Transcendent (19 page)

Suddenly, for perhaps the first time in his life, Fennrys wondered what his mother had looked like. He'd always assumed that he'd probably somewhat resembled his father. He'd just never expected his father to be a god. Certainly not
that
god. He wondered what his father saw in him in that moment. He'd been silent for long enough now that Fennrys was starting to think he must surely be some kind of disappointment. And then, in the next breath, he wondered if that wouldn't be the best possible thing for everyone. In the breath right after that, he wondered why it was upsetting to him.

And then his father smiled and shook his head.

“Mason told me when I first met you that you were perfect,” Loki said, an amused grin curling the corner of his mouth beneath the thatch of his dark gold beard. “I think she might have been right.”

“I . . . uh. Sorry?” Fennrys stammered, startled.

Loki laughed. “You're exactly what this conflict needs, pup.”

“Ah,” Fennrys said. Well, that made sense, he supposed. He was, after all, skilled in the arts of destruction and death. A perfect harbinger for the end of the world. “I guess you probably would think that.”

“You misunderstand me.” Loki shook his head, hearing Fenn's thoughts in the tone of his voice. Those extraordinary
eyes of his glittered with fierce intelligence and something that looked a lot like . . . fun. Or, at the very least, mischief. He leaned forward, every line of his body quivering with vital, barely contained energy. “I don't mean that you're the great doom everyone seems to think you are. Although, of course, there's every possibility that you
are
. What I
mean
is, you are a wild card. Like Mason herself. Did you know that she is the reason I'm now free?”

“No. I didn't know that.”

He chuckled. “She did some fine damage to the serpent that has tormented me through the ages—she's very good with a sword, by the way, did you know?—and the bloody thing slithered off and finally left me alone long enough for me to be able to turn my mind and talents to the task of freeing myself. I really have to thank her for that.”

“And now?” Fennrys asked, intrigued in spite of himself, and the fact that he knew he should probably be terrified down to the soles of his boots at the moment. “Now that you're free? What will you do?”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Don't you have an apocalypse to stir up?”

Loki shrugged. “Seems to be moving along quite nicely without my help. Listen carefully, pup. I told Mason this and I'm going to tell you. The thing
is
. . . I don't know how it ends, Fennrys!” He grinned delightedly. “I honestly don't. I've never read the things they've written about me, although I can guess at many of them, I don't doubt. But I'm not the only shape changer in Valhalla and I'm not the only subtle mind.
And when I hate? I do it honestly. There are others who, it saddens me to say, cannot claim the same.”

“Heimdall,” Fennrys said.

“Ah . . . have you met the great blowhard then?”

“He impersonated Mason's mother.”

“I know. Hel is dear to me.” Loki's voice took on a dangerous edge. “He will pay for that.”

Fennrys shrugged. “Yeah, well, Mason might get to him first. She was pretty pissed when she found out he'd taken her for a ride.”

“Good girl! So she discovered the falsehood then?”

Fennrys shook his head. “Not until we told her about it. And it didn't even matter in the end. Son of a bitch still managed to trick her into taking up the Odin spear.”

Loki's eyes glittered. “But she has yet to choose, am I right?” he asked sharply. “There is no third Odin son yet.”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Then there's still time!” He bounded to his feet and headed for the cavern mouth.

“Time for what?”

“To find out what I've been missing!” He waved a hand in the direction of the tunnel Fennrys had come through to get to that chamber. “Have you
seen
what's up there? That city? It's fantastic! Wine and women and song . . . well, I'm sure it's a little more lively when it's not reeling under a blood curse but, Thor's beard! It's an endless feast for the senses. I'd like to sample some of it before it all comes crashing to an end.”

“Wait.
What?
It's Ragnarok and you're going to play tourist in the Big Apple? I wouldn't have expected that from you.” From Rafe, maybe, Fennrys thought. But then he realized with a start that Loki reminded him an awful lot of the Egyptian god of the dead.

Loki laughed at Fennrys's confusion. “That's because
I'm
unexpected!” he said with delight. “Unpredictable. Unstable. Chaotic. Random. Poised on the knife blade's edge . . . And so are
you
.”

“I am not.”

“Ha!” Loki slapped his palms together. “Look at your track record so far. You, my very dear boy,
are
choice. And she—that mad, lovely girl you love madly—is the chooser. It's poetic, really. Go forth. Make beautiful music together. Burn bright. Be brilliant. Defy!”

“How do I do that?”

“You know the stories—you've read them—so all you have to do now is figure out how to change the plot.” The trickster god laughed. “Tales are told by the victors. Be victorious. Be happy! Write your own ending. Make it a
beginning
if you want.”

A beginning
, Fennrys thought.
Wait . . . there's something to that. How in the hell did this really all begin in the first place?

“That's it . . . you'll see . . . The clues are all there.” Loki's voice grew strange and echoey. “They always are. That's something your mother knew.”

“My mother?” Fennrys drew back sharply, as if those two words had been a slap that had awakened him from a deep
sleep. Or sent him tumbling into a dream . . .

My mother. If only
. . .

T
he torch on the opposite wall suddenly flared, blindingly bright, and Fennrys put up a hand to shield his eyes. When he lowered it again, a figure stood before him, silhouetted in the glare of the sun's light. Startled, Fennrys turned to Loki, but the so-called trickster god of the Norse was gone.

So, for that matter, was the catacomb Fennrys had shared with him only a moment before. In its place, he found himself outside beneath a brilliant blue sky dotted with puffball white clouds. The air shimmered with a kind of dreamy haze and Fennrys wondered for a moment if that was what it was—a dream. But he'd never had a dream so vivid.
He could smell the pine sap from the nearby trees and feel the feathery brush of long grasses waving around his knees. He stood near the edge of a precipice that dropped away, falling in a gentle slope toward a vale, cut through by a sparkling river that twisted like a giant blue snake below. Through the trees, Fennrys thought he could see some kind of boat bobbing on the surface of the water, but he wasn't really concerned with that at the moment.

What concerned him more was the tall, striking woman who stood before him, smiling. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw that she wore a long belted tunic woven of green wool and her arms and feet were bare. Her hair was long and plaited loosely down her back. And “tall” might have been an understatement. She was well over six feet. But she was slender and her face was pretty, if slightly weathered. There were fine webs of lines at the corners of her eyes and she had a deep tan. Even with that, the skin on the bridge of her nose was peeling and just a little pink. It looked as if she had spent the last year outside without any shelter from the elements. It didn't look, though, as if such circumstances would be any particular hardship to this woman.

She looked at him and smiled.

“You grew up strong,” she murmured in a gentle voice.

While she spoke in a language Fennrys didn't know, somehow he understood what she was saying, and he had an immediate sense of déjà vu. He felt as though he might have once heard that same voice singing lullabies in the darkness in that same language. The woman cocked her head and a gleam of
wry humor sparkled in her blue eyes.

“And handsome,” she said. “Like your father.”

“I'll tell him you said so,” Fenn said, swallowing the knot that had tied itself in his throat.

“I used to do that.” She chuckled. “Even though he already knew it. He's a touch vain, you know.”

“And completely mad.”

“Do you think so?” She cocked her head, seriously contemplating that. “I always thought he was the only one of them who wasn't.”

“The only one of who?”

“The Aesir.”

Fennrys shook his head, wearied by the further confirmation—assuming he wasn't actually dreaming or delusional in that moment—of his origins, and his impending disastrous destiny. “My father really is a god, then. Really.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“And so I really am the Fenris Wolf.”

She nodded. “Really. It's why I sent you away. To live with the Faerie.”

That brought Fenn up short. He frowned in confusion and took a step toward her, as if needing to hear her answer more clearly as he said, “Wait. I thought they
stole
me.”

“I wish I could say that was truth.”

The woman sighed, but her gaze never wavered from his face. Fennrys recognized the similarity of her features to his own, even though her eyes were an even paler shade of blue—so pale they were almost dove gray.

“I wish I could tell you that I fought to keep you. Fought to find you . . . never stopped looking for my stolen babe. But the
truth
of it is that I called the Fair Folk to you. And I gave you to them freely. Because it was the only way that I could think of to save your life. And the world—although I cared rather less about that than I did about you.”

“I'm not sure I understand,” Fennrys said, his voice tight.

“The truth of the matter is this: when I was young and not unpleasant to look upon, a young man—a traveling skald calling himself ‘Lothur'—came to my village. As much as he liked my looks, I liked his.”

“Let me guess. Loki.”

His mother nodded. “I didn't know. Not until the morning he left me. He thought I was asleep when he bent down to kiss my cheek and, in a mournful whisper, called me ‘she who offers sorrow' before walking out the door.”

“‘She who offers sorrow'?”

“
‘Angrboda'
in the language of your ancestors.”

Fennrys knew enough of the Norse myths to understand what she meant. “Which just so happened to be the name of the Fenris Wolf's mother in the myths,” he said.

The woman smiled wryly. “Imagine my confusion. Until a few months later when my dresses grew too tight around my waist. Now,
my
mother was a Celtic princess, captured on a Viking raid, and I was raised on the stories of her myths and legends, as well as those of my father. I also had a dowry of her captured wealth. I used it to bribe a crew of sailors. I knew I
would never see my lover again and I knew that if I brought you into a Viking world, eventually you would be killed. Whether you were the real Fenris Wolf or no. I bid the ship's captain sail west, hoping to find the Faerie lands my mother had talked of. Instead, we found
this
land. And the Faerie, having heard my cries as I gave birth to you onboard that ship”—she gestured to the boat on the river far below—“found us. I gave you to them before you ever set foot on the soil of this world, hoping to save both.”

Fennrys didn't know what to say. He just looked at the woman—his mother—and his open mouth produced no sound. He'd spent his entire existence hating and resenting the Fair Folk for having stolen him away from his rightful destiny. And now he'd just been told that that belief—the core resentment of most of his life—had been a lie. Well, not a lie, really—Faerie couldn't actually lie—but a mistake, an assumption he'd made as a very young child that no one had ever bothered to correct because it had suited their purposes to let him accept it as truth. He really didn't know what to say to that.

His mother reached forward after a moment and, again with that amused look in her eye, gently nudged his jaw shut with her fingertips. She left her hand there for a long moment, just touching his face, and a look of longing crossed hers.

It was strange but, where Fenn expected there should be a smoldering coal of rage waiting to burst into flame in the center of his chest, he instead felt a kind of lightness. From the moment he'd come back to himself after Rafe had turned him
into the Wolf, he'd felt as though he'd barely been able to contain his fury. But in that moment, the beast inside was quiet. Like it had been when Mason had pulled her magick trick and transported him to his Safe Harbor.

“I don't expect you to forgive me,” his mother said. “But my name—my real name—if you would like to know, is Sigyn.”

“I'm Fennrys,” he replied, his mouth quirking up at the corner as he reached up to take her hand in his. “But I guess you already know that. Nice, subtle name choice there, Mom.”

She laughed, and it was a lovely sound, echoing off the distant hills.

Fennrys felt a tightness in his throat. He'd meant it as a joke. But it was the first time he'd ever called anyone by that word. His heart felt bruised.

“It seemed there was little reason to hide the fact from the very people I was sending you off to live with,” Sigyn said. “They already knew who—and what—you were.
That
was the whole point. To remove you from this world so that you would no longer pose a danger to it. Although I must say, I do like the Faerie spelling.”

“Sounds the same.”

“It does.” She lifted one shoulder. “But I've found that what a thing sounds like is often not at all what it is, if you know what I mean.”