by Matt Larkin
“I sacrifice where sacrifice is warranted. I do not touch sorcery without direst need of it.”
The svartalf snickered and looked to the girl. “See how he casts himself as a hero? This man who would be king and god of all Midgard? A murderer. A liar. A thief. A breaker of all faith.” Now he looked to Odin. “The only difference between us is I do not cloak my darkness in hypocrisy.”
The woman whimpered again.
“Trust me, Ás, you’ll want a sacrifice before the night is done. I have brought you what you sought, but you must shed blood to truly gain its benefit, and you must do so this night.” He shrugged. “And virgins make wonderful sacrifices.”
Odin groaned. “A virgin.” A child.
Volund snickered. “Well, she was.”
Now Odin lunged at the svartalf. Volund melted away in shadow, only to form up a few feet from where he’d stood.
“You rapist!” Odin spat at him.
The svartlaf snorted. “There was time to pass while the cursed sun blazed.”
“You sick son of a—”
“Please. Spare me the sanctimony, Ás. We are forged by agonies. It the very essence of our existence. The more we suffer, the stronger we become. Those who break are unworthy of aught save their uses to those who weather the cycles of pain and damnation. I do naught which has not been done to me and made me strong. And you, who have sucked the very souls out of hundreds of victims and damned them to eternal torment, would condemn me for visiting transitory suffering upon one soon to die to sate your more profane needs?”
“I should have killed you long ago.”
Volund chuckled and opened one hand to reveal a golden ring, glittering in the moonlight, engraved with faint runes, a swan-like design encircling it. “Had you done so—or tried—you would not now have before you Draupnir. The culmination of our bargain and of your chance to hold the dead under your grasp.”
Odin grimaced, unable to look away from the entrancing golden sight. “I already provided you with souls for that.”
“To forge it. But if you would draw out its true potential, you must feed it, and under a blood moon such as this. Do you think traditions came from nowhere? Do you think they matter naught?”
Finding it hard to swallow, Odin turned his gaze upon the girl squirming on the ground. Damn Volund. And damn Odin himself for employing the dark smith. Without such treasures, Ragnarok would be lost. All of Midgard might fall. What was one girl’s life—or terror—compared to the lives of an entire world? Maybe if she understood, she’d have paid willingly.
Or maybe not.
“Give it to me.” His words sounded almost a growl in his own ears. Draupnir. The Dripper. The ring that would bring him one step closer to victory. If he could but bear the price.
“My payment,” Volund said.
From nowhere, shadows seemed to tickle Odin’s sides, probing into his satchel. Seeking the grimoire. That book, taken from Grimhild, belonged in no one’s hands, least of all a monster like Volund. But the ring … Oh, if only Volund had been able to replicate Andvarinaut, maybe none of his other works would be needful. But wishing for it would not make it so.
Disgusted as much with himself as the svartalf, Odin flung the satchel at the creature’s feet. Sneering, he dared Volund to claim his prize.
Without hesitation nor any hint of shame, the svartalf snatched up the bag. “Use it wisely, oh king.” He flicked the ring through the air and Odin caught it, overcome by its sudden warmth. “For it is the last craft I shall make for you.”
“No, smith. We are not done yet. Not while Ragnarok looms over our heads.”
Volund grinned. “The Mortal Realm concerns me less and less. I have my own kingdom to attend to.”
Odin took a step toward him. Volund fell back, shadows swarming up around him. The gleam of his eyes lingered an instant after his form had descended into darkness. His dry, mind-twisting chuckles remained longer, echoing off the empty mountainside.
With a groan, Odin looked down at Draupnir, warm and gleaming in his palm. Supernal runes lined it, beckoning powers Odin could barely dream of understanding. “Damn you, Volund …”
After a moment of self-loathing, Odin looked to the girl. She moaned, the sound muffled by her gag. Then she flopped around, squirming toward the edge of the slope, as if she might escape by flinging herself down into a ravine.
Odin sighed, wishing—not for the first time—he had some gods left from which he could ask for forgiveness. History judges men. But what of the one burdened to ensure history continues at all? Maybe that had been Loki’s true onus all along.
Seeing no alternative, Odin grabbed the girl by the back of her shirt and hauled her up onto her feet. Those were bound too, so she couldn’t have stood without him supporting her. He turned her about to face him. The least he could do for her, really. “I know it’s not much comfort, but your death may allow future generations to live.”
She whimpered.
Truly a small comfort, even given that she probably had no idea the horrors that lay in store for the dead. Men were blessed with not understanding what truly lay beyond the Veil, an ignorance Odin sometimes envied them.
He eased the girl down to the ground, then slipped Draupnir onto his finger and blew out a long breath.
As he pulled a knife from his belt, tears begin to stream down the girl’s face. But sadly, Volund had spoken the truth: Odin had slain a great many for his ends. The king of gods and men could not afford pity if it might cost the world itself.
Grimacing, he drew the knife along the girl’s throat. Hot blood oozed from the line he’d cut, and he let it dribble down over his fingers, over Draupnir.
Her eyes glazed over, and she fell back into the snow, convulsing lightly.
Draupnir grew warmer, hot even, as hot as molten gold it seemed. It glowed incandescent, then white hot. Odin grunted in pain as it seared his flesh.
Every instinct screamed in his mind to tear the blistering ring from his finger. Instead, he closed his fist—as much to steel his own will as for any need—and held it before his face. Liquid gold seeped from between his clenched fingers and dribbled down his arm.
Odin gasped at the agony as his flesh bubbled and popped from the heat of it. He threw back his head, choking on his own screams. The gold dripped down from the ring and landed sizzling in the snow.
Drop after drop fell, hissing. They threw up curtains of steam hot enough to burn away the mist drifting over the mountain.
Finally, the heat faded. The last dribble of gold fell from Odin’s elbow, and he collapsed to his knees, clutching his arm. Rivulets of raw, blistered flesh ran down the back of it in bloody deltas. The flesh around his finger had bubbled and burst, scorched and agonizing.
Odin groaned, then thrust his burning hand and arm into the snows. It stung like the spit of Hel. He gasped, letting the coldness offer him slow relief.
Immortality would ensure such wounds didn’t kill him. His flesh would heal in a few days, in fact. It hardly lessened the suffering of having his skin burned off. Almost, it seemed a blessing he could only achieve this during a blood moon. It obviated the guilt of not doing so more often.
Coughing, Odin swept away the snow where the drops of gold had fallen. The heated metal had melted straight down to the mountainside, leaving the droplets sitting in pools of rapidly cooling water. And inside each pool lay a ring, a nigh duplicate of his own, and so very similar to the one Svanhit had once entrusted to him.
A ring of valkyries.
And it had spawned eight copies, each glittering in the moonlight. Eight rings to bind the choosers of the slain.
Odin scooped them up and deposited them in a pouch. He’d need to burn the girl’s body to ensure she couldn’t rise as a draug. And then … then he had a great deal of work to do.
2
Eighteen Years Ago
The vagaries of time stripped away the truth of memory and left it a shadow of reality, much like the Penumbra that haunted Od
in’s dreams. How many times had he descended into the deep forge, seeking the svartalf smith? How many interminable winters had passed while Odin strived after scheme upon scheme, seeking knowledge or artifacts that might unravel even a single strand of the weave of urd?
Memory lies, Valravn said in Odin’s mind. The raven spirit he’d taken from Gjuki did not oft speak to him directly, rather relaying the sights beheld by its minions.
A good many moons he had poured over Grimhild’s tome, lost in the mud when Skadi fled from Loki’s implacable flame. The cryptic and mind-shredding writings had whispered strange truths to him, even as the wraith inside Odin taunted him of the grimoire’s potential.
Older than old … Audr said.
Older than the Niflungar, if that was to be believed. Older than either Valravn or Audr. Perhaps even written by Hel herself when she yet lived. The daughter of Loki, in another era, long before the coming of the mists. A book out of time, older than the world itself.
Shadows loomed around Odin as he stalked down into Volund’s forge, ever dancing, seeming to watch his progress and report back to their twisted master.
Perhaps they even sensed the vile grimoire within Odin’s satchel. The book had held more questions than answers, but, if Loki had taught Odin aught, he had taught him the value of questions. Questions might spark revelation where answers but compounded bemusement. If prompted to the right question, knowledge unsought might come to the student.
As the grimoire had instructed Odin, even while refusing to reveal the depths of its secrets.
Dozens of different hands had scrawled notes in the book, explanations even Audr could not unravel, for they had belonged to languages dead thousands of years before the Old Kingdoms. But in the fleeting shadow of his memories, his past lives, Odin could recognize hints, glimpses of tongues spoken in forgotten lands by races turned to dust.
Witchcraft, foul Art stretching back to the beginning of time. To the beginning of all things, perhaps. The darkness that consumed memories and thought. Odin might spend a thousand years studying this grimoire, might lose himself in that darkness, and still not fathom the depth of Hel’s vile power.
“He sees it …” the shadows whispered. “The beginning. The end. The cycle …”
The longer Odin listened to Audr, the more the wraith’s words spiraled around in his mind, unravelling secrets mortal man was never meant to know. Or perhaps unravelling the fragile thread of Odin’s sanity. So many sorcerers went insane from the voices in their heads, the vaettir they bound in an unending search for ever greater power.
We lose bits of ourselves … Audr said.
Until we no longer care, Valravn said.
Sometimes, Odin could not say whether they spoke to him or to each other.
Deeper into the dark tunnel Odin walked, until he came to the forge, lit by the flicker of a furnace. Drenched in swirling shadows, Volund sat upon a chair of bone Odin might have easily mistaken for a throne.
The svartalf leaned forward, fingers steepled, staring at Odin. “I’ve waited for you. You wander slowly in my realm.”
“I am known to wander.”
“But this time you come bearing gifts.”
Odin sneered. The svartalf always knew more than he ought to and oft pushed the limits of Odin’s patience. More than once, Odin had considered ending the creature before him. Volund played his own game of tafl, manipulating the board and ever managing to remain only slightly more of a boon than a thorn to Odin.
He had once conspired with Väinämöinen—Odin’s erstwhile teacher of song-crafting—to claim boons Odin could not begin to understand. He had schemed and plotted his way to the throne of his own dark kingdom within Svartalfheim, heedless of the cost of it.
Ever he trod so close to that line, so nigh to crossing into the realm of becoming Odin’s foe. “I do not come with gifts for the likes of you.”
“Nevertheless, you will give me the tome.”
Odin grimaced. Yes, he’d known what Volund would ask. Prescient whispers of the Sight had warned him of the price he’d pay for his latest request. But Volund might possess the craft necessary to pursue Odin’s ends. The High Seat allowed Odin to look far out across Midgard, to see what happened in many lands. But still there remained realms far too alien and unknown to him, realms beyond his ken or control.
Realms the book had begun to reveal, along with the secrets Odin might need to harness them.
“What use,” Odin said at last, “has a vaettr for a tome about calling vaettir?”
Volund’s perverse grin made Odin’s skin crawl. “So we have an accord.”
Odin did not bother to deny that. Grimhild’s cursed tome offered him many potential boons, but the price might come too high, and regardless, Odin needed to bind the dead to his will, and not, as with Audr, merely to his soul. “You will have the tome only when you have wrought your next wonder, svartalf.”
Volund snatched up a cane and limped over to a great table. “Show me.”
Glowering, Odin withdrew the grimoire from his satchel, then flipped to the pages where he had made his own notes on a potential design.
Snatching the edge of the book, the svartalf spun it around and leaned down over it, apparently having no trouble reading even in the darkness of the forge. A tediously long time he craned his neck over the grimoire, reminding Odin of the ache in his own knees and pain in his lower back.
Having lost Gungnir, Odin was forced to lean upon a real walking stick.
Finally, Volund chuckled. “Oh, we come round and round, the circle unending in its twisted play.” Odin knew better than to answer that. The smith looked up. “There are rings like this, forged of orichalcum, binding servants who pass between this realm and the shadow.”
“You mean valkyries.”
Volund nodded. “So many copies of it I made, and never yet wrought one with the power to duplicate the originals, nor even knew whence they came.”
Odin thumped the book with his forefinger, indicating a prolonged passage about the forging of binding rings, along with his own notes. “This is it? This tells you how they have been mastered?”
Volund snickered. “It tells me … enough. Hel’s tactics may have been somewhat skewed compared to those currently in practice, but I can iterate upon her strategies to make that which you seek.” The smith rubbed his chin. “You’ve seen them.” It wasn’t a question, though how he knew, Odin could not say. “Which one was it, I wonder?”
Odin cocked his head to the side, saying naught. He owed Volund no answers nor did it serve his ends to offer the smith any more knowledge than the man already possessed. Volund had become twice over too dangerous as it was.
“Was it … Altvir?” An odd plaintiveness in the question seemed so uncharacteristic Odin frowned. Why would Volund care overmuch about a particular valkyrie? While perhaps an affectation, if Volund cared so much as to make himself vulnerable for an answer, perhaps Odin could pity him after all.
He scratched his beard. “I have not met a valkyrie by that name.”
The smith nodded, then shrugged as if to deny he cared in the least about any valkyrie. Then he shambled back to his chair, and slumped down, eyes gleaming in the dark. “Such a work would have to rival even Mjölnir. I would need nine years and nine years again.”
Odin suppressed a flinch. Nine years he had expected. Twice that, he had not prepared for. “I will hold the grimoire until it is done.”
“I’ll need a steady supply of souls.”
Odin shrugged. Having Thor funnel souls back to Volund was merely a matter of sending his son to kill more jotunnar with Mjölnir. “You’ll have all you need.”
Volund chuckled lightly, then leaned forward. “Have you considered, King of the Aesir, that those with such power already have a master? One who is not like to surrender servants without a fight.”
He’d considered it.
“I will see you in eighteen winters.”
Volund’s snickers followed Odin out of t
he forge, blending with the whispers of the shadows and the voices in Odin’s head into a cacophony of madness that seemed to chase him forever.
3
Thunder crashed over the mountains. The storm clouds here almost never cleared. It would not have seemed home if they had.
Gudrun had become a haunting voice in the back of Skadi’s mind. Though oft silent now, when she woke from her bouts of fugue, the sorceress had become a weeping, pathetic niggling that served to distract Skadi from more important tasks.
Climbing the slopes of the Thrymheim Plateau—as it was now called—the sorceress chittered in bouts of melancholy nonsense, beseeching nonexistent gods for succor. With a scowl, Skadi pushed Gudrun’s rantings from her mind.
She’d always known she’d have to come here. It was her place, once, her home, long winters back, as a mortal jotunn. Now what was she? A ghost, a snow maiden in possession of a broken woman’s body? She, the daughter of great King Thiazi, she whom they had called the Princess of Winter. Reduced to almost naught.
Involuntarily, ice formed around her fingers as she trod up the steep slope. Flexing her fingers dismissed the forming shards. There was little sense in expending her energy in such indulgences at present. She might have need of her powers soon enough.
After all, she’d spent the better part of two decades gathering enough support to become a threat to Thrym. He would know of her. But still, if she could reclaim her throne without having to ignite a war amongst the jotunnar—one sure to sap their strength with needless bloodshed—she would do so.
At the center of the plateau rose a mountain, encircled by the city Skadi’s father had built in days long gone. A mighty wall protected the city, one even Skadi’s jotunn allies would find hard to breach. Yes, claiming the city of Thrymheim would require a toll she was loath to pay while any other option remained before her.
The Iron Titans flanked the main gate, each seventy feet tall, holding blades that could’ve cleaved human houses in twain, had their owners not been mere ornamentation. Once, during the War of Shattered Cities, Skadi had sought a way to animate those great statues. Ever deeper she’d delved into the abyss of the Art, searching for any answer to bring them to life. Perhaps, had the war not claimed her life, she might have done so.