The Fires of Muspelheim

by Matt Larkin

  Considering she’d brought Syn, he’d call them more than even.

  “There are plenty of private rooms,” Fitela said. “If you two need a moment. I mean, I offered, but she was too preoccupied with you.”

  Hermod cast a weary glance at Sigmund’s son. He was too grateful for all this to take much offense, in truth.

  “Come,” Sigmund said. “Feast, and then tell us what goes on in the world. Valkyries continue to bring in souls, but they tell us precious little, even Kára.”

  Yes. Hermod would tell them.

  “It’s Ragnarok,” Hermod said, after wiping the ale from his lips. The stuff tasted strong, thick. Odin had refused to explain just how he had arranged unending supplies of ale and mead for the einherjar, save that it involved the ancient cauldrons of Brimir, massive things, each large enough to have brewed for an army.

  “You mean it’s finally here,” Fitela said. “What we’ve been preparing for, training for. The battle!”

  Hermod nodded at him.

  The man elbowed his brother, Sigurd, who sat with folded arms. Probably their finest warrior, but Sigurd had never fully forgiven Odin for not bringing Brynhild here. The king had been lost before Hermod could question him on the matter, and afterward, with all that had happened, he’d had no chance.

  No, but Brynhild had broken her oath to Odin, and Hermod could guess why Odin had not brought her. Perhaps could not bring her. In Naströnd, Hermod had heard his own beloved mother. Damned and tormented for the crime of loving her family.

  Sigurd, as usual, did not speak.

  “What does it mean, then?” Sigmund asked. “Was Odin himself not supposed to come and lead us into battle?”

  Hermod desperately hoped the king would do so, but he did not know that for certain. Odin had gone to see the Norns and, so far as Hermod knew, had never returned. Maybe never would. “The king is not here, and I am forced to make the choices I think he would have me make. The world is besieged by Hel herself, to say naught of the other forces arrayed against us. So, I must take up the sword and take the fight to her.”

  Kára stood behind her lover, Helgi, arms folded across her chest. “Few valkyries remain here, but those who do … I can send word to join the battle. Still, we have no means to allow the einherjar to fight in the Mortal Realm. Even if we could arrange corpses for them to possess, the process of dragging each of them across the Veil would be slow and laborious. Besides which—”

  Hermod raised a hand to forestall her. “I don’t think we have to do that. Hel, our ultimate foe, is, I think, essentially a draug. A ghost. Which means, though she possesses a corpse in the Mortal Realm …” Sigyn … Damn. What had he done? How rage had so blinded him! “She possessed a body.”

  “Ah,” Gondul said. “But her essence bleeds through into the Astral Realm. As would those of any draugar or other vaettir she brought into her service.”

  Hermod spread his hands. “The einherjar cannot easily fight against mortal foes, true, but it is not the mortal foes that concern me. Odin, Thor, the others, they can hold off mortal armies. Where they need our support, is against beings from the Otherworlds.”

  “Beings like us, now,” Sigmund said.

  “Indeed.” Hermod rose, leaned on the table, and looked hard at every member in the hall. So many massive tables occupied by thousands of warriors. The greatest warriors of this final age of the world. Men and women who had already died, bold, honorable deaths after glorious lives. And since then, they did naught save train with their arms. Well … aside from the feasting and fucking and laughing. “I have not come to force anyone to this path. Once we leave the protection of Valhalla, we will all again be subject to the deleterious effects of the Penumbra. Nor do I expect there will be any return for most of us. But this moment is what you have prepared for. For centuries, in many cases. Now is the time, and I ask you to follow me into one last battle.”

  Sigmund banged a fist on the table. Then a second time. Then others began to join him in the gesture, a tumult ringing out through the hall, becoming a cacophony.

  He had them. They would come. Hermod raised a hand. “We are dead, all of us. And the Mortal Realm belongs to the living. It is the dead now, who try to claim it from them. But they are not who we are.” He turned from Sigmund to Sigurd. To all of them. “I look at you and I see the greatest warriors in history. Who serves Hel? The dishonored dead! The weak! Those who prey upon your living kin and look to strike fear in their hearts!” Now, Hermod slammed his fists onto the table. “Well, now those dead will look upon our faces. And they will be the ones to know fear!”

  Almost as one, the warriors began to rise, chairs and benches scraping over the stone floor.

  “To arms!” Sigmund bellowed. “Bring the spears and the axes! Grab your swords and shields! Let them look upon such an army as has never before walked the world!”

  Syn’s hand fell on Hermod’s shoulder, and he took it, clutched her fingers. Looked to her. “I’m going to watch Odin kill her. And I’m going to get our daughter’s soul back.”

  16

  An eclipse created pervasive shadows that encompassed all of Vanaheim. Not so long ago, Idunn would have found the dark oppressive, but now, it offered a kind of solace. Hnoss had vanished into the deeper darkness in tunnels beneath the islands, using means Idunn could not easily replicate to pass through the Veil. A secret of the dark, Hnoss had called it, and forced Idunn to leave it at that.

  For a time, she’d navigated those tunnels, relying on the whispers of shadows to keep her course true, until at last she’d come to a collapsed cavern. The cave-in had exposed open sky above, and Idunn had climbed a mountain of rubble and debris to reach the surface, pausing twice to gape at the ring of fire where the sun should have shone.

  Yes. Not so long ago, she’d been suffused with the Sun of Alfheim. Been almost a being of light. Perhaps her nature, tainted by the blood of Ivaldi, had prevented her from ever completing that transformation. Or perhaps the haughty disdain the liosalfar had heaped upon her had itself subverted her attempts to embrace the Sun.

  Such things hardly mattered now.

  No, now, she had to fight with the urge to descend back into the tunnels, to chase after and hope to catch Hnoss, and find a way back to Svartalfheim. How truly abominable she had become to miss the torture, the rapes, the inundation of cruelty. How … inevitable it all felt. Like a part of her she’d tried so very long to keep buried, to deny even existed. But Volund had known it lay there, had woken it in her, even as he’d had it woken in himself.

  And Idunn couldn’t say whether she missed the light or the dark more.

  Would this ever be her fate now, caught between the two, torn in half?

  And what of the child growing inside her? Volund surely had spawned enough bastards in his time, yes, but her child would be different. She, a direct descendant of Ivaldi, carried the blood of Gugalanna. For a child born of two parents of that line, Volund would cross worlds. He would hunt her, drag her back into the darkness by her heels, and force her to remain in his court.

  The worst of it, though, lay in her body’s own reaction to such a thought. The hardening of her nipples. The spreading wetness between her thighs. The pounding of her heart in its hope that Volund would find new, creative tortures to punish her.

  Damn it!

  Atop the debris, Idunn faltered, grabbing her head. What had her nephew transformed her into? She didn’t want to be this! This, this thing that reveled in the suffering of others and most of all in her own torment. This abomination that delighted in such depravities. Who craved being cut, and lashed, and raped, for naught less than the pain could arouse her any longer?

  This was the gift of Nott, through Gugalanna.

  A madness that consumed the svartalfar as a whole. She could feel it, creeping up inside her mind, taking control, and squeezing out the light. Maybe … maybe she should … end it?

  Svartalfar died, from time to time, from self-inflicted injuries, having pushed the
limits of even their immortality too far. Idunn hadn’t heard of any actually committing suicide before. But then, she was more keenly aware of her descent into darkness than most. Aware enough to hate not only that descent, but herself, for loving it.

  Growling, she brushed her now jet-black hair from her face. She had not escaped Svartalfheim with Hnoss only to give in to despair now. She could not allow herself to return to the shadows, nor would she find welcome in Alfheim. The Mortal Realm, though, she might find solace in, even if she had to endlessly flee from Volund’s pursuits.

  She could escape.

  She just needed … a little …

  Teeth grit, she slipped free a dagger from her belt, then lifted up the edge of her leather vest. Her skin had lost much of its color, though she might still pass for human without need of any glamour. Slowly, she slid the blade along her abdomen, hissing at the delicious pain of even a shallow cut.

  Even her blood looked darker now. Deeper than crimson. Almost black, like troll blood. A darkness in her very veins.

  With a sniff, she flung the blood from her fingers, then wiped the dagger on her leather trousers before jamming it back into its sheath. A moment’s peace, at least while the pain lasted.

  So she pushed on, not quite certain which way to head.

  Vanaheim … was in ruins. The halls had been reduced to ashes. The mountains covered in snow and surrounded by rumbling storms. The valleys flooded. Islands of chaos, of nature run rampant.

  The work of jotunnar, no doubt. The question then became, had the jotunnar left any boats she could use to reach Andalus?

  In the shadow of Yggdrasil, the tree that had so long been her home and her duty, Idunn found Odin and Freyja, beset by a small army of jotunnar.

  Crouching in the woods, she watched as the two of them fell back, unable to cross the great bridge that spanned the gap to the Tree.

  Over a dozen frost jotunnar barred their way, and though Odin tore through them with Gungnir—and Freyja, despite lack of sunlight, killed her fair share with sheer speed and strength—more continued to pour from the hollow where Idunn had once lived.

  The two of them, those she had once called friends, were far more adept warriors than Idunn had ever been. Charging in there to fight jotunnar might well get her killed. In her countless treks back and forth across Midgard and beyond, she’d learned to handle a spear when necessary, but had mostly relied on glamours or powers drawn from a bound ash wife—one now lost to her.

  Still, as a svartalf and former Vanr immortal, she did possess rather momentous amounts of pneuma. Enough, she ought to be able to match Freyja’s speed and strength, or close to match, at least.

  Growling, she snatched up a large branch in one hand, and pulled her dagger with her other. She had not expected to find Odin and Freyja here, no, but nor would she abandon them. Pushing pneuma throughout her body to enhance her abilities, Idunn took off at a sprint, faster than she’d ever remembered running before.

  She surged past Freyja—who gaped at her—to smack a jotunn in the face with her makeshift club. The blow shattered the branch but stunned the jotunn long enough for Idunn to ram the dagger into its throat.

  Freyja overcame her momentary shock and grabbed Idunn, shoving her away from the jotunnar. The other woman whipped her thin-bladed sword around in a whirl. One that distracted an advancing jotunn enough he failed to notice the upsweep of Freyja’s mace before it crunched into his ribs with enough force to actually heft him half a foot off the ground. That thin blade whipped around and tore out his throat a heartbeat later.

  For a bare instant, Idunn stared in marvel at Freyja’s grace and power.

  Then she looked to Odin, engaged with a half dozen of the frost jotunnar at once. And winning. The looks of fear, confusion on their faces as an old human man with one eye whipped his brutal spear in deadly arcs. As the undulating blade tore through throats, severed limbs, and tripped jotunnar in a blur.

  Idunn had known many warriors in her life. She could not say she’d ever known any who truly made it an art. No, but Grandmother had known one. A story, a promise that he would come again, and that promise had driven Idunn back out into Midgard in a desperate attempt to find him, to arm him. To beg him to fix the world.

  But looking upon him like this, Idunn could not help but gape. Stare, and realize, that some part of her had never truly believed. Had never really accepted what it meant for him to be this Destroyer. Oh, Grandmother had spoken of how Grandpa Naresh had become like a god of war.

  But Idunn had not understood what she meant, not really. Not until she’d seen Odin become a veritable army in Amsvartnir, slaughtering Fjalar’s forces as though hewing through tufts of wheat.

  And now, on the bridge before the Tree of Life, an entire war band of jotunnar—any one of which might have overcome an equal-sized band of men—lay dead at Odin’s feet.

  Freyja pushed back into the melee, relentless, but also more cautious than Odin. He … fought without regard for his safety, Idunn would have thought. Except, so rarely did the jotunnar manage to land a blow upon him.

  As if his every attack melded into a defense, a move that somehow took him out of the line of danger. A dance, almost.

  Grimly, she shook her head. How little she could contribute here. Oh, with the eclipse overhead, she could have tried to call up shadows and use them to slow or befuddle the jotunnar, but drawing on such powers might only expedite Volund’s search for her.

  Instead, she wended among the fallen, making sure those who fell were truly dead and not able to once again raise weapons against her allies. She could not deny the perverse pleasure that came in slitting throats. In watching the last light dim from jotunn eyes. A delicious cruelty that would have churned her stomach when she was yet human.

  And then, with startling suddenness, the fight was ended. No more jotunnar came charging across the bridge. No others rose up to defend the precious Tree—though from what Idunn could tell, the jotunnar had already plucked it clean of apples.

  Odin jammed Gungnir into a corpse and spun on Idunn, rushed at her so quickly instinct demanded she raise her dagger in defense, though before she even could, he had swept her up in an embrace and was planting a kiss atop her head.

  Because … because he truly believed he was Grandpa Naresh. Not just a manifestation of the Destroyer, but that the Destroyer was a singular soul, cast by forces unknown into such an urd. That the Wheel of Life, as Grandmother had called it, had actually spun Naresh out again. As Odin.

  The blade slipped from her hand and clattered onto the stones below, and Idunn wrapped her arms around Odin.

  Then Freyja was there, too, holding the both of them close.

  The warmth of their embraces, of their feelings, it made Idunn shudder. And wonder, if only for a moment, if she might yet feel something without the need of pain as a stimulus.

  Odin had set to fiddling with a strange orrery now built inside the hollow within Yggdrasil. One, Freyja claimed, that allowed him to create a bridge between the Mortal Realm and any world in the Spirit Realm. It was both madness and brilliance, and terrifyingly similar to a device Grandmother had described as having bridged the Earth to Niflheim, ending the last era.

  But Odin was resolved in his course, determined that he would make a bridge to Muspelheim and thus bring balance back to the Spheres of Creation. And it was not Idunn’s place to stop him. Even if she could have dissuaded him, and of that, she knew better.

  “I don’t want to die,” Freyja said, breaking the silence that had settled upon the two of them for several moments.

  While Odin tinkered, Idunn and Freyja had sat on the bridge, watching leaves fall from Yggdrasil’s boughs with alarming regularity. Oh, leaves had always fallen. People were always dying. Sometimes in great clusters when men warred. But now, the leaves fell in droves, an almost continuous stream of them, as if all the whole world were now at war.

  From what Freyja had said, that seemed not so far from the case. All Midgard—perh
aps Utgard too—caught in a final struggle. Or a thousand of them. And no one, no man, woman, or child, would come out unscathed. Everyone fought now, from the sound of it, and Idunn could not help but brood on her part in the matter.

  She had brought Gungnir to the Wodan tribe during what they called the Great March of Vingethor. It was a token, then, a gesture she had not imagined would later pass into the hands of the Destroyer. Or, in truth, she had actually imagined Vingethor, Odin’s ancestor, might be the one she thought. But he wasn’t, and the spear had already come to Odin, years later, before Idunn suspected the truth about him.

  Idunn had urged Odin on to his quest to overthrow the Vanir, her own people, and she could not shake the doubt Volund had planted in her mind … that she had undertaken this course because of the darkness inside her. Because of the need her svartalf blood gave her, to destroy, to bring pain.

  Freyja reached over and took her hand, squeezed it. “Naught to say?”

  “Oh. Sorry, I …” She shook her head. Freyja sat there, confiding in her, speaking of her fears, of wanting to live, while this very day Idunn had mused on ending her own life. “You’re not going to die, Freyja. Look how Odin fights. Look at the two of you! I don’t think aught in this world could separate you.”

  For some reason, that didn’t seem to comfort Freyja. “How could our beautiful islands be reduced to this?”

  Idunn shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  “What?”

  Idunn rubbed her hands over her face. “There was a world before this. There will be a world after this.”

  “If we win, maybe. But that doesn’t do much for me, for the life I lead, unless you want to buy into Odin’s claims about us all getting spun out by the Wheel of Life over and over. Even if it’s true, I don’t see how that’s me. Or … almost worse, what if I were to lose my soul mate and not die? How could I live on in the face of such a loss?”