by Matt Larkin
“And maybe that was my fault. I let centuries, millennia pass, lost in doubt and unsure what to do. And then I started making pilgrimages to Midgard, determined to see the people who lived there. To find the strongest.”
Odin shook his head and released her hand. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this, Idunn. Or why you wanted me to take this throne, but I held my oath. I made myself king.”
She shuddered, then tapped a finger on the runes branded on his chest. Her touch left him tingling, and he backed away, pulling his shirt closed.
“I told you once you had become king I would give you one more task as the price for those apples.”
“And what would you have me do?”
Her eyes flashed with intensity he did not often see in her. “You will gather the tribes, all the Aesir people and march them to the west. Far, far west, beyond all lands you know. You must march on Vanaheim itself, and there, dear Odin, you must fulfill the greatest of your tasks. You must cast down the gods, overthrow the Vanir … and take their place.”
Epilogue
The town could not hold all the Aesir, and thus a thousand fires dotted the land around the hill, warding against the mist. The revelries carried on long into the night, ringing out the cheer of the moment, the people unaware of the tribulations so soon to befall them. Loki drifted among those fires, just out of sight, never quite one of the Aesir, never quite able to allow himself such an indulgence.
Instead he claimed a lone torch and wandered out into the wild, climbing the next hill over from Halfhaugr. There he kindled his own flame before settling down beside it.
The woman made no sound as she approached, though he felt her presence. She flowed about the hill like the wind, circling as if waiting for an invitation, even as she knew he would not offer one. Nor did he flee from her. The time for that had passed. Were they to march across Midgard together, as her plan entailed, he could not avoid her forever.
And so finally Idunn drifted over to his fire and knelt before it, the flame separating them, as it ever had.
“You do not savor the festivities,” she said.
“I’ve seen a great many festivals. One is not so different from the next.”
Idunn nodded slowly, then looked off in the direction of Halfhaugr. The fortress was just visible, rising out of the mist. “It is he, is it not?”
“You suspected that quite some time ago, I imagine, even before you first came to him.”
“He’s not your puppet, you know.” Her anger, so carefully concealed before the others, now simmered just beneath the surface, so palpable he could almost taste it.
“Nor yours, Idunn. You play a very dangerous game if you think to manipulate the Destroyer.” Loki might have searched for words to placate Idunn and still the flame burning in her breast, but anger, held long enough, became a poison one mistook for a shield. And no word, least of all from him, would drive Idunn to cast away her beliefs.
The Vanr woman grew silent for a time. “I know who you are, Loki. I know why you had an apple left. You had no need to eat the one Odin gave you, not after you tasted one long, long ago.”
“Longer than you can imagine.” She wanted to blame him—people always needed someone to blame for the tragedies of fate, as if, by pointing a finger at a cause, one might somehow obviate the result. Loki was used to it. Sometimes, it served to allow oneself to become the subject of rage. Sometimes, no other choices remained.
“My grandmother never forgave you for what happened to my grandfather. You know that, don’t you? I’m not going to let you do it again. Not here.”
“Chan—” Loki stopped and cleared his throat. He would not let her draw him into an outburst, especially not with their audience, lurking in the shadows. “Your grandmother was an amazing woman. But she saw the world as a simpler place than it really is. As someone who has lived as long as you have, you ought to realize that. And Idunn … if you come between me and Odin, you will regret it.”
Idunn rose, glaring at him. “How many worlds must burn before you?”
Loki shook his head. “Fire is life.”
The Vanr snorted and stalked away, back into the night, casting a last, spite-filled glance his way as she went. Her anger, her shield, would carry her far. At least until some final catastrophic event forced her to acknowledge the agonizing truth that it had protected her, had only allowed her to accumulate more wounds that, unnoticed, were left to fester.
Loki waited until she had drifted out of earshot. “You can come out now.”
At first, no one responded. Then, with a sigh, Sigyn rose from where she lay on her belly nearby and sauntered over to the fire. “I was trained by a master woodsman. How did you know I followed you?”
“Is that the best question you have?”
Sigyn snorted as she sank down beside him. “Tell me what burden you carry.”
Would that he could. “Take comfort in knowing your mere presence eases all burdens.” He stared into the flames, watching the dance, the pattern. Such an excellent medium for the Sight and all the terrible weight that accompanied it. The flames could speak to those who would listen, could reveal the past and future to those willing to suffer blindness and agony for it.
Sigyn slipped her fingers into his hand. So warm, so filled with life … and so much like her, so very clever, perhaps even more than Sigyn herself realized. She was putting pieces together in a puzzle she had only just begun to understand. And to not tell her everything was like having a serpent gnaw at his heart. But to tell her all … that would be worse, not only for him, but for her. He would not cast her into the ocean of darkness he was forced to look upon, not while any choice yet remained to him.
“I saw Yggdrasil. The first night we made love, I saw a vision of it, in my mind. Are you one of the Vanir?”
“No, Sigyn. I am … something else.”
“A god?”
“No. Nor truly are the Vanir. The space between gods and men is perception and arrogance, pride and foolishness. Naught lasts forever. All empires fall; all eras burn down to cinders.”
She squeezed his hand. “I love you. I do. But I want the truth.”
“Some things cannot be given, only taken.”
She tapped her finger against her lip. “I know what you did in that tafl game, but I can’t see how you did it, planning so many moves in advance. But now I’m left to wonder, if you have not done the same thing here, moving pawns here and there, down through the ages toward an endgame no one else has yet glimpsed.”
“Tafl has a finite number of moves available at any given junction. Life offers much more intricate designs.”
Sigyn sighed and fell silent a moment. “Tell me what it meant, your conversation with Idunn. Try to explain.”
He returned the squeeze of her hand. So clever, so certain. But missing some of the pieces and never imagining how excruciating uncovering the obfuscated truths might prove, not only to herself, but to all the world. As always, one faced the choice to shelter one’s loved ones and earn their ire, or weigh them down with knowledge they fooled themselves into thinking they desired. And as always, the middle path offered at least the illusion of asylum from either extreme, if only a temporary one. A half truth, to spare her the depths of despondency.
He sighed, but she squeezed his hand, demanding an answer. “It means the past cannot stay buried forever. It means the future will haunt our every step. We are, all of us, set on a path that has only just begun. A spark ignites embers in the darkness that, tended well, become a flame. The flame spreads like a living being, writhing and feasting, engorging itself into a conflagration that sweeps across the land and swallows all in its path until only ashes remain.”
Before she could ask more, he reached into the campfire and from it drew forth a fistful of flame, dancing around his hand, illuminating the awe on her face. “The fire is lit. Now we tend it. And we wait, for the inevitable inferno.”
Author’s Ramblings
What I
’m doing, what I’ve been doing for some time, is working to retell and reimagine real-world mythologies within the context of a single dark fantasy setting spanning multiple eras. This era, the Ragnarok era, is a mythical past set in an ice age brought on by the presence of mists escaped from Niflheim. So you see things like dire wolves and mammoths, mixed with the Norse and Germanic epics. I had a lot of sources, but the most prominent you’ll see here are the eddas and the Volsung Saga. Some day, if enough people cared, I could come up with a list of other primary sources—my writing cave is littered with tons of them. One of the most substantial influences was the Prose Edda, in which Snorri supposes Odin was a mortal man living in ancient times, one who travelled west from somewhere in Asia and gave rise to many legends.
I published the original version of The Apples of Idunn in early 2014. At that time, it was about half the length of this book, in part because I had wanted it to be a fast-paced adventure story, and in part because I decided to trim out parts of what I originally wrote. And it was well received—I got invited to a podcast interview, had a college professor want to teach it in her class, and otherwise was pretty pleased with it. I published the sequel (The Mists of Niflheim). I wrote the third book (The Shores of Vanaheim). And I just kept going on, planning the fourth one, but I realized more and more, I had not quite done what I’d wanted with the first book. Book 1 was around 50,000 words. Book 3 was around 100,000 words. That was my first clue.
I had always planned the series to span three trilogies, each with a different focus, but I first conceived of them as these fast adventures. And the one thing everyone wanted—including myself—was just more. Historical fantasy, all epic fantasy, really, has the reputation for being doorstoppers, and I came to realize there was a reason for that. Tales of this scope need it. They need the time and depth, and often things need to be seen through different characters’ eyes. After agonizing with the decision—and this is a hard decision for any author—and consulting with my editors, my mentor (thanks Sean), and others, I finally decided I was going to go back and redo this series the way it should have been all along.
The other factor that changed for me, was that I lost my dad. I had written this epic about Odin trying to avenge his father and had done the best I could to express his feelings. But frankly, until you’ve been through losing someone really close, you just don’t know. That loss demanded I come at the series with a deeper emotional resonance than Apples originally portrayed.
So what changed? Each book now features a prologue and an epilogue told from Loki’s point of view. In addition, the first book did not originally feature Tyr or Gudrun as point-of-view characters. I also pulled back the opening to show more of the events leading up to Odin hunting down Ymir. Mainly through Tyr, it shows how Odin becomes King of the Aesir, which was largely glossed over in the original version. Besides all that, the book went through a huge number of editorial revisions to plot and text (big thanks to Clark and Fred for all the help here). The overall plot is not changed much from the original version, though there are some subtle differences.
I wanted to stay as close to the spirit of the original sources as possible, while still not only putting my own spin on the tales but also fitting them into the framework I was creating for that dark fantasy setting I mentioned. It means, of necessity, some things changed to fit the setting or the story. The end result, The Ragnarok Era, is something I’m immensely proud of, and I truly hope everyone enjoyed this first taste of it. There’s a lot more where this came from.
I could not have done this alone, too, so I want to take time to say thanks to everyone who helped me with this. So thank you Brenda, Eryn, Hanna, Sean, Clark, Fred, Clarissa, Jena, and Juhi. And most of all, thanks, Dad, for everything. I miss you.
Thank you for reading,
Matt
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The Mists of Niflheim
Prologue
In the throes of deep meditation, the mind was left to wander, touching realms beyond the physical, much as beings from those realms touched such minds in dreams. Some, practiced in the Sight, sought to harness such sojourns by deliberately projecting their consciousness and soul into the Astral Realm. Loki found such an idea abhorrent, not least because it would reveal him to the innumerable enemies and otherwise hostile forces awaiting him there, and yet, still he practiced a meditation very much akin to projection. One which allowed him to walk in a space outside of time and between any realm, where lay darkness and a void in all directions save forward. There waited the Norns, standing before a well that itself stood nowhere and, in a sense, everywhere.
Loki had sent Odin here once, in an attempt to goad the man toward his urd—a Northern word derived from the name of one of these very Norns. Urd—fate—demanded a great deal of Loki, but then it asked as much if not more from Odin. And if the Norns wanted to be found, one might find them in any number of liminal places separating the Mortal Realm from the Otherworlds.
Neither hurry nor hesitation guided his steps toward them. They, of all beings, had patience, if such a term might even be applied to those existing outside of time. In truth, the further one travelled from the Mortal Realm, the less meaning time held. Or, perhaps, the more meaning, as the tafl board became the tapestry of history itself.
“You wished to see me,” he asked when he finally stood but a few feet from the hooded women.
“Who is—”
“Who was—”
“Who shall be your master?”
Loki folded his arms over his chest, scowling at the exasperating entities. “I am, as ever, a servant of history.”
“Perhaps in the darkness—”
“Blinded by the light—”
“He finds himself mired in the delusions of Eros.”
Loki kept his face expressionless, much as their comments made him seethe. These beings without time also existed without love or, in the sense the Aesir understood it, without even life. Thus they could not begin to understand the callings of the heart or the power it held over the living. They, in their self-superior ignorance, insinuated Sigyn was his weakness, when, in fact, she gave him the strength to face the ineffable abominations he had borne witness to in both the past and future.
Without knowing she was out there, born again to sustain him, he might have crumbled under the weight of darkness.
Such truths so far exceeded their comprehension as to not even warrant discussion. A better topic lay before them, in any event. “The Destroyer grows stronger more swiftly than we anticipated, barreling towards his destiny in great, perilous strides.”
“Anticipation is—”
“Was—”
“Will be a limitation of the linear.”
Loki spread his hands. “You speak of limitations, yet, as always, you still need me. It leaves one to wonder if you do not point out such supposed weaknesses to cover your own.”
“We begin to believe—”
“Indeed to know and to see—”
“A man who grows too attached to the Destroyer—”
“Whose fate remains ever unchanging and bound in darkness.”
“All worlds end, taking with them the one who must bring them down.”
Did they suppose he would try to spare Odin his fate?
Would that he could, for Loki truly did love his blood brother. But the innumerable millennia of his life and bitter destiny had taught him that fate was implacable, and history could never be denied. It plodded forward in a relentless tide, oblivious or uncaring of lives it swept under its waves.
As before, and as always, Odin was damned to his fate.
As were they all.
Part I
Fourth Moon, The Cusp of Winter
1
Waking or sleeping, it mattered naught. Odin could no longer tell the difference. Or perhaps he was caught between the two. His time with Gudrun and Frigg had blurred all lines while it opened his mind, until at last he could no longer say whether the things he saw were real or figments of his own tortured mind.
But he did see them. The Sight tormented him.
Borr. His father. Once the strongest man Odin had ever known. Head tall, the flicker of torchlight illuminating his short red beard as he wandered Unterhagen in the night. Odin had never known why his father had gone to the village that night—but he knew now whom he had met.
Jarl Arnbjorn of the Itrmanni looked up sharply at a crash from outside. He and Borr stood before a fire pit in a small house. They had been debating something Odin had not caught.
“Trolls?” Borr said.
Arnbjorn blanched and fled from the house. Borr groaned and drew his sword. Outside, a pair of men waited for him, each staring off nervously into the thick mist, spear in one hand, torch in the other. “Arnbjorn and his men ran off,” one said.
In the mist, a man screamed. Another crash echoed.
Odin’s father had gone out into the night, into the mists, to protect the villagers. Gone out … and never returned.
“Father …” Odin mumbled, half-aware he was talking in his sleep. On the edge of his mind he knew Frigg had placed a hand on his forehead, hoping to comfort him against visions she couldn’t see. He could shut them out, leave them behind. Gudrun had taught him such things—to close his mind to the Sight. But then he would never see his father again, not while Odin walked Midgard. And, given his newfound immortality, that could mean forever. A separation so final, so absolute, keeping Odin from reuniting with his parents and his ancestors, and he had taken the apple without giving it a moment’s consideration. Idunn had made him a god. But there was a price—solitude. He was a god doomed to walk the world without those who had shaped him.