by Matt Larkin
“Loki,” Sigyn said again as he rose, stumbling closer to her chains, “Grimhild caught herself on mist below. She’s not dead.”
He grunted. He had not truly expected her to die so easily, nor did he have strength left to fight the sorceress now. “We have to go now, before more of them arrive.”
Part I
Year 118, Age of Vingethor
Tenth Moon, Summer
1
To see things other men did not, to know truths they could not imagine, was both blessing and torment. Loki had once told Odin that the Sight carried with it many aspects, that he would see things he might rather have not. His blood brother could not have been more right, but he had neglected to mention the nigh irresistible temptation to keep looking, to keep striving to understand all things in the universe. Unfolding realities of the past and future, the living and the dead, and the connections that bound them together—these visions taunted him, always just out of reach, always promising enlightenment but never quite delivering.
The Aesir did not know what waited for them in Vanaheim, and it was a question even Idunn had not truly answered. Perhaps she could not give any answer that would satisfy him. After all, if Odin was to risk the continued existence of all the Ás tribes, what surety could the Vanr woman ever offer that would be enough? He could favor one tribe by selecting them to send scouts and report back to him. But even then, he could not place absolute trust in such a report. There were some things he had to see for himself. And thus he had spent the past hours relaxing his vision, trying to open himself to unfolding sea of possibilities, to look across the bay and see what waited for him.
He had failed.
Odin was far from a master of the Sight. He could, when necessary, gaze into the Penumbra. Such vision allowed him to see ghosts and spirits if they ventured close enough to the Mortal Realm. At times, he had even been able to throw himself into the past, embrace his father Borr’s memories, and live another life. He had tried that tactic, too, to solve this dilemma, but had found the only memories he could access were those of his parents, especially his father. There were hints of other lives, other lands, people he felt connected to. But he could make no sense of them, could not place the occurrences in time or space. The rest of his visions unfolded in chaotic turmoil, a blurring of incomprehensible images. Once, he saw endless ice fells leading to a terrible iron wall. Another time, he saw a land of lush greenery that might have been Vanaheim—but there were no guarantees. He might have been looking at the past, or the future, or a projection of his own desires.
It was useless. He had too little control for the Sight to grant him what he sought.
And Loki himself remained nowhere to be found. He and Sigyn had vanished in the wake of the battle with Grimhild and never returned, much to Frigg’s consternation. And without Loki, Odin had but one place left to turn, one source to help him make his decision.
Embrace the shadows …
Odin steeled his mind against the wraith. Audr, deep in his soul, stirred on rare, painful occasions. Mostly, the foul shade waited for a moment of weakness in which to strike.
Rather than linger among his men, Odin fled the hall they had built on the beach, trusting his instincts to guide him to Idunn. That much of the Sight he could rely on. Feelings and intuitions which, over the past moons, had grown ever sharper. Odin knew with uncanny accuracy where to find those he sought, sensed when vaettir drew near on the other side of the Veil, and felt it when those he cared for were in pain. Sometimes the cries of his children—of Thor, his blood, and of Geri and Freki, the varulfur twins—would draw him from halfway across the camp. Frigg had asked how he always knew, but he had no real answer to give her, and she, a vӧlva, had seemed to understand. Frigg had visions of her own. Perhaps everyone touched by the supernatural acquired some semblance of the Sight. Maybe that was how Loki always seemed to find Odin when times grew to their worst. Except now, when Odin would have given a fortune in gold for but a few moments of the man’s counsel.
Idunn stood with her feet in the freezing surf, staring out over the sea. If he was correct, then she too—perhaps all the Vanir—must see glimpses of things beyond human perception. The longer you looked at things mankind could not understand, the further you became removed from them. It was a lesson he could not afford to forget, lest he become no different than the Vanir themselves.
“Do you see your homeland?”
She shivered, though not, he suspected, from the cold waters of the bay. “I wanted to save the world, Odin. I thought I could make Midgard a better place. How arrogant is that? I grew up on stories of my grandmother, tales of her and my grandfather fighting against Hel herself. And I allowed myself the hubris of thinking I could accomplish feats such as they did. Did you know, most of the surviving Vanir were born on Vanaheim? I was. Only a handful remain from the sojourn my grandmother led across the world. We call them the First Ones.”
“What happened to them?”
She sighed and rubbed her arms. “A lot of them, my father among them, died fighting the jottunar. The jotunnar would have ruled the world if the Vanir had not driven them out into the wastes of Utgard. And, over time, others died wandering the world, fighting each other in duels, on occasion in battles with other peoples.”
We are all dead …
“People like the Niflungar. You fought them.”
“A long time ago. My husband was the patron of one of the tribes descended from Halfdan the Old. When Niflungar began their wars of conquest, Bragi tried to get the Vanir to intercede on behalf of the Bragnings. Our new king, Njord, refused. It was … well, not the beginning of our isolation. That had always been a problem. There were never enough apples to go around, even for us, much less to share with outsiders.”
And so to ensure immortality for their own children, the Vanir had shut out the rest of mankind. Odin could not truly blame them. What wouldn’t he do to protect his children? Loki had been prepared enough to save an apple for Thor, for when he was grown, but Odin intended Geri and Freki to get apples as well, even before his jarls.
“It wasn’t the beginning of our isolation, but that was when we began to completely turn our backs on the outside world. Yggdrasil is suffused with an unimaginable amount of the energy of life, connecting our world to the Otherworlds. Because of this, we call it both the World Tree and the Tree of Life. And that energy kept the mists at bay, diminishing the Niflungar’s powers. Njord and his daughter, Freyja, used the tree’s power to further fortify Vanaheim against any intrusion by the Niflungar or their sorcery.”
“The Vanir protected themselves and were content to allow Naefil and his sorcerers to conquer all of Midgard?”
“Content? No, never content. I also argued for helping mortals, but few saw things my way. That was actually when I first became involved with my husband, Bragi. We wanted to help the other descendants of Halfdan. It was never enough, though. The humans weren’t prepared to fight against the Niflungar or their mastery of the Art.”
Odin folded his arms, no longer looking at Idunn. At her words, images flickered across his mind like shadows, replaying hints of the ancient wonders she spoke of. He could almost see the events, witness their essence, if not their specifics. Before meeting Idunn, the Ás vӧlvur had thought the era of the mists had lasted for a thousand years. Now he knew it had been nearly five times that long, and in the passing of ages, countless kingdoms had risen and fallen. Lands of jotunnar, dvergar, and sorcerers. “But the Niflungar failed to conquer Midgard.”
“Hmmm. They broke all the other Old Kingdoms, but in the end, they were themselves defeated by the Lofdar—fire worshippers, aided by a godlike priest named Loge. They banished the Niflungar from the known lands to the far north. Until your encounters with them, I didn’t know where, exactly. For a time, the Lofdar ruled Midgard, but they too dwindled, their empire broke apart, betrayed from within. Their descendants became the tribes of modern Hunaland and Bjarmaland.”
Bjarmaland … Tha
t was the ancestral home of the Aesir along the Black Sea. That meant …
“Oh yes, Odin. Your ancestors intermarried with the remnants of the Lofdar. The Aesir are thus heir to their legacy.”
Was he that obvious in his thoughts? He shook his head. His ancestors had defeated the Niflungar and built a glorious civilization, only to be swallowed up by the mists. It was not a mistake he intended to repeat. Vanaheim’s power came from Yggdrasil. Everything came back to the World Tree. With it, he could ensure eternal life for the Aesir, freedom from the mists. More than that, though, it would grant him a place from which he could begin his true mission. He had sworn a blood oath to make the world a better place. The mists of Niflheim did not belong on Midgard, and he would find a way to cast them out.
The Vanir had failed mankind and had failed Midgard. In hiding from their fears, they had proved themselves cowards, unworthy of the blessings they found on Vanaheim. He looked to Idunn now, and she turned to him. Odin couldn’t recall seeing such sadness in her eyes. Idunn had always been a fount of life, nigh to bubbling with vivacious energy and a pervasive joy she tended to share with those around her. Now, preparing for the last leg of their journey, it must have become real to her. All the people she had spent the last five thousand years with were about to die. People she knew and loved.
But they were not all cowards. Idunn was not. She had risked her life again and again, wandering the world, trying to help mankind, to bring the promise of spring where she could. She had granted Gungnir to Odin’s great-great-grandfather, after all. “You gave us Gungnir because we were descended from the Lofdar.” He knew it with sudden clarity, born or enhanced by the Sight.
“Hmmm. I had given it to the Bragnings in times past, at my husband’s urging. Still they failed to stop the Niflungar. But the Lofdar succeeded where the Bragnings had failed.” She stepped out of the surf and began to walk along the beach.
Odin followed. “I do not know what to do from here, Idunn. The ships will be complete soon enough and then … then we must sail for the islands. And you have not told me what threats we will face on those shores, not in earnest.”
“Uh. Well, I don’t know that I can say, in earnest. It has been long years since anyone attempted an assault on Vanaheim. There is only one safe approach through the reef surrounding the islands, but other than that … I know Freyja and Njord have woven together defenses, but not the details. Besides which, I imagine the Vanr soldiers represent the greatest threat. Freyja’s brother, Frey, leads them.”
Frey—bearer of the flaming sword of legend, which Odin now knew to be one of the runeblades of the Old Kingdoms. And such a man would no doubt slaughter Odin’s people as easily as Odin cut down common soldiers on his route here to Andalus. He clenched his fists, trying not to allow visions of such massacres to cloud his vision. So many Aesir had died already on his quest.
He had to find a way to protect the rest. And still, to make those sacrifices mean something, he had to finish this, and soon.
2
The wild places were thick with mist, filled with the shades of those unable to move on from the accursed world Midgard had become. No such beings dared interfere with Gudrun as she and Hljod made their way through the snowfields. Perhaps the vaettir knew her for a sorceress under the protection of Hel. Or perhaps they feared the spirit possessing their scout, the progenitor of all varulfur, Fenrir. The man said very little when she saw him at all—he spent most times scouting far ahead—for which Gudrun was grateful. When near, the werewolf stared at her and Hljod with such ravenous hunger, Gudrun couldn’t be certain whether he intended to eat them, rape them, or both.
Grimhild had placed the varulf under her thrall, tenuous as that might be, using days’ worth of the most profane rituals Gudrun had ever seen. The sorceress queen had bled dry seven maidens and seven crones for her sorcery, and still, with such unhallowed sacrifices, the Moon spirit had visibly strained against Grimhild’s control, had brought the most powerful sorceress on Midgard to her knees. Grimhild might have done better had Gudrun not stolen her grimoire, but she was not about to let the queen know she possessed that forbidden tome. One day, Gudrun would unravel its secrets, and then she would be queen.
For now, though, she could not be certain how strong Grimhild’s hold over Fenrir truly was. The queen had ordered him to obey Gudrun—and Gudrun’s first command had been not to lay a hand on herself or Hljod—but Gudrun did not sleep easy with the werewolf about. Nor, she thought, did Hljod, who had taken to nestling down mere breaths away from Gudrun, as though her mistress might protect her from the horrors in the night. Gudrun could protect Hljod, save from the horror they had brought with them.
Odin’s defeat of Grimhild had unhinged the queen, leading her to bouts of raving and uncontrolled violence. After deciding she disliked her soup one evening, Grimhild had ordered the cook boiled alive in a cauldron of his creation. Still, Gudrun had lacked the courage to directly challenge her mother. The damage Odin had done to her face seemed to bother Grimhild almost as much as losing the grimoire. The queen had always said beauty was a sorceress’s greatest asset. That might have been true, for even this temporary loss of her beauty had sent her into paroxysms of rage beyond aught Gudrun had ever seen.
And when Grimhild had commanded Gudrun to return to Hunaland, Gudrun had leapt at the chance to be out of the queen’s sight.
Beside her, Hljod’s breath came in heavy pants, frosting the air. “I can’t feel my feet. How are you not fucking freezing?”
“You are apprenticed to a sorceress, a princess of the Niflungar. It might behoove you to restrain your tongue, or at the very least, save the profanity for when it is truly called for.”
“I’m pretty sure when facing deathchill, profanity is fucking called for. I’ve already lost one toe and I’d rather like to keep the rest.”
Gudrun couldn’t help but smile. Hljod always seemed to have that effect on her. Despite all she had been through, the girl’s soul had not broken, had, if anything, grown more defiant. That refusal to crack would serve her well as a sorceress, assuming she could learn enough self-control to avoid destroying herself. If not, Hljod would find trolls far from the worst thing out there.
“Come on,” Hljod said. “It’s almost nightfall. Can we not stop for the day? At this point, I’d welcome another lesson if it meant I could get off my feet for a while.”
“Mmmm.” Most likely, the desire to get back to her lessons was half Hljod’s motivation. Knowledge—and the power that came with it—was an addiction, and the girl drank deeply, desperately seeking more and more understanding of the truth of reality. And therein lay the problem. It was so easy to offer too much, too quickly. Many apprentices wound up going mad, as though plunging into the depths of the freezing ocean, unable to find anything to grasp on to as their perceptions of the world washed away in the tide. Those less fortunate found themselves possessed by spirits they were not ready to evoke. There was a legend from generations back about a sorceress who tried to conjure a snow maiden in the hopes it would share with her the secrets of Niflheim. Instead, the vaettr had slipped inside the woman and used her to murder her own parents, her brother and sister, and half a dozen others.
After a bit more complaining, Hljod finally fell silent. Only then did Gudrun allow her to stop, pointing at a copse of trees. As soon as she reached there, the girl collapsed onto the ground. She yanked off her boots and began massaging her feet.
Gudrun nestled down beside her, her back to an evergreen, and pulled some salted rabbit from her satchel. Around the copse, icicles hung from the trees like stalactites—a ceiling of spikes apt to shred those who walked without care. Even Hljod had instinctively picked a safe spot. She had grown up in Midgard, must have known the wilds enough to avoid such hazards. Gudrun shouldn’t think of her as a child, nor could she shield her from the truths inherent in the path she set before Hljod by taking her as an apprentice.
She tossed a piece of the rabbit to Hljod, who bit into
the dried meat with relish. “You want me to name the nine worlds of the Spirit Realm?” she asked, mouth full.
Gudrun sighed and picked at her rabbit. Manners were another lesson. She waved a hand to motion Hljod on.
“Mmm, Hel, that’s good,” Hljod said, then swallowed hard. “Is there mead left?”
Gudrun passed her a skin of it, then folded her arms, waiting.
Hljod took a large swig, wiped her mouth, and grinned. “First is Niflheim, the World of Mist and land of our lady Hel. There is none greater. Opposing that, Muspelheim, the World of Fire, land of the eldjotunnar. There’s cursed Alfheim, the World of Sun. Oh! And there’s Svartalfheim, the World of Dark.” She had set aside the skin to start counting on her fingers. “Uh, Nidaffjoll, World of Earth, from which dvergar hail. And then there’s Noatun, the—”
A tingle in her mind had Gudrun on her feet at once, holding up a hand to forestall Hljod. Sorcery seeped into the air, congealing in the mist. Instinctively, Gudrun glanced at her satchel, just to make certain no corner of the grimoire was sticking out where Grimhild could see it.
The queen’s face appeared in the mist a heartbeat later, eyes mere empty hollows in the vapors, but clearly searching. “Where are you?”
Grimhild’s voice was soft, like a whisper carried on the wind, and yet somehow filled with unspoken threats and barely concealed malice.
“We’ll reach Volsung’s hall in two days, three at the outside.”
“Good. Remind him he owes me everything. I want the Aesir broken before they launch those ships.”
That might prove difficult. Gudrun had sent her own vaettr to spy on Odin’s people and found they were nigh to ready to make for Vanaheim. Even if Volsung agreed immediately—and he might not, given his last defeat at Odin’s hands—it would take time to reach the Aesir. Besides which, should they succeed, an army of men was like to have even less success than an army of draugar had in overcoming Odin and his protectors.