body seemed hollow and stupid.
“Yeah, well, I thought it would roll down the hill.” She smiled a little.
And then she laughed. She covered her mouth, feeling foolish, but the moment itself was foolish, standing over the monstrous bodies and bemoaning her cut hair and poorly designed snare.
Omar laughed with her, but he stopped himself and said, “We need to get out of here before more of those things come sniffing around.”
The walls of the crevasse were slick with fresh ice and their fingers were too cold and numb to climb anyway. The eastward path led down to the shores of Redar Lake, a place neither of them knew but both suspected to be wide open with nowhere to hide from prowling reavers. So westward they went, climbing uphill through the narrow crevasse until the walls sloped away and they could clamber off the trail and strike out for the south.
They hadn’t gone far when the pale claws of dawn appeared in the eastern sky and Freya was the first to admit that she needed a rest. Omar merely nodded and sat down beside her on the leeward face of a low hillock where very little snow had gathered during the night.
“I’ll keep watch,” he said. “I’m not tired yet. Not that I’m ever really tired.” He held the rinegold ring between two fingers, staring through the yellow circle at the earth at his feet.
Freya hesitated. He may have been an ally, he may have even been a friend, but he was still a stranger. He claimed impossible things, but he had also done impossible things, and she was far from ready to turn her back to him. She considered foregoing her rest and pressing on, running all the way back to Rekavik to deliver the ring so she could sleep in a room where she felt safe.
I can’t. I’m already struggling to keep my grip on my spear. I may not make it all the way back if I try. And besides, I’ll need my wits about me when we get back. When the queen and the people of Rekavik see Omar, and see Ivar’s head, or Fenrir’s head, or whatever they all make of it… well, that’s going to be an interesting day.
So she fell asleep.
When she woke up the sun was halfway to its zenith and a fresh snow was falling lightly through the still air. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, feeling slightly more solid, more real, more focused. Omar sat beside her, rolling the rinegold ring across his palms.
“You shouldn’t play with that,” she said. “I’d hate to lose it now and have to tell everyone that you dropped it in some hole in the ground by accident.”
“It would be no great loss, fair lady,” he said slowly. He sighed deeply and turned a very serious face toward her. “While you were sleeping, I took the liberty of speaking with the dead valas inside it. All nineteen of them. As far as I can tell, this ring is only three hundred years old and none of the wise old souls within it have ever heard of anything like this plague of yours.”
Freya frowned at him. “No, no, that can’t be right. Rekavik is an ancient city, everyone knows that. The valas have served its king for at least a thousand years.”
“I’m afraid the grand, sweeping histories of your capital city have been exaggerated. Rekavik as you know it is only two hundred years old. Before that, it was just another little fishing village of no particular importance.” Omar looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“The valas must be lying to you.” Freya stood up and rested her spear across her shoulder. “They’re no fools. They know you’re a stranger, a foreigner, an outsider. And a man, no less! They must be waiting for the ring to reach a vala before they reveal their true knowledge.”
“No, fair lady. It doesn’t work that way. The souls within a sun-steel object are prisoners, not gods. They cannot deceive or command. And I have more than four thousand years of experience controlling the occupants of sun-steel weapons and trinkets. Trust me, they are telling the truth.”
“But… but that means…”
“It means they can’t help us.” Omar stood and pocketed the ring. “It means we killed poor Ivar for nothing. And it means there is no cure.”
Chapter 18. Questions
Wren lay awake in bed a long time, wrapped up tight in the blankets and squinting up at the gray daylight falling through her barred window. Eventually she kicked off the blankets and looked at her left hand. The cuts still looked like cuts, red and angry and torn. Nothing strange there. But the tiny hairs on the back of her hand looked darker. Or did they? She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember ever looking at them before.
She sat up and felt a tiny wave of vertigo, and when she touched her forehead she found it slick with sweat. Wren stared at the beads of moisture on her fingers.
It’s happening. And I slept half the day away, letting it happen.
Slowly, numbly, she stood up and wiped away the sweat. She straightened her clothes and draped her blanket around her shoulders, letting the cloth hang crookedly on her left side to hide her hand, just in case. And then she left the room.
She passed a maid in the corridor, and then a dozen men in the dining hall, and then found Halfdan in the snowy courtyard talking quietly with three of the elderly guardsmen. After a moment he noticed her standing there, watching him, and he turned to her. “Good afternoon to you, little vala. How is your friend?”
For a moment she thought he was talking about the mad woman in the cellar, and she nearly panicked, wondering how he knew that she had found her. But then she remembered. “Katja is fine. She’s fine.” Wren nodded. “Well, she’s the same, anyway. Alive. Snarling. Hungry. I fed her some scraps last night.”
“Good. It’s probably best to keep her happy. A full stomach might go a long way to keeping her under control.” He grinned. “Hell, if she’s anything like me, a full belly will keep her asleep, too.”
Wren tried to smile back, but her face didn’t seem to have the strength to do it. “I need to ask you something.”
Halfdan’s grin faded and he led her away from the guards toward Katja’s cell. “What is it? You look like hell.”
“I didn’t sleep well,” she said. “Last night, I wandered around a bit and ended up in the potato cellar.”
The bearded warrior grimaced. “You heard her, didn’t you? The dark woman?”
“I saw her, too. She didn’t look any better than she sounded.” Wren swallowed. “Who is she? Why is she down there?”
Halfdan sighed. “She’s down there because Skadi wants her down there, and the less said about it the better. I’ll tell you about her someday, maybe. But not today. Best you leave well enough alone, and don’t mention it to anyone. And don’t go back down there again. Understand?”
Wren saw the sorrow in the man’s eyes even as she heard the iron in his voice, so she nodded and he clapped her on the shoulder and wandered back to his men. She was still standing there, watching the men talk, when a woman’s voice said, “Skadi wants to see you.”
It was Thora standing in the doorway that led back into the cloak room. Her dark brown hair hung in carefully brushed locks and braids that shone in the sunlight and framed her pale face and dark eyes like a portrait. Her black dress clung to her body, accentuating her height and the healthy firmness of her arms and legs.
The apprentice looked more beautiful in the morning light than Wren thought any apprentice had a right to look. She certainly had never looked like that when she was tending to Gudrun. Her eyes darted down to her own appearance, noting the stained and frayed black shirt and trousers, the filthy boots, the scrawniness of her arms, and the ragged tangles of her red hair.
“I should wash up first.”
Thora nodded and went inside.
Wren waited a moment for the apprentice to leave the dining hall, and then she went inside, slipping quickly past the tables and men and through the narrow passage into the kitchen. There she found a tin bowl full of warm water and retreated to a corner, earning only one curious look from the cook, and she set about washing her face and combing her hair with her fingers. When she was done, her reflection in the bowl merely looked like a slightly cleaner and wetter version of her usual self. She sighed, and yawned, and thought of her bed.
No. Skadi wants me. I have to be awake. I have to be sharp.
Back in the dining hall she took a moment to swipe at her clothes, hoping that if only she could beat the
