Mickey Reichert: Godslayer

Larson complied reluctantly. Valvitnir buzzed slightly against him, glowing with blue light. "Silme. Shouldn't we wait until you've had some rest. "

Silme locked her fingers between Larson's. Her voice became a low drone. "No time. Bramin can trace us through the gaps in your mind. We don't want him to know we discovered his treachery."

Silme let her eyes fall shut. Her head lolled forward.

"Silme?"

"What!" Impatience made her curt.

"What if I can't control my thoughts?"

Her voice assumed a hiss of dry warning. "Let's just hope you can."

Her reply did nothing to reassure Larson. Near panic, he chose to conjugate verbs from his high school French lessons. Je suis, tu es, il est: Twin presences pressed against his mind with the banding grip of a headache. Vidarr and Silme scuttled without direction, silent as mice in the jarring loops of Larson's flawed thought pattern. God and sorceress probed blindly for one another, and Larson felt all too aware of their locations.

Nous sommes, vous etes, ils: ils sont: Gradually, Silme and Vidarr closed the distance between their mental presences. Their union broke to a dazzling explosion of light, sparking one of Larson's frayed memories like a dried piece of kindling. Hurled into flashback, Larson stared at a mine crater the size of his bedroom back in the States. Then a barrier snapped into place with a force which broke the illusion. Threat carved into focus. Hold your thoughts! I've no power to rescue you again.

J'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons: Larson plunged into his studies with desperate passion. The combined essence of Vidarr and Silme wove drunkenly through his brain. A flurry of enchantments battered through consciousness unsteady as fever.

VOUS AVEZ Will hurling Valvitnir in the Hel spring of Hvergelmir bring rescue or ruin to the gods of law and men? Silme's question echoed through

Larson's mind, pulling him from his furious attempts at conjugations.

Smoke eddied like car exhaust. The fused presence gasped in triumph, then hissed in fury as the haze peeled away, like scalded wax, without answer. Je vais, tu: Frustration settled in Larson's mind, dimmed to resolution. Silme/Vidarr gathered energy, unwittingly tapping him in the process.

Reference folded in nightmare as magics enwrapped him in drugged awareness. Fog thick as earth warped vision. Another alien presence winked to life in Larson's already overcrowded mind. Destroying the sword heralds Vidarr's death. Beware! Such an action will doom the world to Chaos.

Sanity flickered. Tu vas, il va, nous allons, vous allez, ils allont! Emotion pervaded him in a perfect mixture of outrage and concern. Silme/Vidarr coiled like a cat prepared to spring. Magic formed a tense ball in Larson's mind, crushing aside fragile circuits of memory. Pain blurred thought to blackness. Jefais, tufais, ilfait : Rationality exploded to madness.

A painted forest replaced the emptiness of Larson's eye-closed world. He walked between Silme and Vidarr beneath a mercilessly hot sun. Blue haze ringed the sorceress, and the god shone with a golden glory. Where the hell? thought Larson. Oh: a: nous faisons. The syllables warped to nonsense. Suddenly, a woman tall as a watchtower stepped from the brush, directly in his path.

Larson recoiled. The life auras of god and sorceress fused to glaring green. "Who are you?" demanded Silme boldly.

"I am Skuld, Future." The giantess' voice rattled trees. "In what cause have you summoned me, Silme Sapphirerank?"

"The cause of men and gods." Silme replied nearly as loud. "Should Chaos claim this world, there shall be no Law nor time nor knowledge. You and your sister Fates would perish." Her entreaty rolled like thunder through the silence of the forest. "How must we free Vidarr from imprisonment?"

A breeze rose and fell, rose and fell again. Several seconds passed before Larson recognized the wind as the breath of the giantess Skuld. "Your fears are founded, Lady Silme. Your quest is honorable, though it brings doom upon others, men and women of my domain, those ruled by one of your companions and beloved by the other. It is not my place to judge your task nor prevent it. The answer to your question lies with my sisters." Skuld marched back into the forest, trampling trees like matchsticks.

The giantess' prophecy sounded strange to Larson's numbed mind. How could rescuing men from Chaos doom them for the future? Before he found time to ponder the question, another woman shouldered between the trees. She looked sufficiently like Skuld to be her sister, yet not similar enough to be a twin.

"I am Verdandi," the giantess said, though no one asked her name. "I hold title to the present. Your query has gone beyond my realm to the past. I can tell you only that your quest stands contested by a god and a half-breed with the power to destroy you." Swiftly, she returned to the forest.

Cold sweat ran down Larson's back, and he shook with chills despite the heat. The third sister of Fate glided from the tangled brush. Vertigo transformed her to a blur which sharpened slowly to detail. She was obviously the eldest of the giantesses, smaller, withered, face puckered with burdens transferred from her sisters by time.

"I am Urdr, keeper of the past and the understanding of Odin. It was I who added the final provision to Loki's spell, and I who shall reveal that knowledge to you. To free my lord, Vidarr, the elf must claim Loki's life with the blade Valvitnir."

Shock battered Larson, obscured Urdr in glare. Silme's scream pierced his mind like a spear, jarring loose a wild memory. The sound transformed to the shrill whine of jets. Even as Larson located the blood-red afterburners of the paired phantoms, he recognized his surroundings. He traveled a familiar road in the Mekong Delta. Some distance ahead, a dozen buddies in cammie paused in horror as they discovered the jets' target was the same village which had, moments before, been their destination.

The lead jet passed over the village. A raging column of flame consumed grass huts and villagers without mercy. Panicked screams made Larson cringe. Even as the gasoline fumes pinched his nose, he realized he was neither in flashback nor alone. The dry crackle of gathering magics made him whirl toward Silme and Vidarr. "Oh my god! Silme, no!"

His warning came too late. Sorceries howled past his ear with all the inhuman speed of the phantoms. Bluish magics impacted the trailing jet and broke to a savage explosion of emerald. Shards of twisted steel rained to earth. Larson's sinews went taut with shock. He could only suppose Silme saw the jets as dragons swooping upon an innocent town. Ahead on the road, the camouflaged men dropped, as one, to the ground. Suddenly,

Larson knew he and his otherworld companions had become the enemy.

"Down!" hollered Larson. He dove into the roadside ditch. Gunfire popped and sputtered around him, sounding oddly impotent after the scourge of napalm and the thunderclap of Silme's spell. With no means or desire to return fire on his buddies, Larson flattened to the dirt without recourse. What have I done? Worried over the ignorance of his alien companions, he forced his gaze toward the road. Vidarr and Silme stood behind a shimmering curtain which reflected bullets like a wall.

The oddity of their magical defense was not lost on the Americans. One yelled. "Holy fucking god!" Silme began a new incantation. Dark mists broiled from her fingertips. A graying glow flickered around the enchantress and winked out like a spent candle. As Silme drained her life energy, she fell in a soundless faint.

"Silme!" screamed Larson. The sorceress lay still within her magical shield, but her final spell was cast, Wizardry rolled along the road like a living ball of fire. The men in cammie dodged from the path of the sorceries with startled cries. And, from over the burning village, Larson caught sight of the returning phantom. Faster than its own report, the jet glided toward them in vengeful silence.