by Matt Larkin
Odin grunted. “Vili, help Ve.”
“I’m fucking starving.”
“So am I, but it can wait. I don’t want the boy wandering this place alone. Could still be draugar or aught else here.”
Grumbling, the berserk lurched to his feet and went after Ve.
Loki retightened the bandage on Odin’s leg, forcing Odin to stifle a grunt of pain.
“Thank you. Brother.”
Loki snorted. “Brother?” he asked, when Odin turned back to him.
Odin leaned back on his elbows, grateful for even the slight respite. “Without doubt. You saved my life and that of my little brother. You alone helped me uphold my vow. You may not have been born of the same woman as I …” But what did that even matter? No one controlled what family they were born to, but there was no reason you couldn’t choose others. Rolling to his side, Odin pulled a knife from his belt. Loki stared at it without any hint of alarm. Pity—Odin had expected to at least startle the foreigner.
Instead Loki raised his eyes from the knife to Odin’s face. Steady one, this. Fearless? Or just not easily worried? No, he had stood with them against a jotunn. That kind of courage exceeded that of even most berserkir.
Odin drew the knife along his palm, opening a shallow cut. “We shall be brothers in blood, my friend, until the end of our days.” He held up his dripping palm for Loki to see, then passed the knife.
The other man took it without hesitation, though he did watch Odin’s eyes a moment before opening his own palm. “Some things cannot be undone.” He set the knife by the fire, then offered his hand.
Odin clasped it, mingling their blood. “Nor should they.” A sudden warmth passed through him, and then dizziness. Hunger and fatigue, no doubt. His eyes swam. “We will be united, always, now. I will never accept any ale unless it be brought for you as well. I will take no glory without you at my side, brother.”
Loki’s hand tightened around Odin’s. The man was stronger than he looked. Though svelte, his grip was like iron. “You invoke old magic without understanding it, brother. But I will stay by your side, long as I am able.”
In truth, Loki was the strangest man Odin had ever known. He knew far more than a man ought, but that had proved a boon time and again on this trek. Without him Father would still dwell in agony. And surely he must be free now. Surely. Free and gone … No longer watching Odin. That thought hit him like a blow to the chest, one that stole his breath.
Odin shook himself and broke the grip. He looked at the foreigner. Loki claimed to have come from the far west, but Odin knew little of lands beyond Aujum. Some said the gods lived in the west, beyond the farthest sea, on islands that knew neither time nor winter. Vanaheim. Had Idunn truly come from such a place? It seemed too good to be truth. Odin’s people—all Ás tribes, really—had lived along the Black Sea far to the east, before Vingethor led them on the Great March. Nine tribes, all wandering Aujum, some fishing the Gandvik Sea, some raiding into Hunaland or Bjarmaland.
He leaned back on his elbows. “You keep many secrets, brother. Will you not speak of your homeland?”
Loki watched him with those intense eyes a moment. “A man is entitled to secrets and privacy both.”
“Just fucking move!” Vili bellowed from across the hall.
Odin and Loki both looked to him as he shoved Ve out of the way and yanked down a tapestry on his own. Ve stood there, staring at the berserk as if uncertain what to do. He had dropped his torch, which now lay sputtering on the icy stone.
Loki rose, grabbed a torch, and strode over there, forcing Odin to hobble his way over to where his brothers worked.
As Loki approached, Ve backed away from him and sat against the wall. Loki knelt before him, staring into his eyes. And Ve’s eyes—those looked a touch too wild and confused for Odin’s liking.
“What is this?” Odin demanded as he reached them.
“Fucking uselessness,” Vili said. Odin’s huge brother hefted the tapestry by himself—berserk strength at its finest—and hauled it off, back toward the fire.
Loki didn’t turn from Ve’s face. “What was your mother’s name?”
Ve’s eyes seemed to gleam in the firelight, though he cringed from it as though it pained him. He shook his head, eyes growing even wider.
Odin knelt before his little brother. What in the gates of Hel? Their mother had died birthing Ve. And the boy had never known her, but he certainly knew the name Bestla. Father’s beloved wife, oft mourned.
So now what … No.
This wasn’t possible. Vӧlvur said the mists could steal memories, but vӧlvur said so many things. Odin hadn’t thought … He’d taken Ve, taken both his brothers up the mountain to fight Ymir, unwilling to allow them torches for fear of jeopardizing his vengeance. Every step had drawn these mists deeper inside his own brother.
No. It could not be. Not in one night.
“Ve?” Odin’s voice cracked, still sounding raspy. “Brother?”
At last a look of recognition flashed over Ve’s face and he nodded to Odin. Recognition and dread. Gods above, his brother knew what was happening to him. And he was terrified. Odin reached a trembling hand to pat his brother on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Ve. You’ll be fine. You just need a good night’s sleep. Some food in your belly.” Odin hauled Ve to his feet and guided him back to the fire where Vili had left the mammoth flesh roasting.
Gods, what a fool he’d been. To find vengeance for Father he’d brought his brothers up a forbidden mountain, then denied them the life-preserving flames that might have warded off the mists. Ve sat, much farther from the fire than he ought to.
“Eat,” Odin said.
Ve moved no closer.
Odin groaned and snatched the meat off the spit Vili had fashioned. When he brought it to Ve, his brother tore into it with a ravenousness that would have done Vili proud. He’d be fine. He watched Ve a moment. Just fine.
Odin turned, then tugged Loki aside, out of earshot of his brothers. Would Vili turn on his brother? Maybe not, but the rest of the tribe would. At night, sometimes men told stories about those whose minds were taken by the mists. Some said those who went mist-mad eventually became wraiths, wandering the world and filled with unfathomable loathing of all that lived. Odin had seen it four times—men cast out from the tribe because of the madness, because the tribe feared a warrior’s soul lost to Niflheim.
And one had come back. But not as a man. As a draug—a revenant risen from the dead and bent on vengeance against those who had cast him out. The creature refused to die, tearing men to pieces even as they hacked away at it. In the end, Father had pinned the creature to the ground with Gungnir and Tyr had lopped off its head. Their vӧlva had built a pyre to send the creature to Hel, and they had fled that camp, declaring it cursed for all time.
“Tell no one of this,” Odin whispered to Loki. A resigned sadness washed over the foreigner’s face before he nodded. Maybe a vӧlva would have known what to do to save Ve. Heidr—their tribe vӧlva, maybe she could help. Or …
Loki. The foreigner knew things, talked like a vӧlva himself.
“Can aught be done for him?” Odin asked.
“We should rest.”
Odin clenched his fists at his side and leaned in close to Loki’s ear. “I will not let my brother fall.”
Loki sighed. “Odin, some things are not easily undone.”
“No!” Fuck that.
He’d find a way to save his brother.
Arms laden with yet another tapestry, Vili stomped back over to the fire. “Should get us through the night. I say we leave this cursed place at dawn.” He slumped down by the others, glared at them—probably vexed they ate before him—and snatched up the remaining hunk of mammoth flesh.
Odin looked to Loki, then to the entrance. “We can leave when the storm clears. Be that dawn or otherwise.”
Vili growled, juice dribbling down his chin and beading in his thick beard. “If the jotunn’s death brought this on, the farther we get
from here the better.”
Odin could not argue with that. But nor would he again take Ve into the cold without flame, much as his younger brother now seemed to recoil from the very thing that ought to have protected him. The storm howling outside trapped them in this place, this ruin of the Old Kingdoms. Trapped, sitting and watching Ve stare vacantly off into the darkness of the hall, never looking into the fire.
Hel. Would Father blame Odin for this? In his desperation to avenge him, Odin had let another son of Borr fall to harm. Groaning, he lurched to his feet, drawing strength from Gungnir. He had done it. He’d avenged Father. So why did he still want to rage at the sky and burn down the world? Should it not have brought his soul peace, as well as Father’s?
Vili glanced at him, spat. “There’s rune markings on some of the walls. Fell place, this. I wouldn’t wander.”
Odin glared at the berserk a moment before shambling off toward the back of the hall. Oh, but he wanted to wander. He wanted to be anywhere but sitting there, watching his brother lose himself. Like a Hel-cursed fool, he’d allowed himself to believe mist-madness could not touch him. Not him, not his family. It was a distant threat, one that fell upon other people. Not his problem.
Loki fell in by his side, saying naught. Perceptive enough to know naught could be said. His new brother already knew how Odin had failed his other brothers.
A curving staircase led to an upper balcony, but Odin passed beneath it, to where a series of oak doors lined the walls. Loki drifted along behind him. The foreigner brushed away a layer of hoar to reveal some strange markings carved into the walls. How on Hel’s frozen arse had frost covered the interior walls? Something fell and unnatural was at work. Loki claimed not to have visited here before, but he still knew much of this place.
The runes Loki examined meant naught to Odin. Such were the workings of dvergar of old, warding the ancient places against the mist, or so vӧlvur claimed. They also carved the symbols on runestones, marking safer routes from the more perilous ones. And Gungnir also bore runes, perhaps carved by the Vanir.
“Who did you say built this place?” Odin asked.
“The Odlingar. One of the Old Kingdoms, all of which collapsed some eight centuries back.”
“How does a people capable of building this,” Odin waved his arm to encompass the majesty of the castle, “fall?”
“The same as all once great kingdoms—torn apart by strife from within and torn down by foes from without. A neighboring kingdom took advantage of turmoil within the Odlingar houses and betrayed them.”
Odin grunted. “How does a man know what happened eight hundred years ago?”
Loki chuckled. “I’m a student of history.” He tried one of the doors, but it didn’t budge.
The foreigner moved on to another door, tried the handle, and then shouldered it open. Ice cracked off it. The room beyond was cast in darkness and reeked of must and ancient death.
“So no one has come here in all those years?”
“They may have entered. I’m not certain whether anyone ever managed to leave.”
What the fuck did that mean?
“What is it you think lives here?”
Loki knelt by a mound of ice. Under a thin layer of hoar, a pair of corpses lay in each other’s arms. A mother and child, perhaps, wrapped in a dying embrace, frozen to death in this room. The foreigner frowned, shaking his head. “I doubt anything lives here.”
A wind howled through the castle, raising the hair on the back of Odin’s neck. That had come from upstairs, but no window looked apt to let wind inside. A wise man would flee the castle now. Save for the killing blizzard raging outside. He looked to Loki, but the foreigner only returned his stare blankly. Letting Odin decide. Cower in the hall and hope whatever lurked in those hidden recesses left them to their fire. Or face it.
Not much of a choice. Ve stared into the dark like a man drunk and dazed. Because of Odin. Because his big brother had let him face danger he ought not have. Odin pushed out the door and strode toward the stairs.
Vili had risen, taken up his axe, but Odin motioned him to stay. Odin’s pace slowed as he climbed those stairs. Each step shot tendrils of pain through his leg that reached almost to his spine. Gungnir’s butt clanged on the floor, the sound echoing in the empty hall.
At the top, a freezing wind rushed over him, howling like a wolf. A fell whisper emerged from one of the archways beyond.
Leave.
Odin spun. Naught there.
Loki had followed, now turning about.
“Did you hear something?” Odin asked.
Loki nodded.
Not in Odin’s mind then. Forward. The archway opened onto a hallway, long, probably to the great tower. Large windows lined the hall, letting in a crisscross of light through cracked ice. This must be the skybridge he saw outside.
Odin leveled Gungnir, shared a glance with Loki, and proceeded down the hall. Whatever lived here, vaettir or not, his brothers needed this place, and it was his job to get them what they needed. He’d protect Ve by whatever means necessary.
Leave! The voice seemed to come from all around them. Still a whisper, but one laced with fury.
“Who are you?” Odin called, continuing down the hall. “What do you want?”
No answer came.
“A wraith,” Odin whispered, praying he was wrong. Some claimed wraiths were the most dangerous of all the vaettir. They were shades of the dead bent on the destruction of life, stripped of all that once made them men. There was no fighting a wraith, not really. With neither body to slay nor blood to spill, such a ghost could not be killed. If they were lucky, maybe it would fear Gungnir.
If not, they might as well take their chances with the snowstorm.
A look at Loki told Odin the man would continue on. Odin nodded at his new brother, who drew something from beneath his furs. A crude iron dagger. Loki said naught in answer to Odin’s raised eyebrow.
At the end of the hall an archway led onto a landing of the great tower. Stairs ringed the outside, rising up to the other levels.
Odin blew out a hard breath and clenched his grip around Gungnir. This was the way. The only way. His heart pounded so hard he could barely hear anything else. Just keep going forward.
He’d stepped one foot on the stairs when another chill passed over him. He spun around to see a woman standing in the archway they’d just passed through. She looked naught like any wraith he’d imagined, though the ends of the black cloak she wore faded away into wisps of nothingness. Her face seemed almost solid, and, though pained, not vile. She had green eyes and long blonde hair that blew about, though no wind reached in here. By her side stood a white wolf, also translucent. A ghost hound.
“Be gone, vaettr!” Odin shouted.
“You dare … command me leave my home … mortal?”
Loki raised his torch out in front of him and the dagger to his side but made no move to advance on this spirit.
“Your home?” Odin asked. “Then who are you, lady?”
“I am … I was … the queen here, long ago.”
“My lady, please. We need shelter from the cold.”
The ghost’s form flickered then vanished.
Her voice whispered in Odin’s ear. There is none.
He and Loki both spun about so fast they nearly tripped over themselves, stumbling backward. The ghost stood behind them, her wolf with teeth bared, stalking closer. She flickered again, appearing beside Loki, her hand on his head. His torch and dagger both slipped from his grip, and he fell to his knees. In an instant his skin turned blue as deathchill.
Odin swung Gungnir at her, and she vanished again. He spun as she appeared some distance behind him. The wolf stalked around, circling behind. He couldn’t keep them both in view.
Loki groaned, crawling away with the torch in hand.
“Please!” Odin said. “We beg your hospitality.”
The ghost’s body shimmered, as if fading out of the world, before popping back up eve
n closer. “The last time I sheltered travelers they turned on me. Killed my people, left me this cursed existence. It is not a mistake I am apt to repeat. Least of all to those who come saturated in the mists.”
What? What did she … Ve? “My brother? You know what’s happening to him?”
The ghost flickered in and out of existence. “What always happens to mortal men who breathe too deeply the mists of Niflheim.”
The wolf snarled and lunged.
Odin rolled to the side, whipping Gungnir forward. The ghost wolf snapped its jaws around the shaft and pinned Odin to the ground. The thing had weight like a real animal, though its breath was cold rather than hot, inches from his face. Odin pushed against the animal, unable to dislodge it.
“Please! We are not your enemies!”
She drifted to his side and pressed her hand to his cheek. Even as she did so, the wolf released Gungnir. Odin’s own grip on the spear went limp, and it clattered to the floor. As it fell, a sudden weariness and chill set in on him. Sleep. He needed to sleep.
“Please what, mortal?”
“S-save my brother from the mist.”
Loki lurched forward, waving the torch. The ghost and wolf both recoiled long before he touched either, the wolf snarling. He bent to retrieve the dagger.
“Why?” She drew the word out so long it seemed to writhe in his ears.
“I’d grant any request if it might save my brother.”
“Odin—” Loki began.
Odin silenced him with a glare. “I will avenge whatever wrong was done to you, spirit. But save Ve from this dark urd.”
The ghost flickered again, appearing just before Odin’s face. She drew a finger along the line of his jaw. Her touch was like the mists—icy and maddening, hungry to consume body and mind and soul. “On your oath …”
“I … I swear it.”
“Swear on your blood to return that which was stolen, the Singasteinn.” She touched a hand to her breast, then shook her head. “Return my amulet to me before the solstice.”
“I swear! Where do I find this amulet?
She drew back, and warmth slowly returned to his limbs, though cold still gripped his heart. “Taken … taken by the Niflungar.”
