Mist (6 page)

“And she knew you were already here?”

“Even so. She contacted me six days ago. Since I was on the other side of Midgard, it took me some time to reach this city.” He got to his knees, bracing his hands on the ground to either side of his body. “And now there is no more time for discussion.”

“Wait a minute. I want to know—”

“What you want is of no consequence. You are a servant, and you must obey.”

“Obey
you
? I don’t remember signing on to serve a cursed arrogant elf with dirt on his nose.”

He cracked open his other eye, and there was something fierce in it, an echo of un-elflike anger that put a chink in his façade of dispassion.

“My appearance is irrelevant,” he said, trembling as if he were on the verge of some kind of seizure. “My purpose in coming here was to make sure Gungnir was safe and prepare you and the other Valkyrie for what is to come.”

All at once Hrimgrimir’s words came back to her again.
“A pity that you chose
her
side. You might have lived to see the new age.”

And she knew, even before she asked the obvious question, what Dainn was going to tell her.

“Hrimgrimir was only the beginning,” Dainn said, the ferocity leaving his eyes. “We do not know how many Jotunar are here with him, and there will be many others to follow. They will all be searching for the same thing.”

“The Treasures,” Mist said. A wave of fresh dizziness rolled over her, and suddenly she was in Norway again, kneeling over Bryn’s body, slipping the Falcon Cloak on its thong over her neck. And afterward, at the site of the massacre, staring at the broken halves of Thor’s unbreakable staff. Believing they would never be of use to anyone, ever again.

She grabbed Dainn’s arm before he could get to his feet, feeling long muscle that was surprisingly firm in such a tall, slender body. “Why?” she asked, though she already knew the answer to that question, too.

“What has ever been the Jotunar’s intent?” he asked, pulling his arm from her grip.

War with the Aesir and their allies. The old hatreds had simmered since the beginning of time itself, coming to a boil as the time of Prophecy drew near. Old grudges were revived, oaths broken, once- strong allegiances abandoned. Aside from a few giants who had intermarried with the gods and took the side of light, the vast majority had eagerly joined with Loki, himself the son of giants, Odin’s blood brother and most deadly enemy.

Suddenly Mist’s breath seemed locked in her throat, unable to reach her lungs. “They want another Ragnarok,” she said.

“And the victory they believe was stolen from them,” Dainn said.

“The Aesir want it, too?”

“No.” Dainn met her gaze, his own clear and determined. “It was never the intention of the Aesir to engage in another war. They intend to build a new Homeworld, a better one, in place of that which was lost.”

“In Midgard.”

Mist was well beyond shock by now, but her stomach performed some interesting gymnastics nevertheless. She could feel the looming disaster behind his words, but she could hardly begin to grasp the enormous and frightening consequences of such a plan.

“You’re saying they want to take over this world,” she said.

“It is complicated.”

Right. The old fallback line when someone didn’t want to tell someone else the truth. “It isn’t complicated at all. The next Ragnarok will be—”

“
Must
be won by the Aesir,” Dainn finished. “Or this world will be finished.”

“And the Aesir need the Treasures to win.” She suppressed a shiver. “Why hasn’t Freya contacted me and my Sisters directly?”

“You are only Valkyrie, and do not possess sufficient magic to hear her.”

There was nothing in his tone to indicate contempt for her limitations, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She wasn’t even a demigoddess, like many Valkyrie. She had been born to mortal parents, and her very limited Rune-lore was a pathetic thing compared to that of an elf.

Or should have been. “What about your magic?” she asked. “How did Hrimgrimir manage to grind you into the dirt?”

He looked away. “Explanations later,” he said. “If your curiosity has been satisfied—”

“I’m not going into this blind,” Mist said. “You said you came to warn me. What is the plan here? Have the Jotunar located any of the Treasures?”

“None, to our knowledge. But you are the first we have contacted. We have been unable to locate the other Valkyrie thus far.”

“And you think
I
can tell you where to find them? I haven’t been in contact with any of my Sisters for over half a century.” There was just the briefest flicker of uncertainty in Dainn’s dark blue eyes, as if she had hit on a problem he hadn’t anticipated. A problem that scared him.

“How did you find
me
?” she asked, taking advantage of his lapse. “Why did you and Hrimgrimir show up here first at the same time?”

“Enough,” he said abruptly. He stood, wobbling only a little as he found his feet. “Take me to the Spear.”

Mist hesitated. She couldn’t get past the instinctive sense that something about all this wasn’t right. It wasn’t just the shock, the bizarre improbability of it all. It was something about Dainn himself. Something that made her reluctant to trust him.

And yet . . .

“Please,” Dainn said, inclining his head.

Mist found herself playing the word back in her mind to make sure she’d heard right. It wasn’t humility, not quite, but it was in the general neighborhood of the ballpark. She found it deeply disturbing that he could make her want to punch him in the jaw one second and then turn her feelings upside-down again in a heartbeat, all after she’d only known him for all of fifteen minutes.

“All right,” she said. “But keep your mouth shut and your hair over your ears when we get to my loft. My friend Eric may be there, and I’m going to have to come up with some kind of explanation for bringing an apparently indigent man in off the street in the wee hours of the morning.”

“Eric?” he echoed, giving her a long look.

“Just let me do the talking. And you’re going to have to answer a lot more questions on the way there.”

He nodded, and Mist headed for the Volvo. By the time he caught up with her, his filthy, ill-fitting rags flapping around him like the ratty feathers of a molting seagull, she was already unlocking the doors. She waited impatiently for Dainn to climb into the passenger seat.

He stood on the curb, frowning at the car as if he’d never seen one before. “This is your vehicle?”

“She doesn’t look like much,” Mist said, walking around to the driver’s side, “but she gets the job done.”

He regarded her with that flat expression she’d decided meant he didn’t want her to guess what he was thinking.

“I always shoot the Norns a little prayer when I get in,” she added dryly.

If he got the joke, he didn’t show it. Gingerly he grasped the door handle, opened the door, and climbed in.

“Buckle up,” she said. “I don’t know where you’ve been living, but we have seat belt laws in California.”

With only the slightest hesitation he did as she asked. She wrinkled her nose at the elf ’s rank odor, cracked open the window in spite of the chill, and released the brake. The heater rattled and coughed as she turned it on. Dainn braced one hand on the dashboard and the other on the armrest.

It was still too early for commute traffic, though the buses were already trundling along Lincoln Way. Once she was on Nineteenth Avenue heading south, she took a deep breath and starting talking.

“Next question,” she said. “How did the Jotunar figure out how to make themselves physical when the gods couldn’t do it? How did the Aesir learn what the giants are up to if the races are separated? Are the Realms interconnected somehow?”

“I thought I made it clear that Freya has not seen the need to reveal all her knowledge to me,” Dainn said shortly, his fingers tightening on the armrest.

Resisting the urge to lean on the gas pedal just enough to rattle him, she cast Dainn a quick glance. Was that a hint of resentment in his voice? The Alfar had always been considered more or less the equals of the Aesir; in fact, some believed they were directly related to the Vanir. Maybe Dainn didn’t like the idea of playing servant to the Aesir simply because he was convenient to their needs.

But he’d want what they wanted, wouldn’t he?

Mist adjusted her grip on the steering wheel, aware that she had left her gloves in the park and her palms had begun to sweat. “Why was I the first?” she asked.

“Of the Valkyrie to be found?” he asked, clutching at the front edge of his seat with both hands as if he thought it might come flying off the chassis. “Gungnir itself led us here. As Odin’s weapon, it contains more power than any of the others, and Freya detected that power in this region of Midgard.”

That was the first time Mist had heard that Gungnir was more powerful than the other Treasures—it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, in fact, since anyone would think Thor’s Hammer or the Apples of Idunn would be more important—but it wasn’t as if she’d ever been the All-father’s particular confidante.

He’d certainly never been clear about why he’d sent the Treasures to Midgard when nobody would be left to use them. Maybe he’d
known
Ragnarok would never happen.

Oh, Hel.

“Okay,” she said, forcibly steering her thoughts back to the subject at hand, “the Rainbow Bridge was destroyed along with the other Homeworlds, right?”

“Bifrost is no more.”

“Then how are the Jotunar getting here?”

“There are other passages.”

“What kind of passages?”

“In some ways they are not unlike Bifrost itself, but linking Ginnungagap to Midgard.”

“I assume they don’t look like rainbows.” She glanced through the windshield at the blue-black, starless sky, half expecting a hole to open up above her and drop another Jotunn on top of the car. “How do they work?”

“The Aesir have but recently discovered their existence, and that the Jotunar have been using them,” Dainn said, his voice a little steadier now that he had apparently become more accustomed to the peculiarities of her mechanical mount. “They can transport physical objects and beings, but they themselves seem to have no distinct physical form. We do not know if these bridges formed naturally or were created by some force beyond our knowledge.”

Like whatever had put an end to Ragnarok, Mist thought. “So they’re like wormholes,” she said.

Dainn didn’t answer. Mist forged ahead.

“How did the Jotunar find them before the Aesir?” she asked.

“That we do not yet know. The Lady has been making a study of them, as much as she is able to from the Aesir’s Shadow-Realm.”

“Then the Aesir don’t have access to them.”

“Clearly not,” Dainn said dryly, “or Freya would not find my assistance necessary.”

Or mine,
Mist thought. “So where do these bridges lead to? It wasn’t a coincidence that Hrimgrimir showed up here.”

“No.”

“So maybe these bridges can be controlled somehow, put wherever the Jotunar want them, like a
Star Trek
transporter. ’Beam me up, Hrimgrimir.’ ”

Apparently Dainn missed the reference. “We do not believe they have complete control over them,” he said. “There are indications that several such bridges lead to this city. In fact, all those Freya has located seem to do so.”

Mist laughed, taking humor where she could find it. “It’s an odd thing,” she said, quoting Oscar Wilde, “but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.”

“Unfortunately,” Dainn said, “they are appearing, not disappearing.”

His straight-man response almost made her laugh again, but she didn’t really feel like joking.

“So why this city?” she asked. “Does it have something to do with Gungnir? Maybe, if it’s so powerful, it sort of anchored these bridges somehow?”

She wasn’t really being serious, but Dainn gave her an odd sideways look, as if he found merit in her speculation. “You may be right,” he said.

“Mighty big of you to admit it,” she said. She hesitated, hating to admit her blatant failure to recognize that she was walking into a trap. “I felt a compulsion to go to the park a couple of hours ago, and I knew there was something strange going on almost as soon as I set foot on the grounds. Do you think Hrimgrimir used some kind of summoning spell on me?”

“It would seem likely. Clearly Hrimgrimir wished to confront you at a time and in a location least conducive to mortal interference.”

“I thought he might be following you, but
you
were following
him.
”

Dainn stared out the window as they passed Sigmund Stern Grove, thick with eucalyptus trees whose leaves had been badly scorched by the unusual cold. “I felt the presence of a Jotunn when I reached this city, and I followed him to the park,” he said.

Mist slowed as she turned southeast onto Ocean Avenue. “You didn’t know he’d summoned me?”

“No. I thought it best to conceal myself and observe him until he took some definitive action.”

“He took action, all right,” she said, glancing at his battered face, which was already beginning to heal. “He beat you within an inch of your life. You shouldn’t have had any trouble defeating him.”

Dainn was quiet all the way to the Southern Freeway ramp. “I preferred him to believe that I was no threat to him or his allies,” he said at last.

“You mean you weren’t unconscious when I found you? You just let me walk right into a trap?”

The muscles in his jaw worked. “No. I was unable to aid you.”

Unable to use his magic? Something didn’t add up—again—but Mist let it pass. “Inconvenient, since you need me to get Gungnir.”

“I was instructed to warn the guardians, not take the Treasures from them.”

“Then why do you need to come with me? You’ve warned me, and now you can run out and find the others, since I can’t help you with that. Though even if you find the rest, the Jotunar might follow you right to them.”

“We will make every attempt to keep that from occurring.”

“Who? You and Freya?” She leaned on the gas pedal, and the Volvo shot forward with a grunt of protest. “As you pointed out, Lord Elf, we’re only Valkyrie. Our magic is limited. It was never part of our job description to hold off a swarm of frost giants.”