The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (23 page)

I look straight into the single eye of the
subject of the latter and say, "I glimpsed Odinn... falling."

"Falling?" Freya echoes. She has
brought the quaver under control. "Explain."

"I saw him plunge a great distance, into...
I know not what."

"You saw him die?"

"No, yet... the fall was not of a kind that
one survives."

"The All-Father is not just anyone."

I see that Freya's purpose is to cast doubt upon
news that is unwanted. "The sight had a sense of doom to it,"
I say. I hope that it can be my last word, since I know no more.

Indeed, this suffices to silence Freya. Although
she remains thoroughly composed, I sense that I have shocked her.
With Odinn, the seated statue, it is much harder to tell.

The All-Father leans forward in his oaken
throne, rises to booted feet, steps down from the stone dais and
speaks for himself at last.

"The serpent of your vision is Jormungand,"
he says. "In the future as I have seen it, its awakening
portends the end times. Ragnarok. And indeed, my death." As he
talks, Odinn walks a deliberate, circular track, with me at its
center. "But it is to be no fall that kills me, and there is
much else I have foreseen which has yet to occur before the Serpent
ever takes flight. So I worry not about your so-called 
sense
of doom!
" The All-Father snorts derisively. "As for
this Myriad... as they failed to feature in  my own visions,
they can hardly be a threat of any significance. That they defeated
your folk speaks only to the weakness of your kind. Should a swarm of
them come to our world, we shall send it back whence it came. Is that
all?"

For an instant, I consider answering in the
affirmative. But my fourth and final vision is not a secret worth
dying for.

"I saw myself laying with Gaeira," I
admit in a quick burst, that it might pass barely noticed. "And
that, truly, is all."

From outside of my vision, I hear a breathy
laugh from Freya. Odinn, currently behind me in his circular course,
laughs more emphatically. "Good for you, lad. To my knowledge,
she is a maiden. If vision proves true, she would grant you an honor
of which I am certain you are unworthy!"

By Odinn's voice, I can tell that he has stopped
moving. I give no thought to twisting my kneeling form  to look
at him, but keep my eyes instead, respectfully, upon his empty
throne.

"Should you be lucky enough to wed her, she
will not make the nagging sort of wife," he chuckles. "At
least, not until she's killed a few more giants!" Odinn stepps
closer to me from behind and muses, "Perhaps I will send you
with her to Vanaheim. She can lick your wound."

"
Wound?
"

As I speak, there is the sound of a small blade
sliding from its scabbard. Odinn's rough hand covers my mouth tightly
from behind, pulling my head back firmly against his thick, fur- and
iron-clad torso. From the right, a shadow swoops down in front of my
face. Steel glints, and razor sharp agony fills my left eye.

I cannot entirely stop myself from crying out,
though I do manage to cut short my scream. My hands form
white-knuckled fists that beg me to lash out at the perpetrator of
this affront, but I will them to refrain. For even though the pain is
intense, far greater than anything I have felt, and even as the
sight  in my left eye goes forever dark, I know that this is
Odinn's price, the same price that he once paid, and he is justified
in taking it.

Freya appears at my side with a cloth to staunch
the blood and leads me back through the curtain into the company of
Baldr and Gaeira.

“Thamoth,” Baldr addresses me sooner
than I am willing to listen. “My sympathies. I cannot but feel
I am partly to blame.”

Pain deafens me to whatever else he may say.

Soon we are away from him. A short walk on
Freya's arm, blood-soaked cloth pressed into my mutilated eye socket,
brings us to Freya's home, where I lay down while Freya washes and
tends to the wound. I drink something that she gives me and gladly
sink into oblivion.

When I awaken, the pain reminds of what has
transpired. It has lessened now, but still feels as though someone
has removed my eye from the socket and stuffed in its place a jagged
rock three sizes too large. I can tell by a corner of white fabric
visible in my remaining eye and a tightness over my ear that  my
head is bandaged. A large swath of my world, everything to the left
of the blurred bridge of my nose, has vanished into darkness. On
rising from the bed and walking about the room, I find that I
continually hear sounds from that side. Continually I turn, certain
that someone or something lurks there in the black patch, only to
find nothing at all; I start at phantoms.

It is night. Though I have been asleep, the room
is lit, surely a courtesy Freya has done me so that a newly
half-blind man might not awaken to darkness in a barely familiar
place. She is a kind and thoughtful woman, this Freya, even if she is
perfectly capable of being otherwise when called to do so.

My stirring has not gone unnoticed; Gaeira
appears at the curtained entrance. She wears the same garments of
linen and soft hide she has worn since Heimdall's. A residue of
recent sleep ever so slightly weighs down her gaze. She has two eyes,
one more than I, and under them I feel incomplete, defeated, ashamed.

Sensing there might otherwise be no end to her
silent staring, I fumble for words.

“Had you known what a burden I would
prove, you would have left me in Jotunheim.”

She displays no easily readable reaction, but I
detect a subtle one anyway. She feels no regret.

I continue our one-sided conversation: “Thank
you for staying with me by the Well. And now, for that matter. It's
surely more than I warrant.”

The sight of her now through my single eye
summons afresh my vision of what the future might hold for us. She is
strong and patient and beautiful, and I would be the worst kind of
fool not to desire her. But maybe I am exactly that. I cannot tell.
The twin losses of eye and my Ayessa, coupled with the knowledge of
my less than honorable actions in another life have left me crippled
and devoid of hope.    In my reduced state, it is difficult
to contemplate any future at all.

Gaeira's ever-impassive mouth pulls back at one
corner, so imperceptibly that it might be but a trick of the
flickering light. If it is not, she might be telling me something...

Understanding, or something like it, dawns.

“You are right,” I chuckle. “I'm
feeling sorry for myself. You must have, too, did you not? For a
short while, at least, after you lost so much. Before you became what
you are now, this... this bane of giantkind. Or did you simply seal
your lips that day and hoist an ax?”

I pause to think. Gaeira stands there in the
doorway, watching. Listening. It is nice to “converse”
with someone and have the luxury of time in which to form thoughts
and words, not worrying that the other will race to fill any gap of
silence. Of course, I would also like to hear Gaeira's voice. Very
much so, now that I think of it.

I scoff cheerlessly and continue. “Unlike
you, I have none to blame but myself. No giants or monsters to swear
revenge on. Not even Baldr. Just give me time. I will—”

I am interrupted by a thunderous and insistent
pounding at the door of Freya's home. Gaiera's head whips round, and
she swiftly vanishes through the curtain that leads to the
antechamber. Instinctively, I follow to find Gaeira already at the
door with hand poised on its handle. Freya sweeps down the stairs in
her white sleeping gown. No demand is made for the knocker to
identify himself before the door is opened. Inside the walls of this
city, it would seem, Odinn's subjects are not wont to  question
their safety.

The visitor is an Aesir warrior in battle gear.
“Loath to disturb you, Lady Freya,” he says, “but
your presence is commanded at the All-Father's side.”

“What is it?” Although Freya asks,
it is clear she has no thought of refusing the summons.

The warrior glances at me as if wary of speaking
in front of a stranger. But he answers anyway, likely on the
conclusion that Freya's judgment supersedes his.

“Word from Heimdall,” he reports. “A
party crosses Bifrost.”

I recall that Bifrost is the name of the
shimmering rainbow-bridge to Asgard. But the next names to cross the
warrior's lips are not ones which I recognize.

“Hel comes, with her golden guard,”
the man says. “And Thrym.”

It is not clear which name in particular prompts
the look of surprise in Freya's features, if it is one more than the
other. But my good eye sees Gaeira's hand clench at the mention of
this second name,
Thrym
.

“Tell the All-Father I hasten to his
side,” Freya says. “He would see me dressed for the
occasion, I presume.”

The warrior nods. “By your leave, my
lady.”

Freya races back upstairs. The messenger takes a
long backward stride into the night and evidently means to pull the
door shut behind him, but Gaeira stops it with a palm. With a brief
look at her, the warrior yields and departs, his swift footfalls
echoing on stone-paved street.

Gaeira twists her head to look at me from the
open doorway. There is something new in her eyes. Something... wild.
It takes me seconds to understand what it means, which is fortunate,
since that is all the time she allows me. The look is a warning, one
she would not give were it not also meant as invitation. She is
leaving—now. I suspect I know her destination.

I nod to tell her I accept, but she has already
left. Fortunately I am dressed, lacking only sword and sandals,
neither of which seem essential when weighed against being left
behind. And so I just fly, barefoot, into the streets behind her.

Careening through the dark while freshly
deprived of one eye, the socket of which throbs, is hardly easy, but
I manage to keep up with Gaeira in the silent, empty streets. It
helps that she takes a route I have traveled before, from Freya's to
the city gate. The gate is shut, presumably not to reopen until
morning. Gaeira raps the stone wall with the flat of her sword,
gaining attention of the guards, who open a door in the tower's base
and allow us in without need for explanation. Inside we climb via
staircase to the top of the wall, from where we descend to the plain
outside by means of a rope which the guards lower for us and then
promptly retract.

Before my feet even hit the ground, Gaeira,
first down, wakes an elderly groom and leads two horses by their
reins out of the pitch-black stables. She mounts one, I the other,
and we ride at a pace I would  find daunting even in daylight.
We gallop away from the city of Asgard, over the plain, following in
reverse the path by which we arrived on foot. If my guess is correct,
our destination is the mist-filled abyss and the span called Bifrost,
to witness the crossing of Hel and Thrym. I know not who those people
are, or if they are people at all, but I can safely presume that
Gaeira's interest in them has naught to do with conversation. I
cannot guess what her intention is, yet I have no worry. I do not
believe that she would lead me astray, as Baldr did. Her loyalty to
Odinn seems such that I could scant  believe she would take any
rash action in defiance of him.

Before we reach the bridge, Gaeira veers off of
the path to our right (had it been the left, where I am blind, I
might have lost sight of her) and I follow As we make our way up a
shallow slope, the black silhouette of the hilltop begins to glow
misty white under the deep blue of the starry sky. Not much later, we
crest the hill and halt our mounts.

The vista steals my breath. We look down upon
the end of the shimmering span of Bifrost, arcing out of a glowing,
radiant fog in which rainbows soar like circling seabirds. By its
soft light, I can see Gaeira alongside me in profile. She is
stone-faced, which I have learned is not—quite—always the
case. Her jaw is tight, eyes fixed on the bridge, unmoving hands
clamped on reins. Even were she one to speak, I  would not think
of asking her to at this moment. I stare down from the hilltop, as
she does. For me, the beauty of the vision overwhelms and at the same
time makes me feel more acutely the loss of one  eye.

But Gaeira's purpose is not, I think, to admire
the view.

We wait. Out in the mist, a dark spot appears
and begins ever so slowly to grow. What first seems as a gnat slowly
takes on a human form. A man. By his size, he seems closer to us than
he rightly should be, but then the darkness around us and the glowing
mist play tricks, and of course I am now half-sighted. Other
gnat-sized shadows appear at the man's ankles and then coalesce into
a crawling insect bristling with spines.

It is then, with a gasp, that I realize my
vision does not play tricks. The spines are upright spears, and the
insect's legs belong to the bearers of those weapons, a small force
of fighting men marching in procession.

It can only mean that the first figure I saw is
a 
jotun
, towering over those with whom he walks. The
realization sends my gaze to Gaeira, who remains a seething statue.
It stands to reason that the giant is the object of her hatred, which
would seem to mark him as Thrym. He very much resembles the frost
giant I watched her slay: white of beard and pale of skin, shirtless
and loinclothed, armed with an enormous hammer that hangs by a thong
from his belt. Unlike the other, he wears on a rope around his neck a
great golden medallion of a size to crush a man to death were it to
fall.

What is he, I wonder. The giants' king? I have
no one to ask, and so can only continue to watch.

The marching men, drawing closer, begin to
gleam, and I see that their horned, face-concealing helms  and
their breastplates are wrought of gold. The messenger mentioned the
"golden guard" of Hel, and this can only be they. In the
fighters' midst, two white horses draw an open chariot of gilded
ebony in which stand two figures: a warrior, unhelmed, with flowing
dark hair, and a second which I take to be female judging from its
build. She is cloaked and hooded in black, and her face is covered
from forehead to upper lip by a delicate golden mask. Since I see no
other more likely candidates, and from  the impressiveness of
the chariot, I conclude she is the one called Hel. Behind the
chariot, several of the golden guardsmen bear on their shoulders a
litter containing some large burden draped in a concealing cloth. A
tribute for Odinn, perhaps? Whatever it is, I feel it must be the
purpose of their embassy.