by Matt Larkin
Besides which, her host seemed to forget that lying to her was pointless. She could delve through Sigyn’s mind, her memories, her deepest fears with ease. Had she truly wished it, she could have glamoured the rot away from her face and even passed for Sigyn herself.
You will never be me.
No. And why should she ever wish it?
Draugar plodded along behind her, silhouettes barely visible in the night, especially given the unending snow and the mist that thickened at Hel’s presence. She had called them without even really intending to. Rather, they felt her, the mistress of death, and flocked to her from all corners of the world.
Across the Veil, ghosts flitted, equally drawn to her presence. Wraiths were there, too, though not her greatest assets. For those, she would need to create another breach to Niflheim. At present, though, Hel had another agenda.
Loki will stop you.
Finally, Hel paused—the corpse lay before her now, anyway, buried in the pass—and regarded her host. Sigyn’s husband would not dare to raise a hand against her, not while she held his precious wife’s body hostage. Even if the man could have brought himself to turn on his own daughter once more, and Hel doubted that, too. Not that it mattered. While Loki had held that hateful jinni inside him—Hel would not deign to even think the vile name—he could not have matched a fragment of her power.
And now?
Well, deprived of the jinni, her father was little better than mortal, if an exceptionally hard mortal to kill. No, he was a fly to be driven away with a wave of her hand so she could tend to more important matters.
Like transforming the Mortal Realm into an extension of Niflheim and heralding the end of time.
None of the draugar dared come any closer when she knelt, placing her palms into the snow and digging in. Hundreds of feet down, that flicker of wakefulness stirred. Yes, draugar came from human souls. And yet, of course, jotunnar were spawned from much the same stuff as men. Changed, twisted by glorious powers of the spirit worlds, but, at their very cores, human.
And this soul, this furious ancient soul, had refused to depart. It had shifted on astral winds, bound to shadow and awaiting this very moment. For Hel had promised Ymir that his sacrifice, should it come to it, would not go unrewarded. All things came in cycles.
Hel clenched her fists in the snow.
The ground beneath her rumbled with a shifting of powder. A fell wind kicked up the loose snow, almost enough that, had she not known better, she might have missed the flakes rising from the mountain slope on their own, rejoining the blizzard and spiraling around her in a whirlwind of bitter cold. Yes, Niflheim drew close here, desperate to pierce the Veil the Destroyer had dared to place between the worlds in a distant era.
It would not hold her back forever.
And for now, her will alone would serve to pull Ymir’s festering soul back into this realm.
The quakes intensified. Tremors had begun to shoot through all the Mortal Realm, now. The very land writhing in agony at her presence, and at the amount of power the jotunnar had begun to call upon. The World Tree shriveled, gnawed on by the dark dragon who she had bestirred.
When Hel controlled Yggdrasil, she would hold the Wheel of Life in her hand. With that, her power would outstrip all others. Archons would tremble before her. The dark powers from beyond would bow to her. For in souls lay the ultimate sustenance. And Hel would feast on every life and every death.
A hand as big as her body burst forth from the ground. Fingers tinged blue, gaunt, but with only a bare hint of decay. For Ymir had lain beneath the snows, preserved. At least as much as Hel herself, in any event.
The massive fingers flexed, closed, and flexed once more. Then the sickly palm slapped the ground in front of her, digging a foot-deep impression into the snow and flinging up a shower of powder in the process.
What have you done?
Hel didn’t answer that. The hand—and forearm—pulled on the ground, slowly digging the fallen jotunn out.
Fresh quakes resounded, beginning an avalanche on a nearby peak. The noise from it drowned out all other sound, a cacophony of plummeting snow headed for her. Hel raised her hand, palm out, and the path of the avalanche shifted, diverted off another slope as if it had hit an impenetrable wall.
Another hand dug itself free.
And then the horn, five feet long and seeming hewed from granite, it jutted from the ice like a breaching whale. The head followed, eyes now gleaming red where the light of life had once shone.
In the back of her mind, Sigyn gasped, no longer bothering with her feeble attempts to conceal her utter terror.
Foot by merciless foot, the corpse freed itself it until, at last, it managed to climb loose. It came to rest on a knee in front of her, the red gleam of its eyes almost lost in the blizzard raging around them.
The jotunn would have stood more than eight times her height. Hel could not help but allow herself a tight, lopsided smile. Here was her champion. Here, was her herald for the end of time.
This time, she would make no mistakes. The cycle would break, and the Mortal Realm would fall, presaging her conquest of the cosmos. Plans begun tens of thousands of years ago would finally come to fruition.
Father had been wrong, back then, though he still might not admit it.
“Come,” Hel said to the jotunn. “We have work to do.”
In truth, Ymir was no longer Ymir. Not quite as he had been. As her draug-jotunn, he was something more. And so, Hel had named Hrym, the Decrepit. The taste of such irony—for though his flesh rotted, none compared to his might—offered her a morsel of amusement in her long trek up to Nidavellir.
Not even the dvergar had dared approach the perilous waters of Hel’s frozen, underground sea. In this cavernous expanse, the ice was so thick that it could support even Hrym’s weight, along with Hel and the small army of draugar now following her.
But she had not delved below the mountains for ice.
Hel knelt upon it, placed her palm on the surface, and pushed.
A crack shot through the ice, spiderwebbing out in an arc away from her, spreading even beyond her view. The crack deepened, beyond great rents in the surface. Blocks of ice thicker than she was tall split and ground together, flinging up clouds of snow dust.
It was there. Sunken so deep it almost scraped the shores of Naströnd.
In the distance, the massive prow of a ship beyond all measure burst through the ice. Living—or perhaps undead would be more apt—and formed from bones and nails and sinew, Naglfar came crashing to the surface once more. A ship, the size of a small city. From its hull, arms and hands of the damned writhed in eternal torment, sucked into service of this vessel that had been denied its proper purpose since the creation of the Veil.
It had waited here, drawing in souls and compounding upon itself for thousands of years.
Men called its jutting bone spikes a grotesque mockery of life. Some had lost their minds at the screeching howls of the damned locked into the slowly growing ship.
It would serve.
“Come, Hrym,” she said. “Come and be my helmsman. For in the north, on Thule, lies a city of draugar awaiting us. And very soon, the dead shall outnumber the living.”
39
He lay with his head on a desk, sun shining on his shoulders, warming them. Groaning, Odin pushed himself up. How long had he been asleep here? Maybe that question held no meaning whatsoever. Given, relative to whatever time he now dwelt in, he might well have appeared this very instant.
Still woozy, ears thick as though from deep underwater, Odin struggled to his feet and looked around. He knew this place. Back in Sessrumnir, the East Tower.
After steadying himself a moment, he made his way to the door, and then down the steps. It was all too familiar. Mundilfari was gone … or had been planning to abdicate the throne in favor of Njord. That should mean that Mundilfari’s apprentice, Njord’s daughter, Odin’s beloved, should now be running Sessrumnir.
Assuming, o
f course, that he hadn’t gone further back in time.
At the base of the stairs, Odin faltered. Sigyn sat at a table, staring at him, obviously having heard him coming with those keen ears.
The present.
He’d made it back, hadn’t he? Except, she so rarely left Loki’s side from where Odin had imprisoned him, and Odin had ordered her barred from Sessrumnir. Almost, almost … he wanted to release the man. But Loki, slave to the Norns or not, had still allowed the terrible war between their families. Had actively worked toward that war, in order to create Ragnarok.
“My king,” Sigyn said. No disdain laced her voice, or not much. More surprise. “I thought you were in Sviarland.”
She rose, pushing away from the desk and arching her back in obvious pain. Because her belly was thick with child.
Hödr? As yet unborn. The very instrument of Ragnarok, lying quiescent in Sigyn’s womb.
And Sviarland … so … so she thought he’d be manipulating Sigmund’s defeat of Siggeir Wolfsblood.
“I, uh …” His head swam with the nonsensical events of the past few … well, however much time had passed or should have passed or would have. “I needed some information.”
“Something I can help you find?”
Shit. He needed to talk to Loki. The man had finally been trying to tell him why … But Loki wasn’t here. Still, his brother had said that Odin was actually the one controlling his own shifts in time. So some part of himself had wanted to know something in Sessrumnir. Something from Sigyn?
No. No, not her. Someone else.
“Lady Chandi,” he said.
“Uh, huh. Well, she apparently kept a number of journals, but most were lost, or—Mundilfari suspected—perhaps deliberately destroyed by her. What originals remained, I can’t read, regardless. They’re not in the Vanr tongue, but he translated a few from what he called the Skyfall tongue.”
Yes. Yes, of course. Odin nodded. “Give me … whatever originals remained and whatever Mundilfari wrote about them.”
“All right.” She waddled off, one hand to the small of her back.
Odin followed after her, then offered her an arm to make her passage easier. She took it, with a look of mingled concern and surprise.
What if Odin killed her, before Hödr was even born? Would that bring back Baldr? Would it avert Ragnarok? Or would it, rather, enrage Loki and create a yet worse future?
The thought of murdering her before she had done aught, of killing her unborn child, it set Odin’s gut quivering.
How magnanimous … Spare the child even at the cost … of the world …?
Maybe Audr was right. Maybe any price was worth it, if it averted the end of time. Wasn’t that exactly why he’d gone to kill the Norns?
By his side, his hand clenched into a fist. A pneuma-enhanced blow could certainly rupture her womb and destroy Hödr. But …
Sigyn led him to a side chamber where she rustled through a trunk. “Mundilfari makes reference to having translated some additional passages, but those appear lost or misplaced. Unless, of course, he has them in some hidden vault.” She shrugged, though Odin could tell the thought thrilled her. Secret, forbidden knowledge. Oh, Sigyn. If only she had learned to leave well enough alone.
Forcing his fist open felt like trying to swim up a waterfall.
Weakness …
Odin slumped down at the nearest table and, after a glance at Sigyn, began to flip through Mundilfari’s annotations.
“So …” Sigyn said.
“That will be all.” For now. Unless he managed the resolve necessary to end her and hope to preserve the future.
Kill her …
“Oh,” she said. “All right, then.” Damn her and her incessant curiosity. What Odin needed to learn, she could not know.
Besides, Odin could read the Skyfall tongue. He had known it, long ago, as Naresh, and, if he allowed the memories of those past lives to run through him, he could understand languages that had died in prior eras of the world.
To say Chandi’s musings were missing pages would have been a generous estimation. Rather, Mundilfari had collected a handful of pages with no sense of sequence, thrown them together, and called them a journal.
Sensical … to the mad …
Well, then, Odin should be able to figure it out, sooner or later.
… a future. I know there was, and I saw it, and it left me with hope when despair might otherwise have reigned. The sun was shining, and he told me that alone was supposed to be proof. Maybe it was. I so dearly needed to believe it was, and that Vanaheim was the beginning of that.
They said, also, that the same soul could not exist in the same place, even in multiple incarnations.
I asked the Sisters, but all they’d answer me was that time and souls and fate were all intertwined.
“Time is a funny thing,” the fire priest told me. “Eras must end and corruption must be abated. And for that to happen, there must be a catalyst. A person, a soul, willing to take up the horrible burden.”
Even now, so many years later, I cannot forget those words.
I feel like … like he forced it on him. This mantle. This role to serve the needs of the future at the expense of the present … of himself …
Fuck. She was talking about the Destroyer. Lady Chandi, fifty-two centuries ago, was talking about the Destroyer. About Odin. Or Naresh, of course. But someone had told her, back then, about the cycle of eschatons.
“Souls and fate,” Odin mumbled. “The Wheel of Life … the web of urd …”
He rose. Maybe only Loki could finally explain what all this—
The maelstrom crashed into him with such force it sent him toppling over, crashing to the ground and knocking aside his chair. Temporal tides bombarded his mind, stripped the air from his lungs, and shredded his mind into a thousand pieces. They ripped him apart, such that his scream lacked even a sound over the roaring currents.
The sun was warming his face. The ocean waves crashing close at hand, methodical, mesmerizing. Almost enough to threaten to pull him back under once more, to draw him deeper under the current, perhaps never to surface again. Would that be a fitting end to Odin’s quest—to find himself lost on the tides of time, unable to ever rise above them long enough to locate himself?
He opened his eye to behold he lay on a real shoreline, bright and warm, and, though it looked little like Vanaheim, he saw not a sign of the mists.
Instead, he found a steep, rocky slope that ended in a short cliff above an impossibly blue sea. The sun beat heavily on the back of his head and he found himself squinting, almost as if he had suddenly woken on Asgard. Across a bay, greenery-covered another rocky outcropping, and behind him rose a mountain, atop which lay a spire.
“Naught else here …”
Blinking, he climbed to his feet, then unslung his cloak to allow the cool breeze to wash over him. Almost, he hoped that wherever and whenever he’d wound up, he wouldn’t have to return to the war-torn, mist-shrouded world he’d left. Save that all those he loved remained left behind.
Slowly, Odin made his way to the mountain, only to find a small town lay at its base, nestled around another bay. He had not made it far when a trio of tunic-clad, spear-brandishing warriors came trotting his way, pointing their weapons and shouting in some strange tongue that might have been related to Miklagardian. Curiously, despite the bright sun, two of them carried torches in their off hands, instead of shields.
One of them jerked his spear at Odin, motioning him to walk into their midst.
Hands raised, Odin did as the man commanded, forced to turn to keep them each in view.
No … he knew that tongue … in faded memories of past lives, he’d known it.
“… titan spy,” one of them said.
“So gut him and leave him to the sharks.”
“No,” the man who’d first motioned Odin over said. “He said they would come. We have to take him to the Firebringer.”
Firebringer … Did he mean …?
The men ushered Odin to a path, running up the mountain, steep and somewhat treacherous, enough so that Odin relied on a small amount of pneuma to keep from slipping, given he had no walking stick. Yes, he missed Gungnir. He’d only just reclaimed his ancestral weapon and now he’d somehow lost it once more.
An unnameable sense of anticipation had built in his chest, as they continued up the path. A tingling prescient insight that, much as he refused to try to seek direct vision, still forewarned him of some momentous shift impending.
The spire itself was enormously tall, roughly circular, and covered in greenery and flowers of dozens of colors. Thousands of birds had alighted in great arching windows that composed the upper reaches of this tower, which his would-be captors had referred to simply as the Aviary.
Odin could see why, given that, as they entered the lower chamber, even more birds had gathered inside, squawking and singing and filling the tower with a cacophony. They perched on poles spanning the length of the room, criss-crossed at varying heights. They bathed in a fountain in the tower’s center, one that continuously bubbled over its own edge, sending a trickle of water running down into grooves in the floor that ran into grates. Probably accounting for why the tower wasn’t absolutely covered in bird shit.
His guards led him up a flight of stairs, past landing after landing, with each home to other wonders of decoration. A rock garden in the sand. An enclosed library with a glass dome that actually did bear streaks from bird droppings. And at the top, a circle of braziers, in the midst of which sat a tall man, cross-legged, hands upon his knees as if in deep meditation. The fires in braziers swayed, slightly in discord with one another and with the wind.