by Matt Larkin
So did Odin. His only answer was to return that nod.
57
Idunn pointed to the overgrown valley. The foliage was so dense, Tyr could make out very little of what might lie within. The day’s final sunlight fell over it in gentle rays, making the place seem enchanted. Far removed from the bloody woods now covering so much of this island. Vanaheim had become a realm host to as many dead as living. And the war only seemed to grow worse.
Odin’s plan, much like his last, seemed daft or delusional. To send away Tyr in such desperate times bespoke madness. And yet, he had commanded Tyr without the slightest hesitation. Had claimed to love the Vanr woman, Freyja. But Freyja was famed as the goddess of love and sex. How could Odin know she had not bewitched him, as Gudrun had once done?
“You’re certain she’s there?”
Idunn shook her head. “I have a few friends left among the Vanir. They claim she retreated here. That she hasn’t joined the fighting. And I do know she likes this place. We came here often enough, in years past.”
“You were close.”
“Once, she was my closest friend in the world. Now, I have a doubt she would ever forgive all I’ve done.”
Tyr had no good answer for that. An Ás woman who had so betrayed her people would have been hung as a sacrifice—probably to Frey, for that matter. “What does Odin plan now?”
Again, she shook her head. “I wish I knew. He saw something beyond this world, and now he acts like a man caught in a maelstrom of fate. On second thought, maybe I do not wish to know his mind. I may have started this, but Odin has taken over the game and seems to be playing against Hel herself, as best I can tell.”
Tyr rubbed his beard. Such talk was beyond his imagining. “Come with me to the valley.”
“She may not welcome me, Tyr.”
“And she doesn’t even know me. If we are to do as Odin asked, we have to convince her to accompany us.” Out of Vanaheim. Perhaps the king did not want the two women to witness whatever dark fate he planned for the rest of the Vanir. A softness, but one Tyr did not begrudge him. Maybe Idunn would never be his, but he still wished no more suffering on her. She had had more than her fair share, even though her own actions had led to her current situation.
Idunn clucked her tongue and started into the valley, a step ahead of Tyr. The incline steepened so much he had to steady himself with a hand to keep from pitching forward. The vale might have little strategic value, but it would be hard to attack. Still, he imagined Freyja chose it more for the strange blue flowers that seemed to have sprung up everywhere he turned. Some had petals a full foot across, and hundreds of them ran around trees or rose from moss-covered stumps. In another time, he might have asked Idunn. But the Vanr was intent, eyes locked ahead of herself.
She led the way to a freestanding pavilion, its dome-like roof covered in thick moss. Simple columns supported it, and outside those columns ran a rail lined with bowls of glowing water. A blonde woman sat on the rail. Watched them approach, one finger swirling around in the water. She wore a simple white skirt and a much more elaborate embroidered white shirt, left open and barely concealing her breasts. Odin’s attraction to her was understandable. But a fire lit her eyes, one blazing enough to have cowed an army of draugar.
Before he could draw nigh, a pair of cave lions emerged from the woods, growling. Hackles up. Damn, but he needed Gramr. He had to content himself with a normal blade.
“First you bring one man to my hall, and now another, to this private place.”
Idunn sighed. “I wish there had been another way.”
Freyja looked to Tyr. “If you’ve come to kill me I won’t make it easy. I’m not a warrior, but you will not like the price you’ll pay for my death.”
One of the lions snarled.
“I’m not here to kill you. Odin bade me get you to safety.”
She snorted. “Safety? I’m only in danger because of Odin’s warriors. You brought the danger with you. Do not think I didn’t see you cut down my people.”
“And the man with the flaming sword? He is your brother, is he not, my lady?”
Freyja stepped, or rather glided, off the rail. Tyr had often thought Idunn possessed an Otherworldly grace. This woman had it too. Had grown so accustomed to wielding her sexuality as a weapon, she didn’t seem to know she was doing it. “I will not debate this with you.” Maybe she did know.
Idunn stepped forward. “But you didn’t join Frey, either.”
“Should I have picked up a sword and waded into battle?”
Tyr kept his eyes on the lions. They circled, as Freyja moved closer. Forced him to turn about, round and round.
“You could be there, tending the wounded, granting them courage. Instead you hide yourself here, perhaps scrying on the battles, but taking no part. Why, Freyja? Do you already know what has to happen?”
Freyja sauntered closer now, her eyes seeming to gleam. Caught his gaze. He could not look away. So much light, so much power. Those eyes held all the depths of creation, the promise of life. The certainty of urd of which Odin spoke. And she drew so close, her fingers slowly spreading the folds of her blouse, exposing her breasts. “Tell me …” Her voice was somehow inside his head, echoing, ringing. Like a song. “If I asked you to bind Idunn here, would you do it?”
Of course he would. The goddess need not even ask. “You need only will it, and I shall serve.”
“Tyr?” Idunn asked. “Oh, don’t do this, Freyja.”
She opposed the goddess, like a profane blasphemer. Tyr grabbed both Idunn’s arms and jerked them to her sides. She shrieked, but he paid no mind as he carried her toward a tree. He would bind her here for all time if the goddess so desired.
“Freyja!” Idunn shouted.
“You are not fit to speak her name.” Tyr shoved her against the tree. “Do not move.”
Idunn placed both palms against the tree in submission. A good prisoner. She knew there was no escape from the goddess. A pair of vines from the tree suddenly launched themselves at Tyr, wrapping both his wrists. They yanked him aloft, holding him a foot off the ground and prying his arms apart.
Freyja scoffed. “You think that ash wife you bound a match for the liosalf inside me?”
“I don’t want to fight you at all. Please stop this,” Idunn said. “Release him.”
“Oh, you care about him, do you? Like you made me care for Odin?”
“I didn’t make you do anything!” Idunn strode threateningly toward Tyr’s mistress.
He drew his power, surging strength to his limbs, and grabbed one vine with each hand. Then he yanked. The branches creaked, the vines stretched. Both women looked to him.
“Please,” Idunn said. “Odin sent us here because he truly cares for you. Because he said he loves you, Freyja. You may hate him, but part of you loves him too, I think. So let his man go and come with us.”
Panting with effort, Tyr yanked his arms again, this time splitting one vine. He pitched back to the ground and jerked his hand the rest of the way free. Then, both hands on the remaining vine, heaved.
“Oh, be free!” Freyja said.
A wave of vertigo took him, set his knees wobbling, and forced him to fall on his hands. A lion paced a mere foot in front of his face. Forced his breath to catch.
The women were talking still, but it sounded of nonsense. What the fuck was that? Idunn. A moment ago he’d been ready to throttle her. He rose, swaying a little, but rounding on Freyja.
She held up a warning finger. Hel. Now Tyr truly knew how it felt to be enchanted by a sorceress’s whim. He pitied Odin all the more.
“Take me to Odin,” Freyja demanded.
Tyr cleared his throat. His head felt fuzzier than had he downed a barrel of mead. Hel take all witchcraft.
“Come to the beaches. Odin will come for you.”
Freyja looked to Idunn before stepping painfully close to Tyr. She ran a soft finger along his neck, just under his beard. “Try my patience, and I may entice you to t
urn that deadly sword arm on your own men.” She patted the side of neck. “But by all means, lead the way.”
Tyr found it hard to swallow.
58
Somewhere, in the darkest recesses of her own mind, Gudrun had wept. And then, finding herself spent and useless, she allowed herself to look out. Sometimes, victims of possession retreated deep into their minds and stayed there, hiding from the horrors that a spirit might do with their bodies. The temptation to stay in the darkness and ignore what she had become existed, yes, but it would avail her naught.
And so she ventured outward, wandering the labyrinth of her failing mind and tattered soul. Forced to such introspections, her mind’s eye cast her soul as a visible substance, one frayed at all the edges, missing pieces where vaettir had taken their payments from her. In such a void, she found Snegurka, dormant and melancholy.
Every sorceress had voices in her head, whispers of the spirits she had bound or bargained with. The voices perpetuated a descent into madness that only the strongest will could hope to forestall.
“She has taken your body,” Snegurka said. The snow maiden, all clad in white, drifted in and out of mist in some untouched and explored valley. “Madness seems inevitable. Best to give in now.”
The mist and the valley were projections, of course, no more real than aught else Gudrun might see in this nonexistent place. Were they projections of her own mind, created as a means of understanding Snegurka? Or were they created by the snow maiden herself as a kind of self-image, just as a mortal projecting into the Astral Realm created? It did not really matter, of course—such questions were not only academic, but immaterial in the truest sense of the word.
“You see?” Snegurka said. “Already your mind wanders in circles, and the madness creeps in at the edges.”
“I am not yet mad.”
“Immaterial.” Was she taunting Gudrun with that?
Irpa would be here, too.
“No.”
“We are all here.”
“Four of us.”
No one is here.
Gudrun grimaced. It was becoming hard to tell her own thoughts from those of the snow maiden or the wraith. But the wraith was here. Here was not a place. So they all had to be here. Here and there.
Somewhere.
In darkness.
Darkness …
And mist.
They were not alone, after all. There were three of them.
Three.
Three voices.
But if they were not alone here, surely then Skadi was here as well. And she was, drifting amidst the mist, her skin tinged blue, lips the color of cobalt, hair white as snow. In life, Skadi had been a daughter of a jotunn king and a disciple of Hel.
The snow maiden flickered and vanished, appearing so close that her frosty breath coated Gudrun’s face with rime. Gudrun blinked once, willing it away. After all, it was not real. The real Skadi was in possession of Gudrun’s real body.
“Impressive,” Skadi said, her voice sibilant as a distant breeze, “for a human.”
Human?
“I am a Niflung.”
“You are a broken icicle, dangling over a cliff … awaiting but a loud sound to send you … falling into the night.”
Broken.
Broken.
Lost.
And so alone.
Gudrun pressed a hand to her forehead, trying to still their voices for long enough to think. “I have lost so much … but I am not yet broken.”
“You will be …”
All is broken …
All is for naught.
Gudrun grimaced and snatched Skadi’s wrist. The maiden’s flesh was the coldest thing Gudrun had ever felt. It took all of her will to keep from releasing her grip and crying out in the bitter pain of that touch. “As a fellow servant of Hel … I ask you”—she swallowed and gritted her teeth—“one boon.”
“I owe you naught at all, mortal.”
Be that as it might, Gudrun had naught to lose by trying. “I ask you … let me join in your vengeance. Take revenge against your former husband, his kin … everyone who …” Finally, gasping, she had to let go of Skadi’s wrist and clasp her frostbitten hand to her chest.
“My husband … is dead. Slain by your own lover.”
Gudrun’s mouth dropped open. Odin had slain Njord? Sometimes it seemed like naught on Midgard or beyond could stop the accursed Ás king.
Cast into darkness …
Hel, Irpa. Facing such an ancient power now in control of them, could the wraith not for once support Gudrun freely? She needed aid from Irpa and Snegurka both for this to work.
“Odin is not my lover. Not anymore. He is a foe. I would join you in striking back against whoever most vexes you.”
Skadi’s mouth twitched, her eyes seeming to go even paler blue than before. “I was separated from … him … as summer divides winter … and yet …”
“Yet you did not wish him slain. Odin and the Aesir are foes of the goddess we serve. None of us can match you, my lady, but the four of us together, we can become a queen of winter the world has not known since before the Midgard Wall. Give me the chance to know what Grimhild knew, and I will do better with that knowledge than she.”
Skadi fell silent, turning her gaze upon Irpa, then Snegurka.
On impulse, Gudrun slumped to her knees, then beckoned the other spirits to do the same. Snegurka did so, though Irpa hesitated. Gudrun and Snegurka glared at her until at last the prideful wraith knelt before the winter goddess.
At last, Skadi pressed a single, freezing finger against Gudrun’s forehead.
Gudrun’s already fractured thoughts were swept away in a maelstrom. At once, she felt sight and memories of four different women. Vertigo swirled the world around her.
It took a moment to realize those were her real knees, and she rested now on a real floor, in the same ruin Grimhild had summoned her. Skadi—she was Skadi now, in a way—rose. Gudrun’s body was young and lithe, and Skadi could keep it that way for centuries. It was changing, though. She fondled a loose strand of hair. Already, it had transformed from golden blonde to ash blonde. One day, it would be white as Skadi’s own hair.
She had already cast aside Gudrun’s worn traveling clothes. Such tattered rags did not befit the figure of a goddess. Truly, it was better to go unclad and reveal her glory than hide it beneath such terrible cloth. Soon, she would need garments worthy of the queen of winter.
For now, she pulled the grimoire from Gudrun’s satchel. She—they—had taken it from the unworthy Queen Grimhild, who, despite the arcana revealed to her by Lady Hel, had failed to secure Midgard for the lady’s return. Queen Skadi would do better.
She opened the tome, flipping to pages she had previously not understood. Now she understood. For she had written them in a distant age, back when she was the chosen of Hel. Grimhild had occupied that position of honor for too long now.
What had once been Skadi’s, would now be again.
Njord was dead.
And at long last, true winter would settle upon Midgard once again.
The cold would reign eternal.
59
Well past midnight, Ás scouts met them in the woods perhaps five hundred feet from the beach. Zisa led them, to Tyr’s chagrin. Woman held the arrow aimed at them longer than necessary.
“Who is she?” his ex-wife asked when finally lowering her bow.
The woman Odin loved, apparently. Tyr didn’t even want to think about Frigg’s reaction when that got back to her. No, nor the look of utter betrayal he could imagine all too well.
“Lady Freyja,” Idunn answered for him.
Zisa rounded on her. “I did not ask you, witch.”
Tyr opened his mouth to protest, but Idunn gave him no chance.
“No. Had you asked my opinion on anything, I’d have called you a fool girl to leave Tyr for Bedvig. You chased ambition with your trench instead of your brain. Small wonder the man you found ended up being a trench himself
.”
Tyr flinched. It did not do to so besmirch the dead. Even if Bedvig was a fucking trench. Zisa started to raise the bow again, while her scouts seemed torn between stifling guffaws and sharing her outrage at having their former jarl insulted.
Freyja folded her arms. “You wonder why my father left your uncouth tribes out in the cold? Where is Odin?”
“A good question.” The harsh, throaty voice sounded from somewhere in the woods. A voice Tyr knew and was not apt to forget soon.
Fenrir.
“I keep killing his people. Still he does not show his face. Craven?”
Tyr jerked his sword free of its sheath and turned slowly, looking for sign of the werewolf. The Aesir had begun cursing, quickly forming a circle.
At once, Zisa was by his side, eyes locked on the woods. “He breached the walls, killed twenty people tonight. We had no choice but to give chase.”
Hel’s frozen tits. She had willingly pursued the varulf lord into the woods at night? At least she was not fool enough to have brought her sons on this mission.
He grabbed Idunn and yanked her toward the circle’s center. “Get behind me. Both of you.” He addressed the latter to Freyja, who stood looking at the forest with her head cocked.
Something in the woods yelped. Brief cry of an animal in pain. Followed by a dry chuckle. And still Tyr couldn’t tell where that damned voice came from.
“V-Vanadis?” Freyja called. “Hörn?”
The chuckle grew worse. “You think you can protect the women? I will lay all three of them out and fuck them to bloody pulps. And I will leave just enough life in your body for you to watch.” There, in the shadows of the trees. The voice came from there, though he was moving. “Or you can give me my prey and end this.”
Tyr stepped forward, sword out before him. “You are brave in darkness. Come forward and face me, wolf.”
The glimmer of eyes flickered in the darkness, then he stalked forward, moving every bit like a predator. He was naked, his flesh taut, rippling muscles. Dark hair covered much of him. Behind him he dragged the corpse of a cave lion by its mauled throat.