prologue
The knocking at his door was as sharp and insistent as lightning in a dry sky. Elario had read the leaves and knew the day would come soon. Still, his heart leapt as he pressed the ancient crystal that hung around his neck to his lips. He whispered a prayer of strength and courage before kissing the amulet again and rising to his feet.
Shuffling to the door, he threw a log onto the fire and tossed a handful of powder into the flame. He hoped they would see. Hoped The Hallowed would come.
Either way, his life’s mission would finally be fulfilled and he could leave this mortal plane. Perhaps none would make their way from the nearby town to see what had become of him. But if they did, it would please him if they found all to be in order.
He paused at his door, placing both hands against the rough wood. Yes, yes, he thought. He could feel the woman’s need even before he threw open the door, and caught her as she stumbled into his arms.
“Help . . .” she breathed, one arm clasped tightly beneath her swollen belly.
“I am here. I am ready,” Elario said. Her skirts were torn, blood and waters-of-the-womb soiling the lower half and Elario struggled as he moved to support her—there was much work yet to be done.
He helped her to a mat placed before the fire, then set about readying the supplies. He filled a pot with water before setting it on the hook that hung inside the hearth. He hoped the water would heat before the babe arrived.
“ . . . found you,” the woman said, but Elario did not stop to question what she might mean. He knew she would find him: the how did not matter.
Elario scanned her body, assessing her wounds, her needs. For so long he had waited for her, and now that she was here he felt curious as to the nature of this, his greatest task. Curious about the one for whom he would give his life. He wondered if she knew it would cost her hers as well, though from the look of her, he suspected she did.
The runes on her face and hands clearly named her his. Elario knew her belly would also bear such marks. He scowled in distaste for the creature that had brought her to this moment. Yet he had never shied away from the eternal fight against the Dark One and he would not fail now.
The Gardian had told him what he must do. The fate of the worlds rested upon this child—the weapon devised by Odin himself when his son Loki called himself Lucifer and overtook Hel’s realm. Where so many had failed, this child must succeed.
Elario gathered his wits and will about him and set about the task of bringing the child into the world.
The woman howled in pain and she curled onto her side, clutching her belly with desperate hands. He had hoped she would come with more time to spare, but alas, that was not to be. What good he hoped to affect now seemed slim at best, but he would try, and pray The Hallowed would arrive before the Dark One claimed what was his.
He caught the woman’s eyes, dark with fear, glassy from the pain—but flecked with the gold of a Gardian. They did not speak, though he tried to convey a measure of comfort to her in his steady gaze and the small smile he was sure to give her.
Warm and golden, he thought, as he settled to the floor. He hoped the child’s eyes would be like her mother’s—the gold spark an indication of her great lineage—and not the cold blackness of her father. The ground quivered and Elario’s tools of medicine bounced in their bowls, clattering. Sand ran toward the low spots on the floor. Quickly now, he thought. The Dark One will be here soon.
The woman grimaced as she rolled onto her back, her hands sliding to the top of her belly. Fear passed across her face before it was stamped out by sheer determination. What a miraculous thing that she should escape the clutches of the Dark One when the birth of his child was imminent.
Elario crouched near her head, and pondered what he might say. How do I comfort a woman who may bear a child bent on fulfilling her father’s evil plans?
What if The Hallowed are too late?
Please let them get here, Elario prayed. If The Hallowed claimed this child they may yet deal the Dark One a blow far greater than any since the beginning of man. If they did not . . . Elario couldn’t bring himself to ponder what evil would befall the Earth if they failed in their task.
The ground rumbled again, this time hard enough that bowls and pestles fell from their shelves in shattering screams.
As the woman labored, a mighty boom shook the hut and the front door blew off its hinges. Elario placed his hands on the woman’s belly, seeking the babe, seeking to guide it to Earth.
He closed his eyes and imagined the infant Gardian finding this strange home, the body of a demon, and finding a place within it. No child in the history of mankind would have a more difficult task, not at the inception of life, nor, he imagined, throughout. The nature of man already lent itself to the lowly in life, to the temptations of the earth. What burden will this child bear? Elario wondered. Born of the Father of Lies?
The babe leapt within the womb, but its journey was not yet over. The woman squeezed her eyes shut as blood trickled from between her clenched lips. Her hands reached out, grasping, but found no purchase.
It is too late, Elario feared, as the battle for life stretched out far too long. He closed his eyes, the words of the Gardian once again moving his lips. He did not see when the mother lost her own life. It was only when the fervor within the womb ceased that he opened his eyes to see her belly glowing and her face lax in death.
Still, he smiled. It had been a good death. She has won.
He set about freeing the child, anxious now to greet the little one he had waited for centuries to meet. Elario trembled as he made the incision and reached inside. The mother’s hands rested at her side, her smooth skin showing no sign of her brutal fight for life. Between her fingers pooled the links of a chain, the pendant shining in the candlelight.
Elario rocked forward, while his hands sought the babe. So that is how she did it, he thought. The woman possessed a warding charm, a complicated knot from the Old World, in the Old Tongue. She had surely worn it to hide herself from the Dark One’s view—and now that it lay puddled on her palm, the Trickster was coming.
No sooner had the babe slipped into his hands than the ground rumbled once more, this time opening a fissure at his feet large enough that the mat and low table were sucked into the darkness.
Elario stepped back from the crevice, clutching the mewling infant to his bony chest.
When the warm and heavy hand fell on his shoulder, he screamed and the child cried with him, her dark eyes flying open in fright.
Elario whirled to face the Dark One. He had failed. They had all failed. They had not prepared the child for what she must do. There had been no opportunity to teach her who she was—not only who, but what.
Fresh tears crept down his cheeks as Elario imagined her living in the darkness, blind to her divine mission, knowing nothing of the good she might do.
He blinked away the tears as his vision slipped—sometimes he saw the Dark One, a shadow of blackest night, his beating wings crashing through the low ceiling. And then as he blinked, as he tried to see the one he had fought against his entire existence, he thought he saw . . . a man.
Elario fell to his knees, looking to the child now cradled in his arms. She gazed at him, her gold-flecked eyes shining with determination and courage. She smiled.
“Dios . . . ” But the prayer Elario might have uttered slipped from his lips as the man gently took his daughter and stepped into the abyss.