I should probably note that this is a lead-off story for a series of short stories mostly centering on Sif… so if things seem to move too quickly, that would be why. Nevertheless, let me know please if the pacing feels off!

That Dread Touch

by Alara

Chapter 4

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Meanwhile, Sif was undergoing even more strenuous training than the previous days: Maldunn was incorporating tumbling and jumps into the drills, and by the end of the fifth run-through, she'd collected a fair number of bruises. Add to this that her moon-days were due soon, and her guts were cramping painfully, and the result was that this was one of the most physically punishing days Sif had ever experienced—even worse than battling the ice pixies during a blizzard after spending days wading through snow. Then, she'd been numb; now, she felt every spike of gnawing pain following her pounding pulse across her body.

At least Maldunn had behaved as her instructors normally did today, calling out corrections, or briefly moving a limb into the proper position.

Finally, he gave the order: "Sit. Stretch."

Gratefully she set the double-bladed pike down, slid to the ground, and dutifully began to slowly stretch, wincing as the new bruises made themselves felt.

And then she felt Maldunn's breath on her neck. She resisted the urge to sit bolt upright—that would bring her back against him.

"I've told you," he said quietly. "You need to relax. Lie down, I've got something for those bruises."

"No! No, really, I can take care of them my—"

"Lie. Down. Or do I report to your usual instructors that you cannot follow a simple order, even when it's for your own good?"

Chastened, she leaned forward and brought her legs around til she was lying facedown. She did her best not to cringe when he moved his hands, warm with some kind of oil, over the muscles of her back, and then down her legs. Whatever it was, it was soothing to the bruises, she had to admit…

…Perhaps she was misreading him? A wave of tiredness—sleepiness—crashed over her. She blinked—she should stay awake—

"Sif." His voice in her ear startled her; her eyes blinked heavily open. She was sitting up against Maldunn—when had that happened?—and his hands were kneading some of that oil into her aching gut; his fingertips were just below the top edge of her skirt, but the sleepiness got in the way of her instinct to strike his hand away.

"Sif," he said, and lifted his hands. "You need to get up now; it's late. People will be wondering where you are."

"They will?" she blinked, not yet awake. "Oh. Yes. I'll go." She started to get up; he lifted her by the waist when she wobbled. When had she become clumsy?

"You go sleep now, and you'll come back tomorrow."

"Yes… tomorrow." Woodenly she made her way to the door, and nearly tripped over Thor, who waited outside in the—night? When had night fallen?

"Sif," he said, shocked at how ill she looked. "Have you been training all this time?"

"Training? Oh, yes, I suppose I have." She squinted at the stars. "It's late, isn't it? I should go to bed."

"Have you had dinner?"

She stared at him blankly, her normally mobile face almost slack.

"Have you eaten?" More blankness. "Food?" he prompted.

"I'm sure I must have…" her brow crinkled in thought. "Haven't I?"

"I don't think you have," he said, eyeing her with concern: She was pale and listless. Suddenly she wavered, almost staggered. Quickly he slipped an arm around her waist to steady her, and was startled when she leaned right into him, her head lying heavily on his shoulder.

" 'm too tired to eat," she mumbled. "Just want to go t' sleep."

"Sif…" he began to protest, then frowned as his hand slid across her skin. "Sif, what is this?"

"What's what?"

"This… stuff… on your skin." It had a nasty, greasy feel under his fingertips.

"Something Maldunn uses for bruises." She frowned. "Or is it for muscle cramps? Something."

Hmm. Sometimes medicines did odd things to the mind; Balder, for instance, couldn't take rhubarb, or he thought absolutely everything was hilarious. "Did he tell you what it was called? I don't think it's good for you."

"No… it's something… h' rubbed it in, doesn't hurt anymore…"

He took a firmer grip on her. "Let's get you something to eat, and then I think Brunnhilda will help you get this stuff off of you. It's not good for you."

Clouded dark green eyes turned up toward him, blinking trustingly. "It's not?"

"Definitely not."

"All right… whatever you say…" she muttered vaguely, and followed tamely where he towed her—which was the most alarming thing yet.

"And then you'll sleep."

"That's what Maldunn said to do. Sleep."

"Well, he's right, but first you will eat and wash this stuff off of you."

"All right."

He got to the dining hall, where Brunnhilda and Balder were waiting. At the sight of their friend, Balder bit back a curse, and Brunnhilda jerked out of her seat—so Thor wasn't imagining how poorly Sif looked. He got her to sit down at a table, and looked at her in the torchlight, and grimaced: bruises were coming up all over.

"No wonder he gave her some salve." He muttered.

Brunnhilda looked up from where she was trying to get Sif to focus on her. "What's that? What's wrong with her?"

"Maldunn gave her some sort of oil, or salve, or something for her bruises—it's all over her—and I think it's addled her mind."

"Like rhubarb does to me?" Balder asked.

"Yes, only with less hilarious effects."

"It's as though she's sleepwalking," Brunnhilda said, waving a hand in front of Sif's unresponsive face. She ran an experimental finger along Sif's arm, breathed in the oil, and grimaced. "What's in this oil anyway? It smells… I don't know. There's something about it…"

"I don't know what's in it; Sif didn't say."

"Hmm." Brunnhilda took Sif's belt pouch and dug around. "There's nothing in here that could hold salve."

"I guess Maldunn took it away with him." Balder shrugged, and concentrated on Sif. "Sif, you need to eat something, all right? Wait here, I'll get something." He disappeared into the kitchen area and returned with a plate of meat, fruit, and bread and a pitcher of small beer. "Here, eat."

Sif looked at the plate as though she didn't recognize what it was for. The other three exchanged alarmed glances.

"All right, I think perhaps first we girls will visit the bathing hall and eat later, all right?" Brunnhilda said briskly. She looked at the concerned young men. "She's gotten worse even as we sit here; I think the faster we get this stuff off of her, the better."

"Right. We'll take this to Sif's room and meet you there later," Balder said, gathering the pitcher and handing the plate to Thor.

"Right." Brunnhilda took charge of Sif, grimacing at the oily feel of her skin. "Come on, Sif, I think you'll feel much better when you're clean."

"Oh… if you say so." With one last distressed look, Brunnhilda swept the dark-haired girl away, leaving the men to discuss what else could be done.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sure enough, when Brunnhilda dumped Sif into a tub of hot water and began scrubbing the heavy oil off of her skin—and Brunnhilda was disturbed to see that almost every inch of her skin was covered—the other warrior maiden began to wake up.

She frowned at the bubbly water, then at Brunnhilda. "How did I get here?"

"Um… you walked?" Brunnhilda offered. "Well, sort of. I had to help you. Are you feeling more yourself?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course I'm—what do you mean, you had to help me?"

"You don't remember? You were in practice with Maldunn for a very long time. Then he gave you some sort of oil to put on your bruises, and whatever is in that oil has a very bad effect on you. It was like you weren't really here."

Sif stared at her. "You're serious."

"Yes." They looked at each other for a moment.

Sif shook her head. "Well, then, thank you. I certainly feel myself right now, but—by the Allfather, I hurt!"

"You should; you're all over bruises from neck to knee." Brunnhilda pointed out.

"What?" Sif got out of the tub and examined herself in the mirror: she was, indeed, bruised. Most were faint, while others had livid edges. Some of the marks were clearly from hitting herself with the double-bladed pike as she moved through the drills, but others…

Well. Perhaps she'd fallen during practice? She couldn't remember it, after all. Shrugging, she reached for her clothes, but Brunnhilda swept them out of the way. "Oh, no. These have that oil all over them." And how the oil got inside your clothes I'll worry about later, my friend. "I'll clean them for you, but you'd better borrow a robe and throw something on when we get to your room."

"This memory lapse is… odd," Sif stated the obvious as she threw on a robe, then began to pick through her tangled, wet hair, ignoring the blonde's snort. "I wonder if Loki had anything to do with this?"

"What? Loki? Where did that come from? I've wondered… Why do you always suspect the worst of him, anyway?"

"You mean you haven't heard how I got my hair?"

"Your hair?" Brunnhilda asked, puzzled. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Everything. My hair used to be more richly golden than yours, you know." Sif said.

"No, I didn't..."

"Yes, and it was the envy of every other maiden. And, I suppose of Loki's, who of course has his actual father's dark hair, which points him out as not being Lord Odin's son by blood."

Brunnhilda didn't need to ask the obvious question aloud. So what happened?

"Thor and I have been great friends for a long time—"

"No, really."

"Hush. Even before we became involved, we were great friends. When Balder came we just added him into the friendship, like we did you, but before Balder, it was always Thor and I, with Loki tagging along." She sighed. "We were cruel, like children often are, and we were playing at some game we made up that deliberately had only room in it for Thor and me. No place for Loki. And we took care to point it out," she winced in memory.

"We were terrible. But we were children! We thought it was amusing, not realizing how much we were hurting Loki. And we only played this game for about a week, but that is a long time in children's time. But then he showed us how much it hurt him.

"A normal child would have gone into a rage, or complained to his parents, or found new friends; not Loki. No. One afternoon, as part of our game, Thor spent quite some time comparing my hair to any number of golden things, and now and again would throw in '…unlike Loki's hair.' Because we knew he was spying, listening in. We wanted to see what it would take to get him to show himself. But he never did, and we moved on to kinder games.

"But that night, that bastard trickster, who knew a fair amount of magic even at that age, cloaked himself in silence and came into my parents' house, and crept into my room.

"He took a pair of freshly-sharpened shears and sliced my hair off at the scalp, and stole most of it, leaving individual hairs scattered here and there. And it was long—down to my knees—so made quite a hank of hair. I believe at first he planned to keep it as a trophy."

Brunnhilda's jaw dropped. "He stole your hair? How terrible!"

"Well, when I woke the next day, I bet they could hear my shriek in Jotunheim. I went running to my mother, who thought at first I had managed to cut it off myself with my 'playing at being a warrior.' But then she understood that someone had done this to me deliberately. She threw me into a hood, and went storming up to Lord Odin, demanding he find the culprit.

"Oh, Brunnhilda, you are new here, but you will learn that Lord Odin is kind, and just—and shrewd. I think he had an idea of who was responsible, but knew he could not easily prove it was Loki. But he made Loki take responsibility anyway. He called him to the throne room and challenged his wizard-son to make a new head of hair for his brother's closest friend.

"Loki agreed, of course, to his father's request—grudgingly, but he agreed. He said he could not do this magic himself, but he knew who could. He took the skein of stolen hair to the dwarves and had them fashion it into a wig, a beautiful golden glimmering wig that would instantly become the actual hair of whomever it was placed on.

"But Loki tried to get away without paying for the wig, so that he could get all the accolades of restoring my hair without admitting guilt in any way, even by paying for the wig's making. To his twisted mind, paying for the work was equal to admitting his fault.

"The dwarves warned him: If you pay for naught, naught is what you'll get, but he ignored them, as he already had the wig in his hand. He fled, laughing at their curses and warning, and came to where I was still weeping in my room.

"He looked so proud as he offered me this golden thing of hair, as though he had made it himself, and I smiled at him, so grateful he had gone to the trouble of getting this wig made for me. I didn't think of why he should be relieved at the restoration of my hair. I was too fixed on the return of my former appearance.

"I put the wig on, and it worked! The hair was my own; pulling on it hurt as always. I went to hug Loki in thanks, but his face changed. The mirror behind me showed a dwarf's face. 'Naught for naught, princeling,' he laughed. 'And now the golden hair shall be as naught, as dark as the nothing between the stars.' And as he spoke, this black color spread through my hair even as we watched in the mirror—even my eyebrows changed, and my eyes went from Asgardian blue to this murky green I now have.

"This time, I believe my scream was audible in Hel, and I'd have put Loki there, too, were it not for Lord Odin's intervention. He talked me out of murdering his foster son—but not into trusting him, not ever again." She finished grimly.

"No wonder you don't trust Loki, even when he's trying to be nice!" Brunnhilda exclaimed.

Sif sighed, and then laughed. "Balder, of course, when he heard the tale after he arrived, saw the good in the situation."

"What was that?"

"I no longer looked like a delicate, flowery Maiden of Asgard—I was definitely different from the other girls—so when I asked to go to warriors' school, everyone was already off-kilter and less willing to pigeonhole me in the sorcery school."

"Ah. I suppose he was right. He usually is. But—don't you miss your golden hair?"

Another sigh. "Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes it would be useful to be underestimated," she pointed out wryly.

"Well. The color of one's hair isn't the only thing women are judged by," Brunnhilda pointed out cautiously. So far Sif had resisted all Brunnhilda's attempts to make her more feminine. Perhaps here was the key to getting Sif to understand that simply because she was a warrior maiden, it didn't mean she had to sacrifice the maiden part entirely.

"What do you mean?"

"Well. Clothes, for one."

Sif glanced over at the heap of clothes on the ground. "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Nothing is wrong with them!" she was quick to assure. "But people do judge a woman on what she's wearing, and wearing that getup, of course people would immediately categorize you as a dangerous warrior-maid. But if you wore something softer, they'd have to really think about it to see you as a threat, or even as a warrior—which could be a benefit."

Sif was nodding slowly. "I can see that—guards would be let down, people would be less wary. But—what sort of clothes?"

Brunnhilda blinked. "What—don't you own anything else?"

A shrug. "More practice gear, mostly." Sif found herself seized by the wrist at this news as Brunnhilda clamped a hand around it and proceeded to drag her out of the room. "Where are we going?"

"To my room, where I'll show you what I mean," Brunnhilda laughed at her, inviting Sif to share the joke. "You'll need something more than a robe to wear, anyway—I forgot that Thor and Balder are waiting for us in your room. A robe would be indecent. So you'll just have to borrow something of mine!"

Sif laughed too. "I guess I have no choice."

"Nope!" came the cheerful response. "You have none at all. But after this," she said, "we are going to your room where you will eat and sleep. You still look very drained," she said worriedly.

"Honestly, I do feel well right now. I'm sure you were all right, and I just had a bad reaction to that muscle-salve of Maldunn's. I'll make sure he doesn't use it on me again."

"All right, then." The other young woman grudgingly agreed, and focused on thinking of what clothes she should force Sif to borrow.

Sure enough, Thor and Balder looked much happier with Sif when they reappeared; she was animated, and talked and moved almost normally, only a few vestiges of her reaction to the oil remaning.

And Brunnhilda couldn't help but give her an I told you so look when Thor nearly missed the chair sitting down, so glued were his eyes to Sif, who had borrowed a soft green belted tunic from her.

And Sif had to admit that maybe, just maybe, the other young woman was right, as before he left, Thor bent and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek, saying softly, "That shirt makes your eyes brighter; I think you need to steal it from Brunnhilda." That surprised a laugh out of her. He brushed another kiss against her skin. "Sleep well; I'll come by in the morning to see how you're doing."

"I have such wonderful friends who look out for me; how could I not do well? Thank you, all, for helping me tonight. I don't think I would have made it back to my room without your aid."

"Ah, well, you may not need our help often, but when you do, it is always there," Balder promised gallantly, and with that the trio left Sif to a deep night's sleep.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next morning, when the trio met her, Sif still looked a bit worn down, but was immensely improved from the previous night. While she still had no memory of the previous evening, she was almost back to her usual self. She teased Balder about his unending kindness, and asked Thor if he wanted to be bested again in staff work, while exchanging mutual eyerolls with Brunnhilda at the antics of the young men.

They ate breakfast, went off to class, and in the afternoon, when Maldunn came in to take over, it all started to go wrong. Brunnhilda kept an eye on Sif, and was disturbed at what she observed.

He stopped by Sif briefly, and laid a hand on her shoulder as he said something to her, then went on to teach the class. But Sif looked dazed, and her movements were just a bit off-balance. When Maldunn passed by her, he corrected her forms with innocuous, light touches on the wrist or neck or waist, but—

Was she the only student he was touching? She squinted; she couldn't quite tell. Was he pointing at Ashur's outstretched leg, or was he in fact adjusting the angle of his ankle?

And every time Maldunn brushed by Sif, her movements became a little more disjointed. Not so much that anyone not watching carefully would notice, but Brunnhilda was watching. And she didn't like what she saw.

She wasn't surprised when Maldunn singled Sif out for extra training—"We'll continue what we began yesterday," he said, in a strange tone that set vague alarms off in Brunnhilda's mind.

Thor beat her to the punch. "I think we definitely need to spy on the training session today. Sif looked exhausted too early again; I don't think it's safe for her to participate in an extra lesson today."

"I believe she is not-thinking again," Balder added. "She was moving through the forms as though she couldn't remember them, by the end."

"And did anyone else notice that she is the only student that Maldunn actually touched today?"

The other two shook their heads. "But what could that be about?" Balder asked.

"I don't know, but it can't be good. Let's go." Thor said, and they headed off toward the sparring room.

The sparring room was in the lower level of a two-level room, the upper level being open in the center so people could observe the contests. For safety's sake, however, the upper level was warded with a clear magical barrier to prevent errant arrows, weapons, or (when the sorcerers' school had contests) spells from striking observers. The barrier also prevented sound from carrying to or from the contestants, so no foul play could be attempted by spectators.

In this case, since it was unlikely Maldunn would look up, it afforded the trio the opportunity to observe and discuss, unheard.

When they arrived, Maldunn was having Sif run through some quite complex forms with the double-bladed pike. Balder was impressed: "She's learned an incredible amount in a short amount of time," he commented. Below them, the girl was gleaming with sweat, but otherwise seemed to be moving effortlessly—a bit glassy-eyed, and mechanical in her movements, but moving well nonetheless. Madlunn seemed pleased.

"Either he's some kind of teacher, or she's some kind of student," Brunnhilda agreed.

"I would bet on Sif," Thor said loyally. "But perhaps it's a bit of both."

As they continued to watch the apparently normal training session, they all began to sheepishly wonder if they'd overreacted, and were jumping at shadows. Perhaps what they had noticed was merely leftover fatigue from Sif's dousing in the oil yesterday? Yes, it was true Maldunn was touching Sif all over as he corrected or taught various moves, but these touches didn't last long; he wasn't lingering.

Then he said something to Sif, and she dropped into a low balance pose. Her head swayed as though she were falling asleep, or tipsy, but otherwise she was still.

Maldunn paced behind her, apparently talking to himself. Once or twice a hand reached out to trace the curve of her back, or to flick across her shoulder, only to have that hand snatched back as though touching Sif burned him. His face reflected alternately anguish, determination, and an animal hunger as they watched. Sif seemed oblivious to it all.

"I don't like this…" Brunnhilda said, alarm beginning to build. This was reminding her terribly of something…

"Balder, get my father. Now." Thor said tightly. "He is the only one who can remove this barrier."

Balder was out the door before the sentence was finished, and Thor and Brunnhilda were left to watch. They watched, increasingly nauseated, as Maldunn seemed to give in to the hungry side and fitted himself against Sif, an obscenely blissful expression crossing his face as he kissed her neck and caressed her midriff. Sif stayed still and expressionless.

"Why does she not move—why does she not protest?" Thor whispered, distressed. "Is this what she wants? Someone with more prestige, more battles? Older?"

"Don't be an idiot," Brunnhilda snapped. "Look at her. She's more out of it now than she was last night! Somehow, he must have got more of that oil or salve or whatever-it-was on her, and just like last night, the longer it's on her, the more it affects her."

Thor bit off an oath, followed by a pained sound, as one of Maldunn's hands went north, and the other south, and he pulled an unresisting Sif to the ground. "We must get in there! Wait for Lord Odin, and tell him all; I'm going to see if I can get in another way."

"But, Thor—"

But he was already gone.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-