The road led her up the hill of Hlidskialf.
Giving reserved greetings to those Aesir she met, Frigg walked on, alone, up the slopes of the hill. High above the halls and woods, fields and rivers, she reached a wide, open, grassy space that crowned the hill. In the centre was a large stone seat.
Breathing heavily, as much from anticipation as from exertion, Frigg approached the chair. Would she find Odin? Few Aesir other than her husband dared sit upon the stone chair and look out across the worlds; indeed, it was forbidden to all but Odin and her. Young Frey had done so once, in the morning of the world, and gone away heartsick.
Nevertheless, Frigg’s need was great. Odin had been gone long, longer than he had ever been before; longer than the time when he was deemed dead in his absence, when his brothers Vili and Ve took his possessions. Rumours spoke of frost giants marshalling their hordes in Jotunheim; of fire giants plotting in Muspellzheim; of swart-elves and trolls, all the enemies of Asgard, scheming and once again preparing to launch their assault upon the worlds of order.
Without Odin, the Aesir were lost.
Frigg sat upon the cold stone chair, and began to scan the worlds, and the spaces between the worlds. Alfheim she spied, the woodlands of the light elves; then Vanaheim’s bright oceans and islands; Midgard’s bustling cities and out-flung wildernesses; the mountains and castles of Jotunheim. Niflheim’s ice. Muspellzheim’s fire. Svartalfaheim’s sinister darkness. Hel’s worm-gnawed gloom, where her own dearest son sat at Death’s side, in sombre state.
But nowhere, among all the teeming millions of the worlds, could she see the beloved figure of her husband, in any of his guises. Was he dead? Was he imprisoned somewhere beyond even the sight of Hlidskialf? Or was he hiding, for some unfathomable reason of his own?
Frigg was about to rise, her curiosity punished with longing and heartache like Frey in days long gone. Then her eyes lit upon two figures struggling ashore on the ice-choked shores of Jotunheim, far to the north of the perilous forest of Ironwood.
Although he had clearly been swimming a long time in the freezing waters, the taller of the two wore a long sword at his side.
Frigg could never say what it was that drew her eyes to the shivering, half-drowned human and his dwarven companion. But she could not tear her gaze away from them. Her heart beat faster, and hope rose unbidden within her divine body.
It was a small thing to hang hope upon, she knew; two half-drowned vagabonds on the hostile coast of Giantland. Nevertheless, she leaned closer to watch their progress.
1 THE ICE FIELDS
‘We survived, then.’
Hal surveyed the icy landscape with eyes as bleak as his surroundings. Shivering, he glanced upwards to where the light of the low-lying sun filtered through the mist. That made a change. It was a long time since he had last seen the sun. He burst into a fit of coughing.
‘What of Prince Helgrim?’
Hal turned to look at his companion, who had spoken. Tanngrisnir the Dwarf eyed him darkly. Hal rubbed his cold face. ‘The last I saw of him, he was dragged away by the force of the waters,’ he wheezed. ‘It took all my strength to hold on to the ice block.’ He looked out to sea, where the block of ice to which they had both clung still bobbed in the murk. ‘Where are we, Tanngrisnir?’ he added.
The dwarf stretched his cold and tired limbs. He looked about him at the soft snow that blurred the lines of the crags and boulders.
‘Jotunheim,’ he replied. ‘The world of the giants. I recognise this strand.’
‘You’ve been here before?’ Hal coughed again.
Tanngrisnir nodded shortly. ‘I first met my old comrade-in-arms here,’ he replied, ‘Hlymir the storm giant. He whose mother will teach you the arts of the warrior.’
Darkness was swiftly descending upon the snows, although the sun never quite sank behind the horizon, and strange multi-coloured lights danced all night through the atmosphere above. After their ordeal on the icy waters, neither of the two wanderers felt like moving far. The strand yielded sufficient driftwood for them to build a fire in the lea of a crag, and they sat huddled over it as the darkness beyond grew deeper.
‘What now, Tanngrisnir?’ Hal asked. He was cold and hungry, and the fire left his back to freeze. His nose was running, and he still had little idea what they were doing here. ‘How do we find your old friend’s mother?’ The dwarf stroked his beard in silence. ‘What do you suppose happened to the others? To Gwen and Eric? To Ilmadis and Mordis, and her pet wolves?’
Tanngrisnir snorted. ‘How can I answer that question? The waters drew us apart. We escaped death, escaped into this world. Perhaps they did, too.’
Hal frowned. ‘This makes no sense to me,’ he told the dwarf. ‘They said at school that Earth is a planet in the middle of space, orbiting the sun. These worlds we’ve visited are divided by seas and rivers, not by space. Where does what I learnt at school fit in? Doesn’t that universe exist?’
Tanngrisnir shook his head. ‘It exists, and in other ways it does not. It does not exist here. This world, the world of the giants, exists on another plane, if you like; another dimension, as I believe your wise men would say. Asgard is in another plane; Svartalfaheim, Hel, and all the rest exist in their own separate universes, as does the world of men.
‘However, they all intersect, brought together by the mystical rivers of Elivagar and Vimur, and all the others. And linking them all is the World-Tree. Each root, each branch, leads to a different world; separate, unique, but interconnected. You saw one of them in Niflheim.’
Hal absorbed this. ‘I see,’ he replied. ‘Then if we had gone a different way when Prince Helgrim attacked us, we would have just… floated into my universe. Is that right?’
Tanngrisnir nodded. ‘It is unlikely that you would notice the change,’ he replied. ‘It would be as seamless as the transition from Hel to Svartalfaheim, or even from Svartalfaheim to Niflheim. But once in that world, that universe, it would obey all the rules your teachers taught you - unless you were to leave it under certain special circumstances.’
Hal coughed and spluttered. ‘Then… maybe Gwen and Eric, and er, er Mordis might have gone back to Earth?’ he asked eventually.
Tanngrisnir lay down on the cold rock before the fire. ‘You must learn to find your own answers one day, Hal,’ he replied. He closed his eyes, and went to sleep. Hal looked down at him, exasperated. The dwarf was becoming as difficult as Gangrel…
Where was Gangrel now, though? Had he truly died when he fell from the swart-elf stronghold? Frowning, Hal ran his fingers along the hilt of the Runeblade, the sword he wore almost uncomfortably at his side.
He had come here to learn the discipline of the warrior. Tanngrisnir had said that Iarnvidia, Hlymir’s mother, would teach him. But he did not know where he would find her, in this cold waste of ice and rock.
Coughing, he lay down beside the fire, and tried to sleep.
Images rushed into his mind like ice-melt, unlocked from his cold-numbed memory, poignant as only half-forgotten memories can be. Yet they were not his memories.
He had seen many strange sights in recent weeks, but never had he watched phantom warriors battling upon a windswept moor. Never had he seen black smoke rise from a huddle of turf-walled bothies, and known it as a sign of doom. Never had he sailed north, north, and north again past islands and fjords, pursuing the dark sail of a ship that bobbed forever on the grey horizon.
Yet, here at his side were his two friends, Gwen and Eric. Dressed strangely, and Eric had a beard. But were those truly their names? It seemed to him that they were named differently - and that his own name was somehow different, also.
The images rushed past him and around him, sending his consciousness spinning like a twig in a torrent. Aboard the dark ship, they confronted a menacing figure, a tall warrior who wore a wolf-skin like a helmet: a figure Hal had never seen before, and yet which was naggingly familiar. A face he had seen in forgotten dreams, nightmares that had left him on waking,
left him with nothing more than an unaccountable sense of dread.
A face he had seen in a forgotten past.
* * * * *
Hal awoke with a start.
The cold, dim half-light gathered around the glowing embers of their fire like a wolf pack, waiting with awful patience. The wind howled in the distance, over the nearer crash of waves upon the shore. The lights in the sky danced crazily on. He coughed, cold to the marrow, and tried to sleep again.
Which was worse? His dreams were nightmare-ridden, his waking life little better. Looking across the fire, he saw Tanngrisnir’s form sleeping peacefully, despite the cold and the night-noises, and the rocky ground. With a grunt, Hal sank back down, ignored the dull light of the low sun and the madly jigging lights of the aurora, and tried to find sleep once more.
His eyelids hung heavy, and he teetered on the brink of dreams, but whenever he began to doze, the howling of the wind would bring him back into wakefulness. After what seemed like hours of this wretched state, Hal rose to pace back and forth up the strand near the glowing embers.
He put his hand on his hilt, and peered into the howling murk. Was there truly anything out there? Or was it simply his imagination?
He settled himself back beside the fire again. Sleep would not come. His body felt like ice, his thoughts were dull and heavy, and still sleep would not come.
The wind died down. Chill silence settled on the land, broken only by the lap of waves: the silence of the wilderness, remote beyond imagining from the world of humanity.
* * * * *
Hal woke, and gazed around in dazed surprise. He had fallen asleep, after all! And his dreams… His dreams melted in his memory even as he tried to gather them. He could remember nothing he could put into words.
Only an unaccountable dread.
At a sound from behind him, Hal rolled over, and tried to draw his sword. The scabbard tangled between his legs, and sent him flying as he tried to rise.
Tanngrisnir looked down at him, and stamped over to the fireside. ‘Gangrel was right,’ he grunted. ‘You have much to learn.’
He flung down the carcasses of two white-furred hares, and began skinning them. Hal rose, and watched in silence. ‘So this place isn’t uninhabited, then?’ he asked finally. His eyes travelled around the cold landscape: the ice-choked waters to the north, the frozen sand stretching away on either side, the snow-muffled rocks and boulders inland.
Tanngrisnir grunted, and began gutting the first hare.
‘I thought I heard something out there,’ Hal said vaguely, gesturing inland. ‘Late last night. Not that it was night. When we were sleeping, I mean. Not that I was sleeping...’
Tanngrisnir interrupted. ‘It could have been anything,’ he replied shortly. ‘Or anyone.’
Hal rose, and paced back and forth. ‘Where is this Iarnvidia, then?’ he asked, after a while. Tanngrisnir had finished preparing his catch, and was now roasting the meat over the embers.
‘She is a giantess who dwells in the forest of Ironwood; many leagues to the south, beyond the kingdom of the trolls,’ Tanngrisnir replied. ‘Unlike many of her kind, she favours the dominion of the Aesir, and works with them. Her son, Hlymir, was an outcast and a rebel, and came to be my companion in the wanderings of my youth.
‘His mother has trained many warriors in the past. Gangrel intended that you should study under her. Since we know little more of Gangrel’s plans than that you should become wielder of the Runeblade, we go there so that you may learn. It seems it is your weird to be champion of Asgard, against the coming onslaught of the fire giants and their allies.’
Hal tried to digest this, found it unpalatable and pushed it to one side in his mind as Tanngrisnir handed over a skewer of hare. Hal gnawed uneasily upon the bitter meat, and looked thoughtful. ‘Why me?’ he asked at last. ‘Gangrel never seemed to have the time to explain it to me. But why am I to wield the Runeblade?’
Tanngrisnir shook his head. ‘I do not know. It must be in your blood.’
‘I had a dream,’ Hal added after a long pause.
‘So you did sleep!’ said Tanngrisnir. ‘By Tyr, I thought that you remained awake all night.’
Hal stared into the fire. ‘I dreamed of Gwen and Eric,’ he added. ‘Except they weren’t Gwen and Eric. And I wasn’t me.’ He looked up. ‘Except I was.’
‘Of what did you dream?’ Tanngrisnir asked.
Hal frowned, and tried to put it into words. Finally, he shook his head, and shrugged. ‘I can’t really recall it,’ he replied. ‘It felt like a memory. Yet it was nothing I remember.’
Tanngrisnir rose, after wrapping the remnants of their meal in hide and stuffing it into a leather satchel. ‘Time to get moving,’ he said. ‘Or do you wish to freeze to the spot?’
Hal got to his feet, brushing himself down. He looked around. ‘Where do we go?’ he asked.
‘Follow me,’ Tanngrisnir replied, and began to pick his way across the rocks in the direction of the crags to the south.
Hal glimpsed a range of high mountains through the mist. As they made their way across the steadily ascending ground, the peaks grew gradually closer.
‘Is that where we’re going?’ Hal asked his dour companion.
Tanngrisnir nodded. ‘Those heights are known as the Bones of Ymir,’ he replied. ‘Beyond them lies Isavellir, the ice-fields, and the kingdom of the trolls. South of Trollheim is the forest of Ironwood - our destination.’
‘Listen!’ Hal said, halting in his tracks. ‘What’s that?’
From the mist ahead, a slithering, hissing sound came, like someone skiing across snow. The sound seemed magnified - perhaps by some freak effect of the mist. Before Hal could rationalise it further, a dim, titanic figure burst through the swirling clouds.
‘Hide, by Frey!’ Tanngrisnir urged, dragging Hal behind a boulder.
‘What is it?’ Hal hissed. ‘I must see…’ He raised his head above the boulder, and his eyes widened.
Skiing across the path ahead was a huge woman, easily eleven or twelve feet tall; a lithe muscular figure clad in thick furs that left her sinewy arms and legs bare. Her face was cold yet forbiddingly beautiful. Over her shoulder, she carried a crude stone spear.
Tanngrisnir pulled Hal back down again. ‘Don’t be an oaf!’ he hissed. ‘Did he see you?’
Hal crouched beside him. ‘No,’ he retorted sulkily. ‘And it was a she. She wasn’t looking over here. But why did we have to hide from her? I could have fought her. How can I become a hero if I run away all the time?’
‘No hero rushes rashly into the fray,’ Tanngrisnir retorted. Slowly, he raised his own head above the boulder. The slithering of the skis was receding into the mist.
‘Come now,’ the dwarf whispered. ‘The giantess has gone.’ They hurried up the path.
‘That will have been a frost giantess,’ Tanngrisnir explained. ‘They are more common south of here, in Ymisland and around Utgard, their capital. Doubtless she is out hunting. I am sure she would not turn her nose up at human or dwarf. We must be careful. This is a perilous land.’
The mountains grew closer as the two wanderers crossed the barren, mist-hung snow. Soon they were among the foothills, where cliffs rose above them on either side. The wind blew cold and bitter, knifing their ice-chill bodies. Hal walked hunched up against the cold as they proceeded up the pass that led through the Bones of Ymir, and he coughed bitterly to himself.
The mountains rose on either side, like giants themselves, blindly watching the progress of two insects that crawled beneath the skies’ face. The wind howled around the peaks and screamed through the valleys, buffeting and tugging at their slowly progressing forms. Snow whirled around them as they inched up the bleak, barren pass, and the misty sky was the colour of cold iron.
Yet a distant, dismal, steely sun shone through, dimly illuminating the peaks from the east. Despite the cold and the wind, Hal felt his hopes lifted by this glimpse of distant light and warmth. He had spent so long in worlds fa
r from the sun.
As he trudged on, he wondered where his friends might be. He had been split from them at the confluence of the Elivagar and the Vimur, between Niflheim, Jotunheim, and Midgard - as the inhabitants of the other worlds called Earth. Maybe Eric and Gwen had gone home.
He ached to be with them, wherever they were.
The mountain walls enclosed the pass on either side of Hal and Tanngrisnir, and the shadows of the cliffs cut off all sunlight. Down in the darkness of the pass, the two wanderers continued their slow, painful journey. About noon, they paused in a cave in the hillside to eat cold hare-meat, and to squeeze water from snow to drink. Refreshed and reinvigorated, they continued half an hour later.
‘How much further?’ Hal said, as they made their way up the dark valley.
‘Far,’ Tanngrisnir replied gloomily, ‘Many leagues before we reach the head of the pass, and see Isavellir below us. Many more before we reach our destination.’
Cheered not at all by his companion’s statement, Hal walked on.
The effects of food and rest wore off quickly, and soon Hal felt as he had before, like a machine, striding across the rock too numb to register his cold and weariness. How far had they come? How far would they go? Where would their next meal come from?
The wind screamed about them. Hal stumbled on in a trance, hunched in upon himself.
With the mountain walls still enclosing them they crossed the sloping rocks as mice might scurry across some vast, deserted, darkened hall.
Again, they rested in the lea of a massive boulder, chafing their frozen limbs into some semblance of life. The mist hung above them like a roof. Ahead, hazy light filtered through, to illumine the dark scene.
‘How far are we from the pass?’ Hal asked hoarsely.