Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [43]
Svan drew the skin toward his lips, stopped, and sniffed it. His eyes narrowed. Shit.
“What treachery is this?” Svan’s voice was low, like Dad’s voice when he got angry. “Do you think me a fool, who does not know what you offer me?”
“Umm.” Now what?
Ari looked back and forth between us. “The mead of poetry,” Svan said, answering his unasked question. “Haven’t I rested in Muninn’s mountain long enough, Haley?” Svan’s voice dripped disdain as he handed the skin back to me, still open.
“Wait—that’s the mead of poetry?” Ari’s eyes grew wide by the firelight. He reached toward the skin.
“Don’t.” I drew it away. “It’ll make you sleep—”
“Yeah, but—”
“But what?”
“If I could write a decent poem for once—a decent song …” He reached for the skin again, then hesitated.
“Oh no, you don’t!” I pulled the thing out of his reach. “I need you here.” I turned the skin upside down. No way was I taking a chance on Ari going unconscious on me.
The mead steamed as it hit the sand. The wind died, all at once.
Svan grabbed the skin from my hands and righted it. The remaining liquid sloshed inside. “You are a fool,” he muttered.
The earth trembled, ever-so-slightly, less like an earthquake than someone shivering at a too-gentle touch. Svan gestured down the beach. A fog bank moved toward us, silver gray in the moonlight. Within that fog a man ambled toward us with a slow rolling gait. His broad-brimmed hat covered one eye; his cloak was the same color as the fog.
Do not spill that. My master would not like it. How stupid was I? I hadn’t thought about Freki’s warning, though. I’d thought only about Ari.
Yet the man didn’t seem angry. He didn’t seem in any hurry to reach us, either. He smiled as he made his way down the beach. Then he saw me watching him, and he winked, though I should have been too far away to see. The trembling of the earth moved down beneath my skin. I started shivering and couldn’t stop. I looked at Ari and saw that he trembled, too, even as he cursed slowly and steadily under his breath.
My sight blurred, and I saw only fog, but the shivering went on. The fire in me burned hot, hot, hot, even as I shivered.
Svan corked the mead and tossed it into my backpack. “You must go.” He began putting other things in the pack as well: the wooden bowl, the knife in its sheath.
Leaving sounded awfully good to me, only—“Wait, if that’s Freki and Muninn’s master, can’t he destroy the coin?” Destroy it without killing anything in the process?
“Haley.” Svan spoke slowly, as if to a small child. “Muninn’s master does not fear the end of the world. He will fight it, to be sure—he and the fire spirits are old enemies—but he will throw everything he has into that fighting. You hesitate to kill a single fox; to him we’re all less than foxes. He won’t hesitate to sacrifice us.”
I opened my mouth; no sound came out. Ari got to his feet, reached for my hand, and pulled me up as well.
The mead had soaked deep into the sand, but steam still rose from the spot. Svan dug a couple of other items out of his bag—a raven’s claw, a dull black stone—and tossed them into the backpack as well.
“I don’t need that stuff. I—”
Svan reached for my shoulder, thought better of it, and let his hand drop. His expression turned almost gentle. “You are my kinswoman. I will do what I can to protect you. I will hold him off as long as I can. Only you must make it worth it. Destroy the coin. Not only for the land’s sake. I felt the fire within you—Hallgerd’s spell could consume you, too, if you do not end it.”
My fire didn’t come from Hallgerd’s spell, but even now I didn’t say so. “What about you?” What did I care about him, after the way he’d attacked me?
A sly smile crossed the sorcerer’s face. “I may be an old man, but I have a few tricks left in me.” He cast a wry look Ari’s way. “Perhaps I’ll see if my poems have more worth than yours. If nothing else, it should make a good story.”
The fog was closer now. I heard footsteps crunching over the sand. Svan thrust the bag at me and I zipped it shut. “Thank you.”