The Songweaver's Vow

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  Euthalia wondered if she should thank him.

  “Now go,” he said, “for you have stayed long to serve, and someone will wonder at our words.” He made a sign absently and one-handed, and she realized he had worked some magic as they spoke. A concealment, perhaps?

  She took her remaining mead to a table of einherjar and hoped Odin’s ravens would find a track of Vidar, a cave where he had sheltered, a place she could pursue him.

  Freyja was doing nothing. She had promised to work to free Loki and to help to find Vidar, and she was doing nothing.

  Euthalia said as much to her as she swept the packed earth of the goddess’s sleeping room. “Am I not doing my work well? And so should you not be doing yours, according to our contract?”

  “One might think you would not be so demanding to your mistress,” Freyja warned over her shoulder.

  Euthalia did not care. “It is not my mistress I address just now, but a party in a business negotiation.”

  “And what do you expect of me at this time?” asked Freyja, peering in a handheld mirror and tugging at a stray eyebrow hair. “Do you think I can simply march into Odin’s hall and demand that he free Loki? No, of course I cannot; I would only anger him and set him more firmly against us. I must build my appeal carefully, must first sway others to my petition, and I must tread carefully as Loki has offended so many.”

  “Surely there must be some who are not hostile to Loki,” Euthalia said. “He cannot have offended all of Asgard.”

  Freyja made a sound almost like an undignified snort. “How optimistic you are. In fact, he made a sport of that very thing—set himself a task to do it all in one night, in fact, leaving no one unaddressed.”

  “Offended to the point of torture?” Euthalia frowned. “Didn’t he have a previous wife—?” But she stopped herself, realizing that an abandoned wife might be the very worst of allies.

  “Oh, yes,” answered Freyja. “I suppose she might speak for him. But she does not come often to Odin’s hall.”

  “Then I will go to her,” Euthalia said firmly.

  Freyja opened her mouth to laugh, but hesitated. She sat up and looked at Euthalia, looked at her for the first time in the conversation. “You would go to seek her? In Jötunnheim?”

  Euthalia nodded. “And you should not begrudge me the time, as I only go to perform the work you yourself should be doing.”

  “Oh, I begrudge you not a moment of it,” answered Freyja with a smile. “Indeed, you spare me much effort with your willingness. But do you know the way?”

  “I do not,” admitted Euthalia.

  “Well, you must either take the Bifröst or climb the trunk of Yggdrasill,” Freyja said cheerily, “and the tree will take far too long. I don’t want to send you away for days, you see. So I suppose it will have to be the Bifröst.”

  “I have traveled the Bifröst on two occasions,” Euthalia said, “but always with others. I do not know how to take the road myself.”

  “Oh, it is a simple enough thing,” said Freyja, rising. “Only be careful of the fire. The red of the rainbow is all fire, you know, to keep the Jötnar from Asgard. But it’s safe enough if you keep your wits about you.”

  Euthalia blinked and followed her from the hall.

  They went to a place of gently rolling hills, in which was nestled another dwelling, a homey place which Euthalia thought looked comfortable and somehow friendly. “This is Himinbjörg,” said Freyja, as if that explained all.

  “Who lives here?” Euthalia asked, trailing obediently behind.

  “Heimdallr.” She raised her voice. “Heimdallr! Open to us!”

  The door opened, and Heimdallr waved to them. “Freyja, welcome! Come and drink!”

  “He is always drinking,” Freyja confided in a low tone, but Euthalia did not think she sounded disapproving.

  Heimdallr waved them inside, smiling broadly. “Come in, come in! What brings you to the heavenly hills?”

  “This one must travel to Jötunnheim,” said Freyja. “Will you give her passage on the Bifröst?”

  “By herself?” Heimdallr frowned at Euthalia. “You will be safe?”

  “I think I know not to step into fire,” Euthalia said, but without as much confidence as she wanted. She had only a vague impression of traveling the Bifröst, and she did not remember clearly seeing fire.

  “Oh, I am sure of that,” he answered with a chuckle. “Only I meant the trip itself.”

  “She asked to go,” Freyja said. “Well, I will leave her to her business. Come to me when you’ve finished, girl.” She nodded to Heimdallr and departed.

  The big Æsir turned back to Euthalia and rubbed his hands. “Jötunnheim, then?”

  “Could I choose to go somewhere else as well? Midgard?”

  He frowned. “Do you wish to leave your mistress? You must know I cannot aid you in that.”

  “No, I have remaining business with Freyja—a contract. I wish only to perform an additional errand in Midgard and then return.”

  Heimdallr seemed faintly surprised at her claim of business but did not argue.

  She had to take the opportunity. “My lord,” she said, “have you seen Vidar? Do you know where he is?”

  He looked at her strangely, and she realized that he did not recognize her as Vidar’s wife, but only as Freyja’s thrall. “Why would you ask that?”

  “It is important—to my mistress.” At least, Freyja had agreed to search for him, and Euthalia could not bear to confess that she was the wife who had betrayed Vidar, not to this friendly face.

  “She has not asked me,” he said. “Freyja knows I can see far and know much. But I have not seen him.”

  Euthalia’s heart sank. “Odin is searching for him, too,” she said, and her tone betrayed her loss.

  Heimdallr was clearly perplexed by her investment in the missing god. “Do you seek him in Midgard? Where do you think to find him?”

  “I don’t know if I will find him there,” she said, “but perhaps a clue to his location.”

  “Where?”

  She told him.

  Heimdallr’s dismay was unconcealed. “I can send you there,” he said, “but it is no small thing you ask.”

  “I will be brief,” she promised. “Only help me, please.”

  “When you have finished in Jötunnheim, return to the exact place you arrived, and I will send you on to Midgard,” he said slowly. “And then come back to that place in Midgard to return here. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Good. Then go.” Heimdallr waved his arm, and the air opened before Euthalia, brilliant with sparkling color. It was less a bridge and more a tunnel, and Euthalia felt dizzy merely looking into it. She tried to turn away, but it was already around her, she was already inside somehow, and she put an arm out to keep from falling and then jerked it back, remembering the fire. She fell.

  The colors swirled around her and then parted, so suddenly that she might have imagined them but for her stumbling landing against the cold ground. The hills of Himinbjörg had vanished. She sprawled upon an expanse of ice, its sheen blunted by packed snow and a dark grey sky spitting stinging flakes down on her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Euthalia ran her palms down her skirt, the fabric catching in the sweat of her hands despite the raw chill in the air. Falling snow blew about her and confused her vision. Her thin cloak from Freyja’s equipping was not sufficient for this mountain climate, and she longed for the bearskin Vidar had given her via the dragon-helmed warrior. But it was lost to her with her house and her marriage.

  The other worlds, she was learning, encompassed all the geographies of Midgard, and while she had never visited the snowy peaks of the human world, she was climbing their equivalent now in Jötunnheim. She had been told the object of her search lived on this mountain, but looking at the rocks and snow all about her, she despaired of ever finding her.

  Freyja had laughed. “Don’t worry,” she had reassured Euthalia in a voice wh
ich was not at all reassuring. “She will find you.”

  Euthalia stumbled as a frosty rock gave way beneath her foot and she caught her fall only by bashing her knee into a stone. She clutched the wounded joint through her skirt and considered sitting on the rock for a good cry. No one would notice, and she felt she could use one.

  “I hate you,” she snarled at the offending rock. “I hate you, and I hate Asgard, and I hate Freyja, and I hate Odin, and I wish I hated Vidar.”

  The rock responded with a quivering growl, and Euthalia jumped. The sound grew, and the roar shivered the earth beneath her feet, making the stones tremble about her. She waved her arms to keep her balance and caught one hand on a boulder.

  And then the sound faded, and the rocks stilled, and she stared at the offending stone, wondering what power she had awoken and whether she should apologize.

  “Well,” she said, trying hard to make her voice artlessly light and distant, as Freyja did so well, “well, perhaps not you.”

  The stone did not respond.

  Euthalia hesitated, considered, and decided to make certain. “I did not mean to offend you, stone. I only am so frustrated with—”

  Laughter arose behind her, deep laughter which must come from a chest like an aurochs’s or a dragon’s. Euthalia whirled, and for a moment she saw nothing but the mountainscape.

  But then the stones shifted, and Euthalia saw emerging from them a figure, grey and mottled like the lichened stone so that it had blended perfectly in the falling snow. It was a woman, Euthalia saw, half-naked in the cold and enormous like a great tree. She rose from the mountainside and stood over Euthalia, who staggered back in surprise. Euthalia’s head came to her mid-thigh.

  She did not come close. She did not need to. If she wanted to reach or catch Euthalia, there was little Euthalia might do to escape.

  “Tiny girl,” rumbled the half-bare woman. “The stone cannot hear you, and I doubt it cares much for your words.”

  Euthalia burned with embarrassment and shivered with cold fear of the creature before her. “I—I thought—the shaking… Was that you?”

  But no, the earth had not trembled when she laughed or rose from the rocks.

  The woman shook her head soberly. “It is not my doing.”

  Euthalia swallowed and focused on her task. “I have come seeking Angrboda.”

  The stone-colored woman snorted. “That rock does not bear my name.”

  “You are Angrboda, then.”

  “I am.”

  Euthalia nodded. “I have come to ask your help for Loki.”

  She had the woman’s attention now. Angrboda lowered herself to sit on a great boulder and looked down at Euthalia. “Why is that?”

  “You—you were his wife, once. For love of him, you could aid him. Do you know how he suffers now?”

  “I do.” She nodded seriously. “But why should I go to help him now?”

  Euthalia hesitated, confused. “But… you had three children by him.” She reviewed the names Vidar had once given her. “Jörmungandr, Fenrir, Hel.”

  “Four,” Angrboda corrected, her lips turning upward slightly. “I ate one.”

  Euthalia had no answer to that.

  “Yes,” Angrboda said, “I had children with Loki. But I do not love him. We do not love, Loki and I. We are Jötnar.”

  Euthalia thought of Loki kneeling in the net, stretching out to his sons and pleading for mercy on them if not for him, and she wondered if Angrboda knew Jötnar as she thought she did.

  “He has a new wife,” Angrboda continued. “Sigyn. Let her help him.”

  “She is trying, as best she can,” Euthalia said, “but it is not enough.”

  “Then Loki should have chosen his bed more prudently,” Angrboda said.

  Euthalia nodded once, agreeing mildly for lack of anything else to say. She liked Sigyn, but she could not fault Angrboda for resenting her husband’s second wife.

  “What did Loki think a human wife could do for him?” Angrboda sneered. She looked at Euthalia. “I would eat her. Devour her, crunch her bones and stew her marrow and suck her skin clean. If that would help Loki.”

  Euthalia gulped and clutched the rock behind her. “She is the only aid Loki has now,” she said quickly. “I am sure it would not help him to remove her.”

  Angrboda shrugged.

  “What of your children?” Euthalia asked, trying to keep the desperation from her voice. “Would they help their father?”

  Angrboda stared down at her for a few heartbeats and then burst into deep, rolling laughter. “Do not approach them, tiny girl,” she warned, still chuckling. “You cannot face such as them. The Æsir and the Vanir fear them; you could not hope to survive them.”

  Jörmungandr’s serpentine length encircled an entire world. Fenrir’s strength frightened even Thor and the mightiest Æsir. Hel kept the underworld. Euthalia did not want to face any of these monsters, and it was easy to believe Angrboda’s warning.

  The ground shook again, and Euthalia grabbed for the boulder beside her. This time the shaking was fiercer, and the rock shifted beneath her hands. It shivered free of its foothold and began to fall toward Euthalia.

  An enormous hand cupped her and swatted her out of the boulder’s path. Euthalia stumbled and fell across the rocky slope, panting for breath, and watched the boulder tumble down the mountainside, cracking into another rock with a sharp sound. She glanced up at the stone-colored woman who had saved her.

  But Angrboda had no further interest in Euthalia or her gratitude. “That bitch,” she snarled, looking across the mountain at something Euthalia could not see. “She is no help to him.”

  “What?” Euthalia asked. “Who?”

  Angrboda shook her head and turned away. “We will inherit at Ragnarok,” she said, walking into the falling snow. “He will be avenged then, many times over.”

  “We can help him now!” called Euthalia, but the half-bare stone-colored woman did not turn back.

  Euthalia retraced her steps to where she had arrived sprawling in the snow, watching for a burst of rainbow. She had a visit to pay.

  It was possible, she supposed, to visit anywhere in Midgard, the human realm. She could return to Aros, or Byzantium, or even to her own home village. She felt a small temptation at the thought of appearing unexpectedly at home, learning what tale her father had spun to explain the missing warriors and daughter and then explaining the truth of things to all—but that was no home to her now, even if she knew how to go there.

  Heimdallr must have seen her somehow, for the portal opened and she braced herself for the disorienting whirl of color. This time she kept her feet. She did not remember much of her first trip via the Bifröst, when Vidar had carried her from Aros to the mimic-village in Asgard, but the second was etched clear in her mind.

  She walked out into the cool air of a Midgard autumn, light slanting golden. She looked about the hilly landscape, pretty in the early evening light. Then she steeled herself and turned toward the cave which lay ahead of her.

  Her stomach wrenched even as she faced the opening. Too clearly she recalled Narfi twisting into a wolf, Nari screaming as he tried to fend off his brother’s savage attack, Sigyn’s long, agonized screams as she watched her sons destroyed before her.

  Euthalia shook her head. If they were terrible things to her, they were more terrible still to Sigyn and Loki. She took a slow, deep breath and started into the cave.

  The light faded quickly, and Euthalia made slow progress as she felt her way forward. She remembered the cave floor being stone-littered but solid, without crevasses or pits to engulf her, and the ceiling was low but sufficient for her head. Through the darkness ahead of her she could see a pinpoint of light, and she crept toward it.

  Sigyn heard her stumbling and kicking stones in the darkness. “Who’s there?” she called sharply. “I know you’re there!”

  Euthalia wished she’d thought to announce herself earlier; of course they would fear someone creeping upon th
em. “It’s Euthalia,” she answered. “I have no light, I’m sorry.”

  “Euthalia?” Sigyn’s voice was not welcoming. Euthalia told herself it was not outright hostile, but she wasn’t sure if she were lying to herself.

  Loki said something, but Euthalia could not distinguish his words. His voice was low and the words were slurred.

  Euthalia could see them now, lit by a single lamp. Sigyn leaned forward over Loki’s supine body, her arms stretched to extend the bowl over his head. By the angle, the bowl was better than half-full and heavy. She turned her face from the bowl to watch Euthalia come into the light.

  “What brings you here?” she asked, her voice a barely contained snarl. “Come to gloat? To see how far we have fallen?”

  Euthalia felt as if a knife had pierced her gut. “No, Sigyn, no,” she answered. “Of course not.” She swallowed. “I came to ask how I can help.”

  “Help?” Sigyn bit off the word as if it were foul.

  “I have been trying,” Euthalia said quickly. “I have gone to Freyja and secured her pledge to help me persuade Odin, and I went to find Angrboda, and—”

  Loki’s cracked laughter interrupted her. It was horrid, crackling and wet, and she really looked at his face for the first time, shielded by the intervening bowl. It was pitted and scarred, red and black with scabs and oozing sores which ran down his chin and pooled in the hollow of his throat. Euthalia caught her breath, unable to look away.

  But Loki was still croaking his laugh. “You went to Angrboda,” he cracked. “You sweet-faced little liar. You never did, not you.”

  “I did,” Euthalia said. “I found her on the mountain, in the snow. She—she was not eager to help you, not now that….”

  “Not now that I have a human wife?” Loki snorted. “Perhaps you did speak with her, little lamb.”

  “Stop calling me a sheep!” snapped Euthalia, surprising herself. “I am only trying to help you!”

  “It is your fault he is here,” Sigyn growled.

  “That is not true,” Euthalia returned. “Blame Baldr for his taunts, blame Thor for his cruelties, blame Loki himself for his own actions, but do not blame me. If Odin had not heard my story, he would have chosen another punishment, but he never would have overlooked the death of his son. This is not my doing.”