled a dirge of acrimonious anguish, and the bear-woman screamed and roared in misery and maniacal rage.
A cup of cool steel rested against my lips. “Drink,” said Sif. “Hank, drink!”
I opened my mouth and let the cool, sweet liquid splash across my palate. “More,” I croaked when the cup ran dry.
I moved a slider to the left on instinct, and the image of the oolfur zoomed out. I flipped a switch next to the slider and a map, of sorts, appeared superimposed over his image.
“Look!” said Meuhlnir. “He’s close!”
I zipped through the wall toward the street, emerging fifty feet in the air, almost right on top of the oolfur, and imagined talons once again.
In the dining room, I lurched to my feet, unsteady, but determined. I pushed Jane and Sif’s restraining hands away and stumbled out into the hall.
I banked in a tight circle, flapping my black-feathered wings in a frenzy, fighting gravity for altitude, fighting the wind for speed. Two sets of feet pounded in my wake, and snarls and growls reached me over the roar of the wind. Up! I thought, and in a flash, I emerged, thousands of feet in the air. I circled, gazing downward with a hawk’s eyes, searching for my target yet again.
I swam higher, up near the ceiling of the roadway’s tunnel. The oolfur below me sniffled the air, aware of my presence by means I didn’t understand, but unaware of my location. I swept downward, wings tucked, talons out, coming at him from behind. Right before I struck, I shrieked a mocking crrruck, and as he turned his head, I lanced his right eye with my talon.
The oolfur roared as I hit the switch that opened the rolling doors. Kunknir and Krati seemed to leap into my waiting hands, and I squatted low, peering under the rising door.
He growled deep in his throat and swept his claws, lightning-quick, in a vicious half-circle that would have killed me had I been a flesh-and-blood bird. As his arm slashed through the air at me, I thought about being as solid as steam up near the ceiling, and in less than a heartbeat, I was.
Below me, the bear-woman roared and snapped at the air, lost in a barmy birse, blood streaming down the side of her face from the three long rips I’d put in her skin. The oolfur that was with her—Luka, surely—glared up at me, pointing and shouting something lost in the wind. I banked hard to the right, just in case he was hurling a kaltrar at me. Standing on my wingtip, I tucked my wings and fell toward the plain once more.
Gunfire thundered from where I knelt inside the garage, and the oolfur whirled to face the new threat—me, or the physical part of me, anyway. As he did, I plummeted at the top of his head, as swift and silent as falling ice. At the last moment, I snapped out my black-clad wings, thrusting my talons out in front of me, stabbing toward the beast’s ears.
As the door rose toward its zenith, I emptied Kunknir into the oolfur’s torso, aiming at his vital organs. I squeezed Krati’s trigger as fast as I could, peppering his body with .40 caliber rounds. For the first time, I saw my other-self, a black raven the size of a bald eagle, and our eyes met for the briefest of moments. It was as disorienting as gazing into a hall of mirrors.
My talons latched onto one furry ear, and I squeezed hard, rending the flesh as I beat my wings for altitude. There was no way I could lift the beast, and I wasn’t trying; I wanted to rip the ear from his head.
I reloaded Kunknir, not giving a damn about how much ammunition I had, still firing Krati. Mothi screamed a war cry behind me and charged around the carts, well out of my line of fire. His axes gleamed in the soft light of the roadway. Sif raced behind him, shouting for Meuhlnir, her shield strapped to her arm, her vicious axe held ready.
The ear shredded in my talons, and I was flying free. I saw Jane come up behind the me that bore pistols and I crrrucked a hello. In a blink, I was up near the ceiling again, watching the oolfur sweep around and grab at the space I’d been a moment before. This form was too small—there was no way I could do enough damage to an oolfur as a mere bird.
As I plummeted toward the army below me, my feathers thickened and grew, and my tail stretched out behind me. The bear-woman looked up at me and cringed away, ducking her head. The army panicked, units broke apart, and men dashed this way and that, as the shadow of a bird the size of a small plane drifted over them. My shadow.
Jane stepped to my left, shield up to protect us. “Kill that bastard, Hank,” she hissed.
I fired as fast as I could, rounds streaking into the oolfur’s pustulant flesh, exploding out the other side, and spraying blood on the ground. The creature whirled back toward me, and Mothi leapt forward slashing his double-bladed axes at the beast’s long legs, going for crippling strikes.
Veethar and Frikka stood to my left, watching the oolfur through narrowed eyes. “It’s Vowli!” yelled Veethar, jerking his sword from its sheath. He pointed at the oolfur and yelled, “Vaykya!” in a voice charged with command. The oolfur yelped and stumbled, weak-limbed.
Mothi slammed both axes into the beast’s sides below its ribs, and the oolfur howled in pain. It turned, slashing its claws at Mothi, but Sif was there, turning one of the blows on her shield. She chopped at the other hand with her axe, deflecting it enough that instead of ripping into her son, the claws left only shallow cuts across his belly.
Bullets smashed into the oolfur, rocking his body this way and that. I fell on it from above, pinning it to the ground beneath the weight of one foot, talons as thick as fence posts from the other skewering it through the abdomen.
I rolled to the side in midair and dove at the bear-woman again, talons snapping out, wings stretched wide. In the moment before I struck her, Luka leapt, teeth closing around my throat, claws digging into my chest. I twisted to the side, ripping at him with my beak, and we slammed into the ground together, sliding hundreds of feet through the lifeless dust. I continued ripping long strips of flesh from his back, but Luka held on, hot blood flowing from between his jaws—my hot blood. The bear-woman thundered up to us, her face savaged and savage with spite. She fell on me like a pallet of bricks, claws and teeth flashing in the sun, and I staggered against the cart, almost dropping Kunknir and Krati.
In the roadway, my head spun, and I reeled for a moment, but long enough for Vowli to twist in my grip, pressing my talons out of his body and rolling away. He slashed at Mothi with one clawed hand and leapt for my back, jaws opening wide.
I staggered again as Vowli fell to his knees, jaws closing on nothing. Althyof whirled past me, daggers already out and performing their air-ripping cartoon dance. My vision swam, while disorientation at having all three parts of myself thrust together into one body again made my head spin.
“Hank! Are you okay?” asked Jane.
“Dizzy.”
Althyof sang a trowba and danced around Vowli in his graceful way. Vowli’s eyes narrowed into slits, and his head darted this way and that, looking for the giant bird that had accosted him. Althyof lunged in, the cadmium red aura of each dagger stretching impossibly long as if reaching for the oolfur’s body. He slashed his daggers across Vowli’s chest and left two long jagged stripes in their wake.
Vowli roared and shot to his feet with drops of blood splattering the ground around him like rain. He slashed at Althyof and at Mothi to keep the two at bay.
“Ehlteenk!” shouted Meuhlnir from behind me, as his hammer whirled by to slam into the oolfur’s head. “Aftur!” As the hammer leapt to his hand, the lightning he’d called for arrived—a blinding blue-white flash of electricity that came in sideways and fried the fur from Vowli’s back in a circle the size of a pie plate.
“The Dark Queen is coming,” I said. “I tried to slow them down, but…”
“How can we deal with all three of them at once?” asked Jane. “Vowli’s bad enough!”
Vowli twitched and shrugged, long, thin cuts erupting across his chest and back. The Alfar. The invisible Alfar attacking in tandem. The oolfur roared and slashed a circle of clear space around him.
“This is a delaying tactic,” I muttered. “He knows we can’t kill him before the others arrive.”
“Haymtatlr!” yelled Jane, holding my phone. “Haymtatlr, can you seal the entrance?”
The phone chirped, and for a moment, everything was still, even Vowli, and all eyes turned to my wife. “Now, why would I want to do that? It’s so much fun watching you play together.”
“They want us dead, Haymtatlr. If we’re dead, who will entertain you?”
In answer, the phone chirped, and the screen went dead.
“Weapons! Were there weapons in the yellow section?” I asked.
“Nothing I recognized,” said Meuhlnir.
“We need more firepower.”
Vowli snarled and feinted toward Althyof but leapt at Mothi and Sif instead, landing between them. He snapped at Mothi and back-handed Sif. She flew across the road and landed in a heap and didn’t rise. Mothi screamed and swept his axes in singing arcs toward Vowli’s chest, but before they made contact, Vowli lashed out with his foot, kicking Mothi in the solar plexus and driving him into the wall.
“The scroll,” I muttered, patting my body for the scroll case. “Where is the scroll?”
Meuhlnir and Yowrnsaxa rushed into the road, calling out in the Gamla Toonkumowl and striking at the oolfur with their weapons.
“No, Hank!” snapped Jane. “You nearly passed out last time. What help is that?”
“Something else! We need something else.” I turned and sprinted past Sig, down the hall, and skidded into the dining area. The scroll lay on the mattresses, still open, and next to it was the scroll case. I scooped them both up with one hand and ran back to the garage. As I ran, I read the runes from the next page—this time without any confusion—and a cold smile spread across my face.
I rerolled the scroll and put it back in the case, slinging it around Sig’s neck as I went. Chanting the triblinkr, a momentous power coursed through me. I stripped off my gun belt and jerked the mail-shirt over my head.
“What are you doing?” Jane demanded.
“Get all our gear into these carts. Protect Sig and above all, be ready to move.”
“Hank—”
I stepped past her and tossed the hat and cloak into the cart as I went. Half-naked, pain lancing through my joints now that the cloak was off, half-blind, I smiled and screamed my challenge at the top of my lungs.
Vowli darted a glance at me, and a lupine smile cracked his features.
“Everyone back,” I said, my voice growing thick.
“Hank, what are…” Althyof’s eyes went wide as they tracked up to where my face now was—much higher than it had been.
“Go,” I growled. I grew at an astonishing rate, limbs thickening, lengthening, muscles bunching like the Hulk, but I didn’t turn green. You can’t have everything.
Vowli threw back his head and howled. In the distance, someone answered him in kind.
With a determined grin, I finished the triblinkr, and my skin rippled as my bones popped and rearranged themselves. Thick brown fur erupted from my skin, and I fell forward, onto all fours. Even hunched over as I was, I towered above the others—they came to my front shoulders. My claws clacked on the road’s surface, and the scent of blood—both Vowli’s and Mothi’s—ignited my drool response. As the prayteenk—the change—flowed through my body at the cellular level, my human emotions shrank, replaced by things more primal, more savage. I glanced down at my body, reminded strongly of Kuthbyuhrn and Kyellroona, and the comparison pleased me. Keri and Fretyi crouched next to me, one on either side without any sign of fear, and growled at the oolfur.
Vowli sank into a crouch, snarling and snapping his teeth. He circled to my left, and I shook my shaggy head, saliva drooling from my maw in ropy strands. A chuffing noise—or maybe a hoarse bark—was coming from my mouth, and as Vowli leered at me, a primal rage exploded in my heart, and I roared. As if it were his cue, Vowli pounced, jaws snapping.
I rocketed forward, sinking low and angling my head upward to slip underneath his attack. My jaws snapped open wide without conscious thought, and I lunged toward his neck, aiming my jaws with animal instinct. Keri and Fretyi darted forward, mouths gaping wide, and stormed at Vowli’s legs.
Vowli yelped and tried to twist away in midair, but my lunge was too quick, too precise, and my jaws snapped shut around his throat. I reared back on my hind legs, towering to my two-legged height of close to twenty feet, pulling his feet from the floor to remove all his leverage. The pups let go and circled us, growling and snarling.
Vowli thrashed and clawed at me, but my thick fur and skin resisted the worst of his efforts. I shook my head, like a dog worrying a chew toy and threw my weight back, jerking him this way and that. I wrapped my arms around his torso and crushed him to my chest. My claws dug into his skin, and he thrashed against me, growling and trying to push away.
My skin tingled and itched where he had clawed at me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jane staring at me intently, effort etched on her face—healing the damage as fast as the oolfur could inflict it.
I kept at it, pulping his torso with my arms and compressing his neck with my jaws. My breath came fast and hard, a growling bark punctuating my efforts.
Until that moment, I’d been functioning on animal instinct alone, and it occurred to me that I could do a better job crushing him if my weight was on top, and I didn’t have to waste energy keeping us both upright. As if I were an Olympic wrestler, I lifted Vowli higher into the air, twisted to the side and drove us both over with my rear legs and on to the ground. We rolled with the force of it, and I heaved my bulk over, rolling him underneath me, and stabbed down with my front paws, piercing his skin with my claws. The muscles in my neck bulged, grinding my fangs into his flesh, and locking my jaws.
His breath exploded out of him in a mournful, desperate howl, and I grated my jaws together with all the strength I could muster, closing his throat even further. He battered my head and neck, but I had one of his arms pinned beneath us, and he had no leverage. I bore down, using my rear legs to drive my weight into him.
“Help him!” shouted Meuhlnir. “Or Vowli will heal!”
In an instant, my Isir companions surrounded us, stabbing and chopping at Vowli’s body where they could. John stepped closer, holding an improvised spear of broken pipe and stabbed down, again and again, screaming all the while. It was hard to make out his words—his rage and pain blurred them together—but his hatred of the oolfur I had pinned beneath me was clear. Keri and Fretyi tore chunks of flesh from his legs, worrying at his thighs.
Even with all our efforts combined, Vowli struggled back from the brink of death, eyes blazing with a new hatred. A howl erupted from his throat, and this time, the answering howls were much closer and followed by the roar of a bear.
“It’s not enough!” shouted Veethar. “Can you bind him, Althyof?”
“What? Bind him? There is no time!”
“What do we do?” asked Jane, stepping out of the garage.
I growled deep in my throat, hoping she’d understand I didn’t want her out here. I didn’t want her anywhere close to Vowli.
Then I saw what was in her hand. Kunknir.
“I…” she started. “I don’t think I can do it. Not this way.” The Isir glanced at the pistol and turned their heads away.
Althyof stabbed both daggers into Vowli’s side and straightened. “I will do it,” he said, holding out his hand. “But you must tell me how to work it.”
Jane handed him the pistol and showed him how to release the safety lock on the slide and how to squeeze the safety built into the grip. “Don’t worry about aiming, put it to his head and pull the trigger.”
Vowli lashed back and forth beneath me, bleeding from a multitude of wounds, unable to breathe, unable to get away. Althyof knelt next to him, eyes hard. Vowli’s eyes rolled side to side, seeking escape, seeking help, but enemies surrounded him, both old and new, and we gave him no quarter. Althyof leaned forward and pressed Kunknir’s muzzle against the side of Vowli’s head. As he pulled the trigger, he spat in the oolfur’s face. The report deafened me, and sparks flew as the round ricocheted from the paved surface of the road.
Vowli arched his back beneath me, going stiff all at once. His breath rattled from his chest. We kept at it a moment longer, stabbing, rending, chopping, biting.
At the end, what remained of his head hung from his neck by tatters of flesh and bone, and blood slicked the roadway beneath us. The strength of my ursine musculature had wrought havoc on his body, and that, added to the weapons of my friends, had done massive amounts of damage to his mutated flesh. All of it conjoined with the .45 caliber slug from Kunknir that churned his brain to mush must have overcome his unnatural healing.
His blood tasted sweet in my mouth. I forced my jaws open, fighting against the animal instinct to feast on his flesh.
I crawled off him, feeling free of pain for the first time in almost a decade. Keri and Fretyi danced and yipped around me, lupine mouths seeming to smile. I stood on my hind legs, threw back my head, and roared in victory. When I opened my eyes, Sig stood in front of me, dwarfed by my standing height and by my bulk. His eyes were wide.
“Dad? Can you hear me?”
I winked at him and turned to the side a little, so I could fall to my paws and nuzzle him.
“Cool!” he said. “You sort of resemble Kuthbyuhrn, Dad, but he’s cooler looking. Anyway, Mom said, and I quote, ‘Get your bear ass back into the right body and get dressed so we can get the h-e-double hockey sticks out of here.’”
I made the sound Kuthbyuhrn had made on many occasions—the sound I had equated with bear laughter—and trundled toward the garage. In my mind’s eye, I cast the runes of the triblinkr for shape-shifting, fixing my human form in my mind. I forced sounds out of my throat, doing my best to chant through an ursine throat.
As I shifted back to human form, the blindness and pain came back with a vengeance, and I staggered against Sig. He wrapped an arm around my waist and took as much of my weight as he could. I gazed at him with my good eye, amazed at how tall and strong he’d grown in the past year. “Get his cloak!” he yelled.
Althyof ran from the garage, holding both the cloak and the floppy hat he’d enchanted to deal with my loss of an eye. As the cloak settled on my shoulders, the pain receded, and as the hat settled on my brow, I closed my eyes for a moment, and the peculiar, three-hundred sixty-degree vision reasserted itself.
“Come on!” said Jane, as she guided me to the cart holding most of our stuff. “We’ve got to get a move on.”
I threw my gear on while I explained the cart’s operation. “Whoever drives the second cart, you’ve got to stick close to me.”
My phone chirped. “There is no need for all that drama, Hank,” said Haymtatlr. “If you flick the third switch in the series of switches on the dash of the second cart, it will follow the lead cart without input from its driver.”
“Autopilot, eh? Good. That will make it simpler.” We piled into the carts, and I took the controls while Jane slid in beside me. Meuhlnir, Veethar, Yowtgayrr, and Althyof got into the back seat of our cart. Mothi slid behind the controls of the second cart and flipped the switch Haymtatlr mentioned. Sig sat beside him, while Yowrnsaxa, Frikka, Skowvithr, and Sif climbed in the rear. John stood, in a daze, eyes tracking between the carts and Vowli’s corpse. “Come on, John,” I said. “He’s dead and going to stay that way.”
“I…I don’t know… He said he had the power over life and death.”
I nodded. “If he’s grown into anything comparable to the Dark Queen and Luka, I imagine that he said a lot of things that weren’t strictly true.”
John nodded, the confusion in his eyes clearing. “Yes, I’m sure that’s the right of it.” He slid into the back of the second cart. “Let’s get going.”
Fretyi and Keri stood, heads ping-ponging between Jane and me in the first cart and Sig in the second for a moment before jumping into the seat next to Jane. I drove out of the garage but paused in the middle of the roadway. In the distance, the roar of thousands of voices and the stomp of twice as many feet resounded from across the complex. “They are inside,” I said. “Where do I go? Haymtatlr, I need to get the preer running. Where do I go?”
My phone chirped, and the sound was akin to a door slamming shut. I took the orange guide from the seat next to me. “What can I ask it? What name would the place have here?”
“We need the control room.”
“There are other colors than what Haymtatlr used in his little rhyme,” I murmured. “I’ve seen yellow, and an orange roller door with a purple stripe. Brown leads to the mechanical apparatus behind the preer. The yellow led to that security monitoring room. But remember ‘run the white?’”
Jane shrugged. “Can’t hurt to try.”
“Unlocked white door, avoid any other living beings,” I said to the guide. It vibrated in the affirmative, and I drove away at top speed, the second cart tucked in behind me like a coal car behind a locomotive, matching my every twitch of the controls in perfect synchronicity. We could hear the Dark Queen’s army howling and screaming as they raced through the complex.
The guide led us through a labyrinth of roadways, and I followed its instructions faithfully. A screech and a howl echoed from behind us, followed by a cacophonous outcry of rage and hatred.
“My brother and the Black Bitch have found Vowli,” Meuhlnir shouted over the wind of our passage. “They will be after us in a moment.”
I already had the controls as far forward as I could make them go, but despite that, the cart slowed. I glanced down at the dash; the power light was dark. The second cart whipped around us with no sign of slowing.
“What’s wrong?” shouted Jane.
The cart drifted to a stop, with the other cart still racing off at full power. “Haymtatlr, stop the other cart! My cart has lost power.”
The second cart kept right on going. Sif waved her arms in great, wild arcs, and when she saw we were watching, tossed her medicine bag off the back. The bag hit the road’s surface and bounced to a stop, while the cart carrying my son and half our party dwindled with distance.
“Sig!” Jane shouted. “Haymtatlr! Haymtatlr, talk to me!”
The phone chirped. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes!” Jane and I shouted in unison.
“Oh, my! Whatever could be the matter?”
“Our cart has failed, and the second cart is going on without us,” I yelled.
“Yes,” said Haymtatlr.
“What? What do you mean ‘yes?’”
“Everything is functioning as intended. There is no cause for alarm. Jane and the others will be fine.”
“Jane? She’s standing next to me! And what do you mean the others will be fine?”
“I’m taking them to a place of safety. Are you sure Jane is not in the other cart? My calculations indicate that Jane would ride with her son with ninety-seven percent confidence.”
“Your calculations were wrong!” Jane hissed. “Bring that cart back here!”
“Oh my! I must check my statistical circuits.” The phone chirped.
“Never mind that,” snapped Althyof. “We’ve got bigger problems.”
In a breath, I heard what had caused his concern. The army was close and racing closer with each passing moment.
I used the garage door opener switch on the cart to open one of the bay doors near us and tried the four carts we found inside. None of them powered up when I hit the switch.
“Haymtatlr!” I shouted in impotent rage.
“Never mind him,” said Veethar. “What are we going to do?”
We came up with a loose plan. To contain the battle, to choose the battlefield such that the Dark Queen could not bring her superior numbers to bear, we needed a choke point. I held up the guide. “Dead end roadway, walking distance, avoid the Dark Queen’s forces.” The thing was silent for a moment but vibrated its acceptance of the command after a heartbeat. We grabbed our gear, and Meuhlnir grabbed Sif’s bag from the roadway and ran in the direction the guide indicated.
We rounded a blind corner, and there it was, a cul-de-sac bordered on three sides by garages hidden behind roll-up doors. I pointed the guide at the garage door on the right. It was orange with a white stripe. “Open the door!” I didn’t expect the door to open, but it trundled upward, revealing one of the ubiquitous square rooms for storing carts.
“Good.” I pointed at the door set in the inside wall of the garage. “Packs in the hall, clear all but one cart out of the garage—we’ll use the last one to close the door if we can. We start the fight in the cul-de-sac, fall back to the garage if we get overwhelmed, and then through the door into the hall. If we have to defend the door, we fight, by twos, right here in the doorway, letting the others rest or do damage at range.” Everyone nodded, and I stepped into the hall and dropped my gun belt, cloak, hat, and mail shirt. Next to my gear, I put Sif’s medicine bag. “Make sure this stuff stays with us. We can lose the packs, but we must keep our arms, armor, and the medical kit.” I stepped back into the garage and began what I was calling the Kuthbyuhrn triblinkr in my mind. A dull pain slid in behind my eyes, and for a moment, I saw only purple and blue splotches, as if I’d rubbed my eyes too hard. Unlike a short time ago, the prayteenk was slow, painful.
“Hank, what do I do? Bears don’t need skyuldur vidnukona!”
“Use the ring,” Althyof said to Jane. “Fly over the battle, hit where you can, sow confusion and fear everywhere else.”
“But watch your energy,” I said, my voice growing thick and decreasing in pitch. The moment I took my full concentration away from the triblinkr, I started to revert. “Harder this time,” I gasped.
“Go slow,” said Althyof.
“Don’t overextend, Jane. We need you awake and functional. Laundry won’t do itself…”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “After this is over, I’m giving you such a beating.” Black wings sprouted from her back as if she were Azrael. She beat her wings once and took up a position in the square of road surface that was our bottleneck.
“Watch me,” Althyof said. “When I go into the garage, we all do. No exceptions.” The last he directed at me, scowling up into my shaggy face. “You will need to belly crawl, but don’t you dare change forms out here.”
I nodded my head and chuffed through my nose, applying myself to changing into a magnificent bear.
“They come,” said Veethar, pointing up the road with his sword.