Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 2: Books 4-6

by Matt Larkin

  Such musings served no purpose, of course. All they could do now was press on and trust to Odin’s instincts to guide them to shelter when the need arose. It was too late to turn back in any event.

  Grunting in frustration, Odin jerked his walking stick free from a snow drift where it sunk down nigh two feet deep. Footing grew more and more precarious the further up they traveled.

  The cold had so bitten his face he could no longer feel his ears or nose. It tore at him like flame, and still it perturbed him less than the incessant, howling wind. Like a scream out of Niflheim, the wail followed them up every challenging step. It chased them, haunted them, promising the peril of winter unlike aught they could imagine.

  Geri caught Odin’s arm and helped him up onto an ice-coated rock. No paths ran up this Diineezi mountain. Sometimes, they had don crampons and scale nigh sheer sides. Other times, they had to climb from one wind-sharpened rock surface to the next, careful to avoid shredding the furs keeping them alive.

  Odin had sent Hrist up there to scout ahead.

  She had not returned.

  Dusk descended with a swiftness that stole Odin’s breath. The days here grew shorter and shorter. It gave them so little time to find a way forward.

  They stood upon a shelf of ice the size of a jarl’s hall, though not quite level. From here, he could actually look down on most of the other mountains. And still Diineezi rose higher.

  After Hrist had vanished, Odin dared not send Huginn or Muninn ranging more than a few hundred feet ahead. Indeed, the icy winds seemed apt to freeze even the ravens to death in the space of moments.

  Now, despite the chill and the growing darkness, he had no choice but to send them scouting again. They needed a place to take shelter and they needed it immediately.

  The ravens soon took flight and began soaring in expanding circles, searching for a cave, an overhang, an alcove—aught that might cut down on the wind and allow him to kindle a fire with what few supplies remained to them.

  Odin concentrated on seeing through their eyes, only half aware as Geri circled him in obvious distress.

  There.

  A large rock formation jutted up at an odd angle, enough that they might pile under it and cut down on the worst of the elements.

  “Father …”

  Odin jerked himself free of Valravn’s sight and turned to her.

  “Something foul dwells on these slopes.”

  Varulfur, as hosts to vaettir, had a sense of the Penumbra, even if they could not directly look into it. Odin, on the other hand, could look. He embraced the Sight. Sure enough, shades drifted along the mountainside, wailing in wordless agony, making slow, pointless circuits around the slopes.

  As he opened himself up to that realm, one of the closest ones suddenly turned, looked right at him.

  They can see you.

  Odin didn’t need Audr to remind him that looking into the Penumbra ran both ways. He dropped the Sight before the ghost decided to accost him, then started for the rock. “There are many foul things out here.”

  You saw the ones beyond …

  Tattered shrouds over tattered souls. Wraiths. Caught in eternal torment, so eager to share their suffering.

  Existence is suffering. A vile cycle of sin and despair to feed dark powers and perpetuate darkness. We are all dead …

  Odin grimaced, pushing on toward that formation. They all needed to get out of this wind.

  They found the place shortly beyond the ice shelf, though it actually meant climbing a bit down once more. Odin hopped down onto a slope five feet below, then scurried up under the rock.

  Snows had piled deep here, probably eliminating any hope of starting a fire. Could they dig down to dirt?

  They’d have to try. The apples rendered them resistant to the mist, but still, breathing it in all night might not end well for their bodies, minds, or souls. Assuming the cold didn’t kill them.

  When he explained his plan, Geri and Freki immediately set to digging. They piled great walls of snow around the rock’s edge, slowly forming a wall to shelter them from the worst of it.

  Odin helped them as best he could, though he lacked their speed. Still, every bit would help.

  Legs folded beneath him, arms resting on his knees, Odin reached out with his mind, searching for Hrist. Despite the warmth of their tiny fire, a coldness settled into his soul, an empty void as if one bound to him had simply ceased to exist.

  Given the wraiths Odin had seen on the slopes around this mountain, Odin could guess why. He could guess, he could imagine it, see it in his mind’s eye, as the dire ghosts latched onto the valkyrie. As they devoured her soul and left her naught but a hollow shell of her former self. But did he see the truth, or his mind’s manifestation of his worst fears?

  Either way, the valkyrie now seemed beyond his reach.

  It was the risk any who pierced the Veil took.

  And his children … the varulfur had curled up together to sleep. Exhausted. His children. They’d come here for him, to ensure he made it. They’d wanted to protect him. But maybe he had to protect them, too.

  Shifters had their souls bonded to Moon vaettr. Just how close was that bond? Could a wraith reach across the Veil and touch a varulf?

  Does it frighten you?

  Yes. It frightened him more than most else he could imagine. Years with Audr inside him had taught him the depths of hatred that consumed wraiths. Sometimes, they could pull themselves partly across the Veil and harm the living. Beings like Odin’s varulf twins might be more at risk, and he could not trust Audr to tell him the truth on the matter.

  Their alliance remained uneasy at best.

  You always delve into darkness beyond your ken …

  They are in danger, Valravn said. Much as you are, when you touch the other realms with your mind.

  That all but settled it then.

  Odin would leave the twins here to rest and, he dared hope, remain hidden from the wraiths. The birds, too, he’d have to leave behind, before they froze to death.

  He would set out with naught but himself and his walking stick.

  And the madness eating away at your writhing soul …

  And yes, the voices in his head.

  Odin took a long look over his children. He’d raised them from babes as though they were his own. They were his own.

  Maybe the way ahead would cost him much. Either way, he couldn’t risk them. Never them.

  Slowly, careful to make no sound, he rose and edged his way to the small gap in the snow wall. He’d leave now, before first light.

  They could no doubt track him if they so chose. He’d have to trust they’d understand why he’d leave them behind. To hope they would trust in him.

  Dawn broke over the mountain with a nigh blinding glare. Sunlight reflected off the ice and snow as though off a field of diamonds, obscuring all before Odin as he climbed up onto a glacial shelf.

  This he followed a ways, trudging over snows. The sound of running water—inexplicably unfrozen—greeted him even before he caught sight of a stream running down from the mountain. The current swept by like the rushing wind, too fast to freeze, perhaps. This stream he followed another half an hour. The roar of water grew louder the longer he walked.

  Until, at last, before him a chasm split the glacier, a jagged scar sliced along it for hundreds of feet. The stream pitched over it in a fall that disappeared down into a curtain of luminous mist.

  Odin blew out a long breath that frosted the air. This was it. He’d made it.

  He followed the edge of the gap some distance before catching sight of the massive root jutting from the wall below him. The root itself was twice as thick around as most trees. It rent through the ice of the glacier, leaving great cracks spreading outward for dozens of feet. It twisted and wormed across the chasm at irregular angles before breaking through the ice on the opposite side.

  If Odin dropped down onto it, would he have somewhere else to go?

  The rising mist obscured w
hatever lay beneath that root. It hid everything down there.

  Which left Odin only one choice, really.

  He embraced the Sight.

  The Penumbra slipped into focus, the mist in the Material Realm now seeming a slight fog that blurred rather than concealed what lay beyond. A hint of light permeated the shadows of this realm, allowing him to make out another root—or the same one, more likely—breaking through the ice once more below the first.

  A way to travel deeper.

  Odin glanced around. Other ghosts flitted about the glacier, and while none had noticed him as yet, some twisted shades might well have been wraiths.

  Beckon them …

  The longer he dawdled, the greater the chance Audr would get his wish.

  That first root had to be thirty feet down.

  Odin had not come all this way, crossed Midgard and Utgard both, only to surrender at the cusp of victory.

  He blew out another breath, then jumped down to the root. For a gasping, gut-wrenching moment, he was falling. The root rushed up at him like a striking predator. It slammed into him with enough force to steal his feet out from under him and blast the wind from his lungs.

  He landed wrong, pitched over sideways barely in control of his body. The roll carried him half off the root. Odin flailed, trying to steady himself. That only sent him careening over the side. He snatched hold of fibers jutting from the root as he fell. Their rough skin scraped his hands raw, but he managed to pull himself to a stop.

  Flooding pneuma into his limbs abated the rapidly growing burning in his arms.

  Odin glanced down. The next root was twenty feet below. But not perfectly lined up with him. He’d need to—

  A giant severed head appeared within arm’s reach of Odin.

  Odin’s grip faltered and he plummeted down. Screaming, he twisted, managing to slam shoulder-first into the lower root.

  His scream continued to echo off the glacial walls even as Odin struggled to pull himself up onto the root.

  The ghastly head—itself bigger than Odin’s torso—drifted down until it drew even with Odin. The head had long gray hair that mingled with his beard, all of it seeming to flow as if underwater. The eyes held a faint blue luminescence that seemed to bore right into Odin’s soul. Red, angry flesh peeled away where the head had obviously been severed from a large body.

  A ghostly head.

  Odin was looking into the Penumbra.

  Loki had claimed Mimir died … Died. Decapitation had that effect on most things.

  “Mimir?” Odin mouthed, pushing himself up on his elbows.

  “Destroyer.” The head spoke the Northern tongue with a strange, hollow accent that seemed to come as much from the glacier as the ghost itself. “Violator or paragon of the march of time. Trespasser in lands where none yet walk.”

  Odin rose to his knees. He glanced around. Another twenty feet below, a hot spring bubbled, steam mingling with mist as it rose. The spring was set in a cavern of blue and green stone beneath the glacier. The root Odin rested upon twisted around and around before finally touching down on the edge of the waters. Feeding them or drinking from them, or both, Odin could not say.

  “I must drink from the well,” Odin said, finally regaining his feet.

  The ghost chuckled. “Of course, you do. History must unfold in its pitiless procession. It will take from you all you are.”

  Odin grimaced. “History, or the well?”

  “Yes … If you would drink to see, you must offer something of equal value in return. All things have their price.” The hollow echoes banged against the glacier and reverberated inside Odin’s head. Did Mimir, disembodied as he was, actually have any ability to stop Odin from doing as he wished in the Mortal Realm?

  He might.

  Powerful enough ghosts could enforce their wills with dire powers, and Odin could take no chance of being denied. Not now, not after all he’d been through to reach this place. Thor had suffered a terrible injury and more like than not ignited a more heated war with Jotunheim. Hrist was probably dead—if her very soul had not been consumed. And if Odin failed to recover her ring, he’d have permanently lost one of his valkyries. And he still had to get his varulf twins back to Midgard.

  “Name your price,” he snapped.

  “What holds more value to you than sight itself? Therefore, to gain sight, you must lose sight.”

  Odin blanched. “What does that even mean?”

  Mimir winked at him.

  Vile ghost seemed to take pleasure in confounding Odin.

  There are so few pleasures left to the dead …

  It crawled into his mind then, the slow burrowing of prescient insight, the intuition that told him the only price Mimir would accept. A price demanded by urd itself, perhaps, for Odin could see himself, gouging out his left eye. Screaming in agony as he dug it free and flung it into the well.

  Sight for sight.

  A drink of the wisdom behind the veil of his own eye.

  The pain to come hit him, brought him down to his knees.

  Madness … let him turn away from this. To do such a thing to himself, to so maim his own body, it defied all instinct. This much could be expected of no man. Such a sacrifice exceeded all bounds.

  Unable to form a coherent plea, Odin implored Mimir with wordless entreaties. He knelt there, silently begging the ghost to spare him this price. He saw himself imploring, outside himself, unable to move forward or back, caught in the merciless web of urd. Its threads closed in around him from all angles, stripping choice and leaving him ravaged.

  And knowing, with bile-inducing certainty, Mimir could not have withdrawn the price had he wished to. Time itself was the ultimate predator. The pitiless procession of history, as Mimir had claimed.

  We are forged by agonies.

  Volund had told Odin as much, before Odin had even known the Well of Mimir existed.

  The more we suffer, the stronger we become.

  Everything had its price. Even knowledge. Especially knowledge.

  Odin must drink in suffering to fortify his soul for the struggle ahead. It would not be his last sacrifice. This he knew with the unerring dread of prescient foresight.

  A price must be paid for every gain, a hefty weight for each wisdom. Sight for sight, breath for breath.

  Sight for sight … The Norns had told him that—five decades ago they had warned him this day would come. It had trod closer and closer with each passing breath. He had always been heading here, to the abyss of despair and wisdom.

  His knife was in his hand. He didn’t remember drawing it. He was watching himself as it rose slowly to his face.

  Let him turn away from this. It was madness. It was inhuman.

  It was urd.

  Could he cast the knife aside and welcome Ragnarok and all the death it would entail?

  No.

  His eyelid kept closing of its own accord as he drew the knife closer. Closer. It had to stay open. The future demanded it. History must unfold. If mankind had any chance, no sacrifice was too great.

  The blade had drawn so nigh he could no longer see the point.

  Do it.

  Do it and have done with it.

  Do it.

  Do it!

  Odin wedged the knife into his eye.

  Pain, unlike aught he’d ever imagined surged through him. It exploded through his head like a gong. It ripped him apart from the inside out. Until, unable to bear it a heartbeat longer nor yet able to risk losing consciousness, he found himself watching the ensuing performance. A shadow play enacted before him. A man digging out the tendrils behind his own eye. A macabre spectacle of ultimate suffering.

  We are forged by agonies.

  And wracked with unspeakable agonies, a man might thus become something more than a man. Something closer to the god which others worshipped him as.

  The coursing, burning, brain-melting torment slammed back into Odin as he knelt, gasping in horror, staring at his own bloody eye in his palm. It mocke
d him, a sick memento of light he would never again gaze unto.

  Slowly, unable to catch his breath, Odin turned his palm sideways. Until his eye pitched down into the well. A faint splash, barely audible over the bubbling of the hot spring.

  To one side, utter blackness filled his vision. The other wobbled, in an unsteady haze as he lost his hold upon the Sight.

  Unable to steady himself, Odin pitched over sideways, plummeting down into the well himself.

  Water almost hot enough to scald him crashed all around him. It seared and burned his hollow eye socket. It shot up his nose. It flowed over him in a wake of bubbles that made sight from his remaining eye impossible.

  With a sputtering gasp, he broke the surface, sucking down great gulps of spring water in the process.

  Choking, Odin swam toward the rock lip surrounding the spring. He flung himself half out of the waters and collapsed, lacking the strength to pull his limp body another foot. The hot water churned in his gut, roiling and twisting, sending cramps shooting through his whole lower body.

  That maelstrom began to rise inside him, a swirling tightness gushing through his chest. Closing in around his heart. Crushing it within.

  Drawing higher. Closing off his airways.

  Settling in on his brain.

  It washed over his consciousness like a great wave, crashing over his mind. Drowning him in a sea of memories. Past and present and future all bled together in an ocean that threatened to wash away all he was.

  A rooster’s crow, a last call to a final end. The close of the age of man.

  As if drawn by that cry, Odin’s hands closed around Loki’s throat. Squeezed the life from his brother. The man wouldn’t die. So instead, he was bound within the bowels of the Earth, locked in torment. Knowing … knowing the end was coming ever closer.

  The gates of Hel opened … The legions of the dead flying free …

  So many dead. So many whom Odin had cared for, staring accusation at him. Thor, and Tyr, and Sif, and all the others … their cries of torment bombarding him and drowning him. Damning him.