The Shadows of Svartalfheim

Matt Larkin

Incandescent Phoenix Books

Join the Skalds’ Tribe and get access to exclusive reader rewards like The Ragnarok Era Codex, as well getting free books like Darkness Forged and notifications on release dates and sales.

https://www.mattlarkinbooks.com/go-ragnarok/

Want maps, character bios, and background information on the Ragnarok Era? Look no further.

For my wife. Thank you for not giving up.

Prologue

The flames said a great many things. Some, Loki knew, would make sense only in retrospect, if even then. Flashes of images, of times gone or yet to come. Of eras when cities flew, of a world inundated, of battles against monsters never imagined by men of these times, of darkness, lurking beyond the fringes.

They did not, however, consent to answer simple questions half so easily as he might have wished.

While Sigyn slept in their bed, Loki sat crouched before the fire pit, hands on his knees, watching every shifting pattern. The flames danced and undulated in rhythms beyond prediction. The intricacies of the display served as a conduit to unlock the Sight. Sometimes, it served him well. Sometimes.

Where was Odin?

That question had haunted him for centuries. He felt certain—almost certain—that if his blood brother had perished, he’d have known it. No, but he couldn’t see him, no matter how many nights he spent looking. The most probable explanation for such a blindness lay in Odin’s nature as an oracle. His own prescience must block Loki’s, at least up until the point where Loki’s might create a paradox. Or, if not Odin himself, than some other oracular power in his presence.

If the man had succeeded in his aim to reach Alfheim, Loki could imagine he might have simply chosen to remain with his love there. A blissful self-delusion on Loki’s part, of course. Mortals spending too long in a spirit world would find themselves changed by it, even as the first spirits were. The woman Odin had loved on Vanaheim would not be the same woman he found on Alfheim.

Maybe Odin had discovered that, but still accepted it and chosen her anyway. Loki would have, if such had befallen Sigyn. Still, it seemed unlikely that any end Odin found in a spirit world would prove beneficent.

No, Loki had to assume some darker urd had befallen his blood brother, one which he could not see nor act to undo. Not yet. Still, he had to keep looking. Though the years had dragged on and most Aesir had given their king up for dead, Loki would not. He needed the man, even more than he loved him as a brother. Was it … even possible the Destroyer could die before the end?

No. He’d not entertain such a notion. The result of that would be … He stifled a groan.

The cycle of eschatons could not be denied. It had grown far beyond his control, a self-perpetuating system, as long as naught went so awry as Odin’s premature death.

“What’s wrong?” Sigyn asked, her voice bleary with sleep.

Loki hesitated. What to tell her? She knew he looked for Odin every few days and had done so for more than three centuries. That she knew, and too, that he could not find the man. Would such an explanation suffice for her?

Now she groaned and sat up. “Instead of figuring out a means of evading the question, why not just tell me? I am your wife. Should I not share your burdens?”

Oh. Would that he could. But there were other truths that yet weighed on him, ones he owed her answers on. “I’ll have to go back to Midgard soon. Hödr will find himself in difficulties before much longer, and I … have to be there for him.”

Even though such help must invariably cost all three of them.

“Should I come too?”

“No.” Keeping his voice steady was a struggle now. He’d spare her whatever pain he could, little as though that might prove to be. “No, just go back to sleep. I won’t leave for a few more days.”

Fatigue must truly have claimed her, for she did lay back down without further inquiry. Fortunate, given a fully awake Sigyn was never easy to forestall.

She may have wanted to share his burdens, but he’d not have wished that on her. Especially not knowing that she would blame herself for the things that would follow.

When he was certain Sigyn slept, Loki allowed himself a moment of utter despondency, his head falling into his hands, mouth open in a soundless wail of defiance against the impending future. Would it have changed aught, he’d have cursed urd and railed against the Norns for this.

Experience told him otherwise.

It never got easier … watching the world end.

Part I

Year 398, Age of the Aesir

Winter

(325 years after The Radiance of Alfheim)

1

A bitter wind swept down from the Sudurberks, throwing flurries of snow across the valleys of Styria. The cold itself didn’t bother Hermod much. His wolfskin cloak cut out the bite, and besides, the apple had increased his tolerance to such things.

No, but the weather concerned him, nonetheless. The winter should’ve broken already, but it had stretched on far too long this year, such that men had begun to question if summer was coming at all. A land like this should’ve been ideal for crops. No one would grow aught with the ground frozen.

Twilight had settled in, drenching even this light forest with shadows so thick other men would’ve found it hard to see without torches, to say naught of the dangers of the coalescing mist. Hermod’s senses were keener than other men’s, though. Even in the dark, he could see the path of roots that might have tripped his progress, hidden beneath a light coating of snow. He could make out the trail of those he tracked, despite the fresh snowfall.

And he could move without a sound that any mortal man could’ve heard.

The mist served to conceal his presence, limiting the need for crouching, so long as he remained silent.

Howls went up through the night, announcing a wolf pack nearby. The animals were growing more desperate and more aggressive as winter dragged on. Game grew scarcer. Some predators that might have avoided men had begun attacking, picking off those fool enough to wander out at night or travel alone in the wilds. Sometimes small groups of people disappeared.

The villages were awash with talk of varulfur, but it hardly needed something Otherworldly to bring this about. Starvation brought out savagery, plain enough, and Hermod had hunted down a few wolves that had roamed too close to settlements. A couple such kills and the rest of the pack would find elsewhere to hunt.

But animals weren’t the only ones that grew more savage. He’d seen men eating their own dead, not a fortnight back.

This night, though, he was tracking other men. Brave men, who’d come out in the mist after dark. Brave, or desperate themselves, not so very unlike the wolves in their own way. Pushed out of their places and seeking after any chance to pursue their ends.

Hermod followed the trail to a glade where the men had built a bonfire to hold back the mist. A dozen men had gathered round a gnarled tree in the center of the glade, and they’d slung a noose over it. A naked man was on his knees, staring defiance at his captors, hands bound behind his back. A woman—the only woman among them—was carving a rune on the captive’s chest. A rune of sacrifice. The man trembled, growling but not crying out.

Finally. Rumors had persisted of the Odinic cult practicing here, but Hermod had been hard pressed to find them. But that mark meant these people were clearly those he sought, even if the hanging sacrifice had left any doubt.

This cult—or cults, perhaps, since they didn’t seem to have much connection with one another—obsessed over Odin hanging himself from Yggdrasil. Hermod hadn’t seen that happen, but he’d heard Tyr tell of it. A strange thought, especially given that, hundreds of years later, it would have inspired men to try to mimic it—if not on themselves.

Actually, he had heard of a few völvur trying it. Hadn’t ended well for them.

Now, Hermod did drop into a crouch, edging around the fire, careful not to reveal himself as more than a shadow in the mist. Not that the cultists were really looking for him, but they’d be nervous, nonetheless. The Deathless had a strong hold over most of Hunaland now, Styria included. It took that kind of persecution to bring men out here in the night, risking the wilds.

One of the men sniffed the air looking about, and Hermod immediately fell back. Damn. Some kind of shifter? He’d heard a rumor that—

Snow crunched from across the clearing, drawing his gaze and that of the man who caught some scent.

“They’re here,” the man said.

Oh, damn it. Hermod unslung his bow. The last thing he needed was to get mixed up with the damn Deathless zealots.

The cultists at once snatched up axes and clubs, and the woman shoved the captive down in the snow.

A moment later, the flicker of torches glimmered across the glade, and armored men charged into the clearing. War cries went up on both sides. Deathless soldiers, maybe, or just mere converts hate-filled enough to want to kill anyone who thought different.

Hermod lined up a shot at one of the Deathless warriors, then loosed. The shaft must’ve seemed to come out of nowhere to him. He just jerked to a stop mid-stride, staring at the shaft embedded in his chest. Already, Hermod was nocking another arrow and drawing a bead on a different warrior.

A shadow raced at him, moving far too fast through the mist, as if a part of it.

Shit.

Hermod dropped his bow and jerked Dainsleif free. He barely had the runeblade in hand before the Deathless soldier was on him, blade in one hand and shield in the other. Hermod didn’t oft bother with a shield himself. It would have impeded his sneaking and scouting. In a situation like this, though, it put him at a profound disadvantage.

He gave ground, instinctively aware of the lay of roots and other dangers underfoot.

His foe launched into an aggressive slash. Hermod twisted out of the way of that, but the man’s sword came back around much faster than it ought to have. As fast as a man who’d had an apple of Yggdrasil, like Hermod. He parried the sword, then narrowly avoided getting a shield slammed into his face.

Enough of that.

Hermod stepped sideways, out of the world and into the Penumbra. He’d done this so oft now, it was as simple as breathing. Everything in the Mortal Realm turned to shadow, all color leeched from the world, as a grave chill rushed over him and hateful whispers filled his ears. From the perspective of his foe, he’d have seemed to melt into shadow and simply be lost in the mist.

In the Penumbra, the Mortal Realm seemed almost as if moving through a mire, slowed down to a crawl. Here, Dainsleif radiated a faint cold light. Hermod darted around his foe so he could push back through the Veil and—

The man suddenly solidified, spinning around to face Hermod.

He’d stepped through the Veil.

Hermod couldn’t do more than gape in momentary surprise.

The man lunged at him, hissing, baring twin fangs.

Hermod stumbled backward. The snow didn’t reach into the Penumbra, so naught dragged on his heels. Hermod flooded pneuma to his limbs to increase his speed.

He should have known. When that thing moved so fast, he should have realized. Most followers of the Deathless didn’t have an actual vampire with them. If the Patriarchs were sending their minions this far from Miklagard, they were serious about stamping out all other religions.

The vampire’s assault came even more aggressively than before. All Hermod could do was continue falling back. Stepping into the Penumbra had been a mistake. Now, he couldn’t get back to the Mortal Realm without himself seeming slowed down compared to his foe. The vampire would get behind him and run him through before he could twist around. Hermod would know. He’d killed hundreds of men that way over the centuries.

The vampire was as fast as him, as strong as him, and had a damn shield.

On the other hand, Hermod had a runeblade. With a grunt, he turned a parry into a riposte, going not for the vampire, but for his shield. Dainsleif ripped through the iron band around the shield’s rim, gouged and splintered the wood, and jerked free.

The vampire’s sword came back in so fast Hermod couldn’t get Dainsleif back in position. All he could do was pitch over backward. That blade caught him behind his half-missing ear and tore through his cheek, sliced the bridge of his nose, and came within a hair of cutting out his eye.

Hermod landed on his arse, barely able to push down the white hot pain that shot through his face. Blood dribbled into his eyes and sent the vampire into a frenzy. The creature lunged at him, probably intent to sink those fangs into flesh.

And that was his mistake.

Hermod twisted Dainsleif up and the vampire’s own momentum drove the runeblade straight through his chest. That fanged face hissed and snapped at him, a hair away from his head. Hermod pushed the creature back with both feet, flinging it off Dainsleif.

The vampire dropped its shield, snarling as it took its sword in both hands.

Damn things were too hard to kill.

Hermod rubbed his wrist across his head wound as he rose, trying to keep the blood from blinding him, although without much success.

Despite bleeding from a hideous gouge in its chest, the vampire lunged in. Fury had transformed its moves into wild, savage blows that might have felled most men. Hermod wasn’t a typical warrior. He batted aside one attack, stepped around the vampire, and slashed Dainsleif across the back of the vampire’s hamstrings.

The undead creature pitched forward into the shadowy ground, howling. Panting, Hermod stepped up behind it and cleaved across with the runeblade, lopping its head off.

After another fruitless attempt to clear the blood from his eye, he ran toward the rest of the melee.

It was all shadows here, though one combatant was clearer—one who’d become a wolf, tearing out the throat of a shadow. A varulf, as expected.

From the Penumbra, Hermod couldn’t always be sure who was who. Based on the shape of the shadows, he came up on a man—clearly armored in gambeson—he judged to be a Deathless soldier. Hermod pushed back through the Veil. There was a heartbeat of choking where his lungs couldn’t get air, a bare instant, though enough time to confirm his target. Then Hermod ran Dainsleif through the soldier’s back.

The runeblade punched through the padded armor with ease.

A cultist stumbled away, probably wondering if he was a vaettr who had just stepped out of the mist to claim a man’s life. Hermod nodded at the man, then set about slaughtering the remaining Deathless soldiers.

Between himself and the varulf, it did not take long.

When the last Deathless fell, the varulf arched his back and collapsed onto the ground. Fur began to recede back into his body. Bones and muscles popped and snapped, drawing a grimace to Hermod’s face. It didn’t matter how many times he saw that. It still always made him wince.

The woman strode over to him before the varulf had even finished reverting to human form. “Who are you?”

“Hermod. You?”

“Bergljot.” She had streaks of gray in her otherwise sandy hair, and severe creases around her eyes. The woman had lived longer than most mortals.

“You’re a völva.” At his words, her brow crinkled, and a few of the others brandished weapons. Hermod raised a hand to placate them. “Peace. I’m obviously not with the Deathless. You saw me slay them.”

“Who are you with?” the varulf said, rising. He didn’t bother going for any clothes. Even in human form, he was muscular, if not tall.

Hermod knelt to wipe the blood from Dainsleif on a corpse’s trousers, using the opportunity to take in the camp. Some of these cultists believed Odin favored varulfur—probably because of the long dead twins he’d adopted—but Hermod was never sure whether they’d found a way to turn some of their numbers into shifters, or these cults just attracted men like this varulf. Either way, he seemed to be the leader here. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Didrik.”

Hermod rose, looking Didrik in the eye, before turning to address the völva. “In all your sacrifices, has Odin ever given you any sign he’s listening?”

The woman’s face turned down in a sneer. “Have you come here to mock the old faith?”

What would she say if he told her he remembered a time before the Aesir had taken Asgard? If he said he’d been there, when Odin first convinced men that the Aesir were gods? More to the point, how would she answer if he were to admit he came here in the probably vain hope of finding any clue where the king had gone?

Most Aesir now thought Odin dead, but Loki had sworn it otherwise. Hermod knew better than to believe the king heard the prayers of these scattered cultists, but, still, he dared to hope Odin might somehow be aware of these groups that invoked his name in their sacrifices.

“I offer no mockery. I’m a foe to the Deathless faith, which, I suppose, makes me an ally to followers of your old ways.”

“You worship the Aesir?” Didrik asked.

“No.” Hermod sheathed Dainsleif over his shoulder. “Rather, I respect them.”

The varulf and völva exchanged looks, before she turned back to Hermod. “Be welcome, then. We must return to the village before daybreak, but you can stay for the sacrifice and then share our ale.”

It was a start, and by now he knew better than to get his hopes up. Wherever Odin had wandered, he seemed not to want to be found. But the world grew darker with each passing year. Asgard needed its king.

2

The raucous din of Ingjald’s feast hall threatened to overwhelm Hödr. The stench of hundreds of men all pressed together melded into an equally overpowering assault on his enhanced senses. Centuries of practice let him filter such things if he had to, but still, he avoided the greater press of the crowd, preferring to keep to the fringes.

Indeed, he wasn’t sure why he even bothered to come to Upsal. Or, he knew why, only he wasn’t sure it was worth it.

Ingjald celebrated his ascension to the throne, and Baldr had insisted on attending to keep Asgard’s presence felt here. In Upsal, the old faith remained strong, but Deathless priests had already begun to spread their ways south, in Skane and Ostergotland. It wouldn’t take overmuch for people to start listening to their lies here, too.

But Baldr himself, favored son of the Queen of Asgard, attracted all the attention. Even from across the feast hall, even through the commotion of a hundred conversations, Hödr could make out the other Ás’s boisterous laughter. When Baldr laughed, men laughed along with him. Even Hödr. The man had that easy radiance about him, an aura Hödr could feel more strongly than most.

Next to him, no one noticed the eyeless man in the corner who never lowered his hood. Or if they noticed, they avoided him, made uncomfortable by the burnt-out, empty sockets where his eyes should have been. They tread with care, thinking, perhaps, that he could not feel their stares just because he could not see the way they did.

Decades of work with Mother had ensured Hödr had no such problem, though. He could feel the shift in air currents as a fly buzzed around the rafters. He could pick out an individual voice amid the cacophony—though doing so took effort—eavesdropping on a whispered conversation on the far side of the hall. He could even sense the intangible energies that permeated and surrounded living beings—their auras, ancient Vanr writings called such things.

Men thought him a cripple, but Hödr saw things others could not begin to understand.

Too, he felt it as Baldr plowed his way through the crowd, bearing a horn of too sweet mead in his hand.

Hödr nodded as Baldr approached.

The other man handed him the drink. “You’re the only man in here not drunk, my friend! This cannot stand.”

An exaggeration, if not by much. Hödr took the proffered horn and sipped at it. The stuff tasted even sweeter than it smelled. More to the point, Hödr avoided growing drunk because it dulled his senses and left him apt to walk straight into a pillar, an embarrassment he’d prefer never to experience again.

Baldr, though, never really listened to what others said. He was kinder than his brother—Thor made no secret of his seething hatred for Hödr—and smarter, too, but, in his own way, almost as oblivious.

“Are you a maid of ten winters?” Baldr demanded. “Come on, upend it. Relax a little!”

Hödr took another sip, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and returned the horn to Baldr. “I’m plenty relaxed. Enjoy the feast.”

The other man leaned in to whisper in Hödr’s ear, as if Hödr wouldn’t have heard him whispering from twenty feet away. “Then at least get about and remember your purpose here.”

“I have not forgotten.”

Even if he might have wished he could. No, Baldr had insisted he come along because the prince knew Hödr had a knack for uncovering secrets, even if Baldr didn’t quite know how. Mother claimed Hödr’s enhanced senses worked in concert to generate intuitive abilities in regard to the intentions of others, an explanation that seemed fair enough, though another existed: while Hödr lacked his father’s prescient abilities, perhaps some vestige of the Sight manifested in him—his ability to perceive auras.

Either way, Hödr found it easy to uncover the truth in men’s hearts. And Baldr wanted to know who, if any here, had sympathies for the Deathless. Hödr was under no illusions about that, either. If Baldr thought men being swayed to the southern faith, he’d have them eliminated. In Skane, he’d ordered Hödr to murder two thegns of Jarl Canute.

No one ever suspected a blind man.

Mother believed that thwarting the advances of the Serkland Caliphate had actually left the North Realms more vulnerable to the spread of the Miklagardian religion. Ordrerism, officially, though everyone called it the Deathless faith after their supposed promise of immortality to some of the chosen few. Over the years, some Aesir had gone to Miklagard to try to murder the Patriarchs, maybe even the god-emperor. All had failed.

Now, all they did was claim the lives of pawns.

Baldr clapped him on the arm, then trod back to the center of attention.

Hödr sighed. Best be about it, then. He skirted the edges of the hall, listening in on inane talk, mostly men trying to impress women, or the other way around in some cases. Baldr would care most about the attitudes of kings and jarls, so Hödr made his way to the table where King Gevarus of Gardariki sat with his daughter and a few thegns.

How must he look to them, a man concealing his face? It was for their benefit, of course.

The king raised a goblet in his direction, sweet smelling mead sloshing around inside it as he did so. “Is it true you’re one of the Aesir?”

So men did know who he was. “I’m Prince Baldr’s cousin. Our mothers are sisters.” And their fathers were blood brothers, though that held little bearing here. What mattered was, that, oft, a few truths admitted thus would put men at their ease. Men too comfortable were more like to give away the real feelings in their hearts.

Gardariki lay in Bjarmaland where the Deathless faith had taken a firm grip on the population. If the king himself had fallen under the sway of the Patriarchs, Baldr would almost certainly have him killed. Chances seemed good it would be Hödr’s blade that did the killing, though not until the king was well away from Ingjald’s hall. Not even Baldr would tarnish a king’s reputation by killing his guests.

How strange, to sit across from a man and know that a turn in the conversation, even a subtle one, might lead to the speaker’s death. To know, in fact, that the life of Gevarus and perhaps everyone in his retinue, now lay in Hödr’s hands.

“So you’re related to King Odin himself?” Gevarus’s daughter asked.

“Forgive Nanna, she forgets herself sometimes,” the king said before Hödr could even answer.

Hödr smiled anyway. She had a soft voice, filled with unfeigned wonder which—besides being endearing—meant she must truly still hold the Aesir as her gods. What of her father? “There’s naught to forgive. But no, I’m not related to Odin by blood, only by marriage. His wife’s half-sister is my mother.”

“Oh,” Nanna said. “Hmm, but can you say why he no longer visits men? The king, I mean.”

Hödr forced his face not to fall at that. The question did reveal a certain impertinence. While Hödr took no offense at such things—unlike some fool Aesir who truly thought themselves gods—still, the Deathless had partially undermined the faith by claiming the Aesir were just men and women. Rightly claiming, of course. But did Nanna’s question mean she questioned her faith, or merely that she saw the declining state of Midgard, the same as anyone else with a brain should have?

Wars raged constantly, in all lands. Miklagard included, in fact. A drawn-out struggle between several Patriarchs was about the only thing that had limited their expansion, and no one was sure how much longer than the god-emperor would allow his vassals to play their games. Elsewhere, things grew even worse. There were no more great kings left in the world. Only petty ones, oft scarcely able to hold on to a few cities or towns. Thrones changed hands more oft than coins did.

And with winter having drawn on far too long, there was already talk of famine. Some claimed men in Nidavellir and Kvenland had begun eating their own dead. Hödr believed it. Starving men would do most aught.

So, what answer to give her then? The truth? Not even Asgard knew where Odin had gone. Such an admission would undermine the Ás faith more surely than aught the Deathless priests could accomplish. Hödr idly scratched behind his ear.

The motion must have revealed the burns around his eyes, for Nanna drew in a sharp breath. Other men would never have heard it in the noisy hall, but Hödr missed little. Still, the woman did a good job of hiding her dismay, for she didn’t pull away.

“Did I ask something wrong?”

“No,” Hödr said, too quickly. “No, it’s just … I’m not permitted to tell you what goes on in Asgard nor what plans Odin makes. I’m sure you understand.”

“We do,” Gevarus said.

All at once, the crowd fell silent. They were staring at someone in the center of the hall, though from this distance Hödr could not make out who. “What’s happening?” he whispered.

Nanna moved from her seat to sit beside him. Though she wasn’t touching him, her warmth too pleasant. “Ingjald has raised a bull’s horn.”

Instead of a drinking horn? If it was time for him to claim his throne, he ought to have distributed mead to all the other kings present. So what was this about now?

“Sviarland is broken,” Ingjald proclaimed. “Divided by our wars.”

“He’s hefted the horn up high,” Nanna whispered.

“Even once-mighty Upsal has fallen into decline. But I swear, on my life, I will restore the glory of my forebears and increase the lands of Upsal in all quarters.”

“He points the horn in each direction,” Nanna said. “Now he is climbing up to his throne.”

Angry murmurs melded with grumbles of shock, men quietly objecting to the improprieties of it all.

“Was that a declaration of war?” Nanna asked.

“Yes,” her father said. “He says he’ll make war on all the other kings.”

“He pointed east as well. The only thing east is the Gandvik Sea.”

Gevarus grumbled. “And beyond it Gardariki.”

Hödr grimaced. A declaration of war against three, perhaps four other kingdoms … No, that bespoke utter madness. No matter how great Ingjald’s dreams, he could not hope to win such a fight with no allies. So either he had allies currently unknown or he’d gone mist-mad. Allies … Miklagard?

“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” Hödr said.

“But …” Nanna said.

“Daughter!” Gevarus snapped. “Of course, Lord Ás. You’ve honored us with your presence.”

Hödr rose abruptly then made his way among the crowd. He didn’t like wending amid so many, especially when they were drunk and like to make erratic moves. Even his senses could grow befuddled when bombarded with such a crush of body heat and so many smells.

But he needed to get to Ingjald and get a better read on him, and he couldn’t pick up on his aura from halfway across the hall. Was Baldr wrong in thinking Upsal secure against the Deathless? What if the greatest threat to the Aesir was where they thought themselves most secure? Once the center of the faith had lain in Dalar, but those days had passed, and besides, Ingjald had just threatened Dalar.

Hödr picked up on Prince Baldr’s presence from well away. His aura was flush with pneuma from the apple of Yggdrasil, making him easier to notice. Hödr moved to his side, which fortunately was close enough to get a read on Ingjald.

The new king of Upsal was whispering to one of his thegns.

“What is it?” Baldr asked, without actually looking at Hödr. “Find a traitor?”

Hödr held up a hand for silence, not because he couldn’t filter out the prince’s words, but because it was better Baldr understood he was eavesdropping on someone else.

Hödr jolted at Ingjald’s words. “He … he plans to wait until everyone is drunk, then burn the hall with his rival kings inside. We have to stop him. Such a breach of hospitality is unbelievable.”

“But necessary.”

Now Hödr turned on Baldr. “You knew.”

“Ingjald is correct.” Baldr still wasn’t looking at him, just whispering while pretending to follow another conversation. “It’s not just Sviarland, but all of Midgard is drowning in corruption. Too many worthless cravens seeking a throne. This land had always been the center of father’s plans, and now we’re losing it to the Deathless priests and their insipid followers. “We need a strong leader to unite the people and guide them back to the old ways.”

“By murdering anyone who opposes them? By violating the sacred traditions of hospitality?”

“Peace, Hödr. Some things must be. This is no different than you murdering those who have betrayed us, only now it happens all at once. Which is why you are here to identify those loyal to us, but who are also not a threat to Ingjald’s supremacy. We need a united Sviarland. One kingdom to strengthen the faith.”

While it made sense, still it left a bitter acid roiling in Hödr’s gut. Such callous plans. Had Queen Frigg approved of this? She allowed Baldr free reign over Midgard, so she might not even know. Either way, as the prince, it was Baldr’s decision, whether Hödr liked it or no.

Pushing down his distaste, he made his way back to Gevarus’s table.

“Lord Hödr,” the king said, rising. “I had not thought—”

“We need to leave, now.”

“What?”

“Get your daughter and your thegns and meet me out behind the hall. Don’t all use the same exit. Some of you should take the servants’ way through the kitchens. Do it now.” Not waiting to see if he was obeyed, Hödr slipped away from the table.

The change in air currents and temperature warned him as Nanna’s hand shot out for him but he allowed her to grab his wrist. “What’s happening?”

Hödr took her hand and drew her away, toward a side exit. Anyone who saw them would no doubt think him taking her off for a romp. Given his status as a noble of Asgard, no one would say a damn thing about that. Either way, it seemed the easiest way to get Nanna clear from this mist-madness.

She didn’t resist, actually clutching his hand tighter. “I want to know what’s happening.” She was speaking too loudly.

“Later.” He guided her through several corridors, not quite sure where he was going. Sensing people was easier than understanding buildings, though he could manage when he needed to. As now.

Once they drew nigh to the door, he could feel the coolness outside, hear the slight whooshing of wind. Hödr flung the door open, turning a smirk on a guard who spun on him. The man glanced from Hödr to the princess and back, then chuckled knowingly.

Nanna stiffened, but her indignation didn’t make much difference under the circumstances. Hödr led her away, behind the hall.

“Please, Lord Hödr. What’s going on here?” Genuine fear laced her voice.

If he told her the truth, she might try to save others. Baldr wouldn’t stand for that. “We’re meeting your father and then heading into the Fyrisvellir. We’ll be safe within the wold, then we’ll make our way back to your ships at the harbor.”

“Safe from what?”

He was saved from having to answer that by Gevarus and his men making their way over.

With a nod, Hödr took off to lead them into the Fyrisvellir. Nanna refused to let go of his hand.

The wold was marshland, and even a sighted man could easily blunder into bog water if he wasn’t careful. The plop of footfalls was enough to give Hödr a good indication of the closeness of pitfalls, making him more confident than the others. “Step where I step.”

A fair portion of the wold was open plains, but if Ingjald had ordered his men to hunt down any survivors … No, they needed to be where the trees were denser.

“There’s a strange light in the distance.”

“A will-of-the-wisp.” Hödr had never seen one—obviously—and couldn’t sense them, but he’d heard plenty of tales of the odd lights leading men to their deaths. “Don’t look at it. Just focus on me. I won’t let aught befall you.”

“I trust you.”

Her words were like a shock of cold water. No woman had ever said that to him. Most could not help but shy away from his disfigurement. And, of course, those on Asgard still disdained him for the things he’d done while possessed by the Fire vaettr, so very long ago. Most of all, Thor hated him, and the others followed their prince. Hödr was lucky Baldr did not.

Behind them, a crackle sounded, flaring up and growing in intensity.

“Is that …?” Gevarus asked. “Fyris Hall is aflame.”

“I know,” Hödr answered. “Keep moving. We go south.”

All of their breaths had become ragged, as if none of them could even believe that Ingjald would dare to betray his guests nor burn his ancestral hall. Maybe Baldr was right. Maybe the Aesir needed someone to unite Sviarland.

But Hödr couldn’t help but fear the prince had chosen poorly.

3

On the edge of the Fyrisvellir, Fyris Hall blazed, an inferno that lit the night sky while Baldr watched. He’d wished he could have spared more of the people inside, but any sort of evacuation of slaves would have alerted the fallen kings.

So instead, he stood beside Ingjald and his thegns. The king’s daughter Asa snickered, seeming a bit too fascinated with the flaming ruin of her home. It was a calculated move on the tafl board, not something to relish, even considering many of the dead were enemies and traitors.

The problem with Ordrerism was that the Deathless priests offered men immortality. Odin had promised that some of the worthy would join him in Valhalla and fight, drink, and fuck until the end of the world. But somehow, the lure of bodily immortality drew in so many more, convinced that the god-emperor alone was a true deity.

Baldr rubbed his face. It had started slowly, the spread of this insidious faith. A few priests, alone or in small groups, passing among the villages. Hardly worth noting, and thus, largely unnoticed by the Aesir. Until one day, nobles and kings had begun shunning the old ways in favor of these new. Mother had wanted to reveal the truth that, if the Patriarchs offered immortality at all, it would only be through vampirism. But Baldr had advised against such a tactic. Most of the people would have never understood or believed such a thing.

Their worlds were small.

More importantly, the Aesir were warriors. They didn’t fight their enemies with petty words, and doing so would have served to undermine the faith Father had built. No, it was better to simply kill their enemies and stamp out this faith before it could spread farther. And sometimes the best way to be sure you killed all the rats was just to burn the whole barn down.

“Guthruthr of Skane did not attend,” Ingjald said. “But the kings of Dalar, Njarar, Ostergotland, and Jamtla are dead for sure. The plan was a success. Still, we cannot allow Guthruthr to unite the people against us. Should I have my men make sail for Skane now?”

“No,” Baldr said. “You’ll have enough to deal with in order to subdue the neighboring lands without spreading your men to the far south. Besides, sailing in winter is too risky.” And the damn winter seemed disinclined to ever end. “No, there are other ways to ensure Guthruthr is no threat.”

“You mean send someone to murder him.”

Baldr had chosen Ingjald because the man was ruthless and loyal to the Aesir. Unfortunately, cunning too seemed included in the deal. “You have a daughter of marriageable age. She has what, fifteen winters behind her?”

“I don’t want to marry that old bore,” Asa snapped.

“No one asked you,” Baldr said, still looking at Ingjald. “You need an ally and Guthruthr will hear of this and know he has two options. Either forge an alliance with you and accept you as high king, or go to war. He’s not strong enough for war to be his first choice.”

“So he’s a craven?” Asa said. “Even better. Let’s kill him too.”

Ingjald narrowed his eyes, glanced at his daughter, then turned back to Baldr. “You’ll see to it?” Baldr nodded. “Go with him, then, girl.”

“But—”

Ingjald turned his glare on her and Asa fell silent. “You will do whatever the Prince of the Aesir tells you, Asa. Mind him and bring no shame upon us.”

Traveling to Skane in the company of Asa did not much appeal, but Baldr saw no other way to be certain. Not that Asa was unpleasant to look on, with auburn hair in a flower braid, and mischievous eyes, just that she was young and impetuous and Baldr would have just as soon spent his time with a woman of more maturity.

Still, the needs of Asgard outweighed his personal preferences.

“Don’t wait for summer,” he said to Ingjald. “Your levies should be moving on Dalar within a fortnight. Njarar is a lesser threat, but if you can claim it quickly enough, it will provide a bulwark against Ostergotland.”

Baldr dared to hope the man wouldn’t disappoint him. He’d hate to think all this would prove for naught.

* * *

Baldr stuck to the wooded paths, avoiding the coastline. If any of the fallen kings’ men survived Ingjald’s massacre, they’d be looking for vengeance and he couldn’t take the chance someone would recognize Asa. The young woman strolled along at his side, humming softly to herself, providing far less vexing of a companion than he’d expected.

That she didn’t talk overmuch worked in her favor. Indeed, she seemed to have the intelligence to realize her life could be in jeopardy, though that didn’t appear to frighten her half so much as he’d have expected. Was it courage on her part, or a steadfast belief in Valhalla?

Either way, toward evening they came upon a camp just off the path.

With one hand, Baldr eased Asa behind him, the other wrapping around his sword hilt. Laevateinn had been a gift from his mother on his hundredth winter. Apparently Father had hidden it away in the bowels of Yggdrasil, but Mother had called that a waste, and granted him the runeblade. Baldr had no complaints.

“Peace,” a figure said, emerging from the wood. Hödr.

Baldr eased off the runeblade’s hilt and embraced the other Ás. “You always seem to know it’s me.”

“I can smell you.”

Baldr frowned. Hödr had said that before, and Baldr had never been quite sure if it was meant to start a bout of insults or just Hödr being strange. The man knew things he really ought not to, but smelling people didn’t seem very plausible. He wasn’t a wolfhound or varulf.

Rather than answer the strange statement, he beckoned Asa forward. “Hödr, this is Asa Ingjaldsdottir.”

Hödr offered her a rather stiff nod, then beckoned the two of them back to his camp.

There, an older man and a young woman sat, and beyond them, a handful of men. The elder man had a hand on his sword hilt as Baldr approached. “Is he not with Ingjald?”

“Baldr was the one who told me to save you.”

A stretch, given Baldr wasn’t actually sure who these people were. The girl was beautiful, though, with hair the color of sun-drenched wheat, and a smile that seemed hidden behind her obvious wariness.

Hödr waved a hand in their direction. “King Gevarus of Gardariki and his daughter, Nanna. We were heading for the harbor, but Ingjald set their ships ablaze.”

Baldr grimaced. Asa, though, snickered as if that was some kind of jest. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

Hödr nodded. “It means we have to move into Njarar to help them find a ship home. Whatever Ingjald’s plans for Sviarland, this has clearly not become a place for foreigners.” Baldr’s cousin pointed off to the woods. “I’m going to hunt for some game. We had no time to gather any provisions before we fled Fyris Hall. Will you gather roots, berries, whatever else we might eat?”

Asa plopped down by the fire. “Well I already have a satchel full of nuts and berries. Some of us came prepared.”

Nanna cast a withering gaze on the other princess, then rose. “I’ll help find something to eat.”

Hödr’s regard lingered on Asa so long that Baldr began to wonder if he planned to criticize the girl. Fortunately, his cousin just turned and stalked off into the wood. Baldr couldn’t say quite how Hödr hunted, but he was fairly good at it, so it was best to let him do so alone.

Beside Nanna, Baldr skirted the path, seeking aught else they might eat.

“Your companion seems lovely,” Nanna said.

Baldr chuckled. “A sheltered life, perhaps. And she’s young.”

“Do not all mortals seem young to you?”

Again, he found himself laughing. “Yes. But some more than others. A few years can make a great deal of difference at her age.”

“So … she’s not your … lover?”

All he could do was chortle at that. “I’d sooner claim a jotunn as a lover. No, she is betrothed—or at least intended to be—to Guthruthr. A peace offering.”

“You mean a bribe to acknowledge Ingjald’s supremacy as high king.”

Oh. Nanna was a clever one. The woman knelt and tugged at some roots half sticking out of the frozen ground.

Baldr filled his arms with pneuma and yanked it free with one hand, grinning when she gaped at him. Few women failed to be impressed with a display of apple-enhanced strength. Baldr brushed a hand over her cheek and she shuddered, pulling away.

He cocked his head at her abrupt response. “Am I not pleasing to you?”

Now she blushed, glancing about everywhere but at him, suddenly far too absorbed in hunting for berries.

“You need not feel shy about your desires.”

“If I had desires, they would be only intended for my husband.”

A shame. Baldr rose. “You’re married.”

“No, I mean …”

Oh. So formal, then. Baldr grunted in understanding. “Have no fear then. Save your desires for after you are wed if it suits you.” Still, he could hardly help but imagine her cheek gripped in his palm, stroking the back of her head. His lips pressed hard against hers.

Baldr forced his gaze away from her, at least until she’d turned her back to hunt for more roots. Some things were hard not to look upon.

He’d had a wife, once, a long time ago. She’d fallen in battle before ever tasting the fruit of Yggdrasil, and Baldr had contented himself with keeping lovers wherever he went since then. It kept things simple. Better to enjoy a few nights—or a fortnight in some cases—of joy with someone and then keep the memory pure than to fool oneself into thinking love could last forever.

Thor had warned him about that trap before he married, but Baldr had refused to listen to his brother. After all, no one ever remembered Thor for his wisdom, and it had been little secret he’d lost Sif after having an affair with a jotunn.

Did that mean Baldr should pass the rest of eternity without a companion? He’d mused on the idea of taking another wife, without doubt, but it never seemed right. Nor needful, since he’d found plenty of women all too eager to lay with the famed Prince of Asgard. For all he knew, he even had a few bastards running around the world. Once, he’d gotten twins in Kvenland to share his bed at the same time for three nights in a row.

Funny, now he couldn’t even remember their names.

When they had enough forage in hand, they returned to where Gevarus had stoked the fire, boiling water in a pot Baldr had left at the camp. Baldr plopped down beside the mortal king and tossed his gathered bits in the pot.

No sign of Asa. Maybe she’d wandered off to have a piss. Either way, he wasn’t like to miss her conversation anytime soon. Nanna sat down across the fire and dropped her handfuls of roots into the broth, setting aside the berries in neat little piles by type.

For some reason, that made Baldr smile. Why did it matter, sorting berries, when they’d eat them all in a few moments?

He looked to Gevarus. “I want to ask for your daughter’s hand.” His words seemed to have leapt from his mouth of their own accord. True, he’d mulled over the idea, but he hadn’t intended … Well, nowhere to go now save forward. “I can offer a hefty bride price from the coffers of Asgard, enough to see your kingdom flourish.”

The king stammered, looking to Nanna, then back at Baldr. Obviously struck dumb by the idea of an Ás looking to marry a mortal. Of course, after they wed, getting her an apple would be his first order of business. Mother wouldn’t deny him.

“Well,” Baldr said, and patted Gevarus’s knee. “I have to finish taking Asa to Skane, then return to Asgard to get the bride price. But after that, we’ll have a wedding that will be the envy of all Midgard. Perhaps around Sumarauki.”

Gevarus nodded, mouth still hanging a bit agape.

Waiting that long to hold Nanna, to feel her warm embrace, it rankled. But he had to respect her desires. The waiting would only make their love all the sweeter.

4

The sun never set in Alfheim. It just blazed in the sky, on and on, until it baked Odin’s skin into hard leather. His prison, if it could be called that, was the top of a tower encased in a curtain of shimmering light that stretched up at least thirty feet. He’d tried several times to pass through it, but it seared his flesh so completely he’d have no chance of surviving it. The last time he hadn’t been able to use his hand for three days.

And yet, it allowed the liosalfar to pass through when they so desired. The light bent around them like a waterfall crashing over their shoulders and flowing harmlessly aside in a rainbow of colors. They came to bring him food and water, sometimes even to talk, though few seemed inclined to answer his questions.

His captors had returned his hat and clothes to him, though he sometimes wondered if that had more to do with prolonging his suffering than easing it. He’d considered throwing himself through the curtain. Considered it, oh so many times. He couldn’t judge how many years had passed here—centuries at the very least.

All that kept him from ending it was the visions. They provided solace, yes, and a deeper truth his captors seemed not to understand. He saw things happening to him outside of this prison. The wolf, Fenrir, still tore his throat out. He still saw his own hands wrapped around Loki’s neck. He saw the world dying in Ragnarok, consumed in fire and ravaged by Hel. If any of those things were to come to pass, then at some point he must escape this tower and this world.

Delving into the past and future were his only refuge, the only recourse that kept him from madness, assuming he had not in fact lost his mind. Within this place, he had so little point of reference he’d begun to doubt that.

Thunder rumbled overhead, dark clouds drifting in. Odin sighed in relief. The rains came most days, at least for a little while, cooling his burning skin and, blessedly, washing away his shit. On days when it didn’t rain, the tower would grow reeking in the blistering sun, for he had no other way to remove the foulness.

With little other warning, a torrent erupted overhead. Rising to his knees, Odin spread his arms and let the pounding rain wash over him, opening his mouth and drinking in its sweetness. In visions of past lives he’d experienced such downpours, in rainforests like the ones covering Alfheim.

More than ever before, his memories of past and future had melded together into a surreal flow, time washed away as if by the rains.

She’d come to him, in the first days he was here. A memory he could not stop himself from reliving over and over, torturous and damning, as if walking through his pain might serve as penance for his unforgivable mistakes.

So long ago. Or maybe yesterday.

* * *

The curtain of light parted and Freyja strode through, more radiant than ever, her very skin now flush with luminance, her eyes aglow with a hint of sunlight, her hair glittering as if made of gold. She wore a sheer white draping that offered little for modesty but was probably cool in the merciless sun.

Odin strode toward her, intent to take her in his arms, but she stepped around him, stalking him like a cave lion waiting to pounce. His love traced a finger along his back, over his shoulder blades before coming around to face him once more.

Her slap caught him off guard and carried such force he actually stumbled backward, flailing a hair away from brushing against the light barrier.

“How dare you …” She shook her head in awful disgust.

“I … I didn’t know you’d be caught in the spell. I tried to spare you and Idunn, I tried—”

Freyja sneered at him, her expression darker than he’d ever remembered seeing it. “That oversight I could almost understand. But not what you did after I was gone.”

“What?” Odin had no idea what she was talking about. Had she been able to see him after that? Had he done something that had offended her? Did she speak of him sleeping with his wife? After drinking from the Well of Mimir, he’d known he needed to sire another son, a champion who would become the favored symbol of Asgard. “Did you think I would not lay with another woman for seventy years?”

“Seventy … was it only seventy to you?” She snorted, still grimacing. “You truly have no idea what you did, do you, Od?” She stalked closer, placing a hand to his still aching cheek. Her face so close to his, radiating heat, her breath so warm. “I was pregnant when you sent me here.”

Odin found it hard to swallow. “We have a child?”

Freyja’s knee snapped up and caught him in the stones.

Odin doubled over in blinding pain, before slumping down on his arse and moaning.

“We had a daughter. Hnoss, I named her, and she was beautiful beyond compare. Her laughter was a symphony of joy. Her smile could bring this whole world to a pause just to revel in it. And when she was grown, she had a place in the Summer Court, winning honor, Odin.”

Her tone had his heart clenched in almost unbearable pain. No torture had compared to this. Not even when Gjuki was sucking out his life. Not when Audr had claimed his body and made him a prisoner in his own mind. His mouth moved in a futile attempt to speak.

“He came into the palace and, despite the glow of sunlight, still he seemed cloaked in shadows. The queen’s guards would have cut him down in an instant, but he invoked a blood oath. A promise made by her father that the firstborn daughter of his loins would belong to him. Not even the queen could break the power of such an oath, or at least she would not risk it.”

Freyja was shuddering, her words seeming to tremble in the air. A tear welled in her eye but refused to fall.

Odin wanted to retch. This wasn’t … wasn’t possible …

“He … dragged her out by her heel, screaming, weeping. Calling for me, as my brother tells it, though I was not there.” At last, the tear broke and ran down her cheek, and she shuddered once more. “I went … to the queen. But she couldn’t help me. I went even to Dellingr and begged him to let us save Hnoss. Not even the Elder God would send us to break a blood oath made by her own father. I … don’t know what the svartalf gave you … I hope it was worth it.”

Freyja spit in his face and stormed back through the curtain.

* * *

The rains stopped almost as suddenly as they’d begun. A quarter hour of them? Odin could no longer judge such things. His sense of time was one of the first things he’d lost here.

The firstborn daughter of your loins shall belong to me, body and soul.

And what had Volund given him for it? Mjölnir, a weapon that Odin had dared hope would let him win Ragnarok.

He’d wept for Hnoss, the daughter he’d never even known.

Later—years later—Freyja had come to call on him again. He dared to imagine a touch less spite in her voice, when he told her all he’d done for seventy years had been in an effort to reach her. But even if the fire of her rage cooled, it left behind an icy ache that refused to kindle into warmth.

Nor did he deserve her warmth.

Sometimes, when years passed between her visits, he still considered ending it all and found himself wondering if urd would let him. After all, he’d seen a future beyond this place. So he could not die here. Probably.

* * *

Again the sun became a blistering pain in the sky. Odin shifted his hat to shield his eye. The thing had become threadbare. Freyja had replaced it several times already, but she always waited until the hat was falling to pieces. The rest, they rarely came anymore.

In the first days, others had called upon him. Idunn visited several times, seeming torn between ire and sympathy. Bragi came once, composing mocking verses of Odin’s downfall, while Odin wondered how he’d come to Alfheim.

Ullr, a man Odin had never known but remembered worshipping, who seemed content mainly to stare at him saying almost naught.

Frey came and beat him. Odin didn’t bother fighting back. What good would it have done? Indeed, when his self-loathing became unbearable, he’d revisited that beating in his mind, allowing himself to suffer each blow a hundred times over as if that might enhance his penance.

What a terrible fool he’d been. Bargaining away his daughter, though he’d never expected to sire one. He’d thought himself willing to pay any price to get back here. Well, now he had. He’d lost his own child to whatever depredations Volund visited upon her. Odin tried not to imagine what the svartalf would do to his daughter, but sometimes he could not help it. The very thought of him touching her tied Odin’s guts in knots.

But his rage remained impotent.

After so long, did she yet live? Perhaps not. Perhaps, without an apple of Yggdrasil, she’d perished long ago, even if the svartalf had not slain her. He found himself sometimes hoping for such an urd for her, an end to her suffering.

Odin’s own suffering, that wouldn’t end. Not until Fenrir’s jaws closed on him. For years he’d sought to avoid that urd, but now he almost thought he deserved it. Wished for it, even.

But he still had work to do before that. Whatever his crimes and failings, without him, Midgard would die when Ragnarok arrived. That, he could not allow. Not while breath remained in his body.

Oh, Baldr might stop it. Not alone, though.

The curtain parted once more. It seemed early for a meal, but then, he had a hard time keeping track anymore. This time, though, it wasn’t one of the soldiers bringing him a bowl of soup, but rather Idunn who stepped through, a wan smile on her face.

Wait, was she really here, or was this a vision of the past? She’d come through just like that already, hadn’t she? Odin shook his head, then rubbed his temples. In desperation to hear another voice—the guards didn’t talk to him—he oft replayed old or forthcoming conversations in his mind. He was pretty certain he’d liked this one.

“This is the story about the queen’s banquet, right? The one where that pterosaur came in through the skylight?”

Idunn cocked her head, her smile failing. “That was … centuries ago, Odin.”

Oh. Damn. He massaged his temples more. “So which one is this …? Shit, I can’t remember. You were wearing a blue dress that time when you brought the tafl board. And your dress is red now, and I don’t see any tafl board. What about the time … No. Can’t be that one …”

Idunn knelt beside him and crinkled her nose. “I’m sorry it’s been so long since I … since either of us came. Frey forbade Freyja from coming herself anymore. He was worried that she was starting to … Hmmm. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. She just wished she could have come herself, but she isn’t able right now. I’ll let her explain herself once she gets the chance.”

“Oh! It’s that time.” Odin rose unsteadily and brushed off his trousers. They looked even worse than his hat. “Sorry, it’s started to run together and I cannot make north from south anymore.”

“Odin, I’m here to help you escape.”

He nodded. “Yes, of course, I know. We should hurry, then.”

“You know …?”

“You and Freyja decided that it’s been close to a thousand years they’ve held me here. For us, I mean. For us, in the Spirit Realm. Not in Midgard. The elliptical orbit of the spheres creates disproportional skews in time, further magnifying the dilation of the Astral Realm in ways not easily calculable. But I’ve had so much time to ponder it that I surmise a passage of at least three hundred years, probably with an additional decade or three. Only, I didn’t know now was now until right now, so thank you for that.”

Idunn raised a hand to her gaping mouth, whimpering. “What have we done to you? I … I should have stopped this, but I’m not in favor with the queen’s court … I don’t even go to the isles anymore. Certainly, I’d not dare address Dellingr himself. I …”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Odin cleared his throat. Then stared at his hands. They were trembling. Probably not a good sign. He wasn’t certain he remembered that. Idunn continued working her mouth in an obviously vain attempt to comfort him. Clearly, she needed to say it. If she didn’t say it, he couldn’t remember her saying it. And then where would he be? Paradox, of course. “The deleterious effects of prolonged isolation …” he prompted.

“How did you know I was going to say that?”

He waved a hand, impatient for her to continue. Funny, he’d always done that. Even in his first memory of these events, he clearly remembered having to always get her to say it, and she always asked how he’d known. Another paradox, yes, but not an irredeemable one, so long as she said it.

“The deleterious effects of prolonged isolation seem to have proved worse than we feared. They thought you’d be one of us by now, too, and that hasn’t quite happened. Freyja posited that the wraith inside you—while driven into torpor by Alfheim’s sun—prevented the transmogrification that the Vanir underwent.”

“Good.” Odin nodded, clapping her on the arm. “Good, I’m glad we got that out of the way. Who even knows what would have happened if you hadn’t said that. Maybe the very timeline would have snapped in half, though I suspect the Norns enforce certain safeguards to minimize the damage, even assuming the initial problem of self-referential prescience could be overcome. I’ve … I’ve had a lot of time to think, Idunn.”

Idunn blew out a long breath and looked around as if she expected guards to burst through and arrest her on the spot.

“Don’t worry, they don’t find us here.”

Somehow, she failed to smile in relief. She never did. “I’ve been trying to memorize all the patrols and watch positions.”

Odin waved it away. “I already know which way we need to go. I just need you to open the barrier.”

Face suddenly stern, Idunn grabbed him with an arm around his waist and another around his neck. All at once, his vantage shifted. They were in the sky, way above the barrier, and falling fast. Wind stripped his hat away and stole his brief scream. Then his stomach lurched once more, and they were on the ground outside the tower.

A city spread out around them, a series of exotic spires and megalithic structures, all connected by stone bridges in the sky. Gimlé, they called it. Most of the city was built from marble, pearl, or a yellow stone Odin couldn’t identify. It was a wonder, every time he looked on this.

“Get up,” Idunn said, jerking him to his feet and ushering him hurriedly toward the rainforest. Her skin had lost some of its glimmer.

Because she’d used up some of her stored sunlight to carry them above the barrier and down to the ground. The Sun Stride, they called it. Yes, Odin remembered that.

Hand around his wrist, Idunn took off at a run toward the forest. She darted past a stepped pyramid with stairs ascending it. Odin grabbed her and dragged her to a halt an instant before a pair of guards passed by in a circuit.

The two liosalfar had long, thin-bladed swords and golden breastplates atop glittering mail. Odin wouldn’t want to have to fight such foes.

When he was sure they’d gone around another bend, he dragged Idunn onward. They raced into the wood, scraping their shins and forearms on the dense foliage. The undergrowth was so thick here it all but drew their progress to a halt, and Odin had to force his way past grasping vines and over roots as thick as his torso.

A rainbow of flowers sprouted all around him, adding a touch of beauty that he had no time to savor. Idunn had placed herself in grave danger to save him, that much he knew. The pounding of blood after so long made his head hurt, but it did leave it a little easier to focus on the present.

After about ten feet, the undergrowth drastically dropped off, allowing them to pick up their pace once more.

Idunn panted. “Even if no one saw me Stride into the sky, they’ll figure it out, eventually.” The hem of her dress caught on a thorny root and she yanked it away, tearing a chunk from it.

Odin paused to pluck the loose fabric from the root. It probably didn’t matter. One way or another, soldiers would find them. He didn’t remember much more of what would happen, if he’d ever seen it in the first place, but he remembered that. Still, he tucked the fabric into his belt and followed on after Idunn.

They’d try their best to elude their pursuers.

And then they’d fail.

5

When they reached the trade route south of the Fyrisvellir, Baldr and Asa broke away, leaving Hödr, Gevarus, and Nanna to follow the other branch east toward Agnafit. The town was a bustling port and, despite their progress, news of Ingjald’s treachery had already reached here. The stories floated on the wind, came to Hödr’s keen ears at every turn.

Rumors abounded that Ingjald’s armies were already on the march, moving on Dalar or perhaps even on Njarar, though Hödr had seen no sign of it when they passed through there. Perhaps the traitor king’s levies marched mere days behind him. An army could not move as swiftly as a few lone travelers, after all.

As they drew nigh to the harbor, a chill wind swept in from across the Gandvik Sea.

“Damn winter seems inclined to last forever,” the king complained.

From the feel of the port, men here feared the same. No one wanted to risk the winter storms in a crossing, but how long could trade and traffic be delayed? Fishermen already ventured farther and farther out, desperate for food when the local fjords had begun to show signs of depletion.

All such worries and more bombarded Hödr’s senses, collectively amounting to a sense of foreboding. Men feared the gods were angry with them, wondering when the Aesir would appease Aegir the Benthic and his wife, Rán. Hödr half wondered if it would ease their worries to learn an Ás walked among them. Perhaps it would only worsen those fears, once the people realized he couldn’t actually do a damn thing about the weather, the lack of fish, or even Ingjald’s wild aggressions.

Especially not while Baldr unofficially supported the latter situation.

Gevarus strode down a pier to inquire about anyone heading to Bjarmaland, leaving Nanna behind with Hödr.

She rubbed her arms and blew out a breath. “The air is nervous here. Can you feel it?”

Hödr almost laughed at that. Sometimes other people surprised him. More oft than not, he thought of normal people as the blind ones, unable to perceive auras or garner the overall mood or intention of a crowd the way he effortlessly did. Sometimes, though, those normal people caught him off guard. Like Nanna.

“They’ve heard what’s happened at Fyris Hall. Compounded with the lengthy winter, they’re afraid, even if they cannot say exactly the extent of why. It’s very likely that Ingjald will have control of this port within a few moons, but most won’t want to leave their homes, even if they were willing to risk the winter storms.”

Nanna chuckled. “You’re a warm fire on a crisp night, aren’t you?”

“Forgive me.”

“Oh, that was a jest. I like talking to you, predictions of doom notwithstanding. You’re … earnest.”

Hödr hardly knew what to say to that.

“Oh. Father looks upset.”

Considering no one had agreed to make the crossing, that wasn’t surprising. He almost wanted to tell her he could hear such conversations a hundred feet away or more. But would she fear him then? Think him fell and dangerous?

“No one’s heading east until winter breaks,” Gevarus snapped as he returned. “Which means I have to call on the local jarl’s hospitality to put us up until that finally happens.”

“Jarl Eindride,” Baldr said. “He’s a decent enough man, well known for his hospitality. I don’t think you’ve aught to worry on as far as that goes.”

“Perhaps not, but I’d just as soon have gotten myself and my daughter away from Sviarland before Ingjald’s levies arrive. Still, I can’t thank you enough for helping us.”

Hödr clasped his arm when the man offered it, then cocked his head. “Eindride’s hall is this way.”

He led them through the streets, preferring less crowded alleyways to the main breezeways where too many people gathered all in one place. In truth, Hödr would have just as soon avoided anywhere thick with people, but Gevarus was right about him and Nanna needing a place to stay.

Eindride’s hall lay across a wooden bridge on a small island, and was—according to the way Hödr had heard it described—by far the most impressive sight in Agnafit. It was a recent construction, only built by the jarl’s father a few decades back. Hödr had made several visits in the past few years, and the guards recognized him at once, welcoming them inside. The jarl himself was young, raucous, and slightly rotund, always ready to shout for platters of fresh fish whenever any Ás came calling.

He beckoned Hödr and the others to sit at his table in the great hall, slumping down in his chair with a huff. “You’ll uh … you’ll have to forgive me, but the fishermen’s hauls have proved less bountiful than usual for the time of year.”

Hödr waved that away. It was hardly the king’s fault about the cold.

“I’m just grateful for the fire pit,” Nanna said.

“What’s mine is yours.” Eindride clapped his hands to summon a slave. “Bring out the mead.”

Hödr had to assume that had begun to run low, as well, but the jarl was aught but stingy in distributing the drinking horns. Even if the mead itself had been thinned with water.

When they’d eaten—meager portions, but still welcome after their time on the road—the jarl cleared his throat. “What can you tell me about what happened in Upsal?”

“Treachery,” Gevarus said before Hödr could think of a more diplomatic way to put it. Chances were, if Eindride stood against Ingjald, he’d die, along with a great many of his men. Unless another king united the rest of the land against Upsal, Hödr saw no way Ingjald could fail to conquer Sviarland.

More to the point, Baldr had made it clear he wanted that to happen. Hödr had no right to interfere with his prince’s plans, however much he misliked them. He sighed softly, though no one seemed to notice as Gevarus and Eindride had fallen into intense political debate. The jarl refused to believe Ingjald would make war until winter broke, while Gevarus assured him otherwise.

Nanna was staring at Hödr, he realized. Waiting for his opinion? Or perhaps hoping he would interject, would tell them Asgard would never let a man who betrayed his own guests and violated all laws of hospitality go unpunished. How Hödr wished he could say that, but Asgard had grown desperate, and Baldr had clearly judged that building bulwarks against the Deathless outweighed concerns of honor.

A small sacrifice, he might have called it. Mother had told him once that Asgard was built on such sacrifices. Bits and pieces of tradition whittled away, honor fraying under the ceaseless abrasion of necessity. The actions taken to maintain the dynasty must therefore eventually undermine it. But if those actions truly had been necessary, then did that not mean the decline of all great civilizations became inevitable?

Or perhaps that was Father’s melancholy toward the workings of urd at play behind Mother’s assessment.

Some claimed things went awry when Odin vanished. Others said it was why he’d left and that, if the Aesir could be restored to greatness, the king might one day return. Hödr had doubts as to that.

Nanna leaned in close to him. “Will you not speak out against Ingjald?”

Hödr grimaced. “It’s not Asgard’s policy to interfere in such internal struggles.” A half-truth, perhaps. Queen Frigg discouraged the Aesir from getting involved. Except when it benefited Asgard. Like by checking the advance of Miklagard or Serkland.

“So the gods will not punish him?”

“They won’t. If you want to see him punished, that’s a duty that falls upon the heads of every man and woman in Sviarland.” Baldr would’ve been vexed to hear him speak thus. He’d all but encouraged her to mount a resistance.

Nanna’s hand fell on his. “If the people here did rise against him, would you help us?”

Damn Baldr for allowing this to come to pass. Worse, what if Hödr’s cousin was right? What if Ingjald’s supremacy was needful to thwart the Deathless faith? “I am to see you safely back to Gardariki. Our laws bind my actions. I cannot fight for Sviarland until the prohibition against doing so is lifted.”

“Your cousin wants to see Ingjald win.” She said it like a statement, almost as if Baldr had clearly stated it. Or perhaps Baldr was transparent enough.

“I fear you’re right.” He shouldn’t have said that, either. What was it about her that had him crossing boundaries? No one in Asgard would ever forget the crimes he’d committed while under Eldr’s thrall. Hödr had long known his only chance of remaining accepted at all was to tread with care at all times. To prove himself a model soldier, his loyalty beyond reproach.

His desires and convictions mattered little, if at all.

Nanna squeezed his hand. “I know you want to help.” Her touch was so very warm. So kind.

Hödr laid his other hand atop hers, holding her hand in both of his. “I’ll do whatever I’m able to do. But your best defense may be distance from the entire situation.”

“Except, we cannot escape Sviarland at present.”

“The winter will abate, sooner or later.”

Nanna nodded and withdrew her hand.

Jarl Eindride gave them each rooms in his hall, though Hödr visited his only briefly, before deciding to walk out in the evening. Braziers around the hall kept the mist at bay, but those who’d tasted the fruit of Yggdrasil didn’t fear mist-madness, and so he wandered alone for a while, into the woodlands beyond the jarl’s compound.

At such times, he wished he could speak to his parents. They had piercing insights that he could not always match on his own, and Father, especially, knew things beyond the ken of anyone else in the world. In the end, though, neither of them would have told him what to do, save perhaps an admonition to follow his own heart. No, they’d have prodded him onward not with advice, but with questions designed to help him uncover his own conflicting desires.

Or maybe not so very conflicting.

Maybe Hödr knew exactly what he wanted, only he feared to go after it. All that time traveling through the Fyrisvellir and beyond, it had made clear one truth. He wanted Nanna. Not only because she was one of the few women who’d ever failed to balk at his scars, but because she had a real kindness in her. A warmth he so desperately yearned to cradle and nurture.

Sometimes, during long walks, he’d wondered what she looked like. His senses could reveal her aura, and the overall shape of her figure. But he’d never know the shape of her face or the nature of her smile. The only sight he’d ever held had come while possessed by a jinn, an experience he’d never seek to repeat. Besides, now even the previously useless orbs of his eyes were missing, burnt away when Father had driven Eldr out of him.

It didn’t really matter, though. If he couldn’t see her face, he could see her energy, and it was pure and good, like so few people in all the world could be.

Her laughter thrilled him. So what would Mother have said about that? Probably that, were he honest with himself, he’d know what to do. Or that naught was worse than living with regret of never having tried.

Maybe that was answer enough.

* * *

Nanna and her father were still up when Hödr returned to the jarl’s hall, though most of the household had retired for the evening. The two of them sat in front of the fire pit, sipping water—Eindride must truly have run low on mead—and speaking of the imminent fall of their kingdom to Miklagard.

Already, many of Gardariki followed the Deathless faith. It meant Miklagard might well claim their land without even needing to mount a true invasion.

“Welcome back, Lord,” Gevarus said when Hödr made his way over to them. “Please join us.”

Hödr did sit beside Nanna, wishing again that he could see her face, though he guessed she must be smiling given the flush of extra warmth in her aura. “I came to a decision.”

“Oh?” she asked.

“It is strange for me, because I’ve not … My life has led me down a path of solitude. But I wish to rectify that now, because I found I am taken by you. And if your father will agree, Nanna, I would have you for my wife.”

Gevarus groaned, suddenly shifting.

At the same time, Nanna’s aura became a swirl of confusion, excitement, fear, and frustration.

“If the thought does not please you …” Hödr said.

“It does,” she said.

Gevarus cleared his throat. “I’m afraid my daughter is already promised to someone else. Someone I cannot deny and most certainly cannot break an engagement to.” He continued fidgeting. “Baldr is a prince of Asgard. We cannot offend him.”

Baldr? No. No, he should have said something.

Should have …

Words failed him. All he could do was sit there, shaking his head like a fool.

Because he was a fool. Twice over a fool, to think that he, a disfigured cripple, could claim a princess. To think that he could have aught good and pure, when he had already wrought such darkness among the Aesir.

Hödr lurched to his feet and stumbled back toward the exit.

“Hödr, wait,” Nanna said. But her voice trembled, holding no hint of command.

Did it make it worse, to know she would have accepted, had he asked sooner? Yes. It made it so much worse.

6

Hermod blew sawdust off his fingers and admired his work. The cabin stood deep in the woods of Styria, but close enough to the river anyone occupying it could have easy access to water. He’d intended to model the design after the house his father and uncles had built on Wolf Lake before he was born, but his memories of that place were hazy, lost in the distant past.

Oft, he could not even say what was real and what was a dream. He’d been a child then, and centuries had passed since. The world changed around him. Maybe he’d been naïve, but men had seemed more given to let honor guide them in those days. The innocence of youth, yes, but he’d seen so very much in the intervening years.

The sound of footfalls in the woods had him turning about, hand on Dainsleif’s hilt. But it was Didrik, Bergljot, and the others who emerged from around the trees.

The varulf nodded at the work. “Impressive.”

Hermod shrugged. “I learned woodcraft from my father.”

“Then he taught you well.”

Bergljot’s face trembled as she clasped his hand in both of hers. “I cannot thank you enough for doing this for me.”

Hermod shrugged and withdrew his hand. “The towns aren’t safe for your kind anymore. It’s better if you have a place away from Deathless priests.”

They were especially quick to hunt down völvur. Maybe the Patriarchs considered the witches a threat, or maybe it was the priests themselves, taking offense at völvur because of their roles in the old religions.

Didrik nodded grimly. “What if there was something more we could do to weaken them?”

“What?” Hermod asked.

“They’re building a temple on a hill south of Gradec, a massive one. They say they decorate it with gold plundered from all over Hunaland. The priests raise it on the site of a slaughter of Odinic faithful. It’s an affront to all who follow the Aesir.”

Hermod mopped his brow with the back of his hand. “Destroying a temple isn’t going to solve your problems. You’ll bring retribution down on your heads as the priests seek someone to punish for it.”

“Maybe,” Bergljot said. “Maybe it will. But it will also show them that Styria isn’t theirs yet. That there yet remain free men and women who will not surrender the old ways so easily.”

From what Hermod had seen, Styria most definitely belonged to the Deathless priests. With the way things had gone, maybe all of Hunaland was theirs. If not, it would be within a few more years. “You’ve never seen any sign of Odin himself?”

“Signs are everywhere,” Bergljot said. “You just have to know where to look. The way lightning strikes a tree. The flight of an unkindness of ravens. The falling of the bones.”

Only years of practice allowed Hermod to keep a straight face at that. People wanted meaning in their lives. They were so damn desperate for it they’d invent it if it wasn’t readily apparent. Whether Odin even knew about these people or not, he assuredly didn’t control lightning strikes or flights of birds.

“If you wish a greater sign, perhaps destroying the priests and their temple will prompt the Ás.”

Unlikely. “I’ll help you, then.” Hermod was running out of places to look for Odin, true, but at the very least, eliminating a few Deathless would serve the cause of Asgard.

* * *

Well past midnight, Hermod crouched at the base of a hill, Didrik beside him. The Deathless temple stood up there, its foundations in place, along with support columns and stones that would serve as the lower walls. From the look, it would prove an impressive sight once completed. A beacon to followers of that accursed faith, luring them into its twisted arms.

Beside the temple proper stood a cabin, probably housing the priest overseeing construction. The builders themselves would have returned to Gradec before sunset.

Didrik growled at the sight. “Rumor is, they plan to send an Exarch here, to rule over all Styria from this abomination.”

Hermod nodded absently. No doubt watching the place get built was beneath such a high-ranking Deathless official. For now, they’d have assigned someone else, someone trusted whose career was on the rise but who did not yet hold real authority. Besides—though he had no proof—Hermod suspected most Exarchs were vampires, and thus, wouldn’t have preferred standing in the sun to watch men haul stones or cut timber. Sunlight suppressed their powers, so vampires shunned it whenever possible.

“The priest will have guards, Deathless soldiers,” he said.

“We can’t let anyone escape. Bergljot wants to burn the temple and the cabin both.” The varulf grinned with malice. “We kill them when they try to flee.”

He ought to tell them to call this off. Following this path would enrage the Deathless. They’d begin a hunt for so-called heathens throughout the entire region. Senseless slaughter that would most like end with Bergljot dead, and maybe Didrik and the others, too. But the alternative was what? Tell them to give up and surrender? Accept the spread of the Miklagardian faith?

At the very least, if they died for this, Hermod could see to it they made it to Valhalla. With Odin gone, maintaining that hall fell to Hermod, and he’d not exclude men and women as brave as these. Not assuming he could manage to get a valkyrie or two to watch over them.

“I’m going to close in and scout the area. Wait for half an hour, then send your men in to set the fires.”

Didrik clapped him on the shoulder, then Hermod crept forward until he suspected he was out of sight of the others. Still crouched low, he pushed across the Veil and into the Penumbra. Given how dark the night was, stepping into the realm of shadows didn’t make it feel any gloomier than before. Rather, swirling shadows replaced mist.

As the Otherworld snapped into focus, so too did shades. Ghosts of dozens of slain men and women flitting about the valley. Didrik had said the Deathless had slaughtered the faithful here. So many murdered souls now wandered, trapped in hatred and pain. Their moans and lamentations came to him in waves, whispers carried over chill winds. It might be too much to hope that slaying the Deathless here would avenge these souls and allow them some measure of peace.

At least, he saw no sign of vampires here, though. It should give Didrik and his men the advantage. Still, he needed to be sure, and thus he crept up to the cabin. If the priest inside was a vampire, his presence should have bled through to the Penumbra. At least, it had seemed to work that way on the few occasions Hermod had snuck up on such creatures from across the Veil.

He crept forward toward the cabin, staying low in case there was a Deathless on this side, waiting for him.

A few ghosts flitted about him, crying out about the injustice of their urd. Hermod could do naught for them, so he ignored them. He’d spent enough time traveling in this realm to no longer fear every dead—

A sibilant hiss ushered out behind him. It sent Hermod stumbling to the ground, twisting around and jerking Dainsleif free. The sound had come from a figure wrapped in a tattered black shroud, bearing a sword that seemed made of the shadowy material of the Astral Realm. A wraith!

Hermod jerked Dainsleif up just in time to parry the wraith’s descending attack. He tried to gain his feet, but the wraith lurched at him with a claw-like skeletal hand, forcing him to roll to the side instead. The hate-filled ghost swiped the sword his way once more. The entity might have once been a woman. Perhaps a murdered völva.

Now, it was the antithesis of life. Tendrils of its shroud surged forward like serpents. Despite his attempt to roll away, several strands wrapped around his ankles and jerked him back beneath the wraith. With it directly above him, swinging its sword and attacking with its claws, he caught a glimpse of its face. Or what should have been the face, under the hood. Instead, he saw a well of darkness in the vague shape of a skull, its eyes hollows of fell light.

It hissed at him as Hermod flailed back and forth, parrying and dodging. If that thing got its claws on him it would suck out his soul. In a surge of desperation, Hermod forced himself back across the Veil.

The world shifted, colors and mist both seeping back in. The wraith didn’t vanish, though it did become more etheric looking, translucent almost.

Hermod bit back a yelp of surprise. What the …?

Again that cruel sword descended toward him, and again he jerked Dainsleif up to parry. The resounding clang echoed across the hilltop. Almost immediately, shouts went up inside the cabin.

Godsdamned wraith!

It lunged with its claws again this time, Hermod managed to swipe his runeblade forward. The sword sliced off skeletal fingers which evaporated into dark mist as they left the wraith. The creature roared in pain or rage, the sound seeming apt to shred Hermod’s mind.

Its distraction allowed him to cut his feet free and roll to the side. He struggled to stand, bringing up Dainsleif as he did so. The wraith vanished, appearing to his side an instant later. Unable to get his sword around in time, all he could do was dodge. The ghostly blade bit through his mail and gouged his left arm.

Hermod bit down a scream. The chill of the grave seeped into his shoulder, stealing his breath and making his vision narrow.

A growl sounded, and a wolf came charging up the hill at the same time men came pouring from the cabin.

This had not gone according to plan.

And if he left the wraith here, it might well devour the souls of everyone here, maybe even begin hunting through Gradec. Shit! Hermod pulled himself back across the Veil, hoping the wraith would follow.

It seemed he’d earned the creature’s ire, for it did jump back in front of him.

Its blade had stolen his strength. He couldn’t keep this up much longer.

The ghost flew into a series of wild swings that forced Hermod to give ground. Dimly he noticed the shadows of men fighting on the other side, especially Didrik, who’s form held more substance.

He couldn’t help them right now. Had to focus on the wraith.

Its attacks were wild, driven more by fury than skill or control. That was his edge. If she’d been a völva in life, maybe she had never really mastered swordplay. After all, who would raise a weapon against a völva?

Swaying in not-quite feigned weakness, he lured the wraith in. It lunged forward with more wide swings. Hermod caught one on Dainsleif’s blade, then rolled the parry into a thrust. The runeblade nicked the wraith, only seeming to feed its rage.

All anger.

He could use that. He parried and dodged more overly aggressive attacks, waiting. His own strength was ebbing as his blood pumped out, but he had to wait. Wait for it to overreach. Hermod evaded a high blow and swiped Dainsleif up, severing the wraith’s sword arm at the elbow.

The creature released a mind-shredding wail. Hermod faltered for a moment, the pain in his head almost crippling. With gritted teeth, he swung back the other way, shearing through the ghost’s head. The blade met almost no resistance, as if it had truly struck naught but shroud.

The wraith wavered, its form becoming ripples of shadow.

Roaring, Hermod hefted his runeblade in both hands then swung it straight down, cleaving the ghost from top to bottom. The wraith broke apart like bubbling muck, seeming to get reabsorbed into the shadowy ether.

A wave of dizziness sent Hermod stumbling back to his knees. So cold. So hard to focus. He had to clear his mind to shift …

He fell forward, the sensation like crashing through tar, and landed face-first in snow.

Snow. Snow meant … the Mortal Realm.

But everything had grown so dark.

* * *

Bergljot clucked her tongue as she prodded at Hermod’s arm. “What in the gates of Hel did this?”

Hermod groaned. She wasn’t too far off the mark, though he didn’t think Hel actually created wraiths. Odin had posited most had been practitioners of the Art who gave up too much of their souls.

Didrik had lost two men because of Hermod’s fight with the wraith, but the varulf hadn’t questioned him. Not really. As if he knew what had attacked Hermod. Maybe he did. Maybe the wolf spirit inside him gave him enough of an idea to understand it.

Either way, they’d helped him retreat into the woodlands, laid him beneath an oak tree, and built a tiny fire, daring no more lest the Deathless loyalists in Gradec come looking for them.

The völva screwed up her face as she squeezed the wound.

Hermod had to grit his teeth from the pain. Pus oozed from it, and his skin had turned sallow already. Black streaks spread from the site. He didn’t think the apple would let him die from such an injury, but it hurt like Hel had spit on him.

“I have to carve out the rotting flesh,” she said. “I …”

“That won’t kill me.” Though he imagined he’d rather be really, really drunk for such an experience.

Maybe Didrik thought the same, because he pulled out a skin of ale plundered from the priest’s cabin and handed it over.

Hermod drank it all.

Then the varulf gave him a stick. “Bite.”

Gates of Hel!

Hermod did. Bergljot began to saw away at the skin around his upper arm. Hermod moaned, a scream building in his throat. Didrik’s rough hands grabbed his jaw and forced it to stay closed around the stick.

Hermod wanted to retch, unable to look away from the macabre sight as the völva cut away large chunks of his flesh.

“I’m sorry. I have to stop the spread of whatever this is.”

Hermod groaned.

Until it became too much, and he passed out.

* * *

His arm was a bubbling well of agony. From the feel of it, Bergljot had seared the wound closed as best she was able. She’d wrapped it in linens, with a foul-smelling poultice inside of that. Hermod could guess at a few of the herbs she’d used by the stench. She knew what she was about, at least.

Beneath that same oak tree, he moaned, and shivered.

A moment later, Didrik came and knelt beside him. “We have to move as soon as you’re able. Deathless soldiers are combing these woods.”

“Give me … a moment to catch my breath.”

The varulf nodded, face grim. “I’ve no idea how it happened, but I do have an idea what you fought. No man ought to have lived through such a fight, much less the wound or its treatment. Bergljot thinks you’ve got Odin’s own blessing to survive it. Is that true?”

“After a fashion.”

The varulf glowered. “You’ve got your secrets, I get that. But I have to know …”

Hermod blew out a long breath.

“You’re an Ás?”

Damn it. “We have not forgotten about you. But it won’t help them to know I’m here.”

“Why have you let the Deathless spread so far?” Didrik seemed torn between grabbing him and worshipping him.

“Our resources are not unlimited. I … I can’t tell you more than that. But the Aesir are still out there, still trying to make the world right.”

“We burned the damn temple, so that’s a start.” The varulf grunted to himself. “It would ease the others’ minds to know you were here with us.”

“It won’t. They’ll be left with doubts, same as you. Wondering why we can’t do more, and I cannot give you those answers.”

Didrik nodded, then slipped an arm under Hermod’s shoulders to help him rise. “You’ve helped us already, twice now. I suppose that has to do.”

“Didrik?” Hermod found his throat uncomfortably dry. “Don’t give in to these Deathless. You do not want what they offer.”

“That much I know. But without Odin’s help, I don’t know how much longer we can hold out.”

The varulf was right. And Hermod had run out of places to look. He’d have to return to Asgard and seek allies in his quest. No other option remained before him. Because the world could not be lost to the Deathless.

And Odin alone might be able to stop that.

7

Odin climbed over another massive tree root, then sat on it, catching his breath. Idunn glanced back at him, sighed, and then joined him sitting.

“What about Freyja?” Odin asked. He had to find her. Whatever terrible mistakes he’d made … everything he’d done had been for her. He had to get back to her.

Idunn rubbed her face. “We have to go around the perimeter, then we can double back and return to Redwood Grove. Freyja couldn’t come into the city. Once we find her, we’ll have to make for the Blessed Isles of Tír na nÓg.”

“Should we not leave Alfheim and return to Midgard?”

Idunn shook her head. “You really don’t understand aught, Odin. We can leave Alfheim by the nether rivers or the liminal spaces, but there’s no way back to Midgard. Not for us, and I assume, not for you either. Not without the ring you used to get here.”

“Frey took it.”

Idunn nodded. They’d had that conversation before, hadn’t they? Yes, she’d said whatever Frey had claimed, he’d either hadn’t given it to the queen, or she’d allowed him to keep it. “The truth is, I don’t know all that much about what goes on in the court, and I wouldn’t go to the isles if I had a choice. I’m an outcast.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we get to Freyja.”

“She … forgave me?”

Idunn scoffed. “What do you think, Odin?”

A high-pitched howl erupted from the forest, strange and too trilling to be either wolf or dog. “What?”

“Ullr.” Idunn leapt off the branch. “His hounds. We have to go, now! They can move very, very fast.”

Odin jumped to his own feet and chased after her as she ran, her fatigue at once seeming forgotten. Indeed, the pounding of his blood beat down Odin’s weariness as well, though it only enhanced his headache. He was weak from too long with little activity, too long lost in meditation, wandering the breadth of time.

But if Ullr caught them … Well, Odin had no intention of going back to that damn tower.

* * *

The truth was, Odin was old. His encounters with Audr and Valravn had sapped the youth from his otherwise immortal body even as they ravaged his soul. Everything ached unless he drew on pneuma to suppress such things. His back hurt, his knees were stiff, and his neck popped when he turned his head. Plus, it was hard to catch his breath when running through a rainforest in fear for his life.

A peal of thunder rang out overhead an instant before the sky rent asunder and water came crashing down once more. Twice in one day. Huh. That didn’t happen too oft … though he did have a hard time telling one day from the next without the sun ever setting, so maybe it did happen and he hadn’t realized it.

The ground beneath their feet turned to mud, squelching with every step they took and slowing their progress to a crawl while not affording them any rest. It was the first time since coming here he actually minded the pouring rain.

Idunn slipped, scraped her knee on a root, and then leapt over it with enough force she had to be relying on pneuma. And Odin needed to, as well.

The howls were irregular, but growing closer. Hard to say how close when they seemed to issue from all sides, as if the trees themselves stalked him.

Grunting with the effort, Odin pushed on. A slight break in the woods opened out into a marshy plain.

Idunn growled in obvious frustration, glanced at him, then pushed forward. Her feet sank deeper in an instant, and Odin grabbed her wrist and hefted her up onto a patch of drier ground. He thought he remembered this … if only the exact memory were clearer he could know where to step to avoid …

Wait.

Wasn’t something else entirely supposed to happen here? They came to the marsh and then—

A tremendous roar like that of a dragon rang out through the wood, so loud Odin feared his ears would bleed.

Idunn was screaming something, but he couldn’t make it out.

An instant later, two trees got blown out to either side as a giant bipedal lizard burst through. The creature had to stand thirty feet tall, and its neck was rimmed by brilliant plumage in a rainbow of orange, red, and white. Other feathers jutted from its tiny elbows. While its forelegs were underdeveloped, its hind legs were massively muscled, and its maw had teeth like those of a linnorm.

A moment of glorious terror melded with sudden recognition shot through Odin.

Oh. That was it. He’d thought he’d dreamed this.

“A dragon.”

Idunn grabbed his arm and jerked him to the side. “Run!”

Odin flooded as much pneuma as he could to his limbs and dashed off after Idunn, trusting to instinct to guide him through the twisted forest.

The dragon squelched down in the mud behind them, roaring once more.

Bipedal, feathered dragons! Odin leapt over a root. His feet caught in the wet soil, skidded, and sent him tumbling down on his arse. His momentum carried him forward, under an arching root. Idunn yanked him to his feet and they skidded off in a new direction.

Trees and branches cracked and snapped behind them in the wake of the bellowing monster.

Odin glanced back but couldn’t make the creature out through the dense forest. He could only hope that it lacked any sort of maneuverability under such circumstances.

When he turned forward once more, the ground in front of him had given way to a steep mudslide. Odin flailed, trying to stop, crashed into Idunn, and sent them both tumbling down the slope. Everything spun and his head cracked on the ground then splashed under the mud as they tumbled overtop of one another. The mud sucked him under and he couldn’t see or breathe. That lasted but an instant before his momentum carried him sloshing into a river.

A swift current caught him and yanked him into the undertow. A shadow—Idunn?—shot past him underwater. Odin burst through the surface, gasping for air, struggling to swim in the tumult. Just ahead, the waters crashed against rocks, turning into white rapids. All his flailing didn’t manage to stop him from getting sucked under once more.

Even his pneuma-enhanced lungs felt apt to burst, desperate for air, and everything spun round and round. Something hard slammed into his thigh with such force he gasped, sucking down water. The impact twisted him round and further blurred his vision.

Idunn snared his wrist and jerked him to a stop.

Odin choked, retching up mud and water, even as the river continuously pounded against him. He could scarcely breathe or see, but Idunn seemed to have caught a vine.

“Catch your breath!” she shouted, her voice almost lost over the sound of crashing rapids and the crack of thunder overhead. “But I have to let us go. The river may carry us away from the dogs and the dinosaur, both!”

Catch his breath? How was he supposed to catch his breath when the water kept trying to drive him under—

Idunn let go and the current seized Odin once more.

8

Most oft, weddings came in the summer, and the women would decorate wooden arches with flowers and vines, to the sound of lyrists’ gentle music. Since summer didn’t seem like to arrive this year, Asa and Guthruthr were married standing ankle deep in snow, shivering as they made their promises to each other.

Baldr didn’t feel the cold half so much as the mortals did, but he was still just as glad when the guests all moved inside Guthruthr’s warm hall. Despite the prolonged winter, the king of Skane still managed to host a fair feast for his wedding. His hunters had managed to find a herd of aurochs that hadn’t moved on yet, and slaughtered the better part of that herd.

Capturing and corralling the herd might’ve served Skane better for the future, but Guthruthr wasn’t one to skimp on his hospitality or risk the mockery of his guests. Even if it cost him later.

Smoke from a dozen braziers billowed up to the hall’s rafters, mingling with the stench of so many people close together and the more pleasant aroma of roasted meat. Baldr picked at his food, watching the guests mill about.

The wedding was much smaller than it would have been, given Ingjald’s recent treachery and aggression. By agreeing to marry Asa, Guthruthr had sided with Ingjald, earning him few friends but probably securing the future of his kingdom and of his own rule over it, even as a subordinate king to Ingjald.

Asa, meanwhile, seemed to delight in making ever more outrageous demands of Guthruthr’s slaves. First, she’d ordered two women to wrestle for her amusement. Then she’d insisted a slave boy get uproariously drunk on mead while guests egged him on. When she’d told one slave to fuck another in the arse, Guthruthr had stepped in and claimed she jested.

Baldr had his doubts.

Still, Ingjald’s daughter had not pressed the issue, just laughed as if Guthruthr had the right of it.

Guthruthr’s brother, Halfdan Snjalli, raised a toast to the king. “Skol!” The man had a reputation as a pirate, though the long winter no doubt had him bored and distracted. Last summer, Snjalli had sacked towns along Sjaelland and returned to Skane with so much plunder Guthruthr offered him any prize he could name.

Snjalli had claimed jarldom over Hälsingborg to the north, a claim that had forced Guthruthr to oust the then-current jarl Herleifr. The king had refused when Snjalli wanted to claim Herleifr’s wife, too.

Tove settled down across from him. Guthruthr trusted the shieldmaiden above even his own thegns. Baldr suspected they’d been sleeping together for years, though of course the king couldn’t marry someone with no bloodline. Probably, it would continue once Asa was with child. Hardly a concern, really. These things happened. “You don’t seem festive, my prince.”

“I am just deep in thought.” Perhaps a little maudlin, though.

“You’ve heard the Deathless priests have begun spreading their lies in Arus?”

Baldr grunted in acknowledgment. Reidgotaland might well be the next to fall to that insidious faith. Father had once told him he never stayed long in Asgard because so many places required his attention. The intervening centuries had told Baldr just how the man must’ve felt.

“If you like, we could …”

Baldr smiled at her, reaching over to pat her hand. “You’re bitter about the wedding, if only a little. Not that I wouldn’t want to, but my heart lies elsewhere these days.”

Tove scoffed as if to say it was his loss—probably it was—and left him alone.

Baldr sighed and let his head slump into his palms. He’d had enough imported Hunaland ale to feel a bit woozy, and almost enough to let his burdens go. The truth was, the fate of Midgard fell into his hands. Father was long gone and Mother trusted Baldr to see to things out in the world while she ruled Asgard. As for Thor, who should have had this task, the man had neither the patience nor the cunning for it. No, Thor spent his time trekking through the wilds alone, hunting trolls. His forays into civilization amounted to little more than bouts of drunken stupor and unending melancholy that seemed to have deepened over the centuries.

Mother never said it, but she was disappointed in Baldr’s brother. How could she not be? The man was an unmatched warrior, yes, but he resolutely refused to be more than that, to even try.

So who else was there to keep Midgard from falling entirely to the Deathless faith and thus coming under the sway of the Patriarchs? Baldr, Prince of Asgard. No one else could, or would, take the steps necessary to hold the world together. He held back the Patriarchs. He kept the tenuous peace with the jotunnar through Narfi. He met with emissaries from the caliphs, checking their ambitions.

But the truth was, he had no one with whom he could truly share those burdens. Which made them heavier.

Baldr sniffed and rubbed this face. Well. A wedding was no place for such melancholy. What he needed was another drink, and then maybe a walk in the brisk night air. That would do for him.

* * *

Three days after the wedding feast, when Baldr had planned to leave for Agnafit and return to Nanna, he was awakened to the sound of screaming. Baldr stumbled from his bed wearing naught save trousers and blundered into the main hall.

It was still night, he suddenly realized.

And Guthruthr stood over Snjalli’s body, hands around the man’s throat. His brother’s skull had been broken on the table behind him, leaving a bloody mess of brains on its corner.

“What in the gates of Hel?” Baldr demanded.

Panting, Guthruthr turned on him. “Bastard tried to seduce my wife!” The king’s breath stank of mead and rotting meat. Blood had splattered his face and shirt.

All the slaves around the hall, as well as thegns and other warriors stood around, gaping. No man would interfere with a husband making such a claim, especially if that husband was the king. Still, Baldr couldn’t help but glower at the macabre mess of Guthruthr’s hall.

Brothers killing brothers did not serve his goal of a united Sviarland. Not in the least.

“Clean this mess up,” he snapped at no one in particular, then stormed all the way back to his room, slamming the door behind himself.

Once inside, he slumped down on the bed.

What a steaming pile of trollshit. Herleifr had already fled to Ostergotland, understandably turning his back on Guthruthr, and now Hälsingborg had no jarl. Maybe Skane could still hold together while Ingjald conquered the rest of Sviarland, but all it took was an opportunist in Ostergotland to decide Hälsingborg worth plundering, and the wars would stretch on.

Trying to bring peace and unity to the North Realms was like bailing water out of a sinking ship while everyone around him bored fresh holes in the hull. As if men no longer even wanted peace. For that matter, things kept heating up in the South Realms, too. The Valls barely tolerated Baldr anymore, and Miklagard had finally broken through Hymir’s kingdom in Kiovia. The jotunn lord was dead, leaving Gardariki ripe for absorption into Miklagard.

Father said that he’d overthrown the Vanir because they’d given up on Midgard and isolated themselves. Baldr would never do that, but he understood the temptation. It was so very tempting.

* * *

Just after dawn, another shrill scream sounded through Guthruthr’s hall. Baldr had woken with the sun, but refused to get up thanks to the pounding in his head. Too much ale, for certain. When the cry went out, he sat up and groaned. Someone was having a jest at his expense. He knew it.

This time, he did slip on a shirt and boots, and slung Laevateinn over his shoulder. Whatever it was now, it could wait until he was fully dressed. These petty kingdoms ought to be able to attend to themselves for one damn night. Now, instead of setting out on the road well rested, he’d be walking all day half asleep. Because the locals couldn’t treat one another like civilized men.

Once clad, he flung his door open and stalked the corridor until he found Tove.

“What happened?” he asked her.

Her eyes were red, her expression like a bear woken from hibernation. “Slaves found Guthruthr dead, murdered in his own bed. The knife was stuck in his belly, though it had slit his throat before that.”

Oh, by the damn Tree. “Where’s Asa?” If she was dead, too, Ingjald would burn all Skane to the ground.

“Fled from her crime. The twisted bitch cut off his cock and stones.”

“She what? She did this?”

“I’d say so. She shoved his stones in his mouth. Odin alone knows what she did with his cock.”

The girl was fully mist-mad. Baldr could do naught save gape at Tove. Asa, barely more than a girl, had murdered her husband three days into their marriage. Not only murdered, but defaced his body for no apparent reason.

“Should’ve known,” Tove said. “The daughter of a man capable of betraying his own guests like that, burning his own hall … she’s as evil-minded as he is. Spit out from the gates of Hel, I have no doubt.” The woman’s voice was unsteady.

The shieldmaiden was a ship in a storm, ready to break apart, held together only by her rage.

Baldr’s mouth wouldn’t work. He’d brought Asa here in an attempt to forestall slaughter. He’d brought her to Guthruthr.

A sudden realization hit him. Sick, and burning in his gut. “Who saw Snjalli try to claim his brother’s wife?”

Tove looked like she wanted to spit. “No one. Girl herself laid the claim against him, from what the king said.”

Baldr groaned.

Tove blanched. “You mean she tricked the king into murdering his brother? Why?”

Most people needed a reason to murder. But, over his long life, Baldr had met a few—mercifully few—who simply reveled in chaos in all its many forms. Considering her actions, Asa seemed to fit such a description.

“We’re organizing a party to hunt her down,” Tove said when Baldr failed to answer.

If they found her and killed her, it would serve to bring Ingjald’s retribution on Skane. On the other hand, maybe that was inevitable now that the alliance had burned to cinders.

“Will you join us?” the shieldmaiden asked.

Baldr shook his head. “I’m leaving now. I’ll deal with her.”

“You can try. Unless we find her first. I’m inclined to let the wolfhounds tear the bitch to pieces for this.”

Baldr left her and hurried outward. He needed to find the girl before Tove and the others.

Oh, part of him wanted to leave Asa to the shieldmaiden and let her get what she truly deserved. But doing so wouldn’t serve Skane and it wouldn’t serve his aims to solidify the North Realms under the old ways. Not if Ingjald blamed the people here for her death.

On the other hand, if Baldr killed her alone in the woods and no one ever found out … That was sorely tempting.

* * *

He caught up with Asa wandering off the path that headed back toward Agnafit. Already, he had a knife in hand when he found her.

The girl spun to face him, blood still staining her dress and arms. She was grinning broader than she had at her own wedding.

“Why do this?” he demanded. Asa shrugged. “And why deface his body?”

“Oh. I wanted something to remember our time together. Only, turns out it doesn’t work so well without the stones. Shame.”

Baldr blanched, faltering in his steps. She was completely mad. Had she drank in too much mist? Or was she just one of those rare people who had always been wrong? Born wicked, dark. Maybe … maybe not so different from her father?

Ingjald had fair leapt at the occasion to betray his fellow kings. Why should it surprise Baldr his daughter maimed and killed for pleasure?

“What?” she demanded. “You planning to stab me?”

If he did, his hope of a unified Sviarland might die with her. Maybe it should, and he should help Tove and the others unite against Ingjald. But then the Aesir would lose everything. All Midgard would fall to the Deathless faith.

Growling, he shoved the dagger back in its sheath.

“Wonderful!” Asa actually giggled. “So then, you can escort me home.”

“No.”

“Well I’m not sure I can find the way without—”

“I won’t kill you. It’s up to you how you make out on the road alone.” He allowed himself a tight smile at her moment of doubt. The fool girl had been counting on him to track her down, hadn’t she? And she thought he’d help her get back to Ingjald. But Baldr would grieve little if wolves or bandits killed Asa.

As for him, he planned to head back to Agnafit. Nanna was waiting. Ingjald and his vicious daughter could attend to their own mess.

9

Hödr sat perched in the boughs of a twisted oak tree outside of Agnafit, listening to the chirp of birds in the forest beyond, and the soft pad of boots through the snow. Back in the town, men in the harbor were shouting about how far to risk taking the boats out. The skies were clear this day, but storms could crop up quick as a hare, and send men down to Rán.

To the fishermen, those storms probably felt like they came from nowhere, but Hödr could feel it, oft hours ahead of time, as a tingle on his skin. A change in the texture of the air, a taste on the wind that warned him. Had he been in better spirits—and had he thought they’d have believed him instead of calling him mist-mad or vaettr-possessed—he might have bothered to tell the fishermen they’d have several hours, at least this day.

But Hödr wanted little to do with anyone in the town save for Nanna. He’d never pick out her voice among the multitude from this far away, but still, he tormented himself with trying. Desperately wanting to catch her scent, her sound, and hold it inside himself.

Mother had once claimed that love, real love was an all-consuming fire that dimmed out the light of all else. What was it that so pulled him to Nanna, then? Her scent, more intoxicating than the headiest of mead? Her laughter that set his skin to tingling? Or were those but symptoms of a preexisting condition?

Father might have questioned whether the two answers were mutually contradictory. As though both the condition and its manifestation might be predicated upon one another in an unending circle of ever greater need. Hödr suspected some truth must lie in both answers.

The steady gait of a lone traveler trekking through the wood identified Baldr, even before Hödr caught his scent. The glorious Prince of Asgard. The beloved hero of all lands in Midgard, worshipped everywhere he went, in any land. The man who thought himself justified in scheming however he saw fit, perhaps because of his birth, or perhaps because he thought himself alone qualified to decide what was best for all the world. Not so unlike the prince’s father had been, really.

As Baldr drew nigh, Hödr hopped down from the tree branch before him.

The prince started, then backed up a step. “Startling a man like that could get you hurt, cousin.”

Hödr sneered at him. “Did you try to claim Nanna just because you knew I wanted her? Was it pride, cousin? Some arrogance within your breast that refused to let blind, pathetic Hödr have something wonderful when you did not?”

Baldr took a threatening step toward Hödr. “You forget yourself. You are speaking to your prince, and I have no mood for your temper. All I’ve worked to achieve is unraveling. The last thing I wish to deal with is your childish obsession. Had you wished for Nanna’s hand, you should have asked for it in a timely manner.”

Oh, how he wished he’d done so. But even had he posed such a question sooner, Baldr might still have tried to snatch her away. The prince had to have the best of everything, didn’t he? His mother had given him an apple before he’d earned it. She’d given him a runeblade. And still, it wasn’t enough. Hödr drew close to his cousin. By the Tree, how he wanted to beat the man senseless. “You have probably lain with more women than anyone else on Midgard. But you had to have Nanna, didn’t you? Withdraw your offer for her hand.”

Baldr shoved him backward. “What do you care whether your wife is beautiful? You can’t see her anyway! Settle for a plain girl, the daughter of any king or jarl you wish. Hel, you can have Asa now.”

Hödr caught Baldr in the jaw with a right hook. The prince spun around, stumbled, and turned back to Hödr, snarling. He jerked free his runeblade. Though Hödr couldn’t see it, exactly, he felt the heat as the blade burst into flames.

Falling back a few steps, Hödr drew his own blade. “All I’m asking, is for you back down this one time! But you can’t even do that, can you? Not once can you come in second.”

“I am the prince!” Baldr launched into a series of slashes with the flaming blade. The prince had unmatched speed and strength, his ferocity driving Hödr back. Laevateinn’s flames licked at his flesh on several close misses, the heat a painful reminder of Eldr.

Hödr growled, whipping his own blade up to parry. Baldr’s runeblade chipped Hödr’s sword, leaving him gaping. The prince’s boot caught Hödr in the chest and sent him sprawling. A swipe from Laevateinn knocked Hödr’s sword aside.

Another slash tore through Hödr’s cheek. The flames singed his skin and ignited his hair. All he could do was scream in pain and terror, frantically patting down his hair in an attempt to extinguish it. Baldr heaved him up to his feet with a hand around his throat.

“You have attacked your prince. That’s treason and I’d be well within my rights to cut your head from your shoulders.”

“Do it!” Hödr snarled at him.

Laevateinn’s pommel caught him square in the face. Everything blacked out, Hödr’s senses overwhelmed by the pain. He steadied himself and realized he was lying flat on his back in the snow. The sounds began to filter in an instant before a boot caught him in the ribs. An audible snap issued inside him. Two broken ribs.

Hödr tried to roll over into a ball to protect his midsection.

Baldr’s foot caught him in his arms and hefted him off the ground, sending him flying several paces before crashing back down into the snow once more.

Hödr lay there, groaning, unable to focus his senses enough to even know what went on around him.

“This is mercy, cousin,” Baldr spat. “Instead of taking your life, I banish you from Asgard. Count yourself lucky. You’re the only man to ever draw a blade on me and live.”

Hödr wanted to protest that Baldr had drawn first, but all he managed was a gurgle of blood and a groan.

Baldr’s footsteps receded into the town, stomping on snow as he went.

Shit, shit, trollshit!

Hödr coughed, spasmed, and spit out a glob of blood. A surge of pain in his mouth at the motion had him probing a tooth with his tongue. The tooth fell loose at even the slight touch, pulling out by the roots. Hödr moaned, letting it fall into his hand before tossing it aside.

“Owwww.”

Nanna.

No, no, no.

He’d be going to her. And now Hödr had no chance. None at all, unless he could overpower Baldr, and any other Ás who came to his aid. But Hödr would never manage to defeat Baldr, least of all while he had that runeblade. All he could do was get himself killed.

Even that no longer sounded so bad. The pain in his body was almost as agonizing as the pain in his heart.

* * *

Blood still dribbled down from Hödr’s mouth as he limped along through the wood. He could not return to Agnafit. Baldr would no doubt have turned Eindride against him. Maybe Hödr had once thought of the jarl as a friend, but no man, least of all a jarl, would cross the Prince of Asgard. Ironically, the only place Hödr could now find shelter from Baldr’s wrath was like to be among the lands overrun by the accursed Deathless.

Of course, any Deathless priest who learned of his immortality or status as an Ás—former Ás?—would be like to have had him hung or burnt alive. They did not tolerate immortality besides that which their faith promised.

Hödr raised the back of his hand to his mouth to scrub away at the blood. Damn Baldr. The prince thought he could have aught he ever desired, and no matter if anyone else had desired it first. Everyone on Asgard had shunned and disdained Hödr all his life. Why should this prove any different?

He had no friends there, and Baldr had everyone.

Maybe he ought to travel to Hunaland or Bjarmaland and dwell in lands claimed by the Deathless. Maybe, though he could not stand the thought of living without Nanna. No, it was better that he find a time to ambush Baldr and end this. More like than not, he’d die in the attempt. Better than living in this anguish.

But he did not turn back toward Agnafit, rather following the sound of water to a bubbling creek. A figure sitting on the rocks there held so incredibly still Hödr almost wouldn’t have noticed him, but for his scent.

“Father?”

Of course. The man must have seen this in the flames and come to console his son. Hödr forced a smile then realized that probably revealed a bloody gap where one of his canine teeth had been.

Father rose and pulled him into an embrace. His hand was warm on Hödr’s shoulder, and Hödr stood there a long while. If he had eyes, maybe he’d have wept. Perhaps not. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to have eyes.

Finally, Father broke away and drew him down to water’s edge, then began dabbing at Hödr’s injuries.

“I can do it myself.”

“I know.” Father rinsed a scrap of linen in the almost freezing waters then handed it to Hödr.

Hödr wedged the cloth inside his mouth a moment, pressing it hard in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. After a moment, he handed it back. “If you knew this would happen, why didn’t you warn me?”

“I see less than I once did, and I never saw everything. I know things, events that will happen, but they’re oft fragmented and out of context. I cannot always determine things like when or why something will happen. I’m better about finding people.”

“Not Odin.” That failing had bothered Father for long years, though he maintained he’d know if Odin had died.

“No, that’s different.” Father blew out a breath. “You must let this go, Hödr. Your mother, she … she knows it was a terrible mistake, what she did to you.”

“She did it for me.” Hödr had never blamed Mother for summoning Eldr, despite the torment it had created for him. Well … he hadn’t blamed her much. In his darkest moments, he’d traced his suffering back to that accursed day. His blindness had always bothered her more than it bothered him.

“Yes, she did.” Father sighed. “All actions create ripples, they become links in causal chains leading invariably toward urd. As much as we might wish to change the course of urd, fate will not be denied. Still, if we perceive the necessary results of actions and thus trace those chains forward and realize we are carried toward a dark urd, we are obliged to at least try to sever the chains, aren’t we?”

“Such musings suit you and Mother more than me.” Least of all when he was in such a mood. Maybe Father meant all of this entailed out of necessity from Mother first summoning Eldr into him. Maybe that was even true. But if so, that too had been predicated upon causal chains in her life, the pains she’d felt in her own childhood. Either way, Hödr had no desire to dwell on such a thing. It served no purpose. Urd was urd, and Hödr was sick of it.

“Indulge me, and stray from this course you’ve set before yourself. You will find naught save woe on the path you start down.”

Hödr shook his head. “I will not surrender to Baldr, not even if it means my death. If that is urd, so be it. But I cannot deny my own heart.”

Father sighed again. “No. We cannot deny our hearts. In the end, it’s better to follow your heart, knowing it will lead to pain, than to give up on everything.”

That truth was one lesson Father and Mother had always imparted to him, always agreed on. “I must overcome Baldr.”

His father rose, stretching. “If you try to fight Baldr as it stands, he’ll kill you.”

“His runeblade makes him almost invincible. There must be another one out there, one not claimed by Odin. Hermod has one …”

“He’ll never allow you to use Dainsleif, much less with intent to betray his prince. No one loyal to Asgard will aid you, at least not if they know what you are about. There is a runeblade out there. It was claimed by Sigurd Fafnirsbane, given to Thrain the Witch-King, and buried with him. Many years ago a man named Hromundr plundered his barrow and used the blade to fight his enemies—at least until he lost it in the Gandvik.”

Hödr slumped down onto his arse. Part of him wanted to wail in frustration, but surely Father would not have come all this way if he could not offer some help. “What good is a runeblade at the bottom of the sea?”

“The son of a Witch-Queen of Pohjola traded for it from a mer, and now wields it in his attempt to overthrow Kalevala. He has nearly succeeded. If the last kings of Kalevala fall, all Kvenland will come under the yoke of the twisted warlord.”

Hödr had heard of trouble in Kvenland, but Frigg had forbidden the Aesir to get involved, given that the Kvenlanders refused to worship them. He had not, however, realized the land was so nigh to faltering. “Suppose I go there, then, and kill this warlord?”

“Rutto, a son of Loviatar.” Father paused, helping Hödr to his feet. “The witch herself died centuries ago, though her son remains a formidable foe.” Father paused to hand him another clean cloth with which to dab at his cheek. “Son, if you go down this path, if you kill Baldr, there will be a terrible price to pay.”

Hödr pulled the cloth from his wound. “I’ll not surrender and do naught! I will not live out the rest of my immortal life knowing I gave in to Baldr.”

Father’s hand fell heavy on his shoulder. “Just consider your actions with care.”

“All I must consider now is where to get a crew to reach Kvenland in winter. No one wishes to sail and risk the storms.”

“You’ll have to go overland,” Father said.

Unfortunately, Hödr feared he was right. Still, such a trek would take far too long. He’d have to get dogsleds at the very least, and even then, it would be a long, tedious journey.

The subtle shift in Father’s aura revealed that the man wanted to say something, though it pained him.

“What is it?”

“There’s a crew of mercenaries out of Gardariki at Agnafit, men who fled the spreading Deathless faith. For the right price, they’ll serve you, especially with Gevarus’s blessing.”

Oh. But would King Gevarus give his blessing in a quest to thwart Baldr?

* * *

Moving through Agnafit unnoticed had taken some effort. Being able to hear men well before they came into view allowed Hödr to slip between buildings, wait for passersby to move on, and otherwise avoid detection, though that meant the whole process proved painfully tedious.

He could never enter Eindride’s hall like that, so Father had passed on a message to the king to meet Hödr down by the harbor. Sitting under the eave of a fisherman’s house, Hödr had begun to wonder if the king would even show up.

The stench of fish guts mixed with the salt of the sea covered scents, so he didn’t notice the king until the man came around the corner looking for him. Alone. Hödr had half expected to find Baldr and a small war band come to arrest him. Or murder him.

He climbed to his feet. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course, my lord. I’d never refuse you.”

“Does Baldr know?”

The king grunted. “The prince returned to Asgard, saying he needed to make arrangements before the wedding.”

“I … I still wish to wed your daughter.”

Gevarus sighed. “I cannot go against the wishes of the prince. Surely you—”

“I know. I aim to change his mind. But first I need something from Kvenland. Mercenaries loyal to your rule are wintering here in Agnafit, led by a man named Andrik. I know you cannot lend your thegns without risking Baldr learning of it. But mercenaries …”

Gevarus grunted. “I remember the man, Andrik, though I’m not so sure he’s loyal to me anymore. He wanted me to ban the Deathless from the city, but of course I couldn’t do that. It would have invited invasion. I didn’t know he’d come here, though.”

“Go with me to meet him and convince him to hire his band with me.”

“Kvenland is in chaos these days, but I’ll not deny you, lord.”

* * *

Andrik’s band turned out to be five men and a shieldmaiden. Hardly an army, but Hödr could see the violence in their auras. These were killers, men who loved the life of raiders and refused to surrender it.

Gevarus himself promised them each ten pieces of Miklagardian silver for accompanying Hödr.

Doubt and greed warred in Andrik’s aura as he scratched at his neck. “Kvenland’s thick with unnatural things. Witches and draugar and what all. Never heard of so fell a place, tell you true, and I don’t suppose we want aught to do with the place.”

Hödr still had a fair amount of silver on him. After all, his role in Baldr’s service had oft required him to bribe a jarl or a king. “Suppose I throw in another five silver pieces? Each.”

The shieldmaiden chortled. “Fifteen silver pieces apiece? I’d kill a godsdamned linnorm for that.”

“You couldn’t kill a dragon if it was still inside an egg, Kasmira,” one of the others said.

“Please. I’d fry the little bastard up for the day meal.”

“Now your cooking—that’s like to kill someone,” the man retorted.

Kasmira made a gesture but Hödr couldn’t catch such a subtle motion.

“Seems we have a bargain,” Andrik said.

“Good,” Hödr answered. “Get us dogsleds. The fastest ones in Sviarland. I care naught for the cost.”

The mercenary snorted. “Get the feeling we’ll be getting on well, you and I.”

Hödr nodded at Gevarus. Yes, he’d retrieve the missing runeblade. And then he’d force Baldr to give up his claim to Nanna. The prince thought he could have aught he wished.

He was wrong.

10

Odin dragged himself onto the riverbank, chest heaving and hair plastered over his face. The current grew even swifter ahead, beating about rocks in rapids he suspected would kill even an immortal.

Beside him, Idunn groaned as she rose to her knees. Wet, the sheer fabric of her dress stuck to her like another skin. The rains had stopped though, so Odin imagined they’d both dry out in less than an hour.

Idunn swept her hair back from her face and spit out water. “The Radiant Falls are up ahead. We can follow the course of the river, but we can’t use it to hide our scents any longer. We’d never manage to get clear of the currents.”

“How tall are these falls?”

She rose, wobbled, then blew out a breath. “I’m not sure. Hundreds of feet, maybe clear out of Alfheim.”

Out of Alfheim? That sounded like a very long drop. Odin found his legs even more unstable than Idunn’s had seemed. Damn but he missed that walking stick. “How do we get back to the Redwood Grove?”

“I … I don’t know from here. I think we could follow the cliff south until we spotted the Spire of Magec, then turn back into the rainforest. But that way would take us through wetlands claimed by the feathered serpent and we have no sacrifice to offer.”

“Feathered serpent? Like a dragon?”

Idunn nodded, still looking about as if confused. Indeed, Odin wondered how she even knew which way was south when the sun always stayed at its zenith.

“I’m not sure we have another choice,” Odin said. “We risk running into this dragon or else we take too long to get back to her, right? Ullr is already hunting us and we cannot afford any delay.”

Idunn groaned. “I know she’s all you care about, Odin, but—”

“That’s not true. I care about you, as well. I … did I ever tell you who you are to me?”

Now she chuckled and started off along the riverside. “What, that you’re my grandfather born once more from your Wheel of Life? You realize that’s utter nonsense. You hung yourself and had visions prompted by asphyxiation, Odin. Your dying mind conjured up bits and pieces of the tales I told you and melded them into some narrative that cast you as a lost hero. My grandparents are long dead. And if you knew who I really was, you might not be half so keen to consider us family.”

Odin frowned. He remembered pieces of his past lives, though those memories had grown so very hazy. Still, Idunn couldn’t be correct. She couldn’t. He’d based all his decisions on the veracity of whatever he gleaned from the Sight, forward or backward, past or future. But the Vanir hadn’t believed in such things, or had lost their faith during the long stretch of their immortality. Odin would have expected Idunn’s time in this world to have shifted her mindset, but it seemed to have had other effects.

“You have changed,” he said. “Your skin glows now, yes, but somehow I feel like you lost some of the lightness you had when we first met.”

Idunn stiffened in front of him, then walked on without looking back at him.

She’d taken offense, though he hadn’t meant to hurt her with those words. Rather, it seemed like, because of his actions, Idunn had lost a part of herself here.

“If we had more time, I’d sunbathe and reabsorb the light so I could Stride again. Unfortunately, we have to keep moving.”

That was all too true.

More high-pitched howls sounded from the rainforest.

Odin flinched, then quickened his pace even as Idunn cast a nervous glance back at him. “Keep moving!” he snapped. They couldn’t afford to let Ullr catch them. He didn’t even want to know what made those howls, and naught he could recall from his visions seemed to match up with this moment.

Idunn broke into a trot that Odin needed to use pneuma to match.

As she’d warned, the river grew swifter the farther they followed, until a roaring waterfall drowned out all other sounds ahead. When at last they broke through the tree line, Odin faltered, gaping.

The Radiant Falls earned their name because of the almost blinding gleam of sunlight reflecting off a curving fall that stretched at least a quarter mile across. Mist rose up off the waters, partially concealing a narrow stone bridge spanning the river. On either side of the falls rose painted marble statues a hundred feet tall, a male and a female, both armored and with drawn swords pointing out over the drop.

“We have to cross!” Idunn shouted.

“What?”

“We’re on the wrong side, we have to cross the bridge.” She dashed for the stone bridge, but paused on the edge. “It looks slick. Watch your step.”

Oh, damn it. The bridge barely had a lip to stop him from pitching over the side. It was just a drop right onto the falls. The path was no more than five feet wide, either. Maybe whoever built this expected people to be taking their time, enjoying the view.

Unfortunately, circumstances didn’t allow for that.

Idunn spread out a hand in front of her as she made her way across, and Odin followed behind her, casting the occasional glance over his shoulder for fear of his pursuers.

Partway across, Idunn let out a yelp. On the far side of the bridge, a pair of hounds had begun plodding toward them. Hounds the size of small horses, with green fur in plaited braids, wolf-like ears, and gleaming eyes.

Behind them, a blond bearded man with a bow in hand emerged from the rainforest, flanked by two more of the strange hounds.

Idunn faltered, hands out before her. Frey joined the other two hounds, looking almost as feral, with a shining sword in hand.

“I should have known you’d betray the Sun!” Frey shouted at Idunn.

Panting, Idunn slowly raised her hands in surrender.

No. No, Odin was not going back to that damn tower. He had a duty to Midgard. Urd called him back. His fists clenched at his sides, but he had no weapon to draw.

He turned his gaze back and forth between Ullr and Frey. Both Vanir closed in, the hounds plodding before them. He might overpower one of them barehanded, but to fight both and the animals wouldn’t end well.

“Jump.”

“What?” Idunn demanded. “You have no idea where we’d even—”

Odin grabbed her shoulder. “Jump!” And he leapt over the side of the bridge, dragging Idunn along with him.

For a gut-wrenching instant he was weightless, wind whipping over his face. Then water seized him, crashing over him and stealing air and sight and time. Idunn’s hand snared around his wrist, but the power of the falls threatened to strip her away. He pulled on his pneuma, clutching onto the woman in desperation.

Stark terror clawed at his mind as they just kept falling.

So far that, if they hit water below, it would shatter bone. It would have to.

And then a vertigo more powerful than he’d ever felt seized him. Down was no longer down, and direction lost all meaning. A current snared him, and he was underwater, engulfed in blackness.

When the swirling around him finally abated and some sense of direction returned, Odin desperately kicked for the surface. He broke free, Idunn beside him, gasping down painful breaths. Light and color had vanished, replaced by the fathomless shadows and endless starlight of the Astral Realm.

The river was cold, almost freezing, and his teeth set to chattering before he’d even caught his breath. Idunn clung to him, seeming even more disoriented than he felt. Swimming with her arm wrapped around his shoulders took more effort, but he dare not release her. Wherever they had wound up, he couldn’t take the risk of the currents separating them.

Numerous such rivers ran through the Astral Realm, he knew, though most seemed inaccessible in his forays in the Penumbra. Were they in the Roil? Were they in the sky? Or did such notions of up and down fail within this nonphysical space?

Idunn’s teeth were chattering as well, and she’d started moaning. “What have you done? Try not to swallow any of the water! We don’t know—”

A sudden undertow snared them and water splashed up over their faces.

When he came back up, ice shelves crashed together, crunching and bouncing apart. Oh, damn it. They’d get crushed between two of those.

“We have to get atop a shelf!” he shouted.

That sounded almost impossible, unless these were more like tiny icebergs, with a larger portion under the water. Hoping for the best, Odin swam to the nearest surface, grabbed the edge, and heaved with pneuma-enhanced strength. Rather than flip over as he feared, the ice shelf just bobbed a little and allowed him to roll onto it.

Flat on his back, he extended an arm to Idunn, and she grabbed his wrist. He heaved her up, and she rolled over him and onto the ice.

“Just like the damn Ylgr,” Idunn mumbled.

Odin was too exhausted to laugh.

* * *

The nether river carried them through shadows so thick they seemed alive on the banks, nameless horrors grasping at the air as if intent to consume all creation. Odin had always tried to avoid the Roil. Here, the Lethe stole memories and transformed souls into wretched things, while timeless entities sought to devour trespassers.

If one spoke with the dead, they would sometimes mention cities out in the Roil, where shades congregated under the unflinching gazes of dark powers. Odin had heard the tale oft enough he’d begun to believe it.

Thus, he peered into those writhing masses of shadow, wondering if he might spot the fabled walls of those necropolises. But all he saw was more darkness.

Idunn shivered. She had her arms wrapped around her knees. Her eyes were opened too wide, as if she’d seen something he had not.

Odin patted her elbow, but she only flinched. “I had only assumed you would have seen this before. That you might have tried to leave Alfheim.”

“I have seen it.” Her voice had become a whisper.

What terrors had she suffered? Now, thanks to him, he brought her to this again. Naught he could say to her would offer much solace, so instead, he returned to watching the nebulous banks.

* * *

A cracking sound shot through the ice shelf on which Odin sat.

Idunn sucked in a deep breath and held it.

Oh. Well, damn.

Odin mirrored her, holding his breath.

An instant later, a crack rent through the center of the shelf, pitching them down into chill waters of utter blackness. Even the starlight vanished, gone when he surfaced once more. He gasped down another breath.

A fierce undertow seized his legs and jerked him underwater, and down, far deeper than the river ought to have stretched. Like he was falling into an abyss.

Where was Idunn? Odin flailed, grasping all around blindly in the hopes of catch her, but found naught. The current whipped him around, as if in a maelstrom, spinning him beyond any hope of knowing where it carried him, save, ever downward.

All at once it shot him forward, propelled like an arrow from bow. Water shot up his nose and filled his lungs. His momentum carried him to the surface, at least for a bare instant, before his weight pulled him under once more.

With wild gyrations he swam upward again, sucking down a breath that burned his raw throat. Panting, coughing. Flailing around.

There was Idunn, maybe two score feet away, looking almost as overwrought as he felt. Her skin still held a faint hint of radiance, making her seem to glow like a torch in this gloomy place.

Odin coughed again. Above them spread out a canopy of night with stars but no moon. He was no longer in a river, but a lake, or a gentle sea. He couldn’t make out land in any direction.

Was he still in the Astral Realm, or had they passed back into the Spirit Realm?

Still short on breath, he made his way slowly to Idunn. “Are you all right?”

She blinked, staring at the night sky, then moaned.

“You know where we are?”

She coughed. “This is Svartalfheim.”

The World of Dark.

Part II

Year 399, Age of the Aesir

Winter

11

Hermod had not returned to Asgard for several years, so his first stop was to Yggdrasil to see Syn. Odin had warned him, long years ago, that serving as his protégé, walking his dark path, would not endear Hermod to his loved ones. Frigg had chided and disdained Odin for his own long absences, and everyone had known it. Still, Hermod could not turn from the calling Odin had placed on him.

Besides, sometimes, when he looked on Syn he saw …

His wife was inside the World Tree, working on sword forms. She turned abruptly at his approach, then spat over her shoulder. “I’d begun to think you dead.”

Hermod frowned. He’d deserved that, of course. “You know better than that. I’ve sought after Odin in every land on Midgard.”

Now his wife sheathed her sword. “We’ve been here before, Hermod. You know I was loyal to Odin. I’ll never forget the honor he bestowed upon me in granting me this trust here. But the king is dead. He’s never coming back.”

“He entrusted me with the care of Valhalla.” A secret he’d told no one save his wife. So many times Hermod had walked the hall, somehow hoping to see Sif’s face among the einherjar. But she wasn’t there, and never would be. She’d died so very long ago and if any valkyrie had claimed her soul, she’d have come to Valhalla back then. But still he looked for her, there, and everywhere else in the Penumbra.

“You change the topic. If your duty is to Valhalla, fine, see to it. That doesn’t require you to wander the whole damn world hunting after the fallen king.”

“Loki says he lives.”

The look on her face said plainly that she had no intention of having that conversation again. Few Aesir trusted Odin’s blood brother, who knew too many things, saw too many things in his flames. It was unmanly and strange. It unnerved warriors, though, considering his wife lived in a tree that granted immortality and bound the worlds together, it ought not to have felt so very odd to her. Once, though, Hermod would have thought as she did.

She would never really understand the way he had to see the world now, having embraced his heritage as the child of a valkyrie.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said at last. “I just wanted to see you.”

“You mean you wanted a quick fuck before you head out again.”

Hermod spread his hands. Admittedly, her suggestion would not go amiss.

Syn burst out laughing. “Get over here, then.”

* * *

There was a peace on Asgard, and those who stayed too long here tended to forget how the rest of the world seemed to be decaying. Walking the streets of the golden city, Hermod saw people laughing, lounging about. They swam in the streams, perhaps not even realizing that, elsewhere, winter had stretched on across the entire summer. That, now, once again, winter was unfolding, and naught had changed.

The seasons were askew, and badly so. No one here knew it, or cared. Nor much cared that every day another king or jarl was murdered. Hermod could not remember any time in his long life he’d seen so much bloodshed as had unfolded in the past two decades.

He’d seen mothers sell their own children into slavery. He’d seen husbands murder their wives over petty complaints. He’d seen men hungry enough they killed other men just to eat their flesh.

And the wars never stopped. There was no refuge left on Midgard not touched by the slaughter.

That was why he’d now begun fresh attempts to find Odin. Because, without the king, Midgard was finally failing. It seemed so obvious to him, though Frigg and her court refused to acknowledge that doom. Maybe the queen saw it as an insult to her rule, as if he blamed her. He didn’t really, though she could have and should have done better. She held things together here in Asgard and she sent warriors to Midgard to hold back trolls and such. But her efforts in the kingdoms of men had long remained in the shadows.

Most Aesir slowly forgot they were part of the same world as the people out there dying. A warrior people grown weak and decadent. They had seen that before, with the Vanir. They’d fought the Vanir for failing mankind. Maybe Frigg was more involved than the Vanir had been at the end … but who knew how things would look in another century? How long before the court decided to withdraw from Midgard entirely, and leave mortals to their petty games?

Hermod paid a brief visit to Valhalla. Over the passing centuries, the hall had grown more and more full with feasting einherjar. Odin had created a refuge for the warrior dead, though the few valkyries who remained could hardly claim all the fallen. No, most where lost to the shadows.

Having seen to the warriors—they still trained daily, readying themselves for Ragnarok, though Odin had not come back, and some must doubt the battle still lay ahead—Hermod made his way to Loki’s hall.

The man’s hall was modest, atop a mountain overlooking the sea and offering a brilliant vista, while somewhat secluded from the bustle of the rest of the court. Hermod trod up the path.

His foster sister met him at the summit, no doubt having heard even his soft footfalls. She—and her son—were amazing in that regard. Hermod had honed his senses as well, and Sigyn had helped him learn to do so, but he was no match for either of them when it came to such talents.

He drew her into a warm embrace. “It’s been too long.”

Sigyn patted him on the back, then pulled away and guided him to the cliff where she’d so often sat with her husband. No sign of him, though.

“Loki?”

“He went to Midgard saying he feared Hödr had need of him. I asked if I should come as well, but he promised to return soon enough. And I stay busy enough with Sessrumnir. I’ve been creating an index to make it easier to find Vanr references, and some of the others—the younger ones, mostly—have wanted to learn to read.”

Hermod himself had learned a little, under Odin’s tutelage, but had rarely practiced it since. “How’s your son?”

“They’re both well enough, though I see Hödr rarely and Narfi almost never.”

Her subtle reminder that she’d taken the half-jotunn as her own child. A strange choice, and one that didn’t much endear her to the Aesir, but then, Sigyn herself had been Hadding’s bastard child, fostered by Hermod’s family. Nor had Sigyn ever seemed to care overmuch what others thought of her. Hermod rather admired that about her.

“Will you stay for the night meal?” she asked. “I’m not the cook Loki is, but I’ve learned a few things over the years.” Though, she’d refused to keep a house slave who could have done such things for her. Even Hermod had his own slave, though the man was getting old now.

“Given that you seem to master any discipline you wish, I have to imagine if you’ve not mastered cooking, it’s for lack of interest in doing so.”

Sigyn quirked a smile at that. “Either way, I’ve been stewing carrots and fish. It should be ready in an hour or so. Stay. Please.”

How could he refuse?

* * *

Sigyn’s stew, while hardly extraordinary, proved far more appetizing than most of what Hermod ate on the road. And since he spent most of his days on the road, this meal came as a welcome reprieve.

When they had eaten, they walked down the mountain slope and around the cliff by the sea, Sigyn talking at length about her latest obsession: Vanr studies of the stars. Hermod didn’t see how such things made the least difference in anyone’s lives and thus how they were worth studying, but his sister seemed more than content to invest her time in such pursuits.

“What of you?” she asked. “Were you down in Serkland again?”

She meant, was he still out there killing Serks for what they’d done to Sif. Despite Odin’s admonitions to leave it be, Hermod had hunted down numerous Serk officers and even two caliphs. His abilities gave him an exceptional gift for murder, when the need arose.

Hermod grunted. “I … uh. I haven’t been anymore. Whoever was responsible for … for my daughter … They’d be long dead. And Midgard has greater worries at the moment. I cannot help but see the state of the world and fear for the future. War and treachery lurk around every bend. Without Odin, I don’t see how … Are we on the same road as the Vanir?”

He knew he wasn’t making much sense, but Sigyn nodded as if she understood anyway. His sister was always like that. Always so easy for her to see the connections and make the leaps, to know things. So many things. Maybe … Maybe she could help.

Hermod told her of the spread of the Deathless, the general deterioration of all kingdoms, and she murmured along as he spoke. Surely not all of it came as news to her. And yet, the more he spoke of what he saw, the grimmer her face grew.

“Do you know something?” he finally asked.

Sigyn sighed and sat down in the sand, hand to her forehead. “Did you know that the dvergar carved runes into Halfhaugr? In rooms below the surface, where Frigg used to brew her potions, there was … a prophecy, I think. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but it spoke of Ragnarok—the end of time.”

Hermod slumped down beside her. “Ragnarok. Odin was always going on about it … but I thought he stopped it? Thrym and Skadi are dead. Narfi now holds the jotunnar under control.” Of a sudden she tensed, only for an instant, but it was there. “You know something more.”

“I don’t think Odin stopped Ragnarok.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Sigyn looked to him now, debate warring over her face. “Maybe I can’t share everything. But I can tell you what the runes beneath Halfhaugr said. 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 … The Destroyer wakes …”

Hermod found it hard to swallow. Families betraying each other and a time of terrible war. That certainly sounded like what was going on. And Sigyn had known, since … since before they ever came to Vanaheim and made it Asgard.

“Destroyer?” he finally asked. “A jotunn?”

“Oh, Hermod, brother.” Sigyn clucked her tongue. “It’s Odin. And you’re right, I’m not sure we can win Ragnarok without him. But Loki has tried for years to find him without success.”

“I have now done so.”

They both jerked around to see Sigyn’s husband standing behind them. How in the gates of Hel had the man snuck up on him, much less on Sigyn? Were they so engrossed in the unfolding horror of some ancient dverg prophecy?

“Y-you found him?” Hermod asked, climbing to his feet. Even standing, Loki was much taller than him.

Loki nodded. “For a long time, I couldn’t see him at all, though I could have guessed where he went. Where he’s always wanted to go. But he did not return and I didn’t know with complete certainty. He’s left there now, though. I saw a glimpse of him with Idunn.”

Sigyn drew in a sharp breath. “Idunn?”

“They’re in Svartalfheim,” Loki said.

Hermod blanched. “That’s not …” Odin couldn’t travel bodily to the Spirit Realm. The man had hinted that perhaps Hermod could do so, passing through the Astral Realm and on to those outer realities. But Odin had never been able to manage it. “How is he in such a place?”

Loki fitted him with an intense look, so intense Hermod backed away. “Do you believe it matters how he has done it, or simply that he has been trapped in the Spirit Realm for all these years?”

Odin was trapped. Hermod could never avert the descent into chaos without the king. The world needed Odin, especially if Sigyn was right about Ragnarok looming closer.

“I … I have to go after him.”

“No!” Sigyn said. “You can’t even think to go there. Not even the Vanir were willing to risk such a thing. Some of their scholars mused that the power of Dark might be more horrifying than Mist.”

Loki laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Hermod is the only one who can go after him now.”

Sigyn shook her head. “I refuse to allow this madness.”

Hermod kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, sister. We must have the king. The things you’ve told me only make me all the more sure of it.”

Sigyn cast a dark look at Loki, though Hermod couldn’t say for certain what import their unspoken exchange held.

Hermod offered them both a nod, then he plodded off, into the forest. There, he breathed deeply.

Then he stepped through the Veil and into shadow.

12

Frigg met Sigyn in the garden, in the valley Valaskjalf overlooked. Once, a long time ago, this had been wilderness, but—at Frigg’s request—Sigyn had drawn up plans for a cultivated refuge here, one overflowing with flowers centered around a pond the queen had ordered men to dig for her. All of it walled off from the natural reaches of the island.

Her sister wanted to enjoy the flowers, but not the wilderness that went with them.

She did use a small portion of the garden to cultivate herbs. Or, rather, she allowed Eir to use it, relying on rare plants for most of her needs as a healer.

The queen sat on a stone bench before the pond now, hands folded in her lap, staring out over the waters but probably not really seeing them at all.

Folding her dress, Sigyn sat down beside her sister. Things hadn’t ever really been the same between them. Not since Hödr had hurt Thrúd. Sigyn couldn’t blame Frigg for her pain at that, and naught she could say would ever really make it better.

After all, it had been Sigyn’s fault. Her crimes. Her mistakes that had rent asunder their two families.

“I was glad you sent for me,” she said. Particularly as it offered a small distraction from Hermod’s mist-mad plan to travel to Svartalfheim.

Frigg glanced at her, then put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “It occurred to me, maybe too many years had passed without us having a moment alone together.”

A great many years, without a doubt. “I hear you’ve commissioned new ships.”

“Oh.” Frigg withdrew her arm and shrugged. “They’re using one of your old designs, actually. We trust to the reef to protect us, and to Aegir, but it occurred to me it would not hurt to have a few vessels ready to deter anyone who might think to try their luck at finding Asgard. Things with Valland continue to grow direr, and, sooner or later, some warlord or other will look to make a name for himself by destroying the heathen gods.”

No doubt, though Sigyn suspected Aegir himself—given the tribute Frigg paid him—would provide severe deterrent to anyone who came here looking to make war. Besides the numerous Ás immortal warriors now residing on Asgard. In the past, many of those would have gone out into the world, fighting Odin’s wars or making their fame. Not now, though. Now, Frigg pulled more and more Aesir back. Her interest in Midgard had flagged with the passing of centuries.

Odin’s obsession with saving the world had never really motivated Frigg. She looked to her own people first and foremost. That made her a better monarch, of course. A queen who cared deeply about her own people and left the rest of the world to fend for themselves. Never mind that the Vanr, too, had lived like that.

“The ships can’t hurt.” Sigyn kept her expression blank, even though Frigg wasn’t looking at her. Given that her sister was finally, after so long, bothering to speak to her as a sister again, she wouldn’t jeopardize that by antagonizing the woman’s decisions. Not just yet, anyway.

“Actually, there’s something else that concerns me a bit more.” So there was a reason behind her summons beyond sisterly affection. Well, Sigyn had assumed as much when the messenger had come for her. “Thor returned the other day, on Sleipnir. He reports that winter never broke. It just rolled along all through summer and now winter draws nigh once more.”

Well, that was … disturbing. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Peruse the archives to see if you can find out why.”

Sigyn had already read the better part of the books available in Sessrumnir. “The only reference I’ve seen to something like that was stories from the early days, before the Vanir came here. They passed local tribes calling it the Fimbulvinter. Saying that Niflheim had stolen the summer itself, or some such.”

Frigg frowned. “We called this time the Fimbulvinter. Völvur and skalds, I mean.”

“I know. Probably from the Vanir who got the term from the dvergar.”

“What about them?”

Sigyn shrugged. “They’ve all gone into hiding, from what I hear. Even in Nidavellir, no one sees them anymore. Within the past few years, they’ve stopped showing up to even accept their usual tribute from the lands adjacent. Just sealed the doors to their tunnels.”

“What?”

It had worried her, a little, though she’d not really discussed it with anyone. “Let me have another look in the library, then.” She hadn’t given consideration to scouring Vanr tomes about dvergar.

Frigg patted her hand. “I cannot help but feel an ill omen in all this.”

Ah, but then most people thought the Aesir sent omens. Knowing all she knew now, of the true nature of Vanir, of vaettir, Sigyn hardly knew what to think, save that spirits did little for the benefit or edification of mankind. At best, the Otherworldly creatures tolerated mortals.

Still, she couldn’t entirely dismiss Frigg’s concerns.

* * *

Dverg runes swam before her eyes, seeming to dance about the page with discomfiting ease, a blur of cryptic references in an oblique language the Vanir themselves appeared to only have half understood. Once, when she’d first come to Sessrumnir, she’d thought the Vanir so very learned, wise beyond all understanding. Some measure of truth probably remained in that thought, and yet, they themselves had understood so very little of the greater scope of the cosmos.

Sometimes, as with this previously misfiled tome, they had simply recorded the observations of vaettir with little or no annotation or analysis. A crude Vanr hand—not Mundilfari or Freyja, those she could recognize—had scribbled in the margins of this book: Vaettir lie; regard as propaganda.

Apathetic and useless.

Sigyn rubbed her eyes before flipping the page again. Unbroken winter presages the breaking of axes and the days of wolves.

Days of wolves … Wolf time. Like the runes beneath Halfhaugr? Also dverg writings—a prophecy about the Destroyer. Odin. And Hermod had just left to find him.

Damn it … why couldn’t she fit these pieces together?

“All right,” she mumbled, shoving the book aside. Odin was the Destroyer. Which would seem to mean he would cause Ragnarok, though he’d spent years trying to prevent it. But Loki himself claimed to have been working toward creating that final battle. Centuries ago, Loki and Idunn had quarreled over who could control the Destroyer. So … Loki was using Odin to create this final battle. And Idunn had known, or suspected it, even before Odin had become king.

Odin was with Idunn again.

Hel had tried to sway Odin’s loyalties through the Niflungar, and, failing that, had tried to have him killed. Which meant Loki’s daughter feared Odin, or possibly feared Loki’s plans for the man.

This led her to believe Odin would fight on their side come Ragnarok, despite the Destroyer mantle.

So if ‘days of wolves’ meant Ragnarok, and the unending winter presaged that … the final battle was already beginning. And Odin was missing.

Huh. “Well, fuck.” She slammed the book shut. She couldn’t tell Frigg these things, not when she didn’t truly understand Loki’s motivations. Whatever was going on, she wouldn’t betray her husband.

She would, however, need to have a discussion with him. A long one.

* * *

Loki was sitting up in their hall when Sigyn returned, staring into the fire as he so oft did, hands resting on his folded knees.

He looked up when she sat down across from him, the dwindling fire between them.

“I need to know.”

“You’ll know soon.” He didn’t bother asking what she was talking about. So, either the flames had warned him of her line of questions, or he also knew.

“It’s here? Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Sigyn sniffed. It had always hung over her, especially in the time since Loki had admitted he worked toward Ragnarok. But … it had seemed like there would be more time. “Why?”

Loki swallowed, refusing to meet her gaze. “I love you.”

“That’s not a damn answer.”

“It’s the only one I can give. For now. The rest will come …”

“When?”

He didn’t answer. But she could guess. She’d understand the reasons, the connections … when it was too late to do aught about them.

13

Odin’s breath was ragged when at last they drew nigh to shore. Twice, he and Idunn had stopped, treading water while they—or mostly he—caught his breath. In the limitless night all around, he could scarcely make out much of aught beyond the shore. The slap of waves against the beach was the only clear indication they’d reached the edge of this lake or sea.

“Kind of like … the crossing to Vanaheim …” he wheezed.

“There was sun then. It never rises in this world. Just starlight for all time.” Idunn reached the beach first, and was wringing her hair out by the time Odin caught up with her. “And a fair chunk of the world lies within the Gloom Hollow, a cave network.”

A shiver ran through her. Hardly a surprise. In a world without sun, everything seemed too cool. Not cold, exactly, not like winter on Midgard. But standing around in wet clothes they might still catch deathchill. He stripped off his shirt. Idunn’s dress was so sheer, he imagined it would dry quickly.

The Dark wakens …

Odin jolted at Audr’s voice in his mind. After such long absence, the wraith’s vile hiss sent him slipping to one knee. The hateful voice sounded louder than he recalled, but who knew what tricks his memory played these days.

All memory lies …

Gah. Odin beat a hand against his brow. He had not missed the intrusion in his mind.

“Are you all right?” Idunn asked.

“Yes, I’m—”

“Odin!” she shrieked, her gaze locked on something over his shoulder.

Odin twisted around but could see naught.

At least at first.

A shadow within a shadow moved inside the lake. A spot of darkness almost imperceptible within the black waters. Odin scrambled away, grabbing Idunn’s wrist and pulling her aside.

The shadow burst up through the water’s surface, becoming the head of a serpent, with a neck as thick as a tree trunk. The creature rose up, murky waters running off it in a shower.

A sea serpent?

“Odin …” Idunn murmured, and he glanced at her then followed where she was pointing.

Another head had risen in the distance, visible more in outline where it blocked out the stars than clear in itself. Further to the side rose yet another of the great serpents. Three sea serpents.

“Hydra …” Idunn whispered.

Odin held an arm out between them and her. “Make no sudden moves. We don’t want them provoked.”

“Not them, Odin. It.”

It? A single creature?

A fourth head rose up from the waters, this one damnably close to the beach where they stood.

All at at once, the creature surged forward like a striking viper. As it broke over the shore, he caught sight of where several of those necks joined together, though most of the creature’s body remained concealed beneath the dark waters.

One of the heads lunged at him.

Odin seized his pneuma and flung himself to the ground, knocking down Idunn in the process. The head crashed down where he’d just stood, munched a mouthful of sand, and left a crater bigger than he was. The creature stank of brine and decaying meat, a foulness that turned Odin’s stomach.

Before he could even react, Idunn flung him away from her as another head crashed to the beach. She disappeared in a hail of sand.

“Idunn!”

As the head withdrew, he saw her scrambling away on the far side.

“Run!” she shrieked.

The hydra had crawled further upon the beach. The heads all joined together—five of them!—and formed into a single tail that trailed off into the lake. A monstrous foreleg like that of a linnorm stomped down mere feet away from Odin. Each of those serpent necks had to be thirty feet long.

Another head lunged at him and Odin rolled away, unable to gain his feet under the biting assault.

One of the heads roared, the sound echoing over the waters and nigh to deafening. Odin couldn’t keep all those heads in view at once, especially in the darkness. The creature seemed almost made of the night, glistening with water, yet its movements were hard to track.

Two heads snapped toward him. He’d never manage to get away from that, so he flung himself toward the hydra’s leg. The two heads crashed into one another, then shook off the impact as though dazed.

He needed a damn weapon. A sword, a spear, something!

When another head rose up, he flung himself into a roll, desperately scrambling behind that leg. The head bellowed in rage, perhaps unable to get to him in such a location. Of course, now the clawed foot began stomping around, while the hydra’s serpentine bulk threatened to crush him beneath its shifting.

Seeing no alternative, Odin seized his pneuma and leapt up onto the back of the creature’s knee, then heaved himself up onto what should have been a torso—if it weren’t a scaled joining of writhing serpent heads.

They probably couldn’t bend back to bite him while he remained here, but the thick, squirming muscles could easily pulverize him if he got caught between them. Roaring, he pulled on every drop of pneuma he could and punched his fist into one of those necks.

The hydra didn’t seem to even notice, much less care about his attack.

Oh, well, damn it.

A momentary flash of vision had him swaying as he saw himself scaling one of those necks, up toward its head. Each of those necks had numerous ridge-like spines, so he’d be lucky if those didn’t impale him. But he’d seen it in a vision … Better not to think on it long.

“Odin!” Idunn shouted, but he couldn’t afford to spare even a breath to look for her.

Instead, he leapt up and caught a spine. It was slick with water, and his palm slid, drawing a deep gouge in it before he managed to gain purchase. Odin grit his teeth against the pain and heaved himself up onto the neck.

The hydra’s flailing grew wilder than ever. Its twisting threatened to fling him off and back out into the lake. The hydra began to twist around, perhaps intending to dive underwater once more. Odin climbed higher, panting, desperate to hold on to aught.

The ridged scales were sharp, and they clicked together as the hydra moved.

“You want to kill me?” Odin snapped. “Bigger than you have tried.”

He grabbed a scale and—pulling on as much pneuma as he could—heaved. The scale tore free in time with the creature’s bellow of pain and rage.

The descending shadow was his only warning and he flung himself free an instant before another head bit down on the neck he’d been sitting on. He hit water less than a foot deep and smacked down on the wet sand, dazed for an instant.

The hydra’s injured neck flailed about chaotically before slapping down in front of him, throwing up a spray of sand and water.

Odin scrambled around it, throwing himself to the side once more as another head chomped down on his position. “Thought I couldn’t hurt you?” he shouted at it.

A hand closed around his wrist.

His vantage warped and shifted, and he stumbled, suddenly having been moved several dozen feet away from the water’s edge. Idunn released his arm and shook herself. Even the faint glow of her skin had faded now.

No more sunlight.

“Run!” she shouted at him.

Seemed good advice.

Odin took off at a sprint. He didn’t have much pneuma left to call on. He needed rest, food, and meditation to replenish himself. At the moment, he didn’t seem like to get any of those things.

Beyond the beach, the landscape was harsh, dry grasses so sharp they tore at his trousers and scratched his shins and thighs.

Idunn stumbled along, just ahead of him, heedless of how the thorn-like grasses shredded the edges of her dress.

Odin could only assume she was as lost as he was, but probably imagined anywhere was better than here. Behind them, the hydra roared once more, and lurched its way back into the waters with a splash. Not inclined to chase them far on land, at least. He’d call that a blessing if—

Idunn drew to an abrupt stop and Odin crashed into her, sending them both stumbling to the ground. The thorny grasses snared his beard, scraped his cheeks, and tore a hundred gashes into his arms. Odin groaned in pain. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn’t lost his remaining eye, but still, that had hurt.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, struggling to crawl out from underneath Idunn.

She didn’t answer, though, instead rising slowly, hands up in warding.

The shadows seemed to melt up around them, forming into dark, gray-skinned figures with black hair. All women, and all armored in mail augmented with sharp-ridged plates around their shoulders and over their thighs, armor unlike aught he’d ever seen. Save in distorted visions of this world.

Svartalf warriors, twelve of them. They bore heavy swords and spears, brandished toward him and Idunn.

Flush with pneuma, maybe Odin could have beaten them, even unarmed as he was. If they were human, at least. So many vaettir, though, well armed and armored, while he was injured and exhausted—that seemed impossible.

Mirroring Idunn’s gesture of surrender, Odin rose, hands up in warding.

One of the women stepped forward, grin dark and menacing, and pointed a sword at him. “Trespassers.” She spoke in Supernal and it took Odin a moment to understand what she’d said.

Especially, since she seemed almost delighted at the thought of trespassers in their domain.

Given the cruelty Odin had seen in Volund, one of their princes, he could surmise the reason. Prisoners offered them new subjects to torment.

14

Beyond the bounds of Lappmarken in the farthest northern reaches of Sviarland, the days seemed to last but a few hours while the nights stretched on forever. To Hödr, it made little difference, but Andrik’s crew complained of the darkness while at the same time gaping over the dance of colors in the sky. Hödr had heard of such a sight, but he couldn’t really imagine it.

Now, though, they probably couldn’t see much of those lights, given he heard thunder almost continuously.

Every so oft, they had to let the dogs loose from the sleds to hunt. Those periods seemed to take longer and longer as game became scarce. The snows here were thicker than anywhere else Hödr remembered walking, save once on the peaks of Nidavellir. All around him, the men crunched where they walked, setting up a camp to rest awhile and pass a few hours.

In the first such respites, Kasmira and some of the others had tried to sneak up on him and touch him without him realizing they were there. Hödr had caught her hand every time, barely able to keep down the smile that threatened to rise at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t bother to tell them he not only heard them coming, but heard them making their plots on the far side of the camp.

The wounds on his face clearly made them uncomfortable, so he’d taken to tying a bandage around his eyes, and that seemed to give them a little bit of ease. Over the years, he’d had to wear the thing in places where it became impractical to keep his hood over his face. No one liked to look at the gaping holes where his eyes ought to have been. Maybe they served to remind people of just how much they relied on very fragile organs.

Today, Kasmira didn’t bother trying to sneak up on him when she trod over, bearing a pot of roots. “In case the hunters don’t catch aught tonight.”

Her subtle way of encouraging him to go out for the hunt. No one had believed it, when he’d first shot a bow. But people got accustomed to most things over time, and now everyone knew he had a way of tracking game that would have escaped most others.

Hödr took a root and gnawed on it, while Kasmira plopped down beside him. “We’ve passed into the hunting grounds of a cave lion. If there was game here, it would have caught it.”

“How in the gates of Hel do you know a thing like that?” she asked.

He’d caught the scent, but Hödr wasn’t much inclined to tell her so.

“Wait … What about the dogs, then?”

“They’ll stick together. Not even a lion wants to take on a whole pack of them. If they’re lucky, they might find some snow rabbits or squirrels.”

“I could go for some squirrel. Or rabbit. Not too particular about which, when my gut is rumbling.”

Hödr continued chewing on the root a moment. “Something’s different about this place. Something unnatural in the air.”

“Hmm, Andrik says we must be passing into Pohjola now.”

“What does it look like?”

Kasmira grunted, not quite concealing the nervousness in her aura. “There’s dark clouds in the sky, rumbling with thunder and the occasional bolt of lightning.”

“That much I know.”

“Eh. Well, it got colder when we passed the threshold. Suppose you could tell that one, too. Andrik claims the sun never comes up in these parts, even if it weren’t winter. Says it’s a land of cold and darkness damn close to Niflheim itself. More mist than usual, too. I can’t make out too much beyond a few feet, and what I can see, I almost wish I hadn’t. Most of the trees seem misshapen, like someone twisted them all around and back onto themselves. Some of them have leaves, but a lot don’t. A lot of jagged rocks, too.”

The shieldmaiden was scared, wasn’t she? She didn’t want to admit it, least of all to herself, but this place frightened her. More now, since she’d seen it, than it had before.

“Well,” Kasmira said. “Looks like Brynjar’s got a solid blaze going on.” She rose and offered him a hand—perhaps testing again whether he could tell—and when he took it, pulled him to his feet.

Brynjar was the group’s woodsman and archer and his aura had reeked of jealousy from the moment he’d seen Hödr doing better at the both things than he could with two eyes. Hödr didn’t bother trying to console him on it. What was the point in explaining that it had taken him years, centuries even, to hone his abilities to their present level? The mercenary would’ve grunted and pretended to understand. But he couldn’t. Some things were so far beyond a man’s realm of experience that they defied reconciliation to the known.

Still, Brynjar did have another skill: he was a damn fine cook. Very little remained of the snow bear Hödr had slain two days back, but what was left, the man had brewing with the roots and what little herbs he still had.

“A war band’s only as good as its cook,” Andrik was fond of saying.

Their leader, too, welcomed Hödr over warmly and handed him a skin filled with water. All they had left to drink was melted snow, after all. Hödr sipped it.

Andrik slapped his knee. “Me, I’m supposing those witches can’t be much more than a few days north of here, truth be told.”

“It’s not the witches we need,” Hödr reminded him. “Just Rutto, and he’s intent to conquer Kalevala.”

“So we’re turning south, then? Can’t say as I’ve heard better news since my wife bore me a son.”

“You don’t have a wife,” Kasmira objected.

“Nope! But I got me a half dozen bastards all clamoring for my silver, so I figure the best I can do is keep earning it. Or get myself killed and then they can’t hardly blame me for not paying them a trollshit more.”

“Or,” Kasmira said, “and this is just a thought, now. But you might consider not getting any more women with child.”

Andrik spit in the fire. “Talk like that’ll get the men thinking you’ve gone mist-mad, girl.”

Everyone laughed. Everyone save Hödr, at least, though he had to smile at the captain’s foolery. How could he not envy the band’s easy camaraderie? These people knew each other well, and—in their own way—loved one another, even as they sometimes hated each other. They were a family, and Hödr had never truly enjoyed that with the other Aesir, save Mother and Father.

Brynjar said little, save to jibe at the others, but no one resented him for it.

Andrik was all nonsense—at least until the fighting started and then, according to Kasmira, he was fierce as a berserk.

Kasmira got treated as one of the men. She’d hinted that early on, some few of them had tried to get her to lay with them, before Andrik made it clear the band was to stick to whores and women from the villages. She said he’d promised any man who got one of his fighters with child would lose his stones, and that was that.

Ingfred was always carrying on about how his eldest son was going to be a skald one day. The boy was still back in Gardariki, training with other poets, so Ingfred fought, and occasionally brought plunder back to his wife and boys.

Then there was Gudbrand, always polishing and sharpening his axes. He carried three of them, saying he never wanted to be without a way to chop down men or trees. Gudbrand swore at every strange sound in the night. Given it was almost always night here, his stream of curses never abated.

And Sture. An arrow had scraped his throat some winters back, and though he’d lived, he could speak in but a rasp. He also lost two fingers and an ear, plus at least one toe to frostbite. Kasmira told Hödr the man’s face was a crisscross of vicious scars. The band called him lucky. Kasmira said he’d survived more wounds than the rest of them put together. They figured he must be immortal and just by keeping him close, they were all like to live longer. Hödr had asked whether he wasn’t unlucky for having taken so many injuries, but Kasmira had just laughed and pointed out the man was still walking and still fighting.

When he’d eaten, Hödr settled down for a few hours’ rest. They couldn’t afford to let too much time pass, considering Baldr might return and claim Nanna far too soon. Hödr couldn’t allow that to happen.

Baldr got everything he ever wanted.

But not this time. Not Nanna.

* * *

In the morning—or at least when they rose to hear Gudbrand’s objections that it was still godsdamned dark—they turned south and passed into wooded hills. In the valleys, snows seemed to cover large amounts of marshland, so Brynjar guided the sleds along the slopes. Eventually, the trees seemed dense enough they had to dismount the sleds and lead the dogs behind them, turning their progress painfully slow.

“Arse-ugly trees a troll couldn’t love,” Gudbrand complained. “Looks like something a jotunn shit out.”

“How close have you been inspecting jotunn shit?” Kasmira asked.

“Close enough to shut your godsdamned mouth, that’s how close!”

“That makes not the least bit of sense,” Andrik objected.

Several of the dogs had begun to whimper, fighting against Ingfred and Sture when they tried to pull them forward.

Hödr cocked his head to the side. The air had grown more stale, tasting of decay. The woods seemed eerily quiet, otherwise. It was hard to make it out over the band’s inane squabbling, but … had he heard movement? “Quiet,” he snapped.

All at once, all six mercenaries fell silent, staring at him.

There it was again. The faint crunch of snow in the distance. Not like a man walking. Something lighter, or at least adept at moving without sinking below the surface. Several such stalkers, in fact.

Hödr’s hand went to his sword.

“Oh, arse blisters!” Gudbrand snapped, drawing one of his axes and grabbing his shield.

The others readied their weapons as well.

“What is it?” Kasmira asked. “Can’t see aught out there in the mist. So what the—”

Hödr raised a hand to silence her. Their torches were still crackling, but Hödr could filter that out. Footfalls light on snow. And the croaking of frogs? Here? Hödr turned his head to the side, trying to focus on the source, but it seemed to come from all around. There was marshland in the valleys, but the snows should have made it much too cold for frogs.

The stench had grown stronger, the faint croaking a little louder. Whatever made the sounds drew nigh.

Hödr eased his sword free. There was something Otherworldly about this place.

“What the fuck is that?” Gudbrand asked. “Is that godsdamned frogs? Who in the gates of Hel let—”

“Frogs?” Andrik asked. “Shit! Kobolds.”

“No such things as kobolds,” Brynjar objected.

Hödr would’ve said the same.

One of the dogs howled, then another and another. Without so much as a command, they took off running through the woods.

“Godsdamn it!” Gudbrand shouted. “We have to catch those hairy shitters.”

A shudder ran through tree branches overhead, as if something climbed up there. Then Hödr caught its aura. The creature was roughly shaped like a man, yes, but warped as a dverg, shortened and twisted, with bulging eyes. He couldn’t make out much more of it.

“What is it?” Kasmira whispered. “I don’t see aught.”

“Tales what I heard—” Andrik began.

That twisted form leapt from the tree branch and onto Andrik. The man’s screams cut off his words, bloodcurdling screams of agony as vicious claws shredded through flesh and mail, the creature croaking in wild abandon, drawing out geysers of blood.

“What the fuck?” Gudbrand bellowed. “All I see is a fucking blur.” The man swung his axe, but the creature on Andrik easily evaded it. The axe cleaved into the captain’s skull and split it in half.

Oh, trollshit. The others couldn’t see these creatures.

Desperate, he lunged forward, swiping his blade upward. The edge caught the kobold under the chin. Putrid ichor erupted from its wound and the creature flipped over backward. The thing hadn’t even tried to dodge. Maybe it had no idea Hödr could see it.

The kobold landed on its feet and sprang at Hödr. It was all he could do to jerk his sword up. The flying creature impaled itself on his blade. Still its oversized jaws came snapping down at him. The creature was smaller than Hödr, but almost as strong, even with him drawing his apple-enhanced pneuma. Even with it dying all over him.

Its hands were too big for its body, fingers ending in knife-like claws. Hödr kicked it off his sword and it fell, gurgling. Slime covered the creature and made his boot sticky.

More of the fell bastards had swarmed over his party, tearing through shields and mail, leaping in and out of the trees, croaking hideously all the while. One of the creatures had latched onto Sture’s back.

Hödr surged to his feet and came in swinging, bellowing a war cry. His blade squelched into the kobold’s warty skull. Hödr grabbed the sword with both hands and yanked the kobold off of Sture as he jerked it free.

“By the Aesir!” Kasmira shrieked, suddenly backing away from one of them.

Must’ve become visible. An instant later, Gudbrand’s axe slapped down into the kobold’s spine.

Hödr spun at a rustling, and the last of the creatures leapt up into the trees. Branches bent and shook as it—and at least one more, Hödr realized—scrambled along in the boughs, out of reach.

Brynjar fumbled with his bow, but the kobolds had disappeared even from Hödr’s senses before the man could even nock an arrow.

Sture pitched forward, moaning, and Kasmira raced to his side.

“Fuck,” she said as she pulled back the mercenary’s mail to inspect his wounds. Sture whimpered at her prodding. “Odin save us.”

“What is it?” Hödr asked.

“It …” Kasmira swallowed. “He’s losing too much blood. Lots of gouges.”

Sture spasmed, gurgling.

At the same moment, Ingfred slumped down, hand to his leg.

Trollshit. “Brynjar,” Hödr said. “Forget the bow. Heat a blade in a torch flame and sear Ingfred’s wound closed.”

“What about Sture?” the woodsman demanded. “His wounds are worse.

“Kasmira?” Hödr asked. “Can we save him?”

“I don’t …” The shieldmaiden was panicking.

And Hödr couldn’t see the damn wounds. Sture’s aura grew weak, though. If he had any chance left, it wasn’t much of one. “Gudbrand, help Kasmira with Sture!”

They couldn’t afford to linger here, either. If those kobolds returned with more of their kind …

Sture convulsed, vomiting up blood. Then he lay still. Kasmira fell back on her arse, moaning, gaping at him.

“Lucky Sture …” Gudbrand said. “Arse-munching invisible toads!” The man swung his axe into a tree root with a thwack.

Ingfred’s scream resounded through the wood an instant later, punctuated by the acrid stench of his sizzling flesh. The man flung Brynjar off him and the woodsman landed against a root with a groan.

Hödr slowly turned about, sword in hand, searching the trees for any further sign of these foul abominations. Everything seemed too still. “Can you walk, Ingfred?”

“Bastard just burned my godsdamned leg!”

“We have to move,” Hödr insisted. “We cannot be here if they return. Gudbrand, help him walk. Brynjar, lead us forward now.”

“Forward?” Kasmira’s voice was almost a moan. “We have to go back.”

No. No, he couldn’t let them do that. He had to find Rutto. “We’re probably closer to Kalevala than we are to Lappmarken.” Hödr had no idea if that was true, though he hoped it was. “Kasmira, get the dogs.”

“They’re long gone,” Brynjar objected. “And run off in the wrong direction. If you’re really intent to press on to Kalevala.”

Trollshit. Hödr sheathed his sword and unshouldered his bow, nocking an arrow. Next time one of those bastards came sneaking along in the trees, he’d give them a reason to think twice. “Just get us out of this wood.”

15

The svartalfar offered no answers as they guided Odin and Idunn onward, save to say they were being taken to Amsvartnir. Odin wasn’t sure whether that was a person or a place.

His captors led them toward a city, one rimmed with an obsidian-looking wall with massive spikes jutting from the top of it. It rose up at least five times Odin’s height, a shimmering barrier under the eternal night sky. Shadowed forms patrolled behind crenelations, and every so often the wall was broken by hexagonal towers lined with more spikes.

“What are they defending against?” Odin whispered to Idunn.

“Each other. And us.”

One of the svartalf females jabbed him in the back with a cudgel, sending him stumbling forward.

The alfar seemed a match for his strength.

They guided him forward further, up to a portcullis. Rather than a gate that drew up into a gap above, the portcullis was warded by a pair of rounded grates with metal prongs jutting out the ends like spokes on a wheel. The two grates were closed, one in front of the other, but as they drew close, both rolled sideways into the walls, creating an opening—one that still left those sharpened prongs jutting free to either side.

Lovely place.

Darkness festers …

Audr was too at home here for Odin’s liking. The wraith sounded almost … festive. A poor sound for it.

Idunn’s hand closed around Odin’s wrist, tight. Very tight. Her breaths were short and too quick. She was panicking. Odin patted her hand as the svartalfar ushered them through the gate house and past several other guards.

Also all female.

The city itself, while substantial, didn’t resemble any city of men he’d ever seen. He saw no market, no main street, no sense of order to any of the designs. Rather, the place seemed more like a beehive, with every structure connected to those around it by various enclosed hallways that ran through the sky at perverse angles.

The street was often broken by metal grating, below which he could make out naught. Streams of water and filth continually ran down from gaps in the hive-like buildings strategically placed to send refuse flowing into the grates. On the underside of numerous of the bridges grew diverse collections of mushrooms, practically bursting out on top of one another.

Everything reeked.

“Amsvartnir,” Idunn said, her voice seeming close to breaking. She was truly frightened of this place, more so than Odin would have suspected.

They passed numerous other svartalfar, some working forges, others hauling ore in carts, while others seemed to harvest the mushrooms. All were female.

His captors marched him up a slope and into a building. From there, he was guided deeper and deeper, through several of those sky corridors. Eventually, they came to another gate like the one to the city only smaller, again warded by rotating spiked wheels. The doors drew open, and the svartalfar shoved him inside, into a large chamber.

The roof was supported by numerous columns, each lined with a razor-like edge that rotated around the circumference in an ascending spiral. Buttresses connected the columns in their upper reaches, both to each other, and to the walls.

Torches hung on those columns, offering paltry light and only serving to enhance the shadows.

At the center of this perverse chamber rose a dais at least fifteen feet in the air, upon which sat the first male svartalf Odin had seen thus far. He wore no shirt, exposing his ash-colored skin, though he had leather trousers and steel-plated boots.

One of Odin’s captors spoke to the male in Supernal, but before Odin could interpret the meaning, the male had already risen from his throne.

“A mortal and a liosalf.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Glorious.” His voice seemed to hiss and writhe, not so very unlike that of Audr’s. Or perhaps Volund’s, from long ago. “Tell me, human, how did you come to this realm? And alive.”

Odin frowned, uncertain how to answer that question. He’d used Andvaranaut to reach Alfheim, but Frey had taken the ring long ago. “We came by a nether river.”

The svartalf descended the stairs, flexing his fingers. He wore steel claws over them, fitted together with bands across his hand. Not an effective weapon against an armed and armored warrior, but probably vicious in other circumstances. “Your answer fails to explain how you got into the river.”

“We fell into it after jumping over the Radiant Falls in Alfheim,” Idunn said.

The svartalf raised a clawed finger up to Idunn’s face. She tried to back away, but at once, Odin’s captors were there, two females holding each of them by the arms. The male svartalf raised the claw until it stood a hair away from one of Idunn’s eyes. She froze, trembling ever so slightly. Finally, he pulled the finger back.

Then he moved so quickly Odin didn’t even have time to tense up. That finger tore into Idunn’s face and gouged it from the edge of her jaw out to the end of her cheek, tearing a bloody gap into her mouth. She wailed in agony, thrashing in the arms of her captors.

Odin surged pneuma into his limbs and flung one of the females off him. Before he could dislodge the other, several more impossibly strong hands drove him down to his knees.

The male svartalf turned and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back like naught had transpired. “Perhaps we should start again. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Fjalar, Lord of Amsvartnir, son of Ivaldi himself. Who are you?”

Odin growled. Impossibly, the women seemed almost as strong as he was, and with at least three of them holding him, he couldn’t rise. “Odin Borrson. Of Asgard.”

Fjalar paced back around before Odin and paused. “Somewhere in the Mortal Realm, I assume. And her?”

“Idunn. Of … Vanaheim.”

“Of Alfheim, you mean.”

Odin glowered. “Lately.”

“Good. Now, allow me to speak plainly with you, Odin Borrson. If you fail to cooperate with me, I may just feed your souls to Nott. I might anyway, of course, but if you don’t want me to hand you over to the Wild Hunt, I suggest you grovel and answer my every question to the best of your ability.”

“Go to Hel.”

Fjalar leaned in close to Odin’s face and tapped a clawed finger against his brow, just hard enough to draw blood. Hot liquid began to run down between his eyes. “You say that like you think I ought to fear the so-called Queen of Mist. But I imagine, were she here, she’d be the one in trepidation of me. You see, I don’t think you understand quite where you are or what you now face, mortal.”

“Enlighten me.”

The prince flashed a wicked grin. “No. I relish your ignorance. It tastes of honey. I could easily have you interrogated by the caballos who captured you, but why deprive myself of such entertainment? You and I, we shall spend long hours together.”

His smile spoke of feverish glee.

* * *

Barbed chains dug into Odin’s wrists and ankles, binding him in place and stretching his arms and legs out too far. They’d taken him alone into a cell beneath Fjalar’s palace, where a single dwindling candle provided his only source of light.

Odin had tried to look into the Penumbra for starlight but found it impossible from this realm. His abilities let him see through the Veil, but the Veil wasn’t here. He’d truly trod into darkness far beyond the ken of any who had gone before.

All is darkness … We are born of the dark … and to darkness we are inevitably drawn back … All knowledge is a shadow, an illusion born of hubris … the arrogance of thinking we can understand …

Audr’s voice grew in strength the longer Odin remained in Svartalfheim, reverberating in his skull. The wraith’s long torpor had ended, and it woke with fresh ambition, stirring like a nest of vipers in the back of Odin’s mind. Slithering, ever seeking control once more.

He’d wondered if the wraith’s power might let him slip these bonds, though he doubted it, given it seemed to stem from stepping across the Veil. Beyond which, there was no forgetting what had happened last time he called on Audr’s gifts. The wraith had possessed him and left a trail of suffering in his wake that Odin shuddered to think on.

So he remained bound here, blood trickling down his arms, welling in his armpits, and running on over his ribs. His eye hurt from staring so desperately at that fading flame. Perhaps that was a part of the torture, the knowledge that utter darkness impended.

Darkness is always gathering … Light must fade …

Fjalar had stripped him naked and used that claw to slice spiraling ribbons along Odin’s back. Now his sweat stung those cuts, and he shivered in fevers. Each such shiver jiggled his wrists and caused the barbs to dig deeper.

It had become painful to so much as breathe. Leading to the temptation to delve into the Sight and escape the present by losing himself in the future.

Because a future remained. This was not his end.

No, his end would come at the jaws of Fenrir, tearing out his throat. Odin had never found a way to kill the varulf, and maybe he should have devoted more effort to doing so.

Surrender to the darkness … Embrace death …

No. Odin, would find a way to change his urd, destroy Fenrir, and win Ragnarok. Sooner or later, he’d get free of these chains. For now, it was easier to let the sea of prescient memories wash over him.

* * *

“We will call a council,” he said after a moment more. “And it needs to include not only the Aesir and Vanir. We need the liosalfar and … the jotunnar.”

Freyja grimaced at him, shifting in obvious discomfort. “I don’t know that I can convince anyone from the Summer Court to attend. Besides, even with the bridge, they’d still need hosts.”

“We’ll find those.”

“You mean you’ll force captives to serve as vessels.”

Odin shrugged. When compared to the fate of the entire world, the suffering of a few meant very little. After all, if he failed, if he lost Ragnarok, they’d all be dead. “I’ve reason to believe Hel herself will make another move on our world. Before that happens, we need every possible ally. Which is why I’m sending Tyr to call even the jotunnar to the council. And you, I implore you to return to Alfheim and convince as many of the liosalfar as possible to join us.”

* * *

Fjalar moved about the darkness around Odin. The candle had burned down to a tiny flicker, so dim Odin half feared to breathe, though the shudders of his pain—when he returned to the present—made it difficult to control.

“I know what you are,” Fjalar said at last. “You, who walk upon the web of urd, who think to challenge the weave of the Norns, but yet remain their slave. Are you a pawn, or a more valuable piece, though? For me, I think the latter. You are not the only mortal with such a gift, nor even the first to have crossed beyond the Mortal Realm, though none have come so far in eons.”

The svartalf tapped his claw on Odin’s waist, drawing a slight cut as he moved, while shaking his head.

Odin let his mind go, drifting into the tide of visions, escaping the pain—

Fjalar dug his claw deeper. “Stay with me.”

The sudden gouging, the feeling of that blade scraping his hip bone, it jolted Odin back into the present.

“You see, in the darkness, my kind can see things you’d not imagine. But still, the depth and nature of your gift does not oft present among mortal or immortal. It is a boon, and any who control such a power might subtly sway the web, perhaps even subvert the will of the fatespinners. Harnessed properly, your insights might lead to the ascendency of Amsvartnir. To my ascendancy over all the heirs of Gugalanna.”

Odin forced the pain down. The urge to call on his pneuma to bury it became almost overwhelming, but he might need that energy to escape and could not waste it on mere comfort. “Where is Idunn?”

“Hmm. There’s something special about that one, isn’t there? But I think you are not really listening to me, mortal. Because there is something even more special about you. Your ability might prove too valuable to pass up. It might change the course of urd.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Because you don’t know how to use it. Perhaps the Norns gave you the power, but that does not mean it cannot be used against them, if we can do so without attracting their agents.”

Agents? The Norns had servants now? Why would they need servants?

Fjalar seemed to think those entities actually controlled urd … so why have servants? To enact the urd they had written? Or to enforce it if someone went astray?

“Oh,” the svartalf said, chortling. “Oh, now you ponder questions you had not thought to ask. Whence comes this gift, you wonder?” Fjalar paused directly in front of Odin and pressed his clawed finger between Odin’s brows, drawing another trickle of blood. “You thought yourself so mighty in the Mortal Realm. Even in the Astral Realm you dared cross. As if there were not stronger, darker things the farther out you travel from the realms you know. You have a gift, yes, but here, you are not the god you thought you were. If you are lucky, I shall keep you as my slave.”

Odin chuckled, though the motion pained him. “You call that lucky?”

Fjalar leaned in so close his smooth-shaven cheek brushed against Odin’s beard. “Even in your realm, you know of the Goddess of Night. The Elder Goddess of the Dark. Her power saturates this realm. And her hunger is unmatched. I do not jest when I tell you that, if you fail to prove useful to me, I shall earn some morsel of her favor by sending her your mighty soul. And she will feast until you are a wretched husk, unfit to even return to the Wheel of Life.”

The svartalf drew back so Odin could look in his almost pitch-black eyes. “Or serve me well, and I shall nurture the darkness in you, until you become as one of us. The choice is yours.”

With that, the prince seemed to meld into shadow and was gone.

16

Beyond the Penumbra lay the Astral Roil, where the Lethe stole memories and eldritch abominations lurked within a shifting landscape. While the Penumbra served as an echo of the Mortal Realm, the Roil was a nebulous darkness that lost the rules of reality as men understood them. Passing into the Roil seemed akin to moving deeper under the ocean, and Hermod could only surmise that here, time became yet more strained.

As with the Penumbra, light and color was sucked out, leaving a world of blacks and grays and midnight blue. Cold and dead.

It was like walking atop a sea of shadows, the waves half-frozen in abhorrent, twisted shapes with no respect for their own weight. The land seemed cast out of glimmering obsidian, half alive, angry. The longer Hermod walked here, the more he felt something pulling at the strands of his mind. A feeling akin to suffocating ever so slowly, drowning in despair so profound it could blot out the sun.

A living nightmare, the screams of men made manifest. Even sorcerers feared to tread here, in their astral trances. It reeked of death, of decay older than the world itself.

As far from the Mortal Realm as he had trod, Odin had told him, so very long ago, that the Spirit Realm lay beyond even the Roil, perceived at times, as crystal spheres hovering around the Astral Realm. Even Hermod’s mentor could not say with any certainty whether the Spirit Realm actually orbited the Astral, or whether, as some vaettir had implied, this was simply a frame of reference for non-physical directions.

Either way, mortals could not tread there into the Spirit Realm. Spirits could descend into the Astral—indeed, to influence the Mortal Realm they had to pass into the Penumbra—but Odin had never managed to find a way back to the spirit worlds.

Or so Hermod had believed. But Odin had done it, had reached the Spirit Realm. Svartalfheim, specifically. The king had taught him that nine worlds composed the Spirit Realm, though Odin had not known exactly what connected the worlds within the realm.

A whisper thrummed from the land around him, a faint wailing of the damned, lamenting their urd.

The sound made him duck down into a crouch, glancing back and forth and yet able to make out naught save the ever-present darkness. In the Penumbra, starlight saturated the sky, but here it dimmed. Never had Hermod dared to press so deep into the Roil.

A wind whipped over him, cold as winter and more chilling, as if the apple no longer protected him from the elements. The whispering had not abated, but Hermod could not linger here. He pressed on, careful of his footing, trying to move in silence. The hairs on his arms stood on end, and hardly just from the cold.

His heart had begun to pound so loudly something must surely hear him thus.

The ground sucked on his boots like tar, trying to mire him here, trying to draw him under and devour him, body and soul. Grunting, Hermod drew on his pneuma to give his legs strength and jerked his heels up, one by one. The ground slurped as he pulled free, and with each step. He had to keep moving, the longer he lingered, the deeper it seemed to suck him in.

He fled onward, until the surface solidified beneath him. Here, the land rose up in jagged spikes, like a briar patch of obsidian shards. One brushed his arm and tore through his mail, the gambeson beneath, and his flesh.

“Ahh.” Hermod hissed, prodding at the wound.

Thousands of such thorns barred his path, a twisting web of death ahead of him. He glanced back over his shoulder. The mire that had tried to devour him now seemed to rise, lurching toward him in slow undulations, a living bog.

Shit.

Didn’t leave him much choice, did it? Teeth grit, he edged his way past the thorns, raising his arms over his head and turning sideways to avoid them as much as possible. Still, they snared his mail, tore his flesh. All he could do was fight through the pain and keep moving.

That mire kept crawling closer, every time he looked back. Like it was …

“Oh, fuck me …” Hermod mumbled.

Eyes had opened within the mire. Hundreds of lidless eyes, darkly luminous, fixated upon him. His breath caught at the sight. Something primal within him refused to accept what he was seeing. An impossible existence that exuded utter wrongness.

Tendrils began to rise from that ooze, glimmering points of shadow that latched onto the briars and heaved the mass forward with ever greater speed. Squelching. Slurping.

Oozing toward him.

His heart froze in his chest for a bare instant.

Then he broke into a mad scramble, heedless of how many thorns tore into his thighs, his sides. The thorns seemed to siphon his blood, sucking down his pneuma in the process. They fed on him, and a profound enervation closed in upon him, trying to slow his steps.

The whole land seemed intent to claim him, deny his passage.

Hermod grit his teeth against the pain. Were he to falter, that mire would have him. It left him no choice save to push onward, gulping down breaths of air to fight against the rising fatigue and despair.

More squelching sounded behind him. Closer. So close he couldn’t stop himself from looking.

The living mire had oozed over the brambles, was closing in on him. Would be upon him in a few heartbeats.

The sound of rushing water rose up ahead.

Hermod broke through the briar patch and pitched forward onto his face, slapping against hard obsidian. Half whimpering in horror, he crawled forward, desperate to escape the devouring mass. A glance over his shoulder revealed no sign of the thing.

Where was it? Where the fuck was it?

Surely, it had not given up.

Panting, he struggled to his feet, slipped down to one knee, and rose again. Had to move.

Keep moving. Run!

Don’t let it catch him.

Hermod scrambled forward, more exhausted than he remembered feeling in ages. The sound of water grew louder, and he stumbled toward it. More than aught else he needed to lie down, drink a few sips of water, gain some sleep. So thirsty …

Wait. No. Couldn’t drink the water here.

He passed around a hill of swirling shadows and fell to his knees before a black river. The waters were wide, half a mile, he’d gauge, and in the distance … that looked like a city. The walls of a city, albeit one covered in chains.

Hermod wiped his brow, trembling. This had been mist-madness. He had dared to come to a place sorcerers feared to look? What hubris to think he could rescue Odin, when the king had passed into some reality beyond even this horrid landscape. Nor did Hermod have any way back. He could not pass across the Veil from within the Roil—he’d have to find his way back to the Penumbra for that.

A bridge connected the Penumbra to the Roil—the easiest way to pass between the two, so long as its guardian permitted it. Perhaps he could retrace his steps and return to the bridge.

Heimdall had warned him not to go. But the guardian always said that, and Hermod had come to the Roil before. Not this deep, though. Not into this … nightmare.

Trembling, he pressed his palms together, trying to steady himself. Odin had taught him to calm his mind, to dive into a meditative trance. Such lessons felt so far away here. Indeed, he could no longer remember his mentor’s exact words. Had he truly lost the memories, or had he merely pushed his body and mind beyond their limits?

No, no, no. He had to focus. Letting his mind wander availed him naught. This darkness would consume him if he lingered here, of that, he had no doubt.

A city across the river. What did that mean? He was fair certain that he remained in the Roil, so such a city must be a ghost city. A haven for the dead? Certainly no place for the living, and probably not the location where he could find a way to Svartalfheim. What of the river itself?

As he knelt on the banks, a shrouded figure drifted over the waters, guiding a raft using a pole that looked cut from the same obsidian as most of the landscape here.

What manner of entity forded this river? For an instant, Hermod allowed himself to shut his eyes, to steady his breath. Then he climbed to his feet and raised a hand to hail the raftsman. The shrouded figure guided his craft over to the bank and drove it up on shore, splashing black waters very close to where Hermod stood.

An inexplicable aversion to those waters had Hermod taking a step away. “I need to reach Svartalfheim. Does this river go there?”

“The river goes everywhere.” The creature’s voice was empty and hollow, like a whisper on the wind. “But there is a price for ferrying.”

Hermod nodded, almost afraid to ask. “What price?”

“The only currency here. Souls. I shall have a tenth of yours.”

A tenth of his soul. Hermod could scarcely guess what that meant. What would he lose if he made such a bargain? Would he feel the loss? Perhaps such questions held no meaning. He had lost more than that much when Sif had died. It had ripped a piece of him out and left him as empty as this creature seemed. Hermod had not come thus far only to balk at the ferryman’s price.

“So be it. I agree.”

The entity reached a hand out toward him. Mostly, his shroud covered the limb. But beneath that, Hermod caught a glimpse of flesh so pale and gaunt as to seem almost skeletal. All instinct demanded he retreat from the creature’s advancing palm. All decency revolted at the thought of this thing touching him. But he had lost so very much already. He could not turn back. Never.

That hand closed over his mouth, cold and clammy and monstrously strong. Claw-like fingers dug into his cheek and yanked him forward a step.

The cold grew deeper with each passing breath, until it seemed to burn. It seared his cheeks and he convulsed, though he couldn’t break free from the creature’s grasp. His mind filled with a flood of images. His childhood with his parents. Skating on a frozen lake. Living with his uncles. His father taking him away, to search for his missing mother. Losing them crossing the sea.

A thousand other thoughts bombarded him and evaporated like dew, stolen. It was more than memories, though. It was the imprint those memories had made upon his very being. The sum result of his life, sucked out of him, draining away, and along with it, bits and pieces of himself. He felt it, as his pneuma fled, part of it lost forever. Hermod thrashed in the implacable grip, not only from pain but from the awful, inevitable realization: he had surrendered a part of his own humanity, and willingly.

Despair had closed in around his heart ever since the death of his daughter, and he had thought himself half dead inside. But his soul was more than that, written and changed by all the myriad joys and sorrows across his long years. And he had let such things go, traded them for this.

Of a sudden, the hand opened, and he collapsed onto the riverbank, gasping, unable to get enough air down in his lungs. Exhaustion seized control of him, and he lay writhing. Desperately, he combed his mind trying to feel for what he’d lost. But it … it just wasn’t there anymore. Something had fled from him, something precious and irreplaceable, something he’d built over his entire life.

But he couldn’t say what. Thus, he couldn’t even mourn its passing.

A piece of his soul lost. A piece of his humanity gone forever. And he could not miss it.

All he could do was clutch onto an emptiness deep inside.

Hermod climbed to his feet, still breathing heavily, and looked to the shrouded figure. The ferryman backed away, allowing Hermod space to stand on the raft. Once he had settled himself, the ferryman shoved off the shore.

The current caught the raft immediately, swifter than Hermod had thought, and soon carried them beyond view of the chained city, around a bend, and into deeper shadows.

* * *

Hermod’s feet ached to the point he found himself compelled to sit on the raft, though he feared any disturbance might make the hateful black waters splash up on the craft. He’d couldn’t say how long the ferryman had steered them—hours, certainly.

Everywhere he looked, more of the writhing landscape unfolded. Rumbling clouds of utter blackness crackled blue lightning on one bank, a storm that he found himself unable to tear his gaze from. The winds from that tempest whipped the river, forcing Hermod to draw his knees up to his chest in an attempt to keep from getting splashed.

Never had Odin prepared him for aught like this. Even his mentor, so far traveled, could not know all the secrets of this realm.

And Hermod had already seen far more than he’d have wished to.

* * *

The river’s currents only increased as they sped on. The banks to either side had become shapeless, dark expanses, and the stars had somehow drawn closer. Ahead, a black fog had risen off the waters, a cloud of impenetrable darkness blocking the way.

“What is that?”

“Your destination.”

His heart had begun to hammer against his ribs. He eased up onto one knee and raised a hand to Dainsleif, though he knew it folly to think he might defend himself against a fog.

The closer they drew, the more immense that cloud seemed to grow, and whispers issued forth from it, a cacophony of mismatched sounds. Hermod gripped Dainsleif’s hilt so tight his knuckles ached. He grit his teeth, bracing for an impact.

The raft passed into the fog.

It wasn’t damp, as he’d expected. Rather, his ears popped and vertigo seized him, threatening to send him toppling over the side of the raft. The air felt too thick, like a film clinging to his skin. He dared not breathe in these vapors, but he couldn’t see a damn thing to tell how soon they’d pass through this cloud.

He held his breath until his chest hurt. Until his head felt apt to burst. Until he could not hold it a moment longer. Then he gasped, sucking down lungfuls of the thick cloud. It clung to his throat, too, so dense he felt he could choke on it.

Coughing and sputtering, he slipped, bracing himself on the raft. Or trying. Unable to see what lay before him, he overshot with one hand and then pitched forward, tumbling over the front of the raft. A merciless undertow seized him and yanked him through utterly black waters, twirling him this way and that.

Once again feeling apt to suffocate, Hermod furiously swam for the surface and finally broke through. He could see now, a sky full of stars, though no moon. The river’s swift current sent him shooting forward, and massive rocks lay ahead.

Shit!

He sucked down another lungful of air and dove back under, just managing to catch the undertow. It jerked him around the rocks—barely—but held him under too long, spilling him down a short fall. Spots began to swim before his eyes, and he flailed, unable to break free.

His foot caught on the edge of a rock, and slipped, but it was enough to get him out of the flow, and he burst to the surface once more, gasping. Ahead, the river broke around a tiny rock island. Hermod angled for this, catching himself on the island.

Panting, he pulled himself ashore and rolled onto his back.

By the fucking Tree! He couldn’t catch his breath. Couldn’t quite …

A long howl went up, shrill and nerve-rending, followed by another and another. A rumbling storm front billowed in, moving far too fast for any cloud.

“Oh, what now?” His limbs felt like he’d gotten them caught between a hammer and an anvil. His body was spent, his pneuma drained.

A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. In the momentary brightness, he glimpsed a charge of thundering horses amid that storm cloud, each ridden by an armored, white-masked hunter. Abominable black hounds with glowing red eyes raced between the horses, baying and barking.

Fuck.

Sucking down a breath, Hermod dove from the island and back into the river, as deep as he could. Whatever those things were—like the damned riding forth from the gates of Hel, it seemed—he didn’t want them to catch sight of him. If they already had …

Panicking, he swam as deep as he could. Maybe the waters were black enough to conceal him from those hunters. If not, he had no idea what he’d do against flying horsemen.

He swam until he could take no more, then surfaced just long enough to catch his breath. That billowing storm was now directly overhead, and coursing onward, back along the course of the river. It seemed they hadn’t seen him. Still, no point pressing his luck. He dove under once more, again swimming underwater as far as he could with a single breath, then surfacing.

By then, the cloud had passed well beyond him and was soaring onward. If it was following the river, did the hunters intend to enter the Roil? That sounded like a nightmare for whoever dwelt back there.

Feeling only half conscious, he swam toward the riverbank. His fingers brushed over coarse sand, and he heaved himself up and onto the bank, panting, almost ready to faint. With a groan, he managed to pull himself farther away from the waters, then roll over.

Around another bend of the river, he caught an outline of a mighty wall. A city perhaps, but in the starlight he could make out little detail.

His destination? Perhaps, if he could but catch his breath.

17

Ingfred’s gasps, sputters, and incoherent ramblings punctuated every step they took. Hödr sympathized, but they had only just passed beyond the edge of the twisted woods, and they couldn’t afford to delay. He’d been pushing them for days.

The kobolds had tried to ambush them once more, but when Hödr shot one before they revealed themselves, it must have scared them off. He still didn’t like his chances if more than a handful came at them at once. The slimy bastards were fouler than just about aught else Hödr had ever encountered. It was a blessing they hadn’t spread much farther into Midgard.

Ingfred coughed and then groaned. He’d begun to stink of rot yesterday, but Hödr hadn’t wanted to tell the others. The man would be lucky to keep his leg.

“He’s burning up,” Gudbrand said.

Hödr glanced back at the man. His aura had turned all wrong, distorted and fading. “The fevers have him.”

“He needs rest,” Kasmira said. “We all need rest.”

Hödr knew it, but he had to get these people as far from that wood as possible. “A little further.”

They made it another half of an hour, perhaps, before Ingfred’s sudden convulsions sent Gudbrand toppling to the ground beside him.

The wounded mercenary thrashed.

Hödr was at his side in a moment.

Ingfred thrashed his neck violently from one side to the next. He was spewing forth nonsense that sounded … almost like the kobold croaking. The man screamed, raising his hands to his mouth. One of his teeth popped out and fell from his gums with a spray of blood.

“What in the gates of Hel?” Gudbrand said.

A horrible fear seized Hödr’s gut and he grabbed Gudbrand and yanked him up and away from Ingfred.

Another tooth popped out of the man’s mouth. And another. Then they all fell free in a bloody explosion Hödr was glad he couldn’t clearly see. Kasmira screamed. Ingfred arched his head back. Hödr caught the outline of fangs wedging their way out of his gums, to his obvious agony.

“One of them is inside him!” he jerked his blade free.

As he closed in, Ingfred’s eyes exploded in a shower of gore that gushed out over Hödr. His gut churned. Screaming himself—everyone was screaming—he swung his sword at Ingfred’s neck. The blade wedged into the man’s spine, failing to cleanly decapitate him.

Ingfred reached a hand toward Hödr. The tips of his fingers ruptured and claws began to jut free.

With his boot, Hödr braced against the man and yanked his sword free. Bellowing in terror, Hödr swung once more.

This time, his blade sheared through bone and cut the man’s head from his shoulders.

Kasmira was on her knees, weeping. “Odin save us …”

Gudbrand retched.

Hödr stumbled backward and plopped down on his arse.

“What do you mean …” Brynjar mumbled. “How did …”

“Vaettir …” Hödr’s voice was breaking. “They need bodies in this realm. Whatever festering wound it had dealt him, it must have … must have given the spirit a way into him.”

Kasmira moaned again.

Gudbrand wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You saying those arse-thumping abominations used to be men?”

Hödr pointed his sword at Ingfred. “What does he look like?”

“Like larger eyes were trying to grow out from behind his old ones, same as the teeth did. Like he’s halfway toward being a kobold. Big one.”

“Godsdamned, arse-juggling, Otherworldly trollshit!” Gudbrand said. “Think I need to retch again and I’ve got less than naught in my gut. After that display, I’d be lucky not to retch up my spleen.”

Frigg had forbidden Aesir to come to Kvenland, especially Pohjola. Had she known what sort of monstrosities lurked here?

With a sigh, Hödr pushed himself to his feet. “We move on. Another hour at least, before we can sleep.”

Gudbrand scoffed. “What? You think I can sleep after that? I don’t plan to be sleeping again for a decade, give or take. Even then, I don’t suppose I’ll be closing my eyes.”

Having spent so long under the thrall of a vaettr, Hödr could almost forget other people had no idea what to expect from the Otherworlds.

“Then we move on for as long as our bodies can take. Let’s go.”

* * *

As it turned out, the mercenaries had but a few more hours in them before exhaustion forced them to make camp.

“No amount of silver is worth this,” Brynjar complained.

Hödr winced. He’d known he’d need help, but he’d never imagined he’d be brining people into such horror. Their deaths fell on him. Their suffering, their terror. His burden.

While the others fell into sleep almost immediately, Hödr found himself listening to the thunder overhead. This land was accursed, he had no doubt. The witch-queens trafficked with the Otherworlds, perhaps no longer even caring what they let loose on Midgard.

Hödr’s long torment under Eldr had left him more familiar with the hateful beings beyond the Veil, though even he had not imagined something like these kobolds could exist. But jinn, those he knew too well. They pushed at the fringes of reality, ever threatening to burst forth and devour the souls of men.

Most days, he tried to forget.

It was long ago, and time dulled even the most painful of experiences. Dulled, yes, but never quite expunged.

Hödr should not have come to Pohjola.

* * *

The voices of men alerted him to the presence of a war band long before the others, and Hödr called for a halt. The storm clouds lessened here, so perhaps they drew nigh to the boundary of Kalevala. Hödr’s mercenaries now seemed beaten down into despondency, resigned to a dark urd, perhaps, and even the thought of escape out of Pohjola had not yet buoyed their morale.

“People?” Kasmira asked, as if she couldn’t half believe it possible. “Mortal men?”

“Yes,” Hödr said. Not that no vaettr could imitate human speech, but she needed to hear something more hopeful than that. Besides, he doubted kobolds could mimic the sound of a large group of men.

The Kvenlanders fell almost silent as they approached, their voices becoming whispers they probably imagined no other men might overhear. Despite speaking Northern, their accents were strange to Hödr’s ears, and it took a bit of effort to unravel their words. They’d seen the torches carried by Kasmira and Gudbrand, and were closing in, wary of attack.

“They flank us,” Hödr said softly.

Brynjar drew back his bow, twisting around to one side. Hödr mirrored him, watching their opposite flank.

He could hear them, closing in, slow and very at home in the light woodlands of this region. To another man, they might have seemed specters in the mist.

But Hödr caught their every motion in the snow, could’ve even shot them before they drew nigh. Still, whoever this was had at least twenty men, and Hödr and his three warriors could never overcome such odds.

Was this Rutto?

If so, he was better off shooting now and taking down as many as possible before they could see him. On the other hand, if they had stumbled across men out of Kalevala, they’d throw their lives away for naught.

With a resigned sigh, he lowered his bow. “Let them approach.”

“What?” Brynjar said.

“There’s too many.”

The mercenary grumbled, but followed Hödr’s lead.

Gudbrand spit. “Just glad if we’ve found men of flesh and blood.”

Moments later, the war band began to drift into view. Many had bows drawn back, aimed at Hödr’s party. Others had blades or axes in hand, oft with shields, though sometimes with crackling torches.

“Get caught out alone, eh?” a man said. “You a scouting party?”

“After a fashion,” Hödr answered. “Who are you?”

The man snorted. “Given I’ve got men with arrows aimed at you, I’ll do the asking here. You’re out of Pohjola, so don’t bother denying who you’re working for. I just can’t fathom why you’re all alone here. How many more are out there, huh?”

“You think the witch-queens sent us?”

Several of the man’s group spit in warding.

The speaker—their leader?—took a menacing step forward. “Don’t you try these games. I’ve no mood for it. You’re clearly sworn to that walking pestilence, Rutto. I might still be inclined to take you prisoner instead of having you flayed and strung between the trees. But only if you’ve got some use to me.”

Hödr sighed. A skald would have loved the irony—that they might die to the enemies of the man they’d come here to kill. Sadly, Ingfred would never get to tell his son about it. “We’re not Kvenlanders, if you can’t tell by our clothes and speech. We’ve come from Lappmarken in Sviarland.”

“What? Down south through Pohjola?” Now the man chortled. “Got your stones made straight from dverg steel, did you? Or maybe you think that’s what I’ve got between my ears?”

Kasmira snickered. “Did he just suggest his stones are between his ears?”

“Silence,” Hödr whispered to her, before focusing on the man. “I’ve come to kill Rutto.”

“Oh, and I’m like to believe that, am I now? You and your three friends are going to kill the warlord son of Loviatar, are you? What with you being as blind as tale said Rutto’s mother was, no less. Give me a reason not to have my men loose their arrows.”

“I can kill him,” Hödr said, struggling to keep his voice level.

“Can you now, blind man?”

“You’ve heard of the Aesir?”

“Sure. Gods what them in Sviarland and elsewhere are always carrying on about. Now you’re claiming the Aesir are going to protect you, that it?” The man snorted. “Maybe I ought to keep you around, just so you can amuse my kin with your jests, blind man.”

Hödr took a step forward, ignoring the arrows pointed at him. A little boldness sometimes went a long way. Besides, Hödr was done living his life by the rules of Queen Frigg. “I’m one of them.”

“Wait, what now?” Gudbrand said. “You telling me I’ve been trekking through the fucking gates of Hel with a godsdamn … er … I mean … er. Well, trollshit! I mean … aw, Hel.”

Kasmira and Brynjar exchanged glances, then both of them sank to their knees.

“My lord,” Kasmira said. “I should have known.”

Hödr focused on the Kvenlander leader. “It’s the truth.”

“And I’m supposed to take your word for it, is that it, then?”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? Hödr slowly laid his bow on the ground, then unslung his sword. “Test my strength, then. Send one of your men to wrestle me.”

The man spit. “Don’t need to. I can do that well enough by myself.”

Hödr spread his hands wide and breathed deeply, letting pneuma flood into his limbs.

His opponent tossed aside his sword and shield and strode forward, flexing his shoulders as he walked. The man definitely had brawn, Hödr would give him that. And swagger.

His foe lunged forward and Hödr batted his arm aside. A few onlookers chuckled, perhaps shocked he could see the attack coming in. Again the man lunged in to grab Hödr’s leg, and again, he slapped the hand away.

Growling, the Kvenlander charged forward, intent to tackle Hödr to his abdomen. Hödr caught his shoulders and hefted him off the ground, spun him round, and flung him five feet down into the snow.

Shouts immediately went up among the Kvenlanders, and bows were drawn back once more, now all pointed at him.

The leader groaned, but regained his feet, if slightly swaying in the process. “How’d you do that?”

“I’m stronger than a mortal.” An oversimplification, of course. While he had pneuma to call upon, he could prove monstrously strong, yes. But the power didn’t last forever. “Does that suffice to prove I am who I claim to be?”

The other man cracked his neck from side to side. “Not yet, it doesn’t.” He charged forward again, light-footed in the snow, this time going for both of Hödr’s legs.

It would have been easier to hit the man in the chest, but that might’ve killed him. Instead, Hödr allowed the Kvenlander to heft him off balance and fell to his back. The other man tumbled down atop him, grunting in his attempt to pin him.

Hödr pressed his feet against the man’s gut and heaved. The effort sent the Kvenlander flying through the air once more, only to crash down in a snowdrift.

Hödr rolled to his feet while his opponent was still moaning, and struggling to dig his way clear of the snows, batting away help from his men.

“I don’t want to injure a potential ally,” Hödr said. “We want the same thing—to see Rutto dead. He has something I need and I plan to take it from his corpse. Let us help one another.”

The Kvenlander rubbed his gut and shook his head. “Right. Maybe you are an Ás. Me, I’m King Gelderus of Alavus.” The king strode back over to Hödr, looking him up and down, before shaking his head. “I suppose we have some things to talk on, then?”

The only talk Hödr was interested in was about how to kill Rutto.

18

In the darkness of Svartalfheim, Freyja’s own skin glowed like a bonfire, obviating any need for a torch but also making it almost impossible to conceal her presence as she plodded over coarse fields. Thus, she rested her palm on the hilt of the sword belted at her waist. Only the proudest of fools would think herself capable of overcoming a svartalf war band, and yet, she would scarcely be willing to go down without a fight.

In the years since she’d come to Alfheim, no peace had ever taken hold between the liosalfar and the svartalfar, and neither side had probably ever truly sought one. No one in the court truly revealed the source of the conflict, if anyone even remembered. Perhaps it dated back to some distant blood feud. Certainly, the history of the alfar bloodlines far predated the current iteration of the Earth.

Another strange truth she’d learned since Odin had banished the Vanir—that many cycles of destruction and rebirth had played out over the Mortal Realm. Still, a great many truths remained hidden from her, perhaps deliberately obfuscated, or perhaps even the liosalfar did not know. She could not say how many times the cycle had played out, nor how it began. All she had uncovered did somewhat align with Vanr history, reaffirming that a breach to Niflheim had allowed Hel access to the Earth and brought the mists.

And for more than five thousand years, mankind had suffered because of it.

Beyond that, one other thing seemed agreed upon, whispered in the upper echelons of the court: that this era was drawing to a close. A cataclysm approached.

At the edge of the field lay a putrid bog, reeking of sulfur and noxious gasses that seeped up in bubbles in the muck before popping and releasing into the air. Freyja glanced over her shoulder. Should she turn back and seek another way forward?

In truth, she had no idea where to find Odin. Rather, she knew of craftsmen, the sons of Nainn, who had wrought something that allowed them to track anyone they wished. Those craftsmen were said to live as hermits in a tower beyond this bog, in the Shattered Hollow.

Which meant, most like, this route was the only one that would lead to the brothers.

Never mind that the ground here looked like pus-filled sores continuously rupturing on all sides.

She focused on a rocky island rising up out of the muck, several dozen feet ahead. And then she Sun Strode to it, appearing instantly at her destination. Such a use of her stored sunlight dimmed the glow of her skin, ever so slightly. Using it up would allow her to pass with stealth, but it would leave her defenseless against any svartalfar she happened across. A painful trade.

But it wasn’t like she could fly across the swamp, either.

In those first years, when she’d begun to change, when her body began to absorb the light, it had taken special effort to harness it, to clear her mind from distraction and fear and make a Stride. With enough practice, though, such things became second nature. As easy as breathing. She Strode to another island, then another, in rapid succession.

Each Stride used only a tiny fraction of her sunlight, but still, there’d be no replenishing it here. Once her power was drained, it’d be gone until she could return to Alfheim.

This island proved to be more of a peninsula, barely wider than the breadth of her shoulders, but twisting its way through the bog like a slithering serpent. Careful of her footing, Freyja continued onward, until she came to a place where the land dropped away into a crater. The bog bubbled over and flowed down into a ditch, a thick, noxious waterfall, across which lay a rocky lip around the crater.

From inside the depth of that crater rose a tower, bent to one side, banded with dark metal and lined with claw-like spikes pointing upward. The brothers had wrought the tower themselves, tale claimed, or at least designed it, and constructed it with the help of countless slaves.

Her destination. Hateful though it was. Maybe she could run and jump to the lip. Maybe not.

No, she didn’t want to risk falling in and getting stuck, or getting pulled down into whatever abyss lay beneath the falls.

With a sigh, she Strode to the lip. Her feet skidded, and she half slid, half fell down the side and into the crater. Sharp ridges lined the hollow and she had to twist to the side to avoid getting impaled on one.

Frey had warned her not to try this. He’d forbidden her to come after Hnoss, either, and back then, she’d been fool enough to give him her oath. But she couldn’t have done aught for Hnoss, as Odin had promised her to Volund. Still, she wouldn’t lose him too. Part of her hated him for his reckless oath, made without half considering the consequences. A large part of her, in fact. So why could she not let him go? What irresistible force pulled her back to the man, after so many years?

Soul mates, as Mundilfari had once suggested? Was that sort of thing even possible? She had asked herself that question oh so many times over the intervening years. Before Odin had come to Alfheim—come for her, he’d claimed, truly having no idea of what she’d suffered—and certainly many times after it.

It was easier to hate him. To cast aside esoteric questions of souls and connections and blame him for the suffering his actions had wrought. Justice, her brother would have called that. The man deserved the judgment visited upon him. Except … surely a thousand years of torment and isolation in the Tower of the Eye had made them even.

And Freyja’s heart refused to listen to her. No matter how she tried to cling to her anger, her terrible wrath, it kept slipping through her fingers like a handful of sand.

They’d know she’d come, probably even had her skin not glowed like a torch. The svartalfar knew when anyone moved through the shadows, especially the shadows of their own domains. The darkness whispered to them, told them things they ought not to have known. Truths and secrets and—for all she knew—lies, as well.

According to many liosalfar scholars, the svartalfar were all at least half mad. Perhaps the shadows made them that way, having suffused them as much as the light of Alfheim had seeped into her, changed her. She could scarcely recall what humanity felt like anymore.

As she approached the tower, a notched double gate opened like a sideways maw of a dragon, its teeth as long as her forearm. From this stepped four svartalfar, the darkness seeming to cling to them, welling in their eyes and pooling about their feet. In this world, Dark was everywhere. The svartalfar called it the strongest of the Spheres of Creation, though the liosalfar disputed that.

The approaching alfar did not draw their blades, though the foremost among them had a hand on the pommel of his sword, much as she did.

“You are the sons of Nainn.”

A chuckle moved from one to the next of them, as if in a wave of mirth, a connection that unnerved her far more than she’d have liked to admit. As if they were all aspects of a single, dark entity. “We are,” the lead of them said. “And you come seeking sanctuary, perhaps, little liosalf?”

“Your crafts are legendary, even where I come from.”

The four brothers all looked to another, then another cackle ran from one to the next before they turned back to her. “Of course. What can you possibly know of forging in the dark, the first crafting of souls?”

“We,” another said, “grandsons of Dainn, who first struck orichalcum and bound to it his sacrifices.”

“We,” a third said, “who heed the whispers of that which lies beyond even the Dark. If you hold still enough, you can hear them, itching, scratching. Hungering.”

Freyja shuddered. Better to dismiss such ravings as utter insanity. There were things forbidden to speak of, in Alfheim, fears brought forward from her days as keeper of Sessrumnir, as master of lore to the Vanir. If men were children to the Vanir, and the Vanir were children to the vaettir, suppose then, something else lurked yet further out? But one did not say such things under the light of Alfheim’s eternal Sun.

“She wants the Brisingamen,” the fourth svartalf said, and licked his lips, exposing teeth filed into fangs.

Freyja forced herself to stillness. “I would purchase the torc from you.” It was said the bearer could find anyone, anywhere. It alone might allow her to find Od and Idunn before this place seeped so deep into them he could never return from it.

“Oh,” the foremost said. “But she brought no orichalcum.”

“Hardly matters, we have enough.”

“Hmm, will she give her soul?”

“I doubt that she can afford to part with enough to sate the four of us.”

“Hmm. Really only leaves one currency, then.”

Freyja refused to balk or tremble before them. She’d known well enough what price they must invariably ask. In the Mortal Realm, she could have offered silver or gold, but beyond that realm, few things held value. Souls, of course, and knowledge, on occasion. Mostly though, she’d found herself left with only one way to purchase her advancement through the ranks of the liosalfar. Hers, and Frey’s, too, with the only other thing vaettir craved.

Souls and flesh.

“Which of you will it be, then?” she asked. Long practice with such things allowed her to keep her voice level. For a time, she’d dared to believe herself beyond the need to buy her way with her body … at least until she’d resolved to come here.

Lifetimes ago, she’d loved Od, and Idunn too. She wasn’t ready to let them go.

“Which?” the one furthest back asked. Another cackling wave ran amongst them.

“All, of course,” the foremost said. “You must lie with all of us. All at once, all through the night, little liosalf.”

“Pleasure us with trench and arse and mouth and hand.”

Freyja barely fought down a shudder. While liosalfar had oft invited her to join in orgies—or compelled her to, even—never had they placed her in such a situation. But svartalfar fed on suffering and cruelty, even more than most vaettir. They wanted to hurt her. They wanted to terrify her, and she would not give them the satisfaction. “Night does not end here. I’m hardly going to agree to lay with you until daybreak in a realm with no sun.”

The foremost cackled wildly. “Twelve hours, then, clever one.”

There was no way back, save to turn and flee into the bog. Probably she could have escaped from them, maybe even made her way back to Alfheim. And accomplished naught at all. Instead, she plastered a smile across her face as she sashayed over toward the opening to their tower. “Twelve hours sounds rather ambitious on your parts.”

Only a faint snicker answered that.

The inside of the tower seemed forged from black metal, a cold, alien place lit by two small braziers that sent the shadows dancing in ways they ought not to have. A darkness swirled around the room.

The dragon-maw gates creaked as they closed behind her.

19

The svartalfar had removed Odin’s chains and taken him to a hot spring beneath the city. There, six svartalf females watched him bathe. The waters were so hot Odin had to ease in, and they stung his numerous cuts. He’d lost track of time, but his hands still shook from fatigue and hunger.

As he sank deeper, up to his shoulders, the urge to doze became almost overpowering, and he shut his eye.

Your body becomes saturated with the shadows … it could not bear the light of the accursed world … but here you are at peace …

Lies.

* * *

“You asked me to keep you grounded in the present.” Hermod’s voice yanked Odin from his painful explorations. Odin’s apprentice paced around their prison.

Damn, but part of him wanted to weep and the rest of him wanted to curse urd, curse the Norns, and defy the very cosmos. This wasn’t how it was meant to unfold. Everything was falling apart and all his schemes, all his plans, all his efforts had not served to avert the end in the least.

Because … because he had relied too heavily on the visions? Odin shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. No. No.

“Odin?”

“We were always headed here. I thought … I thought if I could see enough, I could change the future. Save us. But there was never any hope of that. There was no stopping Ragnarok. It comes on us as sure as the tide rises. I thought the visions my gift … they are worse than a burden.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Prescience accounts for itself.”

* * *

When he jolted awake, he had no idea how long he’d remained. But as he rose, he saw the cuts on his chest had become naught more than red welts, the pain almost gone.

“Come,” one of the females said.

The spring smelled faintly of sulfur, but it was so soothing he almost wanted to remain. Still, better not to test the patience of his captors just yet, weak as he was.

The female who’d spoken motioned to another one, who handed Odin first a linen to dry himself, then clean trousers, his boots, and a new shirt.

“You’ll wish to eat,” the speaker said.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I am Caballos Weth. And that’s the only question I shall answer, mortal. Do you wish to eat or not?”

Odin nodded. Indeed, he was starving and had no idea how long Fjalar had held him prisoner without food and with only a few sips of water.

His guards led him up from the spring, following a narrow staircase with a precipitous drop down either side. He could try to escape from here, perhaps throw Weth from the stairs and seize a weapon from one of the others. But he remained exhausted and all they offered him at the moment was what he needed most.

So instead, he followed Weth and her soldiers back into the beehive city of Amsvartnir, and into Fjalar’s palace. His dinning hall was a platform suspended in the air, overlooking a chamber where several pairs of females trained with spears, blades, or wrestling.

“Why are there so few males among the svartalfar?”

Weth pointed to a silver-plated chair set along one side of a hexagonal table. “Sit down. Ask your questions of the prince, if you dare.”

Darkness is subtle in its advance … you almost don’t notice when it encroaches upon your soul …

Odin did as the female directed, pulling his chair up to the table.

Moments later, two other females clad in gowns with revealing cuts descended from a staircase. One bore a steaming platter she set upon the table. Sitting on a bed of mushrooms was what looked to be a roasted slug the size of Odin’s torso, split down the middle and stuffed with some greenery he couldn’t identify.

The other female placed a goblet in front of him and poured an almost black liquid into it from a decanter. The stuff smelled like wine. Maybe Fjalar wanted to poison him, but he’d had Odin at his mercy a long while. Refusing the drink seemed madness, especially given he had to eat … whatever that thing was next.

Odin threw back the glass in one swig. It burned and was far more bitter than the wines he was used to, though it had a smoky aftertaste he could get used to. Odin coughed, then cleared his throat. The female helpfully refilled his goblet.

After another glance at Weth—who remained standing rigid, staring straight ahead—Odin prodded at the slug thing. The flesh was well cooked, so it broke off under his fingers.

Probably too much to hope for to get venison or rabbit or aught else he knew in this realm.

So he tore off a chunk and popped it in his mouth. The stuff was chewy, and it too tasted of smoke, though not half so bad as he’d expected from it.

He’d eaten a fair portion of the creature by the time Fjalar descended a different staircase and sat across from him, this time in the company of another male, who remained standing behind him.

“I’ve seen so few males here,” Odin said. “Why is that?”

Fjalar steepled his fingers on the table. “You will learn of our ways in time. First, I’ll have your oath to speak the truth to me, in my court.” The prince cocked his head at Weth, and she produced a dagger and laid it on the table in front of Odin. “You will serve.”

He grunted. Well, what would defiance buy him at present? He took the knife and sliced open his palm. “I give you my oath, on my own blood, I shall not lie to you, so long as you do the same for me.” He tossed the knife onto the table and it clattered noisily.

Fjalar scowled at him, clearly not amused by the conditions of his oath. Odin could almost see it, the war behind Fjalar’s eyes, wondering if he ought to resume his tortures and try to wrest a more obedient vow from Odin.

Odin kept his face impassive. The svartalf thought himself grand, without doubt, and his posturing and pronouncements about the unfathomable power of those from beyond the Mortal Realm might well ring true. Still, Odin would not allow himself to become a mere slave, nor to let an oath bind him without hope of release. “Do you welcome the idea of an alliance?”

Fjalar pressed his palms flat on the table. “I welcome you into the court of Amsvartnir, Odin Borrson, so long as you respect that I alone am prince here.”

Odin nodded. “You want to harness my Sight, against your enemies, I presume. I can make best use of it once I’ve rested.”

“Yes, yes, mortal. Weth will have you taken to chambers more pleasant than those you previously occupied. Ask any of the females for aught you wish, further drink, or bedding any of them or so forth.”

Odin sputtered on his wine. “Bedding any of them? You mean no one will take offense at such a request?”

Fjalar sneered. “You truly know so little of the realms beyond your own. No. No one will take offense nor are the females permitted to refuse.”

Not permitted to … “Then how’s that different from rape?”

“Semantics. In your world, owners do what they will with slaves, including taking them when and where they wish, yes?”

Odin turned his gaze to the two serving females, then to Weth. “You’re saying … the entire female population of Amsvartnir is enslaved?” He wanted to retch. This was … he had no words for such an injustice.

Darkness reigns eternal … it is the state of all things, living and dead … we are all dead …

“No, that was an analogy to make it easier for your simple mind to comprehend. The princes of Svartalfheim are descended from Gugalanna, the Dark King, who was the mate of Nott and vessel for her infinite power.”

“If all your power comes from a goddess, why are the females not her servants?”

Fjalar shrugged. “They are. As they are mine, as a Prince of the Dark, I have told you this.”

“Where are the rest of the males?”

The prince smirked. “Where do you think? Why should I want too many to challenge my primacy or sexual rights to the population? We permit but a few males of the blood to live. All others are fed to Nott.” Damn, but that smirk was infuriating. Fjalar snickered as if reading his mind. “Do not try to deny that it tempts you, arouses you, the thought that you can walk down the street and spread your seed wherever the mood strikes. Do you imagine there is a female left in this city I have not had in my bed? If there is, I am not aware of it.”

Now you find yourself mired in darkness … and can no longer remember the lie of light …

Odin lurched to his feet, toppling over the chair and looked not to Fjalar but to Weth. “Why would you tolerate this insanity? You have a thousand times their numbers. Should you not rise up and kill these so-called masters?”

The female met his gaze with inexplicable defiance, as if he was the criminal in this. “You have sworn an oath, as have we all.”

“Even oaths have limits.”

Fjalar cackled. “You’d try to make someone question practices that predate your entire world? I told you, I am a scion of the power of Nott. There are eight princes, ruling eight city-states, across our world. Your role is to help me ascend over the other princes. Not to waste your breath hoping to incite a rebellion that cannot begin to live.”

“You disgust me.”

How self-righteous … from the man who forces valkyries to bed him …

It wasn’t the same. It was not the same …

You almost don’t notice it … as the dark surrounds you …

Odin couldn’t swallow.

Oh, yes … you see it now … your hypocrisy …

“Take your rest, mortal,” Fjalar said. “If you don’t wish to sate yourself on any of the females here, you’re hardly obliged to do so. But you have sworn your oath to aid me, and I will have knowledge from you. First, of the positions of the troops out of Gnipahellir. We shall thwart their attempts to outmaneuver Amsvartnir. Only then shall we talk more of the future.”

Weth grabbed Odin’s arm and guided him up one of the staircases. He stole a glance at her, unable to believe she could stomach her station in this. But she didn’t even look at him.

When they’d passed into a corridor between buildings, away from the prince, Odin jerked his arm free. “You cannot truly wish to live like this.”

When she at last turned to him, her sneer was so hateful, Odin found himself falling back a step. “Do you believe this is the worst possible urd that might befall a soul beyond the Mortal Realm? I am a caballos—a knight—and among the upper echelons of rank that any female might hope to achieve. My position places me well above that of the vast majority of svartalfar.”

“But beneath any man. Literally. Or is your position why you serve—you enable those who enslave you?”

“You know naught of the realities into which you have blundered. Spirits exist by the sufferance of the Elder Gods. Only once has such a being felt the sting of defeat and had her power claimed by another.”

An Elder God defeated … He had heard that before. Loki had claimed that in a distant era, his dead daughter had usurped the power of the first goddess of Mist. “You mean Hel.”

“Yes. Now come, walk to your chambers and question no more societies ancient beyond your ken. Or I shall see to it the Wild Hunt comes to claim you.”

She spoke as though she had authority to convince Fjalar of aught, but a moment ago she’d seemed a slave. There was more going on here than Odin could wrap his mind around. He let the female guide him onward. “What is the Wild Hunt?”

“A free roaming band with members drawn from all the city-states. Its singular purpose is to hunt down souls to ferry back to the princes, most of which they must then pass on to Nott.”

“Souls …”

Sustenance …

These spirits ate one another. They devoured the very existence of each other, and of any mortals they could catch out. “The Wild Hunt crosses into the Astral Realm?”

“Oh, even into the Mortal Realm, when conditions are right. Yes, human souls are a feast for us all. Those who serve well attain true immortality by such meals. At the discretion and sufferance of the princes, of course.”

Weth led him to a doorway composed of a grated disc that spun into the wall, revealing a narrow, dark room, with shelves along either side for sleep. She shoved Odin inside. “Do you wish companionship? I can arrange for any sort you desire.”

“Including you?”

“If you wish.”

Odin groaned.

You lie to yourself … pretend your lust more pure than those who admit to the shadows deep in their souls … in time, such lies must falter …

Audr’s words left a roil in Odin’s gut, until he felt apt to retch up the foul meat he’d taken. And then a worse, darker fear struck him. “Where is Idunn?”

“The liosalf lives.”

“She is not to be touched, or I will never use my Sight for Fjalar or this city.”

Weth bared her teeth. “Am I to take such a message to the prince?”

“Yes!” Odin could see himself strangling every last svartalf in this world.

Rampant slaughter … We are all dead …

He pressed a palm to his head. “Get the fuck out of here and see to it no one touches Idunn.”

“You mean touches her any further.”

Odin clenched his fists. Oh, he could kill her. Could feel his arm rising, intent to crush her throat with one blow.

Weth smirked, then disappeared back down the dark corridor. The disc-door sealed behind her and did not reopen when Odin pressed against it.

Odin wanted to scream at the walls of his tiny cell. To pound his fist upon the door.

To bargain requires aught of value, Valravn said.

Odin jolted at hearing another voice besides Audr’s. One more welcome, certainly. The Moon vaettr was less vile, though it too required souls.

You cannot bargain if you have naught, Valravn said.

Groaning, Odin slumped down onto one of the bed shelves. Valravn meant he could not protect Idunn—or himself—unless he had something Fjalar wanted. To get that, he needed to learn about the forces of Gnipahellir.

He lay flat on his back and closed his eye, trying to focus his Sight. He’d find out what the prince wanted to know. He had sworn an oath to truthfulness … but there must be some way around that oath. Some way he could get himself and Idunn both free from here.

All of it would have to come through his visions. He needed answers to give to the dark prince.

But one day, he’d see these vile creatures pay for their crimes.

20

Gelderus had camped his forces atop a hill just south of the border between Kalevala and Pohjola. Against most armies, it would’ve offered a secure spot, forcing their foes to attack uphill, all while the Kvenlander snipers picked off those trying to make the climb. Hödr had chosen it for that reason. Because Rutto would—with luck—believe Gelderus thought himself secure up top, while Hödr and his remaining crew hid in the undergrowth in the valley.

A decent plan. Not a great one.

The problem with getting involved with armies was the chaos. In a small skirmish, Hödr could make out friend from foe by their auras. But with dozens, maybe over a hundred warriors engaged, all of them driven to fury, desperate, all mashing about together, it became a tumultuous maelstrom of blood. He couldn’t easily tell where a given man ended and the next began, much less make certain he wouldn’t wind up stabbing an ally.

War suited him ill.

Maybe it suited all men ill, but they courted it, just the same.

All he could do in this situation was wait, and hope he’d be able to figure out where Rutto was among the attackers. Assuming the attack even came.

“Shouldn’t be lingering here,” Kasmira complained.

“Not hardly,” Gudbrand agreed. “Fucking mist everywhere, and those arse-munching kobolds hunting for us. We ought to run straight into the heart of Kalevala and keep running until we’re on a godsdamned boat straight to Sviarland. Or Bjarmaland. Even the damn Deathless liars work out better than what … fucking Ingfred! Worst thing I ever saw in my whole damn life, that’s a fact.”

“Keep your voice down,” Hödr said. “I’ll see to it their shares get to their families.”

“You’re not seeing trollshit,” Gudbrand mumbled.

Hödr chose to ignore him. It was better that way. Better than losing his hired crew. But if this continued, they’d turn on him. At best, they’d flee as Gudbrand suggested. At worst … He could almost see it in the man’s aura. The overpowering need to blame someone for the horrors he’d witnessed. To kill someone.

After finding out Hödr was an Ás, they’d worshipped him. For a bit. Until the shock had worn down. Until they’d spent days lingering here, underfed and given too much time to think. Now they were scared. Sometimes, men did wild things rather than admit their fear. Wild, like turning on their own.

* * *

Night had settled in when the shouts went up. Fierce cries that almost didn’t seem to come from the throats of men. A rush of warriors surged up the hill, greeted by calls of surprise from the sentries.

“Who are they?” Hödr asked.

Brynjar grunted. “Can’t make out much through the mist. Savages, though. Men what serve the witch-queens. Guess that means they follow Rutto, too. Wearing wolf skulls and skins, and a few snow bears.”

Would Rutto be among them? Hödr just didn’t know enough about his foe to judge whether the man would join the first charge or hold back.

A hail of arrows fell among the attacking warriors. Cries of pain broke out over the wild yells, but not enough. Then the sounds of weapons hitting flesh, and wood, and steel. Slightly off, though, the impacts.

Hödr cocked his head. “Are they using stone weapons?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me none,” Brynjar said. “Can’t rightly make out such things from here, though.”

Well. That might serve to distinguish their leader.

Of a sudden, the screams of battle turned to cries of utter terror. Bloodcurdling shrieks.

“What the fuck?” Gudbrand demanded.

So much chaos. Hödr couldn’t make out auras, couldn’t tell what was going on. “We have to get closer.”

“Mist-madness …” Kasmira mumbled.

Hödr crept forward, drawing his sword in the process. Behind him, the others followed, their panting seeming loud to his ears, even given the battle ahead. Scared. Terrified.

“That’s more kobolds,” Brynjar said. “Got to be, the way men are fleeing like that.”

“Invisible toadfuckers,” Gudbrand said.

Kasmira just moaned.

No good way to deal with this situation, but Hödr could make out a few discolored auras now. Those had to be the kobolds, creeping about and slaughtering Gelderus’s men, making it impossible for his otherwise better-armed warriors to face down the onslaught coming up the hill.

“We have to get closer,” Hödr repeated, continuing forward.

“No,” Kasmira mumbled. “No way. I’m done with this trollshit.”

Hödr grimaced, not needing to glance back to know she made a mad scramble away. He could almost feel it, the other two considering joining her. “Run now, and you get naught for your troubles.” He continued forward.

“I want her share,” Gudbrand demanded.

Hödr paused a moment. “Fine. Just stay ready.”

He needed to find Rutto before this went on much longer.

“There’s a man at the base of the hill,” Brynjar said.

Hödr cocked his head, trying to catch a sign of whoever the scout had seen. Yes, someone shouting orders in a strange tongue. Not Northern, though perhaps related to it. And there, the aura of a man, twisted though, warped by sorcery, whether his own … or that of his witch-queen mother. “That’s got to be him.”

“Can’t get a shot from here,” Brynjar said.

Hödr crept forward further, faster than he normally would have tried while sneaking. The noise of the battle should cover his approach, and he needed to do this before too many of Gelderus’s people had fallen. If they broke …

Other, darker, twisted auras surrounded Rutto. Without warning, several of them peeled off and started loping in Hödr’s direction. They moved in awkward hops, made great leaps into the tree branches that sent them rustling, and they bounded across the snows.

“Kobolds,” Hödr said, rising up. No more point in stealth.

Brynjar loosed an arrow that thwacked into a tree. “Too damn fast.”

Gudbrand hefted his axe. “Arse-flogging Otherworldly abominations.”

Hödr drew up close to him. “They’re almost upon us. You’ll never hit them, Brynjar.”

Groaning, the man dropped the bow and drew a seax. Not nigh a long enough weapon to Hödr’s thinking.

“I see a shimmer,” the scout said. “Shit! It’s coming straight—”

Hödr felt it, as the creature distorted the aura, springing from the treetops. He swiped his sword up and it connected with a body in midair, flinging it aside. Another aura jumped at him and Hödr caught it with a backswing.

“He’s only got a handful of these things back with him!” Hödr shouted. “Kill them now!”

“Godsdamned trying to!” Gudbrand said, his wild axe swings connecting with naught.

Damn it. Hödr raced forward and slashed as another kobold leapt off the trees for his head. The impact slowed his charge, but the creature landed in two pieces. Decapitated? He didn’t have time to check.

The man was charging in now, his blade distorting the surrounding air.

Brynjar screamed behind him.

No. Hödr couldn’t get distracted. Another kobold bounded for him. The creature hopped at him, croaking. His blade bit down on its flesh, but it kept coming. The impact barreled him over into the snows. Razor-sharp claws shredded through his mail and pads and flesh, scraping his forearm straight down to the bone. Hödr shrieked as a haze of red filled his vision.

His pneuma could help block the pain, but still, he found himself enmeshed with the creature, rolling. Its slimy skin was so slick he couldn’t get a grip to throw it off. Its breath stank of decay, like a bog.

He caught an arm as a claw swiped at his face. Even with the pneuma, the kobold had almost his strength.

Gudbrand roared, and his axe splattered the kobold’s skull. “Fucking die, arse-gnawing swamp frog!”

Rutto charged in. Hödr shoved Gudbrand off him and the mercenary passed a hair under the runeblade.

Brynjar roared, stabbing with his seax. The runeblade came up too fast, taking his arm off at the elbow, leaving the man screaming in horror.

Hödr roared, swiping with his sword. It bit into Rutto’s ankle and the man stumbled.

The next instant, Gudbrand was on him, burying that axe into the back of his skull.

Blood sprayed over Hödr’s face.

Rutto shuddered. Then he turned around, axe still sticking from his head, and caught Gudbrand with a hand around his throat, hefting him off the ground.

Brynjar shrieked in agony, but Hödr couldn’t spare him a thought.

Rutto should have been dead. This was madness.

The witch’s son reared back with the runeblade, intent to ram it through Gudbrand’s gut. Hödr flung his arms around the man’s legs and heaved, using his pneuma for strength. He sent Rutto toppling over sideways, the blade wedging in the snow. Gudbrand fell, gasping, clutching his throat and choking.

Hödr climbed atop Rutto and rammed his sword through the man’s throat. A geyser of blood exploded over his face.

Rutto heaved him backward, matching his strength. The man stood, Hödr’s sword still run through his neck and Gudbrand’s axe in the back of his skull.

Hödr gaped. How did one kill someone like that? How to kill …

The runeblade!

He lunged for it, jerking it around even as Rutto leapt in with obvious intent to strangle him. The blade punched through his foe’s chest with ease.

Now, the creature—for he was no man—looked down at the blade in his chest. He spasmed once, then lay still.

Hödr fell back into the snow, cradling his mangled left arm.

His flesh felt aflame where the kobold had mauled him. His hands had begun to shake.

He needed …

“Help …”

Part III

Year 399, Age of the Aesir

Winter

21

“Had to put that poor bastard Brynjar out of his misery. Figuring this trollfucker needs the same, except then I won’t be seeing my pay.”

“No,” another voice said. “No, bring the Ás. Me, I’m not having anyone say I let him die.”

Hödr struggled to rise, but everything kept bobbing around. Someone carried him, but he was far too weak to focus on auras or refine his senses.

“Thought you didn’t worship the Aesir.” Gudbrand. He was the one carrying Hödr.

“The man saved my kingdom. Least I can do is bring him to my shaman.”

The two fell silent a while, save for Gudbrand’s huffing, and the crunch of snow under their feet.

“Figure it’s over, then? What with that arse-lord dead?”

“I think so,” Gelderus said. “Without the witch’s son controlling them, the hiisi disappeared back into the wilds of Pohjola.”

“Kobolds, you mean.”

“Call them what you will.”

“Prefer not to call them a damn thing. Prefer to keep on thinking them tales what people tell when the winter goes on too long. Given as my whole band’s dead now, don’t figure how that’s going to work, though.”

It felt like Hödr’s brain was baking inside his skull. His left hand had begun spasming, fingers drawing up into a claw-like grip he couldn’t force open. Something was worming around, beneath his skin. Like maggots, eating him alive, starting with the muscles in his arm.

“Saw some serious trollshit regarding the kobolds, not long before we met you. Can’t say as I want to see it again. His teeth start falling out …”

“Just bring him. Shaman’s tent is just around the next hill.”

The downhill motion made Hödr’s stomach lurch until he wanted to retch, but couldn’t make himself do more than cough and moan.

“Didn’t happen this fast with Ingfred,” Gudbrand said. “Figured him being an Ás ought to have bought him more time, not less.”

Trembles shot through Hödr, followed by chills that had his teeth chattering.

“Don’t see much point in speculating on that,” Gelderus said.

A while longer—maybe he’d slept?—and Gudbrand carried him past a tent flap into a warm interior, with a crackling fire. The mercenary laid Hödr on a fur.

Another man scrambled over, hovering above him, clucking his tongue. “What happened to him?” His Kvenlander accent was so thick Hödr had trouble making it out.

“A hiisi,” Gelderus said.

More tongue clucking, then the shaman prodded at Hödr’s wound, making him gasp. “Rotting already.” Another cluck. “It’s hollowing him out so another one of its kind can take him over. I can feel it, pressing against our world. Trying to crawl up from the depths and into him. Be a mercy to take his head off.”

“No.” Gelderus’s voice brooked no disobedience. “Do whatever it takes to save him.”

“Eh. Huh. I can take the arm then, try to stop the rot before it reaches head or heart. Most men can’t live through that, though.”

No. No! Hödr wanted to shout his objections. Take his arm? Not if it would save him from the very gates of Hel!

“Assuming he lives,” the shaman said, then clucked again. “Assuming he does, I can invoke the spirits and try to banish the bad one. Not without risk, though.”

“We’d all be dead were it not for him. Do whatever it takes.”

No. No …

“Best get some men to hold him down,” Gudbrand said. “Might seem weak now, but you’ve seen how strong he gets when roused. Don’t figure he’ll be too keen on having his arm hacked off.”

“Aatami!” Gelderus shouted. “Get your arse in here!”

A moment later, the tent flap opened again, and more footfalls beside him.

“Heat the axe blade in the fire,” the shaman said.

No. No. No. No.

Hödr moaned.

“Make it a clean swipe,” the king said after a moment.

“Have to take it above the wound.”

“Elbow?” Gudbrand asked.

Someone wrapped Hödr’s wrist in an iron grip and pulled his arm taut.

No! He surged pneuma into his limb to throw the man free. Or he tried to, but it refused his command and all he managed to do was thrash. A heavy knee fell on his shoulder.

“Get it done,” Gelderus said.

“Don’t …” Hödr managed.

“Sorry, my lord,” Gudbrand said. Not even a hint of mockery this time.

Hödr’s breaths came so fast he felt he’d choke on them. They stuck in his throat. Stung. Everything hurt, especially breathing.

Rutto had taken off Brynjar’s arm at the elbow, hadn’t he? Seemed ironic that—

Thwack!

Hödr screamed as red hot pain exploded through his body. The agony built and built until he could have sworn it would rupture his skull. Until his brain must explode.

Then his flesh began to sizzle as flame pressed against it.

He roared. For a moment, before darkness swallowed him completely.

* * *

Chanting. The words alien and hateful, worming their way through his brain and shredding his mind. Sounds he could not understand and yet knew, for he’d felt it, long ago, when the jinn held his body under its thrall. When it made him a slave and used him to work its wretchedness across the world.

Sounds a human mouth wasn’t meant to make. The ears of men weren’t meant to hear it.

Worse still, because something did know those words. Something came close in answer, unseen, but felt, crawling along his skin.

By the Tree, his arm hurt! It was on fire, unending fire, like the torment Eldr had wracked him with back in those days.

The haunt of his dreams, when still he had eyes. When he could see. When a vile thing used him to rape and murder and set the world ablaze.

“Oh. The world will burn.”

Hödr blinked, suddenly able to see, though almost wishing he couldn’t.

He stood in an expanse of almost total blackness, save for flames that surrounded him and yet provided almost no light. Instead, smoke billowed up from the fire, further obscuring his surroundings.

The voice had come from … the smoke? All around him.

“The world will burn soon. Can you feel it, vessel? Can you feel the sparks ready to ignite? The cycle continues, men die, rise again, so that suffering can reign eternal.”

The smoke had grown so thick he couldn’t breathe, and he fell to his knees, coughing. “Eldr?”

“Even now, a part of you wishes for the flame. You crave its power and seek for it, wondering how to hold the ashes.”

What madness was this? Hadn’t he been in Kvenland? And somehow now … his mind was in the dark, with this Fire vaettr.

“Or perhaps there was always a tiny vestige of me left deep inside. An ember, waiting for a spark, so that flame may once more rise into brilliance and immolate the impure.”

“I never wanted you.”

“A lie, of course. A lie told to yourself, over and over.”

“No!” Hödr shouted at the smoke. “No, I never asked for you! I would have wept for joy and relief when you were gone.”

“If you’d had eyes left?”

The smoke redoubled, forcing Hödr to the ground. Couldn’t breathe …

“Do you not wonder at the majesty of Muspelheim? Have you not longed to see the world from which flame rises, eternal?”

It haunted his nightmares. Hardly the same as desiring to see it.

He wanted to deny the Fire vaettr, but he couldn’t form words any longer for the choking.

Then a hand seemed to reach down his throat. Its bony fingers closed around his heart. And it yanked something out, tore it from deep inside him.

All the flames went out and Hödr collapsed onto his back.

Darkness returned.

* * *

He was shivering, despite the fur blanket thrown atop him. That was the first thing Hödr noticed. Slightly coarse fur. Wolfskin? Yes, wolf, maybe even dire wolf. He wheezed. His chest hurt and his throat was raw.

And his left arm itched, still feeling like it was on fire. He reached to scratch it, but it wasn’t there. Just a stump at his elbow, wrapped in stinking bandages.

“Oh … shit.”

“So you live.” The voice came from a man lying on his back on the other side of the fire. The shaman? “I’m glad it wasn’t all in vain.”

“You … you invoked spirits to drive that thing out of me.”

“Hmm.”

“It cost you.” Hödr knew it must.

“It always costs.”

Speaking hurt, so he said no more.

* * *

In the morn, Gelderus came to check on him.

Hödr’s strength had begun to return, though he could not drive the visions he’d seen from his mind. Eldr … might have been brought on by the fevers or the vaettr inside him resisting being pulled out. Probably, he’d never know the truth. Either way, though, he could not shake the image of the world burning.

The king sat down beside him. “I’m in your debt. I’ve secured Rutto’s blade for you. It lies beside you.”

Hödr patted around until he felt the hilt. He’d done it. He’d really done it. He blew out a long breath. So now he had the means to fight Baldr and win.

Discounting having lost an arm and thus being unable to use a shield now.

Hödr groaned.

“I get the feeling the sword isn’t really the end of your quest.”

“No. I have to … to overcome another Ás in combat. One who is probably a stronger fighter and who certainly can command far more men.”

“A bad proposition. And you have but the one mercenary?”

“I have an ally in Sviarland, a king, but yes, I doubt he can call up many men. Would you … If I were to ask you to accompany me, to sail to Sviarland and aid me in my fight, would you consider it?”

The king grunted. “Me, I can’t see myself refusing to aid a man what I owe my throne, no matter the risk. Every last man and woman here might’ve died if no one took out the witch’s spawn. Suppose that means I’d best get a few ships ready. No one’s going to be keen on sailing in winter, though, but it doesn’t seem we’re getting a summer this year.”

No, and that was strange enough itself. Eldr had claimed the world would burn, but at the moment, it seemed more like to die of deathchill.

Crops were failing. Not enough fish in the coastal waters. Famine all over.

Was it better than burning?

Hödr shuddered.

“I’ll get you another blanket for now. Be a bit before we can set out, and we’ve got to head south before we can make sail, regardless.”

But it wasn’t the cold making Hödr shiver. That, he could deal with. No. It was wondering whether what he’d seen had been real or the product of his illness and torment.

Nor was he certain he wanted the answer.

22

Fjalar’s court had gathered around his perverse throne room. Besides the prince, Odin saw six other men and several dozen women, all peering up at their prince, none drawing too nigh to the razor-lined columns.

Weth brought him in and guided him to where Idunn stood, wrapped in a shroud that exposed little save her face. Was that supposed to conceal her light? It was like aught remained of the sunlight she’d carried in from Alfheim. There were too many strange customs in this world, and so many of them left bile rising in his throat. He’d just as soon not remain long enough to understand the import of such things.

“Are you hurt?” he whispered to her.

She shook her head, though pain lurked behind her eyes. Pain, and fear. When he’d known her back on Midgard, she’d never looked like that. Now she seemed … smaller. Fragile. This woman who was, in a sense, his own granddaughter.

Odin drew her into an embrace. “I’m sorry we came here. It wasn’t … I didn’t want this for you.”

“They tortured me,” she whispered in his ear, her voice shuddering. From the way she cast a glance at Weth, Odin wondered if the svartalf herself had done the torturing.

Odin favored their captor with a hateful glare that seemed to only amuse her.

“So,” Fjalar said on his throne. “We have overcome the forces of Gnipahellir and taken numerous prisoners.”

Everyone in the room raised their hands, palms up and stuck out their tongues. Was that supposed to be cheers of approval?

“Yes, yes,” Fjalar said. “It’s time then to formally welcome our newest members into the court. I give you Odin Borrson, and Idunn Ivaldisdottir. To them we must extend our fullest hospitality.” Now he looked to Odin. “So, guests, tell us what strategy Prince Mantus of Gnipahellir will use. Will he have his soldiers retreat back to his cave city? Will he try another approach?”

“You’re helping him,” Idunn said, flatly.

Odin wished he could tell her he had no choice. That, were he to refuse, whatever they’d done to her would only grow worse. But now was neither the time nor the place.

Instead, Odin shut his eye and let the vision trance descend around him. It washed over him like a wave, powerful as a raging sea, tossing him one way and the next, through the torrent of shifting currents. It stole his breath. For a moment. Then he sucked air in through his nose and saw himself telling Fjalar he should send his soldiers to the far side of the Onyx Lagoon.

The words flowed from his mouth as though it were not himself speaking, and he could not help but wonder at the questions Fjalar had raised about the Norns. Did they literally control Odin, strip him of his free will, such that he became compelled to relate the visions as he saw them? Could he choose to lie—or rather, to preserve his oath—simply to fail to give the advice he’d seen himself giving? Doing so would violate the precept of prescience that he and Loki had agreed upon—that it must account for itself.

He ought not to be able to see something which would not happen.

But conversely, if he relayed advice only because he saw his future self relaying that advice, but that self knew he wanted Fjalar to fail … was it possible he might thus intentionally give himself faulty counsel knowing that such must be passed on, while he, in the present would not knowingly be lying? Would such a tactic, in essence, be fooling himself with a thought he’d never actually had, effectively sidestepping his oath?

And what of Fjalar’s supposition that the Norns had agents? If such existed, he had to assume they might take it amiss if a mortal tried to subvert the designs of their masters. Assuming such even could be possible. For what was urd, if not the inevitable?

* * *

Fires raged over the plains. Men and horses turned to ash. Whole cities burned away to cinders that blew upon a scorching wind. From amidst the infernos, a shadow loomed. The march of fire jotunnar, the earth itself trembling before their fury.

* * *

The unsought vision sent Odin stumbling until Idunn caught his arm and hefted him up. What did it mean? He’d seen that before, the world burning. Was that the real Ragnarok? If so, then there lay the future he must prevent, whether the Norns willed it or no. If they had agents and those agents wanted to see the world end, then they, too, became his enemies.

They called him the Destroyer.

In another lifetime he had fought Hel … Rangda.

“Do you have more you wish to share?” Fjalar asked.

Odin shook himself, then fitted the svartalf prince with a grim look. “I’ll tell you when I wish to speak to you.”

The whole court was staring at him now. Almost holding their breath, as if waiting to see how the prince would react to Odin’s rudeness. He scarcely cared. In the future, Fenrir would come for him. That frightened him. That would be Odin’s final end.

Fjalar was a prolonged inconvenience. A thorn he’d eventually pluck from his heel and toss aside.

“Well,” the prince said. “Take our guests to the seamstress. We can find something more fitting for members of the Court of Amsvartnir. Burn their other clothes.”

Weth motioned for Odin to tread before her.

With a last glance at Fjalar, he did so, and Idunn stuck close to his side, her shoulders tense. Yes, it did seem she held a personal grudge against Weth.

Odin could see no way—at present—to take revenge against the svartalf, but he swore he’d keep looking. As an oracle and an immortal, he could afford patience, knowing that all crimes must be repaid in time.

He patted Idunn’s hand in reassurance, though she gave no sign of having noticed.

Weth guided them up a ramp and into another enclosed corridor that brought them to a maze-like chamber where the walls were lined with row after row of black and mottled gray leather. Scaled leather, in fact. From lizards?

So many of the svartalfar dressed in leathers, but he hadn’t given much consideration to it. But maybe it made sense. They had no sheep for wool, but if some kind of reptiles lived in this world of eternal night, their hides might make ideal clothes.

A svartalf female came around the bend, looked them over, then shook her head and waved a hand at Weth.

Their captor grabbed Idunn’s dress and ripped it off her shoulders. Idunn drew in a sharp breath but didn’t shriek, even as Weth yanked the sheer fabric clear from her belt and tossed it on the floor.

Odin didn’t bother to resist when the svartalf began to strip him in the same rough fashion.

In truth, he hadn’t looked close at Idunn before, but she bore red lines covering her stomach and stretching toward her groin, disappearing into the dark hair down there. The svartalfar had sliced her with razor blades. Not deep enough to cause lasting damage, especially to an immortal, but it had surely hurt fiercely.

Odin forced Idunn to meet his gaze and she shook her head once, as if to order him to make no mention of it.

When Weth had yanked the rest of Odin’s clothes off as well, she shoved him forward, toward the seamstress, who groped his thighs without preamble or warning. He drew in a sharp breath as she moved on to his stones, but there was naught sexual about her rough touch. She cupped his arse, then felt back down along his calf, chittering to herself all the while.

She repeated the groping with Idunn.

A moment later the seamstress shoved him aside as if he were but an obstacle in her path. She grabbed leather from the wall, folded it over her arm, and then stalked around the corner without even sparing him or Idunn another look.

Odin glanced at Idunn who shrugged.

Weth placed a hand on each of their shoulders and guided them to benches around the corner. While they sat, the seamstress continued chittering, cutting and sowing.

Eventually, she came back with leather trousers for both him and Idunn, flinging a pair at each of them. When they had donned the clothes, the seamstress next fondled his biceps, shoulders, and chest, then did the same with Idunn, who yelped slightly when the svartalf squeezed her breasts. The svartalf flashed Idunn a grin that might have been a leer, though it could have been mere cruelty.

Then the seamstress cut leather vests for each of them.

While the clothes were a little tighter than Odin would have liked, they did fit well enough.

Once they had dressed, Weth guided them out, though not back to the court, but rather to a large hexagonal chamber with benches around the outside and a pit in the middle. In this pit, a svartalf female fought against a giant serpent, barely fending the creature off with a spear while a small crowd cackled at her misfortune.

Odin shook his head at the scene.

“Does it not amuse you?” Weth asked.

“Not particularly.” He saw the end, in a flash of vision even before it happened. The serpent lunged and—though the svartalf managed to stab it—still sunk its foot-long fangs into her neck and torso. The female collapsed, thrashing on the ground.

Weth chuckled. “Mmm. I’ll bet she’s succulent.”

Odin blanched. “Y-you’re going to eat her?”

“Once the poison is cooked out, of course. But yes, it’s a good source of meat. Her heart will be reserved for the prince and his ritters. But as a pronoiar, I should get a taste. Maybe he’ll even let you have a bite.” Weth glanced at Idunn. “Probably not her, though.”

“Imagine my disappointment,” Idunn said.

Weth sneered at Idunn like she was a fool. “You should be grateful for the honor the prince bestows upon you both. He clothes and feeds you, allows you to partake in our entertainments, even ordered us not to torture you anymore. Unless you ask for it.”

“Ask for it?” Odin hadn’t meant to pose the question, but Weth’s words seemed so strange he couldn’t help himself.

“For certain. If you’ve never tested just how arousing pain can be, you’re missing something rather … enticing.” This entire world had gone mad. “She knows,” Weth said, nodding at Idunn.

Odin glanced at his companion, but Idunn merely grimaced, refusing to acknowledge the svartalf.

Weth snickered. “Give it time, then.” She pointed back down to the pit where two more females came out, each armed with a whip.

“What madness is this?” Odin demanded. “How can you do this to your own people?”

His captor cocked her head. “They’re not our people. These are prisoners taken from Gnipahellir, in the very battle you helped us win. They fight for their survival. One of them gets to keep breathing. The other feeds us.”

Odin wanted to retch. These people … maybe they weren’t people … but still. They suffered and died because he had helped Fjalar overcome them. Did it make it better, knowing that, if they’d won, they’d probably have done the same? Not really.

But perhaps he owed it to them not to look away from what he’d wrought.

To watch. And to despair.

23

The Brisingamen gleamed around Freyja’s neck, pulsing warmly as she trod toward her desired target. Through it, she felt herself drawn to the city on the Onyx Lagoon. Amsvartnir, she had heard it called, when the Áine’s court spoke of battles against Svartalfheim. One of the eight city-states claimed by the heirs of the Dark King, Amsvartnir was ruled by Prince Fjalar.

Freyja dared not draw too nigh, though, for fear of discovery by Fjalar’s scouts. His city was a fortress, and she had no way to conceal herself, no way to suppress the glow of her skin save to use up the stored sunlight. It always came back to that. If she burnt through the energy, she might somehow hope to sneak into Amsvartnir—though how she’d get over the wall she didn’t know—but she’d leave herself defenseless.

She could use a sword well enough, but hardly considered herself a master, nor would it have mattered against thousands of potential foes.

And if Odin was in the city, her worst fears seemed realized. A svartalf prince must have captured Od and Idunn. By herself, she had no hope of rescuing them. She’d studied the geography of this place—what maps the liosalfar had made—before coming.

The cavernous city-states of Gnipahellir and Saevarstadir lay closest, though the river-city of Fjörum also wasn’t so far, if she’d had a boat.

In a crouch, Freyja backed away.

She’d not made it far when a cold blade came up against her neck.

“Who are you?” The voice didn’t have the cadence of a svartalf. It was scratchy a little, but not half so sinister.

Freyja lifted her chin, suppressing the urge to Stride away immediately. “Freyja Njordsdottir.”

“The Vanr?” He sounded shocked. “Why are you glowing?”

She’d have laughed, if not for the bite of that blade. In fact, it had but brushed against her skin and still she felt a small trickle of blood running down her neck. “These days there is little distinction between Vanr and liosalf. Will you remove the blade, please?”

The man did so, backing away, and allowing her to turn around. He was clad mostly in thick furs, with an unkempt beard and long, dark hair.

“Who are you? An Ás?”

“Hermod Agilazson. If you’re a liosalf, what are you doing in this vile place?”

Part of her wanted to snap that Alfheim, while more beautiful, had its own insidiousness. A petty accusation, though, and she’d have chosen Alfheim over Svartalfheim, regardless. “I assume I’m here for the same reason as you. Seeking Odin.”

“Why?”

Because he was the father of her daughter? Because, despite his crimes, he was, perhaps, her soul mate? “He and Idunn have become trapped here, held prisoner—I think—by Prince Fjalar of Amsvartnir across the lake.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Freyja quirked the edge of a smile. Not so foolish as the court tended to think of mortals, then. Honestly, though, she’d been asking herself the same question over and over. Why not let Odin fend for himself? His suffering had resulted from his own arrogance, first in banishing the Vanir, then in coming after them thinking he might make amends. Did it matter that she believed him when he claimed to have wanted to send them to a paradise to avoid bloodshed? Did it matter that he’d not known of Hnoss when he made the bargain with Volund?

“Well?” Hermod demanded.

“I love him.” For more than a thousand years she had wrestled with that, tried to deny it, most of all to herself. Self-deception suited her little, and when she’d learned they had come here, to this accursed world … No. She could not abandon either Od or Idunn. “And my friend Idunn came here with him.”

“Idunn. Huh.”

He knew her. Interesting. “You want the same thing as I do, yes? To find him?”

“I want to bring him back to Midgard. I need to bring him back because the world is faltering.”

Freyja sighed. “Perhaps we can help each other, then. I suspect I know more of this world than you, but as you can see, sneaking about is … a challenge for me.”

Hermod said naught. So very grim.

“We need a plan, though. I know Odin is in Amsvartnir, but even if you could sneak into the city, I don’t see how you could save him alone. The best play …” It tasted foul to even think this. “The best play may be to use one of the other princes. Their schemes and skirmishes against one another never cease. Perhaps we can prompt one into attacking and use the diversion.”

The man stared off at the city around the bend in the lake, shaking his head. “What are the options, then?”

Freyja sighed. She had one move that she’d turned round and round in her mind, detesting herself for considering it and yet hopelessly desperate to try. “I …” No. How could she control herself if they went there? “There’s the cave-city of Gnipahellir, ruled by Prince Mantus. It’s close and—last I heard—they’re oft hostile to Amsvartnir.” Freyja swallowed. “Then there’s Fjörum, a city on the river that connects to this lake. It’s ruled by Orcus, among the most powerful of the svartalfar. Maybe too powerful to risk …”

“You hold something back.”

Only one choice, really. She had to see her. “There’s Saevarstadir, a city on an island in an underground sea—within the same cavern as Gnipahellir, a place they call the Gloom Hollow. A river connects that sea to the Onyx Lagoon.”

“Why do you hesitate on that one?”

“It used to be ruled by Prince Rathwith, a son of Ivaldi. Now it’s ruled by a … a grandson. Volund.”

Hermod blanched.

“You’ve heard of him. Good. He was a smith on Midgard, a number of years ago, before he embraced his heritage as a child of Ivaldi. Since then he …”

Hermod looked ill. That wasn’t just trepidation about the legendary cruelty of an old smith, was it?

“You’ve met him.”

Hermod shut his eyes and nodded. “I had no idea he yet lived, much less that he’d become … what you say. He’s … my uncle.”

Freyja backed away a step, hand going to the pommel of her sword. “You’re descended from Ivaldi? You should not have come here …”

The Ás raised his hands in warding. “My father was Volund’s half brother. Both were sons of a Kvenlander prince named Wade, albeit by different mothers. Father never said much more than that.”

Different mothers. Freyja eased her hand from her sword. “Volund carries the blood of Gugalanna through his mother, Gorgyra, a daughter of Ivaldi. If your mother was a different woman, you are clean of that filth.”

“You’re afraid of him.”

“He took something of mine.”

Hermod groaned, then rubbed his face. “That makes it more complicated. But still … he does share some common blood. Perhaps he would help me on that count.”

Perhaps. Though Freyja knew of at least one other reason Volund might agree to help, despite how she loathed the dark-loving bastard. “If we follow the edge of the lake to the river, a branch of it will break away and lead to the cavern. We’ll have to skirt around Gnipahellir. The place is especially famous for its yeth hounds. But we can reach Saevarstadir.”

Hermod shrugged off his cloak and handed it to her. “It’ll help conceal you, especially with the hood up.”

The thing stank of sweat and too long in the wilds, and was more than a little uncomfortable. Still, Freyja donned it and raised the hood, as Hermod had suggested.

“Let me lead. I’m well experienced in moving unseen.”

“You don’t know the land.” Of course, she also knew it only from a map. But the Brisingamen would guide her to Volund, same as it did to Odin.

“So stay close behind me.” Not bothering to wait for her answer, he took off at a brisk pace along the lakeshore.

Freyja could not control the hammering of her heart.

24

Why had the winter never ended? That question had plagued Baldr after he returned from Asgard. No one there, not even Mother, really seemed overmuch concerned about it. “It’s but a cold summer,” she had said, and told him to wait it out in the court.

Baldr had lingered long—too long, really—caught in the politics of Asgard. And from the moment he’d finally set foot back in Valland, snows underfoot, a nameless apprehension had clenched around his heart.

Maybe it was his mother. She’d claimed to have a foreboding of ill soon to befall him, but she could not say more, other than that she had dreamed it. Baldr refused to abandon Midgard because his mother had a nightmare, even were he not drawn back to Nanna.

Travel had become more tedious in the past century, though. They had to land the boats in Valland, and, these days, the Valls no longer respected their old alliance with Asgard. No, the Deathless faith had grown so strong there that local knights would attack Aesir on sight. It meant making the crossing at night and hiding his identity all through Valland. Skulking about like thieves or criminals, sticking to the wilds most times.

He misliked such games. Others, like Mother, they called it all the more reason to remain on Asgard and bask in the warmth and peace of the World Tree. But Father had intended to protect all of mankind and now that he was gone, the task had fallen to Baldr. Let Mother attend to the court. Baldr would save Midgard.

From Valland he had passed into Hunaland, and there struggled to find anyone willing to cross the Gandvik and make for Sviarland. Damned inconvenient, really. When he’d finally gotten to Skane, he’d bought a dogsled and began to make good time, back to Agnafit.

Once the walls drew into view, he dismounted the sled and guided the dogs inside the town. He’d send one of Jarl Eindride’s slaves to attend them once he reached the island, so he tied them off to a tree.

Ice on the wooden bridge to Eindride’s island cracked beneath his boots. The sea below hadn’t frozen, though the land around it had. While the tail end of it, this still should have been summer. This scene that, but for the people, could have portrayed Niflheim itself. Baldr shook his head, grumbling.

If he did not know better, he’d have thought the frost jotunnar behind this. The strongest of them could call down winter storms, or so tale told. But Narfi had them curtailed, even if his reports to Asgard had become less and less frequent.

Actually, that rather vexed Baldr, too, though he had no intention of trekking across the wasteland to reach Thrymheim to ask. Now, they had to make do with whatever information Loki brought back from his infrequent visits to his son.

Ah, well, that at least was a worry for another time.

By the shore, men knelt sawing timber in the hull of a longship. It seemed they, too, had given over waiting for the warmer months for such things. On this island, if they did such work, it was only because Eindride had ordered it.

“Why now?” he asked one of them.

The man rubbed his brow, having managed to work up a sweat despite the chill. “Food’s running low. Jarl says we have to risk a raid on Reidgotaland or else people will start to starve.”

Baldr shook his head slowly. These were the people Mother now ignored, begging him to remain at court. These were the men—followers of the Aesir still—who the Aesir had begun to abandon. It had taken the Vanir longer before they turned their backs on Midgard.

For food, though, Baldr had no help he could give these men, so he nodded, and moved on to Eindride’s hall. A slave welcomed him inside and escorted him to the jarl, who sat at a table laden with far less fare than Baldr had seen on his previous visits. Even the jarl found the times trying, it seemed. A man famed for his hospitality now could not feed his own household.

The jarl lurched to his feet as soon as he saw Baldr, though, offering a gracious nod of his head. “My lord. Be welcome. I, uh … well there is but a small amount of mead left, and some fish.”

“Whatever you have is a feast under the circumstances.”

Eindride ushered one of his thegns up and Baldr took the vacated seat beside the jarl.

“You should know,” the jarl said, “that I had to swear to Ingjald. Not much choice in the matter.”

It should have pleased Baldr, in fact. His chosen ruler’s power spread. Except that Ingjald and his daughter both rather disgusted Baldr. They were better than losing the world to the Deathless, yes. It did not make either of them an ideal choice. “You did the right thing. You must take what steps seem needful to protect your people.”

His words seemed to encourage Eindride, who nodded and managed to break a smile.

Slaves returned with a flagon of mead, and Baldr threw it back. Somewhat watered down, but he couldn’t really blame them. He handed off the flagon, refusing when the slave tried to offer more. “Tell me of the north.”

“Word is all but Lappmarken have sworn to Ingjald now. Skane pushes back, though.”

Strange. Baldr would have assumed that with Guthruthr and Halfdan Snjalli dead, Skane would have fallen in short order. “Who holds it?”

“Vidfamne, son of Snjalli.”

Hmm. It seemed Asa had badly miscalculated in arranging for Snjalli’s murder. Assuming her actions were prompted by any grander design than sheer madness, and Baldr was hardly certain on that count. She was a vicious bitch that fed on suffering. Part of him hoped she’d died on the way back to her father, though it didn’t really change much either way.

“They call him Ingjald Ill-Ruler these days,” Eindride ventured. So the jarl wasn’t well pleased with his new king.

Not that Baldr blamed him. Rather, Ingjald was simply the ruler with the stones and guile to hold Sviarland against the Deathless. In a way, Baldr could almost understand his mother’s abdication of her duties to Midgard. Everywhere he looked, he found naught but flaming piles of trollshit where the lords of men should have sat.

Baldr rubbed his face. He hadn’t come to Agnafit for Eindride, nor to hear news of just how each pile of trollshit reeked. “Where’s Gevarus and his daughter?”

Eindride grunted.

“Please do not say you turned them over to Ingjald.”

The jarl shook his head. “No. But I did swear to him … so I couldn’t rightly keep a fugitive from the man in my own hall.”

“Where are they?”

“I sent them up to a farmhold in the hills. Place fell empty after the man, eh … man sold his wife and children into slavery on account of not being able to plant a damn thing. The frost, you know. One of his neighbors saw it and brought it to me, so I had him hanged. Had to split the silver the man won with that neighbor.” Eindride shrugged.

Baldr frowned at the casual brutality, but what was he to say? No matter how hard times had grown, one didn’t sell their kin. Slaves were to be taken on raids. But such crimes had become more and more common, and he half expected Eindride would have looked the other way had he gotten a bribe out of it. Shit, maybe he had, actually, and had then hanged the man anyway to keep it all.

“Have someone show me to the farmhold.”

“Yes, lord.”

* * *

One of Eindride’s shieldmaidens guided Baldr through the hill lands northwest of Agnafit. The country was lightly wooded, and not far from the sea. A good location, if the ground hadn’t been frozen solid.

Men were hungry now, but it was like to get much worse very soon. How many moons until the next summer could draw nigh? Would it ever come again?

Flurries of snow had pelted him every step of the way here.

The shieldmaiden pointed out the house, nestled on a hillside and largely concealed by the trees. Down in the valley a bit was flatter land, mostly open snow fields. Maybe dead crops lay there, beneath the frost.

Baldr offered the shieldmaiden a nod and took off on his own to the house. Before he reached it, he found Nanna at a stream in the valley, slamming her knife down into the ice over and over. Scarcely cracking it, really, and panting for the effort, her hair all askew. A wooden bucket rested beside her.

She looked up sharply at his approach, brandishing the knife for an instant before she recognized him. “My lord.”

“Let me help you.” He knelt beside her and drew his own knife, then flooded pneuma to his arms and slammed the blade down, cleaving easily through the frozen surface. He punched a hand down into the water, tore off a chunk of ice, and flung it aside.

Baldr wrung the water from his hand, then grabbed the bucket and filled it for her.

“Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

She tried to take the bucket, but he rose, hefting it. “Let me do it, please. Where’s your father?”

“Hunting.”

And game must also have grown scarce, given the lack of plants for animals to feed on.

Baldr sighed. “We’ll take the water to the house, then, and wait for his return.”

Nanna nodded, face unreadable, and accompanied him back to the farm house. The place was modest but comfortable, with a small fire pit in the center. After the chill outside, the blaze was welcome. Nanna took the bucket and poured most of the water into a kettle to boil it, reserving some for drinking and washing. She filled a cup and handed it to Baldr, and he drank gratefully.

“Things go ill across the land,” he said when he’d finished, handing back the cup.

“We don’t get so much news out here.”

Perhaps not, but they’d surely heard something, so he had to assume she preferred not to speak of it. “I’m glad you chose to remain in Sviarland instead of returning to Gardariki.” Or maybe no one would take them across the sea for fear of the storms.

Nanna folded her hands in her lap and said naught. Indeed, she scarcely responded to any of his attempts at conversation, until he finally gave over and shut his eyes to rest.

* * *

The opening door woke Baldr just before Gevarus strode inside and started at his presence. The king bore a dead rat in one hand, with a bow slung over his shoulder. A rat. The best game he could find? Certainly not enough for him to share with his daughter. Not and have either of them well sated.

Baldr climbed to his feet.

“My lord,” the man said.

“King Gevarus. I know times are hard, but I’ve come to make good on my offer to marry Nanna. I’ve brought a hefty bride price in silver and gold and gems from Asgard. Enough to make you rich and ensure she lives in the greatest comfort. Indeed, if it pleases her, once we are wed I would take her back to Asgard with me.”

Nanna busied herself rekindling the embers in the fire pit, curiously avoiding Baldr’s gaze.

Gevarus grunted noncommittally, then tossed the rat onto the floor. “Your offer is exceedingly generous, my lord …”

No. This was not happening. “Because of the traitor …?”

“What?”

Baldr would not be bested by a man who should have knelt at his feet. He was the Prince of Asgard. He was the one fighting to save Midgard, no matter the cost. Hödr deserved to die for his crimes, and anyone else would have gladly killed him, not least for having burned Thrúd. But Baldr had spared him and this was his thanks?

“My lord,” Gevarus said. “I’m afraid that—”

“You should be afraid.” Baldr struggled to hold his voice steady and not growl at them. “Your enemies are everywhere, including Ingjald, who, unless I order him not to, will no doubt seek to reclaim Gardariki for the Aesir. You’ve allowed the Deathless priests into your midst and invited your doom because of it. Moreover, that,”—Baldr pointed the scrawny rat—“appears to be all the food you have. The world grows harsher, not more pleasant. And I offer your daughter a land untouched by this winter, a full table, and a chance at immortality! But you would spurn me for a man who has betrayed his own prince.”

“My prince,” Nanna said, then fell silent when he looked to her.

Baldr shook his head. “I will return on the full moon. Nanna will either marry me and accompany me to Asgard, or I will leave and take my protection and my offer of gifts with me. Then you can decide how you fancy dealing with Ingjald and this endless winter, both.”

With that, he shoved past Gevarus and slammed the door behind himself.

25

They’d given Gnipahellir a very wide berth, for Freyja had no idea how far out the yeth hounds might detect their presence. That city-state lay on the outer edge of a great cavernous expanse that covered almost a quarter of the accessible land on Svartalfheim.

The Gloom Hollow. As if the eternal night covering the rest of this world did not offer enough horror.

Impassible, darkness-shrouded mountains rose over the caverns, and, according to some tales, Nott herself dwelt in those mountains. Either way, the entrance to the cavern seemed an overhanging shelf hundreds of feet wide.

Beyond Gnipahellir, they’d returned to the river and followed it all the way to a vast underground sea. In the darkness of the cavern, Freyja couldn’t even begin to guess how far the sea stretched out.

The Brisingamen told her that Volund lay ahead, though, and so they skirted the sea until they found a small abandoned canoe.

“Thing hardly looks seaworthy,” Hermod commented.

“It’ll have to do. I can keep us heading in the right direction.”

Hermod grunted, then motioned for her to sit in the boat. When she had, he shoved it off and hopped in himself.

There was a single oar, which Hermod took up, and began to paddle. He rowed in silence, the only sound the lapping of the oar on the water, or the small waves breaking upon the boat. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Any idea how far it is?”

“Obviously close enough one can row there, or there would not be a boat.”

“Ugh. What if they use the boat for fishing?”

Freyja dared to hope otherwise. It felt like they were getting closer. “There’s no fishing nets or other gear.”

“Maybe the fishermen took the nets.”

“Perhaps.”

Hermod grunted. “If there are fish … what else might lurk under the surface?”

Freyja sighed. “I’m not from this world. In fact, I’m not originally from Alfheim, either, in case you have forgotten. I don’t know what …”

Her own glow illuminated the distance a little, casting a giant rock in dancing shadows as they drew nigh.

Hermod glanced over his shoulder to see what she was staring at. “Is that … a root?”

Freyja squinted. Once they drew closer, she realized he was right. A root the size of a house bored down from hidden darkness above, straight into the water, bits of fiber remaining exposed. “Yggdrasil.”

“Yggdrasil’s on Asgard.”

“The World Tree exists in all worlds. It’s what holds us together and regulates the flow of souls.”

“I … I’m not sure I understand. Flow of souls? You mean like ghosts?”

Freyja frowned. She’d never truly understood the idea, either, and the Queen’s court had never been overly forthcoming on how such things worked. Certainly she was far from keen to try to explain the concepts to him.

Hermod steered the boat around the giant root, but Freyja couldn’t tear her eyes from it. “It could be a long time at sea,” he said.

She sighed. Prodding for conversation. Or answers. “So far as I can tell, some or maybe even all of the alfar, maybe all vaettir, were once human. They died and over time became something different.”

“Odin said all vaettir were ghosts.”

Maybe. Maybe that was an oversimplification of an enormously complex process. “One truth underlies reality, as I now understand it. Yggdrasil—or whatever you prefer to name it—holds creation together. The dead are drawn into it. Sometimes the process gets interrupted and souls linger as ghosts, maybe twisted enough to become wraiths or draugar or so forth. The point is, the roots and branches of the tree are like veins, pulsing through all the realms.”

“And souls are blood in those veins?”

That wasn’t … actually that sounded as good an analogy as she could come up with for the moment. She spread her hands for lack of a better answer.

Hermod grunted in time with his rowing as the root disappeared behind them. “So the tree is like veins, and souls are the blood. But doesn’t that mean there should be a creature that all of that supports?”

Freyja chuckled. “It’s possible to take a metaphor too far.”

“The most direct answer I’m like to get, huh?”

“Mmm.”

Still, his words had conjured up an imagery that refused to depart her mind.

* * *

It seemed almost an hour had passed when at last a rocky shore came into view. The boat crunched up on the shore and Freyja flinched.

“That’s not sand,” Hermod said.

No. The beach was made of shards of broken bone, ground—mostly—into pulp.

Indeed, mounds of uncrushed bones taller than she was created the hills.

Freyja’s chest hurt. The shadows here retreated from her light, but only just. Like thousands of serpents, slithering on the edges, seeking a way in. As she climbed from the boat, she grabbed Hermod’s hand and drew him close to her.

He didn’t seem to need much convincing.

Damn, was she glad she hadn’t burned away all her sunlight just yet.

Neither dared to speak—indeed, the writhing shadows felt suffocating and she didn’t even wish to open her mouth—so they passed between the bone mounds in silence. Silence, save for the awful sound of more bones crunching under their heels with each step.

Beyond the shoreline, the cavern ceiling dropped lower, low enough to make out stalactites jutting down like teeth. Water fell from some of them to splash down into putrid pools, while other stalactites actually stretched all the way down to the floor in almost a mockery of the marble columns of Alfheim.

Whole skeletons were strewn about, here and there, some covered in dust and cobwebs, some looking fresh. The whole island stank of death and decay, but as they pushed on, the reek grew worse. Around another mound of bones, she saw why. A newly dead svartalf hung upside down, suspended from barbed hooks in a column, one such hook stuck through each of his ankles. His gut had been sliced open, allowing his blood and bowels to spill all over his chest and neck, in a stinking shower of gore.

Hand to her mouth, Freyja looked away. She was going to retch. She was going to … She fell to her knees and vomited up what little was in her stomach. “Oh …”

The soft rasp of metal on leather told her that Hermod had drawn his sword.

Freyja looked up, though her hair splayed across her eyes and blocked some of her vision.

In the distance, the light of a tiny fire had drawn Hermod’s gaze, though now he turned about slowly, peering into one dark depth of the cavern or the next. “They’re coming. If we can see their light …”

Then they could see hers, too. Freyja wiped her mouth. “There’s no point in hiding.” Even if they could have done so. “We came to see your uncle.”

Hermod groaned, then slid the blade back into the sheath over his shoulder. “I had not known him capable of … this.”

“What do you remember of him?”

“I was young. I remember … he loved his wife. Not much else, really. I mean I remember living with him, skating on the frozen lake. I remember long winters. Not so long as we have now, though.”

What did that mean?

Freyja fell in step beside him, and the two of them plodded forward, toward that distant light.

* * *

The light ahead came from sporadic braziers atop a black stone fortress. Stone lances rose up from the fortress like the spines of a hideous beast, the greatest of which formed a tower so massive, she could not make out its pinnacle. The fortress city-state of Saevarstadir.

None on Alfheim knew the full extent of this place. Whispers spoke that warrens beneath it dug so deep they passed under the sea. Even looking upon it had her gut clenching in visceral dread.

Tale—though few wished to speak of such things—told of liosalfar brought here and tormented until madness shattered their minds and their bodies became twisted beyond recognition.

Into such a dark hold Hnoss had fallen.

“It’s bigger than even the holds of the Old Kingdoms,” Hermod murmured.

Much larger, and Freyja suspected they could not see even half of it. “They’ve been building on this place for millennia. Long, long before the rise of the Old Kingdoms. Before the mists. I don’t think anyone even knows how long now.”

The man blew out a long breath and visibly steadied himself. Freyja knew how he felt. Had they a choice in the matter, she’d have turned back long ago. But too many threads pulled her here and refused to release her heart.

Hnoss.

“What is it?”

She suddenly realized she was clenching her fists and released them. “Naught.”

They made it a hundred feet more before forms melted up out of the shadows, as if the darkness took humanoid form around them. A war band of svartalfar, and this one led by a male, though all his twelve warriors were female.

“You have truly lost your mind to walk here, liosalf.” The male wore no shirt, exposing his ash-colored, tattooed flesh. Even as she watched, those tattoos seemed to shift ever so slightly, writhing as if in torment. “By what madness did you think you might simply approach the gates of Saevarstadir?”

“I will see the prince.”

“Oh, you will most certainly see him, and you will even more surely regret it.” The male looked from her to Hermod, but shook his head in disdain, perhaps judging the man mortal and thus of no consequence. At a slight incline of his head, the female warriors formed up around herself and Hermod. “Walk.”

Freyja offered no resistance. This was why they had come. It was far too late to back out now. However much she might have wished.

The male fell in step behind them.

“Who are you?” she asked, without turning around. “A ritter?”

“Yes. Skafinn.”

One of Volund’s key players, then. According to reports, most of the princes maintained three marquesses under them, and a small but indeterminate number of ritters. All theoretically outranked even the hipparchs who commanded the armies, though she doubted a ritter would wish to offend a hipparch.

Unfortunately, many of such insights were little better than speculation on the part of warriors of Alfheim.

A stone bridge spanned a chasm before the fortress, and beyond that, a thirty-feet high spiked gate could provide another line of defense. Some believed that Saevarstadir might represent the most impenetrable of all the city-states, even though its prince was probably among the least powerful of the princes of Alfheim.

Volund had usurped the position of his uncle Rathwith, though Freyja had no details regarding exactly how this transpired. One look at this city confirmed that it surely had not involved any sort of frontal assault.

As they reached the end of the bridge, the gate creaked open, rising into the darkness above, without any obvious source of someone pulling it open. Inside, torches lined the walls, but they were spaced far apart and—were it not for her own luminous skin—she might have found it hard to make out details.

So far as that went, those svartalfar she met inside squinted at her, despite the cloak Hermod had given to mostly conceal her light. They were so very adapted to the dark, here.

Razored ridges lined the walls, as Skafinn guided them through a labyrinth of corridors inside the fortress. Eventually, they came to a great hall, this supported by columns jutting massive spiked blades and sporting gargoyles in the shadowed recesses far above. The space was wide enough that neither the torches nor her own light seemed to have much effect on the thick shadows, save to send them dancing and whispering, in sibilant hatred.

They felt like physical things, slithering about her heels like serpents, waiting to strike should she show them a moment of weakness. Freyja had no words for her loathing of this place, but even that paled compared to her feelings for the prince himself, sitting in darkness upon a throne raised far above her position.

As he leaned forward, interlocking plates of his armor creaked ever so slightly.

“Remove her hood,” the prince said.

Skafinn yanked back her cloak, then hissed and stepped away, with an arm raised before his eyes.

Indeed, the other females accompanying them also took a collective step backward, their whispers seeming to meld with those of the shadows themselves.

“I thought so. You are Freyja.” Volund said. “And with a mortal companion.”

“Of the Mortal Realm,” Hermod said. “If not quite mortal, Uncle Volund.”

Now the prince rose abruptly from his throne, limping down the steps, relying on a cane in the process. He trudged around the two of them, inspecting them like a wolf circling prey. “Uncle?”

“Who among the mortal realm would call you thus?”

“No one who should yet live.” Volund chuckled, the hateful sound seeming to reverberate through the great hall. “Should not, and yet you do, spawn of Agilaz. So … Odin gave you the fruit of Yggdrasil, didn’t he? Hmmm. Yessss.” He chuckled again. “And here, when I think this existence between life and death has no more surprises … Ahhhh.” Volund traced an ash-gray finger along Hermod’s jaw. “I’m certain you two shall provide me with weeks of entertainment.”

“We are not here to amuse you,” Freyja snapped. More than aught else in her life, she wanted to draw her sword and sink it into this foul creature’s gut. Yes, perhaps she could not hope to match the power of a direct descendant of Gugalanna, much less fight off Skafinn and a dozen warriors. Still, the temptation was almost overpowering.

“I think you are,” Volund said. “You, liosalf, I can assume you came at last in the hopes of joining your daughter in the glorious dark.”

“Daughter?” Hermod asked, suddenly turning on her.

Volund cackled, shaking his head. “Oh, wondrous. You brought him here without even revealing your intentions?”

“I want to see Hnoss.”

“You will. Soon enough.”

“Now!” Her shout echoed through the hall.

It was still resounding when Skafinn’s fingers snared in her hair and he drove her to her knees. “You address the prince.”

“We’ve come for your help, Uncle,” Hermod said, saving her the trouble of answering. Damn, what a fool she was, losing her temper when dealing with him.

“Not for the girl? Hmmm. Help with what, then?”

Hermod glanced at Freyja before looking back up at his uncle. “Odin has come here, and been taken prisoner by the prince of …” Now he looked back to her.

“By Prince Fjalar of Amsvartnir,” Freyja finished for him.

Volund burst into dark laughter, shaking his head and shambling away. Still snickering, he settled down on the steps to his dais. “The fool Ás came here. I suppose that means he finally found it. Ahhh. And he did not get what he sought. Such is the way of the world, is it not?” The prince shook his head in amusement. “Why in the fathomless darkness of Nott herself would I wish to help him? Did you think because we had a few mutually beneficial trades that we were allies? I only regret I’m not there to hear his screams as Fjalar extracts his bowels through his nostrils.”

“Uncle,” Hermod said. “I didn’t know you knew Odin, but regardless, this is me. We are blood, and I am asking for your help. The world needs Odin.”

The prince’s mirth slipped off his face. “Blood … Hmmm. I never thought to find you alive after so very long, Hermod.”

Damn it. He wasn’t going to help them. Which meant … it meant Freyja had no choice save to reveal her last play. One final reason Volund might act against Amsvartnir and aid them. “Odin had a companion, Idunn, and now Fjalar no doubt has her as well.”

Volund spread his hands. “So?”

“Like you, Idunn was the daughter of a vaettr with a mortal. Her mortal mother was a woman named Eostre.” Now she had his attention. “And her father was a svartalf named … Ivaldi.”

The shadows murmured even as Volund lurched to his feet. “Lies.”

“No. Her heritage made her forever an outcast in Alfheim. Barely tolerated, and certainly not within the Queen’s Court.”

“Tell me more about Ivaldi,” Hermod said. “Who was he, really?”

Now Freyja looked to him. “One of the sons of Gugalanna, and Volund’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Volund’s mother would have been Idunn’s half-sister. More importantly …”

Volund chuckled again, shaking his head. “More importantly, she carries the blood and power of the Dark King.” The prince rubbed his brow with one finger. “You managed to surprise me once more, liosalf. Very well. Skafinn, call Hipparch Elga. We go to war against Amsvartnir.”

Freyja took a step toward him. “Hnoss.”

Volund sneered. “As you wish.” He turned to a female warrior. “Bring her.”

* * *

Freyja sat alone on a steel bench, in a chamber lit by a smoldering brazier and the luminance of her own skin. The entire room was harsh, metallic, with ridges running along the walls like the innards of some abomination.

The door—a four-sectioned maw-like grate—groaned as it abruptly slid into the walls, floor, and ceiling.

A svartalf sashayed in, her hair black with blue streaks running through it, her skin so pale as to be almost white. Her eyes like black opals. Spiraling tattoos marred her face.

Freyja’s hand went to her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle her gasp.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Hnoss … what have they done to you?”

Her daughter was clad head-to-toe in black leather designed to accentuate her lithe form. The girl spread her arms and cackled, sounding all too much like Volund for Freyja’s liking. “They helped me learn what lay within me all along.”

“No …” Freyja knew her eyes glistened with tears but she couldn’t stop them. She was shaking her head. She’d always feared what Volund had done to her daughter, but … Even in her worst nightmares she had not imagined … “No. How?”

“Oh, come now, Mother. How long did it take for the light of Alfheim to saturate the Vanir and make them almost indistinguishable from the other liosalfar? A hundred years? Less? How long have I dwelt in shadow? Far, far longer than that.”

Freyja wanted to rise, to go to her. To draw her close into her embrace and never let her go. Save, she didn’t trust her own legs not to give out beneath her. “You were born on Alfheim. You were destined for …”

“Destined?” Hnoss chortled, shaking her head. “What do you truly know of urd, Mother? Its chains are wrapped around your throat, and you do not even see them. You think my destiny could have been changed? This,”—she spread her arms once more as if to indicate all of Svartalfheim—“has always been what lay before me. The bargain was made when I was young, yes, but its genesis rose earlier still. Father sold me for a hammer, but even his actions are predicated upon threads of the web stretching back to the very beginning. Not that such abrogates his culpability, but it casts his actions in a different hue, does it not?”

“What are you talking about?” She sounded half mad. Maybe she was. Maybe Volund’s torture of her had gone on so very long that she … she couldn’t even … Freyja’s tears finally broke free from her eyes and she choked on her sobs. This wasn’t real. It was a nightmare.

Had to be … a nightmare …

Hnoss stalked over to her side and knelt in front of her. “Do you grieve for me … or for yourself, as you pity what you feel was taken from you? Believe me when I say, neither amounts to aught. I don’t need pity and you don’t deserve it. In the darkness of this place, I found my eyes opened wider. I have seen things, Mother.”

What did that mean? Did she have her father’s gift with the Sight?

Hnoss stroked her cheek, roughly, then snickered and rose abruptly. She disappeared back out the maw-like door, leaving Freyja alone.

26

In the harbor outside of Agnafit, Hödr listened to the crackle of Baldr’s burning ships, a trio of smoldering wrecks soon to be claimed by Rán. The prince had thought to meet him in battle on the water, but, despite his cleverness, had seen the danger too late.

Gelderus and his men had launched flaming arrows in a hail that—the Kvenlander assured him—must look like the fury of Muspelheim raining down upon Midgard. What men loyal to Baldr survived would have taken shelter in the town.

Now would come the harder, bloodier work. The work he’d gone to Kvenland and claimed Mistilteinn for. The runeblade hung over his shoulder, thrumming with the knowledge it would soon kill. It had a fell power inside it, Hödr had no doubt. Maybe all the runeblades did, forged by dvergar in another age.

Gelderus clapped him on the shoulder. “Battle’s already half won, you ask me. Men’ll be looking for plunder.”

Hödr hadn’t worn his blindfold now. Sometimes, the effect of his eyeless gaze had its own benefit. He turned to face Gelderus, so the king would feel that power. “No pillaging. Not unless the townsfolk themselves rise against us.”

The man’s aura shifted a little. Vexed. Maybe intent to argue, maybe to disobey. Whatever Hödr said, some of Gelderus’s men would rape and plunder Agnafit. War bands didn’t sail through winter storms and cross to foreign lands without personal benefit.

Still, it sat ill with him. Eindride’s people deserved more.

But so few ever seemed to get what they deserved.

* * *

Gelderus’s warriors leapt from his ships, screaming and shouting and flinging torches at the shacks and shanties by the docks. Most places didn’t catch quickly, not with the wood sodden from unending snows. But by the time Hödr set foot on the pier, billowing smoke clogged the air and set him to coughing.

He hadn’t wanted this.

Shrieking warriors raced past him.

Arrows flew from the sides of buildings, some finding their marks with wet thwacks. Most of the townsfolk seemed to have either fled, or joined Baldr’s defense. And why not? Who wouldn’t join the Prince of Asgard when he called for a levy?

Runeblade in hand, Hödr stalked through the town.

The crush of a wild melee proceeded him. The reek of blood and shit created a noxious wave that hit him like a physical force, mingling with the cries of pain and rage and lust that bombarded him from all angles.

War never suited him, no matter if it sometimes became needful. Baldr had brought this upon himself, and Hödr would not surrender Nanna. He’d make the prince see reason, even if it meant bringing him down.

Unfortunately, being unable to use a shield anymore put Hödr at a distinct disadvantage against a foe as well-trained as Baldr. The prince was a master warrior, without doubt, and maybe even Mistilteinn wouldn’t prove enough. That thought had niggled all the way here, in the long hours on the ship. A fear that he might still lose.

But battle was no place for self-doubt. Mother had taught him that. Told him to push everything else away and focus only on a needle-thin point. A singular objective, while the rest of the world vanished.

A man came roaring, charging out from an alley, axe raised.

Hödr drew his pneuma to increase his reflexes, then whipped Mistilteinn up at an arc. The runeblade sliced through the man’s fingers and the axe haft like he’d swung at a blade of grass. The warrior stumbled, stupefied and gaping at his half-severed hand. A breath like that. Almost enough for him to start screaming when the pain hit.

Before he could, Hödr thrust the runeblade up, punching through his chest as though he didn’t even wear the gambeson padding it. Hödr jerked the blade free and his foe dropped at once, pitching over and lying facedown.

Sparing him no more thought, Hödr trotted off after Gelderus.

* * *

Corpses littered the street. It was hard to make them out, save by the smell of blood, and that was everywhere. Men’s guts squelched under his feet and made the going slick and unsteady. Auras faded when men died, and, of course, the dead made no sounds. So he couldn’t really tell one man from another.

Were the bodies Gelderus’s men, or Baldr’s? A mix of both, probably, now rendered indistinguishable.

What was the point in this? Why couldn’t Baldr have just let Hödr have one thing for himself? The prince was a troll’s cock, that’s why. He thought his own shit was made of gold. Thought the whole world his kingdom. And why shouldn’t he think that, when his mother had groomed him thus?

Glowering, Hödr trotted through an alley and onto the main street.

The fighting was thicker here. Chaos. Too many sounds. Metal on wood. On metal. On flesh. Screams. Gasps. Groans. The stench of death, and, everywhere, an aura of pain, fear.

Among them, though, Baldr’s aura stood out, so strong, his pneuma enhanced by the apple of Yggdrasil. The prince was engaged with … that was Gelderus.

Laevateinn crackled in Baldr’s hand, flames leaping up and down the blade.

Trollshit!

Hödr raced between different bouts of melee, desperate to reach the pair. So many men and shieldmaidens here. He couldn’t—

His foot slipped on something. Entrails, maybe. Either way, his leg twisted and his knee crunched down in mushy snow. Grunting, he struggled back to his feet. “Baldr!”

The prince didn’t look at him. Probably didn’t even hear over the chaos. His flaming runeblade crashed down on Gelderus’s shield and the king screamed, his protection shattering as he went to his knees.

“Baldr!” Hödr shouted at him. “This is between you and me!”

Now the prince did look at him. “Then you should have kept it that way, cousin!”

Sensing the blow, Gelderus raised his sword to block. Laevateinn shattered his blade and cleaved through Gelderus’s brow. His flesh sizzled and melted with a sickening stench, making Hödr almost glad he couldn’t see the ravage of the man’s face. He knew all too well the pain of such burns.

Baldr kicked his body away and stalked toward Hödr. “You still fail to grasp this, don’t you? I am the Prince of Asgard! By sending these men against me you compound your treason. You damn them to die, and to rot in the house of Hel!”

“You had no need to kill him!”

“Of course I did. Are you a fool? How well shall a prince who spares traitors and murderers fare? How long shall his reign be?”

Oh, Baldr’s reign would come to an end. “I’m going to send you to Hel. Then, at least Gelderus will have some company.”

“He has company already. Half your men are dead, cousin. And I spared you once, despite my better judgment. You have now proved my very point in coming here. I’ll not repeat my error.”

Hödr raised Mistilteinn and pointed it at Baldr. “Nine runeblades, cousin. But this one, alone, deals wounds to immortals as though they were mere men. This one cares naught that you’ve tasted the fruit of Yggdrasil.”

A hint of doubt flickered through Baldr’s aura, though only a hint. “Then I’m sure Mother will be grateful when I turn it over to her keeping. It surely doesn’t belong in the hands of a traitor. Father worked rather hard to ensure he could control all the remaining runeblades.”

The prince bore a shield on his arm, giving him an advantage. Though, assuming Mistilteinn would destroy his protection as easily as Laevateinn had smashed Gelderus’s shield, maybe it didn’t matter overmuch. Perhaps Baldr had the same thought, for he tossed it aside and came in, flaming runeblade swaying one way and the next, like a sinuous serpent.

As he drew nigh, Hödr could feel the crackle of its heat. As hot as the flames Eldr had wielded.

“Don’t like fire?” Baldr said. “Shame about that.”

“I’m used to it.”

“Lie to yourself if you wish. But your destiny has always been to burn. Urd closes in around your throat.” With that, Baldr launched himself forward, his blows fierce and lightning-swift, but controlled. Even angry, the prince had discipline paired with his speed and strength.

Hödr fell back, parrying. The flames licked at him when he let the prince get too close. The immense heat of that sword had the both of them sweating. Hödr could smell it on Baldr, under his mail and furs.

With a snarl, Hödr beat down another attack, then jerked his own runeblade back up, intent to sever Baldr’s head. The prince yanked his flaming sword up too quick, though, and Mistilteinn managed only to slice into Baldr’s chin.

Even that blow sent the prince stumbling backward, touching a hand to his wound.

“Mar your perfect looks?” Hödr asked. “I wonder, can the apple heal wounds dealt by Mistilteinn, or will you always bear the scar of this battle?”

Baldr roared at him, breaking into savage slashes that had Hödr falling back once more. Some of the prince’s precision gave way to his furious assault. His rage had him. It clouded his aura and made him vulnerable.

Fearsome, yes. But leaving openings in his defense. Assuming Hödr could exploit them without getting cleaved in two or immolated.

Baldr’s swings had become wider, heavier blows that numbed Hödr’s arms when he parried.

But …

Roaring, the prince made an overhanded chop that might have felled a troll. Hödr lunged inside it, whipping Mistilteinn across Baldr’s torso. Not a solid wound, but still the blade sheared through mail, padding, and flesh, stealing all strength from Baldr’s attack and sending him stumbling away.

Gasping.

“How does it feel, being mortal?” Hödr asked.

Baldr backed away then, hand to his side, blood no doubt oozing between his fingers.

Hödr advanced after him. “No more taunts, my prince? No talk of treason or such nonsense?”

At once, several of the other men broke in, blocking Hödr’s path to Baldr. No.

“Hiding beyond your minions?” Hödr shouted at him. “Running like a fucking craven!”

He could not see the prince’s expression, but his aura filled with such rage, Hödr expected Baldr to come charging back in to finish this. Instead, the prince took off at a shambling run, hand still to his side.

So be it.

Four men on him, but one of Gelderus’s crew trotted over and helped draw off two of his foes.

Hödr tore into his opponents with a fury, knowing it was too late. He’d never catch Baldr now. But the prince had lost.

He’d truly lost.

Mistilteinn took a man’s leg off at the knee and sent him tumbling into the slush. Fear tinged the other man’s aura. But not for long. Hödr’s furious attacks drove him backward, until one punched through his defenses and cleaved his skull in half. Brains and blood splattered and plopped down to the ground around him.

Hödr paused just long enough to run through the other fallen man. Then he flicked the gore from Mistilteinn with a twist of his wrist.

It was over.

He had to get to Nanna.

* * *

He found her—and Gevarus—still in the old farmhold outside of Agnafit.

The woman looked sharply to him as he approached. “We saw smoke coming from the town.”

“Yes.” He wished he could say Baldr was the aggressor, but he’d ordered the first strike. Needfully, though.

“What happened?”

“I won. I drove the prince off. With luck, straight back to Asgard.”

“Will he return?”

That had run through his mind, on his trek up to the farm. Baldr’s pride might lead him either way—to come back to avenge the loss, or to retreat from it and pretend it had never happened. He might well consider it better to let Hödr have the victory and thus let Nanna live out a mortal life.

A thought that suddenly lanced through Hödr’s heart. She would grow old and die unless she got an apple of Yggdrasil. And Frigg would dine beyond the gates of Hel before she’d give Hödr an apple for Nanna.

No, this mortal life was all they had. And he’d not waste it.

“We should wed as soon as possible. Then … I think we must make for Gardariki. It’s falling beyond the reach of Asgard, so we may be safe there.”

The king’s aura filled with doubt, but still he nodded. “We’ll make the arrangements on the next auspicious day, then. You’re right. We cannot remain here.”

Hödr took Nanna’s hand and kissed it.

Finally, they could be together.

27

The armies of Saevarstadir had sailed upriver in great longships that reminded Hermod more of spiked linnorms than of crafts. Either way, they had sailed into the Onyx Lagoon on which Amsvartnir sat.

Hipparch Elga commanded the assault, and it was on her ship that Hermod and Freyja now sat, staring into the darkness beyond. Across an expanse of water, Amsvartnir lay, a perverse honeycomb city where Prince Fjalar had imprisoned Odin and Idunn. Hermod had to rescue his king, at any cost.

That knowledge reigned in his temper, albeit barely.

“There are a great many things you neglected to tell me,” he said, not looking at Freyja.

“You mean about Idunn?”

“That’s one, yes.” It would have been nice to know she was the child of this Ivaldi, and thus, primed to become one of the svartalfar. “Among other things, knowing how little time she had might have altered our course. Besides that, though, you failed to inform me that you had a daughter, much less that Volund held her prisoner.”

“I don’t think …” The liosalf’s voice sounded surprisingly close to breaking. “I don’t think she’s still a prisoner. More like his … concubine.” Well that was disturbing. “And she’s not only my daughter, but your precious king’s, as well.”

Now he did look at her, gaped at her, in fact. “Hnoss is Odin’s daughter?”

“I was pregnant with her when Odin cast the Vanir into Alfheim. She was conceived on Midgard but … born in the World of Sun.” Her voice indicated she held more back, besides, but she fell silent.

Maybe it wasn’t his place to press. Even if it was the king’s own child in question. “Shall we …” He glanced back at Elga, but the svartalf and her crew seemed preoccupied with readying the assault. “Liberate someone else, then?”

Freyja’s look was so forlorn, the urge to offer her an embrace of comfort seized him, though he restrained himself. He scarcely knew this woman, if she was Odin’s lover. Maybe, especially if she was the king’s lover. “I’m not sure we can. I’m still working it over in my mind.”

“Then let me advise you to stay focused on the task at hand, at least until we’ve secured Odin and Idunn. From the sound of it, we need to get them both out of Svartalfheim with all possible haste.”

“Yes.”

With a grunt, he rose, and drifted to the gunwale so he could stare at their objective. Tiny flickers of light on the horizon drew his gaze. Torches on the wall of Amsvartnir, no doubt.

And before those flickers, other, even smaller glimmers out over the water.

“They’ve launched their armada,” Elga stated. “Archers!”

At her command, a row of svartalf archers stood, and on the stern castle, two other female warriors lined up great flat bows they called ballistas. Hermod couldn’t see how that bow was going to fling so thick and heavy an arrow as they’d mounted onto it, but Elga had assured him the devices worked.

He eased Dainsleif free. It would start very soon.

Already, the lead ships were picking up speed, perhaps intending to ram the defenders. Any moment, now, and the arrows would begin to—

An enormous bellow resounded somewhere out over the black waters, a chorus of them, in fact, all in unison. An instant later, one of Volund’s ships flopped sideways and split in half as a massive serpent head burst through the hull. More serpentine heads rose up all around, everywhere about the ship.

“Loose on the hydra!” Elga bellowed.

A hail of arrows rained down over the beast, as archers from this ship and several others loosed on it, heedless of hitting their own allies if it meant driving off that abomination. The hydra—a multi-headed monstrosity—crunched its heads together and flung them outward, turning the ship into kindling before disappearing beneath the black waters once more.

“Oh,” Hermod said. “Well, trollshit.”

A moment later, the creature burst through the surface once more, capsizing the nearest ship to their own. The surge of waves hefted up his ship and sent it toppling over, almost ready to flip. Hermod slammed against the gunwale, lost his grip on Dainsleif, and then caught it just before it would have slid overboard. The ship lurched back the other way, sending him skidding along the deck, before it pitched back right-side up.

“Oars!” Elga shouted. “Oars, close us in! Keep rowing you useless bitches!”

A half dozen of the archers had gone overboard with the wave, and the two manning those ballistas were shouting in their own language.

Freyja stumbled to his side, slipped in water, and hit her knee on the deck. “This is going to cost me.”

Hermod turned to her. “What are you—”

Her eyes lit up like miniature suns, flaring so bright they dwarfed the torchlight. Freyja thrust her hands into the air.

All at once, the hydra ceased its assault. It wavered for a moment, then it dove back beneath the waves.

“How in the gates of Hel did you do that?” Hermod demanded.

The liosalf didn’t answer, her teeth grit, her face almost a snarl.

Another chorus of roars sounded out, this time back toward Amsvartnir, and an enemy ship floundered as the hydra tore into it.

“Fuck me,” Hermod mumbled. That was different.

“Get us up there!” Elga commanded. A moment later, the women at the oars sent them surging forward, while archers launched volley after volley at the enemy ships.

Freyja groaned. “I … can’t … hold …” Her skin had lost a great deal of its luster.

“Line those ballistas up with the hydra!” Hermod shouted.

Elga glanced first at him, then at Freyja. “Do it! Loose when ready!”

Twang!

The contraption snapped and a giant missile hurtled overhead like a spear flung by a jotunn. The bolt punched through a hydra throat. That head went limp and crashed back down into the waters, while several others roared in obvious anger.

Freyja slipped to her knees, blinking, her skin now barely brighter than a candle. “I don’t dare use any more.”

With a hand under her shoulder, Hermod helped her up again. “I’d say you did enough. We’re drawing up on the city.”

“Meaning the real fight is just beginning.”

* * *

The port of Amsvartnir extended beyond the honeycomb city itself. Bodies floated in the water. Face down, face up, or in various states of dismemberment. Svartalf blood slicked the docks and viscera lay in steaming piles. Everywhere Hermod looked, the dead lay reeking. He could scarcely keep from slipping in the gore.

He came to a svartalf female with her hands pressed over her gut, moaning. He couldn’t guess which side she’d been on, but she looked up to him with pleading eyes, as if he could have done aught to salve her pain. A long, painful death lay ahead of her.

With a grimace, Hermod swiped Dainsleif across her throat, spraying a fresh splatter of blood over his face. It took half her head off, and she died almost instantly.

Not even the runeblade could eliminate the fatigue that tugged at his limbs. Breathing had grown painful, and he wanted more than aught else to collapse in a heap, panting and insensate. Exhaustion slowed his movements, and that could get him killed, especially against foes such as these.

The svartalfar had spent ages training with their blades, and any one of them could have ended him.

Still, he had to push on. Elga’s troops had entered the city ahead of him, and he needed to follow, to find Odin, and to get the fuck out of this awful world. The svartalfar could maim and kill one another until the end of time for all he cared.

Volund’s warriors had cleared a path into the city proper. Beyond the docks lay a hexagonal entryway thirty feet high, with spiked grates that should have slid into place. Now, though, everyone around those grates lay dead, bodies strewn haphazardly along the gatehouse, a few impaled on the spikes.

Hermod panted as he gazed up the sloping path beyond. Additional spikes lined the walls here, and many punched through the throats, shoulders, or arms of svartalfar who had been driven onto them. Some of these victims were still alive. A hamstrung male crawled along the ground, whimpering.

“Fuck me.” He’d seen a lot of war in his long life. But this rampant cruelty … he’d rarely seen its like. Not that this sort of bloody work was ever pretty. He rubbed grit off his face with the back of his arm as he continued upward.

Atop the slope, the path split off in three directions. The whole city was a maze of interconnected buildings and he didn’t have the first clue where to begin his search. Well … no, he had one clue. Volund surmised Fjalar would have Odin in his palace in Amsvartnir’s heart. The problem was finding a route to the center without aught to orient himself.

All paths ahead lay strewn with bodies.

A svartalf female from the path in front came trudging toward him with a snarl, a two-handed sword in hand.

Hermod raised Dainsleif and set his feet. As the svartalf drew nigh, she broke into a mad charge, leading with great swipes of that massive sword. Relying on reach and power usually got a warrior pretty far.

He had to hold steady …

The svartalf swung and Hermod jerked Dainsleif up to parry. The impact left his arms numb, even with his pneuma drawn, fouling his intended counter. He stepped into it, though, and caught the svartalf in the gut with a fist. His foe fumbled, unable to get such a large weapon to bear in tight quarters.

Damn svartalfar had strength to match even an Ás relying on pneuma, and his blow stunned his opponent for only a breath. Just enough time to catch her in the nose with a jab. Cartilage crunched under his fist. The svartalf staggered backward, but Hermod couldn’t afford to let her put distance between them.

He yanked a knife free from his belt and thrust. The svartalf dropped her weapon in order to catch Hermod’s wrist. He strained against her power, closing the blade closer and closer to her ribs. Couldn’t get it …

Desperate, he slammed Dainsleif’s pommel into her forehead, crunching bone. She pitched over backward. Roaring, Hermod leapt atop her and rammed his runeblade into her chest. She twitched, spewing blood at him. Her hand closed around his ankle and sent him toppling over backward.

Hermod landed hard and rolled away just before she snatched up the two-handed sword and swiped at him once more.

The svartalf had managed her knees.

He’d stabbed her through the chest and she was still fucking fighting. Bastards were too damn hard to kill.

A light trudged up behind him. Freyja’s sword knocked aside the svartalf’s next blow, giving Hermod the chance to lunge in. This time, he planted Dainsleif’s point between her eyes. Now, the svartalf twitched once. Her own weight had the blade slicing through the top of her skull, and she collapsed to the ground, falling still.

“Fuck me,” he mumbled.

Freyja eased him up by an elbow. “Doubt you could handle it at the moment.”

“What?” Oh. Well … “How do we find Odin?”

“Keep pushing toward the heart of the city, I guess.”

“Don’t you have some Art that can aid us?”

Freyja frowned. “I lost my grip on the vaettir I’d bound as I became a liosalf. The powers I have now … they require stored sunlight and I have very little left, as you can tell.”

Hermod stared down the dim paths ahead. “All right, then. Stay close, and we’ll watch each other’s backs.”

It seemed a great deal more blood lay ahead of them.

28

The chaos outside had everyone within Fjalar’s palace scrambling to fortify the defenses. Hands loose at his side—it took an effort to keep from clenching them—Odin stood by a window overlooking a wild melee on a street directly below him. Svartalfar cruelty and savagery extended to their dealings with one another as well.

It would be easy to dismiss their hatred as inhuman. Maybe it was. But the creatures themselves had mostly begun as mortals. Died … become ghosts … and been spun out through the Wheel of Life or otherwise transformed into this. So the root of their nature was a soul, the same sort of soul that lay within the breasts of every man and woman in Midgard.

Did that not mean that, under the right circumstances, faced with cruelty themselves, anyone would be capable of the atrocities he witnessed in Amsvartnir? He winced as a female warrior stomped on the skull of another. Across from her, another rammed her spear up the arse of one trying to crawl away for no reason save the torment of it. Beside her, another used an axe to hack off the feet of a victim who’d tripped.

“Come away from that window,” Weth snapped.

Odin ignored her, forcing his mind into the vision trance, letting the waves wash over his consciousness. In such madness inevitably lay opportunity. War had ever been a tool Odin could make use of. If you could accurately predict the outcome, you became a general no enemy could defeat.

The svartalf’s hand fell on his shoulder and yanked him away.

Odin allowed her to do so. He’d already seen this part anyway, so he scarcely even watched her as she scowled at him.

“Get back in your chambers, now!”

Idunn’s radiance had dimmed to the point that even in the pathetic torchlight of this palace, Weth didn’t seem to notice her coming up from behind, a shard of glass in her hand.

“There lies an inherent danger in attempting to overmaster any oracle. A peril, in assuming that the Sight of another might be turned to your own ends, when oracles themselves are just as caught in urd’s merciless web as any other.”

“Shut up,” Weth snapped.

Idunn jammed the glass shard into the svartalf’s neck, shrieking as she did so. The liosalf yanked it free, then rammed it in again, in her jugular. Weth stumbled, but Idunn caught her with an arm around her throat and repeatedly jammed the glass shard into Weth’s gut, shrieking all the while.

Savagery is a fire that feeds itself. It becomes an inferno that can burn out only when no one remains to stoke it. Subjected to such pinnacles of malice, a soul becomes inured to it, clinging to rage as the only means of survival.

Oh yessss … And you knew … But allowed her such vengeance …

Of course he had. He’d seen it, which meant he’d not stop it. Could not dare to stop it, even were he so inclined.

As if it had naught to do with those pieces of your precious humanity … you flitted them away for power …

Oh, Odin was under no illusions. He did not begin to imagine himself immune to the transformative effects of antipathy, or the apathy of fate. It did leave him with a question, however—whether taking actions he knew would inherently strip away his humanity made him culpable for a kind of suicide, despite his having no choice.

You deny your free will …?

Perhaps. Perhaps no one had choices.

Idunn continued shrieking, plunging her shard into Weth even after the svartalf had fallen still.

Half aware of her actions, Odin focused on the battle below as it would soon unfold. Rarely had he ever attempted to use his prescience in such a way as he now intended. The flood of future memories, the surge of time that must bombard him, it had always precluded following such intricate plans on an immediate scale. The play of prescience had long allowed him to mold reality into complex machinations, true, but to attempt this appeared both inevitable and audacious to the point anyone must think him mad.

The space between madness and transcendence is a fragile one …

Ignoring Audr, and knowing well that Idunn would follow regardless of his instructions, Odin climbed up to the window. Had he seen it all? Every moment, playing out in recursive detail, each instant predicated not only upon the preceding ones, but the following ones?

Seizing his pneuma and flooding it to his limbs, Odin jumped from the window and fell forty feet to the street below, landing in a crouch but rising immediately.

Svartalfar surged for him, warriors loyal to Fjalar, intent to prevent him from escaping. They would fail.

If an oracle were to be given even a moment of perfect prescience, how then would those without such hope to stand against him?

A warrior thrust at him with a spear, but Odin stepped around it before her action had even begun, placing one of her allies between himself and the spear. It skewered her fellow. Not pausing, Odin ducked a sword swipe without looking at it, and used his momentum to sweep the legs from beneath the spearwoman as she tried to close in.

He came up a hairsbreadth from having his ear lopped off by another swing from that sword. A hairsbreadth, or a mile, perhaps. He didn’t bother looking at his attacker. Others came in at him. He dodged another blow, stuck his foot out, and ducked once more. A svartalf tripped over his extended leg and fell face-first into an ill-timed thrust from a spearwoman. Odin caught her falling sword, jerked it up into a parry and then let it go as the blade of another swordswoman lost its momentum.

He thrust his palm up into her throat, staggering her, then yanked her around, using her body to shield him against a slash from a swordsman. Odin twisted around, two paces to the right, no more, and thrust his elbow into the face of another attacker. The swordsman slipped on spilled viscera and went down to one knee.

Odin’s heel caught him in the ear with enough force to spin him around. Using his momentum, Odin dropped to one knee, and a spear thrust went above him, impaling another foe as she tried to rise. He caught the spear’s haft and yanked, stripping it from the female’s hands and whipping it around so the blade tore out her throat even as the haft cracked another warrior on the temple.

A sidestep took him out of the path of a knife flung from the shadows. A twirl of the spear deflected another projectile and sent it careening into an unsuspecting foe. A thrust killed. A dodge. A block. Twist. Turn. Sidestep. Kill.

Breathe in.

Kill.

Twist.

Kill.

Behold the torrent of blood …

At last the Destroyer begins to wake, Valravn said.

Breathe out.

Kill.

He caught the wrist of another attacker and flipped him over his shoulder.

Breathe.

Spear thrust to the face.

And then there were no more. Just him and Idunn, her gaping at him over more than a score of corpses.

An ocean of blood …

Yes. Odin inclined his head at Idunn and—still not quite managing to close her mouth—she plodded down to where he stood.

Amsvartnir was a maze, but it didn’t matter. He knew the way he would take, which invariably must have led him out, for otherwise why would he have taken it? Part of the paradox of prescience was the need—or the potential damnation—of trusting the visions implicitly. Of assuming that whatever you will do is already predicated upon the success of that action, for if you would not have done it, you would not have seen yourself doing it. A flawless circle, up until he trusted such things so completely as to allow himself to foresee a mistake while not realizing he was making one.

Prescient memories of failure. Such had always worried him.

“How did you do that?” Idunn finally managed, as they trod down the path, taking one turn after another.

Odin dispatched another foe, scarcely aware of doing so. “I’m not sure you’d understand if I told you.”

Lying to her … or to yourself? You claim she would not understand … in truth … you rather fear she would …

“My grandmother told that …” Idunn seemed to have trouble swallowing. “That my grandfather fought like that … in the end. Like a god of war that no man, no army could stand against.”

Odin could not bring himself to look at her. “I know.”

So many of those memories of past lives were cloudy, but some things remained eternally clear, ever cast in stark relief. Because he was the Destroyer. The antithesis of life, in a sense, and he bathed a world in blood if that was what it took to stop the decay. He was the one who would cut the rot from the dying world, in an attempt, however late it came, to save some small portion of the victim.

The strongest prophet must invariably create his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Audr was right. Oceans of blood. Odin remembered such things.

They had drowned the world. And those days were returning.

* * *

“Odin!” Hermod’s voice came when he knew it would, as they descended into the lower levels of the city.

Odin’s former apprentice had changed a little in the intervening years. Not graying, exactly, and yet—despite immortality—time seemed to have weighed upon Hermod. Perhaps, in choosing his protégé, Odin had damned him to the same weathering of the ages he himself had suffered.

You are the architect of his damnation … And your own …

It was all too true.

Hermod threw his arms around Odin, and Odin returned the embrace. “I’m glad to see you.”

“And Idunn …” Hermod said, glancing past Odin’s shoulder. “You’ve …”

“Changed?” she asked.

Odin did not need to look at her to feel her sad smile. Yes, maybe he had created her damnation as well. All of theirs.

And beyond Hermod, glowing faintly, Freyja came treading up the path, looking torn between too many emotions to give name to, if names for them even existed. So much time had torn them apart, and now—though the specifics remained elusive—he feared terribly that so little time was left to them.

“I …” she began. “I saw Hnoss.”

“I’m glad.”

Hermod cleared his throat. “We need to move. Volund made it clear his forces cannot hold Amsvartnir. This distraction is to allow you to free yourself, and it seems it worked. Let us not waste it.”

Odin clapped him on the shoulder, and Hermod took off, leading them back toward escape.

“Not that way,” Odin called after Hermod had taken several turns and attempted to follow the descending path. He pointed instead to a side passage.

Hermod glanced at him, then at the women, and finally shook his head and took off running down the way Odin had indicated.

They followed this, taking another turn past a chamber where several females were engaged in close quarters combat, the clang of steel echoing all around.

And finally, on to blood-splattered docks, and waiting ships.

* * *

“We are lucky the prince was engaged in the heart of the fighting,” Idunn said, as they sailed over the Onyx Lagoon toward the river Kokytos.

“Not lucky for many of our warriors,” Hipparch Elga snapped.

It seemed she commanded Volund’s forces.

Odin didn’t know how to feel about finding himself rescued by the dark smith. He ought to feel something, this he knew.

It seeps from you … you know it’s gone, but still you cannot bring yourself to miss it …

His humanity? Perhaps Audr was right. Perhaps Odin had lost the part of himself that should have governed such times. He couldn’t honestly say with any certainty. So many parts of himself had flitted away in his mission. Maybe his youth had been the smallest price.

Seeming almost afraid, Freyja tentatively slipped her hand into his and pulled him away from the others. “We have so much to talk about, I scarcely know where to begin.”

Odin favored her with a smile, knowing it was sad but unable to do better. Had he lived a thousand lifetimes, drawn to this woman, always. Half of his own soul. Always torn apart again by the implacable web of urd. Its threads suffocated him, leaving only moments for the expression of love.

What if he could turn away from the impending doom? What if he could flee it? Take her in his arms and run to the farthest corners of existence? Maybe even back to Alfheim, where they might hide and while away eternity.

So very tempting, even with the fear that the Norns might force him back into their web.

“Begin,” he said at last, “with what lies in your heart. Those things which cannot be left unsaid. Because even immortals always have less time than they think.”

“What does that mean?”

Instead of an answer, Odin drew her into a close embrace and kissed her forehead.

* * *

“You are my guests now,” Volund said, upon his throne in Saevarstadir, a city-state at least as convoluted as Amsvartnir. “Partake of my hospitality.”

In the darkness below the days, Odin inclined his head in acknowledgment. He could not say he had missed the dark smith.

Of course, Volund meant ‘guest’ in the same manner as Fjalar had.

They had traded being imprisoned in one city for another.

It didn’t really come as a surprise.

29

Music filled the air, men strumming on lyres to set the mood. Everything smelled of snow, rather than flowers, so it wasn’t quite perfect, but still, Hödr felt a profound peace with Nanna standing beside him on the small boat, her arm in his. The woman he loved laid her head on his shoulder.

“What does it look like?” he asked.

“Hmm. People are shivering.”

“I can hear that much.”

“Can you hear them smiling? Everyone wore their brightest clothes this evening. They’re gathered on both banks, waving at us as we drift past. There’s a little boy over there, shifting from foot to foot, probably wishing he could be anywhere else save here. And a girl, maybe ten winters waving at us. Um … the mist isn’t too thick today, despite the chill, though there’s a bit of ice built up on either side of the river.”

Hödr laced his fingers in with hers, trying to focus on the beating of her heart and the rhythm of her breathing. It was a solace at all times, even those of peace, as now.

He’d won. He’d truly done it.

Though his victory had cost him half an arm and far too many lives … Nanna was truly here, with him.

“I was born blind,” he said. “My mother refused to expose me, even though others told her to do so. Mother wouldn’t let them. She tried … everything to keep me from feeling less than other boys. But I never quite felt like I belonged.” Especially not after Eldr. Mother had wanted so badly to help him, but it had cost them both, and Father, more than anyone could have imagined. “I never thought I could … I mean, maybe I never thought I deserved to have happiness in my life. I spent centuries claiming naught for myself, just trying to make up for mistakes I—or my parents—had made.”

She squeezed his hand. “Maybe one day you’ll explain that all so it actually makes sense. One thing, though—you do deserve happiness. And I did choose you. Relax a little.”

Why was that so hard? Hödr chuckled, though it sounded weak in his own ears. Why did he feel so damned convinced someone must come along and take this all away from him?

The things he’d done when Eldr held him, they seeped into his dreams. They reminded him …

Hödr grunted and shook his head. No. He’d spent far too long, lingering on those dark moments. He felt the acrid reek of burning human flesh, scorching his nostrils. Felt it a thousand times more than when it had really happened.

“I’m your wife, now,” Nanna said, this time with a light elbow to his ribs. “I’d rather prefer you keep your attention on me. Or at least on our wedding.”

“Tell me more about it.”

She glanced around. “Well, they couldn’t string flowers together, so they just draped linens over the arch. Looks kind of foolish, honestly, but I appreciate the thought. Must have been my father’s idea, without a doubt.”

“Sentimental?”

“Always.” She chuckled a little, but it cut off far too quickly. “Especially since my mother died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Mmm. Well, anyway, I’m excited to meet your parents. They must be interesting.”

Hödr found himself caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace. He couldn’t think of any other time when anyone seemed terribly eager to meet either of his parents. Their family had become veritable outcasts on Asgard. While Queen Frigg would never actually turn against her sister, Mother and Father seemed, at best, now tolerated.

As for Hödr himself, he’d never be able to return. Baldr would have him executed on sight, and Frigg would side with her son, without doubt. It did not mean Nanna could never meet Hödr’s parents though. Father … he saw things in the fire. “I suspect they’ll come to us, in Gardariki, one day before too long.”

“You’ll send word to them?”

He wouldn’t need to, even if he had a way to do so. “I swear to love you,” he said.

Nanna squeezed his hand. “If I doubted that, I wouldn’t be here.” A pause. “Still nice to hear, though.”

That drew a slight chuckle from him. Yes, he’d never believed he’d have something like this. That peace could come to him. Companionship? Never. Not after what he’d done and what had been done to him, not while most Aesir drew no distinction between the two. Mother called Hödr the greatest victim of it all, but few others saw it that way.

It felt like a dream, one he never … Past the din of the crowd and the music, footsteps sounded in the forest, the crunch of snow under so many boots.

“No …” Hödr reached for Mistilteinn. His fingers closed around the hilt.

Lightning crackled. Everything slowed. He could sense it, disrupting the air currents, power leaping around it as the hammer hurtled through the air. Hödr tried to shout a warning, but it came so fast he barely had time to dodge to the side.

It didn’t matter.

Thor hadn’t aimed Mjölnir at him.

The hammer crashed through the boat. Lightning erupted in a deafening roar, shredding wood. Like a jotunn’s fist, the impact flung Hödr from the craft, a half dozen feet, before he pitched down into the river.

Icy cold numbed his senses. Couldn’t tell … where …

Muscles had seized up. Water rushing up his nose. Mouth. Choking …

It felt like he flailed under the water, but somehow, he managed the surface, coughing up lungful after lungful of freezing water.

Thor … It meant … Baldr.

Nanna! Fuck!

His senses returned with agonizing slowness. Screaming resounded on both banks, men and women terrified, dying. The smell of blood bombarded his raw sinuses as he pulled himself up on one bank.

Shivering and dazed, he managed his knees and drew Mistilteinn, trusting the runeblade to give him strength even when his own was flagging. The first auras began to take shape.

People fleeing in all directions. Raging warriors slaughtering anyone who got in the way or stood against them. On the far side of the river, a powerful aura, someone flush with pneuma.

Thor. Trollfucking bastard had always wanted an excuse to kill Hödr. Now it seemed Baldr had gone to his brother and given him the chance.

Hödr climbed to his feet.

Another strong aura trudged toward him, bearing a flaming sword.

“Did you think your treason could stand, cousin? Did you truly believe you could win against the might of Asgard? We are the lords of creation! We are the rulers of this world!”

Hödr grunted. He was tired of trading words with Baldr. Where was Nanna?

There. On the far side of the river … grabbed by Thor.

Damn it. Damn both brothers. Damn their entire fucking family. It was enough. How many centuries was Hödr to pay for what Eldr had done with him? He’d never wanted to hurt Thrúd and he hadn’t had a damn thing to do with what happened to Sif. Just because the vaettr that had possessed him had joined with the Serks didn’t make him responsible for their actions.

No.

No more.

Growling, he advanced on Baldr.

The prince still favored his ribs. He’d probably not spent so long in convalescence since tasting the fruit of Yggdrasil. Well, this time Hödr would give him a wound that wouldn’t heal at all.

Teeth grit, he moved to circle the prince.

“Naught to say?” Baldr mocked.

“No desire to converse with the contents of a troll’s arse.” Hödr lunged, going for the prince’s throat. Tight, rapid slashes that drove Baldr back.

The prince’s wounds slowed him. Not a lot, but Hödr didn’t need that much of an edge.

Mistilteinn swept up, caught Baldr on the cheek and sent the prince stumbling.

“I’m gonna cut your fucking face off!” Hödr lunged in. And realized his mistake too late.

Baldr had lured him in, feigned more pain than he must have felt. The prince whipped Laevateinn back around so fast that flames licked at Hödr’s face and neck. White hot agony raced through him, and Hödr stumbled away, screaming. His flesh bubbled and peeled, the sickly sweet reek of it leaving him gagging, even over the pain. Blood oozed from his seared skin, running down his chest.

His tunic might have caught fire if it weren’t soaked.

Baldr came in again, almost faster than Hödr could get Mistilteinn up to parry. Now the prince was roaring, launching furious blow after blow.

Even with his pneuma drawn, the pain threatened to overwhelmed Hödr. It blurred his senses and turned the rest of the battle into a hazy mush of swirling auras. Had to focus.

Parry. Dodge.

He kept giving ground until his foot skidded on ice at the river’s edge.

“Nowhere left to go,” Baldr taunted.

No. No, Hödr refused to lose. No more!

All sense should have told him to defend. But fury drove him forward, stepping into his parry as he drove Baldr’s runeblade down into the ice. Laevateinn’s flames washed over his chest, but his sodden clothes warded him. A little. The rest—he no longer cared about pain.

Hödr slammed his forehead into Baldr’s nose. Cartilage crunched under the blow and the prince stumbled backward with a wet gurgle.

Snarling, he lunged at Baldr.

A rock slammed into Hödr’s chest before he could strike, flinging him five feet through the air to come crashing down onto ice. Mistilteinn slipped from his grasp and pain rushed in over him, suffocating him. Air refused to enter into his lungs over the crushing weight now bearing down upon them.

Desperate, Hödr patted around on the ground to find the runeblade. His fingers brushed over the edge, sliced them, though that pain seemed so far away he could scarcely feel it. His hand closed around the hilt as Baldr closed in on him.

And Thor. The other prince had thrown a rock the size of a man’s head at him. Hödr was lucky his entire chest hadn’t caved in. Actually, probably he had the apple to thank for that.

Thor differed, though. Maybe looking for that damn hammer.

Hödr scrambled backward, managing to get up onto his arse but not to gain his feet. So hard … to breathe …

“It’s over.” Baldr’s words were muffled by a broken nose, but even still, Hödr could hear the fury underlying them.

That flaming sword was coming for him. And he was going to die.

Hödr could think of only one thing to do.

He rolled over, drew a breath, and flung himself back into the river.

The freezing waters hit him like another blow, shocking him back into awareness.

Probably not for long though.

Hödr swam straight down, until he brushed the riverbed, then let the current carry him, swimming with it.

Maybe Baldr would find him, when he came up for air.

Or maybe he could get far enough to make his way into the wood. Neither Baldr nor Thor was a master woodsman.

Already, Hödr’s lungs had begun to burn, threatening to burst. Had to hold on.

Swimming with the runeblade in his only hand was too damn hard. He twisted around just enough to sheath it.

Had to get another breath.

With no choice, he kicked off the riverbed and made for the surface. There he allowed himself a single breath. Not even long enough to sense the auras or get a feel for where his foes might be. He couldn’t afford that.

No.

Back down under the surface.

Had to stay down. Had to escape …

Nanna …

Part IV

Year 399, Age of the Aesir

Winter

30

“You have shamed me,” Baldr said to Nanna, when she entered the house he’d claimed.

Word had come that Gevarus had taken a wound—a deadly one, to his gut—and lay in the fevers.

Baldr didn’t fare much better. Chill sweats seeped down his back while his insides seemed lit aflame. His side was a ruined agony. He rested on a wolfskin spread by the fire pit, unable to decide if he was too hot or freezing.

Thor insisted they return to Asgard and let Eir look at the wound. Since when did an immortal need such care? But Hödr had been right—none of the wounds dealt by Mistilteinn healed like they should have.

Instead, they festered as if Baldr were a mere man.

“You don’t look well,” the woman said. Still staring defiance at him.

Oh, he was not well, and part of the blame fell at her feet for that. “You have chosen a traitor and by all rights you should share his urd.”

“Then send me to him.”

Were he stronger, he’d have rolled his eyes at that. As it was, the only retort he could offer was a groan.

“You’re really dying.”

“I’m not dying. I just need … rest.” He pointed a finger at her. “You … Hödr is dead, more like than not. Either way, I would not allow you to join him. Not after he raised a blade to me. No, he is to be denied aught save a traitor’s death and an eternity rotting behind the gates of Hel. Or perhaps feeding the dark dragon in Naströnd.” He wanted to laugh, but it came out as a wheeze.

“My father is dying.”

No doubt. But Gevarus had joined Hödr in his conspiracy, so Baldr would’ve seen him dead one way or another, regardless. Even had the man managed to return to his kingdom, Baldr would’ve come for him. Some slights could not be ignored. Still, for Nanna’s sake … “I’ll grant him a brave death, if he wishes … a chance at Valhalla.”

Nanna blanched. “Save him.”

Oh, not even if he could do so, though it would little avail him to admit that. “Not in my power.”

“You’re a god.”

Now he chuckled, painful though that proved. “Yes. But … not one of healing.” Indeed, Eir alone might have such skills. But with the wound Baldr’s men had described, Gevarus would be dead long before they could get him to Asgard. Not that Baldr would do so, regardless. “Those who might save him are not here. He raised a blade against my men and thus earned his urd.”

“You are a bastard, then.” She looked like she might spit on him. A slight he would have no choice but to punish.

He lifted his chin, daring her to do it. She didn’t. Finally, he sniffed. “I am the last hope to avert Ragnarok.” Mother had foreseen that. “Do you know what that means? It means all of mankind … shall live because of me. So quick to judge with your words … You have no idea the terrible things my blind cousin has done … The murders, rapes, tortures. And now treason.”

Nanna looked like she might deny Hödr’s crimes, but she shut her mouth and set her jaw, stern-faced and dour.

Baldr groaned, and waved his hand. “Be gone from my sight. I’ll deal with you later.”

Sneering, she stormed out the door and slammed it behind her.

Baldr slumped down beside the fire with a groan, and pulled another blanket up around his shoulders. So cold …

* * *

He stood on a windswept cliff, looking down at a town below. Even now, late a night, he could see through the mist—for the town was aflame, a pyre that engulfed every living being within it and continued to spread. The flames leapt outward, surging over hills and into valleys, turning forests to cinders. They passed through mountains, reducing them to clouds of choking ash that buried entire kingdoms as Baldr watched, in helpless thrall to the unfolding cataclysm around him.

“You can’t stop it.”

The voice came from behind him and he turned to see Nanna there, watching him. As eyeless as Hödr—just burned out, gaping voids where her beautiful eyes should have been. Blood oozed between her teeth and dribbled down over her lips. Her mouth was a well of blackness. “You cannot stop aught, Baldr Odinson.”

“Is this Ragnarok?”

“It was never your destiny to stop it.” Her voice was a razor, digging through his mind, shredding it and leaving him gasping.

Now, blood oozed down over his chin as well. It dribbled from his nose. From his ears. He opened his mouth to try to speak, to demand an answer, but all he managed was a choking gasp.

Something pressed against his wounded ribs. A pressure that grew and grew until he was grunting in pain. Then screaming, as he tore away at his shirt, yanking it off. His flesh protruded as if something swam beneath it.

By the gates of Hel! What … what the fuck was that? Like a massive worm, burrowing just underneath his skin.

Like it was ripping him apart in twisted agony.

Open-mouthed in horror he looked up to Nanna. She flashed him a pointy-toothed grin, venom dripping from her fangs.

Baldr slipped to his knees, hands pressed against his side as whatever it was slithered around in there. “G-get it out!”

With trembling fingers he pulled a knife from his belt. His breath had become ragged, wild. Uncontrolled panting, as the point hovered over the awful bulge. “Gah!” He drove the blade in and gouged his flesh, exposing a sinuous black tendril beneath it. A moving, slithering tendril.

It was tearing him to pieces from the inside out.

Still moving, still writhing in there. A serpent’s head poked out from the wound, yellow, murderous eyes. The snake launched itself at his throat like a missile from a bow, ripping through his skin in the process. Its fangs closed on his neck, punching through. Searing venom coursed through him with each agonized beat of his heart.

* * *

Baldr woke screaming. The fire had dwindled down to embers, leaving him in darkness. So dark, it took him a moment to realize someone was in the house with him, sitting in the shadows.

He gasped.

Nanna leaned forward, sneering. “Don’t sleep well, my lord? Is your conscience heavy? Is it black with guilt for the arrogance of your crimes?”

Still unable to catch his breath, Baldr yanked up his shirt. His skin had turned red around the bandages, and reeked of vile rot. Shit, he had to know. Cringing, he tore away at the bandages, heedless of the pain unwrapping them caused. Pus and blood mixed with a green poultice to create a gooey mess that had him ready to retch for just looking at it.

Nanna crawled over to him on her hands and knees, her tongue lolling out to one side. “The fevers have you. Your brain bakes inside your skull. How does it feel, being mortal like the rest of us?”

“Is this real?” His voice sounded like a child’s. A weepy, pathetic child.

“You won’t know until the end.” The woman thrust herself upon him, bearing him down with her weight. She licked the sweat from his forehead. Then lashed his face with a tongue as rough as fish scales. Licked it over his eyes.

He tried to throw her off, but he was pinned beneath a mountain, helpless.

“You wanted me? You wanted me?” her voice had grown dark, deep as a jotunn’s, and masculine.

Nanna reared up and yanked away her dress to reveal an erect cock made of stone.

“W-what?”

With Otherworldly strength she flipped him over, yanked down his trousers. “You wanted me!” she roared.

That stone cock rammed up his arse with a terrible rending pain.

* * *

Baldr shrieked, lurching awake, flailing around wildly, until he pitched over to the side. Sweat absolutely drenched him. He whimpered, casting about the house, but there was no sign of anyone else.

At least until the door bust open and Thor blundered through, completely unclad. “What the fuck happened?”

“Is this real?” Baldr managed.

Thor groaned. “What’s real is you woke me up from a dream where I didn’t have a fucking stone in my brain. You’re supposed to be the clever one, aren’t you, little brother?”

Nightmares. Fell, awful nightmares. Oh, Hel. What had happened to him? How could his mind even dream up such twisted mockeries?

He wiped his face with his shirt. “I … saw … I don’t know. A shade of Nanna. Like she was haunting me. I … should I release her?” To do so was to allow Hödr’s crimes and temerity to go unpunished. But the terrible things he’d beheld in his slumber seemed … seemed to forebode some unspeakable urd.

“Release her?” Thor asked, then scratched at the scab on his forehead. “Fever really has baked your brain, hasn’t it?”

“Perhaps. But what if this is a sign, a message from the Otherworlds not to hold on to Nanna?”

“Oh, fucking damn it, Baldr.” Thor collapsed on the floor in front of him. Then his brother slapped him.

Hard enough that Baldr fell over, and saw spots when he opened his eyes.

“First you come to me begging me to help you reclaim this girl because you have to have her. Can’t say I overmuch minded the chance to put that trollfucker Hödr in his place, so I agreed.”

“Maybe I made a mistake …” Baldr mumbled, struggling to sit up.

“Then you go and murder the girl. Now, what, you having a pang of conscience?”

“Wait, what? Murder her?”

Thor grabbed both sides of his head and hefted him up, to look in his eyes. “Wake up, brother!”

Oh, no. Another nightmare?

Thor shook him, sending the whole world teetering. “She spit on you, threw herself on your sword. Her whole body burst into flame like a fucking funeral pyre. You can’t tell me you don’t remember that awful stench.”

“No.” No, that never happened. This was another nightmare.

“It happened,” Nanna said.

Baldr spun around to look at her. Now, she stood, naked, her flesh charred black, bits of it flaking off and drifting about the room. Her eyes were still empty, her nose gone, her hair burnt away. Baldr gaped, hand to his mouth. “No …”

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Thor demand. His brother grabbed his head and jerked it back around to look at him. “Look. We leave for Asgard in the morn and Mother or Eir or someone will see to you. But you’ve got to live that long first. I brought Sleipnir, he’ll carry us quick. But you need to get ahold of whatever … the uh … whatever’s going on in that skull of yours.” Thor thumbed a finger against Baldr’s forehead as if to make his point.

“I’ll carry your soul straight to Hel,” Nanna said behind him.

Baldr flinched. He could see it, in his mind. The scene Thor had described. Hazy. Painful.

Nanna’s screams as she died, immolated by the runeblade’s terrible fire

“You’re not real …” he mumbled.

“You need me to slap you again?” Thor ask. “Because I’ll do it. Won’t mind a damn bit. Felt good the first time and it’ll feel even better the next. I can even tell Mother it was for your own benefit. Fuck, I’ll slap you left and right ten times a day if needs be. But you go dying or going mist-mad or any other such … uh … what do you call it? Nonsense? Yeah, no fucking nonsense, Baldr.” His brother grunted. “Right. And don’t wake me again, you understand. Or you will feel my fist.”

Thor rose, and tromped out of the house.

Baldr slumped back down, looking to the fire.

Nanna’s burnt face leaned down, close to his. “Hel is waiting for you.”

Baldr clenched his eyes shut, willing her to be gone. A desperate plea for it.

31

Ages ago it seemed now, petty dverg princes had awed Volund as they trained him in the smithing arts and taught him secrets of the Otherworlds. Now, he counted himself among the Otherworldly, making his shambling way through shadowed corridors in a palace he had taken from his uncle. Time moved like a serpent, slithering in strange and unknowable gyrations. Such was the way of the world, Volund’s old mentor had been fond of saying.

Ah, but blood ran true, and given the right prompting, the darkness in his veins had come out. The bitter irony of it all was, the dvergar had failed to bring it out of him. It was the cruelty of men that had finally succeeded.

For if svartalfar knew one thing best, it was cruelty.

The lamentations of the damned were but music, a symphony that one could deny or embrace, and neither made a whit of difference to the cosmos. The Wheel of Life turned, and torment was made manifest, forming the very fabric of reality. Life is suffering. Death is worse. And the line between the two fades as the cycle turns and turns.

Volund snickered. How easy to become lost in such melancholic musings. So many lifetimes ago, Dvalin had forged him, yes, but a prince of the svartalfar learned things others would not have wished to dream of. Truths, whispered in the darkness, carried on the shadows as if from Nott herself. The Queen of Night predated them all, by whatever name she was known.

In sleeping chambers lit by twin flickering candles that the shadows had almost managed to snuff out, he found Idunn sitting with her legs crossed beneath her, hands closed in fists, trembling slightly.

“They speak to you,” Volund said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Chuckling, he eased himself down across from her and stared into her eyes. “You have beautiful black hair. Has it always been black?”

“It’s dark brown.”

He snickered at that. “Not any more, it’s not.”

The woman frowned deeply, as if refusing to speak.

“Imagine my surprise, to learn grandfather had spread his seed on your world. Tell me, did you know your father?”

“He did not come to Vanaheim.”

“Ha! No, I imagine the sunlight there would have come as rather harsh for him. Unpleasant.” Volund reached a hand over to stroke her cheek, though she flinched away. “You did not, I see, deny having met him.”

“If I wished a friend to confide in, it would not be you. Nephew.”

Well. “Did you know, that females of our bloodline, those no more than one or two generations removed from Gugalanna, are exceptionally rare? Oh, I suspect Fjalar must have told you such things.” He leaned forward. “I need to know, of course, if his seed has taken hold in you. There are … ways to have it rooted out.”

For a moment, she looked like she might spit on him.

“I had always heard of you as almost ebullient. The Vanr who walked Midgard for ages, trying to help mankind when the rest of your kin turned their backs. Who chose Odin to overthrow your own people. Who gifted him with the dark spear?” He chuckled. “Or was it just that you found yourself ever drawn to the dark places beyond the hateful sun? Did the war and chaos and bloodshed call to you, in secret whispers you allowed no one else to know of?”

“No.”

“Did you, perhaps not even knowing the reason yourself, undo your own civilization out of a nameless need you could no longer deny?”

“No!” Idunn lurched forward her hands going for his throat.

Volund caught her wrists and shoved her back. “Does Fjalar’s seed quicken in your womb?”

Idunn snarled at him. “I’ll make you eat your own stones, svartalf! I’ll shove your shriveled cock so far down your throat you choke on it! I’ll leave your corpse to rot in this vile world, and never look back.”

He licked his lips and squirmed as he grew hard. “Your rage is delicious. But I truly need an answer. Do you carry the spawn of Fjalar? If you do not give me my answer, there are ways to take it from your mind. The shadows can reach in and claim what I need … but I will spare you that for now if you cooperate.”

“How kind you are, with your guests. You ask about his seed only because you wish to fill me with yours, nephew.”

Volund chuckled. “I admit, I look forward to pounding into your trench with a fury that will leave you screaming in pleasure.” He leaned forward to blow his breath upon her face. “You will writhe in ecstasy you cannot begin to contain, even as torment transforms into thrill. I’ll have your arms and legs suspended by chains and you shall feel as though you fly whilst I fuck you senseless for hour upon hour.”

He could see it, as she warred for control of her expression. As she lost, and scrambled away into the dark corner of the room, far from him.

“We are kin,” she growled.

He shook his head. “Your blood has power that could allow me to sire a glorious heir. Kin does not mean what it does among mortals. Fjalar was your brother, after all.”

“Half-brother. And he raped me!”

“Is that what you prefer? I have no qualms over it, if it excites you. If it arouses you, I can call in a half dozen or so ritters to use you at the same time. They’d have to use your arse, of course. I cannot allow the seed of another to—”

“You are sick, you trollfucking bastard!” She screamed at him, yet pressed herself closer against the wall, clearly disinclined to attack.

He snickered. “Conceptions of sanity and morality are meaningless in the fathomless darkness of existence. Our very souls are fuel to a twisting crucible that serves but to feed the dark. The only truth, and thus the sole measure of lucidity is, power is a choice, and the only choice that matters. Our wills, subject though they are to predations of fate, remain all that define us. I am offering you a singular chance to grasp real power. To be mother to a purebred descendant of Nott, a future marquess who could help us crush those who stand in our way. Together, we might even overcome Mantus, and claim the whole of the Gloom Hollow or beyond.”

“I don’t want to be mother to aught, least of all your spawn.”

The shadows around her twisted, whispering their sweet and damning song, confirming his supposition. After all, Fjalar had no doubt used her on every possible occasion to ensure the conception of progeny.

Volund offered her a smirk, one he managed to maintain even through the pain of standing. “Well. Allow me to apologize in advance for what I must do. I cannot allow Fjalar’s spawn to draw breath.”

“What?”

Volund reached a hand toward her, palm outstretched, then slowly curled his fingers. The shadows responded, tendrils of them writhing, lurching toward her.

Idunn blanched, trying to push herself further against the wall, as if there were any place for her to go.

“I am heir to the power of the Dark King, and thus of Nott herself, you see.” Volund shrugged. “Oh, you will be too, once you embrace your heritage. I can help you with that.”

“No …” Her voice was almost breaking.

The shadow tendrils wrapped around her ankles and jerked her forward, yanking her legs apart. Idunn shrieked, for an instant, before another tendril of darkness wedged itself inside her mouth. The screams didn’t much bother Volund, but no reason to take the chance of the Aesir overhearing this.

Idunn thrashed, wriggling around even as other shadows yanked her trousers down. Then her eyes bulged as another tendril slithered up her trench. Volund closed his hand into a fist, wrapping around the fetus, then yanked it backward, out of her with a slight pop.

The woman wailed, tears in her eyes, as blood seeped from her.

A twist of Volund’s wrist had the fetus floating up before him. So tiny. Unlikely to have much pneuma yet, but no sense in wasting it. He flicked his hand and tossed the morsel into his mouth, swallowing without bothering to chew.

He licked his lips. “Yes, well … as I said. I apologize for that.”

The shadows drew back from her, but she wasn’t screaming. Just lying on the floor, staring daggers at him in her delicious rage, enough to almost mask the tears. Yes, she would make a fine svartalf, and soon. The darkness already began to waken in her.

“Suffering forges us into stronger metals,” he said. And limped from the room.

* * *

How very fitting that Idunn should join him, all the more so because Odin had once relied on her so heavily. The Ás had no one but himself to blame for Idunn’s urd.

Every once so often, a flicker of pity tugged at him, a remnant of his long abandoned mortal life, when he’d still believed in petty conceptions of mortality. At such times, it served best to remind himself that he did only what had been done to him, and made him greater for it.

Still thinking of her, he shambled down the corridors of his fortress, leaning on his cane, until he came to find Odin himself, standing in delightful discomfiture with Freyja, as the two of them looked on their daughter. The three stood before a balcony overlooking the dining hall where several dozen female warriors now drank their fill.

Probably, Odin and the others knew he approached, but still he clung to the shadows, allowing them their moment of despair with Hnoss, who continued rebuffing any attempt either made at familial bonding.

“I don’t know you at all,” Hnoss said to Odin. “All I know of you is that you sold me to a man you had every reason to believe might torment me.”

“I didn’t know you existed—”

Hnoss snickered. “Must have been easier, that way. I don’t blame you. I’ve embraced my urd. You must accept that yours does not include me. Neither of yours does.”

Oh, they wilted as if covered in frost, wretched, pathetic things.

Their suffering would make them stronger, in the end. In truth, they should thank him for what he’d made of Hnoss. She was surely far stronger than the frail flower he’d dragged from Alfheim, long ago.

“Return my daughter,” Odin snapped, not looking at Volund, but clearly addressing him. “Revoke your price.”

Volund stepped from the shadows beside Hnoss and cocked his head at her father. “Even were I so inclined, do you think she could return to Alfheim now? The light would be agony. Trust me, I know.”

Flashing a smirk, he slipped past them, shambling on to reach the stairs. Those were tedious in human form. For a bare instant he focused his mind. His shoulders popped and his jaw hurt as his form shifted into that of a raven. He flew through the corridors and into his throne room. There, Hermod stood, staring daggers at Hipparch Elga while she stood with her arms folded across her chest. Waiting for him no doubt.

Volund flew up to his throne, then resumed his human form. “If you want between her legs,” he said, “all you have to do is ask.”

“I never remembered you being vulgar, Uncle.”

After lounging upon his throne, he looked to Hermod. “What you remember is a time ages back, when you were a boy of a handful of winters, and I did not yet know who I truly was.”

“What makes you think this person you’ve become was your true self?”

Volund drummed his fingers on his armrest. Was the man now petulant, or insightful? It depended on how deep the nature of his question went, really. If he disregarded the existence of urd, that was mere ignorance. If, on the other hand, he sought to express the will within the confines of the system then perhaps he had more cunning than Volund had given him credit for.

Finally, Volund leaned forward in his seat. “What do you know of the Norns, boy?”

“I’m more than four hundred winters old and hardly a boy.”

“Fair enough, if immaterial. No, I’m asking you—”

Taxiarch Alfreda came bursting into the throne room, drawing the stares of both Hermod and Elga.

“What is it?” Elga snapped.

“Liosalfar, attacking the island!”

Oh … that was rich. Glorious, even. What entertainment this should provide …

32

Hipparch Elga and the new woman rushed out of the throne room, and Volund resumed his raven form, flying after them. Leaving Hermod alone.

Now liosalfar? Was that a blessing or more madness? Odin and Idunn had just escaped from Alfheim, they had told him on the boat. Could the queen have sent the soldiers to reclaim her prisoner?

He just didn’t have enough information.

Much as he wanted to burst into a run, he had to balance speed with caution, so he crept from the throne room to have a look. All through the fortress, hundreds of warriors—most female, though a few males—came charging by, paying him no mind in their rush to man the walls.

All right, then.

So they weren’t interested in their “guests,” at least not when compared to an invading liosalf army.

Hermod followed the mass of bodies, careful not to get in the way or draw attention. They’d never let him up on the walls, but there were other small windows, here and there, below the ramparts. Probably arrow slots, really, which meant archers might be inside them. Still, Hermod needed to know what was going on.

He faltered at the steps toward the outer walls, though.

Odin.

Odin knew things he had no business knowing. His Sight revealed truths well before others could understand them. Shit. Hermod had to find the king first. Volund had given them each chambers on the upper level.

Grimacing, Hermod turned and made a mad sprint for the stairs. Two or three at a time he took them, vaulting his way to the higher floor. Damn, but he missed being able to step across the Veil to save time. Everything seemed sluggish here, though in reality, it probably moved as fast or faster than it did in the Penumbra.

Running up the path, he blundered into Odin, Freyja, and their daughter, standing and arguing. Well, at least Odin seemed to be arguing. Hnoss looked more amused.

“Something’s happening,” Hermod said. Could they trust Hnoss? It seemed doubtful, all things considered. He’d seen no indication she harbored loyalty to either of her parents.

Odin seemed to stare off into the distance. They didn’t have time for this.

“Odin!” Hermod snapped.

Freyja glanced from him to Hermod, then to Hnoss.

Hnoss flashed a wicked grin. “Secure the prisoners!”

Oh, by the damn gates of Hel! Hermod jerked Dainsleif free of its sheath.

“No!” Freyja shrieked, interposing herself between him and her daughter.

“It’s not for her.” Hermod pointed at the coiling shadows that seemed to surge down the pathway toward them. “It’s for them.”

“Need more time …” Odin mumbled. “Didn’t have time to see this … properly. Find the way out … No. Loki!” His voice seemed apt to break, weaker than Hermod had ever heard Odin. “No, we should have had more time … it’s not time for this … Now is … eternity.”

Hnoss began to snicker at her father’s apparent madness, backing up, even as several svartalfar melted up out of the shadows around her.

Shit. The old man had gone too deep into a vision trance.

Freyja groaned, pulling her sword as well.

“How much light have you got left?” Hermod asked.

“Not enough.”

And then the racing svartalfar fell upon them. Hermod fell back under the onslaught, forced to engage two warriors at once, each of them at least as strong and fast as he was while drawing on pneuma.

A parry, a dodge.

A blade sliced along his shoulder, scraping off his mail. And sending him stumbling away, back toward the balustrade around the path.

Far below lay the now empty dinning hall.

The other swordswoman’s blade gouged his cheek, scraping across his teeth and gums and slicing the end of his nose. Only his drawn pneuma allowed him to block the pain enough to keep from pitching over in agony.

Desperate, he rolled backward over the rail, turning in midair. Air whooshed by him for a heartbeat, then he landed in a crouch atop a table. The impact still shot through his legs and he lost his grip on his pneuma. Pain crashed over him in wave after wave and he tumbled sideways off the table clutching his mangled face.

His vision was already going hazy.

Had to get … pneuma back … suppress the pain …

Two svartalf females landed on the tabletop, one after the other.

Hermod seized his pneuma, even as one flipped over him. Growling, Hermod made a wild swipe with his runeblade.

He missed, but the attack still served to send the female off-balance.

An instant later, Freyja and Odin both appeared on the lower level.

The other swordswoman swung at Odin.

Hermod couldn’t afford to get distracted with the king’s struggles, though, furiously parrying the svartalf female on him. Like a beast she snarled, launching feral attack after attack. Her blade clipped his exposed thigh and he tumbled to the floor.

Odin interposed himself between them. The svartalf swung at him and he twisted out of the way like she was a flailing child. Then he had her wrist, twisting. The sword fell from her grasp and he caught it with his free hand, even as he bent her arm backward. He rammed her own sword up under her armpit, then dropped her, the blade still half inside her.

Her body dropped down beside where Hermod lay, still twitching, blood gurgling up from her mouth. Eyes wide in pain and disbelief.

Probably much like Hermod’s expression. What in the gates of Hel was that?

Metal clanged on metal. Freyja engaged with the last attacker … And Odin moved to aid her.

Hermod could only gape as the svartalf laying in front of him choked, spasmed, and died. “Fuck me.”

It took all his pneuma just to gain his feet.

“Frey,” Odin said, looking half dazed. “Frey … Didn’t have time to see … the vision’s not complete. Everything is so jumbled.”

So the king thought he was confused?

With a groan, Hermod limped over to where Freyja had felled their last foe, then glanced up to the balcony. It was too dark to be sure, but he saw no sign of Hnoss. Going to get more warriors?

“We have to move,” Freyja said. “Hnoss …”

“She’s not going to join you,” Hermod snapped. Under any other circumstance, he’d have pitied her. He knew all too well the pain of losing a daughter. It was a wound that never healed, no matter how many centuries had passed. A scab he picked at over and over in his mind, as if he might dig out the rot, though he knew only emptiness lay beneath. “If we stay here, we die.”

Without a word, Odin took off down a corridor.

Oh, what now? Had they again lost him to a vision trance?

Hermod set off after him, made it three steps, and then slumped against the table as his leg gave out. Trollshit! Wincing, he yanked his split trousers away from the gouge on his thigh. Blood pumped out of it like a spring, oozing. Given time, the apple ought to mend such a wound. But they didn’t have time. Every breath they wasted inside this fortress was less chance for them to escape.

Freyja drew his arm around her shoulder and pulled the better part of his weight onto her. They hobbled several steps like that, then she growled, knelt, and swept Hermod’s legs up under her other arm, carrying him like a fucking child.

“What the …?”

“I’m an alf now, and one who’s also had an apple,” was her only answer.

Even holding him, she still moved with remarkable speed, trotting after Odin, who wended his way among dark halls as he if knew where an exit lay. Maybe he did, though the king kept muttering to himself, nonsense from all Hermod could tell.

“No … Loki … I didn’t want this … There’s still time. Has to be more time … to find a way … to stop the future … Why? You did this on purpose? Helped him … I should have known. The Norns. You sent me! Was it all … a trick? A move on the board …”

“Odin!” Hermod snapped. “Focus! If you want to see your blood brother again, we need a way out.”

But the sounds of battle greeted them around the next bend, growing ever more intense as Odin pressed on. Oh, trollshit. Was it possible the king had misread his visions? Had guided them straight into the melee?

Freyja had begun to pant as they stumbled into a courtyard splattered with corpses and even more gravely wounded alfar on both sides, some trying to drag their broken bodies away. Black walls rose up all around, dimly lit by braziers that should have provided far more illumination, and by dozens of glowing liosalfar in golden armor. The shadows around them lurched and danced in unnatural gyrations.

No. Not danced, Hermod realized, as a shadow lashed out at a liosalf. It caught him in the face with a blade that cleaved his chin, split his nose, and sent him tumbling to the ground, clutching the ruin of his face.

Volund appeared from nowhere behind another liosalf, seeming to melt up from the shadows. He caught her around the back of the neck. Her light dimmed at once. Shadows seeped from Volund into her, and her eyes turned solid black. Darkness poured from her mouth. She convulsed as if the darkness ate her alive, clearly trying to scream, though no sound issued from her mouth.

The svartalf prince vanished just as suddenly. The liosalf female stumbled, gained her feet, and then set about attacking her former comrades.

“Fuck me,” Hermod mumbled.

“Damn it!” Freyja said. She desperately wended her way between numerous engagements.

The madness of it, the ferocity on both sides, left Hermod gaping. Should they try to help the liosalfar? But Odin had only just escaped them.

So what were they to do when—

A blond-haired liosalf appeared directly in front of them, forcing Freyja to lurch to the stop. The male grabbed Freyja’s arm and then Hermod’s vantage changed all at once, in a flash of light. They were standing on the far side of the courtyard, behind the liosalfar lines.

Again, things shifted, and they were further back, outside the bridge leading to Saevarstadir.

Bile scorched his throat, and he retched from the sudden changes.

Freyja grimaced, setting him down. “We have to get Odin!”

“Leave the old bastard to his urd,” the other liosalf snapped.

“I came here only for him! I’ll not leave without him!”

“People are dying because I came to rescue you! I don’t care if the Ás rots in the fathomless dark.”

Wiping his mouth, Hermod glanced up at them. The male liosalf had lost the glimmer in his skin.

“Frey, please,” Freyja said.

Huh. Her twin brother. They did look alike.

“Saule!” Frey shouted. One of the females on the line looked back to him. “Get Odin, now!”

If she gave any answer, Hermod didn’t catch it. She vanished in an instant. A few breaths later, she appeared, Odin next to her, her own radiance greatly dimmed.

“Idunn,” Odin objected. “We have to find Idunn.”

“She wasn’t in the courtyard,” Frey said. “And we have to get you out of here. Our people are no match for their prince.”

“Idunn—” Freyja began.

“Every breath we waste here means more dead or corrupted liosalfar!”

He held his fist to his face and whispered something. What now?

Hermod struggled to stand. “Odin … Frey’s right. The world cannot survive without you. Things have grown darker than ever.”

“But …”

The sky crackled. The ground in front of him trembled and quaked. The air began to warp around them feeling almost like liquid. The cavern above shuddered, dust and water spilled down in a shower.

An enormous crack sounded, and a stalactite the size of a tower crashed down not thirty feet away. Rock shards exploded from it along with a cloud of dust that had Hermod covering his head with his arms. Screaming.

Another impact erupted. As if the whole Gloom Hollow intended to collapse around them. When he looked up, though, an iridescent bridge now arced out of the ground. Or out of the ceiling, he couldn’t say which. That … that looked like that bridge that Heimdall guarded, between the Penumbra and the Roil.

It shimmered and crackled, bits of it vanishing and then reappearing.

“It’s not stable yet,” Frey said. “We have to hurry. We cannot allow Volund to get his hands on this.”

“Idunn …” Odin said. “My child …”

What? “My king!” Hermod objected. “We must flee!”

The liosalfar line broke, svartalfar crashing through it. Chaos and blood and screaming. Cackling laughter.

Growling, Freyja hefted Hermod up again and took off, running toward that bridge. She hesitated an instant when she reached its base, then trod onto it. And the light supported her, the same as Heimdall’s bridge did.

Panting, she dashed up, over the arc, Frey at her heels, and Odin lagging behind, casting glances over his shoulder.

Leaving Idunn behind didn’t sit well with Hermod, either, but they had no way of knowing where she was and no means of helping her. Not now.

33

The rainbow bridge carried them into a shimmering expanse that might have existed within—or above—the Astral Roil. Though Odin knew no such linear geometry applied to non-physical realms, it remained difficult not to conceive of relative directions as a frame of reference. How many liosalfar had Frey brought to Svartalfheim in search of his lost twin? The liosalf himself was not like to answer that question, nor any others, though focusing upon these immediate concerns helped to keep Odin grounded in the now.

Because the future held perils he wasn’t ready to face. While he had sought a way from Saevarstadir, images with frightening clarity had begun to crystalize, unbidden, in his mind’s eye. As if it was now too late to take any action that might avert the course of unfolding time. As if …

* * *

Loki was panting. Exhausted.

Oh, but Odin had only just gotten started. “You knew this would happen! You did naught to avert it, Nornslave! You never even tried!”

“I didn’t want this.”

“You wanted Ragnarok!”

Loki shook his head. “It was needful. Some things cannot be changed, Odin.”

* * *

No.

No, Odin could not afford to lose himself in such musings. Not now.

“What is this?” Freyja asked, walking just ahead of Odin, beside her brother.

“We’re calling it the Bilröst.”

“Shimmer bridge? How apt.”

“It’s transitory, unstable. We cannot afford to dawdle upon it. If it flickers out whilst we traverse it …”

Would they plummet into the Roil?

Ahead of them, a billowing cloud spread out over the bridge, seeming to spark not with lightning so much as some other gleaming energy.

“Keep moving,” Frey snapped, grabbing his sister’s wrist and dragging her toward the cloud.

Odin shook his head. He had not seen this. So many things he had not seen, and they closed in around him, filling in gaps he’d not have wanted filled thus. Not at such a price. For what he had foreseen was dark beyond measure. A doom upon the Aesir he had tried so desperately to steer them away from, only to find his visions had proved no boon whatsoever. As if seeing the future evoked it.

A crushing weight settled upon his chest, threatening to drive him to his knees. A pain in his heart, though he doubted immortals could have heart attacks. Broken hearts, though … maybe so broken as to be enough to die from. And maybe death would prove his refuge, in the end.

We are all dead … And death awaits you … You feel its jaws, closing upon your throat … And try to deny it … Give in …

The wraith fell silent as Odin entered the cloud. All around, colors flashed, a maddening array of them in purple and pink and blue. He could scarcely make out the others, though surely they must continue to follow the bridge. Had they reached a liminal space? It was the only explanation he could see for this, as if he trod through a gap in reality.

An unnamable energy set the hairs on his arms and neck on end, seeming to crackle over him. The air changed.

And then he passed from the cloud, back into the hideously bright light of Alfheim. They actually trod through the sky, amid other clouds, descending a graceful arc down toward … toward the foot of Yggdrasil, within the same city he’d just escaped.

“You built this at the Tree?” Freyja asked.

“We had to,” her brother answered. “The ring is a catalyst designed to open the roots. They are what flows between worlds. For centuries we worked to stabilize it so that we could move more than one person across the expanse.” The bridge shuddered as they descended. Frey grunted. “You can see it’s hardly secure. Hurry.”

Needing no further prodding, Odin drew his pneuma to allow him to walk faster, and without the normal pain in his joints. Yes, they needed to hurry. So many thoughts kept trying to encroach into his mind. A turbulent sea of temporally dislodged memories that sought to drown him in its wild embrace. Mercurial and maddening.

Had to focus on the now.

“You can’t do it,” he said.

“What?” Frey snapped, casting a glare over his shoulder. “How can you possibly know aught of such things, old man?”

“Brother,” Freyja said. “Let him speak.”

No. Not now. “Later. On the ground.”

Frey sneered. “First intelligent thing I’ve heard from you.”

They followed the Bilröst down to the base of Yggdrasil. As it did in Midgard, the ground around the tree had fallen away, though the liosalfar had buttressed the tree with pearl arches. A circular stone platform in front of the great tree served as the point of origin for the shimmering bridge.

They were about forty feet above that when the Bilröst vanished.

The wind stole Odin’s scream and he scarcely managed to brace himself against the impact. The ground slammed into him like a fist.

All light vanished.

* * *

Everything hurt. Odin opened his eye, tried to sit up, then thought better of it when it felt like his insides were apt to rupture. He lay on a bed inside a large room capped by a marble dome with lattice work breaking around its edges.

Overhead, thunder rumbled. Maybe that had woken him. A few drops began to slap against the roof, rolling down, some water breaking through the lattice and apparently carried through a gutter inside the walls. Within the space of a few breaths, the light rain became a downpour, a fierce one, sounding as if the building stood beneath a waterfall.

With a groan, Odin turned to the side. Hermod lay in another bed a dozen feet away, moaning slightly.

A female liosalf entered through an archway, water glistening over her skin and making her sheer dress cling to her. “You’re awake. Do not try to leave this facility. I suggest you take your rest while you can. Frey will speak to you once his own convalescence is further along.”

All he could really offer in answer was a grunt.

Rest sounded ideal. Speaking with Frey, somewhat less so.

* * *

How many days had passed since he’d fallen? At least three of four. Odin could move about now without too much pain. The confinement did not overmuch help his burdens, though. With little to do save sit and think, he could scarcely help allowing the visions to intrude into his consciousness.

Flickers of them he tried to suppress. A fear he didn’t want to give voice to.

* * *

Loki panted, hands on his knees, shaking his head, even as blood dribbled down his face. “Not everything is clear in the distant future.”

“Not an answer.”

“The only one I can give you.”

“They won’t let you, you mean. Your visions … mine, they gave them to us, didn’t they? A lie! A trick, to show us the things we cannot change whilst setting us on a course from which we could never return! If you would ever have told me all you knew, Baldr might still be alive! Hödr, too! And how many others, brother?”

* * *

“You asked me to keep you grounded in the present.” Hermod’s voice yanked Odin from his painful explorations. Odin’s apprentice paced around their prison.

Damn, but part of him wanted to weep and the rest of him wanted to curse urd, curse the Norns, and defy the very cosmos. This wasn’t how it was meant to unfold. Everything was falling apart and all his schemes, all his plans, all his efforts had not served to avert the end in the least.

Because … because he had relied too heavily on the visions? Odin shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. No. No.

“Odin?”

“We were always headed here. I thought … I thought if I could see enough, I could change the future. Save us. But there was never any hope of that. There was no stopping Ragnarok. It comes on us as sure as the tide rises. I thought the visions my gift … they are worse than a burden.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Prescience accounts for itself.” Odin had taken to walking circuits around the perimeter.

Hermod grimaced. “You always told me that seeing the future didn’t mean you could change it.”

“The immediate future, yes. But I allowed myself to believe that, given enough forewarning, I could … could …”

The other man grabbed Odin’s upper arms and jerked him to a stop. “You always knew we might not be able to stop Ragnarok. You said, if we couldn’t, we at least had to win. That’s why we built Valhalla. It’s still there, my king. I maintained it for your return. The einherjar await you.”

Oh, how had he dragged Hermod down into this madness? What if … what if Ragnarok would unfold not in spite of Odin’s prescience, but because of it? But he wasn’t the only oracle in the world. Damn, how his head hurt. He didn’t want to believe this. Couldn’t accept …

“Should I give you two some time?” Frey asked, leaning against the archway.

Odin turned to the liosalf, part of him wanting to glare. Yet even that capacity seemed buried under the weight that now crushed him. It was a betrayal. That was the answer. The one he had loved over his own brothers … had known. Had … caused it all?

“Come with me,” Frey said, when Odin didn’t answer. “My sister wants to speak with you and—for reasons I cannot understand—I’ve agreed to grant her the chance before we throw you back into the Tower of the Eye.”

Odin pressed a palm against his forehead. This, he had seen not so long ago. Just one more step on the path. What if he turned away here? What if he refused the call, chose to remain on Alfheim, even if the price was returning to his prison of light? But that did not change what had been set in motion.

The things he had begun, long years back, when he first learned of Ragnarok. The machinations. The wars. The ancient relics he’d thought might save the future. Or damn it.

“Without Baldr … my son …”

Frey rolled his eyes. “You truly are a madman, now, aren’t you? You’re not the first to utterly lose himself in the Sight. When my sister helped cast out the First Ones, ages back, sent them here, some few of them had also suffered such maladies. Mundilfari raved and raved about the future, about having seen it coming, heard it from an oracle that drove him mad.” The liosalf shook his head, almost seeming sad about it. “He should have come to Alfheim, himself, though, in truth, many of those we sent didn’t survive this world. Some … found their way into the darkness.”

Even back then … back when the Mad Vanr reigned, and looked in the darkness, what he saw had shattered him. As it crushed Odin.

Maybe the future was written because, even when faced with a terrible choice, one option still became the more desirable alternative. Always the option that led forward. The choice to turn away from oblivion, even if it meant looking into the darkness. Losing oneself.

“You have no idea the malady I suffer,” Odin said, finally looking up at Frey. “And I pray you never will.”

With a disdainful snort, Frey turned, leading Odin and Hermod out through the city, and back toward the World Tree.

Freyja was waiting there, standing on the same platform where they had fallen, along with Saule and a few others. Odin half expected to see dozens of blood splatters, but the rain had washed such things away. Besides, no such splatters had appeared in his visions. Things kept snapping into place. Choices he hadn’t meant to make, but perhaps had already made, long ago. Before he was even born.

Fatespinner. Nornslave. Was that what they had called him?

“So,” Frey said. “My sister has begged our lord for your release, and the Elder God has granted a stay of punishment for you. Conditional on your cooperation. Release the valkyries.”

“No.”

“What? How truly mad are you, old man? You would defy an Elder God? Do you not understand the power Lord Dellingr wields? He could snuff you out like—”

“I have something better to offer you than valkyries. I can fix the Bilröst.”

Frey glanced to his sister, then back to Odin. “How?”

By reliving prescient memories of having done it before, a paradox that remained redeemable only so long as he acted as he’d seen himself acting. Were he to tell Frey how to do it, the liosalf might create a divergence in the timeline. And, oh, how very tempting that thought was. Any change in the timeline would prove escape was possible.

Odin sighed. “That’s not something I can explain.”

Maybe such a paradox was exactly what he needed now. The break in reality might be preferable to the future of damnation that waited upon the threshold. But … again, what if everything collapsed? Too many variables. Forcing him back to choosing the lesser damnation.

“I alone can attune Andvaranaut and stabilize the Bilröst.”

“If you think I’ll give you the means to escape—”

“I’m not seeking escape. I came to Alfheim to reunite the Aesir and the Vanir, this time as allies. I will make a permanent bridge between our worlds, and you and the others shall return. We must hold a council, all of us together. Aesir and liosalfar.”

Frey had already begun shaking his head. “I’ve no reason to trust you.”

“I trust him,” Freyja said. “I believe him when he says he wants to return us to Midgard. He talked of it oft, when I or Idunn visited him in the tower.”

Her brother folded his arms across his chest. “In a thousand years of tampering we never managed to create a traversable bridge to Midgard, or anywhere else save the other spirit worlds. You want me to believe this man can do it in what? A few days?”

“Two days,” Odin said.

Frey scoffed. “The arrogance of you. I’m tempted to let you try just so I can watch you fail, save I know you’d use the ring to flee.”

How tedious this hatred had become. Not that Odin did not deserve it for his crimes against the Vanir, but then, the Vanir had deserved their urd as well. They had cast themselves as gods and failed the people of Midgard. Of course, the Aesir had done much the same. Because no one could have succeeded. Or because … perhaps … even Odin’s methods had not proved drastic enough.

If he pushed himself harder, could he complete the device sooner? Or had his visions already accounted for that?

“I would never leave without Freyja or Hermod. Besides, I need all the Vanir back. A war is coming, Frey, a war for all Midgard. I still don’t have all the details, but I do know it’s far too late to stop it. Just that … Hel will make another play for the Mortal Realm.”

Maybe, had he not been delayed so long in Alfheim … No. No, this had always been his urd, even if he had not managed to see it clearly. He’d been caught in the web since the beginning. Destined toward this end. Plunging headfirst toward a final destination.

“Give him the ring,” Freyja said. “Let him make this right. Loathing the man forever achieves naught.”

With a grimace, Frey looked from her back to Odin, then yanked Andvaranaut from his finger.

Odin held out his palm.

“If you betray us again,” Frey said, “no barrier in existence will save you from my wrath.”

Oh, if only he lived in a world where Frey was his greatest fear. No, all Odin could do was nod.

The liosalf dropped Andvari’s Gift into Odin’s waiting hand.

34

Consciousness slipped from Baldr’s grasp too oft, as Sleipnir raced across land and water, miles melting behind them in a blur. In those bouts of nightmare, she was waiting for him. But then, he also sometimes saw her when waking, especially when they stopped for rest or a meal.

Sometimes, Nanna looked burned. Sometimes, whole. Sometimes, somewhere in between.

In the throes of a particularly brutal nightmare, when he’d seen all of Asgard ablaze and men everywhere turning to ash, she’d come to him like a shadow, drifting through the smoke, her eyes gleaming.

Baldr couldn’t say whether he’d lost his mind, if the fevers brought on these hallucinations, or if Nanna had actually become some kind of ghost. Perhaps even a mara, a nightmare spirit that would eat away at him until naught remained of his soul.

If the ailment was one of his body, Eir should be able to attend to it. The bitter irony came if Nanna truly had become a haunting shade, seeking after his soul. Because the one person who knew a damn thing about such Otherworldly matters, the one who might save him, was Hödr’s mother Sigyn.

And he could not imagine her lifting a finger to aid him.

Atop Father’s horse—Thor’s since Father had vanished so long ago, really—they passed through a cloud of mist and into a warmth Baldr hadn’t felt in so long. The sun blazed overhead, burning his eyes, forcing him to shut them. Even if doing so meant he …

* * *

“The time of man draws to a close.” Nanna stood upon a small, rocky island in the middle of a river.

Baldr was on his knees, staring up at her. On one bank, the world blazed, an inferno unlike aught he’d ever imagined. An ocean of flame and smoke that burnt away all creation.

On the far side, the mist had frozen solid, creating a lifeless wasteland where even the air seemed cold enough to kill.

“None will survive, this time.”

“No. I’ll stop Ragnarok.”

“You’ll be dead.” She cackled, the sound far too deep, like a wail from the damned behind the gates of Hel. “Your soul is seeping out.”

She grabbed him with boney hands, her strength uncanny, and drove him onto his back.

His trousers vanished and she knelt. A tongue as long as her arm lolled out, colored like a bruise, then wrapped around his stones and cock, wet and lathering, slithering like a serpent. Baldr cringed, wanting to object, wanting to throw her off, into the river. But his own body responded to her attentions despite his objections.

Nanna tore her dress off, then lowered her dripping trench over his face. As if commanded, he felt his hands reach up, grab her arse. His mouth rose, his tongue lapping against her, drawing shudders from her, even while his mind desperately rejected it. Tried to pull away.

He failed.

Her mouth closed around his cock, sucking so viciously it hurt.

He wanted to force down his erection, but his body betrayed him. Nanna sucked and sucked, until he climaxed. Sharing that with a woman always drew out some of his pneuma. But in these fevered visions, more than that fled him.

Like pieces of himself, pulsing out with each throb of his cock, drained from him and leaving him less than he’d been before. Even as he so desperately wanted more. Wanted to cling to her forever.

“Revel in the destruction of your soul.” Her voice was like a snake, hissing in his ear.

* * *

“Brother,” Thor said, as he guided Sleipnir up the mountain toward Valaskjalf. “If that’s your cock pressing against my arse again, my elbow will be knocking out at least nine of your teeth. And no more of that warm, wet, stickiness either.”

She was killing him, he knew. One lascivious dream at a time, one fevered vision after another, Nanna was draining his life force. Permanently depleting his pneuma. Oh, perhaps it might recover, given enough time, but that could take years.

How could she thus not be real? A mara, for certain. Eir might treat the wound on his side and thus abate the fevers … but how would Baldr ever be free of this dark vaettr?

* * *

Eir hissed as she prodded at the wound on Baldr’s side. Her touch was like an icy needle, lancing through his ribs and twisting his insides into knots.

Baldr’s mother sat in a chair beside his bed in Valaskjalf, hands folded in her lap and face so blank she could have passed for a statue. It hardly fooled Baldr. She’d fretted over him before Eir arrived, bemoaned foreboding dreams she’d had for him—praise the Tree she hadn’t seen his dreams—and sent for Sigyn, as well, despite Baldr’s protests. His aunt had not yet arrived.

“What could cause such a wound to an Ás?” Eir asked.

“A runeblade,” Baldr said, stopping himself before mentioning Hödr. If Aunt Sigyn was to be his sole hope of recovery, he couldn’t afford to let slip that her son had inflicted the very wound in question.

Eir rose, brushing her gray-streaked hair from her face, and looked not to him, but to Mother. “I have to cut away the rotting tissue and hope the apple allows it to regrow clean. Were he a mortal man, I’d call him beyond all hope. This … I’ve never seen anyone live through this much putrefaction.”

Baldr groaned. Eir planned to saw off his skin. That sounded pleasant. A treatment more painful than receiving the wound had proved.

“What of the Art?” Frigg asked.

The other woman hesitated, then shook her head. “There are … I can call upon vaettir to try to aid the recovery. But there're dangers to that, and I’d need a sacrifice.”

The queen nodded as if of no consequence. “Animal, or human?”

“Human is more likely to draw the interest.”

“Fine,” Mother said. “I’ll have a slave selected.”

Baldr groaned at that, and tried to sit up. Hand on his shoulder, Eir pushed him back down. “Must you …?”

“The life of a slave is naught compared to an Ás immortal,” Mother said. “Much less the Prince of Asgard. The world needs you. I need you, and I’ll not let aught befall you.”

“It’s a bad idea.” The voice came from Aunt Sigyn, standing in the doorway to his room. “Let Eir treat him and push her pneuma into him. Believe me when I say using sorcery will exact a price higher than whatever it grants you.”

Mother turned to her sister. Baldr couldn’t see her expression, but Sigyn frowned at it, so it couldn’t have been pleasant. “If you believe Eir incapable of the proper incantation, then you should do it yourself.”

Sigyn scoffed. “I wouldn’t touch the Art again. No.”

“I’ve had a vision of Ragnarok.”

“What?” Baldr said, now managing to sit despite Eir’s objections.

“In my dream, Baldr …” She glanced at him. “He died. And Ragnarok began soon after. His death would serve as a catalyst for the end of man.” Mother’s normally calm voice had grown frantic. “I will not allow that to happen. You must call upon whatever vaettir you learned of from all those years in Sessrumnir. Do whatever it takes, but save his life. Protect him from any form of weapon or illness. Baldr must never die.”

Sigyn tapped a finger on her lip, staring hard at him. Did she know already? He’d already spread the word of Hödr’s banishment. Maybe that alone would have her refuse. Or worse, agree, but invoke vaettir without the intent to aid him.

After a moment, Sigyn looked to Eir, and the other woman sighed. “I’ll help you,” Eir said. “If that’s how it’s got to be.”

Sigyn threw up her hands, shaking her head. “You don’t understand what can come from this. It’s mist-madness. Have you forgotten—”

“What your son did to my granddaughter?” Mother snapped. “Hardly.”

“It wasn’t my son! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If I do this … what happens if something like that gets inside Baldr? Or me? Or Eir?” The other woman flinched at Sigyn’s words. “These are forces we cannot understand, cannot control, cannot predict, and you want to invite them into our world and hope for the best. Sorcery is madness. Loki always called it the last resort of the desperate.”

“I am desperate!” Mother shouted. “We are all desperate! The world is. Fail in this, and Asgard and Midgard will both fall. I’ve seen it.”

“Assuming your dream means what you think it mean.”

“As your queen, I order you to fortify my son by all means at your disposal.”

Sigyn stared openmouthed at Baldr’s mother, head slightly cocked. Her gaze darted to Baldr for a moment, but he couldn’t guess what went on in her mind. “So be it. Have the slave ready two hours past nightfall. We do this at midnight.”

“Thank you,” Mother said.

“I need to prepare.” With that, Sigyn slipped from the room.

Baldr couldn’t help feeling like a fish caught in a current too powerful to avoid, swept out into deeper waters.

Nanna leaned down over the back of his bed, her bulbous tongue slathering over her lips, eyes a burnt out ruin. “Soon.”

* * *

Sigyn and Eir had thrown everyone else out of his room, save for the slave who knelt, manacled and gagged—because he wouldn’t stop pleading for his life or at least for a clean death—and for Baldr. Who couldn’t stop himself from staring at the slave. They were going to kill that man for his sake.

“He’ll be better off than you,” Nanna purred at his ear.

Baldr couldn’t swallow. His throat was so dry. “Aunt Sigyn?”

“Oh,” Nanna said, snickering. “Do tell her. Tell her how you tried to kill her son. How you murdered his wife. I’m sure that will improve her concentration on the Art.”

Sweat plastered Sigyn’s blonde hair over her face when she looked up from where she was painting strange runes in a circle around his bed. “What is it?” She mopped her brow with her wrist.

“Thank you.”

Sigyn frowned, ever so slightly. “That isn’t what you intended to say.”

Oh, by the damn Tree. Others, they feared Sigyn, and not only because of what had happened long ago with Hödr. Baldr had heard young warriors claim she and her husband could read minds. Mother had assured him it was only that she was too clever for her own good. Still, he’d seen her figure out what people meant or thought just by looking at them. That bespoke some fell seidr, in his mind.

“I … I have terrible dreams. Hallucinations while I wake, even.”

“Fever dreams aren’t surprising,” Eir said. The healer hadn’t been painting the runes, though she inspected Sigyn’s work, crawling about the room on her hands and knees. “You’re lucky to be alive at all, in truth.”

“Not for long,” Nanna said.

Baldr flinched. “I cannot wake from my nightmares.”

“This is a mistake,” Sigyn said.

Eir clucked her tongue. “Given that you’ve already promised the queen, I don’t see …”

“A real sorceress would have practiced for years for this sort of thing. Developed her mind to the extent she could look through the Veil and see the vaettir coming. I can’t do that, and neither can you. We are fumbling in the dark whilst inviting forces of unknowable intent and power in here with us.”

Nanna cackled, drawing a grimace from Baldr. “Oh … if only she knew how right she was.”

“We have to do as we promised the queen.”

Sigyn shook her head, then bent down to resume her work.

She’d made no mention of Baldr banishing her son. She had to know. Why hadn’t she said aught about it?

The hour grew late when Sigyn crawled over to the trembling slave. “I’m sorry.”

Wetness spread out along the man’s trousers and pooled on the floor.

Sigyn must have noticed, but she didn’t look at it. Instead, she took the back of the man’s head in her hand. And drew a knife up to his throat. “I wish I did not have to do this.” In one swift motion, she jerked the blade along his neck. His skin parted and peeled away, even as the man gurgled, and blood began to stream out in an irregular waterfall.

His aunt scrambled over to where she’d left a tome sprawled on the floor, then began speaking discordant, nonsensical sounds that seemed to send crawling insects inside Baldr’s brain. Itchy.

“Oh …” Nanna cackled. “Oh, yes …” She reached a hand for him, and it seemed to push against a membrane, almost like she came from underwater. She leaned forward, her face coming into starker relief than before, fangs dripping venom.

Something was wrong. Was she … interfering with Sigyn’s spell?

Baldr opened his mouth to object. But Nanna’s hand closed over his lips. Her fingers dug in between his teeth, pried them further apart. He thrashed against it, as her arm began to worm its way down his throat. Clawing fingers tearing his insides loose.

He wailed in mute agony, unable to throw her off. Her arm had reached down until her elbow rested on his tongue. Her fingers were brushing against the inside of his stomach.

Fuck! Hel, somebody help him!

“You’ll see Hel soon.” Nanna promised. Then drove her arm deeper in. Up to her shoulder. It felt like she was ripping him apart, unhinging his jaw.

Sigyn’s voice bombarded against his skull, her chaotic and alien words a cacophony that drowned out all other thoughts. Save the pain.

He couldn’t force air into his lungs past her form blocking the way.

Nanna had dived inside him up to her waist now, and was slithering down his throat, wriggling like a worm burrowing into him. Baldr grabbed her hips and tried to yank her free, but she just kept forcing her way down.

Couldn’t breathe …

Everything went dark.

35

Sigyn’s steps came unsteady as she made her way back to her hall, swaying as if drunk, though she’d attribute it more to complete lassitude than aught so gratifying as a feast. A cool breeze swept over the mountain, chilling the sweat that had her dress sticking to her back.

Trembles ran through her hands. Her senses felt dulled, as if underwater, the sounds and smells muted. Maybe the incantation had drained her pneuma, and if so, it ought to return in a few days. It was hard not to feel like she’d lost something more, though, some part of herself now missing, ripped out, and worse still, she could not identify that part.

Her legs gave out beneath her and she stumbled to the ground, banging her knee on the rocky slope and eliciting a groan. Frigg should not have asked for this. But then, her sister listened to her less and less, since what had happened with Hödr so long ago. Yet somehow, the irony in it seemed lost on Frigg. Her sister had justifiably blamed her and pushed her aside for her misstep in calling on the Art to aid Hödr, but now Frigg had forced her to walk the very same road on behalf of her own son.

Not that Frigg had ever much seemed amused by irony. Or any other form of humor.

Oh, but the troubles went deeper than this. Frigg had insisted that they needed Baldr to win Ragnarok, or that his death would ignite that very final battle. But Loki had admitted to her not so very long ago that he’d maneuvered events across the world to ensure Ragnarok arrived, though he’d evaded any questions as to exactly why, offering only unilluminating platitudes about necessity or the demands of history.

She could guess, though. Though he’d never confirmed it—and had fervently demanded she relinquish that line of questions—she’d become increasingly certain over the centuries that he was bound to the Norns in one way or another. In the most obscure Vanr texts, she’d come across a word used without context: Nornslave. If the Norns controlled the web of urd, and if Loki was their servant, then, did they use him to maintain that web? It did not truly explain why they’d need someone to do so, though.

That problem, she had never been able to work out.

Sigyn blew out a breath and pushed herself back to her feet, then trod up toward her hall.

She had not gone so very far when someone came plodding down toward her, footfalls soft, almost unnoticeable without her enhanced senses. “Loki. I’m glad you’re back.”

“It’s me, Mother,” Hödr said. “You didn’t recognize me?”

In the darkness, he seemed but a silhouette, and she could have easily mistaken him for his father. “Sorry. I’m exhausted.” True, if hardly the main reason she could not recognize the sound of him. And how had he come back here? Baldr had banished him. Treading on Asgard would have meant death for him.

Indeed, Sigyn had planned to travel with Loki to find Hödr, just as soon as her husband had returned.

She shook her head. “Hurry inside. I’m coming. You can’t be seen here.”

Her son nodded, and slunk up the path, seeming almost invisible. His abilities in stealth had increased. No wonder he’d managed to sneak into Asgard. Still, they could afford no chances, least of all with Frigg so overwrought about her son …

Oh. Well, fuck.

Baldr claimed Hödr had betrayed him and he had thus banished him. Betrayed him over a woman. A couple moons later, he showed up with a wound that could have killed an immortal.

“Oh, Hödr … what have you done?”

Forcing down her fatigue, Sigyn rushed up to the hall she and Loki had built on the cliff.

Her son waited for her behind the fire pit, staring at it almost as if he still had eyes to see it, though, as usual, he did not care to sit too close. Always a little afraid of fire.

Indeed, as she drew nigh, she realized his face and neck bore burn scars. It would take a blisteringly hot flame to do that to an Ás immortal and have it not heal within a few days. Flames like those of Laevateinn.

“Damn it, Hödr,” she said, sitting down beside him. “What were you thinking?”

He snickered. “I take it you guessed what has unfolded.”

“I’ve surmised enough, yes, though I still prefer to hear the details from you. I expected to get the tale after I came to find you out in Midgard, not here where you’d be killed on sight.”

“It doesn’t matter. Some things cannot be borne.”

She patted his knee. “Tell me. There is no mistake you could make that I have not done worse.” Sigyn’s crimes oft kept her from sleeping deeply. Her error with Eldr had wrought so much chaos. Had led her to … murder her own kin. Even after centuries, she sometimes still dreamed of Thor kicking in her door and coming to smash her head with that awful hammer.

“Ah,” Hödr said. “I never blamed you.”

That was a lie, though Sigyn didn’t bother calling him on it. He did blame her—how could he not?—at least on some level. He had forgiven her, loved her, but he knew she’d made his life far harder than it ought to have been, no matter how pure her motives. Besides, he didn’t know about Sif.

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “Baldr and I quarreled over the daughter of King Gevarus of Gardariki. He believed that, because he was the prince, he could have anyone he desired, even if I loved her first and loved her more. And I … I made the mistake of lashing out at him.”

“So he banished you.”

“Yes. I resolved to reclaim Nanna from him at any cost. And I set out to find a runeblade capable of …”

“Of murdering him?”

Hödr grunted. “Of overcoming him, given the one he wielded.”

Sigyn snorted, and patted his knee again. “Let me give you some advice. Be honest with yourself. You didn’t go claiming a runeblade because you thought it would scare Baldr into giving in. You’re smarter than that. You knew, all along, you’d kill him with it. And you nearly did.”

“More’s the pity I failed in that.”

“How did you learn of this blade?”

“I … heard a tale of it.”

Loki. She’d figured as much, but now Hödr’s reaction left little doubt.

“Regardless, I claimed it, wounded Baldr, and married Nanna.”

“So what are you doing here now?”

“He attacked during our wedding, injured me, and murdered Nanna.”

“He what? I thought you said he loved her?”

Hödr let his head slump into his hands. “I found her funeral pyre. Her father was dying, but, before he passed, he told me what had happened.”

“And you came here for vengeance.” Sigyn groaned. “You can’t, Hödr.”

“You would have me spare the man who murdered my wife? Allow her shade to rot in agony, unavenged? Baldr deserves death for his crimes.”

Maybe he did. Maybe they all deserved it. Who on Asgard had not killed in passion or desperation? Who had not broken faith, committed crimes, betrayed … Certainly, Sigyn could not count herself among the innocent.

“If you go after Baldr, he will kill you.”

“I don’t care. He took everything from me. I cannot allow it to stand.”

“And if you kill him, then what? How do you think Frigg will respond?”

“She’ll have me tortured to death, no doubt. If she catches me.”

Sigyn flinched at her son’s casual acceptance of a terrible end. “She believes Baldr’s death will precede Ragnarok.” Oh … what a steaming lump of trollshit. Had Loki … had he aided Hödr knowing this would happen? Knowing that, if Hödr killed Baldr, it would bring on Ragnarok?

“What are we, Mother, if we break with all honor for fear of the end? Do we not then deserve our ending?”

Why would Loki do this? Had he seen something else? What did he mean by urd? It clearly compelled him, trapped him. So … had the Norns forced his hand? Did they order him to take such terrible measures?

“Mother?” Hödr asked. “What’s happened?”

Sigyn gaped at her son. So hard to find words. This couldn’t be happening. Her stomach seemed to drop out from beneath her, as if she stood upon a precipice and stared down into a fathomless abyss. Right now, she was looking at the end of time. A crushing coldness settled around her.

“Mother?”

“I … I beg you not to do this.”

“You know I must.”

“Please, Hödr. I’m asking you for the sake of me, of your father, of yourself … of the entire world. Do not go. Just lay down and sleep, and when the next nightfall comes, leave Asgard forever. I’ll come with you, we’ll find your father, we’ll do whatever it takes, maybe even join your brother in Jotunheim. Only forgo your vengeance.”

Hödr reached up and stroked her cheek. “I’ll sleep on it, as you ask.”

Almost ready to weep, she threw her arms around him and pulled him close. Yes. Let them save themselves and maybe the world.

And Loki owed her an explanation. No more evasions. He owed her the truth.

* * *

Hödr shook her awake, and Sigyn sat up with a groan.

Only, it wasn’t Hödr, but his father who knelt beside her, hand on her shoulder.

Sigyn sat bolt upright and let her gaze dart around the hall. Oh, no. No! Where was he? “Where’s Hödr?” she shrieked.

“Not here. It was only you when I arrived just after dawn. Hödr came here.”

Oh, fuck.

Sigyn lurched to her feet, pulling Loki up after her. “We have to go after him. Loki, please! Whatever you foresaw, whatever is coming, if we don’t stop him, we’re going to lose our son!”

He blanched. He really didn’t know what was happening.

Or … or he hadn’t known it was happening now.

He nodded once, and then ran from their hall. Sigyn pulled on her pneuma to run faster, but found it faint, hard to grasp. Weakened by her invocation the night before.

“Go!” she shouted at him. “Go! Save him!”

Her husband raced ahead of her, faster than she could hope to match being so drained.

Please, let it be fast enough.

36

The sun warmed Freyja’s face, a blissful boon after too long in the dark of Svartalfheim. How easy to bask in it. As soon as her injuries had healed enough to rise, she’d lain naked on a grassy knoll outside her house, soaking in the rays and letting it replenish her. The sunlight accelerated her already rapid healing and restored the energy she’d burned away in the darkness.

Yes, easy to rejoice in it. If she could have blocked out the guilt that crept into her thoughts. Not that she deserved to ease her conscience, though this place had that effect. It could strip one of things one ought to have felt, allowing those here to lose themselves in sensual pleasures and forget bonds that should have held stronger than steel.

She refused to let that happen.

Thus, she forced herself not to smile as she trod upon a flying walkway that reached toward Saule’s pyramid in Gimlé. The other liosalf was native here, and much older than Freyja, but had—on occasion—shown her a measure of kindness that mortals might have called friendship.

A warm wind surged through the city, billowing Freyja’s hair and dress. For a bare moment she thrilled in the feel of it over her skin. The blaring sun atop Dellingr’s palace was headier than any wine. Almost enough to make her burst into song and grab a random passerby to fuck. Indeed, along the way, she passed couples pleasuring one another. A woman sitting on the rim of the walkway, moaning as a man tongued her trench, heedless of the fall of almost eighty feet just behind her.

And there, two women kissing amid ferns that decorated the center aisle, fingering one another.

Seeing such things only increased the temptation, the pull of her body to them.

So like being drunk all the time.

Groaning, she scurried onward, forcing herself to keep her gaze locked upon the pyramid ahead and nowhere else. She had come here with a mission and she would see it through.

A branch of the skyway broke off to Saule’s abode. Most of the time, of course, Saule stayed in Tír na nÓg where she had the queen’s ear, far more so than Freyja did. Whenever she came to Gimlé, though, she lived here—with two dozen servants, and a few of her children—in a position of high authority.

Freyja found the other woman at the pyramid’s apex, sitting upon the steps and flipping through a book. Rumor claimed Saule had a library to rival the Emerald Ascension on Tír na nÓg, and—from the few occasions Saule had let Freyja peruse that—she thought it only a slight exaggeration.

Freyja hurried up the steps to the top of the pyramid.

Saule was alone, save for a servant with a jug of water, and smiled when Freyja approached. Liosalfar smiled most of the time, really. It was easy to mistake sensual pleasures for contentment. Given the space of eternity, so many of the liosalfar lost themselves in pursuit of such pleasures. The call ever tried to suck Freyja in, too.

“Come for a book?” Saule asked.

Freyja shook her head. “We have to go back for Idunn.”

Saule shut her book and handed it off to her servant. “She was never one of us, you know. Always … tainted by her blood. You can scarcely expect the queen to sacrifice more lives to aid one such as her.”

Freyja’s brother had said much the same. How easily he turned his back on a woman he’d known for ages. “Idunn is Eostre’s daughter.”

Saule shrugged. Of course. She’d never met Eostre and had no reason to care about that.

Freyja knelt on the steps before her friend. “I care about her.”

The other woman patted her hand. “I understand you do. Just … stop.”

Freyja snatched her hand away at that. How was she to stop caring? Oh, the answer was easy. Lose herself in the intoxicating rhythm of this place. Mistake an easy life for a good one. She could return to the court and its unending political plays, and perhaps she should, for if not, she risked losing a position that had taken centuries to earn. But. “She was once a good friend of mine.”

“You care too much about the past, especially a past long ago in the Mortal Realm.”

“Please.” What else was there to say about it? If she did not go back for Idunn, Volund would torment her friend as he had tormented her daughter. And the transformation Hnoss had undergone was … soul-crushing.

Saule shook her head. “No one will agree to risk another incursion, certainly not for an outcast. Your former friend is where she belongs.”

Freyja flinched at that. As if, because of her father, Idunn deserved to wither and change in the World of Dark?

But maybe Saule was right. Maybe no liosalfar would help her now. Whatever favor she had in the court now, her brother had almost certainly used it up in his attempt to rescue her. No one cared about Idunn.

Not here, anyway.

* * *

She’d arranged a small cottage for Odin, as close to Yggdrasil as was available, though still it meant he had a long walk to the tree. As it turned out, the device Frey and the others had begun working on existed within the tree itself, in a hollow that mirrored the one on Vanaheim.

Freyja found Odin not in his cottage, but in that hollow, surrounded by a wall of wood and half-watched by a pair of lightly armored warriors who seemed more interested in discussing water sports than in actually keeping an eye on Od.

In the center of this chamber, a ring of glyph-carved stones surrounded an exposed root. Upon this ring sat a device of interlocked metal rings that looked like a cross between an orrery and an astrolabe. It was taller than she was and wider than her armspan, and Odin wended his way between arms of the thing, grunting as he made minor adjustments to gears and dials.

The man glanced in her direction, smiling wanly, before setting back to work. “It’s more complicated because the device doesn’t exist yet in the other realms. Each world in the Spirit Realm is a single facet of a greater reality, so crossing between them is simpler. But the Veil blocks access to the Mortal Realm, and I need a way to punch through it. To make the bridge permanent, I’ll need to recreate the Bilröst machine within Yggdrasil there, as well.”

Freyja shook her head. How very far he’d come from the man who scarcely grasped the import of the Otherworlds. The man she’d trained in the Art, made love to within this very tree, albeit in another realm. How much she had cherished him then. How very badly her heart had broken when he’d cast her here, even as she’d tried to tell herself she understood the need to do so and his reasons.

He was dressed in a loose shirt and a sarong, like a local male, though his aged form hardly fit here. He’d crossed between worlds because of her. That … meant something. Whatever mistakes he’d made … maybe it meant everything.

“Hnoss and Idunn,” she said.

Odin grunted, ducked under an arm of the machine, and came to sit before her, taking her hand in his own. “I won’t abandon them. Neither one. I’m going to find a way to save them, I just don’t know how yet. There are … other things on my mind, Freyja. Terrible things happening on Asgard. Or … about to happen. And now it may be far too late to change them, but I have to try. Once I get back, once I set my kingdom in order, then I can focus on finding a way to save those we left behind.”

Freyja slumped down beside him and let her head fall into her hands. “Hnoss …” It hurt to even speak her name. “She might already be lost. But if we don’t get to Idunn soon, she’ll also begin to be twisted by that place. These spirit worlds, that seep into your flesh, into your soul. It's not possible to linger there and not be changed.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I …” No. Alfheim’s radiance had not saturated Odin, though she could not say the reason for certain. Her best guess was that the wraith and the Moon vaettr inside him prevented that change. She sighed. “I don’t think Idunn will share your immunity to it. Svartalfheim is in her blood.”

Odin leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. His beard tickled and the closeness made her shudder.

So easy to let go. “Od …”

Now he was kissing her neck. Behind her ear. Her shoulder.

Yes.

Just a moment of peace.

Freyja pulled the two wraps of her dress apart to expose her breasts. Odin cast a sudden wary look at the two guards, as if expecting them to gape.

“They hardly care,” she said. “We are free to do whatever we wish, when and wherever we wish it.”

“All your mortal inhibitions gone?”

Most of them. Should that sadden her? No. Such things didn’t matter. Not compared to all else she lost. The rest of her humanity? Her daughter. Her friend.

Damn, but she was tired of her thoughts. Could she not let the light back in, just for a time?

She dropped down from the shelf and lay on the floor, pulling Odin down atop her. He hesitated but a moment, then his kisses again painted her face, neck, breasts. He lifted the hem of her dress, and his own sarong, and eased himself inside her.

She wrapped her arms and legs around him and let time slip away.

At least for a while.

* * *

“It won’t be much longer,” Odin said, leaning against the glyph-carved blocks surrounding his machine. “Frey and the others did good work here, but some aspects were out of alignment.”

Freyja sat with her legs folded beneath herself, watching her lover. On Vanaheim, she’d considered herself the most learned scholar on the Art yet remaining. But exactly how this device worked, that seemed beyond her grasp.

Oh, she didn’t feel guilty that Frey had built it. Her brother had brains, and he’d spent the better part of a thousand years tinkering to come up with this design. But how was Odin perfecting it so quickly? She couldn’t understand that.

“You want to ask,” he said.

His visions. His ability with the Sight had grown by several orders of magnitude since she’d known him on Vanaheim. When she’d visited him in the tower, she’d known it, but here, it became so much more … manifest. “What you’re trying to do … how can you know how to do that? Visions don’t reveal such intricate details. They’re impressions. Ideas, oft non-literal ones, and viewed through a haze.”

The man leaned back, staring up at the wooden weave above them. “It’s … a combination of memories of past lives and prescient insights rarified by the Well of Mimir.”

Freyja blanched. She couldn’t help it. Mundilfari had raved about the well, but she’d never believed it real. After all, the Mad Vanr had abdicated the throne, left, and never returned.

Odin nodded as if understanding her shock and confirming it existed. “The well served to clear the frost from so many of my visions. There are still limits. Prescience is never perfect. But I see so many things, my love. Terrible things that I tried with all my might to prevent. And now I’ve come to realize, there were those who would never have let me stop the future. Some among the svartalfar spoke of them, Fjalar, for one. Perhaps his words unlocked something in my mind. Maybe … I was doomed, damned from the first moment. I cannot say for certain.”

“What’s going to happen?”

Odin swallowed. “A war. A terrible war that—I desperately hope—the returning Vanir will help us win. But win or lose, the price shall prove high.”

His words left her shuddering, somehow breaking through even Alfheim’s hold on her mind and leaving her rubbing her arms.

Shivering, despite the blistering heat.

37

Sweat dribbled down Hödr’s face in the early morning sun, while he clung to the cliff side east of Breidablik. Some claimed that hall—given to Baldr by his mother, of course—was the most beautiful in all Asgard, facing the rising sun, glittering with gilded spires. The layout had come from plans drawn by Hödr’s own mother, though Frigg embellished on those designs, forgoing subtlety for splendor.

Teeth grit, grunting, Hödr slapped around for another handhold. Climbing blind was no easy feat, without doubt, but then, no one would begin to suspect he might make such an attempt. He’d skirted the narrow beach below the cliff, having to swim to reach this locale, and had climbed since before dawn, probably eighty feet or more.

At the moment, he had only the vaguest sense of how much farther. Voices sounded above, though. Servants bustling, preparing the day meal. And … grunting? Someone fucking, behind the side of the hall, where the cliff was even more sheer.

Hödr snorted. That bastard. He’d murdered Nanna and found some other trench to plow.

Struggling to keep quiet, Hödr edged his way around the cliff, until he could come up by the thin strip that separated the hall from the precipice. His arms had begun to burn, forcing him to flood pneuma into them.

As he did so, the aches receded. It might leave him all the more drained later, but for now, it gave him the strength to continue onwards. He heaved himself upwards, then crested the rise.

“Ugh, ugh, ooo.” The sounds grated against him, an affront to all his suffering.

How dare Baldr enjoy himself, after all he had wrought?

There he was, hips slapping against the arse of … Eir? The old healer? Well that was not quite Baldr’s usual taste. Why would … Oh. She must have poured pneuma into him to let him recover from that wound. And it had drawn him to her.

She could have refused, though. Instead of standing there, hands on the wall, getting fucked.

With a growl, Hödr slipped Mistilteinn free of its sheath.

Baldr spun around, shoved Eir to the ground, and grabbed his trousers, yanking them up, even as the healer yelped.

“Your brother interfered with our last duel.”

Baldr chuckled, shaking his head. “That wasn’t a duel. That was an execution, you just didn’t realize it.” There was something off about his aura. A distortion, almost like … a darkness inside him.

Well, it didn’t matter.

“Will you fight me with what honor you have left?” Hödr asked.

“I’d relish the chance, traitor.” Baldr tied the laces on his trousers, then cocked his head around to the side of the hall.

Yes, this strip didn’t offer much room to fight. Hödr backed away, toward the front of Breidablik, and Baldr followed, pausing to snatch up Laevateinn where it rested against the wall. As soon as he tossed the sheath aside, those vile flames erupted along the length of the blade, scorching the air with their heat.

Some servant must have spotted him, for soon a crowd began to gather, forming a circle around them. So be it. Let them see their glorious lord meet his end.

“I’m going to send you to Hel,” Hödr said.

“I await that.”

Baldr’s odd response had him faltering, and the prince lunged in, whipping that flaming runeblade in a savage arc. Hödr gave ground, but the ring of onlookers meant he didn’t have far to maneuver. Desperately, he parried the prince’s onslaught. The wounds that Mistilteinn had dealt him no longer seemed to slow him in the least.

Two-handed, Baldr gripped Laevateinn and cleaved downward, intent to chop Hödr in half. A wild move. Too aggressive.

Hödr sidestepped and whipped Mistilteinn around. Baldr tried to dodge, but the runeblade gouged his side, just above his hip, and sent him stumbling backward. Hödr spat in his direction. “I’ll cut you to pieces to feed Hel’s vile dogs.”

Dimly, he picked up the footfalls of someone running away, down the slope. Gone to report to others? Hödr would be damned if he let Thor interfere again. “Fight me like a man!” he roared at the prince.

“A man?” Baldr snorted. “You’ve no eyes and one arm. How am I to make this sporting?”

“Let it be a real duel. No interference from your kin or warriors.”

“Oh … I swear this time shall end it for you and I, cousin.” Despite his injury, Baldr lunged in, fast, no doubt relying on the apple to let him bury his pain. Laevateinn trailed flames in wild arcs that Hödr could almost see by the feel of their heat. A spiral of fire warded the prince, maneuvers not quite like those Hödr had seen him use before.

All he could do was give ground, backing away at an angle so as not to get caught up with the crowd. Sooner or later, those overreaching attacks would tire even Baldr, or else would leave him open for a riposte that could fell him. And the prince continued to lose blood from that wound.

All Hödr had to do now was avoid getting cleaved in half or immolated.

Snarling in rage so feral it chilled Hödr to hear it, Baldr charged in. Hödr ducked under the swipe, coming up in a roll and scrambling away. The prince’s runeblade thwacked into a bystander, tearing through half her torso in an instant. Her flesh ignited into a flailing inferno, her screams bombarding Hödr for a few breaths before she collapsed.

Even Baldr stared at her as she smoldered upon the ground. “Seems familiar.”

Oh, the bastard! Had Nanna screamed like that? Roaring, Hödr raced in, thrusting with Mistilteinn. Baldr parried and clapped him on the side of the head with his free hand, dazing Hödr and sending him stumbling backward. He barely got his blade up to deflect Baldr’s immediate counterattack.

Wild, almost mad-sounding snickers bubbled from the prince’s lips. Hödr caught Laevateinn on Mistilteinn’s pommel. As Baldr leaned in on it—damn, but he was strong!—the flaming blade crept closer to Hödr’s face. It licked at his hair and had it curling up in reeking tendrils.

Desperate, Hödr kicked Baldr’s shin. The prince stumbled, allowing Hödr the chance to back away and pat at embers in his hair. Panting, he let Mistilteinn’s point droop a little. Baldr fought like a man gone fey. Almost the same as their past battles, but more intense now.

“Hödr, stop this!” Father shouted at him, racing up the hill.

Hödr pointed the runeblade in Father’s general direction. “This is a duel. A righteous holmgang for the murder of Nanna, and no man may interfere!”

Father’s pace slackened, and he formed up on the edge of the circle. “If you do this, they’ll kill you. I don’t know if I can stop that.”

None of that mattered. All that mattered was avenging her, now. Letting her shade find rest in the Otherworlds, knowing her murderer had been repaid in kind.

“Oh,” Baldr said, snickering. “Still want to die? I can oblige.”

Again, the prince came in, swinging and snarling, far too aggressive. It forced Hödr back, but such wild tactics would prove his end. Sooner or later, it would create a massive gap in his guard. Focusing entirely on defense, Hödr batted aside Laevateinn again and again, circling around his savage opponent.

Baldr was stronger, his aggression almost overwhelming. But Hödr wouldn’t give in easily.

He shifted his weight to one leg, creating a deliberate opening. Baldr lunged in with such fury Hödr almost instinctively fell. His body wanted to protect itself. But Hödr was past caring. He parried at the last instant, letting the flames scorch his face even as he jerked his knee up into Baldr’s groin.

Baldr snickered and shoved Hödr back with one hand.

That should have felled him. Even with the apple, it should have at least had him reeling for an instant. Pain washed over Hödr, his flesh feeling like it was melting.

“Hödr!” Mother shrieked, coming up the hill, panting.

Others followed not so far behind her. He didn’t have much time left. He had to finish Baldr before someone decided to step in, despite Baldr’s assurances otherwise. And what did it even matter if he took wounds, now? Mirroring the prince’s wild aggression, Hödr lunged in, launching into attack after attack that finally had Baldr retreating, struggling to parry. Mistilteinn nicked the prince’s face, tore open his shin, and took a finger from his off-hand.

All minor injuries, though the last had Baldr screaming and laughing at the same time.

Hödr dared to hope the cumulative effect of so much blood loss would slow the prince, but the man came in again, cleaving through the air with that flaming runeblade, still wild with his attacks.

Hödr caught one on Mistilteinn’s pommel again, wending and bending with the flow of the sword. Couldn’t afford to care that burns blistered and popped on his hand, his arm, his face. Didn’t matter. Naught mattered save ending this. He drove Laevateinn’s point down until it snared in the ground. Then he jerked Mistilteinn back up at an angle. Doing so freed the prince’s sword and it plunged into Hödr’s thigh, even as his own blade cleaved so deep in Baldr’s side it hit his spine.

With a glorious snap, Mistilteinn tore through Baldr’s spinal column. The prince’s strength left him at once and he pitched over. Hödr too toppled, screaming as Laevateinn jerked free from his leg. His flesh had become a charred ruin, melted down to muscle and oozing blood faster than he’d ever recover from.

“Baldr!” the queen shrieked, cresting the hill. “Baldr!”

“It was a fair duel,” Sigyn shouted.

Thor came tromping along behind his mother, and Tyr with him. While the one-handed warrior paused at the ring, Thor kept on charging forward. He hefted Hödr up by the throat. A meaty fist smacked into Hödr’s face. His nose exploded. His senses dropped into a blur of white. It took him several breaths to even realize he lay on the ground.

“Leave him!” Was that Mother?

Thor stomped toward him again while Hödr’s senses came back into focus. Father interposed himself. Thor swung at him. Father blocked that on his forearm, knocking away a punch that could’ve cracked solid stone. Thor again swung at Father, and again Father deflected the attack like he was parrying a sword, using fighting maneuvers Hödr had never seen. Father’s counters now came lightning fast, a fist to Thor’s side, an open palm to his face. Then he had Thor in a hold and flipped him over his shoulder, slamming him into the ground.

Hödr couldn’t stand. Couldn’t do aught save clutch his mess of a leg and wail, and watch.

“Kill the traitor!” Frigg wailed. “Kill him for Baldr!”

A murmur of hesitation ran through the ring of men and women. Yes. He’d fought Baldr in an acknowledged duel. That wasn’t murder, and if they attacked him now, they’d be the guilty ones.

“As your queen, I command you—tear the traitor limb from limb!”

“No!” Mother shrieked.

But it did no good. As if a dam had broken, men began to close in around Hödr. So be it. He’d avenged Nanna. All else was urd.

Father caught the arm of the first man who tried to close in, twisted it around behind his back, and snapped it. The warrior fell, screaming. Others broke into a run, rushing at Father. He whirled from one to the next, blocking attempts to grab him with a flurry of limbs. His foot kicked out a man’s knee, the joint popped so loudly Hödr winced despite his own pain. An instant later, Father felled a man with a palm to his nose.

Another he flipped over his shoulder and hurled into his fellows. He was a storm of blows, dislocating joints, breaking limbs, and leaving a sea of groaning bodies in his wake.

Tyr stepped in, and Father’s boot clipped him on the side of the head, sending him spinning around.

Rough hands seized Hödr’s wrist then. He twisted over to catch Thor’s aura before the elder prince’s boot drove Hödr’s shoulders into the mud.

“Loki!” Mother shrieked.

Hödr had no idea where Father was, but he clearly couldn’t get to him.

Drawing his pneuma, he tried to shove himself up. But with his sole hand held by Thor, he had no leverage, and the prince was much stronger than him. Thor roared, yanking Hödr’s arm from the socket, even with Hödr’s pneuma drawn. Pain lanced through his arm, his shoulder, his neck. A throbbing built in it.

Hödr screamed but his face buried in the mud. Thor kept pulling. Hödr wailed, but, even with his pneuma, he was helpless against the weight driving him downward.

He felt it, as his flesh began to tear. Tendons ripping. Muscle shredding. An ocean of agony bombarded him, pain beyond aught he’d ever imagined. All-consuming, thought-devouring torment.

And the sick, awful popping sound as his arm tore free from his shoulder.

And then darkness.

38

Odin fixed Andvaranaut into the center of the orrery, set into the new arms he’d built for it.

“You’re not going to wear it?” Frey asked. Freyja’s brother had insisted on watching these final moments along with his sister.

They would be the first ones to accompany him back to Asgard, along with Hermod, Bragi, and Ullr. They had once been lords among the Vanir and now held some authority in the queen’s court. A fitting expedition back to their former home, he supposed.

Odin spared Frey a glance. “That was part of your mistake, actually. Wearing it would allow you to traverse. But imbedding it in the machine allows us to create a more stable bridge. I still need to recreate the machine back in the Mortal Realm, but this should hold for now.” He looked back to the ring. He’d sacrificed so much for this moment, and yet, part of him wanted to remain here. To turn away from the pain he knew awaited him back on Asgard.

But that had never been his bargain with the Vanir.

It had never been part of urd, either. No, urd demanded he go and face what must unfold. If he was ever to subvert the web of urd, it would not be by hiding here and pretending the future was better off without him. Ragnarok impended. Or … maybe it had already begun. Not everything was crystalized in his Sight yet.

Freyja knelt by his side. “You’re afraid.” Terrified, though not of what they would assume. “Do you … do you fear you’ve attuned it wrongly? That we might bridge the gap to another spirit world?”

“No. It’s ready. And it connects to the Mortal Realm.” And there was no point in delaying. The future impended regardless. Odin turned a crank that set the gears spinning. The ring, too, began to revolve, slowly at first, but picking up speed.

In distant eras, men had built a similar device, one that could warp reality and defy the normal perceptions of space and time. It had not ended well for them, and, in the end, had allowed the mists of Niflheim into the Mortal Realm.

The irony that he now created a variant of that same abominable device was not lost on him.

He rose and stepped back, guiding the others out onto the circular platform. Already, the air had begun to shimmer, currents of light forming into an iridescent arc that would transcend the layers of reality and allow them to traverse from etheric realms into physical ones.

Energy coruscated along the length of the arc like tiny bolts of lightning, power that set Odin’s hair tingling, standing on end.

“Fuck me …” Hermod said.

Freyja’s hand closed around Odin’s. “This is really happening. We’re … going back?”

It was easy to blame urd for all that had transpired, and all that would. Certainly, strands he could neither see nor control tugged on every life in every realm. The Norns touched everything. But … but so many of the tragedies still fell at Odin’s feet. His mistakes, his arrogance, his obsessions and his desperation. His … and those of the other Aesir. And Loki. Why had his brother wanted this? Or had he not wanted it, and yet found himself powerless to avert the course?

The bridge stabilized, ceasing its flickering.

Odin blew out a breath. There was no denying what lay ahead. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The others, they followed mutely behind Odin and Freyja, and even she said naught, walking by his side, though he could feel her looking about the glittering city his people had built. Wondering, no doubt, what had become of the glories the Vanir had built over the course of millennia.

While Asgard had changed much in his absence, the city could not hold his interest now. Not knowing what was unfolding before Baldr’s hall. Much as he tried to drive the visions out, they bombarded his mind now, fitting into place with terrifying efficacy. Urd would not be denied.

All hope is a lie … Oblivion impends …

A great throng had gathered before the hall, gasping, cursing, and most simply gawking at the unfolding spectacle.

No.

No.

He refused to believe he was too late.

He’d always been too late. Back, before he was born, he was too late for this moment. From the dawn of time, perhaps. No … his son … his brother … Not this …

Odin shoved onlookers aside to behold: there, lying almost severed in half, his beloved son. Beautiful, radiant Baldr. The last hope for the future. Beside him, Hödr lay, one arm severed and the other ripped off in a mess that had strewn gore all over.

Beyond, Loki pummeling Thor and Tyr to bloody pulps, shrieking in rage, whilst more than a dozen warriors lay broken at his feet. The man’s palm repeatedly slammed in Thor’s face.

He’d known.

He’d always fucking known, hadn’t he?

Because … because the foreknowledge of it didn’t blunt the rage when the moment at last unfolded. Odin’s fists clinched at his sides. No. That impotent awareness of the terrible end only stoked the fires within.

Oh, he knew Loki’s rage.

Roaring, Odin shoved another onlooker aside with enough force to take him off his feet.

Loki half glanced in his direction, caught Tyr’s shoulder, and sent the man flipping through the air such that his legs slapped into Thor’s face. The way his blood brother looked at him, then … oh, he knew.

Odin launched himself at Loki, pneuma flooded to his limbs as strongly as he’d ever done. He led with a fist. Loki blocked. Odin was already punching once more. To the others, it must have seemed blinding, the dizzying array of attack, block, counter, in an endless stream.

Odin roared defiance at his blood brother.

A thousand lifetimes of warrior instinct came to him. A kick, aimed at the man’s shin. Loki hopped over it, both palms surging for Odin’s chest. Odin slapped his own palms into Loki’s, sending the man flying back several feet.

“My son!”

“And mine.” Loki was panting. Exhausted.

Oh, but Odin had only just gotten started. “You knew this would happen! You did naught to avert it, Nornslave! You never even tried!”

“I didn’t want this.”

“You wanted Ragnarok!” The very words he’d heard in prescient memory, revealed to him the future as it unfolded.

Loki shook his head. “It was needful. Some things cannot be changed, Odin.”

Odin lunged in, reaching low with one hand. Loki blocked, and they fell into the rhythm once more.

Fuck! Damn the Norns! Damn Loki! Damn … everyone! All he had done meant naught. Because the one he’d loved best had seen further. Had seen it, and guided things to this end.

Loki swung. Odin caught his wrist and twisted, bending the man backward.

“Mistilteinn was lost!” And Odin should never have sent Starkad after it in the first place. “It was gone! Only you could have told the boy where to find it!”

Loki’s elbow caught him in the mouth and jerked his head backward, sending him stumbling. “You cannot loathe me more than I do myself. But I realize, even as you have, that sometimes the future does not allow us to be the people we wish we were.”

Odin’s blood brother came in again, lunging with a knife hand that Odin easily turned aside.

The man gave him a pause, a chance to back away and wipe the blood from his face. “You’ve had millennia of practice, I know. Trained in every form of combat in history, haven’t you? Were you always here? Were you ever a man?”

“You are so quick to curse me, blame me, when I gave you so many opportunities to rethink your course. But urd holds its sway, regardless. Have you forgotten, in days you must think long gone, that we mixed our blood and you swore you’d never take ale unless it was brought to me as well?”

“I never forgot. Our families were always destined to tear each other to pieces. Hel has tormented my steps since the beginning, since before I ever tasted of that apple. The boon I should have cast aside, lived and died like a normal man. Did you know, even then, when we shared our blood, this would be our end?”

Loki panted, hands on his knees, shaking his head. “Not everything is clear in the distant future.”

“Not an answer.”

“The only one I can give you.”

“They won’t let you, you mean. Your visions … mine, they gave them to us, didn’t they? A lie! A trick, to show us the things we cannot change whilst setting us on a course from which we could never return! If you would ever have told me all you knew, Baldr might still be alive! Hödr, too! And how many others, brother?”

“You still refuse to understand.” Loki rose, hands up before him in warding. “I have been chained over the black walls of Tartarus itself. I have buried wives and children. I watched everything I knew die, over and over. Because the cycle must continue! If any man in history matches your suffering, I do. But you see only your own pain.”

“I’ll see yours soon enough.” Odin shrieked at him, lunging in.

Loki blocked his punches, his kicks. Ducked, dodged. Countered. Odin pulled even harder on his pneuma. The flood of prescient memories tugged at him, pulled him under its sway, the bombarding of waves grasping at him.

His fist came up under Loki’s guard, memory and perception blending in a blurred amalgamation. The now became eternity. Loki’s blows hit empty air, for Odin had already moved. His palm slammed into the man’s face, hefted him off his feet, and sent him stumbling to the ground. Odin’s hook caught him on the jaw and sent him onto his arse.

Odin dropped down, his knees on Loki’s chest, and wrapped his hands around his brother’s throat. Squeezed. “It was always coming to this. I saw it, hundreds of years ago.” His brother’s eyes bulged as Odin strained. “I wanted to evade this end. But I was a fool to think that prescience allowed me to change the future. It bound me to it. Made me a veritable slave to …”

To the Norns? A Nornslave?

“No!” Sigyn’s wail shrieked out over all the other noise of the chaos, and Odin could not help but glance at her, held down by Tyr, though even he seemed to struggle to keep her under control.

When he looked back, Loki’s face had begun to turn blue.

Odin eased his grip, and Loki gulped down a choking breath. Odin shook his head. “Naught you can say changes what has transpired. Your son killed mine, with your help. Even could I absolve you of guilt when it comes to Hel, still you sided against my kin.” He leaned in close to his former brother. “Some things cannot be forgiven, even if they were fated. You have been chained before, yes. And so shall you be again. Left to watch, powerless as ever, as the world ends around you.”

As Odin sought so desperately to find a way to stop that end.

* * *

The tunnels lay far beneath Asgard, beneath its soaring mountains and glorious valleys. In dark passages scarcely lit by the flickering torch Odin now carried, he walked ahead of Loki and Sigyn. Tyr walked behind, holding a link to the chains that bound Loki, and trailed by a few of his most trusted warriors.

Odin might have spared Loki’s wife, but she’d insisted on coming, and somehow it seemed fitting. Their child had wrought this. Or maybe she had, in casting Eldr into Hödr so long ago. Or Loki had, years before any of them were born.

Or the Norns had, somewhere in a place that was not a place, an existence outside of time. And Odin was left with the awful realization that his visions were given to him solely to serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. The Norns must have chosen—or even now still were choosing—to reveal those same things which would cause him to fall into their web, time after time.

How did a man win against such foes? Perhaps no victory was possible against fate itself. If one were … would it not then lie in refusing to look at the future? Turning aside from the visions they had used to manipulate him?

If he were honest with himself, he pitied Loki, at least a little. It changed naught. However the Nornslave had gotten himself embroiled with those creatures, he was still serving their ends.

The tunnels led to the underground lake, beyond which lay a few rocky islands. Guards stood watch here, as they had for four hundred years, over the one prisoner Odin had no means of killing. And now, another he was unwilling to let die, assuming the man could perish after so long a life.

Above, water dripped from stalactites, mostly into the lake, but also into smaller pools around it.

“I will grant you one mercy, and not have you bound on Fenrir’s island.” He pointed at a stalagmite jutting from a shallow pool of water.

Tyr jerked on Loki’s chain and pulled him into the pool, threading the orichalcum bonds around it. He wrapped the chain around Odin’s former brother, drawing him tight to the stalagmite. Loki blinked his crystal eyes. Drops of water fell from above at irregular intervals.

After testing the links, Tyr backed away.

Odin looked to Sigyn who stared defiance and hatred at him. “I do not bind you, and I will even allow you to leave, and to visit once a moon—under guard, of course.”

“Where would I go?” she snapped. “All I have left in the world is in here.”

“So be it.” He looked to Loki, shaking his head. He had never wanted this end. But had there ever been a chance of avoiding it? “I can feel it. The breaking of the world. You allowed this to happen. You refused to turn your back on your vile mistresses.”

Blood still crusted around his mouth and nose, but somehow Loki yet managed to force defiance into his gaze. “You don’t understand half so much as you think you do. But you’re right … an end is coming. The eschaton is approaching. If I’d ever had a choice …”

Odin held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear it. You did have a choice. You chose to offer only the most cryptic of warnings. Now I must salve the wounds we have wrought.”

He stalked from the cavern. Wanting more than aught else to slump down against the wall and bemoan urd. To rage in the darkness and curse the shadows for all that had passed and the dark truths he could no longer avoid.

But Tyr was there. The others.

All the Aesir, and now, Midgard, they were looking to him.

So, he must be their strength.

If only a little while longer.

Epilogue

“You don’t have to do that,” Loki said.

Sigyn shifted a little in the pool, holding the bucket over his head to catch the water that incessantly beat against him. It was a slow, grating torture, designed to drive him mad as he never knew when the next drop would fall. Odin could have done worse to him, though Loki had seen this moment in the flames, long ago.

Some threads of the tapestry of time had always been clear, while others only came into focus slowly. Loki had endured more soul-crushing circumstances than this. This petty, physical torture was naught compared to the knowledge of the losses that would follow. He didn’t know them all, of course. No, he couldn’t see enough to predict every last heartbreaking end before it unfolded.

Like seeing the look of betrayal on Odin’s face. The man had called him brother, and Loki had … had followed the course of urd as he must. Given foreknowledge of a terrible future and powerlessness to act outside the constraints of urd, what was an oracle to do? Could he ever have acted otherwise than he had?

Sigyn stroked his cheek. “It’s time. Tell me it’s time.”

Were there a deity he could pray to, he would. The fear of the truth—even a fragment of it—costing him Sigyn was the bitterest of all fears. But he’d always lost her. No matter how tightly he’d tried to hold on, she slipped through his fingers and he’d had to wait until she was reborn so he could claim a few more precious moments with her.

Perhaps the universe itself judged him for his mistakes.

She mopped his cheeks with the hem of her dress. “Loki. Why cause Ragnarok?”

“Civilization is ultimately an untenable state, as much as chaos is inherently self-destructive. The needs of maintaining a society give rise to the very corruption that must invariably undermine it. If … if the world were formed of darkness, even given a tiny light within it, the darkness would compound upon itself. Corruption, left unchecked, must eventually cause civilization to crumble under the weight of its own darkness. Rather than allow the entirety of creation to succumb, instead the only solution seemed to be to find someone that could combat that corruption at its core and allow a new age to rise. Even if that battle must needs be cataclysmic.”

Sigyn backed away, hand to her mouth. “Y-you’re saying … you … created the Destroyer? As a weapon against darkness?”

Oh, how tempting was it to let her believe such a beautiful half-truth. He had needed a soul stronger and more malleable than his own, though, and she would eventually come to question why he himself had not taken on this mantle. A question that would lead her back to the Norns, and the power behind them.

“To end an era,” Sigyn said, only seeming to half see him. “To wash away the corruption and begin civilization anew … The world … you believe the world has to end.”

“There are chains on me, stronger by far than the fetters that bind me to this rock.”

“The web of urd.” Her face fell and Loki could almost see the whir of her mind behind her eyes, struggling to fit the pieces together. “You want a better future. But you cannot break the cycle of creation and destruction.”

How close she got to the truth. So desperately he wanted to give her the rest of the answers. To share the burden that weighed upon him. But the knowledge of what lay out there, beyond the Spirit Realm, it might crush her into despondency, even as it sometimes did to him. Eldritch terrors watched and fed off the cycle of death and rebirth. He could say the words—would they punish him again?—but all he’d achieve was ensuring she never slept soundly again.

He could never break the cycle of eschatons. Indeed, the thought of it breaking might hold the greater horror, given what that might impend.

“All along …” she said. “You wanted Odin angry. Tortured. Ready to take any measure in his war against … against what? Hel? Your own daughter?”

Oh. “She was your daughter, too.”

Sigyn flinched, stumbling away, balled fist pressed into her mouth as if to stop herself from screaming. Yes. Her soul. For a time, she stood there, panting, breathing so erratically he feared she’d pass out. Rather, she steadied herself, eyes closed.

When at last she opened them, she seemed calm. “What will happen now?”

“I don’t know the specifics.” Sometimes, ignorance was better, regardless. “All I can say is this … you and I will both suffer for the things we have done. As will everyone else. The final reckoning has already begun.”

“There’s more you still hold back.”

To protect her.

Because he had seen a few things more. War, and death, and pain.

And a world where all voices had fallen silent. A world buried in ash.

The Saga Continues …

Dear Reader,

Thanks for reading!

Baldr is dead.

His death sparks Ragnarok.

Can the end war be stopped?

Odin sends Hermod to the gates of Hel themselves to recover his son.

But what price might the dark goddess ask for such a valuable soul?

Don’t miss the stunning continuation of Gods of the Ragnarok Era.

Get it now.

The Saga continues with The Gates of Hel:

books2read.com/gatesofhelbook

Thanks,

Matt

Author’s Note

In Norse mythology, we find two versions of Baldr’s story. In one version, found in the Poetic Edda and more-or-less retold in the Prose Edda, we have the tale as it’s most commonly told. Frigg (or Baldr himself) dreams of his death. Frigg, in a panic, gets everything in the world to swear never to harm her son, only she doesn’t bother with mistletoe because it’s so young and harmless of a plant.

At this point, even someone who doesn’t know the myth is probably thinking, “uh oh.” Yeah. So the gods are impressed with Baldr being invincible and decide to test by attacking him with all kinds of weapons. Nothing harms him.

Loki comes along and makes a spear or arrow from mistletoe, and convinces the blind god Hödr to join in the fun and try shooting his brother (you’ll note that I made Hödr Loki and Sigyn’s son, though this is not traditional). Hödr then kills Baldr, and later gets killed by Vali (a son Odin sires to avenge Baldr because he probably doesn’t want to kill his own son).

While aspects of this tale certainly made it into Gods of the Ragnarok Era, I actually drew more inspiration from the other version of the story, the one found in the Gesta Danorum. Here, Hotherus (Hödr) is a mortal hero who contends against Baldr (a demigod) for the hand of princess Nanna. Hotherus can’t win against a demigod until he claims the magic sword Mistilteinn.

From here, things go from bad to worse, and you can guess how happy Odin is to have his son murdered by a mortal.

Despite being the less familiar tale, I actually found this one much more compelling, and certainly more in keeping with the grittier and more realistic setting I’ve tried to engender here. The struggle of these two men, and having it tear apart kingdoms and families, it fit in well with the themes and tone of Gods of the Ragnarok Era. After all, the Völsupa tells us that “sisters’ sons will defile the bonds of kinship” when Ragnarok begins.

Within this series, Baldr’s death is the catalyst for Ragnarok. The final straw that tears the Ás dynasty apart. While the characters argue about fate and whether they could have avoided this, we see, of course, that—fated or not—they ultimately did this to themselves. Their choices compounded upon themselves, with the origins of the tragedies in some cases tracing back to the very first books.

Besides the Hödr/Baldr conflict, The Shadows of Svartalfheim also revolves around Odin’s sojourn into the Otherworlds. I’ve long maintained that anything Otherworldly, when taken in a realistic manner, ought to be horrifying, whether or not it is also wondrous. The supernatural was something these cultures would have feared even as they respected it.

While other books here and in the Runeblade Saga have offered glimpses of the Otherworlds, this one gave us the most prolonged look thus far at Alfheim and Svartalfheim. Each has its own horror, of course, but Svartalfheim naturally comes across as far worse. Bad enough that aspects of it proved difficult to write, not only because of the casual cruelty, but because of the pervasive misogyny, the general disregard for life, and utter self-absorbedness of these entities.

It’s been said the writer’s job is not to look away. Which means, for writers working on stories that might get termed grimdark or horror, we’re writing things that make us uncomfortable and forcing ourselves to do it, because the story demands it.

It’s also strange to revisit Volund, over a thousand years—from his perspective—after the events of Darkness Forged have transformed him into a monster of inhuman whims and intentions. We see what prolonged submersion in a world without empathy transforms him into. It makes me hope everyone reading this has already read Darkness Forged.

As far as Odin, what we see is mostly the natural progression of his obsession with the future. It destroys him, and he—perhaps justifiably—blames Loki. I’ll point out here that, in the original sources, Loki’s imprisonment by Odin and torture by Skadi are the same instance, whereas here I separated them. This remains in keeping with the overall tortured theme of his character.

And finally Hermod … I had always known he would be a major POV character in this final trilogy. In fact, I had wanted to use him as a POV character sooner, but every time I looked into it, there was always someone else better suited. Now, he at last gets his moment to shine.

Thanks to my wife for helping me reach this point. Also, special thanks to my cover designer and to my Arch Skalds (in no particular order): Al, Tanya, Kimberly, Jackie, Dale, Missy, Grant, Lisa Marie, Bill, Rachel, Barbara, Bob, Kaye, Mike, and Regina.

Thank you for reading,

Matt

P.S. Now that you’ve read The Shadows of Svartalfheim, I would really appreciate it if you’d leave a review! Reviews help new readers find my work, so they’re very helpful. Thank you in advance for helping me build and grow my author career!

Follow me on BookBub:

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/matt-larkin

THE SHADOWS OF SVARTALFHEIM

The Ragnarok Era Book 7

MATT LARKIN

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2018 MATT LARKIN

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Published by Incandescent Phoenix Books

mattlarkinbooks.com