by Matt Larkin
“How much farther is it?” she asked, leaning against Loki’s shoulder.
“It depends on which ruin they’ve taken up in. I doubt they’ve brought him all the way back to their castle in the islands.”
“Samsey, right? In Reidgotaland?”
Loki grunted in acknowledgement. He wouldn’t answer a question she already knew the answer to. But then, there were plenty of other questions to ask anyway.
“What are they doing out there?”
“Plotting, most likely.”
“Do you know that’s vexing?”
“Do you think it should be?”
Sigyn laughed. “Don’t you think?”
“I don’t think you’re terribly irked.”
In answer, she pulled away so she could look into his eyes—startlingly crystal blue, and deep as the sky. How much had they seen through the centuries? How old was Loki, really? He had to be one of the Vanir if he’d known Idunn’s grandparents. The only other explanation would be if he’d become immortal in some other way. And what other way could there be?
“You may never again have such a pristine landscape to ask your questions.”
“Is that a prescient vision?”
Loki waved a hand as if to take in all the Sudurberks and the blue sky above. “Do I need a vision to recognize beauty?” He brushed a hand across her cheek and ran his fingers through her hair, the motion leaving her warm despite the chill wind atop the mountain.
“If you can see the future, why don’t you just know which ruin they’re in?”
“Do your sister’s visions work with such acuity?”
No—even Frigg herself rarely seemed to understand what she saw. Not that Sigyn missed that Loki had, once again, evaded the damned question. Maybe she needed a different approach. Loki made her work for every answer, but then, that only made the uncovering of those answers that much more satisfying. If he wasn’t so inclined to reveal details about himself, he did seem to understand their opponents, and approaching a puzzle from a new angle often yielded better results than staring at the thing endlessly.
“The Niflungar are an ancient people, older than the Aesir.”
Technically it wasn’t a question, but still he shook his head. “People are people, and people have been around a long, long time. So many times humanity has faltered like a dying flame, only to be once again rekindled. The Aesir, at least as you are now, didn’t really arise until after the fall of the Old Kingdoms eight centuries ago.”
“What happened? How did the Niflungar fall?”
“Why does any kingdom fall? War, corruption, enemies within and without.”
Sigyn fell back and stared up at the clouds. Before gaining the swan cloak, she’d never really seen clouds, not clearly. Loki still hadn’t really given an answer, but she was willing to work for it. “War with who?”
“Everyone.”
Everyone? “What, all of mankind? The Vanir? Themselves?”
“Yes.”
All right, fine. Bastard. “They fought the Vanir? So the Vanir were the ones who defeated them?”
“The Niflungar skirmishes with the Vanir were minor compared to their wars with the other descendants of Halfdan.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Sigyn rolled over, trying to ignore the growing shivers building across her body. Her wet clothes were going to bring her to deathchill, but she could not let this opportunity pass. “Who was Halfdan?”
Loki pointed down at the mists. “What do you see?”
Sigyn shrugged. “The world? Midgard?”
“And the world was changed. All people across the world feared that change. Some turned to any source of succor against the mist, no matter the cost. Halfdan the Old bought three hundred years of life through a pact with a vaettr. In those three hundred years, he sired nine sons. As the Vanir withdrew more and more from the world, each of those nine sons used the treasures of his father to build a kingdom. Among them, Naefil, whom his father had named for Niflheim. Little surprise, then, that Naefil himself made a pact with the queen of Niflheim.”
The man had founded the Niflungar, given rise to the Children of the Mist. By embracing Hel herself, by making all his descendants sorcerers. “Are they immortal too?”
“No. But using their sorcery, the heirs of Naefil have lived even longer than Halfdan himself. And now Naefil’s great-great-grandson rules the Niflungar.”
“And he wants Odin because he is the Destroyer?”
Loki shook his head. “You do not understand.”
“Then help me to.”
“We’ve tarried too long here already. We have to find Odin.”
Dammit. She was getting somewhere. She wanted answers to the questions, and even knowing she had all eternity didn’t bide her over. She was going to understand their world, and he was going to reveal it. One way or another.
Loki started to rise, and Sigyn threw herself on top of him, bearing him down.
“Ever made love on a mountaintop?” She kissed his neck.
“Romance, Sigyn? Or do you think you’ll get your answers like this? Isn’t it cheating?”
She continued kissing his face, fumbling with his trousers. “Stop me if you want to.”
Despite the freezing cold air, she was probably warmer without her wet dress. She yanked it off in a jumble and settled down onto him, clinging to him for warmth.
“Show me,” she mumbled between kisses. “Show me everything.”
With one hand he clutched her shoulders, pulling her closer, the other clenched on her arse. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Sigyn cried out as he rolled atop her. Freezing snow crunched under her back. Gods, she was making love on top of a mountain. Her voice echoed off the peaks, driving her to further excitement. She had never, never felt so alive.
“Show me!”
His release hit her like a wave, the mix of visions as confusing as always. Bits and pieces she was forced to string together through countless nights of lovemaking. Islands covered in greenery, a battle against the undead, creatures like draugar but somehow different. A war against Hel. And the coming of the mists. Loki had watched it all, and visions from long before that.
She clung to his shoulders to keep from sliding down in the snow, weakened by the impact of so much information. She had seen some of these things before, but maybe it was enough to begin to understand. Loki had been there when the mists came, had tried to help Idunn’s grandparents stop it. And he had been there long before that. Long, long before that, in flying cities.
“You don’t know what you’re digging into,” he mumbled, panting.
There was no way Loki was a Vanr. The Vanir had become immortal when Idunn’s grandmother had led them to Yggdrasil, years after her battle with Hel. And Loki had been immortal before that. But he had eaten an apple, she had felt that the first time they made love. A lifetime ago, it seemed now, though it had been just about a year.
“Who are you?”
“I am yours.”
The same answer as before. Sigyn trembled in his arms. She had been wrong. That answer was not enough after all.
31
“You should have taken my daughter’s offer,” Gjuki said
Odin once again lay bound to the gods-damned altar, again painted by spirit glyphs. “I thought this would be more enjoyable.”
Gjuki slashed a knife over Odin’s stomach, opening a shallow cut. Then he dug a finger in that cut.
Odin grunted against the pain, keeping his gaze locked on Gjuki’s face. Maybe he should have taken the potion Gudrun had given him, but he could not trust her, much as his heart longed to. He could never trust her. She had seduced him with her tonics once already, and he would not willingly drink another.
The Raven Lord next traced blood across Odin’s forehead, marking some unseen symbol there too. “You are a fool, King of the Aesir.”
“I’ve heard that before. Do your worst, troll-spawn. When it’s done, I’ll be the one standing over your co
rpse.”
Gjuki’s hand tightened around his throat. “There will be no mercy, Odin Borrson.”
Odin gasped for air, sucking down none. His vision blurred at the edges and began to seep into the Sight. Shadows shifted around him. Shadows that waited for Gjuki to break him, to open him up to them. The Penumbra was home to unfathomable horrors, all eager to use mortals as a vessel. Most men never saw the liminal place, never saw the other side and the terrors that lurked just out of sight. Most men were lucky.
At last, Gjuki released his grip.
Odin coughed, trying to fill his lungs. They burned like fire, every breath stinging his swollen throat. “No need … for mercy …” he said, a clear rasp in his voice.
Gjuki chuckled. “I admire your tenacity. I can see why the goddess wants you. The choice is yours, whether you find yourself under her thumb or under her heel.” Once again, he dug a finger into Odin’s cut, then painted more glyphs in blood.
From what Odin could remember of his lessons with Gudrun, there was no actual need to paint the glyphs in blood. Any rendition of a spirit’s name would draw its attention. The Niflungar no doubt favored these blood glyphs as a means of intimidating their foes. Or perhaps some of the darkest vaettir fed on pain, on suffering. As Odin bled out, they’d be drawn to him. He probably should have taken that potion after all. It wouldn’t be the first time pride had cost him.
“Your … mistress … took my father. Took my brother. I’m going … to kill you. And then I’m … going to fucking kill her, too.”
“You’re going to kill the goddess Hel?” Gjuki rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I was wrong, Odin. You’re not a fool. You’re a madman.”
“Madmen are dangerous,” Odin spat, then jerked against his chains.
Sadly, Gjuki didn’t even recoil. Bastard had faith in these fetters, Odin had to give him that.
“You are correct, Ás,” Gjuki said. “Madmen are dangerous. Most of all to themselves.” The Raven Lord drew a long, black dagger and held it before Odin’s eyes.
Was that supposed to intimidate him? What was he going to do, cut him some more? Odin would heal. Pain was just pain. These bastards served Hel, and Hel had taken everything from him already. She had taken his father, his brother. They were all he had. She had taken nigh unto all he loved. Odin gritted his teeth. He was going to enjoy returning the favor. He was going to burn the Niflungar to the ground and—
Gjuki slammed the dagger through Odin’s palm and embedded it into the obsidian altar.
Odin screamed, wailed at the pain. Almost immediately lances of ice began to jolt outward from the dagger, shooting through his veins. Odin couldn’t make out Gjuki’s chant over the sound of his own agonized screaming.
His confinement had given Odin ample chance to practice slipping back into his father’s memories. Odin dove in, seeking any solace, any chance to escape the pain. Any reprieve from agony, no matter how temporary.
“I can’t get him to stop crying,” Bestla said, offering the newborn babe to Borr. “What kind of mother can’t comfort her son?”
“Hush now,” Borr said. “You have done naught wrong. Boy just needs some time with his father. Isn’t that right, Odin? I’ll just take him for a little walk.”
Borr stepped out into the afternoon sun as, for once, it seemed to cut through the mist and offer a clear view of the woods. The moment he began to stroll the babe quieted, slept. Borr smiled. He walked out of the Wodanar camp and through the woods, walked for an hour before sitting on a rock by the river.
As soon as he stopped walking, little Odin woke and began wailing again.
“Oh, really?” Borr asked, chuckling. “You think I have the stamina of a berserk, it appears.” And still he rose and walked again, walked for hours and hours, until at last twilight forced him to return to the safety of the bonfires.
It was just the motion lulling the babe to peace, of course. Borr knew that. Still, he liked to think it was something about him, some connection he had with his son.
Odin jerked as pain snatched him back to his own mind and body. He moaned, not caring if Gjuki thought it for the torture. His father had loved him so much, had walked for hours and hours and … And Odin just wanted to go back there.
Chilling claws snatched at Odin’s neck, his arms, his legs. His vision flickered between Sight and normal vision, revealing glimpses of the Penumbra, of the unutterable monstrosities answering Gjuki’s call. A shade lingered over him, its black-gray form hazy in the starlight of the Penumbra. Though roughly humanoid, its fingers ended in claws reaching out from a tattered shroud within which all light vanished, like the fathomless expanse of a starless night.
No mere ancestor shade, this, but a wraith, the vilest and direst of all ghosts, festering in hatred for uncounted centuries. Gudrun had bound one such vaettr, though she admitted she feared it and feared to call upon its power as it slowly consumed her from the inside out.
The wraith straddled Odin, and pressure built in his chest. It sank a claw into his left shoulder, then another into his right. He shrieked, squirming in a futile attempt to dislodge the ghastly presence now writhing atop him like some perverse lover in the throes of forbidden passions. The figure pulled itself forward, crawling up his body until its face—or lack thereof—rested inches above his own. Forcing him to look into the absolute blackness of its eyes, of its broken soul. And the deeper he looked, the more he realized beyond the blackness lurked a glow, though not one born of light, but rather an opalescence spawned from hatred in its most undiluted form.
The entity wailed and dove into Odin, seeping through his eyes and mouth and nose and ears. Odin jerked at the awful pressure spreading through his body. He tried to scream but only managed a choking gasp. An alien presence built in his mind, like another person’s thoughts, a whispered conversation where he could make out intent, but not words. And it was growing louder. Became a cacophony of madness and despair.
Bucking against his chains, Odin slammed all his will at the vaettr. I am Odin, son of Borr! He tried to shout at the abomination inside him. I am Odin!
He would not let this thing take him. Not now, not ever. His people needed him. His wife needed him. His son needed him. No one should take a father from his son. Never.
It was about will.
Gudrun had said that, back when she tried to teach him sorcery.
They can be bargained with, cajoled, or dominated, whence comes the power of a sorcerer.
The strongest will survived. And even an ancient font of power such as this might find itself cowed by an implacable human will. And Odin trembled, flinging his will at the vaettr. It felt like trying to wrestle a waterfall, a torrent that swept him up and threatened to drown him.
“You are mine,” he said, his words broken.
The current bound his limbs, choked him, slithered down his throat to steal his words.
“What are you doing?” Gjuki said, his words blurred and sucked away by the shadows clogging Odin’s senses.
Odin spoke ancient, eldritch words Gudrun had taught him, a language from beyond the realms of men. Words that a vaettr could not ignore.
His hands clasped around the wraith’s wrists as though they were solid, flesh writhing under his grip. Everything had gone dim, even dimmer than using Sight to pierce the Penumbra brought about. And he had slipped free of his fetters, even as the vaettr had leapt into twisted clarity. Beneath a tattered shroud drifting off into oblivion lay eyes, gleaming with fell light. Odin tumbled off the altar and head-butted the creature in his arms.
It was in him still, but it had begun to recoil, as if seeking to vanish into the dark prevailing all around them.
Gudrun had made him learn the words of binding. And, free of her potion and sorcery, Odin had sworn never to use such things. But now, on the edge of oblivion, what choice remained—surrender, or fight. Bargain. And Odin began to speak the words.
He could draw no glyph no warding circle, call upon no talisman for aid, nor other
wise fortify his body or will against the wraith. But he would not surrender, not ever.
The wraith hissed back at him in the same vile language, though he could not understand it. The words set his stomach quivering and his head trembling. He tightened his grip on the wraith’s wrists. His life force was bleeding out as he did so, feeding this thing.
“Serve me,” he said, barely able to form the words.
No.
He repeated the binding words in the vaettr language, each ringing in his head, each threatening to be his last as his breath gave out.
A sudden burning arose on his forearm, his flesh sizzling as the wraith’s glyph seared itself onto his flesh. And Odin pitched forward, the vaettr suddenly gone. No. Not gone. Drawn within him. Darkness enveloped him.
32
He had to make sure everyone was in position. Couldn’t afford another breach like last night. If it happened, if he had to strike down Arnbjorn, he would. But if he could stop a breach, he had to do everything in his power to do so.
That meant Tyr had to be on the wall. Had to check everything. Fool jarls were going get them all killed if he let them. Everyone wanted to take the lead now.
No one knew how.
As he crested the top of the stairs, Tyr heard Vili speaking to Frigg. “Odin is lost.”
“Loki and Sigyn have gone to rescue him.”
Vili snorted. “The foreigner and his woman? They can’t help him.”
Tyr hated to trust in Loki, but what other choice did he have? The foreigner had returned, learned of Odin’s fate, and insisted on going after him. And since the varulfur he’d sent to track Odin never came back, how could Tyr argue with that?
“You underestimate both Loki and Sigyn,” Frigg said.