The Lost Sun (6 page)

Pirro sighs. “Think it over, Soren. Better to be prepared. When the rage fully takes you, your choices will be over.”

Then he gives me permission to go up to my dorm to work on my Anglish paper. But I’m too restless to write. Instead I sit on the floor where London’s bed used to be and concentrate on my breathing. It takes all my focus to balance the fever, to calm it by spreading the heat evenly through my skin. As I slowly breathe, Astrid’s words whisper in my ears.
This is what I saw tonight: Baldur sitting in a desert. Faraway cities and people with mournful faces. I saw the New World Tree with ashes at its base, and the ashes blew away in a violent burst of wind
.

She could find him.

A boon from the Alfather is a great thing
.

I can hear the trickle of Sigurd’s fountain now. The Dragonslayer had the patronage of a god. I would if I accepted Odin’s—as Pirro insists I must.

There was a berserker thirteen hundred years ago named Starkad who served Vikar the King. Starkad was known throughout the north as stronger than a dozen bears, wittier than ten poets, and quicker than Loki himself. He and his king went a-viking, drawing praise and glory to their names. But on the way home, their ship was becalmed in a shallow bay. They swam ashore to pray and make sacrifice. Starkad dreamed that in order to be free they must draw lots among the band and sacrifice the chosen man. Because it was a high honor to be killed for Odin’s sake, and because they were desperate, the men agreed. Vikar the King drew the short lot. Again and again they redrew, but all three times Vikar was named to die. But Starkad was distraught—his king, his lord, could not be lost outside of battle, even if it was to the Hanging Tree. Again
Starkad prayed, and Odin himself appeared in his dreams and said to Starkad that if he himself cast a reed spear at Vikar as the king stood beneath the tree, the shaft would shatter and the symbolic sacrifice would release them all. Starkad awoke, relieved. That morning as Vikar stood with his neck in the noose, Starkad raised a reed spear and, with a call of praise to Odin, cast it at his king.

The reed pierced Vikar’s chest, destroying his heart.

Such is the honor of Odin, creator of the berserk warriors.

Astrid suggested that I have no love for the gods, but could she blame me for not wearing Odin’s ring about my neck? This spear tattoo is required of me, as a warning to others of what I am, but I refuse to claim allegiance to a god who would so easily betray his own. As he did my father.

When I open my eyes, the sun has set, and I’ve missed the call to dinner. But nobody will mind. They might even be grateful I’m not adding my presence to the anxiety pushing throughout the school.

There’s a tap at my window, like a tiny bird pecking to be let inside. I glance over and see only blackness. As I stand, the sound reoccurs. The window doesn’t open, but I put my nose as close as I’m able. Down in the dark stone courtyard is Astrid. She raises her hand and tosses another pebble. I put my hand to the glass and she sees me. She waves me down. Beside her is a canvas bag.

A louder knock on my door shocks me.

In two strides I’m there, tugging it open.

Taffy.

She pushes past me into the bedroom, then whirls on me as if I’m the one who barged into
her
room. “She thinks you’ll go with her.”

I look down at her, at the frizz of blond hair she’s pulled back into a tight braid, at her snub nose and surprisingly pink lips.

“Convince her to stay, Soren.”

“No.”

Taffy moves nearer so that she’s completely within my personal space, her crossed arms only a breath from my chest. Her eyelids flutter, the only sign she’s not as confident as she wishes to appear. “Why not?” she demands, but her voice isn’t as sharp as usual.

I glance at the black square of the window and imagine Astrid waiting beside the Sigurd fountain, calm and certain I’m on my way. She needs me, just as she did last night when she danced into the future. I was with her when she saw Baldur, and I should be with her when she finds him. “I know what she is,” I tell Taffy. “I know what her power is, and what mine is.”

She sucks breath in through her teeth. “You think she can do it. That you can do it.”

“Yes.”

For a dozen of my slow heartbeats, Taffy stares up at me, her lips parted. Then she lifts a hand to fidget with the end of her braid where it sits over her shoulder.

I walk to my trunk for my old backpack. I stuff in extra shirts, sweats, and my toothbrush. Taffy says nothing as I put on a dark blue hoodie and tie up my boots. I grab my father’s
sword and buckle the sheath to my back, then sling the backpack over it. I take my spear from the closet.

A light touch on my arm nearly puts me out of my skin.

Taffy flattens her whole hand against my shoulder and says quietly, “I should have peeled the apples myself.”

My cluelessness must be apparent, because she grows angry again. “I was trying to apologize, Soren!” She snatches away her hand.

“Oh.” It’s barely even a word, but she draws a deep breath and nods once, accepting it.

“London would want me to say …” She hesitates, her chin down. The rest rushes out: “Thor’s strength and Loki’s luck go with you. But I’ll just settle for”—Taffy lifts her face and glares—“God’s blessings on both of you. Keep her safe, berserker.”

My smile feels weighted down. But I promise.

It’s easy to slip out past the RA, since he watches too much National Stoneball to pay close attention to his wards. Especially on a night like tonight.

Astrid waits on the front steps of my dorm, and when I push open the door, she smiles. Silently, we jog through the courtyard, keeping to the shadows next to buildings. Nearly all the windows pour forth light and the sounds of TV updates, and the majority of the academy is locked down waiting for news instead of engaged in the regular evening movement between buildings for study sessions or visits to friends in another dorm.

Because the main gate may be watched for signs of more parents arriving to collect their kids, we cut through the woods. When we pass the burial hill, Astrid scrambles up it, disappearing over the summit. She skids back down a moment later, an ashy yew branch clenched in her fist. It’s about the thickness of her pointer finger. “A wand for luck,” she whispers.

The trees envelop us, but I know the quickest path off the property from my long runs. Leaves crackle beneath our feet and an owl hoots. Flapping wings trail behind us, but I can’t find the bird to identify it in all the darkness.

We push out through the edge of the woods into an open field. It lies fallow, and has at least as long as I’ve been here. Before us is a gravel road leading west into the nearest town. It will take nearly two hours to walk, I guess, and as we pass one of the troll-marked stones Pirro showed me last winter, I am very glad the hill trolls were driven out of this area long ago. I keep a firm grip on my spear, though, for there might still be lesser trolls and goblins haunting the empty land between here and town. Trolls rarely attack large gatherings of people, but their tenacity is the main reason most people in New Asgard live inside a city.

Astrid takes off for the road. “Do you have a plan?” I ask.

“In town, I’ll wire my uncle for some money.”

That’s good, because I only have half a note and change.

“Then we’ll take the bus to Omaha, where we can rent a car.”

“They’ll be able to track us too easily.”

Astrid hefts her bag more firmly over her shoulder. “Richard won’t tell anyone anything, and even if they use the credit
information from the car place, they’ll never catch us in time. This won’t take more than a couple of days.”

“Baldur is that nearby?”

Her smile is beatific. “You know I dreamed he was in a desert. There were layers of rock towering high all around him and a hill covered in little flowering cactuses. And a stone shaped like a mushroom. I didn’t think of it until this afternoon, when I was writing everything down from the dreams, but I’ve been to that exact place. I know where he is. It’s only eight hours from Omaha in a car. Less if we take the kingstate highways.”

I regard her as we stand still at the edge of the gravel road. Despite being on a quest, and despite the frost on the ground, she wears one of her perpetual sundresses and a thin sweater. The string of black pearls hugs her neck. I don’t know what pearls are good for, in the seethkona business. She’s dressed for lunch at a New Amsterdam café, not for hunting a missing god.

And yet, without saying any more, I transfer my spear to my left hand and offer Astrid my right.

FOUR

WE DRIVE THROUGH flat farmland still sleeping off the vestiges of winter. As the sun rises behind us, it melts frost, pulling gray off the sharp spikes of harvested hay and turning everything around us into gold.

From Omaha, we took the rental car northwest on Highway 275 toward the South Lakota kingstate. Now the highway follows the Elkhorn River, a wide, sad thing dragging a line of trees with it. A hundred years ago this area was the location of constant skirmishes between the New Asgardian militias and native tribes. My grandfather’s grandfather was captain of the berserk band stationed here, and I wonder if he stared at the same stretch of river.

Astrid’s window is rolled down and the wind of our passing roars inside. It’s midmorning, and she grips the wide wheel of our car loosely, drumming one finger against it to the rhythm of some song playing in her head. When she chose this car I was amazed, and suggested something more sensible than a heavy ’84 Volundr Spark with tail fins and a manual transmission.

But she shook her head so that her curls flounced. “It’s what Mom and I used to drive all over the country, Soren. Well, we had an ’89. But this is very reliable.”

Any vehicle painted bright orange seems less than reliable to me.

“You look worried,” she says now. “We’ll find him.”

“It isn’t that. I was thinking …” I look at her gentle smile and don’t want to mention war, or anything hard and bloody. But she takes her eyes off the road to glance at me and lift her eyebrows encouragingly.

“There were battles here a century ago. I was thinking about what it would have been like to fight in them, with so much open ground. The tribes refused to send champions to fight, and so whole armies died.” Their blood soaked into the ground, and after the militias won, enslaving the surviving enemy in Old Asgardian tradition, few settlers came. The area is still rife with ghosts and hill trolls. Not even the Thralls’ War, which ended slavery, brought many back.

How can this be where we’ll find Baldur the Beautiful? Why would he be here? I peer out the passenger window at the naked winter trees and waiting fields. A farmhouse stands like a child’s block in the center of a field of razed cornstalks. Its blue paint peels, as if the atmosphere here is acid and has never recovered from war. I wonder if its inhabitants enjoy the danger of living in isolation. Or perhaps they have no choice.

“Are all berserkers so dire?” Astrid asks lightly.

I frown harder.

Her lips press together and she says, “I’ll have to distract
you, then. Concentrate. There may be an exam when I’m finished.” The line of her mouth spreads into a smile. I lift one corner of mine in response.

And Astrid immediately launches into random facts: Her favorite holiday is Disir Day, six weeks from now, when there will be dancing and revelry, then the slaughter of cows and goats and cats in honor of the goddesses. She prefers tea to coffee, but a fine barley beer to anything in the world. She dislikes the flavor of coriander, but cinnamon reminds her of her mother.

When her mother disappeared, Astrid went to live with her uncle Richard in Westport City. “He’s a seethmathr,” she says, casting me a sideways glance to gauge my reaction. But I don’t judge men for playing with Freya’s seething magic. Odin did it himself. When I only tap my fingers on the door handle, she continues, “He makes good money at it, and most of his clients don’t care that he’s a man.”

“Why did you come to Sanctus Sigurd’s?” Astrid should have had her pick of masters in nearly any trade; she shouldn’t have needed to rely on an academy education.

“I wanted to apprentice to Richard, but he was worried that we’d both be shunned if it was discovered I learned from him. We compromised by having me go to Sigurd’s for at least a year, in order to convince people I’d had a semblance of a regular education.”

She tells me of driving around the country with her mother, stopping to camp with dozens or occasionally hundreds of people. “The festivals were the best,” she says. “When tents
went up and you could buy anything, from hotpigs to bison burgers, and sit at craft tables to watch women weave bracelets, or watch quilting circles creating these immense blankets with ancient heroes and common gods on them. We bought a hand-scribed edition of the Eddas for my tenth birthday.” Astrid rolls her eyes my way. “Once we met a peddler saying his sticks were straight from the New World Tree itself.”

I laugh for her, though I’m reminded of the snake caravans Mom and I sometimes joined. Lokiskin who were always trying to sell false relics.