Page 96 of A Curse Carved in Bone
Not only could I not risk them spying, these animals deserved to be free.
I removed their collars, then, extracting Gyda’s seax from my belt, I carefully trimmed away the stained fur on Skoll’s head. No sooner was I finished did he jerk out of my grip, racing away to stop on the sand. I did the same for Hati, who then raced after his brother. “Be free,” I said. “I know what it’s like to be bound.” For I was still bound by my own oaths, given that Ylva still lived. What pain that might yet cause me was unknown.
The wolves raced away into the trees, and as they did, an idea occurred tome.
“Ragnar said that Steinunn is in Grindill, or at least will be soon if a performance is planned in conjunction with Bjorn’s execution. If she sings the tale of what happened on that island in front of the whole crowd, all who hear will see the truth.”
“So we head to Grindill and capture the skald?”
“But how do we get to her without him knowing?” I paced up and down the beach. “Harald will know we are coming, so he’ll be watching. There will be no way to sneak through Grindill’s gates, and there is no other way into the fortress.”
“There is one way.” Geir pursed his lips thoughtfully. “There are drains in the city that pour into the river Torne. We just have to find the opening and crawl inside.”
I huffed out a breath. “And just how are we to find them without anyone noticing? The river is fast and deep, and one misstep, and you’ll be over the falls. Trust me, that is not a thing you wish to experience.”
“Ropes moored upstream. We do it at night. As to how…” Geir shrugged. “It is of good fortune that you have an army that does not need to breathe.”
I woke face down in a pile of moldy straw, my nose filled with the stench of piss and shit. Opening an eye, I took in the bars within arm’s reach of my face and realized I was in one of the cells beneath Grindill.
“You want something to drink?”
I turned my head, finding Tora seated on a stool facing the bars, her elbows on her knees. Her face drooped with misery and her eyes were dull.
“Yes.” My mouth tasted like something had died in it. And my body felt worse. “How long have I been out?”
“Long enough that I wondered if you’d ever wake.”
She dipped a ladle into a bucket and held it through the bars as I pushed myself to a seated position. I drank greedily, and it tasted like the nectar of the gods, I was so parched.
“Volund put you back together.” Tora refilled the ladle for me. “More or less, at any rate. He wanted to let you die, but Ylva was insistent.”
I finished off the ladle of water and said, “What has Harald told everyone? Or are you able to say?”
“Changes by the hour.” She gave a frustrated shake of her head, blond braids swaying. “Too many moving parts. Too many players he can’t control. But everyone believes that you and Freya conspired to gather the armies of both Nordeland and Skaland together so that she could send them all to Helheim, and that it is only because the gods intervened that she was limited to slaying the Skalanders. He told them that it was a desperate union between him and Snorri that saw Freya killed and you captured, though I am not sure how he’ll handle her return to the realm of the living if she escapes before Skade can reach her.”
I ignored the latter in favor of the former, because thinking about Skade finding Freya trapped in that prison made me sick. “Why would we want to kill the armies of two nations?”
“Freya is Hel’s child and desires to steal souls deserving of Valhalla for her divine mother. And you are just a lovesick fool who does her bidding.” Tora shrugged. “Steinunn has been singing herself hoarse showing Freya at her worst. Red-eyed and rage incarnate, the midnight roots of Yggdrasil bound to do her bidding. It is easy for them to see her as a monster, and no one questionswhya monster does evil deeds. As for you, it is agreed that you have been thinking with your cock.”
I made a face, weary of everyone assuming that my only motivation in life was to get between Freya’s legs.
“He’s not as in control as he likes to be, but once you’re dead and Freya’s dead, it will be easier. He’ll tighten his hold on two nations and then find a new game to play. It’s his nature.” She spat on the floor. “Loki.”
“How long have you known?” I asked.
“A little more than a year.” Tora picked at her nails, the cuticles bleeding. “I wanted to ask Saga some questions, so I traveled to her without asking for his leave. Despite him having claimed to have visited her not a week prior, it was clear to me upon arrival that no one wasliving in that cabin. Weeks of dust and mouse shit everywhere. No stores. The path overgrown. In truth, I thought she’d died and that he was feigning that she still lived for reasons of his own.”
“Not far from the truth,” I said, my eyes filling with the horror of my mother’s face melting and re-forming as Harald.
“I made the mistake of telling Skade what I’d discovered,” Tora continued. “She feigned concern but then told Harald my suspicions. And that was when he began the process of binding me to his will.” Her lip quivered. “I had a lover in one of the villages. She came to Hrafnheim to see me and we spent the night drinking. Making love. When we were deep in our cups, she said that we should bind ourselves together for life. Pledge something deeper than troth. I loved her so much that I didn’t hesitate to agree. She wrote runes in blood and I swore vows to her, bound myself to her in every possible way. But when it came time for her to swear the same to me, she started to laugh.”
The water I’d consumed started to rise in my throat, the story making me sick to my stomach.
“She laughed and laughed, and then her face began to melt.” Tora clenched her teeth, fighting back tears. “I started to scream, but my lover snarled, ‘Silence!’ and the scream was stolen from my lungs because I’d sworn to obey. And then she re-formed as Harald and I knew. Knew what he was, and that I’d not been making love to my sweet Tove but tohim.That I’d not sworn oaths to Tove but to Harald. And he laughed and laughed, because nothing delights him more than one of his schemes coming to fruition.”
“I’m sorry, Tora.” My words felt deeply insufficient for the nightmare she’d suffered. Horror that I understood all too well.
“Every time I’d find a way to worm my way free, he’d only make me swear another oath,” she said. “I am so bound to his will that there are times I feel that I can barely breathe without his permission. And the things he’s made me do…” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I am like one of his Nameless. Bound to his will and destined to do all his dark deeds. I hate him but I also love him more than life, and I will continueto love him until the end of my days, because I swore it to him when he wore my sweet Tove’s face.”
