Authors: J.A. Pitts
“Yep.”
“Does it involve working for Nidhogg?”
I grinned at him. “Oh, no. This is much cooler. You remember the elves? Skella and Gletts? The mirror children?”
He nodded. “Not sure I like where this is going.”
“It’s a good plan, honest.”
He sighed. “Do I get an actual vote here?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. What’s this plan?”
“Hire Skella. Let her take a squad out to the house in Chumstick to keep an eye on things. We could set up a camp across the road from the house.”
He looked at me, thinking. “Interesting idea. I’ve been thinking how we could keep watch out there. Don’t want any surprises.”
“That’s why I agreed to help Nidhogg, Jim. Keep things on an even keel until we can figure a way to diffuse the situation out there.”
“Ask her,” he said. “But we’ll pay her. We’re not like the dwarves she and her brother worked for.”
That made me smile. “Oh, she’ll love it,” I said. “Hell, I’m willing to bet she’d do it for nothing, if it meant she had something interesting to do.”
He rolled his eyes at me and motioned to the living room. “Run it by Deidre. She’ll have to agree on the salary, but I’ll work out the schedule with the squads.”
“Excellent. Thanks, Jim.”
He walked away, shaking his head.
I grabbed Katie and we boogied. Things were coming together. I liked that we had a plan. Now I wanted sleep and a return to my normal routine. I needed to work with horses soon. The power of them and the grace, that’s what kept me going back. I loved their gentle hearts. Gave me something to look forward to.
Five
O
f course, we got home to a message from one of my regular clients: Jude Brown. He wanted to postpone my coming out to Broken Axel and shoeing his mules until Wednesday. Something about his sister extending her stay past the weekend.
So I figured to sleep in Monday morning. And I gave it a yeoman’s effort. Unfortunately, the image of the troll mother kept intruding into my dozing. That and the wound in my leg throbbing like a hammer on an anvil. I gave up, figured it was a good time to head over and see Nidhogg. She wanted a full report of what was killing the sheep, and I wanted some answers of my own.
If I had to work for a dragon to rescue someone like Qindra who’d been nothing but kind to me, I’d make good use of that time. I’m sure there were things I could learn that I’d never dreamed of. Maybe clear some of the unknown that plagued me.
Katie went off to school dressed in that way I loved so much: hair pulled back, long skirt, frilly blouse. Total kindergarten-teacher chic. I puttered around the apartment for an hour or so longer, giving the tepid sun time to really rise. I’d be taking the Ducati into Seattle, and I’d be cold, no matter what I did. Maybe I needed to buy some heated pants or something. I loved the bike, but, damn, it got cold riding in the November rain.
The guard at the gate to Nidhogg’s property knew me by now and waved me through without even having me take off the helmet. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Zi Xiu, the head of Nidhogg’s household staff, met me at the front door. For an old Norse dragon, Nidhogg sure had a lot of Asian people in her employ. I’d met Zi Xiu on my last visit. She was in her fifties and from Hong Kong originally. She’d been raised in Nidhogg’s household and assumed her current position when she was in her thirties. The last matron of servants had met an untimely end at the same time Qindra’s mother had passed. No one would give me any more details, but I speculated it was Nidhogg going on a rampage, just like she’d done in the spring after I’d forged Gram.
Dragons were funny creatures. Nidhogg looked like she was eighty, but was surely several thousand years old. She represented an order of dragons that wanted to keep control of us poor, misguided humans—help us maintain our upward trek to prosperity and comfort, while keeping to the shadows and not letting us know where the real power lay.
Her last broodling, Jean-Paul, had ruled the Vancouver area. I never got a clear idea of his territory. I just knew it was above the Canadian border. Nidhogg ruled the entire state of Washington, more or less. Seattle was her home base.
Jean-Paul had been a member of the ruling caste, like his momma, but he played with a second, more sinister team. He was mixed up in a different political faction: one where the dragons called for an open rule, putting the humans in their place, letting us know in no uncertain terms that we were prey.
Jean-Paul was scum. I’d killed him (twice), but Nidhogg did not begrudge me the acts. Dragons live a brutal life. Apparently they kill each other more often than they want to admit. She told me on my last visit how Frederick Sawyer had come to rule the Portland area. Nasty business, that. Intrigue, assassination, and political favors being traded.
Sounded very Machiavellian.
Zi Xiu directed me to the great doors that lead to Nidhogg’s inner sanctum—a vault of a room with a tiled floor covered strategically in rugs of assorted sizes and styles, probably from all over the world. The large fireplace set in the west wall had a fire burning merrily in its humongous depths, and the french doors to the veranda were shut tight, with the heavy curtains drawn against the cold.
Jai Li, the small cross-stitch girl, sat at Nidhogg’s side again during this visit. She was a cute one, six or seven, and didn’t speak. Zi Xiu had explained that the girl did not have a tongue. Total freak show around here, let me tell you. She smiled at me, this little waif child, and bent her head back to her cross-stitch. I could not tell what vision she saw as she slid the needle through the delicate white cloth, but she did not seem to need a pattern.
Nidhogg nodded by the fire, her cane propped against the wall to her right and a quilt thrown over her lap. Her gray hair lay fine against her mottled skull and her face seemed a little misshapen, like a candle too long near the fire.
Jean-Paul had been a small but stout man until he shifted to his full dragon form. That had been sleek and beautiful; eighty feet from tip to tail, with a wingspan to match. He was a sculpted killing machine—powerful and elegant.
How would Nidhogg appear when she shifted?
I bowed when I got within the proper distance (as Zi Xiu had taught me) and waited. One did not wake Nidhogg. One waited for her to rouse herself and notice one’s presence.
That lasted about thirty-eight seconds. I’d been on the bike, in the cold rain, and my jeans were a little too tight for this kneeling on the floor shtick. I held that position, trying to clear my head, but I just couldn’t do it.
I coughed. The echo fell away, absorbed by the wall hangings and the crackling fire. Twice more I coughed. She did not move.
Finally, I’d had about as much of this as I could stand. I quietly slid over on my knees until I was near enough to the fireplace; then I swung my leg out and kicked over the cane with its thickly carved metal cap.
It slid sideways before it hit the floor, and everyone in the room froze, staring at me. It was a millisecond, maybe less, but when the cane clattered to the tile in front of the hearth, it sounded like the Seventh Cavalry coming over the horizon.
Jai Li looked green around the gills, and the boy near the veranda doors covered his head with his arms.
Nidhogg took a long, shuddering breath, raised her head, and opened her eyes.
“I smelled you, you know,” she said, her voice like a silken ribbon.
I blinked rapidly.
“You have no patience, no understanding of your place.”
“Yes, well…”
She continued with a wave of her hand. “You are quite unlike any who have served me in many a year.” She chuckled dryly, covering her mouth with one gnarled hand. “The rest are so afraid; they cringe if I as much as break wind.”
I barked out a laugh. Juvenile, I know, but the image of Nidhogg ripping one in front of this crowd was damn funny.
She smiled at me and clapped her hands. Two young women appeared from behind a long curtain to my left. One strode quickly to retrieve the fallen cane, the other offered her arm to Nidhogg, who took it and stood.
Once her cane was grasped firmly in her left hand, she waved at me to rise, then reached out to hold my arm as she strode across the great hall.
As I looked back, the servants had a look of awe and horror on their faces. Way to rock their world, Sarah. I tried really hard not to grin.
“You remind me of another I knew in the long dust of time,” she said as we exited the great hall and turned down the long corridor to the right. “There was this boy who teased me when I was very young.” She glanced up at me at a noise I made and smiled. “I was young once, even in this broken world.”
We reached a large wooden door and a footman peeled himself away from his post where the hallways crossed and opened the door.
Inside was the largest library I’ve ever seen in my life. It was larger than the great hall where Nidhogg spent most of her days.
“Wow,” I said quietly. I couldn’t help but crane my neck around as we crossed the threshold. The bookshelves rose in three great stacks, tiered upward, wrapping the room in paper and leather.
You could fit the entirety of the Seattle Public Library and the Bellevue Public Library inside this room and still squeeze out room for the Seattle Storm to play an exhibition game.
“You approve?” she asked me.
I looked down. She obviously wanted to go farther into the room but had stopped when I found myself frozen in wonder.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping toward a row of couches near the far side of the room. They were set to allow ample angle for conversation and still face the great fireplace at the end of the room.
The fire there was already burning. How much wood did this place go through? That was no gas fireplace.
She sat us on either side of a small table and clapped her hands again, calling out, “Tea.”
Soon, several young women were placing a tea setting and plates of cookies and pastries on the table in front of us. They poured for each of us, then faded back into the shadows.
Nidhogg picked up her teacup and sipped the steaming liquid. I took up my cup and blew on it, afraid for the heat.
“You have news for me,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You have solved the problem plaguing my thralls near Wallace Falls?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, feeling like I was speaking with my mother about homework. “It was a troll.”
“Troll?” she asked. “Here?”
I nodded. “She had fled the battle where Jean-Paul…” I froze. Last thing I wanted to do was piss her off by reminding her I’d killed one of her kids.
“He was a toad,” she said, setting her cup gently back on the saucer on her lap. “So, this troll was marauding through my lands, injuring my thralls, impacting my commerce?”
“Um, sure.”
“And you dispatched this creature?”
A lump rose in my throat as I thought back to the troll falling to her knees, whispering the word “mercy” while her lifeblood flowed into the snow. “Yes,” I agreed.
“That is settled then.” She reached over and took a fruit cookie from a tiny plate near her. “What are you doing about rescuing my Qindra?”
I took a deep breath. “She remains in Chumstick, holding a barrier over the breach of the ley line that runs through the area. Nothing has changed.”
She studied me over her teacup, her ancient gray eyes peering into me. I kept my gaze level, even. She’d know if I lied, could read the intent in my words. I had no fear of her, but I respected her.
“She is strong,” she said finally. “You will bring her back to me soon. I have dreamed this.”
Dreams scared the hell out of me lately. They were portents, visions of things to come or things that had been. Not all dreams, but when they crossed that line into premonition, it was like trying to hold on to a two-twenty line with lightning shooting out of your toes.
For the next hour, Nidhogg told me of her youth. Of the godling, Loki, who tormented her, teased her with his antics and brazen arrogance.
“One night, as snow fell through the branches of Yggdrasil, he came to me, whispered into my dreams that the gods were jealous of my beautiful scales. How Freya wanted to have a mirror made of my great eyes and how Thor sought to make a suit of armor from my hide.
“For three nights he came to me, each time dripping his poison into my ears. Each morning, when I would wake, Ratatöskr the squirrel would scamper down to bid me warning from the great hawk, Veðrfölnir, who sat upon the great eagle at the top of the World Tree.
“‘Loki poisons you against the gods,’ Ratatöskr said to me each morning. ‘Veðrfölnir sees him with his keen vision, fleeing your nest among the roots. I have heard the trickster myself,’ he told me.
“But I was young and vain. I feared the gods, and Loki the first among them. They were spiteful and mean creatures, bent on self-aggrandizing and debauchery.”
She looked at me, as if I was going to contest her account. “Sounds creepy,” I offered.
A smile touched her creased face and she nodded. “Yes, creepy, as you say, does cover it most vividly. Alas, I hatched my plans from there, cast my words out through the World Tree to my offspring. We waited until Loki tricked the mighty Thor to lay aside his hammer, Mjelinor, and we struck at them, singly and en masse at the end. Freya fell first, under my claws. The rest I left to my brood. I had grown jealous of Freya’s beauty and fearful that she sought to steal my own for her vanity.”