Mist

2

It was the revelation she had been bracing herself to hear, and yet fresh shock pumped through her body and settled in her gut, roiling and churning like worms in a bloated corpse.

“They’re still alive?” she asked. “How? Where are they?”

“Odin believed he could forestall Ragnarok. He failed, and all but one of the Homeworlds—this one—were destroyed. But before the Aesir, Alfar, and those they fought could destroy each other, they were thrown into Ginnungagap.”

“The Great Void?” she said, feeling her way through a morass of thoughts as sluggish as stagnant water. “Nothing lives there. Nothing can.”

“It is simply another plane of existence. Not entirely physical as we know it, but it maintains life.” Dainn rotated his right shoulder. Something popped, and he winced. “The Aesir and their enemies have been trapped there in a form of stasis since the Last Battle.”

She scraped her hand through her hair, nearly yanking half of it out of her braid. “Who trapped them?”

“That is a discussion for another time.”

Of course it is, Mist thought, just a minor detail, after all.

“What does ‘stasis’ mean?” she asked.

“The gods exist in a state one might call semicorporeal. They do not age, nor do they experience the physical sensations living creatures do. They, the Alfar, the Jotunar, and the dwarves live in separate regions we call Shadow-Realms.”

Mist settled back into a crouch, too dizzy to trust her balance. “Shadow-Realms,” she repeated mechanically. “And all the Aesir live there? Odin, Freya, Heimdall, Frigg, Thor?”

“All but those already in the Underworld.”

Baldr, he meant—gentlest and, it was said, wisest of the gods, dead because of a filthy trick that had sown the seeds of Ragnarok.

Dainn scraped dried mud from his chin with the heel of his palm. “Since Ginnungagap was the original source of all magic, the gods have learned to shape that raw magic to re create something of what they lost during their exile.”

“Are you saying they’ve rebuilt Asgard?”

“Some elements of it, yes, after a fashion. The great halls of the gods, their palaces and lodging places.”

“And the rest? The forests and mountains and rivers?”

The pointed look he gave her was answer enough. “They are unable to reach Midgard in corporeal form, and only Freya has been able to communicate across the Void. But that problem the Aesir are also working to solve, and it is only a matter of time before they succeed in shaping true physical bodies of their own.”

“The Jotunn looked pretty cursed real to me,” she said.

“The frost giants have already accomplished what the Aesir are striving to achieve.”

Odin’s balls. This was getting worse by the second. “How?” she asked.

“That we do not yet know.”

“But I never saw a Jotunn here before today. How long have they been in Midgard?”

“Perhaps as long as two weeks.”

“Then they’ve been keeping a very low profile,” she said.

“They would not have wished to attract attention until they had achieved their goal.”

“And the Alfar? How did you get here?”

Dainn hesitated barely a moment. “I was already here. I have been in Midgard for centuries.”

She stared into his indigo eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“I have walked this earth as far back as I can remember, Mist of the Valkyrie.”

Mist’s thoughts went round and round like Jormungandr the World Serpent biting his own tail. Until she’d met Vidarr and Vali, she’d never once been aware that she and her Sisters shared this world with other immortals.

“Why were you here?” she asked. “How did you survive Ragnarok?”

“That is the difficulty. I don’t remember.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. But she had an idea that if she let herself go on too long, she’d never stop.

“That’s exactly what Vidarr and Vali told me,” she said catching her breath. “It’s a bad sign when gods and elves lose their memories.”

Dainn cast her a stunned look. “Odin’s sons? You know them?”

“For about half a century. They live right here in this City. You didn’t know?”

He shook his head slowly, and Mist allowed herself a brief, uncharitable moment of satisfaction. “Vid and Val were supposed supposed to survive Ragnarok,” she said. “If nothing happened according to Prophecy, didn’t the Aesir notice they weren’t around?”

His shock gave way to that annoying composure that made her want to give him a good, hard shake. “I am not privy to the gods’ thoughts beyond what they convey to me,” he said.

And Vidarr and Vali certainly hadn’t “conveyed” any knowledge about the Aesir’s survival to Mist. She was pretty sure they’d be just as shocked as she was.

“So you’ve come for the same reason Hrimgrimir did,” Mist said. “What exactly did Odin tell you to do?”

“It was not Odin,” Dainn said, in a tone that managed to suggest he found her question amusing. “It was Freya.”

Freya, the Lady, the beautiful, the goddess of love and desire, of fertility and battle, though most forgot that fiercer aspect. Freya had been born to the Vanir, the most ancient gods, who had been displaced by the warlike Aesir, defeated in battle by Odin’s children, and finally accepted among them. Her brother was Freyr, adopted as one of the first lords of the Alfar.

Freya was also the First Valkyrie, the found er of the Choosers of the Slain. It was she who selected women—some the daughters of mortal lords, some from among the lesser goddesses—to ride the battlefields in search of valiant warriors worthy of joining the Aesir until Ragnarok. Half of the Einherjar went to her hall, Folkvangr.

But Mist had ever been Odin’s servant, not the Lady’s. She’d had no dealings with Freya at all.

“Why not Odin?” Mist asked, struck by a fresh sense of foreboding.

“It is Freya’s Seidr that enabled her to breach the barriers of the Aesir’s Shadow-Realm with her thoughts.”

Seidr, called the Witch-magic. Mist knew very little about it, except that only Freya and Odin were said to possess it.

Dainn answered Mist’s unspoken question. “Odin and the other Aesir maintain the Shadow-Realm of Asgard. It is the Lady’s task to deal with Midgard.”

“And she knew you were already here?”

“Even so. She contacted me six days ago. Since I was on the other side of Midgard, it took me some time to reach this city.” He got to his knees, bracing his hands on the ground to either side of his body. “And now there is no more time for discussion.”

“Wait a minute. I want to know—”

“What you want is of no consequence. You are a servant, and you must obey.”

“Obey you? I don’t remember signing on to serve a cursed arrogant elf with dirt on his nose.”

He cracked open his other eye, and there was something fierce in it, an echo of un-elflike anger that put a chink in his façade of dispassion.

“My appearance is irrelevant,” he said, trembling as if he were on the verge of some kind of seizure. “My purpose in coming here was to make sure Gungnir was safe and prepare you and the other Valkyrie for what is to come.”

All at once Hrimgrimir’s words came back to her again. “A pity that you chose her side. You might have lived to see the new age.”

And she knew, even before she asked the obvious question, what Dainn was going to tell her.

“Hrimgrimir was only the beginning,” Dainn said, the ferocity leaving his eyes. “We do not know how many Jotunar are here with him, and there will be many others to follow. They will all be searching for the same thing.”

“The Treasures,” Mist said. A wave of fresh dizziness rolled over her, and suddenly she was in Norway again, kneeling over Bryn’s body, slipping the Falcon Cloak on its thong over her neck. And afterward, at the site of the massacre, staring at the broken halves of Thor’s unbreakable staff. Believing they would never be of use to anyone, ever again.

She grabbed Dainn’s arm before he could get to his feet, feeling long muscle that was surprisingly firm in such a tall, slender body. “Why?” she asked, though she already knew the answer to that question, too.

“What has ever been the Jotunar’s intent?” he asked, pulling his arm from her grip.

War with the Aesir and their allies. The old hatreds had simmered since the beginning of time itself, coming to a boil as the time of Prophecy drew near. Old grudges were revived, oaths broken, once- strong allegiances abandoned. Aside from a few giants who had intermarried with the gods and took the side of light, the vast majority had eagerly joined with Loki, himself the son of giants, Odin’s blood brother and most deadly enemy.

Suddenly Mist’s breath seemed locked in her throat, unable to reach her lungs. “They want another Ragnarok,” she said.

“And the victory they believe was stolen from them,” Dainn said.

“The Aesir want it, too?”

“No.” Dainn met her gaze, his own clear and determined. “It was never the intention of the Aesir to engage in another war. They intend to build a new Homeworld, a better one, in place of that which was lost.”

“In Midgard.”

Mist was well beyond shock by now, but her stomach performed some interesting gymnastics nevertheless. She could feel the looming disaster behind his words, but she could hardly begin to grasp the enormous and frightening consequences of such a plan.

“You’re saying they want to take over this world,” she said.

“It is complicated.”

Right. The old fallback line when someone didn’t want to tell someone else the truth. “It isn’t complicated at all. The next Ragnarok will be—”

“Must be won by the Aesir,” Dainn finished. “Or this world will be finished.”

“And the Aesir need the Treasures to win.” She suppressed a shiver. “Why hasn’t Freya contacted me and my Sisters directly?”

“You are only Valkyrie, and do not possess sufficient magic to hear her.”

There was nothing in his tone to indicate contempt for her limitations, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She wasn’t even a demigoddess, like many Valkyrie. She had been born to mortal parents, and her very limited Rune-lore was a pathetic thing compared to that of an elf.

Or should have been. “What about your magic?” she asked. “How did Hrimgrimir manage to grind you into the dirt?”

He looked away. “Explanations later,” he said. “If your curiosity has been satisfied—”

“I’m not going into this blind,” Mist said. “You said you came to warn me. What is the plan here? Have the Jotunar located any of the Treasures?”

“None, to our knowledge. But you are the first we have contacted. We have been unable to locate the other Valkyrie thus far.”

“And you think I can tell you where to find them? I haven’t been in contact with any of my Sisters for over half a century.” There was just the briefest flicker of uncertainty in Dainn’s dark blue eyes, as if she had hit on a problem he hadn’t anticipated. A problem that scared him.

“How did you find me?” she asked, taking advantage of his lapse. “Why did you and Hrimgrimir show up here first at the same time?”

“Enough,” he said abruptly. He stood, wobbling only a little as he found his feet. “Take me to the Spear.”

Mist hesitated. She couldn’t get past the instinctive sense that something about all this wasn’t right. It wasn’t just the shock, the bizarre improbability of it all. It was something about Dainn himself. Something that made her reluctant to trust him.

And yet . . .

“Please,” Dainn said, inclining his head.

Mist found herself playing the word back in her mind to make sure she’d heard right. It wasn’t humility, not quite, but it was in the general neighborhood of the ballpark. She found it deeply disturbing that he could make her want to punch him in the jaw one second and then turn her feelings upside-down again in a heartbeat, all after she’d only known him for all of fifteen minutes.

“All right,” she said. “But keep your mouth shut and your hair over your ears when we get to my loft. My friend Eric may be there, and I’m going to have to come up with some kind of explanation for bringing an apparently indigent man in off the street in the wee hours of the morning.”

“Eric?” he echoed, giving her a long look.

“Just let me do the talking. And you’re going to have to answer a lot more questions on the way there.”

He nodded, and Mist headed for the Volvo. By the time he caught up with her, his filthy, ill-fitting rags flapping around him like the ratty feathers of a molting seagull, she was already unlocking the doors. She waited impatiently for Dainn to climb into the passenger seat.

He stood on the curb, frowning at the car as if he’d never seen one before. “This is your vehicle?”

“She doesn’t look like much,” Mist said, walking around to the driver’s side, “but she gets the job done.”

He regarded her with that flat expression she’d decided meant he didn’t want her to guess what he was thinking.

“I always shoot the Norns a little prayer when I get in,” she added dryly.

If he got the joke, he didn’t show it. Gingerly he grasped the door handle, opened the door, and climbed in.

“Buckle up,” she said. “I don’t know where you’ve been living, but we have seat belt laws in California.”

With only the slightest hesitation he did as she asked. She wrinkled her nose at the elf ’s rank odor, cracked open the window in spite of the chill, and released the brake. The heater rattled and coughed as she turned it on. Dainn braced one hand on the dashboard and the other on the armrest.

It was still too early for commute traffic, though the buses were already trundling along Lincoln Way. Once she was on Nineteenth Avenue heading south, she took a deep breath and starting talking.

“Next question,” she said. “How did the Jotunar figure out how to make themselves physical when the gods couldn’t do it? How did the Aesir learn what the giants are up to if the races are separated? Are the Realms interconnected somehow?”

“I thought I made it clear that Freya has not seen the need to reveal all her knowledge to me,” Dainn said shortly, his fingers tightening on the armrest.

Resisting the urge to lean on the gas pedal just enough to rattle him, she cast Dainn a quick glance. Was that a hint of resentment in his voice? The Alfar had always been considered more or less the equals of the Aesir; in fact, some believed they were directly related to the Vanir. Maybe Dainn didn’t like the idea of playing servant to the Aesir simply because he was convenient to their needs.

But he’d want what they wanted, wouldn’t he?

Mist adjusted her grip on the steering wheel, aware that she had left her gloves in the park and her palms had begun to sweat. “Why was I the first?” she asked.

“Of the Valkyrie to be found?” he asked, clutching at the front edge of his seat with both hands as if he thought it might come flying off the chassis. “Gungnir itself led us here. As Odin’s weapon, it contains more power than any of the others, and Freya detected that power in this region of Midgard.”

That was the first time Mist had heard that Gungnir was more powerful than the other Treasures—it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, in fact, since anyone would think Thor’s Hammer or the Apples of Idunn would be more important—but it wasn’t as if she’d ever been the All-father’s particular confidante.

He’d certainly never been clear about why he’d sent the Treasures to Midgard when nobody would be left to use them. Maybe he’d known Ragnarok would never happen.

Oh, Hel.

“Okay,” she said, forcibly steering her thoughts back to the subject at hand, “the Rainbow Bridge was destroyed along with the other Homeworlds, right?”

“Bifrost is no more.”

“Then how are the Jotunar getting here?”

“There are other passages.”

“What kind of passages?”

“In some ways they are not unlike Bifrost itself, but linking Ginnungagap to Midgard.”

“I assume they don’t look like rainbows.” She glanced through the windshield at the blue-black, starless sky, half expecting a hole to open up above her and drop another Jotunn on top of the car. “How do they work?”

“The Aesir have but recently discovered their existence, and that the Jotunar have been using them,” Dainn said, his voice a little steadier now that he had apparently become more accustomed to the peculiarities of her mechanical mount. “They can transport physical objects and beings, but they themselves seem to have no distinct physical form. We do not know if these bridges formed naturally or were created by some force beyond our knowledge.”

Like whatever had put an end to Ragnarok, Mist thought. “So they’re like wormholes,” she said.

Dainn didn’t answer. Mist forged ahead.

“How did the Jotunar find them before the Aesir?” she asked.

“That we do not yet know. The Lady has been making a study of them, as much as she is able to from the Aesir’s Shadow-Realm.”

“Then the Aesir don’t have access to them.”

“Clearly not,” Dainn said dryly, “or Freya would not find my assistance necessary.”

Or mine, Mist thought. “So where do these bridges lead to? It wasn’t a coincidence that Hrimgrimir showed up here.”

“No.”

“So maybe these bridges can be controlled somehow, put wherever the Jotunar want them, like a Star Trek transporter. ’Beam me up, Hrimgrimir.’ ”

Apparently Dainn missed the reference. “We do not believe they have complete control over them,” he said. “There are indications that several such bridges lead to this city. In fact, all those Freya has located seem to do so.”

Mist laughed, taking humor where she could find it. “It’s an odd thing,” she said, quoting Oscar Wilde, “but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.”

“Unfortunately,” Dainn said, “they are appearing, not disappearing.”

His straight-man response almost made her laugh again, but she didn’t really feel like joking.

“So why this city?” she asked. “Does it have something to do with Gungnir? Maybe, if it’s so powerful, it sort of anchored these bridges somehow?”

She wasn’t really being serious, but Dainn gave her an odd sideways look, as if he found merit in her speculation. “You may be right,” he said.

“Mighty big of you to admit it,” she said. She hesitated, hating to admit her blatant failure to recognize that she was walking into a trap. “I felt a compulsion to go to the park a couple of hours ago, and I knew there was something strange going on almost as soon as I set foot on the grounds. Do you think Hrimgrimir used some kind of summoning spell on me?”

“It would seem likely. Clearly Hrimgrimir wished to confront you at a time and in a location least conducive to mortal interference.”

“I thought he might be following you, but you were following him.”

Dainn stared out the window as they passed Sigmund Stern Grove, thick with eucalyptus trees whose leaves had been badly scorched by the unusual cold. “I felt the presence of a Jotunn when I reached this city, and I followed him to the park,” he said.

Mist slowed as she turned southeast onto Ocean Avenue. “You didn’t know he’d summoned me?”

“No. I thought it best to conceal myself and observe him until he took some definitive action.”

“He took action, all right,” she said, glancing at his battered face, which was already beginning to heal. “He beat you within an inch of your life. You shouldn’t have had any trouble defeating him.”

Dainn was quiet all the way to the Southern Freeway ramp. “I preferred him to believe that I was no threat to him or his allies,” he said at last.

“You mean you weren’t unconscious when I found you? You just let me walk right into a trap?”

The muscles in his jaw worked. “No. I was unable to aid you.”

Unable to use his magic? Something didn’t add up—again—but Mist let it pass. “Inconvenient, since you need me to get Gungnir.”

“I was instructed to warn the guardians, not take the Treasures from them.”

“Then why do you need to come with me? You’ve warned me, and now you can run out and find the others, since I can’t help you with that. Though even if you find the rest, the Jotunar might follow you right to them.”

“We will make every attempt to keep that from occurring.”

“Who? You and Freya?” She leaned on the gas pedal, and the Volvo shot forward with a grunt of protest. “As you pointed out, Lord Elf, we’re only Valkyrie. Our magic is limited. It was never part of our job description to hold off a swarm of frost giants.”

“I do not believe the situation will become so dire.”

“Well, that changes everything. We’re safe.”

He was silent, but she couldn’t tell if it was because he was insulted or simply couldn’t provide a satisfactory response. She relaxed her grip on the wheel and pressed lightly on the brake.

“I still don’t understand why the Jotunar got here first,” she said, as much to herself as to the elf. “The only advantage the frost giants ever had over the Aesir was their sheer numbers. The reason they were such a threat during Ragnarok was because—”

Mist broke off, drawing in a sharp breath. Because they had a leader who would stop at nothing, not even the darkest and most deadly magic, to attain his ends.

The realization hit her like a Jotunn’s fist, so terrible that she almost slammed on the brakes in the middle of the freeway. Her guts twisted in panic, and the tattoo began to burn again. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t already thought of it, that Dainn hadn’t mentioned even so much as the possibility.

Because he’d deliberately hidden it from her.

“Where is Loki?” she asked.

Dainn seemed unmoved by her alarm. “That is the other task Freya has set me. She suspects he may be here with the Jotunar.”

“And you didn’t bother telling me this rather obvious suspicion before?”

“It was clearly not obvious to you.”

The elf ’s complete lack of concern made Mist want to knock his head against the dashboard. “Of course the Jotunar couldn’t create or open these gates or bridges or what ever they are by themselves,” she said, feeling like an idiot. “Not if the Aesir couldn’t.”

Her hands began to tremble on the wheel. She remembered what she’d told Dainn not long ago: that only a minor god could break the wards she’d set over Gungnir.

And for all intents and purposes, a minor god was exactly what Loki was. Minor, but in name only. If he had sent Hrimgrimir with just the right spells . . .

She pressed the Volvo to its limits, reaching eighty as the car crossed over Highway 101. She flew along the Embarcadero Freeway and raced down the Twentieth Street exit ramp. She screeched right on Twentieth, crossed Third on a yellow light, and made a hard right on Illinois.

The Volvo was sputtering when she pulled into the driveway. She set the brake, practically tore the belt buckle apart, and jumped out. Dainn was right behind her as she unlocked the front door.

She knew immediately that Eric wasn’t home. A dozen strides along the main hallway and a sharp right at the kitchen carried her to the door of the ward room.

Only it wasn’t warded any longer. The Rune- staves painted on the wall above the door had broken to pieces, reduced to a chaotic series of black slashes like smears of rotted blood.

Mist plunged through the door. The case was open.

Gungnir was gone.