I flew back into the passageway, resumed my Aspect (and my clothes). I was waiting when Brokk came out, blood still trickling down his face and something, wrapped in a cloth, in his hands.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Well, this is it,’ said Brokk, unwrapping the object.
It was a warhammer, I saw; heavy and brutal and laden with glam from its nose to the tip of its handle – a handle that was rather short, the only flaw in a weapon that even I could tell was wholly unique; unique and uniquely desirable.
‘This is Mjølnir,’ said Brokk, with a snarl. ‘The greatest hammer ever forged. In the hands of the Thunderer it will protect all of Asgard. It will never leave his side; it will always serve him well; and when a show of modesty is required, it will fold up like a pocket knife and—’
‘Excuse me,’ I interrupted. ‘A show of modesty? Are we still talking about a hammer?’
Brokk displayed those awful teeth. ‘Of course Thor loves his wife,’ he said. ‘But when it comes to impressing his friends, a giant weapon is all he needs.’
I pulled a face. The Maggots rarely manage humour, and when they do, it tends to be coarse.
‘We’ll see about that, shall we?’ I said. ‘As for your weapon, it seems to me to be a little – ah, short in the shaft.’
‘It’s what you do with it that counts,’ growled Brokk. ‘Now, shall we get going? My brother and I have a wager to win.’
I led the way to Asgard.
LESSON 10
Needle and Thread
Basically, never trust anyone.
Lokabrenna
I WAS FEELING QUIETLY CONFIDENT as we arrived in Odin’s hall. Sif was already waiting for me (her head still wrapped in a turban); Thor at her side like a thundercloud. Odin was watching from his throne, his one eye gleaming with anticipation. Heimdall was looking slightly put out – I guess he hadn’t expected me to make good my promise to return. And the goddesses – especially Sigyn, who had been making eyes at me since I arrived – were watching me expectantly, no doubt wondering whether I would manage to save the day once again.
Brokk, looking (and smelling) all the more repulsive for being in the daylight, stood at my side with his three gifts, with the golden boar Gullin-bursti growling at the end of his chain, and the hammer sticking out of his waistband.
‘Who’s this?’ said the Old Man.
Brokk said his piece and explained about our wager.
Odin raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, let’s see these gifts of yours,’ he said. ‘We’ll vote on their merit afterwards.’
I shrugged. ‘I think you’ll find—’ I began.
‘Let’s see them, Trickster,’ said Odin.
I presented my gifts. Brokk offered his. After what seemed like an unnecessarily lengthy interval, Odin gave his judgement.
‘Ivaldi’s sons have done well,’ he said. ‘Their work is quite remarkable.’
‘Isn’t it?’ I winked at Sif, who was already wearing her new head of hair. True to Dvalin’s promise, the hair extensions had bonded perfectly with Sif’s own hair, restoring her Goddess Aspect.
She gave me a grudging look. ‘It’s all right.’
‘And what about the spear?’ I said. ‘And the compass that turns into a ship . . .’
Odin nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But Brokk’s gifts are also remarkable. The hammer, Mjølnir, especially.’
‘What? That little stubby thing?’
Odin gave a chilly smile. ‘It’s true, the handle’s a little short. But even so, it’s a magnificent piece, more impressive than my spear, or the Reaper’s runesword. And in Thor’s hands, it could mean the end of all our current defence issues.’
Thor was holding Mjølnir protectively in the crook of his arm. ‘I agree. Brokk wins.’
Odin turned to the other gods. ‘What do you think?’
Frey nodded. ‘I say Brokk.’
‘Heimdall?’
‘Brokk.’
‘Njörd?’
‘Brokk.’
‘Balder?’
Golden Boy sighed. ‘Oh, dear. Honestly, I’m afraid it’s Brokk.’
Aesir and Vanir, one by one, voted Brokk’s gifts the superior. All except Sif, who was plaiting her new hair, Idun, who didn’t like weapons, Bragi, who was already working on my death anthem and Sigyn, who was watching me with a disturbingly motherly look, as if at any moment she might be impelled to put a soothing hand on my forehead.
I was revolted. ‘Seriously?’
Odin shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. You lost.’
Brokk’s dark eyes lit up. ‘I win.’
‘That’s right,’ I told him. ‘You’re the best. Now about that silly wager—’
‘Your head belongs to me,’ said Brokk, pulling out his knife from its sheath.
‘I’ll give you its weight in gold instead,’ I said, retreating a step or two.
‘No deal,’ said Brokk. ‘I want your head. That way, anyone walking into my workshop will know how highly I value my reputation.’
‘How about double or quits?’ I said, taking another step backwards.
He grinned, once more showing his disgusting teeth. ‘Tempting . . . but no. I’ll take the head.’
‘I guess you’ll have to catch me, then,’ I said, shifting into my Wildfire Aspect. In less than a second I was out of the hall, trailing smoke behind me. But Thor was even quicker than that, and he was wearing his gauntlets.
‘Oh no, you don’t. Shift back,’ he said.
I struggled and cursed in Thor’s big fist, but knew I had no chance of escape and resumed my habitual Aspect. Now Yours Truly was covered in soot and clad in nothing but his skin. Not my finest moment.
I appealed to the Old Man. ‘Odin, please . . .’
‘A bet’s a bet. You lost. It’s out of my hands,’ he said.
‘Frey? Njörd? Anyone?’
No one seemed ready to intercede. In fact, I thought that a number of them showed signs of a callous enjoyment. The bastards were enjoying the show. Heimdall’s eyes were gleaming, and Týr had actually brought snacks.
Thor dropped me at Brokk’s feet; beaten, exhausted, abandoned by all. But brilliance in extremis has always been one of my attributes.
I put up my hands. ‘All right. I give up.’
I heard Sigyn gasp.
‘Brokk, be my guest.’
Brokk raised the knife. He pulled back my hair, exposing my throat to the wicked blade . . .
‘Er – hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘I thought our deal was for the head.’
Brokk looked nonplussed. ‘Well, so it is.’
‘But you were going to slit my throat,’ I said, with feigned indignation. ‘Fair’s fair, the head belongs to you. But no one promised you the neck. In fact, the neck is out of bounds. Totally and utterly. Put as much as a scratch on the neck, and the deal’s off. A bet’s a bet. Don’t you agree, everyone?’
For a moment I watched as Brokk struggled with this new information. ‘But how do I . . .?’
‘Not the neck,’ I said.
‘But—’
‘You set the stakes,’ I told him. ‘You were the one who insisted.’
‘But I can’t take the head without the neck!’
‘Fine by me,’ I said, and grinned.
Brokk’s face darkened. Behind him, the Aesir and Vanir began to smile. Even Thor, who had a rudimentary sense of humour at best, was looking amused.
Brokk turned to Odin. ‘That’s not fair! You can’t let him get away with this!’
‘I’m sorry, Brokk,’ Odin said. ‘You made the bet. It’s out of my hands.’ His face was stern as granite, but I knew that inside he was smiling.
For a moment longer, Brokk tried to find words to express himself. His fists clenched. His body shook. His dark face darkened still more with rage. Then he turned on me, eyes smouldering like the coals from his forge.
‘You think you’ve outwitted me, Trickster,’ he said. ‘Well, maybe I can’t claim your head. But since it now belong
s to me, I can at least make some improvements.’
‘What? Are you going to cut my hair into a more flattering style?’
Brokk shook his head. ‘No. But that smart mouth of yours can be taught a lesson. I can do that, if nothing else.’
And from his pocket he pulled out a leatherworker’s awl and a long, thin leather thong.
I said: ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Brokk, with a grin. ‘We Tunnel Folk aren’t such humorists as you seem to believe. Hold his head, someone.’
And so, while Heimdall held me down (of course, it had to be Goldie, and I could tell he was enjoying himself), Brokk sewed my lips together. It took nine stitches, each of them like being punched in the mouth by a fistful of wasps.
But much as it hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as did their laughter. Yes, they laughed, my so-called friends; they laughed as I struggled and whimpered, and no one moved a finger to help, not even Odin, who had sworn to treat me like a brother – but we all know what happened to them, don’t we? Bragi, Njörd, Frey, Honir, Thor – even goody-two-shoes Balder joined in the laughter, succumbing to peer-group pressure like the weakling he secretly was.
And it was the sound of their laughter that followed me back to my bolt hole, where I pulled out the stitches and howled in rage and swore that one day I would pay them back – all of them, and especially my loving brother – in full. In blood.
The stitches healed quickly. The pain went away. But Brokk’s awl was a magical tool. It left a permanent mark on me. Nine neat little cross-stitch scars that faded silvery with time, but never vanished. After that, my smile was never quite as true, and there was something in my heart, a barbed thing, like a roll of wire, that never ceased to trouble me. The gods never suspected it. Except perhaps for Odin, whose eye I often felt on me, and whose morality, I knew, was almost as dubious as my own.
As for the rest of them, they thought I’d forgotten. I never did. ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, or so goes the saying among the Folk. Well, I could have saved the Nine Worlds. I could have halted Ragnarók. But the gods, in their arrogance and greed, had clarified my position. I would never be one of them. I knew that now. I was alone. I would always be alone. I’d learnt my lesson for good, this time.
Basically, never trust anyone.
‘Every dog has his day’, as the old Middle-Worlds saying goes. Every dog and every god, and now I began to long for the day when our roles would be reversed, and I would be the one looking down on all of them as they pleaded and cried. That day would come, we all knew that. Change is the wheel on which the Worlds turn, and the time would come when gods would be dogs, howling as everything they had built came down in ruins around them. Power always comes at a price, and the higher they climb, the further they fall. I meant to engineer that fall, and to laugh as they came tumbling down.
Till then, I bided my time, and smiled as sweetly as my scarred lips would allow, until the day I would take my revenge and bring the gods down, one by one.
LESSON 1
Gold
All men are one-eyed when a woman’s involved.
Lokabrenna
AND SO I BECAME THE TRICKSTER, despised and yet invaluable, hiding my contempt for them all behind my scarred and twisted smile. I found my appeal undiminished among the ladies, who seemed to find that scarred smile quite attractive – but that wasn’t the point, of course. Chaos is unforgiving. And in spite of my defection, I was still a child of Chaos.
Isn’t it funny, how quickly things change? Nine little stitches, that’s all it took for me to suddenly realize the truth: that whatever I did, whatever I risked, however much I tried to fit in, I would never be one of them. I would never have a hall, or earn the respect I so clearly deserved. I would never be a god; only ever a dog on a chain. Oh, I might be of use to them now and then, but as soon as the current crisis was done, it would be back to the kennel for Your Humble Narrator, and without as much as a biscuit.
I’m telling you this so you’ll understand why I did the things I did. I think you’ll agree I had no choice; it was the only way I could retain what little self-respect I had. There’s such purity in revenge, unlike those other emotions I’d had to endure in Odin’s world. Envy, hatred, sorrow, fear, remorse, humiliation – all of them messy and painful and quite spectacularly pointless – but now as I discovered revenge, it was almost like being home again.
Home. See how they corrupted me? This time, with nostalgia, that most toxic of their emotions. And perhaps with some self-pity as well, as I started to think of all the things I’d given up to join them: my primal Aspect; my place with Surt; my Chaotic incarnation. Not that Surt would have understood or cared for my belated remorse – that too was the product of their pernicious influence. Hence my hunger for revenge, not because I expected a reconciliation with Chaos – not then – but because the urge to destroy was really all that I had left.
My first and purest impulse was to seek out the enemies of the Aesir. Just as Gullveig-Heid had done in the days of the Winter War, I thought to find refuge among the renegade Vanir, exchanging my skills for their protection. The problem was, I’d been too good. My reputation preceded me. I was known throughout the Worlds as the Trickster of the gods, the man who’d given Odin his spear; Frey his ship; Thor his hammer. I was the man who’d built Asgard in stone and cheated the builder of his reward. In fact I’d cheated everyone – including Death itself – with the result that no one would trust me, or believe I meant business.
And so I decided to bide my time. There were perks to living in Asgard. The food was good, there was plenty of wine and the view was the best in the Nine Worlds. War with the Aesir would change all that. Living under a grubby tent, or in a cave in the mountains; no Idun to heal my wounds; growing old; getting fleas; looking up at Asgard and remembering what I could have had . . .
No, I decided. That wasn’t my style. Better to live as a dog in Asgard than as a god anywhere else. Better to work undercover for now; undermining them one by one; spreading discord among them; working to find out their weaknesses; taking them down one at a time. Then, when they were ready to fall . . .
Boom!
I started with Freyja. No reason, except that she was the weakest link in the chain. Odin had a soft spot for her, and if my plan worked, I meant to cut him as deeply. Now the Goddess of Desire was vain and, since my encounter with the Tunnel Folk, had never ceased to question me about their treasures, especially the jewellery I’d seen on my visit to World Below.
‘Tell me more,’ she would say, lounging on her silken couch, eating fruit, attended by her maidens. One of them was Sigyn, whose interest in me seemed to increase the less attention I paid to her. Next to Freyja she looked plain, which I guess was Freyja’s intention. Freyja herself was peerless, of course; creamy skin, red-gold hair, a rack like you wouldn’t believe. Her amber-eyed cats purred at her feet, the air all around her was scented. No one – not even I – was wholly impervious to her charms, but I preferred the wilder type, and besides, I had more important things on my mind than romance.
‘Well,’ I began, helping myself to a grape. ‘The sons of Ivaldi may not have been judged the best craftsmen in the Nine Worlds – although I still dispute this – but they are undoubtedly the finest goldsmiths I’ve ever seen, as I’m sure you’d agree, if you’d seen their work. I’m talking about gold, Freyja. Necklaces, bracelets, the lot – shining like scraps of sunlight. And there was one particular piece – a necklace like you’ve never seen. A choker, broad as the length of your thumb, made up of links so delicately crafted that it might almost be a living thing; moulded to every curve of your neck; gleaming, reflecting, perfecting—’
Freyja gave me a sharp look. ‘Perfecting?’
‘Sorry. My mistake. Of course. My lady, you’re perfect already.’
I grinned inside. The lure was thrown. After that, it was only a matter of time before Freyja went in search of it. I watched her from afar. Not for long. Sur
e enough, as I’d anticipated, I saw her leave Asgard one morning – on foot, without her chariot, without even a single handmaiden to assist her – and cross the plain of Ida in search of the Sons of Ivaldi.
I followed her in bird form, soaring high above her head, and when she entered World Below through the Forest of Ironwood, I changed myself into a flea and dropped into her cleavage, to find out just what kind of deal she was ready to make with the Maggots.
The first time I’d been in that workshop, my own head had almost been turned by the potency of all that gold. Freyja, who lived for beautiful things, I knew would be bedazzled. And so she was. In spite of the stink, and the heat of the forge, that necklace, displayed against a backdrop of rock, blazed out like the light from the sun. I saw her eyes widen; her lips part. She held out her hand to touch it . . .
Dark against the orange glow, the Sons of Ivaldi watched her. I told you they worshipped beauty; they’d never seen anything like her before. Desire, unveiled and in Aspect; as I said, even Odin, married to Frigg and a seemingly happy father-of-three, had been known to lust after Freyja, although he kept his feelings at bay and hidden to all but Yours Truly.
The Sons of Ivaldi had no such restraint. Their dark eyes shone; they practically drooled.
Dvalin stepped forward. ‘To what do I owe . . . ?’
‘How much is that necklace?’ said Freyja.
Dvalin shrugged. ‘It’s not for sale.’
‘But I want it,’ said Freyja. ‘I’ll give you gold. Whatever you want.’
Once more, Dvalin shrugged. ‘I have all the gold I can use,’ he said.
‘Well, surely you must need something?’ Freyja gave him her sweetest smile and touched him on the shoulder. ‘Besides, it would please me so very much. Don’t you want to please me?’
Slowly, Dvalin nodded. His brothers stepped forward to join him. From the shadows I saw them, hungry and filled with longing. ‘Oh, yes. I want to please you,’ he said.
The Gospel of Loki Page 7
