by Eva Chase
Because the raven had stolen it out of my memories of home, of course.
“So, you can see more than the others?” I said to Ari, still a warm whisper of fabric beside me. “Past Muninn’s construction?”
“Just a little so far, here and there,” she said. “When she’s distracted, maybe? I haven’t figured out a definite pattern, but that was what I was trying to do back there. To break her focus and see if I could get another glimpse.”
“Don’t ignore your other senses, then,” I said. “Listen, smell, taste, touch… She’s using them all to build this place, but that means every aspect can falter. We need all the clues we can get.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t even thinking of that.” She paused. “Have you smelled anything that’s kind of ashy? Or is that something you’d expect to smell around here that maybe the others would be remembering?”
Ash in Asgard? “There might sometimes have been a bit of wood-smoke scent in the air from the hearths,” I said. “Not often while it was warm like this, though.”
She brushed her hair back from her face with a rustle of those soft waves. “Not wood-smoke. There’s something a little more… chemical-y to it? That’s why it didn’t seem to fit. But I’ve only noticed it once, and then it faded. I don’t know if it means anything.”
“We’ll have to keep it in mind,” I said. “Unless the great Loki has already solved all our problems and we’re about to walk right out of here.”
“You never know,” Ari said, but her tone was teasing. She fell silent for a moment, her shoes tapping against the smooth marble stones. “Do you two just get on each other’s nerves, or is there a bunch of history I don’t know there?”
“History,” I said. “A lot of it.” Not any I wanted to think about, even though it was hanging over me with every second we spent in this place. Normally Asgard didn’t make me think about those times unless I let my mind go there, but with the city turned into a prison, it was hard to avoid the most negative associations.
“More tragedies you don’t want to share with me yet?” Ari prodded. She kept her voice gentle, but she couldn’t completely disguise the note of disappointment. She’d ended up sharing an awful lot of her painful history with me in the last week. The things she’d been through… I shuddered to remember them in the little detail she’d offered. It’d been easy enough to fill in the blanks.
I wished I could show her the same vulnerability in turn, but I wasn’t solely the victim in my history. The parts that closed my throat and weighed down my tongue were laced with guilt.
Would she talk to me like this, touch me like she had a moment ago, if she knew the whole story? I wasn’t sure it cast me in that much a better light than it did Loki. I’d prefer it if I never had to find out.
“It’s long and complicated,” I said. “And I don’t think getting into it would be very productive toward getting out of here. It’s just hard not to be reminded.”
“Well, I don’t know what happened, but you’ve stuck it out with him this long. Maybe you can cut Loki a little slack at least until we are out of here?” She bumped her elbow gently against mine.
It was hard to argue with that. Not that I’d wanted to spend all my days since Ragnarok with the Sly One around, but he and the Allfather had their seemingly unshakeable bond that I’d never understood, and Thor considered him an ideal partner for adventuring more than an annoyance most of the time, so by falling in with them, Baldur and I had fallen in with Loki too.
If he was so sly, so clever, why hadn’t the trickster spotted this trick before it’d trapped us? I’d like to hear him explain that.
But because Ari had asked me to, I held my tongue as we joined the others where they’d stopped at the far end of the courtyard, where the rainbow bridge had set us down. I might not have ever seen the gleaming colors others had described to me in the past, but when it was here, its magic gave off a faint vibration, left a taste like sugary sap in the air. I discerned nothing of it now. The bridge had disappeared the moment we’d stepped off it with the false Odin.
I sensed Baldur’s presence near me, like the warmth of sunlight on skin. I shifted a little closer. My twin had at least as many horrible memories that could be dredged up here as I did, and in them he was definitely a victim. He’d retreated so far into that dreamily peaceful state since we’d come back after Ragnarok, as if living in that haze was the only thing that let him keep the harmony he was always chasing. How long could he hold onto it here, shoved so far out of his comfort zone?
Norns willing, we’d never have to find out.
“How are you holding up?” I asked him quietly.
“Well enough,” he said serenely, but I thought I heard a slight stiffness in his voice that wasn’t usually there. “Hopeful that whatever experiment the trickster has thought up will get us somewhere.”
Ahead of us, Loki clapped his hands. “Oh, Muninn!” he called out in a singsong voice. “You can hear me, can’t you? Our little raven voyeur. Take a little trip with me, will you?”
What in Hel’s name was the trickster up to? I shifted on my feet, drinking in the air, taking in the sounds of the false realm around us.
Loki’s voice carried on, at a steady lulling pace, almost hypnotizing. “Think of all those times you crossed Bifrost with Odin. Perched on his cloaked shoulder or soaring in the air beside him. His feet thumping across that shimmering surface. The colors blazing beneath you, red and yellow and blue and everything between. The clouds parting into mist that tickled against your feathers. The green sprawl of Midgard’s lands spreading out ahead of you.”
A quiver crept over my skin. My breath caught. He was trying to draw the memory out of her, to cajole her into adding an exit to our prison by getting her to focus on the bridge. And it was working. The air vibrated with more power, an echo of the rainbow bridge’s magic. Was it starting to form before the others’ eyes even now? Ari stirred beside me as if in anticipation.
“Maybe Heimdall was there to offer you a wave and a few words in that gravelly voice, in that watchtower of his poised on Asgard’s edge,” Loki went on. “Or maybe it was just you and your partner in flight and your master, climbing that brilliant arc and—”
The quiver of magic snapped away in an instant, like a door slamming shut. A fierce wind blasted into us, sending us stumbling apart. It whirled around and wrenched me straight off the ground.
“No!” I shouted, but the wind ate my words too. It flung me through space I couldn’t feel other than the lash of air against my skin and clothes, and threw me down on hard cold ground. As quickly as the wind had risen up, it slipped away, leaving me in silence.
Total silence. Not a voice, not a breath, not a rustle of clothing except my own. I swallowed, the sound of that action enormous in my ears. “Ari? Baldur? Thor?”
My voice rang out unanswered. Wherever the raven had tossed me, it was away from the others.
An edge of icy fear jabbed through my gut. If she’d done this to me, what had she done to my twin? To our valkyrie?
6
Aria
The world spun around me, the ground tipping. The marble slabs from the ground flew up between me and my companions. I tried to throw myself at a gap between them, and a burst of wind shoved me back.
I tipped head over heels and sprawled on the ground… which was not the ground anymore. My hands pressed against fine-grained wooden boards as I shoved myself upright. My heart lurched.
The courtyard we’d been standing in, the shimmer of the bridge starting to form, the gods and goddess I’d been standing with—they were all gone. But the place I’d found myself in wasn’t exactly new. It was the only place in Asgard I’d been at all familiar with before today.
The gold, weapon-lined walls of Valhalla rose around me. A vacant bench stood at a thick oak table just a few feet from where I was sitting. The high ceiling glinted overhead. The cloying smell of alcohol and manly musk tickled my nose.
I scrambled all the way onto my feet. The
wooden floor thumped under them as I jogged to the nearest side door between the mounted swords and spears. I gripped the handle and wrenched at it, but it didn’t budge.
Shit. I pushed on to the next, and then next, all the way down to the broad door at the opposite end of the room from Odin’s throne. When I reached it, my palms were stinging from heaving at so many. I still gave that one a good yank.
It didn’t move an inch. The smack of my shoulder didn’t move it either. I glared at it, rubbing the side of my arm.
Muninn had locked me in here, away from the gods. What had she done with them? And why had she put me here?
No, I didn’t need to ask that. She’d tossed me into the place I had the clearest memories of so that she could build her construct on a stable foundation. All the better to trap me with. She didn’t want there to be any chance that I’d see through this illusion to her or wherever we really were.
Voices echoed behind me. I spun around. At the sight that met me, I jerked backward, bracing myself against the door with a hiccup of my pulse.
The once-empty tables had filled with figures. Men in battle armor, metal or leather, muscles bulging as they grabbed mugs of mead or snatched hunks of meat off the roasts now sitting on platters between them. They packed every bench throughout the long hall. Here one rose his mug in a toast. There another threw back his head with a bellow of a laugh.
They weren’t modern warriors. From their clothes, the ruddy tint to many of the heads of hair, the thick beards most of them were sporting, I had to guess these were Viking warriors from ancient times. The snippets of shouted conversation I caught were in a language I didn’t know. They looked like they were having a good time, though. And the smell of the roasts made my mouth water.
That meat would probably disintegrate into dust if I tried to eat it, wouldn’t it? These men, they were part of the illusion too. Not from my memories, but I guessed from that of the Asgardians here with me. Muninn obviously had no problem stitching constructs together from several different sources.
A figure in a white dress laid over with silver armor wove between two of the tables near me. A woman. My gaze followed her, startled. Her long blond hair tumbled down her back and her face was soft with youth, but muscles flexed in her own arms as she handed out more mugs to the assembled warriors.
There were others like her, more women in dressed-up armor, circulating through the room. A few wore battle helmets and most, I noticed, carried swords or daggers strapped to their belts. Warrior women.
Valkyries. A rush of understanding filled me. These were the original valkyries, the ones Odin had summoned way back when. The ones who’d flown into battle to harvest the souls of worthy men to bring them back here. I hadn’t realized they’d acted as waitresses in between those times. I couldn’t say I was sorry I’d missed that part of the gig.
I eased toward them, tensed to leap back if any of the conjured people showed any sign of aggression. But they kept eating and drinking and serving the tables as if I wasn’t there. Gradually, my shoulders came down. I ambled down the aisles, glancing over the faces, trying to ignore the growing pang in my stomach.
Why had Muninn constructed all of them? They weren’t trying to hurt me. She could have just left me in this place alone if she’d only wanted to imprison me. I didn’t get it. But then, the raven woman had always seemed pretty kooky. Maybe this was for her entertainment.
A low, rolling chuckle carried from the head of the room, and my feet froze in place. Muninn had conjured one more figure. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a travel-worn cloak and a chestnut beard flecked with silver, one eye lost behind the gouge of a scar, was leaning back in the throne I’d only ever seen empty before.
Odin. I’d imagined him there when I’d first come to Valhalla on my own, a picture drawn by instinct. I’d thought I was walking across the bridge with him just a couple hours ago. But this… this wasn’t the real Allfather, not any more than these were real warriors around me or this the real Valhalla, but he was as close to the real one as I’d gotten. Not a shuffling wounded puppet like the one who’d led us here. A vibrant reflection of the god from his actual life.
I edged closer, dodging a warrior who tipped back on his bench as he pounded the table in amusement. Odin’s one light brown eye roved over the assembly. His lips were curled in a smile I could only call satisfied.
Two wolves sprawled on the floor by the foot of the throne. Not huge monstrous ones like the wargs, but regular sized, one gray and one black. Their ears stayed perked, but their heads rested languidly on their forepaws. Their gazes didn’t twitch toward me either as I passed the last row of tables.
A raven perched on Odin’s shoulder, its head bobbing as it leaned close to its master. Muninn or the other raven Loki had mentioned to her—of thought, he’d said? I couldn’t remember that one’s name.
If that was Muninn, was it the real one? Incorporating herself into this tableau while she spied on me?
My legs balked for a second. Then I marched right up to the throne and swiped my hand at Odin’s shoulder.
My fingers collided with a feathered body. The raven squawked indignantly as I smacked it forward. With a ruffling of feathers, it hopped back to its perch. Odin didn’t stir from his contemplation of his warriors.
All just part of the illusion, then. I frowned, following Odin’s gaze over the crowded hall. Okay, I’d gotten to see the party. Now how the hell was I going to get out of here?
Somehow the throng of great warriors looked different from over here. Their faces seemed more shadowed. Before all the voices had sounded pleased or triumphant.
Now… Now an angry shout reached my ears. At a nearby table, one of the men had yanked another to his feet by the front of his shirt. The second man punched the first in the face, so hard blood spurted from the guy’s nose.
In his throne beside me, Odin laughed. The sound rolled over me, setting the hairs on my arms on end.
Over there, some brawny guy had his face so deep in his mug he was practically snorkeling in his mead. When he raised his head, his cheeks were flushed. He swayed a little in his seat. He slammed his mug against the table and bellowed at a passing valkyrie to bring him more.
A platter clanged on the floor. A row of warriors on one bench jostled with each other as they fought over the choicest bits of meat on a goose they’d just been brought. Over here, a man grabbed a sword off the wall and jabbed it at one of his companions. They dodged back and forth in a dance of sword play, their blades clattering together. But they weren’t just playing around. Their mouths twisted with hostility.
Even the gold on the walls looked tarnished now, dented here and there from a bash of a blade. One warrior flung another against the wall, and the building shuddered. A few golden flakes tumbled down from the ceiling like glittering snow.
“Bravo!” Odin called from his throne. “Let the feasting continue!” The set of his mouth looked uncomfortably like a smirk now.
Why had the scene changed? Had this really been what Valhalla was like back then? It didn’t fit with what the other gods had told me. Why would the valkyries have brought back assholes instead of honorable warriors? Why would Odin have cheered them on when they squabbled? What would be the point of Valhalla if it was like this?
I paused, glancing at Odin’s shoulders again. At the single raven on one, the other one bare.
Maybe these weren’t memories from any of the gods. Muninn would have spent tons of time in this hall with Odin, wouldn’t she? It’d be in her memories she was least likely to picture herself there rather than just what she’d seen around her.
And apparently what she’d seen had looked to her like a bunch of drunkards waging little wars against each other, with Odin egging them on. She clearly wasn’t an Odin fan these days. It could be her memories had gotten skewed. Whatever the case, she’d wanted to show this to me. To give me her side of the story? Was this supposed to convince me that throwing us into this prison was justified?
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“Are you trying to prove to me that Odin deserves whatever you’re doing to him?” I called up toward the rafters. “It’s a little hard to assume your take on things is unbiased. And he let all of these people go, didn’t he? He sent off the warriors and the valkyries to finish their lives… after-lives… however they wanted. Even if you don’t like how he ran the hall, he stopped it.”
No answer. Not even a hint that she’d heard me.
The men having the fight by the wall spun around each other. The bigger one shoved the lankier one into the wall again. More gold flakes fluttered down. I traced their path backwards, up through the air toward the arched ceiling. A sliver of sunlight shone through the gold thatch.
An idea prickled through the back of my mind. Loki had been able to shift Muninn’s thoughts enough to get her to picture the rainbow bridge, to bring it partly into being, and that was something she hadn’t been meaning to think about at all. If I could work with the impressions she was already giving me, maybe I could trick her into giving me what I needed.
I flexed my shoulders, urging my valkyrie wings out from my back. They spread out on either side of me, heavy and solid. Mine. I flapped them to lift just a few feet off the ground.
“I get the picture,” I said, pitching my voice over the din of the crowd. “Valhalla was a shitty place. The warriors were pricks. Odin was a bigger prick. The gold was dulling. The mead going sour. The ceiling starting to crumble.”
I swept up a little higher, gliding over the warriors. More of them were fighting now, this one tossing mead in that one’s face, another clambering right up on the table to kick at his neighbor’s head. Real nice, guys. Keeping it classy. I’d known gangsters back in my first life whose company I’d have preferred.
Or were they just responding to Muninn’s thoughts as she responded to what I was saying?
“Those weapons look ready to fall off the walls,” I said. “I’m just waiting for one of those benches to crack right open. Odin would probably laugh at that, right? At least until that pretty throne of his toppled right over. Or will the roof fall in on his head? It’s awfully wobbly. Barely holding together at all. He’s lucky it hasn’t already crashed down.”
