by Ann Gimpel
I’d just looked at him and asked if what he and I had just done, which amounted to an exorcism and hadn’t been especially pleasant on his end, was preferable. With a great deal of grumbling, he’d shambled out of the clearing in front of my cottage. No teleporting from now on. Everyone had to use Bifrost.
Was it only a matter of time before evil penetrated Rowan and me? And if it hassled Ro, what would it do to our son? The urgency I’d felt earlier to scoop her up and lock her away somewhere safe returned with a fury.
I tried to gather as much air in my lungs as I could. It was thinning out, and soon there’d be none at all. Sequestering Rowan somewhere was out of the question. She’d even taken exception when I’d inquired if this trip to the bottom of the Nine Worlds would be safe for her.
“Hang on,” Quade told me.
I grabbed one of the horns that grew from the junction where his neck and body met up. Usually, the dragon was chattier. He may have intuited I needed to be alone with my thoughts, or else he was worried about where we were going. Or he might have other reasons for his silence I couldn’t guess at.
Regardless, I’ve come to respect the dragon beneath me. He’s wise and thinks things through. The unexpected news about Nidhogg being my father hadn’t changed our relationship, and I was grateful. It would have been awful if Quade had begun pussyfooting around me for fear of Nidhogg’s wrath.
I haven’t exactly sorted things out, but Nidhogg appears to play two very different roles. In the Nine Worlds, he is the Norse dragon, emphasis on the. He commands dragons who inhabit the Nine Worlds, and they defer to his directives. His other role is on Fire Mountain, the dragons’ ancestral home world. There he is one of twelve elders who manage dragonkind via a council structure.
Quade hit what felt like air pockets. They tossed us up many meters and then we were sucked down. Nothing left to breathe, and for once the absence of an atmosphere tugged at me. It wasn’t only an issue of no air. Whatever remained had a negative gravitational pull and felt as if it was trying to suck every last molecule of oxygen out my pores. Sort of like traveling from sea level to ten thousand meters in one fell swoop.
I wasn’t at all certain how long I’d remain conscious. My lungs burned, and my throat and nose felt like they’d been lined with sandpaper. The blackness around us was absolute. No form. No substance. Not a hint of shading.
“Look dead ahead.” Quade had shifted to telepathy. The rough suction couldn’t be easy on him, either.
What had been impenetrable gloom blew up in front of us. I expected shockwaves, but nothing traveled anywhere in this negative atmosphere. The rounded bottom of what I assumed was the Nine Worlds flashed into view. It was enormous, and I only saw the part right in front of me.
Yggdrasil’s roots were a tangled mess as they coiled around the bottom of what might be a sphere or an ellipse. Quade flew lower and then horizontally. Stretching my neck, I stared upward. The One Tree’s roots had blackened in places, but it looked more like they’d caught fire than rotted. The black spots had spread, though, until entire patches of roots were clearly dead.
Perhaps fire had weakened them? And then rot had set in?
I caught flashes of green and knobby wood around the black circles.
“Doesn’t look good.” Rowan’s voice slithered into my mind.
“No, it doesn’t. We have to talk about it.”
“Later. When we can breathe.”
I didn’t bother answering. My energy was fading fast.
I had no idea how the One Tree’s roots usually looked. I’d never been here before. I also couldn’t estimate how long ago the damage had occurred, or if Yggdrasil was in the midst of repairing it or had jettisoned the ravaged spots.
I blinked a few times and forced myself to absorb what was spread above me. My head pounded, and my vision was hazing around the edges. We were a long way from transiting the bottom of the Nine Worlds. It loomed over us, extending endlessly. Some of Yggdrasil’s roots wriggled like oversized snakes. It might have been a trick of my air-starved brain, but I thought I saw grayish conduits surfing through the void, heading right for the One Tree. When I tried to count how many, they danced around, shifting position.
Where had they come from?
Floating, bumping into one another, and moving on, they held a hallucinogenic quality, so maybe they weren’t real after all.
“We are done here,” Quade said without preamble. It clearly wasn’t up for discussion, and I was fine with leaving. Before I passed out and fell off the dragon into goddess only knew where. The tubular crawly things gave me the creeps. I didn’t smell anything foul, but I sensed it.
Quade spread his wings and flew back the way we’d come. It took forever to reach the edges of the One Tree’s roots. The dragon was definitely flying slower. I felt the strain on him and offered up power of my own. I looked around for Zelli and Rowan but didn’t see them.
Probably didn’t mean anything. I hadn’t seen them since we left my cottage. Quade extended his great wings and took advantage of the lack of gravity to move upward. We passed through the same bumpy spot we had on the way in. Well, perhaps not the precise place, but it felt similar. Zero air yielded to a spot where I could breathe. Finally, my reflexive breaths did something other than make my lungs hurt.
We crashed out of the blackness and into the clearing next to my cottage. Quade pulled things out at the last minute, so we didn’t quite splat onto the dirt. Gwydion was where we’d left him, with still more roots twining about his body.
“Sorry.” Smoke and fiery ash rained from Quade as he caught his breath. “I wanted to remain longer, and so I waited almost too long.”
I scrambled down from his black-scaled hide, catching my trousers on rough areas in the process. “Have you been there before?”
“Aye.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. Maybe he was still regaining his composure. “Almost too long” sounded bad, as if we might not have made it out of there. “Did it look different?” I prodded after a glance Gwydion’s way.
“Very. Dealing with the enemy will be difficult in that location. They appear to have figured out a way to maneuver in the void. We have yet to accomplish such a thing.”
My brain wasn’t exactly firing on all burners. “Those gray things. Those were the enemy?” I couldn’t think of what else he might be referring to.
The dragon nodded to the accompaniment of clanking scales. “Did ye not feel their wickedness?”
“No. I couldn’t feel anything. Uh, shouldn’t Zelli and Rowan be back by now?”
“They should. Let me see if I can reach Zelli.”
I was recovered enough, worry gnawed at my belly like a cancer as dragon magic ebbed and flowed around Quade. If it was taking this long, he must have reached Zelli. Or had he failed and was trying over and over? I wanted to grip his forelegs and shake him to hurry things along.
What I did instead was dash inside and grab Gwydion’s staff. I’d had an idea, and saw no reason not to test it. If Rowan was in trouble, I needed Gwydion far more than Yggdrasil did. The magical accessory felt unpleasant in my hand, cold and prickly.
“Stop that,” I told the staff. “Your master needs you.”
The carved length of wood must have understood because the harsh sensations ceased. Back outside, I hustled to where Gwydion sat and uncurled one of his hands from around a beefy root. In its place, I positioned the staff. It began to glow with a clean white light immediately.
So far, so good. It recognized its owner, and like as not the one who’d carved it. Gwydion shook his head. When he looked at me, the hazy, unfocused expression left his blue eyes. Eyes that he narrowed as understanding crashed over him.
Without a word, he began uncoiling the roots from around himself. He was gentle, almost as if he understood hasty movements would encourage the sentient wood to cling tighter. Yggdrasil has always been slow responding to anything. It’s why I was able to escape its clutches when it made a
bid to absorb me.
Gwydion was down to two roots, big thick ones that didn’t wish to yield. He touched his staff to one, and it drew back as if he’d injured it. I moved the last one aside, and Gwydion sprang to his feet shaking himself from head to toe much as a dog might have.
“Thanks, mate,” he gritted out. “I have no bloody idea how it conned me into feeding power into it.”
“One note at a time,” I suggested. “It sang to you, right?”
“It did indeed.” He cast a speculative glance my way. “It’s tried the same thing with you.”
“Rather recently,” I replied, followed by, “Freeing you wasn’t as altruistic as all that. Rowan and Zelli aren’t back yet.”
“What’s he doing?” Gwydion looked Quade’s way.
“Hunting for them.” If anything, the magic around the dragon had thickened. It didn’t make me feel any better.
“What are we waiting for?” Gwydion said firmly. “We must go after them.”
“Not as simple as all that. Quade and I barely escaped the airless gorge around the bottom of the Nine Worlds.”
“There should be air and light farther up,” Gwydion said. “Or Yggdrasil would have foundered long since.”
It made sense. “Mmph. What we saw must have been the largest of the tree’s root systems, the one that drinks from Hvergelmir.”
“A pool in Niflheim, right?” Gwydion asked.
I nodded. “More like a rushing cascade. Pool is too tame a word. The other primary root systems drink from Mimir, a well in Jotunheim, and from the well of Urd in Asgard.”
Gwydion tapped his staff on the ground and spoke a power word. It made my ears hurt, but the roots that had been writhing once he extricated himself quieted and began a gradual retreat. I’d run out of patience and was about to break into Quade’s trance or conversation or whatever he was involved in when the magic swirling around the dragon broke into silvery streamers and dissipated.
He focused his spinning gaze my way. “They are in Asgard. We shall meet them there.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Not certain, but they ran into trouble. Hel was close and assisted them.”
Breath rattled from me. If I knew anything about Hel, she’d be a lot pushier about sticking Rowan in a safe spot until our son was born. More insistent than she’d been before.
“See you there,” Gwydion said. “I know the way.” He paused for a beat. “I am in your debt, Master Sorcerer.”
“We’re allies,” I told him. “Means we help each other without expecting tit for tat.”
“That may be, but I still owe you.” Celtic magic, green and gold and smelling of mint, thickened around him before he vanished.
Twining my own magic into a ramp, I returned to Quade’s back. Gwydion was gone, and the dragon and I may as well travel together. Only a few roots remained above ground in my courtyard. I wasn’t fooled, though. Yggdrasil had located safe harbor in front of my cottage. More roots were probably slinking beneath the dirt, ready to emerge when their need was great.
I should tell the One Tree I wasn’t always here, but it wouldn’t understand. In its arboreal mind, its needs were primary. It wasn’t so different from Odin in that regard. Speaking of which, “Will Nidhogg be in Asgard?” I asked Quade.
“I doona know.”
We bounced through a choppy spot, and the golden streets of the Aesir formed around us. Quade flew to the enormous stone-lined enclosure inside Valhalla’s gates. The howls of the dead reached me immediately. Something had riled them up.
“See you within,” Quade told me as I climbed down from my perch. He took to the air again, clearly having a way into Odin’s main hall that didn’t involve stairs.
Rowan ran down Valhalla’s broad stone risers and into my arms. I held onto her, breathing her in. Mint, vanilla, amber with something unique to Rowan. “Sorry if I scared you,” she murmured.
Gwydion shimmered into being next to us.
Rowan’s eyes widened. “You got free.”
“Thanks to Bjorn.” Gwydion shook his head. “Perhaps we might not mention that little incident to the others.”
Rowan’s generous mouth stretched into a grin. “I’ll hold your secret forever.”
“Thanks, lass.” The warrior magician bounded up the steps, staff clutched in his hand as if he’d never let it go again.
“It wasn’t me,” I told Rowan, “but his staff that turned the tides. Once I placed it in his hands, he broke out of thrall.”
“Smart of you.” She moved a hand between us and wrapped it around her onyx amulet. “Celts often use external implements to enhance their power. Gwydion carved that staff and infused it with enchantments. It’s not the first he’s owned. They break in battle, and he makes another.”
I stepped back and dropped my hands onto her shoulders. “What happened?”
“We flew a bit too close. One of the root things uncoiled and grabbed my arm.” A shadow crossed her features. “Nothing to breathe, which made fighting back doubly hard. Zelli tried fire, but fire requires air to burn. I stabbed at the root with my dirk, but it was too small to do much good.”
My face must have given me away, shown her the anguish and helplessness roiling through me. It was also clear I’d mislabeled the black places in the One Tree’s roots. They couldn’t be the result of fire, so they had to be extensive rot.
“Since we weren’t going to escape downward,” Rowan went on doggedly, “Zelli blasted a path through the snarl of roots. I guess we surprised Yggdrasil because it let go of me to guard itself from us breaking through its perimeter.”
“Too late,” I muttered.
“It was,” Rowan agreed. “We were already through, but damn, what a fucking nightmare of a labyrinth in there. At least there was air, though. Between the dragon blasting fire and me shrieking power words, I’m shocked all the dead in Hel didn’t come to investigate.”
“They might have, but I beat them to it,” a deep, smooth voice spoke from behind me. I’d recognize Hel’s inflection anywhere.
I spun to face her. Much like the last meeting in Odin’s halls, she hadn’t bothered with a glamour. Swathed in a leather skirt and woolen vest, Hel’s bones were visible all down one side of her body. Long black hair hit her at knee level, and her dark eyes glittered with a cross between anger and relief.
“Thank you for intervening.” I kept my tone formal.
“About that—” she began.
I chopped a hand downward. “We are in your debt, but it doesn’t mean we’re obliged to follow your suggestions.”
Hel raised a sharply arched dark brow. “Och, and just what suggestions do ye expect to hear from me?”
“Never mind.” Rowan smiled warmly. “You showing up when you did was welcome. Meant we didn’t have to fight our way out of any more of those roots.”
“They used to be thicker. The One Tree is languishing,” Hel said and motioned to us. “Come within. Odin needs to understand what has happened, although he may have already heard about it from Nidhogg.”
I took Ro’s hand, and we trooped up the stairs after Hel. Perhaps I’d misjudged her. Or maybe she was waiting until we weren’t so emotional to remind us of the baby’s wellbeing. Several flights later, we trotted down the broad hall I remembered with its dust bunnies and battered coats of armor. The doors to the meeting hall had been propped open.
Nidhogg stood near Zelli and Quade beneath a bank of dirty windows. Gwydion sat next to Odin and Thor, chatting quietly.
Before I lost the train of thought that had occurred to me beneath the Nine Worlds, I herded Rowan toward the dragons. Once we were close, I said, “Nidhogg, may I ask a question?”
“Of course, but I might not answer it.”
I felt like making a face at him, but didn’t. “Legends say you drink from Hvergelmir.”
Nidhogg snorted laughter, along with steam and smoke. “Och, they do say as much. They also credit me with gnawing Yggdrasil’s roots from that
pool.”
When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything else, I risked adding, “Are they true?”
His eyes spun faster, turning from silver to green and back again. “Mayhap once, long ago, but not for millennia. Why is it important?”
“I’m trying to figure out if things have changed beneath the Nine Worlds,” I answered.
“She is more likely to know than me.” Nidhogg extended a talon toward Hel, who stood a meter away. “She is far closer to Niflheim than me these days.”
Odin’s ravens flew so close, feathers brushed my back. Cawing, they herded us, dragons and all, to the table. In a few words, I sketched out the events behind today, beginning with Yggdrasil’s roots invading my courtyard. Then Rowan described her dilemma.
“Why did ye not call for me?” Nidhogg asked.
“Ye’re joking, aye?” Zelli pushed herself taller. “If I’d quit fighting, the roots would have yanked Rowan right off my back.”
“Do you know what the gray tubes are?” I asked Odin point-blank. May as well cut to the meat of things so long as we were here. “Are they why you deployed teams to the boundary near the outer borderworlds?”
Thor jabbed his father with an elbow. Odin punched Thor in the side. “Gwydion and I made a pact to work more closely together.”
“Aye, I heard as much and chalked it up to political maneuvering,” Thor said, his voice so deep it reverberated in the pit of my stomach.
“Best chalk it up to truth,” Odin retorted.
“The gray things,” I prodded.
Odin took a long slug from one of his drinking horns. The pungent reek of mead wafted my way, and I wished I had my own horn to slurp from. “I know they are there,” Odin said. “They are some type of conduit carrying malevolent energy. ’Tis been eating away at Yggdrasil’s roots for some time now.”
“It appears the darkness has moved beyond the tree and is attacking your subjects,” Gwydion said.
Odin focused his fog-colored eye at me. “Why was I not told?”
“I tried. I said I needed help.”