Powers (31 page)

She cocked her head to one side and smiled that peculiar half-smile of hers. “Speaking of the river, if you can turn into a fish, how come you claim you can’t swim?”

Oh, hell. “Which version?”

“Andvari.”

“Okay, that was probably Norway. What’s
now
Norway. No, I can’t swim. Hell, unless I’ve been eating really good, I can’t even float worth a damn. You’ve probably noticed, not much body fat. Anyway, I was after some placer gold in a mountain stream deeper than I could wade. I figured out what you’d call a snorkel these days. I guess some of the locals saw me go into the water and stay down a lot longer than any of them could hold their breath.” He paused and then shrugged.

“One of the things the legends have right, gold makes me do funny things. That water was
cold.
Needed to come up and bask in the sun on a rock like an otter, after each dive.”

She giggled. That seemed weird, given who she was, the image she projected. Not the kind of woman who giggled. Kali? You couldn’t even
think
of Kali giggling. If you did, she’d take three days to kill you.

“I bet you came out looking like a blue prune. Dick shrunken to a stub about
that
long.” She held finger and thumb about an inch apart.

Well, yeah. Rude of her to say it, though.

“So. Alberich, Andvari, Ottarr, all those names, all those totally mythical dwarves that let gold overcome common sense and decency—what do I call you, now that you remember things?”

He had to snicker, himself. “I’m just Al. Albert, if you feel more formal. Or pig-headed idiot, as needed.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that. Sorry. I should have seen that you were getting sick. Allah and Buddha both know,
I
didn’t enjoy the experience.”

She paused and spent a moment or two with a narrow bone, trying to work a bit of grouse out from between her teeth. Also not something you ever visualized Kali doing. Then, “Did I rave like that in the fever?”

Damn and double damn. “Some. Most of it was in dialects I’ve never heard.”

“Except for the Hani part.”

He nodded. Some things, you can’t unsay. It wasn’t like he’d
wanted
to hear that. To find out what it meant. Should have kept his damned mouth shut.

She waved it off. “ ’S okay. I’ve never been able to talk about him. Amateur psychotherapy, maybe letting it out will help.” Shrug.

“Anyway, you used four or five languages I’ve never heard, so we’re even. But several times, English and Latin, you mumbled something about circuits or paths in the iron. Steel computer chips. And silicon in the ore.”

She paused, staring into the fire. Made with cedar wood, it cracked and popped and spat sparks and sooted up the pots, not prime campfire wood, but you go with what you got.

“Look, I’m no authority on either the wily ways of Suleiman bin Dauod, or working iron. But, if someone cuts a bunch of wires in a radio, it isn’t gonna work. That doesn’t mean I have to know how to design or even build a radio, to fix it. Just reconnect the red wire to the red wire, the blue wire to the blue, and so on. I even know that
this
stub of red wire doesn’t want to connect to that other red one over
there,
because it just won’t reach. Can’t you do something like that with the Seal?”

She looked up from the fire. “You know, I have to admit that both of us were grubby as hell. Nor can I fault Bilqis saying that you’re small. But I think you’re rather more than a blacksmith.” She paused.

“One thing about pig-headed gods—we don’t give up easy.”

Albert wiggled and then shrugged his shoulders, trying to lose the itching and twitching along his spine. Not that anything
he
did would help. He could hear Mel behind him, quiet footsteps crunching the path’s gravel and dead leaves, and the problem was
her.

Her, and his hyperactive imagination. He kept seeing her sneaking up on those grouse and then a sudden flash of steel as she whipped the
naginata
around faster than the bird could see, faster than anyone could see, and the bird flopping from its perch, a fountain of blood where its head had been. Flailing wings scattering dead leaves. Slowing. Stopping. Blood soaking into the forest litter.

Then another, and another. Five of them, she’d crept up and lopped their heads off. If she’d wanted more, she’d have killed more. Nothing to stop her. Kali, Goddess of Death and Destruction.

Reminded him too much of a praying mantis, motionless or a slow stalk, then the spiked forelegs flashing out and grabbing a victim. Then the jaws, and death.

He knew what that blade would do. He’d forged it, after all. And he’d used it to kill the . . . shield-bear . . . Mother had called it. Slashed through those scales like tissue paper.

That blade walked behind him. In
her
hands. She’d sworn to kill him . . .

“Quit twitching, damn you. I promise I won’t chop your head off like a damned grouse. Or stab you in the back, or shoot you, or any of the other dooms you’re imagining with every step you take.”

So it will be one I don’t imagine. Thanks a
hell
of a lot.

“Look, I swear, oath on Allah’s love, I won’t kill you before I have a washing-machine handy. I
hate
washing blood out of my uniforms once it’s had time to set.”

Meaning, she’s done it. Now she’s mocking me, to rub it in. She said she’s not a Believer, not one of the
umma
or
ulema.
Not what you’d call a binding oath, under those circumstances.

“Fuck it. I’ll take point, if you won’t trust me behind your back. You’ll have to carry the pack, though. It’d slow me down in a fight.”

Taking all in all, he decided that was a good tradeoff. Though that brought him closer to the dying whimper of the Seal. Anyway, she heaved the pack down on the stream-side path, he set the shotgun against a tree, and took up the load. Not any lighter, for all that the tent and assorted gear had had a chance to dry. That Seal couldn’t weigh more than a pound, at most two, but it dragged at him like twenty pounds of lead.

Why couldn’t Mother have the decency to
kill
it? Decency? Mercy? Her? She’d probably hamstring an enemy at sunrise in the desert ten miles from an oasis, and hang around to gloat over the dying.

Typical god. Life isn’t painful enough, so I’ll invent eternal hell. Can’t escape by dying.

The path led on, not steep, praise be to Allah, following the slope of the trout stream it tracked, surfaced with stones and roots and gravel mostly, cleared high and wide enough for Fafnir with a fly rod. He glanced out through and over swamp maples, cedars, thickets of laurel, a grove of dark fir here and some tall pines on a knoll over there looking like a Japanese
sumi-e
ink painting, expressive brushstrokes.

Something waited, ahead of them. Mel’s winds had sensed it. She hadn’t explored further than the immediate area of the campsite, keeping watch over his sickness. Now he could feel that something, his own power waxing as the Seal’s waned. Neither of them had much clue as to what they felt. That had been part of Solomon’s ancient work, stealing their memories and powers and more than half their skills.

At least Mel had known she was a goddess, because her people filled in the blanks. They told her what she was.

Do I
want
to fix the Seal? Cripple myself again, Mel again, after Mother has set us free?

Gods invent hells.

They climbed beside a waterfall, fifty vertical feet of cascade whitewater and rainbowed mist, stepped pools and black mossy rocks and trailing wet ferns, one laurel clump perched on an outcrop in the middle to supervise the whole. Thing looked like it had been built as a Zen gardener’s fish ladder to allow spawning runs upstream. How much of this had Fafnir
made,
anyway?

He’d had centuries. He liked fish. He’d helped build Valhalla for gods he
didn’t
like. Gods who cheated.

This is the other side of what gods do, if they take the time. None of that six-days-and-rest nonsense. Takes me longer than
that
to make a decent blade from scratch. Making a good universe, one that passes detail, that takes years. Like, billions of them, what with the geological epochs thrown in for checking up on long-term consequences of this tweak here and that one there.

Constant tinkering. Not a one-shot deal.

Albert soaked up the smell of wet moss, clean water, healthy trees and soil. The roar and hiss and boom and chuckle of falling water. Fafnir must have tuned the stream for pitch and timbre. Need a plunge pool over here for the low register.

Adjust again each spring, as the ice-out and high water changed things, shifted rocks and dumped washed-out trees across the current and gouged new pools. Study the results. Keep the good and adapt the bad to make it good. Life is change.

Except for us. Can gods change?

The path crossed side-streams or the main current by stepping stones—Zen spacing, you had to alter your stride and pay attention to balance, live in each step. Be here now. Zen teahouse views—framed to snatch a glimpse of shimmering pool and overhanging laurel or cedar in mid-stride, you only caught it once, from one exact angle. A trout jumped in the middle of one such glimpse, snatching a mayfly or some such glinting morsel at the peak of the leap, then vanished into spreading silver rings of water.

I’m glad we didn’t have to fight him. Kill him. Guest-law requires him to defend Mother to the death. Once he let her shelter under his roof.

Damn her, for setting such a trap.

He’d lagged behind Mel, savoring the place and time. Now he pushed harder to catch up, burning hip and all, panting and sweating with the weight of the pack and the Seal. He could feel the ancient iron dragging at him on the climb. He’d had to tuck his cane into the pack, to free his hands to hold the shotgun ready.

Dammit.

“Whatever’s waiting ahead of us, it has to be a trap. That’s the way Mother thinks.”

She didn’t pause or even glance back, keeping her attention on the trail and any dangers, searching the treetops, the rocks, every clump of shrubbery, the shadows, even the water in case of kraken.

“You say this like it was some kind of news.”

Sometimes, paranoia represents an accurate world-view.

They topped another slope next to another artwork cascade, and the valley opened out in front of them. Water meadows framed by forest, grass and cattails and sedges and the stream snaking deep and dark and cold through it all, perfect for the clean back-cast of fly-fishing, here and there a beaver lodge to harvest the bordering aspens. Across it all, a rise of glacier-carved gray stone much like the cliff that held Fafnir’s cave.

Another giant’s home? Albert didn’t care. All he cared about was the route ahead looked flat for a while. Mel had been staggering, the morning she’d recovered from her sickness. He’d turned his fish spear into the
naginata
because she needed the support, not because he thought she knew that weapon.

He felt like she had looked.

Well, half dead is better than the whole dish. On the other hand, half a fish is better than none. Metaphors are almost as slippery as eels.

He shook himself and took one step, then another. If you’re still moving, you’re still alive. Mel had paused and waited while he caught his breath. Now she studied him with narrowed eyes, head cocked to one side.

“Want to take a break? I’m pretty sure I could scrounge up some lunch around here.”

Temptation. Get thee behind me, Satan. Except, he didn’t trust her behind his back. Dilemma.

He pulled up a couple of quotes from the Qur’an and then discarded them for the sake of his hide. She’d told him to stick to Shakespeare. “ ‘ ’Twere well it were done quickly.’ If I sit down, I won’t get up for a day or two.”

And then, by association and not out loud,
By the pricking of my thumbs
 . . . now that they had a clear view over the water-meadow, he recognized what he felt from the bare stone outcrop ahead of them. “We’re getting closer to one of those gates. Same feeling as the alley outside that old door that wasn’t there.”

She nodded. “I didn’t want to mention it, in case I was just wishing. Glad to know you feel it too.”

“I think people like us, gods or whatever, we’re supposed to be able to find the gates. Maybe we even built them in the first place. One of the powers Solomon stole from us. If you believe Mother.”

They plodded on. Or, she strode and scouted and radiated deadly speed while he plodded. That amount of bustling energy could have aggravated the hell out of him, if he had the strength to spare. Instead he just filed it as a fact, possibly important. Let her take the hard part in the coming battle. Not being a coward, just recognizing reality when it rose up and smacked him in the face. Like the trail kept threatening to do.

A mile winding around the water-meadows and in and out of aspens and birches, past the gnawed pencil-point stumps that said the beaver lodges were still active, a mile of one foot in front of the other and wishing he dared take a break on one of the long stones placed here and there along the trail—rounded glacial stones with gentle flats or depressions of the correct size and height to receive a giant’s butt for lunch or quiet contemplation of a particular view.

Glacial stones not placed by any glacier. Fafnir had been working on this for a
long
time.

Damn shame I can’t pause and admire his masterpiece. Those vistas. But if I stop moving, it’s gonna take dynamite to get me started again.

One foot in front of the other. His view narrowed to the trail in front of him, leaving the vistas and any possible threats to Mel. If you’re still moving, you’re still alive.

He moved into shadow. He looked up into a bulk of vertical gray stone spotted with lichen and the wash of dark and light that rain brought below the lichen, its acids painting or etching the rock. The trail ended at a door, a weathered wooden door of rails and stiles and inset beveled panels that looked a hell of a lot like the one back in that alley, except this didn’t have a cross and shield at the peak of its pointed arch. And just like the alley door, it didn’t offer a knob or handle or other outside hardware. It did have an inscription winding up and over the peak and down.