Iduna (16 page)

Freya woke to the sounds of seagulls trying to steal the morning catch from the returning fishermen. She crouched and waited. Patience had paid off in Lawan.

After hours of watching numbly, she was wrenched out of her stupor by the sight of Senbo walking down the road. She blinked. It was him. What was he doing here? If he was here, where was her husband? Her frantic thoughts subsided when she realized Senbo was all alone. Without Vilir she could take him. Senbo was nothing without Vilir's immense power.

Senbo would be her next prisoner. She would enjoy having him as her prisoner, then trade him for her husband.

She slid down and jumped off the back of the building. The village was small and quiet with few people around, which was good because she stood out like a snowstorm in the tropics. She moved quickly from one building to the next. Senbo was taking a wide dusty trail out of the village. She jumped into the foliage and rushed to get far enough ahead of him and away from any passerby. She stopped and waited. When he was two strides past her, she jumped out and pressed his own dagger to the small of his back.

“Where do you think you're going, Senbo?” she sneered.

“Nowhere now,” he replied.

“Where is my husband?” she asked, clamping her other hand on his shoulder.

“Who is your husband?”

She was getting frustrated. They were too exposed here. She would need some time with him. Then he would talk.

“Keep going.” He walked awkwardly in front of her as she kept hold of his shoulder and let the dagger press into him just enough to remind him who was in control here. They approached a shack and went inside.

“Get some rope,” she demanded.

“Rope? I don't usually keep rope around, but I have some handcuffs you could use on me.”

“So this is your house? How fortunate. Where are these cuffs?”

He pointed over to a shelf. She walked him over to a bookshelf that held a myriad of contraptions. He picked up the handcuffs, and she pushed him down in a chair. She pulled his hands through the railed back of the chair and cuffed them. Another pair of cuffs secured his feet together in front of him.

She stood back and appraised her handiwork. She never thought to see Senbo in her power. He didn't look angry at her, and that rankled. Instead he looked eager to talk. He leaned forward as if to share a fun secret with a friend.

“I should tell you that I'm not Senbo.”

Skuld walked along the beach to Vilir's tent. Vilir had called both Dagna and Skuld for the first time since the two of them had agreed on their plan. They hadn't discussed their intentions since that night — there were too many eyes and ears around them to take the risk.

The energy at the camp had grown slowly and, as it had, so had everyone’s level of alertness. Skuld was glad it had taken a while. He took heart in the apparent limitations of Vilir's power; that it took time to recover between slaughters was a beggar's consolation.

His hands were damp with nervous sweat, and he wiped them against his legs.

Kick, ax, kill. He clung to the mantra. Two out of three of those actions were Dagna's, and he felt lucky to have her on his side. She was the most courageous warrior, and his mind was full of stories from their past. Polar bear hunts, caribou tracking, facing the sporadic attacks from their neighbors to the south.

In retrospect he appreciated how nonviolent each of those encounters had been, and it was clear that the border skirmishes had truly been lighthearted affairs. He couldn't recall anyone on either side actually killing in decades.

He entered the tent to find Vilir and Senbo discussing a map and sketches. Dagna stood quietly to the side of the table.

He saw Dagna with new eyes.

She was incredibly beautiful and strong. The weakness and openness from the night they'd talked had changed everything.

He cursed himself for not having agreed on a cue to action. Maybe they wouldn’t need it. They had spent years side by side, before they'd been split apart to manage solo one of the two sides of the Ull force. They knew each other well. She looked poised, ready. He could see her weight balanced ever-so-subtly on the balls of her feet. Her ax was hanging at her side like always.

“You will begin building these rafts.” Vilir pointed to the sketches. They showed a series of palm tree trunks strapped together to make a raft. “And the paddles to power them." The designs for both craft and paddles were simple.

“Why?” Skuld couldn't resist asking. He would make his move soon.

“We are going to conquer the islands of Okeenos,” Vilir replied. His gaze moved over the map as if envisioning the begging and bloodshed his attack would soon cause.

Skuld let a pause settle in the air. He took in the self-satisfaction that oozed from Vilir. It was time to end this madness.

“No!” Skuld yelled as he crouched and rammed into Vilir, hitting him low and knocking them both to the floor. Vilir was an enormous man. Skuld lay on top of him, clamping his hands on Vilir's thick wrists and using his legs to keep the other man's legs down. It wasn't a position he would be able to sustain for any period of time. He knew from their youth that Vilir was the better fighter, and that could only be truer now. He was counting on surprise and speed.

And Dagna’s help.

He heard Dagna's battle cry as she grabbed her ax and swung it toward Vilir's taut neck. The vessels in Vilir's neck bulged as he struggled to toss Skuld aside.

A keen, high whistle broke through all sounds.

Vilir pushed Skuld off like a gnat, and Skuld fell in a sprawl. Skuld was confused, not knowing where the sound had come from and why Dagna’s blow hadn’t fallen. He looked up to see Dagna standing over him with lips curled in a snarl of hatred. In search of an answer, his gaze turned to the only other person in the room.

Senbo's lips were still pursed, and the whistle died off slowly.

Skuld was panting from the oh-too-brief wrestle with Vilir and his own confusion.

Senbo arched a brow, inviting Skuld to talk.

He couldn’t believe it. “You have the power too,” Skuld said.

“Yes.” Senbo said while Vilir rolled to his feet and now stood tall. “My power is much more limited than Leder Vilir's. I can only target one person effectively at a time. If I were to try my power on all the Ull, like Leder Vilir can do with such ease, then I would fail. But I can control one person completely.” He nodded at the beautiful female warrior. “Dagna is mine.”

Skuld could see Senbo wrestling with his own ego. The man was a weasel, and Skuld hated that he was now at Senbo's feet. At least he was confident that his feelings for Senbo were his own. A new clarity came to him.

“When you came to Ull is when everything started changing. You caused all this.” He grew angrier with every word. He spat at Vilir's feet. “And you are his tool.”

“I will enjoy watching you die,” Vilir said. “End him. He’s of no use to us.”

“Dagna, strangle him,” Senbo said in a flat monotone. To Skuld he said, “If you fight her and win, we will just kill you both.” It pleased Senbo to watch the two turn on each other. With Skuld gone and Dagna compromised, Vilir would lean even more into his power.

Skuld lay still with shock as Dagna, his Dagna, moved toward him. She straddled him and sank down to sit on his chest. He looked up at her, beseeching her to stop. If he could bring her back to her senses, then they might be able to win. This couldn't be her.

“Dagna, stop. You don’t want to do this,” he got out as she curled her fingers around his neck.

“I hate you.”

“You don't hate me. I love …” The words couldn't make it past her clenched hands. His eyes bulged, and blackness descended.

“You look like Senbo,” Freya said, squinting at him dubiously.

“He’s the one that looks like me. It's the perk he gets from being my brother. And his real name is Obi,” Akio said.

She couldn't process this. A cloud of rage was obscuring her thoughts. She'd felt so close. If what he said were true, then she'd just lost a direct connection to her husband.

“Prove you’re not Senbo,” she bit out.

“I don't know how to do that. Maybe we can figure this out together. Where did you see Obi?”

She detected a sharp curiosity in this last question. He wanted to know where his brother was. Maybe she could use it.

“I'm in control here. I ask the questions. Who are you, and why do you want to know?”

“My name is Akio, and I'm the trainer. I'm worried about Obi. He was upset when he left here, and I'm afraid of what he may have done.”

His apparent honesty was disconcerting. She needed to focus. The rage humming in her was a living, breathing thing. It needed to vent. She looked around his home. It was a mass of odd contraptions and books. She'd never liked books, preferring the outdoors when she was young. She was a simple woman, and books suddenly felt like a tool that had been used against her. She picked up a book and turned to face Senbo's supposed brother. She started tearing the pages and throwing them on the floor. The act of destruction soothed her as did the wince of her prisoner.

She wouldn't tell him that his brother had her husband; she wouldn't tell him anything that might give him some control.

“Do you know Iduna?” She kept tearing out pages one by one.

“Yes, I just met her recently.”

“Why did she come to you?” That had been bothering her. She'd been following Iduna, but she had no idea why Iduna had abandoned her people in Lawan—though that did seem to be her style, Freya thought with a snarl. Where was Iduna going, and what was she up to?

“Iduna needed to learn our magic.”

“Where is Iduna?” Freya could care less about magic.

“She's not here, but she'll be back, if she's successful.”

“Successful?”

“Oh, yes. She could be dead by now,” he said.

She crumpled the torn page leaf in her hand. What would she do if Iduna were dead already? Her mind whirled.

“If she's dead, then I need her body,” she said.

“Now that won't be possible. If you go where she went, you would die within minutes.” He considered further. “Seconds, more likely.”

At this, she hurled the book against the wall and screamed. She raged around the room, cursing and yelling at herself and the world.

She just couldn't take it anymore. Everything she tried just failed. Everyone was trying to block her, and she just kept failing. The days waiting in Cha. The days at sea sitting in a still or slow-moving boat. The waiting. The endless waiting. All while her husband suffered a vacuous existence and imminent death. She was his wife, his partner. He would never have let her suffer like this. If he’d been in her shoes, he would have saved her by now.

She was a total failure. Her ranting screams and epithets echoed in the small house.

Suddenly the screams turned to laughter. She laughed hysterically. The futility of her situation, her utter failure, all suddenly seemed hilarious. She was a farmer. She milked cows. She served meals. She wasn't a hunter. It was all too ludicrous.

She plopped into a stuffed chair and kept laughing. Her laughs would start every time the ridiculous nature of her position struck her anew. She hiccupped.

She was a farmer no more.

“Well, we'll just wait here for her.” It was what she'd had to do so far. She would do it again. If he were the trainer and if Iduna needed to learn their magic, then Iduna would come back here.
Magic
. The Ull had long ago cast aside magic, preferring to work with their hands. These silly people and their magic. His magic didn’t seem to be helping him get out of those cuffs. Wiping a tear of laughter from her face, she kicked back in the stuffed chair to sleep.

Rubino carried Iduna high above the clouds, and her spirit soared. The wind rushed by her as she flew on the back of the mighty red dragon.

She felt free and open, like she could feel again.

As Iduna laughed out loud, Rubino dove through the clouds and burst through the other side to skim along the surface of the undulating ocean. Iduna leaned down and brushed her fingertips lightly over the massive swells. Rubino gave a playful turn, and Iduna screeched as she was almost dunked. Rising high again, Iduna couldn’t stop smiling. The mountains of Okeenos loomed near, and Rubino circled to land.

Iduna slid from the dragon's back onto one of the many sandy beaches of Okeenos. The ride had been exhilarating and its own kind of revelation.

“Thank you, Rubino.”

“You're most welcome. Good luck to you, stick. I hope you free your people.”

“Thank you. I do too. I still don't have the answers,” she lamented.

“You figured out how to free us. I think you will be fine.” He looked back in the direction of the island. “We'll be leaving the island for good once our son’s wing is healed enough. Maybe our paths will cross again. Until then.”

“Until then.” She waved as he left.

She watched the dragon fly away and dropped down to sit on the white sand. Her thoughts turned to the puzzle before her. She didn’t share Rubino’s confidence. She'd learned how the dragons go about breathing fire, but her goal had been to learn how to fight Vilir's power over people's emotions. She doubted trying to roast him with fire breath would work, even if she could figure out how to exhale fire.

She watched the ocean's flat horizon. A light breeze blew steadily with small gusts kicking up sand. She reached out with her power, sensing the wind and sand, pulling them together into the shape of a dragon. She made the dragon fly in circles and spew sand in the shape of fire. It gave her an idea.

Breathing in deeply, running through the routine, she thought of Lexonia's kindness in coming back for Iduna when she was wounded. She felt the image made of sand tighten, grow more detailed and sharp. One limitation had always been size. A single Spellcaster could only work with so much material. What if she pushed for a larger size? Continuing to breathe and focus on Lex's kindness, she drew more and more sand to the flying dragon. More and more and more. The sand dragon flying through the air was now as big as a galleon. Startled and not wanting to draw attention to herself, she dispersed the image over the water.

Using the dragon's technique seemed to dramatically improve her spells but still didn't provide her with a weapon against Vilir. She wouldn't be able to cast any spells if he sang, wringing the emotion out of her.

“Unless …” she whispered quietly.

She popped up and ran to Akio's shack.