Mickey Reichert: Godslayer

Gaelinar bowed politely to his hosts. "Forgive me, Sigurdhr Blacksmith. Lord Alleruni and I cannot attend your meal. We've a sword lesson to complete."

Larson turned suddenly and reluctantly from the feast. "Now? But there's food on the table."

Gaelinar bowed again, but his words were without compromise. "Practice. Now."

"Excuse me," Larson mumbled to their host. He found abandoning dinner for swordplay painful, but he followed the Kensei across the brown grasses of the blacksmith's lawn to an open area beyond the forge. An edge of the sun had already slipped beneath the horizon, coloring the western sky as red as the blood in Vidarr's vision. Larson scowled as he reached for his sword. "You're one hell of a gung ho gook."

"Pardon me?" Gaelinar's hand paused on the brocade of his katana.

"Nothing." Larson sighed, enjoying the sound of English in this legendary Northern world. "But where I come from, it's impolite to refuse dinner with a host."

Gaelinar nodded once, his eyes dark as midnight. "Hero, if you miss a meal tonight, you will have another tomorrow." He paused as the air hummed with the first of the evening's mosquitoes. "If you skip practice, you may not. Begin."

Larson obeyed with reluctant annoyance. In two days, he would face the greatest challenge of his new life with nothing but the knowledge of a few dodges and strikes. Surely one lesson more or less would make little difference to his abilities. But Gaelinar seemed to think otherwise, and Larson found it impossible to argue with the swordmaster concerning his own trade.

Gaelinar worked Larson without mercy far into the moonless night. For each success, the Kensei presented a new challenge until Larson's annoyance folded beneath all-encompassing fatigue. More and more frequently, he relied on Vidarr's cues. By the time the practice concluded, without ceremony or. praise, Larson no longer wanted food, just a place to lie down and a full night's rest.

Gaelinar and Larson returned to the cottage in a silence which pleased the elf. Condemning words or maxims would have rekindled the exasperation he struggled to suppress. Inside, Gaelinar joined the conversation of Silme, Sigurdhr, and Kelda who shared tea before a roaring fire. Larson excused himself with a yawn, and Kelda showed him to a bedroom with a straw pallet and a hand-knitted quilt. There, Larson promptly fell asleep.

The dream seized control of Larson during the shallow, twilight slumber near to awakening. It began as a pleasant vision of the extension of their journey. Gaelinar, Silme, and himself rode along a meandering path beside the river Sylg, which twisted like a silver serpent, widening to a torrent of ice-flecked waters. The trail forked many times. Always in the past they had taken the branch which most closely paralleled the river. But in the dream, Silme indicated a wooden sign corroded by fungus and started down a side path which led away from the stream.

As the dream-Larson turned to follow, panic seized him like an overdose of adrenalin. He dismounted and dropped to a crouch, heart hammering in his chest. His mouth dried to rawness. His vision blurred to haze. War memories pressed toward expression, but the being who inspired his nightmare wove barriers with the intricacy of a spider. In the vision, Larson shook his head with uncharacteristic violence and gestured toward the northern trail along the river Sylg.

There was no sound in Larson's dream, but when Silme cleared slime from the road sign, its writings became clear:

Temple to Odin

The Oracle of Hargatyr

With an air of exasperation, Silme and Gaelinar reined their horses down the eastward branch. Reluctantly, the dream-Larson remounted and followed, but with each hoof-fall his anxiety trebled. Rows of twisted juniper passed unnoticed. The scenery might have been painted backdrops for all the heed he paid it. Instead, his attention focused on the looming gray outline of the temple to Odin.

By the time Larson and his companions reached the temple dooryard, his clothing had adhered to his sweat-soaked torso. He paused, studying the squat structure with an aura of mistrust. Brown ivies swarmed its exterior in uneven clumps, making it seem to lean awkwardly to the left. Moss chinked the wall stones like green mortar. Larson almost expected to see lightning flare between nonexistent watchtowers. He shivered, wondering whether to blame the temple's eerie appearance or his heightened senses for the fear which coiled his muscles nearly to immobility. He felt like a traitor who had refused both cigarette and blindfold before the firing squad.

At Silme's knock, the ancient door swung open with a squeal of complaint. A half dozen drab-robed acolytes met Larson and his companions and escorted them past stained altars. Beyond, a dark curtain crisscrossed with glimmering silver threads spanned a doorway from ceiling to floor. Gaelinar and Silme passed through a slit in the fabric. Larson followed them into a room as gray as the moment before dawn. At its farthest end sat the oracle of Hargatyr, a young woman with a seemingly endless cascade of reddish hair. Though shadowed beyond recognition of detail, her face seemed not quite normal to Larson. Before her stood a marble slab which supported a clear, oblong diamond with a black central core rimmed green. Not unlike a giant eye, the stone winked and shone with an intensity which further shattered the dream-Larson's confidence.

Silme stepped forward and presented a request Larson could not hear in the frustratingly soundless world of his dream. The oracle passed a withered hand twice across the diamond. Mist swirled in the depths of the gemstone, floated upward in lines tenuous as heat haze. Abruptly the oracle burst to a conflagration of yellow flame. Larson reeled backward as a shapeless black form leaped from the fire and attacked the startled sorceress.

Claws rent Silme's flesh. Blood sprayed the room in arcs of red chaos. Gaelinar howled. His swords reflected highlights of scarlet and gold. Valvitnir rasped from its sheath. Larson and Gaelinar lunged together for the demon which savaged Silme. The beast's claws carved searing lines across Larson's arm, but steel also met its mark. Valvitnir plunged deep into the monster's gut. Even more swiftly, Gaelinar's swords went sticky green with demon blood. It fell, witch-screaming, across Silme's lifeless form.

The room was awash with color. No life remained in Silme's broken body. The sapphire in her dragonstaff shattered like glass on the cold stone floor. Grief struck Larson in a wave of mental anguish. As he stared at the wild waste of multiple hues, the scene swirled and blurred away to a single black face with glowing red eyes. Bramin! Rationality escaped in a rush of fear, and sound sundered silence in a rolling thunderclap of evil laughter. Bramin's misshapen mouth formed words which struck like daggers of ice. "Be forewarned, Al Larson. Should you choose to seek the oracle, you will pay with the lives of friends!"

Bramin's face winked out. His dark hand remained and scattered the carefully placed barriers in Larson's mind. Memories burst forth like a torrent through a broken dam. Rockets flared from every angle with roars which deafened Larson. Bullets whined in insect-like swarms where he cowered with no safe place to retreat. Screams formed a chorus of hell-born agonies, while ghosts of buddies and enemies alike sentenced Larson to an eternity of life.

Larson's mental flight from madness ran him headlong into a scene from the past. He crouched between the banks of a dried river, clutching an M-16 which grew surprisingly light in the moments before death. Surrounded by enemies, he charged from the banks with Freyr's name on his lips. But where the last time he had recalled nothing except awakening in a strange elf body and a foreign world, now he recalled the torment of bullets riddling his body, jerking his limbs like a marionette. Horror held him screamless while a river of his own blood washed between the banks.