The Philadelphia Death Hall is a tall red-brick building with white trim and columns restored from the Colonial days, when the city became the capital of the country. It faces away from the Federal Square and hanging ground, with little street parking even this late at night. We find a spot half a block away, and Amon carries Soren’s wrapped body once again over his shoulder.
The wind is cold and damp, the sky overcast, blocking out any stars or moon. The bare black branches of the New World Tree rise behind the blocky Death Hall, a dark cap for the slanted, slate roof. There’s no sign of trouble or elves, though I’m not certain what elf-sign would look like.
The wide double-doors of the Hall are shut, but Sune and I lift the heavy ring handle and swing it open. These doors should remain unlocked all night to accept any congregants passing by, no matter the time. Death comes always. The hunter holds the door open for me and Amon, who follows me into a warm atrium. It is long, whitewashed with accents of dark wood and three arched doors leading into the sanctuary. Large porcelain vases spaced between the doors hold wilting tropical flowers: elephant ears and orange birds-of-paradise blackening at the tips. A darkly sweet smell permeates the air; rot, I think, and although it turns my stomach, I admire Signy for setting such an obvious tone for her Hall.
Candlelight beckons us past the closed gift shop and rack of pamphlets into the sanctuary itself. The cavernous, dark main hall reminds me immediately of Eirfinna’s throne room, but done in shadows and living wood.
Carved wooden pews form concentric half-circles between us and the altar, vivid green cushions tied to their seats. Pillars carved roughly like tree-trunks fly matching green banners with runesign I recognize as binding runes made up of death and world and I think tree, though the latter is not one I know well, as it is not used in prophecy. Several men and women kneel at the pews or sit in contemplation, heads bowed and facing the altar. It is long and built of heavy stone, the only nonliving thing in the chamber. Behind it spreads a life-sized carving of the World Tree, rising to the distant roof, branches acting much like buttresses. A seat is cut into the thick roots for the Valkyrie herself.
An eternal flame burns in the shadows far back on the opposite wall, beside a curtain and a darker doorway. There is another wide arch, too, separating this inner sanctum from the garden outside by an iron gate. Beyond it are only night shadows. I stride down the center aisle toward her throne and step around the tree to peer behind for an attendant or priest I might ask to fetch the Valkyrie.
Amon and Sune walk more softly, and Amon bends to set his heavy package upon the altar stone.
“What are you doing?” calls a soft voice from behind us. I turn in time to see a man sitting up from a fully reclined position in the fifth-row pew. A book that had been open against his chest falls into his lap. He’s in his mid-twenties, wearing elaborate blond braids and a rather shabby jacket with patches at the elbow. He looks like a stereotypical professor of legends or poetry, except for his disagreeable expression. I saw him in my dreams, under the New World Tree.
I step in front of Amon and Sune. “I am here to see the Valkyrie.”
The man’s mouth twists. “No one just sees the Valkyrie.” He stands, leaning heavily onto the pew in front of him. “What is that on the altar? You people are…” He limps down the aisle, pushing me aside to get to Amon. The godling stares down at the smaller man, and even from my distance, I see the flicker of lightning in Amon’s eyes.
“Son of Thor,” the man says. “What are you doing in the Alfather’s house?”
“We’ve brought death here, where it is home,” I say.
The few witnesses have either inched nearer to pay attention or left, grumbling at our disruption. The man scowls at Amon, then turns his ire on me. “There are etiquettes for this, you know, pretty lady, and…” He slows as I approach. Behind me, I hear Sune quietly clearing out the sanctuary of other people.
“Idun the Young,” the professor says. “You were traveling with Amon, son of Thor, and a hunter, Signy said. You were looking for…” With surprising speed and grace, he darts around Amon, flipping the edge of the sleeping bag wrapping Soren.
My berserker’s dead face is clear, though wreathed in flickering shadows.
“Soren!” he gasps, catching himself on the carved edge of the altar.
I know the man now, too, from Soren’s own descriptions: this is the poet my lady Freya raised from the dead to help Signy solve her riddle. Her lover. “Ned Unferth,” I murmur, touching his back.
He takes a handful of sleeping bag, dragging it further off Soren. I’m surprised Signy didn’t tell him my news.
“She will be destroyed by this,” the poet whispers. “How am I to manage that?”
“She knows already. I told her on the phone early yesterday.”
Ned’s face draws sour. “No wonder she’s been especially monstrous. Why else was I hiding from her?” He shakes his head slowly. “Wait here.”
The poet leaves abruptly through the rear door, slamming it shut behind him. I smooth Soren’s hair, touch his cold cheek with my finger, tracing the line of the spear tattoo. Should I cover him again? What will be easiest for her? Even knowing he ate the apple, even with Freya’s assurances, it will be a shock. Maybe worse because of Freya.
“How does one brace oneself against a Valkyrie?” Amon mutters.
Sune appears beside us to answer, “I’d have guessed you knew that rather specifically, Amon.”
I lean back into Amon’s strong shoulder. The silence around us grows thick. I put my fingers against the apple tucked into my left bra strap.
From overhead comes the echo of footsteps and a slam, then the door tears open and she is before us, wild and bright. Her legs are braced apart, her fingers splayed at her sides. She wears a long red sweater with a thick cowl, and all her blond braids seem to hang away from her head like furious snakes.
She ignores us and strides to the altar. She shakes her head a little, desperately.
I say, “Soren will rise in the springtime with Baldur, Signy.”
Silently, she sinks to her knees beside the altar, fingers hard against the sharp stone corner. Signy presses her forehead to the edge, eyes shut. I go to her and stand at Soren’s head. I put one hand atop her crown, where her pale hair is parted for braids. “He will return to us. That is my gift, what I do: grant life.”
She nods against the altar stone.
My gaze slips down her face and neck to her chest, and I know the stone heart is cradled there beneath her sweater. With my right hand, my golden hand, I reach toward it. The slip of heat that curls around my wrist is no surprise, and I feel the temptation like a zing of electricity from my elf gold ring to the golden scar on my breast. Signy’s own hand rises protectively, and she covers the heart. Tears drip from her eyes when she blinks.
“Tell me now, Lady of Apples,” she says, “what danger you bring to my door.”
• • •
Though I am loathe to part with him, we adjourn to the private residence hall behind this public sanctuary and leave Soren upon the altar under watch of two wolf guards. They are women wearing the darkest green, with wolf-mask tattoos across their faces, who obey the Valkyrie unflinchingly when she tells them to guard the body of the Bearstar with their lives.
Signy leads us, her hand tightly gripping Ned Unferth’s, into the residence, a three-story dormitory, the top level of which belongs solely to the Valkyrie. Unferth’s stride is lopsided, and Signy does not check her pace for him. Sune and Amon walk behind my shoulders like an honor guard until we arrive at a wide corner office with a view of the New World Tree’s garden and, beyond it, the wide, flat field that is the Federal Square hanging ground. The office is hardly decorated, with a huge L-shaped desk in the center and scattered, nonmatching chairs before it.
Signy says she’ll have food brought and wine, then immediately says to Ned, “There had better be some of your last batch left in my cabinet.” She points beyond his shoulder at
built-in bookshelves that house old leather tomes and the contents of a full wet bar.
The poet casts her a wry half-smile and pulls down five tumblers and a pale glass bottle sloshing with dark liquor. The Valkyrie vanishes out the door while Ned pours. I sink into a small armchair and pull my feet up to curl beneath me, and Amon plops onto a loveseat he barely fits on alone. But Sune is distracted by the paneled wall opposite the shelves where there is a long table covered in bladed weapons. Short swords and spatha; daggers of both polished and rotting iron, the latter of which should be in display cases; one broad sword as tall as me; and various sheathes both plain and jeweled. Old cavalry swords hang on the wall, curved up to hold luck. Sune glides nearer, as if drawn by a cord, and skims a finger down the round hilt of one small dagger.
“That’s a rondel from the museum across the way,” Signy tells him as she leaps back into the room, striding to Ned and sticking a hand in his face. He obliges her with a tumbler full of his batch.
He offers them around, and even I accept. The liquor burns my tongue and scorches down my throat. I choke. Signy grins viciously at me, and Amon knocks his back like it’s apple juice. Sune joins us, and we settle in, Signy last. After a moment’s hesitation, she squeezes herself into the same plush recliner Ned Unferth already is in, one leg flung over the arm so that they fit together. Then she rests her cool gray-green eyes on me.
Just then comes a knock at the door, and two women in green hooded apron-dresses enter with trays of cheese and bread and meat. Signy thanks them by name, and as the women depart, a tall man with dark hair, ruddy skin, and a berserker’s spear tattoo slides into the room between them.
“Is it true?” he says to Signy.
She nods, and the berserker closes his eyes in brief pain. He puts two fingers over his heart. He must be ten years my elder, black hair in a simple tail and wearing a hoodie with an icon of a ferocious eagle emblazoned at the breast, plaid pajama pants hastily tucked into boots.
“Sit. Join us,” Signy says and gets up herself to pour him a finger of this liquor. “Here are Amon Thorson, Major Sune Rask, and Idun the Young. This—” She glances at me. “—is my captain, Darius Strong.”
The berserker captain only lets slip his shock by a brief flicker of fingers. Recovered, he bows politely to me.
I say, “Captain Darius, Soren spoke of you, your honor and kindness to him.”
“He is—was…”
“Is,” I say firmly. “Soren partook of an apple of immortality. He rests with Baldur the Beautiful and will return to us with the god of light.”
Darius Strong sinks onto a cushioned footstool, staring at me.
Cupping my tumbler in my lap, I study the perfectly amber liquid until the ripples still. They wait for me, all of them, shifting or sighing impatiently, ready.
I tell them everything.
Beginning with the bargain I made with Freya and Odin two years ago in the orchard to save Baldur the Beautiful. Because I am tired of half-truths and keeping allies at an arm’s length, I tell them the true story of the apples, the apple charm, and my role. I tell them that Idun the Young has always been the name of a girl born to humankind, for hundreds of years, and I am the most recent in an ancient line. I tell them Soren’s story, of tracking Evan Bell for his Lokiskin friends, of the killing and his imprisonment. I tell them Eirfinna’s story, too—that the elves were not wiped out but hidden from the world, at first by their own will and then by our gods. I tell them I know how it feels to be removed from the world, to be desperate for remembrance. I speak of the Stone Plague and that I know its cause because I seethed it in return for Soren’s freedom. I tell them how he died, in Sune’s place, and that Eirfinna of the Mountains wants Signy’s heart enough to come here and take it. She wants to revive the troll mothers.
Signy listens stone-faced, and Ned Unferth’s eyes are drawn again and again to the elf-gold ring on my hand. Captain Darius does not seem bothered by the gold’s temptation.
When I am finished, there is a long silence.
Sune, who has drunk all of his liquor but eaten little cheese or meat, says, “Eirfinna is capable of great disguise and cannot be far behind us.”
The berserker captain leans his elbows onto his knees. “I will post my men in doubles and alert the wolf guard.”
“She’ll not wish to make a scene if she can help it,” Amon adds. “She does not enjoy conflict, though will fight for what she wants.”
“Can she be killed?” asks the poet. His gaze is on my right hand, on the gold. He, too, has finished his drink.
Sune says, “She could be, but should not.”
The Valkyrie slowly stands and walks to the small table where the liquor bottle sits. Pressing her hands against the edge, she leans in. Her head bows. “What do you want me to do, Astrid?” she asks, her back to all of us. “You tell a long tale, with details I did not need in order to understand the danger and Soren’s death.”
I stand, too, folding my hands before me, left fingers covering the ring upon my right. “I want you to give the troll heart to Eirfinna so that she can wake the trolls.”
She spins to me. “Never. It is mine.”
“Then I want you to swallow it.”
“No!” Ned launches to his feet, then hisses as he clutches his hip and bends in pain. Darius Strong puts a hand on the poet’s shoulder and meets my eyes. His are dark brown, with a thin flare of crow-feet. Heat radiates off of him, as familiar as Soren to me.
“The heart is too dangerous,” the berserker captain says. “It turns Valkyrie into monsters.”
“The troll mothers are dying, all of them, with the heart in that iron cage,” I say.
“Maybe that’s their fate,” Amon says. “They were created by magic. It is fitting for magic to be their undoing.”
“Who are we to make that decision?” Sune demands.
“And who are you to sacrifice Signy?” says Ned. His lips have gone pale with strain. “Is that so easy for you? The heart could destroy her.”
The Valkyrie cuts him an ungrateful glance.
Sune says, “It’s already destroying her.”
His pronouncement is met with more silence. We all six stand in a circle.
“It must be swallowed,” I say. “If you won’t give it to Eirfinna, Signy, you have to be brave enough to risk it yourself.”
She looks at me, something like longing in her face.
I unbutton the top of my cardigan and reach under the collar of my dress to pull the final apple of immortality from my bra. I hold it out in the palm of my gold-encrusted hand. “This is a seed of life. It gives life, to balance what the heart consumes. Maybe it can save you.”
Signy latches onto it with her eyes, her own hand clenched around the heart pendant. She stares and stares, growing a sheen of sweat across her lip. Harsh breath rushes suddenly out of her, and she says, “We’ll burn Soren tomorrow night,” then flees the room.
TWENTY-SIX
Though I’m offered a room in the residence, I sleep in the dark Death Hall near Soren. My dreams are full of monsters: troll mothers and stone babies birthed by human mothers, diamond teeth growing out of my gums, and my skin turning to solid gold when I walk out under the sun. The scar in my shoulder crawls over my skin, spreading strength like a hard golden shell. I cannot move my arm, but the gold overcomes my breasts and stomach, transforming me into a statue.
My mouth is frozen open, my vision fading as even my eyes turn into gold.
Urgency throws me awake.
But I’m alone. My panting breath scours the empty hall. I’m stiff and uncomfortable, on my side against the first pew, head on my tingling arm. Why do I have this dream? This nightmare? It cannot be a true dream, for I surely cannot seeth my own future any more than Freya herself can.
What is this dream? Is there some answer to it? Freya said gold under that giant metal hammer and follow the gold to your heart’s desire. Was there some riddle in that prophecy? We choose the monsters we become.
/>
How can I convince Signy to make this attempt or give the heart to Eirfinna?
Slowly, I get up from the pew.
There is Soren, upon the altar. From this small distance, in the dim candlelight, I could believe he only sleeps if his chest weren’t so still.
I go to him, rubbing my eyes. He’s laid out properly now, no sleeping bag but a fine green altar cloth below him, Sleipnir’s Tooth on his chest. Below the fresh oil of sharp camphor and mint, I can smell it easily now. The decay. I do not kiss him.
An hour later I’ve washed and found a kitchen with a kindly enough cook who gave me the tea I asked for and returned with it warming my palms. I sit on the floor of the Death Hall, my back against the altarstone, waiting.
I expect Signy to come. I expect her to seek me out to talk about Eirfinna and the heart and my plan. I sip my bitter tea, head leaned back, eyes staring down the long aisle to the front of the hall, which is barred from the public today. Two wolf guards stand ready, spears in hand, long knives sheathed at their hips. In the old times, Valkyrie commanded packs of wolves: the actual beasts, larger than what we know now, who roamed the battlefields with the Death Choosers, feasting on the unworthy slain. Those are some of my least favorite stories. Now the wolves are human fighters, trained in one of the only paths to war for women.
The rear door opens, and I hear two pairs of footsteps. They pause on the opposite side of the altar, where I am not visible.
The newcomers are silent for a moment, then one sniffs loudly—like a child.
“I am sorry,” Darius Strong says. “I will contact your father if you like, and you can be returned to his band.”
“I’d rather,” says a high voice, a boy’s voice, “stay with you, captain.”
Pilot. Soren’s apprentice, who traveled with him these past nine months. I slowly stand up and turn to look at the boy from across Soren’s body. He’s twelve and slight, with tanned skin and the sort of brown hair that changes with the light. It’s long and braided simply, and the boy looks strange in the official winter uniform of berserkers: black pants and boots and a thick black vest over a shirt that is also black. It isn’t the uniform itself that is strange, but his obvious youth. I’ve never seen a berserker so young already taken by the frenzy and joined in a warband. The spear tattoo is too long for his face.
The Apple Throne Page 27
