There were a lot of þursar in the forest. A lot. Like, a whole army’s worth, Sigmund following along behind Skinnhúfa, stumbling over roots and running into branches the whole way.
When they got to the camp, Skinnhúfa barked at Sigmund to stay put, left six huge jötnar to guard him, then vanished off into the crowd. Valdís followed, Eisa and Sleipnir stayed behind.
It occurred to Sigmund, as he sat himself down beneath the watchful gaze of his excessive detachment of guards, that he was a prisoner. Again. He’d never been a prisoner before all of this. The closest he’d ever gotten was detention once at school for calling out his year-seven comp sci teacher, Mr. Hennessey. That’d been a long time ago, and sort of how he’d become friends with Em. They’d gotten back an assignment, Em’s had been marked wrong in a way Sigmund’s hadn’t, for more or less the same answer. Em had tried to argue her case before the class. Mr. Hennessey had told her she was wrong, and Sigmund had known the guy’d been lying about it. So he’d said so, and wound up in detention.
The net result of that had been Em’s mum had made Mr. Hennessey apologize to Em for being an asshole, care of a quick word to the principal about equality in STEM fields. Sigmund’s dad, meanwhile, had sighed and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, then had launched into a lecture about appropriate times and places to speak truth to power.
Sigmund had been a lot more careful about calling out liars after that. Em, meanwhile, had dropped out of comp sci until uni, and she’d never forgotten what Sigmund had done. Nearly a decade later, and Em was organizing rock concerts for an undead horde and Sigmund was being eyed off like dinner by a bunch of scowling jötnar.
Life. Go figure.
“There, um. There’s a lot of people here,” he said at one point.
Eisa looked up, eyes as sharp as her arrows. “War is coming,” she said. “Hel sends her armies to Ásgarðr’s door. When the time comes, we will be ready.”
“I, uh. I don’t think she really wants war.”
Eisa narrowed her eyes, looking at Sigmund as if she could strip him raw with gaze alone. “Nor do we,” she lied, grinning her father’s grin.
----------------------------------------
It wasn’t that Sigmund was unused to being stared at with open hostility. After all, he’d been followed around in department stores by sneering middle-aged white women since he’d been a child. But those women had mostly just been worried he was going to steal things. They’d never looked at him with the violent hunger he found himself regarded with now.
It wasn’t that eating him would make the þursar cannibals or anything, what with them being a different species. And Lain did say jötunn meant eater, and that name had to have come from somewhere.
Sigmund closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.
He was still trying not to think about it, in fact, when he heard heavy footsteps approach, coming to a standstill just in front of him.
“Get up, boy. The Hersir has seen reason.”
When Sigmund opened his eyes, he saw Valdís looming overhead.
“Um,” he tried. “That’s nice?” He scrambled to his feet, trying not to groan as the aches of the last few days made themselves known.
Valdís huffed. “Hm,” she said. “Perhaps. There is great hunger for blood among the þursar, a desire to finish what was left undone at Ragnarøkkr.”
“You mean war.” Sigmund tried not to think about every way he ached. “Against the æsir.”
“The mortals have forgotten their gods,” Valdís replied. “There is no reason Ásgarðr should retain its primacy upon the Tree.”
“I won’t help you fight Asgard.” No matter how much of a jerk Forseti was, Sigmund wasn’t going to be party to war. He hoped.
“You will,” Valdís said, and that was definitely a grin. “But perhaps in another way. I have convinced Hersir Skinnhúfa to send warriors to retrieve Father.”
“Lain? Why?” Except Sigmund knew the answer as soon as he’d asked. Valdís confirmed it a moment later with:
“Ásgarðr cannot be allowed to possess Mjölnir. If Father is the only one who knows of its location, then we cannot allow the æsir to possess him, either.”
“And you need me as bait, don’t you?” Sigmund asked. “For Lain?”
“Father’s loyalties can be . . . complex.” Valdís sounded apologetic. Almost.
“So . . . what?” Sigmund felt something ball up inside him. Something like anger, but heavy and sour. “You’re gonna hold a knife to my throat and demand he choose sides?”
Valdís was silent for a moment, feathers shifting across her shoulders.
“Let’s hope it does not come to such extremes,” she finally said.
----------------------------------------
When they left, they took a bunch of þursar with them. Maybe twenty or so, in various shapes and sizes, some running on all fours, some riding others, all dark-feathered, through either dye or nature.
Eisa, skin rubbed with soot and swathed in indigo robes, swung up onto her sister’s back as soon as she was in reach. Sigmund did the same with Sleipnir, after an encouraging nudge that nearly sent him stumbling.
Then they were off, variously running and galloping and loping out of the camp. All around them, Sigmund saw þursar polishing armor and sharpening blades.
Hel on one side, Myrkviðr on the other. Sigmund had seen Ásgarðr, had wandered around inside the walls, seen the tired looks on the faces of the einherjar and the crumbling façades of the Halls. It’d been a great realm, once, but that greatness had faded. And, like any fallen empire, its enemies were circling.
----------------------------------------
When they finally broke through the trees, it was out beneath a silver moon so big and bright and low Sigmund had to shield his eyes from it after the forest’s gloom.
Up ahead, a huge towering outline was shadowed against the stars. A mountain. Like, a real and proper mountain. Not the rounded, low things Sigmund was used to back home, in Australia, worn down by a billion years of wind and rain.
This mountain stood alone, rearing high enough into the sky that snow collected on its peak, and Sigmund must’ve been staring, because Valdís drew up beside him and Eisa said, “Niðavellir, home of the dvergar.” Her voice was hushed, dark cloak drawn tight around her shoulders.
“We saw Father dragged inside,” Valdís said, rumbling voice low enough for Sigmund to feel it rather than hear. “He has not emerged.”
“You think he gave Mjölnir to the dwar— er, dvergar?” Sigmund didn’t buy that for one second. Lain loathed dwarves, whatever fancy word they were described with. To the point where Em had had Stern Words over not bringing his weird myth-age bigotry to the DnD table, lest it come down to a choice between having the party Cleric quit and allowing Lain to stay. Later, Lain had ranted all evening about Em “just not getting” what “jealous, vicious maggots” the dvergar really were, until Sigmund had finally pointed out that, first, that was kinda a bit fucking racist, and, second, they’d been talking about someone’s character in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, not an actual bloody dwarf.
Lain had muttered something like “Looks the same to me,” but he’d been much better behaved the next time the group had gotten together.
Point being, Lain really fucking hated the dvergar. Sigmund couldn’t imagine him giving them anything of actual value voluntarily, even if it was to keep it out of the hands of someone else.
The group camped down in a hollow some distance from the mountain, sending Eisa and another one of the smaller þursar off to scout. While they waited, Sigmund ate a quick and not-at-all-terrible meal of spiced jerky and a soft, sweet bread with Valdís and Sleipnir. The other þursar murmured among themselves, and eventually Valdís said, “Tell me about Father?”
Sigmund looked up. “Um, well.” He bit his lip. “Honestly? Your dad, I don’t really know that well. Um. It’s a little complicated, but Lain . . . Lain is to your dad like I am to Sigyn.”
Valdís nodded and looked away. “I . . . see.”
She looked so bleak at the news, and it took Sigmund a moment to realize he’d just, in effect, told her her dad was dead. So he added, “I’ve spoken to him once or twice. I think he really misses you. All of you.”
A pause, then Valdís said: “He was not always the most attentive father. I would wait for him to come home. Days or weeks. Too long spent away. But when he was home . . . When he was home, we were family.”
Sigmund nodded, gnawing his jerky in silence, at a loss for what to say. Honestly, Loki scared him a little. Sigmund felt him, every now and again, coiled beneath Lain’s skin like a festering black serpent, vicious and angry. But, for all his faults, Sigyn loved him. And her memories of him—while far from perfect—were tender and kind, on his side, not just hers.
Loki, Sigmund thought, was a devoted father and loving husband. The problem was those weren’t the only things that he could be.
----------------------------------------
Sigmund was dozing when Eisa returned, a small, dark ghost slipping through the camp.
“—thing is wrong,” Sigmund heard her hiss, as he blinked himself awake. “Inside Sindri. There are no guards within the hall, nor in the streets.”
Valdís’s feathers rose at the news, and she shared glances with one of the other þurs. “Dead?” she asked.
“We saw no bodies,” came the reply. “Nor signs of war or struggle. Half the town is simply vanished. We reached well inside before we turned around.”
Valdís scowled, feathers shimmering beneath the moon. She conferred with the others, Sigmund forgotten in the moment. From what he could gather, there was a town just inside the mountain—Sindri, a sort of border post between the dvergar and the outside world—and it was all but abandoned. As if half the population had just picked up in the middle of the night and left.
“Then Niðavellir is weak,” said one of the þurs whose name Sigmund didn’t know. Beneath dark leather and smeared ash, she had skin like a ghost-gum and feathers the frosty blue-green of a conifer. “And we should strike.”
“We’re here for Father,” Valdís snapped. “Not to make war with the dvergar.”
“If they aid Ásgarðr in its quest, then they make war on us.” A statement met with a lot of grim nodding.
Valdís growled, low enough that maybe only Sigmund heard it. “Then we move swiftly,” she said. “Like the owl in darkness.”
----------------------------------------
Sigmund had never been on a, well. On a raid before. At least, not for real. Like, outside a game or whatever. He wouldn’t have said he’d been keen to be taken on one now, only that his options were limited by his company, and it wasn’t like he was expected to do very much. Just ride low against Sleipnir’s back and follow up the rear of the main force.
The þursar were fast and, when they needed to be, they were quiet. Leaping down a winding stairwell and into the center of a collection of low, box-shaped buildings covered in geometric designs of wrought metal. The town might have been emptied, but it wasn’t empty, and the front of the force got halfway into what seemed a town square when the cavern was filled with a sound like pounding stones, and arrows began to fly.
The þursar, however, had come prepared, each carrying several rectangular crystals, like sticks of butter carved from quartz. Sunstones, Eisa called them, and when the þursar threw them against the flagstones and buildings they exploded into brightness just like their namesake. The dvergar’s reaction was instant, shrieking and retreating from the light.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Eisa had explained the effects, too. Sigmund tried not to think about it. He had his own sunstone, gripped in his hand, just in case. But the plan was for him to stay back from the main group and—
Movement. Somewhere just beyond the square. The dvergar glowed, and Sigmund saw it, the flash of light as someone darted from the back of the biggest building, the one set at the edge of the strange, glowing lake. Running along the shore toward a tall tower that looked . . .
It looked an awful lot like a lighthouse. Or a watchtower.
“Shit! By the water, we have to—!”
But Sleipnir had seen the figure, too, and was already lunging forward, legs a blur against the stone. Sigmund lay close across his neck, holding tight, arrows shooting over his head close enough for him to feel the wind.
All around, shouting and explosions turned the world into a chaotic mass of postproduction. Still Sleipnir pushed forward, through the square and past the large house, feet skidding up a shower of black shale as he made a sharp turn on the water’s edge.
Up ahead, the fleeing dvergr heard their approach, half turning and doubling his pace, a mad sprint for the base of the watchtower. There was a door there, much smaller than Sleipnir, maybe even too small for Sigmund. If the dvergr got inside . . .
Beneath him, Sigmund felt strong muscles coil, then Sleipnir lunged forward, wings opening and beating once, twice against the air, enough lift to send them sailing straight over the dvergr’s head, blocking his path to the watchtower door.
“Oh, no you don’t!”
The dvergr’s big dark eyes went very round and, in the strange blue light of the glowing water, Sigmund had a brief impression of a salamander crossed with the minerals counter at an Australian Geographic store. Then the dvergr was stumbling, trying to stop and turn and not slam into Sleipnir, ending up skidding along the ground on his ass instead. Sigmund leaped to the ground himself, and Sleipnir reared, and when big, hooflike claws descended it was with one planted heavily on top of the dvergr’s chest.
Somewhere in the distance, Sigmund heard more footsteps, running is his direction.
Somewhere inside, Sigmund felt a ball of rage and pain and ice, exploding into shards.
“You!”
The dvergr’s hand twitched, reaching for something at his belt. Sigmund’s sneaker came down on the digits before they could get close. Came down, and came down hard.
“I know you!”
He did. Or rather Sigyn did. Because, in that moment, staring down into wide dark eyes, Sigmund had gotten one single perfect flash of memory:
(the house is dark the fire is dead, she hadn’t left it like that when she’d gone, not so long ago, left alone in her crumbling little cottage, and she was back now, back to fill her lonely bed except the house was dark but it was not empty, for there, cowering in the corner, flinching at her touch even as the blood poured between his shaking fingers, eyes bright with pain and shame and madness and she feels it, deep inside, her own rage and fury that someone would dare and when she asks she gets a name and that name is)
“Brokkr!”
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, Sigyn came home to a dark house and a sobbing husband, his lips stitched cruelly shut. The sagas called it Vartari. And here, now, beneath Sleipnir’s heavy claw, was the man who’d made it.
“Where is he, you stone-skinned piece of shit? Tell me!”
Brokkr gaped, large mouth slack and open.
“Now!” Sigmund’s throat felt tight and he could feel his nails gouging little crescents against his palms.
“I do-don’t know what—”
“Liar!”
Sigmund closed his eyes against the scream. Took a breath, then another. Tried to sort his own anger from Sigyn’s.
“My name,” he said, voice tight and cold and awful, “is Sigmund Gregor Sussman de Deus. Many, many years ago, you sewed my husband’s mouth shut because you lost a bet. A day or so ago, he came through your town. He hasn’t been seen since. Now. I’m only going to ask this once: Where. Is. My. Husband?”
Sigmund opened his eyes, meeting the hard stares of the three þursar who’d come running after him. Three þursar, Sleipnir, and Eisa. The latter’s eyes were very wide and very round, her small hands held over her mouth.
Brokkr looked at Sigmund, then at the others, and he said:
“I will tell you nothing, surface-filth. How dare you. This is our town. You have no right to—”
“Shut up!” It was true, but Sigmund wasn’t in the mood. Lain had been here. So close, Sigmund could all but smell the loam and cinders in the air. “Eisa, take off your cloak.”
“I . . . what? Why?”
“Do it!” Sigmund pulled out the sunstone. Brokkr’s eyes went wide to see it. “You know what this is,” Sigmund said. “So here’s what we’re going to do. A little eye for an eye, mouth for a mouth. You’re going to tell me what I want to know. And you’re going to tell me now. And if you don’t, Eisa here—she’s the daughter of the man you maimed—”
“That was—”
“I said shut up!” Sigmund’s hands shook. His whole soul shook so hard it felt like he’d come untethered from the ground at any moment. “If you don’t tell us what we want to know, I’m going to have Eisa wrap you up in her cloak. All of you, nice and tight and dark. All of you, from head to toe, except your mouth. We’ll leave you a corner. Let’s say the left. No wider than a spoon. And the rest, I’m going to get that nice, smooth, soft skin, and I’m going to crumble this piece of rock. And I’m going to burn your fucking mouth shut you piece of shit do you hear me? Burn it shut but for that one little corner, so you can spend the rest of your miserable little life drinking your meals through a straw. Forever.”
Sigmund paused. Just long enough. Eyes fixed on Brokkr’s.
“Or,” he continued, “you can tell us what we want to know.” He crouched down before Brokkr could speak. “And before you say anything, remember I am the consort of the Lie Himself. If you think any fumbling, pissweak half truths you can think of will fool me, then I leave your hands unwrapped as well. Do I make myself clear?”
Bare inches away, Brokkr’s eyes narrowed. “As the water of the Skærasær,” he said.
Sigmund blinked as his mind tripped over the meaning of the name—the “Shining Sea”—flashes of primary school recitals of the national anthem cutting through his rage. He wasn’t sure whether the answer was ironic or not, but maybe it didn’t matter in the next moment when Brokkr said:
“Yes. I saw your beast of a husband. He came through here with the sons of Thor, looking for the hammer, Mjölnir. We did not have it, and they moved on.”
Sigmund’s lip curled back. “Try again. Harder.”
“Want me to wrap him?” Eisa’s green eyes were bright with vicious mischief, the dark fabric of her cloak pulled tight between small hands.
Brokkr spat. At the ground, not on Sigmund. “I tell no lies.”
“You tell half truths.” Sigmund grinned, putting every ounce of Lain into it that he could manage. “I can feel those, too. They itch. Very uncomfortable. You wouldn’t like me when I’m uncomfortable.”
Brokkr’s expression suggested he didn’t like Sigmund now, but he said, “Mjölnir’s forging was imperfect. To wield it, one would need a special belt and gloves, also. These were dredged from the sea in our fishing nets, after Rangarøkkr. We traded them to Thor’s sons.”
Sigmund’s eyes narrowed, something queasy turning over in the pit of his stomach. “Traded them for what?”
Brokkr grinned. “What do you think?”
Bastard. It was a question, not a lie or a half truth. There was something there, something Sigmund couldn’t see and—
“The girl.” That was Eisa. When Sigmund looked up, her face was twisted in horror. “He keeps saying ‘sons,’ “ she told Sigmund. “But there was a girl with them, also. Father protected her, from Valdís.”
“You will not have her,” Brokkr said. “She was betrothed to my son in fair exchange. She—”
“You bought a girl for some fucking fashion accessories? A fucking person?” Sigmund had heard enough. He stood up, disgust warring with rage in his heart. “No. No, that’s not— Jesus fucking Christ.”
“The girl has honor. She was proud to do her part to protect her Realm from monsters like you.”
But Sigmund was done with listening. Instead, he turned to Eisa. “We’ve got to find her. The girl.”
Eisa’s eyebrows hiked into her hairline. “But Father—”
“Is gone. He wasn’t lying about that. We can follow them, but—” Suddenly, Sigmund spun back on his haunches in front of Brokkr. “Where are the others? Your guards. Whoever. This place is fucking abandoned.”
Brokkr grinned, broad, flat teeth like alabaster poking through his gums. “That I do not know.”
Shit. That was the truth. “And Thor’s sons? Where did they take Lain?”
“I do not know this, either.” Sigmund thought he’d never seen someone so happy over his own ignorance. “They took a boat across the Sea. To Miðgarðr, I know not where beyond that.”
Miðgarðr. Shit. That would’ve almost been convenient, if not for the fact Lain didn’t have pockets in his jötunn skin. Meaning he didn’t carry his phone when he was in it. Meaning Smoke—Pyre’s stolen phone GPS locator app—wouldn’t be useful. Fuck.
Sigmund stood again, pacing away from Brokkr. “Bring him,” he said over his shoulder. “Tie him up somewhere, I don’t care. Don’t hurt him. Tell everyone you can find they’re looking for an ásynja girl. Don’t hurt her, either.”
Lain had protected the girl. That meant she was important. Even if she hadn’t been, Sigmund wasn’t going to let her rot down here in the dark, sold out by her family for bloody trinkets. This wasn’t the bloody dark ages anymore. Brokkr hadn’t been lying about her willingness, but, well. People believed a lot of shitty things about themselves in shitty circumstances, in Sigmund’s experience.
Behind him, he heard þursar scrambling to obey his orders. Not that he had a single ounce of authority over them, but he had just chased down someone kind of important, then threatened information out of the guy. He hadn’t missed the glint of respect in their gazes as he’d left.
A respect that, Sigmund thought, would probably have lasted exactly as long as it took for him to get out of sight, behind the big building.
Whereupon he promptly threw up.
----------------------------------------
Eisa found him first, standing staring at a pile of puke. Hand clamped across his mouth and tears and snot streaming down his face.
(oh gods what was that what happened what is wrong with me I)
(“you did what was needed, as we always do”)
(yeah but Jesus I)
“Sigmund?”
Sigmund scrubbed his face on his sleeve quickly at the voice, smearing snot and tears all over his glasses. “Y-yeah?”
Through the darkness and the haze, he could just about make out Eisa.
“The girl?” she said, her voice more hesitant than Sigmund could remember ever hearing it. “They think they’ve found—” A pause, then, “Are you . . . are you—?”
“I’m fine.” Much too harsh, so Sigmund tried again. “I-I’m fine. Really. It . . . uh. It’s been a long day.” A long . . . however long it’d been since he’d left home. A thousand years and another lifetime.
Eisa nodded, looking unconvinced. She gestured for Sigmund to follow, and he did. Around the side of the town’s main building. The plaza outside contained a big tarp-covered lump, with rings of smashed sunstones around the edge, and a bunch of þursar, plus Sleipnir, standing around, looking grim. The tarp shifted, and it occurred to Sigmund there were dvergar underneath.
He swallowed. “The, uh . . . the people . . . ?” He gestured, Eisa shrugged, and Sigmund decided not to ask any more questions.
The inside of the large building was ornate, if still heavy and claustrophobic in spite of the high ceilings. It reminded Sigmund of a high school trip to the National Gallery: all strange concrete blocks jumbled on top of one another at weird angles, every surface gray and industrial. There weren’t many paintings inside the dvergr hall, but there were a lot of mosaics. Not of anything, as far as Sigmund could tell, just geometric shapes and patterns, stone and gems set into flowing bands of color that glittered as they walked by.
Þursar patrolled the halls, and small heads and large eyes peeked through doors and retreated at their passage. Dvergr children, maybe. It hadn’t occurred to Sigmund there would be children.
Eisa took him down a flight of stairs, then another. Valdís and two other þursar were assembled at the bottom, pressed against the wall.
“The girl ran,” she growled to Sigmund, voice low. “Followed by a dvergr. There is a vault at the end of the corridor, he pushed her inside. He stands guard in the hall.”
“We get her out,” Sigmund said. “Then we go find Lain.”
Valdís nodded, gesturing to the others. A moment later, they were bursting around the corner.
Sigmund followed. Hesitantly, just in case of firearms or magic or arrows or something. He needn’t have bothered; there really was only one guy in the hall, armed with one spear, and armed was stretching the definition. The guy looked terrified, the bioluminescence of his skin rippling like a startled cuttlefish. The þursar had him cornered in an instant. From somewhere behind, Sigmund heard the creak of Eisa, drawing her bow.
“Monsters!” the dvergr spat. “You will not take her!”
“We’re not here to take anyone,” Sigmund said. “We’re here to free her.”
“The solarium opens from the inside.” The dvergr raised his chin, defiant. “Kill me if you must, but you will not harm Þrúðr!”
( . . . wait, “solarium” what?)
Sigmund blinked. He’d definitely heard solarium. Or, well, Sigyn had heard the words the dvergr had spoken, and Sigmund’s brain had done the translating. But unless there was some idiom he wasn’t getting, he was pretty damn confident the guy had called whatever he was guarding the sun room. And, now that Sigmund was looking, he noticed the curved shape at the end of the hall did look an awful lot like an artistic representation of a sun.
Also, now he had the girl’s name: Þrúðr.
(“Thor’s daughter, and eldest child”)
“Um . . .” How the hell had Sigmund gotten himself into this mess? What was this mess to begin with?
“Look,” he started. “I think maybe there’s been a bit of a, um. A misunderstanding? Here. Maybe? My name is Sigmund Sussman. I’m from Midgard, and I’m looking for my boyfriend. I was told he’d been brought here not long ago. Um. Tall, red feathers, can be kind of an asshole . . . ?”
“Meinkráka,” the dvergr said. The name meant something like harm crow or mischief bird or whatever.
Sigmund shrugged. “Sure.” It fit. “I call him Lain. I’ve come to take him home.”
The dvergr’s eyes flicked between Sigmund and the þursar. In the end, some of the tension seemed to leave him, though he didn’t lower his spear. “I am Uni,” he finally said. “Eldest of Brokkr”—Sigmund tried not to wince—“husband of Þrúðr. Your risi is no longer here. He is Þrúðr’s bondsman, and was sent forth with her brothers.”
“Whoa whoa whoa.” Sigmund held up his hands. “The only anyone’s anything Lain is is my boyfriend. The æsir took him prisoner. They’re torturing him. Let’s make it really, really bloody clear I am not okay with that. And I’m not okay with selling girls into slavery under pretense of ‘marriage,’ either. And these guys”—a gesture to the others—“aren’t okay with Asgard going off on a quest to retrieve a magic superweapon so things can go back to the bad old days when they used to get hunted for sport. They’re about to go to war with Asgard to try to preempt that, plus the dead have risen out of Hel and are about to do the same. Meanwhile, it hasn’t escaped our notice that your city seems a little bit short on guards and soldiers. So, like. The way I see it, half the Realms are ready for war and whatever went down here is somehow the key. Now. I always prefer to pick the diplomacy dialogue tree, but I’ve also had a shitty couple of days. So if you don’t want to do things my way, I’m gonna walk out of this corridor and it’ll be up to my immensely patient friends here to decide how to handle things. But between you and me? I’d try talking first.”
Public speaking. Who said it was hard, right?
Uni’s eyes flicked between Sigmund and Valdís and the arrow Eisa was pointing straight at his head. After a moment, a blue tongue flicked out to draw across his lips. He took a breath and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, there was a sound like shifting mountains from behind him, and the sun began to open.
When it was done, a girl stepped out, not much older than Eisa. Her hair was literal gold that glittered molten in the gloom, and there was something about her face that felt familiar, even if Sigmund couldn’t place it.
She was young, and she was beautiful, and she opened her mouth and said:
“My name is Þrúðr Þórsdóttir. I am here of my own volition, and there are things that you must know.”