He took off his bracelets and torc and placed them on the nightstand next to my bed. “Can’t bring it with me. You’ll have to hold onto it for a while. But I’ll be back before you know it.”
I stroked a finger over Mjölnir’s warm surface. “Promise me?”
“Promise you what?”
“Promise you’ll come back.”
“I’ll swear to come back if you make a promise to me in return.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t try to come after me. Don’t interfere with this fight. It’s not just the sword at stake. It’s for your own safety, too. Promise you’ll stay away.”
Could he see me roll my eyes in the dark? “Even if I wanted to, how could I? It’s not like I can just blip through space like you and Baldur.”
“If you want something badly enough, Sunshine, you’ll find a way.”
True, that. I had never been an outright liar, but I could be… evasive when necessary. “If you know me as well as you say you do, then you know that isn’t a promise I want to make or keep.”
“Sunshine,” Thorin said, his voice low and foreboding.
“I promise to stay out of your way.” Whether Thorin could see it or not, I put three fingers to my brow in a Boy Scout salute. “I promise that, when you leave, I won’t go with you.”
But nobody said anything about going later. Any attempt to subvert Thorin’s orders depended on the vulnerability of Baldur’s sympathy. Manipulative? Yes. Did I care if it meant ensuring Rolf’s defeat and securing our possession of the sword? Not so much.
“There’s a lot of wiggle room in that promise,” Thorin said.
“Take it or leave it. It’s the only one I’m going to give.”
Thorin groaned. “I ought to tie you up and put you back in that ice cave.”
“You could. But you won’t because if you did something like that, then there is one promise I would make you, and I would keep it.”
“What’s that?”
“When I got free, and I would get free, you wouldn’t find me again, and we’d spend the rest of my days playing the most epic game of hide-and-seek that ever existed.”
Thorin huffed. “You’ve threatened me with that before.”
“It isn’t a threat.” I jimmied my covers higher, snuggling them around my neck. Then I rolled over, giving Thorin my back—a dismissal, if he translated my body language correctly. “Like I said, it’s a promise.”
Chapter Thirty-three
I woke again in darkness, and the numbers glowing on the alarm clock beside my bed displayed the time: a few minutes after four o’ clock. Guess I’ll have time to sleep when I’m dead… if I’m lucky. The house creaked. Something thumped and rattled. I slid out of bed and opened my door. A light shone from across the living room. I followed the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and found Baldur leaning against a kitchen counter, mindlessly swirling a spoon around his mug.
“Where is he?” I asked and crossed my arms over my chest. Cool morning air seeped through my thin cotton T-shirt, and I shivered. Without taking my eyes from Baldur, I backed into the living room, snatched the afghan draped across the sofa, and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Already gone. He left about half an hour ago.”
“And we’re just going to sit here, twiddle our thumbs, and wait for him to come back?”
Baldur set his mug on the counter. Shadows haunted his eyes, and deep lines scored his forehead and formed parentheses around his mouth. “What else are we supposed to do?”
“Go after him.”
“That would violate Rolf’s terms.”
“Since when do we let Rolf dictate what we do?”
“He’ll give the sword to Helen if we don’t.”
“And if we don’t go, and if Rolf does something tricky—and you know he’s going to do something tricky—then who’s to blame when Thorin suffers the consequence?”
Baldur set down his coffee and stood up straighter. “And what if something happens to you? I’ll be the one who has to live with the God of Thunder’s wrath. Do you know what that’s like?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said wryly. “I’ve had some experience.”
“For an eternity?”
Okay, got me there. I gave him a crooked smile and shrugged.
Baldur smiled in return. “I don’t know why he calls you Sunshine. Your nickname should be Bulldog.”
“I’d take it as a compliment.”
Baldur snorted, and it turned into a chuckle. “You would. Okay, Solina. If you’ve got an idea, I’ll hear it. Thorin going to Rolf alone and unarmed doesn’t sit well with me either, if you want to know the truth.”
I nodded. “I do have an idea. It’s not much, but something is better than nothing, I guess.”
Baldur made a beckoning gesture, urging me to get to the point.
“You remember what you told me when we were trying to escape from Helen’s warehouse? You said you could create a rune that would make me totally invisible if you had your full strength and time to prepare. Well, you still don’t have much time to prepare, but I figure you have more than you did back then.”
Baldur cocked his head like a curious dog, and some of the worry lines faded around his eyes and mouth. He glanced at the window and the sky beyond it, as if judging the nearness of sunrise. “I have the time.”
“You have enough strength?”
“Guess we’re about to find out.”
“Is it that easy?” I asked. “I wish for invisibility, and you snap your fingers and make it happen?”
“Easy? Have any of your abilities come easily for you, without cost?”
“Of course not.”
Baldur nodded. “It drains your physical energy, and it’s finite, right? Your powers aren’t unlimited.”
“Right. It also means I’ve spent a lot of time running around naked.”
Baldur chuckled. “It’s going to cost you a normal life, too. Even if this all ends, things will never be the way they were.”
“It also cost me a brother. If I hadn’t lost Mani, I have a feeling I would still be as mundane as ever.”
Baldur set down his coffee mug and folded his arms over his chest. He tilted his head and looked at me through his lashes. “Do you know how Odin got the runes in the first place?”
I nodded. I had read the story in my research, although the details were cloudy. “He hanged himself from the world tree and stared into the well at its base until the runes accepted his sacrifice and revealed their shape and power.”
Baldur huffed and rolled his eyes. “Out of the mouths of babes…”
“I summarized,” I said. “I know it was more complicated than that.”
Baldur shrugged. “Not really, Solina. What you said was the important part. The sacrifice. The suffering. That is the cost of runes. I have paid the price, dearly. Over and over.”
“But the Valkyries use the runes, too,” I said. “They inscribe them on their swords. Thorin has them on his bracelets.”
“Odin gifted those runes to the Valkyries, as was his right. But creating runes that can change a person’s essence or give them powers they never had before or defy the forces of the natural world…” Baldur looked away and waved a hand as if dispersing the rest of his thought, but I picked up his meaning.
“Only you, right? Because you’ve paid the cost, in your faultless death, in your time with Helen, in the way you lose Nanna over and over again. That’s the price of being Allfather and of having the abilities you have?”
Baldur swallowed and bobbed his head.
“Does it hurt you when you do something like this? When you make a rune that can defy the natural world?”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Only a little, Solina. I b
arely notice it anymore.”
After a disturbing and gut-wrenching flight through the æther, Baldur and I crouched at the edge of a random field, in an indiscriminate rural area near Portland. For the first few minutes after my feet touched solid ground, my vision spun and my ears rang. My stomach swirled and heaved, and my heart skittered around my chest like a demented demon. The last time I had traveled via Aesir Express, I was mostly insensible. After that recent and more conscious experience, I decided I preferred oblivion.
A chill breeze stirred the grass, churning up odors of hay, old leaves, and soil. I tugged my parka’s hood over my hair and huddled into the warmth of its fleece lining. Several hundred feet away, in the gloaming light and early-morning fog, stood Magni Aleksander Thorin, Son of Thor and God of Thunder. He had spread his feet wide, his shoulders were squared, and he kept his hands fisted at his side.
A passing stranger might have commented on Thorin’s incongruous presence in the middle of an empty field, but he was otherwise unremarkable—as unremarkable as a six-foot-five man wearing his long hair in braids could be. His faded jeans fit him loosely, allowing room to maneuver, and he wore a dark wool sweater. I easily pictured him in leather, armor, and furs, and that mental image sprouted goosebumps across my arms.
Baldur and I had watched Thorin for a while, and he hadn’t moved, hadn’t uttered a sound. He made no indication he knew we were there, which was the point. It meant Baldur’s rune was working as planned. As long as Baldur touched me, I could see him. The moment he let go, he faded into mist. Therefore, I planned to keep at least one hand on his shoulder at all times.
I brushed my fingers over the burn on my chest, the place marked by Baldur’s magic. What he had done and how he’d done it remained a mystery, but he’d said the rune-maker’s willpower and intent were crucial ingredients. Baldur’s magic occupied a hollow place inside me, and where my fire felt like an eternal, smoldering ember, the invisibility rune felt like nothing. The sensation wasn’t cold or numbness, just… a notable absence of feeling.
“What do you think he’s doing?” I whispered.
Baldur and I had discussed the possibility of creating a rune that would keep others from hearing us, but we realized we might need to communicate our presence to Thorin in a hurry, possibly to shout a sudden warning. In the end, we agreed a rune of silence might be more trouble than it was worth. Whispering was easy and a lot more flexible.
“Meditating,” Baldur said.
“What—” I started, but a shimmer of light and shadows played across the field, several yards beyond Thorin. Its strangeness startled me and sent all questions out of my head.
The shimmer coalesced into the form of a man. From that distance, the early-morning gloom hid the details of his face, but the dark hair and striking stature gave him away. Seeing Rolf Lockhart again brought back memories of our fight in San Diego. An image of Tre’s crumpled body flashed across my mind’s eye, and my imagination replaced Tre with Thorin. I shook my head, blinked, and pushed aside the image. Tre was no immortal, no God of Thunder, and as if to prove my point, a lightning bolt seared across a sky filling with gunmetal rainclouds. Thunder rumbled an ominous warning, and the already dim light faded, plunging us into darkness.
Rolf brought out the sword, and the light from its flames repelled the shadows falling over the two men, standing face-to-face in the middle of the field. If they said anything to each other, their words didn’t carry over the thunder and whipping winds. I stepped forward, but Baldur caught my arm and pulled me back.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get a better look.”
“It’s bad enough I brought you here, but I’m not going to let you get any closer. Not so you or I can get struck down by some inadvertent lightning bolt. If Thorin needs our help, we’ll reassess. Until then, let’s stay out of his way.”
I shot Baldur a dirty look but did what he said. Whether I liked it or not, he had a point. Thunder and lightning were weapons requiring a wide battlefield.
“Why do you think Rolf brought Thorin to this place that gives him such an advantage with his powers?” I asked. “Tell him he can’t bring Mjölnir, but let him have an open area where he can easily access his thunder and lightning. If I was going to fight Thorin, I’d meet him in an underground bunker. No windows, no place for the lightning to get in.”
As if to support my argument, a spear of electricity stabbed down from the atmosphere, crackling and popping and raising the hairs on my arms and neck.
“There are many things about this situation that make no sense,” Baldur said. “We can only wait and see.”
Maybe the two adversaries had said nothing up to that point because when Thorin finally spoke, his words rose above the storm’s uproar. “That was a warning,” he said. “The next one won’t be. Hand over the sword, Rolf… or whoever you are.”
Rolf smiled, baring his teeth in a distinctly wolfish way. Skoll and Hati were accounted for, and nothing in history or in all our encounters indicated either had a score to settle with Thorin, but countless other wolves peppered the ancient legends. Perhaps the forces that reincarnated some of the Norse pantheon had decided to reincarnate them all.
Rolf rolled his wrist, and Surtalogi spun in a pinwheel of flames, throwing sparks and fire like an erupting volcano. Thorin stepped back and made a gesture, and lightning exploded overhead in a complex web of veins, as if the sky had turned into a massive, pulsing heart, pumping electricity through the atmosphere.
You should run now, Rolf. Run now, if you can.
“There is no justice in letting you die in ignorance,” Rolf said, raising his voice above the storm. “But it won’t come easily for you. If you want to know who I am, you’ll have to fight for it.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Another motion from Thorin’s hand brought the lightning down, a missile aimed at his enemy. Rolf swung, flames spewed, lightning struck, and an explosion of energy and sound rocked the space around us. It rattled my bones and battered the air from my lungs. I staggered and gasped. Baldur grabbed me and held me up.
Rolf attacked, drawing the sword up from his hip in an undercut. Surtalogi’s fire reached for Thorin, but a gust of wind and a pillar of rain deflected the flames. Surtalogi guttered, its light flickering, but Rolf flashed away from Thorin and whipped the sword into a blazing frenzy again. Another swipe of flames, another streak of lightning, and the two supernatural beings fell into an incomprehensible battle that mimicked the style of Thorin and Baldur’s earlier practice fight.
“I can’t keep up,” I said to Baldur. Wind tugged at my hood, and wayward rain gusts rattled against me like BB-gun pellets. “Who’s winning?”
Baldur’s gaze followed Thorin’s and Rolf’s movements, his eyes flickering as if experiencing a waking REM cycle. “Magni has the advantage in attack, but Rolf is quick in his defense. But he’s tiring. If Magni maintains his strength, Rolf’s defeat will be swift.”
“Could you maybe pop in there and grab the sword?” I asked.
Baldur huffed. “One doesn’t simply ‘grab’ a sword made of fire, Solina. Rolf isn’t going to let go of it easily either. Trust Thorin. Let him do his job.”
Another concussion of light and sound underscored Baldur’s conclusion. Thorin and Rolf stopped several yards before us, both heaving for breath, both wearing matching expressions of viciousness and obstinacy. Thorin stood, shoulders thrown back, fists raised. With his head tilted back, he peered down at Rolf, who stooped on one knee before him, empty-handed. The sword lay several feet away, cold, inert, and as ordinary as an artifact in a history museum.
“Will you tell me now?” Thorin asked. “Have I not earned the right to know your name? Your real name?”
A cold smile formed on Rolf’s lips. “Maybe I’ll tell you when I see the light fading from you
r dying eyes, Magni, Son of Thor.”
Thorin bared his teeth and growled. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Rolf threw back his head and roared something in their ancient Aesir language. The ground shook, and the earth roiled, heaving and splitting open in a scene from a horror movie. Instead of spitting out half-rotted, undead corpses, the ground spewed forth an army of darkness, a battalion of horrors I had hoped to never see again. Helen Locke’s stone men rose to their feet, faster and more fluid than anything formed from mud and rock should have managed. They circled around us, twenty or thirty golems, all wearing their stolid, emotionless expressions and waiting for Rolf’s command.
Guess that explains the need for the open field.
Baldur huffed a harsh breath beside me. He hadn’t let go of me throughout the battle, and his hands tightened around my arm, either stopping me from moving forward to join Thorin’s side or stopping himself.
“You said you wanted a fair fight,” Thorin said.
Rolf snorted. “As if a fight against the Allfather’s warlord could be fair in any situation. Even without your hammer, we both know you are the superior warrior. I am only trying to level the battlefield.”
“I told you he was going to be tricky,” I hissed in Baldur’s ear. I yanked my arm, urging him to let me loose. “We can’t stand here and watch. Thorin’s going to need help.”
Baldur glared at me, and blue flames burned in his eyes. I’d seen that same look in Val’s eyes before, and the resemblance between the two half-brothers was uncanny.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “Too soon.”
I gritted my teeth. He’s right. We’ve still got the element of surprise on our side. Use it when it’s going to make the biggest impact.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve battled Hela’s legions,” Thorin said.
Rolf laughed. “You haven’t encountered her new and improved version, though. Twice the speed, twice the strength. Twice the fun.”
Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2) Page 32