The Odin Inheritance (The Pessarine Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria L. Scott

Odin put out his hands in a gesture that indicated anything was possible. “I give you a choice,” he said.

  I scoffed. “That’s a change,” I said cynically. “Very little that’s happened to me over the past few days has felt like I had any choice in the matter.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “No matter how you ask me, I’ll still not worship you.”

  Odin chuckled. “Yes, Little One, you made that quite clear. I don’t need a worshipper. Jehovah and I, while not exactly friends, do have certain goals in common. Your allegiance to him is without question. The choice has to do with something else.”

  “What about your choice, Odin?” I asked.

  “My choice?”

  “Why me? Why have all these things happened to me? Why didn’t you just leave me on the World Tree to die? If you had, I dare say more people would be alive now.” I stopped for a moment, my heart squeezing painfully in my chest. It was hard to keep my voice even as I continued speaking. “I was an insignificant little girl. Had you done nothing to save me, my death would have stopped Laufeson’s plan cold. That was the logical, cold-blooded thing to do, well suited to a god of war and death. Why didn’t you do it?”

  Odin blew out a breath slowly. “I found you hanging in the World Tree in sacrifice,” he began, his voice sad. “The shedding of your blood in that place made your life mine to do with as I wished. I could have claimed you for death, and that thought did cross my mind. The Norns, who see the future and advise me occasionally, told me to leave you to die. They showed me what the Son of Loki hoped to do with you if I didn’t destroy you.” A look of fierce pride and wistful memory crossed his face. “You were brave. You had spirit. By Yggdrasil, child, had you been born a thousand years ago, what a warrior you would have made! How could I end a life that burned with such determination and strength at so young an age?” I said nothing.

  Odin continued, “It’s true I’m a god of war and death, but I am also a god of magic, poetry and above all, wisdom. Therefore, I decided to let you live under my protection until you fulfilled your destiny,” he said, “and the possibility of failure be damned. I believed your destiny was to thwart the Son of Loki’s plans... which you did, with my help.”

  He’s been playing a long game with my life and me none the wiser, I realized. “And now, having done that, what do you intend to do with me?”

  “As to what happens next… that depends.” Odin clasped his hands in his lap, watching me, saying nothing.

  I rolled my eyes. “That depends? You set me up from the beginning to trap Laufeson. You set up everything in my life to do what I did in Hell. You’ve made it so I have no choice as to what I do from here.”

  “Call for your wings,” he said, unmoved. “Call on your magical power. Right here, right now. See what happens.”

  Confused by the non-sequitur but curious as to what would happen, I did so. I felt nothing. I looked down at my arms, which still showed no sign of the golden gears and circuits from before. I wore no magic breastplate and felt no wings on my back, which upon reflection was a good thing, since I wasn’t sure what the razor-sharp feathers would’ve done to the couch I sat on.

  Odin reached in the pocket of his vest, pulled something out, let it dangle in his hand for a moment and allowed it coil, serpent-like, into a pile on the table between us. It was my father’s gold watch chain – the one I’d wrapped around my wrist that had altered Laufeson’s magic. The fob at the end, a worn golden saint’s medal Father had called ‘Old Tom,’ sat on the top of the coiled golden chain.

  “As you are right now, Ariana Grace Trevelyan,” Odin intoned, “you possess no magic. I am no longer part of your mind. You are not Valkyrie. You are what you would’ve been had the Son of Loki never touched you.” He indicated the chain. “I removed the artifact from your body and severed my magical ties to you.”

  “That’s Father’s watch chain, not an artifact,” I said, staring at it.

  “Your Aunt Miranda gave it to your father years ago upon my order. She and her father found it on the body of Aithyrr, the last woman to bear the artifacts of my Heir. You saw the tomb?”

  I remembered Aunt Miranda’s story. “Yes. She was buried with a man, and she had red hair, like mine.”

  “Her husband died at the hands of a misguided Christian and she chose to join her husband in death. She now serves in Valhalla.”

  He put his hand over the golden coil on the table for a moment and when he removed it a worn golden pendant that resembled a raven had taken the place of the old saint’s medal.

  “When you called on me as Randgríðr, I made this artifact part of you. It is no longer, just as you are no longer Randgríðr.” He snapped his fingers and a dart appeared on the table beside the golden chain and its raven fob.

  “Pick up the dart,” he said and waved a hand to indicate the bookcases. “Pick a target. See how you do.”

  I grasped the dart, the feel of it in my hand familiar from more dart games than I could count. Looking up, I picked a book spine out of one of the shelves, aimed and threw the dart as I’d done thousands of times before.

  The dart missed the book and bounced off the glass of one of the French doors with a bang. It dropped to the ground with a plop. I stared at my hand and then the door in disbelief. It had been an easy shot and I never missed… until now. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but my mouth went dry and fear fluttered in my belly.

  “If you want to get good at darts again, it’ll take a great deal of practice,” Odin said. “You’ll have to acquire the skill just like everyone else does. I’m afraid that means you’ll not be able to rely on pub winnings to help fund your aeronaut endeavors.”

  “That ability – that was all you?”

  “It was,” he agreed. “You do have some natural ability, but I stepped into the forefront of your mind and threw the darts with your hands. You had very little to do with it.”

  “But,” I said, thinking furiously, “there’s more to this – more to all of this – than my throwing darts,” I said. “The choice isn’t about that – it can’t be.”

  “True enough,” Odin agreed. “It’s about the future.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “How can my choice make any difference in the future of anyone but me?”

  Odin leaned back on the couch and looked at me for a long moment. “The era I came from was one of ignorance and hardship. Life was short for most and the world didn’t change very much for hundreds of years. Many were born, lived and died in the same place and didn’t travel beyond their own village. That’s no longer the case. Humans create new devices, make new discoveries, develop new theories about the world at a rate that’s astonishing and breathtaking to someone from the Iron Age. When I was the primary god of my people, long distance travel in a short period of time required considerable magical power and mortals couldn’t even imagine such rapid movement across land or through the air. That was then. Now, common mortals traverse vast distances in short spans of time without giving it much thought. They ride in great metal beasts driven by steam that roar with mechanical voices and it’s no magic trick. Humanity has harnessed ingenuity and it’s spread like wildfire across the world.”

  He rubbed his chin. “I thought the changes that happened when the Christian god came to my lands were rapid. What’s happening now…” He shook his head. “...I can barely keep up.”

  “But you’re a god,” I said. “A god of wisdom, of all things. How can you not keep up?”

  He chuckled. “I’m an old god – and an old man. I have limits. Those limits were harder to see twelve hundred years ago, but the world was a vastly different place then. Now I see the world from my silver throne and I can track most of the changes as they happen. But, just because I know what’s happening in the world doesn’t mean I understand all of it, Little One. Believe me: in the Iron Age, being ‘all knowing’ was considerably easier. Nowadays my abilities as a god still function relatively effectively, but I’m wise enough to know when I need help.”r />
  I could see how the pace of the modern world would seem incredibly fast to someone who’d lived during the time of the Vikings. “Do all the pagan gods who help the Facti on Earth have this difficulty?” I asked.

  “To differing degrees, I should imagine, but they’d hardly admit it, now, would they?” he said with a rueful grin. “It isn’t the Facti gods that I’m worried about. The Obscurati tend to be far more… inventive, shall we say, with changes in mortal knowledge. Loki, Hades, Ahrimanes, Set and other gods like them have deep ties to the mortal world. Their desire to cause harm serves them well, and new inventions are easily turned to evil purposes.”

  Realization struck me like a physical blow. “My God,” I said, “Laufeson mixed magic and technology in an effort to take over the world. He understood enough about mechanics and Enhancements to do that much…” I thought about the mini Diabolicals he’d forced me to make, “...and he came very close to succeeding.”

  “Indeed, though he needed your blood to do it. You took him out of the world permanently, but the Son of Loki had many followers. They may try to continue his work, assuming other Obscurati heirs don’t beat them to the punch. I’m not convinced his plans are completely frustrated just yet.” He looked at me, his one blue eye dark and serious. “We seem to have lost track of the mini machines Laufeson ordered you to make. Will they still function magically without Laufeson to direct them?”

  Oh, God, I thought, horrified. I didn’t know if the devices could work independently of Laufeson or me. “I… I don’t – I’m not sure—“ I stammered. “I made them so the changes they wrought on their victims could be reversed. It didn’t occur to me to make them cease functioning if Laufeson wasn’t around.” I squeezed a handful of my dress in frustration, silently cursing my oversight. The damage those devices could do was horrible to contemplate. “I should have thought of that.”

  “The fact that you put the reversal spell into the mechanisms right under the Laufeson’s nose is impressive.”

  “But—“

  Odin put up a hand to stop my spluttering. “We’ll find out soon enough if the devices became inert or if they’ll have to be dealt with.”

  “Dealt with? What do you mean ‘dealt with’? How will you deal with them?” I asked.

  “If the Facti can reverse the spell on the devices, then they’ll do that. If they can’t—“

  My heart sank. “You’ll have to kill them?”

  “That’s a possible outcome,” Odin admitted.

  I felt sick. “You’re saying I may have condemned hundreds of people to death.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “I can’t say that makes me feel better,” I murmured.

  “These are difficult times, Little One. Laufeson will not be the first Obscurati to merge mechanics and magic, but the threats to come from others won’t need your blood as a catalyst,” Odin told me. “I’ve seen that. So have the Norns and your Lady Sato. The Obscurati are seeking out new Heirs just as I am, and theirs are not so keen to do the world a good turn as you are.”

  “You’re saying you need me,” I said as a frisson of apprehension made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “You need me because I used the magic you gave me to straddle your Iron Age world and my industrial one. You linked that magic with my knowledge of science and math and the principles behind mechanical devices. That’s why I see spells as equations and had the gears in my skin. I’m a… hybrid. Laufeson started the process when he kidnapped me and you exploited it to destroy him. I’m the new blood you need to stop the Obscurati recruits.”

  Odin beamed. “Yes.”

  “But…” I looked at where the dart had fallen, “...you removed the magic. Now I’m just a normal young woman. Laufeson’s followers or other Obscurati may use the devices I created against my will… and you’ve left me helpless to stop them or help their victims.” Odin nodded. “Why? If you need me—if you need how I use magic—why did you take it away?”

  “That’s the choice,” Odin said. “You were the Son of Loki’s victim when he left you on the World Tree. I turned you into a weapon out of necessity, without consulting you. If you wish to go back to Midgard as you currently are, free of magic, you have that right.”

  Alarm spiked within me. “But Hades—“

  “If you choose a normal life, I’ll deal with Hades,” Odin assured me.

  “But what about—“

  “There are other Facti who can fight those arrayed against us,” he explained calmly. “It doesn’t have to be you. If you decide to be done with magic, you’ll no longer be involved in the conflict between the Facti and the Obscurati. You can take the Tripos and finish at Cambridge, establish your business, or marry, or do whatever you wish unencumbered by magical entanglements. Your mind will be your own, but the outcome of your dart games will be far less predictable.” He smiled. “I’d suggest you give up wagering until you’ve had some time to practice.”

  I took that in. I could have a life like Cora and Mellie had. I’d not have to worry about random attacks or abduction attempts. There was something very appealing about that possibility, but I knew it wasn’t a choice I truly had open to me. Victim of Laufeson or not, I felt responsible for those who might be hurt by the mini Diabolicals… and Odin knew it. I’d already lost most of what I’d known as my life, but I was curious how my normal life would be if I chose it.

  “I assume,” I said, my tone thoughtful, “if I decided to walk away from using magic and all of this,” I waved my hand to encompass the room, the coiled gold chain and Odin, “you’d conveniently erase any knowledge of Facti and Obscurati? I’d go back to ignorance about magic and the rest of it?”

  “That’s usually how things are handled, yes,” Odin said. “Fewer difficulties that way.”

  “What would I remember about the death of my mother and my friends on the Bosch?” I asked, my tone sad and bitter. “Laufeson blew the ship up with them on it. How do you propose to wipe that memory away? Or would you bring them all back from the dead?”

  Odin smiled. “Very easily,” he said with a wink.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Suddenly, I was on the darkened deck of the Bosch, the ship swinging widely back and forth as a result of the dragon… or whatever it had been… uncoiling from the balloon and body of the ship. Its massive wings flapped and a gust of wind rattled the airship. I put my arms out to steady myself against the movement only to find my arms were ghostly, filmy appendages. A quick look down verified that my whole body was nothing more than a spectre, making me immoveable in relation to the ship, though the swinging of the deck below me was disconcerting. I could see the wind billow the pegamoid silk of the balloon above me, but I couldn’t feel the moving air or the night’s cold.

  Apparently, I was an observer of past events within the ‘realm of the mind’ Odin commanded. I’d have a front row seat for the explosive destruction of the airship and the horrific death of my friends and my mother. “Please—no!” I cried out. “Please! I don’t want to see this! I don’t want to see them die!”

  Odin didn’t respond. I clenched my fists in frustration, trying to will myself back to the library, but nothing happened. For the second time in as many days, I had to watch, helpless, as bad things happened to those I cared for.

  As the Bosch struggled, rudder loose, engines silent and the bridge devoid of the direction its crew provided, my friends and Mother remained rigid on their knees on the deck, their eyes vacant and faces expressionless as they started to slide toward the starboard rail. They made no move to stop their potential drop over the side into the open air.

  “No!” I shouted, more frightened for my friends and mother than I’d ever been in my life. I waved my spectral arms at them, knowing it was futile but not able to help myself. “Wake up! Stop yourselves!” I screamed. “Please!”

  Lady Sato blinked, shook her head and stood up in a flash, throwing her arms out wide, her face intent with concentration.

  “B
ATILTU!!!” she screamed, and everything on the ship… just… stopped.

  My mother and the crew of the Bosch collapsed to the deck, panting and shaking. Mother gripped the deck with such force I thought for sure she’d make finger holes in the wooden planks. I nearly fell over from relief. They’d not slid off the deck into darkness. They might have a chance, I thought, hope filling me.

  “Bloody Hell!” Max said, sitting up and slamming his fist into the deck with a loud, angry thump. “By God, Sato, I’m not a damnable puppet on a string! What on God’s great green gob was that horrific thing, and what’s that German bloke with his dragon and demons going to do to Ari and Andrew?”

  Mother’s head popped up, her eyes wild, but the set of her mouth was determined. “We need to follow them,” she insisted. “I don’t care what it is – who he is—we can’t let that fiend harm my daughter!” She shoved her free arm through the loose half of the parachute only partially attached to her body. Pushing herself to a standing position almost as quickly as Sato had, she reached over to grab Griff by the arm and pull him up. He stumbled a bit but managed to keep his feet. Lizzie, Needle, and Max followed suit.

  “Get down to those engines, young man, and start the infernal things up!” Mother ordered Griff. “We need speed! We have to save Ariana!”

  “No,” Lady Sato intoned. Her eyes blazed with white fire while waves of energy flowed outward from her body, holding the ship perfectly still. It felt very much like what Lady Sato had done when I’d made my escape on Gregor’s back, the two of us and Hugo moving at speed within the infinite space between two seconds. Then it had been Lady Sato in control of the magic. Clearly, she wasn’t in control this time.

  “Bloody Hell,” Needle whispered, frightened. “She’ll set the balloon alight, she keeps that flaming eyes bit up.”

  “Leave the ship, lest ye die,” the being within Sato said, its voice insistent and commanding, “I, Mammetun, goddess of Fate, have seen it.”

  Max looked at the others and rubbed the back of his head in a quick, decisive movement. “That’s good enough for me,” he said. “Grab chutes and let’s be off, toot-sweet! Abandon ship!”