by Matt Larkin
While Vafthrudnir was wont to expound on the glory of Brimir, he did not speak oft of his father, as if the topic itself were forbidden. Even then, as a young woman, Skadi had sensed a depth of pain behind his eyes. Deeper than the pain all frost jotunnar held at the abandonment of the Great Father. It was the beginning of the end of Brimir.
Huffing, constrained by the limits of her mortal form, Skadi made her way to the top where Vafthrudnir had carved his Refuge into the mountainside.
Hateful flames flickered in braziers at the entrance, burning away mist. Inside, Vafthrudnir called on the Art to infuse ice with inner radiance, but out here, he kindled flame, as if to test his own kindred.
Skadi stood panting at the entryway, shaking her head.
Did her old teacher know of the ultimate fate of his father? Aurgelmir had ventured into Midgard, perhaps even made the first breach, and there—calling himself Ymir—had slaughtered Aesir to bring out the Destroyer. The man who would dare to stand against Hel. The goddess had commanded it, Skadi knew from her host’s memories, though why Ymir had agreed to a mission like to end in his death, she didn’t know. A bargain made, but the goddess took few confidants into her counsel, and Skadi could not count herself among them.
She ventured inside, having little doubt she was expected. No one surprised Vafthrudnir.
He met her, not where she’d have expected on the upper balcony where he oft gave his lectures, but in the foyer. The ancient jotunn had begun to show his age, at long last. Creases marred his eyes, his cheeks. His white beard looked a hint more threadbare than she’d remembered. As if this being, who should have lived forever, had finally started to wither away during the long ages Skadi passed in death.
He cracked a hint of a smile, exposing more wrinkles yet at the same time making them seem all the more becoming. “I missed you, Little Öndur.”
Skadi couldn’t help but smile herself at the familiarity, and the name. Ski. As she had once loved to do, in the old days. The pleasures of life, before the shadows of death had crushed them.
“Come,” he said, and led her down a passage lit by chunks of ice stuck on the wall, carved in the likeness of flame and imbued with iridescent light shimmering within. He guided her down a staircase to a circular chamber.
In life, he’d allowed her to visit the Mirror Room only a few times in her studies. Oh, she’d come past here, oft enough, stealing a glance inside with passing. Beyond this room, Vafthrudnir’s great cauldrons rested, where he crafted the alchemical brews he prepared for jotunn royals willing to pay the price. Those cauldrons were relics of Brimir themselves, the art of their making now lost to most of jotunnkind.
But cauldrons meant naught compared to the wonder of this room.
Nine mirrors of quicksilver lined the walls. Wrought in the dark tunnels of Nidavellir and bargained for or stolen from the dvergar over the course of ages. The surfaces could have almost seemed murky waters, rimmed by intricately carved frames of silver or platinum. Those frames oft depicted beasts great and foul, monstrosities that slept deep beneath the world or waited tireless in the Otherworlds for their chance to gorge themselves in the Mortal Realm. Warnings, perhaps, of what looking too deep into the mirrors might show.
Vafthrudnir paused, allowing her to inspect the room and its remarkable devices. Beautiful art wrought in crafts of terrible power. They served to magnify a sorcerer’s Sight, reflecting it infinitely until one could look into distant places. To see. And to be seen.
I had one …
Oh. Skadi’s host seemed lucid for a moment. And she’d had a dverg quicksilver mirror. Yes, Skadi could see it, in the sorceress’s memories. Gudrun had kept it hidden away, feared to look upon it, and rightly so.
After a moment more, Vafthrudnir strode to a mirror, mumbling incantations, and placed his hand upon the surface. It rippled, flowing around his palm until he finally pulled his hand away. A shimmer built in the mirror, a vision revealed, even as Gudrun drifted closer. Only a great sorcerer could have allowed the mirror to reveal its secrets to another person. Vafthrudnir was beyond great.
The image clarified, depicting an old man mounted upon an eight-legged horse, riding across snowy plains. Odin Borrson.
Skadi grimaced. The persistent, festering wound in the side of the goddess. And whomever removed that wound must surely win Hel’s favor. “He rides for here?”
“Not yet. But he will. He must pass through many kingdoms in Jotunheim to reach Thrymheim.”
Skadi looked to Vafthrudnir. “You could stop him.”
“Perhaps. But it is not my way to intervene thus.” Not anymore, perhaps. “I merely share information so that you, Öndur, may act as you please.”
“Working together we could prove unstoppable.”
The old jotunn smiled forlornly and shook his head. “There are so many things I’ve learned in the passing ages since you left this world. Brimir is gone, and so too did the arm of the Vanir weaken. The sons of Halfdan have all but faded away. This era is drawing to a close, dear one. A battle is coming, unlike aught you have ever seen before. The princes of Brimir bestir themselves, thinking to claim a golden age they believe stolen from them.”
“Believe? It was stolen. The Vanir took it from us.”
Another sad shake of his head. “An instrument of the inexorable march of history, made necessary by failings from within. No empire can stand forever without giving rise to corruption, for the simple reason that innocence is ill-prepared to deal with perils. The very shift in paradigms that allow the empire to sustain itself in hardship are the same that must eventually undermine it.”
She wasn’t hearing this. Not from him. “Did you not extol the virtues of Brimir over the course of countless hours?”
“Without doubt, it was glorious. But as I said, I have had millennia to study since then. To think. To read the ancient writings of Mimir. To watch.” He moved to another mirror, whispered an incantation and touched it. Again, the image shifted before Skadi’s eyes. This time, it revealed a land covered in greenery, steaming, so hot Skadi could almost feel it through the mirror. And there, a deep skinned man fighting against a woman who looked half-dead. The woman flung ice and mist as weapons.
A sudden certainty hit Skadi, a revelation of truth. The Queen of Mist herself, fighting the Destroyer. The battle of a prior era. Nigh to five thousand years ago? The coming of the mists. Hel succeeded in flooding the world with her power, yet still lost her host thanks to the Destroyer.
Vafthrudnir made no comment, instead moving to a third mirror. What did the old jotunn mean to show her? What was his point among all this? Again, he drew forth an image. A man on his knees, covered in blood. Holding the broken body of a woman dying from terrible wounds.
Vafthrudnir let a hand fall on Skadi’s shoulder now. “Humans and jotunnar are not so different. They too love their children.”
Skadi knew that man. He’d fought her, when she tried to deliver Odin’s soul to Hel. Loki—or Loge as the Niflungar knew him. A fire-priest with powers drawn from Muspelheim. He looked different, subtly, but the eyes, the face, they seemed much the same. It had to be him. Holding his dying daughter, watching the life leave her eyes.
Eyes … cold. Black … eyes. Her eyes … Hel.
Skadi swooned, held upright only by Vafthrudnir’s suddenly tight grip on her shoulder. How? How could … a man … be the father of the goddess of Niflheim? Queen of the Mists … It was impossible. “W-when was this?”
Vafthrudnir grunted. “The world is not what you think it is.”
“T-tell me …”
“No. Knowledge must be hard-won, or it means naught. You think you have suffered, but you have only begun to see the secret shadows at play behind the web of history.”
The old jotunn released her and Skadi held a hand to her mouth. Impossible nonsense …
“I …” Skadi swallowed, uncertain what to make of all this. “I’m not sure it changes aught. I still have to win over as many jotunn lands as possible s
o I can press my claim to the throne here.”
“Of course. We must all do as urd compels us.”
Skadi nodded. “I … I need a new host. A jotunn body, a beautiful one.”
Vafthrudnir nodded, and Skadi touched another mirror, speaking the words to activate it. From this, a hall slowly came into view. A jotunn king, upon his throne. And his wife, blue-tinted skin and a fell look in her eyes.
“King Geirrod, and his wife Angrboda,” Vafthrudnir said.
Skadi allowed herself a smile. “She’ll do.”
7
Asgard’s pristine beaches greeted Odin upon his return. The mists surrounded the isles as if held back by a physical barrier, kept at bay by the power of Yggdrasil. Such a sight was both a boon to his weary soul and a warning of how truly precarious his position was. But for the power of the tree, Asgard would become one more land in Midgard.
Choked and dying under poison mists.
The lands that lay before him were not some paradise, but rather, the true state of the world. The state he hoped one day to return to Midgard. If Ragnarok did not destroy it all first.
With the Sight embraced, he could see and hear his valkyries, trailing along behind him in the Penumbra. They had chatted oft enough on the paths leading to these shores. Flight over the waters had rather precluded it after, and now they’d fallen almost silent. As if themselves awed to see a land not so very thick with ghosts.
Oh, vaettir of various sorts watched from across the Veil, even on Asgard. But fewer, and less aggrieved than those found elsewhere.
Upon Sleipnir’s back, Odin made his way along well-worn paths, nodding at those he came upon.
“My king!” someone said.
“Welcome home, my king.”
“Today is blessed, my king.”
Of course, he could have disguised himself using a glamour. Audr’s power allowed it. But every use of those powers strengthened the wraith and weakened Odin’s soul. His guises were best saved for when dealing with humans out in Midgard.
Outside Valaskjalf, Odin dismounted and patted Sleipnir’s shoulder. “Go on. Run free and have something to eat.” From Valaskjalf rose a silver spire upon which rested Odin’s High Seat. To sit there and gaze out over the world was both a relief and a burden, draining and all too necessary.
Like so many of Volund’s works, in truth. A double-edged sword.
The double doors stood open, inviting crowds of courtiers to come and bemoan their grievances to the Queen of Asgard. This throng parted as Odin strode inside and made his way to the back of the hall.
Frigg sat upon her throne—beside Odin’s perpetually empty one—but rose as he entered, offering him a too formal nod in greeting. She wore an elaborately embroidered green dress, maybe one of Serklander silk, though the embroidery was local. Head to toe, she looked the part of royalty.
A stark contrast to Odin’s travel-worn clothes, muddy cloak, and oversized hat. Which, of course, remained part of the point. While Frigg stayed here to run Asgard, Odin could walk freely across the land, oft unrecognized even without a disguise. An old vagabond drew few eyes and men said much in front of those they thought of little account.
Odin returned Frigg’s nod, and she resumed her seat and with it, her court. They’d speak later, her words no doubt filled with thinly veiled recriminations about his long absences. He’d offer meaningless words of remorse. And naught would change.
Despite her objections, Odin had to believe Frigg truly understood the burdens he bore. That she knew, were he to turn from this urd, chaos would eventually claim all lands.
Leaving behind the great hall, he traveled to the back of Valaskjalf, where a small number of cells housed an even smaller number of prisoners. Most of his enemies Odin made a point of disposing of permanently. Some few though, either couldn’t die—like Fenrir bound far beneath Asgard—or he couldn’t bring himself to slay.
As with Lodur.
Odin’s onetime friend rose as Odin pulled open the door to his cell.
The man groaned, stretched his back, and made as if to pace about his tiny room. Since the confines would have allowed him no more than a handful of steps in one direction, such a gesture would have made him look like a caged animal. Perhaps Lodur realized it, for he gave over pacing and instead leaned against a wall. “Did you miss me?”
In a way, Odin had. He missed the rival he’d known so long ago, when they were both young men. Lodur had fostered with Odin’s family back then. Back when Odin’s greatest care was what to hunt for the night meal or how best to get a pretty shieldmaiden to drop her trousers. He missed the days—struggles though they’d been—of simpler life.
His father’s murder had changed all that. The beginning of the end, really, for all Aesir.
How badly Odin wished he could recall the happy days with clarity, but like so much else, he’d lost bits and pieces of his memories because of the Art. Because of … Audr.
“I find myself ever wondering what I am to do with you,” Odin said at last.
Lodur snorted. “If eighteen winters didn’t give you the answer, I won’t hold out much hope of hearing one in the next hour or so.”
Leaning against his walking stick, Odin ignored that. His old friend had always thought himself cleverer than he really was. No doubt that had led him to his present situation, imprisoned for treason.
“Naught to say, great king?” Lodur asked. “Perhaps because the walls whisper how your allies slowly slip away from you. Even as your fame spreads, so too does your infamy.”
Odin groaned and shook his head. “I have what allies I most need in the places where I desire them. I had dared to hope you might have had the time to reflect on your errors, old friend.”
Now Lodur burst out in mirthless laughter. “Would you have me throw myself at your feet and beg for mercy?” He spat on the ground before Odin. “I’d sooner die. You have brought the Aesir far, dear king. Far from our home, far from our old ways. Far from honor and into the halls of intrigue and corruption, of faithlessness and debasement upon the altar of your glory.”
Grumbling, Odin stormed from the cell and slammed the door behind him. “Have him bathed,” Odin snapped at a guard. “He stinks of his own shit.”
“It was by my hands we wrought this world!” Lodur shouted through the oak door. “And what have you made of it now, king? What have you wrought in five decades of your rule?”
Odin grit his teeth and stomped out of Valaskjalf, brushing away courtiers and old friends in the process. Lodur was wrong. He had allies aplenty. He’d spent the years earning them across the North Realms.
Almost as many allies as enemies, in fact.
Telling himself that did not quite abate the sour churn of Odin’s stomach.
“You betrayed your own friend?” Altvir asked, her voice flighty and distorted across the Veil.
“No,” Odin snapped. “Lodur betrayed me. And I was a fool not to have him disemboweled for it.”
“Then you plan to kill him now?” Altvir asked, exchanging a look with Svanhit.
“So that I might look petulant in present and shortsighted in my past decisions?” Odin shook his head. “No, now he must be left to rot until such time as I find a use for him.”
Hrist snickered. “My new lord must come here oft, seeking redemption for things long past.”
Rather than reward the valkyrie’s keen insight, Odin shot her a baleful glare. Passersby looked at him askance as he conversed with his invisible and inaudible companions. Odin was not overmuch concerned with their opinions though. A reputation for eccentricity, even madness, might serve his ends.
It almost made him wonder how mad Mundilfari had truly gone in days past, when he had sat on Vanaheim’s throne.
Odin found Loki on the slopes below Valaskjalf, watching the sunset along with Sigyn. The pyromancer may have seen Odin’s need for him in the flames. Or perhaps he’d merely caught wind of Odin’s return and come here to greet his blood brother.
Eit
her way, as Odin drew nigh, Sigyn rose, cast him a glance, and then departed.
Loki beckoned for Odin to join him. The man sat precariously perched on a rock jutting out over a sheer drop of at least a hundred feet, far from the beaten path.
While Odin didn’t much relish climbing out there, he certainly would not refuse the invitation from one of his truest allies. Yes, bad blood had passed between them over the years, and more when Odin had learned that Hel herself was Loki’s long dead daughter from a distant era. But despite it all, Loki had come to save Odin from Skadi’s wrath. Such loyalty earned him Odin’s eternal gratitude.
So, walking stick braced against the loose ground, he made his cautious steps out to the edge, then slid down onto his arse beside the other man. Loki could have passed for a fraction of Odin’s age though in truth, the man had lived long before the current era of the world. How long, exactly, Odin was still trying to discern.
Loki clasped Odin’s arm and Odin returned the gesture.
“How long have you been back from Valland?” Odin asked.
“A while. Things will come to a head there soon, but not during winter.”
Things had been simmering there for many years. Andalus was lost to the Serklanders. And if Valland fell, the Utgard-based empire would own the South Realms, at least in the west. Odin had forestalled this somewhat by provoking a war between Serkland and Miklagard, but that would not last forever.
“Something else troubles you,” Odin said.
“Such are the burdens of prescience and premonition, brother. As you well know. Can you tell me when last you slept peaceful, untormented by visions or fears or duties?”
Odin grunted. In truth, probably when last he lay in Freyja’s arms, daring to forget the world for a moment. Giving in to the same apathy that had so consumed the Vanir and led them to fail the world. “I notice you did not answer my question.”
Loki flashed him a wry grin that—unless Odin missed his guess—contained less mirth than it ought to have. “And what of you? You play a dangerous game, seeking to harness the dead. You paid heavily for trying such already, and still you persist. Consider that, perhaps, the Veil is best left unpenetrated.”
