“Quite right,” Freya replied, though I could tell she was holding something back. “I am sure it was an innocent coincidence.”
“What was?”
“Sorry, it’s nothing. Forget it.”
“Doesn’t sounds like nothin’,” I countered, growing exasperated by her caginess. “Why not simply tell me?”
“Because honestly, I’m not sure if it means anything or not, yet. Only time will tell. In fact, let’s table this until you come with Hilde to Asgard. If you still want to know, then, I should have an answer, one way or another.”
Sensing this was the best offer I was going to get, I agreed—despite the fact that I had no intention of traveling to Asgard alongside Hilde. Not because I wasn’t curious to see the mythical realm the majority of the Norse gods called home, but because I wasn’t interested in becoming embroiled in another pantheon’s politics. Between the deals I’d made in Fae, the debts I owed the Titans, and my unresolved issues with the Otherworlders, I had plenty to keep me occupied without sticking my sweet new beak into Nordic business.
Speaking of which…
“Assumin’ I make good time through Niflheim and can sneak past the mutt guardin’ Helheim, what should I expect from the goddess in charge?”
“From Hel?” Freya shrugged. “She’s Loki’s daughter and one of the jötunnar, but more trustworthy than most. My husband appointed her the realm’s guardian long ago, and by all accounts she has carried out her role as dutifully as anyone. But I have never met her, so I cannot say for sure.”
“D’ye t’ink she’ll help me?”
“I do not know. From what you’ve said, it seems the being you’re after is capable of far more than most in the afterlife. His power may even rival Hel’s own.”
“Even in her own realm?”
“It is possible. Our power grows weakest when it is unused, when we gods become negligent,” Freya replied, sounding as though she was speaking from personal experience. “Hel has ruled unopposed for millennia. The dead do not covet power so much as mourn the loss of it. You will see that for yourself, soon enough.”
“Cheery thought.”
“Where you are going, joy does not exist,” she warned. “Once you leave Fólkvangr, despair will be your greatest enemy. You must not let it win.”
“Don’t ye worry, I’ve got all me happy thoughts right here.” I tapped my temple for emphasis, amused by how seriously the goddess was taking herself. “Any other advice before I go meet with Skadi?”
“Yes. Be wary of her,” Freya urged.
“Of Skadi? Why?”
“Her father once warred with the Aesir and was slain as a result, which is actually how she came to marry my father. It is another long story. One I don’t wish to tell. But you should know that she was not imprisoned by accident. She was betrayed by Loki, who she has always feuded with. If she has discovered that for herself, I cannot say what plans she may lay to see him caught.”
“I thought Loki was your enemy, also? Why not combine forces?”
But Freya was already shaking her head.
“Loki has always been an outsider looking in, helping or hurting as his whims decide. We cannot know what he is planning, or who will suffer for it, and so we prepare as we are able. But a vendetta between us and him? That would serve no one, and cause even more damage than my son-in-law did when he tried to supplant his father.”
Yikes, I thought, talk about family drama; Freya’s description of life among the Nordic gods struck me as some sort of incestuous rendition of a backstabby soap opera. The Jötunn and the Headless...or The Slays of Our Knives. Either way, I suddenly found myself grateful to have had the upbringing I did—parents or no.
“I’ll be careful,” I said, at last. “I promise.”
“See that you do. I’d hate to have to track down the armor if you succumb to its mists and get lost in Niflheim for eternity.”
“Gee, t’anks.”
“You are welcome,” Freya replied without so much as a trace of sarcasm before reaching out to squeeze my shoulder in some semblance of solidarity, looking as though she wanted to say more but either wouldn’t, or couldn’t.
Realizing our time together was at an end, I offered the goddess the slightest bow of my head and ducked out the doorway hidden behind the trees, emerging in the pass Hemingway had taken me to what seemed like weeks ago, though it must only have been a day or two by conventional standards. Of course, when he’d dropped me off, there hadn’t been a gargantuan leg swinging to and fro from the edge of the nearest cliff. I found Skadi’s right knee raised like an impossibly sheer mountain in the distance, her left lying flat, the rest of her sprawled across the land as though she’d decided to lay down and take a nap. Hell, for all I knew, she had.
I considered flying up to meet her but realized with a jolt that I hadn’t learned the sign to create wings; that I hadn’t thought to ask was a testament to how many knives I’d been juggling since I arrived. Dismayed, I whirled, planning to march back in and demand Freya show me how it was done. But the door was already shut, its Nordic security system armed and ready to zap me the instant I tried to break back in. I cursed, distantly aware that Freya had probably kept that tidbit to herself on purpose—anything to keep me under her thumb. That, or I was simply being paranoid after her shady recruiting pitch.
Either way, it seemed I’d have to get Skadi’s attention the old fashioned way.
“Oy! Big fuckin’ giantess!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Shrink your fat ass down and say what ye came to say!”
I felt Skadi sit up before I saw it; the world beneath my feet shook as her torso soared towards the heavens, her face so far away and so high up I could barely make it out. Still, I waved, making it as obvious as possible that I was ready to talk if she was.
“Do you still intend to go to Niflheim?” Skadi rumbled, her voice like thunder overhead.
“I do!”
“Then let us walk and talk.”
That bright light shone—far more brilliantly than the late afternoon sunlight that permeated Fólkvangr—and suddenly Skadi stood at the edge of the cliff, her fists on her hips. She beckoned me to join her as though all it would take was a single bound. But then again...why not? I began pacing the base of the cliff, getting a feel for how the armor moved beneath the illusion I’d placed upon it; while my base speed seemed largely unaffected, a brief test of my reflexes and overall strength revealed noteworthy improvements. Maybe not enough to leap a couple hundred feet in the air...but enough to climb a cliff without a harness.
“I’ll be right up!”
Of course, that turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, though I did manage to reach the top some ten minutes later feeling pleasantly spry. Skadi, on the other hand, seemed less than impressed; she took off in the general direction of Niflheim without so much as a word, forcing me to race after her to keep up.
“Hold on!” I shouted to no avail.
“I do not wish to be within earshot of Freya or her Valkyries when we speak. The faster we walk, the farther away we get. Now, we move.”
And move we did; I ended up jogging after the taller, leggier giantess to keep from falling too far behind. After several minutes of that pace, however, she finally slowed and took stock of me for the first time since we left Valhalla. I watched her eyes wander up and down my body like some creep at the bar and immediately covered my vulnerable bits out of sheer habit.
“What?” I asked, alarmed.
“Your armor. It is...familiar.”
“Ye can see it?”
“Of course I can see it. We jötunnar were the first to create this magic you are using to hide your true self, though we did so far less frivolously.”
Well, that was news to me; I’d assumed the jötunnar’s magic was of the raw, untamed variety. The fact that the Aesir had somehow bastardized it was another thing Freya had failed to mention. That, or we were dealing with the Norse equivalent of “he said, she said.”
; Regardless—now that Niflheim was finally in my sights—I wasn’t eager to debate revisionist history with a jötunn. So, thinking it would save time, I quickly summarized what all had happened in the tower after Skadi left, including the deal I’d made with Freya and the origin of the armor I’d been given in exchange. To her credit, the giantess stayed quiet throughout my explanation, waiting until the very end to pass judgment.
“You are a fool.”
The words hit me like a bitter slap, accompanied by the faintest downtick in temperature; my skin pebbled beneath Skadi’s withering glare. I may even have taken an inadvertent step backwards—prompted of course by my trusted survival mechanism.
“What d’ye mean? Why?”
“Because if you had come to me, first, I would have given you my blessing and escorted you to Helheim, myself. Without demanding anything from you.”
“Why didn’t ye say somethin’ sooner?!”
“You did not ask.”
“Well, when I made the deal in exchange for the blessin’, I had no idea ye were comin’ down from your mountain.” I ducked my head a bit as Skadi’s scowl grew even fiercer. “Look, I’m sorry. But how was I supposed to know you’d do somethin’ like that for me? So far it seems every deity this side of the River Styx believes in a barter system.”
“That is because they owe you nothing, child. Whereas I owe you a debt. But that is not why I would have done this thing on your behalf.”
“Really? Why then?”
“It is my belief that only you can defeat the creature who has invaded our realm.”
“Ye mean Ryan?”
“I can feel him,” Skadi insisted, her glacial blue eyes staring into the middle distance as if imagining someone—or perhaps something—that wasn’t there. “His power is too close to my own for comfort, and his will is as destructive as any I have ever felt. He must be stopped.”
“Are ye still offerin’ to help me, then? I could seriously use an escort to—”
“No, I cannot,” Skadi said, making a cutting motion in mid-air. “It is too late. You wear the armor of a Valkyrie. Any who saw us together would be too suspicious of one or both of us to leave us be. Even the jötunnar who have made peace with the Aesir avoid their pets, as a rule.”
I cursed, wishing I’d have spoken to Skadi earlier. Maybe then I could have avoided Freya’s bargain—albeit at the cost of what was, admittedly, a sick set of armor. I sighed and shook it off, realizing there was no use crying over spilled blood.
“Alright, well if ye can’t come with me, then what d’ye want to talk to me about?”
“I have something for you. A gift that will help you accomplish what you came here to do. The thunder in Thrymheim told me what you would need to succeed, and so I have come to give it to you.”
“The thunder?” I echoed, reminded of the bizarre phrasing Skadi has used back in the mead hall. “Are ye sayin’ the sky spoke to ye?”
“Does it not to you?”
“Not generally, no.”
“Well, perhaps you are simply too short to hear it speak.”
“Must be it,” I drawled, though I was barely able to repress my skepticism.
“Stop here,” Skadi instructed me a few seconds later, flinging her arm out like a mom at a crosswalk. I halted in my tracks, startled by the abrupt command, but even more surprised to find the giantess turning towards me cradling a wonderfully ornate box in her other hand—a jewelry chest that hadn’t been there a moment before. “This is for you, child.”
“Uh, t’anks,” I replied, eyeing the would-be present as I replayed Freya’s warning in my head. Was this some sort of trick? Some elaborate plot cooked up by the jötunn? I decided I couldn’t be sure, but knew I was reticent to take it from her. “Can I ask what it is?”
“Of course you can.”
We stood in silence for a moment before I realized Skadi was genuinely waiting for me to ask the question.
“Oh, right. What is it?”
“It is my father’s heart.” Skadi flashed me a roguish smile as she opened the chest to reveal a glittering black jewel that seemed to swallow up the nearby light the instant it was uncovered, its facets throbbing to the beat of my own pulse. “I hope you will cherish it.”
24
I must have made an appropriately disgusted face in response to Skadi’s grisly offering, because Skadi snapped the lid shut and pulled the chest close with a hurt expression. Of course, I wasn’t sure how she’d expected me to react after opening a box containing her father’s “heart”; where I came from, organs didn’t look like the sort of jewels a maharajah might wear to his serial date night. Still, I’d been raised to say thank you no matter how awkward the gift, and so I held out my hands and put on my most grateful smile.
“Sorry, Skadi. I thought ye were givin’ me your father’s actual heart. That is a lovely gift.”
“But it is my father’s heart. The heart of Thiaza, greatest of the jötunnar.”
I frowned, struggling with the glaring anatomical discrepancy, and pointed at the gilded chest in her hands. “Your father’s heart is a precious stone?”
“Yes, as are all hearts belonging to those of us who walked the world before mankind was conceived,” Skadi replied matter-of-factly, as though such knowledge was commonplace. Then again, maybe it was; Skadi had spent millennia imprisoned in a pocket realm, which meant it was entirely possible there was a sizable gap between what was known then and what was known now.
“And ye want me to have it?”
“Yes.”
“Not to sound ungrateful...but why?”
“Because you will need his power where you are going.”
“In Niflheim? Or d’ye mean Helheim?”
“I cannot say. All the thunder told me was that you would require the power of a jötunn if you hoped to survive.” Skadi continued as though that tidbit of information were far more trivial than she made it sound. “This is perhaps the last unclaimed heart of my people, but if it means my debt to you is repaid, and it rids the Nine Worlds of this abomination, then it will be worth it.”
“Well, then...uh, t’anks. I will do me very best to honor ye and cherish your father’s...heart. And when ye say I’ll need it to survive...”
“I do not know the details,” she admitted. “I wish I could tell you more.”
“Right. Well, t’anks anyway.”
“Another word of caution before you go,” Skadi said as she passed the box over. “Keep this hidden, even if it means using the pathetic magic Freya taught you. If any realize you carry it, they will try to either steal it from you or take it by force. The heart of a jötunn is a precious and incredibly powerful thing.”
“I appreciate the warnin’. I’ll be sure to do that.” I slid the chest under one arm, surprised by its density; the box had to weigh twenty pounds, at least. I extended my other hand awkwardly, unsure whether to shake hands or squeeze Skadi’s beefy shoulder as Freya had mine. But it turned out neither was necessary; Skadi yanked me to her and wrapped me in a bear hug that would have shattered every bone in my body if it weren't for Nevermore. As it was, I heard the fabled metal creak under the strain.
“You must return as soon as you are able,” Skadi muttered, her voice ragged with emotion.
“Skadi, are ye cryin’?”
The giantess drew back, her cheeks stained with frozen tear tracks, and clapped both my shoulders hard enough to make me whimper. She smiled, her eyes shimmering with unspoken sentiment.
“I will miss you, child.”
I grinned despite myself, realizing I would miss her, as well; no matter what Freya said, my gut said to trust Skadi’s intentions, if not her actions. Some people—even giants capable of leveling whole cities Godzilla-style—were just inherently well-meaning and therefore, in my not so humble opinion, worthwhile. And I had a sneaking suspicion Skadi was one of them.
“Don’t worry, Skadi. We’ll always have Valhalla.”
25
I headed nort
h after saying farewell to Skadi, skirting the boundary between Fólkvangr and Valhalla so that Freya’s eternal sun grazed my left side as I walked towards Niflheim. Unsure what to do with the jewel in my possession, I used the trick Freya had shown me to stow my helmet away, tapping my hip and then the box with my pinky and pointer finger. The box vanished, though I felt its weight on that side of my body, forcing me to adjust my gait to avoid walking with a noticeable limp.
Despite the inconvenience, I found myself touched by Skadi’s gift; I doubted any of my friends would be so altruistic as to hand over their patriarch’s still-beating heart, no matter the reason. Or maybe I was simply being uncharitable to my friends. Either way, I appreciated the gesture—even if I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the thing, powerful though it undoubtedly was.
Resolving to solve that mystery when the time came, I turned my full attention to the journey at hand, scouring the horizon for signs of Niflheim’s border. Of course, I need not have bothered; after walking perhaps another mile, I came upon a dip in the flatlands that led to a valley smothered in dark mists which rose into the sky like a dome, swirling so violently that I could see nothing beyond.
“The entrance to Niflheim,” I said aloud as I strode towards the eye of that lethal cloud, recalling what Freya had said of the border between her lands and the true realm of the dead.
“Keep your eyes shut and do not breathe when you enter,” she’d cautioned. “The mists will burn your eyes and sear your lungs. Your armor will protect your flesh and my blessing will keep you safe from most of the creatures you might run into within, but you should still avoid the mists at all cost. Stay away from the bogs and out of the caves. Head straight for Helheim and you should be safe.”
At the time, I’d been duly concerned by the goddess’ caveats and stipulations—especially when they included words like “most” and “should.” Now that I saw the wretched looking realm for myself, however, I couldn’t help but wish I’d extracted a few more promises from the Vanir. Like, say, a medical evacuation clause should I sneeze in the middle of a mist pocket.
Brimstone Kiss: Phantom Queen Book 10 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 13