by Matt Larkin
“Loki! Come down here, I would speak with you.”
The man shared a secret smile with Sigyn. Sleeping together, were they? Odin couldn’t blame Loki’s choice—Sigyn was a beauty, for certain. Ironic, that his blood brother would choose his wife’s sister. Irony, or urd, perhaps. Loki jumped off the roof, landing in a crouch in the snow beside Odin.
“How was she?” Odin asked before he could stop himself.
Loki frowned, sparing a glance back at Sigyn. “I’ve warned you about vulgarity, Odin. I’ve given Sigyn the apple you granted me.”
Odin’s jaw hung open for a moment. Loki had just met the girl. He restrained himself from asking if she’d really been so good in bed Loki needed her for the rest of time. And it meant the apples were truly gone. “I … forgive me, brother. I spoke out of turn. If you wish to spend your immortal life with Sigyn, I wish you happiness.”
“But that’s not why you’ve sought me out.”
“No. I bedded Frigg, as you suggested.”
“And you’ve absorbed some part of her seid.”
“I saw my brother … his eyes had turned red. His teeth had become like …”
Loki sighed. “Like a troll’s.”
“What?” Odin stopped in his tracks. “What does that mean? Do you know what’s happening to Ve?”
“I know. Odin … where do you think the trolls come from?”
Odin shook his head, taking a step back. “No. No! Trolls are the spawn of jottunar.”
“Do you confuse what you wish to be true with reality? They are men, twisted and warped by too long in the mist. Why do you think they still seek human wives, brother?”
“No!” Odin lunged forward and grabbed Loki’s tunic, shoving him back against the house. “Why! Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
Loki gripped his hands but didn’t attempt to pry them loose. Instead his crystal blue eyes bored into Odin’s, as if seeing his soul. “Because if it happened, there was naught you could do to stop it. This is a war within him, a process not easily halted once begun.”
“You. Should. Have. Told me!”
“And what would you have done differently? Do you think I would let you suffer if I knew a way to prevent it? We have no way to stop this.”
“I have a way! I will retrieve the amulet, and the ghost will end this!”
Odin shoved Loki against the house again, then stormed off. The ghost had threatened Odin, warned him the price of failure would be those he loved. So this had to be her work. It had to …
Hadding had given Odin’s brothers a house in town. Odin broke into a run, dashing there and flinging the door open. Vili lay sprawled on the floor, a naked girl under each arm. One groggily looked over at Odin as he burst in. He didn’t even bother to look at her, instead spinning until he spotted Ve, sitting in the corner.
He held one of the babes—Geri, assuming the embroidered blankets hadn’t been switched—in his arms, rocking the child. In the darkness, his eyes were glowing red. He opened his mouth too wide, revealing pointed teeth, a tongue slightly bulbous.
Hel and Freyja, this could not be happening.
Odin staggered over and reached down. “Ve. Give me Geri.” His voice sounded so hoarse in his own ears. A bare whisper. Pain built in his chest until he wanted to weep like a maid.
Ve’s eyes darted down to the babe, and his tongue licked the edge of his teeth.
“Give her to me. Now.”
At his commanding tone, his brother handed him the child. Odin took her gently, then backed out of the house. It was all too much. He’d failed again. He’d been doomed all along, maybe. He would not sit by and watch this happen. He would not allow this!
“I’m trying!” he shouted at the sky. “I’m fucking trying! I haven’t given up! I won’t!” Villagers had begun to stare at him, but he didn’t care. “I will get your damned Singasteinn back!”
At that, Geri began to cry. Gods, where was the other babe?
“Lord Odin?” Frigg asked.
He spun to find his wife, fully dressed, watching him along with the other concerned villagers. Odin shoved Geri at her, and she took the babe with a slight hesitation. She tried to speak, but he dashed off, back toward his brothers’ house. This time, Vili woke as Odin crashed inside.
Ve remained in the corner and actually backed farther into it when Odin opened the door. He backed away from the sunlight. He now feared the one thing all men counted on to protect them from the vaettir. Odin shook his head.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Vili demanded.
“Where is Freki?”
Vili looked to a blanket on a nearby cot. Odin dashed over without waiting for his brother. The child lay there, pawing at the air like a wolf in a dream. Mercifully asleep.
Pausing only long enough to sweep up the babe, he stormed over to Vili. With one hand, Odin yanked Vili to his feet by his beard. The big man yelped and looked as though he might have punched Odin if not for the babe in his arms.
“Watch. Your. Brother!” Odin glanced at Ve to make his point.
For the first time, Vili seemed to notice the red glow in Ve’s eyes. “Frey’s flaming sword! What happened?”
“Watch him. And let no one else call upon him until I return.”
“Where are you—”
“Just do it!” Odin stormed out to see Frigg, Sigyn, and half the gods-damned town staring at him.
“Are these your children?” Frigg asked.
What? Odin glanced at the babe in his arms. She thought the twins his bastards. “No.” But they were his, weren’t they? He’d taken them from their mother and spared them. And he could no longer count on Ve to watch over them. “I mean, they are not of my blood. I adopted them. They are mine now.”
“I see.” Frigg’s face gave no indication of what she thought about her new husband taking on wards. Wait until she found out the babes were werewolves. “I would speak with you, Lord Odin?”
Lord Odin? “Gods, woman, you’re my wife now. I would have thought …” Odin bit his tongue. He was going to say he would have thought he might have loosened her up a bit last night. But Loki was right—vulgarity had to be beneath him. He had to be a man worthy of kingship. A king to save the Aesir from this madness Hel had visited upon them. “I would have thought you’d be resting, my lady.” Odin had no time to talk with her. He needed set out for the Niflungar without delay. “I have to ride from here. I may be gone long.”
Frigg frowned, seeming to examine every detail of his face. “I see. And the apple for my father? It was … kind … of you to offer one to me, but his need is immediate.”
Odin pushed the other babe into Sigyn’s arms. “Take care of this child as if it were your own.” With that, he grabbed Frigg’s arm and pulled her away from the others, who continued to stare. “I gave the apples to those who were best suited for them, wife. Be satisfied you and your sister were among them.” Even had he another, he wouldn’t waste it on a weakling coward like Hadding. And he had already delayed too long in fulfilling his oath to the ghost. There was time left, but not so much. The solstice crept ever closer, now less than two moons away.
“I am grateful. But now you must give one to my father.”
Odin folded his arms over his chest. She was telling him what to do, was she? “Those apples were entrusted to me, personally, by the goddess Idunn. I decide what to do with them, wife.”
Frigg stiffened, her lips very still before she spoke. “You promised an apple to my father.”
Odin shook his head. “I promised to treat my allies right. The best way I can do that is by giving apples to those with the most to offer.”
“My father is the jarl of the Hasdingi!” For once her words came out blurted, her calm broken. But only for a moment, then she looked aghast at her own outburst. “He is your ally.”
“Frigg, I know this is a hard truth to face, but your father is not a well man.”
“Yes, my lord. That is why he needs an apple immediately.”
>
He shook his head sadly. “We don’t even know if an apple would reverse the ravages he’s already suffered.”
“Well, you have to try!”
The woman had best get control of her temper. “I am a jarl, and soon I will be king. I will not be told what I have to do, not by you nor anyone else! Your father hides in fear behind his walls, complacent and weak. He has no place in the future I will build.”
By now a crowd had gathered around the two of them. Damn her. She’d raised her voice first. Now he couldn’t back down even if he wanted to.
“You will save my father, Odin,” she spat, her voice pitched low enough that others couldn’t hear. “Or I will place such a curse on you you’ll wish you had!”
Odin’s fists clenched. He caught himself raising a hand toward her and restrained himself. Curse him? He’d had far too much of witches and ghosts and curses. Ve was losing himself, perhaps because of a curse, and now his own wife threatened him with another? “Do not presume to threaten me, woman! You ate the last apple yourself,” he whispered back. “Consider that.”
Her face grew pale, and she fell back a step, shaking her head.
“I ride for the Reidgotaland!” he shouted to the assembled crowd.
Without another word he stormed off and shouted for Sleipnir. Moments later the horse came trotting over the hills. Odin leapt into the saddle.
“Take us north,” Odin said. “Far north, hard and fast.”
He did not look back as the horse galloped away from the camp. Not at first. Not until he already knew it would be too late to see any of the people he had just left behind.
Part III
Fifth Moon
35
The runes in lower Halfhaugr swam before Sigyn’s eyes, taking on new shapes, winding and unraveling in a clarity she had never before hoped for. Hand to her temple, she panted, desperate to stop the motion of a swirling world changing around her. But the world had not changed, she had. Whether from the apple or her hallucinatory experience with Loki, something inside her had shifted, had opened to view the world in new light, as with the parting of mists. She swept her hair back from her face.
And how had that all occurred? She’d had her pleasure of men before, and might have even called it a spiritual experience. This time, though, had reached a whole new magnitude of transcendence, had prompted visions in her, perhaps not unlike those her sister experienced. But how? Had the apple made Sigyn a vӧlva as well?
So often Sigyn had doubted the tales, the stories, the many beliefs men held about the Otherworlds. How could they possibly know what went on in places they could not see or touch? But she saw something now.
She shoved the table aside once again, clearing away any obstruction before these runes. Apples of immortality, seid, visions, Otherworlds—if such things existed, then perhaps too the dvergar had come from those Otherworlds, perhaps they did indeed carve a prophecy down here. One no one else among the Aesir read or understood. If so, it then fell to Sigyn to unravel the secrets lost to men.
She brushed dust from the wall.
The end times. She had seen it before, but it now it seemed to sing in her mind, the voice of the stone booming like a herald of darkness. The runes, taken as a whole, rather than one at a time, began to paint a clearer picture in her mind’s eye, an unfolding play in the shadows while she stood transfixed, letting her present surroundings fall away.
The end times. The doom of the gods. Ragnarok …
Brother would fight brother …
Sisters’ sons would break the bonds of kinship …
The world falters …
Axe time, sword time, broken shields, wind time, wolf time …
Her heart slammed against her ribs. The words seemed to echo all around her from the unending shadows. The crash of iron. Her legs sinking in a sea of blood.
The Destroyer wakes …
Sigyn slipped to her knees, hands splashing down in the blood. She raised them to her face, staring in horror, unable to quite get the scream past her throat. Stretching into infinity spread row upon endless row of corpses, now waking, grim and merciless. Marching under the heel of the Queen of Mists. Hel was coming for Sigyn, coming to feast upon her soul.
Tears tumbled down her cheeks. Blood seeped from her fingers. She trembled, shook, freezing from the inside out.
Was Hel the Destroyer? Was she to break free of Niflheim and end Midgard?
“Sigyn?” A voice, far away. “Sigyn!”
Strong arms enwrapped her, jerked her to her feet. She shuddered, shut her eyes. Blinked. Agilaz held her in his arms, tight grip on her biceps. Concern on his usually emotionless face.
“Papa?”
He pulled her close into an embrace. She almost never called him that. He had never claimed to be her father, nor encouraged her to think of him as such. But sometimes, in the darkest nights, a girl wanted her parents. Cast out by those who had birthed her, she would draw solace from those who accepted her. They understood, especially Olrun.
“What happened to you?”
“I …” Sigyn glanced at the runes then quickly turned away, lest their embedded story consume her mind once again. “I fear for the future.”
“As do I. Word has come through our new allies. King Otwin of Njarar sides with the Godwulfs, or at least with Jarl Alci.”
Sigyn stilled herself with a slow breath. “Otwin. The same king to whom Father owes debts of old?”
Agilaz nodded. “Otwin was his father Nidud’s hand in Aujum during the war. He drove Hadding and the others into it. That’s why we call it the Njarar War. His father may have been the cruelest king the North Realms have ever known. He tortured my brother, Sigyn.”
Agilaz had a brother? She opened her mouth to ask, but he waved it away.
“I do not speak of him. All I can say is I fear for Otwin’s allies almost as much as for his enemies.”
“Hermod. Hermod is with the Godwulfs.”
“Indeed. And I must ride for the Godwulf lands with all haste.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Agilaz shook his head and fixed her with a stern gaze. “Your presence might make things worse. Stay here and keep an eye on our Wodan guests. Already your father grows agitated that Odin fled without keeping his promise.”
“Odin did not actually promise to give Father an apple.”
“Perhaps not, but we cannot trust men who rely on clever words to avoid keeping faith.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Sigyn, you and Olrun, you must work to keep this new alliance from fracturing. We cannot afford war with the Wodanar. Stay close to them and, if they plot against us, make sure Hadding knows of it.”
Sigyn sighed but nodded. Keeping an eye on the Wodanar was not difficult. Finding a way to help Hermod, that was a problem. But she would think of something. She had to.
36
A shelf of ice rimmed the shore of the Morimarusa, stretching perhaps a quarter mile out. That sea wrapped around Reidgotaland where it joined with the Gandvik Sea. Some said the ice grew so thick you could sometimes walk from Reigotaland to Sviarland.
Reidgotalanders around the sea took fishing boats out beyond that, some hunting fish and sharks. Out here, the mists never seemed to part. Every boat Odin could see had a torch pole mounted to both ends in a feeble effort to keep the perilous vapors at bay.
Odin had watched them long enough to realize they spoke a dialect of the North Realm tongue, but understanding them proved a challenge. Besides, there were few enough people in any event. More ravens haunted this town than people.
He patted Sleipnir’s neck. “How are we going to cross?”
Perhaps he could barter for a boat. Even if the locals didn’t understand his words, they might understand an offer of value. Perhaps Odin’s arm ring, or …
Sleipnir started off again, down toward the icy shelf.
“Whoa,” Odin said. “You crack that ice, and we’ll be taking a very cold swim.”
The horse paid him
no mind, holding a steady gait right toward the water. Odin pulled back on the horse’s mane, but Sleipnir just jerked his head forward and kept on. Then the horse trod onto the water itself. His hoofs hit the sea like solid ground. Odin let the reins go slack, too shocked to even try to control his mount. The moment he did, Sleipnir took off at a gallop.
Odin clutched the horse’s neck. “Gods above!”
He should have learned by now not to underestimate this animal.
Sleipnir charged across the Morimarusa, waves lapping at his many heels. The mist out here grew so thick Odin couldn’t see past Sleipnir’s snout. “I hope you know where you’re going,” he mumbled.
The horse snorted.
They charged out, far past all fishing boats and beyond. A few shouts rose as he went by, fishermen no doubt fearing spirits out in the mist over the sea. Perhaps he’d give rise to a new legend here.
Odin had no way to judge distance, but he guessed a quarter hour’s ride and he heard hooves on solid ground again. The island of Samsey. At last.
The path Sleipnir trod inclined upward, and soon Odin passed high enough that the mist thinned, revealing a treacherous path winding along a rocky mountainside. Beyond, through the mist, stood the outline of a castle stretching far up into the sky. It had to have been eight stories tall.
As they neared, the sound of rushing water began to fill his ears. No vegetation grew on this mountain, though moss had sprung up on some of the rocks. When Odin drew closer to the castle he at last caught a glimpse of the water. It fell in a steady unfrozen stream that ran from the base of the castle in a cascade that pitched over the mountainside. The stream looked like it emptied into an inlet below, though the mist prevented any vision of that.
“What kind of madmen would live in such a place?” he asked.
Predictably, Sleipnir gave no answer.
