by Karen Chance
“The legend states that eventually Jörmungandr grew so large that he was able to surround the Earth and grasp his own tail. He was believed to be holding the world together, and that when he let go, it would end.”
He added a line across the top of the board and wrote “Loki” in the middle. Then he made three branches coming down from it, like an abbreviated genealogical table. The soccer ball was attached to one of them. He underlined it helpfully.
“That’s Earth?” I asked, just to be clear.
“Yes.”
“And that thing wrapped around it, that’s Jor—whatever?”
“Yes.” He frowned. “Can’t you tell?”
“Not really.”
He leaned over and did something to the drawing. “Is that better?”
I didn’t see any difference. Until I looked closer. And saw that the thing with eyes now also had a tiny, forked tongue.
“Jonas—”
“Now, the interesting thing about the Norse myth,” he told me, “isn’t so much how it differs from the others, but what it adds.” He drew a little line down from the soccer ball and scribbled a name below it. He looked at me expectantly.
“Thor?” I guessed, because Jonas’s handwriting wasn’t any better than his art.
“Yes.”
“God of thunder, big guy with a hammer?”
“Quite. And Jörmungandr’s archenemy. The legend says that in Ragnarok—” He saw my expression. “That is the Old Norse term for the ‘Twilight of the Gods,’ the great war that will decide the fate of the world.”
I nodded, mainly because I wanted him to get to a point already.
“The legends say that Thor will defeat Jörmungandr during Ragnarok, only to die himself shortly thereafter,” he told me. And I guess that was it, because he just stood there, rocking back and forth on his toes and looking pleased.
“I’m kind of still waiting for the interesting part,” I confessed after a few moments.
Jonas blinked at me. “But don’t you see? That is essentially what we have just experienced. The ouroboros spell was defeated, allowing the return of one of the old gods, who died almost immediately afterward.”
“But that was Apollo,” I said, my stomach falling a little more. Because if there was one thing I liked discussing even less than the ouroboros, it was the guy who had defeated it.
Apollo had been the source of the power that came with my office, gifting it to his priestesses at Delphi so that they could help him keep an eye on those treacherous humans. But once the ouroboros spell kicked him out along with the other gods, the power had stayed behind, bound to the line of Pythias who continued their work, only on behalf of the Circle and the humans he had despised.
Or at least it had until I came along. Apollo thought he had it made when a clueless wonder inherited the Pythia position instead of one of the carefully groomed Initiates the Circle kept under its watchful eye. He’d intended to use me to help bring back the bad old days of gods and slaves and nothing in between by helping him get rid of the barrier once and for all.
He’d been less than pleased when I’d declined.
In the end, I’d been the one left standing, although I still wasn’t quite sure how. But I suspected that a heck of a lot of luck had been involved. Now, as far as I was concerned, I could happily go the rest of my life and never hear that name again.
“You know, it’s really quite fascinating,” Jonas said. “But many of the old Norse gods have parallels in the myths of other cultures. From Scandinavia through Ireland, India and even beyond, their names may change, but they are essentially the same entities with the same powers and, in many cases, the same symbolism.”
“Are they?” I asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it was coming; I could feel it.
“Oh yes. Take Thor, for instance. As you say, he is best known as the god of thunder. But would it interest you to know that, when famine threatened, it was Thor to whom the ancient peoples of Scandinavia prayed to send a good harvest—a role traditionally allocated to a sun god? Or that sun gods the world over have customarily been depicted holding axes—which look a great deal like Thor’s famous hammer? In fact, some scholars have suggested that they were the prototypes for it.”
“But what does that have to do with—”
“And that, according to legend, of the four horses that drew Apollo’s chariot, one was named Lightning and another Thunder? Or that Apollo was said to have used lightning and thunder—the elements, not the horses—to drive away marauding Gauls who threatened his sanctuary at Delphi?”
“Um, okay, but—”
“The ancient Gauls also considered the god of thunder and the sun god to be one,” Jonas said, really getting into it now. “Images have been found in France of a god resting one hand on a wheel, the symbol for the sun, and holding a flash of lightning in the other. And the Slavonian god of thunder, Perun, was honored with an oak-log fire.”
“Oak?”
“In Greece, oak was the wood dedicated to the sun god.”
I stared at the chalkboard, and the queasy feeling doubled. I swallowed. “So . . . so what you’re trying to say is that—”
“And then there’s the Hindu god Indra. He had early aspects of a sun god, riding in a golden chariot across the heavens to bring the day. But he is more often known as the god of thunder, wielding the celestial weapon Vajra—a lightning bolt.”
“Jonas—”
“And then there’s the fact that Thor’s home was said to be in Jotunheim, in the east, connecting him again to the rising—”
“Jonas!” That was Pritkin.
I looked up at the sound of his voice to see him standing in the doorway to the foyer, arms crossed and green eyes narrowed. He looked pretty pale, for some reason, and instead of his usual ramrod posture, he was leaning against the wall. But he was alive and looking pissed off and I’d never been so happy to see him.
“Hm? Yes?” Jonas blinked at him.
“Are you trying to tell us that Thor and Apollo are two names for the same being?”
“Well, yes,” Jonas said, as if that went without saying. “And once I realized that, well, naturally I began to wonder. . . .”
He and Pritkin stared at the board for a long minute. “Wonder what?” I finally blurted out.
Jonas looked at me. “Well, if we aren’t fighting Ragnarok right now, of course.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Breathe,” Pritkin told me, and I tried. But suddenly, that seemed a lot harder than normal.
“It’s merely a theory,” Jonas said, fussing about the kitchen. We’d moved after that little revelation, because he’d declared that we needed tea. Personally, I didn’t think tea was going to fix this.
“Even if we accept the identification of Thor with Apollo,” Pritkin said, “which many scholars do not—”
“They don’t, you know,” Jonas assured me. “Really they don’t.”
“—there remains the fact that the creature in question is dead. Whatever his name, he is no longer an issue.”
“That’s very true.” Jonas and his hair nodded emphatically.
“Then why did you bring it up?” I asked harshly.
“Why, because of the others, of course.”
Pritkin and I looked at each other, while Jonas kept opening cabinets. He paused slightly when he came to one that had a fork sticking out of it, half-buried in the wood, but he didn’t comment. “You haven’t any tea?” he finally asked me, looking as if he knew that couldn’t be right.
“No.”
He blinked. “None whatsoever?”
“In there,” Pritkin said. He nodded at one of the lower cabinets.
“Oh, good.” Jonas looked vastly relieved, as if a major crisis had been averted.
I started to wonder if I was insane.
After a moment, I cleared my throat. “What others?” I asked, as Jonas began examining Pritkin’s little boxes and tins.
“Hm? Oh, the other two g
ods, of course,” he said absently. “Ah, Nuwara Eliya. Yes, very nice.”
“Nuwara Eliya is a god?” I asked, confused.
He regarded me strangely. “No. It’s a town in Sri Lanka.”
I looked at him.
“Where they grow tea. Very good tea, too.”
Pritkin put a heavy hand on my shoulder, which was just as well. It probably wouldn’t have looked good to choke the head of the Silver Circle to death right before the coronation. Then again, my reputation was shot to hell anyway....
“What other two gods?” Pritkin asked quickly.
“Oh, didn’t I say? Ah, well that’s where it really becomes interesting. According to the sagas, Ragnarok involves the deaths of three main gods: Thor, Tyr and Odin. The legends state that the war will end only when all three are dead, and that the three children of Loki are the ones fated to kill them.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Jonas started filling up the kettle. “I’m not sure. But I did locate some clues that might be useful. The first child of Loki was Jörmungandr, which we now know stood for the ouroboros spell. The snake was opposed by Thor, or Apollo if you prefer. He defeated the spell, but died soon afterward. This, of course, has already happened.”
“Of course,” I said faintly.
“Now, the second child of Loki was Hel,” Jonas said. He reached across the counter to draw what looked like a crooked smile or possibly a banana on his blackboard, which he’d set up just outside. “She was thrown into the underworld by Odin and became the goddess of death.”
“Hell?” I repeated. “You mean, like the place?”
“Yes, in a sense. Our modern word derives from her name. She was said to have power over the nine hell regions—”
“Nine?’
“Yes, the same number that Dante would later record in his Inferno. Fascinating how the myths intersect on so many—”
“Jonas.” That was Pritkin.
“Yes, well. In any case, she was said to have control over the hells, as well as the pathways between worlds. Quite a powerful figure.”
“Like the Greek goddess Persephone,” Pritkin said.
Jonas wrinkled his nose. “No, not exactly. Persephone was queen of the underworld, yes, but only because of her marriage to Hades, who already ruled it. Hel was queen in her own right. She was one of those powerful virgin goddesses you find sprinkled throughout the pages of mythology who lived independently of the authority of any man. Which is why I don’t think Persephone quite fits the bill. And, of course, the moon wasn’t her symbol—”
“Hel’s symbol was the moon?” I asked, finally figuring out what the banana was supposed to be.
“Yes, the dark side, at least. She was—”
“The dark side?”
I guess my voice must have changed, because Jonas looked up sharply. “Yes, why?”
“It’s probably nothing,” I said, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of explaining my little toy to Jonas. But he was standing there, looking at me intently, and I didn’t really have a choice now. “It’s just . . . I have this tarot deck and—”
“You saw something?”
“Well, no. I mean, I didn’t have a vision or anything, you know, magic—”
“Forgive me, my dear, but the tarot in the hands of the Pythia is magic. Yes, indeed. What did you see?”
“Well, it’s not a normal deck,” I explained awkwardly. “So I didn’t have a spread to go on, just the one card—”
“The Moon, I take it?”
“The Moon reversed.”
“Ahhh.” Jonas slowly sat down.
“Like I said, it probably doesn’t mean anything—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said mildly, staring off into space. “No, no. I shouldn’t at all, really.”
I just sat and looked at him for a while, but he didn’t say anything else. Pritkin tried to ask something, but Jonas just waved a hand. “Talk amongst yourselves,” he said vaguely.
I looked at Pritkin helplessly. Most of the time I thought Jonas was a sharp old bastard who was playing some kind of weird mind game with everyone for his own amusement. But there were days when I honestly wondered if the magical world was being led by a complete nut.
“It isn’t even a real deck,” I told him, trying again.
Nothing.
“It’s a toy I was given as a child.”
Nada.
“I don’t even choose the card. It chooses for me!”
May as well have been talking to the wall.
“I’ll be right back,” Pritkin said, apparently giving up. He headed out of the kitchen and I went along because, frankly, it was getting kind of creepy in there.
“I’m just going back to my room for a moment,” he told me, when he realized I was following him. Which would have been fine, if he hadn’t turned around and tripped on the stairs leading from the living room to the foyer.
He caught himself before he face-planted, and for anybody else, it would have been no big deal. I tripped over that same step an average of once a day. But Pritkin wasn’t me and he didn’t regularly fall over his own two feet.
I grabbed him before he could escape, and I didn’t need to ask what the problem was. Blood was seeping through the lower part of his shirt, staining the soft gray cotton. Of course it was, I thought furiously. Of course it bloody well was.
“Damn it, Pritkin!”
“I’m fine,” he told me, which was less than comforting, considering he’d probably say the same thing after losing a limb. I crouched down and pushed up his T-shirt.
“Fine?” I said, staring up at him angrily. The blood was leaking out of a bandage that covered half his stomach.
“Well enough,” he said, trying to push his shirt back down. I slapped his hands and started to pry up the edge of the soaked bandage with a fingernail. It had already come loose and would have to be replaced, and I needed to see—
A steel-like grip caught my wrist. “I’m fine,” Pritkin repeated. “It will be healed by tonight, by the morning at the latest—”
“And what kind of a wound takes you that long to heal?” I demanded. I’d seen him shrug off a knife to the chest in a matter of minutes.
“A Fey one,” he admitted.
I said a bad word and started to pull off the bandage with my other hand, but he caught that wrist, too. And then he tugged me to my feet. “You said you were going to see friends!” I accused.
“Acquaintances.”
“Do your acquaintances usually want to kill you?”
“It’s not completely unknown,” he said wryly. And then he saw my face.
“Let me go,” I told him dangerously.
“So you can slap me?”
“So I can get you a new bandage!” I’d slap him later.
Pritkin let go and I stalked off. We didn’t have a medicine cabinet in the suite; we had a medicine closet. I didn’t know what the guys were preparing for, but they could have stocked a small clinic out of there. Usually, I thought it was a big waste, since I was the only person around here who could benefit from that stuff, and if I needed that much I was a goner, anyway. Today, I was grateful for it.
I grabbed what I needed and went back to the living room, but it was empty. I found Pritkin in the lounge, seated at the card table. I guess he didn’t want to bleed all over the new sofa. The vamps had cleared out, leaving us alone except for a forest of plants and a guy eating chocolate in a corner.
“What are you still doing here?” I demanded.
The blond mage jumped slightly and looked up. “I—No one told me to leave.”
“Leave.” I slammed the medical supplies down on the table.
He scurried off.
I glared at Pritkin. “You swore you’d be all right!”
“And as you can see—”
“You lied!”
“I didn’t lie. I merely didn’t anticipate walking into a—What are y
ou doing?”
I’d knelt on the floor and now I was pushing his legs apart so I could fit between them. “I’m going to rebandage you. If you’re smart, you’ll sit there and let me.”
“I can do that my—” He stopped when my fingernails sank into his thighs.
“Open your legs and hold your shirt up,” I snapped. And to my surprise, he did.
The bandage came off easily since it hadn’t been put on right to begin with, and underneath was—
I sucked in a breath.
Pritkin started to say something, but stopped when I glared up at him, so angry I could barely see. “Don’t.”
He didn’t.
The thing about having superhuman healing abilities is that you’re seriously out of practice when you actually need to do some first aid on yourself. At least, I assumed that was why the bandage had merely been slapped into place, why the cleanup job underneath had been halfassed and why the line of black stitches holding an ugly red wound together might have been done by a farsighted three-year-old. Or maybe he was just trying to piss me off.
If so, it was working really well. I was so mad my hands were shaking, but I didn’t know if it was at him or at me for letting him go. Damn it, I’d known this was going to happen. He was Pritkin. He couldn’t walk across a freaking street without getting shot at, and I’d let him go into goddamn Faerie.
I must have been out of my mind.
“I suppose you had to sew yourself up?” I asked harshly, going into the kitchen to run some water into a bowl.
“It seemed . . . advisable.”
Yeah. If the alternative was spilling your guts everywhere.
I brought back the water and the hand soap. Marco had told me that hydrogen peroxide wasn’t a good idea in deep cuts. Apparently, it could cause bubbles to form in the bloodstream that would kill you a lot faster than whatever had caused the cut in the first place.
I sat everything down on the floor and knelt back in place. I thought about asking him to unzip, because his jeans were in the way, but he usually went commando so I didn’t. I just tugged the fabric, which was soft and old and loose, down enough that I could see to work.
