The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) (40 page)
Read The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) Online
Authors: Tony Daniel
Tags: #Fables, #Legends, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Norse, #Fantasy & Magic, #General, #Myths
Chapter Fifty-Four:
The Dragon Hammer
Wulf rolled over on his back, clutching the hammer. The sky above flared red and burned. He twisted his head and saw the stark black outline of the cathedral belltower against the burning sky. Streamers of fire whirled everywhere. Instead of the sun, there was a ragged hole in the sky like a hole in glass that a pebble has broken through. From this hole, more fire streamed, purple mixed with black.
The purple and black fire churned and swirled. It seemed to gather near the belltower, to spin around the belfry like a whirlwind. Faster and faster. Until the purple and black flames—
Came together.
Took shape.
It was a dragon. A winged dragon. Reptilian. It was perched at the very top of the belltower. Then it spread wings, huge wings that sparkled with a golden color. It pushed off and
flew
.
Movement like a soaring raptor, around the belltower once, twice. Then it turned its head toward the square below and toward Wulf. It changed course.
It was coming toward Wulf. Too fast to scramble away. Too fast to move at all.
Closer.
It swooped directly toward him.
He saw the dragon eyes, enormous. A man could step through the pupil slit as if it were a door.
Then he felt it.
The dragon
saw
him.
Closer.
It’s coming for me,
Wulf thought.
The dragon opened its mouth. It whipped its head back, opened its maw.
Flame shot forth. A ball of liquid fire headed straight for Wulf.
The flame struck Wulf. Pain. Understanding. Transformation.
His mind burned away.
He was in the dragon.
He
was
the dragon.
Yet he was himself. He was Wulf.
This is what you were made for,
he thought.
For whatever reason or chance, this is the purpose of hearing the dragon-call. This is what the call, the trance, the visions were preparing you for.
Then a deeper, echoing voice within him spoke.
You have traveled through me. Now I travel through you.
No, it wasn’t a voice. He didn’t hear words, not really. It was understanding. A piece of understanding placed in his mind. There had been a dragon-shaped emptiness inside him before. Now it was filled with burning dragon essence.
Flowing through him
Into the Dragon Hammer.
What is it? What is the hammer
for
? What does it
do?
Nothing.
Everything.
The hammer was a chip of the Never and Forever. A not-thing from before the beginning of all beginnings.
What is it for? How did it come to be here?
The answer came as understanding.
The hammer had the power of making and unmaking of all things.
When the time comes . . .
It is—
It will give us—
Flight.
Into the sky. Out of the world.
To the Never and Forever from which all souls spring.
Then Wulf was back in Allfather Square, the Dragon Hammer in his hands.
More understanding. Not words. Sudden, total comprehension of what he had to do.
Now is the time. While the emptiness of Ubel is dispelled and Abenweth Grevenstran
is within creation once more. Now is the time to unmake the fallen Pillar of the North.
Wulf stood.
The smell brought Rainer back to consciousness. The maggoty death smell.
He looked up.
The elder elf stood over him.
Or was it the draugar?
The elf’s face began to extend. The beak was coming back. Tendrils of blackness spread like a night-crawling vine under the pale skin. The elf’s eyes were still green, but while Rainer looked, they clouded over, as if black shells were growing thickly over their surface.
“Rendrener drenlevantenteos!” the draugar shouted. “Die, star, die—”
The words twisted into a cry of pain. The cry of pain became a scream of agony.
Black fluid ooze seeped from the draugar’s mouth. Then the ooze turned from black to red, and it was blood that ran down one side of his chin. The coal blackness of the face disappeared.
The draugar was the elf again.
The elf pitched forward, facefirst. He landed on the cobblestones in front of Rainer.
Rainer looked up. Wulf stood over the elf with open palms, the deep scar on his right hand glowing an angry red.
Rainer looked down.
The Dragon Hammer was lodged into the elf’s back. The elf’s hauberk had parted. Blood was matting the links. It looked like the ax’s dull “blade” had punched through and pierced the ancient elf’s heart.
“Wuten, Rage of the North,” Wulf shouted. “Be unmade.”
The elder elf threw back his head as if to roar anger at the sky. No sound emerged from his throat.
“Abenweth Grevenstran, Pillar of the North!” shouted Wulf. “Be unmade!”
And it was so. The elder elf began to disintegrate.
Like a statue of gray ash crumbling away, Rainer thought.
Then the ash making up the remains of the elder elf collapsed. The grains that had formed him sparked like fireflies, flaming in all directions, then dying to nothing.
Gone.
The Dragon Hammer fell to the flagstones of Allfather Square with a dull thump.
“Merciful Tretz,” Rainer murmured. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Finally, he looked up at Wulf.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
Wulf shook his head. “It wasn’t me. The hammer did it.”
“Blood and bones,” Rainer said. “What does that even
mean
?”
“How the cold hell do I know, Rainer? It was like in the trance. Only the dragon was in
me
instead of me being in
it.
”
“So is the black thing gone? Do you at least know
that
for sure?”
Wulf nodded. “Gone. Like he never was in the first place. Gone for good. Gone forever.”
For a moment they both were still and silent. They gazed at the hammer.
It still looked like a lump of misshapen iron to Rainer. Almost natural. But also almost, but not quite, like it was forged by human hands to use as a tool.
Rainer’s body began to ache like it had taken a beating. He groaned softly.
“Give me a hand up?” he asked Wulf. His friend helped Rainer get to his feet.
They looked down at the hammer again. Rainer felt his strength returning. But the aching didn’t fade.
After a moment, Wulf bent down and picked it up. He looked it over.
“Don’t ask,” he said to Rainer. “I have no idea what it really is.”
There was a soft whirring sound, and something landed on Wulf’s shoulder.
Rainer stepped back.
It was a small owl. It gazed at him fiercely.
He was about to knock it away, but Wulf stopped him.
“No,” Wulf said. “She’s with me.”
Rainer looked around the square. The Sandhaveners had stopped fighting. In fact, they stood motionless. Some got ruthlessly chopped down in that pose. But then the mark forces, man and Tier alike, understood that the Hundred wasn’t fighting anymore. The soldiers weren’t moving at all.
“Ravenelle’s gotten hold of them,” Wulf said to Rainer. “Her captain must still be alive.”
All he really understood in Wulf’s words was a simple fact he’d been hoping to hear for days.
“Ravenelle’s here?”
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s good,” Rainer said.
He was about to ask for more details, but the words died in his throat.
Wulf was gazing in horror at something he saw across the square.
“Saeunn,” his friend whispered.
Chapter Fifty-Five:
The Fallen Star
Wulf knelt beside Saeunn’s body, afraid to touch her. He still had the Dragon Hammer handle in one hand. He rested its head against the cobblestones.
Saeunn lay limp. Her eyes were open. They were unfocused and fixed on nothing. He took her hand in his and lifted it. Cold.
He sat for a long moment, trying to feel anything but numb inside. There were footsteps, small and quick. Anya was beside him, Tolas walking up.
“Saeunn?” she said.
Wulf shook his head.
He reached over to push Saeunn’s eyelids down.
When he did, the star stone on the chain around his neck brushed against Saeunn’s neck.
She blinked.
“Saeunn?” Wulf said. “Saeunn, can you hear me!”
“Gone.” Her voice was flat.
Wulf didn’t understand. He gazed around the square. It was strewn with bodies. Dead Tier, dead men. Although it was still early spring, what flies there were had found them. Crows were cackling, waiting for the pesky living to get out of their way so that they could begin the feast.
“Yeah, it turned into a fight,” Wulf said.
Saeunn sat up. Wulf tried to help her, but she did it quickly and firmly. She looked around. Deliberately. First one way and then the other.
“Wuten?”
“He’s dead, Saeunn.”
“Yes,” she said. “The star died.”
“Saeunn, are you going to be okay?”
She looked at Wulf, her face expressionless. “Saeunn Amberstone is not here. Only her memories.”
“Her…what?”
“Saeunn is not alive,” she said. She paused for a moment, a look of concentration on her face. “Not here,” she repeated.
“Who
are
you?”
“No one. Not a person.”
“But Wulf is talking to you,” Anya put in. “You’re talking back. You have to be Saeunn.”
Saeunn turned toward Anya, but there was not the warmth, the love, in her expression that Anya expected.
Wulf spun around. “Tolas!” he said. There were tears in his voice. “Tell me what to do.”
The gnome shook his head. “I do not know, Lord Wulf. This is far beyond me. I’m very sorry.”
Wulf looked to Rainer, standing nearby. Rainer wiped away tears.
Wulf turned back to Saeunn. Anya was trying to draw Saeunn out. “Saeunn, it’s me, Evinthir. Say it, Saeunn! Say my name. Don’t try to fool me. It isn’t funny. Say it the way you do.”
Saeunn was silent.
The little girl burst into tears.
Wulf pulled Anya toward him, hugged her with one arm.
“I know it’s Saeunn,” Anya said, and pushed her face into Wulf’s tabard.
Saeunn sat expressionless.
“I do not think I will live much longer,” she said. She paused, then spoke again. “I do not understand why I am alive at all.”
“So she isn’t really here?” whispered Anya. “We didn’t save her.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Wulf said.
“She gave away her star.”
“What? How?” Wulf asked his sister.
“She made him take it,” Anya replied. “The thing.”
“How do you know that, Anya?” Anya usually didn’t make things up to fool herself, but in this situation, maybe. Wulf didn’t blame her.
“She told me what she was going to do,” Anya said. “While we were riding on the horse. It was like she was practicing it in her mind.”
“She…are you sure, Anya?”
“She told me,” Anya said. “She was going to give away her star.”
“Elves think that a star is their soul,” Wulf said. “It’s the way they say that someone died.”
“Yes, I know
that
,” Anya replied, reproof in her voice. “But a star can bring an elf back to life. Saeunn told me. That was how she made the bad thing be an elf again,” Anya said. “She did it so you could kill it.”
“Blood and bones,” Rainer murmured. “Saeunn saved us all.”
Wulf was kneeling at Anya’s eye level. He turned Anya toward himself so he could look her directly in the eyes.
“Tell me what she said. Everything you can remember.”
“I did,” Anya said. “I think she needs a new star.”
Right. The most impossible thing to get in all of creation.
Then he realized he had one. Or what used to be. Was there life left in a fallen star?
Wulf took the steel chain from around his neck. He took the stone in his hand and cradled it in his scarred palm.
Please, he thought. Let there be some of you still here, star of Brenunn Temeldar.
He leaned over and gently put the chain and stone pendant over Saeunn’s head. He pressed the stone pendant to her breast.
Saeunn gasped. Her hands flew up and grabbed Wulf’s.
The movement startled Nagel. The owl flew from Wulf’s shoulder and found a perch on a nearby windowsill.
Saeunn’s eyes focused. She looked around wildly.
“Saeunn?
“Where am I?”
“Raukenrose.”
“I don’t know any—”
Then the bewilderment seemed to leave her.
“Oh.”
Saeunn’s eyes focused on the Dragon Hammer in Wulf’s grip.
“What is this?”
“The Dragon Hammer. We found it. Well, Rainer did.”
She reached over and took hold of the handle of the Dragon Hammer with both hands. She sat there for a moment, holding on, a look of intense concentration on her face.
Then she breathed out a sigh. She looked into Wulf’s eyes and smiled.
“We’re both here,” she said. “Saeunn Eberethen and Brenunn Temeldar.”
“Saeunn?” said Anya in a small voice.
“Yes, Evinthir, it’s me.”
“Oh, Saeunn!” The little girl threw her arms around the elf.
Finally, Anya let her go. She stood back, smiling, wiping away her tears.
Saeunn breathed deeply. Then she moved as if she wanted to get up, and Wulf offered his hand. She took it. Saeunn stood.
She looked at Wulf’s eyes. “It’s me,” she said.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said.
“You did,” Saeunn said. “But I’m back. I don’t know for how long, so I’d better—”
Then she kissed him.