Part 14 (1/2)
”Then why have you not prepared?” Vali asks. ”Why are the sons of Muspellheim not a.s.sembled in their ranks? Why do their thunderous war chants not make the other worlds shudder down to their very foundations? Why does Muspellheim lie dormant?”
The words come from Vali's mouth, but Vidar has crafted them as expertly as any dwarf could craft metal. They could not be better designed to insult Surt to his core.
”I am always ready for war,” Surt bellows. ”Raise arms against me, and you shall see the preparations of Muspellheim put into action. Never let it be said that Ragnarok comes as a surprise to me. I am Ragnarok.”
Surt exaggerates. He has no better claim to sole credit for Ragnarok than the Midgard serpent, or Loki, or the sky-eating wolves. But certainly he has a great part to play in it. The sibyl's prophecy says that Surt will go marauding into Asgard, bringing down the rainbow bridge and setting the world aflame with his fiery sword.
”If you are ready for the last battle,” Vali says with a sigh, growing weary of having to recite his lines, ”then where is your sword?”
Surt fails to hide his dismay. He has never needed a weapon. Indeed, his body is a weapon. The surface of his skin is hotter than a bolt of lightning. Lava flows in his veins. What does Surt need with a sword?
Except that the sibyl's prophecy mentions his sword. So he must have a sword.
”Fear not, great Surt,” Vali intones. ”We have a gift for you.”
Many people think that Munin and I have seen so much that we're impossible to impress, but that's not so. Hermod, for example, impresses us regularly. For someone with so few perceptible advantages, he has the potential to achieve things others of the Aesir would not even consider, and that is why so many of our hopes are pinned on him. We would never tell him this, of course. For one, we are under no obligation to speak plainly to anyone but Odin. For another, it would simply scare him to death.
We are impressed now by the sword Vidar produces from a pouch in his metal suit. It appears at first no larger than a pocket comb. But then he unfolds it, and the blade is as long as a surfboard, and Vidar struggles to bear it.
”Take it,” Vali says to Surt. ”It folds out more.” And Surt unfolds the blade until it's sixty feet long and six feet wide. The sword is clearly the work of the dwarf Dvalin, who also constructed the boat of Frey, which can transport the whole host of Asgard or be folded like a cloth and stuffed in a pocket.
Surt looks at his sword, somewhat puzzled and disappointed, until Vali instructs him to dip the blade into the volcano. Surt does so, and the blade ignites, glowing white hot and sending off brilliant bursts of plasma. He sweeps it around his head in a shrieking circle, and the resulting rush of air sends Munin tumbling into me. We claw at each other until we regain stable flight.
”Do you like it?” Vali asks Surt.
”Oh, yes,” Surt says, unabashedly pleased. ”Very much so. Thank you!”
”Then marshal your troops and prepare to meet your ancient enemies on the plain of Vigrid.”
Vali turns to Vidar with a pout that means, Is there anything else? Can I go kill something now?
Satisfied, Vidar begins his descent down the mountain, with Vali soon overtaking him in his haste.
Surt looks happily at his sword. He smiles. Whirlwinds of blue gas flash in his teeth.
HERMOD LAY FACEDOWN in the sand, listening to the quiet slap of waves against the sh.o.r.e. He was in pain, but at least he was warm. Gradually he became aware of Winston's tongue lapping the back of his ear. Hermod groaned and lifted his face from the sand. He wiped blood from his nose and hissed as he withdrew a pencil-length sliver of wood from his thigh.
They had ridden the flood for days, it seemed, through rapids and falls, out of Helheim and down the rivers between worlds. Hermod had steered them with nothing more than a broken branch for oar and rudder, exhausted and navigating solely by strength and instinct.
Reluctantly rising to his feet, he saw Mist a few yards off, splayed out on her back. She was moaning weakly, but at least she was moving. He went to her, and after trading mutual inquiries into each other's condition and receiving only mildly rea.s.suring answers, Hermod offered his hand and helped her up.
”Where are we?”
Hermod took in his surroundings. A vast plain of charcoal waters melted into a starless black sky, and, looming in the distance, a mountainous black column curved up away from the horizon. Thick atmosphere obscured the column in a haze, but the shape of it was still recognizable as the twisted trunk of a tree. Overhead, knots of branches and tendrils in the sky gave off a faint, lime-colored glow of bioluminescence. Sweet aromas of plant life and decay clogged the air. Hermod felt like an ant in an overgrown garden.
”We're at the bottom of the World Tree,” he said. ”Down at the roots.”
Mist shook her head, as if trying to jiggle her thoughts into more sensible order. ”Where's Grimnir?”
Hermod spotted Mist's thug a few yards off. Draped over the remains of their shattered tree-raft, he waved off their a.s.sistance. ”Leeme alone,” he said. ”I'm dreaming. I'm in San Francisco. I'm going to see a professional lady of my acquaintance.”
”But you're awake,” Mist observed.
”Impossible. I smell Chinese food.”
”It's a hallucination. You probably cracked your head when we-Wait a minute. I smell it too.”
Hermod sniffed and got a strong whiff of grease and garlic and ginger. A few feet away-resting against a Jotun boot the size of a bathtub, pottery shards with elvish markings, a garden gnome, and other jetsam-chow mein noodles spilled from a plastic grocery bag. The noodles were waterlogged and inedible, but the sack also contained a sealed Tupperware dish with kung pao chicken. Only after Hermod and his companions fell upon it and devoured its contents in a brutal feeding frenzy did they begin to address the question of how the Chinese food had gotten there.
”For that matter, how'd we get here?” Mist asked, licking grease off her fingers.
Hermod gazed forlornly into the empty container. ”If the Midgard serpent stirred and the world's seams are splitting apart, then the rivers in Helheim and a lot of other places must have broken their banks in the flood, and since all rivers run down to the bottom of the world eventually, we washed up here with the rest of the junk.”
Hermod watched Mist's face as she worked out the grim calculus of his suppositions. The serpent's thras.h.i.+ng could have caused tsunamis to wash over every continent on Midgard. Without any check on the wolves, they would have grown large enough to complete their destiny and eat the sun and moon. And they'd seen Naglfar set sail with their own eyes. The s.h.i.+p would deliver Hel's handpicked draugr and armed dead to do battle with the G.o.ds. Ragnarok was humming along just fine.
”I should be with the boys in Valhalla,” Grimnir said, without his usual bl.u.s.ter. ”I'm supposed to be gearing up for a fight, not mucking around in the sludge at the bottom of the world. Maybe Radgrid went off the deep end a little bit, but she had the right idea: Somebody's gotta be there at the end to bring the fight to the giants and monsters, and I'm supposed to be one of those somebodies.”
”If we make our way back to Midgard,” Mist said, ”I'll send you to Valhalla.”
Grimnir was silent for a while. Then, ”Thanks, but that's a mighty big if,” he said.
Hermod suggested they search the sh.o.r.eline for more food. Indeed, Grimnir found some soggy but still-plump berries from a bush that grew only in Alfheim, but Hermod warned him against eating them. He'd once dined in Alfheim and ended up as a love slave to a beautiful but abusive mistress for three hundred years. So, reluctantly, they left the berries behind and stepped around the detritus of nine worlds toward the prodigious tree trunk rising in the distance.
Hermod instantly recognized the stabbing whinny that flew across the water and rose into something like a lunatic shriek. There was no mistaking its source: Sleipnir.
The horse thundered over the lake's surface, gun-metal foam spraying from his eight hooves. He took the sh.o.r.e as though attacking it and reared up on the hindmost of his eight legs, releasing another harsh, laughing cry.
Grimnir and Mist both had reached for their swords, and Hermod had to put a hand on Winston to still his growling.
”Easy, everyone,” he said. ”I know this horse.”
Despite his words, Hermod felt no ease in the presence of the horse he'd long ago ridden to Helheim and back. Sleipnir was powerful and unpredictable and too similar to Loki, the horse's father-or mother, as Loki had taken on the form of a mare and given birth to Sleipnir before returning to his male form. In any case, other than Odin and Hermod, no G.o.d would even venture close enough to Sleipnir to get within range of his gnas.h.i.+ng teeth, let alone to ride him.
Hermod slowly approached the horse and reached up to stroke his neck. Sleipnir had grown since Hermod had last ridden him.
”Fancy meeting you here, boy,” Hermod murmured. ”Did you wash up with the rest of us?” The horse s.h.i.+vered and snorted but allowed Hermod to continue petting him. Raking his fingers through Sleipnir's mane, Hermod brushed against a flat stone tied in place with a leather thong. He stood on tiptoes to unfasten it.
The runes etched into the stone were tiny, the language ancient, and the hand familiar. After impatient prompting, Hermod translated it for his companions, relating the meaning of the words if not their actual tone, which was dry and cold as the arctic wind yet thrumming with simplicity and magic.
Hermod cleared his throat. ”My son-I a.s.sume he means me-difficult are the tasks set before you, and once more I lend you Sleipnir to see that they are done. Go to the well where I left my greatest treasure and reclaim it.” Hermod silently read that bit over again, wondering if he was mistranslating. After all, these runes were to his Asgardian language as Aramaic was to modern English. But repeated readings did not alter their meaning.
The letter ended with an admonition not to foul things up as badly as he had the last time. Skepticism and disappointment were evident in every carven stroke.
”You stopped reading,” Mist informed him.
Hermod coughed. ”Sorry. He goes on to say that he would write more but he's very busy right now. He wishes me nothing but success.”
”Greatest treasure? What's all that about?” Grimnir asked.