Sif scowled and answered as he’d expected. “Don’t be stupid. We already had this conversation. I’m sticking with you, and that’s that. We just have to find a way in.”
They sat in silence for a time, while the wind – not the raging, freezing gale the storm giant had conjured, thank goodness, but cold nonetheless – whispered out of the north. Heimdall strained to find a stratagem but could think of nothing. The intent, sour look on Sif’s face revealed she was trying too and not faring any better.
After a time, she said, “Thor would smash that storm giant magic like it was nothing.”
Heimdall didn’t doubt it. Thor was the God of Thunder, after all, the supreme master of the powers of the storm. But what did it matter? “Thor isn’t here,” he said.
“I know that. I’m just saying.” She paused for a beat. “Here’s a thought. The storm giant spotted us when we flew in. What if we ride in at ground level?”
Heimdall shook his head. “I don’t think that would help. Most Asgardian warriors travel on the ground. The storm giants are surely watching the floors of the passes as attentively as they’re watching for flyers.”
Sif sighed. “I suppose so. Do you have an idea?”
“No.” He was chagrined to admit it. Sif might tease him about his bookishness and his musings over things no one else considered worth pondering, but he knew that, deep down, she thought him clever if eccentric, and now it hurt to feel he was letting her down. “Except choose a different pass and hope we can contend with whatever’s waiting for us there.”
His sister snorted. “I could have come up with that. But all right. Let’s rest a while longer and then have at it.”
Eighteen
Eventually Sif gave Heimdall a questioning look. He nodded, and they rose, stretched, and shifted their limbs to shed the stiffness that had come from sitting on the cold ground.
As they moved to Bloodspiller and Golden Mane, Heimdall tried to summon up the dauntless attitude of a proper Asgardian warrior, the confidence that his prowess would see him through any fight, and that if it didn’t, that simply meant fate had chosen to favor the other side and it was time to die bravely if need be.
But he couldn’t feel that way, not when failure would likely mean defeat for Asgard and the loss of his sister’s life as well as his own. He was no seer to glimpse the future, but at that moment he had a premonition nonetheless, a certainty that if he and Sif couldn’t come up with a better plan, they were surely riding to their doom. Perhaps, he thought, he was fey. That was what the skalds called it when, at the end of a saga, the hero was stubbornly embarked on the course of action that would spell his doom.
Well, he thought defiantly, he didn’t want to be fey, and perhaps it was the trapped, desperate feeling he was experiencing that finally made an idea pop into his head.
“Wait,” he said.
Sif had already mounted the roan and looked down at him from the saddle. “What is it?” she asked.
“Maybe I have an idea after all. We’ve been thinking of the Valkyries as Odin’s flying warriors.”
His sister shrugged, making the pauldrons of her red and white armor clink. “That’s what they are.”
“In times of war, yes. But they’re more than that. They’re the choosers of the slain. The All-Father sends them flying over the battlefields of Midgard to collect the souls of fallen warriors to live new lives in Valhalla. To do that, they have to cross between worlds, and apparently they can do it because their steeds can do it.”
“Apparently,” Sif repeated. From the skeptical tone of her voice, she understood what he was suggesting but had considerable misgivings.
“That’s what the stories say.”
“You’re still putting an inordinate amount of faith in the stories.”
“For want of anything better.”
“Well,” said Sif, “I haven’t heard any tales of Valkyries crossing from Asgard into Jotunheim, only into Midgard. Even if it’s possible, we don’t know how to tell Golden Mane and Bloodspiller to do it. It was difficult enough just figuring out how to manage them in the air.”
“But we worked it out,” Heimdall said, “and if we open a magical way into Jotunheim, we avoid the mountain passes.”
Sif suddenly flashed a grin. “Well, no one can say life isn’t interesting following you around. All right, then. Mount up, and we’ll see what we can do.”
They flew the winged stallions into the air, where they tried to discover a new combination of rein flicks that would send their mounts flying out of one world and into another. The only results were pointless veerings, swoops, and ascensions that, Heimdall sensed, were making the steeds increasingly annoyed. In his imagination, Golden Mane asked, “Didn’t you already put me through all of this?”
Heimdall called to Sif. “Anything?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“I’m going to try voice commands!” He leaned close to Golden Mane’s ears. “Take me to Jotunheim, boy! Jotunheim!”
The black steed just kept gliding beneath the heavy lead-colored clouds that covered the sky where Asgard and the land of the frost giants met. Maybe that was the problem. Golden Mane judged they were already in Jotunheim.
“Midgard!” Heimdall said. “Let’s go to Midgard!” If he could get the black steed to cross into any other world, that would at least be a start.
Once again, their surroundings didn’t change.
“From time to time,” Heimdall said in frustration, “I thought you more intelligent than an earthbound horse. You’re not showing it at the moment.” He sighed. “But no, forgive me, that’s not fair. I’m the stupid one for not knowing what the Valkyries taught you.”
He tried to imagine what it must be like to pass between worlds when they weren’t in conjunction and no sorcerer’s incantation was whisking you from one to the other. Perhaps, in those circumstances, you didn’t simply step or blink to your destination. Maybe there was a kind of limbo you had to cross.
“Take me to the place between worlds!” he told Golden Mane. That didn’t work. “Take me to the void!” That didn’t work, either. “Take me to the gulf!” Nothing. “Take me outside!” Still nothing. “Show me Yggdrasil!”
A luminous circle, a sort of doorway or tunnel, he couldn’t tell which, irised open in the air before him, its coruscating, shifting rainbow colors a contrast to the gray and white sky and landscape. He twisted in the saddle to shout to Sif and tell her what he’d said, but the circle of light engulfed him and his steed before he could get the words out, and an instant later, he and Golden Mane were somewhere else.
Feathered wings beating slowly, Golden Mane was cantering through a space illuminated by stars and phosphorescent nebulae on every side, and in the center of that seemingly limitless void stood – or floated – Yggdrasil the World Tree, its topmost reaches a leafy crown and its bottom roots that twisted away and dwindled to points without ever anchoring in solid earth like those of a common tree.
The Nine Worlds perched along Yggdrasil’s length. Poised on three of the upper branches were Asgard, loftiest of all, then Vanaheim, and next Alfheim, home of the bright elves who existed on friendly terms with the Aesir and Vanir. Midway down, encircling the trunk like a ring on a finger, was Midgard, home of mortal men, and below that, likewise circular but bigger, surrounding Yggdrasil like a hoop, was Jotunheim. At the bottom, poised on one or another root, were Nidavellir, the land of dwarves like Mudbeard; Muspelheim, home to the fire giants and fire demons; Svartalfheim, the realm of the malevolent dark elves; and Niffleheim, where the goddess Hela ruled over a kingdom of the dead.
Frozen, his eyes wide, Heimdall stared at the sight in amazement, in part because surely no one could regard it without awe and in part, he realized now, because until this moment he’d shared Sif’s doubts that his idea could actually work.
Having thought of Si
f, he looked around and realized with a pang of dismay that she wasn’t with him. But as he wondered how to return to his former location and fetch her, another prismatic circle opened near him, and she and Bloodspiller flew through, after which the ground shrank out of existence.
He gave her time to gawk at the spectacle before them. He was sure she needed it. When he judged that if her astonishment hadn’t passed – for how could it ever truly pass? – it at least wasn’t stupefying her any more, he called, “How did you know how to follow me?”
“I didn’t,” Sif replied. “But when you and Golden Mane vanished, Bloodspiller followed of his own accord. This… this is unbelievable.”
“It’s what sages and philosophers said it would be, but I know what you mean, and I agree. The sight is overwhelming.”
Sif took a deep breath. “It is. But we can’t afford to be overwhelmed. We have to figure out the next step. You’re seeing what you expected to see, but do you understand it?”
“Not really,” Heimdall said. “I don’t know how we’re not dying of the cold and lack of air out here when we couldn’t even survive a flight high over the border mountains of Jotunheim. For that matter, how can we make out the Tree so clearly with only starlight to reveal it?”
The consideration of all the things he didn’t understand gave him a pang of trepidation. How could he hope to accomplish his goal when he knew so little about this uncanny place? But now that he and Sif were here, he had to try.
His sister made a spitting sound. “All of that just is what it is. We can simply be glad of it and move on. I meant, do you understand what matters to us? Why aren’t Asgard and Jotunheim touching? Does that mean the conjunction is over?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? But my guess is no. The mystics say Yggdrasil gives a different view of reality. Higher. Eternal. Likely unchanging no matter how the various worlds move in and out of alignment.”
“In that case,” said Sif, “here’s the most important question. By the looks of it, we’re thousands and thousands of leagues from any of the Nine Worlds. How do we ride to where we’re going without it taking us years?”
“It doesn’t take the Valkyries years,” Heimdall replied. “Maybe distance is different here, or the magic of the horses overcomes it. There’s one way to find out.”
“Fair enough.” Sif nudged Bloodspiller with her heels. The roan’s wings beat faster, and his legs galloped. “Come on, beautiful boy! We’re going to Jotunheim!”
Heimdall urged Golden Mane to go faster and keep up. He thought that after the black stallion reached full speed, another shimmering circle might open in front of them, but if that was going to happen, it wasn’t happening yet. He pushed away the dismal thought that perhaps it wouldn’t happen at all because he and Sif would never figure out how to give the proper command.
Meanwhile, though the two Asgardians had yet to ride appreciably closer, Yggdrasil and the worlds it contained somehow seemed to loom even vaster than before. Merely by being what they were, they inspired the terrifying feeling that they were on the verge of crushing an ephemeral mite like himself into nonexistence.
The silence of the void reinforced the burgeoning fear as if it was another aspect of the dreadful spectacle before him, the totality that finite beings looked upon at risk of madness or perhaps even annihilation. He heard the tiny clinks of his armor, the creaks of his saddle, the rustle of Golden Mane’s lashing wings, but nothing else. He wanted to call out to Sif just to make more noise but could think of nothing to say.
Gradually he came to feel as though all thought, all memory, all purpose was abandoning him, as if the erasing of his consciousness and perhaps his very being had already commenced. He wanted to keep his steed pointed toward his destination, less now to fulfill his mission than simply to escape the obliterating pressure of the void, but he’d forgotten what his destination was.
For a time, numbness and dread smothered him, and then Golden Mane slowed from an aerial gallop to a canter. The shifting attendant upon the altered gait roused Heimdall, and with a flash of terror, he felt he’d been on the verge of losing himself completely and forever.
He looked over at Sif. To his horror, she was slumped and lolling in the saddle, her features vacant. She was clearly in the same perilous condition he’d still be in himself if Golden Mane, apparently feeling his rider’s slackening grip on the reins and no longer certain of his intent, hadn’t slowed down.
At that, Heimdall was afraid he’d only delayed the inevitable. He could already feel the ghastly majesty of the sight before him threatening to grind him beyond insignificance into nothingness. “Please,” he said to Golden Mane, “I know I don’t know what I’m doing, but you do. Get us out of here! If you don’t, Sif and I are going to die!”
The black steed tossed his head and resumed his gallop. To Heimdall’s relief, Bloodspiller accelerated to keep up with his stablemate.
But, Heimdall wondered, were the horses actually racing through the void to any purpose? He feared not, but with his thoughts crumbling once again, there was nothing to do but trust them.
After an excruciating time, another glittering portal opened. Heimdall had just enough of his faculties left to be glad. Golden Mane flew through, Bloodspiller followed, and the Asgardian’s thoughts jolted back into focus. For an instant he rejoiced, then realized that just because he’d emerged from the ordeal alive and sane didn’t mean his sister had. Tense with dread at what he might discover, he looked over at her and called, “Are you all right?”
“More or less,” she answered, a tremor in her voice. For a heartbeat, he closed his eyes in relief. “How do the Valkyries endure that?”
“Training, I imagine,” he replied, “or some initiation into the sisterhood that grants them immunity.”
“Well,” she said, “however they manage it, they’re welcome to it. Are we where we’re supposed to be?”
He realized it was a good question. It didn’t matter how shaken the void had left him. There were practical matters to attend to. “Let’s look around and find out.”
For a little while, as they soared over glaciers white as salt, Heimdall dared to hope this might indeed be Jotunheim. But in time, the glaciers gave way to evergreen forests. When he and Sif passed over a village in which the folk were no bigger than they were, had pink skin rather than blue, and cried out in wonder instead of shouting an alarm and raising weapons, the truth was undeniable.
“We’re in Midgard,” said Sif, frustration in her voice.
“Yes,” Heimdall said. He shared her disappointment. “I suppose that when we became incapable of riding in the proper direction, the horses came to the world they’re accustomed to visiting.”
“I’m grateful they brought us anywhere that isn’t that emptiness. But we still need to get to Jotunheim.”
“I know.”
“They must have sorcerers on Midgard. Someone who can shift us to where we want to go.”
Heimdall frowned, considering the idea and then reluctantly deciding that – much as he dreaded returning to the void where Yggdrasil stood – it wouldn’t serve. “Maybe, but by all accounts, true, powerful wizardry is even rarer here than in Asgard. How long would it take to find a warlock with the proper skills? Does Asgard have that kind of time?”
“Curse you, your knowledge, and your logic! But all right. If we have to go look at the Tree again, I suppose we have to.”
“Let’s take a rest first, and when we do go back we can talk to one another throughout the ride. The conversation will fill our minds and distract us from the void.”
“That makes sense.” Sif pointed. “I see a stream down there.”
Hissing over mossy stones, the water was bracingly cold. Kneeling beside the stream, Heimdall drank his fill of it and scrubbed his face with more. Afterwards, he and Sif ate some of the pilfered food from their backpacks while the horses grazed. The
two Asgardians then sat in companionable silence and he sought to think of things they might talk about when they returned to the void.
He also found himself thinking of how difficult and dangerous it had been just to get this far. It was likely to be more difficult and dangerous still to deal with the perils of the void, Jotunheim, and ultimately stealing Mimir’s head from the stronghold of the frost giant king himself. Seeking to bolster his resolve, he told himself he and Sif had overcome daunting perils already and honed their skills in the doing of it. Surely they were ready for what would come next.
Finally, her voice steady, Sif asked, “Ready?”
“Yes,” he said, doing his best to hide his anxiety as, he suspected, she was hiding hers. They mounted their steeds, and, splashing up water, the stallions galloped down the stream where there were no branches overhead to hinder their ascent and after a few strides lashed their wings and rose into the air. When they’d climbed above the trees, Heimdall said, “Take me to Yggdrasil!” A round luminous portal opened before him.
The spectacle of the colossal Tree was as awe-inspiring as before but more frightening because now he knew how quickly its transcendent immensity would start eroding his mind. He made sure Sif had emerged safely into the void and then, determined to exit the gulf as quickly as possible, turned Golden Mane toward Jotunheim.
“Do you think,” Sif called, “that when we return Mimir’s head to Asgard, that will truly be enough to absolve us of blame?”
You, anyway, he thought. You’re not the fool who killed that poor guard. “I do,” he said aloud. “There has to be some limit to everyone’s blind adherence to tradition and Odin’s decrees.”
“I have to point out that if you’d blindly adhered to tradition and the All-Father’s decrees, we wouldn’t be here looking at this wretched Tree. I can feel the weight of it pushing down on me already.”
“Don’t think about it,” he replied. “Concentrate on what we’re saying to one another and on keeping Bloodspiller – I still say that’s a name for a sword, not a horse – pointed in the right direction.” He strained to think of what to say next. Yggdrasil’s terrible magnificence was making it difficult to recall any of the topics he’d hit on while sitting beside the stream. Eventually, however, he remembered one. It was a good one, too. Teasing and thus annoying Sif might help her keep her thoughts sharp. “You made a point of saying Thor’s power was more than a match for any storm giant’s.”
The Head of Mimir Page 14