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

by Matt Larkin

  “I didn’t send you—”

  “You saw it, in the future, didn’t you? Hmm. In the Well? Because of the Well? Or … Lady Chandi wrote about it. Huh. We thought her mad, you know? Brilliant, but half mad, at least. Or three-quarters mad, perhaps. Five-eights, maybe. I … I have forgotten the equations we worked out. Is that a problem? Are the answers in the Well? Not the Well of Urd, no. I looked there, so many times, so deeply. Sometimes, even without Lytir’s permission. Did you know that? When I thought, perhaps, they didn’t know. How foolish was that?”

  The Norns? Mundilfari was trying to sidestep the Norns’ authority?

  “Souls! That’s what she kept writing about. So much is lost, of course. I don’t think she wanted us to know the truth … Did she know the truth?”

  A knock on the cell door had Mundilfari spinning abruptly around.

  The door creaked open and Loki stepped inside.

  Odin couldn’t keep the shock from his face. Though neither spoke, both vaettir within him seemed equally stupefied at the man’s presence here.

  “You’re back,” Mundilfari said. “Hmm.”

  “I told you I would return when you needed me.”

  “Bah!” The Vanr waved Loki away. “I’ve needed you for quite some time, yes, I think I did. I did indeed, hmm. But now … now the other one is here. Maybe, between the two of you, you can find the damn well. Yes, you should I think.” The Vanr king snorted. “None of this … this … this matters when the future is such a tangled ball of strings. I have to know, Loptr! I have to know.”

  The man had lost himself, for certain. It seemed Odin’s last meeting with him had served as a catalyst to drive him further over the edge. At the moment, though, all Odin could do was stare at Loki—Loptr?—who regarded him without a hint of expression.

  “It’s beyond the Midgard Wall,” Odin blurted. “Beyond even Vafthrudnir’s Refuge.”

  Mundilfari spun and poked Odin’s chest with his index finger. “See! I knew it! I knew it!”

  “My king,” Loki said, “surely you have more pressing duties than—”

  “King! King of what, prophet? King of a failing empire in a failing world.” He snapped his fingers. “Dust. Dust! All of it, irrelevant. How many times, prophet? How many times … have … have they wound us round and round in our loops? The past and future and present … a mush. Soup! We are drowning in soup!”

  “My king …”

  “No more. No, no … Njord always wanted his mother’s throne. Little sister-fucking prince. Well, let him have it. Freyja ought to be pleased, too. Shit, let their entire disheveled family run this faltering island. I … I … I have to find the Well, Loptr! The Well! I have … to see farther.”

  With that, Mundilfari shoved past Loki and stormed from the room. Loki winced as he left.

  Grimacing, Odin’s blood brother turned back to him, grabbed the chains, and yanked them free of the iron loop that bound them. Metal grated and snapped.

  “Causal loops,” Odin said. Mundilfari … “This is not some past life, is it?”

  Loki sighed. “Odin, listen to me.”

  “You know me. You know who I am, even though I still won’t be born for centuries.”

  “We don’t have much time.” Loki shook his head. “So, listen carefully.”

  “Not a past life at all.”

  Loki grabbed Odin’s shoulders. “If it was, you wouldn’t be asking that question, would you? Focus, Odin.”

  Odin shoved the man away. “I ought to kill you, Nornslave! What utter madness you have wrought. Is this your doing, as well? You sent me—the real me—back in time? What, so I could watch the Mad Vanr become mad in the first place? Why!”

  Loki shook his head. “Don’t call me that where people might hear it. Right now, here, I’m Loptr.”

  “Or Loge?”

  Now Loki flinched. “Definitely don’t use that name, either.”

  “Or what?” Odin stalked closer to the man, chains still attached to his wrists and scraping over the stone floor behind him. “What more will you do to me?”

  Loki held up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t do this to you. The Norns have cracked something open that was already inside you.” Wait, what? No. That wasn’t … “Your Sight allows you to glimpse threads from the web of urd. But if it were powerful enough, you might grasp hold of such a thread and pull yourself along it, to nodes in the greater tapestry of time. But you’re not in control, and maybe it’s too powerful for you ever to control, so you’re flitting about, both inside your own past, and bodily into nodes that draw your mind. You can, however, learn to guide and maybe even stop the transitions. You have to focus.”

  We are all of us mad, now …

  Odin clutched his temples, trying to hold thoughts inside that seemed too big for his head. Already, he could feel the tidal forces building again, an almost audible crash of waves at the far edge of his senses, coming for him, intent to drown him once more.

  “I didn’t change aught … I thought … I thought if I brought down the Norns …”

  Loki grabbed his wrists. “They are but symptoms of an already untenable reality, Odin. Manifestations of the force of Ananke, which keeps us all bound to the chains of fate. Your rage against them, while not entirely misplaced, is moot, because if their chains did begin to snap, if you somehow managed to unravel threads of the web, you’d risk the entire timeline collapsing.”

  Odin shook his wrists free. “We are powerless. Utterly, and completely helpless before the merciless procession of urd. Deny it, brother. Deny it!”

  “You have to get back to your own time, Odin. The future needs you.”

  “No! I won’t betray them thus. I left to find a way to change it.”

  “No.” Loki shook his head, almost seeming terrified. “You don’t understand. I needed you, I needed the cycle of eschatons, even if I didn’t know what I was creating, exactly, I knew I needed it. I convinced them to allow it, because the alternative was—”

  The maelstrom rushed over Odin, a crash of waves bombarding him, drowning out all his senses. It swept him from his feet and cast him away from Loki, falling through his brother’s fingertips.

  And vanishing once more into the swirling temporal vortex.

  Control it. Focus.

  Loki had said … he said this wasn’t something the Norns did to Odin. It was something they unlocked in him. The ultimate manifestation of the Sight. The ability, not only to see the past and future, but to live it.

  If he could but gain a foothold …

  But naught Loki said ever made enough sense. He needed answers … Just like Mundilfari.

  Odin had to know.

  37

  Idavollir lay buried under a curtain of ice, its doors frozen shut once more. Lucky the Valls hadn’t claimed it. Maybe they thought it cursed. Roland said something like that. Way back, when Tyr had fought alongside him. Called him friend. Before he died fighting Serks.

  Serks who had now overrun half Valland. Fires raged all over. Villages burned. Cities too. Serks reduced everything to ash. To smoke. To blood and chaos.

  Still couldn’t say they were worse than the Valls. Not anymore. Valls had always worshiped their Deathless god. Only now, they’d taken to hunting Aesir in his name. Years, Tyr had bled for them. Now, no one remembered it.

  Bastards.

  A swing of Thor’s hammer shattered the ice holding the gates shut. Tyr helped the prince force open the doors.

  Odin’s son was the first inside. Didn’t get far before he was gaping at too tall stairs.

  “Weren’t old enough to remember this place,” Tyr commented.

  Thor shook his head. “It’s big, I’ll give you that.”

  “Got wells for water. Food’s a different story.”

  Thrúd had gone out hunting, taking several others with her. Including Magni. Thor’s son was no hunter, but he said he’d watch them. Just as well. They had to eat. Didn’t make this land safe by any measure.

  �
��Start bringing in firewood,” Tyr ordered a group of Aesir.

  Thor grunted. “Didn’t think of that.”

  Prince probably didn’t think of much. Save eating, drinking, fucking, and fighting. Didn’t know a real siege. Tyr held his peace, though. Naught to gain, antagonizing the man. The man had lost a lot, back on Asgard. Besides, until Odin returned, Thor held the throne.

  Not that they had an actual throne. Or much else.

  Still. Didn’t much like their chances if anyone actually let Thor lead.

  Men and women began piling in, selecting sleeping chambers. Prepping kitchens and forges. Bragi immediately set to giving them orders. Like they didn’t know what needed doing better than a liosalf. Skald liked hearing his own voice, Tyr figured. A hair better than Thor giving orders—or failing to.

  “Here we make our stand,” Frey said, coming up behind Tyr and Thor.

  Vanr’s sister stood close at hand, arms folded over her chest. Sullen. Eostre had slapped Freyja on the boat. Maybe on account of Idunn, though the old dawn goddess said naught. Tyr hadn’t figured she’d have stayed with them, but she did. Even when her Sons of Muspel went off to pillage Valland and kill the Deathless.

  Shame, that. Bastards were strong and fast. Would’ve made good allies. Not accounting for them being more than half possessed and possibly mad. Eh … maybe not such a shame.

  Thor shook his head, looking at Frey. Prince would never walk quite right again, but still had strength few could match. Couldn’t ask for a stronger ally when the fighting came, that much Tyr had to grant.

  Now, Tyr nodded at Frey. “It held a good while before. Had draugar swim up the wells, though. Have to guard those.”

  The Vanr nodded grimly. “Sea jotunnar.”

  Tyr grunted in assent. “My prince. Care to inspect the defenses?”

  “Yes.” Thor made his way to the stairs. With that bad foot, it ought to keep him busy a while.

  Tyr met Frey’s gaze. A grim thing, letting it come to this. Vanr had been his enemy, and a bitter one. “Prince won’t know how to prepare for this.”

  “You do.”

  Maybe. But Thor wouldn’t take kindly to having his authority questioned. Had to make it all seem like his idea. And Tyr hated that kind of trollshit. Manipulating and scheming. Didn’t suit him in the least. “You and I. We have to make sure we can hold out until Odin comes.”

  “Still think he can save you? I’m half convinced we made a mistake in not retreating to Alfheim.”

  “No,” Freyja said. First time she’d broken her silence. “Odin shifted the bridge to open from this side in order to stabilize it. You’d have had to leave the ring in the machine for us to cross the Bilröst. Meaning, even if we shut down the bridge on Alfheim, a clever jotunn like Narfi might have reopened it to any spirit world he wished. We’d not only damn Midgard, but we’d risk having unending armies pour into Alfheim.”

  Frey held up his hand, showing off that band. “We die here, they take the ring anyway.”

  “Comes to it,” Tyr said, “you run to Alfheim.”

  Frey snorted. “I’m not leaving my sister here, even I was craven enough to follow such a plan. Nor can I abandon any of the other Vanir now trapped on Midgard.”

  Tyr grunted. “Got to fight then. Got to win.”

  “The world ends all around us,” Freyja said. “Maybe Odin can see a way to stop it. Without him …”

  So strange, being back here. And now, waiting on Odin again. Last time, he’d rode in to save them. Now … Tyr could only pray the king could manage it a second time.

  He found Eostre atop the ramparts. Staring down at the mist. Grim. Sullen, maybe.

  Tyr had spent the past two hours ordering every preparation he could think of. Speaking on Thor’s behalf. Sometimes countermanding Bragi who didn’t know a defensive strategy from his own arse hole. Skald kept carrying on about epic sagas where men held off armies by themselves. Fought in gatehouses and so forth.

  Imbecile might inspire some fools. Get them killed.

  Only thing worse than Thor not knowing what to do, was Bragi thinking he knew.

  “Meant to thank you,” he said to Eostre. Woman didn’t turn at his approach.

  “You saved a good many lives on Asgard.”

  “Vanaheim.”

  Tyr grunted. Didn’t much matter what they called dead islands, to his mind. “Wanted to say something else, too.” Something hard to give words to. He’d almost been tempted to find more tasks to busy himself with. Put this one off. The craven’s way. “I was … fond of your daughter.”

  Now Eostre did spin on him, glaring.

  “Didn’t sit well, her cast into Alfheim. Set less well what happened, her trapped in Svartalfheim.”

  “I can’t tell you how much your concern means to me.” Woman had an adder’s venom when she wanted. He could hardly see Idunn in her, truth be told. Idunn was … vibrant. Optimistic to a fault, he’d have said.

  Tyr rested his hand on a snow-drenched crenellation. “Been thinking on asking Frey for the ring. Trying to go after her.”

  Eostre scoffed. “All you’d do is get yourself killed and hand an unimaginably dangerous weapon to the denizens of Svartalfheim.”

  Thought had occurred to him. Problem was, without the Bilröst, only one person could go. Hermod could’ve gone with him, but the man was most like dead himself, having ridden for the gates of Hel. Utter depths of mist-madness, Tyr had to figure.

  “Can’t see abandoning her.”

  Eostre sneered. “Freyja says she and Odin felt the same. And yet, here you all are, while she rots in the darkness.”

  “I’ll find a way, is all I’m saying.”

  Still sneering, she turned away. Not inclined to talk more on it, then.

  Well, couldn’t much blame her. Not after what had happened to her child.

  With a grimace, Tyr wandered back to the stairs.

  It was just after dusk, a few days later, when Hermod came trudging through the snows up to the gate. Sentries had damn nigh shot him, figuring him a Vall or Serk or even a draug.

  But he’d announced himself, and Thor ordered the gates flung wide.

  Now, the three of them sat in the great hall, Hermod sipping hot soup made from what game Thrúd had managed. Squirrel, mostly, and a rabbit. All mixed together, spread thin for so many mouths.

  They’d told him about Syn’s fall, and the man had grown grimmer than ever. Which stood as a feat, itself. Not that Tyr could blame him. She’d died a warrior’s death, Tyr had told Hermod. The man only grew silent.

  “Where’s my brother?” Thor demanded, before Hermod had even finished eating.

  Rude, that. Tyr frowned at it. Man had come back from a place Tyr didn’t even want to imagine. Maybe the darkest, worst place in any realm. And here Thor was badgering him.

  One look at Hermod’s eyes, and you could see he was haunted.

  Damn, but Tyr didn’t want to know what he’d seen out there.

  Hermod swallowed, cleared his throat. “Hel won’t release Baldr on any account. She refused any offer I made.” Words hung there, like he meant to say more, but didn’t.

  “What is it?” Tyr finally asked.

  “I … I saw Sif.”

  Thor stiffened. “Trollshit.”

  “It’s the truth. Hel has her, too. I tried to bargain for her release. I … I failed.”

  Now the prince slapped his fist on the table. “Well go back and get her!”

  Hermod shook his head. Tyr didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone look so tired. Like weariness would make his flesh drip off any moment. “It does not work like that. But … I avenged her.”

  “What?” Thor said. “On the Serks?”

  Hermod’s face grew even grimmer, if that was possible. “Sigyn.”

  Tyr balked, not quite sure he’d heard that right.

  “What?” Thor asked.

  “Her own aunt murdered her in her attempt to protect Hödr.”

  “Fucking bitch,” Thor
snarled. “I’m going to grind her bones into pulp! I’ll feed her flesh to a fucking troll!”

  “She’s dead,” Hermod said, almost all emotion drained from his voice. “And suffering under Hel herself.”

  Thor hardly looked satisfied even at that. Prince just kept shaking his head clawing at the table.

  “It’s worse,” Hermod said, after a moment more. “I … wanted revenge.”

  “Rightly so,” Tyr said. Time was, he’d almost liked Sigyn. But some things couldn’t stand. Besides, that whole family had betrayed Asgard. They’d chosen their sides. Way back, even.

  “I killed her in the hope Hel would restore Sif to life. But … she … she took Sigyn’s body as her own.”

  “Huh?” Thor asked.

  Tyr felt like someone had punched him in the gut. Odin had claimed Hel would find a way back to Midgard. That she was plotting it. Maybe had been plotting it for centuries. Their whole lives, probably.

  And now she had done it.

  “Hel is here,” Hermod said. “She’s come back. Whatever Asgard faced, this is only the beginning.”

  38

  Even before Hel had strained her power to engender the endless winter, the snows in these mountains had never melted. It meant the corpse lay frozen, buried under four hundred years of ice. Dead, but not completely unwakeful.

  Coming here had stirred up a blizzard, but ice and snow hardly impeded Hel. They fell well within her purview, and thus served her, concealing her steps amid the Sudurberks—as men called these mountains now.

  In the back of her mind, the host squirmed, raging against Hel’s control. The delicious irony of claiming her father’s own wife as a host brought a smile to Hel’s lips. Or, to what remained of her lips, since one side of her face had sloughed off.

  I am not afraid of you!

  Hel didn’t even bother scoffing at the host’s absurd objection. Everyone feared her, and had for era after era. In many cases, unaware of the true nature of the archons or the greater powers beyond them, mortals feared Hel more than they did aught else in all the cosmos. And with good reason, for she alone had usurped the power of an archon, thus becoming an Elder God herself. She alone ruled Niflheim, and very soon, the Mortal Realm, as well.