Elements of Magic (Rune Witch Book 2) Page 4

  “I don’t really know. I don’t know anything about who . . .”

  “Then how are you supposed to help?” Saga clasped her hands tightly in her lap, then took a breath and looked out the oval window. “You shouldn’t have come, Sally.”

  “But I already had a ticket!” Sally protested. “You have to at least let me try. I owe you.”

  Saga huffed and kept staring out at the clouds.

  “Please, Saga.” Sally took a moment to steady her voice. “I’m following my instincts on this one, like everyone keeps saying I should. I can help. I know it.”

  Sally looked down at her hands. “There was something Frigga said. A place, or a name, maybe.” Sally felt Saga’s eyes on her. “Val-trude-something?”

  Thor squeezed himself into the cramped airplane lavatory. He had barely enough clearance to close and lock the folding door behind him. He tried to face the sink, but his belt buckle kept catching the door latch. He tried a three-quarter turn in the other direction and banged his knee on the plastic toilet seat.

  “This is a completely degrading and uncivilized means of transportation,” Thor grumbled as he depressed a small lever on the sink and released an anemic trickle of warm water into the shallow basin.

  Thor cupped the water in his hands to splash on his face. An electronic tone sounded, accompanied by a small, illuminated stick-figure person on the wall next to the door.

  Thor was still frowning at the glowing symbol when a quick knock came at the door.

  “Hello? This is the flight attendant. Is everything all right?” The voice was muffled, but it was unmistakably Brindy. “You hit the call button.”

  “No, sorry,” Thor called out. His deep voice resounded off the dull mirror inches from his face. “Must have hit it by mistake.”

  “Okay,” she responded. “Just try not to press the button again unless you require assistance.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Thor replied. He ran another thin stream of water into the basin and rubbed wet hands across his face and beard. He turned his head one way, then the other as he examined the reflection of his facial hair.

  He’d been clean-shaven too many years, trying to conform to a more Western style of grooming and dress. At least he’d kept his hair long—barely within acceptable limits. It reached just past his shoulders now, and his beard was coming in nicely—though this time his red-gold whiskers had hints of steel gray.

  They needed those apples.

  Thor pulled on an exposed edge of thin paper protruding from the towel dispenser, and the entire stash of towels tumbled out of the wall and into the sink where they disintegrated in the water.

  “Bloody fantastic.”

  Thor grabbed handfuls of dripping paper and started shoving them into the trash receptacle below the sink by his knee. This time he felt the button depress when he brushed against it, and he gritted his teeth when Brindy’s irritated knock came again at the door.

  “Sir?” She called impatiently. “Is everything okay in there, or are you just playing with me again?”

  Thor leaned forward on the sink—achieving barely a ten-degree angle in the tiny space—and growled deep in his throat.

  “Valthrudnir? Are you sure?” Saga stared hard at Sally.

  “Yeah, that’s what she said.” Sally bristled at Saga’s intensity, and she started to wonder if maybe she should have stayed home after all. “I didn’t hear much else. Frigga kind of clammed up after that.”

  Saga clasped her hands together so tightly that white knuckles showed through her skin. “I can understand why.”

  A large shadow fell over Sally, and she cringed when she looked up to find Thor towering over her.

  “What are you doing on this plane?!” Thor whispered with such ferocity that Sally felt his words in her bones.

  “You were given express instructions to remain at home.” Thor pulled his phone out of his pocket and started to dial. “And you’ll be on the first flight back to Portland as soon as we land.”

  “No,” Sally said with a firmness that surprised her. Apparently, it surprised Thor, too, and his finger froze on the phone’s keypad.

  “What did you say?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

  “I’m going to Norway, and that’s final.” Sally crossed her arms over her chest.

  An impatient smile spread over Thor’s features, but before he could respond, Saga leaned over and snatched his phone away.

  “She knows more about what’s going on than we do,” Saga insisted.

  Thor balled his empty hands into fists and rested them on his hips. “Such as?”

  Sally pushed back into the seat as Saga leaned over her to whisper to Thor. “Valthrudnir.”

  “No.”

  “She heard the name on Frigga’s own lips.” Saga draped a protective arm around Sally’s shoulder. “And she is the Rune Witch. She might be able to help.”

  Thor narrowed his eyes at Sally. “And just what do you think you know about Frost Giants?”

  Frost Giants? Sally hear in Thor’s tone that this couldn’t be good. Imagining warriors as tall as houses and wielding deadly icicle spears, she felt the tickle of anxious fear stir in her stomach.

  But Sally set her jaw and looked Thor in the eye. “Nothing, yet. But I can learn.”

  4

  Maggie awoke in a room filled with light—streaming in through high windows and reflecting off highly polished stone walls and strategically placed mirrors. She sat up on a thick pad that sat atop a stone pedestal in the center of the room and pushed aside the heavy blankets that covered her.

  She shielded her eyes against the brilliant light to get a better look at her surroundings, but the curved, dark gray walls of interlocking stone didn’t give her a clue as to where she might be.

  One thing she knew for certain: This wasn’t her hotel room.

  And she had a splitting headache.

  “Heimdall?” Maggie eased her way off the carved slab and its feather-stuffed mattress and padded across the floor. She was surprised to find herself wearing a pair of thick, woolen socks she’d never seen before.

  “Honey?” Maggie squinted against the bright sunlight and moved toward the shadows of a corridor leading away from the oval chamber. She tried to piece together the events of the night before—or maybe it was still night now? Maggie hadn’t acclimated to Norway’s nearly twenty-four hours of summer sunlight. She and Heimdall weren’t traveling as far north as the Arctic Circle, where the sun wouldn’t set all summer long, but the effect was pretty much the same several hundred miles south.

  Had they gone out drinking? That would explain the hangover. Maybe this was an ancient family fortress Heimdall had brought her to. Maggie shook her head, then immediately closed her eyes against a wave of nausea. She pressed her hand against the smooth, stone wall for reassurance and stepped into the dim corridor.

  “Hello? Heimdall?”

  She remembered walking with Heimdall in Studenterlunden on their way to the old town of Gimbledon. No, that wasn’t right. Gamlebyen. Maggie stroked her aching brow. Heimdall was no help with the modern Norwegian language, or with landmarks. She remembered that much.

  Maggie stumbled down a tunnel of stone that seemed to snake forever onward, lit by a series of carefully angled mirrors that reflected the sunlight from the bedchamber.

  “Is anyone here?” She came to a fork in the passageway and hesitated. She decided to keep to the right to make it easier to find her way back. Camp Fire Girls training was finally coming in handy.

  “Hello?” Maggie called out every few yards. “What is this place? Heimdall?”

  The corridor came to an end as it opened into another chamber, dimmer than the one she had left and smaller, too. This room had the same curving stone walls. In the center was another stone bed.

  Maggie stepped tentatively into the room, drawing closer to the bed and the figure that lay on it.

  “I’m sorry, I hope I’m not disturbing you . . .” She walked lightly across the floor, not wanting to startle the only other person she’d encountered in this strange place. “Can you tell me where Heimdall is?”

  Maggie gasped when she recognized the figure in repose. She rushed forward and rested her hands on his shoulders.

  “Loki? Loki! Oh, thank God—or the gods, or whoever. I don’t really care.” She shook him, trying to rouse him from sleep. “Loki? Please, Loki, wake up. Where are we? How did I get here?”

  Shaking Loki was rattling her own hangover. Maggie rested against the carved stone bed and glanced around the dim room. “Are we still in Norway?”

  She looked back down at Loki. He hadn’t stirred.

  “Loki? What’s wrong? Why won’t you wake up?” She leaned close to his face and studied his features.

  “That is why you are here, dear lady goddess.”

  Maggie’s heart jumped into her throat as she spun to face the man behind her. A solid, imposing figure stepped out of the shadows. He was seven feet tall at least, with the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen. Maggie guessed even Thor would shy away from this guy in a dark alley.

  Maggie raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry, but then remembered the unusually tall tourists from the square. There had been no night of heavy drinking. They hadn’t made it to Gamlebyen.

  Maggie scurried around to the other side of the bed, putting the stone slab and the unconscious Loki between herself and the giant.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but there are some very important people who are going to be worried about me, okay? I don’t think you understand just how deep in trouble you are right now, buddy.”

  The giant stopped in his tracks and paused to consider her words. He tilted his head and looked at her in confusion. “Buddy? No, I am not Buddy. I am Geir
rod.”

  He straightened his spine and spread his arms wide in a half-bow, then glanced up at her from his stooped position. “May I have the honor of your name?”

  Maggie gripped the edge of the thick blanket that covered Loki. With that arm span, Geirrod would have no trouble squeezing the life out of a hippopotamus, much less a human woman.

  “I’m . . . Maggie,” she choked. “And I’m telling you, you’d better take me to Heimdall right away.”

  “Curious.” Geirrod rose from his bow and gave her a half-smile. “I know not of any Maggie counted among the kindred of Odin. Perhaps you are new? At least, new since I was last in the world.”

  He stepped toward her and skirted the perimeter of Loki’s bed. Maggie circled around as well, keeping the stone pedestal between them.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” She glanced at Loki’s unconscious body. “You need to tell me what you’ve done to Loki. You’ll tell me where I am, and how I got here. I’ll call for help . . .”

  As she moved around the bed, keeping Geirrod at bay, Maggie realized she had no idea where her phone was.

  “You need to give me back my purse. And take me to Heimdall! I imagine he’ll have something to say about all this. And I doubt very much that you’ll like it.”

  Geirrod stopped abruptly at the foot of the bed. Maggie laid her hands on the stone just above Loki’s head. Casting a large shadow even in the dim room, Geirrod looked across the bed and smiled at her.

  “Yes, your consort. Heimdall, the golden one. Was it he who made you? Or Frigga, on behalf of her son? Perhaps you were elevated from the ranks of the woodland or water spirits, through your association with the Æsir?”

  Geirrod watched her, waiting for an answer. Maggie stared back. “What?”

  The giant clasped his hands in front of him and paused to study her hair, her face, and her body. Maggie squirmed under his gaze.

  “Yes, you do have the look of an elemental,” Geirrod said. “Perhaps you are a daughter of one of the mountain spirits? You need not feign humility with me, divine lady. The beloved of Heimdall merits a place of honor and respect within these walls.”

  “Within these walls,” Maggie repeated. “And just where are these walls located, exactly?”

  Geirrod threw back his head and laughed a loud roar that echoed off the polished stone walls and nearly deafened Maggie. Cringing, she held her hands over her ears and closed her eyes against the pain shooting through her skull.

  The giant’s laughter stopped immediately. Geirrod took a step toward her, his hand outstretched.

  “I did not intend to offend you, goddess Maggie. Please accept my apologies for my uncouth behavior, and for the manner in which you were brought here. I assure you, no harm is meant to you. You are quite safe.”

  Maggie gripped the edge of the bed as Geirrod’s image wavered before her eyes. She worried that she might have a concussion.

  “Safe? You expect me to believe that? You won’t tell me where I am. You won’t let me talk to Heimdall. And I’m pretty sure you drugged me.” Maggie rubbed her face, wishing she could dispel her headache through sheer force of will. “I’m standing in a round room in a really freaking weird building, with my friend lying unconscious or hurt, and you tell me that I’m perfectly safe.”

  Geirrod pressed his lips together and looked down at Loki.

  “You are correct. Loki may be dying. We brought him here to be healed, to partake of Iduna’s apples and regain his strength.” He gestured toward Loki’s still frame on the bed. “But as you can see, he is no condition to eat. We cannot rouse him. Loki needs your healing hands and ministrations, goddess Maggie. Only you can save him.”

  Maggie rested her hands on her hips. “Why do you keep calling me that? Goddess Maggie?”

  Geirrod looked confused and stammered a hasty reply. “But, is your name not Maggie? Is there another name or honorific by which you prefer to be addressed?”

  “No, I mean . . .” Maggie ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “I mean, the goddess part. What’s that all about?”

  Geirrod nodded. “Ah, so they have not yet bestowed upon you the full elevation in status.” He met her eyes and smiled. “It is no matter. A formality, that is all.” He gestured toward Loki. “Please, see to him. I will arrange for sustenance for you.”

  He headed for the corridor, then stopped and turned back to face her. “You will want water and mead, of course. Do you also require apples? It has been many years, I believe, since they were last available. We have an ample supply, if you are feeling weary.”

  “Apples?” Maggie’s drug-clouded mind swam with images of apples in mythology and fairy tales. The forbidden fruit of Eden. Atalanta and the golden apples. Snow White and the Evil Queen—a poisoned apple. Nothing about a giant trapping her in a polished stone castle and offering apples to eat. But no good had come to the maidens in those other stories.

  Sensing her indecision, Geirrod spread his massive arms in a gesture of reassurance. “May I be so bold as to suggest that we share the apples? If that would help you to trust us. Otherwise, I would of course not presume to sit at the same table as one such as yourself.”

  Maggie lifted her hands in futility. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”

  Geirrod smiled. “I will see to it immediately, my lady.”

  Maggie watched the giant disappear down the corridor. She was tempted to follow—to learn more about this strange building, maybe even to find Heimdall or an escape route—but then she looked down at Loki, motionless on the stone slab before her. He was pale, and he hadn’t once moved.

  She stepped around the bed to stand at his side. She tried shaking him again, to no avail. She pressed her fingers against his neck and breathed a sigh of relief when she found his pulse—steady, but weak. She lifted his eyelids to check his pupils—reactive, but sluggish.

  Maggie leaned against the stone platform. She had no idea what to try next. She wasn’t a doctor or trained in magickal First Aid. She was a paralegal. Why on Earth did this peculiarly polite giant think she’d be able to heal a comatose god?

  The room was empty save for the pedestal bed. Maggie made a circuit around the space and looked for any hidden or secret passageways. The walls were made of the same smooth, interlocking stone. She pushed against the large blocks and tried to dig her fingernails into the narrow cracks between them. She pressed her palms against various parts of the stone bed, hoping to trigger a secret doorway.

  No dice.

  Maggie slumped against the edge of the bed and chastised herself for watching too many—or maybe not enough—spy movies.

  Footfalls echoed in the corridor, followed by a pair of voices. Maggie scurried to the head of the bed, again placing the unconscious Loki between herself and possible danger.

  “She seems skittish and disoriented for a goddess,” came Geirrod’s muted voice. “Perhaps she sustained some trauma as a result of the abduction.”

  “Rubbish,” grumbled a second voice Maggie hadn’t heard before. She wondered if they honestly believed she couldn’t hear them. “Immortal females are abducted frequently, by strong tradition. She should be accustomed to the experience by now.”

  The voices dipped lower, and Maggie strained to hear more.

  “What are you doing with five?” The second voice protested. “Surely three should be enough. This is not Thor we are feeding.”

  Maggie’s heart leapt at the mention of Heimdall’s brother, though she knew he was back in Oregon. Far away from wherever this place might be.

  “I offered to partake of the fruit with her, so that she might feel more at ease,” Geirrod replied.

  The second man said something in an angry tone Maggie couldn’t understand. Echoing through the twisting corridor, the voices died away and then suddenly grew louder and more clear.

  “. . . have to be careful with the stockpile we have. Our stores must sustain both us and them. Who knows when there will be another harvest, with Iduna so pouty and uncooperative. And why all the courteous formality with the young goddess? This not Audumbla with giant udders of frozen cream.”

  Geirrod made a choking sound that Maggie guessed was laughter—not as painful to her ears when contained in the outer corridor. “But if Heimdall has not yet taken her as his bride . . .”