Fragments of your Soul (The Mirror Worlds Book 1)

  So she would really be a prisoner, thought Arvid. Perhaps a prisoner in a palace, but nonetheless deprived of her freedom. She wouldn’t be able to help Loke or return to her world.

  “As I said, I’m not here to pass judgment,” Forseti continued. “We would very much have liked to welcome you as a guest in the Council of Asgard to find a solution, but your husband,” he looked at Loke gloomily, “obviously distrusts Odin so much that he insists on coming alone. Maybe you will be able to bring him to terms.”

  “I don’t need to bring him to terms,” Arvid said coolly. “His distrust seems justified. Do you really think Odin would let me go again once I’m in Asgard?”

  Forseti looked at her thoughtfully for a while, then he smiled. “I see, Loke has you fully in his grip. Very well then.” He cumbersomely rose from his seat. “I think for now everything has been said.”

  They accompanied Forseti to the gates of the fortress. To Arvid’s amazement they met two other gods who were waiting there, along with a dozen of Sölunnir’s guards. They were Forseti’s companions, but Byleist had ordered the guards to only let Forseti in, as Loke told her. One of the two gods was so extraordinary in appearance that Arvid had to pull herself together, not to constantly stare at him.

  He towered two heads above the others, but was not nearly as tall as the giants. Apart from that he resembled them in a surprising way. His skin was grayish, he had the same wiry physique, and his eyes were dark gray, with a black iris, which together with the pupils merged to round, dark pools. Obviously he wasn’t cold-resistant like the giants though, because he was wrapped in warm furs. In addition, his hair was cut short.

  Arvid stayed in the background, while the visitors and Loke briefly talked and then said goodbye. Forseti’s companions kept throwing Arvid curious glances, but otherwise left her alone. It was the first time that Arvid could feel that Loke actually belonged to Asgard. What he had told her some time ago seemed to be true. They knew each other, even if there was no unconditional trust. Despite the conflicts no one seemed to question that Loke was one of them. This situation probably would have been different had the gods known how deep Loke’s hatred of and anger at Odin went, and what the real reason was that he protected Arvid.

  “Originally I wanted to return to Asgard together with Forseti,” Loke told her after they were back inside the fortress. He had once again taken the form of a giant, and automatically taken the way back to their quarters. “But he was not the only messenger who arrived today. My father wrote that he will return in ten to fourteen days. I will stay here until then. Forseti agreed to postpone the meeting of the Council. This also gives Odin opportunity to rethink everything thoroughly.”

  “And then?” said Arvid. “How long will you stay in Asgard?”

  “I don’t know yet. One or two weeks. Maybe longer—that all depends on the outcome of the Council meeting, and what else is happening in the country. Festivals are on. It is expected that I show myself in Black Castle in eight weeks.” He grinned. “You know how terribly dutiful I am.”

  “Is that so? I never noticed.”

  “I was while you were there anyway. After all, I had to keep an eye on you.”

  “So I didn’t escape you.”

  “So that you didn’t do anything stupid,” Loke corrected her. “It was stressful enough to straighten out everything after Horalf…”

  “No!” Arvid interrupted him sharply. “Don’t even mention that again; I don’t want to hear it.”

  “After Horalf and his son were poisoned and killed by you,” Loke continued unfazed. “You don’t make it undone by pretending it never happened.”

  “Stop!” demanded Arvid. She had wanted to say it with great certainty, but it sounded more like a plea. She had not wanted to kill those farmers. The feeling of guilt inside her almost tore her apart. Why did Loke have to mention it again and again? He almost seemed to take pleasure in reminding Arvid that she had two people on her conscience. She wanted to forget it, forever erase it from her memory, so that she finally could be happy and carefree again.

  “Oh, come on, Arvid,” Loke sighed. “What did they have to offer this world? Two miserable lives… Oh, no, wait. Meanwhile it’s probably four.”

  Arvid looked at him in shock. “Four?” she asked anxiously. “What do you mean by that?” She didn’t even want to know, but the question came from her lips all by itself.

  “Well, the maid and the farmhand you expelled from the court on this occasion—in some way their deaths were also caused by you, right?”

  Arvid stopped, thunderstruck. At once not only the memories of Gyda and Hagen, but also those of the notice board in Erendal returned. Her heart suddenly began to beat so fast that she was overcome by dizziness.

  “They are dead?” she gasped in horror, but in a way she already knew. They had been wanted for murder, because of something that she, Arvid, had done. Gyda and Hagen had had to pay the price for Arvid’s misdeed. Probably they had been executed, wrongly, as if to mock the terrible life they already had to endure.

  “Forseti brought me all the news from Asgard,” Loke said. He now stopped, too, and turned to face her. His voice suddenly seemed to come from afar, and Arvid had the feeling of not being able to breathe properly. “They were found in a cave, where they apparently had tried to hide, but froze to death. The notice said they looked peaceful, if that makes you feel better…”

  He spoke on, but Arvid couldn’t really understand his words. His voice sounded hollow and distorted, as if she was lying at the bottom of a water basin. Arvid fought for breath.

  The next thing she remembered was Loke’s face in front of her. Arvid realized that she was sitting on the ground, leaning against the corridor wall. She was still dizzy, her heart almost bursting. From the corner of her eye she saw a brown-clad figure hurriedly approaching.

  She felt Loke putting her hands around a cold cup, but her fingers were weak and powerless, and so she just shook her head.

  “Drink something,” Loke told her. He took the cup again and lifted it to her lips.

  “Should I call a healer, my lord?” she heard the clear voice of the servant.

  “No, she’s fine,” Loke said. “She just needs some rest.” He gave the cup back to the servant, then he wrapped an arm around Arvid and picked her up. Arvid put her arms around Loke’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder. She felt his big hand gently stroking her hair, and as if this was a trigger, she suddenly began to cry loudly and uncontrollably. She felt gripped by such overwhelming despair that nothing seemed to be of importance anymore.

  Gyda and Hagen were dead and she was to blame. She had kept telling herself that Horalf and Egil had deserved death because of their crimes, but the young maid and her brother had been innocent. They had been victims, tortured, broken beings. After all they had to go through, they should have earned a little luck. Arvid had wanted to help them. She had thought they would be able to start over again if only she helped them to escape from their tormentors. But all her alleged help had brought them was death.

  Loke carried her to their quarters and put her down on the bed, wrapped her in a warm blanket and disappeared. Shortly after, he came back and sat down at some distance beside her. Arvid buried her face in the furs and wished that the soft hairs would smother the burning pain in her heart. She still felt numb. But although there didn’t seem to be anything but a big, dark hole inside her, her tears eventually ran dry.

  Hours must have passed, but when Arvid finally turned her head and looked up, Loke was still there. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed and embroidered. Arvid had a headache and felt so weak that she was just lying there and watched him.

  It didn’t look as if he would notice. His body seemed to be in a constant state of flux. Some features changed so slowly that it only became apparent after a while, others changed rapidly, su
ch as the color and the look of his eyes. Not always were they human. His body was so, then all different again. Sometimes Loke was clearly female, then male, but most of the time he didn’t seem to have a defined gender, regardless of whether he was human, giant, dwarf or something in between. At times he had hair, then he was almost bald again. The only thing his shapes seemed to have in common was the fact that they were humanoid.

  “Loke,” Arvid whispered at some point.

  He looked up and in an instant took the appearance he used to have in the human world. Probably it was an instinct.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  “No,” she sobbed.

  “You will eventually,” Loke said, turning back to his embroidery. “Maybe I was a little hasty with what I said. It’s not your fault that the two humans froze to death. Were they not all right when you left them?”

  Arvid nodded.

  “So you had no way of knowing what they’d be doing from then on. They were ordinary people. It’s not your fault they were too weak. The weak die, the strong remain, that’s the course of life.”

  “They wanted to reach a village,” Arvid said, “but they couldn’t. They were wanted, even though they were innocent. Nobody would have believed them.”

  “Probably not. Still, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know this would happen when you left.”

  “No, but… you’re still right… It was me that caused their deaths… in a way,” Arvid whispered. “Whether I knew it or not… it was my actions that eventually led to their deaths.”

  “Maybe,” Loke said. He lowered the fabric and looked at her. “And yet you’re here, and they are not. Tears and repentance won’t change that. Time only flows in one direction. Even you and I can’t swim upstream, as much as we sometimes might wish we could.”

  Arvid looked at him and felt new tears running down her cheeks, where they were absorbed by the soft fur underneath her. “How can I simply move on, Loke?” she asked in a trembling voice. “All the guilt that weighs on me… it is… unbearable.”

  Loke sighed. “It only weighs on you as long as you are willing to carry it,” he said. “Someday you’ll understand that you just have to leave it behind.”

  Arvid shook her head. “I don’t know how,” she breathed. “I… just don’t know how.”

  Loke put the fabric aside and sank on the skins before Arvid. He withdrew the blanket from her, which she had been clutching frantically, then he took her hand into his. “That’s not so easy at first,” he said, “but over time you will see that it’s not so difficult. You have to remember that the world is full of people. They were only two. They had nothing that two others didn’t have, too.”

  His words only made things worse, but Arvid felt unable to respond. Loke moved a little closer and kissed away the tears on Arvid’s cheeks, then he looked at her again. Shortly after, he leaned forward again and kissed her lips. Despite the agony in Arvid’s heart she automatically closed her eyes and felt a warm tingle spread through her, which only disappeared when Loke pulled away again.

  She took a deep breath. He was so beautiful. How tempting was the idea of simply nestling against him and trying to forget everything. Arvid wanted to. She wanted it so much. Yet Loke’s care couldn’t just wipe out the pain and guilt in her. He had caused her this pain, and he had done it deliberately.

  Why was he here? He didn’t care about her otherwise. Otherwise he was never there, gone for days, barely looking at her. He never gave her a smile, he never said anything nice to her, never asked her what she had done or how she was feeling here in Sölunnir. Why did he kiss her if he felt no affection for her?

  Perhaps Forseti was right and Loke was incapable of love. The kiss was just an attempt to repair the damage he had caused. He needed her for his plan. He needed her unharmed.

  “What am I to you, Loke?” Arvid asked. She was terribly scared of the answer, but inside she was already numb with grief anyway.

  Loke was silent for a moment, then he frowned. “You seem to expect a certain response.”

  “I can only tell you how I feel,” she said flatly. “Like a toy. Like the toy of a cat, and this cat is you. You enjoy playing with me. But your games are cruel. You take pleasure in hurting me, but… someday… one of these games will kill me… no matter how hard you try to keep me from breaking.”

  Again Loke remained silent. As Arvid looked at him she suddenly knew what she had to do. The thought was even worse than the pain she felt over Gyda and Hagen’s death, but she knew there was no other way, if she didn’t want to go under.

  Byleist had been right. Loke was a hurricane, and his power so impressive, his vision so fascinating that Arvid was completely under his spell. But for too long she had just been standing there. She had come so close to him that he almost devoured her. It was about time she began to run.

  It took all her willpower to withdraw her hand from Loke. She pulled off the covers and got up, then she took a few steps into the room and stopped again.

  “I want you to leave me alone, Loke,” she said in a trembling voice. “I want you… to stay away. Don’t try to touch me… or… kiss me. Never again. Never again, Loke, I… I don’t want… to talk to you… if it’s not necessary. I don’t want to see you. You are cruel. You’re constantly hurting me. You torture me… I just don’t want this pain anymore.”

  Silence fell. Arvid just stood there and stared at the shelf in front of her that blurred behind a veil of tears. After a while she could hear how Loke rose and shortly afterwards stepped beside her.

  “Does our trade still count?” he asked. His voice had changed, and Arvid noticed that he had taken the form of a giant again.

  “Yes,” she said. She just wanted to go home. It was the only thing that ever should have mattered.

  Loke said nothing. He simply turned around and left.

  The Month of Never-ending Festivals

  Several days went by, in which Arvid didn’t get to see Loke. He was not in their quarters, nor did she see him in other places in the fortress. There appeared no open books or unfinished sewings or embroideries in the rock niches anymore. When messengers with answers from the dwarven realm arrived, it was Byleist or Katta who informed Arvid about it. They couldn’t tell her where Loke had gone either. He had not told anyone where he was going and when he would return. Not even the guards at the gate had seen him leave.

  Even though Arvid was still haunted by Gyda and Hagen’s death, she felt a little better. For so many months her joy had been smothered in dashed hopes and pain. Her irrational love for Loke had made her blind and deaf to all the voices that had been trying to warn her. She was here because Loke could bring her home. He was considerate of her, because she could help him reclaim Isvirndjellen’s lost lands, but she meant nothing to him.

  Arvid again started to spend a lot of time reading books and regularly visiting the gardens, where she sometimes met dwarves, who were guests in the fortress. Quite often she was asked about her plans regarding the position of the human servants, and Arvid played along so self-confidently, as if these changes were her intention from the very beginning.

  It was good to feel needed.

  She spoke with Byleist, who promised her to take up this issue as soon as king Farbaute had returned from Borkh and had dealt with the missed urgencies. Her time here in Sölunnir, even in this world, was very limited. Maybe she had less than a year, but she was determined to use this time to do something good—even if it only was on a small scale.

  One morning Arvid sat in the gardens and read. Loke had been gone for eight days. Although Arvid tried not to think about him, she wondered yet again where he was. Had he left for Asgard without telling anyone? His brothers thought it unlikely. Helblindi just said that Loke often retired, sometimes for several weeks, and then suddenly reappeared and acted as if nothing h
ad happened.

  As Arvid just turned another page, she perceived a movement from the corner of her eye. She lifted her head and saw a giantess heading straight towards her. It was Naal.

  A queasy feeling spread through Arvid. Although Loke’s mother had treated her halfway decent in the past few days, especially when dwarves had been close, the atmosphere between them was still cool and tense.

  Her breath for a greeting she also saved today.

  “I don’t suppose my son has turned up yet?” she asked bluntly.

  Arvid put down her book. “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “Since the gods were here, I’ve not seen him anywhere.”

  Naal snorted and then did something unexpected. She sat down on the stone bench beside Arvid and held an envelope under her nose.

  “This letter has just arrived,” she said. “It’s for Loke, from his daughter Hel. The messenger said it’s urgent, but… well, Loke’s not here, right?”

  Arvid hesitated, then took the letter from Naal and indecisively turned the envelope in her hands. It was of brownish paper and bore no seal. On the front Loke’s name was written.

  “Why do you come to me?” she asked finally. “The letter is for Loke and… it’s none of my business.”

  “He’s trained you well,” Naal noted pointedly. “No one should ever know anything about his life, right?” With an impatient movement she tugged the envelope from Arvid’s fingers and simply put it into her lap. “The message really is of great importance. It would be foolish to wait for Loke.”

  Arvid understood Naal’s argument, but she had no desire to read Loke’s post. In fact, the sole emergence of this envelope woke feelings in her that she’d rather banish forever, and from which she had finally had some peace the past few days. She didn’t understand why Naal came to her anyway. Officially Arvid might be Loke’s wife, but after all, the old giantess had also ignored this fact so far.