The Apple Throne (25 page)

My boots slip on the slick trail. I focus on Amon’s wide back, on the prints he leaves. One foot before the other, up and up at a sharp incline. I use my hands sometimes to grasp the edges of boulders or to catch myself against rough bark. Sune is at my elbow, his breath hard but steady. The god of orphans leaps ahead of us all like a deer, footsteps precise, easy, calm. His hair is a beacon that manages to catch what little moonlight filters its way through the thick forest.

And then we come into a clearing where the path hugs a sheer drop-off and I can’t help but gaze out at the valley pulling away from us. Its depths remain as dark as nighttime, but where the mountains rise in the east, they’re sharp silhouettes against a deep blue sky. The sun is coming. There’s a glow from the distant town of Shield at the base of Etintooth Peak, and high up the slope, almost directly across from us, burns the god’s earthly hall, Bright Home. I wonder which of them are in residence, sleeping in gilded beds or sitting up with each other to drink holy mead and laugh. Does the Alfather, seated at his high throne, see us here? Will his ravens, Thought and Memory, bring him word that Idun is not in her orchard?

“Lady?” Sune says, nudging my elbow. The edge of one battle-ax glints with the pre-dawn light.

“I’m well,” I say and turn to trudge after Amon again, who waits at the far end of the cliff path.

“Hurry,” calls Loki from above. I tilt my chin and find him over us on a switchback. He grips the threshold and peeks down at me. “If we miss the mark, you’ll be stuck here until tomorrow, but my debt will be paid regardless.”

I nod and push faster. Amon takes my hand when I reach him and lends a little strength by pulling me along.

There’s a silvery glow casting down through the pines now, transforming the frost into diamonds and bringing a slip of ice-wind. My eyes water and my nose is runny from the cold. My lips chap, and I miss the balm from my old seething kit. Soren’s sword grates on my shoulder, the baldric crossed down over my chest to bind my coat more tightly shut. I wish I could shove my hands into my pockets, but I need them for balance.

Another kilometer and we emerge from the trees into the hidden pocket between two snowy peaks. Rock fall spills from the jagged summits toward the tree line, and a glorious lake ripples gently under the wind. Ice spreads inward from the shore, and the boulders half-fallen into the water are bright with yellow lichen. Bold brown and orange pine needles create a windblown carpet that’s soft under my boots. The air is clear and cold, the sky lightening. Clouds have pulled away as we hiked, revealing the last of the morning stars. Loki leads us over a cluster of boulders so cold my fingers go numb, around to the north side of the lake.

There are no trees here, nothing to block the first fingers of dawn that reach over the eastern horizon. They creep across the valley behind us, past Bright Home, lighting up the mouth of the Etinridge one fang at a time.

Loki lifts one hand and points at the crumbling face of the cliff beside us. My eyes follow the sun from the far shore of the lake as it finds the first ripples and sets them alight with silver fire. The flicker races over the ice and trembling water, an arrow pointing the way. I back up from the lake until my back touches a boulder. The ray of sunlight dances past me to the cliff, and the moment it glances against the stone, arcs of thin silver crackle along the cliff face, revealing veins of crystal running up in the shape of branched lightning. Each silver limb is a line of runes that flickers and blinks, spirals out and disappears again.

Amon says, “Skit,” and I can barely breathe. I see the seams of an arched doorway around the tree of lightning and three runes where a knocker should be that glow red and pink like rubies.

And then the sun is up; the cliff reverts to plain rough granite. The magic is gone.

“Amazing,” Sune says as he touches his hand to the place one of the branches flared. He rubs his gloved fingers down the stone, and I hear the scrape, but he shakes his head.

“Good luck,” Loki the Changer says cheerfully.

Amon grabs his arm. “But how do we open it?”

Loki’s eyes grow wide, and he slips out of Amon’s grasp, slick as oil. “
Speak friend and enter
?”

Sune snorts, and I try to ignore all of them, staring at the spot where I saw the three ruby runes. “Amon, lift me up, please.”

The godling immediately comes over and does so, giving a little toss in to grab me around the thighs as I brace my hands against the cliff. We maneuver so I’m practically sitting on his shoulder.

The stone is warm under my fingers.

My middle finger with the elvish ring flares even hotter as the gold responds to the stone, but nothing changes. There’s no corresponding flash of runes or silver sunlight.

“Could you read what you saw?” Sune asks.

“Some,” I say. “If I’d had more time, I might have identified more, but I know my own runes best, the ones I work with, and these were older versions. There were three in the middle here all the same.
Joy
, I think.”

Amon says, “What the ragging rut does that mean?” He wraps his arm around my legs, and I settle my left hand on his hair.

I stare at the wall of stone again, emptiness making me lightheaded.

“Loki’s gone,” Sune says.

I twist too fast, and Amon has to catch me as I start to slip off him. There’s no sign of the god here on this narrow stone shore. Wind tilts the tips of the distant evergreens and causes the lake to lick at its own ice, while dawn brightens crumbling slopes of these two peaks. I don’t even see an eagle against the blue sky that might mark his departure. Slowly, I slide down Amon’s chest as he loosens his grip. He leaves his hands on my shoulders, and I touch my forehead against his chest. The leather of his coat is warmer than the air around us.

“That bastard,” Amon mutters.

I say to his chest, “He only promised to bring us to their door.” But I’ve no idea what to do, how to open it. Soren might be just on the other side or miles away, beyond twisting caverns and halls of ancient rock. Or he might not even be with the elves-under-the-mountain, and what then?
Two days left.
Assuming I’m counting them right.

Tears tickle the back of my throat, and I swallow them. I take a deep breath and blow it out against Amon. He squeezes my shoulders.

“Maybe we should just knock,” he says.

I pull away, but stay near, as Sune shrugs and raises his fist to pound against the door. The sound is dull and muffled, just fist on stone. There is no echo, no reverberation.

I lift my right hand that houses the ring of elf gold. It’s still the same dull yellow and feels warm, but otherwise not troublesome. I knock. My skin scrapes on the rough mountain, making a tiny slapping sound. I flatten my palm and press. I say, “I want to talk to Eirfinna, please.”

Nothing.

I draw
joy
against the cliff. I breathe onto the rune. If only I had some oil of nightshade or an elder wand to strike at the door with. There is some lore I vaguely recall about elderwood tines summoning light elves.

Nothing.

Amon and Sune watch me in silence, Sune crouched on the ground, studying me and the mountain carefully. “Anything?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I see no prints or disturbance that cannot be accounted for by our own presence. No seams or rune-marks. I can’t even make out the quartz-veins that the sun lit up.”

“Maybe we’ll see more tomorrow morning,” I whisper.

Amon says, “Maybe we should knock louder. Stay here.” The godling turns and climbs back over the boulders, heading for the elk path. He disappears in seconds, only the crunch of his boots on frost and needles betraying he didn’t vanish into air.

I glance at Sune, who shrugs. Then he frowns at me and approaches, turning me so my back is to him. He shrugs off his ax harness, opens his coat and wraps it around me, hugging me against his chest. He takes my hands and stuffs them into his gloves. “You’re freezing,” he says when he’s finished, as an afterthought. His chin tucks against my temple, and he moves my curls out of his face. I stare out over the brilliance of the lake and shiver in this pocket of warmth Sune’s created for us. His breath is light and shallow, tighter than it should be.

“Are
you
all right?” I ask.

“Headache. It’s the altitude.” His arms tighten around me, and it’s easy enough to relax because he’s nothing like Soren. His arms are wiry, his chest narrow. In the corner of my eye, his profile is Asgardian-white and sharp. “Also that ring on your hand is buzzing in my head.”

“Sorry,” I whisper, closing my eyes to feel the sun on my skin. Orange light through my lids, no warmth to penetrate the chilled air. “Where do you think he went?”

“Back to the van for something. I doubt I’ll like whatever he brings.”

“If it gets us into the mountain, I’ll take it.”

Sune grunts.

We wait together while the lake laps at the icy shore and the wind hisses through the frozen trees below us. The sun melts frost away, and I realize I saw this lake, orange and creamy at dawn, in my dreams.

“If Evan Bell was an elf,” Sune suddenly says, “he stole a life from a human man. The paperwork and history is too good otherwise. Unless elves can conjure online data and decades old ink.”

“You’re upset you didn’t see it.” I squeeze his arms.

“I’m one of the only men in the world who knows elves are a possibility, yet I did not.”

“And I know Soren, and should have taken his words literally no matter what I believed of the possibilities. So blame me, too.”

Sune shifts behind me, as if he’s uncomfortable, but doesn’t let go. “Magic makes me unreasonable. It clouds my eyes. I’m especially vulnerable to it, not just elf gold but illusions and all of it.”

“Like the bearbane.”

“I think it’s why I can’t leave Amon alone.”

I laugh very lightly at the ridiculous confession, and his hands jerk tighter, showing his offense. “Sune, I don’t think that’s why.”

The hunter is silent.

Finally, we hear Amon returning. I slip out of Sune’s coat as the godling appears over the boulders. He slides down the rocks to hit the shore hard. A hammer hangs from his left hand.

The heavy rectangular head is twice as large as mine, carved with square knotwork on both flat sides, while its faces are smooth and untouched. The handle is short, made for one-handed swings, and wrapped with dark blue leather.

When Amon sees us stare at it, he lifts it and offers a lop-sided smile. “I might as well be good for something, shine?”

“This is a bad idea,” Sune says.

But I don’t protest. Amon shrugs at the hunter and strides toward the cliff face. He strips off his coat and tosses it to the ground. “This is where it is?” he asks, not waiting for our response before raising the hammer and slamming it hard into the mountain.

The noise of it shatters the still air.

I cover my ears. Amon lifts it again, swinging with all his might. His muscles bunch and shift under the long-sleeved T-shirt. The hammer crashes against the cliff face, rattling my bones.

A third time Amon swings, and the hammer head cracks the stone.

Fissures flare out, and I step back. Sune puts his shoulder in front of me, half-shielding me as Amon hits the same spot again. The cracks deepen.

Crack
.

Amon lets out a loud roar, swings overhead, and
crack
.

Pieces of the mountain fall away. I hear a rumble like thunder, but from inside the earth. I grip Sune’s arm.

The deepest fissure widens, and Amon stumbles back toward us. I put my feet apart to maintain balance, but the world is shaking. The fissure stretches as the door splits in two.

The mountain calms. Distressed bird cries replace the noise of the quake, echoing through the valley, and the wind blows hard, lifting stone dust into my eyes, enraging the surface of the lake.

But we three don’t move, staring into the deep, black passageway.

S
une moves first. He grabs up his harness and swings the double axes back onto his shoulders. “I can’t believe that worked,” he says.

“It might have attracted Bright Home’s attention,” Amon says, belting his hammer.

“Or the elves inside.” I unsheathe Sleipnir’s Tooth as Amon takes out a flashlight from his coat pocket. He heads in first. I follow, with Sune behind me. I hear the snap as he unhooks his axes and draws them.

As I step into the black fissure after Amon, my heartbeat thrills. The spear of flashlight is swallowed immediately by the mountain. I take slow breaths, blinking and widening my eyes as though it will help them adjust faster, and hold the sword close to my body. The thick gold elf ring forces my grip to adjust. With my left hand, I skim along the rough, cool granite of the narrow passage. Sune’s boots scrape quietly behind me.

The stone floor is uneven, sloping slightly downward, and the air grows thicker and colder. Damp. But nothing about this place smells like a cave. There’s a more delicate draft, like autumn leaves or just a hint of wildflowers. Perhaps two meters in, Amon pauses, turning sideways to let me join him. The narrow passage opens into a chamber so we can all three stand abreast. The godling runs his light along the chunky ground, then up the walls and over the ceiling. It’s rough granite with thin veins of crystal that flash under the light. Maybe three meters tall, twice as wide.

“Turn it off,” Sune says quietly.

Amon does, and we’re dropped into darkness.

“Now wait,” Sune murmurs. His eyes glint, and some latent light catches the edges of his ax-blades.

Amon says, “I see it.”

The godling is nothing but teeth and gemstone earrings in the shadows, and I stare up at him, gradually aware of a pale silver glow emanating from the lines of crystal all around us. “That’s not natural,” I whisper. Slowly I move into the chamber, shuffling gently with my toes so as not to walk straight off into a chasm while I stare at the ceiling.

Though dim, as I adjust to the glow, I can make out Sune and Amon more clearly. There’s nothing in this chamber but the three of us.