Stormbringer

by Alis Franklin

  Þrúðr blinked at the phrasing. Perhaps Lain was too used to the human tongue, for surely he hadn’t meant—

  “As you wish, risi,” came the reply from the turret. “In that case, Niðavellir bids you welcome.”

  Magni called out thanks in response, spurring his horse forward. Þrúðr followed, pace slow as she craned her neck back and up to watch the enormous carved rock wall.

  “Pretty epic, isn’t it?” Lain was back to speaking the human tongue, limping slowly along beside. When Þrúðr looked down, he had something in his hand. Like a small white stick with a smoldering end. He kept putting the unlit end in his mouth, wincing, sighing, and breathing out long gusts of smoke. “If you give the dvergar nothing else, you can give them a truly stunning comprehension of their own inadequacy. Conniving fucking maggots.”

  Þrúðr thought that was perhaps unnecessary, given the gate guards’ concern over Lain’s freedom and his welfare. Still, she didn’t say as much. Let the jötunn hold whatever grudges he may.

  Þrúðr had never been anywhere quite like Niðavellir.

  From the entryway, they passed into a tunnel. Not the cramped and narrow passage she had imagined would wind into the mountain’s heart, but rather an enormous carved archway. Set with more of the mosaics she’d seen outside, and lit by thousands of motes of blue-silver light that clung to the walls and drifted gently in the breeze.

  More guards watched their passage, dark eyes peering out from alcoves and turrets, skin shimmering rainbows in the gloom.

  “This is nothing like I had imagined,” she’d whispered, hand reaching up to try to catch a light on her palm.

  “Then perhaps you will not find sorrow here,” Móði said. “Perhaps you will not even miss the sun.”

  His words were meant to comfort, Þrúðr knew. That didn’t mean they didn’t lash, nor take the sting from Lain’s own incredulous guffaw.

  Yet when the tunnel ended, not too long later, Þrúðr wondered if Móði might not speak true.

  They passed through a huge set of heavy stone doors and into a cavern so enormous they may as well have been outside. Þrúðr couldn’t see the walls of it, only a constellation of more glimmering lights, floating in the gloom like stars. The doors emerged at the top of a hill, a road winding down to where a small village sat nestled at the edge of a vast undersea lake. As with everything else, the waters of the lake rippled with light yet still it had no edge, seeming to extend on forever into the dark.

  Þrúðr’s breath caught from the beauty. Beside her, she felt Magni and Móði do the same.

  Lain, who had trod these roads before, appeared unmoved.

  “Sindri,” he said. “Niðavellir’s border town.”

  “It—I didn’t—” Þrúðr managed. Towering above Sindri’s buildings, she saw mushrooms the size of trees undulating in the strange underground breeze. The mushroom trees glowed, too. Everything glowed here, Þrúðr realized. Everything except them.

  Lain, whose eyes and tattoos were also bright and whose feathers shimmered as if lit by fire, continued, “Sindri’s mostly craftsmen and merchants. Anyone who makes a living dealing with the outside. Niðavellir proper is beyond the Skærasær, that big lake thing. Supposedly, there’s another set of doors on the far side. If anyone tries to invade, they slam shut, and so does the mountain.”

  “‘Supposedly’?” Magni asked.

  Lain shrugged. “Never been across to check. Never fucking wanted to.”

  Magni snorted, spurring his horse onward and down the path.

  They saw no one as they approached, the strange light glimmering off slick, dark rocks and pulsing from the lichen and fungi that grew in place of grass and trees. Overhead, Þrúðr heard the sound of leathery wings flapping in the darkness, and she wondered what strange bats circled the void above.

  The air around was damp and warmer than Þrúðr had expected, fresh and moving and scented of wet stone and clean earth. In the distance, she could hear the sound of the lake lapping against the shore and, farther beyond that, something not unlike the roar of oceans.

  What a land this place was! Not the cramped, cold, dirty tunnels Þrúðr had expected—had hardened her heart against—but a waking dream of wonder. For the first time, Þrúðr saw herself, sailing on a ship across the endless glowing seas, climbing to the tops of the highest mushrooms, crawling through caverns and taming whatever unfathomable beasts lurked out there beneath the world.

  Perhaps things were not so bad. Magni would have Mjölnir, and Þrúðr her adventures. It seemed a fair trade, and if she could return from time to time to Ásgarðr, then—

  “Halt. Who goes there?”

  Another guard. They’d reached the edge of Sindri, greeted by a low wall that marked the boundary of the town. A dvergr looked up at them from beside an archway, colors rippling across his stony skin.

  “Magni, son of Thor,” Magni said. “My brother, Móði, and sister, Þrúðr.”

  The dvergr fluttered shades of yellow and green, and Þrúðr did not miss the way it looked at Lain. “Æsir beneath the Mountain? What business have you in our town?”

  “We seek audience with the smith, Brokkr. He has some things we wish to trade, and he will be satisfied with what we in turn have brought him.”

  Þrúðr tried not to wince. Lain caught her eyes and rolled his, the gesture involving his whole head to make up for the blank orbs.

  “Brokkr’s hall overlooks the water,” the guard said. “If he will see you, you will find him.” He gestured, bidding them entry through the arch.

  Sindri’s streets were stretches of delicate mosaic, not used to the harsh clop of horses’ hooves. The dvergar had their own beasts of burden, things like enormous lizards that watched with glowing eyes from in front of carts and inside stables. Their owners watched, too, rippling light as parents caught the hands of their children and ushered them behind fences and inside houses.

  Þrúðr had never thought of the dvergar having children before, but there they were. Soft-skinned and tailed, with webbed hands and strange feathery protrusions emerging from their cheeks. They looked, Þrúðr thought, somewhat like tadpoles. She wondered if they hatched from eggs.

  Then that thought went to places she did not want to travel, and so she turned to stare firmly ahead and tried not to feel the squirming in her guts.

  The guard had spoken true about Brokkr’s hall. It loomed at the end of the village, broad and squat and towering, all at once. The harshness of its façade accented by gold inlays tracing complex, geometric designs, and a cascade of glowing fungus falling from the flat-top roof.

  They were met inside by more dvergar, including Brokkr and his brother, Eitri.

  Brokkr greeted Magni warmly, near as Þrúðr could tell, rippling pleasant colors and speaking kind words about their father. His reception for Móði was similar.

  For Þrúðr, he asked to run his fingers along her braid. When his hand brushed her skin, his hide was rough and cold and strange.

  For Lain, Brokkr’s lights dimmed for a moment before exploding into a brief and violent riot. Then they dimmed once more and he said, “Vartari suits you, Meinkráka.”

  Lain’s feathers flickered orange-red, pinion-cut wings raising slightly in what must have been unconscious ire. For Lain quelled the motion a half breath later, replacing it with a grin and bow. “How could any refuse such a treasure, given freely by the fly-bit smith.”

  Brokkr had scowled at the name, and had proceeded to ignore Lain for the remainder of the evening.

  A minor disruption, and one that had not interfered with their host’s hospitality. Despite the unannounced visit, Brokkr had arranged for the horses to be watered and stabled, then had called forth servants to lay out a feast. Þrúðr had been uncertain of what they might receive, then pleasantly surprised to find the fare mostly meat and mushrooms, spiced and flavorful. True to their father’s legacy, Þrúðr’s brothers devoured plate after plate, with Brokkr commanding more and more be brought fo
rth from the kitchens until all bellies were sated.

  Þrúðr ate her fair share, too.

  Ate her fair share of food and drank her fair share of mead, truth be told. And not just because she found herself seated next to Brokkr’s eldest son.

  The dvergar did not use chairs. The table was a low bench, and they sat around it on the floor, on cushions. Þrúðr had thought it would be awkward, but as the evening wore on and the mead flowed freely, she found herself sprawling out more and more, relaxing against soft fabrics as the chatter of men washed over her and—

  “Is the food to your liking, my lady?”

  Þrúðr blinked. Shook herself and tried to focus through the soft buzz of honey in her head and the faint burn of spices on her tongue.

  “I imagine it’s not as you are used to, in Ásgarðr.”

  Brokkr’s son, Uni.

  “I—” Þrúðr looked at her bowl, then up at Uni. Then down again just as quickly, lest she catch too much of her reflection in his wide-dark eyes. “It is different, yes,” she said. “But . . . it is not . . . unpleasant.”

  “I’m glad, my lady.” A faint ripple of teal light glimmered across the table. Þrúðr wondered how long it would take her to learn the dvergar’s “language.” Even if she could never “speak” it, would she one day be able to look at Uni and know his thoughts with but a glance? The dvergar were an honest people. Perhaps lying did not come easy to those whose very skin betrayed their thoughts.

  Þrúðr made herself eat another mouthful of food and not stare into the corner where Lain lurked, banished from the table with one small bowl of stew to stoke his endless flames.

  “What is this meat?” Small questions seemed safer than the thought of Lain’s piercing poison gaze.

  “Olm,” Uni said. At least, Þrúðr thought it was a word and not a sound. “From the sea. Our fishermen catch them in great abundance.”

  The meat was pale and mild beneath the stew, something like fowl and something like fish.

  “And this?” Þrúðr pointed with her spoon to the dish’s other main ingredient: a sort of strange black lace.

  “Mushroom, my lady. Grown by our farmers.”

  Þrúðr nodded, then, “Please. Call me Þrúðr.”

  Another brief teal ripple. “I would be honored. Thank you.”

  “Your home is beautiful.” From the corner of her eye, Þrúðr could see Uni’s hand resting on the table. Only four fingers, not five. Tipped with little claws and slightly flared ends. Like a frog, and as soon as Þrúðr thought the comparison she hated herself, just a little. Brokkr showed them hospitality and Uni offered kindness. Neither deserved Þrúðr’s cruel thoughts to be cast against them.

  This time, the light that shimmers across Uni’s skin was a rich and vibrant purple. “A-as are you, my l—Þrúðr,” he said.

  Þrúðr bit her lip and finished her stew.

  “Absolutely not. Find another way.”

  Ásgarðr, five days’ earlier.

  “Would that we had the time.” Forseti couldn’t quite manage to keep the exasperation from his voice, fingers twitching where they grasped Gungnir’s haft. “The beast knows Mjölnir’s location, and will take us there. But the hammer on its own is of little use. The gloves and belt are needed also.”

  “Then have the beast steal them!”

  Forseti’s lips had curled, a crease marring his otherwise flawless brow. “No. I refuse to make grandfather’s mistakes.”

  “And I refuse to shame my father’s triumphs. If Thor were still alive you would not be sugg—”

  “But Thor is not alive!” Too long spent arguing, and Forseti’s patience was through. “He is not alive, not here, and even as we speak Hel masses its forces at our gates! We have not the strength to repel such a tide. We need Mjölnir’s might, quickly, and have been presented prime opportunity to regain it. To regain your family’s honor. And yet you stall over petty concerns of ‘virtue’ when all—”

  “I will not whore my sister for your trinkets!” The scrape of Magni’s chair had been loud against the flagstones, his breath heavy as he loomed over Forseti. The shadows of the past, Þrúðr thought, hung over them all. Legacies to live up to, mistakes to learn from. They were all still children, in a way. Children playing war in a land where every adult lay dead and rotting.

  Conscious of her littlest brother’s presence at her back, Þrúðr had stepped forward.

  “Perhaps the object of your disagreement would have her own thoughts on the matter?”

  Magni’s rage had dispersed like clouds beneath the sunlight, replaced by anguish as he moved toward the door, hands outstretched as if to usher Þrúðr away.

  “Sister,” he’d said. “You need no thoughts, as there is no matter over which to disagree. Your cousin is merely a fool. Pay him no mind.”

  Þrúðr had sidestepped Magni’s gestures, instead moving farther into the room. “So it’s true,” she’d said to Forseti. “You have Gungnir.” The Allfather’s spear, thought lost after Ragnarøkkr, but Þrúðr had seen it then, held in Forseti’s hand. Weathered wood carved with oath-runes, bone and raven feathers and a point made not from metal but a dreki’s sharpened tooth.

  “I do,” Forseti had said. Þrúðr had not missed the way his fingers tightened on Gungnir’s wood.

  “Brother tells me you retrieved it from—from . . .” Þrúðr could not bring herself to utter the foul beast’s name. Its oath to Odin would be etched into the spear with all the others. Þrúðr had wondered which of the runes it was, whether it unmarred or scratched through with betrayal.

  “From Loki,” Forseti had said, grim and hard. He’d been handsome once. Warm and kind and wise beyond his years. Now all Þrúðr saw in him was frost and desolation.

  She nodded, trying not to wring her hands, conscious of the eyes on her. Thor’s eldest, and though born a girl, she yet had obligation to live up to the name her father gave her. “And he is here,” she’d said. “In Ásgarðr. He did not perish with the others.” It was not a question.

  “Evil and treachery are difficult to thwart,” Forseti had replied. “Perhaps we should merely be grateful our betrayer comes to us familiar in intent, if not in skin.”

  Móði had mentioned that. Loki had not been the only one with jötunsblóð in Ásgarðr, but in Þrúðr’s memory he had always been bound by the lines of his oath, horns and feathers hidden behind the mien of a man. Loki was unpredictable, a viper in their midst, but loyal to the Allfather if not always to the realm. If those bonds were now broken . . .

  Loki, who stole from the dead. Who desecrated the Ragnarøkkr with as much ease and as little conscience as he had once shorn the head of Þrúðr’s mother while she slept. Loki, who returned to blight their halls with his poison once again.

  “You believe Loki knows how to retrieve Father’s hammer.” Þrúðr made herself say the beast’s name, though it felt like bile and grit on her tongue. Two ugly syllables, not a name so much as an epithet.

  “More than just Mjölnir,” Forseti had said. “Megingjörð and Járngreipr, also. The hammer is hidden, and Loki says he can retrieve it, but the others we must trade for.”

  “You mean to trade me.”

  Magni had not taken kindly to this observation. “I forbid it!” he’d said again. “Loki is a thief and his is a liar, útlagi and níðingr. We do not listen to his poison.”

  Þrúðr had looked at her brother, Thor’s true heir in look and word and deed. Big and broad, with a wild beard the color of flame and eyes that burnt like coals. Magni was fierce, with a rage in him like a thousand storms, and he was a good man.

  But to Þrúðr, he would always be her little brother, would always be dwarfed by the shadow of their father. Thor, big enough to stare into a þurs’s eyes, whose boots were soaked in blood and yet whose heart lived not on the field of battle, but by the hearthstones with his kin.

  Magni may have been his father’s heir, yet Þrúðr would not have him fight her battles.

&nb
sp; “Brother,” she’d said, “enough. This is not your decision.” Then, before he could splutter his objection, “Father is dead, we must honor his memory, his legacy. You are his eldest son, Magni, and Mjölnir should be yours to wield. For all our sakes. But even when you do, I will still be the eldest daughter and I can bring peace another way, as women always do.”

  “Þrúðr, no.” Magni’s expression had been anguish, pure and simple. “They are dvergar, Sister. You cannot do this.”

  Þrúðr’s lips had thinned. “I can and I will. Don’t you see? Loki offers this not to aid us, but to tear us asunder with infighting and with greed. But we are better than he knows. He would think to test us? Fine. We will test him in return. And should he fail, it will not be exile that he faces.”

  “You mean to trick a trickster?” Forseti’s voice had been cautious, as carefully blank as freshly fallen snow.

  “Yes.” Þrúðr nodded. “I will go with my brothers to the dvergar and we will see what of father’s can be retrieved, and at what cost. Do not tell Loki that I come of my own will.”

  “You would have us drag you there in chains, then?” Magni spat the words, lip curled into a sneer. “I will not do it. I will not play villain for that monster.”

  “You will.” Þrúðr had felt the storm rise behind the words, inevitable and certain. “I need not chains, a woman’s life is chain enough. Loki knows this, as all husbands do, and he will see what I would have him see.”

  “Careful, sister.” Móði, voice hushed from where he’d stood at Þrúðr’s back. “They say the jötnar can see into an æsir’s heart as clearly as we see into a mortal’s.”

  Þrúðr couldn’t help the smile playing on her lips. “How fortunate, then,” she’d said, “that I am ásynjur. And as for you, dear brother, you say your runes should damp the monster’s power. Will they limit its Sight, also?”

  From the corner of her eye, Þrúðr had seen Móði hesitate, then nod. Just once. “I . . . I believe so. But, even so. Sister, this scheme of yours—”