The Lost Sun Read Online Free

though I stretch roots connecting my soles to the earth. I’m between earth and sky, in a fluid dance of battle melding all things into one. I am in control. I am warm and calm, not feverish. I am Soren Bearskin.
    Five repetitions later and I’m moving carefully through a serpent routine, my eyes closed and the spear horizontal to the earth. All I’m aware of is the air moving in and out of my lungs, the next step, and the smooth but rapid beat of my heart.
    I feel her coming through the strands of wind.
    I stop, and the earth and sky whirl without me until I suckin a deep breath and push the energy down through my feet, my roots, and back into the dusty arena floor. I open my eyes.
    Astrid watches me from the fence. The wind ruffles the hem of her skirt. She should be freezing, but this is what she’s worn both times I’ve seen her out of uniform: flimsy dress and thin sweater, with that circle of black pearls around her neck. As though she exists in a world that’s always summer.
    “Astrid,” I say, not moving from the center of the combat arena.
    Again she doesn’t bother with small talk, or even with complaining that I left her room so suddenly two nights ago. Leaning her arms on the top rail of the fence, she just says, “Every year on Baldur’s Night, I try to find my mother.”
    I don’t know what to say. Her mother is dead.
    “I chew corrberries and breathe yew smoke, Soren, and I dance a seething dance to search for her. For anything that will help me find her.” Astrid’s voice is smooth and unconcerned, but there’s something in the tension of her fingers where she grips the fence. This feels like a challenge. Like she’s daring me to say it. But, Astrid, your mother is dead .
    She lifts her hands, palms up, as if releasing some invisible balloon into the sky. “But every year I only see apples.”
    I frown. There isn’t a single reason I can come up with for her to tell me this. “Apples?”
    “Apples!” she laughs. The edge of her smile catches me, and I put down my spear. I walk to the fence and rest my hands on the gatepost near hers. Elf-kisses trail around her wrists: she’scold; she just doesn’t care. “I was thinking, though.” She tilts her head up, and the laughter falls away. I wait, still unsure what she wants from me. The fever sleeps in my chest, but restlessly.
    “Maybe …,” she continues, lowering her eyes. She begins to reach for my hand, but doesn’t. When she looks back up at me, she’s determined. “Maybe you can help me go farther. You can help me find her.”
    “Me? Help you go farther where?” I’m trapped between wishing she would touch my hand and wanting to get away before my fever wakes again.
    “Into the seething. Across the river of stars and through the roots of the New World Tree, into death.” She counters the drama of her words with a wry smile. “Where all the wisdom of the world resides, you know.”
    “I didn’t.”
    Her smile softens again and her hand shifts closer to mine. “Will you anchor me, Soren?” It’s strangely formal, as a request from one warrior to another.
    I focus on her fingers, wanting rather desperately to say yes without thinking. But my best defense is caution. “I’m not safe.”
    “You’re the only person at this school with Freya’s wild magic inside you, too.”
    “It’s not her magic in me. It’s Odin’s.” I take my hands off the fence. I’ve never had a conversation like this before, never said so many true, raw things.
    “Soren.” Astrid becomes as still as stone. With one finger she touches my face. As she traces the spear tattoo cleaving myleft cheek, I nearly flinch away. “I am not afraid of Odin’s berserk warriors. Especially a boy who has yet to raise his spear for battle.”
    Now I do withdraw a few inches. But no one has said they aren’t afraid of me before. None of the students here, none of the teachers, not my mom, not even Master Pirro. Just this girl I barely know. “Why