Mistress of the Wind (13 page)

There was still no word from Reidar as to why Sigurd had taken Norga’s side, and Bjorn would not risk her going out.

Two weeks she had been closed up inside these gloomy passageways, wandering the halls and rooms while Bjorn ran free outside.

When he came to her at night, warm and vital, smelling of the forest, she ached for the open air as much as she ached for his touch, and to see his face.

Nothing was straightforward. She loved him . . . yes, she loved him. Loved the way he held her, and cherished her. Loved his strength and his courage. And yet she was angered by his silence and his dismissal of her need for the open air. Her need to feel the wind.

“I must go out, Bjorn,” she whispered as he rocked her in his arms in the early hours of the morning. “I am suffocating.”

“Winter comes early outside,” he soothed. “You would not want to stay out long anyway.”

“I don’t care.” She would not be put off so easily, despite her joy at his company, her joy as his hands and mouth explored her body. “I cannot live my life only waiting for you to come to me. I need to be outside.”

“Not until Norga is defeated.” There it was again. That edge of steel to his voice.

“Are you able to defeat her by patrolling the mountain?” She knew the answer to that already. Norga had him tied like a bear to a post. Circling, circling, but unable to risk going out to look for his enemy.

He sighed. “She has to come to me sometime. We must be patient, that’s all.”

She must be patient, he meant. “And you were able to get nothing useful from my mother’s story?”

“Nothing that would help defeat Norga, no.”

“Will you tell me what you did glean from it?” She had him now. In the dark, with no reason to go anywhere, the sweat from their lovemaking still drying on their skin.

And still he hesitated. “What I can add to your mother’s story will only increase your questions. Questions I cannot answer.” He smoothed a hand over her cheek and she flinched away. He sighed.

“I will tell you one day.”

“I want to know now. It concerns me. Concerns why the wind heeds me.”

“Don’t be angry.” His calm tone threw oil on the flames. “It is just a matter of time.”

Astrid lay ridged and thought of the torch-lit halls, the long, lonely days, the not knowing, and grit her teeth. “I have more time than I care for.”

“And I have none. I must go.”

He was escaping her?

“It isn’t dawn yet.” He had never left before he had to.

“I have far to go today. I need to leave now to be back tonight.”

He sounded as if he were talking of mundane subjects like the weather, or meeting with Jorgen in the clearing.

“Where are you going?” She forced the anger out of her words, pretended to be calmer.

“I have stayed too close to the mountain these last weeks. I need to patrol the far edges of my domain. Norga could cause mischief there and I would not know it.”

“Will you take Jorgen?” She hoped beyond anything he’d say no. Jorgen knew something. He was Bjorn’s closest friend.

“No. I have no need of him.” Bjorn kissed her forehead in goodbye, his arms coming around her in a final squeeze before he slipped from the curtained bed.

“Be careful,” she called after him, but she knew he would be. And now she had a full day on her own to find the invisible woodman.

As she heard Bjorn close the door behind him, she stretched out and smiled.

Today she would breathe the open air.

* * *

They hadn’t spoken of it since she last used the ladder, and Astrid realized she was trembling as she stood under the skylights. She drew the thick winter cloak she’d wished for around her, scuffed the fur-lined boots on the stone floor, waiting to find her nerve, steel herself for the possibility of disappointment. Would the ladder appear at her command, or had Bjorn banned it along with lights in this room?

“I want a ladder,” she called softly, and there before her, a ladder stretched up to the roof.

He’d either forgotten or thought she would not do it again.

It didn’t matter. It had appeared.

She climbed swiftly despite her bulky clothing, suddenly afraid, against all logic, Bjorn would return. But she reached the top and scrambled out onto the rock ledge unhindered, gasping at the cold.

The sky was only now brightening, and the horizon was thick with clouds. A storm was brewing.

She couldn’t risk going for long. Despite her defiance, she was aware of the danger. Norga’s spies could be watching her now. She pulled her cloak tighter.

“We must be on our guard,” she murmured to the air.

We?

She’d begun to see the wind as a constant ally. Almost an integral part of herself. But the depth of the feeling, the instinctive nature of it, had only just occurred to her.

She tilted her face so her hood fell back and the icy lips of the wind brushed her cheeks. A bracing morning kiss.

“Let’s go,” she whispered to it, and an eddy of air swirled around her, floating her cloak around her ankles and nudging her elbow. “Call to Jorgen through the trees for me. I can meet him in the clearing.”

She almost saw the air take shape, a lithe air nymph, and dive down the mountain to the forest to whisper the message to the trees.

It shocked her how instantly the air obeyed. It must be a mistake, this blind servitude, and she couldn’t help be afraid there would be a later accounting for her use of it. What weighed more heavily was who she would have to account to, and what the payment would be.

She hoped Jorgen could shed more light. She’d defy Bjorn a hundred times over to learn what bound the wind and her together.

When she got to the clearing, her stomach churned with anticipation, and she looked hard at every tree. How did you find someone who could make himself invisible?

“Jorgen?” She called softly, afraid, even with the wind at her back, that she would alert Bjorn’s enemies.

“My lady.”

His voice came from behind her and she whipped round, the wind blowing her cloak up like a swan beats it wings. An attempt at intimidation. Had she done that somehow, or was the wind using its own initiative?

Jorgen held himself tense, his brow furrowed. “Bjorn will be . . .” He trailed off, unable to put into words the extent of Bjorn’s anger if he knew she was in the forest.

She nodded. “I know.”

“Why then?” He held out his hands in disbelief.

“I am not his prisoner.”
Liar. He is a loving warden, but he has put you in a prison all the same.
“I have questions he refuses to answer, and I think you can help me.”

“Why would I tell you things my lord will not?”

“He cannot tell me because of his oath to Norga. You have no such promise binding you.” She hoped. Norga could not have extracted oaths of silence from everyone.

“That is true.” His eyes never rested as they looked through the trees. As if he expected an attack at any time. It set her even more on edge. “If I answer your questions as well as I’m able, will you return to the palace?”

“I promise.” Relief and excitement made her breathless. She stepped closer to him, lowered her voice. “Who is Norga?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. Shook his head. “I am uneasy about this. I don’t know the consequences of answering you. Bjorn should tell you that. It is not my place.”

Astrid glared at him. “Then at least tell me what this is all about. Why did she enchant him? What are the conditions of his pact with her?”

Again, Jorgen shook his head. “I cannot answer that without telling you who Norga is. I am sorry.”

“Can you at least tell me why the wind obeys me?” She was desperate to learn at least that much.

“Because you ask it very nicely?” Jorgen answered with a wry grin, and Astrid blushed, remembering her flippant remark to Bjorn. It seemed he’d shared it with Jorgen.

“So I do.” She stared him down, and at last Jorgen shook his head.

“That is the biggest mystery of all. I don’t know why you have the loyalty of the wind.”

Astrid tossed her head in disgust. “You have given me nothing.”

“I am sorry—”

“
Danger.
” The wind whispered in her ear. The first time it had spoken to her so clearly.

“Where?” she breathed, saw Jorgen was listening to the noise in the trees. No doubt giving him the same message.

“
Not here. The bear is in danger.
”

“Where is he?” she choked out.

“
Come.
”

“Jorgen, Bjorn is in trouble. The wind will lead us.”

Jorgen looked at her agape. “You are not going. I’ll go. There are others in this forest I can call on, too.”

The wind tugged at her cloak and Astrid let it draw her out the clearing, ignoring Jorgen. “As fast as I can run,” she told it, beginning to do just that.

“My lady, please.” His call was desperate and she felt sorry for him, but didn’t even turn round. Bjorn needed help.

The wind seemed to push her, support her, make her faster, and testing a theory, she jumped, holding her cloak wide and felt the wind lift her. Her feet touched the forest floor lightly, and she leapt again.

“My lady, wait.”

Jorgen’s voice was faint, and Astrid risked a backwards glance. Realized she had left the vedfe so far behind she could no longer see him through the trees.

She was almost flying through the forest. Flying to her lover’s aid.

Chapter Twenty

B
jorn looked down, stunned, at the body of Raidar, tumbled like a bundle of sticks over the rocks below.

He’d been right to patrol as far as he could go in one day and still be back by nightfall.

With this death, the mystery of the yggren deepened. For one of his own to take Raidar’s life was a sacrilege of the highest order. So taboo, the murderer must surely contemplate suicide. Who else but another yggren could take on Raidar and win?

He had managed it with Sigurd, but he was the son of a disgraced Vanir, a demi-god. Bjorn knew few in the human realm could match his magic, or his strength.

Raidar must have gone up against Norga herself if another yggren had not done this. And he had lost.

He wondered how long Raidar had lain there. His fellow yggren could not know, they would have taken the body if they had.

He considered moving Raidar himself, and thought better of it. The yggren were likely to take offense at his interference. He would get word to them, and let them care for their own.

Norga was desperate if she was responsible. While the yggren had supported the balance, they had not actively opposed or hated Norga. That would change now.

Bjorn turned away from the tragic sight of a powerful force turned to matchwood, and started down the narrow path. He would skirt around the foot of the mountain where Raidar met his end and head back home through the forest.

He had hardly taken two steps from the edge when something landed on his back. Cruel, tight arms came around his neck and tried to lever him up by the throat, strangling him.

Gasping in shock, Bjorn twisted his head sideways and caught a glimpse of a silver-grey yggren. It took the strain, straddling him as it tried to hang Bjorn by lifting him in a chokehold.

Fool twice over.

He’d dismissed the possibility of another yggren killing Raidar, and he’d assumed the killer was long gone. But Sigurd had broken taboos himself, by siding with Norga. There was a rot within the ranks of the yggren, and he had looked at only one of the bad apples, assuming the rest were still untouched.

He threw a freezing spell upwards, his eyes blinded by spots of bright light as he struggled to suck in air. It worked for a few precious seconds, enough for him to slip from the chokehold and turn, snarling, on the traitor.

As with Sigurd, the yggren shrugged the spell off in a moment, screaming at him, its eyes protruding from its face in rage and grief.

“You killed your own.” Bjorn’s voice was rough and scratched, barely audible after the crushing hold.

He could not run. An yggren was faster than he’d ever be. And this one had an edge. It did not care for its own life. He felt its elemental magic resisting his own, a stalemate that left physical strength and intelligence the only decider.

The yggren leapt at him, and Bjorn charged, skidding underneath it, so they were both forced to turn again on the narrow mountain ledge. A cliff to one side, a solid wall of stone to the other.

It surely did not attack him on Norga’s orders. Her plan was nothing if he should die. She needed him to fail, but most of all, she needed him alive.

“You killed Raidar, and now you want someone to kill you?” Bjorn called to it. “I will do it gladly. Just tell me why.”

With another shriek, the yggren whipped out a long arm, clawed at him with lethal fingers, and Bjorn could see all reason had gone. It was maddened beyond thought, beyond any sensible reply.