by Kevin Hearne
Granuaile shifted and said, “Can we afford the time?”
I shrugged. “I figure we have a little bit, yeah. The huntresses probably need brand-new bodies and chariots, and they have to pick up our trail somewhere on the Dover coast. We’re coming to the end, though, and we can’t let them be all refreshed when we’re not. You and Oberon sleep. I’ll watch for a while and then wake you up to take a turn.”
Granuaile drew close to me and planted a soft kiss on my lips. “No arguments here. I’m exhausted.” Granuaile curled up on the ground and Oberon sprawled next to her. Both of them drifted off in a couple of minutes, and I was left to think about how we would survive going forward.
If, somehow, we could defuse tensions with the Olympians, our priority had to be the mystery in Tír na nÓg. Whoever was divining Granuaile’s location was also responsible for sending the dark elves and vampires after us.
Strangely, the safest place for us would be Tír na nÓg. Neither vampires nor dark elves would be tolerated there. Shuttling them through using the Old Ways was one thing and easily hidden—especially for someone like Lord Grundlebeard, who controlled the rangers—but keeping them in Tír na nÓg for an extended period as they came after me would raise all sort of alarms and questions that this shady adversary would wish to avoid. And as for the remaining threat—the Fae—I had a distinct advantage where they were concerned.
If I could find a safe place to leave Granuaile and Oberon, I could go solo and perhaps surprise Midhir or Lord Grundlebeard. If they were behind this, they’d expect me to stay next to Granuaile and wouldn’t be able to use divination to see me coming.
I let Granuaile sleep until midmorning before waking her up to take a watch.
“I needed that,” she said, stretching languorously and perhaps a bit teasingly. “Thanks.”
She levered herself up, but Oberon barely stirred. Poor hound.
“You’re welcome. Wake me up midafternoon. We’ll go get some clothes.” I stretched out next to Oberon and stopped fighting my fatigue.
Chapter 20
An odd shudder traveled up my right leg and rattled my ribs, shaking me all along the length of my tattoos. It woke me with a start and made Granuaile jump.
“Gah! What the hell was that?” she asked, staring at the tattoos on her arm as if they would provide an answer. Frowning, she turned to me and saw I was awake. “Did you feel that?”
Oberon roused and yawned.
“Yeah, I felt it.”
“So what was it?” Granuaile said.
“The last time I felt this was when Perun’s plane died.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. Some plane connected to earth has been destroyed.”
“Does that mean Loki is free?”
“Probably. Unless someone else is destroying planes.”
The shuddering continued, and I extended my thoughts to the English elemental, Albion.
//Disturbance detected / Query: Source?//
The reply confirmed my fears. //Old plane of the Finns / Burning//
“Albion says it’s a plane of the Finns.”
“How many do they have? Not as many as the Irish, I hope?”
“No, I can’t think of many. Unless it’s Tuonela, their land of the dead.”
“Why would Loki even care about that?”
“No idea. But if he’s free again, what happened to Malina? Did she let him go, or is she a crispy critter now? Or maybe Hel found them and threatened her, or paid her off, or killed her—who knows.” Annoyed by the lack of answers, I looked up at the sky, assuming that Odin was looking in on us from Hlidskjálf. “And, hey, Odin! Are you listening? I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eye on Loki, since he’s such a potential problem.”
Granuaile considered. “The Finns had a thunder god, didn’t they, sort of like Perun?”
“Yeah. I saw him once. His name is Ukko, which basically translates to old man. God of the sky and thunder. He was part of the crew that came to kill me in Arizona and instead hacked up Coyote into tiny pieces. He seemed a bit more laid back than the other thunder gods, though. Probably because the Finns are just cool like that. Want to guess where they say thunderstorms came from?”
“Oh, ew. I’m not sure, judging by the grin on your face.”
“All that noise and precipitation gets made when Ukko and his wife, Akka, have thunderous sex. Isn’t that awesome?”
Granuaile shook her head. “No, it’s gross. You are such a guy sometimes.”
She’s not saying I’m occasionally female. She’s implying that I’m shallow.
Hey!
Granuaile couldn’t have heard what I said, but Oberon’s comment, plus the outrage that must have shown on my face, caused her to laugh.
“Good dog,” she said, petting him.
“Well, I hope Ukko’s all right,” I said, steering the conversation back to safer territory, “if indeed he was the target and if this was Loki’s doing.”
“Ukko wanted you dead and you’re worried about his welfare?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. He also cheered when the Morrigan cut Vidar in half. I think he was more bored than truly angry with me. He tagged along for the entertainment value.”
“If he calls ganging up on people and watching them die entertainment, I’m not predisposed to like him.”
“Few of the old gods are truly friendly. Goibhniu is a notable exception.”
Granuaile brightened, agreeing with my hound. “Yeah, I like Fand, and Manannan Mac Lir. They tend to save our asses, so what’s not to like?”
“Count them amongst the few, then,” I said, and squinted west toward the sun, now low on the horizon. “You let me sleep a bit long, didn’t you?”
“You needed it. I was just about to wake you.”
Two large ravens swooped down from the sky and landed on the branch of an ash tree. “Ah, Odin was watching us after all,” I said, pointing at Hugin and Munin. “Perhaps we can get some answers.”
In the mundane spectrum I still couldn’t tell them apart, but in the magical spectrum they were easily distinguished now, since Hugin glowed with more magic as the mind of Odin. Hugin jerked his beak at Munin, indicating that I should bind my consciousness with his.
Once I did so, Odin’s memories caught me up with recent events. I saw Loki still dazed by the charms of the Sisters of the Three Auroras, specifically by Klaudia’s lips, to which I myself had succumbed once upon a time. They were decadent. Sultry. So very, very kissable. And, damn, they almost snared me through the replay. The witches and the god of mischief were still in the same field where we had left them, which surprised me to some extent. I had expected Malina to move the operation elsewhere, but perhaps she had decided that moving was more trouble than it was worth, and it’s not as if onion fields are subject to constant scrutiny. The view expanded to show me Garm, Hel’s gigantic hound, similarly entranced by a couple of other witches. I smiled appreciatively. With Garm occupied, Hel wouldn’t know where to send her draugar. Malina had done well.
Garm’s gaze was fixed on a stick held in front of his eyes by one of Malina’s younger coven members. Clearly it had been enchanted with the same beguiling charm they had used on their body parts to ensnare humans. With both Loki and Garm preoccupied—Garm being Hel’s eyes and ears on earth, much like Hugin and Munin often served as Odin’s—Malina could conceivably stave off Ragnarok indefinitely, keeping Hel uncertain of victory.
Provided, of course, she wasn’t interrupted.
Ukko provided the interruption. Somehow, he’d discovered that Loki was unbound from his long imprisonment and located him—a mystery that begged to be solved, since no one else had beaten him to
it. Why was Ukko the first to discover this? He flew down from the sky, landed a short distance away, and, without so much as a howdy-do, threw lightning at Loki.
His motivation wasn’t a mystery at all. Like Perun, who held an equivalent position amongst the old Rús tribes, the Finn would have very little love for the Norse pantheon, being a sort of direct competitor for the hearts and minds of people in that region of the world.
Loki flew bodily through the air, his torso folded and his long flailing limbs reminding me of a squid. He landed fifty yards away, far outside the range of Klaudia’s lips or Malina’s hair or any other charm capable of calming him. His body bloomed in flames and the madness returned.
“Hah? Who?” he cried, then saw Ukko advancing. “Thhhhunder god! G-g-guh, good!”
Malina shouted something in Polish, but Loki and Ukko ignored it, focused as they were on each other. Loki took a deep breath in the way a trained opera singer would, chest rising faintly but lungs filling like a bellows. He threw back his head and roared as his hands flew up and an inferno exploded from him, a burnin’ ring o’ fire that lifted Ukko off his feet and set the field alight. Here, then, was the great conflagration that Malina’s coven had foreseen.
“S-s-set your world on f-f-fire!” Loki spat before launching himself into the air and streaking north, presumably toward Finland. Ukko, having no choice and forced to play defense, followed him without ever acknowledging—or perhaps even realizing—that he had flipped Loki’s switch from “Neutralized” to “Unchained Sociopath.”
Odin’s vision didn’t chase after them but rather panned back to the witches. They had their purple wards up, protected from the flames but clearly feeling the heat. Garm, however, had no such protection. His fur was aflame and he sprinted, howling, for the river that bordered Jasło’s western edge, some two hundred yards away. The witches ran after him, cursing in Polish and sounding far more angry than scared.
Munin broke off the images and squawked at me. I disconnected with him and then switched to Hugin to speak with Odin.
All right, why was Ukko there? I said.
The Gray Wanderer’s voice lacked the casual tone he’d employed when Loki was safely occupied. Even the raven looked a bit more concerned.
Are you suggesting I had something to do with it? Not only would that be against my own interest, but I’ve been a little busy lately.
Well, what about Hel?
Maybe she just told Ukko that Loki was free and Ukko used his own methods.
Oh. Right. Midhir, I said.
I shared my suspicions about Midhir’s motivation to want me dead and his relative ability to do it.
This time I didn’t curb my tongue. The Einherjar can go toast their foreskins.
Odin laughed at me.
Do. What happened to the witches and Garm?
Great. One more thing to worry about.
That reminds me. How is Freyja doing? The Norse goddess of beauty and war had been severely injured in our raid on Hel.
Does she even know we were successful?
I frowned. Is she in a coma or something? I knew that she had lost a lot of blood and had some shattered bones when we evacuated her, but perhaps she’d suffered more head trauma than was immediately evident.
Odin huffed impatiently.
Thanks, I said dryly. We’ve been working on that. Gotta go.
Why?
Like I said, gotta go.
Who?
“On your guard. Dark elves coming,” I said. “And apparently some standard elves and a bonus dude to help us somehow.”
Oberon perked up.
In this case they do.
Granuaile hefted Scáthmhaide. “Going invisible,” she said, before speaking the binding and winking out. I cast camouflage on Oberon but left myself visible.
The Ljósálfar, when they stepped off Bifrost onto Midgard, both disappointed and delighted me. They weren’t wearing leaf-shaped green and gold armor with curlicues or long robes with overlarge embroidered sleeves. They didn’t glow with backlighting or come with their own soundtrack by Enya. Their hair wasn’t long, straight, and silky, and their eyes weren’t limpid pools of oh-my-god straight out of manga. But they were tall and slender and very shiny, and they sounded like wind chimes when they moved.
The sound came from their light-blue enamel armor—that is, glass fused to a metal base. It draped their forms in layered scales so that they reminded me of pangolins, if pangolins could blind you like metal mud flaps on a semitruck. In the center of each enamel scale, a single rune had been etched with acid, and so far as I could tell, it was always the same rune. On a practical level, I couldn’t imagine the benefit to enamel; basic blunt force would shatter it, and the metal backing each scale looked to be either aluminum or a thin wafer of steel. But the runes must offer some protection. Their helmets had no metal backing: Each was a solid piece of shaped glass in light blue, etched with the same rune over and over, lending the impression that someone had found some defective fishbowls at an outlet store and shipped them to Álfheim. A grid of thin holes had been drilled through the glass around the nose, mouth, and ears, which had the effect of blurring out those features, but otherwise I could see that their heads were closely cropped and the tops of their ears did have the famous pointy cartilage. They had swords swinging on their left hips, but I wondered if they weren’t ceremonial. Their primary weapons rested in holsters strapped to their thighs—large flechette pistols.
Two dozen such elves were led by a thick, diminutive fellow in heavy steel plate. His armor was also etched with runes, but these were many and varied and flickered with their own light. Four small axes were strapped to his back, handles peeking over his shoulder. His voice was muffled somewhat by his helmet, but I still recognized the diction.
“I greet you, Druid, Wolf Slayer, Freyr’s Bane, Loki Shepherd. May you walk from battle unbruised and exult in the death songs of the slain.”
There was only one person I knew who would assign me such epithets and string them together. “Fjalar? Is that you? Runeskald of Nidavellir?”
/>
“Yes. I have come with the Glass Knights, the Ljósálfar elite, rune-warded and ready for battle, to meet the Svartálfar who pursue you. Axes have I brought, newly forged and blazoned, to cut the smoky black and tear flesh out of vapor.”
“What? I beg your pardon, but you lost me there.”
Fjalar drew one of the axes fixed to his back. It had a barb on the handle that triggered a release on the holder as he pulled it up so that the blade wouldn’t get caught. Clever design. He pointed at the runes seared into the blade of the axe and said, “These are experiments in craft and war, an attempt to cleave through magic mist and wound the flesh, to sunder smoke yet slice through bone and sinew.”
“You’re saying if you hack a dark elf in his smoke form with that, he’ll show the wound when he turns solid?”
“I will not know until I attempt it, but it is my hope. The runes are supposed to end their vaporous state and then the blade cuts them, which binds them to their solid form. Should any of the axes prove successful, more will I make and teach the craft and song to other Runeskalds.”
“That sounds fabulous,” I said, “but what if none of the axes perform the way you hope they do?”
The dwarf’s armor twitched, signaling a shrug underneath all the steel. “I will return to my forge and try anew.”
“No, I mean, the dark elves are not going to allow you to experiment on them.”
“They will have no choice in the matter.”
“I mean they’re going to fight back.”
“And the lamb will cry before it’s slaughtered. There is no difference.” Fjalar’s helmet twitched, indicating his eyes had been drawn elsewhere. “Ah. See where they come. Remain here and do nothing until you are ordered to drop to the ground.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You need do nothing but attract them. Let us take care of this.”
I cast my eyes across the pasture separating the Long Wood from the copse to the east and spied a sizable group of dark elves approaching—equal to the number of elves on our side. Dressed in what appeared to be shimmering white warm-up outfits that basketball teams favor—except with tunics instead of jerseys—they ran in an undisciplined mob until they saw Fjalar step forward, brandishing an axe. Responding to some unseen cue, they formed into a wedge and sped up, moving at double time.