Before he could say anything, a flare of brilliant light drew our attention. I squinted into the glare; then stiffened.
—Aw, shit...
Sleipnir screamed a shrill warning and reared to his haunches. Gary glanced sharply at my face; then peered at the new arrival. A stallion had appeared before the Valhall—a stallion wrapped in flame. Fire defined its muscles, flickered from its mane and tail, and exploded from the prancing hooves in gouts of sparks. The glare was so fierce, I had to lift one arm to shield my eyes.
Skuld rode him like a seasoned pro. Her thighs clamped his sides. She controlled him easily as he reared high in answer to Sleipnir's challenge. Her hair whipped out behind her, each strand writhing like a living thing in the wind of the stallion's passage.
She brought the horse back to earth and held him firmly in check. The reins in her hand flickered like lightning. Skuld glanced around with a satisfied air... then turned her fiery gaze toward me.
I'd thought the heat of her gaze staggering before... .
Even Gary flinched.
One fiery brow rose slowly. I thought I saw the corner of her lips quirk. "Not bad. Not half bad."
Then she reached out a flaming hand. Her fingers closed around my wrist. Before I could even draw breath to scream, Skuld had pulled me astride her stallion. I heard Sleipnir's trumpeting neigh; then the bloody landscape of Valhalla was fading around us. As we transferred between worlds, I realized there was no pain, and wondered whether—if I were in the process of being burned to death—I'd notice.
We came out beside the shimmering spring Urd. Skuld slid gracefully to the ground. I jumped down with considerably less finesse, but a great deal more enthusiasm. I eyed her warily, and ascertained that I was, in fact, uncharred.
"I'm glad you survived," she said, by way of greeting.
Finding myself still alive and unincinerated seemed somehow to have caused difficulty with my breath control. I suspect I sounded more than a little petulant as I replied, "I'm glad you're glad—couldn't you have told me that back there?"
Her lips twitched and her eyes sparkled; but all she said was, "Yes; but not the rest of what I have to say. First, let me offer you a gift."
She lifted her hand. I heard a distant squawk; then two midnight-black ravens swooped down from the eaves of her golden hall. They alighted on my shoulders. I stood very still. Sharp little claws dug into my flesh as they found their balance.
"Hugin and Munin returned to me a few moments ago," Skuld explained. "I daresay you will find them useful."
I glanced cautiously from side to side. "Yeah, they'd be great for reconnaissance—better than spy satellites—but what does that have to do with me? I mean..." What the hell did I mean? What did she mean, offering them to me? I studied her through narrowed eyes. I wasn't sure I liked the implications here.
"How do you know they'd even report to me?" I stalled.
I was frantically searching for a way to broach the more delicate questions in my mind. Somehow, I didn't feel quite like blurting out, "What are you up to now?" Instead, I managed to sound like a truant little boy. "I mean, I—um—sort of killed their former owner."
Her glance was as droll as her tone. "I sort of noticed." But her eyes sparkled with white-hot highlights.
Skuld had a sense of humor?
She smiled. "Hugin and Munin were raised by my hand. Odin begged the gift of them long ago, and I obliged."
I eyed her the way a bird eyes a hungry snake. "I don't have to give up my eye or something, do I?"
Her gaze left my clothes soaked with sweat under a crust of dried mud.
Despite what she was, her voice came out cold as a German blizzard. "I would have you know, Randy Barnes, my sisters and I gave up a great deal of power, on the barest chance someone like you might come along someday and win a duel with Odin. I'm not about to sabotage the man who managed to kill that dithering old fool."
Just what was that supposed to mean? Other than the obvious, which was that Skuld's opinion of the late, unlamented Odin Oath-Breaker seemed no higher than mine.
I wondered if accepting the birds would be something like signing a contract in blood. I'd just managed to wriggle out of my contract with Hel, by killing Odin; I didn't feel like striking any more deals with any more deities. But Skuld was waiting for me to do something.
I reached up a tentative hand. Hugin—or was it Munin?—let me stroke his glossy feathers. I glanced up at Skuld again. "Would you, uh, mind explaining that, please?"
I thought it was a reasonable request, considering.
She sat down on a white limestone bench carved with vines and flowers. The stone blackened. If she sat there long enough, would the limestone turn to marble? She patted the bench gently. Reluctantly, I sat beside her.
Skuld sat poised for a moment, as though lost in thought. I waited politely.
"You have already puzzled out the most important part of it," she began, gazing wistfully at the magnificent rainbow bridge that arched out of sight overhead. "My sisters and I have not been... controlling things... for a long time, now. Quite a long time. Ragnarok, of course, approaches. We foresaw long, long ago that no matter how we three meddled, we were going to lose the war. So. We introduced free will and stopped meddling. Permanently."
"Couldn't you just have prophesied victory or something?"
She offered a wan smile. "No. We had the power to shape men's lives, yes. But the power to stop the sons of Muspell from riding against the rest of the Worlds? You credit even us with too much power, my friend." She pursed fiery lips. "Perhaps I had better explain further. We three—Urd, Verdani, and I—controlled men's lives through our little sisters, the lesser norns. I do not speak of the valkyries, although they, too, are our sisters. There was one lesser norn for each man, woman, and child born in all the Nine Worlds, and when their host died, so did they. Some were good, some evil, some mixed in varying balances of the two. But look around you, Randy Barnes. What—or rather whom—do you see?"
I studied the immediate vicinity. Violet-eyed Urd stood knee-deep in the misty spring that bore her name. She was filling a basin with brilliant white clay from the spring bottom. Verdani sat beneath a shaded tree with a wide bolt of iridescent cloth in her lap, sewing what looked like rainbow-colored feathers to it. Besides the two swans that nipped playfully at Urd's shapely ankles, there wasn't another living thing in sight.
"You. Urd. Verdani. A couple of birds."
"Exactly. There are no more lesser norns. You may think it ruthless; but we killed them all long ago."
I had no idea what to say. All of them?
"Would you prefer centuries of us killing your kind?" Her voice dripped sarcasm.
I didn't have an answer.
"When the last of our little sisters died without issue, the final thread tying us to your race was severed forever. No longer did we decide who lived, who died, who murdered whom, who bore the child that would become king, who would start a war, and who would finish it. We did this, in the hope that your creative, inventive race would eventually produce exactly what it did—you. A free agent no one could control, angry enough, strong enough, determined enough to change the balance of power in the Worlds."
I swallowed hard. Was that what I'd done? I didn't feel much like a hero. I felt much more like a terrified kid confronted with a motorcycle gang after his bag of candy.
"Great." My voice cracked a little. "Just what am I supposed to do, now that you've got me?"