The horses plodded on untiringly. It still bothered me that they needed neither food nor water. There was no way of telling time from the environment; the lighting never changed. Only my watch hands, moving faithfully around the luminous dial, told me time was, indeed, passing. I was halfway surprised my watch still functioned. I'd always figured Hell would be a place where time stopped. Not even the dead were immune from the inexorable sweep of years.
As we continued riding, for what felt like days, I began to grow suspicious again. There was no end to the barren wasteland we had entered upon leaving Hel's gates. The ridges had grown steeper, and the valleys colder and more desolate. That was about it. We could have been riding across the surface of the moon and found more life. There weren't even any more of the strange fungi Baldr had harvested along the way.
With our supplies running low, and sources of neither food nor water in sight, I was beginning to wonder if Hel had sent Baldr to lead me into the desert to die. The opposite side of the cavern was still lost beyond the horizon. The ceiling was unchanged, still swirling and flickering in random, abstract patterns of darkness and light. There were times when the overwhelming alienness of Niflheim pressed in like a boulder on my sanity.
Gary Vernon's face, floating in my memory, and the image of Sleipnir's wild eyes, kept me going.
Eventually—when we topped another ridge and I saw nothing except more of the same nothingness—I stopped my horse and planted my fists on my thighs.
"Okay, Baldr, don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
He turned in the saddle. Surprise flickered through his blue eyes. "What do you mean?"
"You know damned well what I mean. We're going nowhere. There's nothing out here but more nothing, and pretty soon you're going to watch me die of dehydration. I let you talk me into this against my better judgment, so I guess it's my own damn fault; but I didn't come this far just to wander around Niflheim's Outback until I drop conveniently dead."
The Biter came unbidden to my hand. I tested the edge casually with one thumb. "I wonder how dead horse tastes."
My mount grunted in distress. He tossed his head, and danced sideways; but my riding skills had improved steadily, and I not only stayed with him, I brought him under control. "Not you, stupid, the other one."
This time Baldr's horse pranced sideways, away from me. One eye rolled white at the Biter. The dead god brought his animal up short, and said, "Randy, put the knife away. There's been no trick. We're almost there."
"Yeah, and I'm the President of the United States. Try again."
"Did you think the Norns would sit out in the open?"
I hadn't really thought about that. If I were a Norn, would I want eavesdroppers watching me manage the Macrocosmic All?
"They're very private beings, by choice and necessity. Believe me, Randy, you could get within a hundred yards of them and not know it. Unless you knew exactly where you were going, you'd walk right past. I do know where we're going—I've been there many times, after all—and we're truly almost there."
He seemed sincere, and he'd saved my ass before, although I still couldn't be sure of his motives. Hell, I couldn't be sure of anyone's motives, except my own. All I wanted to do was get on with my hunt. Find Gary, kick cosmic butt...
Everything and everyone in Niflheim seemed to be conspiring to sidetrack me.
"This is the last time anyone distracts me," I answered shortly. "We get this over with, then I'm on my way. Not you, not Hel, not anybody else is going to stop me. Got it?"
He frowned. "As it must be, so it shall."
"Cut the fate crap. I don't buy it. Are you ready?"
His eyes were troubled; but he nodded. "Yes."
He turned his horse and started down the steep slope into a much broader, wider valley than most. I followed, and slipped the Biter carefully back into its sheath. My horse's hooves touched level ground. Baldr, several paces ahead, rode past an enormous rock, larger than any of the other gigantic boulders I'd seen so far.
His horse shimmered once, and vanished.
Mine rose on his hind legs. He screamed; then lunged sideways and tried to bolt. I cursed long and loud, and clung to his back while he sunfished and tried to hurl me straight into the jagged boulder.
Chapter Fifteen
It took longer than usual to get my spooked mount settled. When he finally stood quietly, I was more than ready to find out if a god could be killed twice.
"BALDR!"
I wasn't expecting an answer, and was nearly unseated again when the head and shoulders of a horse appeared out of nowhere in front of us. Baldr peered curiously through a shimmer in the air while I struggled to keep my horse from dumping me and bolting. Baldr placidly ignored the scalding stream of obscenity I sent his way while fighting my mount.
"Finished?" he asked when the horse stood still and I sat panting for breath.
I growled something physically—and probably metaphysically—impossible.
"I told you we were close. See if you can get that nag of yours to follow me through."
He vanished again; but this time I was ready. Grimly I forced my mount back to the ground. A great deal of swearing and kicking later, I had him moving forward, toward the end of the great boulder. I thought about all the times Gary'd told me horseback riding was fun, and glowered. When I found that grinning idiot, I was going to tell him exactly what he could do with his fun, his horses, and his gods.
The air shimmered around us, and we stepped onto a carpet of lush, green grass. The horse snorted, threw his head up, and stopped short. I let him.
The unrelenting, soulless green light had been replaced by the warm light I'd known all my life. Color sprang up on all sides of me, real color that soothed the eyes. Overhead, an unearthly glow, the color of fire, caught my eye. Startled, I tilted my head back to stare, and nearly fell off my horse's back. Directly overhead were great rivers of blood and fire, gold, sapphire and emerald, and a violet so intense it hurt the eyes to look at it... .
Arching up and up, finally vanishing from sight miles overhead, the ghostly, brilliant spans of Bifrost radiated their colors across the whole sky. Only it wasn't sky; it was a roof, just like Niflheim's, broken into three enormous arches by the immense crack Bifrost climbed through on its journey to heaven.
These were the three great roots of Yggdrasil itself, spreading out to encompass the netherworlds. The unearthly green glow was still there, but paled into oblivion under the brilliance pulsing out of Asgard's sacred rainbow bridge.
I closed my mouth with an effort of will, and lowered my gaze back to the humble ground, where I sat even more humbly on my dead horse.
Below the bridge lay a pool of shimmering white flame which at second glance resolved itself into shining water so bright it hurt my eyes even more than the rainbow bridge did. At the edge of that pool was an incredibly beautiful young woman.
My mouth fell open again.
I hadn't expected them to be so... young.
Baldr murmured unnecessarily—although I couldn't get my mouth to work properly enough to stop him—"This is one of the Three Sisters, the Norns, maiden keepers of the spring called Urd. I believe you would translate that as Destiny. Urd waters the three roots of Yggdrasil"—he gestured to the immense roof overhead—"the ash tree that spreads its branches and digs its roots through all the nine worlds, tying them together."