Stormbringer (21 page)

There was a hole there, Sigmund realized. Not a gate, just a part of wall that was incomplete, large stone blocks left scattered and overrun with grass beside a snag-toothed rift. It would be an obvious place to break through the barrier but also, Sigmund thought, an obvious place to guard.

He really hoped there was only one guy on duty. And that said guy wasn't too keen on shooting arrows.

Sleipnir sped up. Sigmund was getting better at riding, he really was, but Sleipnir was going
fast
now. Very fast. So fast the Wall ahead was getting close enough for Sigmund to see the moonlight glinting off the edges of its individual blocks. Then close enough for him to lose sight of the torchlight behind the battlement.

Sleipnir jumped over some of the discarded stones, which was terrifying and had Sigmund biting back yelps, fingers white-knuckled in Sleipnir's mane and eternally grateful for the strong wings that gripped against his thighs.

In the next moment, they were out of Ásgarðr.

Sigmund's heart was racing, ears aching as they listened for the sound of shouts or the
twang!
and hiss of arrows, aiming for his heart.

Neither happened. Whoever the guy on the Wall was, either he didn't see them go or didn't care that they had. Just another
æsir
brat, slipping off in dead of night.

Sleipnir didn't slow down until he stopped, all but devouring the ground beneath his claws. Sigmund didn't complain, just held on and enjoyed the ride, which happened approximately between the point of them being out of firing range of the Wall and when the chaotic jumble of footfalls finally fell silent.

“Oh. Wow,” said Sigmund, when the world was still again. Then the ache in his legs and ass asserted itself, and he was sliding sideways.

He didn't quite fall off. Not with Sleipnir half trying to hold on, half trying to lower Sigmund to the ground. It wasn't the most graceful dismount in the equestrian world, ending in a dull thump with Sigmund lying on his back, staring at the stars, and being regarded by a long dark face filled with far too many teeth.

“Where are we?” Sigmund asked, not bothering to get up. Actually, he wasn't sure he could. His legs felt like he'd just spent the last twenty minutes doing squats without a wall.

Another thought occurred:

“I didn't bring any, like. Camping stuff?”

This earned him a snort, and a stamp of Sleipnir's foot.

Sigmund tried sitting upright, and got mostly there. The ache made him groan, then look around self-consciously, just in case anyone else happened to be listening.

No one else was listening. Sigmund couldn't hear the bass and drums of the band anymore, Ásgarðr not even a dull glow lurking in the distance.

He pulled out his phone, thumbed on the light, and took a look around.

“Someone's been here.”

They'd come to a stop beneath a huge carved menhir. A rusting iron ring had been drilled into the side of the rock, and not too far from where Sigmund had fallen were the dark ashes of a campfire.

Standing up sucked majorly a lot, but Sigmund managed it, half stumbling, half limping over to the old campfire. It was…an old campfire. Dead and cold and black, but that was about all Sigmund was getting. It was still mostly arranged in a pile of fine ash and dark coal, and it didn't look like it'd been there a long time, but it wasn't as if Sigmund was an expert.

So maybe the grass was a little flatter in one area and maybe the ground looked a bit torn up in another. Sigmund paced the area with his light, trying to figure out what he was looking for even as he was looking for it.

Sleipnir did the same, nose down in the weeds like a bloodhound. Lain had never exhibited a particularly strong sense of smell that Sigmund had noticed, but maybe Sleipnir was a different sort of
jötunn.
Or at least half a different sort. Maybe he got his senses from his dad, not his mum.

And then, as Sigmund paced the menhir, light passing across the runes and dragons carved into its surface, he found what he was looking for.

“Hey. Hey, look.”

Sleipnir trotted closer at Sigmund's voice. His big feathered head loomed over Sigmund's shoulder, the edges of his horns ghosting Sigmund's hair. Sigmund had a sudden urge to reach up and stroke the underside of Sleipnir's neck. His thoughts but not his thoughts. And maybe the gesture would be affectionate and motherly and maybe it would just be weird and awkward, so in the end all Sigmund did was point at the surface of the stone and say, “There.”

It was the LB logo. Crude and out of proportion, but still unmistakable; three upright pillars, the middle slightly shorter, each with a hole near the top.

The design was etched a few millimeters into the stone, even as it looked like it'd been painted by a thick finger. Sigmund swallowed, feeling a little ill when he noticed the dull green sheen of what definitely wasn't paint still clinging to the rock.

One LB logo, drawn in caustic blood at roughly sitting height. Sigmund was starting to get the idea.

When he checked the grass around the base, he found one single long feather that glimmered like flame under the harsh white glow of his phone's flash.

“Lain was here.”

Sleipnir huffed, stamping in agreement.

The logo wasn't on the side of the menhir facing the campfire. Maybe Sigmund shouldn't read too much into things, but…

“Where would they've gone? I mean…can you follow them?”

Another snort, then Sleipnir was trotting away, half glancing at Sigmund over his shoulder as he did. Sigmund got the message, moving (with a groan) to follow, until he heard Sleipnir's footsteps turn from the gentle
shish-shish
of someone moving through grass and into something harder.

A path, leading out of Ásgarðr. The menhir positioned beside it. Sigmund hadn't noticed it in the dark, and didn't think Sleipnir had been following it anyway.

He looked up. Far off in the distance, beyond a thick and tangled forest, the dark shapes of mountains loomed beneath the stars.

Þrúðr's sleep was a restless thing, fitful pits of exhaustion punctuated by tear-filled hours of wakefulness. Her stomach churned hard enough to force out the feast the
dvergar
had provided, and even that was an awful, humiliating ordeal. One that saw Þrúðr stumbling around the chambers she had been given, eventually walking into a room tiled in bright mosaics with water running beneath the ground. She hoped desperately she had intuited the function of the facilities correctly. That she had not relieved herself within the bath nor washed herself atop the privy.

Nothing in the place was as it should be, least of all Þrúðr.

Magni and Móði had come to visit, as grim and stone-faced as their hosts, and had informed her that the deal with Brokkr had been struck. She was to be wed to Uni, in exchange for the safety and prosperity of both Ásgarðr and Niðavellir. Upon hearing the news Þrúðr had ensured her eyes were dry and her chin was raised, and she had said, “Well done, brothers mine. Now rest. Tomorrow, you recover Father's legacy.”

Her voice had not wavered, and for that she was proud. Even when Móði had stepped forward and offered, “Sister, it is not too late. We have the
jötunn.
He is clever, and—”

The thought of Lain—of being beholden to that fickle, burning madness—saw the bile rise in Þrúðr's throat.

“No dishonor,” she'd said. “Today, we make Ásgarðr proud.”

And Þrúðr had.

Young
dvergar
had draped her in gold, their skins rippling with pink and mauve and teal as their stumpy, half-lost tails wagged. Þrúðr's mood lifted at the sight of them—small and soft-skinned and innocent—and at the way they braided her hair and helped her change into the fine furs and silk she had brought in her saddlebags for the day. In the end, she'd stood in front of a mirror in her room, shining and perfect, and fought back tears.

She looked fit to be a queen.

Pity it would be only the dark to see it.

As she left, she felt cold fingers lace into her own and looked down to see a
dvergr
child holding out a bouquet of flowers. Green and white and gold. Surface flowers. Dotted with the long luminescent stalks of mushrooms from the deep.

“Thank you,” Þrúðr said, voice hushed and breaking.

When she walked from her room, it was with a small and clammy hand clutched within her own.

Uni was a good man. Þrúðr reminded herself of this throughout the hasty “wedding.”

He was good, and kind, and stood beside her dressed in mail that shone like the surface of the moon, glittering with every precious gem that could be mined from the far side of the subterranean sea.

“You look very beautiful,” he'd said when he'd seen her.

Þrúðr had nodded, biting her lip and not trusting her voice. Leaves and petals rattled in her shaking grasp, fine stems crushed to pulp beneath her fingers, eyes fixed only on where carvings on the wall told the tale of Uni's family. Smiths and merchants, diplomats who bridged between the world above and one below. And Þrúðr, who was that bridge.

Somewhere, below her eyes, Brokkr sang with a voice like pounding stone.

Then he called forth his brother, Eitri, and his nephew, Tóki, to hand over Megingjörð and Járngreipr to Magni and Móði.

And then Þrúðr was wed.

“Sister, your brothers beg your indulgence.” Móði bowed, deep and low, eyes glittering with irony in the dark. “Lend to us your
jötunn
bondsman, that we may use his guile and cunning to retrieve our father's honor.”

For a moment—one single pride-filled moment—Þrúðr wondered what would happen should she refuse.

Brothers, who took and took and took. And Lain, who was vicious and cunning and sly, and who spoke of his wife with such soft devotion, and whose stitched-shut lips were even now twisted into a baleful sneer.

You should be wielding Mjölnir,
he'd said. The words echoing in Þrúðr's skull, so loud she wondered if the beast could hear.

And Þrúðr knew it was a lie, as all things the
goða dólgr
said were lies. Tricks and tests, to find weakness in Þrúðr's heart. Jealousy. Pride. Dishonor.

Ergi.

For what else to call a daughter who would usurp her father's place?

And so, when Móði asked for Lain's—for
Loki's
—service to his quest, Þrúðr granted it with gladness in her heart.

“Take him,” she said. “He is yours and will serve you well. If you can keep him leashed.” She grinned a brittle grin and Móði returned it.

“Ah,” he said, winking. “We have ways enough for that.”

From somewhere to her left, Þrúðr heard the
jötunn
's vicious growl.

Not long after, Þrúðr's brothers and their beast were gone.

Þrúðr stood beside her new husband on a pier, watching the glow-edged waves of the Skærasær lap the ship.

To retrieve Mjölnir, Magni and Móði would have to travel to Miðgarðr. The
dvergar
knew the way, deeper into the mountain and through the twisted paths between the Tree. Þrúðr had given Magni her bouquet, and she watched him wave with it in big extended arcs as he slid into the dark.

Þrúðr stood for a long time, the boat growing smaller and smaller on the tide, until it was nothing more than a faint and bobbing star. Then nothing at all.

Still, Þrúðr did not give up her vigil, eyes fixed on the slow undulation of the undersea tide. Black water leaving foaming crests of iridescent blue along the black stone of the shore.

She had been alone long enough for her legs to ache and her eyes to sting, when she heard footsteps behind her on the pier. The waddling
clank-clank
of the
dvergar
and his iron shoes.

“My lady? If you desire reprieve from your vigil, your morning gift is ready.”

Þrúðr blinked, then blinked again. Willing tears not to spill at the sound of Uni's soft and gentle voice. Þrúðr was done with crying. She was a wife now, her brothers gone. Her will had been done and now there was nothing left but to be glad of it.

When she turned, she made sure it was with a smile to greet her spouse.

“H-husband”—and if her voice stumbled, just a little, Uni was kind enough not to mention—“forgive me, I only worry for my brothers on their quest.”

“They are strong men,” Uni said, “and their cause is just. They will triumph, and all the Realms will be better for it.”

Þrúðr smiled, and did not speak the words that hid beneath her heart.

Uni took her back into Brokkr's hall, into the wing he claimed as his.

“Yours now, also,” he said, showing Þrúðr through the maze of rooms and scurrying servants.

When Þrúðr was well and truly lost, Uni stopped them in front of what looked to be a huge golden sphere, set into the wall and floor such that only a quarter of it protruded. More gold adorned the walls around its edges, emerging in sunbeamlike geometric rays.

The “sun,” as it turned out, was a door; bisected down the middle and opened with a strange key shaped like a
sól
-rune. The key was threaded onto a chain, and Uni proffered it to Þrúðr.

“This is your morning gift,” he said, coloring rippling strangely at the words. “This room is your solitude, your retreat. Go there, and none will come after you. Not I, nor my family, nor any other who dwells beneath the Mountain.”

“A prison?” Þrúðr snapped. Then flushed in humiliation just as quickly. “Forgive me. It…it has been a trying time.”

But Uni waved a hand, colors darkening even as his large dark eyes could not meet Þrúðr's own. “No,” he said. “Not a prison. The key is yours, come and go as you please. The room is locked for…for other reasons.”

Þrúðr's eyes narrowed. “ ‘Other reasons'?”

Uni bowed, just slightly. “Please,” he said. “Enter, and you will see. Just beyond the door is a plinth. Place the key within its lock, and you will know why you must do this thing alone.”

It could be a trap. With Magni and Móði gone, perhaps Uni was as talented a liar as the
jötunn
beast Þrúðr had traded him for. Perhaps the
dvergar
did mean to keep her here, imprisoned. For her hair, perhaps, and Þrúðr's mind was filled with a nightmare of being strapped into some awful engine, her hair grown and shorn in endless cycles even as her body withered into nothing in the dark.

Þrúðr took the key, fastening the chain about her neck.

“Thank you,” she said, and unlocked the door.

When she did, the sun orb split in two, each half rolling away with the roar of dragging stone, leaving the key without a lock. Þrúðr gasped as, inside, a circular room was revealed, wrought in gold and patterned with more shapes and lines.

She glanced down at Uni, then forward again. “What—?”

“Please,” he said again, bowing and gesturing forward.

Þrúðr stepped inside the dome, in front of the plinth Uni had described. There was, indeed, another keyhole at the top of the pillar, and Þrúðr had to remove the chain from her neck to fit the lock. As soon as she had turned it into place, the grinding began anew, and Þrúðr gasped as the doors behind her closed and the entire room began to spin.

“Uni—” she managed, but then the doors slammed and she was alone, surrounded by walls that began to fall away in segments, opening like a strange flower and into a light more blinding than any Þrúðr could remember. She cried out, hands coming up to shield her eyes and waiting for the warmth on her skin to turn to burning, cursing the
dvergar
with her last breath that they would dare to burn a daughter of Ásgarðr in this awful furnace and—

—and the pain never came. Just the warmth, and the light, and when Þrúðr lowered her arms, when she blinked, her eyes adjusting from the dim world of the mountain, what she saw before her brought her to her knees.

Morning gift,
Uni had called it. A tithe from a husband to a new bride, yet perhaps Uni's words had held another meaning, for what Þrúðr saw hanging above her, set high up in a vaulted ceiling of blue tile that shimmered like a summer sky…

Above her hung the sun.

Or, perhaps not
the
sun—not Sól's daughter—but some magic of the
dvergar
's making. A false sun, shining bright down onto a garden filled with lush green grass and trees and flowers that spread in rainbows over loamy soil.

There was a pond and stream, not too far away from the podium, set behind a silk-shrouded stone gazebo in which Þrúðr could see the shapes of lounges and of tables. Somewhere in the distance, behind artfully arranged menhirs, came the sounds of a waterfall, while, all around, butterflies and bees traced lazy paths upon winds with no source Þrúðr could see.

Nor could she see the edges of the room, so immense was the cavern. And it was a cavern; they must have been below Sindri, below the Skærasær. Uni had certainly brought her down enough stairs to get there and—

“Uni!”

Þrúðr's hands flew back to the key, wrenching it from the pedestal. As she did, the sun door began to grind and rotate once again, hiding the cavern and replacing it with the gloom beneath the mountain, made all the dimmer by contrast to the false sun of the garden.

As soon as the doors had opened wide enough for Þrúðr's passing, she was through them, calling Uni's name as she ran frantically up the corridor.

“Þrúðr? My lady?”

Then Uni was there, rounding a corner, large dark eyes wide and colors flashing in panic at Þrúðr's voice.

“What has happened? Are you hurt?”

Þrúðr fell to her knees, arms thrown around Uni's shoulders, choked by racking sobs.

“I'm sorry,” she cried. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry I can't I'm sorry I—”

Thick, four-fingered hands came up to brush tears gently from her cheeks. Uni said nothing, just held Þrúðr as she wailed against his heart.

“You built all of this?”

Later, back in the garden. Uni knew a way to dim the sun, and had shown Þrúðr the dials on the control plinth that would turn the golden orb into a shining silver moon. There were even stars, glittering against the inky blackness up above.

“Designed,” Uni said. “I had help with the labor.”

They were sitting together in the stone gazebo, looking out over the pond to where a waterfall bubbled down a slide of rocks.

“It's beautiful.” Þrúðr's voice was thick, her eyes burning from the fall of tears that had now, thankfully, dried.

“Thank you. My cousin, Tóki, is the smith. But I have some skills of my own, also.” His color flashed a deep blue-green within the dark. Then stopped, as he inhaled and said, “Þrúðr, this marriage. If your brothers have—”

“It was my design.” Þrúðr would not have the
dvergar
blame Magni and Móði for her own soft and foolish will.

“Yet you do not wish it, not truly.”

Þrúðr had no answer to that, only tears, and she had vowed to shed no more this day.

Uni sighed. “This ‘marrying' ”—he said it strangely, as if the word tasted foreign on his tongue—“it confuses me so. Father explained it, but…” He stopped, and Þrúðr heard him shift. Then, “The
dvergar
do not do this, did they tell you? This is a tradition of the
æsir.
”

Þrúðr blinked, startled as the words set in. “No, I—” She turned to look at Uni. “
Dvergar
have asked for it before.”

Uni flashed green, just for a moment. “Yes, Alvíss. I have heard of his ill-fated plot.”

Alvíss, the All-wise, who had not lived up to his name, and who had lost a battle of wits to Þrúðr's father for his conceit. Fatally so.