Freyja eyes blazed. “Stop—”
“Who admires the prize rather than the victor? What skald sings of a treasure without mentioning more of the hero who won it?”
“Enough,” Freyja warned. “You twist words to make yourself seem clever.”
“You make yourself an object to think yourself powerful. But when you make yourself an object, you become a mere possession. You are a mere necklace to them, a bauble to be displayed and admired.” She raised her head. “You may be a goddess and I a mere human, but even I have known more true love than you have.”
Freyja lunged at her, and Euthalia twisted away. The goddess screeched in rage and snatched at Euthalia’s hair, striking her face again and again. “It is a lie! Say it is a lie!”
“The sky is dark green,” choked Euthalia.
Freyja’s hand hesitated, but she kept her grip knotted in Euthalia’s hair. “What?”
“My ears are like those of a goat.”
“What are you saying?”
“If you stand upon that stool and step off, you will float away to Midgard.”
“You speak nonsense, girl.”
“Exactly.” Euthalia met her eyes. “When I lie, you are annoyed, but you are not angry. You are angry when you hear unwelcome truth.”
Freyja hurled her against the wall, the wood cracking with the impact. Euthalia sank to the ground in a cloud of dust. She was too breathless and stunned to move, and she felt like she should be in great pain, would be in great pain as soon as she had a chance to realize it.
“Bitch!” screamed Freyja. “Bitch!”
Euthalia lay still, lest she provoke the goddess further. But a tiny part of her was satisfied to see that her observation had struck home.
Freyja clenched and unclenched her fists, breathing hard. “I should kill you.”
“For speaking the truth?” Euthalia said. “Just as Loki said as much in Odin’s hall? Will you destroy me as you did him, and hide the truth until the next person speaks it aloud?”
Freyja picked up the antler comb and shattered it in her fist, leaving a stiletto point.
“Or would it not be better to change the truth?” Euthalia said. “Make the truth a thing of pride instead of shame?”
Freyja froze, a tiny frisson of shock passing visibly through her. “They respected me once,” she said, and her voice was nothing like Euthalia had ever heard it, small and hollow. “They were in awe of my magic.”
She came and taught the Æsir the magic of the Vanir, among whom she is the greatest practitioner, Odin had said. She possesses the greatest skill in seidr. If the curse can be broken, then she is the one to break it.
Euthalia swallowed. “Then earn their respect again. Odin knows you are powerful in seidr, he told me so himself. Show your skill. Earn their admiration.”
“And start another war?” Freyja shook her head. “We are hostages here, my brother and I, surety for peace between the Æsir and Vanir. That war began over the possession of magic.”
Euthalia’s breath caught, but this was her only chance, and she pressed recklessly on. “Then show them what good you can do with your skill. Earn their respect by saving one of their own. Unwork the curse on Vidar and—”
“Ha!” Freyja’s laugh was nearly a roar, full of derision and fury. “And help myself by helping you? You are exactly like everyone else, working toward your own desires and nothing else. Who are you to scold me, little Greek?” She reached down and seized a handful of Euthalia’s dress and apron. Pain lanced through Euthalia as she moved. “And here is my final order to my thrall—go to Hel. Ask Loki’s vile daughter for the help you want. I am done with you, you pathetic whining bitch. Get out of Sessrúmnir, get out of my sight.”
She hauled Euthalia off the ground with effortless strength and plunged the broken antler into her throat.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was dark. And cold, in a way that chilled to the bone.
Euthalia was lying on her back, and she was cold. The dark pressed heavily on her, like a fur without warmth. She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt as if they were pasted closed, and she couldn’t summon the effort. Someone was near her, though—not Freyja, somehow she knew that. Perhaps by the hand on her shoulder—yes, there was a hand, quiet and firm, not holding her down but keeping a steady contact in case she needed to feel a hand.
There was a light on the other side of her, low and orange, perhaps a rawhide-shaded lamp. But it was cold, so cold, and so quiet, and the floor seemed to be moving like breathing beneath her. And—she remembered now—and she had been killed.
She worked her eyelids, trying to free them, and cracked open her lips. “Am I dead?” she asked.
The hand jumped, and someone bent to look at her. “Less so than I’d thought,” he admitted. “But considering where we are, perhaps more so than you’d like.”
She had heard the voice before, but did not know it well. Freyr?
He called to someone. It was Freyr, Euthalia thought, squinting upward. Cleaning his sister’s mess of a dead thrall.
“Is she awake?” Someone else came to kneel beside her. She brushed Euthalia’s face, pushing back hair and checking for fever. “I told you, you should have remained a virgin.” Gefjon gave her a reproachful smile. “So much trouble might have been saved.”
“But so much love might have been lost,” answered Bragi behind her. “And so many stories would not have been told.”
“Not every story is worth telling,” returned Gefjon. “Ask her if she likes her own story just now.”
“Where are we?” asked Euthalia. “Why are you here?”
“Freyr called us,” said Bragi. “He saved you.”
Freyr looked embarrassed at this accusation of kindness. “My sister has her reasons for what she does,” he said gruffly, avoiding eye contact. “But they do not extend to murder, and not the murder of the wife of a man she wants.”
Euthalia did not feel particularly charitable toward Freyja’s reasons, whatever they might have been. “She meant to kill me.”
She reached a hand to her throat, and her fingers found a thick wrapping before Gefjon caught them away. “Leave it be,” she said. “It needs peace to heal, like the rest of you.”
Euthalia closed her eyes. “I don’t understand. How did I live?”
“I helped you,” said a fourth voice. This one was female, too, and it sounded wrong to Euthalia, as if it were not meant to say kind words. She had heard it before, but always angry, or grieving, or—
“Frigg,” she recognized. She tried to turn her head, but she felt so weak.
Freyr rose and took hold of a taut rope stretching above Euthalia. Frigg stood stiffly beside him. “Freyr brought me a thrall his sister had meant to kill. I recognized her as the wife of my husband’s son. Like Freyr, I felt Freyja’s reasons did not extend so far. I am a healer, and I did my best to mend the wound.”
“Thank you,” breathed Euthalia.
“It was a poor strike, or you should have been dead,” Frigg said. “You came very near to death.”
Euthalia blinked as a lance of energy ran through her. “Not near enough.”
“What?”
Go to Hel. Ask Loki’s vile daughter for the help you want.
Euthalia smiled. “I want to go to the land of the dead.”
“We know,” said Freyr. “You would not stop speaking of it, even while Frigg was wrapping bandages about your bleeding throat. That is why we have come.”
Now it was Euthalia’s turn. “What?”
Gefjon helped her to sit up, and she looked about her, careful of turning her wounded neck too far. They were on a ship, rolling slightly with a strong wind in its bellied sail. Freyr squinted at a blocky crystal he held aloft, and then he unlashed the steerboard and made an adjustment to their course.
“You said you wanted to come for Vidar,” Frigg said, and Euthalia saw for the first time how much restraint she was exercising. “You—you don’t think he’s dead?”<
br />
“No, I’m sure he’s not,” Euthalia answered hurriedly, anxious to assure her. “But I think Hel can help me to find an end to his curse.” If she could not ask Fenrir for aid, she could ask his sister. “And, Freyja told me to go to Hel, and I am bound to obey my mistress.”
Frigg sighed. “Your wound will trouble you less here,” she said. “Mortal pains have less power in the world of the dead.”
Euthalia nodded as if this made sense, though her stomach twisted at the unnatural implications.
“You will need directions,” Freyr said. “I cannot take you all the way, even in this the finest of ships.” He patted the wood fondly.
“Tell me,” Euthalia said.
“Go north,” Bragi said. “You must go north, across the river Gjöll—it is a torrent of battle—and then on to Nágrindr, the Corpse-Fence. North to death, always.”
“And then?”
“Continue north, and you will come to Eljudnir, Hel’s own hall. She will be there.”
“We are nearly there,” Freyr announced quietly.
The ship slowed as Freyr worked rope and steerboard, and Bragi and Gefjon put out oars to brace against the pebbled shore which crunched under the keel. Euthalia looked out upon the land they’d reached, grey and misty and bleak. There was no sun—it did not ascend above the horizon in this place. “Which way is north?” she asked with mounting panic.
Freyr lifted his piece of crystal, the length of his palm, and peered through it. He rotated the stone, swiveling in place and then pointed. “There. That is north.”
“Are you certain?”
“This is a sunstone,” he answered. “Let me show you, and you can use it as you walk to stay on course.” He put the crystal into her hand. “Put the mark at the skyward side. The stone breaks the light into two, see? Now lift it, and rotate the stone until the two views are the same.”
Euthalia did so.
“When they are identical, then this edge points to the sun,” he said, tapping the crystal. “It is morning, so now that will be east.”
Euthalia nodded. “But won’t you need this to navigate home again?”
Freyr gave his ship another caress. “Skidbladnir will find a good wind,” he said. “She always does. Take the stone.”
“Thank you.”
Euthalia climbed over the edge of the ship and up the pebbled shore. She turned back and met Frigg’s eyes, worried beyond what the goddess would ever admit. Euthalia forced a smile. “I will find him,” she said. “I will find him and end his curse.”
Frigg nodded, once.
Euthalia turned and began walking in the direction Freyr had indicated. Behind her, she heard the keel scrape again as Skidbladnir slipped back into the water, leaving her alone in the land of death.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The wind was cold and cut through her clothing, and disorienting mist swirled about her and sucked the heat from her limbs, but every few hundred steps she would stop and check her course with Freyr’s sunstone. Despite its promise of a sun just out of sight, she felt as if she were in an enormous cavern, that the muted sky above was more stone than air.
At last she came to a chasm filled with what Euthalia first thought was rushing water, crashing against rocks and frothing with rapids, but as she started across a narrow bridge Euthalia could see that it was instead a riot of vicious fighting, warriors striving against one another in an endless flood of war and death. Their weapons rose and fell like waves, their blood-flecked breath rose like foam, and they took no notice of the woman passing overhead.
Bragi had called the river Gjöll a torrent of battle. She was on the right course.
“North to death,” Euthalia whispered to herself.
North had always been death, she realized. Her fate had been sealed when she started north again with her father from Byzantium, not having found a husband there. The river-pirates had carried her further north to Aros, where she had been sacrificed. Now she was going yet further north to Helheim, the realm of death itself.
A wall rose before her, a work of earth and stone, tall and forbidding. She stopped and stared at it. This was certainly the ring of Hel’s domain, but how was she to enter?
A rapid alerting bark startled her, and she looked around. There was no dog to be seen, however, only the dead plain and the distant river of battle. She looked back at the wall as the sound came again, and she realized the dog was behind the wall, though it sounded much nearer. Such an earthwork should have muffled the bark, but it sounded sharp and near, clear enough that she could tell it came from a large throat.
The wall of earth shifted before her, shaking down rivulets of dirt as the dead grass parted. Euthalia leapt back.
A wolf pushed through the splitting earth, shaking dirt free of eyes and ears even as he roared and pushed forward. Fenrir! Euthalia recoiled and whirled, looking for escape, but there was only the dead plain, offering no shelter. She looked for a weapon, anything to stave off the ferocious jaws, perhaps something dropped from the river of battle, but there was nothing.
The beast’s shoulders had just emerged when a hand appeared and caught it by the neck, staying its progress. It continued to snarl at Euthalia, but it did not come for her as the earthwork opened to reveal a tall woman holding the animal by a collar.
A collar. Euthalia’s breath came more easily. Fenrir wore no collar, and this creature was much smaller, an ordinary beast.
The woman dragged the wolf or dog away and fastened him to a chain, which he bit at futilely before turning back to growl in their direction. The woman looked at Euthalia with a faintly disapproving expression. “We have few guests who arrive by the Nágrindr.”
The Corpse-Fence. She had found the way. “I come to seek an audience with Hel,” Euthalia said bravely, straightening.
The woman looked from her to the chained animal, now growling with mouth closed, and back. “You have not much liking for Garm.”
“He has not much liking for me,” Euthalia answered. She hesitated and then admitted, “There was a moment I thought he was Fenrir.”
The woman shook her head without smiling. “Fenrir is greater,” she said simply, as if Euthalia should have realized this while fleeing in terror. “Garm is the hound of Hel. Fenrir is her brother.”
Euthalia nodded. “The earth made him look darker than he is,” she agreed. “But he was digging out, and I thought—” She stopped herself, suddenly wondering if this woman in Helheim knew yet of Fenrir’s binding.
The woman’s stoic face gave no indication either of knowledge nor of curiosity for Euthalia’s choked-off words. “What do you wish with the lady Hel?”
Euthalia took a breath. “I was sent by my mistress, the goddess Freyja,” she said. If Freyja could offer her no real help, she could at least lend her name to carry Euthalia past the gatekeeper.
The woman did not react.
Euthalia licked her lips. “And I bring word of Hel’s father and brother,” she added. Perhaps family could succeed where Vanir prestige could not.
The woman did not react.
If she could not be brave at the very gates of Hel, when she had nothing left behind her but failure, when could she be brave? Euthalia pushed her shoulders back. “And I wish to see Hel and speak with her.”
For a moment the woman still did not react, and then she nodded slowly, once. “Enter,” she said, “and she will receive you.”
Euthalia did not want to step past the growling beast, but she fixed her eyes on the far side of the passage through the earthwork and forced her feet to move.
North to death. North to death.
It was easier to keep going once she had started, and she kept walking. Behind her she heard the deep rumble and she looked over her shoulder to see the earth closing again, once more the wall of Nágrindr. The woman and Garm stayed where they were, looking after her. Euthalia wondered if they were there to prevent the dead from escaping over the Corpse-Fence, and for a moment she had a terrible vision of t
rying to scale the earth and stone wall with Garm snarling and dragging her down by the calf.
She shook her head free of the vision and kept walking.
A longhouse appeared in the foggy distance—Eljudnir, if she recalled her directions correctly—and she directed her steps toward it. It was cold here, and damp, and she felt as if the very air drew the warmth from her skin. The not-sky above her remained distant and muted and eerie.
There was no door visible in the longhouse. She circled it and found the door facing north.
She opened the door of Eljudnir and went inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There were long tables for the dead, just as in Valhöll, but these guests did not boast and jocularly fight one another as they ate. They sat on long benches before lean tables which bore watery gruel, and the faces they turned to Euthalia as she entered were gaunt and hollow.
She looked beyond them for the chair she knew must be present in this mirror of Valhöll, and indeed she saw it, a great carved chair very like Odin’s. Unlike Odin’s it sat at the end of a table, joining the guests in dining. She started toward it, ignoring the rows of wondering dead on either side of her.
She looked up, vaguely conscious of movement, and jumped mid-step as she saw the roof move. They were snakes. The roof was thatched with living snakes.
Someone grasped at her sleeve and she jumped, looking down despite herself. It was not a face she knew, and she pulled away. Someone else took a handful of her skirt, and she redoubled her pace, forcing herself down the aisle toward the chair and through the hungry dead. She had to reach Hel.
Deep in her mind, where she had not properly thought of it but only unconsciously assumed, she had imagined Hel to be a queen of the underworld in the same way she had heard stories of Persephone, the beautiful wife of Hades. But the figure on the throne was nothing like what she had unconsciously expected.
Hel was a woman, as was more than revealed by her rotting clothing which hung in rags and half-covered, half-exposed her frame. She was piebald, with mottled white and black skin, and much of her flesh seemed soft and rotting. One of her arms held a drinking horn half-raised, and the other was a skeletal corpse-hand, white bone visible through the ragged skin and muscle. Silver glittered from her arms and neck and fingers, bright jewelry, but as Euthalia neared she saw it was not silver, but frost, faceted like intricate knotwork.
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