The Codex Lacrimae, Part 2: The Journey to Mimir's Well

What Has Gone Before...

When Clarinda, Fatima, and Khalil arrive with the bedouin at Saladin's encampment, they discover that they have come just as Farbauti and Morpeth are completing their machinations. Having successfully made the alliance between Saladin's and Fafnir's armies, the Huntsmen split forces: Morpeth leads the group of Assassins that will try to open the gate of the Krak des Chevaliers, and Farbauti joins with a newly arrived Kenezki (who's just come from the Battle of Caesarea) to torture Saladin's brother, Hamzah al-Adil, for eavesdropping on their plotting with the mysterious leader of the eastern army, a disguised Fafnir the Dragon.

Back at the Krak, Jacob interrupts the meeting of Hospitaller senior staff in Grand Master Arcadian's solarium (where Ibn-Khaldun, Mercedier, Damian, and Perdieu are arguing), alerting all to the fact that Assassins have infiltrated the castle walls. Ríg reacts immediately to the threat, leaping from a window and attacking the intruders single-handedly until aided by a half-clad Marcus, who's still in the clothes from his hospital bed. The youthful fighters succeed in their defense, but at a cost: Marcus is injured in the shoulder by an arrow and — still grappling with one of the Assassins — passes from Ríg's sight down a hill into the stable area.

Realizing that Marcus's distorted cries of "Orí, Orí, Orí" are attempts by the stuttering boy to say, "Aurelius," Morpeth gleefully identifies Ríg as Servius Aurelius Santini, the mythic Crusader from Mecina.

Morpeth corners the young knight, and orders him to "awaken the Codex" or die. As the book concludes, Ríg succumbs to the nick of a poisoned arrow fired by Morpeth and gets transported into the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology.

In "The Roots of Yggdrassil," the second book of THE CODEX LACRIMAE, Ríg awakens in the forest of Alfheim, restored to his true self as Servius Aurelius Santini. Miraculously recovered from the poisoning and wounds, he soon comes upon Grimnir, an old man fishing by the River Perilous. After a brief conversation and receiving a hatchet to cut a fishing rod, Aurelius turns to find that Grimnir and his talking animal friends are gone.

When the youth goes to the river to find them, he's told not to touch the water by a newly arrived Clarinda Trevisan, who's almost completed her training as a Norn and comes to bring Aurelius back to Mimir's Well and the Norn Grottoes for protection against the awakening Codex Lacrimae. Along the way to get him, she's been mysteriously abandoned by the Norns, and meets a Dark Elf, Rudyick, who warns her that an entity named Old Nick has captured a water elemental and is torturing another elf, Volund, across the river.

Aurelius ignores her advice because he wants to retrieve the hatchet that Grimnir gave him, but upon touching the water he's attacked by a force of strömkarlenand nixies — water spirits controlled by the elemental fossegrimwhom Rudyick had warned Clarinda about. In spite of the surprising effectiveness of Grimnir's hatchet against the supernatural enemies, the gigantic creature brings both Hospitaller and Norn as prisoners to Old Nick, whom Clarinda recognizes as her old enemy, the Templar Grand Master from Caesarea, Evremar of Choques.

Using his extensive bookish knowledge of the Bible, foreign languages, and historical literature, Aurelius guesses both that Old Nick's a disguised Satan (who wants the youth to give him the Codex Lacrimae) and that the enchanted fossegrim has a secret name. Aurelius frees the enslaved elemental by uttering that name, and the creature, Hav, takes immediate action against Old Nick. The fossegrim casts the Ancient Enemy into Lake Glittertind, in front of the mountain that's a weird, or magical commonplace to all the Nine Worlds. Upon releasing Aurelius and Clarinda, Hav reveals that Old Nick controlled him because the Devil stole a special blue coral, and the fossegrim asks that the young people retrieve it so that he'll never be captured again.