by Matt Larkin
“We are just on the other side of the Veil.” Wudga’s voice came from right behind her. “The farther we go from the Mortal Realm, the less reality resembles what we know. We should not dawdle in this place. Sooner or later, something will know we have come.”
Hervor glanced back to see Ecgtheow and Kustaa exchange worried-looking glances. Everyone was waiting for her. She had made herself captain of this crew, and now they waited on her order. “She cannot have gone far. Stick together and look for the witch’s trail.”
“We ought to avoid the shades of those we have slain,” Pakkanen said. “I will try to pick up Loviatar’s trail while avoiding her … fallen minions.”
Indeed.
In this spectral reality, Tyrfing’s ethereal fires had become an all too real blaze, roaring and crackling, casting more heat and light than a torch. Despite Pakkanen’s attempts to avoid the shades, two of the fallen had beset Hervor.
The flames that sprang up upon her drawing the runeblade had shocked her almost as much as it seemed to shock the pair of shades. When she had struck one, it had burst into blue flames, flailing as it turned to smoldering ash. Tyrfing made short work of the other as well.
Hervor could get used to that. Except that the runeblade moved with a perilous will here, seemed almost to wield her. And now, as it blazed in her hand, she felt it drawing closer to Pakkanen.
With her jaw clenched against the pressure, she forced the blade back to her side.
The shaman wandered this place with glazed eyes, reading signs on the wind or ripples in the land, somehow following a trail that seemed nonsensical to Hervor.
“Sheathe the blade,” Wudga said.
“What?” Hervor glanced up only to see Tyrfing had risen once more, edged its way closer to Pakkanen’s open back. Damn. She grabbed her scabbard. As she slid the tip inside, the flames winked out, allowing her to drive the sword all the way in.
“Many things change in the Penumbra,” Wudga said.
“Penumbra? I thought this was Tuonela.”
“The Penumbra is the nearest part of the Astral Realm, what Kvenlanders call Tuonela. Names for that which we barely understand. This is a shadow of our world. And it grows darker the farther from home we tread.”
Hervor rubbed her arms. The place lacked the biting cold of the real world, instead seeming caught in a perpetual chill that pierced through furs as if they weren’t even there. “But you understand. You learned from your father.”
Wudga frowned. “You believe even Volund understands the intricacies of creation? That seems … unlikely.”
So even a svartalf, a being tied to an Otherworld, still didn’t have all the answers. She wasn’t sure if that should comfort or terrify her. Either way, she fell silent. Words seemed foreign here, an intrusion against the natural order.
Pakkanen mumbled under his breath as they walked, ever glancing this way or that, sometimes straight up into the sky. The landscape grew more perilous as he led them out of the valley and into a mountain pass.
A quarter hour beyond this they reached a raging river, its waters dark, nigh to black, surging and coursing over rocks. It cut through the mountains like a blade, severed a peak in half in a way that defied reason.
“Fuck me,” Ecgtheow said.
“The dead rivers divide the transitory lands of Tuonela. Our quarry has passed this and so must we.”
“Swim that?” Hervor asked.
Pakkanen gasped and stared at her with eyes wide. “Set foot in there and you will never surface again—at least not as any living being we would recognize.” He shook his head, glancing back to the river and scanning for something. “There must be … There.” He pointed far upriver.
A small boat was making its way downstream, guided by a black shrouded figure at the back of it. Just looking at the boat made Hervor’s stomach go queasy, though she couldn’t have said why. Maybe … maybe because whatever operated this ferry was clearly no living person. If it ever had been.
“She’s coming …” Pakkanen said. “She must take us for dead.”
“Shouldn’t be hard,” Ecgtheow said. “Most of us are more than halfway there.”
Pakkanen stepped forward, to the river’s edge. “Show no sign of life, no sudden moves, no flicker of emotion. We are the lost ones now.”
Hervor let her face go slack—an effort, given the pounding of her heart.
The boat drew up close, then scraped onto the bank. Pakkanen was right about the ferryman being female, though her face was completely concealed beneath the cowl of her tattered shroud.
“Would you cross …” Her voice was a whisper on the wind, hollow and foul.
“We would cross,” Pakkanen said, as though it mattered to him naught at all.
“Pay …”
The dead wanted money? Hervor started to shrug, then fought down the urge in case it might give her away. Instead, she simply pulled a silver coin from a pouch at her side and handed it out toward the woman. The creature reached out a spiny, bandage-wrapped hand and caught Hervor’s wrist.
“A taste of your soul … Given freely.”
Caught in the woman’s grasp, Hervor could barely move. Despite the creature’s frail appearance, her grip seemed ready to crush the bones in Hervor’s hand. The coin tumbled from her limp fingers and pitched into the river with a tiny splash.
A piece of her soul? What would that even mean? She wanted to look to Pakkanen, to ask his advice. To ask Wudga.
Maybe to just refuse.
Show no emotion, he had said. Be dead.
And was this how the dead paid their debts? Siphoning off pieces of themselves until naught remained? Maybe that was why Pakkanen had warned to show no emotion. Because the dead lost such things one wretched bargain at a time.
“Take it,” she rasped, trying to keep fear or aught else from her voice.
The shrouded woman leaned forward, seemed to suck air in toward her. An icy chill seeped up Hervor’s arm and she could almost feel the warmth being drawn out into the ferryman’s grasp. A tremble seized her, a shudder she could not quite fight down.
She clenched her teeth, struggled not to cry out as something deep inside bled out.
Visions flickered past her mind. Training with Gunther, learning the sword. Playing as a child, running and swimming. Laughing with Grandfather. Brawling.
Images that faded almost as quick as they’d come.
And she couldn’t even remember what she’d just seen, what she’d been thinking of.
Without warning, the ferryman released her grip and Hervor wobbled, dropped to one knee. “You may board.”
Get up. She had to get up. A profound chill had gripped her tight inside, wrapped around her guts. Get up.
She rose, a little wobbly. Maybe it hadn’t been so bad. Who needed a soul, anyway?
Hervor stepped onto the boat and settled down at the front of it.
28
The sharp wind swept down from snow-covered peaks rising out of the mist. Its bitter chill left Starkad shivering, frosting his beard and slowing his already painful steps. The dark metal staff Volund had given him had grown so cold merely grasping it had turned his fingers numb. But if Starkad cast it aside, he wasn’t sure he could keep going.
The mist here was so thick he could make out less than ten feet in front of him, though he could still see the shadows of towering mountains stretching out across the horizon. The land of Hel, indeed. More frozen, more dire, and more endless than even the wastes of Jotunheim.
And the mist here was worse than on Midgard, moving and swirling about him, watching his steps and judging him damned for his crimes. Hard to say over the howling wind, but he’d have almost sworn the mist whispered in his ears, taunted him with empty promises and far from empty threats. It niggled at his soul and flitted away his memories, making it doubly hard to keep in focus his goal.
Someone … Afzal … had told him. He needed to find her. To confront her …
Who?
Ogn.
Ogn, who took her own life in despair after Starkad killed her jotunn lover. Ogn, who’d become … something that ought not to have been her urd. He’d damned her, too, just like all others who came nigh to his side. Just like … someone else. There was someone he was meant to remember through all this.
Dark hair … battle scars. Fierce …
But far away, like a dream. A memory slipping from his grasp, fading into the mist, never to return.
All of Starkad would soon be lost. Unless he … found Ogn. Saved her … or himself.
Snow crunched under his heels as he trudged on, often sinking up to his shins. Below that, the snow was packed so tightly he could actually manage to stay atop it. Beaten down by its own weight, like Starkad.
Odin. The Ás king had stolen Starkad’s power from the Dark. Made him … Otherworldly …
Now he wandered those worlds … dreaming? Had Afzal said that?
The murmuring of a river rose up, reaching him even over the bitter cries of the wind and the maddening whispers of the mist. Water running and … blades clinking together almost as in battle, though muted, and he heard no screams. Battle always came with screams. Pain and death—friends, now, to Starkad, for he knew them better than he knew any living soul. The few memories the mists could not touch.
Leaning on the staff, he pushed on through the mist, and the crash of metal grew louder. Until he came to a river, swift and wide, icy, but unfrozen. Shadows swept by beneath the surface. Ice under the water? That didn’t make sense. And … He leaned forward to peer deeper. Not ice, exactly. Shards of frozen metal like knives, an endless stretch of them pulled along in the current, clanking together and apart.
Anyone fool enough to wade into the river would be impaled and shredded before he could draw a single breath.
A sudden gale swept across the waters, rippling them, and sending Starkad stumbling backward, his clothes billowing up around him. The wind blew the thickest of the mist downstream, revealing the far bank.
On that bank stood a figure, beckoning to him.
Starkad squinted his eye, barely able to make out the man. He didn’t see so well these days. Was that … Vikar?
His brother, waiting for him. Calling him closer. Urging him on to the far shore.
The chance to rejoin his brother after so long … maybe that was what Starkad sought here. Maybe it was what he needed to finally find peace. He took another step toward the river, but hesitated. Those knives would tear him to pieces long before he could reach Vikar.
His brother waved again, pointing upstream. Behind him, shades moved in and out of the mist, too far away and too indistinct for Starkad to identify. And yet, he felt he knew them. That they too waited for him on the far side. That if he could but cross, he might, at last, find an end to his wanderings and his misery.
Vikar started off upstream, still beckoning.
Starkad grunted. “Wait …” He couldn’t afford to lose his brother. Not now. Not when he was so close.
He tromped through the snows, struggling to keep up with Vikar’s faster stride. Starkad’s legs felt like lead weights. His ankles had become frozen and weak. His body was ready to collapse. But Vikar, he just kept going, forcing Starkad to push himself, even as he stumbled.
Through the mists up ahead, something glittered like gold. A covered bridge rose up, colossal such that the tallest jotunn could have passed through without coming close to the roof. That roof itself was thatched with golden sheets covered in frost. The workmanship here defied understanding. Who could have wrought such a thing over the perilous river?
And why?
Vikar disappeared around the far side of the bridge, forcing Starkad to press on, until he could peer through the opening. His brother was now just a shadow in the distance, beyond the darkened tunnel before him. Scattered windows in the upper reaches of the bridge let in a crisscross of light beams, hardly enough to cast aside the shadows.
The mist itself drifted over the floor, thin, but enough to further obscure passage.
“Come to me …” Vikar’s voice carried on the mist, drifting to Starkad even from the vast distance between them.
Starkad swallowed. Yes … he needed to cross. He needed to join those on the other side, those waiting for him. His staff clanked loudly as he took his first faltering step onto the bridge. It seemed to lengthen and deepen before him, reality warping with each successive foot he passed.
He was drawing closer, yes, but slowly, and Vikar still but a shadow.
“Beyond here lie the gates …” Again, the voice whispered along the ground, echoing out of the mist and ringing in Starkad’s ears.
The gates. The gates …
“Step beyond the gates of Hel and join me in eternity …”
Yes. That was the right thing to do. The time had come to stop fighting. Starkad limped forward, staff grating on stone as he pulled himself along. He was almost done. Almost finished with everything. Rest was but a few steps more.
A raven’s caw rang out from one of those high windows. The bird fluttered down and landed upon the head of Starkad’s staff.
“Come to me … walk through the gates of Hel …” Vikar’s voice had grown more urgent. Desperate, even.
Starkad took another step toward his brother. He had to get to him. He couldn’t leave his little brother alone …
The raven cawed again, spread its wings wide, and then took off, flying out the back side of the bridge, the way Starkad had come in. The bird? Why did he feel like it mattered? Why would a bird matter?
“Come to me … Do not turn from the gates … Do not falter …”
Starkad glanced back at his brother’s form, now a mere silhouette in the mist. “I …”
The raven’s cry echoed through the bridge, calling him back. The head of Starkad’s staff had become a copy of that raven, staring at him. What did it mean? Hadn’t he seen this before? The bird had helped him escape from … something.
He needed to catch it, see what it wanted. Grunting, he turned to chase after the raven, his steps growing faster as he did so. The weight holding his legs diminished, ever so slightly.
“Come back …”
Starkad glanced over his shoulder as he reached the end of the bridge. No sign remained of Vikar. Shit. He’d just find the raven first, then double back and get his brother.
He should get his brother … Except it felt like he couldn’t. Why wouldn’t he be able to reach him?
Dammit. Starkad groaned and shambled back into the snow. “Bird!”
Another cry, in the distance.
Starkad followed it, wandering into a mist that grew thicker and thicker with each passing step. So dense he could not make out his hand in front of his face.
“Bird!”
Again, the shrill cry, this time off to his right.
Starkad turned toward it, shuffling on.
The land grew darker, as if the sun was setting too rapidly, though Starkad had seen no sun in the sky. Finally, as he drew on, the mist began to thin, until it too dissipated into naught. Color bled out of the world, leaving him in profound darkness.
The raven’s caw echoed again, beckoning him onward. The snow gave way to solid rock beneath his feet, black as night. He was looking for something.
The thought didn’t quite want to form in his mind. A general disquiet settled upon him, as if he had forgotten something of dire urgency. Or, perhaps, as if that something had been drained from his mind, siphoned away by some unseen force. The all-pervasive darkness here had a different quality than that he’d witnessed in Svartalfheim.
The land beneath him ebbed and flowed like jelly, itself seeming uncertain what shape it desired. Starkad groaned.
There was something to do. Someone he was meant to confront …
But it all seemed so very far away.
And though he could not name what went missing, he felt sure more and more of himself bled away by the moment. A sudden realization settled upon him, a certainty that th
e world itself was hungry—and it was slowly devouring all he was.
But then, after all the years of wandering, of suffering, he found he almost welcomed the void.
29
The black river streamed by, flowing swiftly even as the boat eased along at a gentle drift. Something about that seemed off to Ecgtheow. He’d have otherwise supposed the boat ought to move at about the same speed as the current, but then again, he couldn’t say as many things worked the way they ought to in this place.
And there was Hervor, sitting up in the bow, grim-faced and battered as the rest of them, but otherwise not much changed. Except for having bartered off a bit of her soul. Ecgtheow didn’t suppose she’d had that much to begin with, but still. He’d have expected some sign, some indication the shieldmaiden had lost something precious.
The woman just kept staring at the waters, though, saying naught.
Until the boat scraped up on the opposite bank, far downstream from where they’d boarded. Dark waters splashed against the stern and Ecgtheow jerked his hand away. No telling what getting touched by that stuff would do to a man, and he didn’t aim to be the one who found out.
Hervor rose, slow, and climbed over the side and onto the bank. The others followed, leapt out one by one. When Ecgtheow had finally escaped the cursed craft, the ferryman pushed off with a long pole and set about drifting away, not a word more to her passengers. Which suited Ecgtheow well enough.
Sound of her voice set his teeth chattering.
As if they weren’t enough already. A cold sweat ran down his neck and made the leathers beneath his mail sticky. He couldn’t shake the shivers, though his guts felt like they were aflame. His shits had turned painful, runny things, as much blood as aught else. Whatever the hiidet had infected him with, it was eating him up and Wudga’s salves only seemed to have delayed the inevitable.
Maybe Ecgtheow should’ve told the strange man, or the shaman, even. Except then they’d have asked him to wait behind, drink some foulness and sit and stew. If he was about to die—and he supposed he was—he’d just as soon go down with a blade in his hand instead of shitting himself to death.