Mythos (27 page)

Assuming for a moment that I was stuck in this pantheoverse, I knew that if Ragnarok started in the next ten minutes, I’d go straight to Odin and sign up to fight on the side of the Aesir. However, Ragnarok hadn’t started, and if there was any chance of averting the whole stupid, ugly, self-destructive mess, I was on the side of whoever was working to short-circuit it.

As far as I could tell, that meant Loki, since Odin seemed to be the worst sort of fatalist on the subject. Of course, Loki was a liar and an opportunist and basically amoral, which meant that I couldn’t trust him on anything about which our interests diverged in the slightest degree. Since I counted Eris among my friends, that seemed well within the realm of the familiar.

In the nearer term, I also had a much clearer idea of the interrelationships among the nine worlds of the Norse cosmos and what that meant for getting the hell out of here. As far as I could tell, Asgard was a semi-closed chunk of reality with only two formal connections to the other worlds—Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge, and Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

For reasons unknown, the latter was apparently only used as a path between worlds by a gossipy god-squirrel named Ratatosk. Since none of the legends mentioned anyone else, not even Loki, using the tree as a way in and out of Asgard, there had to be something that rendered it unsuitable for non-squirrel-based transport.

That pretty much left Bifrost with its eternally vigilant guardian, Heimdall. Well, that or a faerie ring,
if
I could make one that worked, although the last had not. That was how I laid out the options when we discussed our next move.

“Did I miss anything?” I asked at the end.

“Not that I can see,” said Tisiphone.

“Me neither,” said Melchior. “If we had the time and equipment necessary to put together an adapter for me for that network card, it might give us another option, but we don’t. Laginn, have you got anything to add? Maybe notes on where the reality doesn’t agree with the Edda’s version?”

Laginn pressed fingers to thumb in his version of a no, and that was it for discussion. I decided to try the faerie-ring route first since it didn’t involve so much as leaving our hideaway. But one large circle and several drops of blood later, and we were heading for the cave’s underwater exit. I’d been able to form a ring, but not to link it with the other worlds. The only place we could have traveled by using it was the ring in the sewers of Asgard city, a definite step in the wrong direction.

 

 

Whether it was because Hati had led the Hunt far afield or for some other reason, we managed to make it to a small wooded hill overlooking the near end of Bifrost without encountering any major obstacles. That was the end of our luck, however, as Heimdall was very clearly on duty, sitting astride his golden-maned stallion far out on the arch of the rainbow. With the low afternoon sun completely hidden by the roiling clouds that had followed in the wake of the Hunt, the bridge visibly glowed, looking unreal and otherworldly. I was suddenly taken with a desire to see it again some moonless night.

“So, now what?” whispered Melchior.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back.

Even as I said it, Heimdall’s head whipped around, and, despite the brush and weeds that lay between, I could feel his eyes upon me. I was reminded rather forcefully of a passage in the Edda that had said he could hear the grass growing on the hilltop or the wool on a sheep’s back. Why is it never hype when you want it to be?

“Run!” I said, as he lifted the horn to his lips and blew a mighty blast.

“Which way?” yelped Melchior.

Before I could reply, Heimdall’s call was answered by the horns of the Wild Hunt from behind us.

“Bridge!” I yelled, scooping him up as I started down the slope toward Heimdall and Asgard’s only exit.

Laginn, who had opted to ride in my breast pocket, slid down deeper. The god drew his sword and waited. Beside me, Tisiphone extended her long claws. Damn it, this was not how things were supposed to go. There was supposed to be sneaking and trickery and perhaps a bit of swearing, but none of this charging-headlong-into-battle stuff. I
hate
charging headlong into battle. Yet here we were, with fifty feet to go to the bridgehead and less than a quarter mile from there to Heimdall.

The bridge boomed hollowly as we ran out onto it. As we got closer to Heimdall, I couldn’t help but remember this was the god who was supposed to slay Loki. Fighting him was insane, but we didn’t have much choice; the bridge defined a transdimensional route between worlds. We couldn’t leave it until we had reached the Midgard side. Not with the horns of the Wild Hunt sounding ever closer behind us.

Hang on,
I thought. Just because we had to stay with the bridge didn’t mean we had to stay on it. Hugin and Munin certainly hadn’t.

“Fly!” I yelled to Tisiphone, shifting my own shape as I did so.

I don’t think I will ever grow used to shapechanging, no matter how often I do it. Not to the action and certainly not to the pain that poured through my body as I assumed the shape of the Raven once again, though I do appreciate the renewal it brings. As I leaped into the air with Melchior clutched in my feet, all tiredness fell away from me, and though I still bore the wounds Tyr had given me, they now felt several days old instead of the mere hours that had actually passed.

I felt a strange feathery sensation in my chest, as though someone were trying to tickle my ribs from the inside. It was only then that I remembered Laginn had been in my pocket when I shapechanged. I’m not certain exactly what happens to my clothes when I transform, since they have been known to come out different than they went in, but Occam has always come through all right. I could only hope Laginn would do as well in whatever extradimen sional pocket or parallel reality held my things. It was too late for anything more.

Tisiphone followed me into the air, and we climbed quickly to twenty or thirty feet above the surface of the rainbow. That should have gotten us comfortably past Heimdall, right?

Wrong.

In the moment that we flew over him, Heimdall changed his own form, becoming a huge osprey. Bunching himself on the saddle of his horse, he threw himself into the air behind us. We had a good start, but he gained with frightening speed. Worse, behind him, and gaining even faster, came the sounds of the Wild Hunt.

“Now what?” demanded Tisiphone, as we both flew faster.

“I don’t know. Give me a moment.”

“I’m willing,” said Tisiphone, “but I doubt our pursuer shares the sentiment.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder.

I looked around wildly, hoping for inspiration. I didn’t really have much to work with: the rainbow itself, the clouds above, and the long, long fall to the sea below. That was all.

Melchior whistled a long sequence of pseudobinary then, but nothing happened. He tried it, or a close variation, twice more in quick succession without any result. By then Heimdall was almost on top of us, and I still hadn’t thought of anything clever. I felt osprey claws graze the tip of my tail as Melchior began whistling a fourth version. Heimdall, having missed his grab, dropped back, but not far.

Melchior began to whistle again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Heimdall straining to reach us. This time he would not miss. Melchior finished the sequence, and we lurched forward just before Heimdall could catch hold. Over the next several seconds we gained speed and opened the distance between us and him considerably.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Don’t Be a Drag,” said Melchior, and it took me a moment to realize he was naming a spell and not grumbling at me.

“Makes us fly faster?” asked Tisiphone.

“Sort of,” replied Melchior. “Mostly it reduces air resistance in the forward direction and
lets
us fly faster. It’s a spell I’ve been thinking about ever since Ravirn decided to turn into a giant bird from time to time.”

“Nice,” said Tisiphone.

I had to agree, but Heimdall was still behind us, and he seemed to have redoubled his efforts, because the distance between us soon stopped widening. Though he had stopped gaining on us, he kept us firmly in sight, while behind him the Hunt was coming on fast. We might make it to the far end of the bridge uncaught, but then what?

We needed a distraction, ideally a big one. Huge. Earthshaking even. I inventoried our surroundings again: sky, rainbow, and the sea below. Nothing.
Wait. Back up.
I felt the tickle of a memory, something Hati had said. . . .
That’s it!
That tossing his uncle Jormungand, the world serpent, into the sea was one of Odin’s great mistakes. If I couldn’t manage Earthshaking, could I maybe pull off Earth girdling? The horns blowing ever closer behind us lent urgency to the question.

But how to find him? He might be the biggest living thing on the planet, but he was also on the bottom of the ocean and not readily visible from above. I still hadn’t figured it out when we reached the end of the line—a pier of rock that looked rather like the first three feet of a stone arch bridge, one that stood on the edge of the sea and reached out over the water. As we moved from one world into the next, we lost our ceiling of cloud, emerging suddenly into the golden hour before sunset.

“Left!” I yelled, turning sharply out over the water.

The maneuver cost us a lot of our lead on Heimdall, but if we were going to find a sea serpent, we needed to stay with the sea. But how did you draw out a sea snake? Maybe I was thinking along the wrong lines. How did you draw out a really big sea snake? No, that wasn’t quite it. How did you draw out a chaos god in the shape of the biggest sea snake of them all? Then I had it.

“Tisiphone, cut me!”

“What?” she demanded. “Are you crazy?”

“Maybe, but that’s not the point. Cut me. Cut me like you were cutting a hole in the wall of the world.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tisiphone.

“You don’t need to,” I said. “I’d do it myself, but Occam isn’t accessible to me in this form, and I need to bleed chaos.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but do it anyway.”

“Deep?” she asked.

“Just enough to make me drip.”

“You’re cracked,” said Melchior. “You do know that, right?”

“Have you got a better idea?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then start whistling Jormungand’s name in pseudobinary as soon as the chaos hits the water.”

Tisiphone struck, a drawing cut about where my right hip would have been in human shape. She used only one claw, but she had to strike hard to get through all the feathers, and I felt as though I’d leaned against the tailpipe of my motorcycle right after a race—it burned! Moments later, and just as I had willed it, drops of chaos started spattering into the water below us, and Melchior began to whistle.

I figured between the very specialized blood in the water, the magical calling of his true name, and the presence of one of his longtime enemies—Heimdall was barely a hundred feet behind us—he had to come out.

Nor was I wrong. Within moments of starting our routine, the sea below us started to bubble and churn. That was when I realized my first mistake. In summoning the Midgard Serpent, I had tied us to the location of his arrival. If we simply flew on with Heimdall and the Hunt pursuing, we would be no better off than we had been before. I turned right to circle back to the place where the waters churned, hoping Jormungand would arrive before Odin and the Hunt. Heimdall cut inside my turn, drawing even closer. Though he couldn’t have missed what was going on down at the water’s surface, he didn’t let it stop his pursuit.

The horns came louder still.

As I spiraled in toward the heart of the disturbance below us, a dark spot appeared in the center. A moment later a tower of bone and muscle burst into the air, a living skyscraper self-erected between two blinks of the eye. Behind us Heimdall screamed an osprey’s defiance and sheered away.

I kept going, mesmerized. I had expected Jormungand to reflect his origins in the Norse world, dark and frightening, as much sharky-sea-monster as serpent, an avatar of the North Atlantic tempest. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Jormungand was the son of fire’s god, and a snake to his skin.

His belly was a yellow as bright as any forest fire. On his sides the color gave way to the deep burning orange of fresh embers threaded through with lines of black that grew denser and closer together as they climbed, becoming a broad, inky stripe on his back. His eyes were intense points of red fire. Once he stopped rising, he opened his mouth, exposing fangs the color of polished ebony, and flared a hood like a cobra’s. For an instant, he hung there above me, then he struck.

It was only then that I realized my second mistake. Giant birds and giant snakes are a bad combination. Instead of attacking the fleeing Heimdall, the Midgard Serpent struck at me.

I tried to dodge, but I simply wasn’t fast enough. The huge head hit me like a falling building. A fang longer than my entire body and nearly as big around as my wrist punched deep into my back. I tried to scream, but a punctured lung transformed it into something between a gasp and a whimper. Quieter even than the now-retreating horns of the Hunt.

The world went dim and far away, and all I could think about was whether it would be worse to drop Melchior the hundred feet into the waves and hope Tisiphone saved him or to hold on to him and hope that I could.

That was when the fang in my back pulsed, and I remembered that Jormungand was poisonous.

Good luck, Mel,
I mouthed, though no words came out.

I felt liquid fire pour into my back and let him go. I only wished I could do as much for Laginn.