“Get it off me,” she whimpered, pawing at her bodice.
But even through her distress, Myrkur’s words echoed in her skull.
He tried to harm us.
Who tried to harm us?she demanded of the god. But the god did not answer. He seemed to be slumbering, just as He had in the aftermath of Svangormr Pass. Whatever He’d just done had clearly drained His energy.
Silla tried to think. There was only one person who’d been in this room with her. One person, whose blood must be on her hands. She didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to see it. But Silla forced her gaze across the hearthfire.
“No no no,” she pleaded.
Fallgerd’s unmoving form was sprawled on the bench opposite hers. Widened blue eyes, devoid of life. Mouth opened wide in a silent scream. The front of his tunic was matted with blood. He’d been stabbed, repeatedly.
Silla looked from the blade on the floor to Fallgerd’s wounds, then at the blood on her hands.
He tried to harm us.
Had Fallgerd lured her here to kill her? Could he have been responsible for the poison in her róa? But how, when he’d never come near her goblet—when she’d sensed such earnestness in him today. Silla had been certain he’d been about to tell her how to break the bargain…
The bargain.
You,she thought inwardly, revulsion and nausea battling within her.Myrkurhad lulled her to sleep before she could glean answers. Had He seized control of her body? Attacked Fallgerd before he could reveal the cure to Silla?
Distantly, the sound of an axe splitting through wood met her ears, but Silla was too busy retching on the floor to think anything of it.
The door splintered into pieces and Ingvarr clambered through. Silently, he strode to Silla, put an arm under her knees, and lifted her. She felt as though she were in a dream, as though any minute she’d wake up to find this was all a big mistake. But as she caught sight of Runný’s expression, she knew this was no dream.
“Did Fallgerd attack you?” asked Runný, panicked.
“He tried to harm us,” Silla repeated dazedly. A wail built low in her chest, releasing as a sound more akin to a wounded animal than a human.
“Shields up!” barked Ingvarr, hefting Silla up higher in his arms. “Our job is to protect Eisa!”
Ingvarr strode out of the home and into the bright sunlight, but Silla only stared dazedly at his tunic. Up close, his pristine uniform was slightly less. A stain from spilled róa. A torn corner on his sigil badge. She focused in on these details. Tried to keep her mind from what lay back in that room.
Runný was on Ingvarr’s left, Kálf on his right, their shields up and swords drawn as they jogged up the hill toward Ashfall.
“Hush now, Eisa,” said Ingvarr, between heaving breaths. “We’ll get you back to your chambers in no time.”
Chapter 19
The Western Woods
A smile played on Rey’s lips as he watched Hekla take charge of the contingent of warriors with a squirrel perched on her shoulder. First, she’d directed them to the burnt remains of Istré so they could search the Bloodaxe Crew’s wagon. While the wagon and most of its contents were burnt beyond recognition, thankfully, the rhodium blades Magnus had provided them in Reykfjord had weathered the fire. This metal had proven particularly lethal to vampire deer and other creatures of darkness, and Rey guessed that they would be useful in the upcoming days.
After gathering the weapons, Hekla had ordered them to have their torches at the ready. And then they rode southward for an hour. This farmstead, Hekla had explained, was where she’d seen the first Spiral Stave carved into a tree and followed a trail of them into the grove where Kritka’s mistress slumbered.
Rey stared hard at the symbol carved into the scaly trunk of a pine. The Spiral Stave was the Volsiks’ sigil. When Magnus had first mentioned the symbol scrawled near the Klaernar’s corpses, Rey had thought its purpose was to incense King Ivar’s anger. Kritka, meanwhile, claimed the symbols were left by his mistress as a plea for help. But if this was true, Rey wondered who, precisely, the Forest Maiden had been calling for.
Long had the Western Woods remained a mystery. Much likeHarpa’s tales of the Forest Maiden, her stories of the woods were equally mysterious—trails twisting until children grew helplessly lost, hollows leading to new worlds, and hills that proved to be slumbering giants. And then there were the groves of magical hjarta trees, so enormous that their roots burrowed down to the deepest depths, and their branches reached up like fingertips grazing the clouds. Rey didn’t know if any of it was true. But as he stared into the shadowy veil of the woods, he knew for certain that there were things more ancient than the gods within.
Rey trudged after Sigrún into the Western Woods. For an hour, they followed a trail of Spiral Staves deeper into the forest. With each passing step, it became clear things in the woods were not right. Just as Hekla had described, the underbrush was dead, and though the taller trees lived, they were leached of all color. But most unnerving of all was the unnatural silence. Where were the chattering birds, the small woodland creatures? It was only their group, trampling dead foliage.
Finally they broke through a heavy thicket of brambles into a glade, and Hekla announced they’d arrived.
The clearing was carpeted with vibrant green grass, the air light and clean. It was obvious that whatever malevolence clung to the woods was excluded from this clearing.
Before them stood a tree. Thick-trunked, its twisted branches clawed upward, a few yellowed leaves clinging to them. Rey blinked in astonishment. The tree’s gnarled bark was twisted into a central spiral with eight branching arms. It was, unmistakably, a Spiral Stave.
