The Complete Fenris Series

by Samantha MacLeod

“You, and your husband,” Thrym continued. “Loki wants to bring him here.”

  “H-here?” I managed.

  Thrym shrugged. “It’s off the map, in a way. The Empire has their own protectors. Óðinn pretty much ignores this part of Midgard. You should both be safe here.”

  Safe. The word set me trembling. Where was the last place I’d truly felt safe? Wrapped in Fenris’s arms in the shelter of our cave, perhaps, both of us hidden deep beneath the trees of the Ironwood?

  “And you can have a good life here, even if it is hot,” he continued. “I’m basically richer than the Emperor, although I try to keep a low profile. An extravagant, rich foreigner makes one hell of a target.”

  I clasped my hands together, trying to hide how badly they were shaking. Safe? Here?

  “Of course, you’ll need to learn the language,” Thrym was saying. “That’s why I paired you with Liburnia. She never stop talking, so you’ll pick it up quickly enough. Once you’ve got the basics of the spoken language, I’ll teach you how to read it, so you can take over some of the formalities.” Thrym’s voice cut off. “Sol, are you all right?”

  I opened my mouth to say yes, of course, I was just fine.

  And I burst into tears.

  “Uh, Sol?” Through the haze of my tears, I saw Thrym shift uncomfortably in his seat. “Stars,” he muttered.

  He reached toward me with a white square of fabric clasped in his outstretched hand. “It’s going to be fine,” he said, rather unconvincingly. “Liburnia!”

  I took the cloth from his hand, wiped my eyes, and tried to choke down my tears. The room filled with another sudden rush of light as Liburnia pulled back the curtain. She fell to her knees in front of me, chattering musically in the language I couldn’t understand. Her thin arms wrapped around my shoulders, and she pulled me toward her. I leaned into her warm body as she ran her hand over my hair, soothing me with words whose meaning was as obscure and undecipherable as the black scratches in King Nøkkyn’s books.

  I gasped for air, trying to bring myself under control, but the images rushed through my mind in a jumbled flood. Fenris screaming. Týr collapsing to his knees, the scent of blood thick in the air around him. The black stones of the island vanishing as Týr pulled me into the water, darkness swirling around me, becoming the ashes of my family’s home.

  My shoulders shook as I sobbed, and Liburnia held me. Finally, my tears ran dry, and I fell back in the chair with a hiccuping sob. Liburnia pushed a goblet of cool water into my hand and ran her fingers over my hair.

  Oh, stars. Thrym was still here, looking almost pained as he watched the two of us. Liburnia’s chirping voice filled the room, although now it was directed at Thrym. She was gesturing with her hands around her belly, almost making a bubble.

  Right. I squeezed my eyes shut in humiliation. Was she making excuses for me? I was pregnant, therefore I was crazy and emotional? I forced myself to open my eyes, clear my throat, and look at Thrym.

  “I’m sorry,” I began.

  Thrym coughed. “Not to worry. Like I said, we’re barbarians.”

  He gave me a weak smile. Liburnia said something to him, and he nodded gravely. She took my hand and, before I could protest, she pulled me to my feet and walked me out of the little room. Liburnia talked the entire time she walked me down the tiled corridors of Thrym’s massive house. I couldn’t understand anything past the occasional reference to Thrym, but I would have bet all the money in his massive tiled estate that she was trying to tell me that Thrym had never had a wife or a daughter.

  THE MONSTER FREED: CHAPTER NINE

  My days in Thrym’s estate settled into a pattern. Liburnia met me in the morning with breakfast, usually a light bread served with a handful of sweet and sticky wrinkled fruits whose insides felt like wet sand against my tongue. Then I followed her around the massive house, watching her duties and absorbing her constant stream of chatter. At first, I’d tried to help her draw water from the well or hang wet linens on a clothesline in the blinding sun, but she’d laughed in mock horror and swatted my hand away.

  The only activity I was allowed to participate in was weaving, and I was almost entirely useless at that particular endeavor, despite Liburnia’s patient guidance. Frequently, I ended up holding a roll of wool for her while her fingers flew over the loom.

  Slowly, Liburnia’s words began to take root in my mind. I learned the names of things first. Loom. Fountain. Water. And people as well; Pomptina oversaw the kitchens, with the help of smiling Velia and dour Volumnia. Handsome Kaeso worked in the stables, which we seemed to visit on any pretense, and whose slightest indication of a smile would leave Liburnia blushing and uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

  I found I could piece together the meaning of their words long before I was able to wrap my own tongue around the unfamiliar consonants and cadences, but the servants were patient with me. They treated me with a level of sympathy which, at times, unsettled me. We’d been ignored in Asgard; I’d been disdained in my own town. The kindness of Thrym’s household felt odd to me.

  “Well, there’s a damn good reason they’re so nice,” Thrym told me one morning.

  His entire household followed a tight schedule. Thrym and I met first thing in the morning, just after breakfast, in his small, darkened tablinum, the room with the marble statue I’d first taken for a man who’d been turned to stone. There, he explained various aspects of his estate and prodded me with questions, occasionally slipping out of our shared language to see how well I could speak or understand the Midgardian tongue.

  That particular morning I’d woken from dark, terrible dreams, and the heavy sense of foreboding sparked by my nightmares had followed me through breakfast, making even Pomptina’s wrinkled smile look ominous. I’d begun my morning meeting with Thrym frustrated and unsettled, and I’d asked why everyone on Midgard was so stars-damned friendly.

  “They were all slaves,” Thrym explained.

  “Oh?”

  “Slavery’s part of life around here. The Empire runs on thralls, I’m afraid. But I don’t hold with it. Blame it on my barbarian roots.”

  He reached forward and poured us both another glass of water. The day’s heat was already rising in the little room. I imagined I could almost see it, invisible tendrils that began as soft, caressing warmth but swelled to a scorching blaze.

  “So, I buy them, then grant them all their freedom.”

  “But, why don’t they all just leave?” I asked, with a shudder. I couldn’t imagine any of Nøkkyn’s whores would have remained in his castle if they’d had the chance to run.

  He shrugged. “Some do. Some stay. I offer them jobs doing what they’ve done as slaves, only for coin of their own.”

  “Ah,” I stammered, unable to think of a response. If he’d done that with his own slaves, in the Ironwood, everyone would have thought he was mad. But here—

  “You can do that because you’re a barbarian,” I finally said.

  “Now you get it,” Thrym answered. “And I’m richer than all the bastards who laugh at me. Still, I don’t exactly broadcast it. I ask the servants to keep their mouths shut. And, for the most part, they do. Oddly enough, freeing them tends to make for very loyal workers.”

  “But why are they so nice to me?” I insisted.

  Thrym’s grin widened, showing the broad flash of his white teeth beneath his thick, black beard. “Perhaps they’re hoping you’ll carry on the tradition. Niece.”

  The implications of his words settled on my chest like a stone. The heat in in his little tablinum felt thick, almost too thick to breathe. Me? Take over this place? Decide whom to set free, or whom to enslave?

  “I can’t—” I began.

  “Oh, stop.” Thrym pushed a goblet of water into my palm. “You’ll do just fine. I’m not planning on dying immediately. We’ve plenty of time for you to learn the ropes. Look at how much you’ve learned in just eleven days.”

  Eleven days. The words twisted in my gut like a knife. See you
in eleven days, my dear! Angrboða had called to Loki as the walls of her palace dissolved around us.

  “Loki,” I asked softly. “Have you...heard from him?”

  Thrym took a long sip of water. “He comes and goes. Don’t worry, he’s not going to forget you. Or your husband.”

  I took a breath, then hesitated. How could I possibly explain the strange interaction I’d witnessed between Angrboða and Loki? My mouth suddenly tasted sour, and I brought my own water glass to my lips.

  A scuffling sound from the other side of the curtain caught my ear. I turned to see Liburnia pulling the curtains aside. She greeted Thrym with her usual curtsey, and said...something. Someone was here?

  Thrym rose, thanked her, and opened the curtain wide. I flinched as this Realm’s unforgivingly harsh light flooded the room. Liburnia waited patiently on the black and white tiles, standing next to a woman whose back was bent with age. She carried a large, rough sack slung over her shoulder. Thrym greeted the older woman warmly and pressed a few coins into her palm. She chuckled, revealing black gaps where her two upper teeth should be.

  “Sol,” Thrym said, switching back to our language as he faced me. “This is Olcinia Parnesia. She’s very highly regarded.”

  I frowned, unsure where this conversation was going.

  Thrym cleared his throat. “Anyway. She’s here to examine your, uh...” He waved his hand at his own midsection. The bright light flooding the hallway revealed a crimson blush spreading beneath his dark beard. He cleared his throat and continued. “You know. Your pregnancy.”

  “She’s a midwife?” I asked. “But, I’m not in labor!”

  “Right. Well. Obviously.” Thrym laced his hands behind his back as he shifted uncomfortably. “She’s just here to look you over. It’s how things are done around here. Apparently.”

  I realized I’d unconsciously wrapped both arms over the growing mound of my stomach. No one in the Ironwood had a midwife. Usually, if a family had to send a runner for a midwife, it was already too late for the baby. It was often too late for the mother as well.

  Liburnia pushed past Thrym, who looked relieved to fade into the background. I tried to swallow the sense of panic climbing the back of my throat.

  “The baby,” Liburnia said, speaking very slowly. “For the baby.”

  It was one of the first words I’d learned in her language. Baby. She’d cradled her arms, held them against her chest, and looked at me with a wide smile. And I’d found myself returning her smile, almost against my will, as I mimiced her motions. My pregnancy had been the first bridge between us, my earliest connection to this strange new world.

  Every morning, now, as she fastened my dress and brushed my hair, Liburnia would stop to admire the swell of my stomach. She’d run her hands over the fabric and press her hands against my skin, asking me questions I only half understood.

  Yes, I tried to say. Yes, I feel fine. Yes, the baby kicks.

  As if the child could hear my thoughts, I felt the baby inside me ripple with a slow, twisting motion. I met Liburnia’s sparkling eyes.

  “Baby,” I said, pressing my hands against my stomach. “Baby, move!”

  Both women laughed. Liburnia knelt before me, holding her own hands over mine, and I tried to maneuver her smooth, warm palms to the place just below my ribs where I’d felt the kick. She frowned in concentration, then cocked her head to the side, as if she were listening hard for a distant voice.

  “Well, then,” Thrym said, from the far side of the room. “I’ll just leave you to it.”

  He ducked out of the curtain and vanished down the hallway before I could respond. The old woman cackled merrily before bending over my stomach. She asked me a question I could barely understand. When I shook my head, she motioned with her hands and pursed her lips together, as if she were bringing a glass to her mouth.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Water.”

  Liburnia pressed a glass into my hands, and I took a sip. The old woman then acted as if she were picking food off a plate and chewing noisily. At first I thought she was offering me breakfast and shook my head. Liburnia responded with a string of words spoken too quickly for me to follow, but I caught yes, yes, and my own name.

  Eating. Yes, Liburnia was saying. I was eating.

  The old woman’s serious expression softened, and she raised her hands in front of me. She looked at her gnarled fingers, then at the soft bulge of my stomach, and nodded her head. May I?

  “Yes,” I said.

  She grinned again. Her hands were gentle, despite the way her fingers bent with age. She tapped softly beneath my rib cage, then in a line down my navel. The child within me squirmed as she pressed a finger into my skin, and I yelped in surprise. She laughed.

  Then her face wrinkled, as if she’d just stumbled across something unexpected. I froze beneath her touch. All the miserable, heartbreaking stories I’d heard of childbirth swept through my mind on a tide of blood and loss.

  The midwife bent to press her ear to my belly. Then she pulled back, opened the purse at her belt, and pulled out what looked like a wooden shell. She reached for the hem of my dress, caught my eye again, and nodded toward me. May I?

  “Yes,” I said, forcing the words through my suddenly dry lips.

  With a look of intense concentration, the old woman pulled my dress over my knees and exposed the pale curve of my stomach. Stars, I hardly recognized that vast, pale curvature as part of my body. It was as round and smooth as the bottom of Ma’s mixing bowl, and it already looked larger than it had this morning when Liburnia dressed me.

  The midwife pressed the wooden shell to my stomach, paused, and leaned over me again, fitting her ear to the wood. She closed her eyes as the little shell slid across my skin, smooth and cool. It seemed very still in the small, hot room. Finally, the midwife opened her eyes and smiled.

  “Baby?” I said, forcing my tongue around the dissonant syllables of their language. “Baby good?”

  The midwife laughed again in her merry old woman’s cackle as she picked up the wooden shell and put it back in the bag around her belt.

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Good.”

  She held up her hand and raised one finger into the air. I bit my lip, trying to figure out her meaning. She raised a second finger.

  Liburnia squealed a word I didn’t understand. The midwife grinned in agreement, responding with another string of unfamiliar words.

  “What?” I cried.

  The women turned to me with almost identical smiles. “Two,” the midwife said as she wiggled her fingers in the air. “Two babies.”

  “What?” My eyes dropped to the pale skin of my abdomen. “Twins?”

  The word came out in my own language, of course. I had no idea what Liburnia would call two babies born at the same time, or if these strange people even had a word for that.

  Liburnia shrieked in delight. She folded both of her arms at her sides and rocked them, smiling first at the right, then at the left. As if she were holding two babies.

  “Two,” Liburnia echoed, her voice almost blissful. “Two babies!”

  Slowly, as though touching my belly would make this discovery more real, I cupped my fingers over the top of my swelling pregnancy.

  “Fenris,” I whispered, in the language I knew they wouldn’t understand. “We’re having twins.”

  THE MONSTER FREED: CHAPTER TEN

  I woke to screaming.

  The room was so dark that, for a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was. My heart thundered against my breastbone, and I gasped, willing myself to remain calm. I ran a hand over my stomach; the soft, familiar curve of my stomach felt no different. Thank the stars.

  Screaming. Somewhere, someone was screaming.

  “Fenris,” I gasped.

  I was on my feet before I fully realized what I was doing. The floor was cold and smooth; tiles, then. This was Thrym’s domus. But that scream! It had been the desperate cry of agony, of torture. It was the sound Fenris had made just after
they’d stuck a sword in his maw, forcing his great jaw open.

  I realized I was trembling in the darkness of my own sleeping chamber. Had I dreamt it? Fenris’s scream echoed through my dreams almost every night as I ran down dark corridors, sometimes the halls of Nøkkyn’s castle, sometimes choked, overgrown paths through the Ironwood. Sometimes I ran toward that scream. Sometimes, I ran from it.

  My breath hitched, and I realized how close I’d come to tears. Stars damn it! Forcing myself to breath, I pressed my palms against my eyes. It was a dream. I’d had another nightmare. It was just—

  The scream came again, shattering the night. It sounded as though it had been ripped from someone’s throat.

  I pushed open the wooden door and ran toward it.

  The lamps had burned out, and cool moonlight filtered through the shuttered windows and poured in through the open compluvium in the roof. As I crept through the halls of Thrym’s domus, I heard the whisper and murmur of voices. I wasn’t the only one the screams had awoken, then. But I couldn’t wait for Liburnia, or for Thrym. That voice was too much like Fenris. I’d left him chained once before. Stars be damned if I’d do it again.

  The screams led me out through the kitchen door and across the small herb garden, one of the few places in the entire sprawling estate that reminded me of my former life in the Ironwood. Beyond the kitchen garden, Thrym had told me, was the entrance to the caves. He stored his wine barrels down there to age, along with much of the food for the domus. Thrym had promised me a tour, but it hadn’t happened yet. Stars, it had only been—

  Another scream ripped through the night. It sounded like a man being skinned alive. Fear pulsed through my body in alternating flashes of fire and ice. I forced myself to walk across the smooth, raked sand of the garden path until I reached the wooden door over the cave’s entrance.

  It was unlocked.

  The door swung open soundlessly. The yawning, black maw of the cave opened before me. I swallowed hard. The screams had fallen silent once I entered the herb garden, but I could almost imagine I heard the heavy, thick sound of someone breathing. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, as if the dark cave itself were somehow alive. And panting.