Chapter 26
The crystals in the twisting root and rock above them woke ahead of Arne one by one, pale lights blooming across the cave roof whenever he was about to reach them.
The dark road was a chasm that never ended, twisting down through stone and the roots of the World Tree, sometimes reaching out into a black void before returning to the earth. Since the portal had shut, the only light in the world belonged to Arne.
Fenris kept his hand in Linnea's, unable to let her go. He wanted to tell himself that it was because he was afraid something would reach out and try to snatch her from him. That was only partly true. His biggest fear was that it was too much like his prison.
Void magic, darkness, earth… He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't trapped. Linnea seemed to sense his unease, and her thumb had started to brush small circles on his wrist.
"Stay in the lit stretch," Arne said over his shoulder. "The crystals answer the rune of passage I carry from Alruna. Walk this road without one, and the ceiling answers instead. Those stalagmites up there are not decorative."
"I'm sorry, the ceiling does what now?" Von demanded, pulling his head in.
"Impales trespassers, and Yggdrasil feeds on their blood and bones."
"Yay. Thanks so much for that description."
"You asked." Arne laughed. "We are allowed to be here, Von. Relax, or your balls will never come back out of your body again."
"Ah, but that is where you are wrong. There's a trick I know to cure that affliction. What you do is you get a beautiful person to blow your dick really hard, and your balls just pop right back out."
"I'm so glad we have brought a shaman of such peerless wisdom and knowledge of anatomy on our very dangerous quest," Layla said with a straight face.
"I never thought the words would come out of my mouth, but I vote we get Gandalf next time," Ciara replied.
"Oh, please, I bet Gandalf has blown plenty of…" Von started before he was cut off by Tor's hand over his mouth.
Fenris had no idea who they were talking about, but their laughter helped relax the prickle of unease between his shoulder blades.
He had run Yggdrasil's paths as a pup, racing Geri and Freki along sunlit branch-roads wider than rivers.
Those roads were the Tree showing off, but this one was the Tree keeping secrets.
He doubted that even Ratatoskr ventured down here unless the All-Father ordered him to.
Fenris's scarred eye was aching, and no amount of rubbing relieved it. Down here, there was too much magic for it to try to read anything. Wards older than Asgard ran through Yggdrasil in slow currents. The light-threads of growing things pulsed in the roots around them.
He slowed and examined a root the width of his thigh that ran along the left wall, and a vein of dull silver threaded through its bark like frost. He leaned closer and inhaled, and the smell hit the back of his throat, sweet and wrong.
Don't touch it, his wolf snarled, hackles rising.
Wasn't planning to.
"Keep clear of those silver roots," Arne called back to them. "Don't touch them. Don't even look at them for too long."
"You are no fun at all," Von complained, pulling his fingers back from where he was about to touch one. "They are energy and magic currents that flow from the Nine Realms and help power Yggdrasil."
"You know this, and you still want to touch them?" Tor asked.
"I mean… How else am I going to know what it feels like?"
"No touching," Fenris growled. At Von's hurt look, he placed a hand on his shoulder. "I need my shaman not getting hurt before the journey begins."
"Fine," Von said and put his hands back into his jacket pockets.
Linnea turned on the path and banged her head a few times against Fenris's chest, and he had to stop himself from laughing. Von was going to keep them all on their toes on this journey, but Fenris was still happy to have him along.
Around a final curve, the paths opened into an archway carved from the cave wall. Warm magic pulsed around it, so thick that Fenris tasted it on his tongue.
"Urd's Well," Arne said quietly. "Mind your manners and speak when spoken to. If you value your wyrd, don't look into the pool."
"Which pool?" Ciara asked.
"The pool, Ciara. Gods, read a book," Von whispered under his breath.
The chamber beyond was like the inside of a hollow hill, roots arching across the ceiling in ribs, and threads of pure light curved around the roots and tangled together in slow rivers. At the center of it all lay a black pool that had no reflection.
A crone stood nearest the pool, leaning on a gnarled staff.
A straight-backed woman with silver-streaked black hair sat among the roots with a spindle, drawing threads of light through her fingers.
High above them both, in a nest of tangled light, a glowing figure lounged with her flaxen hair woven through the threads themselves.
Urd looked up first. Vereandi nodded without her spindle slowing. Skuld smiled like they were expected.
Tread softly, his wolf warned him. These three measured our chains.
Fenris inclined his head to them in greeting and held his tongue.
"You're quicker than we thought," Urd said to Arne. She thumped her staff on a wooden bucket sitting by the pool's edge. "Good. Bring this."
Arne crossed the chamber and picked up the bucket like a farmhand. Tor opened his mouth, but Ciara stepped on his foot, and he snapped it shut again.
"All of you can work," Urd said, sweeping her staff across the group. "Roots don't water themselves, and you're tracking the cold in with you. Make yourselves useful."
The ritual was simple, and they did it in turns.
Arne drew water from the black pool without once looking down, and they carried it through to a side chamber where pale root shoots grew from every surface, tender and colorless.
The water went over them gently, a cupped handful at a time, while Urd supervised with a running commentary on their technique.
"Not like that, girl. You're drowning it. It's a root, not a fire."
"Sorry," Layla said with a tentative smile. "This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen."
"I'm pleased you think so. Now, go get more water."
Fenris knelt at the far wall and let the water run off his scarred fingers onto the smallest shoots. New fates, every one of them. Lives not yet lived. The shoots leaned toward the warmth of his hand, but he knew better than to touch them.
Through it all, the Norns made small talk about nothing important.
Vereandi asked Arne whether his mother's garden had survived the frost before turning to Von and telling him not to even think about tasting the water.
Urd complained about the draft from the lower doors.
Skuld hummed in her nest and only chimed in when she was asked a direct question from her sisters.
"May I ask something?" Linnea wiped her hands on her coat and faced the crone. "We are going down to Hel's realm. We know about the trials, but only in vague poetic references. Can you tell us anything else about them?"
Urd cackled, a dry sound like sticks breaking. "Nothing, child."
"Of course not," Linnea said. "Silly of me to ask."
"Don't sulk. It's for your benefit." Urd shuffled past her, patting her arm with one knotted hand on the way.
"Besides, they are Hel's doing, not ours.
She designed them to work best when the heart can't prepare for them.
Walk in knowing, and they teach you nothing.
Walk in blind, and they show you what you are.
You'll thank us one day. Well, perhaps not, but you should. "
"Can I thank you now, just to be on the safe side?" Von asked, making Urd cackle.
"You are smart for a shaman," she said and pinched his cheek.
Fenris looked at the three of them, the hands that had spun his thread and measured his years in the dark.
There was so much he wanted to ask about what the dark of Ragnarok really was, why Vili was made to forget, and why Vidar had to leave his home and family.
He forced himself to swallow every question on his tongue.
Some debts weren't worth it. He would find Loki, and they would hopefully get all the answers they needed to stop what was coming.
Vereandi's eyes lifted from her spindle and rested on him with an all too knowing look in her eye. Fenris smiled back politely and kept his tongue safely behind his teeth.
"The way down is through here," Urd said, pointing with her cane. "Follow me. You'll want to be through this passage soon before the roots decide to shift again."
She led them around the pool to a place where two roots crossed over a slab of dark stone. She struck the slab once with her staff. The roots shivered and rose, twisting together to form a doorway and a staircase falling away into more darkness beyond it.
The cold that greeted them made Fenris's hackles rise. It wasn't a winter breeze but the stale cold of corpses and still water.
They all shifted uneasily, staring ahead and not moving. Not even Von dared to crack a joke to hide his uneasiness.
"Little singer." Skuld's voice drifted down from the nest of light, making Fenris's head snap toward her. The name was his for Linnea. Hearing it in this creature's mouth made his fangs drop.
"Yes?" Linnea asked, looking up.
The glowing Norn leaned out over the threads. She looked down at Linnea with a terrible tenderness.
"Listen to your wolf when she speaks, little singer," Skuld said sweetly. "She knows things you do not. Sometimes the beast inside of us is the wisest voice when eyes and ears will lie."
Skuld smiled and drew back into her nest of light, and the threads folded around her, and the audience was over. Vereandi's spindle turned. Urd waved them at the staircase with her staff, shooing them like geese.
Linnea stared up at the roots a moment longer, her jaw locked. Fenris laced his fingers through hers again, warming her cold skin until it stopped shaking. She turned her eyes back to him, and he touched her cheek lightly.
"It's not worth it," Fenris whispered.
Linnea let out a long breath and nodded. Whatever was burning on her tongue to ask Skuld, she held onto it.
They followed Arne with his light, the others following one by one into the stairwell, footsteps swallowed flat by the dead air. The doorway sealed itself above them, taking the last of the chamber's warmth.
Down they went, and the cold dark of Niflheim rose to meet them.