Page 12 of Storm of Fury
“Ask three questions, dragon hunter, and I will answer them,” she spat. “But mind your words, for I am no mere mortal to be trifled with.”
“What did Marduk want of you?” Tormund asked.
“He came searching for the source of the song only he can hear.”
“The song only he can hear?” Bryn muttered.
“And what did you answer?” Tormund continued.
“I gave him a gift: a dwarven listening horn which can hear the music between the notes of the world. With it, he could track the source of this music.”
“Sirius seems to think he went east when he left, which means he was tracking this song, but do you know his precise destination?”
The völva knelt and rested a palm flat on the ground. Closing her eyes, she cocked her head and listened.
A pebble skittered across the ground. Tormund’s nostrils flared.
“Ragnarök’s breath,” Bryn said, her hand falling to her sword hilt. “What is she doing?”
“Communing with the dead, I think.” He’d have never said those words six months ago. Sometimes he wished he’d left Haakon on Iceland’s bleak shores and sailed home to visit his aunt and cousins, where he could safely say he’d never met adreki—or gotten involved in their mess.
Little cracks formed in the surface of the dry earth, and Tormund could sense something stirring beneath the shale.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He shifted his feet as the cracks rent the earth beneath him. “Why couldn’t it be a dragon?”
Why did it have to be the dead?
Instantly, the earth fell still.
The wind stopped.
And as the völva looked up, Tormund knew instantly that something had gone wrong.
“The prince is east of the sun, and west of the moon; North of the earth and south of the ice; Above the fire and below the stars.” The völva slowly pushed to her feet. “But I can See what I did not See before. He searches for the world-killer, for the Monster With No Name. And if he unleashes it, then we shall all wish for the mercy of Ragnarök’s doom.”
Slamming her staff upon the stones, she turned her face to the skies. Instantly, a wind whipped her cloak until her matted white hair streamed behind her. “My dead children whisper of Destruction, and it mustnotbe allowed to happen.”
“Easy, now,” Tormund said. “We’re all friends here—"
“You will help unleash it upon the world. That much is clear. Unless I stop you.”
A hand smashed through the burial mound to his left.
A high-pitched scream escaped Tormund.Fuckity-fuck-fuck. “How good are you with that sword?” he yelled at Bryn.
“If I draw this sword, giant, then none of our enemies will leave this clearing alive.”
“I like your confidence, woman.”
He just wished he shared it.
Another pair of hands crawled from the second burial mound. Mottled flesh clung to the finger joints, but the tips were mostly skeletal.
“They’re all rising!” Haakon bellowed.
And the three draugar were between the group and the rune stones.
“Now what?” he yelled at Bryn. “Running doesn’t seem to be an option anymore.”
