The Fire Duke

by Joel Rosenberg

  The Tuatha didn’t like this; none of the Elder Races enjoy being thwarted. So the Tuatha banded together, and they hunted down one of Loki’s sons, killed him and braided his intestines into an unbreakable rope, then bound the Builder with ropes made from the guts of a god, and left him in a dungeon in what was, then, the chief of their Cities, and they tortured him night and day, demanding that he tell them.

  But he never did.

  “I doubt that was the only thing they were after,” Harbard said. “I think he knew a lot more—”

  Frida waved him to silence. “What he knew and what he didn’t know, only he could say. I’ll take over here.”

  “And likely be interrupted less than I was, wife.”

  “Not if you keep up this way, husband.”

  Well, Ian (Frida went on), the story diverges here, and when it’s told around the fires late at night, it often comes out differently, and that depends not only on who it is that does the telling.

  Now, some say that the Builder escaped his bonds then, and walked upon Tir Na Nog, the New World, for a time, only to finally succumb to the Sleep of the Gods and merge with, perhaps, the soil, or the trees, or the wind. It has happened to others of the Elder Races. Most of the Sidhe, of a certainty, but not just the Sidhe; it happened to Frigg, for one, and perhaps to Heimdal, I suspect.

  It eventually happened to most of the Tuatha; they left their Cities behind for humans. And if you think that the Curse of the Builder had nothing to do with that, then you’re more skeptical than I.

  I once heard that Asa-Thor himself rescued the Builder, his hammer bringing down one of the Cities in the process, and in thanking him, the Builder blessed Thor and his sons, both human and Aesir. It would explain much—it would help to explain why there are five Cities instead of the seven that there should have been, but save that story for another time. And it would explain the talus pile that stands—or more accurately, sprawls—where one of the cities should have stood. The wrath of Asa-Thor was … intense. And it would also help to explain the story of how Loki came to be bound with those same bonds, some time later. That story may be true, or it may not; certainly, nobody ever heard Thor talk about it, and he was a great braggart, but more capable of subtlety than he is usually credited.

  Some say that the Builder had not just created hidden passages within the mountains, but that somehow he had tapped into the Hidden Ways built into the structure of existence, making them solid enough that those with the Gifts can find their way among them.

  There are some who say that it was but a man who released him from his bonds, and in gratitude the Builder showed him and his family a way to the Newer World. There are some who say he simply died in his bonds, and the Tuatha began to search for his sons, knowing that he would have had to pass on the plans to someone.

  Some say that it was the capture of the Builder that finally poisoned the Tuatha, and that he cursed them from his cell, and that is what finally drove them from the Cities, off into the wilderness, leaving behind little of what they once were.

  As for me, I think much of it is true. I think he escaped for a time, and was recaptured for a time, and escaped again only to be recaptured again; and while he escaped once again he was, finally, getting weaker with age, and he had not the strength to escape when later captured by humans, and he lay in a dungeon for as long as memory, until he was freed fairly recently, until he fled through a Hidden Way into the Newer World.

  That’s what I think.

  Hosea sat back. “I think you’ve said more than you know, and both more and less than you should have.”

  Harbard snorted. “Oh? You’d have us talk of the Brisingamen?”

  Hosea looked off into the distance. “You would think he ought to know.”

  “Then tell him. You, of all, should be the one to tell that part.”

  “Very well.”

  The thing you must understand, Ian (Hosea said), is that when she was young, Freya was not only the most beautiful of the Aesir, but the most beautiful that there was. She really was one of the Vanir, actually, before they were largely subsumed by the Aesir. Tyr was born a Vanir, although adopted by Odin, somewhat later—and like her father, Njord, and her brother, Frey, the Vanir were, by and large, better looking than the Aesir, if often not quite as bright.

  * * *

  Frida chuckled. “Nor were they as arrogant, most of them.”

  “Hush,” Harbard said. “Or I’ll leave. I’ve heard this before.”

  “Threats become you little, husband.”

  “Shh.”

  While (Hosea went on, with a glare at both Harbard and Frida) Odin sacrificed his eye for knowledge, Tyr—

  “Tyr was of the Aesir,” Harbard said, his jaw tense, his voice louder than it needed to be in the closeness of the cabin.

  “Eventually,” Hosea said quietly, almost in a whisper. “Eventually. He was adopted by Odin, and Odin was never one to acknowledge a difference between an adopted son and a son of his blood, particularly not when the son was as much of a red-handed killer as Tyr turned out to be, but he was born of the Vanir.” Hosea smiled. “I could understand why Odin would want him thought to be of the Aesir; ‘Tyr’ means victory, and Odin was never one to spurn victory.”

  “No matter what it cost him,” Frida said quietly. “You sometimes do not give Odin his due.”

  Hosea nodded. “True enough.”

  Harbard just scowled.

  —Tyr, as I was saying (Hosea went on), just sort of lost an arm by being careless around Fenris wolf, and later claimed it was deliberate when Thor laughed at him. You see the difference? The trade of something of value for something of more value, as Odin did, versus simply being scarred?

  Well, Tyr wouldn’t, or didn’t, until he was laughed at.

  But I was speaking of Freya, sister of Frey.

  The Eddas, the sagas, were full of references to this one or that one wanting her, of a giant stealing Thor’s hammer and demanding Freya as his bride for its return, or of the Builder wanting that as the price for the building of Asgard. We know that Loki lusted after her—as did Tyr, although few women escaped that distinction. She was often confused with Frigg, Odin’s first wife, and I don’t doubt that was because Odin often chose to so confuse her.

  There were even some stories that she had come between Thor and Sif, although that’s hard to believe. The devotion that Asa-Thor had for his Sif would be difficult to interrupt.

  What is easy to believe is that many would have put the universe on a string, and given it to her for a necklace, and that in some senses, one did.

  Look in an astronomy text sometime, Ian. Ask an astronomer—where’s all the matter? As far as the best instruments your science has to offer can tell, there only exists about ten percent of the matter necessary to make the universe cyclical, to—eventually—collapse down into the monobloc whence the universe came, and to start it all over again.

  No, if your scientists have found it all, there has been only one cycle of the universe: Ginnungagap does not space the universe’s lives apart, but merely is the final heat death, the Ultimate Whimper instead of a slowly paced rhythm of Big Bangs.

  But that, of course, could not be true; a thing, be it a flowerpot or a universe, does not simply come into being. It is created by something, in some way. After the end and in the beginning when there was just the One God and the monobloc, for that incredibly long and incredibly short time, the One God pinched off a tenth of it all, and breathed life and change into it, then sent it expanding out, pushing the envelope, and idly squeezed the rest of it into several different pieces, planning to play with it later, perhaps, perhaps as much as he had with the other tenth.

  But he never did get around to it, and perhaps nobody knows why.

  There are many who have tried to speak to the One God, and even more who claim to have heard an answer, but the answers that they’ve heard are always in generalities. The One God tells them, they say, to be virtuous or kind; he never says how h
ot to heat the blade of a sword if you want to put a good temper on it. He urges restraint, but never gives instructions on an appendectomy.

  I do think they believe that they talk to him. I think that he’s not listening.

  But I digress. The point I was trying to make is that all that extra matter was … collapsed into several—seven, actually—different pieces, and just left lying about. Eventually, as most things of value do, they came into the hands of the Vestri—

  Now, now, now, I’m not being overly critical; I like the dwarves. I have always liked the dwarves. But they were originally fathered by an incompetent upon a troll, and while they’re clever with their hands, they tend to keep, to hoard—and for no reason, like a packrat sealing up its middens with crystallized urine. Dvalin’s Folk are the worst at that, but they’re hardly the only offenders.

  It’s said that Freya came upon three of the Vestri—call them the Brisings—and that they had taken the seven stones and made them into a necklace we can call the Brisingamen. It was hard to work with the stones, of course, because each of them contains so much matter, but the matter is, well, let’s say it’s pushed off in another direction—just as Tir Na Nog is off in another direction from the Newer World—held at a distance as long as the stones remain stones, and these three were of the early blood of the Vestri, and still had some of their father’s magical adeptness with their hands, even if they had little in the way of intelligence.

  Lust they had, though.

  Look at it from Freya’s point of view: here were three lecherous idiots holding a necklace that was not only beautiful, but contained enough matter to redo the universe. She would do anything for it, and the dwarves demanded that she do just that, that she lie with them for seven days and seven nights.

  And so she did.

  For some reason, Harbard was glaring at Frida, who looked down, unable to meet his eyes.

  Ian shook his head. “You mean that this necklace could be used to—what?”

  Hosea looked soberly at Ian. “End the universe; squeeze it all together again; reassemble the monobloc. A magical adept—any of the Elder Races for certain, perhaps even a human—could use it to make himself or herself the One God of the next cycle.” He smiled. “And perhaps that may be all to the best; let the God of the next cycle be a poet instead of a watchmaker, eh?”

  Harbard scowled. “Foolishness, all of it. The universe will collapse when it’s ready; there’s no need to hurry it.”

  Frida tilted her head to one side. “That’s what you say; and I say the time will come, but it is not yet… but there have long been others with other opinions.” She turned back to Ian. “Which is why it was taken from me, and given into safer hands.”

  Ian was shocked that he wasn’t shocked. “Freya?”

  She smiled. “Yes, Ian?”

  “Really?”

  “Ah.” Her smile widened. “You don’t believe me, young one. Well …”

  Ian always figured that it must have happened between blinks, because there was no moment where she changed, or where she had changed, but all of a sudden she was different.

  He could barely breathe for looking at her, and found himself with an erection that was painful. Long, golden hair hung down, caressing porcelain-smooth shoulders in a way that made Ian jealous of it. Her complexion was smooth and creamy, reddened ever-so-slightly at her high cheekbones and at the jawline. Her full, pink lips parted ever so slightly, and the simple shift she wore became a teasing attempt to hide the high, firm breasts beneath it—

  “Stop it,” Hosea snapped.

  Ian must have blinked again, because now her hair was black and glossy as a raven’s in complement to her olive skin, almond eyes of a color blue Ian thought he might drown in. lips as red as blood, pink tongue peeking out, teasingly—

  “You shall stop it now,” Hosea said, placing his fingertips against the tabletop and rising to his feet. “I’ll not have you treat the child so, not with the debt I owe him.”

  Ian must have blinked again, for now she was as he had first seen her: very—but humanly—lovely, of indeterminate age.

  She shook her head. “My apologies, Ian. I should not play with your feelings; I would hope I outgrew that many … years ago.” Her smile warmed him. “At least.”

  Ian tried to say something but all that came out was a grunt.

  Harbard grunted. “Leave it be. We were talking of the Brisingamen,” Harbard said. “Tell him.”

  She pursed her lips for a moment. “Odin,” she said, “ordered me to give it to him, which I did, and he gave it into the hands of the Builder, who broke it apart and separated the jewels, hiding each one of them well.”

  Ian snorted. “Which means that he could reassemble it, or anybody who could make him talk could reassemble it.”

  “Not quite,” Hosea said, his voice sharper than it had been. “Not if he … damaged that part of his mind where those memories are, because he had decided that not even he could be trusted with deciding when the universe ought to end. Then, even if he were later caught by… the agents of the Armageddonists, call them, and even if they bound him so he could not escape, he would not tell them of the location of the Jewels because he simply would not know, not anymore.”

  “They were all wrong,” Harbard said, his index finger idly drawing through a puddle of mead on the tabletop. “It should have been left with you, Freya. You would have kept it until the time is right, and the time is far from right, yet. The Elder Races grow old and tired, but the younger ones should have their days in the sunlight, eh? Just because I am old, do your bones have to ache—”

  There was a pounding on the door.

  “You hold that which is needed elsewhere,” a deep voice boomed, the sound filling the cabin, rattling the plates and spoons on the table. “Surrender them to me.”

  “No,” Harbard said, finally. “You speak of my guests, stranger, and a willing guest will bide with me as long as I allow it. I would no more permit you to molest a guest of mine than I would permit you to harm my wife.” As he spoke, he rose from the table, and walked toward the door. His head was held more erect, and there was a stiffness to his back and a strength in his shoulders that Ian hadn’t noticed before. His head didn’t bump against the overhead beams, but somehow he seemed to grow larger, more substantial as he stood opposite the door.

  The room, which had seemed so warm and comfortable, was now cold. Lamps gave off harsh, actinic light, casting shadows all about. There was no indirect light; it was all either too bright, or black.

  Harbard seemed to like it that way as he turned to face the doorway.

  “Harbard, Harbard,” the voice rumbled, “you would match your will against ours? Old God, you are far too old to be doing that.”

  Harbard smiled, and his smile was an awful thing to see. “It’s been many years since any Tuarin matched strengths with me.”

  A chill washed over Ian. It was starting to make sense, at least, some of it was—the reason why Harbard’s look reminded him of a one-eyed actor, and why his horse seemed to have too many legs.

  The mythology books always had Frigg as Odin’s wife, not Freya, but they were wrong about other things, as well, it seemed.

  “I will match my fire against yours, Harbard,” the harsh voice said.

  “No,” Harbard said, “not today, and not tonight. Remember the stories, old one, remember how I can be killed only at the very end of things.”

  “The stories lie, carrion god, served only by the dead,” the voice rumbled. “For they make Brother Fox out to be allied with the Frost and Fire and with us, and he’s never yet been; for they let Uku-Thor live until he faces the Worm, and his bones have long rotted; for they have a place for Heimdal and all the other long-dead gods.” There was a long silence. “And they lie, for they do not have us winning, remaking it all in our own images.” The rumbling grew louder. “I say again: give Orfindel and his catamite over to me, and you shall be left alone.”

  “I think not,” Har
bard said, reaching for the spear mounted above the door. The wood creaked in relief as Harbard took up the weight, but he hardly seemed to notice it. A distant thrumming filled the room, like the vibration of some distant, powerful engine.

  “You think not?” the voice asked.

  “I think not. I think that Ian Silverstone is no catamite, but a friend and ally of Orfindel, albeit still wet from the womb. I think you do but threaten and bluster, in a place that is of my strength, not yours, and I think that if you do crash through my door into my home, you will not leave again.” There was no answer. Harbard hefted the spear once with his right hand. His head twisted on his neck, bringing his left eye into line with the spear, and the muscles in his shoulders stiffened and tensed.

  Moving so quickly that his clothes snapped like a cracked whip, Hosea was on his feet, one restraining hand laid on Harbard’s biceps. “No.” He stepped to the door, fingers running across the wood like a blind man reading Braille. “He wants you to throw it; he’s somehow ready for Gungnir.”

  “You can tell that by feeling at the wood?”

  “It’s hardly just wood,” Hosea said, “as you well should know.” Hosea closed his eyes. “It’s all one of a piece. It all… resonates. I can feel the eagerness out there, the readiness. Whatever it is, whoever it pretends to be, it’s hurt, but it’s ready now, just as—” he sniffed. “Just as it was ready for me on the side of a mountain, and took on the shape of a bergenisse too quickly, figuring that it would be immune from attack.” He turned to Ian. “The sword—what happened when you touched it with your sword?” he demanded, urgently.

  “You didn’t watch?” Harbard snapped.

  “I was blinded by the pain, Harbard, and I thank you for your tender concern.” Hosea turned back to Ian. “Tell me.”

  Ian clutched at the hilt of his sword. “It—smoked where it touched. The sword, the flesh, I don’t know, but it smoked—”