The Realms Thereunder

5

Freya looked across at the door. “Do you mean it? This leads out of the caves?”

“Absolutely.”

“What if we kill you?”

“Then you can still leave, obviously.”

Freya turned and looked at Swi?gar, lying motionless just outside the door they came in by. “And what about Swi?gar?”

“It’s too late for him,” Gad said. “He’s dead. I’m sorry. You may have thought of him as a friend, but in time you will come to realise that he was your jailer. You will have to leave him here.”

“You said you’d help him!”

“I was not fast enough, I’m sorry. We talked too long. It was self-defense, if it helps to look at it like that.”

Freya choked back tears. She could cry for him later. She thought about what Gad had said about sunlight and fresh air. She went to the door and tried the handle. It moved easily in her hand. “But what about the people in Ni?ergeard?” she asked, turning.

“Do you really care about them? Freya, you are free. Do you understand? This is what you wanted for this. Daniel gets to be a hero, and you get to go home. You both win. You both get what you-”

Gad jerked in his chair. His body tensed, rigid, his muscles fighting against each other, as if having a seizure, his head banging from side to side. It took Freya a moment to realise what was happening, and then it struck her-Daniel must have done it.

She stood, unsure what to do. Wringing her hands, she looked towards the large door that Gad had told her was the exit. Did she dare?

Gad made heaving, vomiting motions but expelled nothing. He looked in unimaginable agony. For long moments he rolled and writhed on the floor, and then finally became still, curled up in a ball, panting.

Exhausted, Gad pushed himself up and stood, swaying, just in front of Freya. His eyes were half-closed, and he seemed not able to see her. He turned and walked to a small table set next to the wall, which had a pitcher on it. He poured clear liquid from that into a small tumbler and took a drink-a few sips at first, and then the whole glass. He clutched at his throat as if it hurt him and then started to laugh.

“I forgot how painful living could be.”

“What just happened?” Freya asked.

Gad turned to her with a smile and sweat on his brow. “Daniel has succeeded-he has destroyed the vessel that housed my immortality-and it has returned to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I am mortal now-I’m back in the game. A long time ago I placed my mortality into the body of an undying beast, so that as long as it lived, I would continue to. In this way, I became much like your friends the knights, walking this world, yet always removed from it. Now, with the sands of my existence once again flowing, I can do anything.”

Freya stood, blinking at him. “So . . . we lost?”

Gad shrugged. “Maybe from your point of view, but that’s a rather simplistic view to take. This is just the movement from one state into another. It is neither better nor worse-just different.”

Freya stood, confused. “So, what happens now?”

“That is for you to decide. You may attempt to complete the mission that Ealdstan charged you with-to kill me and then return home-or you may simply return home now.”

“I-I don’t know what to do,” Freya said, and her eyes went to the body of Swi?gar, still lying dead.

“Do you want to kill me?” Gad asked her.

“No!” she cried, her eyes filling with tears at once. “I don’t want anyone to die. I just want to go home! Wh-at-what am I going to tell the others?”

“I can help you with that. Follow me.”