Chapter twenty-four
Eisa
The world tilted as we emerged knee-deep in a reflecting pool, magic shivering over us in a wave of blue as bright as the Rift.
My hand remained clasped firmly in Arik’s, the gaping hole where Baldur should be—where Arik should be—making Idunn prowl restlessly as I took in our surroundings.
We were on a grassy hill, the dusky sky cold above us. In the distance was a river so wide it was difficult to make out the opposite shore. Trees stretched above us, their needles sparse as if the wind coming off the river had battered them into bareness.
“Where are we?” We were surrounded by broken pillars and crumbling walls, all overgrown with moss. Only the pool beneath us seemed in good repair, the runes carved around its stone edge in the exact positions as the ones Sigrid had carved into the frame of the mirror.
“If I’m not mistaken, we’re on àsynjaheimr.” Arik replied.
I frowned at the long-overgrown stone, which could certainly be the ruined remains of a temple. “Well, I suppose this means you were right.”
He huffed a laugh as he guided me from the pool.
Both of us were completely dry, as if the water were the same liquid glass as the mirror in the tiny attic room.
He lifted my hand to his lips as I stepped onto the grass, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I won’t let it go to my head, Kjaere.”
“Better not.” I looked for some sign of where Sigrid might be—an ancient door, a hole in the ground. But there was nothing but the ruined stone and the wind. “What now?”
Arik looked around, his expression unreadable. “This way.”
“Do you know something about temple ruins I don’t?” I asked, stumbling over a rock as I followed him down the hill.
He grasped my waist to steady me, his lip twitching at the corner. “Just following the smoke, Kjaere.”
I looked up to where his gaze had landed above the trees. A thin, barely-visible wisp of smoke rose into the darkening sky.
Arik took my hand again and guided me down the hill, away from the crumbling walls of the temple.
“There’s a settlement here?” I supposed there was fish in the river, but this little island didn’t seem capable of sustaining a village of any size.
“Not to my knowledge, but smoke usually means people.”
I frowned again at the smoke. Something about it struck me as odd, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
It is the smell. Idunn sniffed haughtily. It is wrong.
The wind made it difficult, but Idunn was right. There was some scent under the smoke that wasn’t anything like burning wood.
“Stay close, Kjaere,” Arik murmured, drawing me behind him as we approached the edge of the tree line. “There’s someone there.”
I peeked around him, hopeful to see a shock of white hair or a stooped back. A figure in a light-blue robe sat on one of the crumbling stones of the outer wall of the temple, a small fire burning before them. “Sigrid?”
“Oh!” The voice wasn’t Sigrid’s, and I felt the hopeful bubble in my chest burst as the robed figure turned toward us. Her face was younger than mine, and golden hair tumbled over her shoulders. “You’re here!”
Arik held up an arm to stop me, and I longed for our mental bridge if only so I could accuse him of being an overprotective watchdog like Branka would.
“Who are you?” Arik’s voice was stone, and the girl took an understandable step backward, almost knocking into the cauldron that was the source of the strange smoke.
“Amaya.” She bowed her head and moved her hands before her heart, making a diamond with her forefingers and thumbs. “I am one of Elysia’s priestesses.”
I frowned. “What was that?”
“What…was what?” Amaya’s eyes were wide as she looked between us. “This?” She repeated the motion with her hands, and something nagged at my mind.
Idunn swooped excitedly in my head. It is the symbol over our heart. From the necklace.
“It is the sign of Elysia,” Amaya explained, waving her hand over the cauldron. The contents inside immediately stopped smoking, as if there had never been anything burning there at all.
“How did you—“
“Sigrid warned me you would have many questions.” Amaya smiled and waved her hand over the cauldron a second time. It completely disappeared. “She will explain all. Come.”
“Volva magic,” Arik murmured, frowning as Amaya hiked up the skirts of her robe and began heading back the way we had come.
“Sigrid is here?” I asked, jogging a step to catch up to the priestess. She was uncannily fast for someone encumbered by long robes, and I wondered if she were floating rather than walking. “Where?”
“In the temple, of course.” Amaya gave me a patient smile that made me want to grind my teeth. “I was told to take you to her directly.”
She stopped a short distance away from the reflecting pool before a set of broken stone pillars, which had fallen together to make a sort of triangle.
“The temple is a ruin,” I argued, waving toward the crumbling walls as Arik placed a steadying hand against my back.
Amaya smiled again, placing her hand to one of the fallen pillars. A symbol like a sideways hourglass appeared for just a moment, as if seared into the stone with a blue light. Then, a terrible grating noise sounded from beneath our feet.
Arik pulled me back as the stone pillar in the center of the triangle sank into the ground, revealing a pitch-black opening that seemed to lead to a set of stairs.
“Not all is as it seems,” Amaya said, snapping her fingers. A small ball of pinkish flame appeared in her hand, and Idunn growled protectively.
The priestess smiled, as if she could sense my dragon’s reticence. “Come. Sigrid is waiting.”
I glanced at Arik, who took my hand firmly in his and shrugged. “We’ve come this far.”
“Goddess save me.” I was really beginning to dislike secret doorways.
We followed Amaya down a spiraling stone staircase, the faint pink light of her fire bobbing along in front of us.
Arik’s hand gripped mine tightly as he walked ahead of me, as if afraid he might lose me in the dark.
We walked in silence for several minutes. I wished I could reassure him, but it felt somehow sacrilegious to whisper in this space. Like Elysia herself might curse us and send the walls crumbling in on top of us.
“You can speak freely,” Amaya said, her voice echoing strangely. “It’s perfectly sturdy.”
Arik and I glanced at each other, and he cleared his throat. “How long has this been here?”
“The temple? Almost five thousand years, I believe.” Amaya disappeared momentarily around a bend before appearing again before an ancient wooden door at the base of the stairs. “Possibly even longer. Would you mind?”
“What the—“ She passed the flame to Arik, her hand tipping the small blaze into his palm, where it floated. “How in the—”
“I’ve never met drage before,” Amaya continued as if passing fire off to someone were a perfectly normal thing. She fiddled with the latch on the door, which clicked as the door swung open, “But Sigrid said the fire wouldn’t bother you.”
“This is…volva magic?” Arik moved his hand, and the flame danced merrily between his fingers.
“Witchfire.” Amaya beamed as she turned and tipped his hand. The fire flowed back into her outstretched palm without a sound. “One of my gifts from the Goddess. Useless on the odemarksdyr, but it’s enough for cooking soup and lighting corridors.”
She smiled at my mate, and Idunn growled possessively in my chest.
Stop that, I chided as we followed the priestess.
She smiles at our mate. He is ours for smiling at.
My impatient reply was cut short when I saw where the spiral staircase had led us.
Before us was a cavern as large as the Great Hall in Stormhold, its walls carved completely from the stone beneath the island.
The only visible light came from the torches interspersed around the walls, all with the same pink witchfire in Amaya’s hand, and a great skylight in the center of the room that gave the darkening evening light a strange, wavering quality.
“Sigrid is probably in the kitchens,” Amaya explained, extinguishing the light in her palm with a flick of her fingers. “This way.”
My gaze was so fixed on the wavering skylight in the ceiling, I barely registered Arik tugging me after her.
“It’s the pool. The mirror,” Arik clarified, giving my hand a squeeze as he dragged me away from the center of the chamber. “That’s why the light is shifting.”
“How is that possible?” The words came out as an awed whisper, and Arik chuckled.
“Magic, Kjaere.”
“That can’t be your answer for everything now,” I muttered as Amaya led us toward one of several archways built into the walls of the cavern.
“The rest of the temple runs around the perimeter of the sanctum,” Amaya explained as she glided past walls, bare but for the sconces of witchfire that lit the way. “Dormitories are at this end. The archives are at the farthest end on the other side of the sanctum. And the kitchens are just here.”
Amaya led us through one of the arched doorways and into a secondary chamber. The ceilings were lower here, and they tapered to meet the floor as if the temple were one giant dome split into an inner and outer circle.
Two other forms in blue robes were present. One, a stern-faced woman who looked to be at least two decades older than me, was stirring a huge, copper pot over the hearth.
The other was older, her face lined and her hair a bright silver. She offered me a knowing smile.
“Sigrid!” I ran and threw my arms around her as I had done a thousand times before. She seemed to have shrunk in our months apart, but the fierceness with which she hugged me back was just like I remembered.
“Ah, my Eisa,” she murmured, her voice sounding older and more cracked as well.
I frowned down at her, noticing deep grooves of age in her precious face that I had never noticed at Henrik’s.
Of course, she had always been old, ever since I was little.
But she had never seemed so ancient before.
So frail. “I see he has brought you back in one piece. I suppose I shall not have to poison him, then.”
I choked on the half-laugh, half-sob that escaped me, clutching her more tightly to me. The top of her head barely reached my shoulder now, and I desperately longed to be a child again, small enough to be folded into the comfort of her arms.
“I missed you.” The words were inadequate to convey how I felt, but they were all I could choke out between gasping sobs.
“Hush, child. What nonsense.” Sigrid clucked her tongue and released me, holding me away from her as if to inspect me. “Well, you look much better than when I last saw you. Come and let us sit by the fire.”
I choked out another sobbing laugh as Sigrid hobbled toward the hearth where the stern-faced woman was still stirring. The pot bubbled with something that looked to be soup, but smelled frightful, and I guessed that Sigrid had made it.
“Make tea then, Freya, that’s a dear,” Sigrid commanded, taking a seat in a rickety wooden chair by the fire as if it were a throne.
The stern-faced woman, Freya, scowled. “Amaya can stir this slop, then. Hearthmother divine, Sigrid, I don’t know how you manage to make every broth somehow both bland and utterly distasteful.”
Amaya took the wooden spoon that Freya had been using to stir while the older priestess went to a secondary, smaller fireplace inset in the wall.
“Kjaere.” I jumped as Arik placed his hand on my back and propelled me toward Sigrid, guiding me into a second wooden chair. He gave my shoulder a squeeze as I sat, then took his place on a low wooden stool that would have made a lesser man look ridiculous.
“I’ll have you know that Eisa here loves my soup,” Sigrid sniffed haughtily, looking at me with hopeful blue eyes.
Lying in the house of the Goddess would almost certainly get me stuck down where I sat. “It tastes of home, Mormor,” I hedged, somewhat truthfully, “but we have many other things to discuss and not a great deal of time.”
“Ah yes, I suspect you have several questions, Eisa dear,” Sigrid said, turning her beady eyes on my mate. She frowned. “I see you have misplaced your bonded dragon somehow, boy. Mistletoe, was it?”
Arik blinked, his only sign of surprise. “How did you know, Sigrid?”
“You must call me Mormor,” she replied, waving away Arik’s question as if it were unimportant. She turned back to me. “And how do you like being his mate?”
I blushed, feeling the eyes of all three priestesses on me. “Quite well.”
“I just bet you do.” Sigrid cackled, the sound morphing into a wracking cough.
She waved me away as I tried to pat her back.
“I seem to be feeling my age more these days. It is a balm to see you, though, my dear. I suppose it is time, after all. I did promise her I would tell you once you were mated.”
“I…” It was my turn to blink in confusion. “What?”
I glanced at Arik, who was frowning at Sigrid. “Promised who, Mormor?”
I didn’t have time to melt at hearing Arik use my endearment for Sigrid as she dissolved into another flurry of coughing. Freya pressed a teacup into her hands, the smell of peppermint wafting gently from it. “Here, you old bat. Can’t have you dying before you tell her everything.”
“Dying?” I looked up at Freya in horror as I helped steady the teacup at Sigrid’s lips. “She’s not dying.”
“Everyone is dying, Eisa dear,” Sigrid choked out between sips. “I seem to be dying faster than others these days. Oh fret not, child,” she added, clasping my hand in hers as she saw my stricken face. “It’s far past time. I’m over eight centuries old, after all.”
“Eight…what?” I sat back in my chair and felt Arik’s hand slide to my thigh, a comforting weight. “How?”
“She’s Volva,” Arik replied, accepting his own cup of tea from Freya with a nod and sniffing it suspiciously.
“There’s no mistletoe in it,” Freya snapped irritably. “Though perhaps there should be, with manners like yours. No wonder your poor dragon hasn’t seen fit to return yet.”
“Kindness, Freya,” Amaya chastised, still stirring the soup, which smelled mysteriously more flavorful under Amaya’s watch. “We’ve spoken of this.”
“You can both be quiet so I can get on with my story before I expire,” Sigrid intoned, giving me a placid smile. “Now dear, where were we?”
This whole exchange had left me in such a state of confusion and bewilderment that I wasn’t even sure where to begin. But my mind was stuck on the question of Sigrid’s age. “Eight centuries?”
Sigrid waved an impatient hand. “Yes, yes. The volva live quite a long time, especially with one of Elysia’s tears. You still have it, I presume?”
“Have what?” I asked, feeling more ungrounded with each moment of this conversation. I had expected to feel reassured and steady in Sigrid’s presence. Instead, I felt like I’d been caught in a storm and turned in every direction before being set right again and told to walk in a straight line.
“Elysia’s tear,” Sigrid repeated irritably as she sipped her tea. She pointed at my heart—at the scar I knew sat beneath my tunic. “The necklace, child! Where is the necklace?”