Ivy League Illusion, Part 8
Runes and Knots
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This time, I didn’t give in to desperation and let Nidhoggson take control. But once I was on the edge of unconsciousness, he no longer needed my permission. He just shoved my mind out of the way, ripping control away from me as he did so.
Once I was more isolated from my damaged body, I regained full consciousness, not that being conscious did me much good. Nidhoggson had sunk his claws deep into my body and wasn’t about to let go.
Despite wanting to scream in protest and wrestle with my inner dragon until I’d exhausted my strength, I backed off, not because I wanted to, but because I was dying anyway. If Nidhoggson couldn’t keep the body alive, it wouldn’t matter which one of us controlled it. If he could keep it alive, I would fight him then.
Nidhoggson ripped out the arrow in one smooth motion, threw it on the ground, and began transforming. He didn’t bother with wings, as there wouldn’t have been room in the tunnel for them to spread, anyway. But he increased my body’s muscle mass, added fangs and claws, and transformed the skin into scales. Apparently, dragon bodies had much more ability to regenerate than human ones. The arrow wound began to close immediately, reducing the bleeding from a flood to a trickle. The previous blood loss left the body much weaker than normal, but I could feel new blood cells being produced much faster than they had been before.
The runes I had set stabilized once my body was out of immediate danger, but I knew they wouldn’t last long without more magic. Nidhoggson had said he couldn’t cast spells, which might or might not be true. I obviously couldn’t trust him. But I could tell that he wasn’t trying to renew the runes. He was focused on retreating before Sowilo stopped generating sunlight and the place filled with dark alfar, vampires, and whatever else might be roaming this plane.
Nidhoggson scooped up one of the pairs of protective gloves, dumped the vampire hands out of them, and put them on himself. They stretched around his claws as if they were made for him, no doubt a result of Norse supernatural craftsmanship. Then he gathered up the chains still attached to my wrists and ankles, draping them over my shoulders so that he could run without scraping them along the ground and leaving an obvious trail. The extra strength with which he’d endowed my body made it possible to carry such a burden easily.
Once he’d made those arrangements, he carefully picked up the staff, which was no doubt what he wanted the gloves for. That reinforced my theory that its direct touch might be problematic for him. But in that case, what did he want the staff for? I could only think of one reason if he couldn’t use it himself—he wanted it as a bargaining chip.
The runes had already started to flicker, but Nidhoggson ran off as fast as he could. Since I’d spent little time in the Harvard version of these tunnels, I had no idea how they were laid out or even if the illusion’s layout matched the actual tunnels through which Nidhoggson ran. He seemed to know where he was going, though I had no idea how.
“What’s your destination?” I asked in the least confrontational tone I could manage. I didn’t want Nidhoggson clamming up on me. Hideous as the situation was, he was the only one I had to talk to now. And he might give me useful information, even if I couldn’t be sure how true his statements were.
“The safest place for now would be the one that least smells like vampire, alfar, or duergar,” he said after a while. “I’m also looking for possible exit routes. Our enemies will hunt us. Your staff is unique enough to track—”
“Then why bring it?”
I felt mild irritation from him as he answered. “They want it, so it seems wise to keep them from getting it. It may be that they will find a way to use it, even without your help. In any case, that is not the only thing they can track. I need a draconic form to escape fast enough, but that leaves a trackable scent. Even if it didn’t, vampires have sharp hearing, particularly for heartbeats. I have no way to mask that sound.
“The only advantage we have is that they can’t track you by blood. There was more than enough spilled on the floor to do at tracking spell, but the…changes I have made break the connection.”
“But since they still have three ways to track us, they’ll find us eventually.”
“Assuming that the tunnels are not infinite and that their numbers are not small, yes, discovery is inevitable. But if I can find a way out and take to the air, that could be an entirely different story.”
He said no more, and I didn’t have any other questions right now that wouldn’t provoke a hostile response. Rather than trying to make small talk, I tried to think of a way out of this mess.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what my first priority needed to be—getting my memory back. From what little I knew, I’d had a lot of experiences, some of which might be relevant. And I needed to know how to better use my magic, both runic and faerie. As long as I was dependent on Nidhoggson for information, I would never get the full picture. I had no doubt he’d lie if necessary to ensure that I didn’t learn too much—because if I did, I might have a better chance of taking back my body.
A few things I’d experienced recently seemed vaguely familiar. Nidhoggson, the vampires, the duergar, the alfar—I’d dealt with all of them before. I was sure of that. Even the reference to faeries gave me a feeling of deja vu. But when I tried to remember more, I hit a blank, unyielding wall.
With Nidhoggson in control of my body, I couldn’t affect the outside world with magic, but I shouldn’t need to. Whatever had been done to me to block my memories would be somewhere inside my mind—at least, I hoped that was the case.
I tried to ignore Nidhoggson’s determined running and everything else going on around me. I imagined myself in silent darkness, and after a while, the sensory input I was getting from my own body faded. This experience also felt familiar, but again, I couldn’t remember any details.
For a while, I floated in the darkness, but I needed to do more. I had gotten silent darkness by imagining it. Now, I tried to imagine a path leading to my memories. At first, nothing happened, but eventually, I saw a path forming in front of me and stretching out farther and farther with each heartbeat. It was white but featureless, a perfectly smooth surface cutting through the darkness.
I ran along it in the same way that Nidhoggson was still running through the tunnels. From time to time, the pathway curved. I continued to follow where it led. After a while, I noticed that I could see other parts of the path, areas I had already traveled or had yet to travel. A design was forming around me, but I couldn’t see all of it. I just kept following the path in front of me—because there was nothing else I could do.
After a while, the twists and turns in my mental pathway began to form a recognizable pattern—a Celtic knot. That I remember the pattern’s name was encouraging. That I had no idea what it meant was less so. But I thought faerie magic and Celtic culture could somehow be related. I still couldn’t remember anything about my family, but my last name—Murphy, assuming that wasn’t just part of my fake college student life—suggested I was Irish. Was I seeing my path this way because my own mind was shaping it, or was I seeing some objective reality? I had no way to tell, but the more I ran, the more complicated the pattern became. Soon, I had no way of knowing whether I was really moving forward or looping back through the same space over and over.
More time passed—at least, I thought it did. By now, all I could see all around me were Celtic knots, stretching out as far as I could perceive in all directions. Rather than taking me where I wanted to go, the path I had invoked trapped me in an endless cycle.
I thought about the few runes Nidhoggson had taught me how to use. The first one he’d whispered to me had been Kenaz, a rune that revealed the truth, among other things. I traced it in front of me, and it burned like a torch, radiating the light of knowledge in all directions. But it did nothing to clarify the road ahead, which seemed to be twisting in upon itself the longer I looked at it.
“Show me the truth.” I whispered the words, but I poured all the power into them that I could. I worried Nidhoggson could feel that, but what could he really do about it? He could control my body, but I’d seen no evidence that he could control my mind. Besides, he was probably busy.
The light from the rune spread out, reflected in the path until the path itself seemed to be on fire. But what I wanted was a clear indication of how to get to my memories, not a light show.
“Show me how to reach my memories.” This time, I spoke more loudly and pushed even harder. The fire reflections responded by focusing on one iteration of the pattern that I had seen originally—three interconnected loops. But I had no idea what that meant. It occurred to me that whoever designed the memory block might have made it reversible—through the use of knowledge I no longer had. If so, whoever it was must have been a sadist.
The symbolism of this particular knot must have something to do with threes. The most obvious connection I could think of was the holy trinity. However, in pre-Christian times, the knot must have represented something else—but what?
I tried naming the three persons of the trinity. Nothing. I tried the basic family structure—father, mother, child. Nothing. What else came in threes? Triplets, but what I needed was a threesome in which each member had a specific name. Or maybe I was on the wrong track altogether.
Despite myself, I started thinking of fours rather than threes—four seasons, four quarters in a fiscal year or certain kinds of school years, four cardinal directions, four gospels, four winds. A door had four corners, and in a sense, I was looking for a door.
I realized that the three cornered knot was no longer glowing. Instead, the glow now came from a different knot, one with two interlocking loops—which gave it four arms.
I recited every set of four I could think of, none of which got any response, except that instead of the entire surface of the knot being fiery, the glow resolved itself into a large number of tiny reflections of Kenaz.
The knots were Celtic, and the runes were Norse. I knew that much for sure. But a knot reflecting a rune meant what? That I needed both to show me the way to my memories? That made some sense if Nidhoggson had told me the truth about my having two kinds of magic.
What if Kenaz wasn’t the right rune for this particular job, though? It had given me knowledge, but for the reflection of the rune and the knot to be congruent, maybe they had to be closer in structure.
Impulsively, I retraced Kenaz to keep it active, but I also traced an X in the air with my other hand. I had no idea if there was an x-shaped rune, but an X had four arms, just like the knot did.
My heart beat faster—or the mental equivalent—when I saw the X catch fire like Kenaz. The knot now reflected the X instead of Kenaz. But intuitively, I knew something wasn’t quite right.
The knot was oriented to the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west. But the X was oriented to the four intermediate directions. To make them more similar, I rotated the X until it also pointed to the four cardinal directions.
A click like a key turning in a lock broke the otherwise complete silence. The Celtic knots twisted so rapidly that I couldn’t follow what was happening. But suddenly, I stood on a single, clear path, leading to a fairly obvious door not too far away from me.
Unfortunately, lying about midway between the door and me was a dragon so hideous that it made Nidhogg look like a puppy dog.
Ivy League Illusion is related to the Different Dragons series. (The action falls after the end of the third book.)
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