CHAPTER ONE
Balder Island, The Pool of Loki
Previous Summer
Freya~
The stranger ignored the storm clouds gathering above the smoking mountain. Even when the savage wind blew him into the ice wall and bloodied his handsome face he continued to move steadily upward. He had to be crazy. Only a lunatic would climb the mountain when Bradur breathed smoke and steam. Only a fool would defy the gods to scale a sheer cliff that led nowhere.
He was wearing strange clothes and stranger shoes, but they would be no protection from the wrath of Bradur and Loki. How could any man challenge the mountain and win? Bradur released another warning blast of black smoke. Still the stranger continued to beat iron spikes through the ice into the rock below.
This handsome youth was stronger than his slim frame looked. His face was alight with joy. His blue eyes sparkled. He looked like a man well pleased with himself. He reminded her of the heroes of old going forth to face the monsters alone. A warrior battling his foes, ready to die. He had to be quite insane.
He replaced his hammer in his belt and smashed his ax into the ice once more, stood on his spike, and effortlessly pulled his entire weight upward another arm’s length. Finally, he reached a ledge with an ice outcrop the size of a milking stool. He sat and refreshed himself from a strange-looking, bright red flask.
Perhaps his red container held mead? That would explain his blithe disregard for common sense. But if it was perilous to scale Mount Bradur at any season, it was doubly perilous to do so full of strong drink. There could be only one outcome when a mortal challenged the mountain.
Bradur lost patience. The ledge yawned open. The youth fell backward into the black abyss. The mountain shot another burst of smoke that mingled with the black clouds overhead. Rocks and ice tumbled down the cliff to the snowy beach below turning it black.
The falling rocks severed the ropes that the youth had used to tie up his boat. In moments the unmoored craft was blown out far out to sea. It rode the white-capped waves like a seagull, until its slender masts snapped like twigs under a wave higher than a man.
The water in the Pool of Loki blurred. Her vision vanished. Freya came back to herself. She dried her eyes. She asked pardon for disturbing the pool with her tears, and made an offering of her best hairpin, breaking the bright gold with a rock before throwing it into the water.
It had been dawn when she arrived at the pool. Now the sun was overhead. It was always so when she came up the mountain to the pool. Time had no meaning here. What had become of the fair-haired stranger? Loki had been tantalizing her for years with his face and form. But she had never seen him on the island in the flesh.
Had Loki shown her the future? She did not know. For a time she had believed this beautiful boy was to release the spell that had held her and her brothers in its grip for so long. But the mountain had eaten him. No mortal could survive plunging into that fiery maw. He had been swallowed by the molten heart of Bradur.
Was her vision a warning? A prophecy? Or just Loki up to his usual tricks? She only knew she grieved for the stranger’s death.
Freya peered into the pool’s crystal depths. Her own grimy face gazed back. Her red hair was dulled by her dusty trek up the mountain. She was thirsty and wanted a wash. But drinking or washing in the pool was also forbidden.
Only once was drinking the water permitted. Long ago she had dipped the water with the silver scoop her mother had handed her and Loki had granted her the power to see his visions. But she had brought a goatskin flask with her. She took a sip from that while she calmed her breathing and her heart.
Then she stood and raised her arms to the blue sky and appealed to Loki again. Thunder rolled in answer to her cries. But no lightning flashed. A good omen. She bent over the pool. The water stirred as if it were boiling, but no steam rose.
The Pool of Loki was worth the trouble it took to get to it. When the surface smoothed out, the images were still and clear, reflecting the bright blue sky and the wispy clouds overhead. She could see all the way to the bottom. From the great depths, smooth gray rocks peeped out beneath a thick layer of gold and silver offerings. The water in the pool was sacred. To the women of her lineage it showed the future – and the past.
It was death for profane hands to touch the water. Yet the dragons had not died when they had tried to steal Loki’s treasures. They had sailed away unharmed with her sisters. She and her brothers had been left alone on their island to mourn their dead kin and their lost sister. And await their revenge.
Suddenly she beheld a night sky. Against the white-faced full moon an enormous glittering dragon spread great blue wings and flew with others of his kind. The breath caught in her throat. She knew again the terror of the day the dragons had raided Balder and sacked and burned their homestead.
These dragons circled over boats much different from the dragon-prowed ships that had sailed up the fjord to raid the homestead. She had often seen how the snow-white, three-sided sails propelled these narrow boats over the waves many times faster than the hundred-oared, square-sailed vessels of the dragons.
The sight of those red and white checked sails had sent her running into the mountains to the safety of the pool. Her father had trusted in his power and greeted them as if they came as friends, not foe. He had ordered a feast prepared and bargained with these pirates. And doomed them all.
Elsa the fair, with hair like butter, and eyes bluer than the summer sky, had gone into the ships. Hilde the honey-voiced, whose skill with shuttle and loom knew no equal, had likewise been taken. And Gerta, sweet Gerta, barely a woman, with eyes that could see visions and who possessed more power in her little finger than Freya had in her whole body, had been carried off to be bed-slaves to the raiders.
Only she had disobeyed her father. When Loki had warned her, how could she believe the lies those dragons had told? Her rebelliousness had been punished. Her entire family had been slaughtered and the homestead burned. She and her brothers had survived only to be cursed by the accursed dragon Snorre.
The flying dragons of her vision must be the sons or grandsons or at least the descendants of those brutal thieves. She watched them whirl and spin through the sky, as radiant as the stars they flew with. Why had Loki shown them to her? Were she and her brothers to have vengeance at last? The water began to move once more. Again it cleared.
The dead stranger entered a room with whitewashed stone walls that were hung with strange devices of many brilliant colors. He was wearing trousers as his forefathers had. But his breeches were slim and fitted tightly. Instead of a tunic, he had on a garment heavily patterned with vines and ropes. It strained across his broad shoulders and thick arms, but did not rip. Had he survived his plunge into Bradur? Or was this the past?
Loki had to be telling her that the rock climber had been a dragon. And just as surely a warrior. And very likely a powerful sorcerer surrounded by the fruits of his magic. Had his power and his ability to become a dragon saved him from the mountain’s wrath?
He was blond. As butter-haired as Elsa, and just possibly one of her sister’s descendants. For long ago Freya had seen in the pool, how slim, yellow-haired Elsa grew round, and many times had held a baby to her breast. Until one day, her sister’s supple back grew bent and her braids turned white, and her clever fingers made fists that would not open.
Then the pirate who had taken her buried her with her butter churn at her feet, her spindle whorl on her breast, and a gold slave-collar around her withered neck. Or maybe it was his son. Or hers. Or theirs, who buried her and sent her to Valhalla.
Hilde and Gerta too had grown old and died. Only Freya and her twin brothers never aged. It was part of the curse laid upon them by that thwarted dragon. They were doomed to remain forever young. Forever on this island. Until a dragon claimed her and won her heart, and she his.
Nothing could be more unlikely. A thousand years of hate had baked into her bones. Woven into their marrow. Rancor kept her young. She did not, could not, love a dragon. But the lad she was watching was truly beautiful. Loose-limbed. Broad-chested. Strong. Handsome. He had a kind face. And cherry lips. He made her heart thud. Loki was teasing her barren womb.
Distrusting the feelings the boy aroused, Freya pulled back from the pool and in her haste disturbed the ground around it. Tiny pebbles rolled into the water and the image of the youth vanished into ripples. Once again she begged Loki’s pardon and made another offering.
When the pool was again still, she saw the grassy mounds where her sisters slept. Sheep grazed where Hilde sailed forever in a boat painted blue and white. Children played over Gerta’s bones, and laughed as she had laughed all those years ago when they were girls. Elsa’s grave on the hill above the farm where she had grown old, still looked toward the ice-bound sea and the island of Balder.
Suddenly weary, Freya wished with all her heart that all the ill-will and bitterness of the long centuries would vanish as if they had never been. Thunder rolled again. And this time lighting flashed bright. It struck far out to sea where the pink horizon warned that the sun was setting. Like a dreamer she awoke.
Where had the long summer day gone? Fortunately, she had brought a lantern to see her home. When she arrived, her brothers would have readied the evening meal she had prepared before her pilgrimage. She bowed to the pool before beginning her journey. All the way down the mountain, the image of the golden youth remained in her mind. And the plea that she had quite unwittingly made.