Battlestorm

by Susan Krinard

  “Yes.”

  “Ryan,” Mist said, “would you mind giving us a little privacy for a few minutes?”

  Grateful to get away, Ryan put a good six yards between himself and the two of them. He could hear them speaking, maybe arguing, in low voices, but the words were too soft for him to hear, and neither of them showed much emotion.

  He’d learned that elves tended to be that way. Not Mist, unless she was really upset.

  She was obviously really upset.

  The conversation lasted about five minutes. When it was over, some of the tension had gone out of Mist’s shoulders. Konur touched her sleeve ever so briefly and then walked away, graceful and aristocratic as always. And not in the least bit guilty-looking.

  Ryan wished he could say the same of himself. He was going to have to admit the truth sooner or later: that he’d tried to help Dainn escape, that he’d seen what Freya planned to do, that warning Eir had probably hastened her death. And that there would always be that kind of risk attached to any vision he revealed.

  The truth was that he had too many questions and not enough answers.

  “I have to get back to work,” Mist said, “if you’re going to be all right.”

  “I am.” He hesitated. “What did Konur say about hiding Freya’s intentions?”

  “He admitted that he knew what Freya was up to,” she said darkly, “but he felt he still owed her some kind of loyalty. He was also convinced that I would win, as Dainn guessed. He was willing to take some pretty big risks based on that belief, like keeping Dainn quiet when he tried to warn me.”

  “So he never really betrayed you.”

  “I can either toss him out on his ear, or accept his explanations and keep him and the Alfar in this fight. There’s not much of a choice.”

  “But you forgive him?”

  Mist nodded curtly. “If there’s nothing else…”

  “There is one more thing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve seen him.”

  She started. “Who?”

  “Orn.”

  A short puff of air escaped her lips. “It’s not exactly a secret.” She smiled, and a shaft of sunlight beamed out of the sky to turn her hair to gold and her eyes the color of clear water. “Something has happened that will change everything.”

  Ryan didn’t have a single doubt about that.

  “You probably want to know about Dainn,” Mist said, her gaze already focused on something across the parking lot. “He’s all right, but I’m trying to keep his presence here as quiet as possible. I’ve listened to his story, and—”

  “You don’t hate him?” Ryan asked anxiously.

  “No.”

  The response was terse, but it untied the knot in Ryan’s stomach. “Will … will you let me see him?” he asked.

  “Later. And that’s enough for now. This is an order—don’t force anything where your visions are concerned. We don’t want any more seizures.”

  Ryan nodded, knowing that was the best he was going to get. “Have you seen Gabi?”

  “Not recently.” She sighed. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that girl, but if you see her, try to talk some sense into her. I want her here, where it’s…” She chuckled grimly. “Where it’s as safe as anywhere else in Midgard.”

  “I will.” Mist walked away, and Ryan chewed on his lower lip, wondering if Midgard would ever be safe again.

  Everything hung on the will of two people who had to accept what they were meant to be.

  23

  Dainn ran.

  The beast was swifter than the elf, but he had no difficulty in resisting the temptation to call upon it. He had already gone well outside the ward and beyond the reach of those who might immediately notice his absence. Mist had efficiently distracted his Alfar guards and concealed his escape with a touch of the ancient magic and the unseasonable fog that had pushed its way across the city from the Pacific Ocean.

  He had worried when she had told him how she planned to help him escape. But in the last moment before he’d left her, he had seen no deterioration in her nature, no sign that Freya’s fading influence had touched her again. They had stood together behind the warehouse in the pre-dawn darkness, silent and apart. Not even a brief mental farewell had passed between them.

  But their last exchange of thoughts had seared itself into his brain like Loki’s knife had bitten into his palm when he and Dainn had made their preposterous oath. It wasn’t her decision to save him from Odin, who had so miraculously appeared to claim her obedience, or her willingness to forgive his many misdeeds.

  It was the emotion she had fought to conceal from him, as he fought to conceal his own from her.

  He didn’t know if he had succeeded. He knew she had sensed his shame. But when she had tried to touch him, and he’d jerked away …

  That had hurt her. And no amount of self-contempt could change his visceral reaction, his inability to accept the contact.

  Dainn paused to catch his breath, leaning against the trunk of a tree. At nine p.m., Golden Gate Park was quiet save for the usual vagrants settling in among the shrubbery and a pair of young mortals who had braved the cold and wind to kiss on an isolated park bench.

  This was where it had begun. Where Mist had found him. Some might think to look for him here.

  But here there was magic … not only the magic of the living tree that flowed into his fingers and seeped from the brown grass, but of memory. Mist’s stern face staring down at him as he recovered from Hrimgrimir’s attack. Her impatience when he had tried to explain his purpose, and his mockery of her because, even then, he had realized how difficult it would be to carry through with Freya’s commands.

  He hadn’t realized then that he loved her. That it would be as impossible for him to stop loving her as it would be to reject Danny or refuse to fight even Odin himself for the safety of his son.

  Find him.

  Curling his fingers against the bark, he closed his eyes, feeling the wind whipping his hair around his face, the insects scurrying under his feet, the sap sluggish in the tree’s heart. His elven magic had begun to return. And this was the test to see if Konur had been right … if the beast would rise with every attempt to call on his abilities, as it had done in the past.

  Dainn opened his eyes and looked up at the needled branches overhead. The boughs rustled, and small birds hidden among them twittered and chirped. They felt him, and he felt them: their simple thoughts of comfort and food and sleep, of mating and offspring and flight. He called them, and they fluttered out of their shelter to settle on his head and shoulders, peeping and fluffing their feathers.

  One had a damaged wing; he stroked his fingers across it, and the air around him suddenly seemed almost solid, sliding in and out of his lungs easily enough, yet heavy with vitality and magic.

  He knew what it was, and flinched away. Mist had used it as a weapon against him in his cell. But the Eitr spun slowly around Dainn, not touching, and he remembered when his body had changed the poison to an inert energy that he almost, almost believed he could use himself. It seemed now that he only had to reach out and take a handful of the substance, gather and manipulate it as he would a shapeless mass of clay, making it conform to his will.

  The thought froze his heart. The Eitr was not his to wield. This must be a freakish manifestation, a lingering trace of Mist’s magic. Hadn’t he told Mist that the Eitr and the ancient magic were interconnected?

  It is real.

  Dainn tried to ignore the voice, but it would not be silenced.

  Do not deny what is yours.

  How many times had the beast said such things to him, tempting him to violence and evil?

  Do you not remember when you healed the boy?

  The boy. Not Danny, but Ryan … after the beast had almost killed the young man during Jormungandr’s attack. There had been a great struggle, Dainn against the beast, and …

  Did you think this ability came from nothing?

  D
ainn forgot to breathe. His heart rattled under his ribs. It was impossible that he should possess such a gift and not know it.

  Your body knows it.

  The voice was so rational, almost soothing. It was as if the Eitr itself had changed the beast, transforming its savagery to reason.

  And what it said accorded with everything Dainn felt now. The injured bird nestled deeper in his palm, trusting and unafraid. It felt no evil, no discord.

  It trusted him as he did not trust himself.

  Instinct told him to use the tools he had already mastered, and so he began to sing … hesitantly, softly, weaving a spell around the Eitr like a bird constructing a nest. He invited the Eitr into the sanctuary he had made, drew it into himself, breathed deeply and slowly. Light burst behind his eyes, and he felt a seed germinate in his mind—twigs and branches stretching out and down through muscle and tendon, the rich sap of life filling his veins and arteries. His feet took root in the soil; leaves rustled in his hair. His hand grew hot, and the bird seemed to sigh.

  The park fell silent. A timeless moment passed, and then the bird stretched its newly healed wing and darted up into the tree. Another moment, a single heartbeat, and then everything shifted.

  Under Dainn’s feet, roots shriveled. Pain doubled him over as the branches interlaced with muscle and bone began to rot and wither. The poison was too great for his body to counter, the dark side of the Eitr too vast for his mind to compass. A pool opened up under his feet, blackened grass giving way to crumbling, sterile earth.

  He stumbled. A great shadow began to swallow him whole as he grasped at the crumbling edges of the pit. It was not some Christian Hell below him, nor the underworld of any mythic tale, but the complete negation of all things. Not even the beast could survive it.

  Danny’s face came to him then—open, laughing, full of joy and complete comprehension.

  “It belongs to us,” he said. “To all of us.”

  Then Dainn began to lose his grip, and the black reached up to take him.

  Someone caught Dainn by his shoulders and pulled him—back, up, out of the pit, and onto solid ground. He found himself gasping and bathed in perspiration, a mantle of pine needles and dead grass covering his head and jacket.

  But there was no one with him. The Eitr had vanished. Even the beast was gone.

  So was the pain. But the pit in the earth was still there, an open wound slow to heal. He pushed himself to his knees and looked over the edge. He sensed a bottom; it did not sink into an endless darkness as he had imagined. But the stink of rot rose up from it, and he knew nothing would ever grow there again.

  Still, the rot had not spread. Scooting back, Dainn leaned against the tree trunk. One of the birds, perhaps the healed one, uttered a soft peep.

  Dainn took comfort in the company. He assessed his condition. His body was weak; his use of the Eitr had exacted a price. He had floundered like a child with his first spell, and it had nearly destroyed him.

  But he had survived, and something had been given to him in return. He turned up his scarred palm. A substance like healthy sap was smeared over the wound, and he could feel a change in his flesh, as if new vessels had grown throughout his body to carry something far more potent than blood.

  “It belongs to us,” Danny had said, as if he had been there with Dainn, encouraging him as the beast had done, and Dainn realized that boy and beast had sounded nearly alike.

  That was impossible. Danny and the beast were utter opposites. But their message had been the same. And he could not ignore it.

  He pressed his hands to the tree trunk. The Eitr was beyond his reach now, and he understood the risk should he move too quickly. But if he could call on any lingering power, foreign though it might be to him, he had to take the chance. And Danny’s face, his presence, was still fresh in Dainn’s memory.

  Closing his eyes, he began to construct a complete image of Danny in his imagination: Danny smiling, happy, sketching Sleipnir with a gray crayon on fine white drawing paper. He saw Danny on the steppes, laughing as Sleipnir bounced him on the Horse’s broad back. He remembered Danny asking to be reunited with Sleipnir again.

  Once the pictures were firmly established in Dainn’s mind, he sang the Runes in the language of the elves as he sketched Rune-staves into the dirt before him—Laguz for life energy and Dagaz for awakening. The earth erupted around the staves like oil from a derrick, its flow controlled and shaped by Dainn’s song. Within a minute, the earth had taken the shape of a small human figure, and began to develop fingers and toes, features, and even hair.

  A small, inebriated man in an oversized trench coat emerged from a dense thicket of shrubs, stared at Dainn and the earth-figure of Danny, and staggered away. Dainn made certain he was gone before he completed his spell. The staves crumbled and became one with the soil, raising fresh green grass.

  The Danny-figure smiled at Dainn and offered its hand.

  “Show me,” Dainn said.

  The crude, miniature figure of a horse rose out of the earth beside Danny, and Dainn knew that that boy and Steed were together. Had Danny convinced Fenrir to let Sleipnir go, or had he used the Eitr to steal Steed from Wolf?

  “Where are you?” Dainn asked.

  “It’s hardly polite to leave me out of this,” Loki said, appearing suddenly behind earth-Danny. “Especially since I have a friend of yours who undoubtedly wishes to keep his life.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said, hanging limply from Loki’s grip on the collar of his jacket. “I only followed you a little ways outside the ward, but he was—”

  “There is no need for apologies,” Dainn said, meeting Loki’s gaze. “How did you find me?”

  “A fly on the wall told me.”

  Dainn spoke a stream of words even he didn’t understand, and Loki blanched, swung Ryan around, and held the young man like a shield in front of his chest.

  “I don’t know what you just did,” Loki said, “but try it again and I will give this boy to Hel.”

  Dainn knew that he wasn’t in any position to fight Loki now, and all he could do was bluff. “You won’t kill him,” he said, “because he has the ability to predict the future.”

  Loki stared into Ryan’s face. “This is the spamadr?”

  “Yes,” Dainn said. “And I do not believe you will rob yourself of such a valuable resource.”

  Loki’s lips curved unpleasantly. “Should I test his worthiness now? Or will you take me to Danny?”

  * * *

  The All-father rose from his chair as if it were his throne, Hlidsjalf, looking down over all the worlds from his hall Valaskjalf.

  “We have delayed long enough,” he said. “Set aside your worries, Valkyrie, and know you are strong enough to serve as my anchor to the world.”

  It was a compliment to match the others he had bestowed on Mist, but she didn’t take any pleasure in it. He had told her what was expected of her: merely to hold herself steady and let him draw on as much of her inherent magic as he needed to stay connected to the real world while his spirit conducted the search for Sleipnir.

  The problem was that holding herself steady wouldn’t be enough. She’d have to be actively working to keep Odin from sharing her thoughts. She’d told Dainn about Odin’s return, and Dainn had understood that once Odin was aware of Danny’s identity and abilities, the boy would become a pawn to be used by whoever got to him first.

  So he and Mist had agreed that Dainn would “escape,” find Danny, and—with luck—hide his son until Odin and Loki were fully engaged with each other.

  What Dainn needed now was time. He’d been gone about six hours, but that didn’t seem like nearly enough. She would have to bury her most private thoughts where even the All-father was unlikely to reach: within the Eitr. It was a guess, an experiment that might fail … but Dainn had told her that Odin had “lost” the means to work the Eitr. She hoped to Ymir that he was right. She walked a blade’s fine edge between treason and compassion, between what she knew of Odi
n’s dread responsibilities and what she didn’t know of his innermost thoughts.

  Whatever favor he might have shown her, she understood that she was never meant to know.

  That was the greatest danger of all.

  “Take my hand,” Odin commanded.

  She laid her hand in his. Immediately she felt the crushing grip of his broad fingers. The pressure lasted only for a moment, and then she became aware of Odin’s consciousness as it linked with hers.

  The joining was nothing like it had been with Freya. There were no demands this time, no desperation … only Odin’s supreme confidence. She felt a warmth in him she had never found in her mother. There was no golden light or scent of primroses, but the call of one warrior to another, a true respect for her strength of will and purpose that she hadn’t expected and wasn’t sure she deserved.

  “There are circles of magic within each being that wields it,” he had told her, reminding her that he was a teacher as well as a warrior, that his wisdom was as great as his pride. “Circles within circles, and only the most powerful of gods and Alfar—and you, my Valkyrie—possesses more than one. The outer circle is that magic closest to the surface, easiest to summon, requiring the least effort to wield.”

  She felt a sudden tug when Odin touched that outermost circle, the simplest Rune-chants she had known even as an “ordinary” Valkyrie. She sensed his power as if it were a burgeoning storm, drawing energy from the charged air around it.

  His consciousness expanded as he called on the next circle, the more sophisticated Galdr, the forge-magic she had built from her knowledge as a maker of swords and knives. Instinctively she created a strong scaffold from Rune-staves of iron and fire to anchor the densely woven filaments that bound the essence of Odin’s spirit to his incomplete body, and felt him gradually drawing away from her as he reached for the third circle.

  That circle was the Seidr, the magic of soul-travel which Mist had never truly learned. Odin knew it well, however, and he found the remnants of magic that Freya had employed in her failed union with Mist, using the scraps to strengthen the soul-cord as he played it out.