The Head of Mimir

by Richard Lee Byers - (ebook by Undead)

  He didn’t doubt it. Throughout their childhoods, she’d always done her best to look out for him, which, in her view, sometimes required pulling him back when he was doing something harebrained. He loved her and was grateful for her protectiveness yet also often found it stifling and resented it.

  “I probably wouldn’t have listened,” he admitted.

  “Of course not. When do you ever?” Sif loosed and scored another bull’s-eye. “At least you escaped with your head still attached to your shoulders. Now forget about it, come, and shoot.”

  Heimdall remained sitting. “I know what you think, but I’m not angry that the queen didn’t take my advice.”

  Sif smiled a skeptical smile. “You’re not?”

  “I’m not. Well, not exactly. Who am I that Frigga Freyrdottir should take direction from me? But I’m upset that she and those around her rejected my thoughts without really even considering them. They were blinded by this haze of reverence for Odin.”

  “Deafened,” Sif replied.

  “What?”

  “If they couldn’t hear you,” his sister said, “they were deafened by their reverence. As only makes sense. Don’t you revere the All-Father?”

  “You know I do. But if you read the histories, even Odin’s not omnipotent. He’s not the only mighty being or force in all the Nine Worlds. It’s at least possible that the right enemy striking under the right circumstances could lay him low.”

  “And who might that right enemy be? Do you really think a frost giant could reach the vault of the Odinsleep in the very heart of Asgard undetected?”

  “King Skrymir might, with his command over illusions.”

  “As far as I’ve heard, Skrymir has yet to take the field at all. He’s still in Jotunheim. Even if he does come to Asgard, sneaking into the citadel alone doesn’t seem like the sort of a mission a king would undertake himself.”

  “Fair enough,” Heimdall said. “But what if he enlisted the aid of a traitor in the court? Unlike a frost giant or some other outsider, a traitor would have a big advantage. He could move freely around the citadel, and no one would think anything about it.”

  Sif made a spitting sound. “Now you’re truly just making wild guesses. Who are you accusing? Who’s been acting suspiciously? Who has anything to gain?”

  “How can I know when I’m not a member of the court myself? I haven’t had the chance to observe anybody.”

  “Exactly. Frigga has and evidently sees nothing amiss, and then we come back to the matter that Odin’s magic protects the vault. Brother, those who are older, wiser, and higher-ranking say no one could have gotten in, so there’s an end to it.”

  Heimdall felt a flash of irritation. He’d like to accept the idea that those in authority above him knew best – life seemed easier for those who did – but was it truly always so?

  “I’d let go of my idea if it was about anything less important,” he said. “I swear I would. But please, just consider for a moment. What if I’m right, and because no one would listen to me, Jotunheim wins the war?”

  Sif turned to glare at him. “The frost giants won’t win if warriors like us attend to our proper business!” Her expression softened. “Brother, I know you don’t think yourself a perfect fit for Ivar’s company. I know you’ve wondered if the Norns intend you for a different destiny. But–”

  “You’re wrong,” Heimdall said. “Or rather, maybe there’s truth in what you say, but this isn’t about that. Truly, it’s about protecting our people. I think…” The presumption and the danger, the sheer lunacy, perhaps, of what he was about to say came crashing down on him, and he had to pause and take a breath before proceeding. “I think someone should try to enter Odin’s chamber whether Frigga agrees to it or not.”

  “Someone meaning you? That’s madness!”

  “I don’t want to do it, but who else is there?”

  “Even leaving aside the fact that trying would be the death of you, what could you do if you did get in?”

  “I could at least look around,” Heimdall said. “If someone has been there before me and I discover signs of the intrusion, evidence of dark magic, perhaps, I can report my findings to Frigga, and maybe then she, Lady Amora, and the other royal mages can undo the enchantment.”

  “You can’t risk your life on ifs and maybes.”

  “Isn’t that a warrior’s job?” Heimdall asked.

  “As the warrior’s commanders and oaths dictate. Brother, I won’t let you do this.”

  There was that overprotectiveness again. It rankled, and Heimdall realized he no longer liked his sister looking down at him. He rose, and they glowered at one another eye to eye.

  “Are you going to inform on me?” he asked. “That’s the only way to stop me. Then I’ll rot in a dungeon or go to the block, and there’ll be a blot on our family honor forever after.”

  Sif stared into his eyes for a few more seconds before snarling, “Curse you!”

  “Does that mean you won’t tell?”

  “It means I’m going with you, idiot!” Her expression softened, and she put her hand on his shoulder. “Where one would surely die, perhaps two can survive and sneak in and out without being caught. So clearly I won’t let you go alone.”

  Five

  Heimdall and Sif had decided they might as well attempt their incursion into the vault that very night. With no way to know what awaited them, there was really no way to make elaborate preparations, so why wait? Waiting, he knew, would only scrape at his nerves and undermine his resolve.

  And now the moment was at hand. He peeked around the corner and down the corridor beyond, felt a twinge of dismay at something he hadn’t expected to see, and pulled his head back. “There’s a guard posted beside the door,” he whispered.

  Sif frowned. “If the way beyond is deadly, what’s the point?”

  “The pomp that’s Odin’s due? Or maybe the guard’s there to keep folk from going through the door by accident. The castle is something of a maze. You got lost the first day we were here.”

  “I only got turned around for a second,” Sif replied, plainly nettled by the reminder. “Anyway, magical defenses are one thing. If there’s a living, breathing sentry, we can’t do this.”

  The relief in her voice irritated Heimdall. He suspected that was because it mirrored a relief he felt, at least momentarily, himself. But the stubborn part of him rejected the excuse for turning back.

  “I can get rid of the guard,” he said, hoping it was so. “You wait here.”

  He pulled up his hood to shadow his face and wrapped his scarf around the lower portion as a man who’d ridden hard might have done to keep from breathing road dust along the way. His pulse beating faster, he then hurried around the corner and down the hallway. “Found you!” he called.

  The guard, a burly fellow equipped with a spear and round shield emblazoned with the ravens that were one of the All-Father’s heraldic devices, gave him an inquiring look. “What?”

  “I just delivered a dispatch to the thane of your company. Then he told me to find you and tell you to report to him.”

  “I can’t leave my post,” the sentry replied.

  “The thane is ordering you to.”

  The burly man eyed Heimdall suspiciously. “Is he, now? What’s my captain’s name, if you truly come from him?”

  Heimdall’s heart was beating even faster. He could feel his pulse ticking in his neck, and sweat breaking out under his arms. “Friend, I’ve been riding since yesterday. I’m dull-witted for want of sleep, and I can’t remember. But–”

  “This doesn’t smell right,” said the guard. “Unbuckle your baldric and lay your sword on the ground.” He started to point his spear.

  In another moment, the weapon would be leveled, and Heimdall reacted by instinct. He lunged, punched the guard in the face and kept on hitting him until he slid dow
n the wall unconscious.

  Sif hurried down the hallway. “What have you done?” she cried.

  “I couldn’t persuade him to step away.”

  “And so you attacked him?”

  “I know,” he said, “it was stupid. But it was my stupidity. He doesn’t know anyone else was with me. You can still walk away from all this.”

  “Meaning you’re pressing forward?”

  “Yes.” He felt bad, and perhaps even ashamed of striking the warrior, but in a strange way it had also shored up his intent. It was as if the transgression had so committed him that turning back was no longer an option.

  “Then I’m still coming too,” said Sif, her voice now less angry than grimly resigned. “At least you had the sense to mask your face, and as you say, the man hasn’t even seen me. With luck, he won’t be able to describe us.”

  Under the scarf, Heimdall smiled. Now, with the unknown perils of the crypt immediately before him, he realized just how grateful he was for her company.

  “And if we do discover something important in the vault,” he said, “the fact that I knocked out the guard won’t matter any more. See if the door’s locked.”

  Sif pushed down the golden handle, and the door clicked ajar. “It’s not. I’m surprised.”

  “If the way beyond is deadly, maybe no one thought it needed to be.” Heimdall dragged the guard inside onto the landing at the top of a steep flight of stairs descending deeper underground. Once Sif closed the door after them, darkness engulfed the space.

  Heimdall touched the amulet he’d purchased late that afternoon from a seller of petty magic in an open-air marketplace and willed the enchantment to life. White light glowed from the brass disk on its leather thong.

  A second light flowered as Sif roused the medallion she’d bought. “Let’s get on with it,” she said.

  They crept down the stairs without incident. At the bottom, another corridor smelling of old stone stretched away into shadow. They prowled along it for perhaps a dozen paces, and then Heimdall spotted rusty brown discolorations on the walls ahead and the floor beneath.

  “Stop.” He pointed. “Do you see that?”

  “Yes,” Sif replied. “Someone bled out. But the person or thing who killed him isn’t here now.”

  “I wonder,” Heimdall said. “Imagine blades or spikes jumping out of the walls to stab and then retracting. That would leave spots of blood on the walls, and the blood would drip down and make streaks underneath. Which matches what we’re seeing.”

  “What I don’t see,” said Sif, “is any slots or holes for blades to pop out of.”

  “But if this place is magical, maybe there don’t have to be any holes.”

  Sif grunted. “Let’s say you’re right. How do we get by?”

  “The spots are either waist-high or higher,” Heimdall said. “I think that if we crawl, we’ll be all right.” He dropped to his hands and knees, and his sister did the same.

  As they crawled forward, the walls above them made snapping, cracking noises. Long, pointed protrusions sprang from the stone itself and then back in again. Had Sif and Heimdall tried to walk, the vertical stalagmites would surely have impaled them.

  As it was, he tensed at every crack and crunch. He believed he’d figured out how to get past the spikes, but what if he was wrong? What if they could stab out just above the floor if they needed to, to kill an intruder? He heaved a sigh of relief when he and his sister left the last of the brown discolorations, and the jabbing of the spikes subsided behind them.

  When he judged he and Sif were well clear of the trap, he stood up, and she followed his lead. They stalked on and came to an open doorway.

  In the vault on the other side, a mountain of a man with an eye patch, the golden ring of kingship called Draupnir on his forearm, and a white beard lay on a bed that bore an unpleasant resemblance to a bier. The remaining contents of the space, however, attested to Odin’s expectation that he would in due course rise from the Odinsleep, refresh himself, and return to his subjects presenting a majestic appearance proper for the King of Asgard. There were handsomely carved chairs sized for a man of his bulk, a freestanding polished silver mirror with combs and brushes laid out on the table beside it, and a haunch of beef, golden apples, and a pitcher of beer on a table elsewhere. Confronted with the spectacle, Heimdall felt a shivering awe in the presence of the King of the Gods.

  Sif let out a long breath. “I can’t believe it was this easy,” she said.

  Heimdall made an effort to stop gaping and resume thinking, for, after all, there was work to be done, work better accomplished before the unconscious guard awoke. “Apparently,” he said, “the tales of impenetrable defenses grew with time, and stories were all it took to keep intruders out.”

  “Until us.”

  “Well, until the enemy – the traitor, perhaps – who sneaked in shortly after the Odinsleep began, and now us.” Or so he hoped to discover. If there’d really been such an enemy, there were no signs of that intrusion so far. Heimdall quashed a flicker of doubt and told himself he and Sif hadn’t really started searching yet.

  They headed for the sleeping god, and, with a jolt of alarm, Heimdall thought he glimpsed a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye. He instantly looked around and was relieved to see there was nothing. The glow of his medallion, swinging slightly at the end of its cord, had merely stirred the shadows.

  But, in searching for what was moving, he had perforce returned his gaze to one of the All-Father’s ornately carved chairs. The seat looked enticingly comfortable, and he was suddenly aware of just how much the tramp through the castle, down the stairs, and along the subterranean passageway had wearied him. He was breathing hard, and his limbs were leaden.

  Why, he thought, not sit for just a moment? He’d search better when he recovered his strength. Eyelids drooping, smothering a yawn, he headed for the chair.

  As he did, though, Sif’s words came back to him. I can’t believe it was this easy.

  It truly shouldn’t have been, nor should his walk have left him exhausted. Any healthy mortal could have made it easily, and an Asgardian warrior was stronger and hardier than any man of Midgard.

  Dread welling up inside him, cutting through the strange fatigue that had briefly numbed his thinking, Heimdall stopped in his tracks and gave himself a stinging slap in the face. Weariness and the urge to sit in the chair fell away from him.

  With his mind clear, he realized Sif was no longer at this side. When he’d headed for the chair, she’d gone elsewhere. He turned, and she was standing in front of the table laden with food. Smiling, she picked up a shining yellow apple.

  More alarmed for her than he had been for himself, Heimdall rushed across the room and struck the fruit from her grasp as she was raising it to her mouth. He shoved her away from the table, upended it, and sent the food and drink crashing to the floor.

  Sif glared at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s what’s wrong with the food!” he said. “Think about it! Even if Odin only expected to sleep for a week, would he want a meal that had been sitting out that long?”

  “I…” Sif looked down at the items scattered on the floor. The food was black with rot and crawling with grubs, the beer sizzling and steaming. “It would have poisoned me, wouldn’t it?” she asked, a tremor in her voice. “Until you roused me, I was so hungry I couldn’t think straight.”

  “I believe now,” Heimdall said, “the obvious trap in the corridor was to make us think we’d gotten through the defenses and were safe. The real traps are here.”

  Sif took a breath, and when she spoke again, any trace of a quaver was gone. “Was that all of them?”

  Heimdall looked around. For a moment, he didn’t spot anything else threatening, and then, staring in fear and amazement, he spied his reflection in the silver mirror. Or rather, partly still in
the mirror. That other Heimdall was stepping out of the gleaming metal, head bowed to pass through a portal a bit too short for him. Once out, the counterfeit reached over his shoulder for the hilt of the great sword hanging down his back.

  Heimdall’s warrior impulse was to draw his own sword, but he had a terrible suspicion he wouldn’t be able to outfight himself. Glad it took such a long weapon a moment to clear the scabbard, he charged, grabbed his counterpart, and shoved him into one of the suspect chairs.

  Metal clanged and clattered as the chair revealed its true form. Chains reared and struck like serpents, snapping the shackles on their ends shut on wrists and ankles. A different chain coiled around the false Heimdall’s neck and jerked tight with a spine-breaking crack.

  “Heimdall!” his sister called.

  He whirled to discover Sif dueling herself. As the two blades flashed through the air, cutting and parrying so quickly that only a trained swordsman could follow the exchanges, the warriors in red and white appeared equally fast, equally skilled, equally fond of the same combinations. He froze, knowing he had to act to help his true sister but uncertain of which was which. It was a paralysis resembling ones he’d occasionally experienced in nightmares.

  “I’m facing the mirror!” one of the women snarled. “She has her back to it! So who just stepped out of it?”

  Convinced, Heimdall pulled his two-handed sword from its scabbard and edged into striking distance. Over the next few seconds, it became apparent that while the counterfeit was fully a match for the real Sif, Sif and Heimdall together were too much for her. He caught her blade with his own, opening her guard, but then, gazing at what certainly appeared to be his sister, found himself incapable of making the killing stroke. Taking advantage of his hesitation, the counterfeit spun her sword free and poised it for a chest cut. Then, however, the true Sif shouted a battle cry and thrust her blade into her double’s torso. The counterfeit collapsed.

  Brother and sister looked toward the mirror. Two more Heimdalls and three more Sifs had emerged. Seemingly the supply was endless. Swords in hand, they moved to surround the originals. The true Sif placed herself at her brother’s back.