I knew about the spot. Immokalee had described it to me this morning trying to scare me into not going. A few dozen yards to the north the ground dropped sharply into a narrow fissure lined with human skeletons. Some still held their weapons. When a draugr sucked the flesh off your bones, he did it quick, like jerking a shirt off a body.
"We also found this." The vampire indicated the tent.
Ghastek's vampire raised the top edge, exposing a dark opening and vanished into it. The leather shifted, mirroring vampire's movement inside it. The bloodsucker emerged into the clear air. "The design is ill-conceived. It is clearly too large for one person, but it has no structure or method of remaining upright as a tent, and besides this side is completely open to the elements. Perhaps it's some sort of communal sleeping bag?"
"It's not a sleeping bag," I told him.
"Would you care to enlighten me?" Ghastek said.
"Look at it from above."
The purple vampire leapt onto the nearest tree and scurried up into the branches. A long moment passed and then it dropped on the ground next to me without a word.
"What is it?" Tracy asked.
The vampire's face was unreadable, like a blank wall. "It's a glove."
The wind stirred the tree branches. The world blinked, as the tech vanished, crushed under the onslaught of a magic wave. Cold froze the glade. The other vampire burst from the bushes and came to rest by Tracy.
In the distance something wailed in inhuman voice, its forlorn cry rising high above the tree tops.
*** *** ***
Gloom claimed the clearing. It came slowly, like molasses, from the dark spaces deep between the roots, washing over trees, leaching color from the greenery, drenching it in shadows, until the shrubs and foliage turned dark, almost grey. Behind the gloom, mist rose in thin wisps, tinted with an eerie bluish glow.
A crow cried overhead, its shrill caw impossibly distant.
"They are putting on quite a show," Ghastek said.
"Yep." I nodded. "Going all out. Viking special effects are out of this world."
I pulled a canvas bundle out of my backpack and untied the cord securing it. Four sharpened sticks lay inside, each three feet long. I picked up a rock and hammered the first of the sticks into the ground at the mouth of the path. That was the way I'd run when it came time to get the hell out of here.
I moved along the edge of the clearing, sinking the sticks in at regular intervals.
"What is the purpose of this?" Ghastek asked.
"Protection."
"Have I've given you a reason to doubt my competence, Kate?"
"No." I pulled a black box out of my backpack, took a black cloth out of it, and extracted out an old pipe out of it. The medicine woman had already packed it with tobacco.
"What is this?"
"A pipe." I struck a match, puffed to get the pipe going, and got a mouth full of smoke for my trouble. The pungent tobacco scraped the inside of my throat. I coughed and started to circle the clearing, blowing smoke as I went.
"What sort of magic is this?" one of the journeymen asked.
"Cherokee. Very old." If life was perfect, I'd have Immokalee herself do the ritual. It took years of training for the medicine woman to reach her power, but none of the Cherokees would go near the draugr. Unlike me, they had common sense. All the chants over the sticks and the pipe had been said already. All I had to do is follow the ritual and hope Immokalee's magic was potent enough to work when an incompetent like me activated it.
I'd finished the circle, put the pipe away, and sat back on the log.
A pair of tiny eyes ignited by the roots of an oak to the left. No iris was visible - the entire eye was an almond-shaped slit of pale yellow glow.
"Left," Tracy said. Her voice was perfectly calm.
"I see it," Ghastek said.
Another pair sparked to the right, about a foot off the ground. Then another, and another. All around us the eyes fluoresced, clustered around tree trunks, staring from the underbrush, peering from behind rocks.
"What are they?" Tracy asked.
"Uldra," Ghastek said. "They're nature spirits from Lapland. They live mostly underground. I wouldn't provoke them. Stay in the clearing."
The eyes stared at us, unblinking.
An blast of icy cold ripped through the clearing. The uldra vanished as one. On the ground, the deer moaned.
Here we go.
I reached into my backpack and pulled out a small leather satchel, a small plastic bear full of honey, and a canteen. No turning back now. I got up off the log and walked over to the center of the glade where a large stone waited. Ghastek's and Tracy's vampires trailed me.
I brushed the leaves from the stone. The inside of the rock had been hollowed out into a stone basin, large enough to hold about three gallons of liquid.
"When the draugr appears, don't talk to him," I said. "The longer we talk, the more time he has to lock onto our scent. We'll have to fight to get clear anyway. No need to make things harder."
No response.
"Ghastek? Do you understand me?"
"Of course," he said.
"The Cherokee's have set protective wards on the mountain. If we make it to the pillars by the road, we're safe."
"You said this before," Ghastek informed me.
"I'm just reminding you." This wouldn't go well.
I set the canteen on the ground and pulled the drawstring cord securing the pouch. It opened into a square of leather in the palm of my hand. Inside lay six runestones chiseled from bone, a handful of beat-up silver coins: two with the etching of sword and hammer and four with the viking raven.
I cast the runes into the basin. They clicked, rolling from the stone sides. It took me a second to unscrew the canteen. Ale splashed on the runes, drenching the bone in liquid amber. The scent of malted barley and juniper wafted up. The mist snapped at it like a striking snake.
"Patience, H?kon. Patience."
I poured the rest of the ale out, emptied the honey into the basin and stirred it with a branch. Magic spread from the runes into the honey and ale. I reached in and took the runes out, all except two: the rune of enemy binding and Tjófastafur, the rune that prevented theft.
The mist hovered by me.