* * *
Bjorn sunk to his knees, Norga forgotten. Everything forgotten but Astrid’s scream as she was thrown from the castle wall.
“Well done.” Norga’s call up to her daughter bounced against the walls of a courtyard otherwise still as the grave. A stunned silence clung like mist to the servants, an uneasy one swirled about the trolls.
Bjorn struggled to his feet, forcing his body to move, though he could barely draw breath. Dekla had taken his air when she’d thrown Astrid over the parapet. He looked for a weapon, anything that would inflict pain, and as if sensing his intent, Dekla hesitated in her descent of the stairs.
“Come.” Her mother’s dismissive, almost contemptuous, tone at her pause made her flounced down, defiant.
That’s right. Come to me.
“There is nothing left for you now.” Norga unclipped the ax from her belt and hefted it, and he could see in her eyes she was weighing up the consequences of killing him.
Before he could move, two trolls pounced, each grabbing one of his arms, holding him in place for their mistress. Forcing him back to his knees.
“Either pledge to my daughter or die, and as the blood drains from your throat, think of your precious kingdom. Of how they will curse your name as I cut them down.”
“Pledge to your daughter?” Bjorn looked at her, incredulous.
“You heard me.” The ax dipped up and down in Norga’s hand, like a child bouncing on its parent’s knee.
“I will never pledge to that murderess.” Bjorn spoke in words so controlled, even Norga peered closer at him. If he lost to his rage now, he would never regain himself. He would become a mad thing.
Norga nodded. A short, sharp movement, decision made. She lifted the ax.
“No.” Dekla took the last step into the courtyard. “I want him.”
“He doesn’t want you.” Norga shrugged. “He’s too tricky, anyway. It’s better this way.”
She lifted the ax over her head and stepped back to balance her huge swing.
* * *
Astrid fell head first, screaming as the pebble beach rushed toward her.
At the last moment, a freezing hand reached out of the air and snatched her up, pulling her to an icy chest. Tiny sparkles of frost dusted her arms and face, and Astrid breathed out in relief, her breath hanging white and wispy as North himself in the air.
“That was close.” Her voice wobbled, and she cleared her throat.
North drew her under the lee of the cliff, and put her down.
“The troll who threw you is looking down, trying to see your body.”
Astrid brushed the icicles off her skin. “We need to help Bjorn. Are you able?”
“I am well rested.” North’s face glittered cold and hard, a freezing fog poured into the shape of a man, and Astrid thought she saw vengeance in his changeable eyes.
“Then let’s go.”
North did not argue. He expanded, and she jumped onto his giant hand, felt the air flow over her face as they shot up from the beach. They raced over the parapet and hovered above the courtyard.
Their arrival went unnoticed.
All eyes were on Bjorn, held on his knees in the courtyard. And on the ax in Norga’s hand.
Norga lifted the ax, and brought it up past her head. Stepped back.
“Down.” Astrid choked out the order, and North swooped. They were too late, too far. They would never get there . . .
Before she could bring the ax down, Norga went over, arms windmilling, ax flying, a scream of fury ripping from her mouth. North caught the ax as it spun through the air, turning it sparkling white with frost. Then he crushed it in his fist, into tiny pieces of wood and steel.
Norga lay on her back, kicking out at something, and Astrid heard a cry of pain.
Jorgen?
She saw a flash of brown. Felt her heart lift. He was alive and fighting to the last. Tripping up the troll queen.
But the moment Norga saw North, she ceased her kicking and leapt to her feet, breathing heavily.
“You.” She pointed a shaking finger at North. “You helped me, once.” She finally seemed to see Astrid. “Who are you, who kills my trolls and flies with the wind?”
“The Mountain Prince’s new ally.” Being in North’s grasp, air swirled around her, teasing her hair out above her head, and snapping her dress.
“The Wind Hag?” Norga staggered back, her mouth slack with shock.
“And neither you nor your daughter will kill my mistress again.” North whispered the words, but they swept through the courtyard with a whistle, an implacable, icy promise.
A small movement caught Astrid’s eye, and she saw the trolls holding Bjorn release him and step back, staring at North with terror-filled eyes.
Before she could blink, Bjorn had grabbed an ax from one of them and was running forward.
“Norga.” His cry was a battle challenge, and the troll queen turned eagerly to meet him. She looked down at her hand and realized her ax was gone and jerked her club off her belt, instead. They met with a crack of wood, Bjorn’s ax slicing into the club and sending splinters in every direction.
She jerked the club free of the blade, swung it, but Bjorn ducked and came up right in front of her, ax raised to strike her heart.
She slammed her forehead into his, and he staggered back, shaking his head and blinking his eyes. Norga gave him no moment to recover, she started forward, swinging the club before her, aiming at head height.
Astrid turned to North, eyes wide, a cry on her lips, but the wind shook his head.
“His fight,” he said in her ear.
The crack of the club hitting Bjorn’s ax handle jerked her back to the battle. Bjorn had raised it, two handed, just in time, and she saw the blow had sent vibrations shuddering through his arms.
Norga swung again, but this time Bjorn didn’t block, he threw himself on his knees and brought the ax over his head, buried it deep into Norga’s chest.
She let the club go and it spun through the air and slammed into the wall, splitting down the middle. Her hands came up to the head of the ax, almost completely embedded in her heart, and looked down at it in surprise.
“I . . .” She toppled and fell dead to the floor.
Bjorn looked down on her, a mere flick of his eyes, and then up to Astrid. She blinked.
“Whatever you did before, for saving my lady from her fall, the slate is wiped clean and I am in your debt, North Wind,” he said, and he did not take his eyes from her.
“The slate was already wiped clean when I warned you of the troll’s tricks yesterday,” North said, his voice chill and dry, but approving. Bjorn had avenged them all.
“Then I owe you two debts.” Bjorn moved toward them, toward her.
“And what of me?” Dekla thumped her chest on the last word, striding through the cowering servants, the dumb-struck trolls. “What of me?”
Astrid saw her grab an ax from the belt of a troll just as Bjorn had, gripping it two-handed.
“Enough.” North’s roar was the rumble of an iceberg crashing into the sea. He tossed Astrid down into Bjorn’s arms and stretched out his hand, grabbing the troll princess by the neck like a rat. “You are the one who threw my mistress from the castle walls.”
It was as if Dekla only just realized who and what she was dealing with. She cried out, dropping the ax as North flew straight up, dragging her behind him.
When her last screams faded to nothing, the silence in the courtyard still lingered.
“Where has he taken her?” Bjorn asked at last, gently setting Astrid on the ground.
She shuddered, still in the circle of his arms, remembering the place where the sky met nothing. “A place from which she can never return.”
There was a murmur from the crowd at her words and she suddenly realized they stood, without weapons, without North, in a courtyard full of trolls. And they had the undivided attention of every single one.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Bjorn dropped his arms from her shoulders and took half a step in front of her as the first troll moved forward.
A flash of dark brown winked in and then out of sight at Astrid’s feet.
“Jorgen?” Her throat felt as if it held a stone. She ignored the trolls, and crouched down, her hand out, patting the air. “Jorgen?”
“I am trying to be an invisible aide, my lady,” he answered dryly. “Except now the enemy knows where I am.”
Astrid stood hastily, her face flushed. “I thought . . .”
“No time.” Bjorn tried to push her further behind him, but she resisted. Looked up into the sky for North.
Another troll stepped forward, and then another, then they were running, not at them, but around them. Dividing like a river around an immoveable rock and racing out the castle entrance.
“We will not challenge you again, Mountain Prince. Leave us be and we will keep to ourselves.” The troll who called out was the one Norga had hit on the dais. He stood still a moment in the surging crowd, and Astrid saw Bjorn nod to him, and with an almost imperceptible bob of his body, the most minimal of bows, the troll followed his new subjects out of the castle gates.
With them gone, the courtyard seemed huge and empty, save for the servants huddled near the kitchen doors.
“You are free,” Bjorn called to them, and Astrid saw they looked dazed, like birds too long kept caged. They did not know how to respond to the open door.
She walked toward them. “You can return to your homes.”
The woman she’d exchanged glances with earlier shrank back, afraid of her. They were all afraid of her. The woman edged toward the gate, past Astrid and Bjorn, keeping the wall to her back. When she reached the huge open doors, she scuttled through them. It started a stampede. Men and women jostled for place as they ran. None looked back.
“I don’t blame them for their haste,” a voice said at Astrid’s feet. Weak, but sardonic. “This place could kill you.”
Bjorn crouched and put out a hand. Felt the air. “Give me a clue, Jorgen,” he said, and Jorgen winked into sight.
He lay, dry and shriveled, curled up on himself.
Astrid forced down a cry. He looked near death.
“As bad as you look, you saved my neck when Norga tried to ax me, didn’t you?” Bjorn knelt beside him, and felt his forehead. Lifted worried eyes to Astrid, and she came to kneel on Jorgen’s other side.
Bjorn frowned in concentration and before Astrid’s eyes, Jorgen seemed to improve, to uncurl.
“You have your powers back?”
“Norga is dead.” He spoke with no emotion.
“So is her poisonous daughter.” Chill air descended from above, enveloping them, and Astrid’s skirts danced around her ankles.
“Thank you.” She rose and turned to where she knew North stood, lifted a hand to his cheek, and he shimmered into being. “Can I ask another thing of you?”
“Take the vedfe back to the forest?” North’s head was cocked to one side, his eyes on Jorgen.
“Yes. Return the vedfe to his forest. There are some things I need to find in this castle and give back to their owners, and I don’t know how long it will take me.”
“What things?” Bjorn lifted his hand from Jorgen’s brow and frowned.
“Magical things,” Astrid told him. “The price of your rescue.”
Bjorn looked up at the grim, black battlements and she could see the distaste on his face. “I have many treasures, let us rather leave now with the North Wind. I will compensate those who helped you.”
Astrid shook her head. “You go then, with Jorgen. These treasures are special, and I realized long after they were given to me that the owners expect them back if it is in my power to do so. Otherwise I will not be their equal.”
Bjorn stood, and they faced each other with Jorgen lying between them.
“Who are they, these people you are in debt to over me?”
“They are . . . women like me.”
Bjorn looked down at Jorgen. Astrid saw already some of the healing power he’d used earlier had been leeched out of the vedfe this far from the forest.
“If it is something you must do, of course I will stay and help you.”
A lightness enveloped her, and it felt to Astrid as if a wind sprite had taken up residence here. That there was the tiny possibility of an air platform. “North will be back for us when he has rested enough.”
North nodded, short and sharp, as he lifted Jorgen gently into his palm.
“Go well.” Jorgen waved as North arced up and away, and suddenly, Astrid and Bjorn were alone.
“Let us find your treasures and be gone,” Bjorn told her, holding her close a moment.
She rested her forehead against his chest and nodded. Drew back. “I think I know where to look.”
* * *
“There is something here.” Bjorn called from the next room, and Astrid looked toward the door as he came in. He had a small sack in his hands, and when Astrid looked inside, she found her three treasures.
“The room where you found them must be Dekla’s chamber.”
“This one is probably Norga’s, then.”
Astrid agreed. The room, though untidy and dank, was well-furnished.
“We can go now. These were all I came for.”
“One moment.” Bjorn had flipped open the lid of a chest and was tossing things from it. “This looks like the treasure you gave Dekla.” He held up a golden knife, and as her gaze fell upon it, Astrid knew with certainty it was hers.
The old Wind Hag’s.
Stolen from her dead body by her murderess.
She reached out and took it from Bjorn, and strength flowed through her, crackled along her arm and up, making her hair stand out with static. As if she’d been wrapped in layer upon layer of padding and it had finally been stripped away. She could suddenly feel properly.
She could feel each of her winds. Knew they could feel her. There was a connection between them and she could command them from anywhere.
She felt a tingle down her spine, and almost heard the click deep within her, two parts of a whole finally fitting smoothly together. Where they belonged.
She perceived with wonder what the gifts she’d been given had cost their givers.
Understood that had she not sought out the treasures to return them, she would forever have lost a part of herself. Of her power. She shivered at the thought.
“What is it?” Bjorn asked, looking at her with a strange expression.
She ran her fingers down the golden hilt, engraved with wavy lines, and something made her throw the knife upwards, glittering end over end, to hear the singing sound it made as it turned in the air. She reached out and grabbed it in mid-spin, slipped it into her pocket.
“It is mine.” And, if it should one day be necessary, may she give it with as much generosity and grace as her gifts had been given to her.
“Good.” Bjorn flicked the chest lid closed and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”
Astrid smiled and slipped her hand into his. And they walked out of the door together.
* * *
If you enjoyed Mistress of the Wind, turn the page for an excerpt of The Golden Apple, based on the fairy tale The Princess on the Glass Hill.
excerpt from
The Golden Apple
by Michelle Diener
Coming Spring 2014
Chapter One
The laughter rising from the festivities below was not at her, although it felt like it was.
Kayla threaded her fingers together on her knees and closed her eyes anyway, trying to block out the sounds of merriment.
She was part of the entertainment, and her father’s subjects were throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the spirit of the occasion.
Whereas she . . . if she had been clamped naked into the stocks, she could not have felt more exposed, more vulnerable. More disrespected.
Even knowing today was coming had not prepared her for sitting
high above a shouting, laughing crowd, merry with holiday fever, in a gilded chair on top of a glass mountain.
She opened her eyes again and watched the fair-goers move below her, skirting the mountain as they talked, ate and drank. More a mystery than how a glass mountain came to be in the jousting field was their acceptance of the mountain at all. It had appeared in the night a few days ago, and now it glittered and flashed in the early morning sun, blinding the unwary.
Was she the only one who wondered at the power it would take to create something like this?
It stood perhaps three stories high, almost as high as the castle itself, but although its peak did not reach the height of the castle towers, it squatted malevolently beside her family home, dominating it.
But if the mountain made no sense, what made the least sense of all was that her father would do this to her.
Auction her off to the boldest adventurer to try his luck here today.
And yet he had.
He’d stuck her up on this crystal monstrosity like the cherry on top of a cake. Her dress wasn’t red, though. It was virginal white.
And that color was no longer appropriate for her. Not after last night.
The breeze blowing the sounds of the fair and the aroma of cooking pies up to her suddenly felt cool against her heated cheeks.
As if it could sense her thoughts, the golden apple in her lap throbbed, heating the skin of her thighs through her thin skirts.
She looked down at it with loathing. A distorted image of her face looked back at her through the shine. As distorted as her world had become since her father embarked on this mad course.
She lifted her hand, hovered it over the apple. Her father had worn gloves when he placed it in her lap, just before she was lifted up the glass hill.
“Don’t touch it,” he’d said. Then he’d walked away, her obedience a foregone conclusion.
She wanted—wanted so badly—to toss it. To throw it, as far and as hard as she could, away from her.
She hesitated, just a moment, then closed her hand over it. And cried out. A light leapt from the apple to her palm, the pain hot, intense. She let go, and immediately the light disappeared. The pain lingered, a throbbing reminder, and then faded away.
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