Part 19 (2/2)
”You won't hurt me either,” said Fenrir with no malice. ”I do not know what your doom is, but it does not involve my death.”
Debris dug into Hermod's back. He felt a rib crack. Dimly, he heard Winston's barking. He wished Mist would tell the stupid dog to go hide somewhere. He wished she would go with the dog.
”You will have learned by now that you can manipulate the small details of events, but things that were meant to happen must happen,” Fenrir said. ”I will eat Odin, because I must. Vidar will kill me, because he must. And my pups will eat the moon and the sun, because the world demands it. There is nothing that can be done to change it.”
Hermod still held the Sword of Seven in his hand, but moving to use it against Fenrir wasn't a thought. He couldn't even summon a moan of pain.
Fenrir twisted his head around to address the three wolves, putting even more pressure on Hermod's tortured chest. ”This is no time to lick your wounds, children. Your hour has arrived.” The whimpering ceased.
The wolves sprang into the sky. They sailed higher and higher, blood from their wounds raining down in dime-size splotches, moonlight gleaming off their white fur.
When Fenrir finally removed his paw from Hermod's chest, the relief was offset by deep stabbing pains in his ribs. Mist dropped to his side, resting her hands lightly on his chest. ”Stay down,” she said, as Hermod tried to control the agonizing spasms of his lungs.
”It will be over soon,” Fenrir soothed, stepping back. ”A flash of burning pain, and then rest and sleep for all.”
”You mean death, and worse. Annihilation.” Mist said this matter-of-factly, not inviting argument. And Fenrir offered none.
”The worlds are quite old,” he said. ”Forests cannot live when old growth casts new buds in shade. Unlike others, I seek no profit from Ragnarok. I am prepared to die. If I can accept this, why can't you?”
”Because I'm not a slave,” spat Mist. ”Not to prophecies, not to sibyls, not to Norns, and you don't have to be either. n.o.body does.”
Fenrir made a chuckling rumble, deep in his throat. ”Oh, little morsel, Odin built the very ground you walk upon, and even he must answer the call of Fate. n.o.body's life can be wound into endless thread.”
Mist stood. ”If you're so sure about your a.s.sumptions, then test them. Try opting out of the game. Don't show up to the battlefield. Don't attack Odin. When Vidar faces you, run away. Don't play along. What have you got to lose?”
”Watch” was all Fenrir said.
Hermod's gaze fell upon the moon. A faint halo had formed around the disc.
”Help me up,” he begged Mist. He sucked in a breath of pain as she pulled him to his feet as gingerly as she could. He would not witness his defeat lying on the ground, at least.
She supported him with an arm around his waist, and he drew her in close, while the moon's edge grew ragged and indistinct behind the expanding nimbus, like a lump of dissolving chalk. Soon there was just a dusty, globular cloud in the sky with a few winking particles. Then that, too, faded.
”It is done,” Fenrir said. ”The serpent will grapple with Thor and stain the sky and earth with his poison. Loki will deliver Naglfar with its crew of dead to the plain of Vigrid, there to be joined by G.o.ds and giants and elves and dwarves and men to do battle. Surt will lead the sons of Muspellheim and scorch the earth, and Loki will do battle with Heimdall the bridge guardian. I will devour Odin, just as my pups devoured the moon, as they shall soon devour the sun. The nine worlds will die in fire and ice, and what comes after is not my concern.”
Hermod raised his sword to Fenrir, but the wolf took no apparent notice, leaping to the sky and vanis.h.i.+ng into the moonless night. Hermod and Mist clutched each other, watching the stars wheel in the sky, ever faster.
VIDAR HAS COME to a place in Midgard. Once this was a San Fernando Valley shopping center, a vast field of asphalt rimmed by stores as large as the halls of Valhalla. The shelves were stocked with nine different kinds of peanut b.u.t.ter and thirty different kinds of frozen pizza, and basketball shoes and lawn mowers and picture books and laser-guided table saws. There was also a movie theater here, a tae kwon do school, and a yogurt shop.
Now the shopping center is a charred sprawl. News crews film the looting.
Hovering above, Munin and I watch Vidar. His right arm terminates a few inches below his elbow in a b.l.o.o.d.y, bandaged stump. He seems to be measuring something, but we can't see what he sees, because now he sees with Odin's eye. It bulges from the socket, ill-fitting. His cheek is plastered with dried gore.
Vidar has a scythe. It's quite obviously dwarfcraft. The snath, gracefully carved from a single piece of wood, is as long as Vidar is tall. The blade, like the Sword of Seven, is made of the roots of mountains, the breath of fish, the beards of women, the footfalls of cats, the sinews of bears, the spittle of birds, and nothing.
Satisfied with his calculations, Vidar nods, and without fanfare or posing, he sweeps the scythe before him. For a one-armed swing, it's pretty powerful. There is no thunder, no big bang, no flash of blinding light. Just a web of seams and worlds spilling through them.
He nods again. The final battlefield now stands ready for battle.
THE STARS RACED overhead, as though time had sped up. Hermod wondered if age would finally catch hold of him now in a big dose of Dorian Gray, but when he put his hands to his face, expecting to feel rugose flesh and mummy dust, his cheeks felt the same as always.
”The stars' accelerated motion is due to conservation of momentum,” Mist was explaining. ”The loss of the moon's ma.s.s translates to a four-hundred-percent increase in Midgard's spin, for a six-hour day. Now that the moon's been eaten, earth will prematurely pull away from the sun, beyond the capacity of the world to sustain life. But that's many thousands of years off.”
”You sound like Munin.”
”Hey,” Mist said, offended. ”You don't have to be a raven to figure this stuff out. I took a little astronomy in college. You want to check my numbers?”
”I believe you, Professor. But none of it matters. If we don't stop Ragnarok, the universe won't last 'til next Wednesday, let alone thousands of years from now.”
They had taken refuge on the roof of a parking garage off the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The air smelled of tear gas. The pops and cracks of gunfire and the sizzle of Tasers reverberated up from the shops and cafes, which had erupted into full-scale riot since the moon disappeared. Hermod couldn't even imagine what people were fighting over. Perhaps the rising wall of pre-Ragnarok chaos had simply broken through the dam.
Winston munched on a stingray he'd found near the stairwell. Sleipnir, left downstairs to forage, had hopefully found a fallen tree or car to eat.
”I'm going to look at my sword again,” Hermod warned Mist. She nodded and turned away. Hermod had been forcing himself to gaze into the blade runes, hoping to make sense of them before the nothingness and impossibilities built into the sword overtook him.
He unsheathed the Sword of Seven, just a few inches, and looked at the blade with almost-shut eyes. These were runes in the language that Odin had learned after hanging on the World Tree for nine days. They were a guide of some kind, an explanation, or a map of the tree itself, charting all the intricate nooks and crannies in its skin. Frigg and Vidar needed a way to connect disasters across worlds so that the moon eaten in Midgard would also result in its loss in Asgard and in all the other worlds. If he could only figure the map out, maybe he could predict Vidar's next move and somehow stop him. ...
Darkness closed in on the edges of Hermod's perception-not just tunnel vision but encroaching oblivion. He looked away and sheathed the sword. It was no good. He needed Odin's eye.
”Hermod, look!”
”I don't want to.”
”No, look” Mist insisted. ”In the sky.”
Hermod followed the direction of Mist's gaze to where a ma.s.sive black object approached, perhaps a hundred feet over the beach. He thought it was a zeppelin at first, but as it grew closer he recognized the dark, pearly hull, and the square sail, and the great dragon figurehead.
”That's Naglfar,” Hermod said.
”Lilly and Hod and the Iowans,” Mist said. ”We have to get up there.”
”How? You have a jet pack you've been holding out on me?”
”Maybe we can bring the s.h.i.+p down to us-” But before Mist could complete her suggestion, a gunshot sounded, and a small crater materialized in the cement wall behind them. Hermod threw himself on top of Mist as more shots whizzed by. They crawled behind a big SUV for cover.
”Who's after us this time?” Mist shouted over the noise of bullets cras.h.i.+ng into the wall.
Hermod reached up and broke the side mirror off the SUV, then crawled forward, taking care to stay behind the engine block. He angled the mirror to get a look at the shooter. A woman in a white leather coat stood at the top of the stairwell with a rifle. Tall and broad-shouldered, her red hair bright in the gloom, she silently directed large, well-muscled men to take positions around the roof.
”It's Radgrid,” Mist said, looking over Hermod's shoulder at the reflection in the mirror. ”I guess NorseCODE finally caught up with me.”
”You don't think Grimnir-”
”No, I don't. He had plenty of opportunity to sell us out, and he never did.”
”Mist,” Radgrid called. ”Come out, please. I need to speak to you.” More shots rang, and the SUV's front tires burst.
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