by Matt Larkin
“My prince,” Nanna said, then fell silent when he looked to her.
Baldr shook his head. “I will return on the full moon. Nanna will either marry me and accompany me to Asgard, or I will leave and take my protection and my offer of gifts with me. Then you can decide how you fancy dealing with Ingjald and this endless winter, both.”
With that, he shoved past Gevarus and slammed the door behind himself.
25
They’d given Gnipahellir a very wide berth, for Freyja had no idea how far out the yeth hounds might detect their presence. That city-state lay on the outer edge of a great cavernous expanse that covered almost a quarter of the accessible land on Svartalfheim.
The Gloom Hollow. As if the eternal night covering the rest of this world did not offer enough horror.
Impassible, darkness-shrouded mountains rose over the caverns, and, according to some tales, Nott herself dwelt in those mountains. Either way, the entrance to the cavern seemed an overhanging shelf hundreds of feet wide.
Beyond Gnipahellir, they’d returned to the river and followed it all the way to a vast underground sea. In the darkness of the cavern, Freyja couldn’t even begin to guess how far the sea stretched out.
The Brisingamen told her that Volund lay ahead, though, and so they skirted the sea until they found a small abandoned canoe.
“Thing hardly looks seaworthy,” Hermod commented.
“It’ll have to do. I can keep us heading in the right direction.”
Hermod grunted, then motioned for her to sit in the boat. When she had, he shoved it off and hopped in himself.
There was a single oar, which Hermod took up, and began to paddle. He rowed in silence, the only sound the lapping of the oar on the water, or the small waves breaking upon the boat. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Any idea how far it is?”
“Obviously close enough one can row there, or there would not be a boat.”
“Ugh. What if they use the boat for fishing?”
Freyja dared to hope otherwise. It felt like they were getting closer. “There’s no fishing nets or other gear.”
“Maybe the fishermen took the nets.”
“Perhaps.”
Hermod grunted. “If there are fish … what else might lurk under the surface?”
Freyja sighed. “I’m not from this world. In fact, I’m not originally from Alfheim, either, in case you have forgotten. I don’t know what …”
Her own glow illuminated the distance a little, casting a giant rock in dancing shadows as they drew nigh.
Hermod glanced over his shoulder to see what she was staring at. “Is that … a root?”
Freyja squinted. Once they drew closer, she realized he was right. A root the size of a house bored down from hidden darkness above, straight into the water, bits of fiber remaining exposed. “Yggdrasil.”
“Yggdrasil’s on Asgard.”
“The World Tree exists in all worlds. It’s what holds us together and regulates the flow of souls.”
“I … I’m not sure I understand. Flow of souls? You mean like ghosts?”
Freyja frowned. She’d never truly understood the idea, either, and the Queen’s court had never been overly forthcoming on how such things worked. Certainly she was far from keen to try to explain the concepts to him.
Hermod steered the boat around the giant root, but Freyja couldn’t tear her eyes from it. “It could be a long time at sea,” he said.
She sighed. Prodding for conversation. Or answers. “So far as I can tell, some or maybe even all of the alfar, maybe all vaettir, were once human. They died and over time became something different.”
“Odin said all vaettir were ghosts.”
Maybe. Maybe that was an oversimplification of an enormously complex process. “One truth underlies reality, as I now understand it. Yggdrasil—or whatever you prefer to name it—holds creation together. The dead are drawn into it. Sometimes the process gets interrupted and souls linger as ghosts, maybe twisted enough to become wraiths or draugar or so forth. The point is, the roots and branches of the tree are like veins, pulsing through all the realms.”
“And souls are blood in those veins?”
That wasn’t … actually that sounded as good an analogy as she could come up with for the moment. She spread her hands for lack of a better answer.
Hermod grunted in time with his rowing as the root disappeared behind them. “So the tree is like veins, and souls are the blood. But doesn’t that mean there should be a creature that all of that supports?”
Freyja chuckled. “It’s possible to take a metaphor too far.”
“The most direct answer I’m like to get, huh?”
“Mmm.”
Still, his words had conjured up an imagery that refused to depart her mind.
It seemed almost an hour had passed when at last a rocky shore came into view. The boat crunched up on the shore and Freyja flinched.
“That’s not sand,” Hermod said.
No. The beach was made of shards of broken bone, ground—mostly—into pulp.
Indeed, mounds of uncrushed bones taller than she was created the hills.
Freyja’s chest hurt. The shadows here retreated from her light, but only just. Like thousands of serpents, slithering on the edges, seeking a way in. As she climbed from the boat, she grabbed Hermod’s hand and drew him close to her.
He didn’t seem to need much convincing.
Damn, was she glad she hadn’t burned away all her sunlight just yet.
Neither dared to speak—indeed, the writhing shadows felt suffocating and she didn’t even wish to open her mouth—so they passed between the bone mounds in silence. Silence, save for the awful sound of more bones crunching under their heels with each step.
Beyond the shoreline, the cavern ceiling dropped lower, low enough to make out stalactites jutting down like teeth. Water fell from some of them to splash down into putrid pools, while other stalactites actually stretched all the way down to the floor in almost a mockery of the marble columns of Alfheim.
Whole skeletons were strewn about, here and there, some covered in dust and cobwebs, some looking fresh. The whole island stank of death and decay, but as they pushed on, the reek grew worse. Around another mound of bones, she saw why. A newly dead svartalf hung upside down, suspended from barbed hooks in a column, one such hook stuck through each of his ankles. His gut had been sliced open, allowing his blood and bowels to spill all over his chest and neck, in a stinking shower of gore.
Hand to her mouth, Freyja looked away. She was going to retch. She was going to … She fell to her knees and vomited up what little was in her stomach. “Oh …”
The soft rasp of metal on leather told her that Hermod had drawn his sword.
Freyja looked up, though her hair splayed across her eyes and blocked some of her vision.
In the distance, the light of a tiny fire had drawn Hermod’s gaze, though now he turned about slowly, peering into one dark depth of the cavern or the next. “They’re coming. If we can see their light …”
Then they could see hers, too. Freyja wiped her mouth. “There’s no point in hiding.” Even if they could have done so. “We came to see your uncle.”
Hermod groaned, then slid the blade back into the sheath over his shoulder. “I had not known him capable of … this.”
“What do you remember of him?”
“I was young. I remember … he loved his wife. Not much else, really. I mean I remember living with him, skating on the frozen lake. I remember long winters. Not so long as we have now, though.”
What did that mean?
Freyja fell in step beside him, and the two of them plodded forward, toward that distant light.
The light ahead came from sporadic braziers atop a black stone fortress. Stone lances rose up from the fortress like the spines of a hideous beast, the greatest of which formed a tower so massive, she could not make out its pinnacle. The fortress city-state of Saevarstadir.
None on Alfheim
knew the full extent of this place. Whispers spoke that warrens beneath it dug so deep they passed under the sea. Even looking upon it had her gut clenching in visceral dread.
Tale—though few wished to speak of such things—told of liosalfar brought here and tormented until madness shattered their minds and their bodies became twisted beyond recognition.
Into such a dark hold Hnoss had fallen.
“It’s bigger than even the holds of the Old Kingdoms,” Hermod murmured.
Much larger, and Freyja suspected they could not see even half of it. “They’ve been building on this place for millennia. Long, long before the rise of the Old Kingdoms. Before the mists. I don’t think anyone even knows how long now.”
The man blew out a long breath and visibly steadied himself. Freyja knew how he felt. Had they a choice in the matter, she’d have turned back long ago. But too many threads pulled her here and refused to release her heart.
Hnoss.
“What is it?”
She suddenly realized she was clenching her fists and released them. “Naught.”
They made it a hundred feet more before forms melted up out of the shadows, as if the darkness took humanoid form around them. A war band of svartalfar, and this one led by a male, though all his twelve warriors were female.
“You have truly lost your mind to walk here, liosalf.” The male wore no shirt, exposing his ash-colored, tattooed flesh. Even as she watched, those tattoos seemed to shift ever so slightly, writhing as if in torment. “By what madness did you think you might simply approach the gates of Saevarstadir?”
“I will see the prince.”
“Oh, you will most certainly see him, and you will even more surely regret it.” The male looked from her to Hermod, but shook his head in disdain, perhaps judging the man mortal and thus of no consequence. At a slight incline of his head, the female warriors formed up around herself and Hermod. “Walk.”
Freyja offered no resistance. This was why they had come. It was far too late to back out now. However much she might have wished.
The male fell in step behind them.
“Who are you?” she asked, without turning around. “A ritter?”
“Yes. Skafinn.”
One of Volund’s key players, then. According to reports, most of the princes maintained three marquesses under them, and a small but indeterminate number of ritters. All theoretically outranked even the hipparchs who commanded the armies, though she doubted a ritter would wish to offend a hipparch.
Unfortunately, many of such insights were little better than speculation on the part of warriors of Alfheim.
A stone bridge spanned a chasm before the fortress, and beyond that, a thirty-feet high spiked gate could provide another line of defense. Some believed that Saevarstadir might represent the most impenetrable of all the city-states, even though its prince was probably among the least powerful of the princes of Alfheim.
Volund had usurped the position of his uncle Rathwith, though Freyja had no details regarding exactly how this transpired. One look at this city confirmed that it surely had not involved any sort of frontal assault.
As they reached the end of the bridge, the gate creaked open, rising into the darkness above, without any obvious source of someone pulling it open. Inside, torches lined the walls, but they were spaced far apart and—were it not for her own luminous skin—she might have found it hard to make out details.
So far as that went, those svartalfar she met inside squinted at her, despite the cloak Hermod had given to mostly conceal her light. They were so very adapted to the dark, here.
Razored ridges lined the walls, as Skafinn guided them through a labyrinth of corridors inside the fortress. Eventually, they came to a great hall, this supported by columns jutting massive spiked blades and sporting gargoyles in the shadowed recesses far above. The space was wide enough that neither the torches nor her own light seemed to have much effect on the thick shadows, save to send them dancing and whispering, in sibilant hatred.
They felt like physical things, slithering about her heels like serpents, waiting to strike should she show them a moment of weakness. Freyja had no words for her loathing of this place, but even that paled compared to her feelings for the prince himself, sitting in darkness upon a throne raised far above her position.
As he leaned forward, interlocking plates of his armor creaked ever so slightly.
“Remove her hood,” the prince said.
Skafinn yanked back her cloak, then hissed and stepped away, with an arm raised before his eyes.
Indeed, the other females accompanying them also took a collective step backward, their whispers seeming to meld with those of the shadows themselves.
“I thought so. You are Freyja.” Volund said. “And with a mortal companion.”
“Of the Mortal Realm,” Hermod said. “If not quite mortal, Uncle Volund.”
Now the prince rose abruptly from his throne, limping down the steps, relying on a cane in the process. He trudged around the two of them, inspecting them like a wolf circling prey. “Uncle?”
“Who among the mortal realm would call you thus?”
“No one who should yet live.” Volund chuckled, the hateful sound seeming to reverberate through the great hall. “Should not, and yet you do, spawn of Agilaz. So … Odin gave you the fruit of Yggdrasil, didn’t he? Hmmm. Yessss.” He chuckled again. “And here, when I think this existence between life and death has no more surprises … Ahhhh.” Volund traced an ash-gray finger along Hermod’s jaw. “I’m certain you two shall provide me with weeks of entertainment.”
“We are not here to amuse you,” Freyja snapped. More than aught else in her life, she wanted to draw her sword and sink it into this foul creature’s gut. Yes, perhaps she could not hope to match the power of a direct descendant of Gugalanna, much less fight off Skafinn and a dozen warriors. Still, the temptation was almost overpowering.
“I think you are,” Volund said. “You, liosalf, I can assume you came at last in the hopes of joining your daughter in the glorious dark.”
“Daughter?” Hermod asked, suddenly turning on her.
Volund cackled, shaking his head. “Oh, wondrous. You brought him here without even revealing your intentions?”
“I want to see Hnoss.”
“You will. Soon enough.”
“Now!” Her shout echoed through the hall.
It was still resounding when Skafinn’s fingers snared in her hair and he drove her to her knees. “You address the prince.”
“We’ve come for your help, Uncle,” Hermod said, saving her the trouble of answering. Damn, what a fool she was, losing her temper when dealing with him.
“Not for the girl? Hmmm. Help with what, then?”
Hermod glanced at Freyja before looking back up at his uncle. “Odin has come here, and been taken prisoner by the prince of …” Now he looked back to her.
“By Prince Fjalar of Amsvartnir,” Freyja finished for him.
Volund burst into dark laughter, shaking his head and shambling away. Still snickering, he settled down on the steps to his dais. “The fool Ás came here. I suppose that means he finally found it. Ahhh. And he did not get what he sought. Such is the way of the world, is it not?” The prince shook his head in amusement. “Why in the fathomless darkness of Nott herself would I wish to help him? Did you think because we had a few mutually beneficial trades that we were allies? I only regret I’m not there to hear his screams as Fjalar extracts his bowels through his nostrils.”
“Uncle,” Hermod said. “I didn’t know you knew Odin, but regardless, this is me. We are blood, and I am asking for your help. The world needs Odin.”
The prince’s mirth slipped off his face. “Blood … Hmmm. I never thought to find you alive after so very long, Hermod.”
Damn it. He wasn’t going to help them. Which meant … it meant Freyja had no choice save to reveal her last play. One final reason Volund might act against Amsvartnir and aid them. “Odin had a companion, Idunn
, and now Fjalar no doubt has her as well.”
Volund spread his hands. “So?”
“Like you, Idunn was the daughter of a vaettr with a mortal. Her mortal mother was a woman named Eostre.” Now she had his attention. “And her father was a svartalf named … Ivaldi.”
The shadows murmured even as Volund lurched to his feet. “Lies.”
“No. Her heritage made her forever an outcast in Alfheim. Barely tolerated, and certainly not within the Queen’s Court.”
“Tell me more about Ivaldi,” Hermod said. “Who was he, really?”
Now Freyja looked to him. “One of the sons of Gugalanna, and Volund’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Volund’s mother would have been Idunn’s half-sister. More importantly …”
Volund chuckled again, shaking his head. “More importantly, she carries the blood and power of the Dark King.” The prince rubbed his brow with one finger. “You managed to surprise me once more, liosalf. Very well. Skafinn, call Hipparch Elga. We go to war against Amsvartnir.”
Freyja took a step toward him. “Hnoss.”
Volund sneered. “As you wish.” He turned to a female warrior. “Bring her.”
Freyja sat alone on a steel bench, in a chamber lit by a smoldering brazier and the luminance of her own skin. The entire room was harsh, metallic, with ridges running along the walls like the innards of some abomination.
The door—a four-sectioned maw-like grate—groaned as it abruptly slid into the walls, floor, and ceiling.
A svartalf sashayed in, her hair black with blue streaks running through it, her skin so pale as to be almost white. Her eyes like black opals. Spiraling tattoos marred her face.