Corpse in the Mead Hall

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I can't remember a time in my life where I didn't know I was an artist.

Not wanted to be. Knew I was. Even as a kid with a pack of crayons, I knew I was an artist.

But since moving to the North Shore to live with my grandmother and discovering I was a volva, which is sort of a Norse witch, but with lots of responsibilities beyond mere magic, I never seemed to have any time to just create art anymore.

Especially after I had started using my art skills to access my magic. I was still an artist, but, a few sketches here and there aside, all of my art was directed towards magical ends these days. It was almost never just art.

Mostly this was because between my ongoing education in all things magical and the number of murders I had found myself working to solve, I seldom had any downtime.

It was a recipe for burnout. I knew it.

But my chief teacher, Haraldr, seemed to know it too. Why else would he have arranged for me to have a day off? Well, really just a night off. One small lesson with him at lunchtime, sure, but after that, my evening was completely free. More than free. I had actual social plans.

Now, I was supposed to be using my time in the morning to catch a nap before meeting Haraldr at his house for lunch, but I was too keyed up to sleep.

Because that evening I was going to see my Runde friends again. After weeks... no, months. I was finally going to be able to sit with them and talk and laugh and catch up. It was only for a single night, but I didn't intend to waste a minute of it.

I really should have been napping to rest up, but after I had tried lying in my bed for nearly half an hour without being able to so much as close my eyes, I had given up. My grandmother had put me in a deep restorative sleep for more than a day, a sleep I had only just woken up from that morning, so it was hardly surprising that I felt, well, restored.

And so instead there I was, sitting in the comfiest chair in the living room of my house in the lost Norse village of Villmark, sketchbook resting on my knees as I looked out the window over the southern half of the village spread out on the hillside below me.

I had intended this to be a restful bit of sketching, a way to let my mind wander in something almost like a dream. I could hear the fire crackling in the fireplace behind me and smell the wood and ash faintly on the air.

Even louder than the fire was my polydactyl black cat Mjolner, purring away in his sleep on the pillow Nilda and Kara had given him as a housewarming present.

All perfectly pleasant. Even the coffee I had brewed when I had given up on sleeping was comforting. Most Villmarkers favored a highly caffeinated light roast that I found a bit of a challenge to drink on a daily basis.

Luckily, I had a friend who could move between worlds. Loke. He always brought back bags of French roast when Jessica got a new shipment from the supplier to her café. The rich, dark roast tasted so good I didn't have to add sugar or cream to get it down.

Plus, the amount of caffeine didn't make my hands shake as I sketched.

Alas, even with a steady hand, the subject I had chosen was a bit of a challenge. The landscape was lovely, rolling hills dotted with stands of trees. And the modernist architecture of the Villmarker houses favored just the sorts of lines I loved so much I could almost draw them with my eyes closed.

No, the problem was, being the middle of February in northern Minnesota, everything was covered in a blanket of snow. The sharp edges of the houses were softened under the bulk of the snow on their roofs, and the trees were similarly all but shapeless under their own wintery coats.

And there I was, with graphite pencil on white paper, trying to capture a scene that was really a bunch of shades of white and not much else.

It was a terrific drawing exercise, but not a particularly restful one.

I looked down at my sketchbook, then out the window, then down at my sketchbook again.

Nope. Definitely not right.

I tossed the sketchbook over my shoulder, intending to get another cup of coffee and maybe try again with a white charcoal pencil on gray-scale paper.

Only my sketchbook never hit the floor.

I turned in my chair to see Loke holding my sketchbook and examining my drawing. His brown eyes were so dark it was hard to tell what he was thinking, but he seemed to be transfixed.

"Don't look at that. It's a failed attempt," I said, reaching for the book. He took a step back, keeping the book away from my grasping hands.

"You're too critical," he said. "I think this is quite lovely. It's minimalist, in a way. And look, there's my house. Right there in that stand of lumpen shapes I know are my trees."

"It always draws my eye, ever since you pointed it out to me," I said. "How's your sister?"

"Esja is fine," he said, still studying my drawing.

"Coffee?" I asked.

He smelled the air. "Sure, that sounds good," he said. I suspected he shared my lack of enthusiasm for the usual Villmarker coffee. I took the sketchbook from him and put it in my art corner on the far side of the room. Then I headed for the kitchen, Loke strolling along behind me. "I have messages," he said.

"From?" I asked as I took another coffee mug out of my cupboard and filled it for him, then refilled my own mug.

"Everyone," he said. "Jessica, Michelle and Andrew will all be there tonight." He handed me several folded sheets of paper, then took a long sip from the coffee.

"Oh, good," I said, glancing at the contents of the notes. "I was worried they might be busy."

"Andrew had to switch shifts with some other guy, apparently, but it all worked out in the end," Loke said. "He's working as an EMT now, you know. Well, volunteering anyway."

"Yeah, he told me," I said. Loke raised an eyebrow at me, and I quickly added, "by letter, which you brought to me. I haven't been breaking any rules."

"Believe me, I know you haven't," he said. "More's the pity."

"You're going to be there tonight too, right?" I asked.

"If I'm able," he said.

"Why wouldn't you be able?" I asked.

"Oh, you know," he said with a shrug. I frowned at him.

"Is there something you're not telling me?" I asked him.

"Ingy, there's all sorts of things I don't tell you," he said. "Do you want to know what I had for breakfast?"

"Not particularly," I said. "Don't change the subject. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"If you say so."

"There's a dark cloud hanging over you," I said.

"You see that with your magical vision, do you?" he said blandly.

"No, I see that because I look at you with the eyes of a friend," I said. "You know I will always be there to help you, no matter what's going on. You just have to ask."

"I know," he said.

"Is it Esja?" I asked. "You said she was fine, but-"

"How's Thorbjorn doing?" he asked, cutting me off. "Have you heard from him yet?"

The mere sound of his name gave my heart a pang. Just as Loke knew it would.

"How could I? I have no idea where he is," I said. "And it's only been a day. It's far too soon to be worried."

"Tell that to that little line that's furrowing your brow," Loke said, touching the same spot on his own face.

"I'm sure he's fine," I said. "But you're changing the subject again."

"Yeah, I'm good at that," he said with a grin. "There's nothing going on that you need to know about, Ingy, I swear it."

"Need to know, you mean as a volva?" I asked. "Because, like I already said, I'm talking to you as a friend. And I want to know."

"There's nothing to know," he said, setting his coffee mug aside. "The last few days have been exhausting, as I'm sure you'll agree. I brought you your messages, now I think I'll head home and check in with my sister if you don't mind."

I glanced at the time on my phone. "I should get moving myself. I'm having lunch at Haraldr's house, so I'm heading your way. Walk with me?"

"Of course," Loke said.

We went to the front door, and I pulled on my boots, then my parka, hat and gloves. The days were getting longer, but the weather was still unseasonably cold. I was so ready for spring.

But not so ready as Loke was, apparently.

"No coat?" I asked him. He was wearing his usual black tunic-length shirt on black pants, but his boots were meant for drier streets than what waited for us outside. He might be able to put his hands in his pockets - he usually did - but his ears were going to freeze without a hat.

"I'm comfortable," he said with another one of those careless shrugs.

But when he turned the handle to open the door, I pushed it closed again. It slammed shut with a bang as if the wind had taken it. Just as it always did. I had thought about getting it fixed, but decided I liked the fact that no one could sneak in without me knowing.

"How did you get in here, anyway?" I asked.

"It's not like you ever lock your doors," Loke said.

"No, but I never heard this door close. I always hear this door close."

"You were in the zone," he said, not quite making air quotes at me. "Seriously. I'm not your cat. I can't walk through walls."

"This is part of what you're not telling me, isn't it?" I asked. "When I first came to town, months and months ago, you said some things to me about your own sort of magic. You've never told me more about that."

"You picked your own path," he said with another shrug. "Speaking of which, Haraldr isn't the most patient of men. Since he's doing you this huge boon with letting you go to Runde tonight, you probably shouldn't risk being late for his lunch."

He smirked at me, but I knew he was right. I was going to be late, and I couldn't risk that.

"Fine," I said, opening the door again. "But at some point we're going to talk about this."

"Believe me, I have no doubt you're never going to let it go," Loke said.

We stepped out of my front gate and into the street, one of two that crossed at the heart of the village not far north from my house. It was late morning and the bulk of the shops were a short walk south of my house, so the street outside my gate was usually bustling with people.

Today was no exception, but this time, the usual shoppers with baskets over their arms or bags over their shoulders were hugging close to the garden walls on either side of the cobblestoned road.

I soon saw why: a small phalanx of warriors was marching uphill towards the center of town. They were dressed for the weather in heavy tunics and woolen cloaks, but I could also see bows and quivers on their backs and swords and axes hanging from their belts.

I recognized a few of them. Raggi and Báfurr for sure, but also some of their friends I knew only by sight and not by name. I had seen them before at Aldís' mead hall at the western edge of town.

But they weren't heading that way now.

"Where are they off to?" I asked Loke once they were safely out of earshot. Raggi and Báfurr were close to having a certain grudging respect for me, but it was a delicate thing still. And their friends liked me less. By blood I was only half Villmarker, and on top of that I hadn't grown up here. They were never going to let me forget that.

"Patrol, probably," Loke said and started walking down the road. I jogged to catch up with him. Cold as it was, I couldn't blame him for keeping up a vigorous pace.

"What do you mean, 'patrol'?" I asked.

"They're filling in for the Thors," Loke said.

"I thought Nilda, Kara and Valki were doing that," I said.

"Those three are guarding the ancestral fire and the caves behind the waterfall, sure," he said with a nod. "But someone needs to watch the village's other boundaries. For bears or trolls. The Thors are ranging quite far out, you know."

"I know," I said, and couldn't help sounding particularly miserable about that as another pang stabbed my heart. "You asked me before whether I'd heard from Thorbjorn. Is there some way I could?"

"You don't have a spell for that?" he asked. He sounded like he was joking, but I was pretty sure he was asking in all earnestness. With Loke, everything tended to sound like he might be joking.

"No. At least, not yet," I said.

"Pity," he said, but for just a split second I saw a hint of that old mischievous gleam in his eye.

"You take messages from me to my Runde friends," I said slowly.

"I do," he admitted. "But they all have doors. Thorbjorn is just out there, wandering." I had no idea what having doors had to do with it. And, maddeningly, he said no more.

I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to a stop in the middle of the road. We were in the heart of the market district now, and several people had to quickly dodge around us, but I didn't care.

"Loke," I said warningly.

"Is there something you'd like to ask me?" he said, blinking innocently at me.

"You know there is," I said.

"Then say it, Ingrid Torfudottir."

"Can you get messages to Thorbjorn?" I asked.

"You could," he said, giving my shoulder a playful nudge.

"As I said, I don't know how," I said. "Do you?"

He sighed and was suddenly all seriousness again. "It's difficult. It has a cost. And a risk. But if the need is dire, I will do my best."

"So you can?" I said.

"Well, not for a love letter, I won't," he said. He was pretending to be offended. His moods shifted so quickly it was always a challenge to keep up. "You should run now before you're late."

"Yes," I said, glancing at my phone again. "But I'll see you tonight?"

"As best as I'm able," he said.

As cold as it was and as red as his ears were, he just stood there with his hands in his pockets, watching me as I jogged to get to Haraldr's house on time.

I looked back one last time before turning off the main road. He was still there, watching me. Then he waved a hand at me before turning and heading in the exact opposite direction than towards his house.

Where on Earth was he going?

Just the thought of that question made me shiver in a way that Loke in the freezing cold never had. Because it felt a little too on the nose.

Where in the entirety of the Earth, among all parts known to the modern world and hidden from it, was Loke going? And why?

One thing he had been right about. I wasn't going to rest until I knew.

But in the meantime, I had another rune to start mastering, and I really was going to be late.

I turned and sprinted the rest of the way to Haraldr's house.