by Matt Larkin
“So we were meant to be forever torn apart from one another?”
“Torn apart. Reunited. Drawn, forever to one another, by forces more powerful than even fate or death. The Norns have their web, yes, and maybe we cannot escape it. But even that web could not hold us apart forever. This will not be the last time I hold your hand. I swear it, Freyja. Whatever happens, I’ll see you again.”
She sighed. “Easy for you to say when you believe so completely in this Wheel of Life, thinking that we might be born again. But since I won’t know you, or know myself even, know the things I’ve been through, how does it matter to me? The person I am now will be gone.”
“Never. You’ll be in there, my love.”
She groaned. Oh, how she wished she could just believe him. Certainly, his convictions seemed beyond religious belief, transitioning even unto knowledge. Something he claimed he had himself seen. Much as Freyja found it hard to credit, she had no doubt he believed his words.
“Well,” she finally said. “Either way, whatever happens, at least we have this time together.”
“Walking through the frozen wastes of Niflheim, about to face a force of entropy beyond comprehension.”
“Ugh. Sure. But at least you’re not hungry.”
“I’ve had my throat torn out.”
Freyja allowed herself a slight smile. “Which is why it’s good you’re not hungry.”
Now, Od cast her a sidelong glance, as if to ask what she had been drinking. She remembered days long gone, in Vanaheim, experimenting with smoking various herbs and extracts, trying to enhance her perception of the Otherworlds. And now … now here she was treading among one such world, well beyond the shadows of the Penumbra she’d hoped to look through. No, never in all her studies of arcana had Freyja desired to see Niflheim.
“We always think of the dead as being without warmth.”
Odin grunted in answer.
“So, if I’m cold by nature now, why should I suffer from the cold, Od? Why does the chill of this place still torment me? I keep trying to imagine the warm beaches on the shores of Vanaheim, and I can’t quite picture them, much less feel the heat of the sand between my toes. I spent ten thousand summer nights walking barefoot on those shores, and I cannot remember what it felt like now.” Was that the Lethe, stripping away her memories, stealing her joys?
Odin’s sad glance told her that it was.
“No matter what we do at Naströnd, win or lose, there’s no future for us. At best we fade away, losing our memories …” And naught could seem more horrifying to her. Despite Odin’s protestations of an eternal soul, Freyja could not see defining the self as aught other than an uninterrupted chain of memories. Take them all away, and the person who remained would be a new person, forming new memories.
“Given the choice,” Odin said, “I would not spend our last moments in this life embroiled in such musings, my love.”
“When shall we talk of them, then?”
Odin wheezed, a laugh, perhaps, though his mauled throat made it sound dire. “We’ll talk of them when next we walk on warm beaches and revel in the setting sun. We’ll think of who and what we are, debating long into the night when no mist obscures the stars.”
Despite the ever-present cold, Freyja almost felt warmth now, at his words. For one perfect instant, she could feel those sweet sands upon her feet again. A memory to hold on to, until the very end.
34
Andalus, what remained of it, was worse than Idunn had ever feared. A land of ash and volcanic waste. The sky was darkened now, not by eclipse or mist, but by smoke and clouds of dust. The once green hills were now mountains of cinder, stripped clean of even the faintest sign of life.
The sight had broken something in Idunn’s mother, and now she walked as if in a daze. Mother had laid her hopes on the idea that Surtr would ally himself with the Serks. Perhaps, had it been a lesser jinni, that might have held true.
But Surtr, they had come to learn, held himself as the firstborn son of Muspel, the first flame to grace the Mortal Realm. The Fire prince thought it his due to burn down the world that it might be rebuilt clean from the ashes, and ruled over by the eldjotunnar who he thought his own children.
Whole villages were blown away in clouds of flame, caught in conflagrations, or inundated with lava. Streams of molten rock ran down the mountains and cut like incandescent serpents through the valleys.
And the only cities Idunn had seen spared were those where the residents had offered up sacrifices by the thousands to the flames. They hung the smoldering bodies of criminals from the city walls in brutal executions. They burned their slaves in screaming effigies upon those same walls, and the screams had gone on and on, as more and more were led to the slaughter. When they ran out of slaves, they burned lower classes, any they found huddled in poverty, starving, or poor. Next came the menial workers and craftsmen they had so long relied upon, any who lacked a caliph as a patron, and even some who had such prestigious friends. When they ran of out those, they ignited their beloved horses.
When even the animals were gone, they strung up and burned lower ranked soldiers, wives out of favor.
Mother had wept and Idunn had wished that she could, but found herself neither physically nor emotionally capable of the act. Still, she had looked away when they began to lead children up to the walls, some of them flailed, crying out for their parents, many of whom had already burned themselves.
The sacrifices worked, Idunn supposed, for the wild eldjotunn armies of Surtr bypassed those cities, perhaps considering them sufficiently cowed.
For their part, she and mother had avoided drawing too close, for when a city was willing to sacrifice their own, why would they hesitate to offer up foreigners? Instead, Idunn had gathered information from the shadows, past caring that relying on such powers might reveal her to Volund. Given the state of things, she seriously doubted the svartalf prince would have any desire to visit the Mortal Realm for years.
“How can they do these things?” Mother asked, her eyes dry now, and her face blackened with soot she no longer bothered trying to wipe away.
They walked between cities, drawing ever southward, toward the Straits of Herakles, hoping, somehow, they could make the crossing and find a land not consumed by these devouring flames. Idunn cast a glance at her mother, not knowing what to say. That cruelty was well within human nature? Empathy was a learned skill, a kind of enlightenment some would have said, though she knew Volund would have called it self-indulgent and deluded. The svartalf would have said, rather, that empathy was a lie perpetuated by those without the strength of will to remake the world as they desired, while still deluding themselves into thinking everyone else ought to forego such a will as well.
Idunn, though, no longer knew what to think. How was she to explain to her mother the apathy of Alfheim? The active malevolence of Svartalfheim? Moreover, whether because of her long sojourn in those worlds or not, Idunn could no longer say with utter certainty that either outlook was inherently wrong. Once, living in the Mortal Realm, she’d believed as her mother did. Once, her heart would have broken to see such cruelty.
But … if fate was cruel … history was cruel … death was cruel … life itself was cruel … Should the living not draw some conclusion from the examples set before them by the cosmos? Volund would have claimed that, in indulging so-called altruism, one did no favors either to oneself or even the supposed beneficiaries of the kindness. Strength was forged from suffering, he had told her oft enough, while torturing her. To deny this was no better than a parent who so shelters his child from the world such that the boy grows to adulthood utterly unprepared for the indifference and oft malevolence of existence in life, much less beyond life.
Only, Idunn didn’t want to believe it. She hated herself—as she so oft did these days—for finding herself drawn in by Volund’s arguments. Wanted to believe that those claims were the self-indulgent ones. A petty excuse to justify whatever actions suited even more petty beings.
That was what she wanted to believe.
If only she could make herself align that way.
With the mists burned away, Idunn could see clear across the Straits, to Serkland itself, the landscape rough and hilly, but naught compared to the impressive promontory that rose up on this side. Idunn had never seen it without the mists. A town lay in the rock’s shadow, lit with numerous effigies along the walls, in obvious supplication to the army of eldjotunnar they surely believed closed in on them.
Still, in this town was their only chance to gain passage across the Straits of Herakles, and the battles had not yet come here, so far as Idunn could tell. So they pressed on, and were not turned away. Maybe the locals did not want to turn anyone away, fearing how they themselves would fare if caught outside.
They had begun to head toward the harbor when they heard it. A sound, like thunder, rumbling through the ground. The march of an army immense not only in numbers, but in the size of its leader.
Though she had no doubt what she’d see, still, Idunn could not stop herself from running up toward the walls. Any moment, she expected some soldier or warrior to bar her passage, but none did, so focused were they upon readying every arrow, rock, or other missile, and upon manning the now-tiny seeming wall.
It seemed, this time, those effigies were not enough to propitiate Surtr.
And he came. The eldjotunnar themselves, most of them, stood perhaps a head taller than the men around them. Some had eyes that simmered like liquid flame. Some had skin black as charcoal and seeming to pulse with inner heat.
None of them compared to the behemoth that strode through their ranks. They parted around him like waters breaking upon a boulder. Surtr, as hideous as she remembered, like a nightmare striding right from the bowels of Muspelheim, coming for her. For them all.
The creature—an eldjotunn possessed by Surtr, she had no doubt—towered over the wall, twice its height or more. In the jungles of Alfheim, Idunn had seen the most fearsome of dinosaurs, a bipedal monstrosity of fang and fury. It would have seemed puny and weak beneath Surtr. His sword stretched out, so bright it looked to scorch the sky. His fangs dripped with magma.
And those dinosaurs would have shat themselves at his roar.
Idunn screamed—not that she could hear it—and collapsed against the wall. Men around her dropped their bows, fell to their knees. Some wept openly. Streams of urine dribbled over the back of the battlements, so prevalent Idunn could not have judged their source had she cared.
She had her hand to her mouth.
Her heart was trying to beat out of her chest, like it too wanted to escape.
In the harbor behind her, people had begun to flock to the boats. They trampled one another, crushed women and even babes beneath their heels in their mad flight. She watched in mute horror as, in the tumult, men fighting over a boat managed to accidentally scuttle it. In desperation, hundreds leapt into the sea and began the nigh impossible swim for the far shore. Even those with the endurance for such a swim would risk deathchill. It was madness.
But still better than staying here to watch Surtr and his brethren immolate the town. Determined to find her mother and make the swim themselves—as immortals, they might survive it—she cast a glance back at the monstrous eldjotunn.
As she looked on, a single man vaulted the wall and landed below, before advancing toward the army of flame and destruction that closed in upon them all. A man, sandy-haired and tall, bearing a flaming runeblade.
Loki.
As if their lord had offered some silent command, the rest of Surtr’s army paused in their advance, and their massive prince strode forth to meet Loki alone. Surtr finally paused, some distance before Loki, cocked his head to one side, and laughed, the sound somehow worse than his bellow. For his laughter revealed that, even in mirth, he was an incarnation of destruction.
When the eldjotunn finally fell silent, not a sound passed among the town—save for in the harbor when men and women continued to fight one another for escape—or out on the battlefield. All who could see Loki and Surtr no doubt found themselves helplessly enraptured by the spectacle, unable to look away or do aught save stand there, breaths held, barely willing to give rise to hope.
Who was this man, perhaps they thought, who would go and stand alone against the Lord of Flame? Who was he that stood there, before their walls, defending them when no other army remained in Midgard?
Idunn had always thought she’d known the answer, drawn from her grandmother’s tales. The man who thought to weave fate. Perhaps, even the first immortal in the world, or among the first. And he’d had some fell, inexplicable connection to fire. He shared it with others, yes, though some piece of the flame remained ever hidden away. He revered it and taught others to do the same, even as it sometimes seemed to frighten him.
“I should have known you could not control your boldness.” Surtr’s voice was like an avalanche of molten rock, and tiny plumes of smoke billowed from his mouth as he spoke. “You, who dared defile the blessed power of Muspel. You, foul wretch, who ought to have died so very long ago. And now, instead of having to hunt you down, you present yourself to me, in audacious madness.”
Loki spread his arms wide, the point of his flaming sword high. “As you say, prince. I stole into the heart of the conflagration, and I took the first flame from Muspel. I stole you, and held you in my breast as if you were my own child. For the benefit of man, I took the first flame that they might ward themselves against darkness and cold. And now, for man, I shall take it back.” Loki took a mad step toward him, as if to threaten the behemoth. “I am the Firebringer.”
Idunn could not see the battle for the cloud of smoke and dust it had thrown up, nor had she long remained. Loki could not win this, she knew, which meant he sacrificed himself to buy the town time. Had he known that she and Eostre were here? Once, he had claimed to have cared about Chandi, and thus perhaps he had cared for her descendants.
Either way, Idunn rushed through the streets, relying on alf strength to shove aside any who tried to block her path, while holding her mother’s hand. The two of them threaded through the crowds. Everyone was bound for the harbor now, knowing this place was doomed. Whatever remained when the eldjotunnar were finished, it would be a world for their kind, and Idunn was no longer sure whether humanity would even survive.
Someone jostled her and she jerked her free elbow out to the side, earning an oomph from whoever had hit her. She didn’t bother looking. The press of bodies had grown so tight she felt she could scarcely breathe. Growling, she shoved someone else—only the man hardly moved. Not for lack of strength, but rather, because there was simply nowhere for him to go. He’d rammed up against a cluster of townsfolk ten people deep.
Howling in frustration, Idunn broke off, dragging her mother down a side street. Suddenly, the wall had become more of a hindrance than a defense, denying her easy access to the sea. What she needed was—
Ahead of her the wall blasted apart in a shower of stone and flame and dust.
Idunn drew up short, coughing. Perhaps she ought to watch what she wished for.
An instant later, a swarm of eldjotunnar charged in, bearing torches and shamshirs and axes, faces mad with bloodlust. They came forward like a wave of violence, hacking at everyone, setting fire to buildings, destroying with fanatical zeal. One paused to kick over a fence even though it wasn’t in the way and barred naught. Another Idunn saw stop to rip the limbs off a corpse.
Frantic, she dragged her mother back, into another alley formed by the town wall and a building. Surely, if she followed the wall long enough she’d be able to reach the sea, and they’d try swimming for it.
All they had to do was keep heading south, until they reached … An eldjotunn surged up before her, blocking the alleyway, a shamshir in one hand and a flaming brand in another.
No!
No, she refused to give up like this.
Idunn cast a furtive glance back at her mother. The way they’d come … led to an army of
these bastards. “I’m going to distract him and you slip by.”
“Wait, Idunn—”
No. It no longer mattered if Volund might find her or what became of her for embracing the dark. Idunn was simply not going to surrender to this. And so, she reached into the shadows, tickled them with her mind, felt them writhe and lengthen in the setting sun. Growling, she lunged at the eldjotunn.
The shadows lunged with her.
Tendrils of them, like manifestations of Nott’s power, drawn straight from Svartalfheim, formed up in octopus-like tentacles. They wrapped around the jotunn’s limbs and throat and waist and pulled him to an abrupt stop. His eyes widened in sudden terror at the Otherworldly power grasping him. He would feel it, the wrongness, the vileness seeping through the world and pulling him down.
Into shadows that would feast upon his very soul.
Yes.
This was what Idunn really was. This, was Ivaldi’s power, manifested in her. Volund was a dark prince, a grandson of Ivaldi. But Idunn was his direct child. His tainted blood coursed through her veins and she was tired of denying it.
Grinning—Mother did as she’d asked and raced around the bound jotunn—Idunn advanced. Licking her lips. “I didn’t want to become this, you know. You … You’ve made me look into places where I would have chosen to avert my eyes. I would have tried to walk in the light and be the goddess of spring others have always wanted me to be. You came here, intent on war and death and carnage. You came here, and you brought this out of me, forced me to become …” Idunn spread her hands as if to indicate the swarm of shadows now forming all around her. “… To become this. And you shall pay for that as I spend the next hundred years slowly wrenching your soul out through your arse.”
The jotunn’s fear, so plain and delicious upon his face, seemed to spread into the air until Idunn could taste it upon her tongue and revel in it, intoxicated by the heady scent.
