Loki (17 page)

Although he was one of the Aesir, she hoped he would not return from Odin’s task. She had heard that the High One had sent him to Jotunheim, and it seemed possible that he might meet his end there. Freyja did not speculate further on what that end might be, nor did she even consciously acknowledge it since it was so contrary to her nature. But there was a part of her that found a measure of peace in the notion that she might not be plagued with his presence any longer.

She stood up and let the water drip from her bare form. Leaving the bath, she strode over to the tall windows that overlooked the green plains of Asgard, the rainbow bridge just barely visible far in the distance. The sunlight streaming in warmed her naked body, the water that remained on her quickly drying with the heat from the sun. As she gazed out the window toward Vanaheim, the home she had left so many years ago, she felt a longing to return, but realized that was an impossibility if peace were to remain between the Vanir and the Aesir. Still, Asgard was majestic and magnificent in ways Vanaheim was not, and the Aesir—even with their strange ways—intrigued her with their unusual sense of honor. They were to be admired in many ways, even if they were different from the Vanir.

She glanced down at her hands and frowned slightly. They were wrinkled, as if from being in the water too long. She held them up to her face to examine them closely.

As she studied her hand, thin, blue veins became slightly visible just under the skin, and small, brownish spots appeared. Mouth aghast, she could only stare in horror as she witnessed her nails grow thicker and turn to a sickly yellow. The blue veins became darker, more pronounced, and they began to travel from the back of her hand up her forearms, each second staining more of her unblemished skin. She brought one hand up to her head, and pulled it away clutching a clump of dull gray, coarse hair.

She held her arms away from her, one still clutching the clump of gray hair, as if they were things alien to her body, as if she could somehow distance them from herself. She would have screamed, but she was so overtaken by a mixture of horror and disgust that she was unable to utter a sound even while her mouth was gaping.

She ran to the mirror in the corner of the room, noting that with even the few steps it took to cross the chamber she felt winded and weak. The first thing she noticed was her breasts. They were shriveled and sagging, like lifeless and dry prunes hanging from her chest. Her stomach was hollowed out, and her ribs were prominently displayed, as if she were a victim of famine. Her bones nearly protruded through at her hips, shoulders, and knees, but her skin hung on her in most places like ill-fitting and wrinkled leather, with the color of brittle, yellowed parchment. Spidery blue veins criss-crossed her legs and arms, although her mottled and splotchy skin made them harder to see than they otherwise would have been.

Her face was the most severely affected. Her once radiant, glowing eyes now glared dully at her from above folded bags of flesh and meandering wrinkles. Her mane of silver-gold hair, lustrous and shining even in darkness, was now a patchwork of bare skin and long, brittle wisps of gray thatch haphazardly attached to her scalp.

She stared at a folded-in version of herself, one consumed by the ravages of time. And she was also keenly aware that her eyesight was blurry and imprecise, and it was this one small favor that allowed her to keep some semblance of sanity, to tell herself that what she saw might not be real. It was not convincing, however, and as she stared at the old crone in her mirror, she finally managed to let loose a scream, but it was the breathless scream of an old woman, pathetic and weak.

Heimdall’s sword belt fell to the ground with an audible thud, his wizened body no longer retaining enough heft to keep it around his waist. Teetering, he put one hand out to steady himself against a small tree. His armor was weighing him down, and his helmet, suddenly and inexplicably too large for him, rode down over his eyes, obstructing his vision. He raised a weary hand and flipped it backwards, where it tumbled to the ground and lay there, inert and empty.

Weariness overcoming him, he lowered himself to the ground slowly and leaned up against the tree. His breath came in ragged gasps through his open mouth, and his head rocked back and forth with the effort of breathing. They were shallow breaths, borne of sickly weakness and frailty, not the cavernous gulps of a warrior exerting himself. Indeed, he had done nothing to even cause exertion. As always, he stood watch over Bifrost, when a soul-wearying tiredness had come upon him.

With effort, he reached around and undid the straps of his armor. He was unable to summon the strength to pull it over his head, and so had to slide his body down the trunk of the tree, like an ancient snake relieving itself of its old skin for the last time. His armor propped against the tree, he managed to crawl slowly out from underneath it, only to collapse with the effort.

After a time, he was able to get to his hands and knees, and then to sit up. His arms were like two thin sticks covered by the tent of his shirt, and his chest was hollowed out and shrunken in upon itself. The only reminder of his once broad and muscular chest was the rolls of skin that sagged lifelessly from it. And his physical frame was not the only thing affected.

His razor sharp senses were now dulled and useless. Where before he had been able to see for leagues upon leagues, his eyesight alone standing as a bulwark against any who might seek to cross into Asgard, the thin film of old age now covered both eyes, and he could barely see the outline of Bifrost from where he sat, not more than a stone’s throw away. Nor had his hearing fared well. He had heard legends about his fabled hearing, caught snippets about his godly abilities from other Asgardians in low, awed tones. They said he could hear the grass growing on Midgard, and also the wool growing on sheep. He had done nothing to discourage these stories, even if they were greatly exaggerated. But his hearing was still greater than any other Aesir, and it stretched for long distances. This, however, was gone as well, to be replaced by a dull ringing that would not end.

None of these troubled him, however, as much as his one overriding thought. He became preoccupied with the idea that the end of his days was near, that soon he would shrivel and die. And worse, he would die weak and powerless, cringing in a bed, or right there on the fields of Asgard, a decrepit and useless old man. There would be no glorious end, with him beset upon by countless legions of giants and monsters, each tasting his steel in turn while the bodies of his enemies piled up, and he blasted Gjall that one final time to signal that Ragnarok had come. No, there would be no heroic end to one such as he, a pitiful shell of a god, the heart of a warrior beating only weakly in a decrepit bone-house.

He had only two other clear thoughts, occasionally rising to surface from the constant and all-encompassing fever of his woe. The first was of Idun. In these brief moments of lucidity, he knew that his state—the state of all the Aesir—was due to Idun’s absence. She was gone from her orchards, and the link that kept them all eternally young was gone as well.

His second thought was one filled with venom and anger, one that drove out, if only momentarily, all feelings of self-pity and desolation. It was an empowering thought, one that filled his feeble limbs with renewed vigor as he imagined having the one responsible for this state at his mercy. In these brief moments, he knew with perfect certainty that it was Loki who had caused this to happen, and he swore countless times that he would make the Trickster pay for this indignity, no matter the cost.

Chapter Eleven

The little goddess was safely locked away in the bowels of Thrymheim, and Thiazi’s satisfaction grew with each passing day. The Aesir grew older by the minute, weaker, more feeble, and it was only a matter of time till they collapsed into nothing but bags of bones. He imagined Jotunheim’s armies sweeping down onto Asgard like a force of nature, destroying everything in their path, desecrating the gods’ lands, and annihilating any trace that they ever existed. He would see the stain of their existence purged from the Nine Worlds with fire and death, their bones trampled to dust underneath his heel.

He had used his power to erase the space between Jotunheim and Asgard to spy on one or another of the Aesir and revel in their wretched state. Idun’s link to them had been severed quickly, and he had enjoyed seeing them wither before his eyes without the gift of her life-sustaining presence. He had not been able to see all images clearly and at length, but what he had seen had pleased him greatly.

Freyja had hobbled out of her keep as a withered old crone, constantly weeping and bemoaning her lost beauty. She had been attended to by her servants, as always, but never before had they been forced to support her weight as she slowly left her hall, step after plodding step. Her head bowed low, she mumbled to herself as she walked, her mind clearly addled. Who would have her now? Not that any of the others would have been capable of engaging with her in their pathetic states.

Tyr looked even worse, if such a thing was possible. Once broad shouldered and lean, a warrior in his prime who knew no peer, he was reduced to a shrunken and doddering old fool who had to be carried from place to place by his retainers. They had hoisted him onto his chair laden with blankets so his thin blood would not freeze in the cold Asgardian air. His hands on top of his blankets, he held onto the sheathed sword that lay across his lap with knobby hands that trembled with rapid and uncontrolled motion. The flesh of his neck hung loose, and his eyes stared blankly at nothing.

Thiazi looked at them all in turn, basking in their infirmities. Balder the handsome, Balder the young, lay in his bed in a puddle of his own excrement. Frey could do naught but repeat the same complaints and worries incessantly while his overwrought servants wrung their hands in despair and hopelessness. Hod the Blind, faithful brother to Balder, had also become Hod the Deaf and Hod the Incontinent. Sif, the beautiful, flaxen-haired wife of Thor, merely sat and stared at an empty wall for hours at a time, lost in her own shriveling awareness, understanding less and less as each moment passed.

He could not see the one-eyed one, but no matter. Odin was nearly as old as creation itself; it was likely that he had already succumbed, and that was the reason Thiazi was unable to view him. Even if he still lived, how much more frail and impotent would he be than the others? Thiazi imagined Odin lying dead in his chambers, worms crawling through the empty socket of his missing eye, while maggots devoured what was left of the other.

While he derived much pleasure from the suffering of these gods, there was far more satisfaction in knowing that he had destroyed them from within using one of their own. Or at least they had once thought of him as their own. Loki was no more one of them than he himself was, and it would be to their everlasting sorrow that they had sent him into Thiazi's hands.

How simple it had been to kidnap Idun and bring her to Thrymheim. Buried in the bowels of his keep he enjoyed seeing her, gloating over her in her dank cell, powerless to change the tides that flowed against her kind.

Thiazi made the long, winding trip downwards to the black caverns underneath Thrymheim. It was there that a rough dungeon had been carved long ago. Although it was never meant for one so small as her, it was an apt dwelling. It lacked light and life, and any who found themselves there drew desolation and despair from the very rock it was carved from. Idun, the giver of eternal life, would wither and die while imprisoned there, and it was fitting that she be forced to spend what little time she had alone and in the dark.

As he wound his way through the meandering tunnels underneath Thrymheim, he could feel her presence as he drew nearer. The force of her life was intensely strong, especially for one so small, but Thiazi knew better than most that appearances could be deceiving. For all that she looked like a young girl of no more than ten summers, she was likely as old as Odin, far older than Thiazi himself, in fact. Realizing this made him feel powerful, and even more confident that this was the end of Asgard. While he did not believe in their ridiculous prophecies, perhaps he would declare that Ragnarok had come when he trod onto the holy ground of their city just to see their spirits crumple along with their withered flesh. “Ragnarok has come for you, One Eye!” he imagined himself saying before stepping on the god’s chest and crushing the last remnants of life from him.

He was drawn from his musings by another presence that he recognized, and he could feel his grip on the god as tightly as before. Loki was his to command, even if he did not truly recognize it, and he would have him at his side while he slaughtered the Aesir, a last insult to heap upon them, a final farewell from one of their own who had finally turned against them. It would be sweet indeed to bask in their bitterness and impotence.

As he stepped into the dungeon, he could see Loki standing near Idun’s cell. He looked tiny standing next to the enormous door, like a small child unable to manipulate the basic objects of his fully grown parents.

“
Keeping Idun company?”

“
Watching her. Trying to understand her link to the Aesir and how she was able to provide them with eternal youth. It seems strange that her captivity here does not affect me. I had wondered if I might age along with them.”

“
But now you see yet again that you are not one of them. Idun holds no sway over you. It is the chaos within you that keeps you vital.”

“
I feel some regret bringing her here. She has never wronged me.”