Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [63]
I blinked the heaviness from my eyes and took Svan’s raven’s claw to my thumb. Piercing my skin with it was easy. The pain felt good, the way holding the coin had felt good. I squeezed my finger, and blood welled to the surface, along with a tiny wisp of smoke. The wind felt suddenly hotter.
I tossed the claw down and used my blood to draw the symbol from the spellbook on the black stone: a circle with three intersecting lines, the ends of each crossed by smaller circles and lines—the same symbol that was on the coin. The stone grew warm. A few more flakes chipped off as I dropped it into the mead. I dropped the coin into the liquid, too, and then I chanted the words I’d memorized from the spellbook:
Powers beyond the earth, hear me!
Powers beneath the earth, aid me!
Find her, turn her,
Return to her this gift!
The fire in me rose with the words, like flames to wind. The mead hissed and steamed. I thrust my hand into it. Flames leaped from the bowl, burning my skin. The scent of hot metal filled the air. I closed my eyes and saw more flames, the flames of my nightmares.
The flames I’d leaped through. Huge figures strode toward me, made entirely of fire, their arms and legs and necks bent at unnatural angles. One of them reached in my direction. I drew away, hot shudders racing through me. He wasn’t reaching for me, though. He was reaching for the bowl in which the mead yet steamed. He dipped a fiery hand into the liquid, then jerked back with a roar.
“How dare you offer us the drink of our enemies? We refuse your gift!”
The flames in my blood burst through my skin. Pain—I’d never felt pain like this. My skin was melting, my bones were melting—I started screaming and couldn’t stop. The ground buckled beneath me like a horse trying to throw me from its back.
Someone grabbed me. There was a roaring in my ears, and then—silence, save for the steady beating of wings.
I opened my eyes. Ari looked at me, his green eyes wide, his hands shaking as he clasped my arms. The fire still burned in me, but it was contained—barely—beneath my skin once more. Liquid dripped from the hand I’d thrust into the mead, and the drips fell back into the bowl.
I drew my arms free, shook the last of the mead from my hand, and looked into the liquid. Somehow, impossibly, the earthquake—if there’d been an earthquake—hadn’t spilled any. Maybe you couldn’t spill mead like this by accident, or maybe the fire giants hadn’t wanted to call on Freki and Muninn’s master, either. “The mead was no good.” My throat felt scratchy from screaming. “It just made them angry. The spell—”
“The spell isn’t worth your life,” Ari said.
What is this small life against the fate of the world? But if I’d died, the fire would have burst through my skin, out into that world.
Muninn’s wings beat on. “Stupid girl! The power will never be contained now.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” There was movement in my backpack. Freki backed out of it, holding the hilt of Svan’s knife between his teeth.
We all turned to look at the fox. He dropped the knife in front of me. “Even had you offered more suitable brew, the fire’s hold on you is too tight. A working as great as this one requires blood. I can give you that.”
Muninn’s wingbeats fell silent. I stared at Freki, not understanding—not wanting to understand.
“Haley,” Freki said, “not long ago, you gave me a gift. Two gifts: a drink of sacred mead and the life of one of my kin. I would repay those gifts now.”
A single sharp beat of Muninn’s wings. “No.”
“No!” For once I agreed with Muninn completely.
Freki tilted his head and said nothing.
“There’s nothing to repay!” Wildness rose in me. Fire roared in my ears as I yelled, “It was a gift! You don’t pay back a gift! That’s not how it works!”
“The spell will consume you if you do not complete it.” Freki nudged the sheathed blade with his nose.
“So let it consume me,” I said.
“Hell no,” Ari said.
“After the spell consumes