Part 13 (2/2)
Loki thrashed and the world shook. ”I didn't mean to hurt anyone,” he cried. ”It was all supposed to be a laugh! Oh, please, bring back the cup!”
”In a moment, my love. I am still emptying it and laughing at your jokes.”
”We can't let him on the s.h.i.+p,” Hod said as Loki's spasms sent a wall of water bursting over the rail. ”Once he takes the helm, he'll steer us to the final battle.”
One of the whip-bearers looked back menacingly, and Lilly swallowed her response.
The giantess finally returned to Loki's side, but she didn't place the cup under the venom drip.
”What are you waiting for?” Loki demanded, twisting his neck to avoid another glistening drop.
The giantess upturned the cup and squinted at it. ”I think it's cracked,” she said. ”Yes, right here, do you see? There's a crack as big as Ginnungagap.” She pushed the cup toward Loki's face.
”You b.i.t.c.h! Just catch the drip, will you?”
She moved the cup aside and a globule of venom fell into Loki's eye.
”Yes, definitely a leak.”
Loki shook with pain, and the cavern shook with him. Huge chunks of the ceiling plummeted into the lake, sending drenching waves over the s.h.i.+p's deck. Stalact.i.tes fell like bombs, one of them crus.h.i.+ng a pair of overseers and three benches of rowers. The Jotun tillerman uselessly threw his arms up over his head as a boulder smashed him down.
Loki howled and thrashed, his bonds stretching like elastic bands. Hod dragged Lilly beneath their bench, and they huddled there with Henry Verdant and Alice Kirkpatrick.
At last the tremor ended, the deep-earth rumbling and Loki's screams replaced by the soft slos.h.i.+ng of water against the s.h.i.+p's hull and the moans of the injured. Lilly disentangled herself from Hod and peered out through the dust-clouded air. The sail hung in shreds, and the bodies of rowers and armed dead littered the deck. Only one of the tillerman's arms was visible beneath a slab of cavern ceiling, the fingers scrabbling uselessly.
On the island, Loki rose shakily to his feet and cast away the shredded remains of his bonds. Wincing when his head hit the stalact.i.te the serpent was wound around, he tore the serpent apart with his bare hands and tossed the segments in the water.
”You have been very cruel to me, Sigyn,” he said, stretching his back and arms. His joints popped like gunshots. ”I am feeling cross.”
Sigyn brushed pebbles from her skirts and hair. ”I will not deny it, husband. Over the years, your torment became my only entertainment. I'm sure you can understand the appeal.”
”Indeed. And I would find it amusing myself, were I not the victim of the j.a.pe.”
”But, of course, I was only fulfilling my part in things,” Sigyn said, meeting his fiery gaze. ”Had I not, you would still be bound by your son's entrails, and those events you helped put in motion with Baldr's murder would be unable to play out to their conclusion.”
”Then you feel I owe you thanks for thousands of years of mockery and torture?”
”Yes,” Sigyn said. ”It is my due.”
Loki bowed low at the waist. ”You have my sincere grat.i.tude, my love. Well played.” His high-arched eyebrows went up as he took in his surroundings and noticed the s.h.i.+p.
”Ah, my transport! h.e.l.lo!”
He waved genially at the disarray on the deck. Some of the dead waved back, but Hod dipped his head to avoid recognition.
”Come with me, dear?” Loki asked, wading into the lake.
”No, I think I'll stay here to be buried alive and then burned to a crisp, along with the rest of the World Tree, as is inevitable. I don't suppose that gives you any pause?”
”Some,” Loki admitted. ”I might have had a less cruel jailer, but never one so lovely. But I must deliver this boat of Hel's to the battlefield. And then I will fight the Aesir to the death.”
”Go, then, husband, with my curses for a painful ending upon your back.”
Loki cackled. ”And may you burn and suffocate, in that order. Farewell, my love.”
”Farewell, my light,” Sigyn said, wiping away a tear with her sleeve.
”We're never going to get a better chance than this,” Lilly said to Hod and the Iowans. ”We take the s.h.i.+p now or whatever-happens-after-death trying.”
She didn't wait to see if her comrades agreed. Instead, she rose to her feet. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she shouted, ”To the tiller! Take it!”
There was a moment when all sound seemed to die, except for the echo of her voice reverberating through the cavern. Then others took up her cry. Her command was repeated in a dozen languages, with war whoops and ululations. The dead rose from their benches, and though many were hacked and stabbed by Hel's soldiers, they moved forward in a surge.
Reducing himself in size, Loki climbed on the deck. He towered over the melee and laughed.
”Oh, good,” Hod said. ”I was hoping for a chance to kill that horsef.u.c.ker.” He snapped his oar, picked up a long, sharp length of it, and ran down the deck toward the sounds of Loki.
This wouldn't be an uprising, a hijacking, or an insurgency, Lilly realized. It would be a battle between G.o.ds. Lilly picked up a spear from a fallen soldier and took off after Hod.
MUSPELLHEIM IS A world of fire and smoke and soot. Buffeted by updrafts and explosions of molten rock, Munin and I beat our wings hard to keep our course. A sea of orange crackles and oozes below us. Flaming meteors rain from above. Munin counts the meteors as we fly. He keeps track of the temperatures and commits the numbers to memory. My brother does this because that's how his brain is wired. For once, I envy him, because reducing his discomfort to mere statistics provides him distraction, while I have no choice but to dwell on the heat of my burning feathers and meditate on its significance and reason out its consequences. That's how I'm wired.
The fire giant Surt is very proud of his realm. You can tell by the way he stands on the lip of a volcanic crater, hands on his hips, his chest bulging like a tectonic plate. No place in the nine worlds is as lovely as Muspellheim. Other places have fire, yes, but their flames are weak and not as orange as the flames of Muspellheim.
Surt stands guard against incursions by the Aesir, whom he considers his lifelong enemies, always ready to make war on his people and take their lands. He has been standing on the lip of his volcano for a very long time, but not once, ever, has a G.o.d of Asgard even flirted with the notion of coming to a place where a tankard of beer would evaporate in a matter of seconds. It is with a mixture of alarm and pride, then, that Surt spots Vidar and Vali scaling his volcano.
His first instinct is to squash them with his flaming foot. But then he reconsiders. First he should find out what they want. Then he can crush them into little crispy motes of carbon dust.
Vidar and Vali have come especially outfitted for this occasion. They wear suits of dwarven craft, made of metal that resists even the heat of Muspellheim, hammered cunningly thin and flexible. In their hoods are built windows of clear crystal so that the Aesir may see their way without their eyes bursting into boiling orbs of meat and liquid.
Munin and I fly circles around the smoking crater as the two G.o.ds struggle to the summit and come to stand before Surt. From his vantage, Vidar can barely see over the tops of Surt's toes, and Vali not even that, yet it is Vali who speaks first.
”I hate this place,” he says, in a whining snarl. ”This is the worst place ever!”
Surt, expecting something more along the lines of a declaration of war, is momentarily dumbstruck. Around him, mountains crumble and splash into the molten sea. Gaseous plumes explode on the horizon. Who in his right mind could hate Muspellheim? More evidence that the Aesir are not like other people.
”I squash G.o.ds,” he says. Heat blasts from his mouth, and my tail feathers catch fire. Munin cackles with laughter at me, but then his tail ignites as well.
Vidar bows his head and he lays his hand on Vali's shoulder, and the child-size G.o.d is almost driven to his knees. Vali aims a kick at Vidar, but the silent G.o.d stays out of his range. After glaring through his crystal window at his older brother, Vali turns and addresses Surt's foot with an obviously memorized speech, delivered in a high-pitched singsong: ”Great Surt, we sons of Odin humbly ask your forgiveness for coming uninvited to your kingdom. We beg you to consider the direness of the hour.”
Surt crosses his arms with a haughty sniff that almost sucks us into his nostrils.
”Surely you have noticed how the worlds have fallen under siege from warfare and sickness and disaster,” continues Vali. ”Surely you have seen that Ragnarok is upon us.”
Surt nods, even though he noticed no such thing from the comfort of his realm.
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