“I did not wait five thousand years for an apology,” he said softly.
“I am not worthy of you.”
“You do not understand. We belong together. Always,” Killian said. “I could not say anything. I was bound by the prophecy and could not reveal myself until you had recognized me for who I was. I could only hope, although I did try to warn you all about the danger in my own way.”
“The dead birds on the beach that Joanna found in the beginning of the summer. That was you, wasn’t it?”
Killian nodded.
“How did you know I was here? How did you find me?”
“Bran tracked me down and sent me an invitation to the engagement party. I think he could not help himself. He wanted me to see that he had won, that he had found you first. So that I would know that he had what I wanted more than anything in the world. He always blamed me for his imprisonment in Helheim.”
Freya realized that Bran’s plan would have worked if he had not been so sure of his victory. But his pride became his undoing; by tempting fate and inviting Killian to witness his triumph, the spell he had cast over her heart had begun to fade the moment she had seen Killian. She had even tried to wed him that night in the forest. She had known who he was, truly; part of her had always known.
“When I arrived he told me his sentence had ended, that he’d been freed by Helda. But I began to be suspicious. Here, open the closet door, there’s a bag on the floor.”
Freya did as told and brought out a brown paper bag. Inside was a wool hat, flecked and crusted with blood. “This is Bill Thatcher’s,” she said.
“I found it in the basement when I first arrived and I hid it away until I could find out whose it was and where it was from.”
“He was the one who killed Bill. Bill and Maura always walked that ridge, across from Fair Haven.”
Killian nodded. “Bran came to Fair Haven in the middle of January, on the eve of the full moon. He must have worried that they had seen him in his true form when he first came to the house, so he attacked them.”
Now she understood why she could not see who had murdered Bill; Loki’s magic had prevented her from doing so. “He disguised himself as my mother.” Freya told Killian what had happened—that Maura Thatcher had woken from her coma and fingered Joanna as Bill’s murderer.
“I stayed so that I could figure out what he was planning, and because I could not keep away from you, of course. I suspected he was lying, that he had not been released and instead had broken out of his prison, and in so doing let darkness into this world. I still do not know how he did it—he must have a powerful weapon at his disposal, something that has allowed him to travel between the realms.”
“His ring. He carries a ring on him,” Freya said. It is my father’s, Bran had told her. It is dear to me; it is all I have left of him. “Odin’s ring.” Made of dragon bone, it could take its bearer through the Nine Worlds, she told Killian.
“So that is how he broke out of his confinement. I thought it might have something to do with Fair Haven, where he was living, and on a hunch I sent Ingrid the plans, thinking she might be able to unlock the code.”
“She did. She knows what’s in Fair Haven. It holds a branch of Yggdrasil.”
“So that was his secret,” Killian said. “He had used the path through the tree to arrive in Fair Haven, for he knew the legend of the Guardians, and as one of us the house would accept him.”
“I told him that you had given the plans to Ingrid and that she was close to figuring it out—he must have stolen them back, and that was why he attacked her, using your form. Oh, Killian, I’ve been so—”
“Stop. He has always played us false. It is his way. He knew what he was doing when he breached the tree and released the poisoned sap into Midgard.”
“Then we are lost,” Freya whispered. Her happiness at finding her true love was tempered by knowledge of the darkness that Loki had unleashed upon the world.
Ingrid appeared at the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But, Freya . . .”
“What’s wrong?” Her sister looked fraught.
“It’s Tyler. He passed away a few minutes ago.”
chapter forty-four
The Labyrinth
Then we don’t have much time,” Killian said. “It’s the poison. It’s stronger now. The children are the most vulnerable, but there will be more victims, more deaths, if we do not stop this.”
“Ingrid . . . Killian is—”
“I know,” Ingrid said with a brief nod. “I figured it out as well. Remember what I told you about Ragnarok? First the oceans will die? And how the toxin that’s in North Hampton is similar to ones found near Sydney, Greenland, and Reykjavík? They just found one near Vietnam. Bran has been spreading it around the world since he arrived in Fair Haven in January.” She explained how at first she had attempted to trace it to Killian’s travels, but she could not find the Alaskan freighter where he was supposed to have served, nor the Sydney resort where he was supposed to have worked as a scuba instructor. As far as she could see, Killian had never been to any of those places, and with a start she’d realized that the person who had told them that Killian had traveled the world was Bran.
She began to investigate Bran’s background and travels, and she realized her mistake in identifying the brothers as soon as she put together the news clippings about the toxin’s locations with a copy of Bran’s itinerary from the Gardiner Foundation, which was published on their Web site. The dates and places matched exactly. Under the cover of charity work, Bran had traveled to each and every place on the map that the toxin had been found. The explosion in the middle of the summer meant the tree was beginning to collapse inwardly. Her suspicions confirmed, she had done a little more digging on the foundation and discovered that in contrast to all the hype, there was very little good it was actually doing; most of its work seemed to be tied up in endless bureaucratic meetings; the foundation had hardly given any money to any of the causes it supported. It was a tax front, a fraud, a way to hide the Gardiner fortune.
She told all this to Freya and Killian. Now she understood that Bran was Loki all along. Like her sister and mother, she had been fooled; due to the restriction, they had been rusty and blinded and lost without their magic, and had failed to sense his use of a powerful spell. She blushed to think of her dream of Killian the other night. Another of Loki’s tricks, of course, to throw them off his trail.
“I know where he’s headed,” Ingrid said. “Through the secret door in Fair Haven. In the ballroom. Come on.”
“Go,” Killian said to Freya. “He has Odin’s ring; he could be anywhere in the universe by now.”
“I can’t leave you here,” Freya said.
“My leg’s shattered, but I can control the bleeding; don’t worry about me. I’ll only slow you down.”
Freya kissed Killian once more and then joined her sister. “Let’s go. It’s time to end this.”
Ingrid led the way to the ballroom. She cast a spell that shattered the plaster and revealed the ghost door she had found underneath.
“Okay, so how do you open it?” Freya asked.
“Watch.” Ingrid had read about the tree in her father’s book. The language she had been unable to decipher, she now understood, was the language of the dragons and the giants who had come before the gods. She placed her hands on the door and murmured a few words.
The door creaked open to reveal nothing but darkness. Ingrid took Freya’s hand and together they slipped through the portal. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, she saw that a pale blue glow lit the coarse thicket that surrounded them. The space, if it could be called that, smelled of damp earth and wood. There was a path that led forward, deeper into the thicket.
However, before they could walk any farther, they came upon Lionel Horning. He was covered in blood, and they could see that he was rotting from inside out; half of his face was missing and he leered at them with his one good eye. “Stop,” he said in a hoarse voice,
raising a hand that was missing two fingers. “You may not enter.” Their friend had been turned into a guard dog, an obstacle to block their way.
“Oh, Lionel . . .” Ingrid sighed. “The toxin. It must have been in his blood, in his system, when he swallowed all that ocean water, which is why the resurrection didn’t take.”
“So I was wrong. He’s not a demon,” Freya said.
“No, definitely zombie,” Ingrid said. “The river underneath their farm . . . it leads to the ocean. The toxin must have been strong there. He’s been breathing it. He swallowed the water and then he was living in a poisoned space. No wonder.”
“Lionel, I’m so sorry but I have to do this,” Ingrid said, raising her wand. White rope appeared from the end of her wand and wrapped tightly around Lionel, creating a straightjacket. “That will hold him. I don’t think we can bring him back, his body is too decayed. But if we stop Loki it will restore Lionel’s spirit and send him to Helda as he was.”
There was a cry from beyond, on the other side of the path that led away from the tree. “It’s Tyler. Ingrid—you get the boy. We’ve got twenty-four hours before the Dead claim him forever.”
“What about you?” Ingrid asked, already turning to the sound of the boy’s cries.
“I’ll take care of Loki,” Freya said, pushing farther into the darkness.
chapter forty-five
Trickster’s Queen
Freya ran her hand over what appeared at first to be a dense cage of vines, but as the darkness slowly gave way to starlight she saw that she was standing in the midst of a vast labyrinth, hollowed from the roots of a tree that seemed larger than the sky itself. The massive roots stretched as far as she could see, in all directions. Above her was a blanket of stars. The small blue lights did not flicker; their light was strong and constant.
Freya glanced at the unfamiliar stars. She was not in Midgard anymore, or even the world of the glom, of that she was sure. She was somewhere else, somewhere beyond the universe itself.
She found a dark line that cut across the sky like a blackened version of the Milky Way, and knew it had to be the trunk of the tree. As she made her way toward the center, the knotted field of roots would open up and allow her to surge ahead—only to lead her to a dead end, where she had to push her way through to the other side. The wood was hard and tore at her skin; her arms were caked with dirt as she hacked her way forward.
In the distance she heard a faint voice casting a spell, and a passage opened in front of her. Free for a moment from the thicket, she ran forward through the darkness. A booming voice emanated from the end of the passage.
“Freya, my love, come to join me?” Bran emerged from the darkness, his eyes shining with malice. The glow of kindness around him, Freya now saw, was part of the glamour he had cast. His awkwardness and nerves were a sign of how difficult it had been for him to keep the spell intact.
“Not at all,” Freya said, holding her wand aloft. The ivory bone shone in the light.
“Your magic is wasted on me.” He sneered. The man she knew as Bran Gardiner was gone. Every time she looked at him she understood something new. Madame Grobadan was the giantess Angrboda, Loki’s eternal mistress. No wonder she did not care for Freya.
“Not at all; I think you have been away for so long you have forgotten who I am,” Freya said, drawing herself to her full height. As her lover he was subservient to her forever; that was the power she held over men, the way she had been made from the beginning. “Give me the ring, Bran,” she said quietly. “You cannot deny me.”
Bran stood in front of her in his true form as Loki, his features oddly elongated, almost grotesque. He moved toward the shadow to conceal himself as he spoke. “You may take the ring but there is no point in having a life with your dear Balder if the world in which you live is poisoned. Let me keep it and I will be able to staunch the bleeding.” He looked at Freya, but her gaze was unyielding.
“Give me the ring.” It was a command from a goddess.
Bran could not resist. Freya felt a warm, putrid air embrace her, and when it dissipated Odin’s ring lay in the palm of her hand. She saw that it was not made of gold at all; its surface was dull white and porous, a bone ring carved from the last shreds of the bridge. A final token of a power older than the gods themselves, it had been lost by Odin during the last battle of Asgard. It did not belong in this world or any other. Its time was past. She held it between her fingers and began to crush the frail shape. Tiny splinters showered from her hand. The ring was so soft, as if carved from a feather, it could be ground into dust at the slightest touch.
“Do not harm it. Return it to me and I shall give you what you desire,” Loki whispered. “If those who placed me in the abyss find me here, I’ll not be sent back this time, I will simply be wiped from existence. And I hope you would have some bit of love left for me still.”
His every word is a lie, she thought: he will do nothing to help you. Freya looked at him once more, but she saw nothing of the Bran she knew. She held the tiny ring between her fingers and slowly ground it into dust. “I’ll not be a fool for you any longer, Loki.”
“Idiot!” he screamed, diving forward to catch what ashes he could as they drifted to the ground. Loki gathered himself from the wet earth and faced her. “Then you shall spend the rest of your existence in a dying world.”
“No, Loki, I will not. You will exit as you entered Midgard, through the hole you made in the trunk, and your leaving will close it behind you. The Tree of Life will be whole once more.” This was Ingrid’s idea, and she hoped her sister was right—that once he crossed Yggdrasil once more, the wound would close and the toxin would disappear.
Loki hesitated.
“It’s your only way out of here now that the ring is gone,” Freya said. “Without the ring, it is the only path that remains open to you. You have only one place to go. I don’t think you want to wait around to see what will happen once Balder gets ahold of you.” The God of Light and Fury would be a fearsome enemy now that he was restored to his full strength and no longer bound by the limits of the curse.
Loki didn’t respond for a while. He simply stood still, his mind whirling, and then he smiled. “You are more like me than you think, dear Freya.” With that he spun around and faced the great trunk of the tree. He uttered garbled words in a language Freya did not catch.
The stars above dimmed as the paths through the great thicket of roots seemed to shift and change in the darkness, revealing a scarred black tear in the face of the tree. The opening looked more like a wound, a mighty rip, and a powerful force emanated from it, blowing a noxious hurricane wind from the shaft. Loki put one hand on the torn bark, for a moment he paused as if to turn and bid farewell, but he did not. Instead he bit his lip and cast himself into the void. The black fury billowed once more from the hole, as if consuming the dark god of mischief only increased its power.
Freya was thrown to the ground as the earth heaved. The heavens went dark and the blackness spread all around her. “Loki!” she called. There was no answer. She closed her eyes and rode out the storm as the fury enveloped her like a tornado, swirling in all directions. Finally the hurricane stopped, and when she opened her eyes the tree was whole once more.
She picked herself up and dusted off her knees. “Ingrid! Are you and Tyler okay?”
“We’re here!”
Freya ran toward the sound of their voices.
Ingrid was out of breath. “I found him on the path. But he hadn’t gone beyond the first gate yet. Hurry, it’s almost daylight. The Covenant!”
“What about Lionel?” Freya asked.
“I couldn’t find him. But if Loki is gone from here then Lionel should be on his way to Helda as he used to be. And without the corruption in his soul.”
“Are we going home now?” Tyler asked.
“Yes. Hold my hand and don’t let go.”
The little boy looked frightened, and Freya remembered that he did not like to be touched; but after
an internal struggle he took Freya’s hand and, in the other, held Ingrid’s.
They walked like that, with the child between them, until they were back in the house.
chapter forty-six
The Judgment of
the Council
Joanna saw them emerge from the front door of Fair Haven. She ran to Tyler, enveloping him in a bear hug. “You did it,” she said to her girls in awe. She had forgotten how strong they were, had forgotten in the years of living quietly that her children were formidable and ferocious. “You did it.”
“Yes,” Freya said, walking over to Killian and taking his hand. His leg was still wrapped in the tourniquet she had made. “But who knows where Loki will end up next.”
“It’s all right, he won’t be free for very long,” a new voice said.
Ingrid looked up. “Dad?”
A man stood quietly in the shadows. He was tall, gray-haired, and handsome, but his face was weary and his beard a tad unkempt. He was wearing a worn cardigan and gray slacks, the academic’s uniform. Freya hugged herself tightly but in the end she ran to him as Ingrid had done.
“My girls.” It was all Norman Beauchamp could say at the moment as he embraced them and even Joanna had to blink back tears.
“Skadi, you’re crying,” Norman teased.
“Oh, Nordj, stop.” She sighed.
The god of the seas released his daughters and looked at them seriously. “Your mother told me you had gone after Loki on your own. I was worried, but you have both accomplished more than I hoped. Midgard is whole once again.”
“Where did you go, Dad? Did you really get an audience with the White Council?”
“Yes. I went to the oracle and spoke to Odin himself. Once I deciphered the code on those plans Erda sent me and saw that the roots of the tree were in Fair Haven, and when I saw those reports of oceanic disturbance, I began to think that perhaps the toxin of Ragnarok had been found in our world, which could only mean one thing. Loki had escaped from his chains and had come to unleash his vengeance upon us.”