Urd nodded. “They left nails exposed under the table where they sat in the inn. Angelo cut himself almost immediately, and the wound dripped on the parchment when he signed the contract. We could do nothing once he agreed.”
“That seems like a trick,” Clarinda said, still seeking any loophole.
“It would've been, if Angelo hadn't completely and of his free will took all the money they offered him, and not known the conditions of the transport. They told your father that Evremar wasn't the man everyone thought he was, and, specifically, that transporting the caskets was illegal under every law known to man and heaven.”
Tears flooded Clarinda's eyes, the fury at the Norns, Mimir, Santini, and all the rest coming full circle to rest on her father.
Padre, you were a fool. I love you, but you were a fool!
“Would you have come for me if he hadn't taken the money? If he hadn't accepted the commission for the transport of those caskets?”
Urd was quiet, thinking, and then spoke. “Yes. The trap laid for Santini by Morpeth and Farbauti was as complex as the Codex Lacrimae is mysterious. Your role â that is, my death, and your assumption of my role â it...it was foreordained the moment Farbauti and Morpeth were enlisted by someone in this foul game.”
“Why, Urd? You're a Norn â even Old Nick said that if I were fully trained he couldn't touch me. Why will Morpeth be able to slay you?”
“They're from Muspelheim, the fire world.” Urd replied. “None are safe from the demons there because they were bound into the Lava Seas and Obsidian Lands at the beginning of the worlds.”
“You've not taken me there yet,” Clarinda observed.
“I won't, either, Child. We can't. Muspelheim is ruled by Surt, the Fire Giant of the Blazing Sword â the one who'll set Creation aflame in the Final Twilight.”
“I thought Mimir's Well...the Norn Grottoes...all this â” Clarinda waved her hands at the subterranean complex, “I thought safeguarding the Nine Worlds meant that we go to all of them.”
“Not Muspelheim. Surt and his legions rage against the boundaries there, ever looking for a way back to this side of Creation. They are Elder Powers and it took the combined might of the Aesir, Vanir, and all the races to help Odin trap him there eons past.” Urd paled, not as nonchalant about her imminent danger as she usually was around the other Norns. “It used to be said that to have one Son of Muspell loose in the Nine World would be a nightmare.” She looked directly at Clarinda. “In Farbauti and Morpeth, we have two: a catastrophe.”
“But, they were coming from the Far East â you said that they were forcing Khajen ibn-Khaldun to return to the Krak des Chevaliers after he got the Codex near the Himalayas.”
“Yes, and your father was bringing the caskets to Evremar from the West â do you see now how both forces were converging upon Santini? We don't know much about their magic â no one thought Sons of Muspell could breach the Wall without cracking the foundations of creation â but it seems as if the Huntsmen need their physical forms to act with full powers in whichever of the Nine Worlds they work.”
Clarinda shook her head. “I just learned that Satan played âUncle Servius' to Santini over five years ago. Are you saying that he and Hela somehow drove him to the Holy Land when he was living in Sicily so that he'd be in the area where the Codex was â or, where it
would
be â some five years later? Did Old Nick free Farbauti and Morpeth?”
“Perhaps,” Urd said, “but I'm of the belief that there's something else at work here, Clarinda. Someone who's organizing events and manipulating people at a level I've not seen since Loki roamed the Nine Worlds.”
“Loki? The trickster god?”
“Yes, but he's still bound at the deepest level of Mount Glittertind. My sisters and I've been checking regularly on him since all this began, and he's still where Odin left him, tied to a rock until the end of time.”
“Why would he have anything to do with this if he were free?” Clarinda asked.
“Clarinda â Mimir interrupted us and you were too angry to let us finish, but you heard correctly when we said that there was more than one author of the Codex Lacrimae.” She paused, and Clarinda kept looking at her expectantly even though she saw Ratatosk moving furtively on a ledge not far behind them. The squirrel obviously intended on listening, too.
“We've known that Volund, the Dark Elf, was one of those creators. Except for Dietrich the Mad, Volund was one of the rare Great Mages who could manipulate the kinds of magic needed to create the Codex.”
“Volund?” Clarinda exclaimed. “Wasn't that the elf who Old Nick and the
fossegrim
captured? He was tied to a tree as their prisoner when Hav brought us to the glade.”
Urd nodded. “That makes sense. Old Nick must have been trying to get information from the Dark Elf about the Codex Lacrimae when you two came along and interrupted him.” She took a deep breath. “As for the other âauthor' of the Codex, we suspect that Loki played a crucial role in making the book before being captured by Thor and imprisoned by Odin after the death of Balder.”
Clarinda and Urd
,
Mimir's voice sounded in their minds,
some haste, please. The girl needs to get to Niflheim.
“Let's go,” Urd said, moving off the bridge. “This mystery has been consuming us for years. I don't think that you're going to solve it in the next few moments.”
Clarinda followed, her thoughts roiling as they descended to meet the Seer of Fate.
Chapter 8
Reunion in Niflheim
In less than an hour after the council with Mimir â and within moments of the Seer's dismissal of her from his grotto â Clarinda used the
Brisinga
necklace and appeared at the edge of the Haunted Woods of Niflheim.
Snow fell steadily on the permafrosted moorlands where she stood, forming a chalky and half-frozen rime that rose in places as high as her thighs. She pushed the
Brisinga
back into her tunic, and pulled the cloak that Grimnir had given her closer to her body, feeling the cold start to penetrate as its bony fingers tried to pry past the protection of her gloves and boots.
Holding her quarterstaff, she surveyed a plain of uncultivated fields and blackened gorse grass, and tried to find her bearings. Fittingly, the crystallized weeds of the moor appeared bent over as if pushed by ferocious winds, the longer segments resembling bodies keeled over in dying agonies.
Clarinda's eyes widened as she realized that the entire landscape was filled with corpses, and what she'd taken for the foliage of this frozen world
were
,
indeed, men and women whose ashen features and broken bodies lay everywhere, their eyes staring sightlessly upward. A griffin lay near the bodies of three goblins, its once majestic eagle's head half-severed from the massive lion's body. Tears filled Clarinda's eyes â she could only imagine the corruptive power Hela had used to induce this most kingly of magical beasts to join her undead army.
“What a mess!” Ratatosk said from his position around her neck. “We just missed a battle, and I'm not setting a paw down there until you find a patch of ground that doesn't have blood or gore.”
“Quiet, Bone-Tooth,” the wolf, Geri, snarled from his place at Clarinda's heel. On Clarinda's other side, the wolf's companion, Freki, licked part of its foreleg as it waited attentively for her to move or give a command.
Geri shrugged its head in the direction of the forest ahead, then rumbled quietly, “Scout ahead, Freki â I'll stay with the Norn.”
The other, larger wolf immediately loped away. Freki disappeared in the trees and Clarinda looked at Geri. “Do we wait, or try to find Santini?” she asked.
“You're the Norn,” Geri replied, sitting on its haunches. “We're merely protection.”
“We'll follow Freki,” Clarinda decided. “Santini's got to be in there,” she nodded at the snow-covered pines of the forbidding forest.
The snow began falling harder, covering everything in pristine white. A deathly silence hovered over the world, broken only when the breeze changed and brought with it the faint din of battle ahead. Changing direction toward it, she passed like a wraith through a thicket and onto some real ground. Patches of frost-covered granite were here, with lichen and fungi bursting through cracks like diseased growths.
“Sounds as if the fighting continues,” Geri commented, easily keeping pace with Clarinda but ears tautly upright and fur bristling.
Freki appeared again, shattering frozen ferns like glass as he ran to reach them.
“Skade's come undone,” Freki said. “She's gone beserker, and it looks as if she almost single-handedly routed the
Wilde Jagd.
Fenris runs with his wolves while the Codex Wielder rides him like a horse battling their foes. All are bloodied by what looked like a fierce battle.” The wolf licked its chops. “Do we fight, Geri?”
“We go where this Norn directs us,” Geri growled.
“Oh, go fight!” Ratatosk encouraged, leaping off Clarinda's shoulders and scampering up a tree. “This is a dead world,” the squirrel continued, “where there's nothing else to do except kill! I mean, look! All there seem to be around here are dead bodies and too many
vampyr
s and werewolves to count. They'll try to kill you at every turn, so I'd recommend getting them first!”
Clarinda ignored the bloodthirsty squirrel and knelt to the level of the wolves. “We'll fight if we have to, but can you lead us around the main battle to where Santini is?”
“Of course, Mistress,” Freki growled confidently. “As I said, they're steadily retreating in the direction of Hvergelmir Falls where Fenris and Skade have a
baude
.
”
“âA hut?'” Clarinda repeated, not sure how defensible a place that sounded, but glad to hear that they were surviving the attack of the
Wilde Jagd
.
“Good â we'll follow and try to intercept them. Lead on, my friends.”
She broke into a trotting pace to follow the wolves as they surged forward.
Surprisingly, nothing came forward to interfere with their progress, so they made their way at relatively good speed through the grey and snow-filled world.
Clarinda heard Ratatosk paralleling their course and at times saw the squirrel leaping through the trees, racing to keep pace. She still felt irritated with him from their argument at Mimir's Well, so his flying from tree limb to tree limb was a close enough distance for now.
She reflected on the encounter with Mimir, and how she'd been initially surprised by the sight of an old man and two wolves sitting by the flaming pool. The stranger and Mimir were chatting conversationally, as if it were the most natural thing in the Nine Worlds for the Seer in charge of the Well of Destiny to entertain someone other than the Norns. Clarinda didn't know the old man, but immediately recognized the wolves as Geri and Freki because (along with Ratatosk and Vdofnir the Hen), the animals had been her companions since her first week in the Nine Worlds.
Before she could give further thought to the strange man's identity, an uncomfortable moment came for Clarinda when she and the Norn descended to the level of the pool. The wolves rose, came forward, greeted her by name, and nuzzled her briefly against her legs. Urd raised a questioning eyebrow at the familiarity.
“Indeed?” was all Urd said, but with an inflection that bundled anger, disappointment, and even astonishment in its two syllables.
Clarinda didn't need any further prompting, and explained how the animals had started coming to her shortly after she moved into the grotto.
“All the animals?” Urd had asked. “Even Ratatosk?”
“Especially Ratatosk,” Clarinda admitted. “Actually, him, most often of all.”
“Hiya, Urd!” the squirrel interrupted, hopping onto a flat length of granite that almost reached Mimir's floating head. The squirrel turned a withering look on Clarinda. “Thanks for keeping your promise and not telling the Norns about us, you little
fille de bas
.
”
“I can't be a bastard, Ratatosk,” Clarinda countered, affronted at the creature's language, “I know both my parents. What are you? I think the term probably could better apply to your â”
“Clarinda, don't waste words with a glorified rat,” Geri cautioned, scowling at Ratatosk with yellow eyes.
The squirrel changed tactics, looking upward pleadingly at the elderly man, whose bearded face wore a slight smile.
“Do you see, Grimnir? Do you see what I have to put up with down here? Is it any wonder that I spend my very long-lived life running up and down a tree and playing with dragons and Hel-beasts? Would
you
stay down here for any time? The conditions are impossible. Let me tell you something, I was just in Hel, and
she
knows how to host a party â a festive atmosphere compared to these grim folk, lively banquet tables⦔