by Matt Larkin
Sigyn’s hands trembled around the apple. “Me? You just met me.” She couldn’t even swallow. Such events did not even unfold in skalds’ tales, and even such tales always ended in tragedy. The heroes died, oft as not, betrayed. Life offered naught but hardship and a bitter end.
Except for this time. He wasn’t asking her to marry him—he was asking her to spend the rest of time with him. Dizziness swept over her, and she nearly fainted. Eat this and she would become something more than human. She would be a goddess herself … She held in her hands the chance for immortality. And if she took it, there would be no turning back. There could be no return to the life she’d known. The uncertain future would lie before her, stretching on and on, titillating and terrifying in equal measure.
But then, maybe it was already too late. Maybe knowing what she held in her hands, what life could be like, would already make this little town seem stifling, even suffocating, to know that she could have had more, could have embraced an urd beyond the ken of mortals. And with Loki, she could truly be herself—and he wanted her for who she was. Never in her life had she met anyone like him. And, in truth, she knew she’d never meet his like again, never have another chance at such a perfect match for herself.
“Perhaps I just met you,” he said. “Perhaps I knew you in another lifetime. Maybe, just maybe, I have always known you, and I’ve waited so long just to find you again.”
A tear formed in her eye, but she blinked it away. She wouldn’t let aught spoil this moment. If it were a skald’s tale, then let the drama unfold as it would.
She bit into the apple.
35
Odin gasped, his knees slamming into the floor. He was in Frigg’s chambers, his new wife tossing fitfully. A vile surge in his stomach sent him crawling to the chamber pot, where he heaved up all the mead he’d drunk at the party. Panting, he glanced back at Frigg. His sickness had not disturbed her in the least, it seemed.
Gods, had Loki known this would happen? Was that how the man had gained such insights—had he too fucked a vӧlva? No wonder men feared the witches’ seduction. Such visions would haunt the bravest warrior.
Odin yanked on his clothes and wandered out to the great hall, stumbling twice into the walls. While some still slept off the party, it seemed the sun had risen, because outside he heard music. Sleeping in Frigg’s isolated, windowless chamber had disoriented him. How did these people manage without seeing the sky?
In the town square, some of the men chanted a song to their ancestors, while another played the lyre. In their midst Idunn danced, her thin red dress swirling in the air. It caught currents of the winds, flying about like her dark hair, entrancing almost every man and woman in Halfhaugr. If all Idunn said was true, did these same apples make the Vanir immortal? What was a goddess if not a woman untouched by time, blessed with powers others could never understand? He’d seen her vulnerability with Ve that day.
But Idunn was an enchantress. Maybe Loki should have suggested her for Odin’s wife. Odin shook his head at the thought. Frigg was his wife now. Indulging in such fantasies dishonored a woman who didn’t deserve such treatment. She would be a fine queen.
Idunn turned, smiling at Odin, almost like she knew what he’d been thinking. His ears flushed. Damn. Not like every man in the whole town wasn’t thinking the same thing about her.
She glided over toward him, placed her hands on his chest, then kissed his cheek. “How was the wedding night?”
“Idunn?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t seem like someone who’s lived for thousands of years.”
She laughed. “Because I talk too much? Or because I’m not afraid to call you out for staring at my tits? Which, by the way, you’ve been doing again. Not that I really mind. I know they’re nice. Anyway, how many immortal women do you know? I know a few. Mostly, priorities change when viewed against a canopy of eternity. False modesty falls away, and you’re left with a clearer view of the things that matter in life—happiness, laughter, companionship. Or else … or else you become so caught up in your own existence you forget the lives of those around you. Some of the other Vanir are like that. To them, your lives go by so fast they no longer take notice at all. It’s kind of sad.”
Odin worked his jaw, uncertain what to say to all that. He had been admiring her breasts. Again. And she did talk more than he expected a goddess to. But then, so often, her words seemed to hide more depth than her flippant tone would suggest.
“So did you give her an apple?”
“Yes.”
“I assume you remembered she’d be needing your sexual attentions right after … You should probably be with her instead of me. We all have needs.”
“Yes.” He shook his head as he walked away, trying to clear the lingering shadows, though he did not head toward Frigg. He needed to find Loki. He didn’t know how, but somehow he understood. Secrets of the world had unraveled before him. Maybe his blood brother could explain the visions. And what he’d seen of Ve, what did that mean? After scouring the town, he found Loki and Sigyn both sitting on the roof of a house. How and why they had climbed up there Odin couldn’t guess.
“Loki! Come down here, I would speak with you.”
The man shared a secret smile with Sigyn. Sleeping together, were they? Odin couldn’t blame Loki’s choice—Sigyn was a beauty, for certain. Ironic, that his blood brother would choose his wife’s sister. Irony, or urd, perhaps. Loki jumped off the roof, landing in a crouch in the snow beside Odin.
“How was she?” Odin asked before he could stop himself.
Loki frowned, sparing a glance back at Sigyn. “I’ve warned you about vulgarity, Odin. I’ve given Sigyn the apple you granted me.”
Odin’s jaw hung open for a moment. Loki had just met the girl. He restrained himself from asking if she’d really been so good in bed Loki needed her for the rest of time. And it meant the apples were truly gone. “I … forgive me, brother. I spoke out of turn. If you wish to spend your immortal life with Sigyn, I wish you happiness.”
“But that’s not why you’ve sought me out.”
“No. I bedded Frigg, as you suggested.”
“And you’ve absorbed some part of her seid.”
“I saw my brother … his eyes had turned red. His teeth had become like …”
Loki sighed. “Like a troll’s.”
“What?” Odin stopped in his tracks. “What does that mean? Do you know what’s happening to Ve?”
“I know. Odin … where do you think the trolls come from?”
Odin shook his head, taking a step back. “No. No! Trolls are the spawn of jottunar.”
“Do you confuse what you wish to be true with reality? They are men, twisted and warped by too long in the mist. Why do you think they still seek human wives, brother?”
“No!” Odin lunged forward and grabbed Loki’s tunic, shoving him back against the house. “Why! Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
Loki gripped his hands but didn’t attempt to pry them loose. Instead his crystal blue eyes bored into Odin’s, as if seeing his soul. “Because if it happened, there was naught you could do to stop it. This is a war within him, a process not easily halted once begun.”
“You. Should. Have. Told me!”
“And what would you have done differently? Do you think I would let you suffer if I knew a way to prevent it? We have no way to stop this.”
“I have a way! I will retrieve the amulet, and the ghost will end this!”
Odin shoved Loki against the house again, then stormed off. The ghost had threatened Odin, warned him the price of failure would be those he loved. So this had to be her work. It had to …
Hadding had given Odin’s brothers a house in town. Odin broke into a run, dashing there and flinging the door open. Vili lay sprawled on the floor, a naked girl under each arm. One groggily looked over at Odin as he burst in. He didn’t even bother to look at her, instead spinning until he spotted Ve, sitting in the corner.
He held one of the babes—Geri, assuming the embroidered blankets hadn’t been switched—in his arms, rocking the child. In the darkness, his eyes were glowing red. He opened his mouth too wide, revealing pointed teeth, a tongue slightly bulbous.
Hel and Freyja, this could not be happening.
Odin staggered over and reached down. “Ve. Give me Geri.” His voice sounded so hoarse in his own ears. A bare whisper. Pain built in his chest until he wanted to weep like a maid.
Ve’s eyes darted down to the babe, and his tongue licked the edge of his teeth.
“Give her to me. Now.”
At his commanding tone, his brother handed him the child. Odin took her gently, then backed out of the house. It was all too much. He’d failed again. He’d been doomed all along, maybe. He would not sit by and watch this happen. He would not allow this!
“I’m trying!” he shouted at the sky. “I’m fucking trying! I haven’t given up! I won’t!” Villagers had begun to stare at him, but he didn’t care. “I will get your damned Singasteinn back!”
At that, Geri began to cry. Gods, where was the other babe?
“Lord Odin?” Frigg asked.
He spun to find his wife, fully dressed, watching him along with the other concerned villagers. Odin shoved Geri at her, and she took the babe with a slight hesitation. She tried to speak, but he dashed off, back toward his brothers’ house. This time, Vili woke as Odin crashed inside.
Ve remained in the corner and actually backed farther into it when Odin opened the door. He backed away from the sunlight. He now feared the one thing all men counted on to protect them from the vaettir. Odin shook his head.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Vili demanded.
“Where is Freki?”
Vili looked to a blanket on a nearby cot. Odin dashed over without waiting for his brother. The child lay there, pawing at the air like a wolf in a dream. Mercifully asleep.
Pausing only long enough to sweep up the babe, he stormed over to Vili. With one hand, Odin yanked Vili to his feet by his beard. The big man yelped and looked as though he might have punched Odin if not for the babe in his arms.
“Watch. Your. Brother!” Odin glanced at Ve to make his point.
For the first time, Vili seemed to notice the red glow in Ve’s eyes. “Frey’s flaming sword! What happened?”
“Watch him. And let no one else call upon him until I return.”
“Where are you—”
“Just do it!” Odin stormed out to see Frigg, Sigyn, and half the gods-damned town staring at him.
“Are these your children?” Frigg asked.
What? Odin glanced at the babe in his arms. She thought the twins his bastards. “No.” But they were his, weren’t they? He’d taken them from their mother and spared them. And he could no longer count on Ve to watch over them. “I mean, they are not of my blood. I adopted them. They are mine now.”
“I see.” Frigg’s face gave no indication of what she thought about her new husband taking on wards. Wait until she found out the babes were werewolves. “I would speak with you, Lord Odin?”
Lord Odin? “Gods, woman, you’re my wife now. I would have thought …” Odin bit his tongue. He was going to say he would have thought he might have loosened her up a bit last night. But Loki was right—vulgarity had to be beneath him. He had to be a man worthy of kingship. A king to save the Aesir from this madness Hel had visited upon them. “I would have thought you’d be resting, my lady.” Odin had no time to talk with her. He needed set out for the Niflungar without delay. “I have to ride from here. I may be gone long.”
Frigg frowned, seeming to examine every detail of his face. “I see. And the apple for my father? It was … kind … of you to offer one to me, but his need is immediate.”
Odin pushed the other babe into Sigyn’s arms. “Take care of this child as if it were your own.” With that, he grabbed Frigg’s arm and pulled her away from the others, who continued to stare. “I gave the apples to those who were best suited for them, wife. Be satisfied you and your sister were among them.” Even had he another, he wouldn’t waste it on a weakling coward like Hadding. And he had already delayed too long in fulfilling his oath to the ghost. There was time left, but not so much. The solstice crept ever closer, now less than two moons away.
“I am grateful. But now you must give one to my father.”
Odin folded his arms over his chest. She was telling him what to do, was she? “Those apples were entrusted to me, personally, by the goddess Idunn. I decide what to do with them, wife.”
Frigg stiffened, her lips very still before she spoke. “You promised an apple to my father.”
Odin shook his head. “I promised to treat my allies right. The best way I can do that is by giving apples to those with the most to offer.”
“My father is the jarl of the Hasdingi!” For once her words came out blurted, her calm broken. But only for a moment, then she looked aghast at her own outburst. “He is your ally.”
“Frigg, I know this is a hard truth to face, but your father is not a well man.”
“Yes, my lord. That is why he needs an apple immediately.”
He shook his head sadly. “We don’t even know if an apple would reverse the ravages he’s already suffered.”
“Well, you have to try!”
The woman had best get control of her temper. “I am a jarl, and soon I will be king. I will not be told what I have to do, not by you nor anyone else! Your father hides in fear behind his walls, complacent and weak. He has no place in the future I will build.”
By now a crowd had gathered around the two of them. Damn her. She’d raised her voice first. Now he couldn’t back down even if he wanted to.
“You will save my father, Odin,” she spat, her voice pitched low enough that others couldn’t hear. “Or I will place such a curse on you you’ll wish you had!”
Odin’s fists clenched. He caught himself raising a hand toward her and restrained himself. Curse him? He’d had far too much of witches and ghosts and curses. Ve was losing himself, perhaps because of a curse, and now his own wife threatened him with another? “Do not presume to threaten me, woman! You ate the last apple yourself,” he whispered back. “Consider that.”
Her face grew pale, and she fell back a step, shaking her head.
“I ride for the Reidgotaland!” he shouted to the assembled crowd.
Without another word he stormed off and shouted for Sleipnir. Moments later the horse came trotting over the hills. Odin leapt into the saddle.
“Take us north,” Odin said. “Far north, hard and fast.”
He did not look back as the horse galloped away from the camp. Not at first. Not until he already knew it would be too late to see any of the people he had just left behind.
Part III
Fifth Moon
36
The runes in lower Halfhaugr swam before Sigyn’s eyes, taking on new shapes, winding and unraveling in a clarity she had never before hoped for. Hand to her temple, she panted, desperate to stop the motion of a swirling world changing around her. But the world had not changed, she had. Whether from the apple or her hallucinatory experience with Loki, something inside her had shifted, had opened to view the world in new light, as with the parting of mists. She swept her hair back from her face.
And how had that all occurred? She’d had her pleasure of men before, and might have even called it a spiritual experience. This time, though, had reached a whole new magnitude of transcendence, had prompted visions in her, perhaps not unlike those her sister experienced. But how? Had the apple made Sigyn a vӧlva as well?
So often Sigyn had doubted the tales, the stories, the many beliefs men held about the Otherworlds. How could they possibly know what went on in places they could not see or touch? But she saw something now.
She shoved the table aside once again, clearing away any obstruction before these runes. Apples of immortality, seid, visions, Otherworlds—if such things existed, then perhaps too the dverg
ar had come from those Otherworlds, perhaps they did indeed carve a prophecy down here. One no one else among the Aesir read or understood. If so, it then fell to Sigyn to unravel the secrets lost to men.
She brushed dust from the wall.
The end times. She had seen it before, but it now it seemed to sing in her mind, the voice of the stone booming like a herald of darkness. The runes, taken as a whole, rather than one at a time, began to paint a clearer picture in her mind’s eye, an unfolding play in the shadows while she stood transfixed, letting her present surroundings fall away.
The end times. The doom of the gods. Ragnarok …
Brother would fight brother …
Sisters’ sons would break the bonds of kinship …
The world falters …
Axe time, sword time, broken shields, wind time, wolf time …
Her heart slammed against her ribs. The words seemed to echo all around her from the unending shadows. The crash of iron. Her legs sinking in a sea of blood.
The Destroyer wakes …
Sigyn slipped to her knees, hands splashing down in the blood. She raised them to her face, staring in horror, unable to quite get the scream past her throat. Stretching into infinity spread row upon endless row of corpses, now waking, grim and merciless. Marching under the heel of the Queen of Mists. Hel was coming for Sigyn, coming to feast upon her soul.
Tears tumbled down her cheeks. Blood seeped from her fingers. She trembled, shook, freezing from the inside out.
Was Hel the Destroyer? Was she to break free of Niflheim and end Midgard?
“Sigyn?” A voice, far away. “Sigyn!”
Strong arms enwrapped her, jerked her to her feet. She shuddered, shut her eyes. Blinked. Agilaz held her in his arms, tight grip on her biceps. Concern on his usually emotionless face.
“Papa?”
He pulled her close into an embrace. She almost never called him that. He had never claimed to be her father, nor encouraged her to think of him as such. But sometimes, in the darkest nights, a girl wanted her parents. Cast out by those who had birthed her, she would draw solace from those who accepted her. They understood, especially Olrun.