4

Six years past and worlds away

Asgard was a cold world. Beyond the ice-like magical enclosures which protected its cities, winter ruled. But while blizzards raged nonstop outside, the land within the enclosures existed in an odd wintry summer, filled with blue-green firs and a dense carpet of sturdy emerald grass. Icy as the light was, it filled the air with warmth. Enough warmth that the native Asgardians walked about in shirt sleeves, as tall and hardy as the stone and wood and sharp angles of their architecture.

I did not go about in shirt sleeves. I lacked the sterner stuff of which the Asgardians were made. A constant chill clung to me, so I wore a heavy cloak wrapped about my shoulders and fur-lined slippers, even indoors.

More than one city under more than one enclosure thrived on Asgard, but only one held a bridge stone, so one city was all I’d ever seen. The Asgardians themselves showed no predilection for referring to their individual cities as anything other than “outside” or “to the east.” So when my people spoke of Asgard, they as frequently referred to the capital city as to the world itself. We had only one city, so we were used to thinking of world and city as one interchangeable entity.

For me, both Asgard the city and Asgard the world became my refuge.

I remembered a few things about the first days following the fire—the explosion—which destroyed Alfheim. I remembered Heimdal’s frequent presence, a silent ray of warmth in my newly-cold world. He didn’t disturb me as I lay wrapped in blankets and refusing to get out of bed, never touched me or spoke, as if he sensed that upending the delicate balance of my emotions would be disastrous. But he would come in and stand silently a while before departing again—off to do his work as Watcher, I assumed.

Although Heimdal didn’t speak to me, I did hear his voice, in the corridor outside my room and in conversation with the older voice I came to associate with Odin, the Allfather, leader of the Aesir who ruled Asgard, city and world alike.

“…too soon. You can’t ask it of her.” Heimdal’s voice, reined-in and carefully respectful.

“I need to see Alfheim.” This was Odin. Brusque, but not unkind. “I must see for myself. She is the only bridge remaining.”

When I realized what they were discussing, nausea rolled through me. Beneath my blankets, I huddled into a fetal position, curling in on myself. Tears stung my eyes.

“She is in no condition—”

“She has no choice. Powerful as Frigg’s scrying is, she cannot see everything. We need to go in person.”

Heimdal’s response was slow in coming. It held a note of resigned obedience. “Then let me be the one to ask her.”

What Odin replied to that, I didn’t hear. But Heimdal’s footsteps entered my room, and I sensed him standing over me. I stayed where I was, squeezed my eyes shut and didn’t move and willfully waited for him to go away.

“Iris.” The murmur of Heimdal’s voice was like a sunbeam soft against my face. “I know you’re awake. I know you heard us. I’m sorry.”

He knew—of course he knew. He was Heimdal the Watcher. He could hear my heart beating faster, hear my ragged breathing. Maybe he could even hear the tears sliding down my cheeks.

“If I could take this away, I would.” I didn’t need Watcher senses like his to hear the empathy in his so-gentle voice.

Hearing it should maybe have broken me. Should have sparked the sob building inside me and reduced me to helpless tears. Instead, it washed through me like morning sun driving away the night’s cold. I felt comforted.

More, I felt stronger. Beneath the gentleness in Heimdal’s voice, there also lurked a strength. That strength tugged at me. Urged me to step outside myself and the despair in which I’d been drowning. It gave me a strength of my own, to take a deep breath and still the quaking in my bones.

My family was dead. My best friend. Everyone. And we still didn’t know what had caused the fire.

The least I could do was help Odin find out.

A servant brought a wash basin and a change of clothes. The silk robes I’d been wearing, the midnight and royal purple of a bridge, were beyond ruined. Still, as I dropped them to the floor, it was all I could do not to crawl back into bed and resume weeping.

When I stepped into the corridor, now wearing simple broadcloth robes of dark and unadorned blue, only one man waited for me. This man was lean, with ropy muscles along his neck and a steel gray beard. Odin, I assumed.

Whoever he was, he was not Heimdal.

My pulse quickened, this time in panic. I looked around, but the corridor was empty of everyone save Odin and me and the servant now carrying away the dirtied wash basin.

“Heimdal has a job to do.”

Odin regarded me with one good eye. A ruin of puckered scars covered where his second eye should have been. He wore a simple tunic and trousers, as if he were only a man and not a god. A grayed braid hung from beneath a simple circlet of beaten gold.

It sank in, finally, that I was in the presence of the Allfather. As Asgard’s Aesir were leaders of the Nine Worlds, Odin was leader of the Aesir. Fresh panic tightened my throat.

“We also have a job to do.” Odin spoke simply. Carefully. “We will stay no longer than necessary. You have my word.”

Perhaps his careful demeanor was intended as kindness. But I had never heard the Allfather and kindness mentioned in the same breath. And now, finally, another thing finally started to sink in.

“She is the only bridge remaining.”

And so of course Odin was treating me with great care. Of course Heimdal was. I was the last Alfar. The last bridge. The last living being capable of opening the ways between the worlds which Asgard ruled.

They needed me.

The “we” who went to Alfheim turned out to include not just Odin but also his sons, Thor and Baldur. They didn’t look much like brothers—Thor was tall and broad, rugged and ruddy, his hair a deep gold nearly the shade of the bronze-worked great hammer he carried on his back. Baldur was equally tall, but slighter in build and more slender of feature, although his hair was equally golden. Both wore heavily decorated mail shirts.

As Rose had predicted in what seemed now the long-distant past, Thor took his time looking me up and down. Sickened by his audacity under the circumstances and dulled by grief into not caring what anyone thought, I had little trouble staring him down. Possibly he picked up on the disgust in my expression, because when he eventually got around to looking again at my face, he turned aside.

Baldur bowed, the picture of courteousness, proving that looks were not the only difference between the brothers. Of the three men—gods—who accompanied me to Alfheim, Baldur was the one who gently laid his hand atop mine for the journey. Odin and Thor each took hold of Baldur’s shoulders to complete the connection between the four of us.

I took them to Alfheim. I stood in the charred remains of the bridge stone clearing. I thought the ground should still seem overly warm beneath my feet, but it felt no different than it ever had.

That was the only thing that was no different. I did my best to look at nothing save the cracked and half-melted bridge stone, its formerly gleaming white surface blackened with soot.

Odin waited with me while Baldur and Thor went down into the city. If I’d chosen to look, I could have seen clearly where the city had been—the trees that had once stood between the hillside and the city were gone. The ashes and cinder coating the ruined bridge stone and clinging to the magical dome protecting the now-dead world were all that remained of anything.

I chose not to look. I stood beside Odin, allowing his greater mass to block my view and breathing air that stank of smoke and burned my lungs and nose.

“The air exchange is still working,” Odin remarked, seemingly to himself. “The atmosphere will eventually clear.”

Maybe it would. No one remained inside Alfheim’s dome to whom that would matter. I kept my insight to myself, though. Despite my determination to find out what had caused this, my insides shook. I was afraid that speaking might unleash a complete lack of control, probably in the form of fresh screaming and weeping.

In the end, through a combination of Thor’s and Baldur’s physical examinations and the scrying talents of Odin’s wife, Frigg, Odin concluded that it was as he’d surmised. One of the dome mechanisms outside the city, perched high in a triangulation of magical energy, had briefly failed. Radiation had streamed into the dome and struck in exactly the wrong place—by all estimations, the explosion had originated in the painter’s guild. I thought of the storage shed outside the guild’s great central studio, filled with tubs of binder and sacks of pigments.

And turpentine. Vats of turpentine.

Willow would have been working there that day. My little brother had probably been among the first to die.

My brother was dead. My father was dead. Everyone I had ever known—dead.

The realization finally, truly sank in. It should have undone me, but instead an ice worthy of Asgard filled me. I listened, numb, as Odin made his final analysis.

“The mechanisms were designed to self-repair. It fixed itself. Then it re-sealed the dome and trapped the fire inside.”

Which was, I thought to myself, no worse than what would have happened if the entire dome had failed instead. But I didn’t say that aloud, either, because it didn’t matter.

Nothing at all mattered.