The Apple Throne

  “She won’t give it to you,” I say.

  The elf’s eyes sparkle as she tilts her head and shows off her black teeth. “I did not say I would ask.”

  I hold out a hand to stop her. “Let me get it for you.”

  Soren makes a small noise, and Amon cusses. Sune is unsurprised.

  Another rumble shifts through the gathered elf-kin. Eirfinna studies me for a long moment. “Why would you do that for us? For me?”

  I think of the dying troll mothers, staring at me sadly, and Signy saying, We’re better off without them. It could so easily be said of these elves and their gold. Of berserkers who are half-mad or dragons or saber tigers or even just most humans. We’re better off without them. But even if it were true, this isn’t how it should be done. We don’t consign creatures to slow death. This is like a cancer—not the work of heroes, of good women or men. We defeat our enemies in battle; we conquer them. That is the Asgardian way.

  But none of that is why I want to go to the New World Tree and claim the heart from Signy Valborn. It’s because the heart is the spark of a spell my lady created long ago. It is ancient magic, alive itself and keeping the trolls immortal.

  It is a piece of fate, a seed of life. Like the apples of immortality.

  The heart is the knot in a spell of destiny, and I am the knot in a spell of destiny: the unique spark that holds the charm together and makes it thrive.

  I say to Eirfinna, “Because I am Idun the Young, and Idun gives life.”

  As she silently stares at me, I notice for the first time how little noise is here in the deep mountain—only breathing, the shifting of boots on smooth granite, the tap of a spear butt.

  Eirfinna bows to me, shallowly. “You may take your lover and go, then.”

  I smile, and Sune’s shoulders relax.

  The elf steps up the dais to her golden throne. “There is one other matter,” she begins, holding a long hand out toward one of her guards.

  “The gold,” Amon says, starting toward her. “You—”

  Eirfinna ignores him and smiles a tight, grim smile in my direction. “Blood price.”

  “You have it,” I cry, shocked.

  Sune makes a noise I barely hear and shifts away from me.

  The guard removes a pistol from his jacket and puts it into Eirfinna’s hand.

  “I have it for my cousin, but not for myself,” she says coldly and aims it at Sune.

  I throw myself toward him, the memory from my vision flashing: Sune knocked back by a bullet. But Soren is already there.

  The shot roars in my ears.

  It is Soren who falls, slowly, as if the air embraces him, lowering him gently, and I dive forward, arms out. His knees slam the stone floor, and he tilts sideways. I land hard on my hip, but catch his shoulder against my chest. He knocks my breath away and sinks against me, down and down. Blood pours hot over my hands.

  Berserker heat bakes my bare skin, turning it tight.

  I see his mouth open, and I see Baldur the Beautiful, crashing to the earth of my orchard valley, a spear in his heart. I felt that blood pour through my fingers, though Soren’s burns and hisses in the cool cave air. My ears are full of roaring.

  His head falls against me. Something explodes at my side and it may be my heart it may be the entire mountain. I touch Soren’s face, my entire body trembling with the effort of holding him. I leave bloody prints on him, and he gasps for breath. I press my hands to his chest, smearing blood, and I am scoured empty, unable to breathe or speak, just cling to him.

  Soren whispers my name, or I think it is my name. His lips move and I cover them with mine. “Soren,” I murmur, hugging his head to my breast, wiping back his soft hair but only leaving streaks of blood. It pumps slowly now from the wound low on his chest, coursing in a continuous stream down his ribs and stomach, pooling beneath us on the smooth stone floor.

  With one hitched attempt at my name, Soren Bearstar stops breathing.

  No no no no no.

  My mouth is on his cheek, the dark spear tattoo I love so well like a target for my anguish.

  I wail. It is soft but will never end—not until the Nine Worlds end, not until every apple on my tree is a withered husk and the gods are as dead as this, their ruined bones the foundation of the next universe.

  Apples on my tree.

  He ate an apple.

  I remember it between two dull beats of my heart.

  He’s dead. But he won’t stay that way.

  He’ll open his eyes.

  He will.

  He doesn’t.

  He takes no sudden new breath, thrust back into life by the magic I gave him.

  I dig my fingers into him. I let go a trembling, terrified breath.

  Someone says my name, and I slowly lift my head.

  Amon is on his knees near us, two elves with their spears trained on his neck, and there Sune with an obsidian sword blade under his throat and his arm aiming a gun over my head. He fired it—that was the explosion I heard. I turn my head. There is Eirfinna standing in her black prom dress, with her gun pointed still at Sune, another elf slumped at her legs, bleeding thin purple blood from his shoulder.

  “What have you done?” My voice is terrible and tastes of blood.

  Eirfinna speaks through her very sharp black teeth. “Sune Rask shot me, Idun of Apples, nearly to death. He almost destroyed my plans for my people, and he turned my dearest friend against me.”

  I stare, my face numb but for my eyes, which blister from tears and fury.

  “You did that yourself,” Amon chokes. His own sky-blue eyes spit lightning. Sune’s breath heaves, though he has not lowered his pistol.

  She says, “My claim is finished. Go all of you.”

  I hear blades lowered behind me, and Sune suddenly takes my shoulders from behind as though I might collapse. I touch his gloved hand with my bloody one. “You killed Soren,” I say to her.

  “He chose to die for Sune Rask,” Eirfinna says quietly, not without sympathy.

  That gentleness is like a canker in my mouth when I say, “You have lost me as an ally, elf queen.”

  “I hope not, but if you say it, so be it. I will get the heart without you.”

  My ears full of roaring blood, I pull away from Sune and say, hard and dark as a prophecy, “You will have the heart of the trolls from no hand but my own, Eirfinna Grimlakinder.”

  The words echo in the throne room, falling like bald truth to the floor.

  Eirfinna lowers her gun, stark expression of surprise on her alien face. “I accept that promise, Idun of the Apples,” she answers me. “Go out of here before I change my mind.”

  Sune tugs at me. Amon crouches and, with one swift pull, lifts Soren’s body over his shoulder.

  I pick up Sleipnir’s Tooth.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There is a goblin who leads us out, barefoot and fast. He may be the one Sune first saw so long ago when we arrived. Was it only yesterday? I grip Sune’s hand and hurry, not trying to recall the way or retain anything, only focused on our guide and staying on my feet. Amon’s heavy footsteps follow behind, and I refuse to think on his gruesome burden.

  Soren will come back. He has to. He ate the apple, and the apples mean a year of immortality.

  When we reach the narrow fissure cracked through their front door, Sune has to let me go, and we turn sideways to slide through toward the weak silver daylight. I emerge first, onto the rough bank of the perfect mountain lake. Sun streams down onto it, casting it sapphire and gold, painfully stunning my eyes. I cannot speak as I scramble up the icy boulders, leaving them to follow, and hurry down the elk path. Snow crunches under my boots, freshly fallen and powdery. It drifts on the wind and plops off clusters of pine needles. The brilliant blue sky cuts through, dazzling the snow, and I stumble, needing sunglasses. My fingers freeze around the sharkskin grip of Soren’s sword.

  I finally crash out of the icy trees and into the side of the van. The driver’s door opens under my fumbling, f
rozen hands, and I find the keys, turn on the engine so it begins to warm.

  By the time I drag open the sliding door, Sune emerges with Amon just behind, plodding carefully along the path I forged. Soren’s head bobs with each step, and his arms sway. My stomach heaves.

  I bend over, retching against the front passenger tire, and Sune dashes to me, pulling back my hair. I push him away, gently, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Blood is dried there, flaking. My stomach knots again. I’m lightheaded and raw inside, and it’s a sickening sensation to feel blood drain out of my skull. Sune helps me sit on the edge of the van, and I put my head between my knees.

  But only for a moment. Amon’s boots appear in my line of sight. I breathe slow, deep, long breaths of icy air. Then I lift my gaze to the godling’s. Lightning curls in his pretty blue eyes, though his brow is low and angry.

  “I can’t believe she did it,” he mutters.

  Sune whispers, “It’s my fault. I am so, so sorry.”

  I stand, strip off my bloody, ruined white coat, spin, and climb into the van. I spread out one of the blankets and the sleeping bag rolled in the corner. It’s got waterproofing on the outside and can be hosed down of all Soren’s blood.

  The thought has me swallowing bile again, and I concentrate on the task, on breathing and being calm. Soren ate an apple of immortality. He’s coming back.

  When when when.

  Amon carefully places Soren’s body atop the sleeping bag, and I remain in the rear with him, dragging Soren’s head into my lap. Amon and Sune fill the doorway, watching me. Light behind them turns them into shadow-statues of themselves, one broad and hulking, the other slim and elegant.

  “Should we call someone?” Sune asks softly.

  “My dad?” Amon offers.

  I don’t reply, voice lost, one hand in Soren’s hair. He’s warm, but not hot. No matter what I know, no matter the voice repeating again and again—he ate the apple, he is not dead, he ate the apple—my body and my heart do not understand the meaning of Soren’s skin cooling down, of his limp stillness. I touch the hole in his blood-soaked shirt. The wound below is a tiny black dot, too small to have destroyed a man like Soren.

  Sune leans one knee into the van, peers at me carefully. “What is it, Idun? What are you…thinking?”

  “She’s in shock, Sune.” Amon grabs the hunter’s shoulder and jerks him back.

  “Wait,” I say. I swallow, trying to work up spit and words. “He’s not dead.”

  They share a startled look. Amon’s frown is epic. Sune’s shoulders slump. He lowers his gaze to Soren’s body. Blood has hardened with frost and turned Soren’s shirt dark. But my vision narrows, my throat closes, and I have to press my eyes shut, my lips shut, and cover my mouth with the back of my free hand.

  “He is dead,” Sune says firmly, but quietly.

  I nod, my neck limp, but then I say, “He ate an apple. I had it in my pocket, and he ate it.”

  “An apple,” Amon repeats, like I’m a toddler with no grasp of reality.

  But Sune sucks air through his teeth. “Holy ragging rut,” he says.

  It startles me enough to lift my head, and Amon looks at the hunter with comedic shock.

  I say, “An apple of immortality, Amon.”

  The godling’s jaw drops, and he meets my gaze with matching uncertainty. “Let’s get off this ragging mountain.”

  • • •

  We drive down the mountain and into Shield, the temple-town at the base of Etintooth Peak and the bottom of the high road leading to Bright Home. Amon takes us up the temple row, every block crushed with belfries and shrines. I see their peaked and gilded roofs pass through the rear windows from my place on the floor with Soren.

  The van stops, and Amon twists around. “This is my apartment building. We can take five to shower, rest, eat, whatever, and figure out what the rut comes next.”

  “You think we can get his body up unseen?” Sune leans forward to peer out the windshield.

  I curl around Soren and kiss his forehead. It’s cooler than before. I leave my lips against him, willing him to jerk awake. Now.

  Amon says, “This time of day, all my neighbors are probably at their legitimate day jobs. And they’re used to me bringing in all kinds of skit in odd-shaped packs.”

  The process is awkward and made worse by five inches of snow on the ground. But thanks to Amon’s strength, it’s easier than it should be to wrap Soren and carry him to the third-floor apartment of a lovely house with columns and many narrow windows. It’s tucked back in a small valley of lodge pole pines, secluded from the road. His level is private, all slightly tilting hardwood floors and prints of modern art and animation. The shelves are cluttered with paperbacks and a wide variety of random statuary, from porcelain milkmaids to comic book figures.

  Amon takes Soren to the bathroom, and he and I wash Soren’s body while Sune goes out for some suitable clean clothes. Never have I felt so apart from myself, touching Soren’s cool skin, washing blood from it. There’s no exit wound, and I imagine the bullet settled somewhere in his heart. Do I have to get it out before he heals? Will he heal at all? I don’t know how this works at all, other than it does. Baldur dies and sleeps for half the year in Hel. I wrack my mind for rules or hints about other gods dying and being reborn. It must happen, but they keep it out of their stories to hide the weakness better. I know some gods give an apple to a mortal companion if they can win an extra. That is part of Loki’s game, and so it must, must, must revive men and women. He wouldn’t bother if the apples didn’t work.

  Despair squeezes my diaphragm, and Amon grips my arm tight enough to bruise before I’m knocked free of it. My breath chokes out.

  What if the tree is dying? Because I have been gone for too many days? What if these apples in my pocket have lost all magic?

  No—Freya would have come if the apple tree were dying. She’d never sacrifice the gods’ immortality for me or Soren. It can’t be that. It cannot be. There must be some time required. Baldur the Beautiful dies in the fall and does not rise again until spring. With a new body because we burn the old one in a massive fire.

  A funeral pyre.

  Maybe I have to make that dream of Soren laid out for burning come true.

  We finish washing him and Amon disappears for a moment, returning with a small vile of oil: camphor and mint, a death ointment. He overturns it against his thumb and draws the oil in a hammer against Soren’s forehead. “Straight to the Valhol for him,” Amon says quietly.

  “And straight back to me,” I add.

  “How long will it take?” Amon sits back against the tile wall, stretching his legs out across the bathroom floor. I join him, pressed between his shoulder and the toilet, and vividly recall a different bathroom where we sat together not long ago, in the Eureka militia station. I’m even filthier now, covered in my lover’s blood. It crusts my rings and turns the front of my dress rusty and ancient.

  I dreamed this, too, I realize. The bathtub and the blood and Soren’s dead body, the night in that hotel outside Salt City. A shiver drives hard down my spine.

  “I don’t know,” I say, staring at Soren. My legs are curled up because there’s little room for me here with Amon and Soren’s body laid out on several towels. “There is nothing specific in the lore, and I never asked. Baldur returns at the equinox, but that is Freya’s magic. Her will. Maybe I have to ask her.”

  “But you’re certain he’ll return.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s just an apple.”

  I open my mouth and let it hang. I stare at Soren, and I know—I know—this is not the end for us. “Faith, Amon. I have to believe in that apple and in fate.”

  Amon opens his arm, and I lean in. Exhaustion drags at me.

  “I can’t imagine what this is like for you,” Amon says after a long while. “It might be easier at the orchard. I can take you back there.”

  A thin, weary smile takes up half my mouth. “Return me to where you g
ot me?”

  “We did complete the quest, technically, and at some point this one’ll come back and give the story its proper happy ending.”

  I reach out and press my hand to Soren’s cool forehead. Amon is partially right: Freya’s prophecies have come to pass. We followed the gold to my heart’s desire, and Soren died on the fourth day.

  Standing, I glance back down at the godling. Strain shows at the corners of his mouth, in the way his hands droop against the tile. Out in the apartment, I hear the front door creak open and Sune call out his return.

  I say, “I am not finished with my quest, Amon. I spoke a prophecy this morning myself, and so it is not time for me to go home. Though you and Sune have done more than I ever would ask and should think of staying here in Colorada.”

  He climbs tiredly to his feet. “Where are we going?”

  “Yes,” Sune says from the bathroom door. “Where are we going?”

  Though the thought of my little cottage bed and the orchard with its colors and peace is a comforting one now, especially if I imagine myself there with my friends, waiting for Soren to return, I say, “To the New World Tree, where there is a heart I need to win.”

  • • •

  We can’t leave right away, as several of Amon’s neighbors have arrived home for the evening. I’m loathe to bundle Soren’s body up again now that he’s clean and dressed in the shirt and pants Sune bought for him and refuses to accept repayment for. Fortunately, sun sets early this time of year, and it won’t be more than two hours before we can sneak Soren out again in the dark.

  Amon carries Soren to his bedroom, and the three of us stand around the large bed. Sune picks absently at the dark blue wool blanket spread across the foot. Amon says to the hunter, “I can’t bring myself to rag at you for being in my bedroom, under the circumstances.”

  Sune purses his lips. “That will do quite nicely,” he says and nods respectfully to me before departing for the kitchen. I level Amon with a look; he shrugs both big shoulders.

  It hardly seems like a bedroom, anyway, despite the bed. There’s a dresser and closet, and the same personalized, but not quite intimate, modern posters and art. Anyone might use the row of brand-name cologne lining the dresser, and the pillows are striped like you’d find at any Walton’s. This might be Amon’s place, but he lives in his van. That is his home. I stroke Soren’s cold cheek and return to the bathroom with the plastic bag of clothes Sune brought back for me.