The Tyranny of the Night

41. Back to the Dark Womb

Svavar ran in an endless blur of mantis legs, only vaguely aware of terrified animals and gaping peasants. Night fell, day came and went, night fell. Rivers and mountains appeared ahead and fell behind. A week passed before hunger and exhaustion overcame him. Only then did reason return.

He returned to his native form: Asgrimmur Grimmsson. Naked. Shivering in the cold that gripped modern Freisland year round. In his Svavar form he was not much more than the Svavar that always was – though his senses were heightened and his mind was clearer and a little faster. And he understood that he was now vastly more than Asgrimmur Grimmsson, pirate and plunderer. He was a new form of terror entirely.

Freisland had changed. The new religion had turned the people into whimpering old women. Naked and unarmed, he still had little trouble taking food and claiming warmth and less trouble dismaying those who tried to fight him.

He flowed back into the insect shape. Terror spread like ripples in a pond. He enjoyed the fear. Grim would be in heaven in this situation. Grim had been a bully born. Svavar had had to learn to take pleasure in the fear and misery of others.

He moved more slowly as the cold deepened. The insect form was vulnerable to low temperature.

The land grew bleaker and more sparsely inhabited. Farms and whole villages had been abandoned. There was no growing season anymore.

Svavar discovered that the insect form was not the only one he could take. That distracted him for weeks, till he learned to assume a dozen more shapes, mostly useful, some just horrible. The limits of his imagination were his only constraint. Someday, he would learn to become a dragon. A huge black dragon, all fangs and fire and claws.

When he became less amused by shape-shifting play he resumed the mission he had assigned himself.

At Grodnir's Point, now uninhabited, he took the shape of a bull walrus, crossed the ice and slipped into the sea south of Orfland. The channel between the mainland and the island was narrower, now, and was frozen over. Sea level seemed to have dropped a few yards. Svavar wondered how much the Shallow Sea had dwindled.

Waters that once teemed with sea people were now almost barren. Svavar needed three days to find a colony sheltering in a cove on the western coast of a small, rocky island thirty miles out in the south Andorayan Sea. A minuscule leak of power kept the cove more habitable than its surroundings.

The power seepage felt like warm sunshine on a spring morning. Svavar had not known about the gentle pleasure the power could give. Nor how much stronger he might grow, given a chance to bask.

The people of the sea were frightened. He was the greatest power they had known. The Instrumentalities of the Night were seldom seen these days. The lesser entities were gone, fled or buried beneath the ice if they were the sort attached to a particular place.

Svavar tried to be diplomatic. He insisted that he meant no harm. He summoned a school of cod, learning that fish were scarce now, too. Then he explained, "Somewhere out on the water there's an opening into the realm of the gods. To the world of the Old Ones."

The fear of the sea people made for a long silence.

Svavar told them, "The One Who Harkens to the Sound is no more. Arlensul and Sprenghul are no more. Once I reach the Great Sky Fortress, the others will be no more as well."

None of these creatures had known any of the Old Ones. The gods of the north had not been active for centuries. Not since, Svavar surmised, a southbound band of hunters from Andoray disappeared a long, long time ago.

He was the fear the sea people knew now.

A reluctant trio of young males received the task of showing Svavar where legend told them the gateway to the realm of the gods lay. The horror the sea people called the Port of Shadows.

SVAVAR THE WALRUS ENTERED THE HARBOR OF THE GODS. Most of the water there contained the warmth of a power leak. But thin ropes of cold snaked around its surface. Everything ashore seemed soft focused, as though seen through cataracted eyes.

Svavar heaved clumsily ashore, assumed the guise of Asgrimmur Grimmsson. Dwarves surrounded him immediately. They brought clothing. It fit. He did not wonder why. Not then.

He stared up the mountain. The Great Sky Fortress looked like a distant dream lurking behind thin trailers of gossamer. The dwarves were solid enough, though. And they were afraid.

Svavar thought back. He could not recall the dwarves speaking last time. Nor could he recall much about them from the myths. They were the wondrous artisans who crafted the magical artifacts that made the legends go. If treated badly or cheated they could become quite unpleasant

He who was widest, shaggiest, and grayest asked, "Are you the One Foretold?"

"Huh? What's going on?"

"The End of Time." The old dwarf said no more. He answered no questions. His companions were astonished that he had spoken at all.

Svavar looked inside himself for the anger. He tapped it. He began to climb the mountain. A band of dwarves followed.

The road upward was in poor shape. There were no guardians at the rainbow bridge. The bridge itself was little more than a hint of tangled color. No pure mortal could have walked it. There were no guardians at the gate. The gate was in sad repair.

The interior of the fortress seemed little changed. Gloomier, perhaps, but not insubstantial, which was true of everything outside. Neglected, though, yes. For a long time.

Svavar drew upon stolen memories to find his way around. It took just a thought to move to the hall where the Heroes had waited. Hundreds remained there now, never having gone through the dark mandala. But most were in wretched shape, missing so many parts, that Svavar's disgust fanned the flame of his hatred. He would avenge and release those pathetic cripples.

There was a feasting hall where the northern gods gathered.

He could not recall how to get there. How could that be? He had to know the way. He was a god. Well, if not wholly a god, definitely a budding Instrumentality. He could step outside himself, even here. And he had other memories. He should know this fortress to the last dust mote. He had taken recollections from three Old Ones… Ah. So. There were a dozen more of them, as yet untouched by the disaster at al-Khazen. They were hiding. While blinding him subtly.

He materialized in the place where the Old Ones cowered. It had no evident bounds, neither ceiling nor floor nor walls. Just dark, smoky distances. None of the gods wore the guises seen in the myths of men. But he knew them.

Only the Trickster showed no fear. He believed he could talk his way out of anything.

Svavar discovered that an abiding anger was no substitute for knowledge and millennia of experience.

The fight was nasty. Not a word passed one way or the other. Svavar withdrew eventually, godly tail between his remaining legs.

The Old Ones suffered, too. Excepting the Trickster, who stood aside. The divine family survived, barely.

Svavar took some of their knowledge away with him.

Dwarves waited at the rainbow bridge. They had reinforced it. The grizzled one who had spoken to him before advised, "Keep the centipede shape. You're hurt too badly to be human."

TIME PASSED. SVAVAR HEALED, DRAWING POWER FROM THE harbor water. The realm of the gods grew more tenuous. But the gods themselves persevered, holed up inside their hidden place.

When he recovered, Svavar climbed the mountain again. He found only eleven surviving Old Ones. They were weaker. The Heroes in their Hall were putrefying. They would not suffer the bidding of the Night again. They had found the freedom of death.

Svavar realized that the Old Ones were trapped inside their Great Sky Fortress. How and why were not clear. It might be the dwarves' doing. They were the architects and artisans of the divine realm. After long ages they saw an opportunity to put paid in full to their indentures.

SVAVAR CLIMBED THE MOUNTAIN FOUR TIMES. THE STRUGGLE never went the way he expected. But he was not dismayed. Life never conformed with wishful thinking.

The Old Ones weakened evermore. Svavar fed on their knowledge. The Trickster tried to work his wiles, but Svavar remained stubbornly disinclined to make deals. There was reason to suspect that his meddling had pushed Arlensul into a position of compromise with the mortal Gedanke. Arlensul remembered. Arlensul remained resident within Svavar, in a spectral fashion, still animated by rage and hatred.

The Great Sky Fortress was a shimmer against a lowering sky. Svavar went up the mountain for the last time, but this time the rainbow bridge would not support him. The Aelen Kofer had abandoned it.

The dwarves knew the heart of the Great Sky Fortress remained real to the surviving Old Ones. But the exterior reality was tenuous. The entire realm would vanish soon. The Old Ones would be locked in an inside without an out. They would spend forever trapped inside a shrinking bubble.

Svavar was satisfied. Though his Arlensul side did crave the pleasure of witnessing their final, screaming madness.

There was no warmth left in the harbor when Svavar swam away. The dwarves had left on the golden barge already.

He had no greater goal than to find himself a warm power leak somewhere in the Andorayan Sea.