by Alane Adams
He looked annoyed but reluctantly grunted his assent. “I suppose we could swing through Galas on our way back home. We’ll need to steal a ship.”
“Promise.” She stared into his red-rimmed eyes, searching for deceit.
“Cross my heart.” He drew his fingers in an X across his chest. “So, you coming with me or not?”
Rifkin was undoubtedly the worst kind of traitor, but right now, he was Keely’s best option for completing her quest. “Yes. But if you call me little mouse again, I’ll cut your tongue out in your sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
With the Draupnir wrapped tightly around his arm, Leo felt invincible. He had killed the beast and recovered the golden cuff Odin had tasked him to find. He wished for a moment that he could tell his father about his heroic feat. Make him proud. But Chief Pate-wa was a world away.
Jey knew of a nearby Falcory village a day’s walk, maybe two, where they could get horses. The two boys laughed and joked about their adventure as they followed a narrow animal trail through scraggly mesquite, past piles of red boulders, making their defeat of the she-she-kana bigger by the moment.
The attack, when it came, caught them both by surprise.
With his heightened senses, Jey smelled the change in the air first—the odor of brimstone that swept in with the witches a moment before the attack. He tackled Leo as a volley of flaming thorns the size of tent stakes pinged into the ground around them with lethal force.
As Leo recovered from the shock of being slammed to the ground, Jey twisted in pain, clutching at the burning thorn protruding from his shoulder. Leo thrust his arm under the boy and together they ran to the shelter of some rocks. The sound of cackles added haste to his feet. A pack of witches was encamped in a circle of mesquite brush barely visible through a thick ring of thorned trees.
“Sorry, Jey, we need to get this out,” Leo said. Jey was pale, his eyes pools of pain, but he nodded at Leo.
“Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”
Leo put one hand on Jey’s good shoulder to brace himself. The boy stifled his groan of pain as Leo pulled the still-burning thorn free. He tied off the wound as best he could with a strip of leather he cut from their waterskin. They leaned against the boulder. They could hear the witches rustling in the brush, drawing closer.
Jey sucked in a deep breath. “I still have my javelin. I’ll make a distraction. Then you run like the she-she-kana is after you. Once you get to the trees, head north. The village is close by; I can smell the campfires.”
“No,” Leo answered swiftly, “I won’t leave you behind. You’ll die.”
Jey rolled his shoulders. “I’m a Falcory. It takes more than a few witches to bring me down.”
“Let me stay and fight with you.”
Jey grasped Leo on the shoulder. “You have to get the Draupnir where it belongs. You can’t run away from this responsibility.”
Leo blinked once then nodded. Jey was right. Keely and Sam were counting on him to follow the cuff to where it led him.
Jey studied the terrain. “There’s a ravine over there. It follows a dried-up river. If you get to it, you’ll be out of the line of fire. On the count of three, I’ll charge their camp. Don’t look back. And don’t stop running till you find that village, understood?”
Leo’s throat locked up with thick grief. This was a suicide mission for Jey.
“I’m sorry,” Leo began, but Jey gave him a shove.
“Go on, get ready.” Jey had his javelin in one hand. Leo stared at it, knowing this was the end of his friend, but feeling helpless to do anything about it.
Jey counted down, then, with a warrior yell, charged toward the witches’ camp. Leo set off in the opposite direction in a blistering run heading for the safety of the ravine. He was almost to the rim when a zinging fireball passed by his ear. It exploded the ground in a bright orange flash, knocking him off his feet, tumbling him down the steep incline. He landed in a clump of prickly cacti. The stinging barbs barely penetrated his consciousness. He rolled over, ready to run, but an old hag stood over him. Leo’s heart sank. It was Ariane. The Volgrim witch who had threatened to turn them into stew. Her caterpillar-like eyebrows arched in recognition.
“Well, well, the earth-child who escaped me.”
Leo swept his leg out, hoping to catch her off guard, but she was too fast. Quick as lighting she did a backflip, landing in a crouch. Leo had half a second to leap to his feet, but she had vanished. He spun around too late. She pounced, spewing her feral breath on him. A cloud of gray vapor enveloped him in a choking mist. He coughed, feeling dizzy. Tingling numbness spread through his limbs. He tried to stay upright, but his bones were spaghetti, and he collapsed to the ground, staring helplessly up at the witch.
Ariane withdrew a wicked-looking dagger from the folds of her skirt. “And now, earth-child, it’s time to pry that cuff off your arm.”
“Not so fast, Ariane.”
Endera appeared in a cloud of black smoke. Behind her, a half dozen bristling, snarling Shun Kara wolves streaked down the ravine to her side. Their lips were raised, baring their teeth in a vicious grimace.
Ariane hissed at her. “Endera. What are you doing here?”
“Catriona gave me orders to retrieve the Draupnir.” Her eyes went greedily to the cuff on Leo’s bicep.
Ariane snorted with laughter. “Funny. My orders were to kill you on sight.”
But Endera didn’t look shocked at her words. In fact, Leo could see she expected it. If Ariane hadn’t been the worst sort of witch, he would have shouted a warning, but as it was, he couldn’t move a muscle.
“A pity you didn’t listen,” Endera said, and then she snapped her fingers.
Too late, Ariane saw the trap Endera had set. While Ariane was focused on Endera, the Shun Kara had moved in, surrounding her. At Endera’s signal, they leaped in unison, taking the witch down in a pile of fur and snarling growls.
Ariane let out a terrifying screech of pain—she was barely visible under the wolves’ gnashing teeth—and then there was a small puff of smoke, and the animals stopped their fighting, confused as they snapped at air.
Ariane had vanished.
“Get up,” Endera ordered Leo.
Leo stood woozily. The effects of Ariane’s spell were beginning to wear off, but he had no strength to run.
“If you want to live, do as I say.” He could hear the keening cries of other witches approaching. Endera waved her hand at the wolves, muttering “Sinfara niemen.” The wolves backed away and disappeared up the rocky side of the ravine toward the sound of the witches. Their howls echoed in the afternoon, followed by sharp shrieks of pain.
Endera pulled a long silver chain from her neck and looped it around Leo’s wrist and then her own.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Why are you helping me?”
The look that crossed her face would have frozen a lava flow. “I’m not helping you. I’m helping myself. Hold your breath,” she added as she snapped her fingers. A cloud of black smoke engulfed them. Leo caught the whiff of rotting eggs, and then they were gone.
It happened in a blink. It felt cold and devoid of light, as if they were hurtling through space. Then they hit the ground. Hard. Endera landed on her feet easily, but Leo tumbled. The chain binding them snapped. He gasped for air as if he hadn’t breathed for an hour.
“What . . . what just . . . happened?” he stammered, slowly sitting up. His elbows were bleeding, scraped from the porous black rock they stood on. A large, familiar shape rose behind them, and a trickling sense of dread took seed. “We’re on Pantros,” he said. So that was it. He was headed into the underworld.
“What do you think the Draupnir does?” Endera said, grabbing his elbow and yanking him to his feet.
“Brings someone back from the underworld.”
If she was surprised by his knowledge, she didn’t say anything. She passed her hand over the chain wrapped around Leo’s wrist. It glowed red, singeing his skin before
it snapped to connect with hers, reforming the link. She started walking, jerking him along.
“Stop.”
Leo dug his feet in and jerked back on the chain, forcing her to turn around. He ignored the flash of rage that turned her eyes to daggers.
“I’m not taking another step until you tell me what you’re doing.”
The nail on her index finger extended into a sharp point. She tilted his chin up. “I could kill you this second and leave your body for the vultures to pick over.”
“Then do it,” Leo breathed. “Get it over with already.”
When Endera didn’t immediately act, hope spurred his voice. “You need me alive for some reason. You could take the cuff off my arm, but you haven’t, so just tell me what you want, and maybe we can help each other. You tried to kill one of the Volgrim witches you worked so hard to bring back. Why?”
She glared at him, eyes glimmering with a rage that threatened to snap at any second.
“I am the leader of our coven!” she snarled. “I didn’t bring back those hags so Catriona could take it from me.” She drove the nail of her finger deeper into his throat.
Leo held himself still. She was a hair’s breadth away from cutting his throat. Something had changed her from the Endera Tarkana they had faced before. That witch had been unflappable.
“That doesn’t explain why you want the cuff.”
A flicker of pain made the heartless witch look suddenly vulnerable. “Your friend, Sam, tried to kill Agathea with the Gungnir spear, but Agathea sacrificed my daughter Perrin to save her own life. The Draupnir can get her out.”
Leo hid his shock. Endera hardly struck him as the motherly type. “And what do I get in return for helping you?”
A slow smile spread over Endera’s face, one of cunning and pure malice. “My promise that when I get back to Skara Brae, I will do to Catriona what I did to Ariane.”
“Your Shun Kara let Ariane get away.”
Endera laughed. “No. They infected her with a special poison I coated their teeth with. It will cause her unimaginable pain, and then she will die.” She retracted her nail and gave Leo a shove. After that, they hiked in silence.
For the first time since they had arrived in Orkney, fear slithered into Leo’s belly, chilling him, even though the baking sun made every step like walking in a furnace. Endera was unhinged and unpredictable. An Umatilla warrior did not let fear control him, but hiking up the steamy side of the volcano, Leo could sense his own doom with every fateful step.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The cuff on Leo’s arm glinted in the sun, the metal warm against his skin. Part of him wanted to rip it off and toss it into a deep crevasse, but that would be the coward’s way out. And whatever he was, Leo was no coward. Still, it bothered him that Endera hadn’t just taken it from him. Why not claim the prize for herself? Unless she needed him along for some reason. A bad one, he had no doubt. He worried about Jey, knowing in his heart that the boy’s survival was as unlikely as his own.
Endera never spoke, never broke her stride, just moved silently and swiftly up the side of the volcano, dragging Leo along. Too soon, the looming opening of the Nifelheim yawned ahead. Leo followed Endera into the dark breach, bracing himself for what was coming. The witch snapped her fingers, and a torch sprang to life. Leo tugged the light from its mount and carried it high, casting a comforting glow on their path.
As they descended, Leo heard the rustling of wings. He cast a quick glance upward, knowing what he would find.
Shreeks.
Hundreds of the oversized bats hung upside down from the ceiling, their leathery wings folded back around their bodies. These were different than the shreeks they encountered flying through the woods. These pitiful creatures had once been human, according to Mavery, but the underworld matron, Sinmara, possessed the deed to their souls, trapping them in this place. Red eyes glowed down at Leo. He looked away, casting his gaze downward, but he could feel their stares.
They entered the main chamber where Sinmara held court. Leo saw her immediately, a bloated figure on a throne of onyx. The walls had been carved from the same black stone. A large pool of molten lava bubbled around her, sending up fumes of toxic gas. Columns of hardened lava rose up like fingers sticking out of the ground.
Sinmara was just as enormous as Leo remembered, with gray flabby skin that reminded him of a whale. The ugly grape-sized mole Mavery had torn off was back in place on her nose, pulsing with whatever slimy creature lived inside it. Oily hair was piled up on top of her head, giving it the shape of a beehive. On her lap, her pet, a black puma, purred as she rubbed its ears with her one good hand. A basket of snails, her favorite snack, rested on top of the puma, crawling with the slimy creatures. Her right arm ended in a withered stump, a lasting memory of their last visit when Rego had lopped it off.
“Endera Tarkana,” she crowed, obviously delighted to see an old friend. But when she caught sight of Leo, her face flushed purple. “You!” she spit out. “How dare you return here?” A surge of lava sprayed out of the pool at her feet and came toward Leo.
He ducked, but Endera blocked it with a pass of her hand.
“Sinmara, enough. The boy is my guest.”
Sinmara’s bloated chest rose and fell as she gripped the side of her throne. “This boy made me lose my precious hand.” She waved her stump at them. “Let’s see how he likes having his limbs removed one by one.”
Endera snapped her fingers at the underworld hag. “Ignore the boy, Sinmara. Focus. We have much to discuss and negotiate.”
Sinmara continued to glare at Leo, but then a harsh laugh rippled through her ample chest. A smile lit up her face as she popped a snail into her mouth and crunched the hard shell. A spray of goo spattered Endera’s bodice.
“Let me guess. You’re here to bargain for your daughter. What was her name again? Pippin? Porter?”
“Perrin, you hideous wretch,” Endera hissed, her face tightening into a grim mask of rage as she wiped away the gray goo.
“That’s right, Perrin,” Sinmara smirked. “There’s a price to be paid to enter into my nest of souls.”
“I have my own invite. I bring the Draupnir,” Endera pronounced smugly.
There was a long moment of silence. Sinmara’s mole pulsed wildly as she fought to keep her calm. “The Draupnir is guarded by a vicious beast—” Her eyes went to Leo and widened with sudden excitement as he turned his shoulder and showed her the golden cuff on his arm.
Lava rose in a dancing circle around him, lifted, it seemed, by the power of the cuff. As the heat rose, light reflected off the golden band.
Sinmara surged up, spilling the basket of snails and sending the puma flying. The creature yowled in protest and then stalked off. Sinmara was still bound by her thick chains, but she strained to the end of them.
“Ooh, isn’t it a lovely thing?” Sinmara cooed. “I haven’t seen it in centuries.” She stretched her fat fingers out to him.
Endera slapped her hand away. “Hands off. I possess the cuff. That’s all I need to enter the underworld.”
Sinmara sniffed and returned to her throne, settling her girth onto the dais. The puma slunk back to climb onto her ample lap. “The black dwarfs crafted the cuff so Odin could go into the underworld and rescue his precious son Baldur and send him home,” she sniped. “But not even Odin was immune to the rules. What goes in, comes out. Two of you go in, two of you go out.”
Endera didn’t look surprised. “I know,” she said as calmly as if she was announcing the day’s weather. “The boy will stay.”
By the boy, she meant Leo. And by stay, she meant remain in the underworld. Which would pretty much mean Leo was dead.
The Sacrifice.
But not a willing one. He backed away from Endera the length of his chain. “I thought we had a deal. If I helped you, in exchange, when we got back to Skara Brae, you would take care of Catriona.”
Endera gave a tiny shrug. “And I will. I didn’t say you would be
joining me.”
At her words, Sinmara laughed, her throat jiggling with fat. “Then I will have my revenge,” she gloated, stroking her puma with her good hand. The mole on her face had moved to her neck. It pulsated as she kept laughing.
“Sinmara, there’s the matter of the door,” Endera drawled.
The grotesque goddess wiped the tears from her eyes. “Of course. There are a few rules to go over. You can bring the child back as long as she’s not too far gone. But first you have to find her.”
“I’ll find her,” Endera said.
“Then proceed, the way is yours.” She waved a hand carelessly. Behind Sinmara, a flaming hole appeared in the wall.
Endera walked toward the flames, dragging Leo along. He dug his feet in, but it was like trying to stop a freight train. All he got for his efforts were skinned knees and bruised shins from bouncing over the rough terrain. Endera relentlessly hauled him forward through the flaming entrance. His last hopes of escape died as the wall sealed shut behind them, trapping them inside.
Leo lay facedown on the cold, muddy floor, trying to slow his heart down. Was this it? Was his fate sealed like the solid wall that blocked his way out?
Jey’s arrogant hawk-nosed face floated into his mind, bragging he was going to steal Keely away from him.
Jey would never give up like this. Jey would get to his feet and find a way out. Leo pushed himself up.
Endera ran her hand over the chain binding Leo, dissolving it. No reason to tie him to her when there was no place to go. He rubbed his wrists. It had been hot in Sinmara’s chambers, but in here it was cold and still, utterly silent.
“Move,” Endera ordered, and she began striding away. Leo hesitated, turning his head in the other direction to see if there was an escape, but there was only darkness, and an eerie sense that eyes were watching him. He had no choice but to follow Endera.
Murky light made it possible to see their surroundings. The walls were made of a foul sludge that squirmed with subtle movements. Leo made out misshapen faces, mouths opened wide in agony as they passed. Grotesque hands covered in withered gray flesh reached out from the walls, grasping at Leo’s arm.