Stormbringer

by Alis Franklin

  “—such a waste, dude. Why make them fight it out when they could be making out instead?”

  “Uh, because Maggie, you doofus,” said Wayne, as if she hadn’t just shifted dimensions care of a towering monstrous avatar of death. She and Em had shared glances and rolled eyes, the arguing boys slinking away in outnerded shame.

  They’d spent the rest of the afternoon apart, arranging leave and packing and doing the sort of things they’d do if they were just driving to Melbourne for the weekend for a con, not helping lead an undead army in the overthrow of centuries of tradition.

  Sigmund spent a long time, staring at his half-packed duffel bag, marveling at the speed with which his life had descended into Urban Fantasy: The Roleplaying Game.

  Just before Hel had left, Sigmund had suggested the possibility of walking into Ásgarðr and finding Lain sitting on the (potentially allegorical) throne. Things with Baldr had been confusing, but Sigmund was reasonably sure Lain still had at least some claim to the realm.

  Except Hel had actually laughed so much at the suggestion, she’d had to steady herself against a display case.

  “I love Father, truly,” she’d said. “But he is no king. Nor, I think, would he desire to be such.”

  Sigmund hadn’t mentioned LB. Or Gungnir.

  Instead, he’d headed home, grabbed his duffel, and thrown together a bunch of jocks and socks and spare T-shirts. Plus an extra pair of jeans and a toothbrush and . . . Jesus. What was someone supposed to bring on this sort of thing, anyway? Fifty feet of hemp rope and an eleven-foot pole? Caltrops? An impossibly infinite supply of zero-weight, zero-size slingshots?

  Sigmund had a hoodie and a cell phone. Both of which, he had to admit, had turned out pretty useful the last he’d done this sort of thing. So what the hey.

  The plan was to meet Hel on the LB rooftop, just after sunset. Em and Wayne were waiting for Sigmund in the foyer when he arrived back at the building, Em dressed in full-tilt black and spikes, Wayne wearing her most combat-appropriate bustier. They both looked incredibly badass. Sigmund made a vow that if he was going to be doing more of this sort of thing in future, he needed his own [Adventuring Threads of the Hero] to bring along. Preferably featuring a long leather coat of some kind. Lain knew about stuff like that, about looking cool and fashionable and badass. Sigmund would find some way to ask about it later.

  Right now, he asked, “Ready?”

  “Born for it, dooder,” said Wayne, grinning and giving a brofist to Em. The pair turned their heads away as they mimed the resulting brosplosion.

  Sigmund was convinced the elevator took them to the penthouse powered by Wayne’s excitement alone. Em, meanwhile, was more subdued.

  “Nervous?” Sigmund asked her, getting a thin-lipped smirk in response.

  “Yeah, man,” she said. “Of course. It’s an awesome opportunity, I can’t not help.” But it’s scary, she didn’t add.

  Sigmund nodded anyway. “Yeah,” he said. They were just mortals, after all. Kids, really. Old souls could get them only so far.

  “Maybe I’ll get to fight an einherwhatsit,” Wayne said. “That’d be so cool.”

  Em and Sigmund shared a grin.

  They stepped out of the elevator inside the penthouse, a sort of hotel-suite-in-waiting, situated above the executive offices for when one of the VPs had to do an all-nighter. Sigmund had spent the night sleeping in the bathtub once, which wasn’t one of his proudest memories.

  Hel was waiting for them when they arrived, as evidenced by the peeling paint and strange, fleshy stalagmites that were growing from the carpet. She was standing out on the balcony, looking over the city, her silhouette tall and thin and obscured by a layer of frost that had, for whatever reason, built up on the balcony doors.

  When Sigmund opened them, he was glad he’d packed a hoodie. The air outside felt like midwinter, not early autumn.

  The reason became obvious fairly quickly.

  “Holy shit, is that a dragon?”

  It was huge. Enormous, even. Perched behind Hel on the edge of the LB building, claws cracking through the concrete, the feathers of its wings leaving behind glittering trails of frost whenever it moved.

  “This is the dreki, Hrímgrímnir,” Hel said. “He will take us to where we are heading.”

  The dragon—dreki—was curled around something that looked a little like a Viking boat and a little more like a basket. When Hel walked toward it, Sigmund realized it was their transport, a sort of cable-car gondola designed to be held in giant claws.

  “Dooder,” Wayne was saying to Em. “We picked the team with dragons.”

  “Eee!” was all Em said in reply. The girls were gripping on to each other, grins huge in the evening light.

  “Hi there!” Wayne called, waving upward. “I’m Wayne, this is Em and Sig. Thank you for flying us! This is so cool.” Wayne paused, looking around at the rime sloughing off Hrímgrímnir’s ice-green skin. “Literally!” Wayne added. “Are you, like . . . an ice dragon?”

  Hrímgrímnir’s eyes were the size of bicycle wheels, glacially blue, and definitely rolled in Wayne’s direction. Then the creature moved, the muscles in its throat working as it made a sound partway between a growl and a purr and a chirp. It wasn’t an aggressive sound, exactly, bar the fact that it was being made from a thing as big as an airplane. Not to mention the accompanying blast of frozen air.

  There was something under the sound, too. Sigmund had a sudden flash of . . . black feathers? Of the clash of swords and the cry of battle and—

  “He says it is an honor to escort such noble allies as yourselves.” Hel’s voice broke into Sigmund’s . . . whatever that had been. “And he thanks you for your service to the dead.”

  Wayne gave a jaunty salute. “Just doin’ our job, sir!” she said, grinning.

  The gondola had a door, and the three of them climbed inside, Em and Wayne sitting next to each other on one side, leaving Sigmund to share the bench with Hel on the other. She was big in the same way Lain was big, but, unlike Lain, she knew how to sit keeping her arms and legs to herself. When she’d settled, she closed the door, then cried out what Sigmund assumed to be the Viking version of “Onward!”

  All around them, through the glass-free windows, Sigmund felt Hrímgrímnir begin to move.

  When the dreki’s claws closed around the gondola’s handle, the whole thing lurched from side to side.

  Then came the sound of giant wings unfurling against the sky, and Sigmund had just enough time to wonder if this was how mice felt beneath owls, when Em suddenly said:

  “Is now a good time to mention I’m, uh. I’m kinda terrified of heights?”

  Then the gondola lurched again and lifted from the ground.

  Em kept her eyes shut the entire way.

  Interlude: Children

  If there’s one thing Loki Laufeyjarson never lacked for, it was children. He’d tell you they’re a side effect of living a long life. This, like many things Loki says, would be a lie.

  His eldest child is a daughter.

  The story goes that once upon a time, the witch Gullveig came to the gates of Ásgarðr. Three times the gods killed her for it, driving spears into her breast, and three times was her body burned. When finally the deed was done for good, when Gullveig’s magic resurrected her no more, all that was left was her blackened heart, burnt on her pyre. Loki, it is said, took this heart and ate it, and from this he birthed all the evil in the world.

  This story, needless to say, is an exaggeration. Nonetheless, Loki does have an eldest daughter, and her name is Eimyrja.

  Loki’s second child was a son. We don’t talk about that one, and neither does Loki. The boy was taken from him and, once the deed was done, Loki swore an oath that he would never lie with another such as the child’s father. Like many oaths of Loki’s, this is one he broke.

  Children three through five were monsters. Their mother, Angrboða, the Grief-Bringer, was one of the íviðjur, the jötnar of Járnviðr, the Iron Wood
. Her hatred of Ásgarðr was strong and so, at that time, was Loki’s; fresh and raw from the loss of his second child. That spite and pain and rage became the couple’s children. The first was Fenrir, the great wolf, who was bound in chains on an island. The second was Hel, had half-corpse skin that saw her exiled to the lands of the dishonored dead. The third, Jörmungandr, grew so large in size it was thrown into the ocean, where it encircled the world with room to spare.

  Child number six was a mistake. When Ásgarðr was still young, the æsir hired a stranger to build a wall around its borders. As always with the gods, they promised much in return for the task, under stipulations they thought could not be met. They had demanded the wall be built within three seasons, and that the builder have help from no other man. The builder agreed, so long as he could still employ the services of Svaðilfari, whom the gods thought of as his stallion.

  Svaðilfari, needless to say, was no man. He was also not a stallion, but a jötunn of a kind the gods were not used to seeing.

  Loki, of course, being a jötunn himself, knew Svaðilfari for what he was, and so encouraged the gods to take the builder’s contract, thinking it amusing to see them bested.

  When it looked as if Ásgarðr’s wall would be built on time, the gods returned to Loki and threatened him with pain and death unless he could find some way to stop it. So Loki took the shape of Svaðilfari’s people, and fluffed his feathers and flicked his tail, and the two went galloping off into the forest.

  Needless to say, the builder was enraged at this seduction and, in his rage, the magic that had made him seem a man was broken, revealing him to be a jötunn. The gods called for Thor, the jötunn-killer, and by the time Loki returned from his pointless tryst, the builder was dead and Ásgarðr’s wall unfinished.

  Sometime later, Loki gave birth to Sleipnir, whose shape was that of his father and whose throat could voice no words. The gods took him for a horse, too.

  Loki’s last three children were with his wife, Sigyn. The first two were born as boys, Váli and Nari. Like their father, they were jötunn, but Loki hid their horns and feathers with the same skin curse that held his.

  The children, of course, knew exactly what they were, thanks to the efforts of their mother. Sigyn would take them into the Járnviðr, where they would spend quiet nights with Angrboða’s clan. She would watch them play with the young íviðja girls, and dream of the day their true skins could be revealed.

  This day came, not long after Sigyn gave birth to Loki’s final child, his daughter Eisa. By then, Loki’s place among the gods had been rescinded. He was captured and imprisoned, bound by iron chains Odin made from Nari’s entrails. Entrails obtained when Odin undid the skin curse laid on Váli, whose horns and feathers brought with them a terrible berserk. When it cleared, Nari was dead. In fear and shame, Váli fled into the woods.

  For her part, Sigyn vowed to stay with her husband in his prison, but a vile cave was no place to raise a daughter. Nor, Sigyn thought, was Ásgarðr, having seen the awful fates given to her husband’s other offspring. And so she sent Eisa away, to be raised by Loki’s eldest, safe among the jötnar.

  Nine children, all in all, called monsters by the gods, imprisoned and killed and exiled.

  Nine children and, it must be said, three grandchildren. Born to Loki’s banished son, raised in ignorance of their lineage.

  Their story is something else entirely.

  Chapter 5

  More time passes. I spend it staring at the ceiling, wishing I had my cell phone. Or, at the very least, a fucking cigarette.

  I have neither, however, so instead I occupy myself with delusions of rescue. These mainly involve Sigmund, dressed in some suitably revealing “armor,” kicking in the door to the cell, crying my name in an anguished way, then coming to rub himself all over me while stroking my horns and telling me how brave I am and how worried he was.

  Because to hell with reality, he’s joined a moment later by Sigyn, covered in blood and brandishing Magni’s head like a trophy. The pair kiss me senseless for a while, then unlock my chains and suddenly it’s time for a nice soft bed and a threesome.

  I’m halfway through imagining the taste of Sigmund’s tongue and the feel of Sigyn’s hand between my thighs when the cell door bursts open once again. Jötunn anatomy is discreet in these matters, which is nice because I’m technically naked and getting caught by Forseti with a raging boner is not a deliverable on my current project plan.

  Forseti is grim and stern and, sadly, also trailing Thor’s brats behind him.

  “Is it time to go yet?” I ask. “’Cause it’s getting kinda dull in here and you really wouldn’t like me when I’m bored.”

  “Silence, silver tongue,” Forseti says. “From now on you will speak only when spoken to.”

  “Or what?” I ask. When Magni grins, it occurs to me I may come to regret the question.

  “How does this work, then?” he says. To his brother, not to me. As he speaks, he raises his left hand. There’s something on the palm, a tattoo in dark ink, still raw-edged and fresh.

  The design on the tattoo is familiar. It should be; it’s part of the one repeated over and over on my own back.

  “The curse’s runes are complex,” Móði is saying. “I couldn’t quite—” He shoots one look at me, swallows visibly, then continues, “Spit will be pain. Blood, agony.”

  Oh. Fuck.

  I know how this goes. Back in the ’70s I spent an evening in a bar in Hong Kong, buying drinks for a shitfaced Sun Wukong. Sometime between the “falling down” and “passed out” stages of drunkenness, the Monkey God told me about his so-called Journey to the West. Specifically, the “magic torture headband” part of it.

  It hadn’t, by his account, been the best experience of his life. Even with a Buddhist priest holding the whip, and a Bodhisattva of compassion watching from the sidelines.

  Here, now, in this cell, I have neither of those things. Instead, what I have are three bloodthirsty assholes who still believe in blood vengeance and slavery.

  And one of them is licking the palm of his left hand.

  This time, it takes me longer to come back. Bound and trapped, the skin of my back and biceps burning like raw flesh rubbed with sea salt.

  It doesn’t last long, but it doesn’t have to. Not with a thousand years held just beneath the surface. The memory of poison, hissing as it fills the hollows of burnt-out sockets, the taste of it running down a throat already left black and full of holes.

  When I howl, the earth itself echoes with my pain, but this time no succor is coming. No bowl held in trembling hands will reappear above my head, bringing a comfort timed by the agonizing drip drip drip of the countdown till world’s end.

  Instead, I get a slap across the cheek.

  “—t’s wrong with it? You said it would be a moment, only.”

  I’m hauled upright, eyes blind and Wyrdsight splintered by my own fear, awareness of the world outside breaking further with each trembling shudder of my hearts.

  “Ergi jötunn bitch can’t take a little pain.”

  I lash out, or try to, hands held back first by chains, then by a weight, pressing me hard against the wall, cold stone rough against my cheek and chest and—

  “Control yourself, your hysterics shame us all.”

  Forseti. That’s Forseti’s voice, and his arms I can feel holding me still. Jesus. Fuck. The little shit is right. PTSD and panic attacks won’t help me now. Not with—with—

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  The word runs in my head, and and over, and I use it to time my breath. In, fuck, out, fuck, in, fuck, out, fuck.

  Slowly, piece by piece, I take and all the fear and pain—all the helplessness—and file it away into a box. The box is shaped like a heart, and it beats black venom, eating up every awful thing it’s fed. And, as it swells and fattens, I feel my breathing slow.

  Then, finally:

  “Well. That was fun.” Describing my voice as “thready” would be
generous, and when Forseti steps back, I slump in an exhausted heap against the wall, bones dissolving into slurry beneath my skin.

  “That is your leash.” Forseti is grim and dour, from his voice to his stance to the thin line of his lips, and the taste of it is like the dull gray lead of bullet. “Be obedient, and your masters will not be forced to use it.”

  I stare straight at Magni. He’s grinning, eyes gleaming with a dark malice that sends a strange ache straight through my hearts.

  After Ragnarøkkr, Thor had been unrecognizable beneath his wounds, face all but torn away, guts spilling out over his belt. He had no love for the jötnar, was a berserker through and through, but I refuse to believe he would look now on his sons with pride.

  Maybe. Or maybe that’s just Lain talking, too much of Baldr’s soft heart and Travis Hale’s modern sensibilities. For all the news would have us believe otherwise, violence and torture are just so unfashionable nowadays. So many people have forgotten so much about just how blood-soaked the past could be.

  “The runes will trigger from any distance,” Móði says. “Do not think running will save you.” He can’t look at me when he speaks.

  “Got it,” I say, somehow managing to push myself off the wall and stand.

  I tell myself I’m not going to kill them. Assholes don’t deserve the comforts of Hel’s halls.

  Forseti unbolts me from the floor, leaving me in the chains and handing the end to Magni like a leash. The three of them drag me out of the cell, through dark hallways I don’t recognize and up a set of stairs into the sun.

  There’s a moment—just a single fleeting moment—when all the horror of the day is gone. Blown away by the clean, fresh air of Ásgarðr, cleansed by the bright light of Sól’s only daughter.

  Ásgarðr was home, for a while. It’s nice to be back.

  Or would be, if Magni wasn’t pulling on my collar, dragging me forward like the big feathered dog he doubtlessly thinks I am.

  Four horses are standing just ahead. Four horses and one young woman.