Raven Quest (Valhalla Book 4)

by Jennifer Willis

  “He was right here. He led me to you.” Heimdall walked a few steps into the woods, but there was no sign of the Randulfr. He was probably headed back toward Mt. Bachelor to protect Sally, and to confront Loki.

  “And I thought I was the one tripping on mushrooms,” Thor sniggered. Freyr chuckled along with him.

  Heimdall looked at his semi-translucent, possibly—or at least, partially—deceased cousin and felt his jaw go slack, again. He shook his head. “There’s just too much going on here.”

  “Like I said, not a good time for a personal crisis,” Grace replied.

  “Though I hear there’s a lot of that going around,” Freyr added.

  Grace turned to Odin. “Shall we?”

  Odin opened his arms in a permissive gesture. “Lead the way.”

  The old woman leaned on her walking stick and blazed a northward path through the trees.

  Oh, good, Heimdall thought to himself. More hiking.

  Heimdall dropped back to give Nanitch a wide berth as the siatco pushed past to walk alongside Grace. He wasn’t surprised to find himself flanked by his father and his brother as they each took one of his elbows and kept him moving.

  “How did you get here?” Heimdall asked Odin, then turned to look at Thor. “And how in the world did you find Bigfoot?”

  Thor winced. “Actually, he doesn’t like being called that.”

  “But that’s what you said.”

  Thor shrugged. “My bad.”

  Heimdall looked back at Freyr and Rod bringing up the rear. Rod kept glancing sideways in Freyr’s direction but didn’t seem to register the Vanir’s presence. Rod was obviously agitated. Heimdall had never seen the normally impeccably groomed handyman looking so haggard. Mud crusted Rod’s jeans, elbows, and even his cheek, and his shirt was a mess of wrinkles and unidentifiable stains.

  When Heimdall’s eyes flickered to Freyr, his ghostly cousin gave him a friendly smile. Heimdall turned forward again. “And Freyr?” he whispered to Odin.

  “Unknown,” his father replied. “But he’s been keeping your brother company in the woods.”

  “It’s actually been kind of fun,” Thor added, then cleared his throat in response to a stern look from Odin. “I mean, apart from the trickster guides and the Bigfoot hunters and the emotionally unstable volcano spirits being loud and volatile all over the place.”

  Heimdall stopped. “Wait. Bigfoot hunters?” The entire expedition was beginning to sound like the interior of a circus clown car.

  “NO TIME!” Grace shouted back with a sharp edge of impatience.

  Heimdall allowed himself to be pulled forward again. “Since when does the great Æsir god of thunder take orders from an old lady?”

  There was the sound of a strangled cough in Thor’s throat. “Since she seems to be the only one with a solid grasp of what’s going on. Well, her and Nanitch.”

  They hiked along in silence for a time after that. Heimdall grew wearier by the minute, and he began to stumble over sticks and pinecones in his path. Thor caught him more than once to keep him from falling.

  “It’s been a long couple of days,” Thor commented in an uncharacteristically even voice.

  Heimdall stared at his brother in disbelief, and narrowly missed walking into a tree. “How are you so . . . calm?”

  Odin chuckled and squeezed Heimdall’s shoulder, both to steady him and keep him moving forward.

  Before Heimdall could formulate another question, the trees thinned abruptly and the group came to a halt in a barren area of dry dirt and dusty rocks. Heimdall lifted his gaze to the view of all three Sisters towering over them. Each peak was miles from her siblings, but the three together formed a wall of snowy mountains that filled the near horizon.

  Each peak glowed red and spewed ash and smoke into the sky.

  Rod, Odin, and Freyr fanned out around Grace. Nanitch marched forward to stare up the slope of the nearest peak. Heimdall guessed they were standing at the base of South Sister, the largest of the three.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  Grace planted her walking stick in the dirt and leaned her weight onto it. “Now we try to talk some sense into these girls.”

  Nanitch turned and eyed Grace cooly. “I don’t advise speaking so informally when you address them.”

  Heimdall staggered backward, and Thor caught him by the elbow. “The siatco can talk?!” Heimdall whispered to his brother.

  “And hear,” Nanitch replied as he strode back toward the rest of the group. “Quite well.” Nanitch stopped in front of Grace and offered a respectful dip of the head. “I will place myself at a distance, perhaps in the shadows of the trees.”

  Grace shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. They know you’re here anyway.”

  Nanitch glanced up at South Sister as the volcano ejected a mass of burning cinders into the clouds. “They always know.”

  Heimdall watched the ejected smoke and ash begin to coalesce in the air above South Sister’s open peak. The mass swirled and danced and transfigured into the form of a tall, curvaceous woman. Long hair whipped about her as though she stood at the center of a cyclone. A new tendril of dark vapor crept over the edge of the volcano’s mouth. It widened as it flowed down the side of the mountain and solidified into a smooth ramp. The cinder-woman stepped onto the smoky track and glided down until she stood a dozen yards above the assembly of gods, human, siatco, and ghost.

  She scowled down at them all.

  15

  Grace stood her ground as the volcano spirit glared down at the assembly. South Sister’s dark eyes blazed and her long hair whipped around her. A skimpy costume of living shale curved and flowed with the smooth muscles flexing beneath her blood-colored skin.

  “Charity,” Grace said flatly.

  The volcano spirit hesitated. If she was waiting for some act of deference or gesture of fealty, Grace left her disappointed.

  Charity rounded her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “What has become of Jonathan?” her voice boomed in a triple octave befitting an over-caffeinated Tibetan monk.

  Heimdall was nearly knocked off his feet by the volume and layered frequencies of her question. He sank into a partial crouch and prepared for whatever she might say next. Glancing around him, he saw the others were also struggling to keep their footing, while Nanitch, Freyr, and Grace remained unaffected.

  The reverberation of Charity’s voice dissipated on the breeze. Grace didn’t give any indication that she planned on answering, and Nanitch was still lurking at the back of the pack. Heimdall straightened and strode forward.

  “Dead,” he announced loudly, falling far short of the volcano spirit’s tone. Instead, his fatigued vocal chords made him sound more like a barking lizard. Heimdall swallowed and lifted his chin to try again. “He endangered one of our own and met a just end.”

  Grace’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

  Heimdall turned toward Grace. “It’s the truth. Surely the other volcano spirits know already that he’s dead.”

  “Mmm,” Grace grunted. “But now they know you were involved.”

  Heimdall ignored the pressure of Odin’s gaze on his back and looked up sheepishly at Charity. “Hey, we didn’t go looking for this fight. Jonathan preyed upon . . .” Heimdall rejected the idea of Sally as an innocent. “. . . on a human girl who is important to us. Her life was at risk. It wasn’t any of us who dispatched him to save her.”

  He glanced behind him and was surprised to see his father step back to stand by the siatco. Heimdall tried to usher Odin forward with a small wave of his hand, but Odin shook his head. Heimdall turned back to Charity. “But it was done by another of our kind. I think we can fix this—”

  Charity’s large eyes flared with orange flame that threatened to brim over. Tear-shaped drops of red-black lava rolled down her cheeks.

  “Is she crying?” Heimdall asked Grace.

  “You,” Charity announced in loud, discordant tones. It was
all Heimdall could do not to clamp his hands over his ears. “You have killed our love?” Her first utterance had been a powerful harmony, but now her conflicting notes rattled Heimdall’s skull. He clenched his fists and took a heavy step forward.

  “Jonathan was killing our friend!” Heimdall yelled over the ringing in his own ears. “His death is regrettable, but it was necessary. Can we just sit down and talk about this?” He paused. “Quietly?”

  “You will pay for this outrage!” Charity shouted while Heimdall’s last syllable was still on his tongue. Before he could attempt another entreaty, the volcano spirit zoomed backward up her lava chute, though she didn’t appear to move a single muscle. If Heimdall hadn’t seen her speedy soot ramp in action, he would have sworn that she’d teleported to the peak. Across the distance, her eyes remained locked on Heimdall’s face as she disappeared into the glowing rock atop her mountain.

  “Well, that went well,” Freyr sighed.

  Grace spun on her heel and glared at Thor. “And here I thought you were the biggest fool of the lot.”

  Heimdall planted himself in her field of vision. “How bad is it?”

  A triple concussion of blasts sounded from the peaks of the Three Sisters, followed immediately by soot-and-slag ramps flowing down from each of the volcanoes. Sprays of red-orange lava leapt into the air against the sky’s deepening twilight. If not for the trio of very angry volcano spirits rising from their incandescent peaks like furious, fiery Amazons, Heimdall might have thought the scene beautiful.

  “We’re in it now.” Grace scowled up at Heimdall, and then looked past him to address the others. “Whatever you do, don’t let them touch you.”

  Thor watched the garnet-skinned women gliding down from the mouths of their volcanoes. With their long ropes of black hair, radiant and smoky eyes, and strong, muscular curves, the Sisters were stunning and undeniably alluring.

  “Lava chicks. They don’t look so bad.” Thor cocked his head toward Heimdall. “You said Sally’s okay, right? That other one, Jonathan, must surely have laid hands on her, and she’s mortal.”

  Grace waved at the sparking peaks behind her. “These ladies don’t give a flying fig about your ancient Scandinavian pantheon. Your young friend lives only because Jonathan does not. Understand? If you want to survive this night, do not let a volcano spirit make contact with your skin. Else we’ll have more dead gods in addition to erupting volcanoes.”

  The active peaks belched more gas and soot, and Heimdall coughed on the burnt, rotten smell of sulfur dioxide that clogged the air. He wanted to launch into a contest of wills with Grace—how could a mortal woman, no matter how wise, possibly advise Norse deities on how to conduct themselves in battle? But Odin placed a steadying hand on his shoulder, and Heimdall backed down. He watched as the North, Middle, and South Sisters slowed their descent and kept themselves at a cautious distance.

  “They’re toying with us.” Heimdall stomped his boot in the dirt. “No matter what we do, we’re hosed. We’ve already got one volcano ready to blow its stack because its resident spirit is dead. Now these three are set to erupt because they’re angry.” He tightened his fists and looked around for something he could strike without consequence. “Why are we even engaging them? We could be evacuating the surrounding towns. We could be helping people get to safety.”

  Odin gave his son a sad smile. “You were equally certain that Managarm would bring about Ragnarok. Remind me, how did that turn out?”

  Heimdall blew out a long breath. He hated it when his father was calm and reasonable. Odin adopted a different manner with each of his children. He bellowed at Thor and cajoled Saga, and he was nearly always even-tempered and wise with Heimdall—all the while knowing how it got under his son’s skin. Teaching balance through unbalancing. Heimdall finally understood why his own steady demeanor so riled Thor when his brother was spoiling for a fight.

  “Right.” Heimdall loosened his hands and his stance. “Nothing is fated. Not even when it’s staring you right in the face.”

  He coughed again on the toxic gases thickening around them. “But I don’t see a path to victory here, nor even an impasse. We have no weapons, and we can’t fight hand-to-hand because apparently the touch of a volcano vixen means death.” He grabbed the bottom hem of his shirt and ripped off a long strip of fabric.

  “But even if we don’t fight,” he continued, “the volcanic gasses are likely to kill us.” He pressed the cloth over his nose and mouth and tied the loose ends behind his head. He took a deep breath. The fabric didn’t filter out all of the fumes, but he figured it would buy him more time in the Sisters’ sulfur-rich presence. “And I’ve already voided any chance of negotiation,” he mumbled through the cloth.

  Odin followed his son’s example and made a bandana out of the tail of his own shirt. “There is always another choice, Heimdall.”

  Nanitch reached for the slender trunk of a young evergreen and pulled the tree straight up out of the ground. With a grunt, Nanitch tore the clumped roots from one end and then removed the branches from the other. Freyr whistled through his teeth as Nanitch twirled the long, bark-covered quarterstaff in his massive hands and moved to the front of the group.

  Not to be outdone, Thor took hold of a considerably larger sapling. He had to wrap both hands around the thicker trunk, and he yanked at it with an impressive show of strength. He managed to dislodge a few inches of dirt from the base of the tree, but the young evergreen’s roots weren’t keen on giving up any more ground. Thor pulled again on the tree, his face reddening as he held his breath with his exertion.

  Freyr stood next to him and tried to pat him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  “Shut up,” Thor groaned. He gave a final, valiant tug and then let the tree go. The evergreen settled back into the ground, the movement setting the tree’s limbs swaying. Two of the lower branches swung forward and swatted Thor in the face.

  Thor pointed a meaty finger at the Vanir’s chest. “Not a word. I don’t want to hear it.”

  Freyr held up ghostly hands and backed away. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  Rubbing his smarting palms across Victor E. Viking’s grinning face on his sweatshirt, Thor approached Heimdall and Grace. Grace pointed to the North, Middle, and South peaks in succession. “Faith. Hope. Charity.” Her voice was sharp with dispirited weariness.

  Heimdall doubted these eponymous virtues would be on display in the coming minutes. He sat in the dirt and pulled off his hiking boots and his socks, then shoved his bare feet back into his boots.

  Thor watched his brother with a dubious expression. “You’re going to beat them back with your dirty laundry? Your feet do smell like fermented bog water.”

  Heimdall ignored him. He slipped his hands into his socks and secured the cuffs around the edges of his shirt’s long sleeves. He held up his improvised mittens for the others to copy. “No skin-to-skin contact.”

  “Not bad.” Thor sat in the dirt and shucked off his own boots. Odin and Rod soon followed.

  Grace remained still, facing the turbulent volcanoes and their disgruntled spirits. She ignored the preparations for no-contact combat and instead gripped her walking stick with both hands.

  Thor looked back at Nanitch and frowned. “I don’t have any extra socks.”

  Nanitch shook his head. “My argument with the Sisters is different than yours.”

  “Okay,” Thor replied, clearly having no idea what the siatco meant. It didn’t seem likely that Nanitch was going to take the time to elaborate, either. “But they’re coming either way.”

  Nanitch gripped the makeshift quarterstaff. “And this confrontation has been delayed too long.”

  Between the vexed volcanoes and the skillful sasquatch, Thor had no trouble recognizing that he was out of his depth. He was pretty sure Nanitch was smarter than he was. He studied Nanitch’s intent expression as the siatco watched the three Sisters. The fiery trio took their time descending the last few dozen yards to the gr
ound. Thor flexed his fists inside his grimy cotton mittens. He nodded at Odin and Rod as they advanced to stand beside Heimdall. Then Thor glanced back at Freyr, who was standing around doing absolutely nothing.

  “So that’s it?” Thor asked. “You die and then you don’t think you have to stand with us any longer?”

  Freyr lifted his translucent hands and swung them at a nearby tree branch. His arms swooshed through bark and pine needles without making the least disturbance. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do. I’m just as frustrated as you are.”

  “I doubt it,” Thor replied, but the retort felt empty. For days, he had been making a conscious effort to subdue his temper and make more constructive choices, all for Grace’s approval. He’d taken every one of Hugh’s blows without fighting back, like some kind of Norse Gandhi in training. He’d let Nanitch pound him into unconsciousness without protest—or, without as much complaining as usual. He’d even kept his exasperation in check when the excruciating emptiness of his belly shortened his fuse to almost nothing. It had been a maddening test, but he’d stumbled into reserves of quiet willpower and stillness he’d never suspected. And it had all been for Bonnie.

  But now that he needed his impatience and rage to fuel him in battle, there seemed to be nothing inside him but dull resignation. His quest had robbed him of his thunder. Had the whole affair been orchestrated to leave the god of thunder powerless before a trio of literally fuming volcano sisters?

  Thor rubbed the tender knots on his head from Nanitch’s strike and from the stinging blows of Hugh’s stick. He climbed slowly to his feet.

  “Ravens.” He spat the word like a mouthful of rotted grain. The black-winged messengers above the sweat lodge had been dropping a curse, not bestowing any blessings. Now that he was finally putting the pieces together, it wasn’t hard to guess who Hugh and Moon had really been. How hard would it be to trick a trickster? He doubted he had much time left to find out.