MythOS (WebMage Book 4), page 14
“What the hell do you think you’re trying . . . to . . . pull . . . ?” My voice had started the sentence out with a yell, but by the time I reached the end, it had trailed into a confused whisper.
“Zeus?” I said, though I knew the answer even as I spoke.
This was not the thunder god I knew. Not Zeus, king of the gods of Olympus. If nothing else, Zeus’s eyes had never been so bloodshot, not even after the heartiest night of partying. Yet . . . the echoes of that god were plain in this god’s face and manner—I had no doubt that I faced another god.
“Who are you?” whispered Tisiphone from beside me. I found the stunned wonder in her voice reassuring—a sign my confusion was fully justified.
The man in front of us looked from me to Tisiphone and back again, repeatedly. His grin grew with each pass until he finally burst out laughing, a deep, infectious boom of a laugh that rolled like thunder—Zeus’s laugh almost, but maddeningly not quite. Little bolts of lightning flickered in his beard when he laughed, just as they did for Zeus.
“Firebird and blackbird, what a perfect pair,” he said in a voice that was and was not Zeus’s. Then he laughed his thunderous laugh again. “And both agog in the noonday sun. Do you really not recognize me, then, flame and shadow?”
“No,” I said, though I was beginning to have the distinct feeling I should.
“Does this help?” He tapped an iron-gloved finger on the great-headed hammer hanging from a blackened metal hammer loop on his thick belt, producing a dull “clank.”
I shook my head.
“Thor?”
“Oh. Oh! OH!” Suddenly I had it, and why he looked so much like Zeus, too.
If it hadn’t been for the brain crash his Zeus resemblance had induced, I’d have had it a lot sooner. Thor! God of Thunder and wielder of the hammer with the unpronounceable name. No wonder he looked so much like Zeus. They were in the same business. The resemblance was uncanny.
Both were big, muscular men—seven feet or more and broad-shouldered. They could have easily worn each other’s clothes. Both had thick beards, though Zeus’s was a reddish gold, and Thor’s was a gold-tinged red. They both had broad, open faces and curly hair.
There was one huge difference, though—their eyes. Zeus’s are perpetually wide open and vacant, making him look somewhat dim and naive. It’s a lie of course; he’s a shrewd old bastard and deeply jaded. Thor’s were . . . distracting. At first glance they looked horribly bloodshot, the eyes of a drunk hitting the end of a three-day binge. But on closer examination, the red threads no longer looked like blood. They looked like lightning, constantly moving and flashing and forking. I’d have bet money that in the dark they gave off even more light than mine.
The two gods’ attitudes were different, too. Zeus is a joker of the hail-fellow-well-met variety and his own best audience—he laughs constantly. But it’s an act, a hard, clever soul playing at gentle dimness to take in the rubes. Thor laughed easily, too, or at least gave the impression of it, but it came off as the good-natured laugh of a wise man who enjoyed life to the full despite its kinks and twists.
Gods are bigger than life, and their personalities reach well beyond the bounds of their skins. To spend time around a god is—to a certain extent—to spend time within the god, and this one felt homey.
“I knew it would come to you eventually,” Thor said, just as my cascading realizations started to settle down. “Intuition indeed.”
“I take it from that, that you know of me as well,” I said.
Thor nodded. “Odin is my father. Though he didn’t mention the lady when last we talked.” He indicated Tisiphone with a jerk of his chin. “Neither her name nor her beauty nor any mention of her nature. What, and who, are you, my dear?” Thor pulled the iron glove off his right hand and offered it in greeting.
Tisiphone inclined her head but didn’t take the hand. “I am Tisiphone, sometimes called Vengeance, and no one’s ‘dear.’ Especially not the son of the god who kidnapped and imprisoned my lover.”
“Ah, yes, that.” Thor chuckled and left his hand extended. “That was not the wisest thing my father has ever done, and I would have counseled him against it. But then, his inability to see Raven here has blinded him to more than just the future. I won’t apologize for a mistake that wasn’t mine, but I won’t try to repeat it either. On that you have my word. Come, step out of that ring, the both of you, and talk with me awhile.”
“What have we to talk about?” asked Tisiphone, impatience plain in her tone.
“Loki for one,” replied Thor. “At least I suspect we have something to talk about there since you are standing in the midst of a devilish bit of new magic he’s brewed up, and no one who’s ever had dealings with him has done so without ultimately coming to regret it.” He turned his gaze my way. “Though, I must admit that your eyes suggest you might have more in common with Loki the Trickster than would make me entirely happy.”
Tisiphone laughed and finally shook Thor’s hand. “There, you may have hit the mark. Ravirn tends to leave a trail of not-entirely-happy souls wherever he goes as well. Come on, Ravirn, we’ve got to find Melchior, and from the sounds of things, Thor is an expert on the Trickster.” She winked at me. “The other Trickster, that is.”
I humphed, but followed Tisiphone out of the faerie ring. She had a point, a number of them, actually, though I was nowhere near as annoying as Loki. At least, I really hoped I wasn’t. I was honest enough to admit that Hades, the Fates, and at least one of Tisiphone’s sisters might see things very differently.
Thor extended his hand to me as well and with a bit of an anticipatory wince I put mine in his. Several amazingly long seconds later he returned it to me, somewhat smaller and the worse for wear—because of intense compression—but still basically intact.
“Come,” said Thor, “sit with me by the fire and we’ll talk.”
He led us a brief way through the trees to a place where a goat-drawn chariot sat in a small clearing. There was no fire when we arrived, but Thor fixed that by the simple expedient of raising his hammer and pointing it at a fallen log. Lightning shot from its head and instantly ignited the wood. Then Thor slid the hammer, now glowing a dull, angry red, back into the metal loop on his belt.
“I’d cook you up a bit of roast goat,” he said, pointing at the chariot, “but there’s a lot of daylight left, and I may need them to take me somewhere before tomorrow morning.”
“That’s all right,” I said, though I was more than a bit confused by the offer. “We haven’t really got a whole lot of time for things like dinner at the moment either.” Besides, I hated goat—a matter of some contention at family parties. “Speaking of which . . .”
“Loki,” said Thor. “I presume you’ve a bone to pick with him since his was the name that conjured you out of your ring. What has he done to you?”
“He kidnapped my best friend,” I growled.
“We’re hunting him now in hopes of making a rescue,” added Tisiphone.
“Typical.” Thor shook his head. “Loki is the trial of the Aesir, and one we too often fail, I think.” He tapped the still-glowing hammer. “I would not have Mjolnir were it not for Loki, nor would Odin have his spear or Frey his great golden boar. All were part of the Trickster’s payment for stealing the hair of my wife. Mighty gifts, and we will have dire need of them come the hour of Ragnarok, but leaving the thief his life was a dear price. Dearer, I think, than Odin—who sees deep into the future—will yet say.”
Thor stopped speaking and glowered into the fire, missing my nod. I was sure he was right. The more time I spent here, the more I remembered from the Norse myths I’d read in that long-ago class, though I’d have happily committed nine kinds of larceny to get my hands on a copy of the textbook and a couple of hours to reread it. Unlike my own family’s story, the Norse gods’ tale had a distinct and unpleasant ending, one involving Loki’s leading an army of giants against Asgard. Of course that left two questions begging.
One: Did they know about it? Odin had certainly seemed to when he spoke of Ragnarok and his family’s dark ending, while Thor did not. Denial? Selective memory?
And two: Was the war to come the future? Or a future? Fate could be a slippery thing, or at least that was my experience. Of course, how much that experience meant in this place with its chaos that was not my chaos and binary that was not my binary was an open question.
Thor finally looked up. “One day Loki is our greatest ally. The next, our fiercest enemy. No surprise, I guess.” He pointed at the burning log. “Loki is Fire, aiding and destroying by turns. But then”—he glanced from me to Tisiphone—“I think you may know something of fire. Tell me a story. If it is a good one, I will help you find Loki and rescue your friend. If it is not, I will tell you one in return, and we may part ways in friendship.”
“What sort of story do you want to hear?” I asked.
“Tell me of the magic rings that Loki spreads across our land. Tell me also of the Raven, Intuition, and his eyes so like and yet unlike the Trickster, Loki’s. Give me the tale of a blackbird and the firebird who travels with him.”
“It’s a long story, and I haven’t the time to tell it all,” I said, stalling.
I didn’t think he was going to much like my role in the faerie-ring proliferation or a number of other things. At the same time, I didn’t think lying was going to work very well. Nor skipping over the relevant bits. I looked again at the bulging muscles and the forking lightning of Thor’s eyes. Loki was a true god, one of the great powers of this MythOS; if we could convince Thor to give us a hand, we’d be in a much better state to demand Melchior’s release. I sighed. Best to start with the worst and work my way up from there.
“The faerie rings are my fault,” I said. “A magic I brought with me from another world, or worlds, really. One that lies beyond Ginnungagap—” The void of ice and fire that was the Norse answer to the Primal Chaos. “Loki entrapped me in a ring of fire, and I transformed it to escape.” I sketched in what had happened with Loki at the miniature of Shakespeare’s house. “I didn’t realize he would be able to use the magic himself, though I should have, and intentions count less than results, I’m afraid.”
“Go on,” said Thor. “Tell me more about this other world of yours.”
“Ever hear the name Zeus?” I asked.
“It sounds vaguely familiar, but no more than that.”
“Then I’ll come back to it. How do you feel about Skuld?”
“The Norn? I try to stay well away from her and her puppet-master sisters.”
“I’ll start there, since I’m not real fond of them myself. Your Norns are very like the Fates of my own pantheoverse. In fact, Skuld claimed them as sisters, an idea I hate, since that would make Skuld something of a great-aunt. Since I’ve already got two that like me even less than I like them, that seems a major step in the wrong direction.”
As quickly as I could, I told him of my lineage and how I came into conflict with the Fates when they tried to steal free will from mankind. Thor growled at the thought, which I read as a good sign. I explained how in the conflict a dear friend had died—the webgoblin Shara—and how I had ventured into Hades to rescue her.
At that Thor clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to stagger me. “Good man. Just so did Bragi bring Idun back from Hel. That you would dare the underworld for a friend speaks well of you. Say on. What happened next?”
“Well, things didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped.”
I spoke then of my meeting with Persephone and how the virus the goddess had written nearly destroyed the mweb and with it the whole multiverse. From there I went on to Persephone’s rescue and how the damage to Necessity and the mweb had allowed the goddess Nemesis to escape into the body of my cousin Dairn and in turn of my duel with her and the further injuries to Necessity.
Somewhere in there I noticed how quiet Tisiphone had grown and that she did not choose to add to the story. Not surprising, I suppose, considering how much of the damage to her mother, Necessity, could be laid at my feet. To say nothing of the bits of unidentifiable claw and the blood that had come through into our world and whatever they might portend. Since there was nothing I could do about that, I hurried through my encounter with the abacuses of Necessity and whatever had happened there to bring us here.
Finally, I related what had happened in the two days since we had arrived in Midgard. The whole took close to an hour, and one I’d rather have spent searching for Melchior, but we could really use the kind of help Thor could give. When I finished, Thor sat quietly for another couple of minutes, finally nodding.
“There is much in your story that I would like to know more about, but if we are to do your friend and familiar much good, then we should move quickly.” He leaped to his feet and in three strides stood at the reins of his chariot. “Come.”
“Then you’ll help?” I asked.
Thor nodded. “There was much left untold in your story, but no lies. You are a strange creature by my standards, a Trickster in the same mold as Loki, and yet as unlike him as the hound who guards the cattle is unlike the wolf who would devour them. I see a hero in you, one the Valkyries would be proud to choose from the field, though you will deny the charge, I think. You seek the right, and so I will help you.”
Boy did I have him snowed. I turned to Tisiphone and raised a sardonic eyebrow, inviting her to share the irony of anyone calling me a hero. She just smiled a brittle smile and tapped her nose in the classic charades acknowledgment of the correct answer to a clue. I rolled my eyes. I was many things, probably chief among them a pain in the posterior of Fate, but a hero was simply not on the menu. Too many of my successes are also disasters and vice versa for that.
Still smiling, Tisiphone took my arm and led me to join Thor. “Our chariot awaits.”
As soon as we stepped aboard, Thor cracked a thin whip. The goats started to pull us forward and up into the sky. Sparks flew from their hooves as they climbed, as though they were hammers of flint pounding away on an invisible steel road. More sparks flew from their teeth when they started grinding away at their cuds. Heavy gray clouds began to form around us as we got higher. That was when I remembered two things. One, this was the chariot of the God of Storms. And two, I hate flying under anything but my own power, and even that I’m not too thrilled about.
CHAPTER NINE
“You can let go of the railing now,” said Tisiphone.
“Not until we’re firmly on the ground,” I replied, though my athame hand ached like Atlas’s shoulders after an earthquake—and that despite our recent trip through the faerie rings.
The chariot had descended out of the storm clouds and into the snow-dappled air above the northwestern shore of Iceland, an outthrust claw of land scalloped like an oak leaf and frosted with white along the high ridges of stone that formed its skeleton. Despite flying in the heart of our own personal blizzard, with all the turbulence you’d expect in such a situation, I’d thrown up only twice. Go, me. To make matters worse, I was flying with two iron-stomached and danger-loving divines.
“Spits in the teeth of death, but can’t abide a bit of heavy air,” said Thor with a grin. “What kind of hero are you?”
“I. Am. Not. A. Hero,” I growled through clenched teeth. “End of story.” To prevent us going any further down that particular path, I asked him, “Why Iceland?”
“Though it is not generally spoken of in the sagas, this is where the island of Lyngvi lies in the hidden lake of Ámsvartnir.”
“Ámsvartnir?” asked Tisiphone. “That’s a jawbreaker.”
“It means red-black,” replied Thor, “a lake of lava underneath Askja Volcano, and the place of Fenris’s binding.”
“He gets around a lot for a wolf that’s been bound,” said Tisiphone.
“Neither he nor his father can break or remove the cord that ties Fenris to this island, nor pull the sword out from his jaws. But Loki is the lord of loopholes and, through means we’ve yet to thwart, he extends the stretch of that cord far beyond our intent.”
“The silver cord,” I said, “the one Odin caused to contract somehow.”
“Gleipnir the Entangler,” agreed Thor. “It’s made from cat’s footfalls and mountain roots among other things, a steely chain in a silky shape, and apparently to no avail.” He sighed and shook his head. “Actually, the last’s not true, Fenris is bound still, and he can’t leave Midgard, but it’s terribly frustrating to see him moving about beyond the edges of this island.”
“Could we go back to the part about the volcano?” I asked.
It was a question that seemed much more immediate, seeing as our goat-drawn chariot, after crossing very quickly over a good bit of snow-covered emptiness, was now heading straight for a huge steaming crater on the side of a low mountain.
“Better I just show you,” said Thor. “It’s just ahead anyw—” His words stopped abruptly, replaced by something midway between the growl of a bear and distant thunder. “I’ve got him now!” he bellowed. Then he cracked the whip, and the goats sped up, redoubling the sparks flying from their hooves.
We plunged straight toward the heart of the crater. I tried not to throw up as the bottom dropped out of my world.
“What’s going on?” I hissed through clenched teeth.
I couldn’t see anything besides steam and snow and gloom.
“They’re playing fetch in the bottom of the crater,” replied Tisiphone, whose eyes had a hunter’s sharpness. “Loki and Fenris, that is.”
“I’m going to land this chariot right on top of them,” growled Thor.
The world got suddenly darker as the high walls of the crater cut off the light of the low-hanging northern sun. Between that and the storm and the steam, I was practically blind.
“Blast!” Thor brought a great fist down on the lip of the chariot so hard the whole thing jumped like a hooked fish. My tightly clutching hands stung like I’d gotten hold of the wrong part of a power supply. “He’s running.” The chariot veered sharply to the left and started to climb up out of the crater again.
