by Lentz, P. K.
“Once Odinn sets his price,” I say forlornly. “And if it is not too steep.”
Baldr gives me a strange, sidelong look. “Is any price too steep for what you seek?”
I have already given the matter some thought and pause now to give it more. “None that spring to mind.”
Baldr smiles. Again, I find his look strange. He looks away and says nothing.
“Tell me of the Valkyriar,” I ask him.
“A band of women warriors under Freya's command,” Baldr answers almost dismissively. “The only force more feared in the eight realms is Odinn's own Einherjar.” His interest lies elsewhere. “I wonder what it is you did to wrong her.”
I have no answer to that, and no speculations I wish to speak aloud. Such heavy thoughts dampen my mood and still my tongue as we ride on. I let the distance between my horse and Baldr's grow, and he makes no move to close it.
It is then that we come upon a sight unlike any other.
From a distance, at first, I mistake it for a vast, curved wall stretching up into a low-hanging mist, but as we draw nearer, passing under an odd, bark-sheathed archway, I recognize the thing for what it is: an impossibly huge tree. The archway is but one of its roots, thrusting up from the ground. Yet more exposed roots turn the ground ahead of us into a wild sea of dark, unmoving waves, some of which are taller than man or horse. High up in the hanging mist, twisted branches spring from the great tree's trunk that are themselves the size of normal trees, each leaf at least as broad as a man's two outstretched arms.
“The World Tree,” Baldr announces. “Yggdrasil. Its trunk exists in each of the eight realms, and its roots extend into the timeless void from which it sprang.” As I gawk wide-mouthed, he halts his horse and leaps down from its back. “Come,” he enjoins, “there are sights to be seen which we may reach only on foot.”
It takes a few moments for Baldr's words to penetrate my awe. When they do, I slide down awkwardly and must ignore a numbness in my backside whilst my legs readjust to having firm ground under them. I walk forward, following Baldr past and underneath magnificently large exposed roots that grow steadily greater in size as we near the trunk. It is impossible to tell how distant is the trunk, for any attempt by the eyes to measure it or determine its limit in any direction ends in confusion and dizziness.
I have given up trying when a figure springs up from behind a massive, serpentine root to stand perched atop it. The sight startles Baldr, but I myself am too awed to be startled. A ray of the sparse light which filters down through the mist and man-dwarfing leaves glints on golden hair.
“Gaeira?” Baldr blurts. “You ought to wear a bell.”
Effortlessly, she leaps down. Rather than approaching us, she stands and waits for us to reach her.
“What brings you here?” Baldr asks while continuing past her. Something in the question's tone tells me he knows her reason.
He expects no answer, and gets none. I search Gaeira's blue eyes and face for clues, and I find in them... disapproval? Yet she makes no move to block our path. Presumably, Baldr, being the son of her lord Odinn, is someone whom she cannot defy without consequence. Since her vow of silence makes action her only available means of communication, I am left to guess at the cause of her disapproval, if that is what it is. What does Baldr intend? Until now, I have been increasingly inclined to trust him... Perhaps that is a mistake.
Wisdom dictates that given the choice between these two relative strangers, I must follow the one who commands the most power, which is Baldr. Instinct points me in the same direction, and so without missing a stride, I follow him past Gaeira, who could not answer me anyway if I were to ask her for some reason I should do otherwise.
She meets my eyes briefly as I pass, and I am first to look away. It brings me no pleasure to ignore her warning, such as it is, but I must. As Baldr and I proceed closer to the World Tree, I feel, but cannot know short of looking back—something my pride will not allow—that Gaeira follows us at a distance. The two of us, maybe three, steadily advance across the root-sea, a chaotic web which converges on the trunk an untellable distance away. Only once do I try looking directly up, an error which sets my head spinning. Thereafter I keep my eyes ahead, until at last we reach the place where the roots rise up and gently slope into the sheer, bark-sheathed, moss-adorned wall that is Yggdrasil.
Baldr leads me up to the rounded surface of a mountain-like artery. Along the seam where it juts from the ground stands a dark hole large enough for a man to climb down into. The smile Baldr gives when he reaches it and turns to face me suggests that that is exactly what we shall do. I glance behind to find Gaeira stopped at a distance, watching us.
“What's down there?” I ask.
“All things,” he says. “If you go far enough, you could come out in any one of the eight realms. Even the ninth, for that matter. Lacking a guide, most likely you would become lost forever.” He grins. “Fortunately, you have the best of guides.”
“Will we travel to another realm?”
“Not that far.” His eyes flick over my shoulder to Gaeira. The look confirms what I already suspect. She knows where Baldr is taking me, but lacking voice and authority, she is powerless to intervene.
Since neither of them is willing or able to inform me, my decision must be an uninformed one. In ignorance, I commence my descent into a dark hole under the tangled roots of Yggdrasil.
27. The Black Pool
As the daylight from behind fades, a new light flares at my shoulder. I look back and blink as I briefly blind myself in discovering that the source is Baldr's own upraised palm. I had not taken him for a sorcerer, but then perhaps all of the Aesir wield some magic or other. It is an unneeded reminder that I know nothing of them.
We walk in silence a short while, through black tunnels that hardly ever progress more than a few steps before curving. The walls, composed of black soil, embedded rocks and rough expanses of bark, are highly irregular and dotted with what might either be side passages or dead ends. As I pick my way slowly, carefully, through deep flitting shadows on a ground which seems to delight in denying me sure footing, Baldr clamps a hand on my shoulder.
"This way," he says, and aims his shining palm into a small side passage that I would have passed by without a second look. "I think it's the cold season in Muspelheim now," he goes on. "You'd have a few hours before your flesh roasted, but still."
Preceding Baldr down the indicated path, I can't avoid sparing a thought for Gaiera, who might be following us. I raise the possibility with Baldr.
"She can take care of herself," he half-answers.
He soon stops me again and uses his hand to illuminate a downward slope so steep that we must descend it backwards on all fours. When the passage levels off again, I glimpse a small patch of pale yellow light ahead. It vanishes once or twice as we weave over, under, and around gigantic roots and boulders.
Finally, a breeze touches my face. It carries upon it the scent of water—fresh, not stagnant, as one might expect in a deep cave. A few more steps, and nothing stands between us and the light's source: an opening onto some wide, well-lit space.
Ducking through it, I shield my eyes against the brightness and squint until my vision settles. When I can see properly I behold a great cavern, the roof and walls of which are formed almost entirely of twisting roots like many thousands of petrified snakes. Formations of jagged black rock, mad mountains, jut from all sides. The dim light filling the space has no detectable source.
We stand perched on a high precipice of rock. Coming up beside me, Baldr extinguishes his hand and pats my back with it before starting down a barely navigable path to the cavern floor.
"Where are we?" I ask.
He does not answer, only leads, and I follow. Halfway down, I look back up along our path, and my eyes quickly find what they sought: a small, golden-haired figure following us silently, gracefully. Again I find I am glad to see Gaeira, even if I can hardly say why.
Baldr leads me acros
s the rough cavern floor to the base of one of the black mountains. I first hear the echoing sound of trickling water, then see the small pool sitting in the shadow of the rocks. It is several feet in diameter, its dark surface gently rippling.
I know without being told what it is that I behold.
"Mimir's Well," Baldr confirms. He gestures upward. My eyes follow and find, set upon a ledge over the pool, a filthy, ancient skull from which hang tufts of knotted straw-like hair and shreds of dessicated flesh.
Baldr says, grinning, "There is Mimir, himself, whom my father slew in his youth."
He hops down the short embankment to the dark water's edge. I remain in place, despite a reckless urge to race down and drink.
"Why have you brought me here? I thought the water was Odinn's alone to share."
"I am his son," Baldr declares. I know it is not a proper answer.
"I have not paid the price. It is not even set."
"You said yourself no price was too high, did you not? You may as well drink now, and pay later."
"If Odinn decides the price ought to be my life?"
Baldr scoffs. "He will not. That much I know. All you need decide is how much you want to know what she knows. That, and whether you are bold enough to seize opportunity when it stands within grasp."
I stand rooted, staring down at the water reflecting back at me the promise of knowledge for which I yearn. Baldr is right. My life itself aside, what do I have that Odinn could take? He might demand my service, as he did Ayessa's. Having had time to ponder it, I know already that I am willing to pay that price. I owe Ares nothing, and in leaving Neolympus, I already decided that my fellow Atlanteans would get on fine without me. Crow will lead them well.
As I am making my choice, or rather giving myself the time in which to unmake it, in case it is wrong, Gaeira enters the edge of my vision. I look to her, and find her looking back.
Spoken words could not make her message any clearer: Turn back from this path.
Baldr is right... but so is she. I am a guest in a strange land ruled by Odinn. What right have I to defy his will?
I can also tell by Gaeira's look, and from the distance she keeps from me, that she will not interfere any more than she has already. I almost wish that she would, for I know I cannot stop myself. I do not possess nearly the discipline that she must have in order to keep such a vow as hers.
"I'm sorry," I say to Gaeira. I owe her no explanation, no apology, no words at all, but they come anyway.
Whatever her judgment, if she counts me a weakling or fool, it remains hidden in an impassive stare. Turning from her, going forward, I kneel, dip my hand into the black water—and drink.
28. Wellspring
Atlantis had known dark days in her past, yet none now living could remember any so dark as these. Under the great golden Dome of Kings, seat of a dozen long and peaceful reigns, a king had died by dagger's thrust. Only year ago, his queen had taken her own life by poison out of despair at the death of her eldest son, the heir apparent, thrown from his horse into the sea. Deaths of queen and prince had seemed suspicious, particularly to those closest to the king, but now the king himself lay slain, and his passing was not only suspicious; it was openly murder.
The assassin would never tell who'd put him up to the deed, never speak again at all, for he too was dead, killed by his own hand when cornered by the king's guard. He was a nobody, a foreigner, surely hired for the task. Chaos might have followed in the killing's wake but for quick action by the royal chancellor, Ozymondros. The city's men-at-arms were accustomed to obeying him, and they gave no second thought to taking his orders during the crisis, as he sent them out to keep order on the great city's concentric streets and broad radial thoroughfares. It did not hurt that in addition to being the king's right hand, Ozymondros was also half-brother to him, with a claim of his own to make on the throne, should he choose to press it.
The more presumptive heir was the king's second son, not present in Atlantis at the time of the assassination. The young prince, Thamoth, having just been married, had taken his bride, Ayessa, sailing up the coast. In the year since his elder brother's accident (if that's what it was), increased attention had been paid to instilling in Thamoth the qualities required of a king. But given the lack of reason for all but a cynical few to think that his father's reign would be any shorter than that of his long-lived grandfather, grooming the new heir did not seem too urgent a task. So if, for now, the prince spent more time than was fitting covered in sweat and sawdust in the sheds of the royal shipwright or checking hulls for leaks in Atlantis's walled harbor, Thamoth yet had time to become more adept in matters of state.
An assassin's blade brought that time to a swift and unexpected end.
A ship was dispatched up the coast to find and notify Thamoth, and twenty days after his father's funeral, the prince and his bride sailed into the harbor of Atlantis. The city, still in mourning, held its breath. Most assumed that Thamoth would smoothly assume his father's throne, even if many were silently less than pleased with the prospect. The prince was not ready to rule, they felt, while Ozymondros had more than confirmed, in the last twenty days, that he was.
Met by a sea of long faces, the prince disembarked, accepted his uncle's embrace and accompanied Ozymondros into the palace. There, alone in a small room, they talked of the future. The moment the door was locked, Ozymondros shed the public mask he'd worn outside and spoke coldly and with shrewd eyes.
"I will be king, Thamoth," he said. "And you shall choose exile, else find it imposed upon you, or worse, when evidence turns up marking you as the one who ordered your father's death. You could fight, but know that the city will stand by me. Most who do not will simply stand aside. You would but ruin the peace of the city, causing Atlantean blood to be shed by Atlantean hand, absent chance for victory. Make the noble choice, Thamoth. Do not let pride stop you from doing what is right for Atlantis."
The prince did not make his choice then and there, but was granted several days under close watch in which to make it. At the end of them, he returned to his uncle to make known his decision.
"I shall not fight you," Thamoth said. "Give me but a month. I shall build a ship and sail away in it with my bride. You will never see me again."
Smiling, Ozymondros agreed. News went out of the prince's plan to cede the kingship to his uncle and sail away. The city sighed in relief. Even as the people loudly hailed Thamoth as magnanimous and romantic, privately they were glad they would not be subject to the growing pains of a young ruler.
Thamoth moved to a cottage by the water's edge, and there dwelt under guard with his bride. He built his ship and named it Wellspring, for in his wedding vows to Ayessa he had told her, "You are the wellspring which shall nourish and sustain me in darkness and in light."
When he had put to Ayessa the idea of forever leaving Atlantis behind, just the two of them, the young woman had wept. She had married the prince for love, not the promise of living the a life of opulence in a well-attended palace, yet still, it stung her to know that she now would never know any taste of the latter.
"Where shall we go?" she asked.
"Up the coast, I suppose." Thamoth gave the answer with wet eyes, for whenever Ayessa wept, so did he. But his bride saw something else in his eyes, heard it in his voice.
"That is not your true desire," she rightly observed. "Where?"
They sat upon a roof of the palace, looking west over the boundless sea. "Up the coast," the prince persisted emptily. "There are many good—"
"Stop. I know the truth. Speak it."
Thamoth took his eyes from the ocean sunset to gaze on Ayessa, whose beauty to him was greater than that of sun on sea. "I can't ask you..." He faltered. "You've lost so much already."
"Then what's a bit more?" Ayessa wiped a tear-filled eye. "Ask me. Ask me to go there with you." She stared at the horizon, wet cheeks agleam in the orange glow.
Thamoth's eyes likewise welled with fresh tears as he asked hi
s love if she would sail away with him west into the setting sun, over the horizon, in search of the lush lands which were said to lie there. His bride said yes that day, and repeated it every day thereafter when Thamoth asked her if she was sure.
And so the plans were set. Wellspring was completed by the prince's own hand, with help from the royal shipwright and his crew. Its hold was stocked with two months' supplies, which took up less space than might be imagined, since the sea could be trusted to provide the bulk of their sustenance, all but water, of course, the thing of which it was composed.
Because thirty days had dulled their grief, and the city's future seemed less uncertain, the people of Atlantis were more festive at their young prince's farewell than they had been at his homecoming. While some of them perhaps truly believed that Thamoth had abdicated because he did not want his free and romantic spirit chained by the burdens of kingship, a fair number must have known, or at least sensed, that Ozymondros, whose coronation was slated for the very next day, had given him little choice.
Lining the harbor's edge, the people cheered and waved goodbye. They made the harbor bright with the blossoms they threw, and Wellspring's prow cleaved through them as if sailing over a sunlit meadow of wildflowers. The prince held his bride close, his cloak soaking up her tears, as they lost sight of land. For a day or two afterward, the mood on board was somber. What they had left behind, all they knew, was lost, forever.
Eventually they smiled again and began to enjoy each other's company, as they had just a short while ago on their honeymoon voyage along the coast. In spite of a harsh word or two, always smoothed over by nightfall, the good mood held, barely, until their sighting of a bird soaring overhead, hinting at the presence of some nearby landmass. Half a day later, Ayessa was first to spot the bluish shape on the horizon. Doubting her own eyes, she called it to Thamoth's attention, and he confirmed that it could be nothing else but land. They celebrated, squeezing each other tight.