The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 12: The Weeping Wood of Svartalfheim

i. Loki, the Dark Elves, and the Runes of Creation

Leaves rustled across the floor of the forest. A cold, piercing wind blew through the trees, wailing in ways that seemed to carry the voices of doomed, fell folk. For Clarinda, the moaning and keening of the air currents left no doubt how the forest got its name.

Great, blackened briars laced themselves through toppled husks of trees felled long ago probably by blasts of lightning. Ruined trunks lay everywhere, many collapsed against other trees that, while still erect, had rotted into spindly, wretched forms. Crowded close together, they seemed to choke the life from the entire surroundings except for the shadows.

Living boughs, stripped bare of bark, lined the right-hand path. Their crooked branches stretched plaintively into the darkening sky, as if reaching for a more merciful fate than that to which they'd been consigned.

Aurelius imagined that he saw figures in those trees; the whorls in the wood appeared to be the opened mouths of screaming men and boys—the dead from Mecina. He frowned and took a deep breath, steeling himself. Unlike his separation from them by a large window in Hela's tower, here the shades were alongside him, beckoning to him. He found himself irresistibly treading toward the trees to try to touch the contorted figures.

Clarinda stopped him by slipping her hand into his and keeping him on the path.

The Venetian girl wasn't faring much better than the young knight. She closed her eyes against the onslaught of her own shades.

The effort didn't work. When she opened her eyes, the trees on her right were as close together as the planks of the wall on the factory-cottage where her mother died. Through the gaps in the wood she saw the slumped forms of the three men who'd tried to rescue Fabricia, and the dangling body of the fourth man, the suicide, who'd killed himself by leaving the toxic gases running in the glassmaking rooms. In trying to save him, Fabricia Trevisan and the men had broken into the house, but their entry had somehow caused an explosion that killed them all instantly.

Words floated sorrowfully on the breeze to Aurelius and Clarinda, and it took a moment for them to realize that the words weren't more phantasmic moans from the trees, but Rudyick singing.

Upon Ymir's Beard, in World's Youth,

From Jotun's Skulls, to Ran's Coral Tooth,

Sought the Aesir—Odin, Vili, and Ve—

Nine Runed Relics, Wisdom's Way.

‛Neath Frosted Pines, distant Shoals Aflame,

In Elven Glade, from Muspelheim

Smote Volund's Anvil—Dooms Entwine!—

In Sampo Hearth, tonged Codices Nine.

Quires Gathered, split Monk-Squire,

Through trebled Witches, hews Flesh-Cut's ire,

'Pon Glass-Walled mage, Dark Cauldron seethes,

In Kenned Ink, Moult-Feather sheathes,

As Gamble-Bones roll, clatter Merchants' Greed,

'Til Ruler's Halo, looms on Wave-Steed.

On Otherworld's Wake, falls Face-Shield night,

Lest Gemmed-Pin's truth, match Codex Might,

By Starred Path's chart, burn Creation's Light.

Nine songs magical sing I,

Goblet-sipped from Bestla's mead,

As Sibyls' Coven and Druids Nigh,