Freyr shook his head. “If you’d set off a rock slide with that bellowing voice, it would have loosened a great deal more than a single boulder.”
Freyr sat up and scanned the rock face above, trying to figure out where the boulder had come from. “There aren’t any other rocks of that size above us . . . Did you notice that before?”
He pointed at the side of the mountain. In the space of a few meters, the mountain side transitioned from jagged rock to looking as smooth as glass. Freyr held up a hand against the glare of the reflected sun. “Almost like it’s been polished?”
Thor climbed to his feet. He ran a hand over the fluid surface and grunted. Then he gazed up toward the mountain peak. “I don’t think that was an accident.”
“You think we stumbled across the Frost Giants’ lair, without even knowing it?”
Thor rested his hands on his hips. “I’m not so sure about that, but we’ve gotten close to something.” He stepped backward, trying to see further up the mountain face. Freyr reached over and smacked him on the heel as Thor shuffled too close to the sheer drop-off.
Thor looked down at Freyr holding his ankle, and grunted his thanks. He nodded at the mountain peak. “Somebody doesn’t want us here.”
A flicker of movement a hundred meters above caught Thor’s eye, and he pointed. “There. Did you see that?”
Freyr climbed slowly to his feet. “I don’t see anything.” His face was less green than it was before.
“Better?” Thor asked.
Freyr nodded. Following Thor’s finger with his eyes, he squinted at the rocks above.
“There’s someone up there.” Thor kicked at the grass beneath his boots. “I should have known we were being watched.”
He spat on the ground in disgust. Midnight sun or not, there was no excuse for having allowed themselves to be observed. If the Frost Giants knew they were here—on the verge of discovering their lair—there was no telling what they might do to Maggie. Or to Iduna, or even Loki.
Thor grabbed Freyr by the front of his shirt and started dragging him up the trail.
“I can walk, you know.” Freyr protested.
“Then do it.” Thor took the lead, powering up the rocky path. He turned sharply on a switchback, always keeping his eyes up, looking for more movement in the rocks overhead. At the second switchback, Thor stopped to gauge their progress. They weren’t gaining elevation nearly fast enough if they had any hope of catching up to the giant who had thrown that boulder.
Thor pressed his hands against the slick rock. “Got any rope on you?”
Freyr looked at Thor, then at the towering rock face. “Are you insane?”
Thor gestured farther along the path. “This carries on to the other side of the mountain before it switches back again. But our attacker came from there.” He pointed nearly straight over their heads. “You know what they say about the shortest distance between any two points.”
“Even with the right equipment, there’s no way.” Freyr ran a hand over the rock’s smooth surface. “It’s too slick, nothing to grab hold of, nothing to plant an anchor in.”
Thor pressed his palms against the mountain and started looking for footholds.
“There is no way you’re going straight up. Particularly without a rope.” Freyr shoved his hands deep into his pockets in protest.
With a loud sigh, Thor gave up trying to climb and backed away from the smooth rock face. “So we’re agreed that this is likely part of the stronghold the Frost Giants built inside.”
A fist-sized rock landed with a thud a few inches from Thor’s left boot. Shielding his eyes as he looked up, Thor caught the dark silhouette of a lanky figure before his adversary ducked out of sight. A thin cackle of laughter drifted down from above.
“Nibelung’s bloody hoard!” Thor pounded on the rock face with his fist. A new shower of smaller rocks and dirt rained down.
Freyr brushed the detritus out of his hair and coughed. “I think he’s playing with us.”
Thor glared at him. “You think?”
“Look, whoever that is, he knows we’re here. And we know he knows it. I’m not sure getting caught up in a cat-and-mouse game is such a good idea right now.”
Thor glanced upward, waiting for his adversary to peer over the edge again to taunt him. Nothing happened.
“It is possible he’s trying to lure us into a trap.” Thor rested his hands flat on the rock surface. Another softball-sized stone bounced off the ground and hit him in the shin. Instead of exclaiming in pain, Thor cleared his throat and looked up. Again, there was no sign of the mischief-maker, though there was another burst of high-pitched laughter.
“Does that sound like a Frost Giant to you?”
Freyr shook his head. “This isn’t their behavior, either.” He gestured down toward the grassy ledge, now far below. “The boulder, that made sense. Giants love throwing big rocks around, as I recall.”
Thor squinted against the sun and kept looking up. Large chunks of stone in general had been the giants’ weapons of choice even after they learned how to carve spearheads and forge iron. And their accuracy couldn’t be beaten. No one ever bet against a Frost Giant packing a boulder.
Freyr kicked at the rocks that had been thrown at Thor’s feet. “If he’d wanted to hurt us, he’d have done it already.”
Another rock came hurtling down, this time glancing Thor’s shoulder before it ricocheted off the mountain face and split into pieces. Thor looked up with a dark scowl. Normally, he’d hurl insults and threats up at this slippery enemy and escalate the situation into a more direct threat that he could easily dispatch. Instead, he turned and continued climbing the mountain path.
“Whoever this hooligan is,” Thor announced as his foot hit gravel and slid several inches to the left, “we ignore him.”
Freyr struggled behind him to keep up. “Ignore him?”
Thor glanced over his shoulder. “Well, pretend to ignore him. Either he’s trying to distract us away from continuing along this path—and discovering what lies ahead—or he’s out to try my patience and cause unnecessary mischief.” Thor slipped again and caught himself on the rock wall. “Either way, it’s not worth my time.”
A few yards ahead, another rock shot down from above and landed squarely in Thor’s path. Not skipping a beat, Thor stepped over it and continued forward.
“Have you noticed he’s only aiming at you?” Freyr pushed himself to keep Thor’s pace. “Maybe it’s personal.”
Thor had noticed. Whoever was up there obviously had a beef with him, or was sympathetic to his Vanir cousin. Continuing forward, Thor made a mental inventory of any old scores someone might want to settle, and of any and all deities, creatures, and various other beings he and his father had ever imprisoned or banished. Frost Giants, volcanic elementals, Vralnick dwarves, bog faeries, at least a dozen Doorish elvenkin, Magecats, an offshoot tribe of sorceraptors, that clan of halfling Entweilders . . .
The list was too long to keep track of without a detailed spreadsheet. And spreadsheets made Thor think of photocopiers, and toner, and repair manuals in thick three-ring binders.
Thor growled deep in his throat.
“Of course, you’re also a bigger—and louder—target,” Freyr added.
Thor ignored his cousin. Some of those vendettas were brewing long before the peace between the Æsir and Vanir—before Freya and Freyr were adopted into Odin’s Lodge as members of his own clan. Thor glanced casually upward. For all he knew, Freyr could unwittingly have an ally in the rocks above.
Thor kept hiking upward along the rocky path.
10
Maggie sat on a wooden chair at the head of Loki’s bed. He was still unconscious. He hadn’t moved so much as a toe since Maggie first found him.
“Go ahead, Lady Maggie,” Iduna taunted her from a corner of the room. Sitting directly beneath one of the skylights, the goddess lounged in a cushioned chair—provided with great fanfare by the giant Thiassen—and combed through her
golden hair with her fingers. The sunlight danced on her tresses.
“Use your bag of enchanted tools to heal the slumbering god,” Iduna added with an unpleasant curl of her lip.
Maggie looked down at her purse on the floor. She hadn’t come up with any way to revive Loki using her passport or lip balm.
“Is this normal?” Maggie gestured toward Loki’s motionless body. “I mean, you’d know more about this than I would, right?”
Iduna sniffed, which Maggie took for annoyed assent.
“And yet you’ve been spectacularly unhelpful,” Maggie said flatly. “Loki is supposed to be your kinsman, isn’t he?”
With a labored sigh, Iduna turned to face Maggie. “What do you want from me, young one? The answers to all the questions of the Cosmos? The keys to immortality? The approval and smiling affection you didn’t get from your parents growing up?”
“Umm, yeah,” Maggie frowned back at her. “Way to overreact.”
Iduna went back to grooming her long, shining hair.
“What I meant was,” Maggie continued, trying to keep the mounting irritation out of her voice, “you’re one of the Old Ones, just like Loki. Isn’t there anything you can do for him?”
Iduna sighed darkly, again. “I won’t do your work for you, young one. You’ll have to prove—or disprove—your worth all on your own.” Iduna closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the sunlight. “Besides, I’m in mourning. I am not expected to perform healing work.”
Maggie rose to her feet. “Even in an emergency?”
Iduna huffed and turned away.
Feeling angry tears rising, Maggie closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. She needed to keep calm, but all she could think about was her current situation. She’d been no help on the phone to Saga, and Heimdall had been too upset to even talk to her. And Maggie still didn’t know where she was.
Maybe no one—not even Heimdall—was coming for her.
Maggie sat back down. She poked at the sliced apples that had been laid out on the small table beside her. Again with the apples! Was there honestly no other food besides apples and stale bread? She lifted one of the slices to her lips, nibbled at the end of it, and dropped it back on the plate. No, she definitely was not loving these apples.
“They’ve shown you great respect by offering you those,” Iduna chided. “You might at least show a little gratitude.”
Maggie looked across the floor and noticed the untouched plate of apples on the small table next to Iduna’s chair. “You’re not eating, either.”
“That’s different,” the goddess snapped. She gathered her hair into a massive, honey-colored sheaf behind her head, twisted it, and then pulled the long rope of curls forward over one shoulder.
Maggie moved her chair to within a few feet of Iduna’s and sat down. Iduna visibly stiffened at her proximity.
“I know there’s a lot I still don’t know about your history, and about Odin and the others,” Maggie started gently. “If I’ve been disrespectful, believe me, it was completely unintentional. I am trying to learn.” Maggie leaned forward, trying to catch Iduna’s eye. “You said you’re a widow.”
Iduna’s face hardened, and for a moment Maggie expected she was in for a solid tongue-lashing from this temperamental goddess. But then Iduna looked down at the polished stone floor, her eyes glistening. “Yes.”
Maggie scooted her chair closer. “Can you tell me more about that? I don’t mean to pry, but—”
“What’s there to tell?” Iduna lifted her porcelain-white hands into the air in a gesture of futility. “Ragnarok is simply a little more drawn out than we’d expected.”
“What are you talking about?” Maggie rested her elbows on her knees. “Heimdall and Odin defeated Managarm at the base of the new Yggdrasil. Even Fenrir had his chance, but then he took off running.”
Iduna turned a tear-streaked face toward Maggie. “There were other casualties that day.” She wiped at her eyes with slender fingers and offered a sad chuckle. “And look around you, Maggie—does this really look like Gimlé to you?”
“Gimlé?” Maggie shook her head. “You’ve lost me.”
Iduna smiled with only a hint of condescension. “An exquisitely beautiful place, rather like what your kind might think of as the Biblical Garden of Eden, where the survivors of Ragnarok are destined to dwell.”
Maggie glanced around the stone room, with its dark walls and sparse furniture. She wondered if even an army of interior decorators would be able to make such a place feel warm and homey.
“Okay, but the jury’s still out on whether all of that really was Ragnarok, or if the old rules and prophecies even apply any more.” She tried to remember the points Saga and Freya had made during any one of the half-dozen fireside ‘Doomsday Debates’ that had raged at the Lodge—and had Maggie zoning out after eating too many turkey legs and heaping servings of roasted vegetables. “Even the Norns can’t say definitively whether or not that was the Twilight of the Gods everyone’s been so worried about.”
“The Norns?” Iduna scoffed. “They couldn’t prophesy their way out of a goat-skin pouch. They only play at eloquence, with their shrieking and deliberately cryptic divinations. They don’t have the true gift of poetry and verse that Bragi had . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked away, the sunlight catching the tears in her eyes.
“Holy cow.” Maggie sat suddenly upright. “He was your husband. You’re Bragi’s widow.”
Iduna sniffed. “I couldn’t leave my grove, when the others journeyed to the New World in search of the young Yggdrasil.” She smiled sadly at her hands in her lap. “And Bragi couldn’t stay. He longed to explore, to weave the new adventures of the Old Ones into epic sagas.”
Iduna lifted her face. “We may have been what you would have called estranged, but I still loved him.” She attempted a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “When you’ve been partnered for thousands of years, what’s a couple of centuries apart?”
“Oh, man.” Maggie didn’t know if she should place a comforting hand on Iduna’s shoulder, or just sit tight. She clasped her hands together in her lap instead.
She couldn’t even imagine living for thousands of years, much less being married that whole time. She was still getting used to the idea that Heimdall and his family had been around for centuries and centuries, living the history that she could only read about in books. And now here was another immortal sitting before her, looking just as young and healthy as any fitness trainer. Heimdall would stay vigorous forever, too, even while Maggie herself aged and eventually died.
Maggie winced. “I am so sorry.”
Iduna dismissed her condolences with a shake of the head. “But Managarm killed him. And then the Frost Giants came, and they took everything from the grove. The entire harvest.”
The goddess nodded toward the untouched apple slices on her own plate. “We’ve always needed these, to keep up our strength. A decade’s vitality in every bite,” she said with an empty laugh. “I don’t think I’ll be eating any more of them. With any mercy, I’ll soon be like him,” she gestured toward Loki. “The others may think differently, but this is Ragnarok, and I’ve had enough of it.”
Maggie sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. She wanted to argue with Iduna, to beg her to intercede on Loki’s behalf and to try to help Maggie escape even if she had no interest getting out herself. But Maggie knew better than to goad someone who was determined to grieve.
Maggie got up from her chair and approached the pedestal bed. Loki was white as snow. His skin was nearly translucent now, and it had tightened around the features of his face. She laid her hands on his chest, then shivered at the feel of his ribs through both his clothing and the heavy blanket draped over him.
“Loki . . .” Maggie rested a hand on his cool brow and sighed. She was too tired for tears, and she still felt a chill in her bones from the short time she’d spent on the roof. She hadn’t been sleeping, either—every time she closed her eyes, she
saw Heimdall’s face or found herself consumed with thoughts of how to rig an IV for Loki out of a digital camera, a pack of tissues, and a tampon.
“So you mean he’d be okay if he could just eat?” Maggie asked Iduna over her shoulder, but the goddess was silent.
Maggie had already tried putting bits of bread into his mouth and pouring in small amounts of water, hoping his body’s instincts to eat and drink would take over, but nothing happened. She was afraid she’d soon be sharing her captivity with a corpse—two, if Iduna had her way.
She pulled her chair over to sit next to Loki’s bed. Iduna had gone back to ignoring her, which was fine with Maggie. She glanced again at the sliced apples, wondering why they hadn’t begun to turn brown even after sitting out for several hours. She picked up the slice she’d nibbled at earlier and tried snacking on it again. She’d long since lost her own appetite, but she hadn’t completely given up hope of getting out of this stone fortress and back to some semblance of real life, somehow.
Maggie stopped chewing. She stared at the piece of apple in her fingers. A decade’s vitality in every bite. Geirrod had said they’d tried feeding the apples to the unconscious Loki, but they couldn’t get him to swallow.
“There’s more than one way to get your daily servings of fruits and veggies,” Maggie whispered.
She reached for the stone goblet of water that sat on the small table by Loki’s bed, and she drank down the contents until only a few tablespoons of liquid remained. She dumped a few apple slices into the goblet and picked up a heavy spoon from the table. Turning the spoon stem-side down in her hand, she started grinding the apples against the goblet’s smooth stone interior.
“Just hang on, Loki. I’ve got an idea . . .” She glanced toward Iduna still sitting in the the sunlight in the far corner. The goddess seemed lost in her own thoughts.
Maggie pulled the goblet into her lap and secured its base between her thighs. She pressed down harder with the spoon, crushing the apple bits into a softening mash.
Iduna's Apples (Valhalla Book 2) Page 11