Moonlight covered our room in a blanket of silver, and both Soren and I sighed, wishing for the moment to never end. Despite his calm demeanor, his heart thumped fast in his chest. My loosened muscles already were tightening again.
The closer and closer we came to getting ready, the closer we came to midnight, the closer we came to the portal, meant the closer we’d come to Hel and Lydian. Nerves fluttered in my stomach like moths.
* * *
THE MOON WAS high in the sky as we entered the courtyard. I clenched Soren’s hand, careful to not put too much pressure on the areas where there might be burns. But I needed his reassuring touch right now. With what we had to do, I didn’t think I’d be able to go on without it. It was amazing my spine hadn’t turned to butter and melted. Without the nature of the stag taking over part of my brain, I was still left with my human emotions.
Other than us, only Diaval was out. She sat in the center of an elaborate circle drawn from chalk. While I could recognize some of the runes—Hagalaz, Raidho, Jera—there were multiple markings that I couldn’t recognize. The she-goblin had her eyes closed and was muttering quietly to herself, but stopped as Soren stepped forward.
She held her hand out in a stopping motion, and Soren took a step back. “Don’t get anywhere near the circle,” she said, eyes still closed. “You’ll ruin it, and then we’ll have to wait another month.”
With that, she continued her chanting. From beside her, I noticed a small flask that she took sips of every so often. It stained her lips a violent reddish-black color, almost like viscera, and looking at it made my stomach twist.
It didn’t take long until Seppo and Rosamund came too, leading the young filly that they’d been chasing a few days before. Satu stood with them as well as Tanya, here to see us off, apparently. Part of me wondered about the rest of the council, before I came to the conclusion that even if they were plotting something, leaving the Permafrost in the hands of Satu and Tanya was more than enough protection.
“What’s with the horse?” Soren asked.
Seppo sighed. “Well, my baby sibling isn’t getting this horse any time soon.”
Satu rolled her eyes. “It would take a few years for it to even be able to ride anyway. I’m sure we’ll find a new horse.”
“If we don’t die from the coming apocalypse,” Rosamund muttered under his breath.
Diaval breathed out heavily through her nose. “Not helping, Rose.” She stood and came forward, though carefully remained in the circle as Seppo led the filly toward Diaval. She cooed and spoke softly to the young creature, ruffling its mane and rubbing its nose.
A sour feeling spread throughout my body. My grip tightened on Soren’s hand, causing him to wince.
“You don’t have to watch,” he said.
“Yes, I do.” This animal was sacrificing its life for us. The least we could do was watch as it died.
Diaval sat back down in the middle of the circle, holding the rope of the filly tight enough that it couldn’t escape. She continued her muttering as the young animal blinked at her with large, brown, trusting eyes. Another ignorant lamb—technically horse—to the slaughter.
She shivered as she took another, longer sip of the dark red liquid in her flask, and I found myself asking, “What is she even drinking?” Some of the liquid escaped her mouth and ran crimson down her chin as she choked on it.
A hand on my arm caused me to jump almost a foot in the air before I realized it was Tanya. She beckoned me over to where she stood, and with a lingering glance at Soren, I went with her. “It’s venom,” Tanya said, “from the snake that hangs over the bound Loki.”
“She’s actually ingesting that?” I said, shocked. “Won’t it kill her?”
“Diaval’s been at this a long time,” Tanya said softly. “She’s immune to most venoms and poisons. It won’t kill her. It won’t be a pleasant experience throughout the ritual either, but that’s what you get with magic. It’s never pleasant. When a goblin creates on the scale of magic, it always changes them, always.” She smiled humorlessly. “I originally wanted to follow that path, but it wasn’t for me. Which ended up being good for all of us, eh?”
Her gaze shifted to Soren, who watched Diaval’s work with an intensity to his lilac eyes that he normally reserved for intimidating or fighting his foes. “Take care of him, Janneke,” she said. “I know we aren’t close. I know I’ve never been what you may consider kind. That’s how I am,” she explained. “But Soren is the one thing I have left in the world. I can see that he loves you dearly. Don’t take that for granted.”
“I won’t. I promise,” I said.
She took my hands in hers and squeezed. “He’s doing a good job of hiding it, but I’ve taken care of him since he was a babe. He’s in pain, turmoil. All of this, it’s making him second-guess everything and shaking him to the core. Please, keep him safe, even from himself.”
“I promise,” I repeated.
A fevered look passed in Tanya’s gaze. “Swear it. An oath. Please.”
We locked eyes and I nodded. “I swear by the gods by whom my people swear. I will keep him safe. If I break my oath, may the land open to swallow me, the sea rise to drown me, and the sky fall upon me.”
A cold feeling passed through me as we gripped each other’s forearms; it grew hotter and hotter until both of us winced with the pain, but neither of us let go. When it finally died down and we let go, the spot where our forearms met was branded with a small Eihwaz rune. It was done, then. For that second, the magic of the oath rooted us both to the ground, and the tremor of the very earth itself rocked beneath our feet as if recognizing my words.
The others still hadn’t noticed anything, and we were quick to rejoin them. I pulled down my sleeve to cover the new brand on my arm.
From where she sat, Diaval was now chanting louder in another unknown language, her hands running across a black blade that shined slick as oil. I might’ve not been able to understand her words by themselves, but I could feel their meaning deep in my bones. It was a blessing.
She stood then, knife hidden behind her back with one hand, and pressed her forehead to the filly’s. “Forgive me,” she whispered, and with a flash of the blade, blood came pouring down into the circle.
10
DWELLINGS
I WINCED AT the horse’s shriek and watched with muted horror as the poor animal fell to its knees, blood gushing from the slash on its throat. The thick blood covered the circle and Diaval, but if it bothered her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she carefully dabbed the blood on different spots—her forehead, elbows, collarbones, and the back of her hands—then spread her hands out on the blood-coated ground and smeared the blood all over the circle with the horse now lying dead next to her.
My stomach roiled, and I was forced to swallow vomit. It wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever seen in the Permafrost, but there was something different about it. When goblins fought one another and other creatures, there was a sense of … normalcy involved. Even if there were deaths and murders, that was pretty much on par for the creatures of the Permafrost. With death came energy, and with energy came power. A type of power I didn’t normally come across. There was no crushing sensation to it, but it was one of the strongest, and it vibrated in my chest like a swarm of wasps. My skin itched at the unnatural way Diaval contorted her body as she changed, at the glassy eyes of the horse, and I could swear for a brief second that Diaval’s own eyes turned completely black.
Her head snapped back with a force so strong, I was sure her neck would crack, and blackish red lines spread from the venom-covered corners of her mouth throughout the rest of her body, making it look like she’d dined on blood.
“Hall of thieves, dogs of men, three stars that break apart at dawn.” Her voice shook with a timbre deeper than her own, as if something had crawled inside of her throat and was now speaking for her. “The black sun falls, the blood thins. Twenty acres of suffering and demon light pulled into the bosom of spring.” Blood tr
ickled from her nose, and my eyes widened when I caught sight of it coming from her ears as well. The black color had completely taken over her eyes again, and they dripped with blackened liquid that I couldn’t be sure was venom or blood or some unholy mix of the two. “Where order and chaos go to die and strength of icy currents pull. Darkness, bitch goddess, the turning worm. Cast upon our ready forms. Avaa ovi ja anna meidän porteista!”
Lightning struck and hit the ground, right in the center of the circle. As it did, all of us stumbled backward except Diaval, whose head was back to a slightly more normal position but who was now bending forward with her palms on the blood-soaked stone of the courtyard. Blue light flickered from her hands. I’d seen her light before, but it was only in sparks. These flickers grew and grew until they threatened to spill outside the circle, but all they did was create a fiery boundary around it instead.
There was a collective sigh of relief as Diaval’s eye color changed back to its normal hue, and she observed her handiwork, blinking in confusion for a second before standing. She stumbled a bit as if she were slightly drunk, but managed to grab her pack and sling it over her shoulder as well as shove the flask back into a holster attached to her pants.
I only noticed then that out of all of us journeying to the lowest realm, only she had no physical weapon. Sure, she had whatever was in her pack, and I noticed some hidden pockets that must’ve been full of something, but she wasn’t carrying any blades as far as I could tell. Compared to my axes and bow and arrows, Soren’s many, many different types of blades, Seppo’s featherstaff, and Rosamund’s double-bladed axes, she was going in completely naked.
No, no, she isn’t, a voice told me. No one with this type of power is ever naked, ever powerless. Diaval’s power did not come in the traditional goblin form. The small she-goblin had given up the right to wield traditional weaponry when she turned to magic and walked down the solitary path of a mage who happened to be a goblin as well. Two things that weren’t supposed to ever mix, but somehow … they had. The part of me more in tune with the Permafrost recoiled at the blatant disregard for the proper laws, but the rest of me had always recognized she was something different, since the day she appeared seemingly out of nowhere to offer her services to Soren and me.
“All right,” Diaval breathed. “I need everyone who is coming to step into the circle. No pushing, no shoving, and for the love of all the gods, don’t speak.” She narrowed her eyes at us, and I winced at the blood still dripping down from them and her nose.
We all nodded with a tinge of terror radiating into the night air, at the blood dripping on her face and her black-red stained lips, the black veins that spread up one side of her face, and the way one of her irises glowed in the darkness. This was the toll on goblins who did magic in the Permafrost. No wonder Tanya hadn’t gone down that path when she came across it.
Silently we came into the circle, with Seppo looking down uneasily at the flames before also crossing through. They didn’t burn when they touched my flesh, but they still were … off somehow. Not cold, not hot … wrong. This entire thing wriggled in my gut like worms crawling to the surface of the earth.
Diaval looked around at us, pulling Rose’s sleeve so he stood closer to the center. She handed off one of the bags she was carrying to him. When she finally approved of us, she gave a sharp nod and clasped her hands together. Dark blue light flared from her fingertips as she muttered one final word: “Laskeutua.”
The world turned, my stomach dropped, and for a single terrifying moment, I was weightless. Right-side up, upside down, left, right, and every which way in between. My body fell like a rag doll, down and down but also up and up, as I crashed through the primordial darkness that swallowed my entire body. One second I was falling, and then the next I was floating in the blackness only to fall once more. At first my heart rate spiked at the sheer terror that flooded through me, but the terror was chased away by the pure darkness that surrounded me. It cradled me for a moment like a mother might her child, and I hung in what might’ve been midair or underground or beneath the water. It could’ve been seconds or minutes or hours, and I’d have no way to tell until my body finally crashed down onto the muddy embankment of two large rivers.
I lay on my side for a moment, panting to recover my breath after the fall—was it even a fall?—that had brought me into this realm. Around me the others, save Diaval, were also catching their breath. When I finally rose, my eyes caught sight of how massive the two rivers were.
They were connected together in the middle as if to form one giant, impossible river. Ice floes littered the incredibly large body of water like plains, and they crashed and churned in the rapidly moving, dark water. Something clenched deep in my gut; this wasn’t a place designed for any fast movement, any escape for the people who crossed it if they survived the crossing at all. Again the wrongness of the entire thing lay heavily inside of me, but try as I might, I couldn’t shake it off. Even if we got through the river, how in the world would we be able to go back? I smelled the protections on the river, the source that it came from, and the stories of my childhood many, many years ago echoed; a voice spoke in my head—not Lydian’s, not mine, but a voice all the same—and whispered the name of the massive river. Gjall.
Nights around a burning fire, huddled up between my sisters and their families, as my father animatedly told stories by firelight came rushing back to me. So, so many stories. How Skadi’s giant father was killed, how the Valkyries picked the dead from the battlefield, and how those who’d died by sickness and old age were forced to cross a mighty river of ice where not even gods could return from, in order to get to their afterlife.
A final test, he’d said.
Hel is a place as well as the name of its ruler. This voice I recognized as Lydian’s, and if I had enough energy after having fallen for who knew how long, I would’ve groaned. After two blissful days of silence, he was back. At least soon he wouldn’t be speaking in my head and driving only me to want to rip my hair out. It’s not for punishment, not all of it. Lydian continued without acknowledging my frustration. Sure, there are some parts that are less desirable than others, especially if you were not properly buried. He let his words linger for a second, and I swore I could see him in my mind’s eye, glaring at Soren. But in reality, Hel means the grave. The dwelling of the dead. Nothing more, nothing less. You cross into its borders and you become its citizen.
“And now we’re going to have to cross back,” I muttered out loud. The others turned to me in concert but shrugged it off when I tapped my temple. By now, I was pretty sure they were used to me speaking to what seemed like myself. Thank the gods they all knew the truth now, so I didn’t look completely out of my head.
“Is he bothering you?” Soren asked.
“Always and forever,” I replied. “But in this case, it’s more of an annoyance. As if I don’t know my own theology.”
“Theology?” Soren raised an eyebrow.
“I’m getting lectured about the river, Gjall, like I’m a kid at a teacher’s knee. It’s almost worse than when he’s taunting me,” I said, acid dripping from my voice.
Rose shot a wary glance at the rushing water. “We’re going to have to cross that, aren’t we?” His face had turned a pale shade of green at the sight. Other than Diaval, the other goblins also were swallowing back roils of nausea at the proximity to rushing water. Because of course, fast-moving water was one of the ways to ward off creatures of the Permafrost. Surprisingly, my stomach wasn’t turning itself into knots and loops.
“I’d say it’s not as daunting as it looks,” Diaval said, “but I’d be lying. Besides, I’m sure you’ve done much more dangerous things.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong about that. But still, rushing water didn’t even have a negative effect on me, and I was terrified to get in there. Not only could I not see the bottom through the rapids and the ice floes, but I was sure the temperature had to be absolutely freezing.
A memory over a hundre
d years old came back to me. Some cocky kid trying to prove their manhood to the rest of the others by jumping into the half-frozen river and going into shock and drowning right after. Would being the stag keep me from dying? Or would it keep my body alive as a vessel and kill the part of me that was human inside of it? I had a feeling I didn’t want to know.
“Either way,” Diaval continued, “I have safety measures at hand. Rose, toss me the pack I handed you.”
Rosamund tossed the packed bag he had slung across his back, and Diaval caught it effortlessly. “What was in that anyway, rocks?” he said.
Diaval let out a small, mischievous smile. “Something like that.” She dug into the pack and pulled out a casing of thick leather rolled up as many times as it could go. She carefully placed the parcel on the ground and began to unroll the leather bindings until the roll was opened, and two wickedly sharp stakes peered out from view.
Immediately Soren, Seppo, and Rosamund took a step back. “You had me carry that?” Rosamund exclaimed.
Diaval examined the iron stakes with her bare hands, not even hissing in pain at the touch of the forbidden metal, and shrugged. “You didn’t die, now did you?”
“Pretty sure one of the unbreakable rules of the Permafrost is not carrying iron into the Permafrost on pain of death,” Soren muttered. “I mean, it’s not like I’m the king of the Permafrost or anything, so how would I know, but I have this hunch.”
“Impressive use of sarcasm,” I said, while simultaneously trying to hide my laughter at the childish tone of his voice.
“Thank you,” he said, the compliment thankfully distracting him from executing the king’s justice on Rose and Diaval. “I’ve been practicing.”
Diaval rolled her eyes and continued with her work. Sooner or later, she was going to get her eyes permanently stuck there.
If it were any other goblin, the iron would’ve burned right through her skin by this point, but Diaval wasn’t a normal goblin. Like Tanya said, she could do some amazing things but they all came with a price. In the time I had known her, I’d seen her handle iron, cross rushing water, take down wards, break oaths, and create in ways other goblins couldn’t. So much power that went against goblin nature itself. Whatever the cost, to her it must have been worth it.
Goblin King Page 10
