Giants of the Frost (20 page)

Out of the murky green darkness, a face loomed in front of me, a nightmare of weed and veins and algae. It was the last thing I saw before I blacked out.

The next face I saw was Gunnar's, close and hot.

Then more blackness.

Voices shouting. Being carried.

Carsten's voice above them all, shouting orders.

Carsten?

Our nurse, that's right. I've been saved.

"Am I alive?" I mumbled, and my throat felt as though it had been lacerated. Relieved laughter. Being pushed and pulled, and a warm towel gathered around me. I opened my eyes. I was sitting in a chair in the sick bay, a linoleum-floored room which saw most of its use in storing our alcohol. Carsten leaned over me and smiled. "Welcome back."

Gunnar stood anxiously in the corner. I touched my wet hair. Memories swung toward me and I shuddered. "What happened?"

"As far as we can figure, you went in after Matthias and then got tangled up in some weed," Carsten said.

"I saw a face under the water," I said, "just as I was blacking out. A nightmare—"

"I'm sure that's not unusual in those circumstances."

"You're fine now," Gunnar said. "Nina called me and I pulled you out." I smiled. "Did you save my life, Gunnar Holm?"

"Would that be all right if I had? Or would that contravene our 'just mates' rule?"

"No, that's all right."

"And the whole kiss-of-life thing?"

"I don't remember it, so it's like it never happened." I laughed and it hurt my lungs, so I stopped.

"You were very brave to go in after Matthias," Gunnar said. "He might have died in pursuit of his sea monster."

"Sea monster?"

"He told Magnus that's why he went in the water."

I closed my eyes and even that hurt.

"Are you all right?" Carsten asked.

"I thought drowning was supposed to be a nice peaceful death," I said.

"Not at all," he replied emphatically. "Filling your lungs with liquid is very painful. Gunnar, could you tell Magnus what happened."

Carsten listened to my lungs and checked my eyes, gave me some painkillers and told me to go to my cabin, have a warm shower and get into bed.

"I'll come over in an hour to check on you," he said, giving me a fatherly pat on the shoulder, "but I think you'll be fine once you've had a rest."

I did as he said, and as I was climbing into my bed I noticed something on the bedside table. The ward. Gunnar had left it there. I picked it up and clutched it in my palm. Did he leave it without saying a word because he thought I really needed it and was afraid to ask for it? He was probably right on both counts.

I dangled it in front of me and it spun slowly on its chain. Matthias, despite being a good swimmer, had gone into the lake and been pulled under. I had gone in and been pulled under. Gunnar had come after me and he'd been fine. Anything to do with a certain good luck charm?

Images from the last weeks crowded my imagination: sticks and weeds, night grey, lake-gloom, matter neither animal nor vegetable, sick moonbeams and nausea in my heart valves. If I lay still and thought hard enough, I might be able'tö pin all these horrors down, but my lungs ached and I wondered what was more important, thinking or breathing.

I opened the clasp and fastened the ward around my neck. I decided I liked breathing.

[Asgard]

The house at Gammaldal was silent and still as Vidar reined Arvak in. A thin streak of smoke curled from the chimney, but Aud did not emerge to greet him.

"Aud?" he called, dismounting. He removed saddle and bridle and set Arvak free to walk about, then looked inside the house. The remains of a fire; the quiet darkness; the smell of old cooking. No Aud. He scanned outside. What day was it? Perhaps she was with Loki. Vidar cursed as he led Arvak to the stable to feed and water him. Vidar didn't want to be alone. He needed company and conversation to break the obsessive circle of his thoughts.

It had seemed so simple before he met Victoria. In his imagination, they would meet, fall in love, then together they would hide from his family, just for a lifetime. And yet, when he finally saw her again, reality weighed heavily on his heart. Had he really forgotten how fine her skin was, so pale he could see the blue veins at her wrist? Had he forgotten the lightness of her voice, the narrow circumference of her waist, the softness of her cheek? She was so vulnerable, so
mortal
. His whole time in Midgard he'd longed to hold her, to crush her body against his and burn his lips on the heat of her skin. In her presence, a longing so acute had gripped him that his whole body would have trembled had he not forced it to be still. But when the moment arrived for him to declare his feelings, he had become acutely aware of the possibility that he might attract to her a danger she was not equipped to battle.

Vidar left Arvak in the stable, but couldn't bear to return to the house, to sit quiet and cautious indoors when such a passion of indecision clouded his mind. He crossed the wide flat fields and found himself walking up and down the muddy beach in the early light.

Nearly a thousand years he had waited. On each day of each week of those years, he had thought about Halla with longing and tenderness, knowing eventually she would return. He had yearned for that day so violently that sometimes he feared it would injure him. How could he turn his back on her now?

It was simply that the obstacle that stood between him and Victoria was so great. His father. A beast—foul, brutal and malevolent. Not happy unless everyone around him was intimidated. Damn him. Vidar set his teeth. Sometimes the shadows of a fantasy taunted him. In his fantasy he went to Valaskjálf at night, burst into the cavernous hall, and killed all of them: his detestable father, his preening brothers, the hard-faced women they surrounded themselves with… But before the fantasy could spawn the kind of detail that would make it addictive and poisonous, he suppressed it.

Vidar stopped, crouched on the beach and watched the waves for a long time, no closer to knowing what to do next.

The sun behind him cast his shadow on the mud, as it rose over Valaskjálf many, many miles away. Aud had arrived at Loki's house to find he wasn't home. She stoked the fire and sat beside it, deciding she would wait one hour, then return to Gammaldal. Vidar had been gone for a week and the cottage was empty and forlorn without him, but returning was better than sitting among the towering shelves of dusty objects Loki had collected. Time crawled and she wished she'd brought some mending. She didn't dare touch any of Loki's things in case she broke something and found herself bound into his service two days a week.

She wondered when Vidar would return. The longer he was away, the more likely it was that this Midgard woman returned his affection and kept him permanently from his home. She had hoped, bitterly and deep in her chest, that the Midgard woman would be indifferent to Vidar, sending him back to Aud broken and in need of comfort; although she couldn't imagine that any woman could be indifferent to Vidar. What aspect of his great beauty or tender heart could be found wanting?

The door slammed inward and Loki stood there, outlined by daylight. It gave Aud a start.

"Did I frighten you?" he said, laughing.

"No. Did you forget I was coming?"

"No. I remembered." He slid inside and closed the door behind him, plunging his features into shadow.

"I've been out hunting."

"Hunting?"

He produced a posy of yellow flowers. "Hunting wild-flowers. For you." Aud smiled in spite of herself. Warily, she took the flowers. "Thank you, Loki." He crouched in front of her. "You see, I'm not so bad. I'm sweet and tender." She laughed. "They aren't the first two words that spring to mind when I think of you."

"What are the first two words, then?" he asked, leaning so close she could feel his breath on her hands.

"
Thief" and "liar
." "Master and servant," she said, refusing to be flustered by his proximity or the hot little kisses he laid upon her fingers.

"Oh, come," he said, taking her hand, "we are more than that."

"Loki, I have very strict orders from Vidar. I'm to serve you. What would you have me do today?" He rose and began hunting through the objects crowded on a shelf on the other side of the room. "Vidar tells me you are a fine weaver and seamstress. Is that right?"

Aud flushed with pleasure. "Did he really say that?"

"Oh, yes," Loki assured her. A shining silver pot fell and hit him on the head. He cursed and proceeded more carefully.

"When I came to Gammaldal, he had two tunics and two breeches, both plain wool, both poorly woven and sewn by himself," she confided, giggling at the memory. "I found madder and lichen, dyed some wool and spun it fine, then wove and sewed him new clothes. The old ones I threw on the fire." Aud patted the apron she wore with her sewing tools in it. "It was very satisfying."

"I suppose you used an Aesir loom, though," he said over his shoulder. "Big, heavy, rough." Aud frowned, puzzled. "Yes. Why do you ask?"

He turned. He had dislodged from the shelf a lightweight carved loom of maple, which he presented to her.

Her fingers traced the carvings. "These are Vanir runes," she said.

"It's Vanir work," he replied. "I found it on my last trip to Valaskjálf. I was looking for honey and this was tucked away in the back of the cook-room. Probably spoils of war, dusty and long since forgotten." A sad-happy feeling tingled up her fingers and into her heart. Something from home.

"Do you want me to weave a cloak for you?" she asked.

"No. I have many fine clothes." He rose and took the seat next to hers at the fire, stretching languidly.

"It's a present. Do what you want with it."

"Then what am I to do for you today?"

"You were a witch princess in Vanaheim, weren't you?"

Aud savored the appellation. Before she'd left her own country, she had been developing a sense of how powerful she might one day become. The family's seidhr magic was strong in her, and to have Loki acknowledge it filled her with pride. "I am," she said. "Though a hobbled witch princess in Asgard."

"Can you make me an elf-shot to use against Thor?"

"I'm forbidden from using magic except in service to the Aesir," she replied.

"It would be in service to me."

"Yes, but it would be against your own family. I wouldn't risk contravening the terms of my service." He pouted. "All right, then. Tell me stories."

"More stories? I don't have any. I've told them all." Even the animal fables she'd used to tell Helgi.

"Make something up. Be inventive."

She shook her head. "I can't, Loki. I'm not a storyteller. I'm—"

"But I
command
you." Loki's pale eyes narrowed. "You must do as I say. You have very strict orders from Vidar." He pronounced Vidar's name in a whispery, feminine voice.

"Very well," she said, "I'll make something up."

As the morning progressed, Loki laughed ill-naturedly at every attempt she made to invent a story. Finally, she could stand it no longer and stopped midsentence to say, "Loki, you mock me so much that I cannot concentrate."

"Petulant girl," he said, "you are in my service and I may treat you as I please. I'm kinder to you than those oafs at Valaskjálf, aren't I?"

She bit her lip and nodded. "Yes, I suppose."

"You've been spoiled by Vidar. You aren't a princess here in Asgard. You are lower than the lowliest worm."

Aud dropped her eyes, her chin set against the outburst that wanted to break free. He was right, Vidar had spoiled her. She had taken the punishment with a willing heart—anything to preserve Helgi's life—and now she allowed herself to be upset by Loki's teasing. She was too proud. And Loki was too sly. He seemed to know her vulnerabilities instinctively and prodded them like a curious child prods the breast of a dying bird.

"Aud?"

She looked up to find him, bafflingly, smiling at her. "Yes, Loki?"

"You are a worm, aren't you?"

She tried laughing with him. "Yes. Yes, I am."

"Good, now that we have established that, let's have more stories."

"No, Loki. Let me do something else, I beg you. Let me climb to your highest shelf and clear down the cobwebs."

"What fun would that be for me?" he asked.

"Then
you
tell a story. You have so many. You have lived so long and been involved in dozens of famous adventures."

"Hmm," he said, stroking his bare chin in a theatrical impression of consideration. "Should a master grant a servant's wish?"

"Oh, come," she said, repeating his own words from earlier, "we are more than that." This amused him. Laughter peeled out of him so loudly that Aud found herself laughing too.

"Very well," he said finally. "Which story would you like to hear?"

"Any story."

"Would you like to know how I fell out with the Norns?"

"Yes, I would. I had wondered—"

"Had you? Then you knew I fell out with them?"

Aud felt her heart start. Had she revealed too much? Was everything threatened by a few careless words? "I had heard tell along with many other stories about you," she said smoothly. If Loki suspected anything, he gave no indication. "It's a fine story, Aud. You'll like it. It happened a few centuries ago. Have you ever seen a giant, Aud?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, they aren't so fearsome as they sound. Most of them are only seven feet tall, and half of them are women and not frightening at all. But fate says that they will be enemies to the Aesir at Ragnarök, and for that, Odin has them trapped at Jotunheim. They aren't clever or cunning, so they rarely try to escape. And if they do, there is only one route out: Utgard Bay. They hate water, and Odin often sends his spying ravens over to watch. Yet, occasionally, one slips through. So it was, on this occasion, that Aurgrímnir overcame his fear of drowning and arrived on the shores near the World Tree.

"Now, Aurgrímnir was just under eight feet tall, brawny and ugly, and very, very shortsighted. He climbed directly up into the World Tree to use it as a lookout. He was so rough and reckless that the tree shook and the Norns, all the way in the roots, believed it was an earthquake. They ran to the nearest opening and Urd peered out. Aurgrímnir slid down the tree to grab her. Skuld and Verda ran back inside, doubtlessly shrieking, while Aurgrímnir dragged Urd to a cave on the bay.