The Gospel of Loki (19 page)

Of course he’d changed his Aspect. I cast the rune
Bjarkán
and saw that a massive pike was caught in my net, flailing and thrashing and showing its teeth.

I spoke a little cantrip –
a named thing is a tamed thing
– and, using his true name, made him resume his true Aspect. Within seconds, the little guy was sitting on the cavern floor, whining in the folds of the net.

‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’

He sounded both aggrieved and scared. I wasn’t surprised; Andvari’s folk were a lot less aggressive than Ivaldi’s brood. They were smaller, too; more like the goblins that came to infest the Undersea and World Below after the end of the Winter War.

‘I want your gold,’ I told him. ‘Yes, I know you’ve got a stash down here. Red gold, and lots of it, or I’ll wring you like a rag.’

He took a little persuasion. But I can be pretty persuasive, and with the help of Ran’s drowning-net I managed to convince him. Still snivelling, he led me to his secret smithy, where I packed his supply of red gold into a number of leather sacks. When I had finished, there wasn’t a scrap of gold left in the chamber – except for a little ring on Andvari’s finger, which I saw him trying to conceal.

‘That too. Hand it over,’ I said.

Andvari snivelled and protested, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I added the ring to the pile.

‘It’s cursed,’ said Andvari sullenly. ‘You’ll never live to enjoy
your theft. Bad luck will follow you everywhere.’

I grinned. ‘So much the better,’ I said. ‘As I’m not planning to keep it myself.’ And then I picked up my sacks of gold and set off on foot back to Inland.

‘You took your time,’ said Odin, when I got back to Hreidmar’s place. The prisoners were still bound fast; they looked dishevelled and hungry and tired. It would make a good story, I thought, knowing that Honir would spread the tale; and then there was Ran, who would tell it to Aegir and all their cronies; how Loki had bravely come back into the wolf’s lair to ransom his friends . . .

I grinned. ‘Here comes the cavalry. I think, when you have a look at all this, you’ll find that Otter has been suitably ransomed.’

Now Hreidmar untied the prisoners, as his sons counted the gold. They stuffed the otter’s skin with it, then heaped it over the bursting remains like a barrow of strawberry gold. Odin watched them in silence, rubbing his sore wrists. I guessed he was as angry as I was at having been caught and humiliated – but he said nothing, just watched them silently through his one eye.

At last, the skin was packed full and covered nose to tail with gold. Only a whisker protruded –

‘There’s no more gold,’ said Odin.

‘Then I’ll make up the rest in blood,’ said Hreidmar, once more drawing his dagger.

‘Wait, there’s this.’ I pulled off the ring I’d taken from Andvari. I’d hoped to slip it to Odin, of course, but needs must, when Wildfire drives.

‘Will this cover it, do you think?’ I bent down and covered the whisker with the ring of blood-red gold.

‘Close,’ said Odin.

I smiled at him. ‘Did you doubt me?’

‘No. Not even for a second.’

And so our very reluctant host was obliged to let the three of us go. As I crossed the threshold, I looked back over my shoulder at him.

‘By the way, Andvari’s curse lies on the ring I took from him. I hope you enjoy it. Serves you right for holding my brother to ransom.’

Odin gave me a sideways look. ‘You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Just remember I saved your life. You know you can rely on me.’

He smiled. ‘I know I can,’ he said.

And just for a moment, I
almost
believed that neither of us was lying.

Funny, how the things we say come back to bite us, like rabid dogs we once made the mistake of feeding. Although we didn’t know it then, our summertime was running out. The seasons had begun to turn, the shadows to lengthen, the sun to set. That rosy light is deceptive; it shines on the faces of those around you and makes them look like friends. They’re not. In ten minutes’ time, the sun will have set, and it will be merciless . . .

LESSON 1

Death

The dead know everything, but don’t give a damn.

Lokabrenna

A
ND JUST LIKE THAT
, it was over. A golden age of godhood, gone, like apple blossom on the wind. I don’t pretend to know much about love, but that’s how great loves come to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret. And that’s how my brother Odin and I reached the end of our fellowship; not in the heat of battle (though that would come round soon enough), but in lies, and polite smiles, and protestations of loyalty.

He never told me
how
he knew. But the Old Man knew everything. All my petty treacheries: how I’d tried to set up Thor; how I’d lost Frey his runesword. If I hadn’t given away the ring I’d taken from Andvari, I might have assumed that the Maggot’s curse was the cause of my turning luck, but I’d left that ring with Hreidmar as part of Otter’s ransom. No, this was something different, something more unsettling. I could see his disappointment, his pain in the way he looked at me, although he never said a word – to me, or any of the gods.

I think I’d have preferred it if he’d simply punished me. That, I could have dealt with. A world built on Order has
rules
, so I’d
learnt, and breaking them has consequences. I’d been living in Odin’s world for long enough to understand, if not to approve, the principle. But this didn’t seem to be Odin’s plan. It made me quite uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong. I had no regrets. Odin’s corruption-by-sentiment hadn’t brought me quite
that
low. And don’t go believing those stories about how I really cared for him, and how our tragic friendship became a kind of passion-play acted out over centuries. Take it from me, it wasn’t. All right? But I was feeling insecure. I felt the hammer about to fall, and I had nowhere to run. I needed to know the Old Man’s mind. I needed to know what his plans were. And so I looked to the sky for help – and Hugin and Munin, Odin’s birds.

They were no ordinary birds, of course. They were Odin’s ravens, trained to carry the Old Man’s thoughts anywhere in the Nine Worlds. That was a part of his power, those birds; manifestations of his Spirit and Mind – with their help, he saw everywhere. But it also meant that he was never at peace. If anyone ever thought too much, it was the Old Man, always alert, always scrutinizing the Worlds for the hint of a threat to his empire. It isolated him. It set him apart from the rest of the Aesir.

It suited him to be that way, but I knew he was lonely. Power had taken its toll on him, and knowledge was eroding the rest. Perfect knowledge was what he’d craved, but with perfect knowledge, illusions die, including such perennials as friendship, love and loyalty.

Think about it for a while. How can you hope to have any friends when you spy on everything they do? How can you enjoy the present when you can see the future? Most of all, how can you love when you know Death lies in waiting?

And Death was where they led me first. Or rather, Hel, Death’s Kingdom.
Not
a realm I frequented much, in spite of having fathered its ruler, and not the kind of place in which I felt my unique skills would best be utilized. But that was where the
ravens led, and that was where I picked up their trail – through Ironwood, and then underground, travelling on foot through World Below for much of the way, not being privy to their trick of simply crossing directly through Worlds – until, days later, I arrived onto the dusty plain of Hel.

Not
my favourite place in the Worlds. Hel’s own kingdom is cold and bleak. Unbound by the conventional rules of size, or scale, or geography, it stretches out in all directions; a colourless desert of sand and bone under an arch of colourless sky. Nothing grows here; nothing lives – even Hel was a half-corpse – and those who come here are either dead, doomed or simply desperate. I told myself that my daughter would surely agree to see me – but it
was
her kingdom. If she chose, she could have me wait at her pleasure for weeks or months; or until the desert swallowed me and I became one of the dead, dust on a wind that blew ceaselessly under that strange, subterranean sky.

I found my daughter waiting, drawing circles in the sand. She’d grown since I last saw her, though, sadly, she hadn’t improved much. She’d always been moody and intractable, even when she was a child, and now she looked at me askance through her single living eye (the other one was dead as bone under a wisp of white hair).

‘Why, it’s dear old Dad,’ she said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

I sat down next to her on a rock. Around me, the hot dry wind of Hel stirred the souls of the departed into a kind of half-sentience. I could feel them drawn to me, sensing the warmth of a living being.
Not
a pleasant feeling. I made a mental note to myself to try to avoid Death as long as I could.

‘I thought I’d say hello,’ I said. ‘How’s the job shaping up?’

Hel raised a single eyebrow.

‘Well?’

‘Well –
Dad
. You’ve seen this place. What do you think?’

‘It’s . . . interesting.’

She made a sound of contempt. ‘You think? Sitting here, day in, day out, surrounded by nothing but the dead?
Not
what you’d call
exciting
.’

‘Well, it’s a job,’ I told her. ‘It isn’t meant to be exciting. Not at the start, anyway.’

‘You mean you think it’s going to improve?’

I shrugged.

‘I didn’t think so,’ she said. ‘So what do you want?’

‘I’m hurt,’ I said. ‘What makes you think I want anything, other than to pay a visit to my daughter?’

‘Because you never visit,’ said Hel. ‘And because the General’s birds were here only a couple of hours ago. I’m guessing you want to know why.’

I grinned. ‘That may have crossed my mind.’

She turned her living profile away, subjecting me to the full impact of her dead face. The eye that gleamed from the socket of bone was horribly, darkly sentient. The binding-rope of runes that she wore twisted around her narrow waist reminded me uncomfortably of Skadi’s runewhip.

‘You’re none of you immune to Death,’ she told me in her grating voice. ‘The General knows that only too well. Death takes everyone in the end. Heroes, villains, even gods – you’ll all end up as dust one day. Even the General,’ she said, fingering her binding-rope. ‘One day Death will take him too, and there’ll be nothing left of him, or of Asgard, or of you.’

This was beginning to sound unnecessarily morbid to me, and I said so.

Hel gave me her twisted half-smile. ‘Balder’s been having dreams,’ she said.

‘Dreams of what?’

‘Of me,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ I was starting to understand. Ever since she’d first seen him, Hel had been crazy for Balder. Balder the Beautiful; Balder the Brave; Balder, Asgard’s Golden Boy. Well, there’s
no accounting for taste, but there was no denying that a certain type of female found him irresistible. Skadi was one; Hel, another. But while Skadi had long since accepted that Balder would never belong to her, I guessed that Hel still hoped to see Balder at her side one day.

Of course, he’d have to die for that – but as she said, everyone dies.

‘So, Golden Boy’s been having nightmares?’ I grinned at Hel’s expression. ‘He always was on the sensitive side. Though what that has to do with Odin . . .’

‘Frigg has been having dreams as well,’ said Hel. ‘Forebodings of Balder’s death. She wants to know how to protect him. That’s why Odin sent his birds.’

‘And?’

She gave me a look from her dead eye. ‘Odin made me who I am,’ she said. ‘He gave me Death’s dominion. I take my role very seriously, and I can’t make exceptions. Not even if I wanted to,’ she added, with the hint of a smile, most gruesome on that half-dead face.

‘But why would Balder die?’ I said. ‘He doesn’t fight. He doesn’t play dangerous sports. He rarely, if ever, leaves Asgard. The only risk he ever takes is that of choking on his own smugness. So tell me, why the anxiety?’

Hel shrugged a shoulder. ‘I don’t know.’

Of course, Death and Dream are very close. Their territories intersect, which is why we so often dream of the dead. They dream of us, too, in their watery way, and sometimes they can tell us things; things about the future.

She was drawing in the sand again. Not a circle this time, but a little heart shape with the runes
Hagall
for Hel and
Bjarkán
for Balder written inside. I found it frankly nauseating, but summoned up a sympathetic look.

‘How badly do you want him?’ I said.

She looked up. ‘I’d do anything.’

‘Anything?’

That dead eye again. ‘Anything,’ said my daughter.

‘All right,’ I said with a little smile. ‘I’ll help you if I get the chance. But not a word to anyone. And you’ll owe me a favour. Agreed?’

She gave me her living hand.

‘Agreed.’

And that was how the Queen of the Dead promised me a favour. I couldn’t foresee when I’d cash it in, but I sensed the changing seasons, and I knew that, like Ratatosk the squirrel, it was time for Yours Truly to put away a few supplies for the winter. Everything dies eventually, of course. The operative word is ‘eventually’. And if I could somehow reshape events to suit my own agenda . . .

Well. Isn’t that what Odin himself did, when he reshaped the Worlds from Ymir’s corpse? Isn’t that what
all
gods do, in their various ways, to survive?