Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) Read Online Free PDF

valas of Ysland had used the rinegold to save the injured and sick, to find long-lost treasures, to guide ships through the Sea of Ice, and to battle the hideous beasts that survived Woden’s war with the demons of Ysland. But most of all, they used the rinegold rings to speak to the souls of long-dead valas, to unlock the secrets of their ancient seidr-sisters.
    And now a sliver of that rinegold was touching Katja’s sweaty brow.
    Gudrun sat hunched and shrunken, folded in upon herself under a heavy wool blanket so that only her wrinkled face and desiccated fingers could be seen. The vala muttered, her dim and hazy eyes pointed across the room at the wall, seeing nothing. Her fingers closed, clutching Katja’s head, and Freya jerked forward but Wren held her back saying, “Wait.”
    The crone’s head tilted back, the wool blanket slipping off her spotted head to her shoulders. Gudrun gasped, shivered, and convulsed forward. Wren grabbed the old woman’s chest and arm, trying to hold her upright, but the vala shoved off her apprentice. Gudrun wailed a horrid wordless cry, her head back, her jaw stretched wide, and her shriveled pink tongue flicking between her naked pink gums.
    “Immortality!” The vala cackled, and then slammed her thin gums shut on the tip of her tongue. A tiny mote of pink flesh tumbled from between her pale lips, and a trickle of dark blood spilled over her chin.
    Wren gasped. “No!”
    Gudrun flashed a bloody grin at them and then smashed her head down onto Katja’s face. Wren shoved the old woman back and saw Gudrun’s head lolling on her limp neck, her face gray, her skin cold to the touch. Freya stared down at her sister’s face and watched as the smear of Gudrun’s dark blood crept across Freya’s skin and vanished into the rinegold ring on the vala’s finger.
    Freya grabbed the crone’s arm and held up the crooked fingers to stare at the ring. “What the hell just happened? Is Gudrun dead? Did she just kill herself?”

Chapter 4. Frogs
    With shaking hands, Wren took the dead vala’s arm from Freya and slipped the ring off Gudrun’s knobby finger and placed it on her own right hand. The apprentice’s face twisted and glared, and for a moment Freya thought the girl was going to vomit on the floor. But then she swallowed and sat up straight, and looked the huntress in the eye. “It’s all right.”
    “What is?”
    “Gudrun gave her soul to the ring, passing on her knowledge just all the valas of Denveller have done for generations.” Wren licked her pale lips. “It shouldn’t have happened until I was ready to take over. Not for years yet. I don’t know exactly what to do with it. It feels…”
    Freya laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Worry about how it feels later. Did all that wailing and bleeding do anything to help my sister?”
    Wren shook her head. “No. But I know why Gudrun did it.” She held up the ring. “I can hear her voice in my head. I can even see her face, just a little, over there in the corner of the room. She looks a bit dark and dim, like a reflection in the water. She says she killed herself like this because she knew she couldn’t leave this tower, and because she wants me to go with you.”
    “To help Katja?”
    Wren nodded. “To cure the reaver plague.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know yet.” Wren went to the body of her mistress and arranged the old vala in a more restful pose on the floor with her eyes closed and the blood on her chin wiped clean. “We have to find Skadi first. She has the rinegold ring of Hengavik, and she’ll probably know more about reavers than any other vala in Ysland.”
    “Fine.” Freya shoved her hands under her sister’s arms. “Help me.”
    Together they wrestled the feverish woman to the window and lowered her on the knotted rope into Erik’s waiting arms. Freya helped her husband to settle her sister on Arfast’s back while Wren lingered in the tower, but eventually the girl in black came down