“Poor bastard. He was a nice man. Not very bright, but he was nice. He had a lovely singing voice.”
“How did you get away?”
“I didn’t. The king transformed right before our eyes, growing and changing, screaming and howling. Then he killed three men and ran off. We were still picking ourselves up off the ground when Skadi gave the order and Leif killed the rest of us right there. I supposed she didn’t want any witnesses telling tales about how she turned the beloved king into a murderous freak of nature.” Omar shrugged. “So after Leif killed me, I woke up and found I had very little desire to go back to Rekavik, as you can imagine, so I wandered off to sulk a bit more in the hills. But then when the plague became apparent, I set myself up here to try to cure it. I figured it was the least I could do.”
Freya said, “That’s very generous of you. Although, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t my fault!” Omar frowned at her. “It was that egomaniacal queen of yours and her rabid little lapdog, who is currently swimming down the Botsna to visit the sea.”
Freya nodded and they both fell silent for a moment. Then she said, “So you came to Ysland by accident, and Fenrir is really Ivar, and the rinegold ring of Rekavik is probably still on his finger, which hardly matters because Skadi was probably lying about using it to end the plague.”
“Don’t be so sure about the ring. Skadi must want to end this madness as much as anyone. It’s no joy ruling over a miserable country,” Omar said. “She might have been telling the truth about the ring. It does contain the souls of your ancient valas, although I have very little confidence that some Yslander relic has any real wisdom to bear on this crisis. I’ve traveled most of the world and seen only a handful of animals with a natural ability for soul- breaking like these bloodflies of yours. There is a golden dragon in China, for example, that can also-”
“The bloodflies. Erik!” Freya dashed to her husband’s side and grabbed his hand. He tried to pull it away, but she wrenched it forward into the light. “No!”
His smooth pale skin was prickled over with dark hair, and when she looked into his ice blue eyes she could see the bright slashes of gold forming across them. She pushed the hair away from his ears and found them stretched and pointed, and again she felt the great heat pouring off his body.
Omar walked over and pulled his sword from the ground.
“No, please!” Freya leapt up between the men, holding out her empty hands to ward the foreigner away. “Don’t kill him! The plague’s already taken my sister. You can’t take him too!”
“When was he bitten?”
“Yesterday.”
Omar stared at her, his eyes dark with misery and sorrow. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for him. He has two days at most before the change takes him completely.”
Freya whipped her knife free and pointed it at his throat as she eyed his bright sword. “Then help me find the Rekavik ring. Help me find a cure.”
Omar ran his thumb down the edge of his jaw, and then across his nose, and then tugged his ear. “Again, the ring is probably useless, but why not? It’s little danger to me. And I suppose I can always kill him for you later, before he can hurt anyone else.”
Erik pulled Freya around to look at him and he signed, “He’s right. I didn’t want to admit what was happening to me. I’m sorry, but he’s right. I can’t go with you. It’s too dangerous. I might turn on you, and you’d have to kill me.”
Freya grabbed his shirt. “I’m not going to just leave you here. What if the other reavers find you here? Or what if you change and go running off into the wild?”
Erik frowned a moment. “I’ll go back to the water mill that we saw on the road to Rekavik. If I’m quick, I can be there by morning. I’ll clear out the bodies and chain myself up where that man had his brother. I should be safe enough there, and you can come find me later when you have the cure.”
Freya searched his eyes, her thoughts racing, but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t think of anything better than what he had described. So she nodded. “All right. You go on, and then I’ll come find you. And I’ll fix everything. I swear, I’ll come for you.”
Chapter 16. Hunting
Freya and Omar took Erik back down the river’s edge past the empty vala’s house to the heavy chain strung across the water. She took her husband’s sweaty, hairy cheeks in her hands and gazed up into his blue-gold eyes. “I’ll be back soon. You know I will. Just stay safe until we get back with the cure.”
He nodded and wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her cheek to his chest, her eyes closed, trying to hold on to that moment and pretend that it wouldn’t end, that life wouldn’t go flooding on past them like the river at their side. But the moment ended and they pulled apart.
He kissed her, gave Omar a stern look, and climbed swiftly across the chain to the far bank.
“He’s doing very well,” Omar said over the churning noise of the river. “He may last another three days if he can keep his heart rate down and slow the changes.”
“He’ll be fine,” Freya said as she watched her husband hiking down the gorge toward the east. “You’ll see. When we meet back up at the water mill, he’ll be there. And he’ll be himself still. He won’t be beaten by a little bloodfly.”
“I sincerely hope not.” Omar nodded. “Let’s be off then.” He led her back up the river and into a narrow ravine that angled north and began to climb up from the level of the river back up to the hills above the Botsna.
When they emerged from the gorge and stood in the free air again, Freya saw that it was late afternoon and the hills were already turning a molten shade of copper as the sun grew angry and red in the western sky. Omar pointed northeast across the vast snowy fields, and they marched on. The peak of Thaverfell stood on their left and Vingisfell stood on their right, and through the vale between them Freya could see the shimmer of a lake that she guessed to be Redar.
They were all just names she had learned from her father and from the old trappers long ago, but even now as she looked upon them they were still little more than words. Hill, mountain, river, lake. She couldn’t see their wild beauty, or their ancient bones, or their hidden secrets. She only saw league after league of ground between her and the golden ring that could save her husband and her sister, and league after league that she would have to cross again to get back to them.
Freya scanned the earth at their feet in the fading light, picking out a footprint here and a tuft of fur there. She saw signs of reavers on every side, along with sheep bones and broken fangs and strangely colored dung in the snow.
“You see their trails?” Omar asked.
“Yes. They’re everywhere. Dozens of them.”
“Most of them have been moving farther north, building dens in the hills up toward Lamb’s Run where there are no people, only the herds and the flocks. Wild sheep and deer by the hundreds.”
“Are the reavers afraid of people?” she asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe they remember that they themselves used to be people, and the memory drives them mad with rage, or sorrow.” Omar shrugged. “Either way, they do keep to the north these days. When I want to find one to try to cure it, I have to go quite a way. If we walk all night, we should reach Lamb’s Run by noon tomorrow.”
Freya stopped. The sky was already a deep violet and the stars were shining in the east, and a soft cool breeze rustled through the tall yellow grass. “And then what?”
Omar paused to look back at her. “And then we start looking for Ivar. Or Fenrir, if you prefer.”
Freya shook her head. “No, that will take too long. We could spent days wandering the hills looking for Fenrir, chasing down the wrong reaver, fighting off whole packs of them at a time.”
“I don’t see that we have a choice in the matter.”
“Erik doesn’t have that much time,” she said sternly. “We need to find Fenrir as quickly as we can. Tonight, if possible.”
