by Kevin Hearne
Ratatosk was taking me in the right direction, so I was confident that I’d make it to Asgard, bruised spleen or not. What would happen once I got there would probably be a surprise. The worst-case scenario would be that I’d arrive as all the gods were in council by the Well of Urd, right near the Norns, and Ratatosk would dump me in front of them all and say,
Perhaps I should try to avoid that.
Ratatosk, how long before we are in Asgard? I asked him as we bounded up the great tree root. It was far, far thicker than a sequoia but gray and smooth-barked instead of red and etched with crenellations.
My, that’s fast. Odin will surely commend you for your speed when I tell him how you helped me. Might you know if the gods are in council by the Well of Urd at this time?
Clearly Ratatosk could not think and run at the same time. This danger comes from outside Asgard, I explained, then spun him a lie. The danger comes from the Romans. The Roman Fates, the Parcae, have sent Bacchus and his pards to slay the Norns, knowing that the Norns will not be able to see him coming.
Damn inquisitive squirrel. He found out from the King of the Dark Elves. The entire evil plot was hatched in their, uh, evil minds. When in doubt, blame the dark elves.
The Dwarf King believes he may already be on his way. Time is of the essence. Let your haste commend your duty, Ratatosk.
Reassured and reinvigorated, Ratatosk leapt up the root of Yggdrasil even faster than before.
It is said that heroes have shat kine at the very sight of him. He drives men to madness. But I do not know how he would fare against the Norns. The danger is in the surprise he represents. If the Norns cannot see him coming, then he may be able to catch them unprepared. Their best defense will be my warning, and with your help all the gods of Asgard will have time to prepare a proper welcome for the upstart Roman.
Ratatosk said with delicious anticipation.
His euphemism startled me, until I remembered that I was talking to a squirrel; I confirmed through the images and emotions in our mental bond that he was using the expression to mean the defeat of an enemy, nothing more.
I affirmed his thoughts and then fell silent as I considered the very real possibilities behind my lies. The Norns would be waiting by the trunk of Yggdrasil as we ascended to Asgard. I was certain they’d not know that it was I who was coming—not because I was a god like Bacchus from a different pantheon, but because my amulet protected me from divination—yet they’d probably know Ratatosk would be bringing someone or something with him at this particular time. They’d be curious at the very least, paranoid at the worst, and if the latter was true they might have planned something unpleasant. They might even send someone down the trunk to see who was riding on Ratatosk. As soon as I thought of it, I cast camouflage on myself, my clothes, and my sword as a precautionary measure. The Norse shouldn’t be able to penetrate it, if the mythology was to be believed; they were continually fooling one another in the Eddas with basic disguises, much less magical ones.
We still had a decently long trek ahead of us, which suggested to me it was an ideal time for a fishing expedition. I told Ratatosk that my creator, Eikinskjaldi, had given me only basic knowledge of Asgard. Would he be so kind as to fill in some gaps in my information? The squirrel was agreeable, so I peppered him with questions from the old myths: Was Loki still bound with his own son’s entrails? Yes. Was the Bifrost Bridge still functional, and did the god Heimdall still guard it? Yes. Had the eagle and the wyrm run out of insults for each other yet?
Do tell.
That’s a good one, I acknowledged. Accurate yet succinct. Did the eagle offer a riposte?
It’s been remarked upon before, I admitted.
What an odd relationship they have. Speaking of odd relationships, why is Idunn married to Bragi, the god of poets? It wasn’t a subtle way to introduce the true object of my foray into Asgard, but I had a feeling Ratatosk didn’t require subtlety.
The squirrel slowed noticeably while he thought it over, but he didn’t stop this time. he said, then sped up again.
That is undoubtedly part of it, I conceded. But I think their lives must be very inconvenient. Do not Idunn’s apples grow far from the city of Asgard and therefore far from Bragi’s audience of the gods?
Ratatosk chattered shrilly, which startled me at first, until I felt through our bond that he was amused. That sound had been his laughter.
Ah, then my point is made. Where do they live?
I can’t? Why?
I was told Freyr’s hall was in Alfheim, but I did not think it would be right on the border. I would like to visit this Gullinbursti, since he is a construct like myself, but my creators have told me little except how to get to Gladsheim. Perhaps I will visit after I deliver my message. How would I get to Freyr’s hall from Gladsheim?
Where?
Two distant black shapes chopping the cerulean sky indicated the presence of Odin’s ravens. He saw whatever they saw, and I wondered if they could see through my camouflage. I really hoped they couldn’t.
I see them now, I said to Ratatosk.
I can’t speak to them like I can speak to you. I probably could, but the last thing I wanted to do was bind myself, however indirectly, with the mind of Odin.
The black specks were growing larger. I couldn’t dodge by saying, “I have to give my message to Odin personally,” because those ravens were, in a very real sense, Odin himself. They were Thought and Memory. Time to lie some more—and blame the dark elves.
Tell them that Bacchus is coming to slay the Norns, I said. The dark elves in Svartálfheim are working with the Romans to get Bacchus into Asgard through a secret tunnel they have been digging for a century. I will give him all the details when I arrive at his throne in Gladsheim.
Thank you, I said. I wanted Odin in Gladsheim rather than at his other residence, Valaskjálf. He had a silver throne there named Hlidskjálf, and legend had it that he could see everything from there—maybe even camouflaged Druids.
I looked upward and had difficulty focusing on anything much, due to severe squirrel turbulence. All I could make out was that the sky above was gone; we had ascended into the shadow of a huge … tract of land. It was the plane of Asgard.
Gritty rocks buttressed clumps of rich brown earth, and wispy roots waved drily in the wind, like the fine hairs that grow wild and unheeded from the edges of old men’s ears.
There was no space between the earth above and the trunk of Yggdrasil, no place for the squirrel to go, and I thought he was going to ram us into it—or else keep chugging through one of those neato optical illusions that Bruce Wayne had in front of his cave. But instead he slithered into a large hole in the root of the World Tree, invisible until we were on top of it, and for a brief time—half a gasp—we were horizontal in a sort of scoop, a small concavity at the base of a long, wooden throat that yawned above us. The back wall was smooth, but the floor we rested on was rugged and littered with the shells of nuts and shed fur. Piles of uneaten nuts and a rough nest of leaves could be seen in a smaller area that winked dimly through a short passage. I assumed I was looking at the place where Ratatosk rested during the winters. The inside wall—or, rather, the opposite side of the root’s outer bark—was scarred and pitted and ideal for climbing, and Ratatosk flipped himself (and me) around so that he could ascend using that surface.
We rose through a Stygian shroud of black, its only sense of depth coming from a hollow whistling of wind passing through my hair. How long will we travel in the dark? I asked Ratatosk.
How far above the plain?
You mean your length?
I see the light now. Excellent. You are without a doubt the finest of squirrels.
Ratatosk scurried out of the hole in the root and headed down the outside surface, and as soon as I saw the earth perhaps ten feet below, I unbound myself from his fur and leapt off, somersaulting in the air so as to land on my feet. A hoarse shouted curse and a flash of light startled me in midair, then I heard (and felt) Ratatosk scream as I landed, the sting of impact flaring in my ankles and knees. As the squirrel’s cries continued, I dropped and rolled to my right, expecting to be crushed underneath him as he fell from the tree. But that didn’t happen; his voice cut off abruptly, the bond between our minds snapped, and I glanced up to see naught but a flurry of ashes and bone fragments raining down from the place where he’d clung to the World Tree.
My mouth gaped and I think I might have whimpered. The Norns had obliterated him completely—a creature they’d known for centuries—because of me. It was like watching Rudolph get shot by Santa Claus.
Clearly, the Norns must have thought I represented a dire threat to act so rashly. I tore my eyes away from the horror and watched them warily, keeping still to maximize the effect of my camouflage.
They couldn’t see me. Their blazing yellow eyes, smoke curling from the sockets, were still fixed above my head on Ratatosk’s swirling remains. They were stooped hags with clawlike fingers, and their faces bore frenzied expressions that mothers warn their children not to make in case they freeze that way. Dressed in dirty gray rags that matched the greasy strings of hair falling from their scalps, they advanced carefully on the tree to make sure the danger they’d foreseen had passed.
It hadn’t.
It wasn’t long before they vocalized this. One of them tilted her head upon a wattled neck and said, “He is still here. The danger remains.”
Danger to whom? I hadn’t come to throw down with them. I just wanted some extremely rare produce. They all deserved a swift kick in the hoo-hah for what they had done to Ratatosk, but much as I wanted to deliver it, I didn’t see an upside to picking a fight with them when they could vaporize giant rodents. I took a step to my right, an overture to running away, but they must have spied the movement, for their heads all snapped down to lock directly on me with jaundiced, egg-yolk eyes.
“He is there!” the middle one cried, pointing, and then in unison they sang out in a truly ancient language and threw open their hands at me, their dirty fingernails releasing a foul dust into the air.
I didn’t know precisely what the dust was supposed to accomplish; most likely, it was my demise. Perhaps, in their old age and infirmity, they thought they were throwing confetti at me—but their behavior did not seem all that warm and welcoming. Rather the opposite, in fact. My cold iron amulet flashed hot for a second, confirming that they had just tried to kill me, and my stomach twisted oddly in my guts, causing me to fart robustly.
Normally I laugh at such things, because there is nothing like a fart to lighten up a tense situation. But this one hadn’t been a natural result of my digestion; it was a deadly serious fart, a sign that some small fraction of the Norns’ magic was getting past my amulet—perhaps a single speck of that dust—and that worried me.
“He’s still alive!” the one on the right cursed, and that dispelled any lingering doubts about their intentions.
I probably should have run for it. But then, if I escaped, they’d raise the alarm and all of Asgard would be searching for me. That wouldn’t end well. Strategically, logically, and even instinctively, in self-defense, I had to take them out. And once a de
cision like that is made in a moment of crisis, there is no such thing as calm, reasoned execution. There is only action, fueled by the baser parts of our brains.
The rags on the Norns’ bony frames were natural woolen fibers, and as such, lent themselves to easy manipulation. As the Norns shoved their claws into pockets for more dust and began to chant something different and more dire in their old tongue, I murmured a binding for the material at their shoulder blades, so that when I finished and willed it done, they were abruptly pulled back-to-back and held in place like a hissing human triangle. That disrupted their spell and caused some wailing and gnashing of teeth. I paused; I almost left them there, bound only by their clothes, seemingly impotent for now. But then abruptly they calmed down and began to rotate in a circle, chanting something low and venomous. Each Norn in turn faced me and pulled a thread from the front of her garment, passing it to her sister on the left. They began to weave the threads, pulling and twisting and chanting all the while as they spun. It was seven kinds of creepy, and I knew I couldn’t let them finish whatever they were doing, because it would likely finish me. I drew Moralltach and charged, not caring if they heard me. Their yellow eyes widened as they heard my approach, but they didn’t stop chanting their spell, so I couldn’t allow myself to stop either. I swept Moralltach through their necks in a single broad sweep, their heads sailed away like ragged balls of gray twine, and thus were the Norse unyoked from the chains of destiny. And thus was I plunged into a galactic vat of doom.