Hexed

The passage led down a narrow ledge with steep ravines on either side. I glanced over the edge and quickly pulled back. I couldn’t have seen what I thought I saw—no, it wasn’t possible. But a second look and I knew I wasn’t hallucinating.

There was a column in the center of the deep pit to my right. Along the column were row after row of faces—death masks and skulls, ornamenting the towering stalagmite that was a good eight feet thick. Holy Hel, no wonder they called this cavern the Gates of Hel. It truly was a death chamber.

I turned back to see the faint glimmer I knew was Vikkommin. He was waiting at the top of the path and I sensed a hesitancy now—a pause in certainty.

“What’s wrong? Are you afraid to come down here?”

Come up. You know eventually I’ll have you. Or you’ll starve to death, waiting for me to leave. Pirkitta, you don’t know the power you’ll have when you are with me. You can’t imagine the beautiful strength that flows through my being now. You will have all that, once you’re with me.

Power. . . power . . . Where had I heard that before? A fuzzy thought began to take shape in my mind.

“I don’t think so. You’re an abomination, Vikkommin. If I’m the one who turned you into this, I promise you, I will give myself over for punishment. But you cannot go on like this—you feed on the life of the Northmen and their families. You are no longer part of the cycle.”

Oh, that’s what you said long ago, that’s what you predicted would happen to me. But look—you are the reason for my existence in this form. You created the monster you feared I was becoming. How do you feel about that, my love? How do you feel now that you know you’ve fucked things up and birthed a fearsome shadow who is the terror of the northern wastes?

I glanced around, staring at the skulls on the central tower, trying to think. The pit over the edge was so vast that if I had to, I could throw myself in and he’d never be able to get me. Had I really done this to him? Was I, at the heart, responsible for all of this?

You’re making a mistake, Vikkommin. You’re going against the Order, Vikkommin. You’re turning into a monster, Vikkommin . . .

His voice mocked mine, in perfect precision, and suddenly, the years began to slide away as the secrets I’d locked within my heart broke open . . . and I was standing back in his room that night, facing my love for the last time.

* * *

VIKKOMMIN HAD CALLED me to his room. Nothing unusual—we spent a great deal of time together, but tonight something was different. He had a look on his face that I didn’t like. One I recognized all too often as of late.

“You’ve been in the White Forest, haven’t you? What are you doing there, Vikkommin? You promised you’d curtail how often you go. You know I don’t like it and neither would the Priestess-Mother.”

Vikkommin, strikingly handsome and with a rogue look in his eye, swept me into his arms. “Kiss me before you scold me,” he said, and I did. His lips pressed against mine, warm and like fine wine, and they sucked me in deep, into his love, into his passion, and I wanted nothing more than to strip off my clothes and climb into bed with him.

But there was something—something that struck me as odd . . . off-kilter. I pulled away, and catching my breath, I turned back to him.

“What are you doing, my love? What calls you to the forest? We have everything we could want here. Everything we could ask for.”

A flame shot wild in his gaze and he shook his head. “You truly believe that? You don’t understand, do you? I have to show you. If I show you, you won’t object. You’ll want to be part of this—and I want you to be. You’re my love, my soul mate, my chosen one. Pirkitta, let me show you what I have discovered.”

I sighed. He wouldn’t be content until I said yes, and I decided that maybe this was the best way to keep him out of trouble. If I knew what I was fighting, I’d know how to engage it.

“All right, then. Show me what you’ve learned from the White Forest.”

“Come here, then. Come and let me enter your thoughts. Let me show you what I’ve been learning. What I plan to teach you.”

He held out his arms again and I moved into them, shivering as he wrapped them around me in an embrace so tight I could not break it. He began to turn me, to spin me—or at least it felt like it—and we whirled onto the astral, our souls joined together.

“Look—look what I’ve found how to do . . .”

And then I entered his mind. The brilliant flames were there, flames of ice, so violent they rocked his soul. I screamed, trying to avoid the wash of the burning ice as the spiraling flames took shape into dancers, who spun around us in a circle of madness. Ishonar . . . the most dangerous of elements—somehow Vikkommin had tapped into the elemental power of ishonar.

“No—ishonar is reserved for punishment only. It is the most powerful form of ice, and we are never to touch it unless it be in urgent need with approval of the Elders.” I tried to break away, but the ishonar Elementals rushed at me and I stopped. “My gods, Vikkommin, you have control over them.”

It couldn’t be—no mortal could control this power. No sane mortal tried. It was like controlling dragons—it just wasn’t done. In fact, the ability to tap into the icy fires of ishonar had been passed to the silver dragons, and they were the only creatures alive who could use the magic as they wished without losing themselves to it. For there was a madness in the extreme cold, a fury when unleashed, that could bring the worst of nature’s wars—the ice ages—upon the world.

“You can’t control this! You can’t possibly hope to control this power.”

Vikkommin laughed and held me tighter. “Oh, on the contrary—I can control it. I have learned how to use it, and I will use it. Once we are in control of the temple, we will wage holy wars upon our enemies. We will freeze our enemies in Pohjola to the core. We will eradicate the fire giants. We will raise ourselves to be at the side of Lady Undutar herself. We will become gods with this power.”

And then I felt her—the Lady herself—coming through me.

“This is madness,” she whispered, and I spoke the words for her. “You dare to compare yourself to the gods? You will pay for this, and you will pay mightily.”

Without a second thought, I reached out—or perhaps Undutar did, or the both of us—and we ripped Vikkommin’s soul off the astral and thrust it into the nearest shadow form. To prevent him returning to his body, I leapt off the astral back into the room. And I gazed on my love one last time, before turning his body inside out. Everything faded, and the next thing I knew, I was screaming, and my world turned upside down from then on.

“OH, GREAT MOTHER. Vikkommin, how could you? How could you hope to ever . . .”

The memories kept flooding back. The sound of his body ripping as I tore him apart. The mad laughter of his soul as he nestled into the shadow. The scream caught in my throat as I killed the love of my life to prevent him from hurting others. He’d gone mad with power and there would be no stopping him.

In that brief glimpse of his soul, I’d recognized that he was even more powerful than the Priestess-Mother and he would rampage across the land and tear it asunder with the ishonar.

But how could I tell the Elders Council? How could I make the Elders believe, when even I was in shock and disbelief? And so the memories retreated, fading back into a little corner of my heart, and I locked them away.

Because I also knew there was danger to myself. For when Vikkommin had entered my mind to show me what he could do, he’d not only shown me how to use the ishonar myself.

Now, as the memories flooded back, I realized I also knew how to control the ishonar—I could make the ice burn and I could shift the weather in ways no mortal or Fae should be capable of. If the Elders had known what I could do, they would have instantly put me to death. Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I must have realized that and blocked off all memory.

Horrified that I was now far too powerful for my own—or anybody else’s—good, my first thought was to throw myself over the edge of the pit, but then Vikkommin laughed, and his laughter stopped me.

You never could handle the concept of being a goddess, could you? I see you remember now. But you do not frighten me—you are terrified to use your strength and you won’t use it for fear of setting off some