“Okay, so how do you open it?” Freya asked.
“Watch.” Ingrid had read about the tree in her father’s book. The language she had been unable to decipher, she now understood, was the language of the dragons and the giants who had come before the gods. She placed her hands on the door and murmured a few words.
The door creaked open to reveal nothing but darkness. Ingrid took Freya’s hand and together they slipped through the portal. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, she saw that a pale blue glow lit the coarse thicket that surrounded them. The space, if it could be called that, smelled of damp earth and wood. There was a path that led forward, deeper into the thicket.
However, before they could walk any farther, they came upon Lionel Horning. He was covered in blood, and they could see that he was rotting from inside out; half of his face was missing and he leered at them with his one good eye. “Stop,” he said in a hoarse voice, raising a hand that was missing two fingers. “You may not enter.” Their friend had been turned into a guard dog, an obstacle to block their way.
“Oh, Lionel . . .” Ingrid sighed. “The toxin. It must have been in his blood, in his system, when he swallowed all that ocean water, which is why the resurrection didn’t take.”
“So I was wrong. He’s not a demon,” Freya said.
“No, definitely zombie,” Ingrid said. “The river underneath their farm . . . it leads to the ocean. The toxin must have been strong there. He’s been breathing it. He swallowed the water and then he was living in a poisoned space. No wonder.”
“Lionel, I’m so sorry but I have to do this,” Ingrid said, raising her wand. White rope appeared from the end of her wand and wrapped tightly around Lionel, creating a straightjacket. “That will hold him. I don’t think we can bring him back, his body is too decayed. But if we stop Loki it will restore Lionel’s spirit and send him to Helda as he was.”
There was a cry from beyond, on the other side of the path that led away from the tree. “It’s Tyler. Ingrid—you get the boy. We’ve got twenty-four hours before the Dead claim him forever.”
“What about you?” Ingrid asked, already turning to the sound of the boy’s cries.
“I’ll take care of Loki,” Freya said, pushing farther into the darkness.
chapter forty-five
Trickster’s Queen
Freya ran her hand over what appeared at first to be a dense cage of vines, but as the darkness slowly gave way to starlight she saw that she was standing in the midst of a vast labyrinth, hollowed from the roots of a tree that seemed larger than the sky itself. The massive roots stretched as far as she could see, in all directions. Above her was a blanket of stars. The small blue lights did not flicker; their light was strong and constant.
Freya glanced at the unfamiliar stars. She was not in Midgard anymore, or even the world of the glom, of that she was sure. She was somewhere else, somewhere beyond the universe itself.
She found a dark line that cut across the sky like a blackened version of the Milky Way, and knew it had to be the trunk of the tree. As she made her way toward the center, the knotted field of roots would open up and allow her to surge ahead—only to lead her to a dead end, where she had to push her way through to the other side. The wood was hard and tore at her skin; her arms were caked with dirt as she hacked her way forward.
In the distance she heard a faint voice casting a spell, and a passage opened in front of her. Free for a moment from the thicket, she ran forward through the darkness. A booming voice emanated from the end of the passage.
“Freya, my love, come to join me?” Bran emerged from the darkness, his eyes shining with malice. The glow of kindness around him, Freya now saw, was part of the glamour he had cast. His awkwardness and nerves were a sign of how difficult it had been for him to keep the spell intact.
“Not at all,” Freya said, holding her wand aloft. The ivory bone shone in the light.
“Your magic is wasted on me.” He sneered. The man she knew as Bran Gardiner was gone. Every time she looked at him she understood something new. Madame Grobadan was the giantess Angrboda, Loki’s eternal mistress. No wonder she did not care for Freya.
“Not at all; I think you have been away for so long you have forgotten who I am,” Freya said, drawing herself to her full height. As her lover he was subservient to her forever; that was the power she held over men, the way she had been made from the beginning. “Give me the ring, Bran,” she said quietly. “You cannot deny me.”
Bran stood in front of her in his true form as Loki, his features oddly elongated, almost grotesque. He moved toward the shadow to conceal himself as he spoke. “You may take the ring but there is no point in having a life with your dear Balder if the world in which you live is poisoned. Let me keep it and I will be able to staunch the bleeding.” He looked at Freya, but her gaze was unyielding.
“Give me the ring.” It was a command from a goddess.
Bran could not resist. Freya felt a warm, putrid air embrace her, and when it dissipated Odin’s ring lay in the palm of her hand. She saw that it was not made of gold at all; its surface was dull white and porous, a bone ring carved from the last shreds of the bridge. A final token of a power older than the gods themselves, it had been lost by Odin during the last battle of Asgard. It did not belong in this world or any other. Its time was past. She held it between her fingers and began to crush the frail shape. Tiny splinters showered from her hand. The ring was so soft, as if carved from a feather, it could be ground into dust at the slightest touch.
“Do not harm it. Return it to me and I shall give you what you desire,” Loki whispered. “If those who placed me in the abyss find me here, I’ll not be sent back this time, I will simply be wiped from existence. And I hope you would have some bit of love left for me still.”
His every word is a lie, she thought: he will do nothing to help you. Freya looked at him once more, but she saw nothing of the Bran she knew. She held the tiny ring between her fingers and slowly ground it into dust. “I’ll not be a fool for you any longer, Loki.”
“Idiot!” he screamed, diving forward to catch what ashes he could as they drifted to the ground. Loki gathered himself from the wet earth and faced her. “Then you shall spend the rest of your existence in a dying world.”
“No, Loki, I will not. You will exit as you entered Midgard, through the hole you made in the trunk, and your leaving will close it behind you. The Tree of Life will be whole once more.” This was Ingrid’s idea, and she hoped her sister was right—that once he crossed Yggdrasil once more, the wound would close and the toxin would disappear.
Loki hesitated.
“It’s your only way out of here now that the ring is gone,” Freya said. “Without the ring, it is the only path that remains open to you. You have only one place to go. I don’t think you want to wait around to see what will happen once Balder gets ahold of you.” The God of Light and Fury would be a fearsome enemy now that he was restored to his full strength and no longer bound by the limits of the curse.
Loki didn’t respond for a while. He simply stood still, his mind whirling, and then he smiled. “You are more like me than you think, dear Freya.” With that he spun around and faced the great trunk of the tree. He uttered garbled words in a language Freya did not catch.