The Winter King (21 page)

Poppy gave him a dead pan
look. Her stomach was beginning to churn. Everything about the idea
of visiting Valhalla made her distinctly uneasy. She’d been wary of
visiting it in the first place, but now that she knew they were
going to actually confront someone there, she
really
didn’t feel good about it. It
was
Valhalla
,
after all. Everyone there was supposed to be
dead
. She wasn’t dead. She was very
much alive, and she really wanted to stay that way.

“
She’s going to stand out
like a candle in a cave in that realm,” said William, who was still
watching Poppy, but whose expression was now one of keen study.
“We’ll need to be quick about this, or we’ll start a war that will
bring down Yggdrasil for good.”

Kristopher was already moving. He crossed
the study in three long strides. “Very well, then let us waste no
more time.”

Poppy jumped out of her
chair. “But, what if it’s a trap?” She ran to catch up with him as
he exited the study and entered the hall. William was beside her at
once. “What if Toril
knew
that Meridian was watching all along and she’s
just trying to get you into Valhalla?”
Or
me,
she added mentally.
She obviously hates me more than him, or she
wouldn’t have compromised my throne.

“
She has a point,
Kris.”

Kristopher stopped and
turned to face William, who had also come to a stop. Poppy wound up
between the two men, feeling like the stuffing in a king
Oreo
.

“
What do you suggest?”
Kristopher asked.

“
Only that we think this
out before we go headlong into what Poppy very intelligently
pointed out might be a trap.”

Kris stared at him a moment, then took a
deep breath. He ran a hand through his hair and paced a few steps
away. Then he turned back. “The most important thing is you taking
the throne, Poppy. We’ll tend to that issue now and go after Toril
later. You can help – when you’re queen.”

Poppy realized she was suddenly biting her
lip and forced herself to stop. She stood up straighter and rolled
back her shoulders. “Okay,” she said. She nodded, just once. “How
do I do that?”

“
Sit on
my
throne.”

Poppy stared at Kristopher, dumbfounded. The
double entendre of the suggestion rolled over and through her, and
she immediately felt ridiculous for having noticed it in the first
place. Before she could ask whether it would actually work, William
spoke.

“
It’s actually a brilliant
idea,” he said quickly. Poppy turned to face him. Excitement had
transformed his handsome features, shifting them from something
slightly reticent to something that reminded her of an inventor on
the verge of a discovery. “Throughout man’s history, queens and
kings have often occupied the same thrones. It makes no difference.
So long as you are both alive at the same time – you will be king
and queen of the Winter Kingdom.”

Poppy looked from one king to the other.
Kristopher caught her gaze and held it. “So?” he asked softly,
moving closer so that he stood over her, and his presence and magic
at once filled her world like a drug. “Will you do it?” His blue,
blue eyes flashed, and tingling heat wrapped around her. Her nerve
endings began to sizzle with the memory of what he’d done to them
only hours earlier. “Will you take the throne and be my queen?”

“
Yes,” she said
breathlessly. At that moment, she very well might have done
anything he’d asked her to.

Chapter Thirty-One

She didn’t hesitate or hold back this time.
When they entered the throne room, she kept right on walking toward
the dais with its thrones, head tall, shoulders back. The men and
the bear behind her grew quiet, probably in anticipation. She made
it as far as a foot from the dais, when she heard the hissing
sound.

The human body is
programmed to respond on a fundamental
old
brain
level to a few vital things. One of
these is heights. If our wiring is done correctly, then when we
find ourselves at an elevated level looking down on our world, we
experience a change in emotion. Another
old brain
trigger is the smell of
death. We possess a reflex to this smell in order to detect rot in
meat or spoiled fruit that can kill us and to warn us that there
might be predators nearby. There are a few more
old brain
initiates, some more vital
than others. And when Poppy heard the distinct sound of hissing and
instantly came to an absolute stand-still, she couldn’t help but
wonder whether the noise of a snake was one of them.

She froze in place, her eyes immediately
shooting to the ground around her. But nothing moved across the
blue-white ice floor or fur rugs splayed about. All was still.

Ssssssssssss….

Poppy’s head jerked up, and her gaze fell on
the throne. In the seat of the massive king’s chair sat coiled a
rather large serpent. A mixture of blue, white and gold, the
snake’s scales were patterned intricately, and were actually quite
lovely. But the snake hadn’t been there a moment earlier. It had
literally appeared out of nowhere. Its unusual blue eyes stared
steadily at her as its head bobbed very slightly back and
forth.

The hissing sound came
again, this time manifold. Poppy’s gaze slid from the snake in the
king’s throne to the floor between the two chairs. More snakes were
coiled there, not quite as large as the first. In
her
throne, the one
covered in ice-carved poppies, there were two more.

She tried not to make any unnecessary
movements. If they really wanted to harm her, she was within
striking distance of all of them.

“
What the bloody hell –
”

Poppy recognized William’s voice.

“
Poppy, just stay where you
are. Don’t move.”

That one was Kristopher. The fact that he
was telling her to do exactly what she was already doing made her
bristle a little, but she gritted her teeth and bore it in
silence.

“
I thought the castle was
warded, Scaul. Why are there serpents in your chairs?” William
asked sardonically. Poppy could just imagine the look Kristopher
was giving him in return.

“
Obviously something
happened when the root was severed,” said Kris quietly. His tone
had dropped, his voice had lowered, and she could tell he was
closer than he’d been before. He was coming toward her.

She was afraid that his
drawing nearer would agitate the snakes.
Oh gods, please don’t let me get bitten just because he wants
to play hero
, she thought. She felt
frustratingly helpless. What she really wanted to do was cast a
spell, but just like most magic, warlock magic required movement
and speech, and she was frankly loathe to do either just then for
fear of provoking the snakes.

She almost jumped when she felt a breath at
her ear and a very strong presence directly at her back. “I’m going
to transport us out,” he whispered. It was a warning, just a
heads-up so she knew what was about to come. He gave the warning
quickly, and a second later, the space around them melted. The
snakes, either agitated by the feel of the king’s magic or alarmed
at Poppy’s sudden apparent movement, took that moment to
strike.

She cried out in surprise as the larger
snake in the king’s throne sailed toward her, able to fly through
the air in a way normal snakes could not. She put her arms up
defensively, but in the next moment, both snakes and thrones
vanished, and she was surrounded by the swirls of a fast-moving
portal.

She spun in the portal,
pulling out of Kristopher’s grasp. “What the
hell
was that, and why didn’t you
just blast it with ice magic or something?” she asked. She’d always
been a stubborn person, and now the fact that someone out there
desperately didn’t want her to become queen of the Winter Kingdom
was making her want it even more.

Kris shook his head. “My magic would have
been useless against them.”

“
Those weren’t normal
snakes,” said William, who had joined them in the
portal.

“
What were they, then?” she
asked.

“
They were the children of
the Midgard Serpent,” said Kris.

Norse myth told that the
Midgard Serpent was a mighty snake wrapped around the Great Tree
from its roots to its highest branches. Legend said that it would
be the Serpent himself who brought about
Ragnarok
, which was the “end times,”
for both mortal and immortal alike. Ragnarok obviously wasn’t about
to happen, so the Midgard Serpent couldn’t be directly involved
with any of this. He must have just had wayward children, and maybe
the Entity even got to them somehow.

The portal opened up behind Poppy, and she
would have been thrown backward into the unknown if Kristopher
hadn’t reached out and wrapped his arm around her at same moment.
She stumbled forward against his chest as Kris jumped with agile
grace from the portal’s exit. Poppy regained her footing as the
portal zapped shut behind all three of them, and they found
themselves in a new world.

Kristopher slowly released her a second
time, and Poppy turned to get her bearings. They stood atop a
grassy knoll, with a view of an entire kingdom.

Poppy took it in with the
slow fascination of someone watching an Imax film or flipping
through a photography book. “
Wow
…” she whispered. If ever there
had existed a place where the fantasy gardens and forests of
artists’ imaginations came to life, this was it. The trees were
full and devoid of dead branches or leaves. The floor was carpeted
with thick, green grass without dead patches anywhere. There were
mushroom rings and wildflowers galore, and there didn’t seem to be
any bugs at all.

The sound of a babbling brook beckoned from
somewhere nearby. A gentle breeze scented with something mildly
sweet brushed through Poppy’s hair. A beautiful cobbled stone
walkway cut through the fields and forests, winding its way into
the far distance, where a castle of what looked like multi-colored
gemstones rose from yet another valley and pierced the heavens high
above.

“
Where
are
we?” she asked breathlessly. “It
looks like Eden….”

Kristopher joined her side. She felt his arm
at her back and glanced up distractedly to find him smiling as if
with pride. “This is Dvalin,” he told her. “The land of the Norse
Dragons.”

“
It’s one of my favorite
places to visit too,” said William as the man moved right past them
on the path to begin taking it down the hill. Poppy watched him go
for a second, but found her feet didn’t immediately want to follow
after him. She was rather glued to the spot because her eyes were
too busy taking in all the candy, and her head was too busy
processing what Kristopher had just said about dragons.

As far as she could see, there was not
another living being for miles. At least not a non-plant living
being.

“
Did you say dragons?” she
asked, seriously hoping she’d misunderstood. Kris moved around her
so he was standing in front of her. Almost instantly, he
encompassed her whole world, pulling her gaze to his.

“
I did,” he said. “Dvalin
is a beautiful realm Poppy, but there is much more here than meets
the eye.” He gently cupped her cheek. His hand was warm. “Stay
close and keep wary.”

She nodded.
Damn
, she thought. She
hated it when there was so much more than met the eye. Why couldn’t
something beautiful just be beautiful? Why couldn’t chocolate just
taste good and not make you fat? Why couldn’t the sun just give you
a tan and not skin cancer? And why did flowers and kittens have to
come with allergies?

“
But why are we
here?”

Kris glanced down the stoned path. William
had a good lead on them now, but Kristopher seemed unconcerned by
the Time King’s wandering ahead. He turned back to Poppy. “The
serpents in the throne room were children of the Midgard Serpent.
Fortunately for us, so are the dragons in Dvalin. If you’ll recall
– ”

“
Dvalin was one of the
doors we had to go through to get to Yggdrasil anyway,” she
supplied, recalling the three realms necessary for activating the
gateway to the Great Tree. “So they might be able to help us
understand why the snakes appeared on the thrones
and
we’ll be closer to
the Great Tree at the same time. Killing two birds with one
stone.”

He nodded proudly. “Exactly. And it just so
happens one of the dragons in Dvalin is working for me as a
contracted guardian. He’s supposed to help keep an eye on both
Yggdrasil, and the seed vault in Norway. Maybe he knows something I
don’t about the broken root.”

Poppy blinked. “What? What seed vault?”

Kris’s expression went blank, then he shook
his head. “I forgot I hadn’t told you about that yet.” He sighed.
“There’s so much to show you…. In Norway, there is a building
called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It’s just that – a massive,
impenetrable building that cuts deep into a mountain and contains
within its walls roughly two-hundred and sixty-eight thousand seeds
from all over the planet. The seeds in the vault are placed there
to protect them from forces that might otherwise lead to their
extinction. It’s far underground, and the sub-zero temperature is
steady. The idea is that should something happen to threaten the
wellbeing of a plant species – drought, plant diseases, whatever –
we can start all over again with the seeds in the vault.”