Contents
eBook Information
Title Page
Copyright
A Note on Eth and Thorn
Prologue
Hel
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Interlude: Children
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Þrúðr
Chapter 9
Interlude: Riddles
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Nanna
Interlude: Gifts
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Glossary
About the Author
Advance Reader's Copy — Not for Sale
Stormbringer
Book 2 of the Wyrd
Alis Franklin
Hydra
This is an uncorrected eBook file.
Please do not quote for publication
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Tentative On-Sale Date: July 21, 2015
Tentative Publication Month: July 2015
Tentative eBook Price: $2.99
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Hydra
An imprint of Random House
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Stormbringer
Book 2 of The Wyrd
Alis Franklin
New York
This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.
Stormbringer is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Hydra eBook Original
Copyright © 2015 by Alis Franklin
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Hydra is a registered trademark and the Hydra colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN 9780553394627
Cover design: [TK]
Cover illustration: [TK]
www.readhydra.com
A Note on Eth and Thorn
A good portion of Stormbringer is set in Ásgarðr, the home of the ancient Viking gods. Because of this, I’ve used Old Norse spellings for most Old Norse names and words. This means you’re going to be seeing a lot of the letters ð (eth) and þ (thorn), particularly given one of the main characters is named Þrúðr.
In English, ð and þ can be written as d and th, respectively. Þ is pronounced as a hard th, like the start of the word this. Meanwhile, ð is pronounced halfway between a th and a d, like the start of the word them, particularly as it’s heard in James Weldon Johnson’s well-known 1928 song, “Dem Bones.”
Enjoy your earworm!
(P.S. There’s a glossary in the back.)
Everything is true. Some of it’s embellished. That’s the trick.
This is how it goes.
Once upon a time, a girl fell in love with a monster. Or maybe it was the other way around. Or both. Point being, there was love involved, that awesome, terrifying force.
According to prophecy, the monster was doomed to die in a bloody battle that would claim the lives of all the gods. He was, on balance, okay with this, because fate is fate and the Wyrd is the Wyrd, and everything needs to die at some point, even gods. The monster sighed, and shrugged, and got on with his life.
The girl didn’t. Because she’d been born a mortal—not a monster, not a god—and the one thing every mortal knows, somewhere down inside, is that there’s always another story. Always.
And so the girl conspired with others, her stepdaughter and her monster’s not-entirely-ex-lover, and they rewrote and rewove and moved the stars themselves out of their orbits. Metaphorically speaking.
Literally speaking, the girl died. She died, and her monster didn’t. Sort of. Because what she knew, and her monster didn’t, was that by then he wasn’t really her monster at all. He was someone else, or half of one. A blank canvas, an empty book with a scratched-out title, written and rewritten. And, somewhere beneath the scrawl, what that title said was:
loki
“Lain!”
Flashback. Night. Interior shot of the foyer of an officer building. Big and open, spacious. Currently smeared with blood and stinking of smoke.
Three people. One is a boy. He’s the one who’s just done the yelling. His name is Sigmund Sussman. He’s twenty-two, and this has been, without a doubt, the weirdest month of his entire life.
The second person is a man. He’s got a thousand years and change on the boy, but doesn’t look a day over thirty. He’s got blond hair, pale skin, and is dressed in the sort of fur-and-leather outfit that went out of fashion in the early eleventh century. He’s currently clutching his face, howling.
He just got bitten by a snake. One that was hiding in the bag the boy, Sigmund, had been carrying for exactly that purpose. Snake-infested laptop bags; next season’s hottest antitheft device.
The man’s name is Baldr. At least, that’s what everyone’s been calling him. Actually, he’s really Loki. That’s something he only figured out recently. He’s currently pretty pissed off about that.
The third person is a monster. Seven feet tall, horned, skin like burnt earth and feathers like bonfire and ash. This is me. I’m also a Loki, and a Baldr, but mostly, right now, I answer to Lain.
Things got confusing. Things always get confusing when a plot twist rewrites fate.
Loki doesn’t really know what he’s doing here, other than writhing in pain. I know this now because I’m him, even though I wasn’t then. Back when he’d thought he was Baldr, and thought he’d been trying to kill Loki. By which I mean me. Now that he knows that he, in fact, is Loki, he’s very slowly coming to terms with the fact he needs to die.
Loki is supposed to be dead. That was the prophecy, the Ragnarøkkr. All the gods would die, all their enemies would die, and the slate of the world would be wiped clean to start again.
What Loki didn’t know—what no one knew—is that someone’s already picked up the chalk and sketched an outline. That someone’s name is Sigyn, and she was Loki’s wife.
She’d dead now. Most of her, anyway. A part lives on in Sigmund, because stories are difficult things to kill.
Sigyn was a mortal, then a goddess, then dead. Now “she’s” back to being a mortal again, because mortals aren’t affected by the Wyrd in the way gods are. They effect it, not the other way around.
So Loki, who knows Sigmund is Sigyn, and knows he was Baldr, and knows he needs to die, also, currently, believes Sigyn betrayed him to be with me. Baldr. Or Lain. Or whomever.
He knows he has to die, because that’s how the story goes, and Loki, despite popular belief, is very big on “how the story goes,” particularly where the fate of Ásgarðr is involved. He’s okay with that, more or
less. He’s not as much okay with his wife’s infidelity.
Of course, he knows only the half of it.
“Sigmund!”
That’s me yelling. I was on the ground, having been knocked out and dragged on-scene by Loki. Now I’m standing up, or trying to. Forcing my claws to stumble over each other in a way that brings me closer to Sigmund. Sigmund, who’s holding out what looks like a scarred old broomstick with an enormous dinosaur tooth strapped to one end.
This is Gungnir, the legendary spear of the god Odin. The point of it is that it can kill Baldr. Loki. Whomever.
My claws close around the wood. For a second, I feel it. The echo of Odin, a greasy black rotting stain of death and broken promises. Of love sold for power and blood spilled for gold. I hate this fucking spear. But, right now, I need it.
“Get to safety!” This is also me, and it’s something of a stupid thing to say. Sigmund thinks as much, his eyes wide white rings that dart around. Looking for somewhere, anywhere, to hide from warring gods.
Behind me, Loki screams. Not to be outdone, I roar and turn to face him. Meanwhile, Sigmund lunges behind a potted plant. It’ll have to do.
Loki says:
“You were supposed to care for her! Then die. We would be free!”
I say:
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Because then-me doesn’t know what now-me knows, i.e., that Loki traded his name and memories with Baldr as part of some half-assed plot with Odin to prevent the Ragnarøkkr. The deal was he would pretend to be Baldr, then “die,” spend some time hanging out with his daughter, Hel, in her realm of the dishonored dead. Meanwhile, Baldr would be Loki, looking after a Sigyn, who’d be none the wiser. Like a kind of shitty dark-ages version of Meet Joe Black.
Funny, in that film, how no one seems to care what the daughter thinks when her boyfriend suddenly changes personalities five minutes before the Happily Ever After is announced. No one asked her, but someone certainly asked Sigyn.
And this—this showdown with the four of us, me and Loki, Sigmund and Sigyn—is her revenge.
In the foyer, Loki explains this to past-me, punctuated by fists and boots. I’m trying to hold on to Gungnir as I’m both lectured and kicked unceremoniously across the tiles, cumulating in Loki’s foot coming down on my hand. Hard.
Funny thing about tenth-century leather soles, though. They’re actually not all that hard. Not like my horns, which I drive up into Loki’s stomach.
For one moment, everything goes black. Jötunn horns aren’t really supposed to be used as weapons. They’re a sensing organ, for something called the Wyrdsight. Being blind, it’s the only sight I have, and force applied to my horns blacks it out.
It also hurts on par with being kicked in the nuts. At least, I imagine it does. Jötunn don’t have nuts. Not anywhere kickable, that is.
So Loki is winded, I’m blind and writhing around whimpering and clutching my head. Somewhere in all this, I’m dimly aware of the sound of wood clattering across the floor.
Gungnir.
I have just enough time to process this before rough hands grab me by the feathers, lift my head, then slam it back down against the tiles. And that? That hurts.
Past-me is too busy being in pain, so doesn’t remember this next bit. Loki does and, since he’s me now—or maybe I’m him, who knows—I remember it.
He stands. Hears footsteps behind him. He doesn’t even get to turn before a strange pressure hits him in the chest.
When he looks down, the bloodied end of a tooth is protruding from the front of his tunic.
When he does manage to turn, he sees—
Well. For one second, he sees Sigyn. A slip of a woman, with hair like rotting straw and a face too broad and too plain to be beautiful. Her eyes burn like the arctic midwinter, and Loki’s heart breaks.
Then he blinks, and Sigyn is gone. Instead, he finds himself looking into Sigmund’s wide and panicked eyes.
“S-sigga?” Loki manages, feeling blood bubble up over his lips. “No . . .” He’d been prepared to die. But dying and being stabbed in the heart—in the back of the heart—by his wife’s reincarnation are two very different things.
Loki doesn’t know why Sigyn did it. He doesn’t factor Sigmund into it much at all, because Loki never does.
Meanwhile, by now, past-me is together enough to realize something’s going down, and a tactical retreat may be in order. I get approximately half a foot before Loki makes his final move: grabbing me into a massive fuck-you hug, impaling us both onto the same goddamn spear.
That’s about the end of it. Somewhere, Sigmund screams my name. The world tilts as Loki turns to deadweight and crashes down on top of me on the floor. I cough up blood. Sig tries to do something, to save me. Except it’s too late. This is the way the world ends.
I tell him as much. Then die.
And it does.
Like I said, everything is true. Some of it’s embellished.
The world doesn’t literally end, of course. It’s a figurative ending, a narrative one. The full stop at the end of a prophecy—a story—penned a thousand years past. Baldr finally dies on the cold, hard tiles in the foyer of a twenty-first-century office building.
He dies, and Loki dies, and only one of them was ever supposed to come back. Except Sigyn had a different fate in mind.
In her happy ending, she gets to keep her monster.
Sigmund gets his, too.
As for me and Loki? Well.
Stick around. You’ll see.
Hel
Chapter 1
Here’s the trick: Endings only look like endings from the front. From behind, they look like beginnings.
It’s the second-to-last day in March, and the sky over Pandemonium City is a riot of orange and gray. It’s getting darker earlier, the sun swallowed by the ravenous hunger of autumn. Daylight Savings is nearly done. It’s not quite cold yet, but it’s getting there, and winter is, by all accounts, definitely coming.
The inside of the car is warm, even with the top down. Sigmund’s in the passenger seat, dressed in ratty jeans and his old black N7 hoodie. His head is back, dark curls fighting with the wind. Exhaustion rolls off him in waves, and not only because he’s spent the whole day shifting boxes of crap into my apartment.
Two months ago, Sigmund Sussman killed a man. Well, allegorically speaking. But allegorically doesn’t count for much, not at three a.m. with the feel of rune-scarred wood beneath his palms. With the memory of the way Baldr’s skin had tried pushing back against Gungnir’s bite. Tried, and failed.
To say “all things” swore no harm to Ásgarðr’s favored son is, perhaps, an overstatement. The great beast that gave its tooth never made such a foolish oath. It loathed the golden-haired little brat, and shed no tears when he died.
Not that first time, nor the second.
Baldr was born to die, that’s what dying gods are for. But it doesn’t mean Sigmund was born to be the man to do it. And all the allegory—all the happily ever afters—in the world can’t wash the blood out of his mind.
So he hasn’t been sleeping well. I know this, because he’s mostly been not sleeping in my bed, and I don’t sleep at all. Not since being imprisoned in a cave for a thousand years, poison burning my eyes to milky blanks. Rebirth may have given me back my breath and heartbeats, but the blindness and the insomnia stayed. I don’t mind so much. Half measures are all I’m made from now.
Allegory. Go figure.
Point being, Sigmund stays at my place, most nights. That apartment I bought for Lain, a literal lifetime ago, all trendy open-plan and within convenient walking distance to work, the head office of my company, Lokabrenna, Inc. Sigmund tells me he sleeps over to save on petrol and on parking. I don’t mind the excuse. We both know the real reason.
We’re taking things slow, for both our sakes. For Sigmund, even living out of home is scary new territory, let alone cohabiting with a lover. For me, I just don’t want to fuck things up. I was celibate for a thousand
years, once. A few weeks now won’t kill me.
I hope.
Two months ago, I destroyed the world. Today, I helped Sigmund move into Lain’s apartment. Tomorrow, I’m going to have to make a trip. Something I’ve been putting off, and something that might see me out of the city for a while. So, tonight, we’re going out. To celebrate.
“Hey, Sig. We’re here.”
Sig blinks awake when I touch him, drawing the deep breath of the chronically wrecked as he does so. The taste of his exhausted disorientation is bitter in my throat, and the guilt of it makes me say, “If you’re too tired . . .”
But Sigmund shakes his head, pushing himself out of his slouch and giving me a smile. It’s worn around the edges, but genuine, and his fingers are cool where he laces them through mine. “Nah,” he says. “I’m okay. Or will be, after some food.”
Sigmund doesn’t lie—can’t lie—and so I return his smile with a kiss, then pop my door and step out of the car. He does the same on his side, then joins me on the pavement.
We’re in Aldershot, Panda’s most overpriced suburb. My billionaire CEO alter ego, Travis Hale, has a mansion here somewhere. It’s a huge, austere thing. All harsh right angles and enormous plate-glass windows, settled on a three-acre block of landscaped native garden that fades into undeveloped bush just past the boundary fence. TV crews come and film it sometimes, and Travis hosts parties there at others. But that’s about all it’s good for.
It occurs to me Sigmund hasn’t seen it. I should take him up there one day. We can skate around the floorboards in our socks. It’ll be awesome.
One day, not today. Today, we’re at Aldershot’s local shops: a little ring of brick leftovers from the 1970s. Highlights include an organic produce store, a massage parlor, a gourmet butcher and delicatessen, a bookstore, a post office, and a restaurant.
It’s called Umami, and it’s the best in the city—one of the best in the country—serving Australian-Asian fusion cuisine to the nouveau riche and anyone else prepared to brave the four-hundred-dollar-a-head set menu and six-month waiting list.
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