by Matt Larkin
Eir mumbled in acknowledgment and Sigyn made her way deeper into the library. A pair of wings led off to towers, each sealed with some form of mechanism. She’d spent a little time examining it. One of the books discussed the craft of locksmithing with enough detail she could imagine what went on inside—tumblers and gears set to drive a metal bar into the wall and keep the door sealed.
Sigyn knelt before the lock. An artisan’s tools were not intended for this, but it was worth a try. With a tiny file, she felt around inside the lock, attuning her hearing for the slightest click. Enhancing the acuity of her senses had been her first real use of pneuma and remained a strength she could rely on. If this failed, she might enhance her muscles enough to break the door down, but then she’d have to explain herself to Eir and Fulla, at least one of which would no doubt relay it to Frigg as well.
She was in no mood for a lecture or for—
Click.
There. Now all she had to do was a little adjustment and … the bolt receded. Perfect.
She rose, packed the artisan’s kit, and slipped into the tower, careful to shut the door behind her.
The tower was just another wing of the library, with shelves more of books, scrolls, and notes lining the walls of each floor. A sheen of dust covered everything, including papers left strewn atop the few tables here. Some of those looked like what she’d come to recognize as Freyja’s hand.
Sigyn leafed through a few. Perhaps the Vanr had been researching something just before Odin banished her to Alfheim.
The betrayal of Audr Nottson.
A historical treatise? Why would the Vanr sorceress be writing about this Audr, whoever he was?
The wraith Odin has bound has admitted to being one Audr Nottson, the fallen prince of the Lofdar. By binding such a spirit, Odin gains access to abilities and insight possessed by few among the Vanir. However, I fear the hold it has over him.
Wraith? Odin was possessed by a wraith? Stories claimed those were the most fell of all ghosts—vaettir of hatred and rage. So some of Odin’s power came from his hold over a vaettr. And it sounded more like Odin was trying to control the wraith than the other way around.
With a sigh, she left the papers on the table. Whatever Freyja had intended no longer mattered, nor seemed to hold any bearing on Sigyn’s current dilemma. She needed a way to restore sight to the blind, and an angry ghost wasn’t going to get her there.
She made her way up another set of stairs to the highest landing. Yet more books. It might take her years to delve through all these tomes. And why not? The Vanir had spent millennia accumulating them, or rather, penning most of them.
There, another tome written by Mundilfari. The former king had lost himself by looking too deeply into the Art, true, so his insights might prove dangerous or delusional. They might also, however, hold the secrets she sought. Where better to look than in the writings of one who had seen beyond what others thought possible?
She settled down on the floor, back against a bookcase, and flipped through Mundilfari’s tome.
The Theoretical Reach and Limitations of the Art, Volume Five.
Five? Damn, these people really had had too much time to sit and ponder things. Though it might now work in her favor. On the other hand, given a few thousand years, she could probably write a good many books herself.
As discussed in previous volumes, a change in one’s perspective can result in a change in one’s own subjective reality. To change the subjective reality of another requires greater expenditures of energy, with more objective changes requiring exponentially increasing amounts of power. No living individual has yet surpassed a certain degree of energy control, which I here term the pneuma plateau. Thus we are given to believe certain phenomena—the most common example being the resurrection of the dead—to be unattainable.
However, given unlimited energy, the most profound limitations appear to be the powers available to spirits themselves. If one could—and so dared—call upon a spirit of maximum potency, such as ascribed to an Elder God, one might theoretically surpass the pneuma plateau and effect a fundamental change to reality. Whether theoretically impossible acts—again, resurrection—might then become possible would thus depend entirely on the purview of said Elder God.
Elder God? Odin had called upon the power of some ancient Sun God to banish the Vanir to the World of Sun, but the king refused to reveal any details of his act. The rest of that sounded more like Mundilfari liked to hear himself ramble, save for the salient point that vaettir could achieve ends beyond mortals.
All sorcery was the evocation or invocation of something Otherworldly. So then, if any such an entity could cure blindness, Sigyn would need to identify the vaettr. Then she’d have to understand enough of the Art to compel the creature to aid her. If Odin had managed to do so with a wraith, then there was no reason to believe Sigyn could not figure out how to do so with any other being.
She just needed time.
25
The mountains of Jotunheim seemed to go on forever, caked in snows that stretched so deep no man could dig to the bottom. Snows built up over the course of thousands of years of freezing wind and bitter mist.
Now, an icy breeze made even the light summer snowfall seem a winter storm. Flakes whipped about, further obscuring the sky ahead.
Odin had seen Jotunheim before, in visions aided by the High Seat. It had not quite prepared him for the endless, barren expanse. Few trees graced this side of the Midgard Wall. Instead, naught but ice and rock stretched out, farther even than Valravn’s ravens could see.
Freki fell back until he was in step with Odin. “We never passed beyond the wall. Do these mountains ever end?” Even the varulf had bundled in heavy furs, those caked with frost. The snows dusted his beard and mustache, adding to his already wild look.
“Everything ends,” Odin answered, hardly considering his words. Sometimes, he felt he began to sound rather like Loki. A consequence of immortality and lofty burdens? He pulled his own wolf-skin cloak tighter around his shoulders. The apple’s power protected him from the elements to some extent, but still, Odin felt his stones were ready to freeze solid.
Men in the North Realms told stories of Jotunheim. A land of wilds, a land of chaos, where the jotunnar dwelt. Still, they could barely begin to conceive of the expanse of this place. So much larger than Midgard, it seemed. Utgard encircled the world of men, ever crushing the edges closer to the chaos.
According to Hrist, the river Ifing blocked their way, and they’d need to find a place where it had frozen in order to cross.
“Do you know aught of Thor?” Freki asked.
Odin spared his varulf son a weighty glance. “I know that he yet lives. More than that, I cannot say.” Clarity was hard to come by. Maybe the Well of Mimir could change all that. “All we can do now is press on.”
“There is a jotunn hall some miles to the north,” Odin said. They had passed out of the mountains and into hill lands. Had crossed the Ifing and found Jotunheim yet more vast.
Odin had only the vaguest sense of where they headed.
Geri glanced at her brother. Neither of the twins bothered to ask how Odin knew what lay ahead. Perhaps they already understood the ravens fed Odin information. Given the wind and the chill, though, Odin could not send the birds out far without risking losing them.
In a recent pass, Huginn had sent Odin an image of a stone fortress rising from atop a hill like a crown of spears. Spike-toped towers jutted from a parapet around that hall, covered in ice and glittering in the sunlight.
While Odin did not much fancy the thought of calling on a jotunn lord, they needed supplies and they needed directions. He saw no alternative save to press forward and seek hospitality.
Some humans had found moderate welcome in similar places. Odin knew Starkad had traveled here before, and come to something like mutual respect with a jotunn king. But those lands lay in the wrong direction, leaving Odin with little choice but to press on to an unknown lord.
> It began as small points, rising from the ground. As they drew nigh to the hall, those points grew into outcroppings jutting from parapets, each twice the size of a man. Upon two, frozen corpses dangled, naked, impaled through the abdomen. The corpses faced outward as if watching for intruders. Odin grimaced at the sight.
Geri grunted, shaking her head. “This is the king you wish to seek shelter with?”
“For all we know those were criminals or traitors. We have not come to Jotunheim to sit in judgment over the locals. Our own lands have enough woes as it is.”
Freki went first, trudging toward the massive gate with surprising grace despite snows that Odin always seemed to sink up to his knees in. Such travels made him miss Sleipnir, though Thor had more need of the horse than Odin at present.
As the varulf drew nigh, a spiked portcullis began to creak up into the recesses of the fortress. The great gate stood perhaps four times Odin’s height, and each of those spikes looked the length of his forearm. The jotunn king did not appear kindly disposed. But then, the lands of chaos didn’t give kindness much chance to flourish.
Still, Odin dared to hope this jotunn might be similarly disposed as King Godmund.
Beyond the gate, a pair of frost jotunnar stood, holding spears that looked carved from bone.
Freki faltered, then fell back several steps. Unlike him to fear even armed jotunnar … “There are wolves in there,” his son said before Odin could ask.
Indeed, five heavy dire wolves came stalking out past the jotunn guards, hackles up. Their growls echoed off the ice-coated walls. Closer they came, until Odin could catch wind of their slightly damp stench.
Freki and Geri formed up in front of Odin, and a low growl built in each of their chests as well.
One by one, the dire wolves met the gazes of the varulfur. Slowly, their tails dropped down between their legs and they began to back away. A slight whimper from the lead one, and then they turned and fled back inside the fortress.
The jotunn pair looked to one another, mouths slightly agape, revealing wolf-like fangs themselves. That, and the hint of goat-like horns poking through their foreheads told Odin just about all he needed to know. Man-eaters.
“Who is king here?” Odin demanded. “Have you no hospitality for weary travelers?”
The left jotunn said something in his own language to the other one, then turned back to Odin. With a jerk of his head, he beckoned them to follow inside.
The gatehouse led into a courtyard, this filled with ice sculptures all situated around a miraculously unfrozen fountain. The sculptures depicted men—or jotunnar, perhaps—posed for battle. Some armed, some brandishing naught but oversized muscles that almost made them look more like bears than men.
The guards led them up to a pair of stone doors leading into the central hall. Each guard grabbed one ringed handle and jerked. The raucous din of boasting, wrestling, and carrying-on hit Odin like a physical wave as soon as the great double doors began to draw open. The hall inside was packed with several dozen frost jotunnar, most overlarge and clearly having tasted the flesh of men as well. A veritable army of jotunnar camped far closer to the breach than Odin would have liked.
Geri drew up close behind him. “We cannot overcome so many if they turn on us.”
Odin nodded once, not turned back to her. The three of them could not have defeated or even escaped so many jotunnar, true enough.
Walk in shadow …
Yes, Audr could pull Odin out of the Mortal Realm and thus—perhaps—out of reach of the jotunnar. That, however, would leave Odin’s varulfur children alone to die here. Instead, he leaned upon his walking stick like any other old man.
“Do not reveal my identity,” he whispered. Living so close to the breach, these jotunnar might well know of Thor, son of the king of Asgard, who so troubled their kind. An unknown vagabond might receive better treatment in this hall than a king.
The guards led Odin and the varulfur past numerous stone tables, each large enough to sit a dozen jotunnar. Scattered among the tables, wolves and dire wolves lounged. As the varulfur drew nigh, ordinary wolves would rise and scamper to opposite sides of the room, clearly cowed.
At the back of the hall, the jotunn lord sat upon a throne, a platinum-haired jotunn female beside him.
The jotunn lord himself wore layers of animal hide that might have served as primitive armor. Four ox-like horns jutted from his head at odd angles, and, indeed, he must have stood twice Odin’s height. A giant sword lay strewn across his lap, where he sharpened the edge with a whetstone. By the look of it, the task hardly mattered. That sword seemed honed to a razor edge already.
The creature grumbled something, spit on the floor, and fixed Odin with a glare. “A man even the dogs won’t attack, eh?”
Odin cleared his throat. “Just a man and his children, seeking shelter from the cold.”
The jotunn chuckled. “Want to be warm? I can arrange that.”
He lurched to his feet, sword suddenly held up and pointed at Odin. “Seize the intruders.”
Dozens of massive forms gained their feet, some brandishing weapons, and all fixated upon Odin and his children.
26
In the foothills of mountains separating the middle world from the outer world, they had found a village under the yolk of some jotunn lord or other. The village paid tribute to the jotunn and got to keep their mud and the ugliest of their daughters. Despite their appalling squalor, the village folk sheltered Sif and her companions, taking turns hosting them in their houses.
Today, they stayed in the cabin of a woodcutter just outside the village proper.
Thor flung his flagon against the wall where it shattered, spilling the dregs of amber liquid in all directions. “Your beer is weak!”
The hapless woodsman flinched at the prince’s tone, muttering apologies and groveling as if a jotunn itself sat in his kitchen.
“It can’t be that bad,” Sif said. “You’ve had ten of them.”
“Counting, are we?” Thor snapped at her. “Well … ten makes me a fucking expert, doesn’t it?”
Sif rose from the small table where she’d sat across from Thor, watching him drink himself into another stupor. She patted the terrified woodsman on the arm. The poor villager brewed his own beer, which, in his circumstances, was an accomplishment in and off itself. “Give us a moment alone,” she whispered in the man’s ear.
The woodsman ambled right out the door, clearly all too glad to be away from the drunken oaf Thor had become.
“Make some fucking mead!” Thor shouted after him. The prince pressed his palm against his forehead, teeth gritted, and strained, as if trying to push his head off his shoulders.
“The headaches have not abated at all?” Sif finally asked.
“Now what could have given you that fucking idea?” He slammed a fist into the table, cracking it down the middle. An instant later, the table split in two, spilling an empty soup bowl onto the floor, where that too shattered.
Sif bit her lip. Hel take Groa. Let the Queen of the Mists devour the sorceress’s soul for this debacle. Thor lived, yes, but he’d become a … a … clod. A brute kicking his own dogs.
Odin may have been a bastard, but he at least feigned civility.
The door burst open before Sif could say aught else, and Loki strode through, hair hanging in his face, eyes wild. “Odin needs us.”
Oh, fuck. Sif rolled her eyes and looked hard at Loki. All of this was Odin’s fault, in truth. If the king hadn’t insisted on getting past Hrungnir, Thor would be fine. Or even if Odin had bothered to fight his own battle. “What is it now?”
“He’s been taken, somewhere in Jotunheim. I have a sense of him, but it’s weak.”
Sif scoffed. “Jotunheim is beyond our reach. We barely survived our encounter with Groa, and Odin has a great head start on us.”
Thor shoved past Sif without so much as a word. Gaping at him, she followed him outside. The prince drew a knife as he stalked to where the woodsma
n was feeding his goats.
“Wait, Thor,” Sif said.
Thor didn’t pause in the least. He stomped over, grabbed the rope that bound a goat, and cut it with the knife. “Goat draws a cart. We’ll catch up like that.” He stormed over to the second goat, cut that rope too.
“But my goats,” the woodsman said.
Thor shoved past him, dragging the goats along by the lines in the process. Not even glancing at the hapless woodsman, Sif’s husband began hooking the beasts up to the cart.
Troll shit. He really intended to steal the man’s animals.
Grumbling, Sif fished out a few silver coins from Holmgard—actually probably Miklagardian in make—and pressed them into the woodsman’s hands. Maybe not a lot he could buy with silver in a place like this, but she had naught else to offer.
“Thor,” she called. “Thor, please, we cannot go to Utgard. It’s mist-madness.”
He spun on her, growling, a trail of spittle dribbling down into his beard. “Stay here and drink arse-strained beer if you wish. I’m going to save my fucking father!”
Sif looked to Loki, but the man remained as impassive as ever. Unreadable.
Troll shit.
Sif climbed into the back of the cart.
27
Eylimi’s court in Styria lay in view of the mighty Sudurberks, mountains many considered impassible. Over the years, Sigmund had heard of a few raiding parties trying to strike into Outer Miklagard by passing through the mountains. None had returned. Whether they fell to the Miklagardians and their strange ways, or simply succumbed to the mountains and the vaettir that no doubt called them home, Sigmund could not guess.
Such things mattered little, in the end. Eylimi had received him in a temple on the lower slopes of those mountains, the place a many-tiered marvel, with steeply sloping roofs overhanging one another. This temple, dedicated to the Aesir and most especially to benevolent Thor who fought the beasts of chaos on behalf of mankind, seemed far more impressive than what Sigmund had seen of Eylimi’s hall.