Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 3: Books 7-9

by Matt Larkin

  She refused to let that happen.

  Thus, she forced herself not to smile as she trod upon a flying walkway that reached toward Saule’s pyramid in Gimlé. The other liosalf was native here, and much older than Freyja, but had—on occasion—shown her a measure of kindness that mortals might have called friendship.

  A warm wind surged through the city, billowing Freyja’s hair and dress. For a bare moment she thrilled in the feel of it over her skin. The blaring sun atop Dellingr’s palace was headier than any wine. Almost enough to make her burst into song and grab a random passerby to fuck. Indeed, along the way, she passed couples pleasuring one another. A woman sitting on the rim of the walkway, moaning as a man tongued her trench, heedless of the fall of almost eighty feet just behind her.

  And there, two women kissing amid ferns that decorated the center aisle, fingering one another.

  Seeing such things only increased the temptation, the pull of her body to them.

  So like being drunk all the time.

  Groaning, she scurried onward, forcing herself to keep her gaze locked upon the pyramid ahead and nowhere else. She had come here with a mission and she would see it through.

  A branch of the skyway broke off to Saule’s abode. Most of the time, of course, Saule stayed in Tír na nÓg where she had the queen’s ear, far more so than Freyja did. Whenever she came to Gimlé, though, she lived here—with two dozen servants, and a few of her children—in a position of high authority.

  Freyja found the other woman at the pyramid’s apex, sitting upon the steps and flipping through a book. Rumor claimed Saule had a library to rival the Emerald Ascension on Tír na nÓg, and—from the few occasions Saule had let Freyja peruse that—she thought it only a slight exaggeration.

  Freyja hurried up the steps to the top of the pyramid.

  Saule was alone, save for a servant with a jug of water, and smiled when Freyja approached. Liosalfar smiled most of the time, really. It was easy to mistake sensual pleasures for contentment. Given the space of eternity, so many of the liosalfar lost themselves in pursuit of such pleasures. The call ever tried to suck Freyja in, too.

  “Come for a book?” Saule asked.

  Freyja shook her head. “We have to go back for Idunn.”

  Saule shut her book and handed it off to her servant. “She was never one of us, you know. Always … tainted by her blood. You can scarcely expect the queen to sacrifice more lives to aid one such as her.”

  Freyja’s brother had said much the same. How easily he turned his back on a woman he’d known for ages. “Idunn is Eostre’s daughter.”

  Saule shrugged. Of course. She’d never met Eostre and had no reason to care about that.

  Freyja knelt on the steps before her friend. “I care about her.”

  The other woman patted her hand. “I understand you do. Just … stop.”

  Freyja snatched her hand away at that. How was she to stop caring? Oh, the answer was easy. Lose herself in the intoxicating rhythm of this place. Mistake an easy life for a good one. She could return to the court and its unending political plays, and perhaps she should, for if not, she risked losing a position that had taken centuries to earn. But. “She was once a good friend of mine.”

  “You care too much about the past, especially a past long ago in the Mortal Realm.”

  “Please.” What else was there to say about it? If she did not go back for Idunn, Volund would torment her friend as he had tormented her daughter. And the transformation Hnoss had undergone was … soul-crushing.

  Saule shook her head. “No one will agree to risk another incursion, certainly not for an outcast. Your former friend is where she belongs.”

  Freyja flinched at that. As if, because of her father, Idunn deserved to wither and change in the World of Dark?

  But maybe Saule was right. Maybe no liosalfar would help her now. Whatever favor she had in the court now, her brother had almost certainly used it up in his attempt to rescue her. No one cared about Idunn.

  Not here, anyway.

  She’d arranged a small cottage for Odin, as close to Yggdrasil as was available, though still it meant he had a long walk to the tree. As it turned out, the device Frey and the others had begun working on existed within the tree itself, in a hollow that mirrored the one on Vanaheim.

  Freyja found Odin not in his cottage, but in that hollow, surrounded by a wall of wood and half-watched by a pair of lightly armored warriors who seemed more interested in discussing water sports than in actually keeping an eye on Od.

  In the center of this chamber, a ring of glyph-carved stones surrounded an exposed root. Upon this ring sat a device of interlocked metal rings that looked like a cross between an orrery and an astrolabe. It was taller than she was and wider than her armspan, and Odin wended his way between arms of the thing, grunting as he made minor adjustments to gears and dials.

  The man glanced in her direction, smiling wanly, before setting back to work. “It’s more complicated because the device doesn’t exist yet in the other realms. Each world in the Spirit Realm is a single facet of a greater reality, so crossing between them is simpler. But the Veil blocks access to the Mortal Realm, and I need a way to punch through it. To make the bridge permanent, I’ll need to recreate the Bilröst machine within Yggdrasil there, as well.”

  Freyja shook her head. How very far he’d come from the man who scarcely grasped the import of the Otherworlds. The man she’d trained in the Art, made love to within this very tree, albeit in another realm. How much she had cherished him then. How very badly her heart had broken when he’d cast her here, even as she’d tried to tell herself she understood the need to do so and his reasons.

  He was dressed in a loose shirt and a sarong, like a local male, though his aged form hardly fit here. He’d crossed between worlds because of her. That … meant something. Whatever mistakes he’d made … maybe it meant everything.

  “Hnoss and Idunn,” she said.

  Odin grunted, ducked under an arm of the machine, and came to sit before her, taking her hand in his own. “I won’t abandon them. Neither one. I’m going to find a way to save them, I just don’t know how yet. There are … other things on my mind, Freyja. Terrible things happening on Asgard. Or … about to happen. And now it may be far too late to change them, but I have to try. Once I get back, once I set my kingdom in order, then I can focus on finding a way to save those we left behind.”

  Freyja slumped down beside him and let her head fall into her hands. “Hnoss …” It hurt to even speak her name. “She might already be lost. But if we don’t get to Idunn soon, she’ll also begin to be twisted by that place. These spirit worlds, that seep into your flesh, into your soul. It's not possible to linger there and not be changed.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I …” No. Alfheim’s radiance had not saturated Odin, though she could not say the reason for certain. Her best guess was that the wraith and the Moon vaettr inside him prevented that change. She sighed. “I don’t think Idunn will share your immunity to it. Svartalfheim is in her blood.”

  Odin leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. His beard tickled and the closeness made her shudder.

  So easy to let go. “Od …”

  Now he was kissing her neck. Behind her ear. Her shoulder.

  Yes.

  Just a moment of peace.

  Freyja pulled the two wraps of her dress apart to expose her breasts. Odin cast a sudden wary look at the two guards, as if expecting them to gape.

  “They hardly care,” she said. “We are free to do whatever we wish, when and wherever we wish it.”

  “All your mortal inhibitions gone?”

  Most of them. Should that sadden her? No. Such things didn’t matter. Not compared to all else she lost. The rest of her humanity? Her daughter. Her friend.

  Damn, but she was tired of her thoughts. Could she not let the light back in, just for a time?

  She dropped down from the shelf and lay on the floor, pulling Odin down atop her.
He hesitated but a moment, then his kisses again painted her face, neck, breasts. He lifted the hem of her dress, and his own sarong, and eased himself inside her.

  She wrapped her arms and legs around him and let time slip away.

  At least for a while.

  “It won’t be much longer,” Odin said, leaning against the glyph-carved blocks surrounding his machine. “Frey and the others did good work here, but some aspects were out of alignment.”

  Freyja sat with her legs folded beneath herself, watching her lover. On Vanaheim, she’d considered herself the most learned scholar on the Art yet remaining. But exactly how this device worked, that seemed beyond her grasp.

  Oh, she didn’t feel guilty that Frey had built it. Her brother had brains, and he’d spent the better part of a thousand years tinkering to come up with this design. But how was Odin perfecting it so quickly? She couldn’t understand that.

  “You want to ask,” he said.

  His visions. His ability with the Sight had grown by several orders of magnitude since she’d known him on Vanaheim. When she’d visited him in the tower, she’d known it, but here, it became so much more … manifest. “What you’re trying to do … how can you know how to do that? Visions don’t reveal such intricate details. They’re impressions. Ideas, oft non-literal ones, and viewed through a haze.”

  The man leaned back, staring up at the wooden weave above them. “It’s … a combination of memories of past lives and prescient insights rarified by the Well of Mimir.”

  Freyja blanched. She couldn’t help it. Mundilfari had raved about the well, but she’d never believed it real. After all, the Mad Vanr had abdicated the throne, left, and never returned.

  Odin nodded as if understanding her shock and confirming it existed. “The well served to clear the frost from so many of my visions. There are still limits. Prescience is never perfect. But I see so many things, my love. Terrible things that I tried with all my might to prevent. And now I’ve come to realize, there were those who would never have let me stop the future. Some among the svartalfar spoke of them, Fjalar, for one. Perhaps his words unlocked something in my mind. Maybe … I was doomed, damned from the first moment. I cannot say for certain.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  Odin swallowed. “A war. A terrible war that—I desperately hope—the returning Vanir will help us win. But win or lose, the price shall prove high.”

  His words left her shuddering, somehow breaking through even Alfheim’s hold on her mind and leaving her rubbing her arms.

  Shivering, despite the blistering heat.

  37

  Sweat dribbled down Hödr’s face in the early morning sun, while he clung to the cliff side east of Breidablik. Some claimed that hall—given to Baldr by his mother, of course—was the most beautiful in all Asgard, facing the rising sun, glittering with gilded spires. The layout had come from plans drawn by Hödr’s own mother, though Frigg embellished on those designs, forgoing subtlety for splendor.

  Teeth grit, grunting, Hödr slapped around for another handhold. Climbing blind was no easy feat, without doubt, but then, no one would begin to suspect he might make such an attempt. He’d skirted the narrow beach below the cliff, having to swim to reach this locale, and had climbed since before dawn, probably eighty feet or more.

  At the moment, he had only the vaguest sense of how much farther. Voices sounded above, though. Servants bustling, preparing the day meal. And … grunting? Someone fucking, behind the side of the hall, where the cliff was even more sheer.

  Hödr snorted. That bastard. He’d murdered Nanna and found some other trench to plow.

  Struggling to keep quiet, Hödr edged his way around the cliff, until he could come up by the thin strip that separated the hall from the precipice. His arms had begun to burn, forcing him to flood pneuma into them.

  As he did so, the aches receded. It might leave him all the more drained later, but for now, it gave him the strength to continue onwards. He heaved himself upwards, then crested the rise.

  “Ugh, ugh, ooo.” The sounds grated against him, an affront to all his suffering.

  How dare Baldr enjoy himself, after all he had wrought?

  There he was, hips slapping against the arse of … Eir? The old healer? Well that was not quite Baldr’s usual taste. Why would … Oh. She must have poured pneuma into him to let him recover from that wound. And it had drawn him to her.

  She could have refused, though. Instead of standing there, hands on the wall, getting fucked.

  With a growl, Hödr slipped Mistilteinn free of its sheath.

  Baldr spun around, shoved Eir to the ground, and grabbed his trousers, yanking them up, even as the healer yelped.

  “Your brother interfered with our last duel.”

  Baldr chuckled, shaking his head. “That wasn’t a duel. That was an execution, you just didn’t realize it.” There was something off about his aura. A distortion, almost like … a darkness inside him.

  Well, it didn’t matter.

  “Will you fight me with what honor you have left?” Hödr asked.

  “I’d relish the chance, traitor.” Baldr tied the laces on his trousers, then cocked his head around to the side of the hall.

  Yes, this strip didn’t offer much room to fight. Hödr backed away, toward the front of Breidablik, and Baldr followed, pausing to snatch up Laevateinn where it rested against the wall. As soon as he tossed the sheath aside, those vile flames erupted along the length of the blade, scorching the air with their heat.

  Some servant must have spotted him, for soon a crowd began to gather, forming a circle around them. So be it. Let them see their glorious lord meet his end.

  “I’m going to send you to Hel,” Hödr said.

  “I await that.”

  Baldr’s odd response had him faltering, and the prince lunged in, whipping that flaming runeblade in a savage arc. Hödr gave ground, but the ring of onlookers meant he didn’t have far to maneuver. Desperately, he parried the prince’s onslaught. The wounds that Mistilteinn had dealt him no longer seemed to slow him in the least.

  Two-handed, Baldr gripped Laevateinn and cleaved downward, intent to chop Hödr in half. A wild move. Too aggressive.

  Hödr sidestepped and whipped Mistilteinn around. Baldr tried to dodge, but the runeblade gouged his side, just above his hip, and sent him stumbling backward. Hödr spat in his direction. “I’ll cut you to pieces to feed Hel’s vile dogs.”

  Dimly, he picked up the footfalls of someone running away, down the slope. Gone to report to others? Hödr would be damned if he let Thor interfere again. “Fight me like a man!” he roared at the prince.

  “A man?” Baldr snorted. “You’ve no eyes and one arm. How am I to make this sporting?”

  “Let it be a real duel. No interference from your kin or warriors.”

  “Oh … I swear this time shall end it for you and I, cousin.” Despite his injury, Baldr lunged in, fast, no doubt relying on the apple to let him bury his pain. Laevateinn trailed flames in wild arcs that Hödr could almost see by the feel of their heat. A spiral of fire warded the prince, maneuvers not quite like those Hödr had seen him use before.

  All he could do was give ground, backing away at an angle so as not to get caught up with the crowd. Sooner or later, those overreaching attacks would tire even Baldr, or else would leave him open for a riposte that could fell him. And the prince continued to lose blood from that wound.

  All Hödr had to do now was avoid getting cleaved in half or immolated.

  Snarling in rage so feral it chilled Hödr to hear it, Baldr charged in. Hödr ducked under the swipe, coming up in a roll and scrambling away. The prince’s runeblade thwacked into a bystander, tearing through half her torso in an instant. Her flesh ignited into a flailing inferno, her screams bombarding Hödr for a few breaths before she collapsed.

  Even Baldr stared at her as she smoldered upon the ground. “Seems familiar.”

  Oh, the bastard! Had Nanna screamed like that? Ro
aring, Hödr raced in, thrusting with Mistilteinn. Baldr parried and clapped him on the side of the head with his free hand, dazing Hödr and sending him stumbling backward. He barely got his blade up to deflect Baldr’s immediate counterattack.

  Wild, almost mad-sounding snickers bubbled from the prince’s lips. Hödr caught Laevateinn on Mistilteinn’s pommel. As Baldr leaned in on it—damn, but he was strong!—the flaming blade crept closer to Hödr’s face. It licked at his hair and had it curling up in reeking tendrils.

  Desperate, Hödr kicked Baldr’s shin. The prince stumbled, allowing Hödr the chance to back away and pat at embers in his hair. Panting, he let Mistilteinn’s point droop a little. Baldr fought like a man gone fey. Almost the same as their past battles, but more intense now.

  “Hödr, stop this!” Father shouted at him, racing up the hill.

  Hödr pointed the runeblade in Father’s general direction. “This is a duel. A righteous holmgang for the murder of Nanna, and no man may interfere!”

  Father’s pace slackened, and he formed up on the edge of the circle. “If you do this, they’ll kill you. I don’t know if I can stop that.”

  None of that mattered. All that mattered was avenging her, now. Letting her shade find rest in the Otherworlds, knowing her murderer had been repaid in kind.

  “Oh,” Baldr said, snickering. “Still want to die? I can oblige.”

  Again, the prince came in, swinging and snarling, far too aggressive. It forced Hödr back, but such wild tactics would prove his end. Sooner or later, it would create a massive gap in his guard. Focusing entirely on defense, Hödr batted aside Laevateinn again and again, circling around his savage opponent.

  Baldr was stronger, his aggression almost overwhelming. But Hödr wouldn’t give in easily.