“Doubtful,” Heimdall replied. “As near as we can tell, they didn’t escape Svalbard until only recently. It would take decades to pull off something like that.”
“By the tears of the Valkyries!” Freya pointed at a photo mounted next to the map. A snow-covered mountain loomed against a clear sky and was mirrored in the calm water below. “That’s Higravstinden.”
Thor frowned at the photo. “So?”
Freya smiled with coy impatience. “Have you forgotten so soon? Just before that last battle with the Frost Giants—at the base of that very mountain—Thrym himself stole into my tent. I suppose in a last, desperate attempt to win my heart.”
Thor rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course. Everybody wants you.”
Freya pinched his arm so hard that he winced and pulled away.
“He promised to build me a castle, on top of Higravstinden.” Freya shrugged. “Well, not so much on top of it as inside it.”
Heimdall rested his hands on his hips. “Inside the mountain?”
Freya smiled. “To protect me from the harsh winter, or so Thrym said. These islands may have a surprisingly temperate climate for this latitude, but the weather here can still change quickly. Especially on the mountain.”
Heimdall studied the photo. The accompanying text—translated to English, because he was hopeless at trying to make sense of modern Norwegian—indicated that at 1161 meters, Higravstinden was the tallest mountain on the Lofotens’ Austvågøy island, and that it sported a glacier on its eastern face. Mostly, though, it looked unremarkable.
Freya squeezed his arm. “They’re ransoming apples for wives, aren’t they? And new brides need a home.”
Heimdall felt suddenly dizzy. He reached out for something to grab onto, and Thor and Freya each grabbed one of his arms to steady him.
“You’ve got a concussion.” Freya held on even as he tried to push her away. “You need to take it easy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Heimdall barked back at her, but his own shouting trigged a new wave of pain in his head. Fighting nausea, he leaned forward and took a deep breath. He nodded at Freya. “Why didn’t you share this information before?”
Freya shrugged and let go of his arm. “Honestly, it didn’t occur to me until I saw that photo.”
Thor sassed her. “Yes, because you get so many proposals and declarations of ever-lasting adoring love that you simply can’t keep track of them all.”
Freya smirked. “Something like that.”
Heimdall wanted to laugh, but he was still feeling woozy. Freya guided him over to a bench and sat down next to him.
Thor’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket, and he stepped away before looking at the display. TXT MSG FROM BONNIE: Hey, sweetie! Did U get 2 Oslo? Hope everything’s OK. Call when U can.
Thor smiled.
“Oh, hey. What’s this?” Freyr peeked around Thor’s elbow to read the message. He beamed up at Thor. “Sweetie? Really?”
Thor shoved the phone back into his pocket and pulled Freyr aside. “You didn’t see that.”
“Oh, I think I did,” Freyr replied. “And . . . Wait a second. Bonnie? Einherjar Bonnie? Sally’s manager at Powells?”
Thor grabbed the nature god by the jacket collar. “If you say anything, I swear . . .”
Freyr laughed. “Yeah. Saga’s going to kill you.”
After giving her cousin a moment to recover himself, Freya turned to Heimdall. “When do the Frost Giants expect us to meet them in Trondheim?”
Heimdall pulled the ransom note out of his jacket pocket. “Two days.” He handed the paper to Freya. “Assuming we’re still standing by then.”
Freya read over the handwritten text, then turned to Heimdall with a flicker of a smile. “What do you say we pay them a visit ahead of schedule?”
“That works for me.” Heimdall motioned Thor and Freyr over. “We’ll send you and Freyr up the mountain to confirm the stronghold is there.”
Heimdall felt Freya’s protest before she even opened her mouth. He turned to her and wagged a finger in her face. “You’re not going anywhere near that place. Not Saga, either, and especially not Sally. If they’re after brides, do you really think we should be sending our women right to their front door?”
“Men’s work.” Thor smirked down at Freya. She rolled her eyes and looked away.
“Call Frigga. Let her know what we’ve found out.” Heimdall touched his brow and winced. His head felt even more tender, not less. “At least, tell her what we think we know.”
Heimdall glanced up at Freyr. “We’ll need a base of operations, someplace close to the mountain.”
“But not too close,” Thor added.
“I’m on it.” Freyr walked back toward the museum entrance and headed for the reception desk.
Saga’s cell phone rang, and she checked the digital display. “It’s Frigga.”
She turned her back on the group and held the phone to her ear.
Heimdall cleared his throat. “Right. Freyr and Thor head up the mountain tonight—”
“Why wait ’til tonight?” Thor rested his hands on his hips.
Heimdall frowned up at his cousin. “So it will be dark?”
Thor shook his head. “I think they hit you harder than you thought. It’s summer. We’re in white nights.”
“Okay.” Heimdall shrugged off his embarrassment. “So you go whenever you want.” He sighed, trying to ignore the pounding in his skull. “Then we’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with. In the meantime, we’ll have Frigga mobilize reinforcements—”
“I don’t think so,” Saga cut in. “Frigga’s not coming. She can’t.”
Heimdall looked up at his sister.
Saga stared at the phone in her hand, her face pale. “It’s Odin . . . He collapsed.”
9
Sally compared the view out the open window with the picture postcard she’d bought at the Lofotr Viking Museum in Borg. Across the Austnes Fjord, the mountain Higravstinden rose majestically out of the water, its frosty ridge glinting in the sunlight—just like the postcard photo.
She wanted to send it home to her parents, but had no idea what to tell them.
Dear Mom and Dad, she imagined herself scrawling across the back, I thought I’d spend my trip with Heimdall and his girlfriend, Maggie, taking in the sights and learning about Norwegian history, but Heimdall got ambushed by a gang of Frost Giants and they kidnapped Maggie. Frost Giants are big and mean. We visited Iduna’s Grove, but all the special apples were gone, so we took a ferry to some islands in the Norwegian Sea. We’re going to storm a castle that may or may not be inside a mountain. We did go to a museum, but just to look at a map, and then we left. I made some new runes out of some stuff I found on the ground in the mists, but they’re not working right. So, pretty normal stuff for my life. Love, Sally.
Yeah, that would go over just swell.
Sally glanced at her watch. 10:17. She didn’t know if that was a.m. or p.m., plus she couldn’t remember if she’d changed it to local time after the plane landed in Oslo. She unbuckled the watch and stuffed it into her backpack.
Freyr had found this place, a quiet guesthouse halfway between Vestpollen and Laupstad on an inlet of the Norwegian Sea. Elevated on stilts, the single-story structure jutted out over the water, with the back deck’s stairs leading down to a small dock. Almost every room in the house had an unobstructed view of Higravstinden, where the Frost Giants were supposed to be keeping Maggie, and probably Loki and Iduna as well.
There were no other houses in sight, though it was only a couple of kilometers to the next town. The water was clear and still, a perfect mirror of the mountains and sky. The light breeze drifting in through window was crisp and clean. Sally couldn’t believe she’d really made it to Norway. Being so close to this ancient mountain was everything Sally had imagined her summer vacation could be.
Aside from Frost Giants across the water, the possibility that she might be captured as a war bride, a
nd the frequent outbursts of argument and lament from the immortals in the living room, it was practically ideal.
Sally turned her attention to the runes on the bed. She’d laid a thick towel beneath them, after a third of the symbols had started sparking on her first spell attempt and nearly set the bedspread on fire.
Sally arranged the runes in order from Fehu to Dagaz. The flakes of russet shell were surprisingly uniform in shape and size, but as near as she could tell they were naturally formed and not manufactured. None of the others—not even the shaman Freya nor her nature-god brother—had been able to identify the material, but Sally figured anything that came from the mists so near Iduna’s Grove would have to be imbued with a magick of its own.
And that’s what seemed to be the trouble. Despite her initial success using the runes to lead them to the Lofoten Islands, whatever was in these russet shell flakes was a kind of force Sally didn’t understand and had no idea how to control.
After the fire scare, Sally had gone down to the dock and collected a cup of water from the fjord. Managarm had consecrated his bastardized Yggdrasil runes with his own blood, but there was no way the Moon Witch was going to do anything the way that traitor had. Instead, she dipped each of her new runes into the cup with a simple directive: “May the waters of your homeland bind you to my will.”
Still, she had a fire extinguisher by her feet and a pair of oven mitts on the bedside table. Just in case.
“I want you to behave now, all right?” Sally held her hands out over the runes. “I’m doing a spell looking for information about any weaknesses that our enemies might have—”
Pertho shifted slightly on an angle, of its own accord.
Sally frowned. Mystery, unpredictability, Sally ran through the symbol’s possible meanings. Karma, Saturn, the color black. The Norns.
“So are you telling me I should call up the Norse Fates and ask them—?”
Jera spun around in a circle and Mannaz skittered halfway across the towel.
“Okay,” Sally rubbed her chin with consternation. “So now that’s also reward—or rosemary—combined with spiritual consciousness . . .”
Before she could complete her thought, three more runes—Isa, Ingwaz, and Ansuz—leapt straight up in the air, while Algiz and Laguz flipped themselves over.
Sally leaned slightly away, not wanting to be struck in the face by flying symbols. “What is this? Popcorn runes?”
The next thing she knew, the entire collection was jitter-bugging across the bed. Berkana jumped about like a flea. Teiwaz played bumper-cars with the other symbols, knocking Othila and Hagalaz to the carpeted floor where they continued to dance around. Sally just barely caught Wunjo before it flew out the open window.
She threw the window closed and clutched Wunjo tight in her fingers, though she could feel the rough edges starting to dig into her skin. She dropped the rune into the hollow of her knitted cap, then quickly held it closed in her fist. She scooped up each rune in turn and thrust them all into the hat, though she had to reach under the bed several times to capture Raido, which kept jolting across the floor. She finally shoved the last rune into her makeshift bag and secured them with a hair ribbon wound tightly around the cap’s scrunched cuff.
Sally sat on the floor and took a moment to slow her breathing. What in the world?! She looked through the window again at Higravstinden, wondering if the proximity to the Frost Giants might be interfering with her work. But that didn’t make any sense. From collecting the flakes and inscribing them with the runic symbols to consecrating them with water from the fjord, Sally couldn’t think what she had possibly done wrong.
She shivered. This wasn’t exactly unfamiliar territory. Last October, after poring over mythological lore and astronomical calculations for months, she’d been sure she had her spells worked out with absolute precision, and she’d still managed to nearly destroy the world.
The runes continued to dance and buck in the bag on her lap.
Thor crept up the rocky path, hugging the side of the mountain. He slipped on gravel underfoot, sending showers of pebbles and larger chunks of rock over the side of the path and down into one of the false valleys nestled between the mountain ridges.
“Troll tonsils!” Thor growled, sending down another shower of loose rock.
Lying flat on his stomach on a grassy ledge several yards ahead, Freyr scowled over his shoulder at his unwieldy cousin. “Think you could be any more obvious?”
Thor pushed himself away from the rocky slope and marched directly toward Freyr. He towered over him.
“I am the god of thunder and lightning!” he bellowed with satisfaction, then grimaced when his booming voice echoed across the mountain range.
Freyr sighed and rolled over on his back. “Yeah, but you’re crap at reconnaissance.”
The nature god stretched out on the grass and stared up at the bright, late afternoon sky. “Do you ever miss these summer nights of endless sunlight? The deep dark of winter?”
Thor snorted. “You’re waxing poetic now? I thought you were supposed to be surveilling the terrain below.”
Freyr lifted his eyebrows in amusement and hooked a thumb toward his chest. “Nature god, remember?” He propped himself up on his elbows in the grass. “Anyway, as much as it may pain you, I think we’re going to have to do this my way.”
Thor scoffed and kicked at the rocks in the path. “You are no warrior.” He started to cross his arms over his chest, but then let them drop to his sides. “Although, you were rather impressive against those bulldozers last fall.”
Freyr smiled. He turned back over on his stomach and gazed down at the valley pockets and across at the surrounding peaks.
“And you single-handedly took on a newly awakened Berserker—and lost, as I recall,” Thor added with more than a hint of mischief in his voice. “Took your phone, stole your keys . . .”
Ignoring the taunts, Freyr shook his head and waved Thor over. “Freya seemed convinced there would be some kind of castle or other fortified building up here—excuse me, in here—but I’m just not seeing any evidence of it.”
Thor sank awkwardly to his knees, crawled forward, and lay down next to Freyr on the grass. “It wouldn’t be difficult to defend a stronghold from such a position. Elevation is nearly always an advantage.”
“So you’d better climb up someplace really high before Saga finds out that you’re dating her boss,” Freyr chuckled.
Thor turned sharply toward him, but kept quiet.
“What? No witty comeback?” Freyr grinned at him.
Thor sighed and waved him off. “There’s no point going round-and-round about it. I’ve been seeing Bonnie. Lately of the Einherjar, I’ll remind you. You saw how she handled herself against those Berserkers in the field.”
Freyr nodded. “Yeah. I suppose that explains the attraction.”
Thor shook his head and felt a glimmer of a smile on his lips as he looked down at the valley. “She’s kind to me. I feel at ease with her. She makes me laugh.”
“So,” Freyr replied. “Do I hear the pitter-patter of little Viking boots?”
“You’re one to talk,” Thor shot back. “With the human witch mooning over you all the time.”
Freyr exhaled and looked down. “Yeah. I need to do something about that. Put a stop to it, I mean.”
Thor nodded. “Do it soon. No good can come of it.”
Freyr closed his eyes and rested his head on his forearms. He moaned slightly as he exhaled. Thor poked him sharply in the ribs. Freyr flinched, but his reaction was delayed.
“No sleeping on the mission, soldier,” Thor cajoled.
Freyr blinked at him. “I think I’m beginning to feel it.”
Thor frowned. This wasn’t good. Odin had collapsed, and Frigga herself was feeling weak. Heimdall’s condition couldn’t be explained by a simple concussion—even if he had gotten hit in the head by a Frost Giant—and Freya was becoming more emotional by the minute. Despite the occasional bluster, T
hor himself was feeling almost even-keeled, calm, reasonable. And he knew that wasn’t right.
It was the last of their immortality draining away.
Thor nudged Freyr with his elbow. “Pace yourself. That’s the best any of us can do right now.”
Freyr blinked hard. Thor could tell he was fighting off a wave of dizziness.
“Do you remember ever getting this close? To the edge, I mean.”
To the end, Thor grimaced at his meaning. Before the Yggdrasil had jumped continents between incarnations and Odin and his kind packed up for the New World, it had been a simple matter of a visit to Iduna every four centuries or so, accepting his share of the apple harvest, and then going on his way. After they’d settled in the Pacific Northwest, Iduna packed fruit crates for them, and Frigga had prepared a week-long feast for them all to enjoy.
Thanksgiving in the New World, she’d called it.
But now they were running on empty—literally. And somehow, Thor had become the voice of reason.
Thor clapped Freyr on the back. “You’re thinking too much about this. I’ve been in bad scrapes, sure, but one thing I learned long ago . . .”
Freyr leaned forward, not wanting to miss this pearl of wisdom from the god of thunder. Thor broke into a wide smile. “It’s never, ever as bad as you think.” He laughed hard and slapped his stomach. Feeling the slight give of his soft gut—and even a bit of jiggle—he wondered if Saga might have a point about his weight.
A rumbling sound came from above, growing louder by the second. Thor turned over and looked up at the rock wall behind them.
“What in the blazes . . . ?”
A boulder the size of a small Volkswagen came hurtling down the rock face toward them.
Thor quickly pushed Freyr to one side and then rolled himself in the other direction, narrowly avoiding the boulder as it crashed down onto the grassy ledge and then careened off the mountain’s edge toward the uninhabited valley.
Freyr glanced over at Thor. “You okay?”
Thor scampered to the edge of the grass and frowned down at where the boulder had come to a rest below. “I didn’t think I was quite that loud . . .”
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