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

by Matt Larkin

  Come to think of it, Hermod truly hoped no dragons dwelt in this abyssal place.

  Not abyssal …

  What?

  Not abyssal …

  Sure. Yet another random comment the wraith seemed disinclined to elaborate on. Maybe Odin or Sigyn could have taken these fragments and pieced them together into some meaningful snippet of knowledge. Hermod had not the cleverness nor patience to bother.

  Mist filled the crevasse, too, until Hermod could scarcely make out his hand in front of his face. Overhead, a howling wind must have whipped some of the mountain slopes mostly clear of the vapors, but here, Hermod couldn’t escape.

  And the longer he breathed in these mists, the more lightheaded he felt. The Aesir had long held that immortals were immune to the degenerative effects of the mists of Niflheim. But then, they’d never traveled to Niflheim itself.

  Hermod coughed once. His throat felt frozen solid. Raw and apt to crack. Just thinking about what these vapors were doing inside of him had his mind reeling.

  Perhaps sensing his rising panic, Sleipnir increased his pace.

  You cannot outrun the air itself …

  Unable to glare at the wraith, all Hermod could do was draw his linen tighter around his face and hope it offered some protection from the poison mists as well as the cold.

  When he at last emerged from the glacial crevasse, he heard it: the crash of ice hitting against ice, mingled with the rush of water. Keuthos guided him on, around another slope, until he caught sight of the river.

  It cut through the pass, carving a path through the valley. Ice shelves slammed together, cracked, and continued onward in a frozen cascade that disappeared into the mist. How so much of the river remained unfrozen, he didn’t know, but clearly, its source lay some distance ahead.

  Far ahead … Hvergelmir … The Well of Cold … from which the icy Elivagar rivers flow …

  Elivagar. He knew that name. Poison rivers from the dawn of time.

  Yes … From poisons come all things … Life itself is a toxin …

  The wraith had a blissful conception of reality, Hermod had to give it that.

  He tugged on Sleipnir’s reins, guiding the horse along the riverbank, careful not to draw too nigh. If this was one of the Elivagar rivers—nether rivers, perhaps?—he didn’t want to know what would happen if it splashed on him or the horse.

  This river … Sildr …

  Good to have a name for it.

  She bid a jotunn lord drink the waters …

  Drink it? From Sildr? From Hvelgemir?

  Drink and … should the jotunn survive … become infused with the powers of Niflheim …

  Did Keuthos speak of Ymir? Odin had said something to that extent, even mentioned that Vafthrudnir had claimed Ymir would walk once more, though he’d been dead for centuries.

  We are all dead …

  Odin had also claimed having a wraith in his mind was a torment akin to getting sand in one’s trousers, constantly chafing one’s stones.

  Audr Nottson …

  Hermod jerked around, though, of course, he could not see Keuthos inside of himself. But his wraith … knew which wraith Odin had bound. Because he knew what Hermod knew? No. It sounded as if Keuthos knew, or at least, knew of, the other wraith. Friend?

  Now, Keuthos’s mad cackle had him cringing.

  Friendship is an illusion for the living …

  Oh. Of course.

  Audr touched the power of Nott … Long after my death …

  So Keuthos was older than Audr, who had been a prince of the Lofdar. That fit, if Keuthos had actually known Hel while she lived.

  Not her name … at the time …

  So, now the wraith wanted to share information?

  But Keuthos fell silent once again, leaving Hermod to trek along the Sildr’s riverbank alone with his thoughts.

  Hermod followed the Sildr’s course for what he judged to be an entire night and the better part of a new day. The sun never rose and those lights in the sky never went out.

  Once, he paused in the faint shelter of a grove of leafless trees. They served to cut down on the wind, if only just, and he allowed himself to doze, trusting to Sleipnir to wake him if aught approached. He’d seen the dead moving on mountain slopes, but down here, in the mist, he couldn’t make out much more than a few feet, so who knew what might draw nigh?

  No, he had to rely on his—and Sleipnir’s—ears, rather than their eyes.

  After the rest, he’d ridden on.

  On the far side of the river, concealed in the mist, he’d seen several pairs of faint red gleams. Draugar eyes, perhaps? The creatures either could not see him, had no way to cross the icy river, or did not care about him. A strange thought, that last one, for draugar on Midgard attacked most living beings unfortunate enough to happen across them.

  Here, though, in a world filled with the dead, perhaps they had other aims. Or no aims at all.

  They serve …

  Served Hel? Or whatever her name was.

  At last, the river led him to a massive depression where the mist thinned enough he could catch a glimpse of what lay ahead. A bubbling spring set around a massive root that descended from the sky. The mist banked away from that root, forming around the well in a circle. A root of Yggdrasil? From this well rose nine rivers, bubbling up with enough force they flowed up over the twenty feet from the water’s surface to the top of the depression, then cascaded away. Rivers of ice and knives and chaos, pulsating like the icy veins of a primal abomination. The beating heart of Niflheim.

  Yes … Hvelgemir … The Well of Cold …

  Hermod grimaced, transfixed in mute horror by the scope of it. He could not judge how far across from one side of the well to another, but easily two or three hundred feet.

  Around the edges of the well, shards of ice jutted up like spears the size of longships. Longer, even, piercing into the mist cloud bubbling above the well.

  And one of these rivers would lead him to the gates of Hel.

  Gjöll … Through Helwind Chasm …

  Wait. The same river he’d passed through on the edge of Niflheim?

  Yes …

  “Then why the fuck did we come the way we came?” he demanded.

  There is no passage that way … None a living man could survive …

  Hermod groaned, rubbing his face. So Gjöll, the River of Knives, both formed a barrier around at least part of Niflheim, and also cut through it. A half circle, perhaps?

  Yes …

  Damn it. He was bitterly tired of this place. In fact, he was just plain bitterly tired. He’d not slept properly in almost a fortnight, unless his sense of time had entirely fled him. Which was possible.

  Hermod grabbed the wrap over his mouth and squeezed, crunching frost off it, then pulling it down to breathe in air where the mist wasn’t so thick. A strange thought that, though Hvelgemir might be the source of the mists, the well itself remained exposed through Yggdrasil’s power.

  Still, the air stung his throat and he felt like his eyes would freeze solid in their sockets.

  They will … Leave this place with haste …

  No feller land could exist. After drawing his wrap up once more, Hermod kicked Sleipnir into motion, skirting the edge of the well until he came to another river. Not Gjöll, though.

  Hermod looked around. The mighty root of Yggdrasil stretched down from a mountaintop, and though the Tree itself repelled the mist, the vapors blocked his view and prevented him from judging how different it might look from the Tree on Asgard.

  Seeing no alternative, he backed Sleipnir up to have him jump the river. Here, at least, they were narrower than further out. The horse broke into a gallop, crunching snow under his hooves, then leapt, flying for a heartbeat, before crashing back down once more.

  This jump Hermod had to repeat once more before at last coming to a river where shards of metal clashed together in a chaotic jumbled.

  Gjöll.

  And if Hermod followed the river
’s course, he would find the gates of Hel at long last.

  16

  The island had become a giant conflagration, half of it aflame, while amid many of the mountains, snowstorms raged. Snow, on Asgard, for the first time in living memory.

  Loki’s guards had whispered to each other, perhaps not realizing Sigyn could hear every word. They’d spoken of an attack on Asgard itself, and this Sigyn had to see for herself. Neither of them had tried to stop her from leaving the cavern.

  But their words had not begun to prepare Sigyn for the catastrophic destruction that ravaged her home. She had climbed up the mountain slope for a better view, having to skirt her way around wood jotunnar. Her enhanced senses made that possible, though if she had not heard the guards mentioning it, she’d never have imagined jotunnar could reach these shores.

  After centuries of alliance, Aegir had betrayed the Aesir.

  On hands and knees, Sigyn crawled higher, to the very peak of this mountain. On the lower slopes had rested halls, though they had become pyres now, smoldering. Up here, icy winds blew, and snow dusted the slopes where none should have reached. The strongest of frost jotunnar could control the weather. They were bound to nature in a primal way, and it would obey them.

  Which explained the flooding in so many of the outer valleys.

  Atop a rocky slope, Sigyn at last rose to a kneeling position. Snow flurries whipped against her face, but she ignored them, peering through the storm and outward to the northern island. It too lay besieged, and she couldn’t see a single structure not ablaze, buried in snow, crushed, or flooded.

  A thunderstorm raged above that island, clouds so dark they probably made it seem night over there. What could cause such a tumult? Storm jotunnar? Vanr writings had mentioned them, but their kind were few, and they’d not taken much interest in Midgard since their war with the Vanir.

  The devastation encompassed this larger island, too, and the cataclysm seemed to be compounding rather than abating. Leaves fell from Yggdrasil in great droves, a curtain of them, with each falling leaf meaning someone had died, here or out in the greater world.

  Armies of jotunnar lay siege to Yggdrasil, trying to claim the World Tree for themselves. If that happened, Asgard would truly have fallen.

  As it well deserved.

  Sigyn hadn’t had any way to send word to Narfi about Hödr’s brutal murder, but her adopted son had clearly learned of it. Perhaps his Sight had even revealed the horror Sigyn herself had witnessed.

  Yes, Narfi must lie at the heart of the ruination now raining upon Asgard, though she had not found sign of him. He kept himself well hidden, working from the shadows. Even if she did see him, though, she wouldn’t have dissuaded him from this course.

  Frigg and Odin had brought this upon themselves when they betrayed her family. Sigyn tapped a finger against her lip. If she could find Narfi, however, he might find a way to free Loki, and the three of them could escape Asgard together.

  Still, the armies of jotunnar indiscriminately slaughtered any humans they came across and Sigyn could not trust they would recognize or spare her. She could not risk roaming the battlefields in search of her son. She’d need another way to find him.

  Maybe Loki could help with that.

  The guards scarcely seemed to notice her return.

  Loki, though, watched her as she drew nigh, though he flinched when another drop of water fell from the stalactite and dribbled down his face. Sometimes, he crawled backwards up the stalagmite that bound him, enough to hold his feet out of the water for fear they would rot. He could not keep himself aloft thus for long, though, and always splashed back down.

  Watching it made Sigyn want to weep. Or rage against Odin’s petty cruelty.

  “He thinks himself betrayed,” Loki said, as if reading her mind.

  Perhaps her expression plainly wrote her thoughts. Sigyn had found, over time, she had learned to read people almost as easily as he did. Tiny variations in facial muscles or posture, flitting eyelids, tone—all gave away hints to a person’s inner world. Loki was harder to read than most, but not impossible.

  “Odin can think whatever he wishes,” she said after slumping down in front of him. “Far be it for me to try to alleviate his delusions at this stage. You and I, we know the betrayal runs in both directions at the very least.”

  Loki sighed. “If I did not say it enough … I want you to know how much I love you.”

  His words triggered a sudden pain in her chest, and she lurched to her feet, putting her hand to his cheek. “Why are you saying this?”

  Though she knew what he would answer.

  “Because I’m sorry for all that’s happened. And all that still will happen. I … I would have changed it all, if I could. If I could break the cycle …”

  Well, she had not foreseen that last bit. “You told me that the world has to end. That was why you started all this.”

  “I’ve seen it end six times already, my love.” He sounded almost ready to weep himself. “But I didn’t want things to go as they have. I just … I am powerless …”

  “The Norns placed this burden upon you?”

  Loki sputtered as more water fell on his face. “They are … intermediaries.”

  “To what?”

  He shook his head suddenly, as if changing his mind about whatever he’d been about to reveal. Something out there used him, used even the Norns, with an agenda Loki either didn’t understand, or could not bear to share with her. Without doubt, this somehow involved the cyclical end of the world.

  Sigyn tapped her lip, taking a step away from Loki. “Fifty-two centuries …”

  Loki looked up at her, pain on his face.

  “My calculations, based on the Vanr records, seem to indicate that approximately fifty-two centuries have passed since the mists came to the Mortal Realm. Five thousand two hundred years since Hel last walked the world.”

  Their daughter.

  “She was already dead,” Loki said. “She needed a human host. A foolish sorceress unwittingly provided one.”

  Sigyn paced around, not bothering to respond to that. The specific variations within an iteration of the world probably didn’t matter so much as the overall pattern. The cycle, Loki had referred to it as. She looked over at him. “Is it always fifty-two centuries?”

  “More or less.”

  Some fragments of mankind had survived that cataclysm and headed for here, naming the islands Vanaheim. At the same time, a jotunn empire had risen and taken control of most of the world. Civilizations rose … and they fell.

  Trying to hold the puzzle pieces in her mind was surreal, like trying to map a dream, when the landscape defied linearity by its very nature. If she could disengage her mind from grounding in the present, she could almost see it all, on an intellectual level. But to try to reconcile time on such a scale, events of such magnitude, to do so strained the limits of comprehension. She could know it, but not quite understand it.

  And Loki’s words … implied not much time remained.

  “Narfi’s come,” she said at last. “He’s destroying Asgard in revenge for what they did to his brother.”

  Loki stared at her, his crystal blue eyes looking ready to break apart, as if they could not contain the torment of whatever he’d seen in an impossibly long life.

  He said he’d seen the world end six times. “If this is the seventh iteration of the cycle, and each cycle endures for approximately fifty-two centuries … you’ve been carrying this weight for … more than thirty-six millennia …”

  “Sigyn. Please. This doesn’t matter. Narfi coming here, it does not presage aught we should rejoice over. I need you to know how much I love you, how sorry I am that I cannot stop what’s happening.”

  His words left her shivering, more than any snowstorm had. “I … I love you, too. We need to find Narfi. He can help us escape from here.”

  Loki lowered his head and groaned. “Sigyn. Run from here. Do not wait for Narfi. Just … find a way off these islands. E
scape anywhere you can.”

  “I won’t leave without you.”

  “Sigyn—”

  “No! I’m not losing you.”

  At her outburst, the guards glanced in their direction.

  Sigyn held up a finger. “Narfi will come for us.”

  She knew he would.

  17

  It sat amidst broken mountains with jagged peaks pointed inward like fangs. The fortress, if fortress were even the right word. Rather, Hermod might have called it a city, or even another mountain. It rose up from the mist, tall beyond his fathoming, a twisted wonder of stonework coated in millennia of ice that jutted from the walls in vicious spikes. Amid the stones lay supports that looked like bones, albeit bones larger than the tallest of trees.

  A screeching wind swept down over the mountains, its wail almost enough to cover the lamentations of the dead lurking within the fortress itself.

  Carved monstrosities overlooked the walls, hanging from skeletal buttresses, poking out from the ice upon spires wider than a king’s hall, and lurking within the triangular gable that rested above the infamous gates of Hel themselves. And those … Fuck. A path cut from the ice and stone rose up the mountainside to double doors that must have stood twenty times Hermod’s height. Iron-banded stonework, complete with rime-crusted spikes and strange sigils half-concealed beneath the frost.

  An entire force of jotunnar would’ve found it hard to open those doors.

  “Fuck me,” he mumbled, then patted Sleipnir’s face. “We truly made it.”

  The rumble in his gut told him it was, perhaps, not something to rejoice over.

  All of this was lit only by those ephemeral bands of light in the night sky.

  The path leading to the gates broke off in several branches, and from those, a procession of shades marched. Many bore horrific wounds or burns. Some, Hermod could see where they’d been decapitated, leaving little doubt that, despite their trudging pace, they no longer lived. Or, perhaps, they lived here now, in the ultimate necropolis.