“Let me see what the Norn will for you.” She turned towards her cave and entered without waiting to see if he followed. Her cave was more of a tunnel, really. To one side she had a small altar to Freya, and on this sat her bowls of herbs. “Come closer,” she beckoned, picking up an empty vessel that she began to fill with a pinch from one bowl, a handful from another. “Start a fire, the wood is in the corner.”
She turned back to her work, mixing the items in her bowl to a fine powder. When the fire was going in its brazier she turned back to him. She sprinkled the powder she had been grinding over the flames and they took on an eerie green color as sweet, heady smoke filled the cavern. She inhaled deeply, accepting the smoke into her lungs and opening her mind to the will of the gods. She stared at the shapes in the flames for a moment, her eyes glowing. She began speaking, but the voice he heard was not her usual dulcet tone.
“Valdis is not to be yours Geri, called the Crow by your master. For you no woman is ever destined to stoop so low as to accept you as her master. For you we only see a knife in the dark.”
It sounded as if more than one voice echoed but they were alone in this cave.
“No Valkyrie will come to collect you to Valhalla. Your death will not be an honorable one in battle, but instead a pitiful whimpering in the dark as your master’s machinations fall to pieces at his feet.”
The flames grew higher, fanned by unseen bellows. They leapt into the air and he thought he was beginning to see figures in the flames.
“Heed our warning Geri, called the Crow by your master,” she continued in that ominous multi voice. “If your master continues along this path of folly, your only reward will be a knife in the belly at the hands of his enemies, and he will perish soon after at the feet of she who he pursues.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the ground next to the brazier. Geri looked at her in horror and confusion for a moment before he fled the cave.
Misha B 