Thora gasped.
The queen fell to the floor in a heap and the top half of her head slowly separated from the bottom, tearing apart on a diagonal line from the bottom of her jaw to the top of her ear, opening up her skull and spilling her charred brains on the cold stone floor.
Omar looked past the disgust on Leif’s face to the horror in Thora’s eyes. “I hope you’ll remember this sight every day for the rest of your life, young miss. You’re the vala of Rekavik now, for whatever that’s worth. They may even make you queen as well. Whatever power you ever come to hold, always remember why you hold it. Because if you abuse that power, then one day, eventually, someone with nothing to lose will come for you, just as I came for your mistress, and he or she will stop at nothing to destroy you. The grand high vala and queen of Rekavik, the great and powerful Skadi, is just a pile of rotting shit now. So take a good long look, young miss. Take a very good look.”
And then he left.
Chapter 28. Reunion
Freya sat outside the water mill listening to Erik gasp for breath and pound on the floor inside. She glanced inside once to check on him, and saw the inhuman expression on his face. It was a face stretched beyond a man’s capacity to understand pain, a face that wanted to scream but never could, a face on the edge of madness and far, far beyond despair.
It was a face she needed to forget.
Time passed. The stream gurgled by, the mill paddles creaked, and gradually the noises inside the mill died down until even her keen fox ears, which were now much larger than before, could no longer hear anything above the gentle whispering of Erik’s breathing. She rose to her feet, set her cold steel spear aside, and went back inside the mill.
This time the figure on the floor was Erik, the real Erik, her Erik. He stretched across the cold earth, pale and naked, his muscles quivering and limbs shaking. Her eyes darted downward and saw that he had indeed been fully restored.
The only differences she could see were the hairy ears standing up through his heavy, matted blonde hair, but the sight only made her smile. There was something almost cute about them.
It’s not just a vaccine. It’s a real cure. A cure for everyone!
Freya stripped off her long leather coat and draped it over her shivering husband, and a moment later his eyes opened, and his lips moved, mouthing, Freya?
“It’s me.” She helped him sit up and then kissed him gently. “How do you feel?”
He winced and looked around. His hand snaked out of the coat and he signed, “Like a corpse that someone lit on fire and then left out in the rain.”
She nodded. “Well, it’s all over now. You’re all right now. Do you remember what happened?”
“I remember coming here,” he signed. “And putting on the chains.”
She leaned around him and unlocked the shackles on his ankles and wrists.
“But after that, it’s all hazy, like a dream.” Erik paused, staring at his hand. “I remember being hungry, and angry, and scared. But that’s all. What happened after I left you? You found a cure with that man, Omar?”
“It’s a long story. But yes, he did make a cure. He’s giving it to everyone in Rekavik right now to protect them from the plague, and then hopefully it will spread to the reavers themselves and they’ll all turn back to normal, just like you did.”
Erik nodded and massaged his eyes. When he looked up again, he was squinting at her face, and then above her face. His eyes widened. “Oh no, you’re infected too?”
Freya reached up and touched the tall fox ears on her head. They felt so soft between her fingers, and the sensation tickled her scalp. “No, I wasn’t infected. This is the cure. The vaccine. It changes us a little bit, but it makes us stronger than before. I can see you just as clearly as you can see me, here in the dark. And listen. We can hear the running current outside, and the wind in the grass, and Arfast’s footsteps, even though he’s far upstream, drinking the cold water.”
Again Erik started, and he grabbed at his own head and discovered the large furry ears.
“It’s all right. It’s happening to everyone, and it means we’re safe from the plague.” She took his hands down from his head and kissed his dry lips.
As she leaned back, he looked at her strangely and signed, “You cut your hair.”
She grinned and ran her hand up the back of her head, feeling the short locks ripple lightly over each other. “Yeah, that’s a long story. But I’ve gotten a lot of practice telling it, so it’s a pretty good story now. I’ll tell you in a moment. Can you stand up first?”
They stood and went to the door where they both had to pause for their golden eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight. She took up her spear, and as they walked upstream in search of Arfast, she told him about her journey to Thaverfell, and killing Fenrir, and returning the ring to Skadi. When they found the white elk, she pulled off the saddle blanket for Erik to tie around his waist under her coat.
He patted Arfast’s neck, and signed, “It sounds like it was quite an adventure.”
“It was. And I’m glad it’s over. Well, it will be over as soon as we find Wren. I followed her tracks here, but she seems to have moved on. Do you have any memory of her coming to see you in the mill?”
Erik shook his head. He frowned. “I do wish I had my clothes. And my spear.”
“Well, you probably tore your clothes off when you changed,” she said quietly. Then she frowned. “But your spear should be wherever you left it. I mean, I can’t imagine anyone came to visit you out here. And if they did find a chained up reaver and a spear close at hand…”
“They would have killed me,” Erik signed.
Freya said, “Maybe Wren took it.”
“But why?”
“Why else would she need a spear? To kill something.”
Together they searched the banks of the stream all the way back to the mill, and in the dead grass behind the house Freya found a fresh boot print in the snowy earth. They set out north, following the faint trail as it meandered around boggy pits and rocky crags and over hillocks until they both began to hear something on the reedy wind. They knelt together in the snow to listen as Arfast stood behind them, flicking his tail over his rump.
“Is it a voice?” Erik signed.
“It could be an animal,” Freya signed back.
“It almost sounds like a deer caught in a snare. Hear the way it’s breathing, short and shallow?”
She nodded and they set out again, quicker than before. The sounds led them up a rocky slope and when they reached the top they looked down on a wide jagged gash in the earth more than fifty paces long though only six or seven paces wide at its center. It looked as though the Allfather himself had plunged his sword into the ground, carving a wound in the stone and soil that plunged far down into the darkness below. Across a narrow part of the ravine, with its steel butt and blade just barely clinging to either side of the rock, was Erik’s steel spear, and in the center of the spear’s shaft they could see ten white-and-red fingers.
“Wren!” Freya dashed down the slope and across the broken rock floor to the edge of the ravine, and looked down.
Wren looked up, her face pale and drawn, her feet dangling above the black abyss. “I made a bet with the Allfather that you would come and save me before I fell,” she said. “Looks like I lost.”
“You bet against me?” Freya reached down to steady the spearhead at her feet as Erik leapt across the gap and took hold of the butt.
“Well, you know how clever Woden likes to be. I thought if I tricked him into taking the wrong end of the bet, I would come out ahead when I fell to my death,” she wheezed breathily. “I would go to the next world with the Allfather owing me a favor. It seemed like the wise thing to do at the time.”
Freya and Erik lifted the spear and the dangling girl with it, and then Erik leapt back across the narrow ravine and Wren collapsed onto solid ground. When she caught her breath, she said, “But now I owe him a favor. Clever bastard.”