The Gospel of Loki (11 page)

That
was the tip of a young poplar, right in the spot where even a god feels it keenly.

‘Please,’ I said, when the power of speech finally returned to me. ‘It can’t be done. It’s impossible.’

‘Ark.
I suggest you find a way,’ said the eagle, making for the next patch of scree. ‘Unless you want to experience the world’s worst case of road-rash.’

My throat was dry. I swallowed.

‘Um. I might be able to think of something.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ he said. ‘I want your word. Your binding oath.’ And he started to plummet towards the ground, folding his wings to increase his speed.

I closed my eyes. ‘All right! I swear!’

The eagle unfolded his wings again.

‘Swear on your name. Your true name.’

‘Please! Do I have to?’

‘Yes!’

So shoot me. I swore. What else could I do?

The eagle’s trajectory broadened out and we started a long and lazy descent back. As we reached the valley floor, some thirty miles or so from the place where Odin and Honir had made their camp, finding my frozen hands free at last, I dropped the last dozen feet to the ground and lay there, exhausted and hurting.

‘Remember your oath,’ said the eagle. ‘Idun, and her apples.’

I flipped him the bird. Even doing
that
hurt.

The eagle just laughed as it flew away; a nasty, croaking,
rusty sound. It knew I couldn’t break that oath; my true name bound me to obey. I had no glam left to shift Aspect, or to hurl runes at the fleeing bird, or even to cast the rune
Bjarkán
to identify my abductor. Instead I lay where I was for a while until I was strong enough to stand, then pulled myself painfully to my feet and started the long walk back to camp.

It was near dawn when I arrived. I’d had to walk for most of the night. I was starving; I was sore; I was limping badly. Though it was no consolation, I saw that the others had also spent a sleepless night. Odin in particular was looking weary, and Honir, fresh as the morning dew, was talking nineteen to the dozen.

He stopped when I reached the camp.

‘Loki! What happened?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me,’ said Honir. ‘Odin, what do you think? I think something happened. In fact, I’m pretty sure something happened. Loki looks terrible. Don’t you think Loki looks terrible?’

‘Shut up, Honir,’ Odin said, and, summoning Sleipnir’s true Aspect at last, prepared to carry the three of us back to civilization.

Arriving at the Sky Citadel on nothing but spleen and will power, I first ate three roast chickens, a mutton pie, a haunch of beef, a salmon and four dozen jam tarts that Sigyn had left to cool on a ledge. Then I drank three bottles of wine and slept for forty-eight hours.

I awoke feeling somewhat better, if not completely recovered, took a hot shower, shaved and dressed and went off in search of Idun. I found her in her garden, singing softly to herself. Her blonde hair was woven with daisies; her feet were bare in the damp grass. Her basket of apples was at her side, ready for immediate use.

‘Loki, you look terrible,’ she said. ‘Are you hurt? Did you get
in a fight? Is there something I can do?’

I guess it was common knowledge that I didn’t make much of a habit of hanging around in gardens. Besides, as Idun had pointed out, I’d taken a lot of punishment, and even after a long sleep I wasn’t exactly Balder the Beautiful.

‘I had some trouble in the North,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. Imagine, Idun, while I was there, I saw a tree in the heart of a wood, and on it were apples just like yours!’

‘Like mine?’ said Idun. ‘Really?’

‘The very same,’ I told her.

‘Did you bring some back?’

‘No. I was otherwise engaged at the time in single-handedly fighting off a giant eagle that had attacked our camp. But as I limped back home, I thought, I bet Idun would want to see these. Maybe these golden apples have similar properties to hers. If so, I thought, it’s my duty to check. And so I came here straight away.’

Idun cut me a sliver of fruit. ‘Eat this. It’ll make you feel better.’

It did – Idun’s golden apples were known throughout the Nine Worlds. They were Ivaldi’s wedding gift to her when she moved in with Bragi, and as well as conferring perpetual youth (always a bonus when applying for godhood), they also acted as a kind of universal tonic, healing most ills, from warts to the pox, and all but the most lethal of wounds. My cuts and bruises healed at once; the pain in my body disappeared; my glam was restored to its usual strength.

‘Thanks. That hit the spot,’ I said. ‘Now about that tree . . .’

She looked at me with eyes that were innocent as summer sky. ‘Shouldn’t we tell Bragi first? Or Odin – he’ll know what to do.’

‘What, and disappoint them if the apples
don’t
turn out to be like yours? No, let’s just go and check for ourselves. Then, if it’s good news, we’ll all celebrate.’

I told you she was innocent. No sense of threat or danger
at all. It was like abducting a kitten – but then, I was already running so many risks that the last thing I wanted at that point was a challenge.

I shielded us with the rune Ý
r
as we passed Heimdall’s lookout post on the Bridge. Then I led Idun as fast as I could into the plains of the Middle World. It wasn’t easy – she stopped to sniff every flower on the way and to listen to every bird – but at last the enemy found us. In eagle Aspect he tracked us down, then, swooping from the leaden sky he picked up Idun, basket and all, in his talons and flew away.

I cast the rune
Bjarkán
as he left and focused on his signature. As I’d suspected, my avian friend was one of the Ice Folk – one of the worst. His name was Thiassi, and he was a warlord of the far North, an ally of Gullveig, armed with her runes, and I’d just given him what he most craved – Idun’s apples, eternal youth, and the chance to make a serious bid for godhood.

Well, so far so good, I thought. Perhaps my misadventure could be turned to my advantage. After all, if I wanted to bring down the gods, Thiassi could be an ally – except that he had already got what he wanted from me by then, which rather reduced my bargaining power. Besides, the Ice Folk hated me; I’d earned a reputation by then as the Trickster of the gods, and it wouldn’t be easy to convince the enemy of my change of heart. I didn’t blame them. Frankly, I wouldn’t have trusted me either.

I walked back home, released from my oath, but feeling slightly guilty. Idun was the one person in Asgard who had never done a thing to me, and who’d been kind when I was hurt. Still, I’d sworn a binding oath, a real one, on my true name, and no one reneges on a binding oath without some radical consequences. I’d had no choice, I told myself – besides, the sliver of apple that she’d given me would last a while, at least until the other gods started to notice her absence . . .

It didn’t take long. The apples of youth, like all cosmetics, work on a cumulative principle. Meaning: once you stop, you
drop. And that’s what happened in Asgard. Before you could say
an apple a day
, everyone was the worse for wear. Even Golden Boy, Balder the Fair, started to look distinctly less than glamorous. As for the others – well, you can imagine. Wrinkles, hair loss, middle-aged spread, incontinence, forgetfulness, piles . . . you name it – and that was just the goddesses. Except for Your Humble Narrator, of course, which meant that sooner or later they would put two and two together.

That was all right. That was my plan. Another little revenge – this time, hitting the gods where it hurt them the most, right at the heart of their vanity. And the beauty of it was that I would be the one to save the day – because when Asgard fell, I promised myself, it wouldn’t be at the hands of some hairy warlord from the hills, but in style, and with maximum effect, and with Yours Truly holding the whip. I wasn’t about to hand my revenge to someone like Thiassi; a renegade whose ambition extended to nothing more than sitting in Odin’s high seat and assuming the name of Allfather. No, if I was ever to regain my place in Chaos (an almost impossible dream, to which I turned in my darkest moments), I would have to do something spectacular. Nothing short of the total destruction of Order would satisfy Chaos. That meant Asgard; the gods; the Worlds. And even then, it might not be enough . . .

Eventually, they figured it out. Heimdall, whose eyesight had dimmed perceptibly since his supply of fruit was cut off, remembered seeing me coming back over the Bridge furtively a few weeks before. The rest of the gods searched their memories and concluded that this was the last day that anyone had seen Idun. And so they found me and dragged me in front of the Old Man, who was looking older than ever by then, white-haired and craggy-faced, and prepared to do very bad things to me.

‘Is this true?’ he said. ‘
Why?’

‘What does it matter?’ said Heimdall. ‘Let’s just kill him now, before we all forget why we brought him here.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, and explained everything that had happened. Odin listened in silence, while his ravens clicked their beaks and everyone mumbled and dribbled in rage.

‘You see?’ I went on. ‘I had no choice. That eagle was no ordinary bird. It was Thiassi, the Hunter, and he would have killed me if I hadn’t agreed.’

‘We’ll kill you now,’ said Heimdall. ‘Slowly and
very
painfully.’

‘What? And lose your only chance of getting Idun back?’ I said. ‘Use your brain, Goldie. I know it’s not as sharp as it used to be, but—’

Odin interrupted. ‘You think you can get Idun back?’

I shrugged. ‘Of course. I’m Loki.’

Heimdall protested. ‘Seriously, Allfather, you’re going to let him go
again
? How can you know if he’ll even come back? He might decide to throw in his lot with Thiassi and the Ice People.’

‘If he’d wanted to do that, don’t you think he’d have done it before?’ said Odin. ‘Besides, we don’t have a choice. Let him go.’

And so, they released me.

I stretched my limbs. ‘Where would you be without me now?’ I grinned at the angry circle of elderly gods and goddesses. ‘I’ll try to be quick,’ I told them. ‘Try not to die of old age while I’m gone.’

Then I looked at Freyja. ‘Lend me your falcon cloak,’ I said. ‘I need to fly to the Northlands.’

‘But you can do that anyway,’ protested Freyja, whose shapeshifting skills were as good as my own, but who rarely shifted Aspects unless she really needed to. Thus the cloak; a marvellous thing of feathers bound together with runes, allowing the wearer to fly like a bird, without arriving naked at his destination.

I have to admit, that appealed to me – it was cold in the Northlands, and I didn’t want to freeze to death. But, more importantly, the cloak would allow me to carry the apples home;
plus I couldn’t cast runes while I was in bird Aspect, which would make me extremely vulnerable if Thiassi were to come after me.

‘Are you going to argue?’ I said, giving Freyja my broadest smile. ‘Or shall we wait another few days, till your hair falls out and your teeth go black?’

Freyja handed over the cloak.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Now, the rest of you. Keep watch. Look for my signature in the sky. Collect all the firewood you can – dry wood, shavings. You’ll know what that’s for if the time comes. And try to stay awake, won’t you? I might be in a hurry.’

Odin said nothing, but nodded. I pulled on Freyja’s feather cloak. An interesting sensation, though I had no time to enjoy it just then. I took flight at once, leaving them to watch me, open-mouthed, as I flew, and made my way back to the Northlands, shielding myself with runes all the way.

I tracked Thiassi back to his stronghold – the Ice Folk are careless with signatures – a castle built into the rock in the cleft between two mountains. It was bleak and very cold – even with Freyja’s feather cloak I was half frozen in the air – but luck was on my side, because I found Idun almost at once; alone and shivering by the fire in one of the castle’s many rooms.

I stepped out of the feather cloak.

‘Loki!’ she cried, and hugged me. ‘I
knew
you’d come to rescue me!’

I said, ‘Where’s Thiassi?’

‘Gone ice-fishing with his daughter, Skadi. I don’t like her,’ Idun said.

I thought that if
Idun
didn’t like her – Idun, who thinks that wolves and bears are cute and that even Your Humble Narrator has a soft side – then Skadi must be something else. I made a mental note to avoid her.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then let’s go.’

A single cantrip and I’d changed her into something a falcon
could carry. Then I swept her basket of apples underneath my falcon cloak and let it transform me once again. A moment later, we were off; a falcon, flying hard and high, carrying a hazelnut.

This time, I wasted none of my glam trying to go unseen, but simply concentrated on speed. How long before Thiassi and Skadi returned? How long would it be before Idun was missed?

I knew that Thiassi’s eagle form was more than a match for a falcon. I was fast, but he was faster, which meant that even with a head start, I could expect him to catch up with me long before we reached Asgard. In fact, I was three-quarters of the way there when I saw the speck in the sky, hunting me, observing me.

I waited until he was close enough, then shot him with the rune
Hagall
. The eagle dropped back for a mile or so, then started to creep back again. I gave him the fire-rune
Kaen
as I fled, and folded my wings to increase my speed. Thiassi tracked me for an hour that way, keeping his distance, but close enough to move in for the kill as soon as I showed any weakness. I was getting tired by then, and my glam was weakening. I gave him a blast of the rune
Thuris
and felt myself flagging in mid-air; Thiassi saw it at once and began to circle me from above.

But I could see Asgard, ten miles away, shining and gold in the sunset. If only I could reach it in time. Ten miles . . .

‘Hold tight,’ I said to Idun in her hazelnut form. Then I increased my speed again, leaving nothing in reserve. The seconds passed. The hunter drew close. By the time I’d reached the Rainbow Bridge, I could actually feel him on my tail.