The Odin Inheritance (The Pessarine Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria L. Scott

  I ignored him. “We’re leaving,” I told Toby. “Do you want to join us, or would you rather stay here?”

  “Leave the thug,” Hades cooed. “Laufeson owes me a life.”

  “I’m all for leavin’, yer worship,” Toby agreed, his expression grim. “I’d rather not pay the Boss’s debt.”

  “Not to mention Hades looks madder than a wet hen at a chicken broil,” Andrew added.

  I turned to Hades and asked Yggdrasil to release him. The branches flowed away from his body and wove themselves back into the floor. He lurched forward, fists clenched and face contorted with hatred.

  “You’ve made an enemy, Valkyrie,” he said. “I’ll make you pay for your work this day.”

  “You conspired with Laufeson to kill my friends and family and do untold damage to the population of the world. Rest assured, I’ll not forget that.”

  Hades raised a hand as if to cast a spell on us. I spread my wings, covering Toby, Freya and Andrew behind them. I held up my sword, pointed it at him and prepared to begin the choosing spell again. “I almost ‘chose’ you, God of the Underworld. Let us leave your realm without incident or else. I hear Hel gets lonely.”

  “Be gone, you Norse harpy,” he growled. He waved an arm and the wall he’d created to close the cavern disappeared. “I trust you can find your own way out,” he snapped.

  The body Hades occupied turned to dust that dropped in a cascade to the floor. A creature of grey smoke remained but quickly dissipated as Hades disappeared. Freya shook her head. “I predict future difficulties with that one,” she muttered.

  “Can’t be helped,” I said, lowering my wings.

  Suddenly the cavern shook with the loudest barks I’d ever heard, the sound coming from down the hallway, accompanied by the scrabbling of nails on stone. The four of us flinched at the noise, which seemed to be getting closer.

  “What in the bleedin’ ‘eck is that?” Toby asked, eyes wide. “Makes a Great Dane sound like a lap dog.”

  “Hades’ pet dog,” Andrew said, frowning. “Three heads, very big, usually hungry, and not friendly.”

  “Then it’s time to skeedaddle, I think,” Toby said. “I don’t fancy a trip through a dog’s gullet. Can you work yer ‘Moon magic’ and get us outta here?”

  Andrew shook his head. “Need moonlight – none of that here. Valkyries have the power to travel between the realm of the dead and the realm of the living. Freya only has the power to move herself and the spirits of the dead from one realm to another, since she’s an Aesir of Asgard, yes?”

  “You speak truly, Son of Khonshu,” she confirmed. “I haven’t the power to transport corporeal beings. For me to save you, you’d need to die first.”

  “No thanks,” Toby said.

  Andrew looked at me. “Think you can manage it?”

  The barking began to alternate with howls and yelps. Dust and small stones started to rain down on us from the cavern’s ceiling as the stalactites hanging from it shook. The scrape of the beast’s nails on the floor of the corridor reminded me of someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard. Both the beast’s yowls and footfalls grew closer to us at an alarming rate, and I detected the distinct smell of a lot of unwashed canine in the air.

  I wasn’t sure I had enough magical or even life energy to get the three of us out of that cavern by magical means, but that was the least of my worries. I slid my sword into its scabbard and returned Andrew’s gaze.

  “I’m certainly willing to try—” I said, speaking loudly to be heard over the din in the corridor. A stalactite fell with a crash against the wall to my right, “—but I don’t know the spell to get us out of here!”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Suddenly, a black paw the size of a writing desk shoved its way into the cavern through the corridor opening, its nails big and sharp as the appendage moved back and forth, trying to scoop us up. We quickly moved to the rear of the cavern, which put us only a few feet out of the beast’s reach and at the end of Yggdrasil’s roots. I sagged as the tree’s energy within me diminished to a trickle.

  The dog howled its frustration in triplicate, shaking the room and filling the air with a stench of carrion. My eyes watered and I put my hands over my ears, as did the others. Toby, clearly realizing the overall size of the monster in relation to the paw, paled visibly.

  “Good God!” he shouted, pressing himself against the wall as best he could, “that thing’s as big as a house! How’s it fit in that corridor?!”

  “I’m more concerned about what it’ll do once it gets in here,” Andrew shouted back. He no longer stood with Freya’s assistance but leaned against the wall, looking for an escape route. “Any ideas on a way out of here that bypasses the hungry dog?”

  Toby looked around and up. “Maybe behind Loki? No way out above us and those pointy hanging things’re movin’ too much... we might get crushed before we get eaten!”

  The paw withdrew, taking part of the opening with it, and two dark eyes sitting in two different heads peered through the ragged enlarged doorway to look at us. Huge tongues ran along the edges of huge jaws as the dog huffed, sniffing at the air of the cavern. He whined and barked.

  More stalactites crashed to the floor to either side of us. I covered my ears more tightly and wracked my brain, searching desperately for a way I could get us out of there, but the pain and noise made it very hard to concentrate. I couldn’t sense Odin within me at all. I felt oddly disconnected even though our lives were in danger and the cavern was falling apart around us.

  Freya grabbed one of my hands. I felt her mind touch mine and she shoved a spell into my thoughts, burning the words there as Odin had done with the ‘choosing the slain’ spell, but with less finesse. I felt more of my own energy leech away as the information took up permanent residence.

  “I have given you the means of escape, cousin,” Freya shouted, letting go of my hand, and then she disappeared.

  “Oy!” Toby shouted, “where’d she go?”

  The black paw came into the room again. It tore away more of the cavern opening in a crash of boulders and dust. Toby saw a stalactite shake loose of the roof and pulled Andrew and me out of the way so it crashed beside instead of on top of us. Stone bits of various sizes flew in all directions, forcing us to shield our faces from the debris and taking the cuts and blows on our backs, wings, shoulders and arms.

  “We may be done for!” Andrew shouted.

  I shook my head to clear it as best I could. Forcing my brain to examine the spell Freya had left me, I struggled to calculate the amount of energy it would take to get the three of us to Great Aunt Miranda’s house on Earth, or ‘Midgard’ as Freya thought of it. The math involved was the easy part until I realized I barely had enough magical energy to work the spell. I asked Yadrasil to give me one last jolt of energy, but trapped as I was at the endo f her carpet of roots, what I was able to absorb was a fraction of what she’d supplied. It would have to do.

  ‘Barely enough’ is still ‘enough,’ I thought.

  “Take my hands!” I ordered, holding mine out to Andrew and Toby.

  They did as I directed. I pulled every bit of energy I had into the spell, feeling incredible pain as I did so. More connections within me broke, but I held on and completed the equations in tandem with the incantation. There was a flash of blue light. The cavern disappeared as the last of my magic sent us back to Earth.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The blue light dissipated and I found I stood in a place I was quite sure wasn’t Brentwood Close.

  “Hello, Little One,” came a male voice. The basso profundo syllables echoed in the huge chamber around me as well as reverberated back and forth in my thoughts. I staggered and winced. I felt a wave of unending, indescribable fatigue and nausea flow over me. I’d used far too much magic. The needful and important things that had loosed their moorings while I’d battled Hades for Andrew’s life and then cast the spell to get us out of his realm made themselves known. The general pulsin
g ache roared to a crescendo and became a solid wall of physical and mental anguish. The wide planked wooden floor beneath my bare feet obligingly rose to meet the rest of my body, the impact a minor note in the symphony of agony I experienced. My metallic wings spread out to either side of my body, limp. When I’d had power, they’d been light as air. Now their weight effectively pinned me to the floor.

  I just lay there after, breathing and hurting, not responding to the greeting of the huge man who towered above me.

  “Welcome to Glaðsheimr,” the voice thundered. “It’s been a long time since we spoke face to face.”

  My face remained pressed to the floor. I couldn’t see his. I breathed some more and tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t pull together enough energy or thought to speak. There were only pained and broken things inside me.

  I heard the shuffle of feet approaching, then the swish of fabric and someone knelt beside me. I saw a hem of a pale green dress trimmed with gold swirls. Gentle, cool fingers touched my temples. A female voice spoke words I couldn’t understand and some of the pain receded from my mind. I knew instinctively that didn’t mean the pain was gone for good. I’d been given a reprieve from enough of it that my mind could function though I couldn’t move to push myself up off the floor. Her hands left my head and she backed up and away from me.

  “Little One,” the voice boomed, “rise. I command it.”

  The words flowed through me, urging obedience. “’I’m sorry. I can’t,” I said, my voice strained. “Not I won’t… I can’t.”

  The woman responded angrily to the man, again using language whose intent I could glean from the tone and vehemence of the words even if I couldn’t understand what specifically was said. She thought asking me to stand in my condition was unreasonable. I needed time to recuperate. I felt the floor move beneath me as the man approached, speaking calmly to the woman on the other side of me. The words made no sense. I closed my eyes and ached.

  Randgríðr, the man whispered deep in my mind, rise.

  The use of my secret name – the one given to me by Odin - shuddered through my exhausted body. I found I could move my limbs. Bolstered by whatever power the name ‘Randgríðr’ had over me, I slowly pulled my wings in with a metallic glide, pushed my hands under my torso and managed to rise to a wobbily standing posture. The pain still rang through me like a low note from a bass viol. I resolved to keep it from showing on my face and set it to a different part of mind with obstinancy born of pride and contrariness. Looking down at myself I saw a thin layer of blue light enveloping my body. That was the outward sign of magic allowing me to stand in Odin’s presence.

  The Head of the Norse pantheon stood towering above me, seven feet tall if he was an inch and looking me over with a one-eyed calculating, cold stare. He wore silver armor chased with golden runes and had silver greaves tied over black leather boots. A blue woolen cloak hung from his shoulders down to his knees, held to his shoulders with golden pins attached to the armor. White hair braided from the crown of his head hung down his neck and back. A black leather eyepatch covered his left eye, the leather strap that held it in place a thin black line across his face and around the back of his head. His right eye was a blue somewhere between midnight blue and a dark grey-blue, the hue changing subtly with what I could only guess was his mood, but I had no way of knowing for sure. He was ancient and ageless at the same time, at one moment vibrant with the power of a youthful warrior, the next moment crafty and wise with age and experience.

  He stood in front of a raised wooden platform made of the same wide dark planks as the floor I’d been laying on just moments before. On the platform against the wall behind Odin sat a silver throne. It was large, regal, ornately crafted and very obviously Odin’s. Twelve smaller wooden thrones sat to either side of the silver throne, six per side. In those seats were the shadows of men dressed in armor, shimmering and only partially corporeal, like ghosts who hadn’t quite decided whether to appear to mortal eyes or not. I sensed they were retainers to Odin… or maybe lesser gods in the Norse pantheon. I was far from being an expert on such things and I didn’t think I had a lot of time to puzzle it out. I had no idea how long the magic surrounding me would last.

  Above the thirteen seats and covering the wooden walls of the hall as far as I could see were huge, vibrantly colored tapestries. I saw a few figures I recognized, like a very large blonde man in a wedding dress – Thor in the story Odin had told through me at the pub in Penzance. I also recognized Loki grinning with malicious glee as a blonde woman wept over the body of a handsome young man pierced through the heart with a wooden arrow. The wooden ceiling above the tapestries was carved with ornate dragons and other creatures I didn’t recognize, some of their more monstrous features highlighted in swirls of color that matched the vibrancy of the tapestries.

  To my right was the woman I’d heard arguing with Odin in the language I hadn’t understood. She had eyes the color of spring grass and a gentle, caring face, her expression as she looked at me one of great concern. Blonde hair framed her face in curling wisps and two long braids draped over her shoulders and down the front of the gown. Gold trimmed her pale green woolen dress on the ends of the long sleeves as well as the hem. Golden buttons held it together at the shoulders and along the tops of her arms, the white flesh of her arms visible in small ovals between the buttons. She had a golden belt tied around her waist and thin golden bracelets on her wrists.

  Odin, fists on hips, regarded me. “You stand in my hall, Little One. I rule here. Behind me sit the judges who determine who enters Valhalla. I interrupted your journey to Brentwood Close so I could speak with you. The Son of Khonshu and the minion of the Son of Loki arrived there unharmed.”

  Relieved that Andrew was safe in a place where he could get help and hopeful that Toby would behave himself, I carefully maneuvered myself into a rickety curtsey, lowering my eyes respectfully as I did so. At least some of Mother’s advice about how to behave in the presence of a monarch seemed to have stayed with me. Hopefully, I could apply the training, combined with my manners and deportment, to dealing with pagan gods.

  “I greet you, All-Father,” I said. I rose from the curtsey ungracefully and focused on the wooden floor. One did not look a monarch in the face. It seemed a wise precaution to take with Odin.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Little One?” Odin asked.

  “No, my lord,” I said.

  “You are close to death. Your soul remains attached to your body only through the efforts of Eir and myself. Her healing powers and my magic hold you here, on the precipice between life and afterlife.”

  I swallowed. I knew I wasn’t well. I hadn’t realized just how ‘not well’ I apparently was.

  “These judges are here to decide if you are worthy of Valhalla if I allow you to slip over the precipice… unless…” I looked up at the god, his one blue eye cold as he regarded me. “...I choose to let you live. What is your life worth, Little One?”

  That stiffened my spine and I felt anger rise in me. Going to Valhalla? I thought, shocked. I wasn’t a pagan, for a start, and if God had heard only half of my imprecations and blaspheming when I’d been tied to the chair in Laufeson’s tower, the only place I was headed post mortem was Hell. No matter where I spend eternity, I resolved, I’d be damned if I beg for my life, no matter who this god thinks he is.

  “I know my worth, my lord,” I said coldly, enunciating so that I could be heard throughout the hall, “but I dare say it’s your opinion of my value that matters. What do you think my life is worth?”

  The twelve spectral judges in the seats behind Odin moved in their thrones, looking at each other in surprise at my words. Mother would have fainted to hear me address a social superior – much less a god in his own hall—in such a way, but she wasn’t with me.

  She was dead. So were my friends. I’d avenged them and nearly killed myself in the process, but at least Andrew was safe. Therefore, hurting as I was, I hardly cared what happened to me an
ymore. I’d done my best. If death and Hell awaited, so be it. At least I know what the Ancient Greek Hell is like, I mused sardonically. I wonder if the Christian Hell will be better or worse?

  Odin tilted his head and skewered me with the gaze from his one eye. I didn’t look away. “You made an agreement with me, Little One,” he rumbled. “Do you not remember it?”

  I did remember it. Having made it under duress and not understanding the language in which he’d proposed it, I wasn’t sure, precisely, what I’d said I’d do on Odin’s behalf. That could be a bad thing.

  “I do, but I’m a bit unclear as to the terMs. Perhaps if you explained them to me in English?” I suggested.

  Again the judges behind Odin looked shocked and whispered among themselves. Odin’s eye narrowed in calculation.

  “I gave you power to defeat the Son of Loki,” he said, his voice echoing through the hall in a proclamation-like timbre. “I protected you from the most invasive and insidious of his magics so that you could turn his evil plan against him. In return, you agreed to serve… and… worship… me.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. Worship… him? I thought, the implications of that running through me like cold steel. My brain ramped up to lightning speed, the pain I’d been holding at bay forgotten amid my blazing and panicked cogitation. My minds’ eye showed me the altar in Laufeson’s office with the bowl on it stained brown with sacrificial blood, which was the only personal example I had of what constituted pagan worship. Andrew had told me those who worshipped Odin hung their sacrifices in trees… as Laufeson had done to me as a child. It was a far cry from sitting in a church pew, singing hymns and listening to a sermon, praying to the Almighty of a Sunday morning.

  Since I hadn’t known the terms, I’d made the agreement without an opportunity to think things through or perhaps find another way to stop Laufeson that wasn’t so personally compromising. I’d had no choice at the time and Odin had known it.