The Gospel of Loki (3 page)

Of course, by then it was too late to review terms. And so the Vanir, in revenge, grabbed Mimir and cut off his head, and sent Honir back with it to Asgard. But the Old Man took the
Head and, using his newly acquired skills, preserved it with runes, and made it speak, so that Mimir’s well of knowledge was passed onto the General, and Odin the Ruthless became Odin the Wise, unchallenged and beloved by all – except perhaps by Mimir’s Head, which he kept in a cold spring that led straight down to the River Dream.

But in the end Odin paid for sacrificing Mimir. The first down-payment was his eye, as part of the spell that kept Mimir alive. The rest, well. More of that later. Suffice it to say at this point: never trust an oracle. And never trust a wise man to do the work of a felon.

If I’d been in Asgard then, I’d have stolen the runes
and
kept my head and saved us all a lot of unpleasantness. Wisdom isn’t everything. Survival requires an element of trickery; Chaos; subterfuge. All qualities I possess (if I may say so) in abundance. I would have been in my element spying for the Aesir. I would have taught them a trick or two that even the Vanir didn’t possess. Mimir the Wise wasn’t wise enough. Honir ‘The Silent’ should have kept shtum. And Odin should have known from the first that perfect Order does not bend; it simply stands until it breaks, which is why it rarely survives for any meaningful length of time. The General didn’t know it then, but what he needed was a friend; a friend whose morals were flexible enough to handle the moral low ground while Odin lorded it on high, keeping Order, untouchable . . .

Basically, he needed
me
.

LESSON 3

Blood and Water

Never trust a relative.

Lokabrenna

N
OW
I’
M NOT CLAIMING
Odin
made
the Worlds. Even Odin doesn’t say that. The Worlds have ended and been rebuilt so many times that no one knows how they came about. But Odin certainly
shaped
them. To the Folk of the Middle Worlds, that kind of power meant godhood, and with Asgard and the runes on his side, the Old Man was unstoppable. From the shores of the One Sea to the banks of the river Dream, everything was under his command, and his rivals – the Rock Folk, the unruly Ice Folk – were, if not
entirely
subdued, at least obliged to watch his triumphant ascent in sullen, angry silence.

But with power comes responsibility. And with responsibility comes fear. And with fear, comes violence. And with violence comes Chaos . . .

This is where Yours Truly comes in. Time to pay attention. Till then I’d existed in Chaos, of course, in the world of Pandaemonium. Chaos, the pure; Chaos, the wild; Chaos, the unpolluted. Ruled by Disorder in its primary Aspect in the form of Lord Surt, the Destroyer; Father of glam; Master of Change; the original wellspring of the Fire. The Vanir were only bastard Firefolk, living off the scraps of glam that fell from Lord Surt’s table. But I
was Wildfire incarnate; a true son of Chaos; happy and free.

Well, maybe not
entirely
free. Or even entirely happy. Lord Surt was a jealous master; pitiless; all-consuming. There was no reasoning with Surt; he was, by nature, unreasonable. You might as well try reasoning with an erupting volcano, or a thunderstorm, or the pox. And we were formless, innocent, hostile to
everything
that lay beyond the borders of our world, and that was how Surt meant us to stay; perfect Chaos, unfettered by form, blissfully free of all the rules of god, mankind or physics.

I, on the other hand, was perverse. It was, after all, my nature. And I was curious to know more about the other Worlds that lay beyond our boundaries; Worlds in which Order and Chaos met and sometimes co-existed; where creatures kept to the same shape, and lived and died without tasting the Fire.

Of course I’d already heard of the gods. The warring parties – well, most of them – had put aside their differences, and the survivors of that war – twenty-four Aesir and Vanir in all – were living together in Asgard. It wasn’t an easy alliance. Some of the Vanir had refused to accept Odin as their General, and had broken away to join forces with Gullveig in the Northlands. Others allied themselves with the Rock Folk, some buried themselves in World Below, some fled to the forests of Inland and hid away in animal form. Thus were the old runes scattered and lost; divided between our enemies, bastardized and gone to seed like grain reverting to wild stock.

Of course, in time this bastardization had its effects in Chaos. Runes have their primal source in the Fire, and every time Aesir or Vanir used a piece of their stolen glam, every time they shifted Aspect or cast a rune at an enemy, every time they dipped a toe into the river Dream, or wrote down a story, or even carved their name into the trunk of a fallen tree, Chaos shivered in outrage and I grew increasingly curious. Who were these people, whose influence I could feel across the Worlds? How was it that I could sense them, and did they even know I
was there?

Meanwhile, in Asgard, the twenty-four remained in a citadel blasted by war; torn by petty rivalries; arguing incessantly; easy targets for anyone who fancied trying for godhood. I saw them mostly through their dreams, which were small and unimaginative but which nevertheless gave me food for thought. Perhaps even then a part of me knew how badly they needed a friend, and how much I could help them, if only they could put aside their puny little prejudices.

In those days the General liked to travel in Journeyman Aspect throughout the Worlds. His blind eye, sacrificed to the runes, saw much further than his living one ever had, and he was obsessed with exploration and the pursuit of knowledge. He was a great traveller in Dream – that river that skirts our borders, flowing alongside Death itself, dividing this world from the next – and he would often watch our realm from the far side of the river, muttering cantrips to himself and squinting through his blind eye.

He didn’t look all that impressive back then – a tall man in his fifties, with unruly grey hair and an eyepatch. But even then I sensed that he was something out of the ordinary. For a start, he had glam – that primal fire stolen from Chaos, which the Folk later came to call
magic
and to fear with a superstitious awe. I could see it in the colours swirling all around him and by the signature he left, as unique as a fingerprint; a broad blaze of kingfisher-blue across the bleakness of rocks and snow. I’d seen that signature in dreams that were bigger and brighter than the rest and now I could almost
hear
him, too; his soft and coaxing voice; his words:

Loki, son of Laufey
.

Son of Farbauti – Wildfire—

We didn’t have much need for names back in Pandaemonium. Of course I
had
them – everything does – but back then they had no power over me. As for my family, such as it was – well, demons have no family. My father was a lightning-strike
and my mother was a pile of dry twigs (no that’s
not
a metaphor), which, to be fair to Yours Truly, made for pretty poor parenting.

In any case, Wildfire is hard to control: volatile; unpredictable. I’m not making excuses or anything, but it’s in my nature to be troublesome. Surt should have known it; Odin, too. Both got what was coming to them.

Leaving Chaos was strictly forbidden, of course, but I was young and curious. I’d seen the man so many times staring into our domain, watching us from Dream and beyond, working his primitive glamours. To be frank, I felt almost sorry for him; as a man sitting by a roaring fire might feel for the beggar sitting outside, trying to warm his hands with a match. But this beggar had a noble look, for all his rags and shivering. It was a look that told me that, sooner or later, he meant to be king. I rather admired his arrogance; I wondered how he would do it. And so, that day, for the first time, in defiance of Surt and of all the laws of Chaos, I left my fiery Aspect and ventured out into World Above.

For a moment I was disoriented. Too many sensations, all of them new, enveloped my new Aspect. I could see colours; I could smell sulphur; I could feel the snow in the air and see the face of the man before me, cloaked in glam from head to foot. I could have chosen any form: that of an animal, or a bird, or just a simple trail of fire. But, as it happened, I’d assumed the form with which you may be familiar; that of a young man with red hair and a certain
je ne sais quoi
.

The man stared at me in amazement (and, dare I say, admiration). I knew that behind my human disguise he knew me for a child of the Fire. A demon, if you prefer the term; although to be honest, the difference between god and demon is really only a matter of perspective.

‘Are you real?’ he said at last.

Well, of course, that’s a relative term.
Everything’
s real on some level, you know, even (maybe especially) dreams. But
I wasn’t used to speaking aloud. In Chaos, such things are un necessary. Nor had I been expecting the sheer impact of physicality; the sounds (the wind; the crunch of the snow; the thumping of a snow hare on the side of a nearby hill); the sights; the colours; the cold; the fear . . .

Fear?
Yes, I suppose it was fear. It was my first real emotion. Chaos in its purest form is free of all emotion, working on instinct, and instinct alone. Pure Chaos is without thought. That’s why it only ever takes shape when in the face of the enemy, taking its form from the enemy’s thoughts; its substance from his deepest fears.

Still, it
was
an intriguing experience – if somewhat claustrophobic – to keep to a single physical form, constrained by its limitations; feeling the cold, half-blind with the light, assailed by all those sensations.

I flexed my limbs experimentally, tried the speaking-aloud thing. It worked. Still, with hindsight, I can’t help thinking that if I’d
really
wanted to try and blend in, I should have thought myself up some clothes.

I shivered. ‘Gog and Magog, it’s cold. Seriously, are you trying to tell me that you people
choose
to live out here?’

He fixed me with his one eye; blue and chilly and none too kind. Behind him, his colours showed no fear, just wariness and cunning.

‘So. You’re Loki, are you?’ he said.

I shrugged my new shoulders. ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as pink and virginal. And speaking of which, if you could find your way to lending me some
clothes
. . .’

He did – some breeches and a shirt, taken from his backpack, and smelling rather strongly of goat. I put them on, grimacing at the smell, as my new acquaintance introduced himself as Odin, one of the sons of Bór. I knew him by reputation, of course. I’d followed his career from afar. I’d watched his dreams. I wasn’t what you’d call impressed – and yet his
ambition and ruthlessness were not without potential.

We talked. He explained his position as General in Asgard; painted a pretty picture of the Sky Citadel and its inhabitants; spoke of Worlds to conquer and rich rewards to be won, then moved onto the subject of a possible alliance with my folk against the Ice People, the renegade Vanir, Gullveig-Heid and the warlords who occupied the Outlands.

I had to laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

I explained that Lord Surt was really not an alliance kind of guy. ‘“Xenophobic” doesn’t begin to cover how much he despises strangers. It’s bad enough that your kind of life emerged from the ice in the first place, but you’ll never get him making a deal with a race of people that entered the Worlds naked and covered in cow-spit.’

‘But if we could talk—’ Odin began.

‘Surt doesn’t talk. He’s a primal force. He reduces Order in all its forms into its component particles. From the mightiest warlord to the tiniest ant, he hates you all impartially. Simply by virtue of being alive and conscious, you’re already an offence to him. You can’t talk him round. You can’t
par-lay
. All you can do, if you’ve got any sense, is simply to keep out of his way.’

Odin looked thoughtful. ‘And yet
you
came.’

‘Shoot me. I was curious.’

Of course, he didn’t understand. The closest he’d ever got to Chaos was through Dream, its ephemeral sibling. And primitive people always imagine their gods to be something like themselves; at best, a kind of warlord, with a warlord’s mentality. For all his intelligence, I could tell that Odin would never understand the scale and the grandeur of Chaos – at least not until the End of the Worlds, by which time it would be too late.

‘I’m going to rule the Worlds,’ he said. ‘I have power, gold, runes. I have the finest warriors the Worlds have ever seen. I have the Sun and Moon. I have the wealth of the Tunnel Folk—’

‘Lord Surt isn’t into possessions,’ I said. ‘This is Chaos we’re
talking about. Nothing has substance, or order, or rules. Nothing even keeps to the same physical Aspect. These things you care so much about – gold, weapons, women, battlements – I’ve seen them all in your dreams, and none of that means a thing to him. To Surt, it’s all just cosmic debris; flotsam and jetsam on the tide.’

‘Forget Lord Surt for a minute,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’re right. But what about you? It seems to me that someone like you could be a big hit in my camp.’

‘I bet they could. What’s in it for me?’

‘Well, freedom, to begin with. Freedom and opportunity.’

‘Freedom? Do me a favour. Do you think I’m not free?’

He shook his head. ‘You think you are? When there are Worlds to discover and shape, and you have to stay in one place all the time? You’re no more than a prisoner of this Surt, whoever he is.’

I tried to explain. ‘But Chaos is, like, the hotbed of creation. Everything else is just overspill. Who wants to live in a septic tank?’

‘Better a king in the gutter,’ he said, ‘than a slave in an emperor’s palace.’

You see, that silver tongue of his was already making mischief. And then he started to talk to me of the Worlds he’d visited; of the Middle World, abode of the Folk, where already the people of Asgard were beginning to be worshipped as gods; of the Tunnel Folk of World Below, toiling to bring out gold and gems from the darkness; of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, its roots in the depths of the Underworld, its head in the clouds of Asgard; of Ice Folk; of the One Sea; of the Outlands far beyond. All ripe for conquest, Odin said; everything new and up for burning. All that could be mine, he said, or I could go back to Chaos and spend an eternity shining Surt’s shoes . . .

‘What do you want from me?’ I said.

‘I need your talents,’ said Odin. ‘The Vanir gave me their knowledge, but even runes aren’t everything. I brought this
world out of blood and ice. I gave it rules and a purpose. Now I must protect what I’ve built, or see it slide back into anarchy. But Order cannot survive alone; its laws are too fixed; it cannot bend. Order is like ice that creeps, bringing life to a standstill. Now that we’re at peace again, Aesir and Vanir, the ice will creep back. Stagnation will come. My kingdom will fall into darkness. I cannot be seen to break my own rules. But I do need someone on my side who can break them for me when necessary.’