When the sun finally broke across the eastern horizon, I’d thought myself in circles at least fifty-seven times, and still, I couldn’t say if anyone in the party could be suspect—let alone should be one. Who could I suspect? No one, that’s who.
“Morning, you idiot,” said Jane.
“I love you, too.”
“Did you sit up all night?”
“Not all night.”
“You are a big, dumb Norwegian. Do you know that? Stubborn. Head-strong.”
“Handsome. Pretty, even.”
“Pfft! Why didn’t you wake me? I’d have gotten you a pill, or a hot rock or something.”
“The pill would’ve kept me awake anyway. And I can get my own pills, woman.”
“Yeah, sure, as if you can be trusted with your own meds. I should pop you right in the lip.”
“I’d love a kiss, thanks.”
She pretended to glare at me the whole time she walked from the bedroll to where I sat and bent down and kissed me. “You will be a mess all day, Henry.”
“Ew,” I said. “Dragon breath.”
“He’s better at this than you are, husband,” said Sif from the bedroll she, Meuhlnir, and Yowrnsaxa shared.
“Much,” said Yowrnsaxa.
“Ha! He only has one wife, it’s hardly a fair comparison.”
“No, he’s better,” said Veethar. “Everyone sees this.”
“Silent god, my ass,” grumbled Meuhlnir.
“I wish all the Isir would be silent,” grumbled Althyof. “How am I to get enough rest to put up with you throughout the day?”
“If only we could get enough rest to make traveling with you easier,” said Meuhlnir.
Althyof stood and stretched, a small smile playing on his lips. “Sleep all you like, Isir. It’s not like we need anything from you.”
“Might as well ask if the sky needs the sun,” said Meuhlnir, but I thought he was hiding a smile. “You know, I was foolish when we bargained. You should be the one paying us.”
“Whatever for?” asked Althyof. “People follow me around for days, hoping to catch a touch of my magic. Hoping to learn how to be witty, to be brave.”
“Hope is such a cruel mistress,” said Sif, not bothering to hide a smile.
“Ah, my lady, you cut me.” Althyof pretended to stagger, clutching his chest. “Remove your barb.”
Sig sat up in his bedroll, rubbing his eyes. “You guys know I’m fourteen, right?”
“What of it?” asked Althyof.
“Fourteen-year-olds need to sleep in late in the mornings. It’s a biological necessity.”
“Speaking of biological necessities,” said Althyof as he walked away from camp.
“I thought he’d never leave,” said Frikka.
“I heard that!”
“As I intended!” yelled Frikka.
Mothi groaned and rolled out of his bedroll. “This inn has such thin walls. I heard everything everyone said.”
Jane tweaked my ear. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how badly you were losing our argument.”
“As if,” I said, pulling her down for another kiss.
“I win sometimes,” she said.
“When I let you.”
“Do you see, Meuhlnir?” asked Sif. “He’s better at it. It’s plain to see.”
Meuhlnir blew a raspberry and stood, stretching his back. “Maybe you are just better at flyting than Jane is. You have several centuries of experience more than she does.”
“So, I’m old?” asked Sif, in a light, jovial tone that made Meuhlnir turn and stare at her. “A crone? You’d prefer someone younger, perhaps?”
“No, no. Not at all. I—”
“Does he truly never learn?” asked Veethar. “I find this incredible.”
We went about our morning ablutions and ate a cold breakfast. As we were packing, Sif walked over, pretending nonchalance while her critical healer’s eye roamed my body, lingering on the spots that hurt me the most. I didn’t know how she could do it, but it was like she could see pain. Given the vefari that surrounded me, maybe she could see my pain.
“It hurts,” she said without preamble.
“I’m okay,” I said. Jane grunted and shook her head.
“Okay, are you?” said Sif while arching her eyebrows.
“Yeah. It is what it is.”
“And since no one gifted at healing travels with the party, I guess you’ll have to suffer through stoically. Right?”
“It’s the Calculus of When,” said Jane. “And a big dose of Norwegian.”
“Of what?” asked Skowvithr.
“His internal calculations of how bad he has to hurt before he will do something sensible, like let Sif help him.” Jane straightened so she could add her disapproving glare to Sif’s.
Sif looked at me, her expression hardening into a stern, forbidding frown. “You will not do this Calculus of When anymore, Hank Jensen. Not when I can help.”
I kept fiddling with the straps that held my pack behind my saddle. Even Slaypnir turned his big head to look at me, and it seemed he was glaring at me, too. What could I say? They were right, and I knew it. There was no doubt, but even so, there was something in my head that made me want to conserve things that worked, to only use them when I felt “bad enough.”
“I will have Jane hold you down, Hank,” said Sif.
“And I will help,” said Yowtgayrr.
“I know,” I whispered, fighting emotion. “I know.”
“So let her help,” said Jane, exasperation at war with her empathy. She glanced at Sif. “It’s the Norwegian genes that make him this way.”
Sif chuckled. “It is the Isir genes, or maybe only the genes of Meuhlnir’s family. Mothi is no better.”
“Leave me out of this, Mother,” called Mothi from across the camp.
Sif laid her hand on my shoulder. “Let me help, Hank.”
I didn’t know why I put them all through this time and time again. I had to learn the lesson—learn to take the help that was available—and, after enough time had passed, I’d have to learn the same lesson again.
“Legs,” I muttered. “Knees, ankles, and feet.”
Sif kicked a log near the now cold fire. “Sit.”
I sat and kicked off my boots, peeled my socks, and removed my pants. Somehow, the last few months had robbed me of being ashamed to sit around outdoors in my underwear.
Sif rummaged in her bag and came out with her stinking pot of balm. She rubbed her hands together to build up some warmth and smeared great gobs of the malodorous stuff from the balls of my feet to mid-thigh. A stinging burning sensation followed her hands, and the pain began to abate.
“Is it only the balm?” I murmured.
“The balm works as I told you, overloading the pain pathways with the burning sensation.”
“But…what about your other gifts?”
“As a vefari?”
“Yes. Are you vefa strenki as you apply the balm?”
“Do you think I am?” she asked, keeping her head down as if she was focused on smearing the balm across my knees.
Since I’d been tricked into traveling to the klith of Osgarthr, my pain had never been beyond the limits of Sif’s balm. Yes, I had the cape Meuhlnir had commissioned for me that reduced the pain I felt to a certain threshold, but I learned what that threshold was when I’d lost my left eye during the battle with the demons and the white dragon. “I think you are,” I said.
“Very astute of you, Hank,” she said.
“What…”
“What am I doing? I vefa strenki to increase the effect of the balm, exciting certain parts of your body—the channels that convey sensation to your brain—and doing the opposite to others.”
“Nerves.”
“If you say so.”
It made sense: excite the irritation pathway, suppress the pain pathway. Since the irritation pathway was starting at a higher level of excitation, the nerves fired more readily. Since the pain pathway was suppressed, it took more stimulus to fire the neurons. “Well, thanks.”
Sif shrugged and looked me in the eye. “It’s what I do, Hank. Try to remember it this time.”
I chuckled. “Does Mothi?”
“Cousin!” he yelled from where he was wrestling one-handed with Sig, his tone one of mock exasperation.
“Might as well ask if stone remembers that the wind can cut through it, given time,” said Meuhlnir.
“That was…painful,” said Jane.
Meuhlnir smiled a wide, tooth-filled smile. “As was that!”
“So many puns,” I said. “Too little time. Let’s get a move on before I’m forced to vomit.”
We mounted and walked the horses up to the stone-paved road. In the sea to the east, sea dragons cavorted, hissing and clicking at us as if inviting us to come for a swim. “How close can they come to the shore?” I asked.
“Right up on the sand,” said Althyof. “But they can’t stay for long, or their skin will dry out and crack.”
“If I were to go to the beach, could they attack me?”
“Oh, yes,” said Althyof.
“Do they see well at night?”
“Better than in the daylight.” With that, the Tverkr spurred his mount and cantered to the head of our column.
I’d been on the shore hours ago, putting myself in danger without knowing it, but they hadn’t attacked. Why? The Tisir? I walked Slaypnir over to Sinir. Meuhlnir glanced at me as we approached and raised an eyebrow.
“What is a Tisir?”
“Where did you hear that word?” he asked.
I glanced at the others. Only Yowtgayrr looked our way, the others seemed lost in thought, or involved in their own conversations, except Veethar and Skowvithr, who rode together in absolute silence. “From someone—something—that claimed to be one.”
Meuhlnir glanced at me. “Yes?”
“Yes. Last night.”
“Tell me of it.” He appeared nonchalant, uncaring, but his eyes burned with intensity, and he leaned toward me in his saddle.
“I woke in the early morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I got up and built up the fire, and sat there, watching the flames. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shift down there on the beach. I waited, wanting to be sure I hadn’t imagined it.”
Yowtgayrr clucked at his horse and rode up on the other side of Meuhlnir. “Did it come into camp?”
“No. When it moved again, it took off to the south. I left camp, paralleling the road, and—”
“You should have woken me,” said Yowtgayrr.
“Time for that later,” murmured Meuhlnir. He twirled his fingers at me.
“I followed it from across the road, and after a little while it stopped and stood with its back toward me, gazing out to sea. I snuck up on it and confronted it.”
“Describe it,” said Yowtgayrr.
“She was black. Like a shade—like a shadowy demon. She said she was a Tisir, sent by the Nornir to deliver a message. She also said she was filkya but wouldn’t name who she was bound to.”
“Did it give you a name?” asked Veethar. He’d drawn up on my other side without me noticing.
“Yes. Um…Guhnter?”
“Kuhntul?
“Yeah, that’s it.” Veethar’s eyes left mine, and I tracked his gaze to Meuhlnir. “What?”
“What was her message?” demanded Meuhlnir.
“It’s nothing. Nonsense. Who is this Kuhntul?”
“Tell us what she said, Hank,” said Yowtgayrr.
“Fine. She said there was a traitor in the party.” As one, the Isir and Alfar turned their gazes forward, coming to rest on Althyof’s back. “No,” I said. “Althyof wouldn’t betray us.”
“The Tverkar differ from us,” said Meuhlnir.
“That may be, but that Tverkr is no less honorable than any of us.”
“Still, he bears watching,” murmured Yowtgayrr, his hand coming to rest on the hilt of his narrow-bladed longsword.
“Look, I don’t believe the message. None of us are betrayers, traitors. Not Althyof, not any of you.”
“Of course not,” murmured Meuhlnir, his eyes never leaving Althyof’s back. “He has quite a way with dragons, though, doesn’t he?”
“Tell me about Kuhntul,” I said and sighed.
Meuhlnir cleared his throat. “It’s Veethar’s area of expertise.”
I glanced to my side. Veethar’s eyes were on his saddle horn. He waved his hand at Meuhlnir.
“Oh, very well,” said Meuhlnir. “A Tisir is a spirit-being, something foreign to all the races known, including the demons. Their origins are unknown—none of them will speak of it. Their role in the history of Osgarthr is…complicated.”
“Complicated? How?”
“They are neither good nor evil—”
“Or they are both, like all living things,” interjected Yowtgayrr.
Meuhlnir nodded. “Sometimes they act as a guardian, a benevolent spirit, but other times they act as antagonists.”
“And Kuhntul?” I asked. “To which group does she belong?”
Meuhlnir cleared his throat and looked at the back of Althyof’s head. “We believe that when we perceive the color of their body, it’s an omen of how the Tisir is disposed toward us—either toward us personally, or toward our quest.”
“And black means what?”
“Seeing a black Tisir is an omen of ill-tiding,” said Yowtgayrr in his quiet, understated way.
“Then she was lying?”
Meuhlnir shook his head. “That is not clear, and it’s not necessarily true that Kuhntul is an enemy. In the war, she fought against the Black Bitch.”
“She seemed adamant she did not serve the Dark Queen,” I said.
“Whatever their intent, the Tisir serve only themselves,” said Veethar.
“Well, Kuhntul claimed to be serving the Nornir in this.”
Veethar shrugged.
“And she may be,” said Yowtgayrr. “But only because serving the Nornir in this serves Kuhntul’s own purposes.”
“Then she can’t be trusted, right? What she said…we should ignore it.”
Meuhlnir shrugged and stroked his beard. “At our peril.”
“Would a Tisir keep one of our glittery friends at bay?”
“If the sea dragon were smart,” said Veethar.
“You were on the beach? Alone?” asked Skowvithr.
I hunched my shoulders. “Yeah. That’s where Kuhntul was. I didn’t know the sea dragons could come up there.”
“And why wouldn’t they?”
“Well, they are sea dragons, right? No legs, no wings.” We rode on in silence for a while, lulled by the ring of the horses shod hooves on the stone. “What I can’t figure,” I said at last, “is why Kuhntul would come at all. Why would the Nornir care what happens to this party? To me?”
“Maybe they like you,” said Meuhlnir with a shrug and a forced smile.
“Someone has to, after all,” said Veethar. He spurred Ploetughoefi forward to ride next to his wife. After a while, I rode over to Jane.
“That was quite a meeting of the minds,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “How’s Sig handling all this?”
“Are you kidding? He loves it.” She gestured to where Sig rode Lyettfeti next to Mothi on Skaytprimir. “Just look at him eating up Mothi’s attention.”
Mothi waved his arms around like a madman, deep in the telling of some heroic tale, no doubt. “How lucky I’ve been,” I murmured, recalling all the hazards, all the dangerous beings I’d encountered since coming to Osgarthr, and yet the first four beings I met were Meuhlnir, Sif, Yowrnsaxa, and Mothi.
“Yes,” said Jane. “It’s not so bad here.”
I looked at her askance. “No?”
“No.”
“You don’t miss being home?”
“Well, sure I do, but there are far worse places to be trapped.” Her face clouded over, and I knew she was replaying events from her captivity at the hands of Luka and Hel.
“I know it was bad, but we got you out of there.”
She smiled at me and winked. “Yeah, because you needed someone to cook and clean.”
“No way! I’m not so shallow as all that. Besides, Yowrnsaxa is a better cook. I needed someone for laundry.”
Her lips parted, and her tongue darted out. “I’ll wash your laundry, all right. And you just wait until we stop for lunch and I tell Yowrnsaxa you were mean to me.”
“She likes me better,” I said.
“I do not!” called Yowrnsaxa from behind us.