The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1)

by Lentz, P. K.

  "There were other visions," I admit. "I saw the Myriad, the creatures who drove the Chrysioi from their realms. There was a great swarm of them, as we fought in Hades, but the landscape in my vision did not match that place."

  "Where?" Freya demands.

  "I cannot say. There was a meadow, some trees, a rocky ledge. I have seen its like in Asgard, but..." I bow my head. "It could be anywhere. I'm sorry. It was but a glimpse."

  Freya is silent a moment. "What else?"

  "I saw a great serpent in flight," I tell them. "Its wings eclipsed the sun. Drops of venom from its teeth set fire to the land beneath."

  Before I have finished, I catch Freya looking abruptly at Odinn. She clasps one forearm with the hand opposite as if against a sudden chill that is not present in the flame-lit room. My vision frightens her, and not just in some vague way.

  Odinn, for his part, might well be carved from the same stuff as his throne, for all the reaction he shows. But he does emit a low, thoughtful growl.

  "Continue." The fresh quaver in Freya's voice is subtle, but detectable even in the single word.

  I have two visions left to tell. One is entirely personal to me, the other of cataclysmic significance to the inhabitants of eight realms.

  I look straight into the single eye of the subject of the latter and say, "I glimpsed Odinn... falling."

  "Falling?" Freya echoes. She has brought the quaver under control. "Explain."

  "I saw him plunge a great distance, into... I know not what."

  "You saw him die?"

  "No, yet... the fall was not of a kind that one survives."

  "The All-Father is not just anyone."

  I see that Freya's purpose is to cast doubt upon news that is unwanted. "The sight had a sense of doom to it," I say. I hope that it can be my last word, since I know no more.

  Indeed, this suffices to silence Freya. Although she remains thoroughly composed, I sense that I have shocked her. With Odinn, the seated statue, it is much harder to tell.

  The All-Father leans forward in his oaken throne, rises to booted feet, steps down from the stone dais and speaks for himself at last.

  "The serpent of your vision is Jormungand," he says. "In the future as I have seen it, its awakening portends the end times. Ragnarok. And indeed, my death." As he talks, Odinn walks a deliberate, circular track, with me at its center. "But it is to be no fall that kills me, and there is much else I have foreseen which has yet to occur before the Serpent ever takes flight. So I worry not about your so-called sense of doom!" The All-Father snorts derisively. "As for this Myriad... as they failed to feature in my own visions, they can hardly be a threat of any significance. That they defeated your folk speaks only to the weakness of your kind. Should a swarm of them come to our world, we shall send it back whence it came. Is that all?"

  For an instant, I consider answering in the affirmative. But my fourth and final vision is not a secret worth dying for.

  "I saw myself laying with Gaeira," I admit in a quick burst, that it might pass barely noticed. "And that, truly, is all."

  From outside of my vision, I hear a breathy laugh from Freya. Odinn, currently behind me in his circular course, laughs more emphatically. "Good for you, lad. To my knowledge, she is a maiden. If vision proves true, she would grant you an honor of which I am certain you are unworthy!"

  By Odinn's voice, I can tell that he has stopped moving. I give no thought to twisting my kneeling form to look at him, but keep my eyes instead, respectfully, upon his empty throne.

  "Should you be lucky enough to wed her, she will not make the nagging sort of wife," he chuckles. "At least, not until she's killed a few more giants!" Odinn stepps closer to me from behind and muses, "Perhaps I will send you with her to Vanaheim. She can lick your wound."

  "Wound?"

  As I speak, there is the sound of a small blade sliding from its scabbard. Odinn's rough hand covers my mouth tightly from behind, pulling my head back firmly against his thick, fur- and iron-clad torso. From the right, a shadow swoops down in front of my face. Steel glints, and razor sharp agony fills my left eye.

  I cannot entirely stop myself from crying out, though I do manage to cut short my scream. My hands form white-knuckled fists that beg me to lash out at the perpetrator of this affront, but I will them to refrain. For even though the pain is intense, far greater than anything I have felt, and even as the sight in my left eye goes forever dark, I know that this is Odinn's price, the same price that he once paid, and he is justified in taking it.

  33. Hel Comes

  Freya appears at my side with a cloth to staunch the blood and leads me back through the curtain into the company of Baldr and Gaeira.

  “Thamoth,” Baldr addresses me sooner than I am willing to listen. “My sympathies. I cannot but feel I am partly to blame.”

  Pain deafens me to whatever else he may say.

  Soon we are away from him. A short walk on Freya's arm, blood-soaked cloth pressed into my mutilated eye socket, brings us to Freya's home, where I lay down while Freya washes and tends to the wound. I drink something that she gives me and gladly sink into oblivion.

  When I awaken, the pain reminds of what has transpired. It has lessened now, but still feels as though someone has removed my eye from the socket and stuffed in its place a jagged rock three sizes too large. I can tell by a corner of white fabric visible in my remaining eye and a tightness over my ear that my head is bandaged. A large swath of my world, everything to the left of the blurred bridge of my nose, has vanished into darkness. On rising from the bed and walking about the room, I find that I continually hear sounds from that side. Continually I turn, certain that someone or something lurks there in the black patch, only to find nothing at all; I start at phantoms.

  It is night. Though I have been asleep, the room is lit, surely a courtesy Freya has done me so that a newly half-blind man might not awaken to darkness in a barely familiar place. She is a kind and thoughtful woman, this Freya, even if she is perfectly capable of being otherwise when called to do so.

  My stirring has not gone unnoticed; Gaeira appears at the curtained entrance. She wears the same garments of linen and soft hide she has worn since Heimdall's. A residue of recent sleep ever so slightly weighs down her gaze. She has two eyes, one more than I, and under them I feel incomplete, defeated, ashamed.

  Sensing there might otherwise be no end to her silent staring, I fumble for words.

  “Had you known what a burden I would prove, you would have left me in Jotunheim.”

  She displays no easily readable reaction, but I detect a subtle one anyway. She feels no regret.

  I continue our one-sided conversation: “Thank you for staying with me by the Well. And now, for that matter. It's surely more than I warrant.”

  The sight of her now through my single eye summons afresh my vision of what the future might hold for us. She is strong and patient and beautiful, and I would be the worst kind of fool not to desire her. But maybe I am exactly that. I cannot tell. The twin losses of eye and my Ayessa, coupled with the knowledge of my less than honorable actions in another life have left me crippled and devoid of hope. In my reduced state, it is difficult to contemplate any future at all.

  Gaeira's ever-impassive mouth pulls back at one corner, so imperceptibly that it might be but a trick of the flickering light. If it is not, she might be telling me something...

  Understanding, or something like it, dawns.

  “You are right,” I chuckle. “I'm feeling sorry for myself. You must have, too, did you not? For a short while, at least, after you lost so much. Before you became what you are now, this... this bane of giantkind. Or did you simply seal your lips that day and hoist an ax?”

  I pause to think. Gaeira stands there in the doorway, watching. Listening. It is nice to “converse” with someone and have the luxury of time in which to form thoughts and words, not worrying that the other will race to fill any gap of silence. Of course, I would also like to hear Gaeira's voice. Very
much so, now that I think of it.

  I scoff cheerlessly and continue. “Unlike you, I have none to blame but myself. No giants or monsters to swear revenge on. Not even Baldr. Just give me time. I will—”

  I am interrupted by a thunderous and insistent pounding at the door of Freya's home. Gaiera's head whips round, and she swiftly vanishes through the curtain that leads to the antechamber. Instinctively, I follow to find Gaeira already at the door with hand poised on its handle. Freya sweeps down the stairs in her white sleeping gown. No demand is made for the knocker to identify himself before the door is opened. Inside the walls of this city, it would seem, Odinn's subjects are not wont to question their safety.

  The visitor is an Aesir warrior in battle gear. “Loath to disturb you, Lady Freya,” he says, “but your presence is commanded at the All-Father's side.”

  “What is it?” Although Freya asks, it is clear she has no thought of refusing the summons.

  The warrior glances at me as if wary of speaking in front of a stranger. But he answers anyway, likely on the conclusion that Freya's judgment supersedes his.

  “Word from Heimdall,” he reports. “A party crosses Bifrost.”

  I recall that Bifrost is the name of the shimmering rainbow-bridge to Asgard. But the next names to cross the warrior's lips are not ones which I recognize.

  “Hel comes, with her golden guard,” the man says. “And Thrym.”

  It is not clear which name in particular prompts the look of surprise in Freya's features, if it is one more than the other. But my good eye sees Gaeira's hand clench at the mention of this second name,Thrym.

  “Tell the All-Father I hasten to his side,” Freya says. “He would see me dressed for the occasion, I presume.”

  The warrior nods. “By your leave, my lady.”

  Freya races back upstairs. The messenger takes a long backward stride into the night and evidently means to pull the door shut behind him, but Gaeira stops it with a palm. With a brief look at her, the warrior yields and departs, his swift footfalls echoing on stone-paved street.

  Gaeira twists her head to look at me from the open doorway. There is something new in her eyes. Something... wild. It takes me seconds to understand what it means, which is fortunate, since that is all the time she allows me. The look is a warning, one she would not give were it not also meant as invitation. She is leaving—now. I suspect I know her destination.

  I nod to tell her I accept, but she has already left. Fortunately I am dressed, lacking only sword and sandals, neither of which seem essential when weighed against being left behind. And so I just fly, barefoot, into the streets behind her.

  34. Procession

  Careening through the dark while freshly deprived of one eye, the socket of which throbs, is hardly easy, but I manage to keep up with Gaeira in the silent, empty streets. It helps that she takes a route I have traveled before, from Freya's to the city gate. The gate is shut, presumably not to reopen until morning. Gaeira raps the stone wall with the flat of her sword, gaining attention of the guards, who open a door in the tower's base and allow us in without need for explanation. Inside we climb via staircase to the top of the wall, from where we descend to the plain outside by means of a rope which the guards lower for us and then promptly retract.

  Before my feet even hit the ground, Gaeira, first down, wakes an elderly groom and leads two horses by their reins out of the pitch-black stables. She mounts one, I the other, and we ride at a pace I would find daunting even in daylight. We gallop away from the city of Asgard, over the plain, following in reverse the path by which we arrived on foot. If my guess is correct, our destination is the mist-filled abyss and the span called Bifrost, to witness the crossing of Hel and Thrym. I know not who those people are, or if they are people at all, but I can safely presume that Gaeira's interest in them has naught to do with conversation. I cannot guess what her intention is, yet I have no worry. I do not believe that she would lead me astray, as Baldr did. Her loyalty to Odinn seems such that I could scant believe she would take any rash action in defiance of him.

  Before we reach the bridge, Gaeira veers off of the path to our right (had it been the left, where I am blind, I might have lost sight of her) and I follow As we make our way up a shallow slope, the black silhouette of the hilltop begins to glow misty white under the deep blue of the starry sky. Not much later, we crest the hill and halt our mounts.

  The vista steals my breath. We look down upon the end of the shimmering span of Bifrost, arcing out of a glowing, radiant fog in which rainbows soar like circling seabirds. By its soft light, I can see Gaeira alongside me in profile. She is stone-faced, which I have learned is not—quite—always the case. Her jaw is tight, eyes fixed on the bridge, unmoving hands clamped on reins. Even were she one to speak, I would not think of asking her to at this moment. I stare down from the hilltop, as she does. For me, the beauty of the vision overwhelms and at the same time makes me feel more acutely the loss of one eye.

  But Gaeira's purpose is not, I think, to admire the view.

  We wait. Out in the mist, a dark spot appears and begins ever so slowly to grow. What first seems as a gnat slowly takes on a human form. A man. By his size, he seems closer to us than he rightly should be, but then the darkness around us and the glowing mist play tricks, and of course I am now half-sighted. Other gnat-sized shadows appear at the man's ankles and then coalesce into a crawling insect bristling with spines.

  It is then, with a gasp, that I realize my vision does not play tricks. The spines are upright spears, and the insect's legs belong to the bearers of those weapons, a small force of fighting men marching in procession.

  It can only mean that the first figure I saw is a jotun, towering over those with whom he walks. The realization sends my gaze to Gaeira, who remains a seething statue. It stands to reason that the giant is the object of her hatred, which would seem to mark him as Thrym. He very much resembles the frost giant I watched her slay: white of beard and pale of skin, shirtless and loinclothed, armed with an enormous hammer that hangs by a thong from his belt. Unlike the other, he wears on a rope around his neck a great golden medallion of a size to crush a man to death were it to fall.

  What is he, I wonder. The giants' king? I have no one to ask, and so can only continue to watch.

  The marching men, drawing closer, begin to gleam, and I see that their horned, face-concealing helms and their breastplates are wrought of gold. The messenger mentioned the "golden guard" of Hel, and this can only be they. In the fighters' midst, two white horses draw an open chariot of gilded ebony in which stand two figures: a warrior, unhelmed, with flowing dark hair, and a second which I take to be female judging from its build. She is cloaked and hooded in black, and her face is covered from forehead to upper lip by a delicate golden mask. Since I see no other more likely candidates, and from the impressiveness of the chariot, I conclude she is the one called Hel. Behind the chariot, several of the golden guardsmen bear on their shoulders a litter containing some large burden draped in a concealing cloth. A tribute for Odinn, perhaps? Whatever it is, I feel it must be the purpose of their embassy.

  I still do not know Gaeira's purpose. To behold an enemy, I suppose, and nurse the hatred that ever simmers under the heavy iron lid of her discipline. The fire of it shows nowhere on her cool exterior except in blue eyes which burn with an icy fire of their own, and in her knuckles, which are frost-white on the reins.

  When the procession completes its crossing, reaching the guard tower on the shore of Asgard, frozen Gaeira finally shifts, turning her horse. She looks drained. Both of her vows, I think, those of revenge and of silence, take a heavy toll on her. She kicks her mount to a gallop and sets off on a return course which will not cause us to cross paths with the odd, ominous procession on its way to Odinn's city. I follow her. We return our mounts to the stables, climb the ladder lowered for us by the sentries, and reenter the city. Gaeira leads me back to Freya's cottage where she opens the door and stands waiting for me to enter. I g
ather that she intends to leave me here.

  Stubbornly, I remain outside. "I'll stay with you."

  She flicks a glance inside. Request denied. I know better than to bother asking where she will go. Odinn mused, perhaps idly, that he might send me with her to Vanaheim, but for all I know, she will return there now, leaving me behind.

  With resignation, I step over the threshold and turn to say something—a final thank you, perhaps—but before I can, the door is firmly shut. I stand there briefly, feeling regret that I have let her go. A second later I open the door again with the vague, stupid idea of following her, still barefoot, whether she permits it or not. But she is gone, one with the shadows of the empty street.

  35. A Baleful Embassy

  I find solitude unpleasant. Since I drank from Mimir's Well, my thoughts do not make good company. Around others, I can be Thamoth the Neolympian, but the second I am alone I become Prince Thamoth of Atlantis. At best, he is a failure as prince and husband. At worst, he is a monster capable of unspeakable acts. I cannot imagine doing such things as Sigrid told me I did to Ayessa in our other life. But in the quiet darkness, my imagination floods with visions of those very crimes. At first I reject them utterly, for they cannot be me... yet the more I see them, the more I doubt.

  I cannot know with any certainty who or what I was, or what I was capable of. My only source of hope lies in knowing that what Sigrid told me comes second-hand. Third-hand, rather, considering that Ayessa's knowledge, like mine, comes from some pool watched over by a withered old skull. If in fact it did show her one version of events and me another entirely, then its accuracy is in doubt, to say the least.

  Perhaps this Well is full of shit.

  I am loath to tell Odinn that his vision of the future, the one which makes him certain of the Aesir's safety, could be flawed. But they should be warned. Perhaps I could approach Freya alone.

  But then, the fate of the Aesir is not my concern. Except...