“Kill them quickly,” said Daisuke. “Hunt them down, and kill them all. It is the only solution and the only mercy they can hope to receive.”
Omar shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“You know,” said the physician, “simply because none of the medicines have worked so far does not mean that no medicine will work in the future. You had only the crudest of instruments and materials in that cave behind the falls. Surely with the help of the valas, with their tools and their knowledge of the plants here, a balm can be created that will soothe both the minds and the bodies of the victims.”
“I doubt that, old friend,” Omar said.
“Perhaps we can bind them,” said the oracle. “Trap them. Control them. Even cast them into a deep sleep, to hibernate until you can find a true cure, if ever. At least then they might find some peace in oblivion, or even in dreaming. Perhaps their lives in this world cannot be salvaged, but in the dreaming world they might live a hundred better lives before their bodies expire.”
Omar smiled sadly. “We’ve been over this before. Even if we could sedate the reavers, even if we could grant them that peace, as soon as the warriors in Rekavik learned that their enemy was vulnerable they would hunt them down and slaughter them in their dens. That’s not the answer I want. I want a real cure. I want to give these people back their lives. All of them.”
“If you can’t get the fox-soul out,” said the Aegyptian girl, “then you should put something else in.”
Omar turned slowly to look at the little ghost lying on her back, wiggling her bare feet through the thin snow without troubling a single white flake. “Put what in, exactly?”
“I don’t know, something nicer. Like a fish-soul or something. Foxes are hunters, right? Kill or be killed. Fighting over the spoils of the hunt. Always competing for things. Food, mates. That’s what’s driving the reavers crazy, isn’t it? All those wild instincts creeping through their brains. Especially mating, I guess. So put something else in there. Maybe a deer-soul. Or even a tree-soul.”
“There are no trees in Ysland,” the oracle reminded her. “But the idea has merit.”
“Put something else in.” Omar nodded thoughtfully. “Something to balance the vixen. Something calm, controlled, stable.” He ran his thumb slowly down his stubbled jaw.
“Trouble.” The samurai stood on the western edge of the pit looking out over the slopes of Mount Esja and the bay below. “Two figures.”
Omar trotted across the frozen earth and snow and stood beside the ghost. Over a league away at the base of the mountain he could see shapes moving in the deep shadows, almost hidden from the fading daylight.
“One is a man with long hair,” said Daisuke. “The other is a reaver. A large one.”
“What?” Omar squinted. “Are you sure? I can barely see them.”
“Strong eyes. The advantages of youth,” the samurai said.
“Your eyes have been dead for over eight years,” Omar said with a grin. “But I believe you. Are they fighting?”
“No. They are standing very close together, but the man has not drawn a weapon. I think they are speaking to each other.”
Omar tightened his grip on his sword.
With Ivar dead, what reaver could possibly be talking to a man?
“Can you see anything else?”
A sharp howl split the silence, and Omar stepped back from the edge. He grimaced and looked at the samurai.
“Strange.” Daisuke paused. “The man is heading back along the edge of the bay toward the city now. The reaver is running in the opposite direction.”
“A meeting?” Omar turned away and walked back toward the hole and his other dead companions. “Could Skadi actually be working with the reavers?”
“If there are other reavers that can speak, then they must also have larger portions of the vixen’s soul,” said the physician. “Enough to have clear fox-instincts and clear human-thoughts, and not the muddled madness of the simple reavers.”
Omar shook his head. “I suppose so, but who?”
“Hey!” The Aegyptian girl sat up, leaving no mark in the snow to prove she had been there. “I want to talk about my idea some more. What are you going to put in the reavers to make them nice again?”
Omar felt his boot knock against something loose on the ground, and he knelt to pick up the hard brown lump dusted with ice crystals. Several tiny mosquitoes were crawling on the lump and buzzing their wings.
“I have an idea of what to use,” Omar said. “And I have an idea of how to deliver it. But we should work quickly. If Skadi is somehow in league with the reavers, then God only knows what she could be planning. But whatever it is, it will not be pleasant for our lovely young friend with the silvery hair.”
“You like her? The huntress?” The little girl scowled. “Her tattoos are ugly.”
“I think they’re quite nice, actually.” Omar picked up a second brown lump covered in mosquitoes. “Now help me look for more of these. We’re going to need a lot of them.”
Chapter 21. Feast
Freya stood at the top of the steps looking down at the iron door of her sister’s cell. The sun was resting on the western edge of the world, setting the sea and sky afire with crimson and molten gold as the eastern heavens draped themselves in princely violet and frozen stars.
My sister is a monster, and I keep her in a cell.
Freya shivered.
Wren shuffled through the snow to her side and stood with her, looking down at the door. She said, “I wish I’d had a chance to know her. If it hadn’t been for the reavers, I wouldn’t have been trapped in that tower. I would have been out in the world, learning and studying. I would have met your sister and traded secrets with her. Stories. Herbs.”
Freya nodded. “You would have liked her. She was always the funny one.”
Wren sniffed.
“You’ve been awfully quiet all afternoon,” Freya said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t heard you talk to the Allfather once since I got back.”
“No.” Wren sighed. “No, we’re not speaking right now.”
Freya glanced at the girl again. She was sweating and shivering, with dark shadows under her eyes, and her breathing sounded just a bit labored, and wet. Freya grabbed Wren’s shoulder and yanked her thick red hair up and away from her face, revealing the tall and pointed ear beneath it. Wren tried to pull away, but Freya held her still as she stared at the ear.
Wren too?
“When did this happen?” she asked as a lump began to form in her throat.
“Last night.” Wren wrenched herself away and Freya let her go. The girl stepped back and kept her eyes on the ground. “I was guarding the cell, and a good thing too, because some men came to kill Katja. But after they left, I went to check the door because it looked rusty. I shook the handle. And I shook the bars on the window.”
Freya glanced at the iron door. “And she bit you.”
Wren nodded.
“I’m sorry, Wren.”
“It’s all right.” The girl sniffed and dragged her sleeve across her nose, revealing her hairy hands for a moment. “It probably would have happened anyway, right? I mean, back in Denveller. They would have gotten me sooner or later. At least this way, I get to live. Instead of being killed by the reavers, I’ll be one of them. I can run away. Far away. I’ll live in the north, and I won’t hurt anyone, I promise.” She dropped her chin to her chest and began to cry.
Freya held the girl to her chest. “Maybe not. That man I told you about, the one who cut off Leif’s arm and Fenrir’s head, he’s working on a cure, a real cure.”
“There isn’t time,” Wren said hoarsely. “I only have another day or so. I should leave the city now, while I
