Ivy League Illusion, Part 18
Lies Exposed
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“You think threatening two vampires is going to stop us?” asked DL, poised to throw himself at Fjalar.
“Wait!” I said. “I made an agreement with Carlos and Susan. Even though I didn’t take a formal oath, in an atmosphere this magical, I’ll probably suffer consequences if I just let them die.”
Fjalar raised an eyebrow. “You sound as if you have your memory back.”
“I do. Now, tell us what you want.”
I had no intention of making a deal with him, but I needed time to think. I could use Sowilo to invoke sunlight faster than those dark elves could stake the two vampires—but I couldn’t immobilize the elves without severe injuring the vamps, perhaps even killing them. Using Eihwaz to start through World Tree energy around would have the same effect. I had to come up with a different strategy.
“The same as my dokkalfar comrades, with one addition. I also want your blood.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. “What for?”
“I’m sure you remember the story of how my brother and I killed Kvasir and used his blood to make the mead of poetic inspiration. Can you imagine what kind of wondrous mead your blood might produce?”
I laughed, though the laugh sounded hollow, even to me. Nonetheless, I had to continue with my bluff.
“I doubt my agreement with the vampires requires me to sacrifice myself for them. But even if I were to be considered in breach of the agreement, stopping you and your allies from getting what they want might be worth whatever penalty I’d suffer. I’ll take my chances—unless you want to make a more reasonable request.”
Fjalar smiled in a way that chilled my blood—a serial killer smile, if I’d ever seen one. He took a moment to ponder what else he might ask for. The pause gave me a chance to look at him more closely. Now that I had my memories back, I realized something about him was off.
The duergar had magic, but they mostly used it to craft potent artifacts. When I first encountered Fjalar, he pulled strength out of me with a simple gesture. I couldn’t think of a single story in which the duergar had draining magic, but there was another type of Norse creature who sometimes did.
Focusing my magic senses as tightly as I could, I saw that Fjalar looked just slightly blurry around the edges—a possible indication that he was a shapeshifter and not displaying his true form.
“If we are to bargain, I must know with whom I am dealing. Reveal yourself as you truly are.”
Fjalar’s face showed surprise, but just for a second. “I am Fjalar, just as I told you. I will happily take an oath to that effect.”
Invoking Kenaz might reveal his true form—but he might also react to that as a hostile act. Now that I remembered the druidic part of my heritage, I might be able to get away with using magic that would be unfamiliar to him.
I no longer needed to draw symbols with fingers nor make my process visible in any other way. “Swear the oath,” I said. But I wasn’t paying any attention to his words. Instead, I was visualizing Muin, one of the letters in the Celtic Tree Alphabet, a form of Ogham. Muin was a straight line crossed by a diagonal one. Literally, it represented a grape vine, but it symbolized truth and prophecy. The moment I had it in mind, I invoked it unseen, just as my faerie kin would have done.
Midway through his oath, I saw Fjalar’s true form. Instead of just being wet-soil dark, his skin was necrotic black. His brown eyes were really lifeless orbs.
He might have been Fjalar once, which is how he could take an oath. But now, he was a draugr—a kind of Norse undead. Just like the duergar, the draugr didn’t like sunlight but weren’t destroyed by it the way vampires were.
“You can stop now,” I said, cutting him off just before the end of his oath. “I’ll concede you are Fjalar—but you are now a draugr.
Fjalar took longer to conceal his surprise this time. “What if I am?” he asked, his tone defiant. “I still hold your two vampires hostage. And my demands will not lessen just because I am dead.”
“Well, we’re waiting,” I said. “You were thinking about more reasonable demands, I believe.”
Fjalar stared at me with his dead eyes, confused both by the fact that I’d figured out his true identity and that I seemed unphased by it.
I now had ways I might render Fjalar helpless—but that might not stop the dark elves from staking Carlos and Susan. I needed to do something to protect them.
Focusing on the stakes, I could tell that they were hawthorn, a common wood to use against vampires. I imagined Huath, the symbol of hawthorn, a straight line with another straight line projecting out to the left. Once I had the image in focus, I invoked its power, pulling the stakes out of the hands of the surprised dark elves and toward me. The stakes fell at my feet, well out of reach of Fjalar’s allies.
Of course, the dark elves could still do harm to Carlos and Susan, but I had already considered that possibility. I invoked an elf cross—really just a pentagram—and endowed it with a bright silver glow. Not being sunlight, the glow wouldn’t hurt Carlos and Susan, but it would still weaken the dark elves. An elf cross made from real silver and blessed by a priest would have been much better, but not being an alchemist, I couldn’t easily create silver from scratch. Nor could I give it a priestly blessing, but my faith ought to be enough to get some effect from the image of the cross I was projecting.
The dark elves stumbled back, squinting against the light. They seemed unable to move any closer to the cross. That just left Fjalar. He, too, squinted at the light, but the elf cross only repelled alfar, not duergar or draugr. He raised his staff and moved toward Carlos, perhaps intended to smash his skull. Holding on to the elf cross, I visualized Straith, the symbol for blackthorn, a straight line crossed by four diagonal lines. I knew I was taking a risk, for blackthorn could be connected with death and dark magic, but it was also commonly used against undead. Romanians wore it in their clothes to protect against vampires.
Straith glowed blackly next to the elf cross, making Fjalar wince. “Begone!” I yelled. “By the power of the blackthorn, I command you to begone!”
“That won’t work,” he said slowly, but it was clear the symbol had some effect. Fjalar’s dead eyes were focused entirely on it, and he was no longer moving toward Carlos.
“Have it your way,” I said. “Guys, he’s weaker now. You can take him down, but make make sure he doesn’t touch you. Being a draugr is said to be contagious.”
I was speaking loudly enough for Fjalar to hear, hoping that he’d take the hint and flee, but he seemed inclined to stand his ground. “Beheading is said to be fatal, but we’ll also need to burn him and scatter his ashes in the ocean,” I added, but he didn’t flinch. He was going to make us kill him.
Yong-Gam raised his sword—which I now remembered was called a ssangsudo—and readied himself to charge. I felt Fjalar trying to draw on our life force, but the blackthorn charm weakened his magic enough that we could shrug off that particular attack.
“This seems too easy,” muttered Ekaterina.
Yong-Gam was already in motion. The others, not having a weapon like that, didn’t immediately advance, heeding my caution about his touch.
But despite the power of the blackthorn, Fjalar still refused to give up. With a wave of his hand, he conjured up foxfire, a blue-green bioluminescence created by mold in decaying wood but also associated with draugr appearances. ‘This line separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. Cross it at your peril!”
Yong-Gam looked back at me for instructions. I’d never heard foxfire described in that way, but as I looked more closely, I could see death magic rippling within it. I needed to try something more effective than blackthorn.
“Pull back!” I said, wondering what to try next. Conjuring foxfire laced with death magic and maintaining it as a barrier seemed to have tired Fjalar, at least for the moment. But the most we had right now was a standoff. We needed more than that if we were ever going to get out of this wretched place.
Perhaps an actual blackthorn would provide greater protection. I glanced at the soil—dry, rocky, and absolutely sterile. I wasn’t going to be able to get anything to grow in such unpromising ground. I could grow a plant supernaturally, but that would require much more magic and possibly even some of my own life force. Still, I couldn’t think of a huge number of other ways to free Carlos and Susan and escape successfully.
“Power share,” I whispered to Adreanna. We had worked together so often that we had no problem casting almost like a single individual. With her considerable magic and whatever extra power I still had from the dragon blood infusion energizing me, a blackthorn plant appeared almost immediately.
I had intended to leave it floating in the air, but as if it had a mind of its own, its roots shoved their way into the dead soil. I saw sparks of dark power flow into it as if it had somehow tapped into the magic that created this place.
With even more power than I expected, the casting moved in directions I hadn’t anticipated. The blackthorn became more than a mere plant. Instead, it was a hedge, dark thorns sprouting out of its midnight bark, reaching out to catch any magic flung against us. The bark and thorns radiated a disturbingly dark power. Yet from its dark branches sprouted yellow-green leaves, as well as white blossoms that quickly became bluish-gray berries. Now I understood why the plant had attracted such varied interpretations. Watching it grow was like watching life and death in a carefully choreographed dance.
As the plant continued to grow, Fjalar’s eyes widened, and his mouth hung open. He shuddered. But Carlos and Susan didn’t look much calmer. Had I created something more sinister than I realized?
But despite his obvious horror, still Fjalar still refused to flee. Instead, he held up a cup of mead. “Give me your blood right now—before you have to give it to what you have summoned.” His tone conveyed something like awe.
The effect of magic was largely dictated by intent, and I certainly hadn’t intended to summon anything. Yet there was another force flickering among the branches—another intent. Had it come from the tainted soil?
The blackthorn became more like a forest than an individual tree, though I knew that its physical dimensions were smaller than that. The forest was of spirit. Yet it seemed real—and in its center, a dark door opened.
A shadowy figure emerged, and the thorny branches seemed to bow to it. I wanted to run away, but my feet refused to move.
What had I done?
Ivy League Illusion is related to the Different Dragons series. (The action falls after the end of the third book.)
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