Free Descendant by Lesley Livingston Page B

sad smile almost made up for the fact that her hand, where it lay along Mason’scheek, was ice-cold.
    “But,” she said, “here we are.”
    She turned and led Mason around a last sharp bend of the cavern path that led to where an arching hole in the mountain opened up onto a wide rock shelf. Hel gestured Mason forward and she stepped through into the open air and marveled at the vista that spread before her. It was the most breathtaking landscape she had ever seen. In the far distance, a range of high, sharp-peaked mountains rose, purple in the fading light of what seemed to Mason like late afternoon, although she couldn’t see the sun and didn’t know exactly where the light was coming from. Snowcaps shimmered silvery white on top while below, situated at the center of a lush green vale several miles wide, the golden roofs of a cluster of buildings surrounded by a high, palisaded wall sparked blinding fire. The largest structure of all was a huge, long hall, with a roof tiled with what looked like thousands of gold and silver scales—warriors’ shields—and its gables curved upward like the fore and aft of a great dragon-prowed ship. Mason knew, instinctively, what this place was. Asgard.
    Valhalla.
    Home . . .
    She shook her head to dispel the subtle voice that whispered that last word inside her head. It had sounded a little bit like Loki, but she knew that it had to be just her imagination playing tricks on her.
    The cave they had just come out of was a little ways up one of the lesser mountains that ringed the valley plain. Mason took another step forward so she could better take in the view. She walked to the very edge of a steep descending staircase cut into the side of the mountain and peered over a rocky outcropping to look straight down. Directly below where she stood, she could see the green plain that stretched out toward the Asgardian halls. . . . At least, Mason imagined it would be a green plain, when it wasn’t covered in fighting men and blood and body parts.
    “I thought you said I wouldn’t have to fight anyone!” she said, drawing back from the edge of the rock shelf, horrified. There were so many men fighting, and it wasn’t just on one front. The fighting actually completely encircled the cluster of buildings that was their destination. They didn’t have a hope of reaching it . . .
    Beside her, Mason heard her mother laugh for the firsttime.
    “What?”
    “Those are Odin’s Einherjar. The Lone Warriors.”
    “None of those guys is alone ,” Mason said. “There are a bazillion of them. And they are what’s standing between us and the hall.” She couldn’t even tell if there were two sides to the battle. It just seemed to her that, once a warrior had dispatched the man in front of him, he just turned to the next nearest and repeated the process. Friend and foe seemed utterly indistinguishable to her. It was chaos.
    “They will not lift a hand against you,” her mother said, and started forth. “You must trust me.”
    Mason didn’t, but she didn’t say so out loud. She was admittedly running out of options. As her mother began their descent down the steeply sloping path that led down to the battlefield and Asgard beyond, Mason fell in beside her.
    “Why are they fighting?” she asked as they got closer and closer to the edge of the terrible melee.
    Her mother answered, “Because they are fighters. It is simply what they do. They are Odin’s personal war band, chosen in ages past by his Valkyries to die glorious deaths and join him here to await the ending of days. Ragnarok.”
    “Right. The thing we’re all trying to avoid have happen by maintaining the status quo. Get me out of here, keep Loki bound and snaked . . . And hey, I’m all for the world not ending. It just makes me wonder”—she waved a hand at the Einherjar—“what’s in it for these guys if it doesn’t?”
    “This is the honored Viking’s promised reward. A glorious death, followed by endless