Chapter 455: The River and the Helmet

Adriana was awake when I came in.

She was sitting in the chair by the window with Roderic asleep against her shoulder, looking out at the lamps of the city. She had not been sleeping much since the basin. Neither had Evelyn. Neither had I.

Evelyn was asleep in the bed behind her. Curled on her side with one hand resting on her stomach.

Adriana looked up when I came through the door.

She saw my face.

“What's happened?” she said quietly.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, close enough to her chair that our knees almost touched, and I told her.

Bruni at the gate. Surtr in the ford. Alone. Asking to talk.

Varrick's officers in his camps. Eleven giants taken.

And then I told her what Thor had said.

Adriana did not say anything for a long time.

She sat with Roderic against her shoulder and looked out the window, and her face did not change.

Then she looked down at her son.

At his dark hair. At his small closed fist resting against her collarbone. At his face, which had his grandfather's frown in it, Mirelle said, even in sleep.

“He killed my father,” she said.

“Yes.”

“On the bridge. At Lyradon. I was fourteen.” Her voice was very steady. “Julian was a baby. Cassia was eleven. Mother carried Julian and pulled Cassia by the hand and I ran behind them with my father's sword because it was the only thing I could think to save.”

I did not say anything.

“I heard it,” Adriana said. “Behind us. When the bridge went. I didn't look back. Father told me not to.” She was quiet for a moment. “I've never once let myself think about what it sounded like.”

Roderic stirred against her shoulder.

He did not wake. He made a small sound and turned his face into her neck, and Adriana put her hand on his back and held him there.

“Why me?” she asked. “Why does Thor want me there?”

“Because she says you're the one with the right to decide.”

“Decide what?”

“Whether to stand in the river with him.”

Adriana looked at me.

“And if I decide not to?”

“Then you don't,” I said. “And nobody will think less of you. Thor least of all.”

Adriana looked back out the window.

“And if I decide to?”

I did not answer.

I did not know.

Evelyn spoke from the bed behind us.

I had not known she was awake.

“Your father's helmet,” she said quietly.

Adriana turned.

Evelyn had not sat up. She lay on her side with her eyes open, looking at Adriana in the dark.

“Julian has it,” Evelyn said. “He's had it since the rescue. Since the serpent's road.” She paused. “It carries Surtr's old beacon. Stripped. Mostly. And something else. Your father looking back.”

Adriana's face changed.

“The enchantment,” she said slowly.

“It remembers him,” Evelyn said. “Julian told me. The last thing your father did. He looked back. At the road where you'd gone.”

Adriana did not answer.

“If you go,” Evelyn said, “take it.”

“Why?”

Evelyn sat up slowly.

She looked at Adriana for a long moment.

“Because Surtr will recognize it,” she said. “And because you shouldn't have to stand in that river with nothing of your father's in your hands.”

Julian was in the workshop.

Of course he was. He had been sleeping there since the basin, on a cot Garrick Valewood had set up beside the lathe, because he said the smell of sawdust helped him think. He was fifteen now. Taller than his mother. Taller than Cassia. He had his father's long jaw and his father's way of standing very still when he was angry.

He was standing very still when Adriana told him.

He did not say anything.

He went to the shelf at the back of the workshop where he kept his father's helmet, wrapped in a cloth Mirelle had embroidered with the arms of Lyradon. He took it down. He held it in both hands.

He looked at his sister.

“I'm coming,” he said.

“Julian—”

“I'm coming,” Julian said again. “He's my father too.” His hands tightened on the cloth. “I was a baby. I don't remember him. I only remember this.” He looked down at the helmet. “If somebody's going to stand in front of Surtr holding it, it should be me.”

Adriana looked at him for a long moment.

Then she held out her hand.

Not for the helmet.

For him.

Julian took it.

Mirelle came to the stables at dawn.

Nobody had told her. She simply appeared in the stable yard in her traveling cloak with her hair pinned back and her face very pale, and she looked at her two children standing beside their horses, and at Thor, and at me.

“You're going to the ford,” she said.

“Yes,” Adriana said.

“To talk to him.”

“Yes.”

Mirelle looked at Julian. At the bundle in his arms. The embroidered cloth.

She went very still.

“That's your father's,” she said.

“Yes,” Julian said.

Mirelle did not say anything for a long time.

Then she walked across the stable yard to her son and put her hand on the cloth. Over the helmet. She held it there.

“He looked back,” she said quietly. “At the end. On the bridge. I've always known that. I didn't need the enchantment to tell me.” She looked up at Julian. “He looked back at us. At the road. And then he turned around and faced Surtr.”

“I know,” Julian said.

“He told me to go,” Mirelle said. “He told me not to look back. I didn't.” Her voice cracked. “I've regretted it every day for fifteen years.”

She let go of the helmet.

She stepped back.

“Go,” she said. “Both of you. And if he says anything about your father—”

She stopped.

She could not finish.

Adriana crossed the stable yard and put her arms around her mother and held on.

We rode to the ford.

Thor. Adriana. Julian, with the helmet wrapped in its cloth across his saddle. Bruni, walking beside the horses.

Me.

Nobody else.

Thor had been very clear about that.

“Not an army,” she said. “Not gods. Not a threat.” She looked at Adriana. “Just the people who have a reason to be there.”

“And you?” I asked.

Thor was quiet.

“I've fought him more times than I can count,” she said. “In more worlds than this one. I've never once talked to him.” She looked east, toward the river. “That's a reason.”

Lexander's camp was quiet.

He met us at the edge of it. He looked at Adriana and Julian, and at the bundle on Julian's saddle, and his face changed.

He did not say anything.

He walked with us down to the edge of the rise, where the ground fell away toward the ford.

And there, in the middle of the river, in the gray dawn light, stood Surtr.

He was not burning.

That was the first thing I noticed. Every time I had seen him before, he had been made of fire. Molten. Shaped like a man but made of the heat that lives at the center of the earth.

He was not burning now.

He stood waist-deep in the black water of the ford, and the water around him steamed, but faintly. His body was dark. Not black. Dark the way cooled iron is dark, with red glowing faintly in the cracks.

He was very tall. Taller than Bruni. Taller than Skarn. His shoulders were broad and his arms hung at his sides and his face, if it could be called a face, was turned toward the near bank.

Toward us.

He did not move.

Thor dismounted at the top of the rise.

She did not draw Mjölnir. She left it on her shoulder.

She walked down the rise alone, to the edge of the water, and stopped.

Surtr looked at her.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Then Thor stepped into the river.

The water came to her knees. Her thighs. Her waist.

She stopped ten paces from Surtr.

They looked at each other.

The goddess of thunder and the lord of fire, standing in a river at dawn, with the steam rising off the water between them.

“You asked for me,” Thor said.

Surtr's voice, when it came, was low and deep and rough. Like stone grinding in a furnace. I had heard it once before, in the burned forest, when he did not speak and only looked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

Surtr did not answer at once.

“Because you stepped over the serpent's head,” he said finally. “And stood between him and the riders.” A pause. “I've known you a very long time, daughter of Odin. I never once thought you'd do that.”

“Neither did I,” Thor said.

Surtr looked past her.

Up the rise. At the people standing there.

At Bruni. At Lexander. At me.

At Adriana and Julian, side by side, with the bundle in Julian's arms.

His dark face went very still.

“You brought them,” he said.

Thor did not turn around.

“They brought themselves,” she said. “I told them they had the right.”

Surtr was silent for a long time.

“They do,” he said.

Adriana dismounted.

She did not look at me. She did not look at Thor.

She took Julian's hand.

And the two of them walked down the rise together, to the edge of the water, and stopped.

Adriana looked at Surtr.

Surtr looked back.

“I know who you are,” he said.

“I know who you are,” Adriana said.

“Roderic's daughter.”

“Yes.”

Surtr's eyes moved to Julian.

To the bundle in his arms. The embroidered cloth. The arms of Lyradon.

“And his son,” Surtr said.

“Yes,” Julian said.

His voice did not shake.

Julian unwrapped the helmet.

He did it slowly. Carefully. The way he did everything in the workshop. He folded the cloth over his arm and held the helmet up in both hands, so that the dawn light fell on it.

Steel. Dented. Scorched along one side. The arms of Lyradon worn nearly smooth on the brow.

And across the crown of it, very faint, a black line. Surtr's old beacon. Stripped. Mostly.

Surtr stared at it.

The red glow in the cracks of his body flared.

Then dimmed.

“That's his,” Surtr said.

“Yes,” Julian said.

“From the bridge.”

“Yes.”

Surtr did not say anything for a very long time.

“I'm going to tell you how he died,” Surtr said finally.

Adriana went very still.

“I'm not going to ask your forgiveness,” Surtr said. “I'm not going to tell you I regret it. I don't know if I do.” His voice was rough. “But I was there. And you weren't. And you should know.”

Adriana did not answer.

Julian's hands had tightened on the helmet.

“He held the bridge,” Surtr said. “Alone. After his soldiers fell. He held it with a sword and that helmet and nothing else.” He looked at the helmet. “I've fought gods who couldn't hold a bridge as long as he held that one.”

Nobody moved.

“He knew he couldn't win,” Surtr said. “He knew it from the moment I stepped onto the bridge. I saw it in his face.” A pause. “But he held anyway. Long enough for the road behind him to empty.”

Adriana's breath caught.

“And then,” Surtr said, “just before the end, he looked back.”

The river ran cold and fast around Thor's waist.

The steam rose off the water between them.

“I've burned a great many people,” Surtr said. “Kings. Gods. Cities. I don't remember most of their faces.” He looked at the helmet. “I remember his.”

“Why?” Adriana whispered.

Surtr looked at her.

“Because he wasn't looking at me,” he said. “At the end. He wasn't looking at the fire. He wasn't looking at the sword in his hand or the bridge under his feet.” His voice dropped. “He was looking at the road. Where you'd gone. As if he could see you. As if he wanted to be certain you'd made it.”

Adriana's face crumpled.

She did not make a sound.

“And then he turned around,” Surtr said. “And faced me. And he was smiling.”

Julian was crying.

Silently. His face very still. Tears running down his cheeks and dripping onto the steel of his father's helmet.

He did not lower it.

“Why are you telling us this?” he asked.

His voice cracked on the last word.

Surtr looked at him.

“Because you should know he was smiling,” Surtr said. “Because he knew you'd made it.” He paused. “And because I've thought about that smile every day since. Every forest I burned. Every road. Every shelter.” He looked down at the water steaming around him. “I wanted to burn everything that could make someone smile like that at the end.”

Adriana stepped into the river.

I had not seen her move. One moment she was standing on the bank beside Julian. The next she was in the water, wading forward, the cold black current pulling at her skirts.

She stopped beside Thor.

Ten paces from Surtr.

She looked up at him.

“You burned my father,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You burned Lyradon. Our home. Our people. Everything.”

“Yes.”

“You burned a forest for six years so nothing would ever grow there again.”

“Yes.”

Adriana's hands were shaking.

Silver light rose around them. Faint. Then brighter. The light I had seen the day her power first woke. The defended wall. The refusal.

“I don't forgive you,” she said.

Surtr did not move.

“I know,” he said.

“I'm never going to forgive you.”

“I know.”

Adriana stared at him.

The silver light around her hands grew brighter. Brighter. Until it lit the steam rising off the river and turned it to silver mist.

“Then why are you here?” she said.

Surtr was quiet for a long time.

“Because something came to my camps yesterday,” he said finally. “Something I've known for a very long time.” He looked at Thor. “Gray coats. Silver at the throat. Rods and nets.” His voice went cold. “Hunting giants.”

“Varrick,” Thor said.

Surtr went very still.

“You know his name.”

“He told it to us,” Thor said. “In the basin. Before he killed Ansel.”

Surtr's red glow flared.

Then went dim.

“So he's taken the door-builder,” he said. “Finally.”

“You knew?” I said from the bank.

Surtr looked up at me.

“I've known him,” he said, “since before the door-builder had a name. Since before your castle had a king. Since before the old woman's house had a lamp in the window.” His dark face was unreadable. “He came to me first.”

Nobody spoke.

“A thousand years ago,” Surtr said. “More. When I was still burning in the south, in the place where fire is born.” He looked down at his own hands. “A voice. In the dark. Very kind. Very patient. Telling me that everything that grows will die. That everything that's free will be kept. That the only thing worth doing is burning it first, so nobody else can have it.”

Thor had gone very still.

“I listened,” Surtr said. “For a while. Longer than I should have.” His voice was rough. “Then one night I understood what he wanted. He wanted me to burn everything so that everyone would come to him. Every soul. Every god. Every death.” He looked up at Thor. “He wanted me to be his fire. The way he wanted the door-builder to be his doors.”

“And you refused,” Thor said slowly.

“I burned him,” Surtr said.

The river went very quiet.

“I turned around,” Surtr said, “and found him in the dark where he was whispering, and I burned him. Not to death. He can't die. He is death.” A pause. “But I burned him so badly he couldn't come near me for a thousand years.”

He looked at me.

“That's why he went to the door-builder instead,” Surtr said. “That's why he went to Ansel. Because I wouldn't let him in.”

“Then why did you work with Ansel?” I asked. “The houses. The serpent. The bargain.”

Surtr looked at me for a long moment.

“Because I wanted to be the one who burned,” he said. “Not because he told me to. Because I chose it.” His voice was very low. “I wanted to prove I didn't need his whispers to do what I'd always done.” He paused. “And Ansel was useful. And I didn't know, until the end, that Varrick was standing behind him.”

“When did you know?”

“When the forest budded,” Surtr said.

He looked down at the water.

“I've burned forests for a thousand years,” he said. “Every one of them stayed burned. Ash stays ash. That's what I am.” His voice was very strange. “And then your storm king put his hand on six years of ash and the roots woke up. And I stood there with buds coming up around my feet.” He shook his head slowly. “And I felt it. The cold. Behind me. In the officers' camp. Watching.”

“Varrick,” Thor said.

“Varrick,” Surtr agreed. “He doesn't like things that grow. He doesn't like fire, because it's free. He doesn't like roads, because they go both ways.” He looked at Adriana. “And he doesn't like walls that refuse to let anyone in.”

Adriana had gone very still.

The silver light around her hands was still burning. Bright. Steady.

She looked down at it.

“My power,” she said slowly.

Surtr looked at her.

“You hold a wall,” he said. “Around a city. Around people who chose to enter it.” His voice was very low. “You refuse.”

“Yes.”

“Captivity is a wall that keeps people in,” Surtr said. “Yours keeps him out.” He paused. “I've watched him for a thousand years. I've never seen anything he hates more.”

Adriana stared at him.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Surtr looked at her for a long time.

“Because your father held a bridge,” he said. “Long enough for you to get out.” He looked at the helmet in Julian's arms. “Because he was smiling at the end.”

A pause.

“Because if anyone in this world can refuse Varrick,” Surtr said, “it's the daughter of the man who looked back.”

The river was silent.

Adriana stood waist-deep in the cold black water with the silver light burning around her hands and her face wet.

She did not move.

Neither did Surtr.

Then Julian stepped into the river.

He walked out slowly, holding his father's helmet in both hands, until he stood beside his sister.

He looked up at Surtr.

“What do you want?” he asked. “You said you weren't asking for help.”

Surtr looked down at him.

At the helmet.

At the dents and the scorch marks and the black line across the crown.

“The giants,” he said. “The ones who crossed. The ones who stood in rivers. The ones your storm king gave walls to hold.” He looked at Thor. “Varrick took eleven of mine yesterday. He'll take more. He'll take every giant who ever refused me, because they refused me, because that means they can refuse him.”

“And?”

“And I can't hold them,” Surtr said. “Not all of them. Not from him.” His red glow dimmed. “The ones who crossed. Keep them. Behind her wall.” He nodded at Adriana. “Don't send them back to me. Don't let him find them.”

“That's all?” Julian asked.

Surtr looked at him.

“That's all,” he said.

“Not a truce?”

“No.”

“Not an alliance?”

“No,” Surtr said. “I burned your father. I won't ask you to stand beside me.” He looked down at the water. “I'm asking you to keep my giants. That's all.”

Adriana did not answer for a long time.

The silver light around her hands had dimmed. Not gone. Settled.

She looked up at Surtr.

“I won't forgive you,” she said again.

“I know.”

“I won't stand beside you. I won't fight beside you. I won't sit at a table with you.”

“I know.”

Adriana drew a breath.

“But the giants didn't burn my father,” she said. “You did.” She looked at the silver light around her hands. “My wall doesn't refuse them. It never has.”

She looked back up at Surtr.

“They can stay,” she said. “As long as they want. Behind my wall.”

Surtr did not move.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don't thank me,” Adriana said. “I'm not doing it for you.”

“I know,” Surtr said. “That's why I'm thanking you.”

He turned to go.

He had taken two steps back toward the far bank when Julian spoke.

“Wait.”

Surtr stopped.

Julian was standing in the river with the helmet in his hands. He was looking down at it. At the black line across the crown. Surtr's old beacon. The thing that had once let Surtr find whoever wore it.

“This,” Julian said. “Your beacon. It's still in here. Faintly.”

Surtr did not turn around.

“Yes.”

“If Varrick tries to take a giant,” Julian said slowly, “and I'm wearing this. Could you find me?”

Surtr turned.

He looked down at the boy standing in the river with his father's helmet.

He did not answer for a long time.

“Yes,” he said finally.

Julian looked up at him.

“Then I'll wear it,” he said. “When the giants work on the walls. When they're in the fields. When they're anywhere outside the city.” His voice was very steady. “And if Varrick comes for them, you'll know.”

Adriana was staring at him.

“Julian—”

“He looked back,” Julian said. He did not look at his sister. He was looking at Surtr. “At the road. To make sure we'd made it.” His hands tightened on the helmet. “I'm going to look back too. At the giants. To make sure they make it.”

Surtr stood in the river for a long time.

The steam rose around him. The red glow in the cracks of his body flickered.

Then, slowly, he bowed his head.

It was not much. A slight inclination. The way a mountain might bow, if a mountain could bow.

But it was a bow.

“Roderic's son,” he said.

Then he turned and walked back across the ford to the far bank, and climbed out of the water, and disappeared into the trees of the burned forest without looking back.

Where he walked, the buds on the burned stumps did not wither.

Adriana did not move for a long time.

She stood in the river with the cold water pulling at her skirts, and the silver light settled around her hands, and she stared at the place where Surtr had disappeared.

Julian stood beside her with the helmet.

Thor stood on her other side.

Nobody spoke.

Then Adriana turned around and waded back to the bank.

She walked past me without looking at me. She walked up the rise to where her horse was standing and put both hands on the saddle and bowed her head against it.

Her shoulders were shaking.

I went to her.

I did not say anything.

I put my arms around her from behind and held on.

She did not turn around. She only leaned back against me, and let me hold her, and cried.

Julian came up the rise a few minutes later.

He had put the helmet back in its embroidered cloth. He held it against his chest.

He stood beside his sister and did not say anything either.

After a while, Adriana reached out without looking and took his hand.

“You were very brave,” she said, her voice thick.

“So were you.”

“I didn't forgive him.”

“I know,” Julian said. “You didn't have to.” He looked down at the helmet. “But you let the giants stay.”

Adriana was quiet.

“Father would have done that,” Julian said. “Mother says. He'd have let them stay.” He looked at her. “He'd have hated it. But he'd have let them.”

Adriana laughed. It came out wet and broken.

“He would have hated it,” she agreed.

We rode back to Greykeep in the afternoon.

Thor did not speak the whole way. She rode at the front with Mjölnir on her shoulder, looking straight ahead.

At the eastern gate, she stopped.

She looked out at the field where Jörmungandr lay coiled in the frost with his head on the road.

Then she looked at me.

“A thousand years,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“He burned Varrick a thousand years ago. Before Ansel. Before the old woman's house.” She shook her head. “And I've spent that whole time getting ready to fight him at the end of the world.”

“And now?”

Thor was quiet for a long time.

“Now I think,” she said, “I was getting ready for the wrong fight.”

Mirelle was waiting in the courtyard.

She saw Julian first. The helmet in his arms. His face, still red around the eyes.

She saw Adriana.

She did not ask.

She crossed the courtyard and put her arms around both of them at once and held on, and Adriana put her face against her mother's shoulder, and Julian stood very still with the helmet between them.

“He was smiling,” Adriana said into her mother's shoulder.

Mirelle went still.

“At the end,” Adriana said. “On the bridge. He looked back at the road. And then he turned around. And he was smiling.”

Mirelle did not say anything.

She only held them tighter.

And somewhere in the castle, in the lower corridor beneath the infirmary, a small bell lay silent at the base of a door that did not open, and a stone lantern burned beside it, and a boy named Callan sat on a stool with his hands in his lap and watched.

Evelyn found Adriana in the nursery that night.

I was there. I had been there since supper, sitting in the chair by the window with Roderic asleep in my arms while Adriana slept on the bed. She had fallen asleep the moment she lay down.

Evelyn sat on the edge of the bed beside her.

Adriana opened her eyes.

“He said my wall refuses him,” she said quietly. “Varrick. Surtr said it's the thing he hates most.”

“I heard,” Evelyn said. “Thor told me.”

Adriana sat up slowly.

She held out her hand.

Silver light rose around her fingers. Faint. Then brighter.

She looked at it for a long time.

“I always thought it was just a wall,” she said. “A defense. Something to keep people safe.” She turned her hand over. “I never thought it could be anything else.”

“What else could it be?” Evelyn asked.

Adriana looked at her.

Then at me. At Roderic in my arms.

At the window, and the lamps beyond it, and the long dark road running north toward a basin where the god of captivity and death was waiting.

“A refusal,” she said slowly. “Not of people. Of being kept.”

She closed her hand.

The silver light did not go out.

It stayed, glowing faintly between her fingers, like a lamp in a window that someone has decided will not be extinguished.

“I don't know how to use it yet,” Adriana said. “Not against him.”

“You'll learn,” Evelyn said.

“How?”

Evelyn smiled.

She put her hand on her stomach.

“The same way the rest of us are,” she said. “One knock at a time.”