Prince of Demons

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Even as the thought entered Colbey’s head, he recognized the other from her impeccable form and graceful walk. Freya. Though ensconced in sword work, he could not suppress a shiver of delight at the vision of his peerless wife. Incorporating the subtle movement into his maneuver, he continued without interruption. Once his practice finished, he would give her some of the attention she more than deserved.

  Freya drew nearer, revealing the details that made her the epitome of the feminine ideal. Muscles firmed by her own sword practices defined uniquely feminine curves, slender and perfectly proportioned. Her wide-set, blue eyes held a twinkle of mischief, and her heart-shaped lips remained pursed, revealing nothing of her intentions. Golden hair billowed in a cascade around a face as smooth as ivory and tinged with just enough pink to rescue it from sallowness. Though gauzy, her outfit left enough mystery to entice, and rawhide ties on arms and legs maintained its practicality. Only the sword belted at her waist ruined the sensuality of the image. This, she drew and charged her husband.

  Colbey met the assault with a deft parry, returning a looping cut that Freya easily dodged. Ecstasy thrilled through him, a second wind not yet needed. Nothing pleased him more than the opportunity to pit weapon and skill against a woman nearly his equal in battle. Their spars had become all too infrequent in the last hundred years.

  Freya bore in with a weaving attack that left her head open for a fraction of an instant. Colbey resisted the obvious killing stroke, reluctant to end the match so soon. He found himself on the defensive as Freya’s sword flicked toward his chest, then his throat. Colbey retreated, then leaped back into the fray, cutting beneath Freya’s sword arm. A concentrated sequence of withdrawal and sidestep rescued her from disarming: Colbey gestured his approval.

  Freya did not gloat. Rather, she became a furious blur of attack. Sword crashed against sword, more like music to Colbey then the tinny chime of bells or the bard’s lute. Back and forth across the grasslands they wove, their swords entwined. Twice, Colbey ignored winning openings to prolong the pleasure that had become too rare for his liking. Forced to reassess every subtlety of one sword, Colbey found the spar more evenly matched than in the recent past. The excitement blossomed into a rabid explosion, the battle as intimate and provocative to Colbey as sex. If the spar never ended, he would truly believe he had found a place better than Valhalla.

  Finally, a miscalculated parry granted Colbey a killing stroke. Pulling it would appear too obvious, an insult to an opponent he so respected. Instead, he bullied closer for an in-fight, wrestling the sword from her grip an instant before he sheathed his own. Colbey bore Freya to the grass and pinned her, excitement blazing into fiery need. He kissed her with feigned viciousness, and she jammed her tongue into his mouth. For an instant, the great swordsman who had lost none of a million battles froze, paralyzed by a need so great he lost control of every muscle. A bonfire flared in his groin. He managed to clamp a hand over her breast, feeling like an adolescent newly wed.

  “Enough,” Freya whispered, the words like a dagger through his heart. “Someone might see us.”

  “So what?” Colbey did not care if the whole of Asgard watched, so great was his need. “We’re married.”

  “Our son might see.”

  Colbey showered Freya with kisses. “We’ll kill him and make another one.”

  Freya eeled free, laughing at his obvious joke. Even had Colbey not loved Ravn with the devotion of ten fathers, gods reproduced rarely. Likely, centuries would pass before another child was born among the deities. Now sixteen, Ravn would soon get his first taste of the golden apples of youth, and his puberty would span longer than a human lifetime.

  Colbey withdrew, though he felt as if everything in his genital region had twisted into knots. “Why don’t we do this more often?”

  Freya stared. “Every day isn’t enough?”

  Colbey rose, then extended a hand for Freya. “I mean the sparring part. If we did that every day, too, I don’t believe I could possibly ask for anything more.”

  Ignoring the proffered hand, Freya stood, straightening her clothing. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Colbey studied his wife, never tiring of staring at the perfection she defined. “Apparently not. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Why we don’t spar much anymore.” Freya shook back her hair, and highlights shifted like sunlight through running water. “I used to best you sometimes. I no longer can.”

  The words seemed nonsensical to Colbey. “Of course, you can.”

  In reply, Freya shrugged. “In theory, perhaps. If you discard who you are and who I am.”

  Still bewildered, Colbey tried to clarify. “You mean husband and wife?”

  “I mean Colbey and Freya.”

  Colbey shook his head.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of this?” Freya made a broad gesture.

  The question seemed ludicrous. Freya had lived here millennia before his birth. “Of Asgard?”

  “No.”

  An even more ridiculous assertion struck him. “Of you?” He gave her no chance to respond. “I love you. Your intelligence and skill never cease to amaze me. If I could spend every moment staring at you, I would consider it a blessing. If I could spend every moment sparring with you . . .” He trailed off, unable to concoct a suitable comparison and basking in an image that rekindled the fire that had diminished while they talked.

  Freya’s long-lashed lids rose and fell, modestly acknowledging the compliment without releasing a point Colbey had taken along an erroneous tangent. “I mean the sword practices.”

  Colbey sighed at a question that had plagued him since he vowed, at age five, to become the finest swordsman his capabilities allowed. For years, his parents had hounded him to perform his share of the work tending gardens, sorting, and straightening to no avail. Every spare moment, he devoted to his swords. In a society that valued war skill above all else, they found it difficult to reprimand him. Eventually, it proved simpler to do the work themselves and let him practice. When combat took them both, the society eagerly picked up Colbey’s share of mundane work in exchange for teaching. Those who did not despise the brutality of his methods thrived under his tutelage.

  Colbey had long ago found his obsession impossible to explain; yet, for Freya, he would try. “Battle is the source of euphoria. Nothing short of dire injury has kept me from it for longer than a day, and even then I feel like a drunkard locked in the cold who can only peer through a tavern window where the wine flows freely. Every day I miss places me a day behind for the competence I could have.”

  Freya huffed out a laugh that stung after the depth of his revelation. Immediately, her expression turned repentant. “I’m not making light of your need. I just think that after four hundred years you must have reached your goal to become the finest swordsman your capabilities allowed.”

  “That’s just it!” Colbey caught Freya into an embrace, hoping to convey his excitement. “I realized the most amazing thing!” He delivered the words he came to understand in adolescence, a brilliant discovery that had colored the remainder of his life. “There’s no limit to capabilities. The more you work, the more competent you get.”

  Freya nodded, a slight smile playing across her alabaster features. Clearly, she appreciated Colbey’s observation, but not with the same fervor. “You’re saying competence is infinite.”

  “Exactly.”

  “As is your time here.”

  Colbey considered. “That remains to be seen. The apples of youth, I’ve noticed, don’t completely stop aging.” He conceded the point, wishing he had not quibbled. Time had done anything but ravish Freya. “But close enough. My time here is essentially infinite.”

  “So if you missed a day or two of practice?”

  “I’d be a day or two less competent than I could be.” The thought chilled Colbey. “I couldn’t stand that.” Concerned his intensity might bother Freya more, he quipped. “You didn’t know you married a lunatic, did you?
”

  Freya smiled back, perfect teeth gleaming. “Yes, I did. But I ignored the warnings.”

  Colbey grinned back, drawing Freya closer carefully so as not to reawaken a passion she would not allow him to consummate. “Are you sorry you did?”

  “Of course not.” Freya did not even pretend to surmise. “What about you? Do you ever wish you hadn’t married me?”

  Colbey laughed until Freya’s sharp look silenced him. “I’m sorry. I thought you were joking.” His grip tightened, and he marveled at a realization that had escaped him until that moment. Even goddesses had vulnerable moments. “Every man from the time he stops thinking of girls as a separate species until the instant he breathes his last breath wishes he could marry you. Every woman gets compared to your standard, and every one must fall short. No matter how skillful my sword work becomes, it’s marrying you that the others will envy.”

  Freya said nothing for several moments, having trapped herself into a difficult position. To agree with any part of Colbey’s assessment meant displaying an uncharacteristic vanity. False modesty, however, would seem equally shallow. “There are stories about me.”

  Colbey nodded, head swishing against the gauzy fabric. He knew as many from the myths told in his mortal years as from the gods themselves. The word “freya” literally meant “lady” in the Northern tongue, but it had come to connote wanton. “Are they true?”

  “Very few.”

  “Then why do they matter?”

  Freya pulled away far enough to fix her sapphire eyes on Colbey’s icy gaze. “I’m surprised that, after so long, you’ve never questioned me about any of them.”

  Colbey met Freya’s stare squarely. “Why should I? I love you. I trust you. What else matters?”

  “Curiosity?”

  Colbey shrugged. Early in their relationship, before he had felt comfortable discussing such things, he had sorted through the rumors and used scraps of conversation to ascertain their veracity. Another demonstration of the differences between a mortal living on Asgard and a true immortal was that Freya had waited three hundred years to wonder about his silence.

  “And there’s something else I find it hard to believe you haven’t done yet.”

  Colbey moved his hands to hers. “What’s that?”

  “You set Valhalla as your goal your whole life. Until you got involved in the Wizards’ balance, you claimed nothing else mattered. Everything you did, you did for Valhalla.”

  “That’s true.” Colbey could not deny it. Even now, every Renshai and every Northman did the same.

  “Yet, in the centuries you’ve been on Asgard, you’ve never visited it.”

  Colbey’s brow lowered slowly. Freya was right. Ravn had gone to Valhalla and described the constant war of the Einherjar who battled through the day, then rose from the dead to eat a great feast every night. Once, Colbey could think of no greater reward. Now he had found one. An emotion flickered through him, one he could not identify. He could not explain why he had chosen not to look upon the place that had occupied the central core of his thoughts through his mortal years. Something held him back, perhaps concern that seeing the place he had aggrandized since infancy would somehow render it a disappointment. Nothing could possibly live up to the expectations he had ascribed to Valhalla. “You’re right. I can’t explain that except to say the time doesn’t feel right yet.” Only then, Colbey considered the possibility that, in his heart and soul, he still hoped or believed he would arrive there if his death was brave enough. In his mind, he remained mortal.

  Vivid images sprang to Colbey’s mind. The mingled perfume of sword oil, blood, and sweat replaced the fruit and flower scent of Asgard’s air. His ears reveled in the music that thrilled him throughout his mortal years: the chime of steel striking steel, war cries echoing, and the moans and gasps of the dying. Highlights flashed from myriad weapons, like stars. Blades of every variety, clubs and maces, fists and shields flew toward him, every one a challenge, each the possible vehicle of the death in glory he sought even before death itself held meaning.

  Colbey remembered plunging into every war as if no other mattered. Each, he believed his last; yet his own dedication proved his undoing. Every practice, every combat honed his skill. Every battle that did not kill him enhanced his ability with sword and dodge until Valhalla seemed a distant impossibility. Few Renshai lived into their thirties, yet Colbey had reached seventy and beyond without committing a single act that might brand him a coward. He seemed certain to die of age or disease, either of which would bar him from Valhalla.

  These thoughts flashed through Colbey’s mind in an instant, followed by an incident he had banished from conscious thought until that moment. He had first met Odin as a mortal, the gray garb and broad-brimmed hat making the god appear nondescript. The aura of power had given him away, and the single eye had radiated the knowledge of the universe. The words the father of gods had spoken returned verbatim: “You do still fear one thing. And although you wouldn’t have any way to know it yet, that fear has been recognized. You will never reach Valhalla.”

  The rage that pronouncement had raised returned to haunt Colbey, a shadow of its former self. Nothing Odin had decreed mattered now, centuries past his death. Yet Colbey could not help wondering if the words bore any relation to his decision.

  “I didn’t come to talk.” Freya’s voice seemed distant, and it took Colbey a moment to make sense of her words.

  He smiled, hand straying to his sword. “You came to fight.”

  Freya laughed. “I’d say you had a one-track mind, but that usually has different implications. Actually, I came to drag you to a meeting.”

  Colbey rolled his eyes, suppressing a groan. The oppressive dignity and infernal patience of the other inhabitants of Asgard made Colbey seem like an undisciplined puppy. The dry, formal affairs usually involved assigning him desperate tasks, binding him hand and foot with restrictions, then announcing dire consequences if he did not act in the same swift and bold manner they reviled him for on a daily basis. At least, he appreciated their means of tearing him from his practice, sending Freya instead of servants. Colbey preferred conversations with the gods’ attendants over threats against them. The viewpoints and experiences of these once-mortals remained closest to his own. “Now?”

  Freya glanced at the sun. “We wouldn’t arrive first if we left now.”

  “Very well.” Resigned, Colbey took Freya’s hand and they headed for the Great Hall where Odin had once presided over the gods’ gravest matters as well as their feasts. “Does Ravn know?” Colbey did not want his son to miss his second gathering.

  “He’s there.” Freya squeezed Colbey’s hand with affection.

  “So everyone’s either at the meeting or headed for it.” Colbey glanced at the familiar symmetrical trees. Their many hues created a pleasing contrast.

  Freya nodded absently.

  “So we could have made love in the grass without anyone seeing.”

  Without missing a pace, Freya kicked Colbey in the shin. “I stand corrected. You have a two-track mind.”

  “Finally!” Colbey threw up his free hand as if in celebration. “Someone recognizes my profound depth.”

  Though colossal, the single-storied Great Hall reminded Colbey of a crouching animal. Silver walls supported a domed, golden roof. Inlaid gemstones represented every color of the rainbow, and the glitter of sunlight that caught different groups in turn gave the impression of watching eyes. The materials came from the altars of their followers, sacrifices of Midgard’s greatest wealth, a collection of treasure unmatched by all of mankind’s kings combined. All wasted, to Colbey’s mind. The gods had no use for money, and the sheer mass of valuables here eclipsed the beauty of individual metals, stones, and objects.

  As Colbey and Freya approached, Balder disappeared through the teak door. Light danced through the edging pattern of diamonds in crazed lines and spirals, then vanished as the panel snapped shut. Colbey appreciated the sight. Once dead, Balder
had waited in Hel for the Ragnarok, only after which, the prophecies decreed, he would live again among the gods. The experience had imbued a patience even beyond that of the other immortals. If Balder had just come, the others had already taken their seats. Colbey relished the lateness that would keep him from having to exchange small talk. He gave Freya’s hand one last gratified squeeze. She had deliberately timed their arrival perfectly.

  Colbey released his wife and reached for the latch. Tripping it, he opened the door. Sunlight glazed through, mingling with the lanterns; and the inside betrayed all the austere simplicity the metallic and bejeweled exterior lacked. A heavy wooden table, bound with iron straps, filled most of the inner court. In the past, the gods and goddesses had left the chairs of the dead unoccupied, a chaotic arrangement that never failed to irritate Colbey. At their last meeting, he had deliberately perched in Odin’s high seat, though he knew it bothered the others. Odin’s terrible dominance had stretched even beyond the grave. Apparently, Colbey’s gesture had broken the pattern.

  The current leader of the gods, Vidar, now took his father’s place. He closely resembled Odin with his harsh round face, broad nose, and strong cheekbones; but he lacked the air of ruthless savagery and mysterious wisdom that cowed mortals and discomfited gods. Short yellow hair and a well-tended sandy beard drew no attention from the bulky body trained to war. Vidar’s blue eyes had hardened, and silver locks now ran through the gold. Otherwise, responsibility seemed to have changed him little.

  At Vidar’s right hand, his half brother Vali sat in contemplative silence. Balder, also Odin’s son, took the open chair at Vidar’s left across from Vali. The last surviving son of Odin, blind Hod, sat beside Vali.

  Freya’s brother, Frey, had taken the seat across from Hod, his handsomeness nearly as striking as his sister’s beauty. Only the scowl that scarred his features since the near-destruction of his creation, the elves, marred the image. Beside him, the women had chosen to sit together: Balder’s wife Nanna, Loki’s widow Sigyn, Thor’s widow Sif, and Idunn, the keeper of the golden apples of youth. The sons of Thor, Modi (Wrath) and Magni (Might), sat beside Hod and across from Frey and Nanna. Their father’s hammer, Mjollnir, lay on the table between them. By blood, Modi and Magni were Colbey’s half brothers, though he felt no particular kinship with them. The mortal Renshai who raised Colbey until their deaths in glorious combat won them their places in Valhalla were, in every sense that mattered, his parents.