Thief Eyes (21 page)

The gray sky was bright, sun turning the clouds gold around the edges. I took a few steps toward the stream, stopped short, and looked around. “Here,” I said.

“How can you know—”

“I
know
this hillside. I stood here in my dreams.” Heat
rose in me as I remembered—blocks falling, fiery arrows striking the ground—this ground. I released Ari’s arm to take off my backpack. He staggered and fell to his knees.

I knelt by his side. “You sure you’re all right?”

Ari gave me a long look. “As sure as you are.”

“Right.” I tore off my jacket. Wind blew through my sodden T-shirt, but it felt hot as the desert wind back home. I drew the spellbook from my pack and laid out the ingredients for the spell: The mead. The bowl. The claw. The rock, which was softer than it looked, flaking at the edges. I left the knife in the pack—I didn’t plan to use it. At last I reached for the coin. Its heat felt good against my burning skin, like a warm caress. I pulled it out.

As I did, the air filled with the beating of wings. I stood and whirled around, shoving the coin back into my pocket. Ari got to his feet by my side, though his legs still shook.

Muninn circled once around us, then landed on a rock beside my backpack. The terns fell silent. The clouds thickened, and the drizzle turned to a fine misting rain.

Not again, not now, I can’t forget now—
I didn’t look into Muninn’s eyes.
I’m Haley Martinez
, I thought fiercely.
Daughter of Gabe and Amanda—

“Haley.” Muninn’s wingbeats were soft and slow. “I come to offer you a bargain.”

Chapter 15

“W
hat bargain?”
I could run
. But Ari couldn’t, and besides, even an ordinary raven flew faster than my fastest sprint.

The wind died. Scraps of mist hovered over the wet hillside. “A bargain to protect this land from the fire you hold.”

“You can do that?” I looked into Muninn’s eyes after all. Dizziness washed over me. “You can take the fire away?” Mist brushed my neck, but the cold was a surface thing. It couldn’t sink into my skin or reach the fire that flowed beneath it.

“I cannot.” The fine rain didn’t seem to touch Muninn’s feathers. “The bargains you made in the fire realm are your own. I cannot undo them. What I can do is take you out of this place. In my mountain, you’ll be beyond the reach of
those who would enter this world through your fire. The land will be safer if you are not in it.”

“No.” Ari grabbed my hand. His fingers felt cool around mine.

Muninn krawked—it sounded like a laugh. His bright gaze shifted to Ari. “And how do you like being a bear, boy?”

“I like it fine.” Ari leaned on me to steady himself. “What about Haley? How safe will she be if she accepts your bargain?”

“Safer than she would be anywhere else.” Mist drifted around the raven. “There are no spirits in my mountain to feed her fire, and in my halls she might find the knowledge to keep that fire from consuming her.”

Like Mom had been consumed—but Hallgerd’s magic had done that. I thought of those fiery arrows tearing gashes in the earth. “Would I have to forget again if I went with you?”

Muninn’s wings stopped for a beat—a moment’s hesitation. “No. And I’d return the memory of you to the wide land—a gift for a gift.”

“So you’re saying our parents can remember us just in time for us to disappear forever?” Ari swayed and tightened his grip on my hand. “Some gift.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “
You
wouldn’t have to go.”

Ari laughed softly. “Ah, but being stupid is what I’m good at. Always best to stick with our strengths. Of course
I’d go with you. I may not be much use in the rescue department, but I can get this much right. I won’t abandon you, either.”

I thought of how in my dreams I was the arrow, the fire that tore the earth open. “If I accept your offer, could I return the coin to Hallgerd first?”

Muninn’s krawk was angry this time. “That other one is not as great a danger to this land as you are now. Even so, I’ll not have you returning any part of her power to her. There is danger there, too. The coin is a part of our bargain. It comes with you. Do you accept?”

Even now, I trusted Hallgerd with magic less than I trusted myself. Hallgerd’s magic already
had
killed. Yet she hadn’t even seemed to want the coin when last we’d spoken. “Do I have a choice?” I asked Muninn.

“There’s always a choice.” The raven’s wingbeats were slow, rhythmic. “Yet bear this in mind, Haley—if you refuse this bargain, I will do all I can to claim your memories once more.”

“Which, as it turns out, is not very much,” a voice said. I looked around and saw a small white fox crossing the bridge over the mist-shrouded river.

“Freki!” I said.

Freki calmly trotted over to stand at my feet. “You know you have no control over Haley’s memories now, Muninn, any more than you had control over Hallgerd’s memories once she made her bargain. The spirits that
burned away Haley’s hair burned away the veil over her memories as well. Those powers are older than you or I, and as you say—we have no sway over them.”

Muninn’s feathers puffed out. “This is none of your concern, Freki.”

“Ah, but it is.” The rain didn’t touch Freki’s fur, either. “Haley gave me a gift, and I may have the chance to repay her, this day. So I will wait. Make your decisions, Haley. Cast your spell, or choose not to cast it. Neither Muninn nor I may interfere.”

I looked at Ari. He looked at me. I knelt down and hugged the little fox tightly. “I missed you,” I whispered, and realized it was true.

Freki squirmed out of my arms. “I have done my job well, then.”

“Do you think I should accept Muninn’s bargain?”

“I cannot say,” Freki told me. “Mostly because I do not know.”

“The fate of the land is at stake,” Muninn said with several short, sharp wingbeats.

“This is not the first time the fate of what matters most has rested on human choices.” Freki curled up at my feet, resting his head on his paws. “None but our master sees the future in full, and the price he paid is not one that others can bear. Haley will do as she thinks best, and no one here knows what will happen after that.”

Rain still fell, soaking through my jeans and steaming
back into the air.
No one knows what will happen
. If only we did know—then Mom never would have gotten on a plane to Iceland. Ari never would have told Mom—or me—the things that he did. I wouldn’t have run from the things I was told. And Dad wouldn’t have—I pushed that thought aside. “None of us know. We just do the best we can and hope we don’t screw it up too badly.”

“Yeah,” Ari said with a wry smile. “That.”

Whatever you steal, be sure to give it back again
. Hrut’s words—I had no idea whether he’d meant the coin when he spoke them. But Katrin had thought the coin should be returned to Hallgerd, too. Did I trust Katrin? I thought of her and Dad—then I thought of how Katrin had stayed up through the night for me, translating Icelandic words to English ones, doing everything she could so that I wouldn’t face magic unarmed.

I thought of Thorgerd, Hallgerd’s daughter, whose warnings and instructions Katrin had passed on. Thor gerd’s descendants had remembered, for generation after generation, that the coin needed to be returned. There had to be some reason for that.

I hadn’t destroyed the land or the world
yet
. Neither had Hallgerd. Maybe there was a reason for that, too.

I fished the coin out of my pocket and set it down beside the black fire stone. “Let’s finish this,” I said.

Ari nodded and handed me the spellbook. I read Thorgerd’s instructions one more time, thinking of how it took
a thousand years’ worth of my ancestors—of Hallgerd’s daughters—to get this book to me.

Muninn’s wings flapped steadily as he watched me. The mist thickened. “If this goes badly,” the raven warned me, “you
will
pay.”

Ari handed me the mead. We exchanged a glance as I uncorked the skin.
If things are going to go wrong, this is the place
. Freki’s whiskers twitched. The little fox turned away from me and began nosing through my backpack. I poured the mead into the bowl, careful not to splash any to the ground. The amber liquid was tinged faintly with red. I waited, but the mead didn’t steam, and the ground didn’t shake. I caught a whiff of its sweet scent, and tiredness washed over me.

I blinked the heaviness from my eyes and took Svan’s raven’s claw to my thumb. Piercing my skin with it was easy. The pain felt good, the way holding the coin had felt good. I squeezed my finger, and blood welled to the surface, along with a tiny wisp of smoke. The wind felt suddenly hotter.

I tossed the claw down and used my blood to draw the symbol from the spellbook on the black stone: a circle with three intersecting lines, the ends of each crossed by smaller circles and lines—the same symbol that was on the coin. The stone grew warm. A few more flakes chipped off as I dropped it into the mead. I dropped the coin into the liquid, too, and then I chanted the words I’d memorized from the spellbook:

The fire in me rose with the words, like flames to wind. The mead hissed and steamed. I thrust my hand into it. Flames leaped from the bowl, burning my skin. The scent of hot metal filled the air. I closed my eyes and saw more flames, the flames of my nightmares.

The flames I’d leaped through. Huge figures strode toward me, made entirely of fire, their arms and legs and necks bent at unnatural angles. One of them reached in my direction. I drew away, hot shudders racing through me. He wasn’t reaching for me, though. He was reaching for the bowl in which the mead yet steamed. He dipped a fiery hand into the liquid, then jerked back with a roar.

“How dare you offer us the drink of our enemies? We refuse your gift!”

The flames in my blood burst through my skin. Pain—I’d never felt pain like this. My skin was melting, my bones were melting—I started screaming and couldn’t stop. The ground buckled beneath me like a horse trying to throw me from its back.

Someone grabbed me. There was a roaring in my ears, and then—silence, save for the steady beating of wings.

I opened my eyes. Ari looked at me, his green eyes
wide, his hands shaking as he clasped my arms. The fire still burned in me, but it was contained—barely—beneath my skin once more. Liquid dripped from the hand I’d thrust into the mead, and the drips fell back into the bowl.

I drew my arms free, shook the last of the mead from my hand, and looked into the liquid. Somehow, impossibly, the earthquake—if there’d been an earthquake—hadn’t spilled any. Maybe you couldn’t spill mead like this by accident, or maybe the fire giants hadn’t wanted to call on Freki and Muninn’s master, either. “The mead was no good.” My throat felt scratchy from screaming. “It just made them angry. The spell—”

“The spell isn’t worth your life,” Ari said.

What is this small life against the fate of the world?
But if I’d died, the fire would have burst through my skin, out into that world.

Muninn’s wings beat on. “Stupid girl! The power will never be contained now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” There was movement in my backpack. Freki backed out of it, holding the hilt of Svan’s knife between his teeth.

We all turned to look at the fox. He dropped the knife in front of me. “Even had you offered more suitable brew, the fire’s hold on you is too tight. A working as great as this one requires blood. I can give you that.”

Muninn’s wingbeats fell silent. I stared at Freki, not understanding—not wanting to understand.

“Haley,” Freki said, “not long ago, you gave me a gift. Two gifts: a drink of sacred mead and the life of one of my kin. I would repay those gifts now.”

A single sharp beat of Muninn’s wings. “No.”

“No!” For once I agreed with Muninn completely.

Freki tilted his head and said nothing.

“There’s nothing to repay!” Wildness rose in me. Fire roared in my ears as I yelled, “It was a
gift
! You don’t pay back a gift! That’s not how it works!”