The Songweaver's Vow

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  This Skathi might consider herself slighted by the others, then, Euthalia noted. It would be good to remember these things, if she had to make her way among immortal politics.

  “Come,” said Skathi. “Let us go to the hall of Odin.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Euthalia could not have explained it, but when Skathi pulled open the door of the longhouse, the rest of the village seemed to fall away along with the day itself. Inside, it was night, or at least the long twilight of the North, and those feasting within had no need or thought of the next day’s morn.

  Men and women lined the longhouse walls and sat at tables in its center. A few were taller like Skathi and noticeable even from the door, but most were of a height. Most were fair-skinned, but a few were like the darker men she had seen in Byzantium, and a few folk were nearly hidden in the unlit corners with their skin like night and their short statures.

  Some hailed Skathi as she entered, others ignored her. None called to Euthalia, though she felt eyes upon her as she followed Skathi along the tables.

  These were the many gods of the North, and there were others, too—for surely the night-skinned ones clinging to the dark were dwarfs, and there were long rows of men along the walls, raising joints of meat and horns of mead, stretching too far to see against walls much too long to belong to a single longhouse. This longhouse was Valhöll, the Hall of the Slain, and these were the dead, the warriors who had earned their place here with a good death and now awaited Odin’s order.

  Women and men, all humans to her eye, moved among the men and served out more meat and mead. They were dressed more humbly, without armor or knives, and she recognized they were thralls. Probably dead thralls, sacrificed like Birna to serve in the afterlife.

  At the head of the longhouse, overlooking all the tables of feasting gods and the long rows of dead warriors, sat Odin. Euthalia missed a step as her eyes found him. He sat in a huge chair carved with beasts like the prows of ships, and where one of his eyes should have been gaped a dark hole of half-healed scarring. Two large ravens perched on the back of his chair, flapping occasionally to keep their balance as he moved or lifted bits of gristle to their waiting beaks.

  “Odin, father of all,” called Skathi. “I have brought her.”

  Odin turned from the conversation he was having with a tall man and set his single eye on Euthalia. “So this is the girl of whom we have heard,” he said slowly, his expression detached and appraising. “The sacrificed bride.”

  Euthalia did not know whether to curtsy or kneel or prostrate herself or stand erect. There were two wolves crouching at Odin’s feet, and so she elected to remain standing. “I am Euthalia, Lord Odin.”

  “And you are a storyteller, or so we hear,” Odin said.

  “A songweaver,” said another, a man in brightly-colored clothing and a full beard. “So we have heard.”

  She had not expected this. “I have a few tales of my people’s history,” she said. Humility or braggadocio? Which would a god prefer? No, she knew which a Greek god would prefer—but what about a Norse god?

  Braggadocio, of course, but she had already spoken.

  “History?” Odin sniffed. “Who could bear to listen to a recounting of history? Traders bickering over last year’s prices? A good story tells of great deeds, of obstacles overcome, of valiant achievement despite fierce opposition. Do you have any proper tales of the mighty, or only pitiful stories of years passing?”

  Euthalia reached for the boldest daring she could recall. “I could tell you of Prometheus, who defied the gods themselves to steal fire for mankind.”

  Immediately she regretted her choice. What gods would want to hear of defiance? She had doomed herself.

  But these were not Greek gods, concerned with keeping their ranks and defending their superiority from grasping men. These were Norse gods, who valued bold action even above reverence. Odin leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee, and ordered, “Tell me of such a man.”

  Euthalia swallowed. The cheerful commotion of the longhouse did not quite still, but it did seem to slow, as if some of the nearer gods and goddesses and others were listening.

  “Well, Prometheus was not a man,” she began unevenly. “He was a Titan, one of those who came before the gods, and he helped the gods to overthrow the Titans.”

  “A traitor?” asked Odin, and his lip curled in disgust.

  Euthalia shook her head. “He was a giant who saw the benefit in alliance with the gods, who recognized their rule as more right and more profitable to all,” she tried. “And with this view, he allied himself with Zeus, the greatest of the gods.”

  Odin raised an eyebrow. “He was a Jötunn,” he declared. He looked at the dark-haired man on his left. “A Jötunn who swore alliance with the All-Father.”

  A cheer went up at this, and the dark-haired Jötunn made a smile, though Euthalia was not sure if the smile were true pleasure or false agreement.

  “When it came time to make humankind,” she continued, “all the best gifts had been distributed to the animals—speed, flight, fur, feathers, claws. Humans had nothing to use for hunting or protection, because they did not yet have tools or towns. Prometheus took pity upon them, and he decided to bring them fire from the mountain.”

  Odin grunted. “What mountain?”

  “Olympus, the mountain of the gods, where they dwell. It is both a physical mountain upon the earth and a place beyond human reach.” Euthalia was nervous, and she could tell she did not have Odin’s attention as she had held her husband’s. And she did not know the stakes if she failed to entertain Odin. “So Prometheus went up to Olympus, and he took fire, and he brought it down to give to the race of humans, so that they might warm themselves, and protect themselves from beasts, and make tools of iron and steel to hunt, and make fine objects of other metals for all purposes.”

  Odin frowned. “So it was an easy thing, to steal fire? Even Loki can thieve with impunity.” He gestured to the Jötunn beside him, who grinned, this time with pleasure and pride.

  Euthalia shook her head. “The theft may have been easy, but the punishment was not. Zeus seized Prometheus, though he owed him much for his service, and bound him to a high rock with unbreakable chains. He swore Prometheus would remain there for eons, for ever, without sleep or respite. When Prometheus refused still to repent, Zeus set an eagle to come each day and rend Prometheus’ body to rags, tearing out his liver and eating it upon his own chest, only to return the next day and the next.”

  This had caught Odin’s ear. He looked at her, fully attentive for the first time. “And he hung on that rock, picked apart by birds?”

  She did not quite follow his question, but it seemed important to agree. “Yes.”

  He nodded approvingly. “A good story. But,” he continued, “not told so well as I had been led to believe you could.” He sat back and turned away to speak to a blonde woman, forgetting her instantly.

  Euthalia hesitated, uncertain of how to retreat, and she glanced to the side in the hope that Skathi was near. But the Jötunn had already turned away and was joining a crowded table, her back to Euthalia.

  The second Jötunn, the one Odin had called Loki, rose from his place beside the All-Father and came toward Euthalia. “Little bride,” he said quietly, “if you stand here with your face hanging like a sheep’s, they will mistake you for a thrall or a cut of meat.” He nodded toward the wall where one long row of dead warriors sat. “Go and take a seat, and eat and drink if it suits you. There is no prestige in standing silently in a hall of great men and women.”

  Euthalia nodded, feeling stupid, and went where he directed. But a woman seated there looked up at her and said, “You have earned no place here.”

  Euthalia resisted the impulse to look behind her for Loki’s guidance or permission. “My place in this hall is mine by right, for I am the bride of a god.”

  The woman sniffed. “Let the years pass, and see what that means to you then. No one will recall your name or you
r deeds, not human skald nor gods themselves. Do you know me?”

  Euthalia had no choice but to be honest. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  The woman nodded. “I am Sigyn, and I too am the wife of an immortal. But no one can speak or write my name without his. I am nothing of myself, because they know only him. Whatever worth I had has been lost.”

  Euthalia did not think it helpful to point out that she knew almost no one here, being a newcomer both to Asgard and to the North lands themselves. She would not know Sigyn nor even any of the gods who had not yet been introduced to her. She sat down beside the woman and said, “But is it not a wife’s duty to bring honor to her husband’s name? Is she not an ornament to his house and a mother to his children?”

  Sigyn laughed without amusement. “What a little sheep you are. A name is not so much to ask. Is a man so much more worthy of one than a woman, simply because he has a soft sack of fragile stones dangling between his legs?”

  Euthalia blinked and found she had no answer.

  Sigyn smiled. “There, now you are beginning to think. That is good, for you will be less of a sheep. Sheep are sacrificed.”

  I was sacrificed, thought Euthalia.

  A thrall brought her mead, and she drank. It was good wine, sweet and tart, and she drank it all.

  She had so many questions, and she thought she might ask Sigyn, but she did not wish to appear more foolish than she already had. She wished she had been a woman of a North family, that she might have heard of their gods and known something of their politics. “Who exactly are the Jötunn?” she asked at last. “Skathi said she was not a goddess, but a Jötunn.”

  Sigyn’s eyes widened. “Oh, did you think her one of the Æsir? That must have been quite the blow to her ego.”

  Euthalia clenched her fists, ashamed and embarrassed. “I was not raised in the North. I do not know the tribes and ranks, and I cannot help but give offense.”

  Sigyn pointed discreetly toward Odin. “That one above all you must not offend. He is Odin, the All-Father, and he is always aloof and withdrawn and does not make merry like most of the others. He sacrificed his eye for wisdom, they say, but I say it was his eye and his sense of humanity. He is not human, of course, none of them are, but most of the others understand some of what it is to be human. Not Odin.

  “But to answer your question, he is Æsir, a god of Asgard, where you are now. The Vanir are of Vanaheim, but many of them stay here and treat with the Æsir as if they were of them. Like Freyr and Freyja, those two over there, the obvious siblings.” Sigyn’s voice held a dripping note of distaste. “Siblings, I say, but they are close—very close, if you take my meaning.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Euthalia needed a moment to follow her. Incest was something known only in tragic tales, always held as the most horrific of acts. Oedipus had been ignorant of his unintentional transgression and still had put out his own eyes upon learning the truth, and his mother-wife had killed herself. That two siblings might knowingly fornicate together was incomprehensible. “Do they know?”

  Sigyn gave her a sidelong look. “Do the others know they are lovers, do you mean? Some do. Some may choose to be ignorant, which is not to say that they don’t know.” Sigyn raised and lowered a single shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Some might say I have no ground to think ill of others’ habits and predilections, not with the songs they could sing of my own husband, but accusation is a poor defense.”

  Euthalia had meant to ask who Sigyn’s husband might be, but now she felt it would be in poor taste, and she did not want to alienate the woman. “I meant to ask if the couple knows they are siblings. I know a story where a husband did not know his wife was his mother, and it brought great tragedy upon their whole city.”

  “Oh, they know,” Sigyn assured her. “Only they do not care. But they are Vanir, as I was saying, who live among the Æsir. The Jötnar are the devourers, those from beyond.” She looked at Euthalia and screwed up her mouth. “Let me think how to say this. The Æsir are those who hold together, while the Jötnar are those who pull apart.”

  “Harmony and chaos,” Euthalia supplied, glad to grasp her meaning.

  But the words did not seem familiar to Sigyn. “Hm. But the Jötnar are not evil; one cannot have saplings without the decay of fallen trees, or spring without winter. They are essential for the greater cycle.” She held Euthalia’s eyes. “Not evil.”

  Euthalia sensed this was an important distinction, and particularly important to Sigyn. “Right. They are chaos, but without chaos, there can be no civilization.”

  Sigyn nodded. “Their land is called Jotunheim. Some of the Jötnar, like some of the Vanir, choose to live among the Æsir.” She nodded toward Skathi. “That one was persuaded by Loki, and she married Njord, though it could not last. It was Baldr she wanted in the first place.” She pointed at a handsome blond man smiling as his shoulders were slapped in appreciation of some joke.

  Euthalia surreptitiously ticked these points off on her fingers, committing them to memory. The Jötnar oppose the Æsir, but not all of them just now. Skathi is a Jötunn who sought to marry Baldr but took Njord instead, and their marriage failed. Freyr and Freyja are brother and sister and lovers. Loki is a Jötunn. This last reminded her, “Odin called Loki a thief.”

  Sigyn frowned. “They call each other many names. They are sworn brothers, though Æsir and Jötunn. No one can say why, not even I.”

  Euthalia was curious. “Why should someone expect you to say?”

  Sigyn smiled and nodded toward the carved chairs where the great gods sat. “Loki is my husband.”

  Euthalia nodded, doubly glad she had not asked about the sexual deviancies at which Sigyn had hinted.

  “And which is yours?” Sigyn asked.

  Euthalia’s throat tightened. “I—don’t know his name,” she said. “I did not speak the language well enough to understand the ritual by which I became his bride. And he has not told me his name in the nights when he comes.”

  “Too busy doing other things,” snorted Sigyn.

  Euthalia said nothing. She looked across the longhouse, scanning the gods laughing and eating. He could be here, she realized. He could be here, and she would not know him. She might have embarrassed him here before his comrades with her poor telling of the tale of Prometheus.

  Or, perhaps, he might have failed her by not standing with her before the harsh scrutiny of Odin.

  She drank the mead the thralls brought.

  After a time, Odin called upon a skald in brightly-colored clothing, who rose and began to sing a tale of warriors hunting a man hiding in the house of his mother. “And she instructed him to sit before her, unmoving, and she began to comb out his hair. And when Arnkel and his men came to look for him, they saw only Katla brushing out the coat of her goat, and they ransacked the house and did not find him.”

  Euthalia should have listened, should have watched the hall to see what they liked in their stories, but the mead was swimming in her head and the constant noise of the hall was echoing in her skull.

  “And again they came, and again Katla used her seidr and spun sjónhverfing, the magical seeing, so they sought him inside and outside the house and saw nothing of him, only a boar asleep in the ash heap. And so they went away again, and this time they returned with another seið-kona to counter Katla’s magic.”

  “Now it comes,” called Freyja, and her twin brother laughed.

  But Euthalia did not catch what came, though she roused enough when the audience cheered to hear that the second seidr-worker had put a bag over the head of the first, blinding her and ending her spell. But then again the story blurred and droned and her eyelids drooped.

  “Go,” said Sigyn quietly in her ear. “I will go with you. We will not be missed.”

  Euthalia glanced at her, a bit embarrassed to have been caught drowsing, and nodded. “Thank you.”

  They rose and picked their way to a door, and those they passed took no more notice of them than of the thralls who carr
ied yet more food and drink. When they reached the door, Sigyn hesitated, her hand on the wooden latch. “It is good to have another here,” she said at last. “They can be so taken with themselves and their own affairs… I am sorry I said you had no place.”

  Euthalia felt a smile break over her face. “And I am so glad to find a friend here,” she agreed. She would have continued, but Sigyn only nodded and smiled and stepped through the door.

  Euthalia followed, but Sigyn was nowhere to be seen. She could not have run quickly enough to get out of sight around a corner—but Euthalia was beginning to guess at the treachery of appearances. She turned, and indeed, there was her little house in the little village that was not a village, though she could hear the distant clamor of Valhöll from the longhouse behind her, as if echoing over a distance.

  Euthalia set off to her little house, grateful for its cozy privacy after the crowded hall.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Some days, Euthalia walked her empty village, imagining who might live there in its mirror-village of Aros. On the outskirts was an irregular circle of poles set into the ground about several large, mostly-flat rocks. Euthalia came upon it only as she followed the stream one day, for it was sheltered by tall obscuring grass.

  A cow’s skull, half-decayed of skin and hair, hung from the top of one pole. On the largest stone lay a scattering of fruits and grains and colorful beads. Euthalia looked about the circle and found more poles, set at an angle, from which several sheepskins hung, discolored by exposure.

  This was a place of sacrifice, she realized. Most of Aros was only mirrored here, but this place was like her house, built to span both Asgard and Midgard. This was a place where humans could leave gifts in the world of the gods.

  She looked down at the offerings on the rock. She was a sacrifice, like the beads or the meat.

  Now you are beginning to think. That is good, for you will be less of a sheep. Sheep are sacrificed.