by Terry Graves
Kai had no idea about where that was. He paused to gaze at the runes carved on the walls, at the tall statues of warriors of men and women with their closed helmets and their rounded shields that observed him solemnly from their bases. The eternal winter had taken its toll there as well. The water had frozen and had produced cracks on some of them, and others had crumbled and lay shattered in pieces on the ground. A couple of the smallest buildings had collapsed and snow had buried them, and only ruins marked the place where they had once been.
“There was a song,” Kai said, aloud. It was just a whisper, but the ghostly city was so silent that he became scared of the sound of his own voice.
There was a song, yes. A poem. He tried to remember it but couldn’t, so he kept walking. Light wouldn’t last forever, and if he was not able to locate the orb fast, Kai would need to find a place to spend the night. Then Skaði would come down the stairs of Himinbjörg and would notice his absence. And she would be furious.
“How did it go?” he murmured. Then he sang: “Hot you are, charring fire, kept that flame away from me.”
The poem came back to him. It was mostly about Ásgarð, a stanza about each god and where he lived. It started with Thor and Thrudheim, then Yewdale where Ull roamed, next… Valaskjálf. It was described as one of Óðin’s palaces, with its rooms covered in silver. But Kai knew there were others. The fourth stanza mentioned Sokkvabekk, and the fifth Glaðsheim. Kai wondered if perhaps the different halls were arranged in the same order as the poem, but he disregarded the idea. According to the song, Thrymheim was next, but Kai knew that the old stronghold where Skaði had been born was not even properly in Ásgarð. Then, the song mentioned Himinbjörg, which was outside the walls.
“It’s not difficult to recognize for those who come to Óðin to see how his hall is arranged,” Kai kept singing, “the rafters are made from spears, the roof with shields, and byrnies cover the benches.” He could see no building like that, so Kai had to assume that the description was nothing but an embellishment from the skalds, so he continued: “It’s not difficult to recognize for those who come to Óðin to see how his hall is arranged, a wolf hangs west of the door and an eagle hovers above.”
Kai raised his head and peered at the roofs of the city.
And he saw the eagle.
It did not hover in a proper sense, but it was perched over a pole on top of one of the largest halls, in the shape of a gold statue with its wings opened.
“Found you,” Kai said, and smiled. Then he muttered a grateful prayer to Óðin. He was not there, of course, not in Ásgarð, and nonetheless he would not hear it, but Kai did it anyway because old habits die hard. Then he strolled in the eagle’s direction, walking lanes and streets, until he reached the foot of the building. The head of a wolf embossed on a temple on the opposite end of the street confirmed that he was in the right place. That made him remember another stanza of the poem, which said: “Five hundred doors and forty are in Valhalla, but the Einherjar will pass through a single one when they march out to fight the wolf.”
And so did Kai as he pushed the doors open. He found himself in a big round chamber with a dozen seats, tall thrones made of gold with convoluted carvings, too large for Kai or any other human being to sit comfortably. The floor was covered in marble and there was a hole in the center where a fire burned with no kindling, animated by some unknown magic.
There was a dusty smell, and something else. A strong organic odor, like rotten trees or carcasses, but Kai could not identify it with more precision. He paced by, leaning his fingers against one of the thrones and touching it just to see if it was real. It was. He tried to imagine the gods seated on top, colossal and terrible, imparting justice. It seemed that he had reached Glaðsheim, the most famous of Óðin’s halls. And this was perhaps also the place where Skaði had been judged, where the assembly had been held. The story had grown into him and now it was almost as if Kai had lived it. Despite the heat, he shuddered.
The throne which faced the door was larger and more ornate than the others, and Kai thought it must have belonged to Óðin.
He knew that most chiefs buried their hoards somewhere in their lands. The less imaginative hid their treasures in the ground of their halls, directly under the dais. This was the safest place, of course, and it was impossible for a peasant to find them by ploughing the fields, but it was also the first place an invader would look. And Kai doubted that the father of all gods would be concerned about being robbed or attacked. Besides, Skaði had referred to heaps of treasure, so Kai should be looking for a treasure chamber instead of digging holes, which would be something very difficult to do in the marble anyway.
When he reached Óðin’s throne he noticed a door behind it. It was small and made of wood, so he assumed it might be an entrance for the thralls, a convenient access so they could come with jugs and pitchers to refill the god’s cup. Kai walked away. That could not be it either, he reasoned. Óðin was keen to dress as a beggar and a wanderer, but he would not enter such an important place shrinking and traversing such a simple door.
There were two more, though, on the left and on the right, so he took one at random and found himself in a corridor with high ceilings and more doors along the sides. There were tall windows covered with glass planes, which he welcomed, for there were no lamps or torches. When night fell, Kai would be blind. He quickened his pace and walked down the corridor, not knowing where to go. Glaðsheim seemed to be much larger than Himinbjörg. While Heimdall had lived as a warrior, in a spartan place at the edge of Ásgarð where everything seemed functional and austere, Óðin had chosen to live as a king instead.
The stench Kai had sensed when he’d entered filled his nostrils again, only stronger. It was definitely something animal, the smell of dung and carcasses of a wolf’s den. That unnerved him enough to put him back in motion. He opened one door and took a peek inside. He saw expensive furniture, and bowls made of silver and tapestries, but nothing special caught his eye, so he closed it and proceeded to the next one.
He repeated the same operation with three more doors before he found the corpses. They lay scattered across the rugs, old bones of tibias and femurs and craniums among ragged clothes. The skeletons were disarticulated, but they had belonged to half a dozen humans, judging by the number of remains. Kai overcame his disgust, picked up a bone covered in cobwebs, and held it in the air to examine it under the dim light. It had been gnawed. There were marks of teeth strong enough to produce fractures. Kai’s uneasiness grew. What kind of beast dared to roam in Óðin’s hall?
Those corpses had probably belonged to human slaves who served the god, which meant that there had been survivors of the Jötnar attack. Kai tried to imagine how these thralls may have felt when they were abandoned in Ásgarð, if they had intended to escape or if Skaði had been aware of their presence, and he decided he did not need to know. He kneeled and left the bone with the others, then cleaned his hands on his breeches and left the room.
Kai wandered through the palace for a long time. Outside, the light was extinguishing fast; the sun was setting and the sky was the color of blood drawn. He would never be able to find his way back to Himinbjörg in the darkness, so he would have to find a place to spend the night soon. But the smell and the corpses had scared him, and he did not want to be in Glaðsheim any longer.
He was about to turn around and make his way back to the door, when he decided to give it a last desperate try. He pushed a door open and, just then, the glint of gold hurt his eyes.
Kai found himself in a large chamber, where shields and helmets and spears piled up to the ceiling, among thousands of rings, bracelets, and armbands. In front of him lay the spoils of a thousand wars, of a million battles against giants, elves, and dwarves. They lay there as if they were nothing, as if the sum of those things could not buy kingdoms and raise armies and change the course of Kai’s world.
Under such a magnificent view, he gasped and paused. The urgency he felt was quickly forg
otten and he walked between the mounds of treasure, marveling at the collars, the swords in their scabbards — some with carved runes, others with strange symbols or drawings — and the gemstones of all colors and shapes.
He picked up a coin with the face of a mysterious queen and a winged creature with a long mane on the reverse. Even he, who had never given much value to gold and precious things, who thought happiness had to be found somewhere else and that kings and lords must lead miserable lives, felt the urge to keep the coin. He wanted to stuff his pockets with them and fill his arms with armbands so everybody would think of him as a famous warrior.
Don’t take something from a man if you’re not willing to face him in combat. That was a saying among Kai’s people. And to rob a god, even an absent one, was unwise, and he knew it. He put the coin back where he had found it.
I’ve been fortunate enough to reach this room, but it’s going to take me ages to find the orb of stars, Kai thought. There has to be a better way.
He climbed one of the heaps of treasure to get a better view, sitting down at the top and meditating on this for a while.
He had seen the orb in Skaði’s carvings. It was shaped like a simple sphere and could fit in a single hand. Perhaps it was bigger, because the hand that held it in the carving was a Jötunn one, or maybe not, because Skaði was a child then, and she was smaller. That was all he could think of, and it was not much help.
But then he remembered that Skaði had to sing for the stars in the orb to glow.
It was worth a try, so he took a deep breath and started singing the first thing he could think of, a merry song that the children of Veraheim used to chant about a boy whose parents regarded him as dull and lazy, but who got lost in the forest and found an old stronghold. In there he killed a troll with three heads — most trolls did not turn into stone with sunlight, but apparently, some did — and ended up marrying a princess, all of this using his wits.
“T’was once a boy who lived in a farm, their parents thought he was not that smart, he spent the days close to the fireplace, he did not work or help in any way.”
That was how the song started. And, while Kai sang, he saw something glowing with a pale blue eerie light under a heap of furs and narwhal horns. He did not stop, but he climbed down and approached, and took the thing with trembling hands. The surface looked like glass and was very cold. This was a feeling that Kai had grown used to, as it was no different from the pendant he had held around his neck for most of his life. Father and daughter shared the same magic. This time, he did not shy away from the touch. He welcomed it.
“So when the boy reached the old king’s hall, he found a troll had made it his home, and had a princess trapped inside, with fair blonde hair and big blue eyes.”
Kai held the orb in front of him and contemplated the stars twinkling inside. When he stopped singing, the light faded away and the surface become barely translucent, almost opaque.
And only then did he discover that night had fallen at last, for without the light of the orb the treasure chamber was dark. Kai did not want to spend the night in Glaðsheim, so he started to sing again, holding the orb in front of him as he walked toward the door.
“The boy said to the troll’s first head, ‘Well, have you or not the scariest stare?’ And then the second head protested, ‘Nay, I have heard my glance is fiercer.’”
He heard the noise for the first time then, above his singing, and it sounded like hooves trotting over the marbled floor. Kai stuttered and the light of the orb started to fade and die again, so he kept singing, because to face whatever lurked there in the darkness would be much, much worse.
Without even looking, he touched one of the heaps of treasure with his free hand until he felt the hilt of a sword and picked it up. He did not want to steal anything, but he was in serious need of a weapon to face whatever it was that was waiting for him.
He hastened his pace and turned into the corridor, then he saw it.
It was a boar, but unlike any other Kai had seen. There were boars in the forests of Veraheim. Kai had watched them in the distance, among the vegetation. They were no wolves, but they were violent and territorial, and adults advised the children not to get too close. Only Sveinn and his men dared to hunt them, and did it only from time to time, as boars were game for warriors. If Fenrir was a varg, and a varg resembled a wolf but it was not quite a wolf, then this creature was the varg of boars. Its silhouette stood under the moonlight, tall as a man, with the sharp tusks protruding like spears and its small eyes shining with an unnatural green.
“The three heads then argued for a while,” Kai kept singing, lower, just a whisper, while the orb’s light diminished, “the boy just nodded and sat and smiled…”
The creature grunted. Kai looked to the other end of the corridor and saw another boar turning the corner and blocking his way.
“…and when the night was finally gone, the sunrays turned the troll to stone.”
The first boar charged towards him and Kai only had time to put the orb into his satchel before the beast reached him. He dodged and avoided the tusks, but was hit on the shoulder. The impact sent him to the ground.
He scrambled up and ran, not knowing where he was going. He could hear the creatures behind him, breathing heavily and grunting. The stench they exuded was nauseating, the same stench he had smelled twice before while he was exploring the place.
Skalds loved songs about Valhalla, and from one of them Kai remembered that the Einherjar — the warriors fallen in battle, rescued by Óðin’s agents and carried away to Ásgarð, to feast and drink in Valhalla and battle among themselves until the very day of Ragnarök — fed on the meat of the boar Sæhrímnir. The beasts that now pursued him may have been its offspring. The stories stated that it was killed every night for the feast and was brought to life every morning, and Kai concluded that would piss anyone off.
He kept running and the beasts followed him, getting closer and closer. He reached the chamber where the assemblies had been held, fell to the ground and slid, got up again and stormed outside. He closed the doors behind him and secured the bolt, but that could not stop them, and they burst it open, broke the hinges, and stomped over it.
Now that Kai was in the open, the boars were going to reach him anyway, and he did not want them to attack him from behind, so he turned around and faced them. He raised the sword he had picked up in the treasure chamber for the first time. It was long and heavy, and felt strange in his hands. Alarr and Gerda had fought with wooden swords since they were children, but Kai had never found the slightest appeal in those games. Or “training”, as they preferred to call it.
Now he wished he had paid more attention.
This change in his attitude made the boars wary. They paced slowly, fifty feet away from him. Now that he was outside, with the full moon shining high in the sky, Kai had a better look at them. Their hair was thick, brown, and it rose in a reddish mane over their heads and their backs. One of them snorted, lowered its head, and rooted in the snow. Its tusks left two long marks on the surface.
I don’t want to die. This cannot be the end.
Kai was terrified and, for some reason, he could not get the song out of his head. So he kept singing it, with steam coming from his lips, in a vain attempt to expel the fear from his heart. “The boy then pushed the troll through the window, and in that way he saved the kingdom…”
One of the boars finally decided to lunge at him and Kai held the sword with both hands and pointed in his direction. A powerful thrust shook through his arms when they clashed, but the tip of the weapon went in and blood was spilled over the snow. The boar squealed and retreated with a deep wound in its neck.
Kai looked at the blade, now streaked with blood, barely believing it. For the first time he noticed the runes carved on the surface and marveled at the way in which it had penetrated the thick skin of the creature, how it had got through flesh and bone as if it was nothing.
This is not an ordinary sword
, he thought. But ordinary or not, it had been a stroke of luck, and he could not count on repeating it again. The second boar was slightly smaller, the hair of its crest shorter, but its tusks were long enough and there was a glint of fury in its beady eyes.
The beast was about to charge when Kai heard the noise of hooves in the distance. At first he thought that more boars were coming toward him, but then he saw Skaði. She was riding the largest reindeer in the herd, barebacked, with no saddle or reins. She had a bow of ice in her arms, and she let loose a single arrow that left a trail of snow dust in the air. It hit the boar in the forehead, went all the way in, and came out on the other side. The boar collapsed, lifeless. The second beast, the one Kai had wounded, made a feeble attempt to fight, but the reindeer lowered its head and rammed it, sending it many paces away.
The fight had ended in the blink of an eye. The two monstrous beasts had lasted even less time than the giant Fyrnir and Kai felt a flicker of compassion for them. Skaði jumped from the reindeer and grabbed Kai’s arms, forcing him to face her. It was the first time she had touched him since the kiss she gave him so many years ago. Even through his thick clothes, Kai felt her freezing contact, numbing his limbs.
“Are you hurt?” she said, and there was concern in her blue eyes. Kai shook his head. She felt him to confirm that he was telling the truth. Then her gaze hardened. “Were you trying to escape?”
“How did you find me?”
“I followed your tracks in the snow,” she replied quickly, but afterwards she insisted: “Were you trying to escape?”
“No, no! I came to get you this.” Kai brought his hand to the satchel and pulled out the orb of stars. The surface was almost black, a dark sphere with a couple of silver veins. It was clear by her expression that she did not know what she was looking at, so Kai sang the last verses of the song he had started in Óðin’s treasure chamber. “He freed the princess from the spell, and she was cheerful to see him again. They were in love and they both married…”
