The Mists of Niflheim (The Ragnarok Era Book 2)

by Matt Larkin

  Tyr paused, waiting in the shadows. What was this now? The sun would set in an hour at most. And they were still arguing. Other jarls, thegns, they also walked the battlements. No one did aught about this.

  Vili grunted. “They’re all lost. You will need a new husband by your side.”

  Now she glowered at him. “Was there someone you had in mind?”

  “Me.”

  Tyr’s hand tightened around Gramr’s hilt. How dare the man dishonor his brother thus? He advanced slowly. Frigg was Odin’s wife. His wife! And Vili thought to claim her while Odin may yet live?

  “I am the king’s brother. I am strong.” As if to emphasize his point, he grabbed her upper arms and squeezed, pulling her even closer.

  “Release me,” she demanded.

  Son of a troll! Tyr jerked Gramr free of its sheath.

  Vili spun at the sound, dropping Frigg, then turned to face him. “This does not concern you.”

  “You shame your family. That is my concern. Draw your weapon!”

  Vili’s smug grin faltered for just a moment.

  “Tyr,” Frigg said, “your sword is not needed here.”

  “My lady—”

  “I am the queen. You will both heed me.” She turned to the berserk. “Strength alone is not enough to rule, Vili. One needs wisdom.” She shook her head. “And it is not wise to proposition a vӧlva, especially a married vӧlva who is not yet a widow. Odin will return. But if you behave yourself between now and then, he need not hear of this conversation.”

  Vili growled. Fucking bear.

  “You have not learned!” Tyr spat at Vili.

  Vili reeled back as if not quite certain what was happening. Tyr was nearly upon him before the werebear even bothered to pull the broad axe from off his back.

  “Tyr!” Frigg demanded. “Cease this immediately.”

  “What is—” Arnbjorn started to say.

  Tyr didn’t look at the approaching jarl. He’d be next.

  Tyr lunged, swinging with a vicious overhead arc. The berserk flung his axe up, blocking Tyr’s sword with the blade. A chip of metal flew from the axe, spinning wide. The iron barb slashed Frigg’s jaw, and she shrieked.

  Her scream drew Vili’s eyes, but Tyr didn’t slow down. Needed every edge against a berserk. He twisted his sword, bending Vili’s axe out of position, then rammed his fist into Vili’s face. The berserk fell back. And Tyr was on him, punching again and again.

  Vili roared, shrugging off the blows, and tackled Tyr. They fell to the ground. Rolling, wrestling. In a moment, he pinned the berserk and rained more blows on him, smashing him with Gramr’s pommel.

  Arnbjorn grabbed Tyr’s arm. With one hand, Tyr flung him to the ground. He snarled at Arnbjorn.

  “Tyr!” Frigg shouted, now having risen. “Tyr, I command you to stop immediately. In Odin’s name!”

  Odin.

  Son of Borr. Like Vili.

  Kill him. Kill the bastard berserk.

  The son of Borr.

  Tyr hesitated.

  Vili shoved him upward and then bodily flung him to the ground. The impact dazed him. Gramr scattered away from him. Werebear dove on top of him. Some else kicked him in the face.

  Beating, pounding, smashing.

  Tyr’s skull cracked on stone.

  Everything went dark.

  33

  The wraith seethed beneath his skin, coiling about his heart and mind, probing against his will. It—he—pushed against Odin’s consciousness before Odin even realized he had woken.

  “Audr,” Odin groaned. The wraith was inside him, and now he knew its name.

  Odin tried to sit, but as he did so, a clawed, spectral hand jutted up from his own, breaking away from his flesh until his elbow. It rent his soul and threatened to shatter his body. Screaming, Odin threw his will against the wraith until he at last receded back inside Odin’s flesh.

  He could hardly breathe. Everywhere, darkness pressed in on him. The Penumbra ought to have been suffused with more starlight than this, or so he had thought. But now, Odin was no longer looking through the Veil at the Penumbra—he had somehow fallen through that Veil, projected himself into the Astral Realm entirely. Unless he was dead.

  If he was dead, where were the damned valkyries? Shouldn’t they have carried him off to meet his ancestors? To meet his father … And what would he tell him? Would his father be proud of what he’d tried to do? Tried and failed. He’d lost Ve. He brought the Aesir halfway around the world but never even made it to Vanaheim. What had Odin done with his immortality? Naught. He’d squandered his gift. And he could not face his father with only that answer. Maybe that was why there were no valkyries. Maybe he didn’t deserve the glorious afterlife. Maybe Gjuki had damned Odin to join Hel and the unworthy dead in Niflheim.

  And if so? Then he would spend the last of his strength storming her gates.

  A lump formed in his stomach as he rose. Gjuki still stood beside the altar, watching it. Watching Odin’s body on it.

  Not yet dead, though his body lay dying and … aged. He looked down at himself, at hands that grown withered well past the twenty-five winters he had seen. Binding the wraith had eaten through so much of his life force it had ravaged his body. Perhaps the apple would prevent further aging, but already pain had begun to form in his joints. What was he now, a man of forty winters—at least physically speaking?

  Odin groaned. The wraith inside laughed, the sound filled more with a loathing of all good in life than with any mirth.

  “Silence,” Odin commanded. Uselessly. He reached for Gjuki, but his hand passed right through the Raven Lord. His action did draw the man’s attention, who smiled at Odin. He spoke, the sound echoing wildly. A spirit’s name, perhaps? Had Gjuki called upon another of the cursed—

  A hand grabbed his wrist and pulled, the motion causing the world around him to twist, blur. Odin fell, tumbling for what seemed far too long before he collapsed on a ground of shadows. The impact of such a fall should have broken bones, but it merely stunned him for an instant. Perhaps his spirit body had no bones to break.

  He rose once again, to find himself no longer within the Niflungar ruin. Indeed, his surroundings had warped beyond all recognition. The starlight had dimmed, and the darkness suffused the horizon in all directions, blocking his view of much beyond his immediate surroundings. And those surroundings! Something like glimmering black rocks rose from the ground, twisting into unnatural shapes that ought not have supported their own weight. Those shapes slowly moved, as though writhing in pain, as though this entire world was formed of agony and nightmare.

  Yessss …

  Audr’s voice echoed in his mind.

  The Astral Roil …

  Oh, dear gods above and below. Gudrun had told him the Astral Realm extended beyond the mirror of Midgard, into deep realms where even a sorcerer dare not tread. He had passed beyond all known reality into some alien depth, some darkness apt to drive men to derangement. The very air pulsed with such despondency he almost choked on it, though he could not say for certain how much came from this realm and how much from the wraith he had bound inside himself.

  All power … is darkness … is despair …

  “No.” Odin spat. “I refuse to believe that.”

  Again, the mirthless laugh that withered his soul. Odin had bound to himself a ghost filled with deathless hatred, a loathing of all creation it meant to share with him.

  Yes … as you lose yourself … as you lose … everything.

  And the wraith spoke with such absolute certainty, Odin could not deny his claim. His body had a little life left in it—for now. But this place would erode his soul until so little remained Audr would win, would take him over. Or until … until Odin had become a wraith himself, lost in darkness and preying on the world he had once known.

  The Roil stretched out in all directions, an expanse of shadows with neither beginning nor end. Darkness spread like blood, staining snows, revealing at long last the underpinnings of reali
ty in all its empty horror. Odin had once thought the glimpse of the Penumbra he saw through the Sight was dire, that it represented the sum of the nightmares in which the dead dwelt. Back then, he had seen less than naught.

  Oblivion is eternity.

  Audr’s taunts had become his inescapable companion on this sojourn, offering yet another torment upon his senses. This realm stank of the ancient dead. Audr’s words grated on his mind. Fell winds chilled his flesh. But these visions, they held the greatest horrors of this place.

  What you cannot see is worse …

  Worse than what he could.

  With every step, you tread deeper into shadow …

  Odin pressed a palm against his forehead as if he could somehow silence the wraith inside him. But he could no more quiet the mad ghost than he could his own mind.

  All the dead are mad … or perhaps finally bereft of the madness of the living … the illusion of light that so befuddles your senses that you can imagine … the ultimate lie might hold some sliver of truth.

  What lie?

  Hope …

  “Go to Hel, Audr.”

  What know you of Hel?

  As much as any man, he supposed, and more than he wished.

  The ground beneath his boots felt too pliant here, like walking on the surface of mud. A fog rose up around his legs—not with the thickness of the mists clogging Midgard, but the vapors seemed fell, nevertheless. He could turn, head back the way he had come, but one direction seemed as true as any other.

  Besides which, he could hardly be certain of traveling in a straight line, what with shadows stretching out into the horizon. He could make out so little beyond his immediate surroundings.

  As he pushed on, the sound of rushing water reached him, drawing closer, even as the mud grew thicker. “What is this?”

  You wished to find Hel … You need find but the bridge …

  What bridge? What was this place?

  Gjöll, the river of Hel.

  Indeed, the fog was rising off a freezing river. Odin could see little beneath its surface, save that the swift current swept what looked like blades along. Daggers, perhaps of ice, perhaps of iron, but they would shred anyone attempting to wade the river. No wonder they needed a bridge.

  But then again, why would he want to reach the gates of Hel? If beyond this river lay Niflheim and the inescapable fortress of Hel, no man would willingly tread there.

  Odin backed away. What he wanted was to find a way to return to Midgard, to his body, to his people. His hand brushed over something, but when he turned, he saw naught but a mass of shadows.

  A sudden wooziness seized his gut, and the desire to sleep.

  Audr’s laughter mocked him.

  I expected you to last longer …

  What?

  Odin turned about but saw no sign of a threat. What was the wraith trying to say?

  Sleep now … weak mortal … sleep and lose it all … let all you know fade to dust and let your light finally dwindle …

  What was he saying? Odin just needed to rest for a few moments. This journey, Gjuki’s tortures, they had both taken their tolls upon him. But what did Audr mean, lose it all? What had he lost?

  A fleeting image graced his mind, an instant of him training with a sword, under his father’s careful instruction. And then that image evaporated. Even as Odin tried to replay it in his mind, he found naught there. A memory of his father, and he couldn’t … he had just seen something. It was on the edge of his mind. In fact, he had just relived it not long ago, through Borr’s eyes. But now he couldn’t remember.

  “Gods? How did this happen? What’s happening?”

  You have already forgotten what I told you … The dead lose … everything. All that makes you who you are … fades …

  His memories? No. No, no. He would not lose those. Never! Not those.

  Soon, you will not even know … what has been lost …

  The mud suddenly grew hard, grasping. Hands reached up out of it and clasped his legs, dragging him down. Arms slurped out of the darkness, wrapped around his feet, ankles, shins, knees. All trying to carrying him under the surface into the oblivion.

  Odin surged forward, calling upon all his strength. Arms broke away and returned to mud, but others took their place which each faltering step he took. The world itself tried to consume him now, as if this place devouring his memories were not enough.

  He broke free of the mud and tumbled to the ground from the sudden removal of resistance. He came up in a roll, panting. As he rose, a bank of shadows like a cloud of darkness spread out before him. He thought he had come this way, but now it blocked his path even as it seemed to block out the sparser and sparser starlight overhead.

  More slurping noises rang out behind him. Odin glanced over his shoulder. From the mud rose a pulsating wave, edging toward him.

  He scrambled away, around the cloud of darkness, almost tripping over his own feet.

  “Audr! Unless you want to spend eternity dragged down into whatever depths—”

  The darkness erupted.

  Three tentacles jutted toward him, converging on his position, each many times longer than he was tall. Odin rolled to the side, reaching for any weapon. He had none. The tentacles writhed like living shadows, attached to some unfathomable monstrosity dwelling within the shadow cloud. Each bore countless spines, and worse still, tiny maws lined with shark-like fangs.

  The tentacles surged for him once again. Odin jumped one, but another enwrapped his legs in midair. A third coiled itself around his arm. It tightened around him until he felt his muscles would burst. The maw raised up in front of his face and hissed at him like a serpent. Each of those fangs had a tiny, opalescent eye, blacker than black and weeping some foulness.

  Odin’s mind seemed unable to latch on or accept the existence of such a being, such an indescribable abomination dwelling just beyond the sight of men. The tentacle snapped forward, and those numerous fangs tore through his shoulder sending waves of burning agony coursing through him. And then it began to suck, drawing out his blood, his life force, even his very soul. With each pulsation of the tentacle, he felt more of himself eaten away, even as it drew his body toward the greater cloud of shadow. Within that cloud writhed something even larger—the body these tentacles belonged to. A body Odin did not want see.

  “Audr!”

  More of his memories seemed to slip away, not evaporating as before, but sucked down by the monster in great, voracious gulps. All the years of his childhood, vanishing one by one, every treasured moment devoured.

  No! He knew he was screaming in pain. But not his memories. Not those.

  Odin beat at the tentacle with his free hand, having no more effect than he would raging against the ocean.

  Not like this. No …

  His mind flailed even as his body began to give out. Flailed, and caught hold of the wisp of a shrouded wraith, tethered to his soul. Odin seized that shroud and pulled it about himself. The monstrosity that held him recoiled for the barest instant.

  Odin’s form became as shadow, and he melted into the darkness, reforming a hundred feet away. He lay on his knees gasping. A shadowy claw breached from his elbow once again, as Audr tightened his hold on Odin’s soul. Trails of shroud dangled from his body, as though tapering out of his own legs and back. The wraith climbed out of the place where he’d buried it, crawling up his throat and struggling to sink its claws into his mind.

  Indeed, the claw began to reach for his head.

  Odin clenched his fist, throwing all his will against Audr.

  At last the wraith receded back within, though Odin’s astral form continued to trail wafts of vaporous shroud. And his hands … They had grown freshly wrinkled even as the ache in his bones deepened. He had burned away another decade off his life, he could feel it.

  “What was that thing?”

  Hungry …

  Odin groaned. That much he could have guessed. He slumped down on his arse and rubbed his temples. The R
oil devoured his memories, when it didn’t try to consume his body. And now this nameless predator stalked him. He had wandered into someplace worse than even the realm of Hel.

  You nearly crossed into there … beyond the river.

  “Is that what you want?”

  No answer.

  Perhaps Audr did not want to fall into Hel’s domain. But they both would—or, failing that, would fall prey to one of the other apparently numerous horrors lurking in the Roil.

  “I don’t think that’s what you want at all.”

  Audr said naught.

  “I know you hate me, as you hate all the living. Believe me, Audr, I loathe you just as much.”

  No. You do not … You cannot begin to fathom the odium of the damned. Not yet …

  “Be that as it may, I suspect you would rather return to the Midgard to sate that wrath than linger here until we both wither away.”

  The wraith slithered beneath his skin, but did not answer immediately.

  Odin waited.

  Were I to guide you … still you could not cross the Veil.

  “Maybe. But we’d be that much closer to the Mortal Realm.”

  And still you cling to hope … I will enjoy watching it crumble through your fingers …

  Odin rose. Whatever the wraith thought, he was not about to surrender hope. Not hope, and not memory. Most else, a man could live without. But those two, they meant everything.

  34

  They had survived the night, at least. No one would tell him much more.

  Tyr’s sword rested against Frigg’s throne, a mere five feet away. They had taken her from him. Taken Gramr, his legacy, his right. The law may have called for such practice during the Thing, true, but … In a single heartbeat Tyr could cross the distance, claim the blade and fight his way free.

  All eight jarls stood around him in a wide circle, eyeing him, judging him. By Frigg’s command, Tyr had not been bound. The queen knew he was innocent. The other jarls, they were to blame. Bedvig and Vili and Arnbjorn, all of them. Tyr turned slowly, forcing each of the vile traitors to meet his gaze.