by Ann Gimpel
Understanding soured my belly about the time Bjorn halted and turned to face me. “About your jewelry, it started oozing power when you were in labor.”
I looked meaningfully at our son, silently telling Bjorn not to upset him further. Tears flowed from our baby and clattered to the floor as gems. I stooped and gathered them, intent on shifting his attention away from the amulet.
“There ye are,” Nidhogg shouted from the far end of the passageway.
“Here we are,” I agreed as we covered the twenty meters or so between us and the dragon lord.
Nidhogg held out his forelegs and made a chirping sound. Geir let go of Bjorn and me and bounded to his grandfather, his unhappiness over my amulet forgotten. Thank the goddess he had a short attention span.
“I heard,” Nidhogg said without preamble.
“What happened?” I asked, seeking information about how Mother had managed to break free from her prison. I’d ditch the amulet and ring and circlet as soon as I could, but not within plain sight of my son.
“I should have an answer to that question shortly.” Nighogg stood aside, and Bjorn and I walked into a cavernous space lit by magic. Long tables were laden mostly with trenchers of various meats. Geir wriggled out of Nidhogg’s hold, spread his wings, and landed on the nearest table. Almost before he landed, he sank his snout into a pile of some kind of white-fleshed meat.
As far as he was concerned, we may as well not have been there. He began with the nearest platter. Meanwhile, I grabbed a plate from a nearby stack and walked through the room selecting items to eat. I was beyond hungry. Ravenous was more like it.
A blast of blurry light from Nidhogg told me he’d sealed off the kitchen from the rest of the labyrinth beneath Fire Mountain. “Eat,” he said. “Get your strength back.”
I’d already settled on a bench and was shoveling food into my mouth nearly as enthusiastically as Geir, although he was more efficient than me. Apparently, dragons didn’t need to chew as much as I did. Bjorn sat next to me. He was eating, but he looked worried.
I got it. Fire Mountain was about as insular and safe as locations came. If we couldn’t put a couple of days together here without incident, it didn’t bode well. Nidhogg was shadowing Geir as he ate his way down the table. Our son was visibly larger than he’d been when he was born.
Big surprise. He’d been eating nonstop.
Nidhogg turned to face us. Not that I’m all that swift reading dragon expressions, but I knew whatever came out of his mouth would be very bad news. “Ysien just reported in. Your mother is back in her cell, but the Morrigan is gone.”
Bjorn punched the air with a fist. “They planned this.”
“I fear ye’re correct,” Nidhogg said. “At least, the Morrigan did. This has her signature all over it. She may have paved the way to free Ceridwen, knowing full well ’twas temporary. And then, she took full advantage of the confusion to sashay out of here.”
I recalled what I knew about the Morrigan. She’d been banished long before I was born, but she was the Battle Crow and capable of shifting into infinite forms. Shifting aside, she incited battles and was a worse shit-stirrer than Loki ever dreamed of being. It was a wonder the two of them hadn’t joined ranks…
“Oh no!” I cried.
“What?” Both Bjorn and Nidhogg stared at me. Geir kept right on eating.
“This can’t be accidental. I know it’s farfetched, but somehow Loki reached out to her, told her about his plight, and convinced her to help him.” The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I heard the ring of absolute truth.
“That’s quite a stretch.” Bjorn patted my hand as if I’d suddenly grown feeble. It pissed me off.
“Think about it.” My voice came out louder than I meant. “Loki stirs the pot. It’s what he lives for. The worse things get, the better he likes it. Well, the Morrigan is the same way. It’s why the Celts banished her—something totally unheard of in the pantheon. She’s the only one they ever sent away, and it was because of her penchant for setting people against one another and causing trouble.”
“She tried to co-opt a young dragon when she was first imprisoned here,” Nidhogg rumbled. “If the hatchling hadn’t told his mother, the Morrigan may well have gotten away with it. She had the youngster convinced he should free her. The tale he ran to his mother with was that the goddess had fallen into one of Fire Mountain’s many chasms and couldn’t find her way out.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
Smoke plumed from Nidhogg’s jaws. “We educated every dragon and sent the Morrigan to Arawn for half the year, where she roasted in perpetual fire. For the time we had her, we buried her even deeper beneath Fire Mountain itself.”
“Whatever you did,” Bjorn said, “it worked for a long time.”
“Aye. Mostly because she gave up trying to outwit us,” Nidhogg said. “We never should have put Ceridwen with her. At the time, I thought perhaps the two would comfort each other, and—”
Laughter, harsh and bitter, burst from me. “Sorry,” I said around gouts of it. “Mother hated the Morrigan. Didn’t you hear when she called her something like a craven bitch before you hauled her here?”
“She said she dinna wish to share the same air,” Nidhogg corrected me. “I thought ’twas manipulation on her part because she dinna wish to be taken anywhere as a captive.”
Thoughts crowded into my head, and I raked my hands through my unbound hair. “When was the last time you sent the Morrigan for her stint with Arawn?” I asked Nidhogg.
He understood exactly where I was going with my question. Smoke, ash, and flames spewed from his mouth, bouncing harmlessly off a far wall. “After the Ninth Gate fell, except none of us knew it had been ruptured.” He shook his head until his scales rattled. “I have to hand it to her. She tricked us, and ’tisn’t easy to fool dragonkind.”
“Loki was skulking around the lowest level of Hell,” Bjorn broke in. “The Morrigan must have met him there—”
“Aye and hatched the plot that just played out. For once, Ceridwen was conned.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t feel sorry for her.” A quick glance at Geir told me he was still immersed in eating. I sidled to Nidhogg and stripped off my necklace, ring, and circlet. “Get rid of these,” I told him in shielded mind speech.
Nidhogg narrowed his whirling eyes, but didn’t question me as I feared he might. He took the items. Power flared bright gold with reddish streaks. When it cleared, my jewelry was gone.
Bjorn was on his feet. “Someone has to alert Odin. Now.”
“I’ll do that,” Nidhogg said. “While I’m there, I’ll make certain he’s up to date on the fate of his work crews and your trip to Cadir’s borderworld.”
Bjorn nodded. “Dewi told you, huh?”
“Of course. Dragonkind have no secrets from one another,” Nidhogg replied.
“What about Mother?” I asked, convinced she had some underhanded plot in mind to wrest Geir from me. Hopefully jettisoning jewels that had once been hers would foil her plans.
“Dewi has that situation well in hand. And we have posted two dragons to keep her confined.”
Hel shimmered from empty air at the far end of the kitchen. “I shall go with you,” she told Nidhogg.
I waited for him to tell her he didn’t require her presence. Instead, he nodded. “Aye, ’tis a good idea.”
Geir’s head popped up. “Grandma. The good one,” he chirped.
“Aye, darling.” Hel hustled to him and lifted him into her arms. “Grandma will be back soon. Eat and grow. Surprise me by how much bigger ye are when I return.”
He puffed steam. Hel laughed and set him back on the table. I was infinitely grateful he hadn’t noticed the missing amulet. Sooner or later, he was bound to. Hopefully, I could find enough shiny pretties to divert him. Should be plenty of those in a dragons’ lair.
“We willna be long,” Nidhogg said.
Hel trotted to his side as magic burbled around him. Moments later,
we had the kitchen to ourselves.
I glanced at my empty plate. I should eat more, but my appetite had fled. “We should be doing something,” I muttered.
“We are,” Bjorn said. “The sooner you’re fully recovered, the sooner we can leave.”
“Go where?” Geir asked.
I looked at my son. So young. So vulnerable. So innocent. The innocent part wouldn’t last much longer. I didn’t want him to go anywhere. I needed him to be safe.
“Wherever we go,” Bjorn answered.
I dipped my head and shielded my mind. Our son didn’t need an overprotective mother with misguided maternal instincts hovering over him. He needed to learn about his magic.
“About those lessons in crafting a ward,” I said. “How about if we begin now?”
Bjorn dropped a hand onto my shoulder and squeezed hard. “Good idea. No time like the present to figure out how his magic will work.”
“Where do we begin?” I walked to his side.
“We let him show us how he wields the four elements,” Bjorn said, “and then we’ll take it from there.”
I nodded. “You’ve helped others learn magic, huh?”
“I have.”
Remembering all the years when the only magic I commanded was what I’d taught myself wasn’t productive. All it did was piss me off. Before I hunted down Ceridwen and cussed her out for being the worst damned parent ever, I focused on Bjorn and Geir. Our son was on the floor, and Bjorn crouched in front of him.
“Show me earth,” Bjorn was saying.
“Want fire.” Geir turned his head, and flames burst from his mouth.
“Earth,” Bjorn persisted.
“Why? Fire is easy.”
“Aye, but spells require a command of all four elements.”
Geir’s head bounced up and down. “Tell me how.”
Bjorn scooped up a ball from the earthen floor and tucked it into Geir’s talons. “Earth holds minerals. Gold. Silver. Copper. Titanium. And many others. All dragons love precious minerals. It’s how you will persuade earth to come to your call…”
Love for the two of them suffused me with a warm glow. Maybe we’d have a moment to teleport to Midgard so I could show my wonderful son to the witches.
“Daughter!” Ceridwen’s unwelcome voice filled my mind. “Ye must come. They’re killing me.”
“Buck up, Mother. You’re immortal. And your spying tools are gone. While I’m at it, stay away from my son.” I slammed wards around my mind with her name all over them and hoped to hell it would be enough. Neither Bjorn nor Geir looked up, so my guess was they hadn’t heard her.
Chapter Twelve, Bjorn
Somehow, we cobbled another three weeks together in our cozy room beneath Fire Mountain. At least I believe it was that long. Dragon magic spins a web over everything until prosaic items like the passage of time grow blurry. Rowan and Geir and I returned to the pool every day. It strengthened all of us, but especially Geir. I swear he grew half again as big after each dunking. He’d shed his scales so many times, a small pile of them circled the pool.
Nidhogg and Dewi said to leave the shiny golden bits. They were probably waiting until Geir was done molting to clear up the mess and hide it away where no one could find it. Rather like the cord and placenta, any physical matter could pose a danger to our son, if the wrong person got their hands on it.
His head reached to my chest now, and he was too heavy to lift. He still liked to curl up in my arms, though. Rowan’s too. I’d expected him to ask what happened to Rowan’s necklace, but he never did. Perhaps with the innate innocence of the very young, he’d known it was evil but had been drawn to it, anyway.
Its absence might have been a relief. It certainly was for me. Kind of like when you don’t know until a thing is gone that it wasn’t healthy for you. I have to hand it to Ceridwen. She did a masterful job swathing those gems in enough Celtic magic they did feel like they belonged to Rowan. Hell, the jewels had even fooled her.
Sometimes everything made me tired. I wanted to gather up my mate and my child and transport us all to my cottage where I could raise my son, teach him the things that I’d loved as a boy. Except he wasn’t a boy. He was a dragon. He might have a human form, but I hadn’t seen it except at the moment of his birth.
His aptitude for magic was bottomless. He learned quickly and added his own twists to spells. Many blew up in his face, but he’d laugh and start over. He could craft a credible ward—and he still obeyed when I told him to do something—but I didn’t expect compliance for too much longer. Surely, dragons had a phase similar to human children where they refused to do anything.
Nidhogg and Hel had indeed returned quickly, with Odin in tow. After dandling Geir on his knees and coating him with Norse protection spells, he’d growled at me that I was shirking my master sorcerer duties. Nidhogg and he had gotten into it then, and I’d quietly left the room.
Later, I’d asked Nidhogg about whether we should teach Geir to shift, or at least explore whether that was going to be part of his magic. Nidhogg took my question seriously because he’d thought for a while before he said, “Perhaps later. He is stronger and far less vulnerable as a dragon.”
“What about Ceridwen and the gems?” I persisted. That episode still bothered me. Rowan and I had talked about it, and I knew her mother was still harassing her.
“Pah.” Nidhogg had puffed enough ash I ended up bent over coughing. “That Celtic slut knows how much dragons adore gemstones. She leveraged Geir’s hoard-lust and did her damnedest to get to him through the onyx amulet. But she failed. That is the important part.”
“Only because Rowan figured it out,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be so blunt, but I needed Nidhogg cognizant of how close we’d skirted to disaster. Who knew what damage Ceridwen could have done if she’d established a toehold in my son’s mind?
I wrenched my thoughts back to today as I trotted through the now-familiar warren of passageways. I’d woken hours ago and left Ro and Geir asleep in our room.
“Hello, mate,” rang from behind me.
I swung about and faced Gwydion. He was smiling and garbed in a deep-blue robe sashed in white, staff in hand. Loose for once, his fair hair fell down his chest. Arawn glided next to him, garbed in black. Trousers this time, rather than a robe, were topped by a linen shirt with full sleeves. His dark eyes had regained some of their sparkle. The last time I’d seen him, he looked beleaguered what with all his Ninth Gate problems.
“Got the latches repaired, did you?” I asked and charged forward, hand extended. Both Celts shook it.
“Aye. I did. Have ye added divination to your other skills?”
I shook my head. “You don’t appear as…troubled as you did.”
Arawn drew his dark brows into a thick line. “Dewi relayed your suspicions about the Morrigan latching onto Loki in my domain. At first, I was furious, defensive, convinced such a thing could never have happened right under my nose.”
“But then he paid Bran a visit,” Gwydion tossed out.
I waited. Clearly, the Celts didn’t require prodding from me. And I was intrigued by what Bran, god of prophecy, had said.
“I’m telling this,” Arawn shot a black look at Gwydion.
“Be my guest.” Gwydion mock bowed.
Arawn hissed annoyance. “I like to be thorough,” he continued. “And so I requested Bran to take a peek into the past to see how my gates were destroyed. As long as he was there, I asked him to determine if the Morrigan and Loki had had any contact.”
It wasn’t a time to ask questions. If I read his body language correctly, Arawn was uncomfortable enough. His shoulders sat ramrod straight, and a touch of color splashed across his pale skin.
“Without adding unnecessary detail,” Arawn went on, “a combination of dragon magic from Cadir and the Celtic world-breaking spell brought my gates down. If I’d retained a gatekeeper, at least someone would have let me know. As it was, months elapsed afore I discovered aught was
amiss.”
Gwydion sent a pointed look scuttling toward Arawn, who chopped a hand downward. “Not a word from you. Until ye have a separate realm to keep an eye on, ye’ve no idea how much time such a task can absorb.”
I kept my mouth shut, and my mind shuttered. I was appalled Arawn hadn’t so much as bothered to set foot in Hell for however long had passed between the gate-breaking and when he found out about it.
“Bran appeared done, so I left off looking at crystals and tea leaves over his shoulder, but then he called me back.” Arawn paused to take a measured breath. “Bran pointed at a third tool. He’d waved his hands over a good sized mirror when I first showed up, but I figured it was for some other purpose. In its surface, I saw the Morrigan and Loki sitting close, heads bent together, thick as thieves.”
“What were they saying?” I was done being silent.
Arawn shook his head. “The mirror dinna include audio.”
“Still proves they knew each other,” Gwydion snarled.
“Agreed.” Arawn bit off the word and eyed his companion. “Ye forget, I know the Battle Crow as well as any. She’s funneled many a soul to Hell, and I dinna lift a finger to save her from her fate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did you vote on her ouster?”
Gwydion nodded. “Aye, and it had to be unanimous. Had even one Celt cast a dissenting vote, we’d not have exiled her.”
“’Twasn’t as if we had much of a choice.” Arawn’s voice held a weary note, as if reliving that part of the past bothered him. “Not if we wanted to maintain our relationship with dragonkind. ’Twas already strained on many fronts, but the Morrigan made sport out of turning dragons against one another.”
“She even recruited griffons and Furies and the Harpies to jump into that last brawl,” Gwydion muttered. “‘Twas the final straw. For us all.”
I hadn’t heard that tale, but it would keep. “You’re here,” I pointed out. “Are other Celts with you?”
“Aye. We shall gather tomorrow to cobble plans together,” Gwydion told me. “Odin and Thor and a few others from Asgard and Vanaheim are due here as well.”