Blood Codex

Chapter 49

Thick stone columns divided the entrance hall into three distinct areas, white-painted ceiling arching above. Over the large fireplace almost filling one end of the room was an ornate wind indicator. It depicted Lindisfarne Island with a compass over the top, marked into sections with ships sailing all around. One hand like a clock’s pointed currently just past North West.

Off to one side of the entrance hall lay a large kitchen, and beyond it the scullery. From the doorway, Rose saw a mechanism for lowering the portcullis that she knew from previous visits could still be used to bar the entrance below. It was an appealing idea to keep Landvik and his men at bay, but the tour guides nearby would certainly not allow it.

She blinked, dizzy at flashes of strange visions, bubbling up through her mind like air bubbles from a SCUBA diver’s regulator. Strobe-like flickers of memory flashed before her eyes. Crowley and Cameron hurried through the castle, looking for places to hide, to set an ambush, ignoring the bemused looks from the handful of other tourists enjoying the sights. They talked about what they might improvise as weapons, something better than the simple knives they both carried. For Rose, every room, every passageway, sparked a new memory. A sudden string of images made her stagger, flashes of descending beneath the castle, interspersed with more recent memories of the ritual Landvik performed on her.

“I’ve been here before,” she whispered, but the others didn’t hear her.

The castle accommodation formed an L-shape and they hurried down the long arm of the L, through a passage that seemed almost carved from the rock of the crag itself. They ran to one side, into a vaulted dining room, dominated by a large fireplace at one end and a wall painted bright blue at the other. A large oval table filled most of the space. Like all the rooms so far except the entrance hall, this one was small, almost cramped. This was a castle of urban home dimensions, like a castle in miniature. But nowhere seemed to afford a good place from which to mount their assault against men with guns and murder in mind. Crowley and Cameron grew increasingly frantic.

Rose staggered again, more flickering memories obscuring her vision. She called out, falling against one wall lest she collapse to the floor. Crowley and Cameron rushed back, crouched either side of her as she slid down the stone to sit on the cool ground.

“Are you okay?” Crowley asked.

“I’ve been here before,” Rose said again.

“What?”

She grimaced, frustrated at Crowley’s bone-headed focus and her own inability to order her thoughts. “I have been here before,” she said for a third time, injecting more certainty into her tone.

“That’s good,” Crowley said. “Any idea where we might hide?”

She shook her head, and then stopped when it only made her dizzier. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about previous lives. Yes, I’ve been here as a tourist, and as a professional researcher, but I’m having different memories now, ancient ones.”

Crowley sat back on his heels, lips pursed. “Rose, I’m not sure we have time for this.”

She shrugged. “I think it’s important. I’m generally as skeptical as you are, but I have no other explanation for this. Landvik's ritual brought the memories back, and like I said before, they were more than memories. They were lived experiences. And it’s happening again. But different. I see Ragnar Lodbrok, but I have Aella’s life memories, not Ragnar’s. Of course, I know his intent, from the things he told me during the blood eagle.” She winced, the recollection of pain flooding her again, and arched her back with a soft cry.

Crowley put a concerned hand on her shoulder.

“I’m okay. I remember the things Ragnar told Aella, I mean. What he wanted. And what I subsequently told Landvik. At least, some of it.”

“So what exactly do you know?” Crowley asked. “Can it help us now?”

Rose breathed deeply, tried to calm her mind.

A castle guide came over, face creased in worry. “Everything okay here? Do you need an ambulance?”

Cameron stood quickly, guided the concerned young man away. “No, no, it’s fine. She just came over a little dizzy. Thank you, though.”

Rose closed her eyes, tried to grab at thoughts that flitted through her mind like moths around a bright light. “My memories are Aella’s,” she said quietly. “And I’m certain, at least I think I’m certain, that this is where he sealed up the hammer.”

“It’s real?” Crowley asked. “And how can you know that?”

“It’s somewhere down below. Ragnar’s sons killed me…Aella, but that was because Aella had been the one to kill Ragnar. But before Ragnar died, Aella got the location of Mjolnir from him. And because it was, in Aella’s mind, an evil and dangerous pagan thing, though he was tempted by its power, he tried to ensure that it would never be found. I know, I remember, that the hiding place was here!”

Crowley looked nervously at Cameron, who stood near the door keeping an eye out. Cameron raised his hands, Crowley shrugged, so Cameron came back to them. “We need to get ourselves organized,” he said.

Crowley nodded. “Rose, what can we do?”

She squeezed her eyes closed in concentration. “Ragnar’s apostasy from the Norse religion cost him everything, that’s what Landvik told me. Aella was sure the hammer itself would lead him to ruin, because he was a pious Christian man. He feared what it could do. I have his memories of learning that this is where Ragnar hid it, and of Aella coming here to seal it up, but I can’t see clearly. I can’t see where, apart from it being somewhere low, somewhere dark.”

“How is that possible?” Crowley asked.

Rose flashed him an angry look. “How is any of this possible?”

“It’s all feasible,” Cameron said, looking slowly around himself. “The crag this castle stands on would have reminded someone like Ragnar of the special rocks and hills in Scandinavia where the dead were believed to dwell. He might have even thought of it as an entrance to Valhalla. It’s a good place to hide something of such importance.”

Rose frowned. “Isn’t Valhalla supposedly in the sky? Like Viking heaven or something?”

Cameron shook his head. “Valhalla, or 'hall of the fallen' derives from valhallr.” He spelled it out. “That means 'the rock of the fallen'. I think Ragnar would have found in this place a connection to his gods.”

“Okay,” Rose said. “So it makes sense that Ragnar would hide it here, and it’s just as good a place for Aella to have sealed up Mjolnir forever.”

“If that’s the case,” Crowley said. “If the hammer is actually a real thing, and it’s really here, we can save our lives if we find it first.”