Finally, they crested a hill. About a hundred yards out, Marius could see the unquiet river. He unfolded the map again, holding it taut against the wind.
“Let’s turn here.” There were no other mountains beyond, closer to the river, so this must be the one they were supposed to hike. He looked to the side. Dread filled his heart as he realized just how steep their hike would be.
Ynga sighed, too. She went before him and started to scrabble on hands and knees up the beginning of the rocky incline. It wasn’t a dignified way to do things, but they had no choice. Marius tucked the map away and followed after her.
Gradually, the hike became a little easier. It was no less steep, but there were more rocks to climb, more area for proper footing. After some time, they found themselves on a relatively flat shoulder. The summit was in sight, but they wouldn’t have to go that far. Marius could feel the vibrations of the heimdyrr nearby.
His companion must have noticed the change in him. “Are we close?”
He responded with a noncommittal grunt and picked up his pace, leaving the rocky path and slipping into the thick pines. Pinecones and needles crunched as Ynga followed him closely.
After a few minutes of picking through the tightly packed conifers, he finally found what he was looking for. The feeling was almost an audible hum, and it drew him toward a craggy opening jutting from the mountain’s face. An old tree had been ripped from the ground, its robust root system exposed, and was leaning against the brow of the cave, partially obscuring the entrance with dead branches.
Marius approached. The breach was small, barely big enough for them to slip through. He traced the doorway with two fingers, and the vibration was so strong he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. “In here,” he said, ducking so he could slowly ease inside.
He had no idea if Ynga followed him. Once he was enveloped in darkness, the White Mountains fell away. The smell of earth surrounded him, and he could feel soil and roots under his feet as he carefully felt his way forward. After a minute or so, the path widened, and he was eventually able to stand to his full height. Behind him, he could finally hear Ynga, her armor jingling as she straightened up.
“It’s well dark here,” she whispered.
Marius hadn’t thought about it. There wasn’t much to see besides dirt, so he hadn’t cared. He shifted his pack and conjured a ball of yellow light with his left hand. It floated above their heads, bobbing between them as they made their way through the earthen tunnel.
The tunnel, which had been declining steadily, suddenly swung up and became smaller again. By the time natural light reached them, they were on their hands and knees. The last few feet of the tunnel were nearly vertical, and Marius realized they would be emerging not from a cave but a hole in the ground. He squeezed himself out, then turned around to help Ynga do the same.
The forest around them now was similar to the one they had left in many ways. Evergreens were packed tightly, fog settled all around them, creatures sang and scuttled between nurse logs. The notable difference, however, was that everything was massive.
Jotunheim was not only the land of giant beings—it was a land of giant everything. Even the skinniest trees were thicker than Marius was tall, and it would have taken at least five or six people to make a ring around one of the trunks. Their branches started so high up that they formed a canopy themselves. Boulders were more like hills. Even the creatures were bigger. He squinted as, in the fog, he observed a pheasant that had to be at least the size of Marius himself dart into a nearby bush.
When even a place’s woodland creatures could eat you for a snack, you knew you were in danger.
Ynga picked up on it right away. She brought her lips right next to Marius’s ear before speaking. “Where do we go next?”
He turned a little. “How do you feel? Was the transition okay?”
“I feel fine. Where next?”
Seemed she was eager to get this over with. He couldn’t say he blamed her. He didn’t want to spend any more time in this place than he had to. Vanaheim had been one thing; this was quite another. He didn’t like the feeling of everything being so much bigger than him.
Hastily, he drew out the map and flipped it over. The path from the heimdyrr to the network of caves his father had mentioned was almost a straight line, cutting right through the forest. How long it would take, though, he had no idea.
He started forward without answering her, dismissing his ball of light. The sun was so shadowed by so many enormous branches that it was practically nighttime at their level, but he couldn’t risk an animal—or worse—finding them. If a full-grown giant happened upon them, he wasn’t sure they could bring it down.
He was so focused on the fog ahead of him that he was taken off guard when the earth began to tremble, and he stopped mid-stride. Ynga pulled up close to him and loosed half a gasp before covering her mouth.
A hulking shape loomed ahead, and the ground continued to shake as it got closer. Thankfully, with the heavy fog, it hadn’t spotted them yet. Marius grabbed Ynga’s wrist and pulled her behind a nearby boulder.
As it passed, Marius got a better look at it. It was about three times his height, hunched, with disproportionately long arms. Where worn pelts didn’t cover its limestone-colored skin, a veritable carpet of moss clung to it like fur. Tangled hair fell down its chest, which was adorned with necklaces of beads, shells, rocks, and clattering junk.
A troll. And judging by its jewelry, one who liked to collect things. There was a good chance this was the creature they were looking for.
Marius tapped Ynga and gestured for her to follow him. They stalked the troll on light feet, hiding when they got the chance, relying on the fog to conceal them otherwise. Eventually, the hulking creature approached what would have appeared to be a normal hill, had smoke not been curling out from the top of it. The troll ducked into a cave in the side and disappeared.
As they followed, they soon learned that Radiant Eirik hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said it was a network of caves. There were so many twists and turns that they soon lost the troll, and Marius had to rely on its mildewy musk and a footprint here and there to finally locate the central chamber. As they approached, warm orange light flickered against the tunnel walls.
The chamber was small but cozy, with a fire burning hot in the center of it. Charms made of sticks and crystals hung from the ceiling. There was a mass of hay and rotting animal hides off to the side, patted down into a little bed. On either side of this were heaps of seemingly random objects, ranging from mundane things like tankards and bowls to embroidered silk, jeweled cuffs, even a golden tiara on top of one of the piles. Marius eyed the piles as he peered into the chamber. Being solitary creatures, trolls didn’t have much in the way of culture. Most of this was likely stolen.
Far into the chamber, its back to them, was the troll. It was sitting down, leaning over something it held in one of its disproportionately huge hands. Something that twinkled in the firelight. A mirror.
Marius observed as the troll combed its knotted hair to the side and touched the reflection. This behavior struck him as so odd that he found himself standing there, staring. As the troll shifted the mirror to the side, the vivid saw his face reflected back at him, right over the troll’s shoulder.
In an instant, it lowered its mirror and turned, affording them their first good look at its face. A short, wrinkled forehead sloped into a triangular slit that served as its nose. Crooked canines poked out of its wide mouth. Impossibly huge, round eyes of solid, softly glowing ivory studied Marius.
Behind him, Marius heard a quiet woosh as Ynga’s amulet of invisibility cloaked her in the shadows. The troll didn’t seem to notice her.
“A human?” It spoke in Old Norse—and its voice was deep but surprisingly soft, as though it was not angry to see him standing there, only mildly surprised. The ivory eyes searched him, lingering on his drinking horn briefly.
Marius was unsure of how to respond
for a moment. Then, “Yes. Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”
“Sir!”
“Sorry. Sir.”
The troll narrowed his eyes, but made no move to attack. Considering that the runepriest it had stolen from had survived to tell the tale, Marius got the feeling this troll wasn’t interested in bloodshed—only his shiny things. It was rather funny that a blessed oracular mirror was now being used as a vain troll’s looking glass.
“Are you lost?” the troll asked.
“No, sir. I came to see you about something you … collected.” Marius glanced toward the troll’s piles of knick-knacks.
Finally, the creature hauled himself up to his feet. He was standing an appreciable distance from Marius, almost six feet, but was still able to reach over and stroke the shiny plate of his pauldron. “I’ve never seen such a pretty human. Your skin is like deer’s fur.”
“Thank you?”
“Your eyes are like coins.”
“Thank you.”
The troll peered at him. “Maybe I should add them to my pile.”
Marius moved his shoulder away from the troll’s massive hand. “I can’t stay for long. I’ve come to get that mirror your holding in your hand, there. It belongs to a friend of mine.”
The troll looked down at the mirror, then clutched it with both hands. “Are you here to kill me?” he asked, sounding slightly concerned but mostly unimpressed.
Marius considered. A few months ago, he would have come in with his weapon already drawn and separated the troll’s head from its shoulders without a word. But he’d had a lot of time to think. Not everything had to come to violence—and not everything that seemed monstrous really was.
He was still getting used to the idea, but he’d resolved not to attack this troll unless he had no choice. He folded his arms behind his back. “I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.”
“Hmph.” The troll held the mirror to his chest and glowered. “I’m not giving you the looker-glass, ever, unless you cut it out of my dead hands.”
Marius sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We can do this another way. How about a bargain?”
The troll seemed unsure. “You don’t have anything I want.”
“Nothing?” Marius raised a brow as he unbuckled his boar tusk horn from his belt. It was a treasured possession, but he could see no other way to avoid battle and secure the mirror Ynga needed for her proving—though he hadn’t failed to notice that she hadn’t been doing a thing, simply lurking in the shadows behind him. He tried to staunch his annoyance for now.
The troll peered down at the horn and tilted his head. “Is it special?”
Marius held it up, turning it so that it glinted in the firelight. “It’s made from a Vanaheim boar’s tusk. It was created by a landvættr there as a gift to me. You can drink out of it, or you can uncork it and blow it, if you wish.”
This seemed to please the troll greatly. He held the mirror up and gazed into it one last time before setting it on the packed earth and toeing it toward Marius.
A strange sense of satisfaction washed over the vivid. He had done what he had set out to do without killing anyone, and now—
A cry pierced the air, and before Marius understood what was happening, Ynga flew past him in a white streak. He stared in horrified confusion as she launched herself at the troll, sword bare, and plunged the blade into his jugular.
“No!” Marius sprinted forward and pulled Ynga off the troll, but the damage had already been done. The troll wrapped his hands around his own neck to try and stop the spurting blood, but he was already on his knees. It was only a few more seconds until he thumped dead at their feet, the glow fading from his eyes.
There was silence. They were both covered in blood, and more was spreading across the floor of the chamber. Ynga moved forward, planting her foot on the troll’s head and wrenching her sword out of his neck.
Marius took a step back, staring at her. “Why did you do that?”
She wiped the blade on the troll’s worn furs and turned to Marius, her face red. “Why did you pull me off of it?”
“I didn’t want you to kill him.”
Her nose and brow wrinkled in confusion. “I thought that was your plan. You would trick it with a bargain, and then I would strike and surprise it.”
Marius raised his voice, tone firm. “I really was making a bargain.”
“You’re more of a fool than I could have ever imagined,” she scoffed, bending to pick up the mirror before thrusting it at him. “Radiant Eirik told us to kill the troll and take the mirror.”
He couldn’t contain his anger, as if the size of his frustration was too big for his body to hold. “I was working on another way, dammit!”
But, as he looked down into the mirror, his anger faded away in an instant. The sight greeting him was not his own face, but rather an image of a room he recognized as the temple’s chapterhouse. In the vision, his father was delivering some kind of speech. Then, without warning, a blade fell, cutting him down. Marius watched in horror as Eirik’s steadfast, reliable form crumbled to the stone floor.
He looked up from the mirror in shock. Ynga hadn’t noticed him stopping, hadn’t noticed the mirror’s image. She was digging through the troll’s piles, probably looking for a trophy.
A faint but niggling screeching sound like nails on a chalkboard drew his attention back to the mirror. Something was appearing, as if etched into the glass itself—seven runes spelling one word. Svikari.
Traitor.
Chapter Ten
“Right here,” Edie said as she looked up from her phone. “This building.”
“I know which building it is.” Cal grumbled and pulled up to the curb, but kept the car running. “Get out.”
Edie couldn’t help but sigh at him.
When she’d called Matilda, the wight had been more than accommodating, even excited at the prospect of having house guests for an indefinite amount of time. That was more than could have been said for a lot of people in her position. Edie knew this was a huge favor, but even though she and Matilda barely knew each other—and Matilda had been a member of the Gloaming until very recently—Edie had a good feeling about her.
The only problem was Cal. He hadn’t spoken a word to Matilda since he’d dumped her and skipped town ten years ago, after Dad’s death. When they’d met again at the party, things had been … awkward, to put it lightly. It had become clear to Edie right away that Matilda still had feelings for the revenant, but she still wasn’t sure if he reciprocated.
At the moment, he was throwing a hissy fit over Edie even talking to her. When it came to how her dad had treated him, Edie understood his moods. There was no polite way to talk about the guy who had kept you as a slave for over a decade. But with this, he was being a big drama queen.
“Aren’t you going to come in?” Edie asked, shoving her phone into the pocket of her quilted sweatshirt, the only clean piece of outerwear she had after the destruction of her leather jacket.
Cal looked at her like she’d grown an extra head, then quickly looked away, gripping the steering wheel. “No, I’m not gonna stick around. Just text me when you’re done.”
Edie glanced into the back seat and exchanged a look with Mercy, then sighed. “Okay, fine. We probably won’t be longer than an hour.”
Sitting next to Mercy, Fisk was bundled up in a huge hoodie layered over a black bed sheet, the only two things in the apartment that had covered him even semi-adequately. He wasn’t as alert as usual, though he did peer out the window at the tall building they’d pulled up to. “New home?”
“Hopefully,” Mercy replied. She sounded marginally better than she had that afternoon, and had finally stopped shaking.
It had taken them a few hours to arrange everything and pack a few things, so it was evening now. The lights of the office buildings, hotels, upscale boutiques, and penthouses twinkled in gray light and freezing rain. Thankfully, almost no one was walking the street at the moment;
most people were still working or had taken refuge from the chill.
Edie climbed out of the passenger seat and opened the back door, helping Fisk and Mercy out. “Let’s get inside before anyone sees us,” she murmured.
The building before them stretched up taller than most of those surrounding it, a sleek rectangle of shiny steel and glass. Matilda lived in a penthouse consisting of the top three floors, and Edie could make out its massive windows and terrace. There would be more than enough room for guests there, but it wasn’t the size of the penthouse that had sealed the deal—it was the fact that Matilda had a pool.
Matilda had told apartment security to expect them. Edie and Mercy were able to hustle Fisk through the lobby and into the penthouse elevator without much fuss, despite him being dressed like a clinically depressed Grim Reaper.
Once actually inside the elevator, Fisk leaned heavily on Mercy, who in turn leaned heavily on Edie. “Water?” he croaked.
“Yes, baby,” Mercy said, “water soon.”
Baby? Edie eyed her with a sly smirk, but didn’t say anything.
The elevator slid open, revealing a carpeted vestibule. To their right was a small side table with an arrangement of white and purple flowers on it, and in front of them was the door to what must be Matilda’s apartment. It was smooth, black-painted wood with a highly-polished silver knocker shaped like a fox head. Edie was so nervous she might smudge it that she opted to use the doorbell instead.
They stood silent and crowded in the vestibule for a while. Edie was about to try the doorbell again when the lock clicked audibly and the door finally opened.
Standing in the doorway was not the petite woman Edie had expected, but rather a very tall, very thin man, with sickly olive skin and long, dark brown hair. He wore a black turtleneck and matching pants, several sizes too big and hanging off his body. He regarded each one of the visitors with a steady but uncertain gaze.
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