Glittering Shadows (45 page)

By the time the sun was beginning to climb back down the sky and the battle had waged for hours, she could tell they were barely managing to hold their own. The field was littered with bodies,
probably more than all the workers underground—so many that after a while she had stopped feeling anything when she saw them. They were just part of the landscape. But all the while her gut
twisted tighter and tighter, and it all felt more senseless as the day went on. Why couldn’t they just talk? Why did thousands of people have to die?

She had no idea how it could have been prevented, though, just like she couldn’t help Ingrid.

Sebastian’s jeep came driving across the field and pulled up beside her. “Nan,” he said. “Otto’s camped at that barn up ahead. We’ve cleared a path, but we
can’t hold that much longer. We won’t have enough ammo to win this, and our numbers are down by half.”

“That bad?”

“They’ve lost more than half, but they also have more reinforcements on the way who will be here in a few days.”

The unspoken message was that they would soon have to retreat.

This was it, then. They didn’t have much more ammo back in Urobrun or anywhere else, thanks to the destruction of the arsenal. If she couldn’t take out Ingrid with the wyrdsong,
Otto’s advantage would be insurmountable.
It might still be.

She couldn’t think that way.

“You’re going in with the revived soldiers,” Sebastian said. “They’re stronger.”

The jeep crossed the battlefield, weaving around piles of the dead until it met with the assemblage of revived soldiers. Nan saw familiar faces among them—all of them now doomed. They
hurried forward, approaching the camp. Military tents were clustered around an old barn with its thatched roof sagging. Several horses were tethered outside, and some of the chickens the Irminauers
had appropriated from the Urobrun farm were running around. If Otto was in the main camp, he was hiding.

From behind farm equipment and hay, soldiers appeared, waiting for Nan’s group to come within range. The revived men closed in ahead of her as they approached, shielding her from the
attack.

Both sides opened fire almost at once. Nan recognized the Irminauers—Sebastian’s men who had gone with Ingrid. She had traveled with them. She knew many of their names. When Ingrid
didn’t need them, they talked and laughed as normal, but their faces were blank with enchantment now.

The Urobrunians had no protection, except that they were already dead, but the bullets still hurt. Some of them went down, screaming and writhing. They were willing to suffer just to give her a
chance. They had already
died
for her, for Sebastian, for Urobrun.

Nan stormed forward, the wyrdsong pouring from her, their cries giving her fuel. She chanted the sounds, but just as before, the song came from all around her. The ground was singing, the sky
was singing, even the barn and the hay and the tents seemed to be singing. The whole world was made of her orchestra, and she lifted her hands to conduct.

“Skuld!” she cried. “Come forth! Show yourself to me!” Her voice barely seemed her own; it was Verthandi now, speaking in the cadence of an earlier age.

The flaps of one of the tents parted, and Ingrid stood before her. Her face had no expression, and she didn’t move at first. Then, with the slightest narrowing of her eyes, she looked
briefly alien and cruel, and her glamour fell away again, showing her wooden limbs and eyes. She let the gulf between them widen until Nan felt she would tumble in.

“I told you to go, Verthandi,” Skuld said. “I gave you a chance to let me take care of Yggdrasil on my own. Now we’ll have to battle to the death.”

“I know.”

Skuld spread her arms. She didn’t open her mouth, yet her wyrdsong burst forth in dark glory, so strong that Nan tasted bitterness on her tongue. It screeched and growled in her ears.

“If Verthandi wins, all of you will lose what I have given you, everything that makes you strong,” Skuld told the men surrounding her. Gun barrels that had been pointed at the
revived soldiers now fixed on Nan.

“That isn’t true,” Nan said. “I’ve come to free you! Ingrid has given you nothing and taken your freedom and your memories. She’s taken your pain, but
she’s also taken everything you love. She’s forced you to protect something that is already dead.”

“It isn’t dead,” Ingrid said. “It lives
because
of all of you.”

“Ingrid is the true Norn.” One of the men moved to Ingrid’s side. “You’ve betrayed your sister and your destiny.”

Memories spiraled out of Nan’s mind and into the magic surrounding her, more than she could hold at once. She saw Yggdrasil dying and Yggdrasil in the height of its beauty. The wyrdsong
pulsed like a beating heart around her, and dimly she heard the battle still raging on the fields behind her, but no bullet could touch her in this moment.
This is all I have. This is all
we’ve shared. This is the end of what we’ve been.

The colors brightened and sharpened. Nan was ready to let go.

But Skuld fought for her life. Her stance shifted like she was holding out against a harsh wind, but her wyrdsong raged on in response. The chickens had all run away, the cattle lowed in
fear.

In the midst of it all, Max stepped forward, and as he did, the magic on his hands fell away and then the hands themselves began to detach from his arms, sliding slowly out of his sleeves until
they dangled by the roots. They dropped to the ground.

“Max, you don’t want to do this,” Skuld said.

“I want to be
free
.” His voice was ragged with anger. “She cut off my hands, and she made me shoot your friend so she could keep feeding her powers, feeding and
feeding…” He clutched his arms around his chest, and one of the revived men reached for him, pulling him to their side.

Nan sensed a crack in Skuld’s magic caused by this betrayal, and when she felt it, she reached with her magic to all the men under Skuld’s thrall.

Jenny suddenly pushed out of one of the tents, missing a hand now. She stumbled through the muddy snow to Nan’s side. Other men shook off wooden feet, leaving behind a shoe, or pulled off
an arm. Despite their limping and the dropping of weapons as they shed the wooden limbs, relief showed on many faces, like they had been released from a long imprisonment.

But not all of them responded to Nan’s song.

A woman with a withered face suddenly pushed her way forward and flung lightning from her fingertips at Nan. Nan jumped out of the way, and one of her own men shoved her farther back just before
the lightning struck him instead.

“Skuld set me free,” the lightning witch said. “Otto stole everything I had, and Skuld has given me back my power. This is our second chance.”

Skuld smiled.

The witch released another bolt of lightning, and this time Nan didn’t escape.
Protect me, Yggdrasil, this is my chance to save you,
she thought, feeling her skin glow with power.
The lightning jolted through her and raised every hair on her body, leaving her on the ground. Jenny grabbed her hand, pulled her up.

“You need to get out of here,” Max said. “Ingrid is too strong.”

“She isn’t! I have to destroy her, I have no choice!”

Skuld dropped to the ground, raking her wooden fingers into the dirt, as if drawing power from the soil like a tree’s roots took strength from the earth. She stared at Nan with her dead
wooden eyes. “Your powers will never be strong enough. You wouldn’t help me, so Yggdrasil belongs only to me.”

T
he wyrdsong swelled in Marlis’s head, but it was not the slow, soothing tone of her dreams anymore. It sounded like bow strings raked
roughly across a large, deep instrument, and she clutched her head.

“Are you all right?” Thea asked, walking to Marlis’s side.

Marlis’s stomach convulsed. Usually her digestion was as disciplined as the rest of her. She shut her eyes against the pain, and when she opened them again, the world was more colorful,
but stars danced at the edges. “Nan’s fighting Ingrid. I think—it’s happening. The end of magic. Or maybe the end of my magic. They’re fighting with the
wyrdsong.”

She blinked back the colors and the stars. “I don’t care what Nan said. I need to go down there.”

The driver of the nearest jeep looked worried for her health—she must have turned a sickly color—but when she gave an order, he followed. Two gunners came with her, keeping enemy
soldiers away from the car as the driver maneuvered around the mess of the battlefield.

When Marlis saw the crowd of men surrounding Nan, she lost all thoughts of her own safety and rushed out of the vehicle. Ingrid was sitting on the ground, but she didn’t look injured. She
seemed to be drawing power. Her face lifted to Marlis’s approach, but even though Nan had warned her, she didn’t expect the wooden eyes that made Ingrid’s face seem blank and
blind.

“Urd,” Ingrid said. “I wondered if I’d ever see you. But I hoped I wouldn’t.”

Marlis stepped back. “Why?”

“The Chancellor’s daughter.” Ingrid’s face was pointed at her, the carved pupils of her wooden eyes staring. “You never realized who you
really
were? You
never heard the wyrdsong?”

“I did.”

“Well, you must not have listened. It’s supposed to guide you. It should have told you your father was your enemy.”

“Skuld, the tree was already
dying
,” Marlis said. “My father’s men wouldn’t have even been able to get close if it wasn’t already a lost cause. The
wyrdsong failed me because it’s been corrupted. The books said—”

“I don’t care about the
books
. You didn’t even come to see me.” Ingrid swallowed back tears. “You were going to let Nan kill me without saying
good-bye.”

“I had other duties, to my people.”

“Your
people
. We are each other’s people. We live together, fight together—
die
together.”

Marlis and Nan glanced at each other.

She’s willing to die…but she wants to drag us with her?

Maybe this was fitting. Maybe they were supposed to die together.

Ingrid shut her eyes, and rolling waves of dark music seemed to come from her body as a vision unfurled above her small crouched form—of Yggdrasil…or was it? The shimmering image had the
rough shape of the familiar tree, but the bark was too smooth—almost like skin, covered in short dark hair like a man’s arms, and then she realized that fingers and toes sprouted from
its branches like growths. What she had first taken for knots were actually eyes and even an ear.

Every piece of a person Ingrid had ever stolen had become a part of their tree.

“What is this?” Nan asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “Is this what Yggdrasil looks like now?”

“Can you see it?” Ingrid asked. “I wanted to show you. I wanted to bring you back to our forest, but this vision will have to do.”

“This is growing in our forest?” Nan switched to shouting.

“Yes. It will grow stronger and more beautiful—if you let it.”

“Beautiful? It has
fingers
,” Marlis said. “It’s monstrous. How—how could you?”

Ingrid raised her arms like branches, shutting her eyes, the vision wavering and shifting until the fingers and toes disappeared, the bark turned dark and rough, and the leaves grew brighter.
“Here it is,” she said. “Yggdrasil’s spirit is with us. We’re all together. Let’s go together, Urd, Verthandi. Let’s go together.” Tears streaked her
face. Marlis edged closer to Nan, and they locked hands.

Marlis’s wyrdsong had already killed one of the men she thought she admired; now it might kill her own sister. Was she acting with courage, or was she selfish to wish for a human life?

The wyrdsong poured through them, more than a song now, but the rawest, purest power Marlis was capable of, and she felt Nan must be giving the same, standing against Ingrid’s darkness.
They were going to take her life, and Yggdrasil’s with her.

Am I selfish? Am I? Am I?
She wanted to turn away, even now. Let someone else do the deed. Through her many lives, she had felt the hand of fate telling her what to do—to reward one
man, to punish another. To take lives, to influence human events, to protect Yggdrasil.

This was different. This was a human choice. It felt right, but also wrong. It would haunt her. She could have pulled back.

But she didn’t.

I will do my best to live a human life worthy of my Norn life. To do what is right. Please. Let me have that chance.

I’m sorry we couldn’t save you, Skuld.

The vision of Yggdrasil shrunk away into Ingrid, and she collapsed forward, her wooden limbs detaching from her body. Her song died. The world seemed to break open in Marlis’s eyes,
becoming a blinding white and then clearing, colors turning two shades more vivid.

Nan dropped to Ingrid’s side and turned her over so her wooden eyes faced the sky. Marlis thought she was already gone. But then Ingrid’s lungs drew a ragged breath.
“It’s dark now and I’m so cold. Don’t leave me, Verthandi.”

“I’m here.” Nan gathered her body onto her lap. There was so little left of her. Marlis stroked her forehead, and her eyes closed. She let out a small sigh.