“What’s that?” he whispered.
From the boat, they could see that there were more, by the duplicated shape and sheen of the first object he saw. They moored there and stepped off the boat. The four men gasped in wonder at the four bronze bowls fixed into four large stones. Vaguely, by the beam of Gunnar’s flashlight they could see that each stone branded a rune that represented a Norse god — Odin, Freya, Tyr, and Thor.
“My god, this is amazing,” Gunnar marveled. His companions nodded in agreement. “They look like gravestones, or monuments.”
“They are singing bowls,” Eldard said nonchalantly in his lecturer tone. “Normally used for meditation.” He stepped through the long grass to take his place next to Freya’s stone. He pulled a wooden mallet from the bowl and tapped it on the rim. Like a church bell, the bronze bowl chimed a deep and beautiful tone, so loud that the men stepped back from it.
“Aye, that’s the way. Let everyone know we are here,” Sam remarked cynically. He did not see the tall red queen making her way towards the rocking boat they had tied down. He did not see her slip onboard and discover the fatally ill Nina.
“So what do we do? Where is the hall? Here are the mounds Nina was talking about from her dream. Where is Valhalla?” Gunnar asked, looking in all directions to ascertain if he missed anything.
“It must have something to do with the number sequences,” Eldard said and checked his hand for the pen written numbers he copied from the hoof he stole from the longhouse. “It says, ‘L12R16’. How is that related to the bowls?”
“L. L. L… umm, let’s see… l-left. Left! The ‘L’ and ‘R’ must be for left and right!” Gunnar exclaimed.
“Yes!” Eldard joined in, “That would make sense, since you run the mallet around the bowl to make it sing, you see?” He dragged the wood along the outer rim of the bronze bowl and it started to hum, louder and louder. Even when he ceased, it carried on a little longer.
“Wow!” Sam said under his breath. He found it truly beautiful, especially here in the moonlit night on the grounds of an ancient settlement where gods were born as men.
“Okay, one bowl’s is left and the other one’s is right. The numbers must be how many revolutions per bowl,” Gunnar smiled just slightly at the puzzle. “But what about the other two bowls? Or can we choose which ones to use?”
“Obviously, the other two would utilize the numbers from the second number sequence, you fucking imbecile,” Lita grunted from behind them, her hideous rasp splitting the peaceful night. The men spun around to find her standing with Nina’s limp body in her arms. She had carried her from the boat. Slokin sneered from her side and Sam felt like giving him another blinding punch.
“Is she alive?” Sam screamed, his eyes wide in shock.
“Relax, lover boy, she is my insurance. Again.” She looked at Nina, impressed. “She must have one hell of an immune system. Now, lads, you do the turn-turn thing and open Valhalla, and then, when I have collected the monster inside, you can have old whiny back. If she isn’t pissing through her pores by then.”
“Oh, I’m going to love ripping you open, you fucking freak!” Gunnar roared at Slokin, but the little creep just snickered and looked at his mistress.
“Get to it!” she shouted in furor.
Each of the four men took a mallet and, according to the numbers received via text and those carved into the hoof, they each had a number of times to circle his bowl either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Simultaneously they started their revolutions, emitting a gradual crescendo of sound from the bowls. Soon, the unison of the tones at varied heights formed a choir and eventually culminated to one terrifying voice of thunder. The earth under them filled with tremors and shook boulders loose from the river bank.
With the ground shaking beneath them, the four men counted their revolutions carefully whilst in the throes of reverence and fright. Like the horn of Gabriel announcing the end of the world, the singing bowls sang with the deep voice of a thousand Vikings. It pulsed through all within earshot, rattling their insides and challenging their rib cages. What a truly terrifying sound it was! Even Lita felt her soul kneel in awe of the voice, momentarily realizing just how insignificant humans were in the presence of nature’s forces. No wonder they were called ‘gods’.
Nina awoke from the din, but she was weak and disoriented. At the sight of Lita, she began to weep softly, desperate that she was yet again at the mercy of the merciless. But the powerful hum scared her even more. Through burning eyes, the dying historian looked for her friends, but what she saw shook her to her core.
All across the tall grass that was glistening in the glint of moonlight, she saw them converge. They closed in slowly on the four men at the singing bowls. Hundreds of them appeared from nowhere, swords and shields in hand, hair whipping violently in a storm wind while the night air stood still. Nina gasped and turned her head to follow their wandering. She was astonished by their beauty, grace and fury but nobody paid attention to them.
“Valkyries,” she sighed in absolute worship.
“What did you say?” Lita asked, but Nina just shook her head.
The earthquake caused two rifts in the riverbed, about 30 meters apart. Between them, to the terror of all present, the water fell away, swallowed up by the riverbed. Like a bath tub, the water level slowly sank until the singing bowls had chimed their last round. In front of them, the roof of the hall became visible and as the waterline dropped the moon rays fell upon the hall in all its glory. It had no windows and it was covered in mud and algae. The great doors were crafted from steel and wood, bolts and beams.
Thoughtlessly, Lita dropped Nina to the ground and told Slokin to watch her, but he only smiled.
“Not so fast, dear Lita,” Carlos Oliveira called out from the obscurity of the hillocks. “This site now belongs to the Order of the Black Sun.”
Lita’s eyes flashed with rage, “I am the Order of the Black Sun. And you are obsolete! Slokin, take care of him.”
“Why would he?” Carlos asked, walking down to them with Miro Cruz at his side. “He is the one who called us here. He is the one who told us that you planned to destroy us and take it all for yourself. You have been betrayed, Lita Røderic.”
She turned to Slokin, her eyes ablaze and livid.
“My work is done here,” he laughed in cowardice and ran off. Gunnar went after him, pulling his fifteen inch knife as he ran.
Lita abandoned them and climbed down the riverbank to the mossy splendor of Valhalla while Gary took place next to Nina.
“Go on, I’ll take care of her,” he told Sam and Eldard. They recognized the old men from the boat. Now they knew that these were the senior ranks of the Black Sun, eager to claim Fenrir.
“Kill Lita Røderic and you get out of this alive,” Carlos told Eldard and Sam with good old Nazi authority, but as soon as he finished his sentence his old colleague pulled out a pistol and shot him in the head. They froze, staring at the old man in disbelief.
“I don’t share power,” he said coldly and stowed away his weapon. Stepping over the corpse of his friend, Miro joined them and said plainly, “This is precisely why I locked that goddamned thing in my council hall in the first place. Concocted to birth Ragnarök with its evil breath. I had to keep it hidden because we could not destroy it.”
Astounded, they followed him down to Valhalla. He rounded the corner and was gone.