by Matt Larkin
“Return my daughter,” Odin snapped, not looking at Volund, but clearly addressing him. “Revoke your price.”
Volund stepped from the shadows beside Hnoss and cocked his head at her father. “Even were I so inclined, do you think she could return to Alfheim now? The light would be agony. Trust me, I know.”
Flashing a smirk, he slipped past them, shambling on to reach the stairs. Those were tedious in human form. For a bare instant he focused his mind. His shoulders popped and his jaw hurt as his form shifted into that of a raven. He flew through the corridors and into his throne room. There, Hermod stood, staring daggers at Hipparch Elga while she stood with her arms folded across her chest. Waiting for him no doubt.
Volund flew up to his throne, then resumed his human form. “If you want between her legs,” he said, “all you have to do is ask.”
“I never remembered you being vulgar, Uncle.”
After lounging upon his throne, he looked to Hermod. “What you remember is a time ages back, when you were a boy of a handful of winters, and I did not yet know who I truly was.”
“What makes you think this person you’ve become was your true self?”
Volund drummed his fingers on his armrest. Was the man now petulant, or insightful? It depended on how deep the nature of his question went, really. If he disregarded the existence of urd, that was mere ignorance. If, on the other hand, he sought to express the will within the confines of the system then perhaps he had more cunning than Volund had given him credit for.
Finally, Volund leaned forward in his seat. “What do you know of the Norns, boy?”
“I’m more than four hundred winters old and hardly a boy.”
“Fair enough, if immaterial. No, I’m asking you—”
Taxiarch Alfreda came bursting into the throne room, drawing the stares of both Hermod and Elga.
“What is it?” Elga snapped.
“Liosalfar, attacking the island!”
Oh … that was rich. Glorious, even. What entertainment this should provide …
32
Hipparch Elga and the new woman rushed out of the throne room, and Volund resumed his raven form, flying after them. Leaving Hermod alone.
Now liosalfar? Was that a blessing or more madness? Odin and Idunn had just escaped from Alfheim, they had told him on the boat. Could the queen have sent the soldiers to reclaim her prisoner?
He just didn’t have enough information.
Much as he wanted to burst into a run, he had to balance speed with caution, so he crept from the throne room to have a look. All through the fortress, hundreds of warriors—most female, though a few males—came charging by, paying him no mind in their rush to man the walls.
All right, then.
So they weren’t interested in their “guests,” at least not when compared to an invading liosalf army.
Hermod followed the mass of bodies, careful not to get in the way or draw attention. They’d never let him up on the walls, but there were other small windows, here and there, below the ramparts. Probably arrow slots, really, which meant archers might be inside them. Still, Hermod needed to know what was going on.
He faltered at the steps toward the outer walls, though.
Odin.
Odin knew things he had no business knowing. His Sight revealed truths well before others could understand them. Shit. Hermod had to find the king first. Volund had given them each chambers on the upper level.
Grimacing, Hermod turned and made a mad sprint for the stairs. Two or three at a time he took them, vaulting his way to the higher floor. Damn, but he missed being able to step across the Veil to save time. Everything seemed sluggish here, though in reality, it probably moved as fast or faster than it did in the Penumbra.
Running up the path, he blundered into Odin, Freyja, and their daughter, standing and arguing. Well, at least Odin seemed to be arguing. Hnoss looked more amused.
“Something’s happening,” Hermod said. Could they trust Hnoss? It seemed doubtful, all things considered. He’d seen no indication she harbored loyalty to either of her parents.
Odin seemed to stare off into the distance. They didn’t have time for this.
“Odin!” Hermod snapped.
Freyja glanced from him to Hermod, then to Hnoss.
Hnoss flashed a wicked grin. “Secure the prisoners!”
Oh, by the damn gates of Hel! Hermod jerked Dainsleif free of its sheath.
“No!” Freyja shrieked, interposing herself between him and her daughter.
“It’s not for her.” Hermod pointed at the coiling shadows that seemed to surge down the pathway toward them. “It’s for them.”
“Need more time …” Odin mumbled. “Didn’t have time to see this … properly. Find the way out … No. Loki!” His voice seemed apt to break, weaker than Hermod had ever heard Odin. “No, we should have had more time … it’s not time for this … Now is … eternity.”
Hnoss began to snicker at her father’s apparent madness, backing up, even as several svartalfar melted up out of the shadows around her.
Shit. The old man had gone too deep into a vision trance.
Freyja groaned, pulling her sword as well.
“How much light have you got left?” Hermod asked.
“Not enough.”
And then the racing svartalfar fell upon them. Hermod fell back under the onslaught, forced to engage two warriors at once, each of them at least as strong and fast as he was while drawing on pneuma.
A parry, a dodge.
A blade sliced along his shoulder, scraping off his mail. And sending him stumbling away, back toward the balustrade around the path.
Far below lay the now empty dinning hall.
The other swordswoman’s blade gouged his cheek, scraping across his teeth and gums and slicing the end of his nose. Only his drawn pneuma allowed him to block the pain enough to keep from pitching over in agony.
Desperate, he rolled backward over the rail, turning in midair. Air whooshed by him for a heartbeat, then he landed in a crouch atop a table. The impact still shot through his legs and he lost his grip on his pneuma. Pain crashed over him in wave after wave and he tumbled sideways off the table clutching his mangled face.
His vision was already going hazy.
Had to get … pneuma back … suppress the pain …
Two svartalf females landed on the tabletop, one after the other.
Hermod seized his pneuma, even as one flipped over him. Growling, Hermod made a wild swipe with his runeblade.
He missed, but the attack still served to send the female off-balance.
An instant later, Freyja and Odin both appeared on the lower level.
The other swordswoman swung at Odin.
Hermod couldn’t afford to get distracted with the king’s struggles, though, furiously parrying the svartalf female on him. Like a beast she snarled, launching feral attack after attack. Her blade clipped his exposed thigh and he tumbled to the floor.
Odin interposed himself between them. The svartalf swung at him and he twisted out of the way like she was a flailing child. Then he had her wrist, twisting. The sword fell from her grasp and he caught it with his free hand, even as he bent her arm backward. He rammed her own sword up under her armpit, then dropped her, the blade still half inside her.
Her body dropped down beside where Hermod lay, still twitching, blood gurgling up from her mouth. Eyes wide in pain and disbelief.
Probably much like Hermod’s expression. What in the gates of Hel was that?
Metal clanged on metal. Freyja engaged with the last attacker … And Odin moved to aid her.
Hermod could only gape as the svartalf laying in front of him choked, spasmed, and died. “Fuck me.”
It took all his pneuma just to gain his feet.
“Frey,” Odin said, looking half dazed. “Frey … Didn’t have time to see … the vision’s not complete. Everything is so jumbled.”
So the king thought he was confused?
With a groan, Hermod limped over to where Freyja had felled their last foe, then glanced up to the balcony. It was too dark to be sure, but he saw no sign of Hnoss. Going to get more warriors?
“We have to move,” Freyja said. “Hnoss …”
“She’s not going to join you,” Hermod snapped. Under any other circumstance, he’d have pitied her. He knew all too well the pain of losing a daughter. It was a wound that never healed, no matter how many centuries had passed. A scab he picked at over and over in his mind, as if he might dig out the rot, though he knew only emptiness lay beneath. “If we stay here, we die.”
Without a word, Odin took off down a corridor.
Oh, what now? Had they again lost him to a vision trance?
Hermod set off after him, made it three steps, and then slumped against the table as his leg gave out. Trollshit! Wincing, he yanked his split trousers away from the gouge on his thigh. Blood pumped out of it like a spring, oozing. Given time, the apple ought to mend such a wound. But they didn’t have time. Every breath they wasted inside this fortress was less chance for them to escape.
Freyja drew his arm around her shoulder and pulled the better part of his weight onto her. They hobbled several steps like that, then she growled, knelt, and swept Hermod’s legs up under her other arm, carrying him like a fucking child.
“What the …?”
“I’m an alf now, and one who’s also had an apple,” was her only answer.
Even holding him, she still moved with remarkable speed, trotting after Odin, who wended his way among dark halls as he if knew where an exit lay. Maybe he did, though the king kept muttering to himself, nonsense from all Hermod could tell.
“No … Loki … I didn’t want this … There’s still time. Has to be more time … to find a way … to stop the future … Why? You did this on purpose? Helped him … I should have known. The Norns. You sent me! Was it all … a trick? A move on the board …”
“Odin!” Hermod snapped. “Focus! If you want to see your blood brother again, we need a way out.”
But the sounds of battle greeted them around the next bend, growing ever more intense as Odin pressed on. Oh, trollshit. Was it possible the king had misread his visions? Had guided them straight into the melee?
Freyja had begun to pant as they stumbled into a courtyard splattered with corpses and even more gravely wounded alfar on both sides, some trying to drag their broken bodies away. Black walls rose up all around, dimly lit by braziers that should have provided far more illumination, and by dozens of glowing liosalfar in golden armor. The shadows around them lurched and danced in unnatural gyrations.
No. Not danced, Hermod realized, as a shadow lashed out at a liosalf. It caught him in the face with a blade that cleaved his chin, split his nose, and sent him tumbling to the ground, clutching the ruin of his face.
Volund appeared from nowhere behind another liosalf, seeming to melt up from the shadows. He caught her around the back of the neck. Her light dimmed at once. Shadows seeped from Volund into her, and her eyes turned solid black. Darkness poured from her mouth. She convulsed as if the darkness ate her alive, clearly trying to scream, though no sound issued from her mouth.
The svartalf prince vanished just as suddenly. The liosalf female stumbled, gained her feet, and then set about attacking her former comrades.
“Fuck me,” Hermod mumbled.
“Damn it!” Freyja said. She desperately wended her way between numerous engagements.
The madness of it, the ferocity on both sides, left Hermod gaping. Should they try to help the liosalfar? But Odin had only just escaped them.
So what were they to do when—
A blond-haired liosalf appeared directly in front of them, forcing Freyja to lurch to the stop. The male grabbed Freyja’s arm and then Hermod’s vantage changed all at once, in a flash of light. They were standing on the far side of the courtyard, behind the liosalfar lines.
Again, things shifted, and they were further back, outside the bridge leading to Saevarstadir.
Bile scorched his throat, and he retched from the sudden changes.
Freyja grimaced, setting him down. “We have to get Odin!”
“Leave the old bastard to his urd,” the other liosalf snapped.
“I came here only for him! I’ll not leave without him!”
“People are dying because I came to rescue you! I don’t care if the Ás rots in the fathomless dark.”
Wiping his mouth, Hermod glanced up at them. The male liosalf had lost the glimmer in his skin.
“Frey, please,” Freyja said.
Huh. Her twin brother. They did look alike.
“Saule!” Frey shouted. One of the females on the line looked back to him. “Get Odin, now!”
If she gave any answer, Hermod didn’t catch it. She vanished in an instant. A few breaths later, she appeared, Odin next to her, her own radiance greatly dimmed.
“Idunn,” Odin objected. “We have to find Idunn.”
“She wasn’t in the courtyard,” Frey said. “And we have to get you out of here. Our people are no match for their prince.”
“Idunn—” Freyja began.
“Every breath we waste here means more dead or corrupted liosalfar!”
He held his fist to his face and whispered something. What now?
Hermod struggled to stand. “Odin … Frey’s right. The world cannot survive without you. Things have grown darker than ever.”
“But …”
The sky crackled. The ground in front of him trembled and quaked. The air began to warp around them feeling almost like liquid. The cavern above shuddered, dust and water spilled down in a shower.
An enormous crack sounded, and a stalactite the size of a tower crashed down not thirty feet away. Rock shards exploded from it along with a cloud of dust that had Hermod covering his head with his arms. Screaming.
Another impact erupted. As if the whole Gloom Hollow intended to collapse around them. When he looked up, though, an iridescent bridge now arced out of the ground. Or out of the ceiling, he couldn’t say which. That … that looked like that bridge that Heimdall guarded, between the Penumbra and the Roil.
It shimmered and crackled, bits of it vanishing and then reappearing.
“It’s not stable yet,” Frey said. “We have to hurry. We cannot allow Volund to get his hands on this.”
“Idunn …” Odin said. “My child …”
What? “My king!” Hermod objected. “We must flee!”
The liosalfar line broke, svartalfar crashing through it. Chaos and blood and screaming. Cackling laughter.
Growling, Freyja hefted Hermod up again and took off, running toward that bridge. She hesitated an instant when she reached its base, then trod onto it. And the light supported her, the same as Heimdall’s bridge did.
Panting, she dashed up, over the arc, Frey at her heels, and Odin lagging behind, casting glances over his shoulder.
Leaving Idunn behind didn’t sit well with Hermod, either, but they had no way of knowing where she was and no means of helping her. Not now.
33
The rainbow bridge carried them into a shimmering expanse that might have existed within—or above—the Astral Roil. Though Odin knew no such linear geometry applied to non-physical realms, it remained difficult not to conceive of relative directions as a frame of reference. How many liosalfar had Frey brought to Svartalfheim in search of his lost twin? The liosalf himself was not like to answer that question, nor any others, though focusing upon these immediate concerns helped to keep Odin grounded in the now.
Because the future held perils he wasn’t ready to face. While he had sought a way from Saevarstadir, images with frightening clarity had begun to crystalize, unbidden, in his mind’s eye. As if it was now too late to take any action that might avert the course of unfolding time. As if …
Loki was panting. Exhausted.
Oh, but Odin had only just gotten started. “You knew this would happen! You did naught to avert it, Nornslav
e! You never even tried!”
“I didn’t want this.”
“You wanted Ragnarok!”
Loki shook his head. “It was needful. Some things cannot be changed, Odin.”
No.
No, Odin could not afford to lose himself in such musings. Not now.
“What is this?” Freyja asked, walking just ahead of Odin, beside her brother.
“We’re calling it the Bilröst.”
“Shimmer bridge? How apt.”
“It’s transitory, unstable. We cannot afford to dawdle upon it. If it flickers out whilst we traverse it …”
Would they plummet into the Roil?
Ahead of them, a billowing cloud spread out over the bridge, seeming to spark not with lightning so much as some other gleaming energy.
“Keep moving,” Frey snapped, grabbing his sister’s wrist and dragging her toward the cloud.
Odin shook his head. He had not seen this. So many things he had not seen, and they closed in around him, filling in gaps he’d not have wanted filled thus. Not at such a price. For what he had foreseen was dark beyond measure. A doom upon the Aesir he had tried so desperately to steer them away from, only to find his visions had proved no boon whatsoever. As if seeing the future evoked it.
A crushing weight settled upon his chest, threatening to drive him to his knees. A pain in his heart, though he doubted immortals could have heart attacks. Broken hearts, though … maybe so broken as to be enough to die from. And maybe death would prove his refuge, in the end.
We are all dead … And death awaits you … You feel its jaws, closing upon your throat … And try to deny it … Give in …
The wraith fell silent as Odin entered the cloud. All around, colors flashed, a maddening array of them in purple and pink and blue. He could scarcely make out the others, though surely they must continue to follow the bridge. Had they reached a liminal space? It was the only explanation he could see for this, as if he trod through a gap in reality.
An unnamable energy set the hairs on his arms and neck on end, seeming to crackle over him. The air changed.