Part 15 (1/2)

Mist shook her head. ”I don't like this. It may be the eye of Odin, but it's still just a normal-size eye, right? How are you supposed to find it in the dark mud, with who-knows-what lurking down there?”

Hermod gave her a smile that he hoped was rea.s.suring. ”Possessing Odin's eye is too good an advantage to pa.s.s up,” he said. ”We should at least give it a shot. And it's like Grimnir said: I'm Aesir. I should be fine.”

Mist gave him a dubious frown, but she didn't offer further protest. Hermod rather wished she had.

Well, then.

He stripped down to his boxers. ”What?” he said, catching a strange look from Mist.

She blinked and looked at her feet. ”Nothing. Just be careful.”

”Right. Okay.” He jumped into the well and treaded the water. It felt like icy pudding. There was no rush of voices in his head. No wisdom. No insanity. Not yet. He glanced back to Mist and detected warnings and cautions and exhortations trapped unspoken behind the strained line of her pressed lips. He gave her a small here-goes-nothing wave, took a deep breath, and dove beneath the surface.

There were worlds down below. Cities and continents and oceans turned beneath him, as though he were observing a planet from high orbit, only it was more than just one world. A mosaic of countless worlds braided and dovetailed. Mountains and rock formations and canyons and plains and fields covered the surface of the World Tree's roots.

Great, Hermod thought, I go looking for an eye, and instead I get grand visions. Did these visions const.i.tute wisdom? Not if he couldn't glean any useful meaning from them, they didn't.

Maybe he wasn't wise enough to receive wisdom.

He kicked his legs and swam to greater depths. He'd hoped that, in this environment, water wouldn't act like water, but he felt stabbing pains in his ears as the pressure increased, and squeezing his nose and clenching his jaw gave no relief. Down he went, toward the worlds at the bottom of the well.

He paddled toward a continent where a sea of lava spilled into a sea of ice, pus.h.i.+ng out great gouts of steam. He had a good feeling about this location. It was the sort of place Odin tended to favor: fire and ice, with destruction at the interface.

He tried and failed to ignore his desperate need to breathe. Even at great depths it would take more than a few minutes to drown him, but spots wavered in his vision, and hideous clamps of pain squeezed his head. He wanted to return to the surface, get away from the pressure, breathe. He wanted to quit. He wasn't supposed to be here, down at the bottom of everything. This was no place for living creatures. But going where no one was supposed to go was what he always did. It was his purpose. Wanderer, seam-walker, interloper. n.o.body else could do this. So he put his pain aside and went deeper.

A marvelous model-train world spread out before him, with miniature glaciers cutting tiny chasms, and tiny waves battering the sh.o.r.e. Were there little civilizations at arm's reach, too tiny to see? What would happen if he brought down his foot? Was this how his kin always felt? Huge and powerful, truly like G.o.ds?

Not even Odin sees the world as his toy, said a watery voice.

Hermod spun around, looking for the source of the voice but finding none.

You cannot find me. You cannot know me.

Who are you? thought Hermod.

Your kind credits the All-Father with having created sky and earth from the corpse of his father, but he is just a piece of it, and a small piece at that.

Mimir, is that you?

Look at what is revealed to you.

You mean d.i.n.ky Town down there? I've been looking.

You look, but do you see?

So far, this disembodied voice was irritating Hermod about as much as conversations with the all-knowing usually did. He should have expected that swimming in the well of wisdom would only aggravate him.

What is it I'm supposed to see?

Down here in the thickness of Yggdrasil's deepest waters, one can see everything.

I am Hermod, son of Odin, late of Asgard. I have come here with the permission of this well's keeper, and I am running out of patience and breath. Who are you?

I am what you seek, if what you seek is what you came here for.

I came seeking after the eye of Odin. Are you it?

That may be what you want, but it is not what you need.

Nice dodge. You are Odin's eye, aren't you?

And there was silence, which Hermod took as a sure sign that he was right.

He floated past a range of sharp crags blanketed in snow, similar to ones he'd climbed in Jotunheim or that in Midgard would be spa.r.s.ely dotted with Buddhist monasteries and climbers' camps. Illusion, certainly, covering plain, mucky lake bottom. He came to a stop and reached down to grab a handful of whatever it was below. Mountains crumbled in his grip.

Long ago, when the Aesir had battled their rival tribe, the Vanir, much had been destroyed in the collateral damage. Hermod knew what a falling mountain looked like. It looked just like this.

He opened his palm and watched pebbles, grit, and dust drift away in the currents.

Now you have earned a new name, the voice said. Hermod, Destroyer.

It's not real, Hermod thought. It's just a vision.

The voice sighed, impatient. It is a vision, but it is a vision of what's real, or at least another way of looking at it The world as metaphor, and the metaphor literalized, if that helps you understand it With his lungs crying out for air, his head imploding, and the last specks of a mountain in his hand, Hermod didn't feel like struggling with the mysteries of existence.

Did I just kill a whole lot of people? he asked.

I am not sure. I couldn't see that well from my vantage. Does it matter? Are you not a G.o.d?

Hermod looked down at the wreckage he had created. Stone, earth, and snow lay in clumps around the runnels his fingers had dug. And floating in a lake of molten rock was an eye, the iris storm-cloud gray, glinting with lightning.

Hermod picked it up. Its weight astonished him.

Father? he asked.

His eye, merely. And obviously.

Did I just kill a lot of people down there?

I can't see the mountains if I'm staring at you. Turn me around.

Hermod did as he was told.

After an unbearably long time, the eye said, This part of the world was uninhabited. You owe no compensation.

Hermod nearly sobbed with relief. He closed his fingers around the eye and kicked toward the surface.

When we get back to land, Hermod thought at the eye, you're going to cooperate with me and dispense all the wisdom you have. You're going to be a regular wisdom vending machine, understand?

The eye did not respond. It sat cold and dense in his fist.