by Matt Larkin
32
When the Aesir had assaulted Vanaheim, rampant slaughter had unfolded all around, enough to crush Freyja’s heart. That was naught compared to the devastation that had now befallen the islands. Indeed, the flooding had covered so many valleys, Vanaheim now seemed less two islands than twenty.
What wasn’t underwater was blanketed in snowstorms. Or on fire.
“Madness,” Freyja said, shaking her head, while standing on the lower slope of a mountain. For thousands of years the Vanir had held the jotunnar at bay, preventing something like this from happening.
Ragnarok, Odin called this.
Every land she had passed through on the way lay embroiled in bloody war. But Vanaheim, her glorious, beloved homeland … the chaos here surpassed even her worst fears.
To look onto this was to see the end of time. What Odin had feared for so long, he had been powerless to stop. He’d said this was coming, but somehow, not even bringing back the Vanir or the liosalfar had changed it.
Before he’d left, Mundilfari had raved about an unbreakable cycle of destruction and rising chaos. So many of his rantings had seemed born of a tortured, twisted mind. But … had Freyja’s old teacher foreseen the same thing Odin had? Was that why the old king had abdicated the throne in favor of Father?
Twilight had settled upon the islands, though they remained bright enough, given the wildfires that leapt amid the forests. Billowing columns of smoke combined overhead to form a canopy of darkness that seemed deeper than night, making what remained of Freyja’s stored sunlight gleam all the brighter.
Freyja had oft needed to Sun Stride to circumvent such conflagrations. She passed from elevated boulders, to rocky slopes, avoiding drawing nigh to the spreading flames.
Could anyone yet remain alive here? Odin had sent her back to join the defense, but she was too late. She’d seen naught but jotunnar and corpses since her return. Maybe Narfi’s army had killed all the Aesir, or maybe some had managed to retreat across the sea, back to Valland. Freyja had come via Andalus, and there found the Serklander army had already marched on Valland.
Passing through those lands had proved tedious, always needing to avoid the Serks for fear of encountering the Sons of Muspel.
And all for naught?
Maybe she ought to return to the shore, recover the boat she’d stashed, and retreat from here. Odin now refused to use his prescience, so he hadn’t known Vanaheim would look like this.
A choked, dead, wasteland. Her beloved island paradise, reduced to ashes.
In the distance, a bolt of lightning streaked down, crashing into a tree. So bright it stung her eyes. So close the thunder left her ears ringing, while the scent of burnt air twisted her stomach.
All the forces of nature had turned their wrath upon the world. Creation itself raged against the Aesir. And … perhaps the Vanir, too. Maybe they were guilty of no fewer crimes than Odin and his people. The hubris … the failures.
Freyja chewed on her lip, then sighed. No, naught remained here for her to do. She’d have to retreat to the mainland and try to meet up with Odin on his return.
As she turned, however, a man approached, climbing up the rocky slope on all fours.
Narfi? Except, he looked changed. His hair darkened, coarser. His features shifting …
Possessed? Hadn’t she seen this man before?
“Oh …” The man said. “You still smell the same as you did, centuries ago … His woman.” He chuckled. “I’ll enjoy tearing out your throat … after I’ve pounded your trench raw.”
“Who are you?”
“You’ve forgotten? You were there, when the one-handed one bound me. You had … kittens …”
Kittens? Her lions.
“Fenrir.” Freyja twisted her lips into a grimace while she slid her sword free. “I owe you for that.”
She’d seen it, when he’d slipped from a dead host to a new one. Spirits so powerful were not easy to cast out of the Mortal Realm. She should run. Stride as far as she could—not so far, given her short supply of sunlight—and escape. But somehow, her feet kept carrying her forward.
Fenrir had murdered her lions and wrought death among Aesir and Vanir alike. And now, all he wanted, was vengeance on Od. Freyja wouldn’t let that happen.
Though he wasn’t in range, Freyja slashed with her sword, Sun Striding behind him mid-attack. The varulf’s elbow snapped back impossibly fast, catching her in the chin and sending her staggering backward.
The blow cracked her neck too far, felt like it almost took her head off.
She tried to bring the sword back around to bear, but Fenrir batted it aside with a hand. As a liosalf, she had more strength than a man. Fenrir’s casual slap still wrenched her arm. His hand lanced out and closed around her throat, lifting her off the ground like she weighed no more than a child. His other hand caught her wrist and squeezed.
The bones in her wrist snapped audibly, the sword tumbling from her grasp. Freyja tried to scream with the pain, but managed only a wheeze through her closed-off windpipe. He could have killed her like that. But he was keeping her alive just to draw it out.
Desperate, she grabbed his hand, yanking against it just to buy herself one more breath. It was like trying to push over a mountain.
One … last …
Freyja looked up, as high as she could raise her gaze. Past flaming trees to the choking smoke above.
She Sun Strode into that black cloud.
Fenrir went with her, but the varulf released her throat with a yelp of surprise. Freyja kicked away from him, pitching end over end. Spinning round, the wind buffeting her. Couldn’t catch a breath …
She tried another Stride, but managed only a few dozen feet, a change in angle, if not in momentum. A change to line her up with a flooded valley.
Her throat burned … Couldn’t catch a breath …
Falling so fast, like an arrow from a bow, shooting almost straight down. The canopy rushed closer and she barely cleared it.
The water hit her like a fist.
Everything went dark.
The ground beneath her rumbled, a violent tremor that jolted Freyja into sudden wakefulness. She lay in snow.
Immediately, she sat up, sending daggers of pain coursing through her veins with such sharpness it blurred her vision. The ground snapped back up to meet her.
“Easy. Slow.”
The whole mountainside seemed to spin around her, whirling enough to make her stomach churn.
The speaker leaned over her, placing a hand behind her head to help her sit up, slowly as he had commanded.
Tyr. Odin’s champion.
“Owww.”
“Saw you fall from the sky,” he said, as if she had asked.
Freyja blinked, trying to steady herself, then saw a small group of others had gathered on the slope. They rested on a slope above the valley, one blanketed by a light snow. Which meant frost jotunnar must lurk not too far away.
Scattered around the slope rested Thor, Syn, Bragi, and Mani, along with a few dozen others. All that remained of the Aesir and Vanir?
“You’re awake,” her brother said, rushing to her side, taking Tyr’s place supporting her. “Forgive me … I had no sunlight left to catch you.”
Freyja groaned. Oh. “Fenrir!”
“What?” Tyr leaned in again. “Wolf’s loose?”
“Yes. He tried to kill me.”
“Fucking varulf,” Tyr said.
Behind him, Thor limped over, and, catching sight of him, Freyja could do naught but gape. A third of his foot was gone, as well as a finger from his hand. And he bore more gouges, bandages, and seeping wounds than she’d ever seen in one man. Much less one still able to walk, however slowly.
“Fenrir did that to you?”
Thor grunted. “Narfi. Trollfucker. He fell into the abyss, so I hope Hel has him now.”
Oh. Well, maybe a fate almost as bad. “I think … Fenrir has possessed him.”
Tyr groaned and slumped back onto his a
rse, shaking his head. “Swear I’ll find a way to kill that wolf.”
“Huh?” Frey asked.
“He can switch bodies,” Freyja said to her brother. “If a host dies, he passes to another.”
Her brother frowned. “A progenitor of his tribe?”
Freyja nodded.
Frey shook his head, looking to Tyr. “Leave him be, then. There’s not a Sun Knight on Alfheim who could challenge a shifter progenitor. It’d be like trying to take on a Prince of Svartalfheim. It’s madness.”
“Don’t figure I’ve got a choice. Wolf will go for Odin. Me, I won’t let the king fall.”
Frey snorted. “Look around. The whole kingdom has fallen.”
“Fuck that,” Thor said. “Asgard is ours and always will be.”
Freyja blanched as a sudden realization settled upon her. “The tree!”
“We had no choice but to withdraw,” Frey said. He held up his hand to reveal Andvaranaut. “We took the ring to break the bridge, so they can’t use it to reach any spirit world. But we could not hold the bridge any longer.”
So they had access to the apples of immortality, but at least they couldn’t open another door to Niflheim. For now.
“We have to get off these islands,” Freyja said.
“I’m not leaving!” Thor bellowed. “I’ll hunt down Narfi or Fenrir or whoever the fuck he is and I’ll feed his soul to Mjölnir.”
Tyr grunted. “Half-jotunn damn nigh killed you last time. Now he’s got that varulf inside him.”
“To say naught of an army,” Frey added. “My sister is correct. This land is lost. We must regroup with your king. Where is he?”
Freyja frowned. “I … don’t know. He said he planned to ride to the Norns’ mountain to confront them about the web of urd. He thought … he could change fate.”
Now her brother stared open-mouthed at her, slightly shaking his head.
“What’s that mean?” Tyr asked.
“It means he’s beyond our reach,” Freyja said. “For now. We have to find a place to hold out against the jotunnar and await his return.”
Thor grabbed a stone and hurled it out into the water down in the valley. “I’m not telling Father we lost his kingdom.”
Freyja winced. “You’ll attract attention like that. My brother is right, Vanaheim is gone, Thor. The last time Hel made such a move against our world, only a few pockets of mankind survived. We cannot win this by throwing our lives away.”
“Hel’s not here,” Thor pointed out. “Maybe losing the device is how she gets into our world in the first place. Either way, we have to take back Yggdrasil.”
“Maybe when your Father returns. For now, we have to escape.”
Thor folded his arms over his chest, winced, and dropped them to his sides. “My daughter is out there on this island, hunting for survivors.”
Oh. Well, damn it. “I’ll find her.”
“I can find my own damn daughter,” Thor snapped.
“You can hardly walk.”
Frey shook his head. “It’s still night, even if there weren’t so much smoke. No way to replenish your sunlight.”
“I’ll go,” Syn said. “I’m adept at woodcraft.”
Freyja frowned. “So am I. And I know these islands better than you. I spent millennia here. We can both go, but the rest of you need to find a way off Vanaheim and to someplace defensible.”
“Idavollir,” Tyr said.
Freyja looked at him.
“Old jotunn fortress in Valland. Held it a long time against trolls and draugar. Figure it’ll hold against jotunnar, too.”
Freyja nodded grimly. Oh, she knew Idavollir all too well. “Fine. Then we meet there once I’ve found Thrúd and any other survivors.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Frey objected.
Now she rolled her eyes. “If the jotunnar get that ring and understand what it does, we lose. We lose everything. You have to get it somewhere safe. Idavollir will do for now.”
Frey drew her into an embrace. “Don’t you dare die.”
Oh, she didn’t plan to.
33
Sessrumnir seemed not so very different from how Odin remembered it, if not quite so overgrown, and not quite so laden with flourishes it had become under Freyja’s tenure here. Now, though, Lytir took him to see Mundilfari, in chambers beneath the great library, lit only by twin wall sconces and thick with Otherworldly energies that had Odin’s arm hairs standing on end.
The man was dark-haired and deep skinned, like Eostre, which meant, like her, he must have hailed from somewhere far to the east. Perhaps from the Skyfall Isles, like Eostre’s parents, perhaps from elsewhere.
Lytir had not bound Odin’s hands, perhaps thinking him but an old man, while he himself had tasted the fruit of Yggdrasil. Instead, the Voice of Urd simply guided Odin to a chair and shoved him in it, then moved to whisper in Mundilfari’s ear. The Mad Vanr sat at a desk laden with scrolls and books, his fingers stained with ink.
After a moment more, Mundilfari waved the other man away, and stared intently at Odin, while folding his hands over his lap. “It seems Queen Irpa has ordered I curse you with a penalty normally reserved for those who have stolen an apple of Yggdrasil. Do you know what that means?”
Odin pursed his lips. Was Mundilfari half as mad as his queen? Given his potentially unhinged host, a single mischosen word might send the man raving or invoking the very eldritch powers Irpa had demanded he call upon.
If Odin was in the past—whether in a past life or not—if he were to kill Mundilfari now, would that not change history? Would the Norns try to stop him? Unfortunately, Odin didn’t know enough about when he was or how he’d gotten here to make an informed judgment. Had the Vanr already summoned and bound Eldr, then his death might not avail Odin in any way, and would certainly carry with it heavy risks.
On the other hand, such a change in history would certainly indicate freedom from the Norns’ web. If the Mad Vanr died now, he could not meet Sigyn in the future. But would that lead to a worse reality than the one already unfolding?
“You have naught to say for yourself, old man?” Mundilfari snorted, his eyes darting to the side rather randomly. Flitting about. Like he heard conversations others did not. Vaettir. Bound inside himself, spewing their lies and maddening insights, no doubt. “I am more interested, in truth, in knowing how you got in the Norns’ chamber. You were looking into the Well of Urd, weren’t you?”
Odin folded his arms over his chest. Maybe it didn’t matter what he did here. So long as it broke free from the Norns’ chains, naught else truly mattered. “I looked into the well.” If not now. “All the wells, in fact.”
“All the wells?” Mundilfari’s eyes darted around once more, then he abruptly grabbed a book from a stack, upending the rest unto the floor without paying them so much as a glance. He flipped through the pages of the chosen book with far more care, and Odin could see why. The paper had grown so old it flaked beneath the man’s fingers. “You saw the others. The root trails … Tell me about the others.”
He was not mad yet, perhaps, but the seeds of madness already lurked within the man, did they not?
They lurk within all men …
Ah. True enough.
“Mediums for divination,” Mundilfari said. “Most potent to those already possessing a gift for the Sight, which, in turn I’m given to imagine functions less as a singular vision, and more a web of loosely interconnected perceptions of the underlying layers of reality, yes? All sorcerers—those capable of basic competence—must develop at least a rudimentary ability to gaze across the Veil and perceive extra-spatial realities, while the most blessed or cursed among us also hope to see extra-temporal chains.” The man looked to the side once more, head cocked as if listening. “But, but, but … But! The Sight is not directly a manifestation of the Art, or so many theorize. An internal potential, rather than external one?”
Madness, perhaps, though in his nascent madness, Mundilfari’s theories seemed
insightful.
In madness lies apprehension …
Mundilfari thumped his finger on the book. “So, where does the other well lie, then, old man?”
Odin waved his hand dismissively. “Far beyond the Midgard Wall.”
“Midgard … Wall? What wall?”
It took all his control to keep his face impassive, even as Audr’s mad cackle reverberated through Odin’s mind. The Midgard Wall didn’t exist yet. Mundilfari … hadn’t even thought it up.
“Oh … They have it! Don’t they? Don’t they? The well to pierce not the past, but the future. It’s out there, in the lands still claimed by the jotunnar. That’s why we can’t win.”
Odin couldn’t quite keep his mouth from falling open. “Mimir …”
“The advisor to the Elder Council? Yes … He … he controls the well? Of course!” Mundilfari slapped a hand on the book. “Of course. No … No. Yes!” He flung up his hands wildly, almost as if swatting at an invisible insect. “And it lies beyond this wall?”
Odin grimaced. What the fuck was going on here? Were the Norns showing him something?
Mundilfari had fallen over the precipice of madness—and it didn’t seem he had so very far to go—by raising the Midgard Wall. Then he’d journeyed beyond it, abandoned the throne, in a desperate attempt to find the Well of Mimir. Had he ever found it?
Kill him …
We cannot predict the consequences of such a paradox, Valravn argued.
Odin rubbed his brow. Was it possible … had he set Mundilfari on his path with this very conversation? How? Mundilfari had already done these things, long before Odin was even born. Before his great grandparents were born. It seemed as if … not even the Old Kingdoms yet existed. So not even Audr would have existed yet.
A devastating loss to this age …
Had the wraith just spoken in jest? Did wraiths even have a sense of humor? Odin pushed that from his mind. “You’re not really intending to carry out Queen Irpa’s command, are you? You know I did not steal any apples.”
“Oh, she’s gone quite mad, yes.” Mundilfari again seemed to be speaking to someone else. “My poor student. She delved too deeply into the Art. I warned her. Even Svarthofda lost herself in the abyss. The things out there would chill Hel herself.” He drummed a finger on the book. “Oh, the Norns know, but they refuse to answer.” From what Odin could tell, the Norns seemed more dire than Hel. “They know … Hmm. Oh. Yes, well, she’ll have to go. Before she destroys all Vanaheim.”