Sleipnir

Chapter Eleven

The glow that grew out of the darkness was green.

Not the warm, earthy green of gardens and manicured lawns; but a nasty, weird color somewhere between emerald and sickly yellow. Once, when I was about seven, I'd seen the whole sky turn just that color. When the storm was over, and the tornado gone, pieces of our toolshed, a neighbor's house, and three big live oaks were distributed all over one end of the county. I noticed that my feet had slowed and stopped by themselves, and after a moment's thought I decided they were right. I sat down in the stone chips. No sense just rushing in...

Not a waver of movement, not a hint of sound. Everything was utterly dead both behind and before me. Even the trickling of the stream was subdued; the water slid noiselessly along the wall. So what was I waiting for? An engraved invitation? I chewed the end of my thumbnail and rubbed my other hand palm-down against my trousers. It didn't do any good; sweat had already soaked what was left of my clothes.

I spit out bits of ragged thumbnail. I'd worked harder to get where I was now than I'd ever worked at anything in my life. I couldn't just sit on my ass now that I was so close. Maybe striving for a goal was a lot better than reaching it. Now that I was this close...

Bull. The only thing wrong with me was a case of nerves like I hadn't had since Mary Lou Meyerson first showed me what the backseat of a Ford was for. I looked at the green glow ahead and discovered that I didn't have the faintest idea what to expect out there. Despite all my "research," I really didn't know what I was going to find. Fighting thirst and underground rivers and even terrorists—I was trained for that kind of battle. But how much would my training be worth in Niflheim, where even the gods went when they died?

I reached down into the stubborn core of myself, where I'd found the strength to haul my ass up out of that icy underground river, and lurched to my feet. Then I stumbled forward into the green light. I was barely aware of the hum against my calf where Gary's long knife rode patiently. The slope of the floor gradually leveled out until it was nearly horizontal again. The distant ceiling had long since disappeared into green gloom overhead. Muted echoes of my footsteps bounced back. The walls began to curve away as well, although not nearly as far as the ceiling.

The eerie glow brightened until I was bathed in ghastly green. Then I emerged from the tunnel onto the verge of a gravel beach. My feet stopped of their own accord and my eyes widened. And widened. I stood there long enough for both feet to go to sleep, just staring, and feeling awfully small... .

The cavern which stretched before me had Journey to the Center of the Earth beat all hollow, as it were. The "ceiling" was miles overhead; parts of it were dark, almost black, with streaks and splotches and whorls of brighter color just the shade of the green light. Bright patterns glowed with cold phosphorescence, like fireflies, or those deep-sea fish I'd seen in National Geographic. As I watched, entranced, I could see the patterns moving, changing, sliding into darkness while the darkness blossomed slowly into light.

An odd sense of familiarity niggled at the back of my mind, but I couldn't place it, and soon gave up, lost in the eeriness on every side. The whole landscape was lit by that unearthly green glow, even my skin and fingernails. My skin looked like algae, while my fingernails were a darker olive shade. My knife, peeping out of its sheath, still looked dead-flat black.

The rocky beach extended five yards in front of me. Beyond stretched a body of what looked like oil but smelled like water. The surface was as flat black as my knife, with peculiar green glints. Not a ripple disturbed it, as far as my eyes could see. It reminded me of something, a place I'd read about, where oily pitch oozed to the surface of the ground to snare the unwary... . Heavy mist hung like curtains across patches of it, in places obscuring even the "sky." Whatever it was, it stretched off into infinity to both left and right, while directly across, so low it looked no more than a slight thickening of water, a dark smudge suggested a headland jutting toward me.

Just at the—water's?—edge stood a ruined structure of some sort, rising from the beach in a gentle slope to extend fifteen or twenty feet out over the lightless water. It had broken off—or something had broken it—leaving jagged edges to project above the smooth black surface below. The posts and ramp might once have been a dull gold; but now only hints of muted color clung to the grey stone. A bridge, maybe, that had collapsed?

Gauging the distance to the far shore, it must've been one hell of a span. I didn't see any sign of support pillars out there. Silence hung heavily in my ears. I could hear my breath rasping in my lungs. When I took a step forward to get a closer look at the ruined bridge, echoes of the loud crunch seemed to continue forever, disappearing across the misty horizon.

I stopped again, uncertain in the aftermath of that first loud noise, and scuffed a toe while deliberating on courage.

Blood froze in my veins, leaving my face stiff and cold. I knelt, and ran a disbelieving hand through the "gravel." Bones. Millions of them. Billions of them. Finger bones. Toe bones. Vertebrae. Wing bones. Tiny rodent skulls. Claws. Dull, greenish-white, and brittle as shale, the bones ran along the shore until it curved out of sight into the mist.

I thought some more about courage, wondering what it might feel like if I had any, and heard a faint sound, almost like a sigh of wind.

I looked up, glanced up and down the beach, then out across the water. I don't know what I expected to see; but when I saw it, I went very still. There was movement on the black surface, far out but approaching rapidly. I watched it come for some moments; then decided that staying on my knees would make me look entirely too overawed. Not that I wasn't; I just didn't want to give that impression. So I stood, and noticed I was breathing hard—and much too fast.

My fingers were gritty, so I brushed bone dust off my hands, wiping it onto my pants, where it clung like glue to the sweaty cloth. My boots were thick with the stuff, which coated the damp leather where I'd crushed brittle, dry bones into powder with my living weight.

Meanwhile, the object out on the water gradually took form, detaching from the black backdrop as it approached on a collision course with the ruined bridge support nearby.

Soon I could tell what it was: a flat-bottomed skiff, propelled by nothing I could see. A series of gentle ripples patently at odds with its speed ran from the front, along the sides, and out behind the back. The prow rose into twin poles topped by human skulls. The sides were black, writhing with the intricately twined bodies of carved black snakes. Eyes and fangs gleamed silver throughout the hideous pattern.

Standing in the bow was a gaunt old woman with long, greasy hair that no comb in the world could have untangled. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes were hollow, her whole body no more substantial than the bones I'd ground into dust. Her skin looked like the flaky piecrust from a TV commercial—but I didn't think a starving Ethiopian would've touched a piecrust that color.

The skiff stopped just short of the beach and we stared at each other across the intervening stretch of bones. Her eyes swept me at a glance, noting the bloodied knee wrappings, the weapons, the battered pack and heavily laden web gear, and stopped only when they caught my gaze. An expression that might have been the beginnings of a scowl or a laugh crossed her face, gone before it could really register.

"You're alive," she said. Her voice produced not even the whisper of an echo.

I repressed a spontaneous shudder and waited.

"Only the dead find their way here. Why have you come?"

The ball was in my court and abruptly I felt like a peewee-league runt going one-on-one against Kareem Abdul-Jabar. Confronting a pack of gods on their home court suddenly didn't seem like the great idea it had once been... . Under her penetrating gaze, I felt all too mortal, standing as I was on the bones of what might've been my own ancestors. I managed to check my virtually galvanic impulses, and—for a change—didn't answer flippantly.

There was no telling what this—woman?—might do or know.

"I'm looking for Odin." I winced at the thousands of echoes which bounced from water to "sky" and down again.

A grin split her face. She raised a hand and pointed to a spot behind me.

"Warriors looking for Odin find him by hanging on the tree."

I turned, already knowing what I would find but compelled to look anyway. A lightning-blasted oak had risen from the bone beach right behind me. The shattered trunk was rotten with the smell of death. Corpses swung from every twisting branch, ropes knotted tightly around decaying necks, spears plunged between the exposed bones of rib cages. Some had decayed until only the furs and helmets of Viking warriors clothed the bones; others had been strangled only last week, still clothed in flesh under uniforms of khaki, black, and olive drab. The congealed blood staining their chests looked black.

A moment ago there'd been nothing on that spot but beach, and now the stench sent me stumbling backward, trying desperately not to think about Hohenfels and Gary.

"And what will you say to Odin when you stand before him, human?" The old woman's voice called my attention back to the shore. "Will you ask to see Loki, where he lies bound?"

Loki! How in seven hells had the old witch known that? I stared down at my knife, suddenly aware of the focus of the old woman's keen interest. The knife lay quietly in its sheath, pretending to ignore me. Was the damned blade a mind reader? If it knew, Odin knew, and had maybe warned this disgusting old hag—unless she was the mind reader? Damn...

I tried to look unconcerned, and knew I failed utterly. Meanwhile, the old crone just watched me, and her eyes glittered.

How had she known I was after Loki? Loki—who, for the sheer reckless fun of putting the rest of the gods in his debt, had turned himself into a mare to help the gods weasel out on a deal they'd struck with a frost giant. Odin and his crew had broken their contract, and Loki ended up giving birth to a baby horse—Sleipnir. The biology was impossible, of course; but I'd decided, not long ago, that I would never again say anything was impossible.

I glanced up. The old witch was watching me with eyes that glittered like polished bone. She might or might not know that I needed Loki's help to catch his son. Right? Right.

"Yes," I answered, meeting the old crone's eyes. "I do seek a word with Loki."

Hollow eyes narrowed to slits. I could smell the stink of my own fear sweat and hoped to god—to God?—that she couldn't smell it, too.

"And when you speak to Loki," she said, her voice bitter as wormwood, "will you tell him of life's pleasures?" Oddly her eyes had the look of a person who knows he is going to die, and is determined to take as many of his killers with him as he can. Fever-bright, they burned like coals in the deep black hollows of her face. I found myself clutching the P-7.

"Yeah. Sure."

A laugh ran like ice along my skin.

"It is worth the trip to see that one squirm," she cackled, my presence almost forgotten in her glee. I stood sweating on the beach. "Come, human," the old woman commanded, gesturing imperially. "Loki awaits your pleasure."

I glanced over my shoulder to look back up Sleipnir's great tunnel. Then I drew a quick breath, forced myself to let go of the pistol, and climbed over the broken bridge. I dropped carefully into the skiff. To my surprise, my weight didn't cause the craft to so much as bob in the water.

A chill crawled along my spine as the skiff moved silently away from shore, heading for the distant blur on the horizon. My hair lay glued to my head from what felt like (and might have been) weeks of accumulated sweat, oil, and dirt. The remnants of my clothes flapped loosely on my frame. The bow churned up no froth in the black water, just gentle ripples that caught the far-off green of the ceiling and flung it back into my eyes.

I turned to look at the crone. She was wrapped in a filthy black cloak. The tattered edges of the garment writhed in the wind like living snakes. A shudder caught me unawares, and I hastily turned to study the inside of the skiff.

It was black inside as well as out, and completely watertight. None of the strange black water found its way inside. I wondered what they'd used to waterproof the wood, and if the substance had caused the black coloration. That wouldn't explain the silver eyes and fangs, though, unless they'd been added afterward, applied like gold leaf.

Beside the ancient woman's feet, rolling slightly on the floor, rested a bowl made of dried, whitened bone. It looked like a human skull case. There were a few disks inside that gleamed dully metallic in the green light. A long pole lay beside it, one end decorated with a wicked iron hook and the other with the polished skull of a wolf, the dark brown color of museum bones. I hoped the old woman used the hook for mooring the skiff—it had lethal potentials I didn't even want to think about.

"What thoughts are in your head, mortal?"

Her raspy voice—snake scales slithering across dry rock—reached over the sound of the wind, apparently without effort. I turned reluctantly to meet her gaze.

"This sea—what is it called?" I gestured out to the horizon.

Her cackle filled my ears. "This is no sea, human. This is the River Gjoll, flowing out of the great wellspring Hvergelmir, which feeds all the rivers of Niflheim. Gjoll is Hel's river—it flows past her gate." She laughed again. "Living men are not welcome in her hall, little man. Hel prefers them newly dead. Shall we oblige her?"

Before I could even try to frame an answer, she was talking again.

"Loki's kin, she is, full blood daughter, and sent here by Them above as don't trust her. Give Hel the dead to satisfy her, They said, and she won't look to Asgard with greed in her eye." The old woman's laugh wheezed with every sentence. "Comes the hour when the sons of Muspell ride, and Hel will have Asgard; aye, in flames. And I, Modgud, will stand and watch as I've done through these long centuries."

Just when I thought the bombast had ended, Modgud's eyes caught mine and held them.

"I'll watch for Loki's fall in the Final Battle, I will, the great Ragnarok, and I'll laugh when I see him down. His groaning and fighting to be free of the Rocks shook the earth and broke my lovely bridge... ." Her thin shoulders were shaking, with visible rage. Spittle flew from loose lips. "Once I was Queen of the Golden Bridge of the Gjoll and now—nothing!—nothing but a slave, chained to this wretched boat. I'll watch him bleed and die on Vigrid's plain and I'll laugh as Surt burns the world. Aye, it'll be a fine day for vengeance when the sons of Muspell ride."

Modgud's eyes were glazed, my presence forgotten.

And I thought I was out for vengeance... ?

I hoped to hell—or was it Hel?—I did nothing to anger the old witch. Enemies like her I could do without. She began crooning to herself in a language I'd never heard, so I turned my gaze back out to sea—or rather, to the river. Christ, they didn't do things on a small scale in Niflheim. The opposite shore was closer; but not much.

What would I find on that inhospitable jut of land? Niflheim was where the old, the sick, and the accident-prone came when they died. From everything I could gather, it was supposed to be a pretty dull place. All the real fun was in Valhalla; although if Valhalla was supposed to be fun, maybe I'd settle for boredom and Niflheim.

The only thing I heard was wind in my ears. Given the way sound carries across the water, I couldn't imagine there'd be much happening over there. Maybe I'd find Hel's Hall, like Modgud had said. Would Loki's daughter tell me where to find her father? Or just casually squash the life out of me for daring to intrude into her kingdom? My fingers caressed my pistol and I thought I heard the old crone's snicker at my back.

A movement far off to port, almost on the horizon, caught my eye. The water was boiling. Great waves rolled off some disturbance. Plumes of spray shot into the air like a row of uncapped oil wells—angry foam bubbled and hissed for nearly a mile in either direction from the disturbance's center. A brief gleam tantalized my retinas, gone before I could name color or substance. The water continued to boil and spew for several moments more, then gradually subsided to flat black again.

I turned to look at Modgud; but she hadn't noticed or didn't care, and after her response to my last question, I didn't much feel like asking. The first rolling swell caught up with the skiff, lifting it slightly before the stern slipped into the trough. I thought the next wave would surely swamp us; but the skiff only repeated the gentle, lifting motion. Or was Modgud doing the lifting to keep her craft afloat?

I wondered if Death liked wet feet any more than the rest of us. Except she wasn't really Death; Hel was... .

I shook my head to clear it. Maybe it was something in the air, or just exhaustion; but my thought processes were beginning to resemble a well-scrambled egg. I turned my eyes back toward the far shore, which to my astonishment suddenly was only a hundred yards away.

There was no repetition of the bone beach. Instead, the ground was an odd, indefinable grey, somewhere between green and black, undercut at the water's edge to form a steep clay bank as high as my waist. The other side of the bridge had collapsed into stony rubble. From the river's edge, the land rose in sharp ridges, each higher than the last, blocking further view inland. Strewn across those ridges, and half buried in them, were jagged boulders, somewhat lighter grey in color, ranging from no larger than my fist to massive blocks that would've dwarfed a three-bedroom house. Some glinted oddly in the light, with occasional bright flashes of genuine color that made me wonder if they, too, were phosphorescing.

I didn't see anything that remotely resembled buildings. There was no sign of vegetation; but as we neared the bank, I could see that the top six inches of soil were extremely dark, forming a layer that looked richer, more organic than the clay below. The whole sweep of land was barren, utterly deserted. I wasn't sure if I should be relieved or apprehensive at the lack of habitation.

I had no more than these few moments for an impression of my destination because the boat had stopped dead in the water. The silence of the cavern rushed into my ears, replacing the roar of wind. We were still a good twenty yards from shore. I turned to look at Modgud. What now?

"You must pay the toll," she said softly, her eyes dancing.

I glanced at the intervening yards of water. I was a pretty good swimmer. A cackle interrupted my thoughts. She had picked up the braincase bowl and was scooping out a handful of silver coins. Modgud dipped the skull into the water, filling it; but carefully kept her gnarled fingers dry. She raised the braincase to eye level. Seconds later, water poured out the hole it had eaten through the bottom. I swallowed.

"You must pay the toll," she said again, with a grin that lingered as her eyes measured my braincase against the ruined bowl in her hand.

"Uh..." I fumbled through my pockets, fingers shaking despite my efforts to remain calm. I dug out a scant handful of change and saw mostly pennies, plus a couple of old "lucky" dimes I was never without.

I didn't have any gold, except the little gold Thor's hammer on a chain around my neck. I was awfully fond of that.

"I—uh—haven't got any gold coins—"

Modgud spat over the side. There was a quiet hiss as spittle struck the acid "water." Her lip curled. "Gold is for trinkets. Junk. Silver was the price of the bridge, and silver is the price of the ferry."

I scooped up both dimes and started to hand them over.

A disembodied voice reached across the water. "I wouldn't give her both, if I were you."

I spun. Pennies slid all over the bottom of the skiff. A man was rising to his feet, from a comfortable seat against a boulder.

"What?" I knew I sounded like a Vienna Boys' Choir soprano, and didn't care. I'd looked at that piece of ground, and hadn't even noticed him.

"I'd give her only one," he repeated, with a genial smile. "How else will you pay for the ride back across?"

Good point.

If I lived that long.

I handed Modgud one dime. She curled bony, claw-tipped fingers around it.

The boat swept silently toward shore, and grounded gently a moment later. The owner of the disembodied voice had come down to the shoreline, and now stood looking into the skiff. Blond, with laughing blue eyes. He was surprisingly short, but compactly built and muscular. There couldn't have been an ounce of fat anywhere on him. Even at my best—which I hadn't been since getting shot full of holes—I was nothing but flabby standing beside him. And this guy was dead as a doornail. Dead people were supposed to look... well... decently dead.

He balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, arms loose, ready to grip my hand in friendship, or heft a weapon, whichever was called for. He wore a long sword, in a black scabbard worked with silver. His torso was protected by a ring-mail shirt, but he wore no helmet. Cautious; but not overtly threatening. Did he work for Mistress Hel? Or...

A bloodstain had dried across the front of his shirt, just visible beneath the mail. A curious little green dart was embedded in his chest, having struck between the circular links.

Green dart? The first dead person I met in Niflheim was a god? The "coincidence" made me sweat, despite the cool, damp air. The dart that had killed Baldr was Loki's doing. Though someone else had thrown the weapon, Loki alone had known that the mistletoe dart was the only thing in the nine worlds that could kill his foster nephew.

My next—irreverent—thought was how extraordinarily short Baldr was, for a god. I hadn't exactly pictured myself as a giant; it hadn't occurred to me that I might actually tower over any of the Norse gods. Vikings were supposed to have been tall people.

"How long are you planning on staying?" he asked, nodding toward Modgud.

With difficulty, I turned my attention back to the silent old crone. "I'll be finished here by this time tomorrow, or I should be, anyway, so how about you pick me up then?"

She just looked at me with those weird, hollow eyes.

My Nordic athlete spoke up: "Death has no concept of time, friend."

"Oh." Logical.

"Well, then, how about tides? We're at the bottom of Yggdrasil here, right? And Earth—I mean Midgard—is just above us here, so it's all part of the same tree, right? And this river is big enough to have tides, right?"

I really was going to have to stop babbling like a fool.

The blond laughed quietly, a nice sympathetic chuckle that somehow put me at ease despite my suspicions.

"Not necessarily; but it happens there are tides here. Two in about, oh, four-and-a-half songs. Roughly the same as Midgard. Earth," he added, smiling in deference.

Songs? Did they keep track of time by how long it took to sing a ballad? Without day and night, and no real need for sleep, it made some sense.

"Good. Can you be here, at this spot, in two tides?"

She held my gaze, and smiled slowly. "Can you?"

"Just be here, okay? I'll have the silver with me."

I knew I sounded petulant; but that old witch made me nervous, and Baldr—the dead god—was taking an interest in my affairs that I could have done without.

Modgud inclined her greasy head and I jumped ashore. I slipped in the clay, and slid toward the acid river. Before I could plummet feet-first into a messy death, my benefactor grabbed my arm, and hauled me to the top of the bank. I panted my thanks, which he waved away, innately courteous, although I saw his eyes narrow slightly.

He was probably wondering—with sudden apprehension—whether saving me had been the smartest thing he'd ever done. Given who his father was, I wasn't so sure—from his viewpoint—that it had been, either. Personally, I was pretty grateful. I had to watch my step triply now that I was squarely in the middle of Death's domain. I squared my pack and tugged my tattered shirt back down into place.

His first question voiced what everyone must have been wondering, myself included.

"What brings you here?"

The old woman's high cackle stopped any answer I might have formed.

"He's come to torment your uncle," she wheezed gleefully.

Baldr's brows drew sharply down. My instinct was to dive for my knife, even as I wondered whether a dead god could be killed again... .

The skiff shot out into the river, disappearing into a bank of mist, which left me no choice but to face Loki's nephew—and Odin's son.