Thief Eyes

by Janni Lee Simner

  “Well, that’s something, at least.” Ari looked like he was trying to figure something out. “Aren’t you and your brother supposed to be wolves?”

  Freki’s whiskers twitched. “There are no wolves in Iceland,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Ari grinned at that. “Yeah, well, remind me to tell my teachers. I’m sure they’ll be very interested. So Haley drank—the mead of poetry?” He sounded like he was trying to get his brain around a difficult idea. That made two of us. How could some drugged alcohol teach me a whole new language—not to mention mend broken bones?

  “Even my master’s mead can only do so much. Given the gibberish Haley spoke when she arrived here, it’s a wonder we got her speaking intelligible words at all.” Freki flicked an ear toward me. “You’ll have to handle the poetry on your own.”

  “I’ll cope.” I kept using Icelandic so Freki would understand. “Do you have the mead of memory lying around someplace, too?”

  Freki’s whiskers twitched again—because he thought that was funny or because there really was such a thing, I couldn’t tell. “You’re no help,” I told him.

  The little fox stretched his legs out in front of him, unconcerned.

  “And they say Icelandic is hard to learn,” Ari said wryly. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick to my own language from now on. English is not so easy for me, you see.”

  His English sounded awfully good to me, but what did I know? Not much, at the moment.

  “If Haley doesn’t want that mead next time, you can give it to me,” Ari told the fox. “I’ll give you poetry complete with a solid bass line.”

  Freki didn’t answer that, just headed down the hall ahead of us. I thought of the mead in my pack. Ari probably wouldn’t be half as interested in it if he knew it would put him to sleep.

  He gave a rueful laugh. “And to think I once told my mother all her sorcery talk was nonsense. If we make it out of here, I owe her an apology.”

  I heard a whisper of memory—in my head, not in the air around me. “But you said it wasn’t sorcery you were sorry for.”

  A pained look crossed Ari’s face. “You remember that?”

  I tried to remember more. My thoughts slid away; my head began to hurt. A drop of water dripped from the ceiling and trickled down my jacket. “What were you sorry for?”

  Ari drew a sharp breath. “See, answering that question is one of the things that got us into this mess.” He pulled away from me. “Thanks, Haley. I think I can walk on my own now.”

  I missed the weight of his arm on my shoulders, but I didn’t say so. I gripped the flashlight tightly as the tunnels whispered on. “Take me abroad with you, for it is not Iceland that I love, love, love.”

  “Of course he didn’t take her with him.” Ari scowled. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry with me or himself. “He went abroad and flirted with the pretty Norwegian girls, and so she married his best friend instead. And then both men died. A tragedy, just like in Shakespeare.”

  I’d gone abroad, too. Had I left someone behind? More water dripped in the distance. “What happened to the woman? Did she die, too?”

  Ari shook his head, white hair falling into his eyes. “Nah, she remarried and lived to a ripe old age.”

  What kind of romance was that? A bit of mist floated past the beam of my light. “Didn’t take her long to get over him, did it?”

  “What makes you think she got over him?” Ari plucked a strand of hair from beneath his cap, squinted at it, and frowned. “It’s not that simple.”

  But it was simple: Either you loved someone or you didn’t. Yet as if to mock me, the air around us whispered, in the same woman’s voice, “Though I loved him best, I treated him worst.” Ari laughed, a pained sound.

  In the distance, I heard the faint beating of wings. I froze and switched off the light. Ari’s shallow breathing seemed loud beside me.

  Freki twined around my legs. “There are no secrets here,” the fox said. “Muninn knows where you are, just as I do, and he comes or not as he chooses.”

  The wingbeats grew closer, then faded. I waited until they were completely gone before I turned the light back on and continued walking, Ari close by my side. I wanted to reach for him; I clenched my free hand into a fist instead. Nails dug into my palm. I forced my hand open before they could break skin. Why did I keep doing that? You’d think I wanted to hurt myself. I glanced at the scars there and wondered if I did.

  We reached the final turning. I shone the light down one last tunnel and saw a round room with a stone bed at its center. The room was empty, no raven waiting for us there.

  “Right. I can take it from here.” Ari took the light. He glanced suspiciously at Freki, then back at me.

  I shrugged. “He says he won’t try to stop us.”

  “Is that true?” Ari asked him.

  The little fox silently stared up at us with his small brown eyes.

  “Yeah, you expect us to trust you just because you’re cute, don’t you?”

  Freki didn’t answer. Ari laughed to himself and started walking. He led us past several familiar turnings, then turned sharply right. I followed him, Freki a silent white shadow at my side. We began a steep climb. Ari panted with effort, but my legs made their way uphill easily enough, as if used to working hard.

  Images flickered around us. The voices whispered on. “You shall not hew!” one of them said.

  “Like in the Lord of the Rings,” Ari muttered.

  I remembered that movie, and the book, too. Only there the line had been, “You shall not pass!” which wasn’t the same at all. Great—I could remember lines out of old movies but not whether I had a boyfriend.

  “Hey, weren’t Arwen and Aragorn twentieth cousins, too?” Ari laughed softly. He glanced at me, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He quickly returned his gaze to the sloping tunnel.

  Whispers of vengeance and battle gave way to whispers of bad weather and lost grazing, of failing crops and starving livestock.

  “I have committed no crime. A charm to keep foxes from lambs, nothing more!”

  Freki sniffed disdainfully. “There is no charm that can keep a fox from a lamb.”

  “Hear my innocence. By God and Christ I swear I used sorcery against no man.”

  On the walls I saw images of flames lapping at wood and skin. I saw a woman bound and thrown into deep waters.

  A memory flickered through my thoughts: A pool of water, turned bloodred by the sun. The memory slid away as I tried to focus on it. I bit my lip to keep from crying out with frustration. Maybe it’d be easier to remember if I began with the small things, the ones that didn’t matter so much. TV shows. Old movies. Like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. “Hey!”

  Ari looked back at me.

  “You are so not Luke Skywalker!”

  Ari’s mouth quirked. “You prefer Han Solo, then?”

  “I …” I didn’t know. I remembered Star Wars, sure, but I didn’t remember whether I liked it, or the actors in it. I remembered only the parts that had nothing to do with me. When I tried to get at what I’d actually thought about anything, I hit more darkness. I wanted to scream. Instead I gave a shaky laugh. “You’re not Han Solo, either.”

  “Ah.” Ari nodded knowingly. “That leaves only Darth Vader, then.”

  Chill mist drifted through the air around us, thicker than before. “Darth Vader was kind of cute when he was younger,” I said. At least, I thought so now—who knew what I’d thought before?

  “Darth Vader was a jerk when he was younger,” Ari said without heat.

  “As opposed to his old age, when he had a productive career blowing up planets?”

  Ari laughed, and the sound echoed off the walls around us, making the corridor feel just a little less cold than before.

  We reached a dead end. Ari shone his light on the wall, and I saw depressions in the gray stone, evenly spaced, like a ladder. Ari put the flashlight between his teeth and began to climb. The light faded above me.
I found the first foothold as much by feel as by sight.

  I felt claws through my jeans. Freki scrambled up my legs, over my backpack, and onto my shoulders. He was heavier than he looked, but I didn’t kick him off, whether because he really was cute or because I’d grown used to his company, I didn’t know. His fur was soft against my neck.

  My arms were nowhere near as strong as my legs. They strained as I climbed. The voices and images faded away. The wall disappeared into the mist below. Dizziness washed over me, and I turned quickly back to the cold stone I was climbing. Apparently I was someone who was scared—terrified—of heights. I remembered falling through empty space, water roaring in my ears. My head swam. My grip loosened on the stone.

  Claws dug into my shoulders. “Ouch!” The memory fled and I quickly tightened my hold.

  “Thank you, Freki.” I was breathing hard. The fox nudged my neck with his damp nose.

  I didn’t look down again, just focused on finding handholds and footholds, on climbing higher and higher, following the blue beam of Ari’s flashlight above me.

  The light vanished. My breath caught, but then the light returned—Ari knelt on a ledge, pointing it down at me. I kept climbing. Freki leaped from my shoulders onto the ledge. I followed, shaking out sore arms.

  Ari led the way up a low staircase and into another stone room, like the room where I’d slept, only larger. He swept his light around the space, which held no mist at all. There was a small stone bed, covered with furs, and a huge wooden door—a door!—carved with a pattern of arcs and lines. No handle, no doorknob—but a door was a start, right? We just might make it out of here.

  Ari’s light moved on, to a stone desk covered with scraps of parchment and more animal skins, a wooden staff—carved with symbols—leaning against it. An old man sat in a wooden chair there, head on his arms, asleep. Ari’s eyes grew large. He quickly shut off the light. I guessed the man hadn’t been here when Ari found this place—or maybe that was one of the “problems” he’d mentioned. Pretty big problem, having a guard at the door. In the dark Ari grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the stairs.

  I heard a sound like wood scraping stone. It echoed and re-echoed through the chamber. “Who disturbs my sleep?” a voice boomed.

  Heavy footsteps strode across the floor, right toward us.

  Chapter 7

  Light bloomed from niches in the walls. Ari and I whirled around, racing for the stairs, but then we heard wingbeats down below.

  Right. No going back that way. We turned to face the man. His brown beard was streaked with gray. His wool cloak hung open over a belted shirt and baggy pants wrapped with strips of leather. His eyes swept quickly over Ari and took on a calculating look as they focused on me.

  “That one is no friend to foxes,” Freki whispered at my feet. I guessed that meant the man wasn’t Freki’s master. The little fox nudged my leg with his nose, then slipped back into the shadows.

  The man stepped toward us. Ari edged closer to me. Behind us the sound of wings beat on. “And who might you two be?” The man’s voice was lazy and slow, as if he were used to having all the time in the world. He glanced back at Ari. “Your hair is white for one so young.”

  Ari straightened beside me, though his hand was sweating in mine. “I am Ari, Katrin’s son. This is Haley, Gabriel’s daughter.” Gabriel—my father? “Who are you?”

  “Svan is my name. Bjorn’s son. I guard this place in return for my lodging here.” He took another step toward us. I stepped back and nearly stumbled over the top stair. Ari grabbed my arm, steadying me.

  He looked at the man. “Svan like in the saga? Surely not.”

  The man laughed, though his gaze didn’t leave us. “Do they yet remember this old sorcerer out in the wide world?”

  “Remember is one way of putting it,” Ari said.

  Behind us, the wingbeats grew louder. My heart pounded. We had to get out of here. I stepped toward the door, not that I expected it to be that easy.

  Svan grabbed his staff and stepped in front of me, blocking the way. He poked my chest with his free hand. I shoved him away, glaring.

  Svan laughed again. “Haley. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t about to tell him so. Try that again and you’re going to get kicked where it hurts. Ari made a low sound that reminded me of his bear’s growl. “Haley is an American. A—a Vinlander, you might say.”

  I couldn’t tell whether the words—American or Vinlander, whatever that was—meant anything to Svan. A pair of terns flew chittering into the room, landed on Svan’s desk, and watched us.

  “Please,” Ari said, the politeness obviously forced. “We need to leave this place.”

  The sorcerer chuckled. “I can see you are the sort of man who would rather bargain than fight, Ari, Katrin’s son.” Was that an insult? “Tell me what gift you would offer in return for your freedom.”

  Ari hesitated, then squared his shoulders and stepped forward. “A poem,” he said.

  I looked at Ari. He shrugged uneasily. “It works in the sagas,” he said in English.

  If Svan understood English he gave no sign. He tilted his head as if intrigued. “Very well. Let’s hear your poem, boy.”

  Two more small birds swooped into the room and perched in niches in the wall. Ari switched back to Icelandic, looking right at Svan as he recited:

  This isn’t real, it’s just an old story

  Lies and betrayals, words stab like swords

  Birds cry out, someone’s running away

  No one in stories heeds dusty old warnings.

  This isn’t real, it’s just an old story

  Footsteps that stop at the end of a path

  The ones left behind, they keep the lies going

  In stories there always are prices to pay.

  This isn’t real, it’s just an old story

  The pages all crumbling, the ending a mess

  Stories don’t stop at the end of the summer

  And magic has never solved anything yet.

  Images flashed through my head at Ari’s words: feet running over gravel, a raven crying out, the rush of water. Svan stared at Ari, as if considering his poem, but then he threw back his head and laughed. “You price your words too high, boy. You’ll have to do better than that!”

  I glared at Svan. “I liked it,” I said.

  Ari looked down, and his neck flushed red. “I don’t have anything else to bargain with.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” A slow smile crossed Svan’s face. He reached out and grabbed my arm.

  I tried to pull away, but he was stronger than he looked. I kneed him in the groin, hard.

  Svan grunted and let go, doubling over. His staff clattered to the floor, but he didn’t stop smiling. “A strong woman. I like that.” He winked at Ari. “What do you say? A gift for a lonely old man? Long have I been in this mountain. She’ll more than buy your freedom.”

  I tensed, ready to kick him, even as my eyes scanned the room for a weapon. The sorcerer straightened.

  Ari shone the flashlight right into his eyes. Svan threw a hand up over his face and staggered back. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “You’re only a boy, whatever the color of your hair. You wouldn’t know what to do with her!”

  Ari growled softly. In my pocket, the coin flared with heat, burning through the denim. Heat was a weapon—I grabbed the coin. Memory washed over me.

  A golden-haired girl and a man—Svan—sitting together on a black beach. The man drew circles and arcs and lines in the dark sand, and the girl carefully copied each symbol—each rune—in turn.

  “See, Uncle, I can learn.”

  “Yes, Hallgerd. Now do it again.”

  “I already understand! Don’t you trust me?”

  The coin burned hotter. I flinched, and it fell clattering to the stones.

  “I do know you.” Svan’s voice brought me back to the present. He looked at me through slitted eyes, then hel
d his hands out in front of him, as if to show he meant no harm. A bit late for that. “Your eyes are wrong, but you are surely Hallgerd’s kin.”

  The distant wingbeats fell silent. Ari still held the flashlight, aimed just below Svan’s eyes now. A listening silence filled the room.

  The sorcerer reached for the coin. I snapped it up—it was still warm, but not as hot as before—and shoved it into my pocket.

  “The runes inscribed there are clearly my niece’s work,” Svan said. “How did it come to be yours?”

  Damn good question. “Who’s Hallgerd?” Even as I asked, I knew: The other one, who Muninn wouldn’t name.

  “Hallgerd was a bitch.” Ari’s eyes never left Svan—Hallgerd’s uncle. “She’s also someone you don’t want to mess with.”

  “Aye, she is that.” A strange sadness crossed Svan’s features. He picked up his staff. “Teaching Hallgerd was a mistake. She combined the runes in ways I never intended, and in so doing called on fires that yet threaten the land beyond these stones. I think it is not by chance that you’ve come to me now.” He nodded. “It is time to undo my mistake. I will leave with you, Haley, and teach you the sorcery with which to end Hallgerd’s spell.”

  “Hell no,” Ari said.

  Muninn hadn’t seemed sure the spell could be ended. “You’d let us both leave if we let you come with us?” I said. That seemed way too easy.

  Svan glanced sidelong at Ari, and I knew there’d been no both in his original bargain. He nodded. “Yes.”

  “It’s the best chance we’re likely to get,” I told Ari in English, though I didn’t want Svan hanging around any more than Ari did.

  “You’ll keep your hands to yourself,” Ari told the sorcerer in Icelandic.

  “She is my kin!” Svan looked offended. He gestured at Ari with his staff. “What do you take me for, boy?”

  “I do not think you want me to answer that,” Ari muttered darkly in English.

  Svan laughed and strode across the room, ignoring the birds perched on the table. He fastened his cloak closed with a round silver pin—a snake eating its own tail—then wrapped a strip of leather inscribed with more runes around his staff.