Chapter 32
An eerie sound whistled and chimed across the dead plain a long time before they reached the source of it.
It was like a thousand drawers of cutlery being thrown down the stairs, and the closer they walked, the more the sound jangled Linnea's nerves.
The thread of the river spread, and the shine of it broke apart into a thousand moving points of light, each one winking and turning and gone.
That is not water, her wolf said and went low and uneasy inside her.
What gave it away? Linnea answered bitchily because it was either that or piss her pants in fear.
The fast-moving river was made entirely of blades.
Knives and swords and daggers and broken edges, blade over blade over blade, turning in the current like fish, catching the gray light and throwing it back.
There was no water under them and no water over them.
The blades were the river. They poured past in their thousands, edge-first, slicing the air menacingly, and the whole churning weight of them gave off a smell that coated the back of her throat.
Blood, cold iron, and something rotten underneath, like the killing floor of an old abattoir.
There was no bridge over it, and the far bank was a low gray nothing, swallowed in mist after twenty feet.
"Slíer," Von said quietly beside her. He had his pack open and rifled through it until he pulled his leather journal out.
"This is the River of Blades. Gjoll is the river of water in this realm, the one with the bridge that features in the story about when Hermóer rode Sleipnir down here to try and get Baldur back.
" He turned through the pages of his journal.
"This one runs through valleys of poison, and it cuts apart anything that tries to cross it uninvited. No exceptions."
"Eyvindr, that priest, wrote down in his story that the Wanderer crossed it," Fenris said, eyes not moving from the bristling blades. "There has to be a way."
Von didn't look up. "Yeah, yeah, let me find the exact wording. I'm just double-checking if I made notes anywhere about other stories where this river is mentioned."
Ciara stepped up to the edge, drew one of the bread rolls she had pocketed at breakfast, and lobbed it out over the river.
The blades caught it a foot above the surface. There was a puff of crumbs, sliced to nothing, and swept downstream with the rest.
"Kind of hoped it was an illusion," Ciara said with a sigh.
"What? Like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?" Layla asked her, and Ciara nodded. "Damn, I didn't think of that one at all. Shame, it would have been awesome."
"If we don't end up turned into bloody confetti, maybe you can give Hel some pointers," Arne suggested.
The talk started up behind Linnea, low and fast. Arne asked about the narrowest point. Tor asked how far portal magic could throw a person, Ciara said something grim about ropes, and none of it mattered.
Linnea stopped listening to them. The river could not be fought. A blade raised against it only fed it. Strength was the wrong tool, and so was steel, and so were the warriors at her back who had kept her safe the whole way down and could do nothing at all for her here.
It could not be fought, but it wouldn't have been in the story if Havi hadn't figured it out. It had to be possible, or otherwise this would be the only trial Hel created.
Linnea stepped forward, past Ciara, and walked to the very lip of the bank.
"Linnea?" Fenris asked, uncertain.
"Give me room." She didn't turn around but kept her eyes on the shifting blades. "Whatever happens, do not touch me until I tell you to move."
She knelt on the shingle, closed her eyes, and dropped into the quiet place where her magic lived. She tried to remember what the story had said about the river. You had to have a good memory for song and story to be a volv?, and she had drilled her recall skills for years.
The lines of the poem came back to her like a whisper in her ear, I came first to the river of swords, where I could not cross with strength, so I crossed with a song's feet…
Instead of the words, she saw a small boat on a black sea. The sea heaving it up and dropping it, white teeth of foam reaching over the rails, and a single voice on the deck singing the water flat, telling it to lie down.
"Song and stillness," she whispered, opening her eyes. She pulled out the soft bag of her runes, and she drew two at random.
Laguz, water, and ísa, ice, and stillness. They confirmed what her vision had revealed to her. She set them at the water's edge where the spray of cut air could almost reach them, and she pressed her palm flat to the cold ground.
The whole of her seidr power rose up at her call, more of it than she had ever let herself reach for. Her whole life, she had been told the wolf was the only power worth having, and when her wolf had stayed silent, she had learned to be ashamed of the empty place where four paws should have been.
That was not power. This roiling wave rushing through her was, and it came from her alone. No father could beat it out of her. No cult could bleed it out of her. This was magic and soul and song.
She opened her mouth, and the first note was a single held tone that was the sea itself, vast and dark and patient, and she poured the rune power into it.
"Laguz, heyr mik. Ek nefni tik. Saer eggja, ek kann nafn titt…."
Laguz, hear me. I name you. Sea of edges, I know your name….
The blades faltered.
The song ran through the river like a shiver, stuttering in the endless turning. She didn't stop. The note climbed, and the words came up out of the deep part of her in the old shape, the one that repeated and turned back on itself and bound tighter with every turn.
"Vie brunninn, er grét tik kaldan,
vie djúpit, er bar tik,
tagga tína hundrae grátandi munna.
ísa, kom nier.
Legg tína hvítu hond á vatnit.
Kyrr snúninginn. Kyrr tennrnar.
Sof nú, svereá. Sof."
By the well that wept you cold, by the deep that bore you, still your hundred crying mouths. ísa, come down. Lay your white hand on the water. Still the turning. Still the teeth. Sleep now, sword-river. Sleep.
The current slowed. Nothing in any realm could stop it, so she asked it only to lie down for a while to rest. The bristling blades began to fall.
The wild flashing churn smoothed itself out, point by point, edge by edge, until the thousand turning knives lay flat and quiet, the surface of the river smooth and seamless as a pane of new glass.
The terrible grinding rasp died into nothing.
The silence that came after it was so total that her own held note hung alone in the air over the water.
Under the deadly glass, far down, the blades still ran. She had sung to the surface, and it would sleep exactly as long as she kept singing and not one breath longer.
She turned her head a fraction and met Fenris's eyes, and she didn't break the song. She narrowed it down to its smallest turning loop, the three lines that held the stillness, and she sang them over and over while she lifted one hand off the ground and pointed at the river that was now a road.
"Kyrr, kyrr. Sof, svereá. Lát oss fara. Kyrr, kyrr. Sof, svereá. Lát oss fara. Kyrr, kyrr. Sof, svereá. Lát oss fara."
Still, still. Sleep, sword-river. Let us pass. Still, still. Sleep, sword-river. Let us pass.
Fenris understood her gesture. He shifted into his wolf and stepped out onto the surface first. His weight came down on the sleeping river, and the sheet of cold metal held.
He crossed at a steady trot into the mist without stopping once until he was back on steady ground.
He shifted back into his human form and called out, "It holds, but don't dawdle! "
"Still, still. Sleep, sword-river. Let us pass…."
Ciara went next, sprinting on light feet.
Tor went after her, muttering something under his breath that might have been a prayer, his eyes fixed straight ahead, and his big hands curled into fists.
Arne went next before waiting with his arms outstretched for Layla to run into them.
Von ran next, whispering, 'Fuckfuckfuck. '
Linnea rose off her knees, swept the runes back into her bag without breaking the galdr, and stepped out onto the river.
She didn't look down at the edges sleeping an inch beneath her soles.
She kept her eyes on Fenris in the mist ahead, her voice moving in her throat, and she walked the width of it with the song wrapped around them all like a held breath.
Her boot came down on the gray shingle of the far bank, and she let the song go.
The river woke up furious and thrashing.
It came apart all at once with a sound like ten thousand swords being torn from their sheaths, a shriek of metal on metal that rolled out across the whole dead plain.
It had been made to still against its will, and it threw itself at the bank, slashing out to reach them.
Linnea stood on the far side, her ears ringing and her knees shaking. Tor let out a low whistle through his teeth, looked at the raging river and back at her before pulling her into a hug.
"You are the cleverest sister in all of the Nine Realms, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise," he said into her hair, fierce and proud.
"Put me down, you enormous oaf."
"In a minute, when I feel like I'm not going to throw up." He squeezed her again and put her down. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. I just can't believe it worked," she admitted.
Von was already taking notes in the journal. "How did you do that? Which runes did you use?"
"Laguz and Isa," Linnea replied.
"Huh, seems obvious now that you say it. You're going to teach me that one. You know, for the official record of our journey," Von said, waving his journal about.
Fenris moved Von out of the way and took Linnea's face in both his huge, scarred hands. He looked at her like she had hung the moon and a few of the better stars, right before he kissed her. The shaking in her legs stopped, and the sounds of the angry river faded away as his arms folded around her.
When he finally drew back, he kept his forehead against hers. "The Norns sent you down here with me, and I'm starting to think they knew exactly what they were doing when they wove our wyrds together. There is no one in any world who could have done what you just did, you little miracle."
Tears pricked at Linnea's eyes, and she pressed her face in the groove of his chest. She had spent her whole life certain that she was an accident, a broken thing that not even her own mother could love.
She had never been someone's miracle, and if anyone else had said it, she would have made some flippant joke about it. Fenris meant what he said and it shook her to her core.
"Come on," she said when she had pulled herself together. "Whatever's next, let's hope it's easier."
She doubted it, but she was determined to be positive. How much worse could it be after a river of blades?
They turned together and walked on into the mist to catch up with the others, the roar of the river fading behind them.
Somewhere ahead, the next trial was waiting in the fog. They couldn't see it yet, but it wasn't long before they could feel it.