The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 50: The Quest for Annen Verden

"They're gone ..." Aurelius said, stunned as he slumped against the wall and looked at the ruins of the hospital ward. He gazed upon an empty chamber, the floor, still intact, with no sign of the skull whose sockets had sucked into the Void everything that had mattered to him.

Clarinda's gone. I just met her here, on Midgard, and she's gone. He recalled their last kiss at Mimir's Well, and a grief opened in his stomach at her uncertain fate. In spite of her hopes, Old Nick could have killed her in the passage between the worlds.

I certainly hope she's dead, along with the rest of your friends. I can tell you this, most of them are gone from this dimensional plane, the Codex Lacrimae said, Sister Nikola's voice soothing in its reassurance. Good riddance, I say. I told you we don't need them. Marcus, Jacob, and the Norn, Genevieve. Mogthrasir's fire must have incinerated them, because I sense them nowhere in the Nine Worlds.

He scanned the area of the ward where he'd last seen them. Only a broad, concave crater indented the flagstones where they had been lying. Smoke still rose from the blasted area. Aurelius got to his feet, walked to the site, then knelt and touched the crater.

The stones were still hot, but he kept his fingertips on the scorched surface because at the contact of his flesh, he felt and saw the supernatural vestiges of a rune gate. "Did we catch them in the rune-gates we made for the Huntsmen?" he asked the Codex Lacrimae.

Of course not.

Then show me where they are.

My Creator is free. We should go find a passage to Annen Verden.

"You will heed me, Codex Lacrimae," he ordered, and committed such an effort of will to the command that he felt pressure building in his head.

Very well, Lore Master. Sister Nikola's voice replied, suddenly coquettish. No need to get nasty, unless you'd like to take a break and roll around with ...

"Where are Marcus, Jacob, and Genevieve?"

Oh, very well, my boy. Let us see where this runeporte was directed before we shifted all of them into different times ...

"What did you say?" Khalil asked behind him. Aurelius ignored him and closed his eyes, following the Codex Lacrimae into the dimensional planes. He saw a shimmering field of brilliant white where the crater was; the outline of the portal flashed rainbow colors, and then turned a sapphire blue.

The Fjords of Asgard?

Then the vision of the rune-gate collapsed and Aurelius was left staring at the smoking remains.

Moments later, more Hospitallers entered the ward and began removing bodies both on the fringes and in the antechambers that hadn't been claimed by Youdic the Damned.

Khajen ibn-Khaldun arrived and took a minute from speaking with the surviving members of his family to glance at Aurelius.

Khalil sat on a pile of rubble, speaking softly with Brother Jeremiah, seemingly bemused to be sitting in the middle of Christian fortress and not slain on sight by the Crusaders. He nodded with a broad smile at the newly arrived Adelbert, who with Grand Master Arcadian entered the destroyed ward and looked through the roofless ceiling to the lightening sky above.

"I think I know the answer, but just for clarification, you've closed the rune-gates?" Fatima asked, coming to stand beside him and guessing what he was thinking. "So none of us can use them again?"

"Changed them," Aurelius corrected. "I think that the Codex Lacrimae reoriented where they go to, but then, to spite me, displaced them in time."

"To spite you?" the Arabian woman said.