Chapter 1
Frigga paced back and forth in the torch-lit hall outside her husband’s chambers. She was resolved to ask for leniency for her dear friend. She would leave no means untried to save Heimdall from the horrifying fate Odin had pronounced. I must gather my best arguments, she told her whirling brain, I cannot, I cannot lose him too. But what arguments could possibly convince Odin, who seemed to believe that he was already being lenient?
Frigga thought of the time, thousands of years ago now, when Odin had taken her, his shy new bride, to, as he had said, “meet my uncle.” The memory still made her shudder. There, at the base of the cosmic tree, they had walked together, Odin leading her by the hand, through the damp mists of that region, until they came within hearing of a softly burbling spring. Frigga had held back, then, as some nameless apprehension tightened her chest, but her husband had relentlessly pulled her forward, a kindly expression upon his face, but a hard, measuring look in his single eye.
When she saw the spring, and hanging above it, the “uncle,” Frigga had frozen in horror. Her body and her mind – her very soul – simply froze. For the gently-reared princess of gentle Vanaheim, guarded since her birth from sight of any gruesome thing, the dangling “uncle” had been like something from a winter’s tale, the blood-curdling type told around the servant’s hearth on the longest night of the year. She had thought that such things existed only in such tales, and such tales existed only to titillate young princesses, and help them keep awake to see the First Morn.
“Look,” said Odin, pointing, “See the price I paid to be All-Wise.”
She followed his pointing finger, feeling that her face was ice. There, just a few handspans down in the clear water, lay an eyeball looking right back up at her. Its grey iris was glaucous and waterlogged; its straggling, bloody threads stirred in the soft movements of the water.
In any other circumstances, in any other company, she would have hidden her face in her hands and turned away from the sight. But now she sensed that that would be wrong. With Odin watching her with his one remaining, calculating, grey eye, somehow she knew that to give any sign of weakness would be the wrong thing to do.
She turned to him and replaced her own warm face with a stone mask, one that she would need to wear many, many, many more times in the long course of her marriage.
“Odin-King, will you not introduce me to your uncle?”
The large, faded head cackled voicelessly, turning slowly at the end of its knotted, colorless hair.
“Odin-King,” it whispered near-inaudibly, having been separated from its voice-box many millennia ago, “What bright candle have you brought to warm your uncle?” As it turned, it looked at Frigga from further and further in the corners of its eyes. They were the exact same shade of grey as Odin’s, she saw. She had heard tell of Mimir (in those same winter’s night’s tales that she had once disbelieved) and she knew him to be the elder half-brother of Odin’s mother Bestla.
If this is what he does to his own kin…
“My uncle; my bride Frigga-Queen, fairest daughter of fair Vanaheim,” said Odin calmly.
“Stolen, or wooed?” the withered lips whispered, “Loved true, or merely coveted?”
Odin felt no need to answer these questions (though Frigga had wondered them herself), instead turning to Frigga.
“When my uncle was alive, he was renowned for his good advice. He never did advise amiss. When the Vanir unjustly slew him, I worked a great spell to keep the use of him.” He announced proudly, “His advice, if possible, is even better now.”
Frigga didn’t know what to say to that. The phrase ‘to keep the use of him’ seemed to stick in her mind, echoing unpleasantly.
“Have you any question you would pose him?” Odin finally asked her, magnanimously.
Nothing came to the frozen mind behind Frigga’s mask, except to wonder “Was your soul permitted to go to Valhalla, uncle?”
The ancient lips twitched, “Child, my soul wanders mindless in Hel. Were it any otherwise, I would avenge myself.” Here the foggy eyes had turned upon Odin.
Mind and soul sundered, head embalmed, “to keep the use of him.”
To think of the same being done to kind, patient Heimdall. The warm hands which had held hers in her distress, the solid body against which she had been permitted to lean now and then, cut away from the useful head, left somewhere to rot… No! Frigga would not stand for it. She turned, resolute, though no convincing arguments had occurred to her, and knocked at her husband’s door.
She heard her husband speak, but could not make out the words. Hoping that he had given her permission to enter, she pushed open the door and stepped through.
Odin was standing in the center of the room, his back to her, and his newest prize, the blue-lighted scepter, in his hands. He was speaking, or muttering, but she couldn’t hear him well.
“Husband?” she said quietly. If he was working magic, he would not thank her for interrupting. Softly, on her satin-slippered feet, she crept around the perimeter of the room until she could see his face.
His eye was cast down upon the floor, so that she couldn’t see it. Then he looked up, right at her, and she saw it plain.
Odin’s eye shone blue. Just like the Einherjar’s.
He looked at her, but he did not seem to see her. He was still speaking, and she edged slightly closer, and then closer still, until she could understand his words.
“The Jotun whelp failed you, my master, as I could have warned you that he would. But it is no matter. The stones are now with me, and I am ready to do your bidding. I see the glory of your vision, now. Beautiful. Beautiful. Such a clean universe it will be, quieted by your gracious goddess. I cannot wait…”
Frigga stood amazed. To whom could Odin possibly be speaking? Whom would he call master?
His muttering trailed off, and he stared into the blue light of the scepter, as if he was looking through a tiny window.
“Great Titan, I will. I will, I will. I will come to you, soon. Soon and gladly. But, master, first there is Asgard. Allow me to subdue it for you, ready it for your coming. Let me prepare for you a welcome worthy of your greatness. There is so much to be done here. Let me handle this realm, and prove to you my loyalty-”
He cringed and cast his eye back to the ground.
“No, no, my master. Of course not. I meant no such thing.” He began to gasp, as if a hand was tightening around his throat, though Frigga saw nothing. “No! No! I swear to you! It is here. Both are here.”
His breathing eased.
“Safe for you, my master. Safe for your coming. The fools of Midgard gave it to me! Eager to be rid of it, with this, the other. I have them both.”
He gasped again, and winced.
“Yes. Yes, that is what I meant. They are yours. These two, and soon all six.”
Frigga had heard enough. At any moment the communication might end, and Odin’s eye see her in his chamber, eavesdropping. She fled as silently as her silken skirts allowed.
Once in the hallway again, she flew on fear-driven feet. Down, down, and further down, until she was away from the royal wing, and entering the huge old hall where stood the doors to the vault.
Her thoughts were confused and clashing, and refused to line up orderly for inspection, but a few things were very clear. Odin was enthralled to some mysterious “master,” the one he called “great Titan,” and the two magical items he had received from Midgard, when he had failed to bring home her sons to her, were evidently important to this “master.”
One was in Odin’s hands at this very moment, hopefully still holding him enthralled. The other…
Two Einherjar stood sentry duty beside the doors. Their eyes shone blue in the dark hall, though not as virulently as Odin’s had.
She was grateful that she had already tested the supposed illusion-piercing ability of the blue eyes, and found it lacking. It was easy work to weave a simple duplicate of herself, while casting invisibility over her true form. The duplicate cried out desperately from the entrance to the hall “Come quick! Oh come, the king needs you!” and then ran off into the darkness. The Einherjar went clanking after it, leaving their posts. Frigga counted her fingers while she listened to their armored footsteps receding, and then opened and slipped through the doorway to the vault.
She didn’t even bother to close it behind her. Speed, now, not secrecy, was needed. Dashing down the half-lit hallways of the vaults, turning her head from side to side, she quickly found what she wanted.
The blue cube sat in its Midgardian case, which stood open on top of a pedestal. She hesitated for the barest moment, and then closed and latched the case and took it up by its handle. It was made of something that felt hard and light as dragon scale, but was a glossy silver.
It was simplicity itself to use the cube, as Odin had explained to her. It made its possessor master over space. He had said master, never considering the possibility, apparently, that space might obey a mistress.
Before her eyes could open from their blink, Frigga smelled the damp stone and mildew and terror-sweat of the dungeons. A clanking drew her attention to the darkest corner.
“Frigga-Queen!” Heimdall said, his voice ragged.
In her free hand, she grasped his solid forearm, now somewhat bonier from deprivation.
“Come,” she said, and they were standing in the bright light of a pinkish mist. Around them stood butter-colored mushrooms, tripe-textured and tall as Jotnar. The air was soft and fragrant like a damp forest in autumn.
Frigga had carried Heimdall with her, but not his manacles, and now she turned his arm in her hold to look at the blistered skin where they had been.
“He had you in the searing chains?” she asked gently, but Heimdall didn’t answer that.
“My queen, oh my queen,” he rasped, “What have you done?” He closed his enchanted eyes, already squinted against the unaccustomed brightness, and rubbed his face despairingly. “What will become of you when Odin gives chase? I cannot hope to protect you.” He turned to her, dropping his hands, “You must go back, right now. You must put me back where you found me. If we are only gone for a few seconds, perhaps he won’t know. Or – perhaps he will forgive.”
“Forgive?” said Frigga, pitying her friend’s agitation. It was strange to see him give way to fear; she had never seen it before. No doubt the dread and pain and darkness and solitude had temporarily weakened his stout heart. “We already know what his mercy looks like. He would turn you into a second Mimir for speaking truth, yet you think he would forgive you for escaping?”
“No, I mean that there is still a chance that he may forgive you, if you take me back right now.” He actually made to snatch at the silver case in her other hand, but Frigga simply moved herself twenty paces away.
He stayed where he was, perceiving the futility of any more attempts, and turned to persuasion.
Frigga sat down on a budding mushroom, and drank in the sight of her dear friend and the air of freedom.
“Queen, Frigga, friend,” he began, rather desperately, “The sooner you go back – and take me back – the more likely he will be to forgive you. You can plead confusion, soft-heartedness, anything you will, only hurry, hurry. If we go back now, right now, I believe he will spare your life. He values you, he would not toss you aside so easily…” Now he sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“Dear Heimdall,” she said, smiling to notice that his fear was all for her. Indeed, she could weep for it. To think that she had nearly lost this friend. And now he was speaking nonsense about her taking him back; putting him back in that dank cell, back in the searing chains, back under the axe. She could no sooner leave her innards in another room and walk away. Foolish Heimdall, brave Heimdall! “Shush,” she told him.
He hung his head, seeing that the argument was already lost.