Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI (Loki Vowed Asgard Would Burn)

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Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI (Loki Vowed Asgard Would Burn) Page 19

by C. Gockel


  “He shouldn’t be nice because he’s afraid … he should be nice because …”

  “He’s not a rapist,” Harding says. “He’s just a jerk with mommy issues.”

  Amy touches her throat. Everyone has heard Rush mumbling about his mom in his sleep … he always sounds frightened and young. She sort of thought it was an unspoken rule that no one talked about it.

  Harding shakes her head. “Look, forget it. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. It’s not Rush we have to worry about.”

  Amy doesn’t know if she believes that, but she lets the subject drop. Scooting closer to the fire, she holds her hands out to the warmth.

  A few minutes later, the door opens and Beatrice comes in, umbrella under her arm and Gerðr beside her. The Frost Giantess looks around the room, slips off her bracelets and takes off the hat she wears on her damp white-blonde hair. Amy makes room for them beside the fire. They’re both shivering.

  Amy bites her lip. “Sorry there was no hot running water.” Looking at the fireplace, her heart falls. “They used to have a building that was always warm on the inside, and metal stoves around the fireplaces. It was like they were just coming out of a dark age …”

  “Looks like they’re back in the dark ages,” Harding says. Picking up a spare log, she points at a groove in the floor close to the fire. “I believe you when you said they had stoves. Look at this hole in the floor—that was probably the intake area. Also, I noticed holes in the fireplace where it looks like walls have been torn down. Probably metal walls that forced the heat around, conserving heat and fuel before it went up the chimney. It was simple technology, but not widely in use until the 1800s.” Her voice drifts off—she sounds as sad as Amy feels.

  Gerðr rubs her hands in front of the flames. Little tendrils of tree branches from the eaves wave in her direction. When she speaks, her English is flawless. “In most of the realms such technology is not needed. We use magical stoves or stones for heating and cooking. The manufacture of such things is a specialty of the Red Dwarves.”

  Amy stamps her feet and winces. Tired of wearing boots on her blisters, she slips them off. The stones beneath her feet are cold. There is only one bit of adornment in the room, an enormous bear hide laid out as a rug in the center of the floor. Picking up a back paw, she drags it toward the fire.

  “Oh, what’s that?” says Beatrice.

  Amy turns to see her grandmother walking over to a wooden door in the floor. Amy blinks. Loki had no memories of wooden doors in the floor.

  Going over, Harding sits on her heels and tugs on a small metal ring. The door lifts with a creak. “Hmmm…” she says. “Metal pipes and what looks like an access tunnel.”

  Beatrice and Amy sit down beside her. Suddenly the cold isn’t so bothersome ... a mystery! Amy peers into the tunnel. There’s just enough space to crawl through.

  “Do you think you should be opening it?” asks Gerðr. “It could be dangerous.”

  Amy meets her grandmother’s eyes, and then Harding’s. All of them look at the Frost Giantess.

  “If it was dangerous, they should have locked it,” says Harding.

  “Looks like pipes for heating the floor,” says Beatrice, tapping one with her umbrella. “I’d like heat if we’re going to be here the rest of the winter.”

  Bouncing on her heels, Amy says, “I’m game, let’s go!” She can feel warm air rushing up from below.

  Raising an eyebrow, Harding unholsters her Glock. “Let me check it out first.” In a smooth movement, she hops down into the tunnel, pulls a flashlight from some invisible pocket, and ducks her head beneath the floor.

  At that moment, the door opens and Steve stands in the frame, Claire next to him, and the other men behind him. His face is set to serious and angry. Amy’s jaw drops. What will he say? It probably isn’t nice or politically appropriate to poke around your allies’ fortress-type place, and Steve is all about politics.

  Harding doesn’t get out of the hole. “Yep, looks like a service tunnel.”

  Hastily putting on her hat and bracelets, Gerðr says in her own language, “I told them it might be dangerous.”

  “Just more pipes and stuff,” calls Harding. “Warmer down here, too …”

  “Harding, get out of there!” Steve barks, stepping into the room. Harding backs up and gracefully vaults out of the hole. Amy’s about to defend the Marine’s actions but before she can, Steve comes over and frowns into the tunnel. “Rush, you’ve got plumbing experience. Get down there.” All the other guys but the ones on guard come rushing in, and Sigyn, Nari and Valli bring up the rear.

  “Yes, Sir!” says Rush, still wet from his own bath. He jogs over and jumps down.

  All the other guys come and crowd around the hole. Bohdi comes over, too. He leans against Amy, more than he needs to. She smiles and leans back, even though she doesn’t have to. His hair is wet, he’s shaved, and he smells like soap.

  “Was it the central heating system you talked about earlier?” Bohdi asks, peering down into the tunnel.

  “Could be!” says Rush, disappearing from view.

  Normally, Amy thinks of the SEAL team as puppy-like—physical, full of energy, but ready to snap to attention at the first sound of a whistle. At the moment, they remind her more of curious cats. They buzz around her whispering about floor heating and flushing toilets. She looks up at Gerðr, Sigyn, Nari, and Valli. By contrast they’re standing back, looking uncertain.

  She sees Steve looking at them, too, his gaze calculating. “I had a little talk to Heiðr,” he says. “She seems to believe that the running water, central heating, and other technology that used to exist in this place were magic.”

  “They weren’t,” Amy says. “Any large magic expenditure is blocked by the trees.”

  Larson rubs the back of his neck. “Ralf, and even us, we’ve been using magic and it hasn’t been blocked. Are you sure the trees here are going to block Odin if he opens a World Gate?”

  Amy blinks. And then she knows how to explain it. “Just like a house plant doesn’t tilt its leaves to a weak light source, the trees here don’t respond to a little magic.” Brow furrowing, she remembers the tiny fronds of branches reaching toward Gerðr. “Or, they don’t respond as forcefully. It makes sense if you think about it. It takes comparably more energy to bend a stick, compared to say an arm, that’s essentially on hinges. Flexing the tough cellulose of plant structures ...” She looks around the room and sees eyes glazing over. “Too much detail?”

  Larson gives her what might be a tight smile, but it is utterly lacking in the lips-turned-up part. “We get the picture.”

  “We saw what happened to Thor’s lightning,” says Bohdi.

  Raising a hand, Steve says, “Back on topic … Heiðr invited some dwarves to investigate the old magical devices, but the two lead dwarves on the project met an accident and the others left.”

  Amy doesn’t like the sound of that. “What sort of accident?”

  Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know.” His tone says he doesn’t like it, either.

  She gulps and looks down the hole. She thought she heard the Frost Giants harassing the dwarf inn owner earlier. Dwarves are generally reviled in the other realms for being small, subterranean, and magically weak. But it’s their weakness that has allowed them to become the craftspeople of the magical worlds. Because their innate magic is weak, they’ve perfected the art of harnessing it in magical objects. In a way, of all the magical races, dwarves are the most human.

  Across the room, Cruz says, “So how long are we staying here?”

  Amy sees Steve and Larson exchange a glance. Frowning, Larson looks away first. Steve says, “Heiðr revealed a few options for us—”

  Every single person in the room tenses. And then Steve finishes. “—but none of them will be available until spring.”

  The mood plummets. Shoulders slouch. Gazes shift to the floor.

  Rush backs up so he’s sitting directly below everyone. “Looks like a heating
system, alright. There is probably a pump somewhere. We might be able to fix it, depending on how it’s powered.” Pulling himself out, he grimaces. “We’d have to check the pipes to make sure they’re not busted. Don’t know how we’d replace them if they were broken ...”

  “Can we patch them up?” Steve asks. “I can weld. Worked in a machine shop some summers during high school.”

  Amy blinks. “It’s legal for a minor to weld?”

  Steve grins. It’s a real grin, not a patented Steve public-press-op-photo smile. “Nope, but I didn’t tell.”

  “I can weld, too,” says Larson, and Amy thinks she sees a twinkle in his normally too-stern blue eyes.

  “Me, too,” says Redman. “I took a metal sculpture class in community college.” Everyone looks at him. He shrugs. “I like playing with fire.”

  Steve chuckles. “Don’t we all?” There are echoing chuckles throughout the room.

  Harding taps her chin. “We could make a welder with a battery from one of the snowmobiles.”

  “We’d have to go back and get them,” says Berry.

  Amy remembers the hunters in Loki’s memories, calling to one another across long distances. “The Frost Giants have a communication system … I don’t know how it works precisely. But if we had tradeable goods maybe one of their hunting parties would bring them back for us.”

  “We’ve got tradeable goods,” says Rush, with a smile.

  “What sort of tradeable goods?” Sigyn asks.

  Rush grins wide. Blushing a little, Tucker rolls his eyes. “Of course you brought some.”

  “Cigarettes?” asks Bohdi, a little too hopefully.

  “Nope,” says Rush. “Por—”

  “Don’t finish,” Steve snaps.

  “Finish what?” asks Claire.

  “Ohhhhhhh,” says Bohdi.

  Grinning, Redman runs a hand through his sandy brown hair. “You’ve been holding out on us, Rush.”

  Amy blinks, still in the dark.

  “Of course we’d have to charge the batteries once we got them back,” says Bohdi.

  The room explodes in suggestions from everyone at once. Some are serious and plausible, like building a windmill. Some, like Bohdi’s suggestion of building a giant gerbil-wheel turbine and throwing Rush in to power it, are less plausible. But what strikes Amy is how happy all the humans are. Maybe it’s having a solvable problem, a distraction from the gravity of the situation.

  Clearing her throat, Harding says, “My comm equipment has a trundle charger. We could use that.”

  “Aww, but I wanted to see Rush in a gerbil wheel,” says Redman.

  “All right, guys,” says Steve. “We need to come up with a plan. Heiðr says that this place was abandoned for nearly two hundred years. She’d like to restore it to its former glory. Considering how we probably don’t have enough tradeable goods to feed us through the winter, it’s a problem we need to solve.” He turns his gaze to Amy. “Lewis, what can you tell us about how this place used to work—and how this place burned down?”

  “Did they burn Gullveig at the stake, like in the myths?” says Thomas, the historian of the team.

  “They may well have,” Sigyn mutters darkly.

  Thomas clears his throat. “And did Loki eat her heart and … you know …”

  Amy feels her skin heat. Before she can think of a proper retort, Valli strides toward the broad-shouldered SEAL. “He did not eat her heart and then shit out all the trolls and ogres in the world. That is a disgusting myth and I should—”

  Nari catches his brother. Eyes on Amy, he says, “Would you like to tell them what really happened?”

  Amy opens her mouth, but before she can get a word out, Tucker says, “Wait, why is he asking you to tell us?” He tilts his head, his cornflower blue eyes on Amy. He looks concerned as much as confused. “Wouldn’t Loki’s own sons or his wife know the story better?”

  Amy gulps. Explaining the situation back on Earth for Sigyn and her sons had been very uncomfortable … she doesn’t want to do it again. Sigyn comes to her rescue. “I am Loki’s ex-wife. At the time of his passing, he was courting Dr. Lewis. He passed all his memories to her—giving Dr. Lewis a first-person perspective.”

  Courting isn’t the right word, but Amy doesn’t correct her. Sigyn drops a hand on her shoulder and says, “My husband always had good taste when it came to his romantic partners.” Sigyn squeezes her shoulder and says quietly, “Go ahead, tell them about Loki and Gullveig.” Amy bows her head. What Loki had with Gullveig was different.

  x x x x

  Loki isn’t in the habit of leaving feasts early, but he wants to chat with Gullveig alone. Gullveig has an entourage, so he needs to get where she will be going before she does. A bribe from Odin’s stockpile of gold rings is enough to convince a serving girl to lead him to Gullveig’s quarters. The door, of course, is locked.

  Loki reaches into his pocket to pull out his lock-picking tools. And then he pauses. While he was locked up in the cave he’d had plenty of time to study the journal of Luthor. He’d learned to move things with his mind. It’s difficult, and magically intensive, but he’s curious. He looks at the roof above his head. Twisting tree branches make up some of the rafters. Turning his focus to the door, he reaches out with a hand, pulls magic into himself and —

  One of the branches whips down and lashes around his wrist. He tries to focus his magic on removing it—it doesn’t budge, but another branch whips down next to the first. He relaxes … and the branches go limp. He pulls them off and then spends a few minutes tucking them back above his head. And then he pulls out his tools, opens the doors, slips in, and stretches out on Gullveig’s bed —

  x x x x

  “Lewis, you don’t really need to be this detailed,” Larson says.

  Amy pauses mid-sentence. “But that seems important.” She’s not sure why … She rubs her forehead. “The trees whipped out and attacked him when he was performing energy-intensive magic. It would have trapped him there if he hadn’t stopped.”

  “Could be useful,” says Bohdi.

  Amy sits up a little straighter, and Larson scowls.

  Bohdi smiles and raises an eyebrow. “If we had to contain, say, a critter that is magical all the time—a chatty magical man-eating dragon, maybe?”

  “Haven’t seen many of those around these parts,” says Larson.

  Steve says, “I’d rather hear all the details. We don’t know what will be useful.”

  Amy flushes. Steve supports her, too?

  Larson shakes his head. “I still don’t see … Whatever. Go on.”

  “Wait!” says Steve, throwing up a hand. “This story is suitable for kids, right?”

  “Dad!” says Claire.

  Amy blinks. “Oh, no, Loki wasn’t going to—right then—no.” Just later … She looks up at Sigyn. The other woman shrugs. Of course, she knows.

  “That’s good,” says Harding, bent over her comm equipment, pumping a trundle thing with one foot. “Because he was sounding like a creeper.”

  In halting English, Gerðr says softly, “If I understand creeper … No, Loki not take advantage …” Her eyes flit to Amy and then away. “... by force.”

  Amy takes a deep breath at the silent implication. Not by force, but by trickery. And at least to Gerðr, Amy was a “victim.” She closes her eyes, hit by a roiling flood of emotions. It hadn’t been like that. Loki had never lied to her or promised her anything. He just hadn’t felt the same way about her that she did about him. She was fun to play with but …

  She feels a nudge at her shoulder. She lifts her eyes to find Bohdi gazing at her. The firelight is making his eyes appear orange. “Hey,” he says, “you okay?”

  Blinking, she looks around and sees everyone staring at her. “Yes,” she says, and Bohdi doesn’t sneeze, even though it’s a lie. Once she’d thought that he was Loki, and the sneeze was his equivalent to the all-over itch Loki used to get. But he isn’t Loki. And that’s a good thing.

  She pu
shes back a lock of hair, and begins again, “So Gullveig comes back—”

  x x x x

  Loki wakes to the sound of Gullveig softly padding around the room. He knows he should get up and announce himself, but her bed is deliciously comfy…

  The curtains draw back at the foot of the bed, and there is Gullveig, silhouetted by the lamplight, a gleaming pistol in her hand. “It’s you,” she says. For a moment neither Loki nor Gullveig move. Loki stares at the pistol, transfixed like a bird staring at a snake. He wonders if the branches would reach him before he gathered enough magic to stop the bullet. He frowns. Or, he could just blow the thing up in her hand—he could do that so quickly the branches wouldn’t have time to gather. But he’d hate to. Aside from the lie about the gift of sight, he rather likes Gullveig.

  The leader of the Iron Wood takes a deep breath and sets the pistol down carefully upon the bed. “Come to kill me, already?” she whispers.

  Loki raises an eyebrow. He’s half-wrapped in the fur throw that was lying on her bed and is staring at her between the tips of his boots. It was quite rude of him not to take them off and he’s actually feeling a little guilty about it. Rudeness aside, this is not the pose of an assassin. “Kill you?”

  She looks away, and for a moment she looks so much like Aggie that he finds his breath catching.

  x x x x

  Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Bohdi fights the urge to sneeze from Amy’s lie. “Aggie?”

  “Anganboða,” Sigyn says. “His first wife, and my friend.”

  Bohdi gulps, remembering the beautiful woman lying in his arms in his dream.

  Thomas, the burly historian says, “Did Odin kill her? Like in the myths?”

  “Let’s just say I had a few reasons to want Baldur dead,” Sigyn hisses.

  “Really?” Bohdi says, “Odin said she committed suicide.” And Bohdi had sensed no lie.

  “She was depressed,” Amy says, sounding confused. “Loki found her … you were there, Sigyn.”

  Sigyn looks away. “I know your kind’s definition of depression. You believe it is caused by a chemical imbalance.” Eyes flashing, she turns back to the group. “But sometimes depression is a logical response to a situation that is untenable! She had Prince Baldur’s eye, and when Loki was captured and tortured for thirty days, it was Baldur who prevented Odin from negotiating for his release.” Sigyn gives a tight smile. “Baldur visited Anganboða many times during those thirty days to tell her not to worry, that she would be welcome in his household as a princess should Loki not return.” Her lip curls. “However, a similar offer of hospitality was not extended to her daughter, Helen.”

 

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