Thief Eyes

Chapter 15

“What bargain?” I could run. But Ari couldn’t, and besides, even an ordinary raven flew faster than my fastest sprint.

The wind died. Scraps of mist hovered over the wet hillside. “A bargain to protect this land from the fire you hold.”

“You can do that?” I looked into Muninn’s eyes after all. Dizziness washed over me. “You can take the fire away?” Mist brushed my neck, but the cold was a surface thing. It couldn’t sink into my skin or reach the fire that flowed beneath it.

“I cannot.” The fine rain didn’t seem to touch Muninn’s feathers. “The bargains you made in the fire realm are your own. I cannot undo them. What I can do is take you out of this place. In my mountain, you’ll be beyond the reach of those who would enter this world through your fire. The land will be safer if you are not in it.”

“No.” Ari grabbed my hand. His fingers felt cool around mine.

Muninn krawked—it sounded like a laugh. His bright gaze shifted to Ari. “And how do you like being a bear, boy?”

“I like it fine.” Ari leaned on me to steady himself. “What about Haley? How safe will she be if she accepts your bargain?”

“Safer than she would be anywhere else.” Mist drifted around the raven. “There are no spirits in my mountain to feed her fire, and in my halls she might find the knowledge to keep that fire from consuming her.”

Like Mom had been consumed—but Hallgerd’s magic had done that. I thought of those fiery arrows tearing gashes in the earth. “Would I have to forget again if I went with you?”

Muninn’s wings stopped for a beat—a moment’s hesitation. “No. And I’d return the memory of you to the wide land—a gift for a gift.”

“So you’re saying our parents can remember us just in time for us to disappear forever?” Ari swayed and tightened his grip on my hand. “Some gift.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “You wouldn’t have to go.”

Ari laughed softly. “Ah, but being stupid is what I’m good at. Always best to stick with our strengths. Of course I’d go with you. I may not be much use in the rescue department, but I can get this much right. I won’t abandon you, either.”

I thought of how in my dreams I was the arrow, the fire that tore the earth open. “If I accept your offer, could I return the coin to Hallgerd first?”

Muninn’s krawk was angry this time. “That other one is not as great a danger to this land as you are now. Even so, I’ll not have you returning any part of her power to her. There is danger there, too. The coin is a part of our bargain. It comes with you. Do you accept?”

Even now, I trusted Hallgerd with magic less than I trusted myself. Hallgerd’s magic already had killed. Yet she hadn’t even seemed to want the coin when last we’d spoken. “Do I have a choice?” I asked Muninn.

“There’s always a choice.” The raven’s wingbeats were slow, rhythmic. “Yet bear this in mind, Haley—if you refuse this bargain, I will do all I can to claim your memories once more.”

“Which, as it turns out, is not very much,” a voice said. I looked around and saw a small white fox crossing the bridge over the mist-shrouded river.

“Freki!” I said.

Freki calmly trotted over to stand at my feet. “You know you have no control over Haley’s memories now, Muninn, any more than you had control over Hallgerd’s memories once she made her bargain. The spirits that burned away Haley’s hair burned away the veil over her memories as well. Those powers are older than you or I, and as you say—we have no sway over them.”

Muninn’s feathers puffed out. “This is none of your concern, Freki.”

“Ah, but it is.” The rain didn’t touch Freki’s fur, either. “Haley gave me a gift, and I may have the chance to repay her, this day. So I will wait. Make your decisions, Haley. Cast your spell, or choose not to cast it. Neither Muninn nor I may interfere.”

I looked at Ari. He looked at me. I knelt down and hugged the little fox tightly. “I missed you,” I whispered, and realized it was true.

Freki squirmed out of my arms. “I have done my job well, then.”

“Do you think I should accept Muninn’s bargain?”

“I cannot say,” Freki told me. “Mostly because I do not know.”

“The fate of the land is at stake,” Muninn said with several short, sharp wingbeats.

“This is not the first time the fate of what matters most has rested on human choices.” Freki curled up at my feet, resting his head on his paws. “None but our master sees the future in full, and the price he paid is not one that others can bear. Haley will do as she thinks best, and no one here knows what will happen after that.”

Rain still fell, soaking through my jeans and steaming back into the air. No one knows what will happen. If only we did know—then Mom never would have gotten on a plane to Iceland. Ari never would have told Mom—or me—the things that he did. I wouldn’t have run from the things I was told. And Dad wouldn’t have—I pushed that thought aside. “None of us know. We just do the best we can and hope we don’t screw it up too badly.”

“Yeah,” Ari said with a wry smile. “That.”

Whatever you steal, be sure to give it back again. Hrut’s words—I had no idea whether he’d meant the coin when he spoke them. But Katrin had thought the coin should be returned to Hallgerd, too. Did I trust Katrin? I thought of her and Dad—then I thought of how Katrin had stayed up through the night for me, translating Icelandic words to English ones, doing everything she could so that I wouldn’t face magic unarmed.

I thought of Thorgerd, Hallgerd’s daughter, whose warnings and instructions Katrin had passed on. Thor gerd’s descendants had remembered, for generation after generation, that the coin needed to be returned. There had to be some reason for that.

I hadn’t destroyed the land or the world yet. Neither had Hallgerd. Maybe there was a reason for that, too.

I fished the coin out of my pocket and set it down beside the black fire stone. “Let’s finish this,” I said.

Ari nodded and handed me the spellbook. I read Thorgerd’s instructions one more time, thinking of how it took a thousand years’ worth of my ancestors—of Hallgerd’s daughters—to get this book to me.

Muninn’s wings flapped steadily as he watched me. The mist thickened. “If this goes badly,” the raven warned me, “you will pay.”

Ari handed me the mead. We exchanged a glance as I uncorked the skin. If things are going to go wrong, this is the place. Freki’s whiskers twitched. The little fox turned away from me and began nosing through my backpack. I poured the mead into the bowl, careful not to splash any to the ground. The amber liquid was tinged faintly with red. I waited, but the mead didn’t steam, and the ground didn’t shake. I caught a whiff of its sweet scent, and tiredness washed over me.

I blinked the heaviness from my eyes and took Svan’s raven’s claw to my thumb. Piercing my skin with it was easy. The pain felt good, the way holding the coin had felt good. I squeezed my finger, and blood welled to the surface, along with a tiny wisp of smoke. The wind felt suddenly hotter.

I tossed the claw down and used my blood to draw the symbol from the spellbook on the black stone: a circle with three intersecting lines, the ends of each crossed by smaller circles and lines—the same symbol that was on the coin. The stone grew warm. A few more flakes chipped off as I dropped it into the mead. I dropped the coin into the liquid, too, and then I chanted the words I’d memorized from the spellbook:

The fire in me rose with the words, like flames to wind. The mead hissed and steamed. I thrust my hand into it. Flames leaped from the bowl, burning my skin. The scent of hot metal filled the air. I closed my eyes and saw more flames, the flames of my nightmares.

The flames I’d leaped through. Huge figures strode toward me, made entirely of fire, their arms and legs and necks bent at unnatural angles. One of them reached in my direction. I drew away, hot shudders racing through me. He wasn’t reaching for me, though. He was reaching for the bowl in which the mead yet steamed. He dipped a fiery hand into the liquid, then jerked back with a roar.

“How dare you offer us the drink of our enemies? We refuse your gift!”

The flames in my blood burst through my skin. Pain—I’d never felt pain like this. My skin was melting, my bones were melting—I started screaming and couldn’t stop. The ground buckled beneath me like a horse trying to throw me from its back.

Someone grabbed me. There was a roaring in my ears, and then—silence, save for the steady beating of wings.

I opened my eyes. Ari looked at me, his green eyes wide, his hands shaking as he clasped my arms. The fire still burned in me, but it was contained—barely—beneath my skin once more. Liquid dripped from the hand I’d thrust into the mead, and the drips fell back into the bowl.

I drew my arms free, shook the last of the mead from my hand, and looked into the liquid. Somehow, impossibly, the earthquake—if there’d been an earthquake—hadn’t spilled any. Maybe you couldn’t spill mead like this by accident, or maybe the fire giants hadn’t wanted to call on Freki and Muninn’s master, either. “The mead was no good.” My throat felt scratchy from screaming. “It just made them angry. The spell—”

“The spell isn’t worth your life,” Ari said.

What is this small life against the fate of the world? But if I’d died, the fire would have burst through my skin, out into that world.

Muninn’s wings beat on. “Stupid girl! The power will never be contained now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” There was movement in my backpack. Freki backed out of it, holding the hilt of Svan’s knife between his teeth.

We all turned to look at the fox. He dropped the knife in front of me. “Even had you offered more suitable brew, the fire’s hold on you is too tight. A working as great as this one requires blood. I can give you that.”

Muninn’s wingbeats fell silent. I stared at Freki, not understanding—not wanting to understand.

“Haley,” Freki said, “not long ago, you gave me a gift. Two gifts: a drink of sacred mead and the life of one of my kin. I would repay those gifts now.”

A single sharp beat of Muninn’s wings. “No.”

“No!” For once I agreed with Muninn completely.

Freki tilted his head and said nothing.

“There’s nothing to repay!” Wildness rose in me. Fire roared in my ears as I yelled, “It was a gift! You don’t pay back a gift! That’s not how it works!”

“The spell will consume you if you do not complete it.” Freki nudged the sheathed blade with his nose.

“So let it consume me,” I said.

“Hell no,” Ari said.

“After the spell consumes you,” Freki went on matter-of-factly, “its power will be set free into the world.”

I shook my head. “I won’t kill you. No way will I—” I looked wildly around. “If the spell needs blood, it can have mine!” I grabbed the knife out of its sheath and drew it toward my wrist. I had a lot more blood than Freki did. I might not even have to die.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Ari tried to grab the knife. I wrenched it away from him and pressed the blade to my skin. It was sharp, and I was used to breaking skin. A thin line of blood welled up.

I smelled a burning sulfur smell. Paper-thin flames rose up out of the cut—out of my blood. I froze, clutching the knife, mesmerized by the sight. The ground trembled. I barely noticed. Such a pretty light—

Ari’s hand clamped down over my wrist. The fire went out. The ground went still. I jerked my arm away from him. “How dare you—”

A sickening burned-skin smell stopped me mid-sentence. I looked down and saw puckered red skin around the cut. Pain seeped into my awareness slowly, like blood through a bandage. I felt the cut bleeding again, and I knew any moment fire would follow once more—my own blood burning, melting my skin. I doubled over and threw up in the grass, even as the pain in my wrist flared hotter. Burning hurt way, way more than breaking skin or drawing blood.

Ari grabbed my wrist and wrapped something around it. His handkerchief. I swallowed and sat up as the pain receded a little.

“So you see,” Freki said calmly, “your blood will not do. It will only set the power free.”

I smelled the handkerchief beginning to burn. Ari grabbed the water bottle out of my pack and poured it over the cloth. The burning smell subsided, replaced by the wet ash scent of an old campfire. Ari handed me the bottle, and I drank deeply, cool water soothing my throat. “I won’t kill you,” I told Freki again.

“Don’t be silly, Haley.” Freki laid a paw on my leg. “I cannot die. I will only leave this world for a time, nothing more. Even so, I do not offer this lightly.”

My chest ached. “Will it hurt?”

Freki didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Muninn’s wings flapped sharply downward. “I will not allow it,” the raven said.

The little fox laughed. “You have no power over me, Muninn. We’ve always been equals, in our master’s eyes and all others’. This gift is mine to give.”

To my amazement, Muninn didn’t argue with that. He glowered at us all in complete silence.

I looked at Ari. Ari swallowed hard. He tore a blank page from his mother’s spellbook and made it into a funnel, then sat down, balanced the mead skin between his knees, and used the funnel to pour the mead back into the skin. Nothing soaked through the waterproof paper. Not one drop hit the ground. In a few seconds the bowl was empty.

“You didn’t want me to do this before,” I said.

“Not so much depended on it then,” Ari said grimly. He took the fire stone out of the funnel and set it on the ground. The black stone had my blood upon it still; the mead hadn’t even smudged it. Ari set the coin on the ground, too, bouncing the silver in his palm as if it were hot. His skin was burned where he’d grabbed my wrist, a new welt across his palm and fingers already blistering.

“I hurt you.”

“I’ll survive,” Ari said brusquely. “I’d like to see to it that you survive, too.”

I looked down at Freki. He looked up at me. His tiny eyes were filled with compassion. “It is different for humans, I know,” the fox said. “If you leave this world, you leave it forever, and there are those who would miss you if you did.” He flicked an ear toward Ari, even as Ari muttered, “Damn right.”

“Accept this gift, Haley. Erase the debt between us.”

“There’s no debt between us.” My throat tightened around the words. I glanced at Ari. His lips were pressed together, his expression grim. If the fire beneath my skin destroyed me, he really would be alone here.

I thought of Dad, staying in Iceland, waiting for me. I thought of Jared in Tucson, waiting as well. What would they think if I never came back? Would Dad remember me at all?

Mom wouldn’t want this. But I wasn’t so sure. The thing about the animals at the clinic, Mom always said, was that they were helpless. They depended on us for everything. And wild animals were wild—they didn’t understand. Freki was neither wild nor a pet.

It was because of Mom that I knew what it was like to have someone disappear and never return.

I wiped the sweat from my neck. My skin was fever-hot. “You swear you’ll come back?” I asked Freki. “Eventually?”

“You have my word.” The little fox glanced toward Muninn. “So long as you remember me in this world, I will return to it.”

My throat hurt. “Of course I’ll remember you.”

Ari gave my hand a quick squeeze. I swallowed hard and reached for the knife.

Muninn gave an angry krawk and launched himself from the ground, flying up to the church. He perched beside the little birds. “Have a care, Haley.”

I can’t do this. I stroked Freki’s head with my free hand. So soft—softer than bear fur, softer than anything I knew. He sat back and gazed at me through brown fox eyes, waiting. I moved my hand to his back and gently took hold of the scruff of his neck. Around my wrist, the handkerchief began to smolder. I brought the blade toward Freki’s throat. My hand shook.

“Quickly, Haley, please.”

I drew the knife across his fur, gasping as it bit the skin beneath. Yet that was only his skin—I pushed harder and felt a sickening pop as the blade severed the vessels beneath. Freki twitched, once, and was still. Muninn let out a piercing cry. And then hot blood spurted from the wound, onto my hand and sleeve. Its coppery scent was everywhere.

Ari shoved the bowl under the little fox to catch the blood, even as Freki’s open eyes went dull. I dropped the knife and grabbed Freki’s legs to hold him over the bowl. So much blood—it stopped spurting and began to pour from the wound, filling the bowl. Too soon it was done. The flow of blood slowed, then stopped. Freki hung limp in my hold, his white chest drenched with red. Hot tears burned down my face. What kind of monster was I?

“Don’t you dare waste this gift!” Muninn’s wings beat furiously at the air. Wind picked up around us, and the rain began falling again—had it ever stopped? I scratched Freki behind the ears one more time. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and laid him gently on the grass.

Ari’s eyes were damp, too, but he just pointed to the stone and the coin. I dropped them both into the bowl and repeated the spell. This time the liquid began to boil.

I shoved my hand into it. The blood didn’t seem so hot now—or maybe my skin burned just as hot. I shut my eyes and saw flames once more. A fiery hand reached into the liquid. I heard a deep, satisfied sound.

“Ah. Better,” the rough fire-voice said. “Much better. We accept your gift. Cast your spell. We’ll be ready for you and for your world, should you fail.” A hot shudder ran through me at the words.

The flames rose higher. Through them I saw a clear sky with a broad path beneath it. I saw back, past the years of my own life, to a time before cars and airplanes, when homes were made of wood and grass, when dragon ships sailed the seas and cloth was woven on weighted looms. I saw stories released from their pages, not bound in books but free to be spoken and remembered. I saw—

My mother standing on the path, almost close enough to touch, her face streaked with angry tears. She looked up at me, and for a moment our eyes met. “Mom,” I said, stunned, the heat that burned in me forgotten. Was it really her? The path pulled me toward her, and I reached out my hands.

My hands and gaze were wrenched away. “Mom!” I fought to look back, but the path pulled me on, past other women: the grandmother I barely knew, because she lived in Canada; the great-grandmother I’d met only in old photos; her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother in turn. The heat came with me. I feared if I looked at my hands I’d see not skin, but flame.

I saw beyond the oldest, crumbliest pictures to other women with fair hair and fair eyes. Each of them looked at me in turn, and then my gaze was pulled farther back, and farther still, for countless generations until—

“Haley!”

A kneeling woman glared up at me, holding a feathered arrow in one hand. She was older now, with lines around her eyes and mouth, but I knew her. I’d never forget her or what she’d done. She handed her arrow to someone out of sight, glaring still. Behind her the sky was hot blue, no sign of rain.

“Why do you seek me, Haley? I have left you to your life. Leave me to mine.”

She never should have cast her spell if she wanted to be left alone. I drew the coin out of the blood, just like my spell said to do. “I’ve brought you a gift!” I called.

Hallgerd grabbed another arrow and pressed her lips together. “Haley, don’t you dare. Leave Gunnar and me to our fate. I have released my claim on the coin and spell. Your life and mine are linked no longer.”

“The hell they aren’t.” I thought of Mom, leaving for Iceland, saying she’d see me in a few weeks. I thought of Freki’s limp body in my arms. I threw the coin to Hallgerd, as hard and as fast as I could. Only once she caught it would I be free of her and her magic.

Hallgerd didn’t turn away. She couldn’t turn away. “You will pay for this,” she whispered. Her hand fell open. The arrow clattered to the wooden floor beside her, and the coin landed in her palm. Her fingers closed around it.

A wave of dizziness washed over me. The path, the earth, the sky all trembled and gave way. I fell, and flames rose up all around me. My cry was lost beneath their roar.

Then all at once the world went still. I was kneeling on wooden boards, and the sun shone brightly above me. Fire burned in me yet—did I think I was burning before? That was nothing compared to the heat I felt now. There was a roaring in my ears, and the air around me shimmered. I looked down at my hands. They were old hands, worn with age. I wore a dress, not jeans, beneath a scarlet cloak. A pouch and small knife hung from my belt. My head felt strangely heavy. Long hair fell over my shoulders from beneath my—hat? Headdress? I reached up and touched a blond lock. It felt hot, even to me—I jerked my hand away. My skin was hot, too, fire burning through the blood beneath it.

Through the roaring, I heard yelling down below. I was in a small loft, above a long narrow house. One side of the peaked roof had been torn away, leaving open air ahead of me. Beside me, a ladder led down to another room.

A man knelt by the loft’s open edge, sweat beading on his brow, a nocked bow in his hands. Beneath his leather shirt his arms were thick with muscle. Damp red hair, just beginning to gray, escaped from beneath his metal helmet. A grassy hillside rose ahead of us, like the hillside Ari and I had climbed, only now it was outlined by a bright blue sky, no sign of rain. Sheep grazed there, and the air held an earthy barnyard smell.

In my head Hallgerd cried, “How dare you deny me my right to die by his side!”

I started cursing then. Because the spell wasn’t just for returning the coin. Katrin’s spellbook had it wrong, or else after a thousand years a few things had been forgotten. I’d cast—must have cast—the same spell Hallgerd tried to cast at Mom, or one very much like it.

I was in Hallgerd’s place, a thousand years ago. The man beside me was her husband, Gunnar, and he was—we were—under attack.