Black Ice

by Susan Krinard

  “I see that you left no dagger for me,” the Lady said.

  “I thought you already had enough weapons in your arsenal,” Mist said. “You can’t keep throwing your glamour around, especially not with my mortal followers. They need their minds clear.”

  “I will do my best.”

  Sure you will, Mist thought. “Where have you been?”

  “If you will be patient, I have something to show you. Something I believe you will find of great interest.” She shot Mist a sly glance from under her thick lashes. “We shall have to join our minds for a brief time.”

  So she couldn’t do it without cooperation, Mist thought. “I don’t make a habit of that sort of thing,” she said.

  “Except with Dainn. Is that not correct?”

  Once again Mist was left wondering how much Freya knew about her activities with Dainn before the Lady’s initial appearance and throughout her subsequent absence. And what Dainn might not have told her about his communications with the goddess he had served.

  “First you tell me what this is about,” Mist said, holding her mother’s half-lidded gaze.

  “As it happens, it regards Dainn and his present activities,” she said. “That does interest you, does it not?”

  “You already had a pretty firm opinion on that, as I recall,” Mist said, grateful that Freya didn’t know what Dainn’s note had contained.

  “Ah, but I have gathered new information that I believe will convince you that my opinion is quite sound.” Mist did everything within her power not to show her dread. “Okay,” she said. “But I should warn you that Dainn provoked me into a serious case of psychic self-defense the last time he dug too deeply into my brain. I doubt I can hurt you, but…”

  “I shall keep that in mind,” Freya said, chuckling at her own joke. She took a seat on one of the battered chairs and patted the seat next to hers. Mist sat as far away from her mother as she could.

  “Hold my hand,” Freya said.

  Mist kept her hand where it was. “How is this supposed to work?”

  “We will be traveling in a way mortals call ‘astral projection.’ Our bodies will remain here, but our souls and minds will travel.”

  “Seidr?” Mist asked. “The witch magic?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Will you trust me to guide you?”

  Reluctantly Mist scooted closer and took Freya’s hand in her own. She felt a touch of the glamour, and then it was gone.

  All at once she seemed to be flying over the city, looking down on the mortals scurrying on the ice that had, along with the quakes, so disrupted their lives. Like a banking plane, she circled around until she and Freya were looking down on a building Mist didn’t recognize at first.

  Then she knew it was Loki’s headquarters … and she understood, with a pang of horror, what Freya was about to show her.

  As if Loki’s wards had lost all their strength, she and Freya slipped like ghosts through the outer wall of the ground floor. They glided along corridors and up through one ceiling to the next until they had reached the top.

  Sick to her very soul but unable to escape Freya’s hold, Mist slipped through a door. The room was in fact a suite, with a sitting room richly furnished and another door to a bedroom, dominated by a bed large enough to accommodate six people at one time.

  Loki was lying stretched on his belly, the silk sheets barely covering the lower half of his torso. And on the floor close to the wall, curled up in a fetal position, lay Dainn—his eyes open, his hair tangled, his face as expressionless as the day Mist had first met him.

  Her stomach heaved, and all at once she was back in the workshop, Freya’s hand tight around her own. She pried herself free, jumped up, and started for the door.

  “Now you know,” Freya said. “He has gone to Loki. He has chosen our enemy.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing all this time?” Mist asked, turning in the doorway. “Hunting up more reasons why I should hate him?”

  “I think this one reason should be sufficient.” Freya felt behind her for one of the chairs and sank into it, her face pale with exhaustion. The Seidr had clearly taken its toll, but Mist felt no sympathy.

  “He didn’t want to be there,” she said

  “He chose.” Freya favored Mist with one of those mournfully compassionate stares, the kind Mist was beginning to despise. “I know how deeply this disturbs you, but you still have no conception of the depth of Dainn’s relationship with Loki. Though Loki’s disguise was flawless and Dainn believed I was his lover, Loki saw to it that no one else in Asgard knew of the affair, concealing it even from the All-father. Yet all who knew Dainn as a wise counselor, Odin’s special confidante, saw him change. Saw him begin to lose his stability without understanding the reason.” She touched her own cheek as if to wipe away a tear. “When I learned of this I attempted to interfere, but it was too late. By then he believed I had urged him to negotiate a peace with Loki on behalf of the Aesir.”

  “And after he knew he’d been deceived, and was to be cursed for a betrayal he didn’t commit,” Mist said, “he tried to kill Loki.”

  “He has had his chances to try again, has he not?” Freya asked, the sympathy gone from her voice. “Ask yourself what happened between him and Loki on the day you fought Laufeyson in his dwelling. Why was Dainn so powerless then? Why did he find it so easy to surrender?”

  As much as she had despised how her mother had used Dainn—used both of them—Mist hadn’t thought herself so capable of hating the goddess who had borne her. The image Freya had called up was one Mist had never quite managed to forget, in spite of all the times Dainn had proven his courage: Loki trapping elf against the wall of his apartment, Dainn unable or unwilling to fight back.

  In exchange for my life.

  “He was trying not to make things worse for me,” she said.

  “But there is more,” Freya said, “Though it pains me to tell you. Dainn bears a scar on his palm that matches Loki’s. They represent a blood-oath made not long ago, after Dainn first came to you, and these marks will not fade unless the oath is broken. Both must agree to the severance. Loki never will. Dainn belongs to him now.”

  “How do you know this?” Mist asked, remembering Dainn’s bloody palm, the way he’d tried to hide it from her and made up some excuse about cutting it on Gleipnir when he’d escaped to find Anna.

  “I saw the wound when I met Dainn on the steppes,” she said, “and Loki’s stink was all over it.”

  “And you didn’t see fit to mention this before, when you were trying to make your case against him?”

  “You must accept the facts. Dainn is profoundly vulnerable where Loki is concerned. The Slanderer may work his tricks again, turn Dainn’s creature to his own purpose—even convince Dainn that I am the enemy.”

  “Do not trust her,” Dainn had written. Odds were that he’d already gone to Loki by then. Had he been rational when he’d written those words, or was he already …

  “I’ll never believe he’d betray us,” Mist snapped.

  “I am more sorry than you can imagine,” Freya said. She rose, approached Mist and stopped, reaching out to stroke Mist’s cheek, and all that honey-warmth penetrated Mist’s skin, filling her with unspeakable joy.

  Freya was right, Mist thought. Hadn’t Dainn deceived her again and again?

  No. No no no.

  Jerking free, Mist strode out the workshop, crossed the warehouse floor, and walked blindly into the falling snow. It was soft and gentle, but Mist felt only the cold her own body had turned against her. She walked at a jarring pace along Illinois, ignoring the faint call that pursued her.

  Not all is what it seems. Had Dainn referred to himself and Loki? How could she ever guess what really lay beneath those six words?

  And Danny …

  Mist stopped abruptly. Freya hadn’t used him in her argument.

  “Say nothing of him,” Dainn’s note had said. And he’d written that Danny was safe. Safe because he’d gone to
Loki to protect the boy who, in spite of his power, couldn’t protect himself?

  And the blood-oath could mean anything. Dainn might have made it with Loki to protect her, for all she knew. He’d never willingly give himself to the godling who’d nearly destroyed him, who would so gleefully destroy everything he …

  Suddenly her thoughts returned to that first fight with Loki in Asbrew, and what Laufeyson had said at the end. “Don’t trust her. And don’t trust him.”

  Now she wondered if he’d meant Dainn all along, because Loki knew something she didn’t. Something about Dainn the elf would never tell her.

  And the her …

  Freya. The same warning from Dainn and Loki. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it meant something much worse, something Mist couldn’t even bring herself to contemplate.

  Traitors. Svardkell’s word. Vali. Vidarr. And now …

  Dainn would never have passed those words on to me if he thought he might be exposed, Mist thought.

  Yet Dainn said Svardkell had died before he could say more. Was that another lie? Wasn’t a little truth more convincing than none at all? And if he’d lied, was Svardkell really her …

  Mist leaned over and emptied her stomach.

  He’s gone, she thought, her belly filling up again with a terrible certainty. He’s gone over to the enemy.

  Maybe it was for Danny. Maybe he thought he could deceive Loki into trusting him, and turn that trust against the Slanderer. Maybe he had the best reasons in the world, and hadn’t dared confide in Mist.

  But he was gone. And Loki had deceived him before. If Laufeyson used the right kind of pressure, or even persuasion, to encourage Dainn’s relationship with Danny, the boy could become an even more powerful weapon in Loki’s hands.

  Dainn had made a choice. And if Mist ever saw him again, she might have no choice but to kill him.

  Loki frowned at the monitor. Dainn was still with Danny, working earnestly to win the boy’s attention, and his failure thus far had irritated Loki considerably.

  But there would be time. And Loki knew he shouldn’t overlook the continuing good reports from his “employees.” Vali, with the dubious help of Loki’s IT team, had located another of the Valkyrie: Skuld, guardian of Thor’s Belt of Power, Megingjord. Now he had two of the Thunder god’s famous weapons, and he felt quite certain he could encourage the lovely Rota into giving up the third, if he played his cards right. He suspected they had much in common.

  He turned up the volume and listened to Dainn speak to Miss Jones. They knew, of course, that he was watching everything they did and said, but Dainn seemed indifferent, and he appeared to have encouraged the mortal woman’s suppressed inclination toward stubborn defiance as well.

  No matter. Loki had no intention of ever setting her free. And once Dainn got through to Danny again—which Loki had no doubt would happen …

  Nothing would be beyond them. The three of them, together.

  Orn laughed.

  Vidarr sat at the bar, drinking one whiskey after another. The once-called “Silent God” had regained his reputation at last. His blue eyes were dazed, as if he had forgotten where he was.

  But then again, he had not been quite himself since Loki had given him the thrashing he so richly deserved

  “It was for him,” he had said to Orn, over and over like a silly parrot that only knew one phrase. “It was always for him.”

  Orn knew better than to believe him. He cocked his head to examine the flat chip of stone lying on the table at his feet. He recognized the picture on it. It was not a good likeness, but it was important.

  The pendant was important, though he didn’t yet know why. He still had much to learn, to remember. But he had touched the Spear. It wasn’t enough, but it was one of the strongest, and he had been different ever since.

  Different enough to know he had to hide, even from Anna. Different enough to know how to make Odin’s sons create a new ward around this place, so that no outsiders would realize they were there. Not the evil one, not the traitors, not Mist.

  And he would not have to hide long. Soon Vidarr would serve a new purpose, and continue to serve until he was no longer useful. One by one the others would be found.

  Until he was whole at last. Then they would all get what they deserved. Mist, Odin’s sons, the Slanderer, Freya. And this world would at last become the paradise it was meant to be.With a soft croak, Orn stretched his wings, settled more comfortably on his perch, and watched Vidarr slip into unconsciousness.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks, as always, to my agent, Lucienne Diver; my eagle-eyed editor, Melissa Frain; the excellent Amy Saxon; my husband, Serge Mailloux; the Krinards, Lonners, and Weinmanns; C.J. Cherryh, for thirty-five years of inspiration; and the booksellers and readers who make it possible for me to write what I love.