The Fires of Muspelheim Page 7

  “The God Slayer,” Muninn said.

  “But there’s another,” Leona said. “He made another.”

  “With much sacrifice on the side of the All Father, yes.” Huginn nodded. “But this God Slayer that was crafted with the blood of Hafaress’ love can only be wielded by someone who’s worthy enough of it.”

  “Hafaress,” Muninn said.

  When Leona looked up the ravens were staring at her.

  Rorick and Camilla stood at attention before the oaken desk in Rowan’s office in the town hall. The day was bright. The sun was behind Rowan, illuminating her white hair as brightly as the snow outside. Her hands were folded on the top of the desk. She chewed her lip.

  “You’re absolutely sure that she meant Leona?” Rowan asked them.

  “Unless there’s another new harbinger here that we don’t know about,” Camilla said. “Yes, she meant Leona.”

  “She’s making these plans for tonight?” the harbinger wondered.

  “Tonight,” Rorick said. “Skye is with Leona now, keeping a watch on her. I don’t dare show myself too much around her, Leona might get suspicious.”

  “Good thinking, we don’t want her to worry, and we don’t want her trying to kill this darkling herself,” Rowan said. “This means she’s a target. This may only be one darkling now, but there will be more if this trade is being planned.”

  “That’s what I feared,” Rorick said.

  “So you’re waiting for a kill order?” Rowan asked. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I know Deborah. I’ve visited with her on several occasions. Her daughter to the south is due to go into labor any day now.” Rowan closed her eyes and rested her head in her hands.

  “But she’s a darkling,” Camilla said.

  “We don’t know that,” Rowan told her. “There’s a chance, but we don’t know that.”

  “Rowan, if she is a darkling, then there’s every chance that you feel friendship for her where she feels none for you.” Rorick leaned against the desk. “It’s never going to be easy. You know everyone here. It’s made the darklings very personal to you.”

  “I know,” Rowan said, looking to the two gathered before her. “I know, and you’re right. You are absolutely sure that she was willing to make a trade off with that dark elf?”

  “Absolutely,” Camilla said without a second thought.

  “Then kill them both.”

  Camilla lurked in the shadows at the end of the alley, waiting for the presence of the dark elf. She looked skyward to check the time, but it was overcast, and there was no hint of a moon behind the dark clouds. She sunk further into the shadows, checking her grip on the knives she held flat against her arms.

  Enough time passed that she didn’t think the elf was going to show, either that or the targets had met in a different place. As she was about to put her knives away, a shadow crossed the end of the alley. A light like the moon turned the corner, and then went dim as the dark elf tucked the moon scepter into the folds of her cloak.

  The tall elf strode toward her, casting an eye to the sky. There was an answering glow behind the clouds, as if they were parting to allow the slightest bit of light through.

  The gray elf came to a halt at the end of the alley, her black eyes rooted on where Camilla hid. Camilla held her breath, willing her racing heart to slow so that she wouldn’t give her position away. After several agonizing minutes, the elf turned away from Camilla, tossed her silvery hair over her shoulder, and crossed her hands before her waist.

  She waited.

  Camilla eased into a crouch. She wasn’t going to wait to see if Deborah showed up. She had an assignment, and she intended to carry it out. Wasn’t that why she came to Haven anyway? To keep the darkness at bay?

  She gripped her knives tighter. This was a living being though. This was a humanoid. She had the same agenda: extinguishing the darkness.

  At what cost? Camilla asked herself. Not allowing a second thought, Camilla launched dove at the elf, her knives coming to a natural grip in her hand. The glinted in the faint light.

  The elf feinted to the side. Camilla soared past her. There was a flurry of light as the dark elf twirled her scepter out from behind her and into her grip. Camilla tucked and rolled to her feet. She turned, tossing her knives aside and drew her sword. It cleared its scabbard in a hiss of steal on leather.

  “Did you think I didn’t know you were there?” the elf asked. “Where’s Deborah?”

  “With any luck, she’s dead.” Camilla swung her sword, expecting that any connection with the glass-like scepter would shatter the elves power.

  The elf blocked with her scepter. Camilla waited for the sound of the breaking scepter, but it didn’t come.

  The sword sang with the connection. Tremors ran down the length and into her hands. Her arms throbbed and went numb. She danced backwards.

  “I will have the harbinger,” the elf said without emotion. “You will bring her to me.”

  “Never,” Camilla said. She danced forward. Every swing of sword, every flurry of movement was quickly deflect and blocked by the elf. The elf led her in circles, her scepter flashing here and there faster than Camilla could bring herself into another attack. She quickly found herself fumbling to defend against the elf’s aggression. She swung the scepter like a club, and the force of her volley told Camilla if the scepter connected with her, she would be the one breaking.

  Her breath burned in her lungs, her arms were numb from the constant shock of her sword connecting with the scepter.

  Camilla broke away, danced backwards.

  “Are you giving up, human?” the elf asked, resting her scepter across her shoulder. “I’m just getting warmed up!”

  The tip of the scepter glowed. Before Camilla could react the elf brought the weapon down. There was a recoiling blast that rocked the elf back and a beam of pure moonlight lanced through Camilla.

  She crashed into the brick wall behind her, dead before she even hit the ground.

  “Too easy,” the elf said. “Is there no real challenge in Haven?”

  She strode closer to Camilla, the small woman clad in black nearly vanished into the shadows for all eyes except elven.

  “You’ve lived near us for how long and didn’t know about our night vision?” she asked the corpse as if it would answer.

  “Oh yes, I forgot, you can’t answer.” She knelt down beside Camilla, gripped the back of head with her hand. The skull beneath the black hair moved in a way it shouldn’t have. Fragments of Camilla’s skull slipped under the surface of her scalp. “But you will give me the harbinger.”

  In the other hand, the scepter glowed. The elf closed her eyes, the power of the moonlight slipping through the scepter and into her body. With the power she urged her thoughts into Camilla’s head.

  The first image she saw skitter through Camilla’s dying mind was a tall bearded man. The elf had seen him before. He was built like an ox. He was close to the newer arrival. He had to know something.

  “Yes, the boy,” she said. “Tell me, what does he know about the harbinger?”

  Camilla was dead, there was no fight left for the elf. There was no resistance to the knowledge that she wanted. Her mind slipped through Camilla’s mind like fingers sifting through mud.

  Blood dribbled out of Camilla’s ears as the probing power of the moonlight liquefied the soft tissue within her head. The answers were there, and the elf would have them even if she had to shred every remainder of her mind.

  But time was running short. If the body stayed dead too long, then the mind would die as well. She needed the answers before the last bit of Camilla’s soul left her body and the charge through the brain went silent.

  It was happening quickly this time, but she knew the answers were close.

  The elf smiled.

  “There it is,” she said.

  Leona, a name came to her. Leona Bauer.

  “And where does Leona Bauer live?”

  The image of a house came t
o her. Two stories. White. She lived there with her sister who was missing and the boy named Rorick. But there was another staying there now.

  When the taste of a light elf came to the dark elf, she spit in disgust.

  “Cursed light elves,” she said. “I will have the blood of the harbinger.”

  Rorick was never more aware of how screwed up life had gotten than he was at that precise moment, standing in the shadows of a building in the middle of the night, across the road from a house he shared with Abagail and Leona, waiting for a darkling to show up that wanted to kill Leona for her blood.

  If this had been his old life, Abagail would be beside him right now. They would be in the forest between their houses, and she would be complaining about how she wasn’t going anywhere, how her life seemed to be at a standstill and she was going to live out the remainder of her youth as a farm hand until she had nothing left to give. Then she would be a spinster. In those times he was the only one she’d confided in. He was her best friend, but times had changed.

  She was infected, he thought. But it wasn’t just that Abagail was infected. It was that she insisted if the plague take over that he kill her. That more than anything had driven a wedge between them. He didn’t mean to pull away from her, but how could he not with something like that looming over their heads?

  I’ve been too rough on her, he thought. Too rough, but what was she to expect when every time she let the darkness in it pushed Rorick that much closer to having to kill her?

  Darklings. He frowned. Rorick shifted on his feet, casting his eyes up and down the road, wondering if maybe Deborah had decided not to show.

  Through the window he could see Skye settling down at the end of the table with a deck of cards. Leona laughed at something the light elf said, and he smirked. He shuffled the cards and dealt them out. Leona looked out the window, as if she were also expecting something to happen. Rorick wasn’t sure what she could feel. She was a seer, so maybe she sensed something was about to unfold.

  “Ah, a welcoming party, how nice,” Rorick heard a woman say behind him. He spun, reaching for his sword, but before he could close his grasp around the hilt a dark wyrd rose up around him and chased him into unconsciousness.

  When Rorick came to he was in a large field of snow. He stood and looked around him, but he didn’t see any hint of life, except the glow of Haven and New Landanten to the north. He checked, but there were no footprints either.

  He listed to the side, his head weary. The gray glow of dawn was quickly approaching and he shivered from exposure to the cold.

  A shadowy cloud, like black smoke, shuttled across the sky, descending, heading straight for him. He stepped back, his hand going to his sword. It was still there at least. The shadow crashed into the ground, smoke billowing around the snow. When the blackness parted, the plump figure of Deborah emerged. Her silver hair was piled high on her head. Her mouth was set in an arrogant grin.

  “Your friend is dead,” she said, folding her hands into her sleeves.

  “Leona,” Rorick said, his knees going weak. It took an extreme force of will to stay upright.

  She shook her head no. “The other one. Camilla.”

  Sickness swirled through his stomach like a plague of bees. He took several deep breaths to ease the rising gorge.

  “But the girl will be dead soon enough,” she replied. “We have to rethink our attack—”

  The sword cleared his sheath and in one fluid motion slashed through Deborah’s stomach.

  Her words froze on her lips. Her mouth worked, trying to make sense of what just happened. Glistening gray guts bubbled out of her stomach and her hands went to her intestines, as if she could hold them in, keep them from tumbling out all over the ground. She fell to her knees, her brown eyes wild and fixed on Rorick’s.

  If she was hoping to find pity there, she wouldn’t.

  He brought his sword down, diagonal across her face. Her skull split in two. One half of her head slipped off, rolled over her shoulder, and plopped into the snow. Her body fell on top of it.

  Rorick cleaned his blade on her jacket and fixed his eyes on the glow of Haven.

  The field where they trained was like no field Abagail had ever seen. It was barren, devoid of any vegetation, and ashen. She stepped out onto the field and black motes of dust kicked up around her feet. The only sign of life outside of the three fire-etin dwarves, Abagail, Dylan, and Elyse, were the fairies.

  When Abagail thought of fairies they were much like Daphne—tiny humans with butterfly wings. Not these fairies. The fairies of Muspelheim were black and crystalline with fiery wings in oranges, blues, and reds. At the heart of their bodies kindled a flame of wyrd, different in size and hue for each fairy present.

  Abagail’s eyes followed the fairy swarm. Her mouth gaped open when she saw the multitude of fiery wings hanging like bats from the basalt ceiling of Muspelheim.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Dylan asked.

  Abagail smiled at him. He could have been Elyse’s twin. He was short and thin with short black hair that looked like he constantly ran his hands through it. His eyes were green, like Elyse’s.

  “I didn’t realize fairies lived here,” Abagail said.

  “And you didn’t realize we had food, either,” Elyse poked her in the ribs.

  Abagail laughed, rubbing at the offending spot. “Well, how can food grow in such a place?” She wondered.

  “Well, I hope you know now,” Dylan said.

  She nodded. When she’d asked where they got their food, the siblings had taken her to a cliff that overlooked a large field of livestock and crops. Some of the plants, and most of the animals, she’d never seen before. While grass and plants she knew, as well as animals, couldn’t live in such harsh conditions, Muspelheim had adapted. There was plenty of food to feed the dwarves. The giants lived elsewhere, though she was assured they had their own food.

  What crops she did know were seeded in ground that had been irrigated with water from the lake she’d met the Norn in.

  “And remind me next time that I don’t like fire drakes,” she said. The fire drakes weren’t nearly as large or as forbidding as she’d imagined drakes being. They were relatively small, about the size of a cow, and though they were winged they didn’t like to fly. They were easy prey, but their meat tasted like the ash they fed off.

  “High in protein,” Dylan said with a grimace.

  “You can keep your protein,” Abagail said.

  “Anyway, children,” Elyse said. “We came today to practice, not to discuss our diet.”

  When Abagail and Dylan both nodded, Elyse began.

  “Abagail, how have you been training before this?”

  “Rowan was teaching me to focus on good memories and push away the bad.”

  “So she was having you suppress one emotion in place of another? Show me.”

  Abagail closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Remembering how she’d been taught, she called up a happy image, the one of her and Skye in the new Fey Forest. A smile ghosted across her lips at the thought of the light elf and how he made her feel. She remembered the kiss they’d shared and she could feel the wyrd responding to her call. It boiled up from within her, spilled down her arm and to her afflicted palm.

  She gave a small push, and the wyrd blasted out of her, popping into a shield around her.

  Black dust and sand swirled into the air. Else and Dylan closed their eyes against the debris, and turned their heads away. The force of Abagail’s wyrd blasted their hair back, and tugged their clothes fitfully.

  Once the debris had settled, they opened their eyes.

  Abagail smiled at them, happy she’d done that simple task without the thoughts of her sister’s affliction ruining the mood.

  Elyse looked at Dylan, her eyebrow arched.

  “Wow, alright, that’s the problem,” Dylan said. “You’re ruled by emotions—”

  “Most fire-etin are,” Elyse interjected.

  “You can’t tr
y supplanting one emotion for another. So, we are just going to use all of your emotions.”

  “Bellvin said that I shouldn’t care about people if I want to keep them safe,” Abagail argued with Dylan. “Caring about them will make them a target.”

  “No,” Dylan said, shaking his head. “She’s right, but no. Caring too much about them will make you both a target, but being able to control your emotions will keep the target off from them. The only reason you’re both targets now is because of the way you care about people. You care about them enough that you’re emotions go crazy when you think of harm coming to them. Then the darkling wyrd takes over, and that happens.” Dylan pointed at the inky black stain on her skin. “But if you can use that emotion, control it, then you’re more powerful.”

  “It’s not that you shouldn’t care about them, that’s impossible. You should care deeply for them, but understand that by caring deeply, you must master your power. If you don’t approach it calmly, you will never be a protective force for them, only destructive,” Elyse said.

  “Fire-etin are ruled by emotion,” Dylan echoed Elyse’s previous statement. “To fight your emotions is to fight who you are. It’s nearly impossible, and if you were even able to do it, you wouldn’t be nearly as strong as you could be.”

  “How do you draw on the wyrd now?” Elyse said.

  “I just showed you,” Abagail said.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Elyse said. “How do you draw it up from inside of you?”

  “I just think of something happy, and it responds.” Abagail looked from Dylan’s frown to Elyse’s. “What?”

  “So you don’t call it at all? You don’t draw it up, you wait for it to answer?” Dylan asked.

  “Yea,” Abagail said, itching her face. “Is that . . . wrong?”

  “Very,” Elyse said.

  “So what are we going to do?” Abagail asked.

  “Here.” Elyse took up a spot behind Abagail. She felt Elyse put her hands on her shoulders. “Alright, let’s try this again. This time when you cast the shielding, I want you to simply call to the wyrd. I will show you the way.”