The Song of the Ash Tree 03 - Already Comes Darkness

by T L Greylock

  With visible effort, Vakre steeled himself. “No, no. If you had done as I asked, the world would be a dark place.”

  “I would live in darkness if it meant peace for you,” Raef said, a sudden vehemence rushing through him.

  “I told you once that you cannot save us all, Raef,” Vakre said, his voice gentle. “My fear will pass.” Vakre looked to the sky. “It will be lonely.” He dropped his gaze to Raef once more. “Perhaps I will make friends with the stars.”

  There were no more words, it seemed to Raef, nothing but grief. Vakre held his gaze for a long moment. When he turned his back for a second time, he did not look back.

  Raef watched him go, unwilling to leave until Vakre had climbed too high, too far into the darkness for Raef to follow him with his eyes.

  He was yet in sight when the wings passed over Raef, the sudden stir of air in the still night raising the hair on the back of Raef’s neck. Raef glanced to the sky just as the flock of crows turned, twisting as one in the air, and dove at him. He ducked the first pass but the birds doubled back and rushed him again. This time their wings beat against his face and arms as he tried to shield himself, and on the third pass their talons and beaks found his skin, raking his forearms. So relentless was their assault that Raef could not draw his sword for fear of exposing his eyes to their sharp beaks. With one arm covering his face, he tried to beat them back, flailing blindly against the storm of wings. If he struck one, another replaced it, and Raef dropped to his knees, his arms and neck stinging where he bled. As he hit the ground, the flurry of wings grew silent and Raef drew his sword from its scabbard as he opened his eyes.

  The crows stood on the ground around him, their black eyes staring, their feathers glossy in the starlight. They made no move, no sound, and Raef, sensing a breath of something behind him, spun.

  The figure was difficult to make out. It was robed in a darkness that moved as though alive and Raef was reminded of the sea foam that the giantess Barra had worn when at last he saw her in the feeble light of Jötunheim. But this was no sea foam; it was midnight bereft of stars.

  The face, regal and cold, was unknown to Raef, though the piercing eyes he found there seemed somehow familiar. It was a man, or something like a man, tall and handsome, flawless.

  “Where is my son?” The voice began as a terrible thunder, beating on Raef, and ended like rain falling on green hills. A beautiful voice, but deadly. Loki.

  The god laughed at Raef’s silence and the crows croaked along with him, their voices chilling Raef’s blood. Any of Vakre’s heat that had lingered on him was gone. “Hold your tongue if you like. It matters not. I will find him.” But Loki lingered and Raef began to see the uncertainty in the god’s eyes. Loki took a step toward Raef, who willed himself to hold his ground, head high, gaze unrelenting. “I see the workings of your mind, human. You are scheming at something.” There was frustration in Loki’s voice now, and anger. “I will peel you to the core to discover it, exposing your every hope and joy, your deepest fears and scars.”

  “I spilled your blood once, Loki, I can do it again.” Raef’s snarl ripped across the air between them and set the crows cawing.

  The god laughed again, a mirthful sea at storm, delighting in his own superiority. “In that weakened form, yes, yes, you drew a drop of blood. Try again, boy, and see what I am made of.” Loki seemed to grow before Raef’s eyes and against his will he took half a step back as the god filled his vision. “Or better yet, I will show you the true form of Loki, the form I was born in, the form that will bring destruction to the nine realms, the form that the eyes of humans cannot endure.” The darkness that cloaked Loki began to hum and flicker, but then the god grew still, as though he was reconsidering, and the midnight he wore was still and quiet, too.

  “Where is my son?” he asked again, and Raef again sensed Loki’s doubt.

  “He will be greater than you soon.”

  To Raef’s surprise, Loki did not shake this off, did not laugh at Raef’s bold words. His pale eyes narrowed. “The gods cannot be saved from their fate.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what is it that you want?” Loki shouted.

  Before Raef could reply, the crows took flight, their frantic wing beats taking them up, up the slopes above Raef and Loki, up to the high places where Vakre had disappeared. Without thinking, Raef began to run, certain the crows knew where to find Vakre and desperate to defend him, to keep the sun alive long enough to be born.

  He was slammed to the ground by an unseen force before he had gone five steps and though he struggled to rise, a great weight kept him pressed to the snow. Raef cried out in pain.

  “The crows are agents of fate, Skallagrim. You cannot stop them.” From the edge of Raef’s vision he could see that Loki was gazing into the darkness. “And I think they have found my son.”

  “But you can stop them.” The words came out in a crush of air as Raef fought to stand.

  Loki moved without Raef seeing, suddenly crouched next to Raef, their faces almost touching, Loki’s hand clutching Raef’s cloak. “Why should I?”

  The pressure on Raef’s body vanished and he sucked in a breath before answering. “Because he goes to destroy himself.” The truth came rushing out and Raef could not hide the pride he felt. “Because he goes to take the sun’s place in the sky.”

  Loki did not move, did not draw back, but was quiet for a moment. “So, this is what you intend.” Raef held the god’s gaze. “It is in vain. There is no dawn for these realms.” Silence.

  And then Raef was lifted from the ground, the earth shifted beneath him, the sky spun, and when he could see again, he found he was high above the place where Loki had come upon him. The crows swarmed overhead, dark wings blotting out the stars. Loki held tight to Raef, still, his eyes not leaving Raef’s face, and then the crows went silent and began to fall from the sky. One by one they dropped as though turned to stone and they did not rise again. Only when the last crow hit the snow, its heart gone cold and quiet, did Loki release Raef.

  “There,” the god said, stepping back. “I have spared him from the crows.”

  “Why?”

  Loki looked up to the crest of a hill above them. A fire burst into life there, distant and small, but Raef’s heart erupted with joy. When he looked at Loki again, the coldness there turned his blood to ice. “Because now you have your hope. And when it is crushed at last in the defeat of Odin, in your defeat, my victory will be all the more complete.”

  Raef did not quail before Loki’s words. “I have looked into the eye of the Allfather. I do not fear you.” Raef stepped close to the god and looked up into that pale, handsome face. “Heimdall is waiting for you.”

  The flinch was almost imperceptible, but Raef was sure he saw it in the muscles around Loki’s eyes, in the tightening of his mouth. It seemed Loki, for all his eagerness to destroy the Allfather and the nine realms, was not so impatient to face his fated battle with the other god, the battle that would kill them both.

  “The shieldmaiden is badly wounded, Skallagrim. Do you think you can save her?”

  Raef’s heart skipped.

  A smile played across Loki’s face. “Let me look after her for you.”

  And then the god was gone and Raef was left to scream at nothing but the sky.

  How he came down from those hills, Raef could not have said. He ran, sliding when his feet got too far ahead or behind, but when he reached the place where Siv should have been, he found only the horses.

  There was no sign of a struggle. If Siv had seen Loki coming for her, she had not had a chance to fire, for her quiver was not missing a single arrow. The knife and sword had not been disturbed and the bow lay alongside them, placed with care.

  Raef dropped to his knees and stretched out a hand to touch the smooth, curved bow. Once he might have hurled his anguish at the sky, shouting at the gods, cursing Odin and Loki both, but he did not have the will now.

  He collected the weapons and strapped the
m to his pack, then mounted his horse, leaving the other behind rather than slow himself by tying the horses together. Casting a glance to the hills, he saw only darkness and no sign of Vakre, no fire in the sky.

  “Alone, then,” he said. “Let it come.”

  With a shout Raef urged the mare onward, west now, to the sea and the hole in the earth that might give him an answer.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The coast was white with foam. Waves, released by Jörmungand in the deep, crashed against the shore, spewing salt spray high into the air. The Old Troll stood tall, stone eyes facing the sea, waiting for the flood that would come to swallow the land.

  Raef’s mare, breathing hard, reached the top of the lone hill and came to a halt, legs trembling with exhaustion from the hard race through darkness to the sea. Raef swung out of the saddle, then patted her neck and thanked her for her swift legs and strong heart. With steady fingers, he loosened her saddle and freed her from its weight, then removed the bridle as well. Steam rose from her back and she snorted at him, blowing hot air on his neck. Leaving his pack alongside the saddle, he stroked her nose once more, then turned to the sea that he had dreamed of so often, that had called him westward in search of unknown lands. The sea road was as lost to him as Vakre and Siv. Closing his eyes, Raef turned away from that distant dream and faced the hole the lightning strike had made in the top of the troll’s skull.

  Without a means to lower himself, Raef was forced to brace his back against one side of the tunnel, his legs against the other, and slide in halting, grating bursts down through the earth. Then the small cavern opened up beneath him and Raef fell, striking the stone floor hard, the impact jarring through his bones. Wincing, Raef righted himself and strained his eyes for a sign of something, anything, but darkness reigned uncontested by the stars.

  But he could hear. The sound was faint, but Raef knew at once what it was. Water. Tiny ripples lapping against stone. There had been no water in the cavern when he last visited, when he saw the strange, glimmering image of Yggdrasil fade from the walls and ceiling. Lowering himself to his hands and knees, Raef felt his way across the cold stone floor until he felt water at his fingertips.

  Raef dipped his hand into the icy water and lifted it to his lips, testing it. Clean. Better than the best mountain streams Raef had drunk from in the high places of Vannheim. This gave him courage, though had the water tasted vile he still would have unfastened his cloak, set it to the side, and stepped into the pool.

  The water dragged him down. There was no bottom. It filled his ears and nose, it tumbled him around, and just when Raef ran out of air in his lungs, the current vanished, leaving him suspended in water that threatened to freeze his blood.

  But there was light above him and Raef kicked to the surface, breaking through at last, sucking in air.

  He was in a lake. The surface of the water was smooth and flat around him, the ripples made by his limbs dying away almost instantly. Above him were stars, but they hung low in the sky, illuminating the lake in bright light. In one direction the lake extended unimpeded, stretching away into a flat horizon, but it seemed to Raef that there was an edge, and that the water there must form a waterfall large enough to swallow all of Midgard. There was a shore, though, and it was close to Raef. And it was green, impossibly flat, just as the lake was, but vibrant and rich even in that strange starlight. Raef swam to it and only when he climbed onto the grass did he see the tree.

  It stood away from Raef and the lake, but he found he could not guess the distance. The trunk was wide and straight, the limbs curling and twisting into the stars. And three roots burrowed into the green earth at its base.

  “Yggdrasil.”

  The name came to his lips as though placed there by some force other than his own mind, and he could taste it. It was soil and summer fruit and lean venison and silver fish and root vegetables. Sunshine and mead. All the bounty of the earth.

  Raef began to walk across the endless green meadow but he had not gone far when he sensed something following him. He stopped and turned and saw the lake was lapping after him. It did not frighten him, for there was no malice in the water, and by the time he reached the tree, the water had closed the distance, too, coming to rest by the roots. Perhaps there had been no distance at all. He peered once more into the lake and in that moment he saw Odin’s lost eye, the pair to the one he had looked into when the Allfather had come to him in the labyrinth of Jötunheim.

  The eye covered the entire lake and yet was also a tiny thing hovering just below the surface, so close that Raef could have reached in and plucked it up.

  “Then this is Mimir’s well,” Raef murmured. Odin had sacrificed his eye to the well in return for ancient knowledge. The borders between the realms must have weakened a great deal for Mimir’s well to reach to the Old Troll.

  The bark of the great ash tree was covered in carved runes, some orderly and neat, others scrawled in haste or maybe pain and falling at angles down the trunk. But as Raef paced around the trunk, he saw that one part was rotten, the bark oozing with decay and slime, though he could see it had been smeared with wet clay from the lake in an effort to stave off the rot. There were scars in the trunk, too, and Raef was certain he was seeing the marks left by the ropes Odin had used to bind himself to Yggdrasil for nine days and nights. A squirrel chattered at him from a low branch as he passed underneath. Raef wondered what message he was passing between Nidhogg, the serpent in Yggdrasil’s roots, and the eagle perched in the ash tree’s highest branches.

  He had passed around the tree at least three times, he was sure, before he found those who had scooped the clay from the lake and spread it across Yggdrasil’s wounds.

  The Norns were sitting between two of the roots. One was dressed in white, her hair almost as pale. The second wore black and her raven-colored tresses fell across her face. The third was ready for battle in gleaming armor made of fire and moonlight. She had red hair and it was her eyes that found Raef first.

  “You should not be here.” The red-haired Norn’s voice was no more than a whisper.

  “Did your runes tell you that?”

  “The stars are falling, child of Midgard.” It was the Norn dressed in white who spoke next. Raef looked up and saw that it was true, almost as if her words had begun it. The orbs streaked across the sky, plummeting into the lake or beyond the edge of the green plain.

  “The battle has begun. Fenrir has come for Odin. Jörmungand has slithered from the seas to face Thor. Even now Black Surt sets a fire to the walls of Valhalla.” This from the dark-haired Norn.

  “The long-told fate has come.” The red-haired Norn rose from her seat on the root and Raef saw the serpent Nidhogg was curled around her waist.

  “And you think you can undo what was made when Yggdrasil was no more than a seed.” The white-blonde Norn spoke again.

  “You are Urda.” Raef was not sure how he knew this but she did not correct him. “I have met your son.” He turned to face the dark one. “And you are Verdandi.” She gave a slight nod, though he thought it was against her will. “Then you are Skuld.” Raef said to the third as he reached out and ran a hand up Yggdrasil’s ancient trunk, his fingers sliding among the runes. He heard one of them hiss at his boldness. “I have not come to save Odin. The Allfather knows his fate. But I do not know mine. And so I have learned to hope.”

  “It matters not.” The Norns spoke as one and then they were gone and in their place was a three-headed creature. Its body was that of a massive wolf, but the wings of an eagle had sprouted from its back and the heads were all different. A dragon bristled in the middle but the other two creatures were too ancient for Raef to name.

  The beast came for him but Raef was ready, eluding the three heads as they sought to snatch him up. Diving first out of the reach of one, he slashed into the tendons of the second just as the dragon’s teeth snapped over his head. Whirling, Raef threw his axe, catching the dragon in the throat. The creature wailed as Raef lunged forward, his sword
stabbing into the wolf heart. Writhing, wings beating the earth, the creature dropped to the ground, but it was Siv who fell, who curled up in agony, hands trying to stem the flow of blood from the gaping hole in her chest. She called out to him, her pain taking life in the air Raef tried to breathe.

  He knelt by her side, fear and horror reaching into his heart with cold fingers. But there, just at the edge of his vision, the blue of Odin’s eye flashed from the depths of the well and his mind steadied. “You are not Siv. You are here to break me. Know this: I was already broken in the labyrinth of Jötunheim. My mind is my own and belongs to no other. You cannot take it from me.” Without thinking, Raef drew the dragon-kin talon from where it rested in his belt. It was warm to his touch and seemed to pulse with the last heartbeats Raef had felt in the smoke-colored kin’s chest. The thing that was not Siv cried out, begging him to help her, pleading, but Raef, as the stars fell around him, buried the talon in her chest.

  When he drew it out again, hot with blood, the form of Siv vanished, leaving behind only a spreading stain to darken the green grass at the edge of Mimir’s well.

  Only then did Raef feel how his heart raced, how his breaths came shallow and short, how his limbs were weak and unsteady. He sank to the edge of the lake and rinsed the blood from the talon, and as the water touched his skin, as his hand was swallowed up by Odin’s eye, he was able to catch his breath.

  “You are watching me still, Allfather,” Raef said.

  Rising, Raef turned and took in the great expanse of Yggdrasil, larger, it seemed, than ever. Before it had been merely a tree, ancient and carved with runes, but nothing more than bark and limbs and leaves. Now he could see eight realms cradled in Yggdrasil’s strong arms and one, a dark, cold place, nestled between the roots. This was Niflheim. The green plain was gone, leaving only stars above and below Raef. They were fewer now, the expanses of dark sky between them larger and threatening.