by Ann Gimpel
He frowned. “Aye, but I assumed ye were being lazy.”
Anger flared, quick and hot. I started to tell him off. He’d never had reason to believe me slothful. Getting into a shouting match with Odin wouldn’t help anyone, though. I set my jaw in a solid line and said, “It was only today I saw a pattern emerging.”
He spun one hand in a circular pattern, ordering me to continue.
“When people call on their magic, something dark jumps in, takes over, and perverts their ability.”
“Is it fixable?” Nidhogg asked.
I nodded. “With a fair amount of effort. I’ve told everyone not to levy magic, but you know how effective that will be.”
“I shall issue an edict,” Odin said. “Meanwhile, three parties have departed for the outer borderworld boundary.” He skewered Rowan with his implacable gaze. “What progress have ye made on the Breaking site?”
“None,” she said. “Haven’t been back to Midgard since my last trip through here.”
I blew out a breath. I’d been afraid she was going to remind him dealing with the Breaking spot had been her idea. Turned out my relief was premature.
“That was my idea,” she went on with scarcely a pause. “As was killing off what doesn’t belong on Midgard.”
“Aye, well kill them on the rest of my worlds too,” he growled and flapped his hands at us in obvious dismissal.
We never had sat down. Leaving was as close as a teleport spell, but I wasn’t quite ready to go. “Rowan and I will tend to the Breaking and see what we can do.”
“I shall help, along with my kinsmen if they are needed,” Gwydion said.
The ravens cawed. Leaving Odin’s shoulders, they flew around the room making an infernal racket. Maybe they were trying to dissuade me from what came next. It was probably ill-advised, but I plowed ahead anyway. “What will you do next?”
“Are ye addressing me?” Odin roared.
Tempting as it was to vanish in a cloud of magic, I said, “Aye. We’re playing on the same team. Means we should know what everyone’s doing.”
Something that sounded suspiciously like a cackle emerged from Thor. He stood and strode from the room.
“We should leave.” Rowan nudged me.
My stubborn side wanted to wait Odin out, but it was misguided. Even if I won the current petty battle of wills, he’d make me pay somewhere down the line. He and Loki had that in common.
The gray tubes weren’t going anywhere. We’d deal with the Breaking site first. “Your spell or mine?” I asked Rowan.
“Ours,” Zelli and Quade said in unison. A blast of dragon magic somersaulted me through the air and onto the dragon. Rowan sat astride Zelli. Valhalla wavered around us.
“That was a mistake,” Quade said once our travel spell was underway.
I didn’t have to ask what “that” referred to. “Yeah, but a satisfying one.”
“Really?” The dragon’s tone was threaded with sarcasm. “His realm is dying. He is linked to it, so he feels every grunt. Every groan. Every bit of slippage.”
“I get that. But my point was to ferret out what he was doing about it other than feeling sorry for himself.”
Midgard formed around us. When Quade spoke next, he’d shelved telepathy. “Evil is draining Odin too. What if he’s doing everything he can to keep from sinking?”
That possibility hadn’t occurred to me, mostly because I viewed Odin as invincible. Feeling about two centimeters tall, I jumped off the dragon and sprinted across cracked and broken dirt to the Breaking site. The dikes I’d built were gone, the stench of death and rot much stronger than the last time I’d been here.
A flash of copper wing told me Zelli and Rowan had arrived. Gwydion strode from behind a pillar that had recently been a troll, its features still visible. Together we waited for Rowan to dismount once Zelli landed.
I felt a jolt as she married her power with mine. “Why is it worse?” she mumbled.
“Worse than?” Gwydion arched his brows.
“Our last jaunt through here,” she said.
The fine hairs on the back of my neck prickled unpleasantly, followed by a chilly sensation tracking down my spine.
The vertical gash that had hosted Ceridwen’s Breaking spell pulsed ominously. “Strike!” I shouted.
“But we doona know what it is,” Gwydion shouted back.
“We don’t have to,” Rowan told him. “Nothing good ever comes out of that hole.” Power blasted from her upraised hands, courtesy of our joined magic.
Chapter Five, Rowan
Somehow, we’d escaped Valhalla before anyone brought up the baby. Maybe it meant I could slide by not thinking about it for a little while. Gwydion’s brush with Yggdrasil had diverted his attention away from me. After Hel had shepherded Zelli and me to Niflheim, I’d been certain she’d insist I remain glued to her side, but she hadn’t said a word.
Zelli thumped down about ten meters from the Breaking site, and I hustled off her back. She felt responsible for the roots snagging me because she’d been so close to them. After her third apology, I’d told her not to worry about it, but she’d been uncharacteristically quiet since then.
Everywhere Bjorn and I went, trouble found us. I’d assumed the Breaking place would have gone back to what it was before he constructed crafty little braces to contain what was left of its wickedness. Not only were the L-shaped catchalls gone, but the opening was half again as big and rimmed with slimy-feeling gunk.
All I had to do was look at it, and the slime came alive, almost as if it was breathing. My power joined Bjorn’s, rather like an overzealous homing pigeon. We’re stronger together than individually, much stronger.
I needed strong right about now. After my fight with the One Tree, my reserves hovered far lower than I would have liked. That’s the thing about slinging power words about. They really suck all the juice out of you.
Gwydion just showed up with his own opinions, reminding me of the adage about too many cooks. He wanted to slice and dice and examine the foulness. I didn’t give a jolly fuck what it was. I wanted to annihilate it. We could dissect it later.
Without waiting for him to agree, I lobbed as much destruction as I could muster at the damned thing, cursing my mother all the while. I thought I’d moved beyond wasting energy blaming Ceridwen. Guess I was wrong.
Bjorn’s magic had a steadying effect. I zoomed in on it rather than Mother’s treachery. If I had my way, she’d rot in a cell forever.
The dragons worked in tandem too. Without exchanging words, they took the top third of the Breaking. Bjorn and I targeted the middle section, and Gwydion worked the lowest part. I hadn’t been at all certain he’d do anything besides argue, so having him deal with the bottom segment made a certain amount of sense.
If he slacked off, we’d get there eventually anyway.
Maybe.
This wasn’t going well. “What are we doing wrong?” I shouted as I watched one more short section we’d just shut peel open again.
“Something’s undoing it. From the inside.” Bjorn sounded short of breath. I got it. I was working way harder than I wanted to be.
“Told you we needed to evaluate what we’re fighting,” Gwydion muttered just loud enough to make certain I heard him.
“Alrighty, Mr. Last Word,” I yelled his direction. “What do you think we should do?”
“Not certain. If I was, I’d have said something,” he replied.
Meanwhile, the dragons had painted their section with so much fire, rocks were melting into goo, but the breach just pulsed harder. As if what we were doing was feeding it… Shit. Crap. Fuck.
“Stop!” I shouted.
“But we’ll lose ground,” Bjorn protested.
“Can’t see as we’ve gained any,” Gwydion observed.
Much as I hated to admit he was right, he was. “I have no idea how,” I said, “but that thing is borrowing our magic and using it to nourish the breach.”
“Och. I dinna ken until I quit,” Zelli s
narled, “but the reason it took more and more effort was exactly that. Something within is siphoning our power.”
“And turning it back on us,” I said. “Not directly, but it dispatched our destructive spell to wreck more of the breach. We’d shut a portion, and someone boomeranged the magic back at us to open it again.”
“Perhaps not someone but something.” Gwydion sounded thoughtful.
“Not many can twist dragon, Norse, and Celtic power to their bidding,” Quade said.
It did narrow the field. Put that way, I couldn’t think of anything powerful enough, or savvy enough, to manage it. Standing and staring at the suppurating hole in the ether was counterproductive. Even if we hadn’t made any headway, I’d felt better while we were fighting it.
“Any idea where it leads?” Gwydion had cocked his head to one side. Magic arced from his upraised staff as he did what he’d wanted to do to begin with. Assess the damned thing.
“Might have been a good question for Mother,” I growled.
“Nay, she wouldna have any idea. I feel her energy, but ’tis minor compared with everything else it’s mixed with.”
“Loki claimed the spell originated with him,” Bjorn said. “He crafted it and then passed it to Ceridwen’s dragon lover, Cadir.”
“I canna believe Ceridwen was that stupid.” Gwydion banged the butt of his staff on the ground. Sparks flew every which way.
“You weren’t there,” I told him, “but our best guess was Cadir lured her with inducements he still loved her. All she had to do was cast this spell, and they could be together forever.”
“Doesna sound like the goddess I knew,” Gwydion muttered. “She used men. Never knew her to be obsessed by them.”
Fire flew from Zelli and Quade, a sure sign how furious—and ashamed—they still were with Cadir. I wasn’t enamored of him, either. He might have donated the sperm that made me, but after that his dad contributions had jumped off a cliff. The one and only time I’d met him, he’d tried to kidnap me and then turned it around to make it my fault.
He was dead. I’d cut out his heart, and Dewi had cast it into the volcanoes on Fire Mountain…
“Rowan?” Bjorn’s tone held that solicitous note that had crept in ever since he found out I was pregnant. He meant well, but I wanted to strangle him and scream at him to leave me alone.
“Yeah.” I tossed my head back. “Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention.”
“Someone needs to go inside.” Gwydion looked at me as if he expected me to volunteer.
“Inside there?” I stared at the suppurating gash. He nodded, and I said, “If you’re so all-fired interested, be my guest.”
“I’m considering it.”
“What are you expecting to find?” I asked him.
He shrugged, reminding me of a physics professor I’d had in a long ago college class. Dr. McGovey had been more interested in whether something was theoretically possible than in whether it was a good idea or not.
“Probably related to those gray things we saw wriggling through the void under the Nine Worlds,” Quade spoke up.
Bjorn turned to the dragon. “If that’s true, I should talk with Yggdrasil. I’d thought the black places in its roots were burned spots until Rowan pointed out fire wouldn’t ignite in the absence of air. I should have figured that out on my own, but it means the darkened areas have to be rot, and it’s been spreading for a while now.”
“Talking with the One Tree is not a good idea,” Gwydion said.
“It’s not so bad, long as you keep your guard up,” Bjorn told him. “The problem would be encouraging it to communicate. Mostly, the tree sings and lives in its dreams.”
“Aye. I ken well enough. I was there.” Gwydion set his mouth in a tense line.
I raked hair out of my face and tried to connect the dots. I’d gotten at least some sleep, but I still felt frazzled and fuzzy. “What does talking to Yddgrasil have to do with that?” I pointed at the pulsing gap. It looked about the same as it had when we showed up. At least it wasn’t worse, but our efforts hadn’t done a damned thing.
A creeping malaise held a wrong feel; I took a few steps back and built a ward. The change was instantaneous. “It’s still draining us,” I warned.
Magic flared around Bjorn and Gwydion. Apparently, the dragons had their own methods of dealing with the magical thievery. Their scales probably provided natural protection.
“Thanks,” Bjorn said. “Presumably, the tubular things are some type of transfer mechanism.”
“What tubular things?” Gwydion furled his brows. After Bjorn described what we’d seen, Gwydion’s next question was, “If ’tis a transfer mechanism, where does it begin?”
“Odin suspects somewhere near the boundary separating the outer borderworlds,” Bjorn replied.
“If that were true,” I said, “why aren’t they attached to anything? It seems to me they can’t do much harm floating about.”
“They were not attached when we were there,” Zelli said.
“Mmph, so they may have been earlier.” I thought about it. Had our unexpected presence interrupted something, and they’d let go abruptly? They hadn’t been all that close.
“Odin may have understood more than we offered him credit for,” Bjorn said. “Cutting off whatever is powering this at its roots might be the only way.”
“What did ye do last time to counteract the Breaking place?” Gwydion looked at Bjorn.
“Mixed fire and earth and built a magnetic trap to defuse the residual evil clinging to this place. But then it wasn’t this large, and malicious intent merely oozed from it. Now it’s more like a flood.”
Gwydion snapped his fingers. “Solves one part of this puzzle. Ye left magic lying about. The entity strengthened itself on the casting ye built.”
“Probably so.” Breath hissed from between Bjorn’s clenched teeth. “So much for another go at attempting to contain it.”
“Not a good idea,” Gwydion agreed. “’Tis all or naught. Either we wipe it out of existence or leave it be.”
“We canna leave it be,” Zelli argued. “’Tis growing.”
“I wonder if other gateways such as this one exist?” Quade mused.
“I really do not like that line of inquiry,” I told the dragon.
“Mayhap not”—he angled his eerie gaze my way—“but we must attend to every possibility.”
Thinking about it made me even more tired than I already was. “I should check on the witches,” I mumbled. I wasn’t concerned about the splinter group growing vegetables in Inverlochy Castle’s courtyards, but most of my friends remained in caves beneath Ben Nevis.
Casting a sidelong glance at the Breaking site sent icy tendrils down my spine. “Do you suppose it’s safe to leave it unattended?”
“I already answered that,” Zelli said. “In a word, no.”
“That much worse than afore, eh?” Gwydion asked.
“Much worse,” Bjorn and I said almost in unison.
“I’ve kept an eye on it for years,” I told the warrior magician. “Right after the Breaking, it was so bad I couldn’t get within a hundred meters, but gradually the horrible, warped malice pumping out of the hole faded. It actually receded so much, it barely felt evil anymore.”
He set his staff on the ground in front of him. Light glowed from within, bright and inviting. Holding up a hand, he counted off on three fingers. “Cadir is dead. Ceridwen is imprisoned on Fire Mountain. Loki is, presumably, imprisoned in Jotunheim.”
Before he could say more, Bjorn jumped in. “My money’s on Loki. He’s almost as connected to the Nine Worlds as Odin. Perhaps more in some ways because of his giant blood and Hel’s role.”
“You don’t think Hel has anything to do with him?” I squawked. It had just come home to roost that Hel being Bjorn’s mother meant Loki was his grandfather. I snaked a protective hand across my belly. The world would end before I’d allow Loki within spitting distance of his great-grandchild.
Bjorn turn
ed both hands palms up. “No idea. He is her father, and she borrowed his magic to seduce Nidhogg.” After casting a surreptitious glance Gwydion’s way, he added, “I’m not certain we ever truly understand the gods’ motivations or aims.”
“Ye’ve joined our august ranks,” Gwydion noted wryly. “Or did that escape you?”
“Being a half breed doesn’t count,” I reminded him.
He ignored my comment. Probably just as well. Everything about this patch of ground was making me antsy as fuck. The Breaking spot had not only grown, it held a different feel. Darker. More malevolent than before. I didn’t see how the amorphous gray things could possibly be related to it. Maybe I was being too literal, but they hadn’t been connected to anything—at either end.
Surely, if they served as a kind of conduit, some of them would have stretched beyond my field of vision. They hadn’t. The ground heaved beneath my feet. Great. More earthquakes.
I judged the shifting, rolling landscape and picked the flattest spot. A brisk leap landed me squarely on it. Before I had a chance to congratulate myself and yell for Bjorn to join me, the inviting patch of dirt opened into a crater, sucking me into blackness. Dirt fell on me as the chasm closed over, blocking out Bjorn’s outraged hollering. Unlike my last unexpected jaunt away from almost this same place, he hadn’t been fast enough to reach me.
Just as well.
I’d been conned. Just because I’d been an idiot was no reason to sweep the whole world into the same trap.
Damn it. I knew better. There’d been a reason for the single flat place, and I’d played right into somebody’s hands. “I’ll get you,” I shouted. “You’re horsemeat.”
My words echoed back at me. Before I ended up too far away to use telepathy, I shouted, “Bjorn!”
No reply. Distance couldn’t be the issue. I’d only been falling for a few moments. Falling. Yeah. Need to fix that part first. I righted myself and did what I could to slow my downward trajectory. Turned out I couldn’t stop myself completely, but being upright helped. Teleporting to somewhere familiar had to be my next move. The void between worlds would be an improvement, even though where I was now had air.