Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (110 page)

Situated in the middle of the clearing, perfectly filed into a complete circle, was a well—a plain, simple well, constructed of stone and leading
to what could only be the center of the world.

What is this?
Odin thought, tempted to step forward, but unsure whether or not he should.

In the moments following his revelation, he began to wonder whether or not all places of the
Will were like this. He imagined that couldn’t be possible, considering such creations were of the material world and could not be of nature, but as he began to think even more, his thoughts led him to the idea that this had been placed here—if not by the Elves, then by some greater, higher being.

Maybe,
he mused.
Maybe…

Maybe, completely devoid of purpose other than to direct attention
unto themselves, the Gods had placed this here.

Unsure what to think and growing more nervous by the moment, Odin fell to his knees, pulled the pack from his shoulder, then began to fish its depths for the book, which he
found at the bottom beneath his bedroll.

“All right,” he thought, turning his eyes first
to the book, then the well before him. “This is it. Where it all begins.”

Taking a deep breath, Odin opened the
tome, lit his palm in magical fire, then poured light over the page until he found what he was looking for.

Bringing back the physical dead.

He turned the pages, closed his eyes, then opened them and allowed them to fall on the very page he’d so desperately sought out.

Is it only in the minds of men that fear is summoned by word?

Odin opened his eyes to look at the book before him.

It took but a few moments to read from the sacred text.

When the memories of death were true, Odin stood, then approached the well.

His heart on his sleeve, his nerves
in his hands, he approached with a heavy mind and an even lighter conscience.

He
’d expected much more of this sacred thing that had been hidden from the world by the creatures fair and immortal—smoke, possibly, maybe even mist or a light at the end of the tunnel that marked the Will and just what it ordained. That was not what he saw, as when he peered into the well’s depths he could find nothing but darkness. The idea that he could have come all this way for nothing, much less a dead source, unsettled him so much that he began to shiver when he placed his hands on the stone, tracing the mighty and chaotic construction beneath his fingertips as he would a cat nice and full of love, but when he found himself able to realize that the Will had never, nor ever would fade from this earth, he took a moment to compose himself and calculate what he would have to do.

Here, in this moment, he would lift from his body the essence of his father
’s life and revive the very Sprite that had departed his body upon his death.

“This is for you,”
he whispered. “Father.”

Reaching down, he drew from its sheath his father
’s silver-bladed sword, then brought it to his head, where he cut from the base of his skull the very hair that had been bonded to him by Ardut upon his father’s death.

Ceremonial, it would have seemed, were anyone to have looked upon the scene.

Odin closed his eyes.

He lifted the hand that held the lock of hair and pressed it to the curve of the sword.

Flesh met steel. Blood was born.

The pain, though initially
catastrophic, did not last, as everything physical seemed devoid of reality.

Odin opened his eyes.

Bonded in his hand, blood and hair appeared brother and sister, husband and wife, father and son.

Slowly, with grace he could not imagine, he pushed his hand over the mouth of the well, then let go.

Blood and hair fell.

“Come back to me,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

In his head he formed the words he would speak, then imparted them from his lips.

As his blood continued to spill, a spark of light began to pulse from the bottom from the well,
then eventually expanded until it lit the clearing.

“I know from you my message clear,” he said, opening his eyes to survey the
world before him, “and I know from you my life was dear. Come back to me, oh fallen one, and grace the world you’ve once become.”

A pink flash lit the world.

Shadows were pushed back. Trees were rustled. The dead matter on the ground parted like dust and from the great chasm that was the Will came a sound that bore no distinction and held no memory.

Odin closed his eyes.

The light began to fade.

Soon, darkness filled the world.

There was no light.

There was no sound.

But he knew.

No
w, he would wait.

To think that a life-changing event could occur in but one moment was like waiting for the moon to rise in place of the sun. A completely ignorant fallacy that could not have been completed even with the strongest of magic, it lay forth like a suspended orb of light slowly crossing the sky, creating the illusion that such a thing could happen. In Odin’s mind, and in the face of such realities he knew would come true, he found himself more at peace than he had sice that one fateful day.

To think that, for almost a year, he had attempted to bring his father back to life seemed impossible—benign, even, for surely this moment couldn
’t exist and this entire journey was just a dream.

What if it was?
he thought, dozing, his eyes to the sky and his injured hand wrapped in cloth.
What if it is?

Rather than think about
it, he allowed the mist to overwhelm his body and chose to think of simpler things—like children, running and playing in the snow, or dogs, frolicking through fields of flowers and snapping at bees. These were the things that really mattered—the memories that would last a lifetime.

In that moment, while lying there beneath the mist, Odin thought
everything would change—that, in one breath of time, his reality would shift, thereby thrusting him into a new and inspired light.

He opened his eyes.

Darkness hovered beyond the glowing mist pooling from the well.

What is it?
he thought, shivering, suddenly colder than he had been since touching down on Sharktooth Island.

Could it be, he wondered, that the magic was working—that the spell, which he had so carefully cast, was now taking affect what seemed like hours, possibly days later?

The pangs in his stomach growing increasingly by the moment, he pushed himself to his feet, grounded himself, then looked into the thicket of trees.

Something shifted.

“Father?” he asked.

It came from the wood as though dead and out of place. Tall, emaciated, with skin the color of bone upon an elk
’s exposed horns and shadows peaking every hollow of its body—its long arms hung slack at its sides and its bony, dome-shape head, covered with thin strands of greying hair, appeared to gleam in the light reflected off the single orb of magic Odin had cast to illuminate the clearing. Nude, seemingly-completely unaware of its surroundings and looking frightened beyond compare, it stumbled into the clearing and rounded the well in a few awkward steps, then turned several times to examine the world. It raised its head and gawked at the trees, extended its hands and reached for the stars, and shifted as the mist curled around its thighs, as if unable to hold its posture because its body was too frail to support itself.

Throughout all of this—the pain, the agony, the frustration, the fear, and, most importantly, the unabashed amount of love—Odin found himself watching the creature with h
is mouth open and his jaw cracking from the pressure weighing upon it.

Is it,
he thought, then stopped before he could finish.

The creature turned to face him.

Upon the sides of its head were the curved, bat-like ears that symbolized the creature for what it truly was.

Tears spilled down his
face.

His body began to shake.

A scream rose in his throat.

Odin, unable to maintain his composure, fell to his knees.

No,
he thought, grappling his hair, tugging with all his might.
No. No. It can’t be. It just can’t.

He
’d done everything the book had said, had read precisely in the exact Elven tongue and had cut the hair from his head and the blood from his palm just as it had instructed. It seemed too simple—too
concise
for anything to have gone wrong. It was like one-plus-one, two-plus-two, one foot forward and one foot back, the fall of the sun and the rise of the moon. He couldn’t have failed, he just
couldn’t
have
.
He’d come too far and done too many horrible things to get to this point just to give up now.

The creature groaned.

Odin turned his head up to look at it.

In
his eyes he saw the person he’d intended to resurrect—beautiful, handsome, emaciated but living. It held its high cheekbones at the eclipse of its face and its long, fine nose just above its lips. Even its eyebrows, devoid of hair and lacking in purpose, appeared as they did when it was alive—curved directly to the bridge of the nose and arcing back down at the curl of its brow.

Perhaps the most startling portrayal, however, was its blank eyes—white, muted, and resembling something like
fog cast over an all-knowing glass.

“Father?” he asked.

The creature, much like the flesh summon Odin had encountered once before, tilted its head and opened its mouth, as if unable to understand what was going on. It remained like this for a very long period of time before, slowly, it opened its mouth and said in slow, simple vowels, “Odin.”

His heart broke.

His mind cracked.

His teeth sunk into his lips and spilled blood down his chin.

No.

“NO!” he screamed, throwing himself to his feet as the creature reached out to touch him. “No! NO! You
can’t
be him! You
can’t
be!”

“Oh-Din,” the creature breathed, once more reach
ing for him with its long, bony fingers. “Oh-Din, Oh-Din.”

“Stop saying my name!”
he screamed. “Stop it!
STOP IT!”

“Oh-Din.”

“You’re not him!
YOU’RE NOT HIM!”

“Oh—“

No. No. This can’t be happening. It just can’t be.

As the creature stepped forward, Odin found himself unable to look
at it any longer.

He turned and ran
.

The forest whipped by as if it were a piece of leather braided to beat horses
, to stun the wicked and to maim the shamed. The mist harsh, the ground faltering, the darkness absolute and without light—it felt he would simply fall and land in the snow that had accumulated on the ground, thus ending the permanent resistance he had instilled in order to keep the thoughts away. He’d come so far, done so much, committed so many horrible acts and done things no sane person would ever do only to bring back something foul, something broken, something
impure
that could not and would not ever be the person he loved.
How,
he wondered, could he have failed, when he had done just as the book had instructed?

Maybe I didn
’t read it right,
he thought, the thoughts in his head racing so fast he thought they would shoot from his head.
I didn’t know the entirety of Elvish. Maybe I mistranslated something, did something wrong, said the wrong thing or tainted the hair by putting my blood on it.

“It can
’t be,” he breathed, throwing himself toward the shore that lay no more than a few feet away. “It just… it can’t.”

Daylight had since broken the horizon and lit the sky in pale shades of grey and white, signaling the first coming of a storm.

He felt, for a brief moment, as if he were going to collapse, then fall into the wake and drown. It would have been ample punishment—would have secured him as the evil scum he was—but in that moment, he wondered just how he would return to the mainland without the Ferryman.

I can
’t,
he thought, his breathing desperate and completely out of this world.
I can’t… I can’t—

Something struck hi
s thigh.

Odin
gasped.

Pain blossomed.

He looked down.

Embedded in his leg
was the stalk of an arrow.

Raising his eyes, Odin trained his attention on the world in front of him.