Sword of Light

by S. M. Schmitz

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because he has to be,” she said. “The universe can’t be this cruel.”

  I just nodded and fell into one of the chairs, burying my face in my hands. Keira sat beside me and put a hand on my shoulder again. “What you did… getting away from them like that. Gavyn, that was incredible.”

  “This happened to him because of me.”

  “Oh, Gavyn. You can’t help who you are. This isn’t your fault.”

  I kept my face buried and asked, “How did you find me?”

  “I went back to Asgard and had Odin perform a scrying spell,” she said.

  “You say that like I should know what it is.”

  “It’s how we found you the first time,” she said. “He does a spell and looks into a mirror and can see you.”

  I finally lifted my head and squinted at her. “That’s totally pervy.”

  Keira rolled her eyes and stood up. “Come on. Let’s find you a shirt in the gift shop.”

  Once I was fully dressed again, we got coffee we barely touched and sat in the waiting room. The silence between us was occasionally punctuated by whispers of what the other heroes and a handful of Norse and Irish gods were doing to help the people in New Orleans. At some point, Tyr showed up and sat with us, also holding onto a cup of coffee that he didn’t drink.

  Finally, a doctor emerged from the double doors and approached me. My legs seemed too weak to hold me up, but somehow, I didn’t fall. Maybe because he looked pleased rather than grim. “The surgery went well,” he assured me. “He’s in recovery then we’ll move him to a room and you can see him.”

  I exhaled slowly and thanked him, waiting until Keira and Tyr were alone with me again before saying, “Every last one of those bastards is going to die.”

  Chapter Three

  A week passed before the Sumerians resurfaced, perhaps because they were licking their wounds as well, waiting for Ninurta to recover. We brought my father to Asgard as soon as he was released from the hospital then returned to Reykjavik where Agnes finally started pulling her weight by bringing in a handful of Irish heroes. I was still trying to convince Hunter that he should go to Asgard, too, but the stubborn ass refused. Neither Cadros nor Agnes would help me convince him, and Tyr and Frey refused to just kidnap him and bring him anyway.

  So naturally, I crossed my arms angrily and snapped, “Y’all had no problem kidnapping me.”

  “That was different,” Frey argued. “You’re Norse.”

  “And that whole ‘fate of the world’ thing,” Tyr added.

  “And it was just more fun that way,” Keira also added.

  “I hate you,” I said, even though that wasn’t really true. Not anymore. My feelings for Keira were particularly muddled, but it’s not like I had time to sort them out considering the fate of the world really was kinda at stake.

  But Agnes waved me off anyway and snatched the newspaper off the table. She’d adopted her old witch disguise again, so at least I didn’t have to worry about being attracted to her because that had been completely unacceptable. “Hunter’s fine,” she insisted. “Stop worrying.”

  “Don’t you have children to lure into ovens?” I asked.

  Agnes cackled then flipped the newspaper, holding it in front of her five-hundred-year-old face so I could no longer see her. I’d learned by now that was her cue she was no longer participating in our conversations, so I turned on Tyr and tried again. “One trip to Asgard will shut me up.”

  “You’ll eventually shut up anyway,” he replied.

  “But I’ll annoy the hell out of you until then.”

  Yngvarr snickered and took their side, the bastard. “You know how you’re not supposed to cave when a toddler throws a tantrum over not getting his way? Sets a bad precedent.”

  “Traitor,” I mumbled.

  “Stop trying to orchestrate my kidnapping,” Hunter demanded.

  “Go willingly so I don’t have to,” I demanded back.

  “If I were going anywhere, I’d go to the Otherworld, but since Agnes won’t tell me if there’s a harem of goddesses awaiting me, I’m staying here.”

  “All right, you old hag, you heard him,” I said. “Whisk him off to the Otherworld.”

  Agnes turned the page and ignored me.

  Cadros turned the volume up on the television, pretending he was completely engrossed in an Icelandic game show in which a host appeared to be asking the contestant trivia questions, but unless those questions involved dead Sumerian gods, I couldn’t see why it was so interesting. “Coward,” I mumbled at him now.

  “Gavyn,” Keira sighed. She sounded exasperated with me already, and it was only nine a.m.

  I gestured toward Hunter and shot her a “Then do something” look, but she only shot me her “You’re being an annoying asshole” look in return. And Freyja suddenly returning from New Orleans didn’t help the atmosphere at all. Keira seemed to remember she was mad at me or just thought I was a selfish pig, which was probably fair, and started scowling at me again while Freyja announced the last of the hostages, if that’s what they were, in New Orleans had been rescued.

  “The Sumerians just let them go?” I asked.

  Freyja shrugged and smiled at me, but for some reason, I just didn’t find her that irresistible anymore. “What choice did they have? They’d promised not to kill anyone if they surrendered, but with Ninurta so badly injured, whatever they’d planned got delayed. If they killed those people, no one would believe them again, and the Sumerians don’t want to slaughter everyone—who would be left to worship them?”

  “So they have to be evil but not too evil,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she agreed.

  “See?” Hunter interjected. “If I were in Asgard, I’d be missing all this.”

  “If you were in Asgard, I wouldn’t have to worry about a handful of asshole gods abducting you to get to me,” I argued. “There are very few people in this world I care about, and they know that and they will hurt you if they get the chance. Especially since I almost killed one of them.”

  “How did you almost kill a god?”

  It was my turn to shrug. “With a spear.”

  “Not what I meant, dumbass.”

  “With a sharp spear?”

  Hunter blinked at me then tapped Agnes’s shoulder. “Can I reconsider the Otherworld?”

  “They’re back,” Cadros breathed, pointing to the television.

  I groaned because the Sumerians always resorted to televising their stupid demands, so I thought everyone should know my thoughts about it. “This is why nobody gives a shit about the Sumerians anymore. They lack originality.”

  The entire room shushed me, so I added, “But they probably let their demigods speak.”

  The entire room shushed me again, but before I could add anything else, Keira put a hand over my mouth. I squinted at her, but she was watching the television.

  And not surprisingly, when the Sumerians spoke, they addressed me directly. Also not surprising was Ninurta’s appearance. We’d all assumed they’d been quiet for the past week because he was recuperating, but seeing him looking so healthy irritated the hell out of me. “As you can see, Gavyn, your attempt to murder me has failed.”

  I tried to say, “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” but Keira still had her hand pressed tightly over my mouth and it came out sounding more like, “Ehm haunted oo eel oo, oo’ed ee ed.”

  And the room still shushed me.

  “And,” Ninurta continued, “your escape indicates we underestimated you. Rest assured, we won’t make that mistake again. As payback for costing us so much time…” The camera panned to his left, allowing me to see he was standing in the parking lot outside Tiger Stadium, which shuddered then began to collapse.

  “Oo summona itch!” I yelled, which wasn’t what I yelled at all, but since Keira still had her hand over my mouth, that’s probably what everyone heard. Hunter groaned and ran his fingers through his hair as we
watched our beloved stadium reduced to a tremendous pile of debris. At first, I thought they’d at least had the decency to wait until the stadium was empty before remembering most universities had canceled the rest of their football games. At least until the Sumerians stopped taking out their anger on the world by destroying buildings, but honestly, I figured they might as well just cancel everything.

  Keira let her hand fall and we braced ourselves for the inevitable ultimatum. But Ninurta was obviously full of surprises that day. “We’ll see you soon, Gavyn.”

  The screen went dark as they cut the feed, and a few seconds later, the Icelandic game show came back on. In a few minutes, the game show would be interrupted again once word spread that the Sumerians had resurfaced, but Cadros muted the television and Tyr muttered, “I really hate that guy.”

  “Our stadium…” Hunter said.

  I nodded because words seemed stuck in my throat. Ninurta had accomplished the impossible: he’d rendered me speechless.

  “Should we look for them?” Freyja asked.

  “Odin is always looking for them,” Keira said. “His spells don’t work on gods.”

  “I didn’t suggest we rely on Odin,” Freyja replied smugly. “I suggested we look for them rather than constantly waiting and responding to catastrophe.”

  Keira crossed her arms angrily and snapped, “If you think they’re so easy to track down, be my guest. Go find them.”

  Freyja crossed her arms angrily and snapped back, “That’s exactly what I’m proposing, dumbass!”

  I snorted over hearing a goddess call someone a dumbass and Hunter shot me a look that said, “You’re the dumbass.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Freyja,” Yngvarr said. “We can’t keep waiting for them to destroy some building or kidnap an entire city. We need to be proactive.”

  “And do what?” Tyr asked. “They could be anywhere in the world, and we don’t exactly have a global reach of allies.”

  “We kinda do though,” I said, admittedly a little impressed that I didn’t even need vodka to regain my ability to speak. Tyr raised an eyebrow at me and waited for my explanation so I shuffled my feet nervously for a moment as even Agnes lowered her paper, those beady eyes studying me. I looked away quickly before she turned me to stone or something. “The Sumerians are probably the biggest threat to humanity right now, so why not get the help of mortal agencies? Do you really think the FBI and CIA, and every other acronym you can think of, aren’t out there looking for the gods who’ve already murdered almost two thousand people and caused billions of dollars of property damage?”

  “I’m sure they are,” Tyr said. “But why would they trust us? You didn’t trust us at first.”

  “Of course not. You assholes kidnapped me.”

  “You were being uncooperative,” Keira responded as if that excused my abduction.

  “And it’s not a good idea for you to show up on the CIA’s doorstep,” Yngvarr added. “Once they find out you’re the hero the Sumerians have targeted, they’ll hand you over in the hopes it appeases them enough to stop killing people.”

  I shook my head and insisted, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists. Everyone knows that.”

  “Do you?” Keira said. “Do you really know what your government does or just believe that because it’s what they tell you?”

  I squinted at her because I didn’t have an answer for that, and she was right anyway. How did any of us know how the U.S. handled situations like this? And we’d never really encountered a situation like this. Gods weren’t supposed to exist. These were just stories most people didn’t tell anymore.

  “So don’t admit you know me,” I finally offered. “Frey and Cadros can go talk to them, see if we can work together. But I’m done sitting around and letting those assholes hurt people. It’s time we put them on the defensive.”

  Frey and Cadros glanced at each other, and Frey took a deep breath, nodding slowly as he thought about my proposal. “Okay, Gavyn. We’ll go.”

  I noticed Keira staring at me, so I stared back at her and she smiled, but I was a little too freaked out by how she was looking at me to smile, too. “What?” I demanded.

  “You,” she said. “You’re finally turning into the hero I always knew you could be.”

  Sleet fell against the metal roof of the warehouse where Tyr had set up an impromptu training center since we couldn’t fight outside. I stood in front of the table of swords, but I wasn’t really studying them or trying to decide which to use. I was too worried I’d made a huge mistake by sending Frey and Cadros to the States; I couldn’t bear being responsible for their deaths. Keira lifted the plainest sword on the table and the light reflected off the blade. I blinked at it, temporarily seeing a completely different sword, one that glowed in its owner’s hands.

  “Try this one,” she said. “It’s very well balanced.”

  She handed it to me, and I suddenly felt transported back to my first day in that field when I’d never held a weapon in my life and I almost dropped it. I sheepishly grinned at her and apologized. “Sorry. My head’s just not in this today.”

  “I know. But until they return, there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “Perhaps,” Tyr suggested, “you can learn how to handle a few different weapons today. Sword fighting is already in your blood.” He gestured to a spear on the table, and I laughed because he’d brought Sharur into the training center.

  “If I weren’t already Sumerian-Enemy-Number-One,” I said, “stealing that spear would have catapulted me to the top.”

  Tyr nodded seriously. “Ninurta is really attached to this thing. Like Havard’s sword, it’s supposedly enchanted. Or maybe he’s just crazy for thinking his spear talks to him, but either way, it’s just a spear to us.”

  “You take it,” I said. “You’re the one who’s an expert with a spear.”

  Tyr just shrugged and plucked Sharur off the table. “It is a nice one,” he murmured.

  I twisted the sword in my hands then slowly studied each one on the table as an idea—or, more accurately, a realization—formed in my mind and I blurted out, “I want to find the Sword of Light.”

  Keira didn’t seem all that surprised by my announcement. She simply picked up a different sword and felt its weight and balance as she considered the possibilities of finding my ancestor’s sword. “Do you have any clues as to where we should start?”

  “No,” I sighed. “But I know the Sumerians want it. Inanna told me some god on their pantheon whose name was…” I bit my lip as I hurt my brain trying to remember this god’s name. “Asshole?”

  Tyr arched an eyebrow at me. “Asalluhi?”

  I pointed the plain sword in my hands at him. “That’s it.”

  “Okay,” Keira said. “So what did Asshole have to do with your sword?”

  “She claims he made it. He’s like their magician, and for some reason, Inanna gave it to Havard when he was born.”

  “Oh, I think I know exactly why she gave it to him,” Yngvarr said. He’d snuck up behind me and scared the shit out of me, to be honest. I spun around and pointed my sword at him now.

  “Never sneak up on someone holding a sword,” I warned. “That’s suicidal.”

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  “Um…” Tyr interjected. “You think your father and Inanna…?”

  “It’s my father,” Yngvarr sneered. “Of course they had an affair.”

  “Why would she give such a valuable gift to her lover’s son?” Keira asked.

  Yngvarr shrugged. “No idea. But it’s definitely possible Inanna is telling the truth, especially since she knew about this sword and Gavyn’s ancestor even though none of us Norse remember him.”

  “If you’re abducted by the Sumerians again, don’t wait a week to tell us about super important conversations,” Tyr instructed.

  I grunted at him and reminded him I’d been kinda busy worrying about my dad surviving a gunshot wound. Keira tossed her sword
onto the table and met my gaze. “Where do you want to start looking for your sword?”

  “If Havard hid it somewhere before he died, it would have most likely been in one of two places, right?” I answered.

  Keira nodded. “Asgard or Norway, neither of which is particularly small.”

  “True,” Yngvarr agreed. “But we do know where he lived. If we’re going to find his sword, why not start at the most obvious place?”

  I smiled at him and threw the plain sword onto the table by the one Keira had dropped. “To your palace then. Because if we’re going to defeat Ninurta, I have a feeling we’re going to need this sword.”

  “I think so, too,” Keira agreed quietly. “Not because of the sword itself, but because of you. When it’s in your hands, it’ll become the most powerful weapon among our kind.”

  Goose bumps broke out across my arms, and I rubbed them quickly, trying to coax the skin back into submission. But that feeling I’d been having that I’d need this sword in order to defeat the Sumerians had only grown stronger, and part of me already knew Keira was right. Finding the Sword of Light would transform me, and I would transform it, and together, we’d become unstoppable.

  Havard Reveals a Prophecy

  (And I think he’s one lucky bastard)

  Three days had passed since Arnbjorg and I traveled to Midgard and discovered her parents were missing. And in those three days, Arnbjorg had largely kept to herself, no longer harvesting apples or baking treats for my nieces and nephews. I worried she blamed me for her misery, but what could I possibly say to the girl who’d just lost her family?

  I was in the stables with Sigurd when she found me, clutching a book to her chest as if it contained the secret to her immortality. I didn’t even notice her at first—she was so quiet as she sat on a hay bale and watched me comb his coat. When she spoke, she startled me. “I can’t read.”