Fritti smiled a little, hearing her son praised, but her expression wavered at the tension in the air between Reginleif and Sigrun. Understandable. If Lorelei really is who Sigrun thinks she is . . . and who she’s admitted to being, out of her own mouth . . . she’s partially responsible for the deaths and madness of millions. And yet . . . was she not punished in the Veil? If not deliberately, or with judgment . . . was the result not the same? “I have trusted Lorelei for many years,” Fritti finally assessed. “The whole . . . Reginleif thing . . . will require some thought. But in terms of bringing her with us? I have no objections, Sigrun, if it won’t be an issue as to how we’re traveling there.” A niggling voice at the back of her head whispered that if push came to shove, and if a life needed to be given for a life, she would far rather use Reginleif’s than Rig’s. Fritti pushed the voice down. She didn’t want to think that way.
“It should not.” Sigrun’s voice was terse. “Though the person who is taking us may have objections of his own.”
Reginleif shifted uncomfortably. “Where am I going?”
“Lieksa, on the shores of Pielinen. We go to bring Loki back to the world.”
Reginleif looked down. “Ah. Then I will look forwards to seeing the area again. My grandfather used to take me to the islands there in the summers. I’d gather berries, and he’d fish.” Her voice remained leaden, however; chill harmonies of regret shivering at the edges of her words.
“It sounds . . . lovely,” Fritti said, trying for normal conversation. “How old were you?”
“Eight, the first time he took me there. That was in 1777. He used to watch the birds flying overhead, and encourage me to chase them through the air. He so wished to see mortals flying, that he took me to a hot air balloon exhibition once. So that he could share the air with me, just once. Of course, by the time the first manned airplane flight took off in 1825, he was long dead.”
Fritti’s eyes widened. Her parents, now that she was back in contact with them, were getting old at a distressingly quick pace. Sigrun’s expression was blank. At least this may not be something Rig will ever have to experience, she thought. Even his wife is spirit-touched.
Rig cleared his throat. “No offense intended, but where will Reginleif be overnight? I’d prefer to make sure that she can’t . . . run off on us, or tell anyone what our plans are.”
Reginleif looked apt to respond, but Sigrun cut in, quietly, “She’ll stay at my house. I rarely sleep at night. And I have a . . . rather good friend who will keep watch with me.”
“I look forward then, to meeting Master ben Maor once more.” No humor. The words were a parody of polite conversation.
“Adam is on holiday. Possibly a good thing. I suspect that he might attempt to punch you, if given the opportunity.” Sigrun’s voice was remote. “I am afraid you will not much care for your other guard tonight.”
Fritti ate her dinner without tasting it, ruing the tension at the table. Lorelei had been a good person. Quiet, tough, competent, and insightful into the harpy community’s difficulties. She’d been a staunch advocate for the group, but also an ally of Fritti’s . . . and now it looked like what had been a solid friendship might be ruined.
On the other hand, at least all the subtext and tension kept her from dwelling overly on what they were to attempt the next day.
The next morning at dawn, packed and dressed in warm wool clothing that Fritti hadn’t unpacked from her trunks in over twenty years, she and Rig awaited Sigrun in a public park. “I don’t see why she wouldn’t just meet us at the airport or train station,” Fritti grumbled.
“You’ll see, Mother. You’ll see.” Rig squeezed her shoulder. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Not really,” Fritti admitted. “He told me that god-born lock themselves into a moment of tragedy. Maybe mine can finally be resolved. For better or worse, after today? I can move on.”
Rig shook his head. “I don’t know what mine is. I suppose when I was young, it was ‘Father didn’t love me,’ but when I got older, everyone made sure I knew that wasn’t the truth.” He looked up. “Ah. Here we go.”
Fritti looked up in time to see a black dot swoop in and become increasingly larger, until what was unmistakably a dragon landed beside them, the backstrokes of its wings kicking up enough wind to tear the leaves off the nearby trees. Sigrun was perched atop the shoulders of the black-silver beast, and Reginleif was in front of her, her hands unbound, but looking . . . quietly aghast. Fritti herself stared up at the beast, feeling foolish. “I didn’t think Nith would carry anyone but you!” she shouted up to Sigrun.
In the past, I have not. My lady rarely asks me to do that which is not needful, however. The enormous head swung around to stare down at Fritti, and she swallowed, hard. The dragon had never spoken to her directly before, and the power in the voice made her waver on her feet. Take a seat between Stormborn and Visionweaver, if you would, Hiddenstar. There is a blanket there over my scales, so that you will not be damaged by contact with my flesh.
Fritti’s hands and feet were chilled through her gloves and boots, climbing up the dragon’s side; even with Rig’s help, she slipped once or twice, before settling into position. “How was your evening, Lorelei?” she called forward to Reginleif, politely, if a little awkwardly.
“Instructive,” the siren replied, still looking directly ahead of her. “I had not realized that Niðhoggr could change his size, that he could speak, or that he would condescend to use me as a throw-pillow.”
It was that, or chew-toy. The words were succinct, and cold. You would all do well to hold to the straps. The dragon’s muscles bunched under her, and Fritti seized the leather harness in front of her, and then they were off, the air rushing over her face as they ascended.
Fritti had never been through the Veil. She held on for dear life, watching over Niðhoggr’s wings as they passed volcanoes made of ice, which erupted water into the thick, brown air of whatever place this was. They passed through a green place, emerald and brilliant, through which sunlight shone in perfect lines, warming the sweet ichor that flowed around them. They were torn and buffeted by a hurricane, the only thing holding her to the dragon’s back the leather straps and the strength of her son’s arms, and she looked down into the eye of the storm, and realized that it was larger than the Earth itself, plunging endlessly, vertiginously down into infinity . . . and then they burst through and cold slapped her in the face. They’d emerged over a thawing lake, cold and dark blue, with ice floes still dotting the water here and there, even in Maius. In the distance, she could see what looked like the ruins of a small town.
“Nith, let’s take a look around before we land,” Sigrun called up to the dragon. The beast banked in assent, and Fritti therefore got a very good look at what had once been the city of Lieksa, Fennmark. The various yards and parks were all heavily overgrown, with years’ worth of weeds. Rust stains and peeling paint were prevalent on all the buildings, and gutters hung loosely off the various houses. Many doors and windows had been broken, and gaped wide, letting the elements into the domiciles. Overturned motorcars. One or two had been hurled into the buildings, and still lay where they had fallen in twisted, rusting piles of metal. Wild goats grazed here and there, bounding away as the dragon spiraled overhead. No dogs. No smoke. Nothing that suggested that even a single human currently inhabited this place.
Sigrun raised a hand, and began pointing out landmarks. “That was the hotel we stayed at. Pretty good venison, as I recall.” she said. The building’s sign had long since fallen off—or had been torn away. “That was the gardia station, where Ima, Vidarr, and the rest of his jotun were held captive, with Trennus there to assure everyone of mutual good behavior. Being held hostage seems to be an occupational hazard for the Matrugenas.” Her tone held grim amusement.
The gardia station had been clearly very hard hit; there was almost nothing left of its walls. Fritti huddled closer to Sigrun. “What are we looking for?” she called over the sound of the wind.
“Lindworm nests. They probably won’t take to the air with Nith here. Fenris packs. If they spot him, they will howl to let each other know there’s something dangerous in the area. Tracks . . . there we go . . . .” Sigrun pointed at a muddy path behind one of the buildings. “That’s fresh, Fritti. Grendels are in the area. They’re using the buildings for shelter. Aside from which . . .” she tipped her head towards Reginleif, “it is important to see this place. After all, we did such good work here.” Irony chilled her voice once more. “All right, Nith. I cannot spot the correct island from the air. You will have to do this part.”
The dragon snorted, and swung them out over the lake, landing on a long, thin island with the ruins of several buildings on it. Twenty-two years of harsh winters had taken their toll; on the largest structure, no roof remained, and no walls. Just the raw, rusting beams that had held everything together, and a variety of rusting machinery that lay in piles along where the walls had once been. The other buildings had all collapsed into moldering heaps, and there was a line of simple mounds that made Fritti’s throat close down. Graves.
She slid to the ground as Nith landed, and trudged in a circle, staring. Reginleif’s head drooped as the siren found a low wall, made of stone, in the middle of the steel-framed area. The rest of the floor had been poured-stone, but this piece jutted up out of the earth, brown and coarse looking. Reginleif sat down on it, and sighed, looking around herself silently.
Sigrun now walked, light-footed, towards one side of the building, and stopped. “Here, Fritti.” She pointed down, and Fritti stared at what Sigrun had found, her eyebrows rising. A sword—a simple Roman shortsword, used by legates and tribunes and centurions to denote rank—had somehow been slipped into the poured stone. “This is what he was carrying,” Fritti said, suddenly. “When I saw him at Rig’s wedding. He was leaning on this.”
“It was Livorus’ sword, originally. He carried it with him wherever he went after he retired from the Legion.” Sigrun’s voice was so empty, Fritti suspected that the older woman was holding on rightly to every ounce of her self-control. “It marks the spot where Loki went through, Fritti. Go ahead. If you require assistance, tell me whatever you need.”
Fritti swallowed, hard, as Sigrun stepped away, and stood, leaning on her spear, clearly on guard. Nith, outside the wreckage of the building, did the same, watching Reginleif and their surroundings. “I don’t even know where to start,” Fritti admitted to Rig, after a moment.
“If it helps? I can see where the fissure in space is,” Rig offered, pointing just ahead of them, squinting a little.
Reginleif stood and approached, looking intrigued. “You have Veil sight, then, young one? I did not develop this myself until after I had been steeped in the raw Veil.” She turned and gave Sigrun a sidelong glance. “It is an interesting ability. One that lets us see what is really there. And there is so much to look at in this world. So much to experience. Taste. Touch. We don’t really appreciate that, until it’s taken away.”
Rig shrugged. Fritti thought he was about to say something, but he paused, checked himself, and only smiled, and gave the siren no information at all in return. “So you see the fissure as well?”
“Yes, precisely where it was when Master Matrugena opened it. Oh, it has collapsed, and appears as little more than a scar in the air now, but energy still leaks through here. I would not be surprised if a mad godling came here to nurse every now and again.” Reginleif’s tone was brittle.
“All the more reason to get this right the first time,” Rig said, and stepped forwards. Raised one of his hands above his head, and showed Fritti the dimensions of the gate that she couldn’t see at all. Finally, she crouched, and put her hand on the hilt of the sword. Sun-warmed steel, and nothing more, at least for her. Fritti closed her eyes, and concentrated. “Loki touched this. He held it in Jerusalem, years ago, at your wedding, Rig. He had to have brought it, had to have left it again, for a reason.”
“Uti possidetis,” Reginleif said, her tone abrupt and clear. “As you possess, so do you continue to possess. Possession is more than a matter of mere human laws. When a spirit possesses a body, a resonance is left behind, even if the original occupant was never bound to that spirit by blood or by soul. And what you have owned, what you have possessed, maintains tiny resonances of you, as well. More than just DNA. A highly-skilled spirit can track by this kind of resonance.” She turned and gave Sigrun a look. “What have you been teaching these children?”
“I left the lessons in magic and theory to Trennus, Kanmi, and Minori. I am not adept at such.”
“Of course. You were god-born of Tyr, not of Freya.” Reginleif sounded intrigued. “Though I find the shifts in your aura fascinating. At least you’re no longer carrying a shard of crystal impaled directly through your heart. Instead, it’s become a diffuse glow, all around you. You’ve accepted your own seiðr at last. I did not think that you would, and told Dr. Eshmunazar so.”
“Not the time for this discussion,” Sigrun said, shortly. “If you can use your own seiðr to help Fritti, do so now.”
Fritti had no notion of what they were talking about, but from the way Rig shifted around, she suspected that he had an inkling. “The resonance that is used to find people,” she said, slowly. “Can it be used to make them hear you?”
“Yes, it can,” Reginleif told her, as if she were an apt pupil. “The sword is a focus object. Keep your hand on it, and I will try to evoke the resonance for you. This should come about in your mind as a clear image of the target.”
Fritti lowered her head. “A clear image of a face I only ever saw truly once. Radulfr was the guise I knew. My mentor, then my friend, then my beloved.”
“Hmm. And yet, which face do you see in your dreams, when you are angry with him, or sorrowful, or bereft? When all you want is an answer?” Reginleif’s voice was patient. “You are more likely to remember the illusion’s face for love, and the other face for anger or sorrow.”
Luminous eyes, grey-silver, with a gleaming rim around the outer rim, like the edge of an eclipse, Fritti remembered, and for a moment, that was all she saw. She struggled to create the face around those eyes, and felt Rig take her left hand in his. Felt power rippling through the air as Reginleif worked, and the image grew clearer, but was still incomplete. “I never saw my father,” Rig said, glumly. “I’m no help here.”
“I remember his face very well,” Reginleif said, and looked down. “The one who gave commands. Then the bitter adversary I constructed in my head. Then the one who gave me back my Name, and my face. Take what I remember, and add it to your own images.”
You may take of my own memories as well, Niðhoggr offered. I hated him for centuries, for he was the father of my progenitor. I assumed that he had made her what she was to me. It is only recently that I have begun to understand that she was shaped, too, long before she shaped me. By humanity. By her own will. She was, like Jormangand, and Fenris, a piece of Loki’s essence, a shard of his awareness, once. Broken off, and allowed to grow on her own. Take what I remember of him, a master of a thousand shapes. One can never truly know where the master of illusion is hiding. He could already be among us, and I would not even be surprised.
Fritti tried to balance it all in her head, the constantly-shifting image flowing away from her. Images flowing in from Reginleif, from the dragon. Her own ephemeral memories. “Sigrun?”
“You would have my memory of him?” Sigrun sounded startled. “It might change how you see him, and the one to whom you call out to must be the one that you remember.”
“Please.”
“Very well. A creature of intelligence and subtlety. Misplaced in our ancestors’ world, when what they valued was direct combat and brash openness. An entity who above all else, loved this world, and delighted in the workings of humanity. I think he would . . . get along well with Prometheus. Do not ask, Reginleif; you are not in my counsels.” That last, with asperity, as the siren’s mouth opened. Sigrun went o
n, carefully, “He cloaked himself in glamour and illusion, and when they were all stripped away, a starved and broken creature, who had had much of his substance stolen away by her.” Sigrun’s stare at Reginleif was cold, and the siren looked down at the poured-stone floor, her wings half-raised, as if to shelter herself against a storm. “The Lord of Illusion was lied to, by his own, and she managed it by being bound to both Hel and him at the same time. I rued his betrayal, Fritti. I felt . . . sympathy. I could count his ribs, even as I’d once counted Inti’s, sun-lord of Tawantinsuyu. But at least Loki lived.”
The image hit Fritti then, copper wires plunged into the living flesh of Loki’s avatar. Tangle of dark hair, exhaustion, pain, and regret. A plan that had been meant to save the world, in ruins . . . and the world one step closer to Ragnarok, in spite of it. The face in Fritti’s mind clarified. He was the teacher, the mentor, the friend, the lover, the mysterious father, the lord of lies, the master of illusion and trickery, and the sacrificed god, all at once. Fritti looked into his eyes, as he once more, in memory, begged her to understand. That he’d given her a gift—freedom—that he might never know, himself. Come home, she thought, standing, and put all the force of her gift from Baldur and the Evening Star into it. For an instant, she wondered what either of them would think of her choice to use this gift to bring back Loki. Loki had supposedly slain—or was supposed to slay—Baldur, after all. Who was manifestly alive and unharmed, with the usual confused temporality of the religion of her people. It doesn’t matter. They gave us our powers, as Sigrun once told me, in the expectation that we would use our judgment. Today I am a valkyrie. Today, I choose life. Fritti’s eyes were closed and she could feel Rig’s hand clasping hers, tightly. Come home, she thought again, with all the longing she normally tried to suppress. I need answers. I need to know who I am when I’m not wondering where you are. I need you. The world needs you. And damnably enough, I still love you, and I’m not even sure why. Come home. Loki, Radulfr, whoever you wish to be, come home.
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