By the Mountain Bound (35 page)

She turns and gestures to the sea. I stand at her stirrup and watch an image take shape—an image rendered hollow by the heavy silver dangling from my ear, but otherwise convincing.

I see Brynhilde.

Her valraven watching, straining against her command as I have seen the Imogen strain against mine, Brynhilde wanders down to the sea. She spreads her arms, beseeching . . . and then draws a knife from her belt and opens the veins along the lengths of her arms slowly, with methodical care. The illusory blood spills into the sea. I smell its taint on the wind.

“The sacrifice works when the intervention is bought of the supplicant’s free will. But not if the supplicant is compelled.” Heythe’s hand strokes my shoulder.

I want to taste her blood.

“Compelled?”

“Muire gave her a little charm, a talisman to protect her. I hung a little do-my-bidding on it as well, is all.”

For once, the Suneater and the Grey Wolf are unified in their desires. And Mingan the man—he has long ago decided. What there is left of him.

“You tricked the Serpent into a false intervention.”

“Clever Wolf.” She strokes my neck like she might stroke the neck of her red mare. “There was no willing sacrifice to summon it, so when it came . . . Shall I show you that scene as
well, Wolf?” She raises her hand, and bits of light sparkle about it.

I step away. “No!”

“I was waiting for it. Once it made itself vulnerable, I got it a mortal blow.”

I cover my ears with my hands like a child.

The Wyrm, my brother.

She talks on. “It will probably take it a few thousand years to die. Gods are slow about these things.”

“Oh.” I stare out at the sea, which tosses gray and unknowing. The touch of her hand is the heaviest thing I have ever felt. The Light is dead. Not just the children. But the thing itself.

Doubling fist into fist, I strike her across the face.

And she laughs out loud, rocking back with the blow, blood spattering from her mouth as she brays her mirth. The hand on my shoulder clutches, pulling me hard against the side of her mare. She leans across the horse’s withers, dropping the reins, and the red mare sidesteps, dragging me.

Contemptuous, Heythe shreds my shirt and thrusts her hand under my collar, lifting me into the air. She leans back in the saddle, and holds me up to her face. I claw her wrist with both hands, fight to ease the choking pressure. The red mare spooks as my feet bang her side, but Heythe must calm her, for she dances but does not bolt.

Black edges my vision as the goddess draws my face close. “Wolfling, wolfling.” She smiles and leans so close I can taste her breath. “Remember the last time we wrestled?”

She throws me down upon the sand. I roll into the water.
Blood smears my hand when I pull it from my throat, and my breath sounds like the rasp of a saw.

“I remember.”

And then she’s all tenderness again, sliding down the shoulder of her horse, crouching in the spray beside me, taking my head in her hands. Her lips brush mine. She nuzzles the torn skin of my neck and rocks her head in a little, burrowing motion I have reason to know oh, too well.

“You’re right,” she whispers against my skin, while the waves soak my tattered shirt. “You should kill me. But you can’t. So come with me, Suneater, Fenris-Wolf, darkness incarnate. We can keep each other company until God is dead, and then we can rule.”

She wanted them all dead. All the children, all the survivors scavenged from the world before. She wanted to tear down whatever the Aesir built that outlasted her prophecy. Gullveig, her name was Gullveig, and they roasted her on spears for her words of ruin, but she could not die.

She will destroy everything the conquerors, the enslavers of my father’s folk, built. And yet she doesn’t want to be alone. How strange. I taste her offer like an exotic wine, a heady savor under my tongue, the aroma of power filling my head.

She draws me to my feet and I stand before her, eye to eye, cold seawater dripping down my back and filling my boots. She is flawless, lovely, with the snow caught in her golden hair and her blue eyes gleaming with excitement.

“I will be everything you ever wanted in a lover, Wolf. Every goddess you ever imagined.”

The breath of the sea runs in and out of my lungs while I let her offer hang. I lean toward her. I smile. Almost, almost, I kiss
her mouth. Sparkles of light spill from my collar and dapple both of us, like sunlight reflecting from rippled water. In time, by her side, I could even learn the power to kill her.

She does not want to be alone.

Well, there is one revenge I can hang on her.

“The prettiest collar you can think of is still a collar, my Lady.”

Her laughter peals as I walk away. She calls after me. “Mingan! Then I’m going on ahead, without you. It will be brief for me . . . traveling my roads. But what say I look for you in a few thousand years?”

I am not inclined to answer, walking down the long and empty shore, although I do turn back when her rainbow descends, and watch her ride out of sight.

Someone waits for me several days south, where the cliff finally staggers down to the beach, ending in a black jumble of rocks smoothed by the tide. His cloven hooves give purchase like a goat’s on the sea-cleaned stones, and he bends his neck to regard me. Moonlight crystallizes along the spiral of his horn.

I stop, and turn to look him in the eye. “Silken-swift. If you bring a message from your master, take one back. He was a fool, and he earned his death. And his dying.”

He does not speak into my ear, neither name nor acknowledgment. A moment taut as a silken rope stretches us.

I take a step forward; he minces a step back. The wind flips his mane over his eyes, flaps the tatters of my shirt. “Well,” I whisper. “If you can find a heart in me, then put your horn through it. Last chance to slay the Wolf, before the end of the world.”

He lowers his horn and sights along it. I turn my head and
close my eyes, waiting.
Oh, it hurts; it hurts; it hurts; it hurts. And it cannot hurt enough.

The pain does not end.

When I open my eyes, the unicorn is gone. I stand alone on the salt-stained shore.