Mist screamed.
Dainn had no time to brace himself. Mist’s counterattack came hard and fast, slamming against the beast, driving it back with ice and flame and air and stone. It scrambled for purchase on formless ground, snarling and slavering and howling defiance.
Wracked by indescribable pain, Dainn tried to call it back. He had achieved what he had intended. Mist had broken through her own wards, her resistance purged like pus from a festering wound. He could not enter her mind yet; that would be impossible until Mist ceased her furious assault. But as long as the beast resisted . . .
Come back, he sang in a language he had not heard spoken by anyone else in centuries. You will have what you desire. We will be one.
The creature was far from stupid. It knew Dainn might deceive it for his own protection. But the temptation was great, and Mist’s unrelenting onslaught was telling on its strength, burning the black fur from its massive body, blinding it with slivers of ice and rock.
In the end it had no choice. It began to retreat, edging back toward the relative safety of Dainn’s mind. Dainn felt it come and cried out in agony, his own breached defenses attempting to rise against it, instinctive rejection he could not afford to permit.
So he embraced it, endured the searing pain of its invasion as he had done so long ago. When it was safely within him again, he soothed it with promises until, exhausted, it fell into a momentary stupor.
But Mist was not finished. She drove after it, sweeping through the raw wound it had left in its wake, carving out a void in Dainn’s mind and controlling his body with all the ease of a mortal child manipulating a puppet. Runes and Merkstaves, their true shapes barely distinguishable—scythe-wheeled chariot, driving hail, seething flood, needles of yew—plunged like flame-tipped arrows into his heart, his belly, every vulnerable part of his body. The icy-hot wind picked him up and flung him across the room while her will stabbed at every nerve, flaying him alive. His throat was too raw for screams, even as every bone shattered when he hit the floor.
He had failed. In the fury of her attack, Mist had lost herself.
An ebony veil fell over Dainn’s eyes, and he began to let himself go. He had feared death, and longed for it; so many times he had tried to take his own life and had been prevented by the instincts of the beast. But if he had driven Mist mad by forcing her to confront her own vast power, his existence was meaningless.
And the beast would die with him. He would never have to pay Freya’s price for its destruction, abandoning the last traces of decency he had clung to since his fall.
Mist would never know how he had planned to betray her.
He closed his eyes and released his life.
* * *
“Dainn!”
At first all he knew was that the pain was gone. Hands fluttered over him, strong, long-fingered woman’s hands, touching him here and there as if their owner could not keep them still.
“Dainn! Can you hear me?”
Mist’s voice. A little rough, and urgent with fear. He felt Mist’s hands cup his face, Mist’s breath on his lips. She pulled his mouth open and covered it with hers, blew air into his lungs, turned her head away for a count of two and shared her breath again.
It was sweet, this revival, and it almost made him forget the agony of living. He opened his eyes. Mist pulled back, whispering a prayer even the White Christ might have approved.
“You’re alive,” she said. “I thought—” She bent her face to his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Dainn was incapable of responding, though he knew he had suffered no lasting harm. He didn’t feel broken anymore. His lungs functioned. His heart beat as it should.
Had it all been illusion, then, the shattering of bones and the tearing of flesh?
Perhaps that part had been. But not her magic. Yew needles were scattered on the carpet around him, and melting water soaked his clothing. Lingering manifestations that accompanied only the most powerful magic.
“Do you think you can drink?” Mist asked. She left him for a moment and returned with a glass of water. “Tell me if anything hurts.” She positioned herself behind his head and lifted it with utmost care, wedging her knees under his shoulders.
“There,” she murmured, helping him take a swallow of the water. “You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right.”
Dainn closed his eyes again, relishing the feel of her strong thighs supporting him, her loose hair caressing his face as she leaned over him.
She was sane again. But she was not blind. She knew that something incredible had happened and that she was responsible for it. Perhaps he had not failed after all.
But neither had the beast. It had not been badly damaged by the assault, only driven back for a time. He felt it sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, but it was far from sated. When it woke it would remember his promise. A promise he must continue to resist as he resisted the emotional weakness that threatened to consume him all over again.
“Mist,” he croaked.
“Don’t try to talk,” she said.
“Are you . . . well?”
“Me?” She hissed through her teeth. “Everyone keeps asking me that when I’m the healthiest one around. Aside from wondering what in Hel just happened, I’m fine.”
“What . . . do you remember?”
“Rest now. We’ll talk la—”
“What do you remember?” he repeated more urgently.
“Power,” she said. “Inside me. Something . . . breaking through, wanting to hurt. Fighting . . . fighting you.”
He gathered up the tattered rags of his courage. “Do you understand . . . what I did?” he asked.
The bewilderment in her eyes cleared. “You attacked me.”
Now. Now it would come.
He tried to sit up, and this time she didn’t prevent him. He braced himself on his elbows. “You asked that I . . . show you the barriers you have created within your mind. The only way to make you aware of them, and what lay behind them, was to force you to defend yourself.”
“But I . . .” She moved from behind him and knelt facing him, her expression tight with worry. “There was fire, and ice, and . . . such anger—” She shook her head. “I think I wanted to kill you. I remember thinking of the Runes, the way you showed me. But the rest of it . . . it wasn’t from Freya. It couldn’t have been. And it wasn’t the Jotunn magic I used in Asbrew, either. I never felt anything like this before.” She glanced at the carpet, at the yew needles, at the melting hail on his shoulders. “You said you expected me to become what I was meant to be. What am I?”
“You are remarkable,” he whispered.
She rejected his answer with a jerk of her head. “Maybe you should start by telling me exactly what you did.”
A painful shiver wracked Dainn’s body. Was it possible that Mist had been too absorbed in her counterstrike to understand what she was fighting, the terrible truth of his dual nature?
“That is not important,” he said. “What matters is what you did. I recognized at Asbrew that you had great potential. Now I believe you may have . . . talents even your mother does not possess.” Mist looked at him as if he were mad. “How can I be more powerful than a goddess?”
Dainn knew it would be better to say nothing at all. This was far beyond his skill.
But she needed—deserved—to understand.
“Do you remember when I spoke of an ancient, almost forgotten magic?” he asked.
“Are you saying that’s what I was doing?”
“You may be drawing on abilities that reach back to the very source of Vanir power.”
She ran her fingers through her loose hair. “But the way you talked about it—”
The way he had talked of it had suggested that no living being could wield that magic. Freya had not suspected, or she surely would have prepared him to anticipate greater obstacles. She had admitted that Mist was more than she expected, but could she ever have imagined this?
“I have no expl
anation,” he said. “Yet the facts are clear. You were capable of driving me out of your mind, and you used both the power of thought and Runic elements to do it, imagery that came as instinctively as the glamour. Even at my full strength, you would have overcome my defenses.”
Mist stood, backing away until the couch prevented her from moving any farther. “And these are the ‘talents’ you expect me to develop?”
“Freya expects me to help you use all your abilities.”
“The glamour is bad enough. I’m not going to do anything that can destroy someone the way I almost destroyed you.”
“As you see, I am not damaged.”
“Don’t give me that, Dainn. I threw you against that wall. With my mind. And water, and pine needles, and spears of flame. Loki’s piss, I could have killed you.” She raised her hands, turning them forward and back. “Fighting with these, or a sword, is one thing. Even getting rid of Jotunar with magic is acceptable, because sometimes there’s no other choice. But there’s evil in this other way, just like there is in making people come to me. Even if I don’t know I’m doing it.”
“It is like any other tool, like the Runes. It is even more essential that you understand how to use it.”
“And how do you know I’ll choose the right path?” She stared down at him, fists clenched and jaw set. “You talked about the danger of misusing the Runes. They shape the magic, right? Did I use Merkstaves against you, Dainn?”
He couldn’t deny it, and Mist clearly saw the answer in his face. “If I’m so cursed powerful, what makes you so sure I won’t use this . . . force inside me to attack anyone who threatens me?”
“There is no wickedness in you, Lady,” he said, meaning it with all his heart.
“But there is something dark, isn’t there? Just like there is in you.”
Dainn laughed silently at his own naïveté. He hadn’t escaped after all.
“When you attacked me,” Mist said, “something came after me. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen it, either. When you helped me shape the Rune- staves the first time, it was there in the shadows.” She crouched where she was and stared at him, grim and implacable. “At first I thought it was just something my thoughts invented, some kind of image I made up because I was scared and needed something solid to be afraid of. I didn’t want to believe it was really part of you.
“But it is. And it hates me, Dainn. It hates the whole world.”
14
Dainn pulled himself to his feet and leaned heavily on the wall. “Yes,” he said. “It hates. It hates everything that lives or ever lived.”
“And you sent it into my mind.”
“I would not have done so if I believed there was a chance you couldn’t overcome it.”
She folded her arms and glared at the carpet. “Where did it come from? Did you . . . create it?”
The idea sickened him. “It was not of my making, but it feeds . . .”
He had to swallow several times before he was sure of his voice.
“When we met, you believed that Dainn Faith-breaker had died at Thor’s hand before the Last Battle began. That was the story put out by the Aesir. But I clearly did not die. I was cursed.”
Mist sat down on the couch hard enough to make it squeak in protest. “Cursed? By whom?”
“Odin, with the approval of the Aesir and my own people. Only Freya spoke for me. And she could not save me.”
“Then you were lying when you said you didn’t remember how you got to Midgard,” she said. “You were sent here, with this curse on you.”
Dainn bowed his head. “Before the Last Battle had fully begun.”
“But what is it?”
Dainn put his back to the wall and let it take his weight as he sang the increasingly ineffective Rune-spell that had once allowed him to detach himself from all emotion. Mist heard nothing of it; a year of continuous meditation and practice had made the use of his voice unnecessary.
It was not entirely effective, and he had not expected it would be.
The spell only muted the memories and allowed him to speak without weeping.
“It is a beast of thought,” he said, “but it has no real intelligence of its own. Only the will to hate. And to seek freedom from the restraints that prevent it from attacking others as it attacked you.”
“In the mind?”
So many things he could have told her then, if he’d had the courage. If the beast itself hadn’t reminded him why he could not. “It has the potential to destroy what mortal psychologists have called the ’psyche’ of other intelligent beings. It claws its way through any resistance and devours what it finds.”
Mist’s face revealed every emotion as she absorbed his meaning, puzzlement to comprehension to horror. “You mean it makes people crazy?” she said.
“No. It obliterates their minds.”
“Gods,” she said, her eyes flaring with revulsion. “You talk as if you’re not even connected to this thing. I’ve almost gotten used to hearing you speak like someone who doesn’t understand normal emotions, but how can you be so cool about this?”
Cool. She had seen so deeply into him and still believed he felt nothing. His spell had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. “Emotion is one of the things that feeds the beast,” he said. “Your emotion?”
“Dark emotion.”
“Like anger. Anger over what the Aesir did to you? At Loki?
Over everything you lost?”
Those were questions he could not answer. Would not. “I have had to learn how to dampen the beast’s power,” he said. “The bars,” she said. “The cage.”
“The work of many centuries,” he said.
Mist drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “What’s the other thing that feeds it?” she asked quietly. “Magic.”
It was as if the proverbial lightbulb had winked on over her head.
“Of course,” she said. “It wasn’t just that you were out of practice that you held back.”
“I couldn’t tell you then. You would not have understood.”
“I still don’t.” She rubbed at the wrist that bore the wolf and serpent tattoo. “Did Freya know about this thing when she sent you to find me?”
“She did not believe the beast would be an . . . impediment.”
“Not very good judgment, if you ask me,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “You said she couldn’t save you when you were cursed. Doesn’t she have any way of helping you get rid of it now?”
So close, so very close to the truth. “She cannot,” he said. Mist clamped her lips together, clearly not satisfied by the answer. “I think I know now why Loki was so afraid of you.” Dainn looked away, unwilling to lie to her face yet again. “He was not involved in the curse.”
“You said your parting didn’t end on a ‘cordial note,’ ” Mist said.
“You said that once you could have done him harm, but you couldn’t do it anymore. That was a lie all along, wasn’t it?”
“We met once after Odin laid the curse on me, before I came to Midgard.”
“Finally a little honesty,” she said. “But I won’t ask you for the details now. You said you had it under control. That has obviously changed.” She lifted her head. “Maybe you’ve kept the thing inside you from being a threat to others, but what about to you? You’re an elf. Elves are aesthetes, civilized, peaceful, even though they think they’re better than everyone else. They don’t use weapons, and they only fight with magic when they have no other choice.” She searched his eyes. “It tears you apart, doesn’t it?”
“I have learned to accept it,” he said.
“And what happens if the beast escapes again?”
“I found a way to contain its power before. I will do so again.”
“That isn’t good enough, Dainn. I want to help make sure it can’t
happen again.”
Brave Mist. Stubborn, impulsive, headstrong Mist.
“No,” he said.
She swung
her legs to the floor. “You said I could be more powerful than Freya. You want me to understand my own abilities.
What good is any power if I can’t help my friends?”
Friends. She didn’t know what she was saying.
“You have no grasp of your magic,” he said. “You are incapable of what you suggest.”
“I can obviously do things with my mind that only gods can. I was able to stop the beast. If I can help you rebuild that cage . . .”
“If you reach too far, you could destroy yourself.”
“That’s my risk.”
Holding his arm out in case he should fall, Dainn went to the door. “Come with me,” he said. “There is something I must show you.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and yawned. “It’s already seven in the morning,” she said, “and the kids’ll be up soon if they aren’t already. Where are we going?”
“It would be better to do this in a larger space, where there is no chance that others might hear.”
His words must have sounded ominous indeed, but Mist got up and followed him into the hall. Almost at the same moment, Ryan came pelting down the stairs in his bare feet, oversized pajamas flapping around his spare frame. He came to a sudden stop halfway down when he saw Mist and Dainn.
“Shit!” he said. “I thought something was wrong!”
Dainn stared at the boy, whose pupils were so dilated that the light brown of his irises was barely visible. Mist went to him immediately.
“You’d better sit,” she said, pushing him down onto the stair. “Are you having another seizure?”
Ryan shook his head. “I thought it was already here,” he said. “What was already here?” Dainn asked, moving closer to the boy. “I don’t know,” Ryan said, his voice rising. “I thought—” Suddenly the cats streaked out of the kitchen, tails puffed up to twice their normal sizes, ears flat. They stopped just past the stairway, hissing and arching their backs.
They were facing the door to the gym.
Dainn felt it a moment later. “Go upstairs, Ryan,” he said. “But—”
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