Katja. I kicked her. I kicked her in the face.
Freya blinked and focused on the queen. She was a middle-aged woman, her dark red hair streaked with soft grays. Her eyes were lined with age and worry, and painted black. Her lips were thin and tense, and painted red. Her hands clasped the arms of her throne, displaying her black-painted nails and silver rings studded with blood-red rubies.
The rest of her body was buried in ermine, a river of white and gray fur pouring down from her shoulders to her feet, except for a sliver of milky flesh running from her smooth throat down between the hidden swells of her breasts.
Freya stood between the braziers and felt the heat rolling up the sides of her body. She bowed her head slightly. “Lady Skadi, I’m Freya Nordasdottir, a huntress from Logarven.”
“Yes,” the queen said. “Halfdan says you’ve brought your plague-bitten sister to me.”
“We did. We took her to Gudrun in Denveller first, but she couldn’t help us.” Freya glanced back at Wren. “And she died. But before she went, she told us that Skadi of Hengavik might be able to cure my sister. So here we are.”
“You went to Hengavik?” The queen nodded. “Or what’s left of it?”
“We did. There was no one there but the dead. And the bones of the giant.”
Skadi smiled a little, and then a little more. “The bones of the giant?” She shook her head. “I watched that giant fall from the sky, its flesh all afire, a trail of smoke slashed across the heavens. When it struck the ground, I thought the world itself would shatter and swallow the entire city.”
Freya nodded. “I’m sure I will enjoy hearing that tale some other time, but right now my sister is a rabid beast in a black cell underground, and she needs your help.”
“My help? You want me to cure her?” Skadi curled her fingers into fists. “Don’t you think that if I had the power to cure the plague, I would have done it by now? Do you think I would have that hideous wall casting its shadow on my city?”
Freya felt the icy resolve in her heart begin to melt, dripping down her spine with fear and doubt. “I’ve brought Wren, Gudrun’s apprentice. She has the knowledge of every vala of Denveller, to help you.”
Skadi glanced at the girl in black. “Ah, so you were her last apprentice? You have my sympathy. I had the good sense to leave when I could. I suppose you had the good fortune that Gudrun died before she destroyed too much of your life.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Wren said. “Except at the end.”
The queen nodded, and then frowned. “Logarven? Wasn’t there a vala out there as well?”
“There was,” Freya said. “She’s in your cell at this moment.”
Skadi’s brows rose in understanding. “It would seem our sisterhood has entered a rapid decline of late. And the reavers have gone as far east as Logarven. I suppose it would be asking too much to expect some good news these days.” She rubbed her forehead.
“My lady, do you know where the reavers came from?” Freya asked.
“Has Fenrir really returned?” Wren asked.
Skadi looked up and said, “Yes, I do know, and as to your question, little sister, the answer is yes. Fenrir lives.” The queen called for a drink and the tall girl with the long brown hair at her side poured her goblet of dark wine. “My apprentice, Thora,” the queen said as she took the cup and drank. The tall girl nodded to them curtly. She had sad, serious eyes that took no particular interest in the newcomers.
Skadi handed back the empty cup and said, “It was eight years ago when the skyship fell on Hengavik.”
“A ship?” Freya stared at her. “That thing was a ship, and it was built by people who sail the skies? We never heard anything about this in Logarven.”
The queen frowned. “Yes, I know. It was my order that no one speak of the ship outside of Hengavik. I didn’t want to create a panic with rumors of frost giants and dead gods falling from the heavens. I also didn’t want to risk scavengers and treasure hunters coming to loot the ship or to kidnap the two survivors. But I also knew that the Jarl of Hengavik didn’t have the wits or the strength to protect the ship for long, so I came here to Rekavik, to King Ivar, with a proposition. His vala was old, maybe even older than Gudrun, and a fool to boot. So I became his personal advisor and he brought the skyship survivors and many pieces of the ship itself here to Rekavik where he and I could study them. “
“What sort of people were they? The survivors, I mean,” Freya said. “Were they from Alba?”
Skadi shook her head dismissively. “No, they were from a land called Marrakesh, so far to the south in a place so hot that it never snows, even in winter. They had brown skin and black hair, and wore strange clothes, and spoke many strange languages, but the man spoke Yslander well enough. So when they recovered from their injuries, we began to learn from them. About their homeland and about their ship. At first, King Ivar wanted to build a skyship of his own, to sail to the far south and see this Marrakesh for himself. He dreamed of a fleet of Yslander ships sailing the skies so that we might explore and trade and make war as we did in the old days. But we didn’t have the tools or materials to build even one skyship. The southern woman explained how her country was full of great mines, and giant smithies called factories, and giant laboring beasts, and devices that not even I could imagine. All of these things are needed to build a skyship, and we have none of them.”
Freya nodded, hoping the queen would hurry along to the heart of her story so the huntress could escape the heat of the braziers. “I see. But, the plague?”
“Patience. I’m coming to that. Eventually, I suggested a different use for these foreigners and their machines. The engine that drove them across the sky is a machine that spins, like a mill, so I reasoned that we could use the engine as a drill to tunnel down into the earth.”
Gods! Gudrun was right. Skadi did want to dig up the ancient demons!
Freya asked innocently, “To find iron and silver?”
“Oh no, I had far greater ambitious than mere ore,” Skadi said. “We would drill into the base of Mount Esja to release the molten rock into the bay and the southern fields. The heat would drive back more of the ice, and the new land would give us more homes beside the water, and the fertile soil would strengthen our crops. With one stroke, we would make Rekavik into a thriving paradise, the greatest city in the world. I even secretly dreamed we might one day grow trees again here in Ysland. The king agreed to the plan, and the foreigners agreed to help us. So for two years, our smiths worked to create the pieces of the new engine, Ivar’s Drill. When it was built on the slopes of Mount Esja, it stood taller than Gudrun’s tower. And in the months that followed we drilled deeper and deeper into the mountain.”
“The den of the wolf,” Wren whispered. “When the Allfather defeated Fenrir, the beast was sealed in a prison that had no door, deep in the earth. But no one knows where the den of the wolf is.”
“Yes, well, we know where it is now.” Skadi ran one white hand down the fur trim of her robe from her neck to her chest. “After months of drilling, the foreman sent word that he had found rock walls so hot they glowed red. We thought the drill was about to tap the river of molten rock so Ivar and I went to oversee the work that day. We had grown quite close over those years, and we married just before the drilling began.”
“And then?” Freya prompted her.
“And then, we sat on the slopes of Mount Esja and listened to the drilling, waiting to hear that the magma had been found, waiting to see that river of golden fire pour out of the mountain and down into the bay,” Skadi said. “It was late in the afternoon when the drilling stopped. The machine itself stood on the slope where we were, with only its grinding arm reaching down into the darkness. Ivar and I stood beside the pit, beside the machine, and we listened. We waited to hear the foreman tell us he had found the magma. Instead, all we heard were screams.”