Chapter 2
It had taken Odin several hours to make his next attempt, after recovering from another round of his master’s chastisement. Once Frigga had foiled his efforts again, she took herself and the silver case and Heimdall to a realm much more distant than any they had yet visited.
They arrived on a mountain of almost unbelievable height. Patches of gold farther down the slope appeared to be vegetation, and gleaming far out on an endless tawny plain were copper-colored configurations that might be roads. The air was brisk and moving, and there was a smell like hay and honey.
It was a pleasant enough planet, but Frigga felt that their situation was becoming intolerable.
“I am the mistress of space,” she told Heimdall, “And yet I cannot go to my beloved sons who have been separated from me for years. If we go anywhere within the branches of Yggdrasil, Odin will be able to come to us under his own power, and I will not be able to stop him. I would have no choice, then, but to flee, after having led him to an innocent realm. And if we stay out of Yggdrasil, we shall have to flee just the same. I wish I knew what to do.”
Heimdall pinched his lips together in thought, “I am afraid I cannot advise you in this, my Queen. You understand the situation full as well, or better than do I, and I can see no other course than to keep on as we have done so far.”
“To keep leading Odin around by the nose, you mean?” Frigga asked. “We cannot do this forever.”
She sat down on a rock and peered up into the high, white sky.
“I wish I could speak with Loki. His cunning would be most welcome.”
Heimdall gave a little huff of laughter. “You will never guess what he is doing right now, my queen.”
Frigga smiled, imagining all of the impossible things Loki was capable of. “Tell me, my friend.”
“He sleeps, chastely and tenderly cradled in the arms of one of his avowed enemies, the Avenger Steve Rogers. It is clear he has stolen the man’s heart utterly.”
Frigga was very familiar with Loki’s ability to engineer unexpected alliances, but she wondered, “And what of Loki’s heart? Does he care for this Avenger, or only use him towards some end?” It was not her place to judge loveless alliances, she knew, but she wanted better for her son.
“Though I have watched over him from infancy, I have never learned to read the younger prince’s heart. I can tell you only that he sleeps most soundly, like one who trusts his bedfellow.”
“That is well,” Frigga nodded, “Loki’s trust is a rare and priceless gift.” She wished that she had been worthier of it herself, but she had done her duty instead, and kept her husband’s secrets.
They sat quietly for a while then, Heimdall keeping an eye on Odin’s activities and Frigga trying to think of some way out of their cycle. She had heard tales of immortal pairs who became caught in eternal hunts, one running and one pursuing forever, through the infinite forest of Cosmic Trees of which Yggdrasil was only one. She had thought those stories to be exaggerations or allegories, but now she realized that she might be at the beginning of such a one, and that the rest of her long life could be spent in fleeing. If Odin’s master truly was a Titan, he would outlive them both and would think nothing of using up all the millennia of their lives in the pursuance of his goals.
Her hand crept into Heimdall’s, and she felt comforted by his warm grasp. To be driven on and on forever was a cruel fate, but to have such a companion in her fate was the Norns’ own blessing.
Planning and plotting had never been Frigga’s role, and she found her head aching and her heart sinking the longer she kept at it. Always before in her life, she had had her father or her husband to make all of her plans for her, and they had always seemed so sure of what was right to do. With no kings to direct their steps, she felt that she and Heimdall were like two children wandering lost and helpless. Who could she turn to for advice?
The answer struck her quite suddenly.
“What is Odin doing?” she asked Heimdall.
“He lies on the floor in his chambers, writhing under his master’s distant lash.”
Frigga could spare no thought of pity for Odin now. “Good, we still have time.” She was still holding the handle of the silver case, so it took no more than a thought to enact her plan, such as it was.
They found themselves standing in a thick, damp mist, on a blighted ground of dead moss. They could see no more than twenty paces in any direction.
“This is Nornheim,” said Heimdall in a whisper.
“Yes,” said Frigga, “I have been here once before.”
“Are we here to see the Spinners?” Heimdall asked, his voice apprehensive.
Frigga looked at him. The idea had actually not occurred to her. But she quickly pushed it aside, shaking her head, “I have never heard of them giving an answer when they could give a riddle. Their wisdom is too profound for our needs.” It was prudent to always speak respectfully of the Norns; in truth, all of the stories that Frigga had ever heard about the Norns depicted them as unhelpful and frustrating in the extreme, even supposing that they would allow themselves to be found and spoken to. “No, we are here to see the greatest advisor who ever lived.”
Heimdall sucked in a breath. “Mimir.”
They made their way, hand in hand, over the pitted ground. Dark shapes loomed up alarmingly, ahead and to either side, but these, as they neared, were revealed to be only dripping spires of mist-soaked granite. Occasionally a dead twig would break underfoot with a dull pop.
The small sound of trickling water seemed sometimes to draw close, and other times to draw away from them, but Frigga trusted Heimdall to see through the confounding fog and lead them true.
At last they nearly tripped over the low stone lip of the pool, and the swirling mist parted to show the great grey head hanging from its own hair, snarled in the branches of a long-dead yew tree.
It turned slowly, its glassy eyes remaining fixed on them.
“She returns,” it whispered, “The Queen runs away with the Gatekeeper. An ancient tale indeed.” The leathery face looked like it would have sneered if it could have mustered the energy.
Frigga felt no shame at the low accusation, although it was substantially true. She tightened her hand around Heimdall’s and felt him squeeze hers in return.
“Odin is enthralled,” she said, wasting no time, “He has turned against his own people and serves an unknown master.”
A low clicking sound was heard, and after a moment Frigga realized that the head was attempting a chuckle.
“Twice now has Bor’s brat ignored my advice,” the head was still spinning slowly, “May he do it a third time, to his downfall.”
Frigga nearly goggled in a most unqueenlike way to hear Odin referred to so unceremoniously. Then again, Mimir was Odin’s maternal uncle, and had no doubt witnessed a nappy-change or two.
“You warned him against the Titan?” Frigga asked.
“Titan?” the head whispered in its dry, voiceless voice, its withered eyes widening incrementally “Which Titan?”
“We know not, only that he has addressed his master as ‘Titan’. Does it greatly matter which Titan it may be?”
The clicking was heard again. “Oh, greatly,” said Mimir’s head, nearly smiling. It had a remarkably unpleasant smile.
After a few moments spent waiting in vain for it to say more, Frigga asked her most pressing question. “Wise one, what shall we do? Odin comes wherever this cube is,” she hefted the case in one hand, “And though I can stop him and go to another place, he can follow as many times as I can repel, and I do not wish to live under siege forever.”
“Cube?” whispered the head, facing away from them now. It appeared to have no control over the slow spinning. “Show me it.”
Frigga opened the case, and moved to another side of the pool to be in front of the drooping grey eyes.
The head hissed when it saw the blue glow. “As I suspected. You hold one of the Six Firstborn.” He lifted his dead gaze to Frigga’s face, “I advise you to always treat her with the uttermost respect.”
“And so I shall, Wise One-” Frigga was saying, when Heimdall interrupted.
“Odin wakes.”
“How can we stop him?" Frigga asked, an unaccustomed note of anxiety creeping into her voice. “If Odin catches us, as eventually he must, he will bring his master, the Titan, here. We are no match for Odin, with his seithr and his great store of ancient spells. I know of no one who can defeat the All-King in battle.”
“No indeed,” the head seemed to be enjoying Frigga’s distress, “There is no such one.”
Frigga hung her head, and tried not to give in to the wave of despair that swept over her. If the greatest advisor in all the Nine Realms said there was nothing to be done, then there was nothing to be done.
Heimdall stepped close beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. She turned and burrowed her face against him. She had no doubt that he would willingly die defending her, and certainly earn his place in Valhalla, but she had hoped for so much better for him. She could admit to herself now that she had hoped to share some of the sweetness of life with this man, her truest friend.
“However,” whispered the head slyly, “There is such a pair.”
“A pair,” Frigga lifted her head sharply, “A pair who can defeat Odin? Who are these great ones? Where shall I find them?”
A clicking came from the truncated neck again, and the large face swung slowly back towards Frigga. “Frigga-Queen, tell me: why did the All-Father bring you a Jotun runt as a prize of war? Was that the kind of gift you were accustomed to receive from your doting husband?”
It was a question that had more than once puzzled Frigga, but she could hardly see its relevance to her current pressing dilemma. “He said he pitied the child, and in mercy could not leave it to die…”
“In mercy? A quality you found abundant in Odin?”
In fact, Frigga had always found Odin to be sorely lacking in mercy. Even at the time, the story of him stopping in his triumphant progress to pick up a squalling infant had been a little hard for her to picture. She had asked no questions though, both out of general policy, and because she had been so instantly smitten with the tiny blue baby.
“He claimed that child on my advice,” the head whispered, “He feared that one day his son would hew him down, as he had done to his own father. So I advised him to take another heir, to teach one to be a leader and a warrior, and to teach the other to be a sorcerer and a politician. In two people the four aspects of a king. Only united could they equal him, and he could drive them together or apart at his whim, until the day he chose to relinquish the throne.”
Frigga gasped at the heartlessness of this plan, and at the instant recognition of the truth. Odin had played Thor and Loki against each other almost from the first day. She had attributed it to blindness, thinking that he simply didn’t see the harm he did, never considering that it might be deliberate policy. While she had been diligently nourishing the two brothers’ love for one another, Odin had been just as diligently stoking the fires of jealousy and resentment. A rage unlike any she had ever known swept through her veins like boiling water. She thanked the Norns that Odin was now a thrall, and her sons free.
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the dead thing in front of her. It could not be blamed, since it was Odin who had made of Mimir a being literally without a heart. Perhaps he had once had a conscience, when he lived.
“My sons are the pair you speak of,” she said, “You advise me to take this jewel to them.”
“Your mother’s heart loathes me, eh?” the head asked shrewdly, “I do not blame you. But consider this; what would have happened otherwise? What would have happened to your Loki? What would have become of your Thor?”
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but Heimdall spoke at the same moment that a crackling sounded from the silver case.
“He comes.”
Frigga knelt and opened the case hurriedly. She turned to Mimir’s head, “Will you advise him when he comes?”
“Yes, I must,” it replied, smiling grimly, “But I think, for a third time, Odin will scorn my advice.”