“That malevolent black energy, and the four dragon-wights who assailed us from those tombs.” Bjorn growls as he lifts his eyebrows at me,then scowls. “They got away when we blasted out the roof of the cathedral with our power, trying to survive.”
“Now Emil and Litha are gloating because the Five are back in the world again, giving the Black Dragon more power.” Ström frowns as he thinks it through with us. “The last time we saw the beast in Copenhagen, it seemed stronger, more fleshed-out… but still truly a Frankenstein monster, disoriented. Not something that could devastate the world, yet.”
“Perhaps the souls of the Five have not completely returned to it.” Mikkel chimes in now, his face grim but with a spark of ruthless eagerness in his black eyes. “If they haven’t, it wouldn’t be up to its fullest power yet. Which would still give us a chance to bring it down.”
“If we had the right tactic.” Bjorn looks at Baldur. “You say you found something that might help us?”
“The Five are the key.” Baldur nods at Bjorn, then looks at me again. “Preventing the Five from fully returning to the creature is everything—because in them lay the ability for the beast to truly access all the souls it has stolen.”
“All the souls?” I ask now, sharpening on Baldur’s words. “Are we talking, like,allthe souls it has ever stolen, even from five thousand years ago?”
“Yes.” Baldur nods, his gaze dark, but with a glimmer of hope. “Right now, if the Five have not fully returned to the beast yet, then they are only tethered to it via the five rings Hedda created. Thus, the Black Dragon only has access to the first stage of its creation, rather than the second, where it gets complete access to all the souls it has ever usurped, plus the Five themselves.”
“Emil had one of those rings.” Lærke is intense as she glances at me. “That black gold ring he always wore, which he boasted about in the Jarl’s hall. I saw it on his finger ever since we were younglings, but only thought it was some arcane family heirloom. Now we know.”
“He said it was an original,” I recall, as I glance down at my ring nowfrom Maryse, “and that mine was some sort of sad copy, lesser in its power. I thought my ring came from my Ancestor Hedda, though?”
“Maybe it’s something else...” Ström says now as he moves in. As he takes up my hand, he examines my silver ring, though it looks just the same as it always does. “No curses upon it.” He shakes his head. “No sigil-work, nothing of note. Just a pretty ring… with power we don’t seem to understand. Though it resonated with Aesa’s Truthstone when we got here, to open the door to this place. Do you think it might have been Aesa’s, rather than Hedda’s?”
“Could be,” I say now, as I ponder my ring. “But all the times I’ve spoken to Aesa in the Void, she never mentioned it, though it’s been on my finger the entire time.”
“Maybe it just wasn’t the most important thing she needed to convey whenever you two spoke.” Baldur is thoughtful as he gazes at my ring as well. He looks at my Truthstone now, visible at the open collar of my leathers, then reaches out, touching it. It vibrates beneath his fingertips, swirling a vivid white, then flaring red with runes.
“Aesa bound her soul into this,” Baldur is quiet now, as I feel him go faraway to the Void. “Or part of it. I believe that’s why her soul was not taken into the Black Dragon when it killed her, though all the rest who battled against it at the time were. Because some part of her was tethered to this object. And still is.”
“Her power is waning, even in the Truthstone,” I feel how little of Aesa’s support I have left now, after all the magical insanity we’ve been through. “What happens when she donates the last of her support to us from the Void? What will happen to her soul?”
“I don’t know.” Baldur shakes his head, sorrowful. “What happens to souls that dissipate in the Void is beyond my training, Rikyava. She gave you a very great gift, however, giving you this part of herself, then pouring as much power as she could into it from the Void. Aesa has given her everlasting soul to stop her sister’s last creation. We should not waste it.”
“So what do we do to prevent the Black Dragon Five from fully returning to the beast?” I ask now, ready to hear what Baldur’s got.
“Just like our Ancestors did, when the Black Dragon was finally stopped and defeated… we trap them.” Baldur watches me, intense. “What Hedda did was genius and madness, to use binding-runes the way she did, and create the creature. But when something has been bound once, it can be done again. The souls of the Five can be bound away from the Usurper, just like they were bound into it, by a process Aesa managed when making her Truthstone—an ancient runic binding ritual to create aSoulstone.”
“What is a Soulstone?” I ask as my eyebrows rise, having never heard of such a thing, even from Maryse.
“Ever seen Harry Potter?” Baldur’s smile is wry as he elaborates. “What they call a Horcrux, our ancient Ancestors call a Soulstone. They exist; or did. I did not have that kind of training, however, those arts lost long even before my sister’s time.”
“Then how can you possibly create one, if those arts have been lost?” Bjorn grumps, as he gestures at Baldur.
“What Hedda created in the Black Dragon is essentially one massive Soulstone,” Baldur says with an intrigued gleam in his eyes now, as he looks at Bjorn, then me. “Mad, yes. Insane—absolutely, what she did on such a massive scale, to entrap countless souls inside one object. The process is the same, however. I believe, if I study her scrolls further, they will give me the key to undoing the beast: the ability to create a Soulstone that can entrap the souls of Hedda and her four mate-wights away from returning to the Black Dragon. And contain them, separate from the creature, so they cannot ever return to it. Then destroying the stone so they never will. Releasing the Five back to the true Void at last.”
As we all stare at Baldur, I feel a vast shock flow through us, then a glimmer of hope. Even as that hope flickers inside me, though, I see the look on Baldur’s face.
Rapt, he’s staring back up at the scroll displayed upon the silvermirror-stone. That look is so enmeshed, so besotted and entranced, it’s almost like the look an addict has when they’re about to get their next dose.
It’s far from good, as I feel the deepest, darkest part of him rise, flooding through me with his eagerness to work on and discover these ancient magics.
Before Baldur shuts me out—slamming the door on our metaphysical connection again so hard it leaves a violent ringing in my ears.
It’s then that I realize just what the darkness that drives Baldur is—and why he’s hiding it so very hard from the rest of us. As a deep intuition roars through me, accompanied by agreement flaring through Aesa’s Truthstone upon my chest, I know what the monkey on his back is.
It’s addiction, as I see him quickly banish that enraptured look on his face. I know what I saw, though, and what I felt, as I understand now that somehow, Baldur is addicted to using runic Void-magic.
The temptation to create something utterly lethal like this, to entrap someone’s soul away from them, is just too much for an addict like him to resist. I see it now, as he glances at me with shock and guilt in his blue eyes, that I’ve found him out.
His eyes shy away, because he can’t hold my gaze; shame fills him, before he locks our Bloodbond down so hard it’s like a white wall of ice has slammed up in front of me, ten miles high.
“Everyone, out,” I command quietly, as I feel what’s really going on here. “I need to talk to you. Alone.” I turn to Baldur now, as I get ready to address this, at last.
