Winter Lost

“My brother took the harp,” I said slowly, trying to work things out through the warning buzz in my head. “Then he dropped it off at the hot springs or hid it or somethinged it. But it makes the most sense if he left it with someone at the lodge. You wouldn’t just dump an artifact somewhere and leave it by itself.” I paused. “I wouldn’t, anyway. There is no end to the trouble a loose artifact can cause.”

“Somethinged it,” said Hrímnir, as if he enjoyed the word. “And then came to tell me he’d done it.”

I stopped grooming. Incredulously, I turned around.

“What in the name of little green apples did Gary do that for? I thought you caught him, or cornered him into telling you what he’d done. He just went up to you and said, ‘Hey, you know that harp…lyre…thingy? Yeah, I’m the one who took it’?”

“You know,” Hrímnir said ruminatively, “I should have waited for him to tell me why before I spelled him to shut him up. And to punish him.” He stared at me. “Because you are just like he described you. And you risked running into me in order to make sure the horses had food and water.”

“Maybe I came here to see if I could talk to you,” I said. “Because you’d been up here to take care of the horses yesterday.” I tapped my nose.

“Maybe,” he said. “But that’s how he described you, too. I would like to know what my brother did to make your brother befriend me, then steal my harp.”

I scoffed. “There is nothing that your brother could do to make Gary take your harp.” I was pretty sure about that.

“Ymir has money. More gold than Andrew Heddar.”

“If my brother were motivated by money,” I said dryly, “he wouldn’t be babysitting a ranch in the winter and breaking colts in the summers.”

Hrímnir grunted.

“Besides,” I said, “there is no world in which Ymir and my brother managed a civil conversation for longer than it took one of them to open his mouth.”

Hrímnir grunted again, this time in agreement, and went back to grooming. After a while, he stepped back, and then held out a hand for the brush I was using. “They’re clean enough.”

His hand touched mine when I gave him the brush. I think I expected to feel something—that his skin would be hot like the werewolves, or cold because he was a frost giant. I expected to feel the power of the storm. But it felt exactly like any other hand I’d ever touched.

“You still have no idea where the harp is?” he asked.

He sounded…odd. But not angry.

“No,” I said. “But if we are all going to die tomorrow if Adam and I don’t find it, I’d better get back.”

I walked to the horse pen’s gate, conscious that he wasn’t following me. I unhooked the chain.

“What happened to rip open your mind?”

The question was said in virtually the same tone as his previous query had been; it took me a moment to process what he’d said. Open gate in my hand, I turned to look back at him.

Before I could figure out what to say, he narrowed his eyes. “Not your mind. Your magic and your soul.”

That was more than I’d known about the damage. “I encountered an artifact called the Soul Taker,” I told him. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could fix this.” I tapped my head.

“I am not a healer.” He tipped his head. “The Soul Taker. Time was that the priests who held the Soul Taker could see inside the souls of men.”

I couldn’t help but grimace. “And women.”

“I met one once,” he said. “He gouged his own eyes out.”

Yep. I needed to get this fixed even if I had to ask Coyote. “Did that help?”

“I don’t remember,” Hrímnir said. “Where is the artifact?”

“Siebold Adelbertsmiter destroyed it,” I told him.

He drew in a breath. “It’s good that you destroyed it—or had Wayland Smith destroy it. As you said, stray artifacts do nothing but cause trouble.”

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“Go back to the hot springs and find that harp, Mercy Hauptman,” said Hrímnir, who was apparently done with the topic of me and my damage. “I cannot trespass there to help you, but I will give you such—” He stopped speaking for a moment as if searching for a word. I caught a flash of expression that I couldn’t interpret. “—aid as I might. There isn’t much time. You need to find out where the harp is and bring it to me. Then I can let the storm dissipate.” He paused, then said softly, “I will do anything in my power to help you find it.”

I nodded and left the pen. I shut the gate and stood for a minute. “If my brother took the artifact, it’s because he thought he was doing the right thing.”

Again, I couldn’t read the expression on Hrímnir’s face. Old creatures are good at hiding their emotions. “Possibly,” he said. “Doing the right thing doesn’t mean no one gets hurt.”

“Did he know about the wedding?” I asked. “I mean, it would be stupid of him to leave the harp there if he wanted to stop the wedding.”

“I didn’t tell him,” Hrímnir said. “I didn’t remember. It’s one of the ways I protected the Great Spell—no one remembers it until they need to. Only the couples who are the heart of the spell.”

“You don’t remember it?”