The Applee

THE APPLE Introduction F ire is life.That aphorism had spread through the North Realms as thoroughly as the mists themselves. Fire could hold those freezing mists at bay. But all fires dwindled, and still the cold remained, hungry, waiting to devour man and monster. And Loki was left alone to tend the flame. Fate bound him, hurled him ever forward toward a destiny of anguish and despair with only the barest ember of trust remaining. Hope for a better future than this dying world. The hope that for once, if he kindled the flame high enough, it might endure and offer a lasting rampart against the cold and the dark. Likely, it was a delusion he clung to like a man wandering in a blizzard, convinced shelter lay just beyond the next pass. A figure drifted in on the mist and sat across the bonfire from Loki. Few among the Realms of man still remembered Loki's guest. Those who did called him the Mad Vanr. The sorcerer king who had walked away from his throne after looking too long and too deep into the dark and losing himself there. Loki could empathize with such a failing. Long ago, pyromancers had stared into flames such as these, seeking answers from the perilous future. Few remained with such talents, and those few, like Loki, felt the burden ever more keenly for it. The Vanr cleared his throat as he warmed his hands before the fire. "I passed beyond the edge of the Midgard Wall some moons back." Mundilfari, his people had called him, in ages past when he sat upon the throne of Vanaheim. This wretched figure had once been the sorcerer who protected Midgard against the chaos and darkness — for which he lost his humanity and spiraled into corruption, falling ever deeper into the dark between Realms. "I passed into Utgard freely. There are cracks in the wall, fissures that widen with age." Loki poked the fire with a stick. "Naught lasts forever." The Vanir — most of all Mundilfari himself — had raised a mighty wall out of the mountains, a barrier to encircle most of Midgard, separate it from the lands of the jotunnar. That very act, calling upon such forbidden depths of the Art, might have been the point that sent this Vanr plummeting toward the abyss of madness. Now, uncounted centuries later, the sorcerer had fought his way back from the edge. But to use his Art once again, he'd risk falling deeper than ever and, like as not, find himself becoming a vessel for some horror of the Otherworld. So he had visited Utgard, perhaps needed to see for himself how the World had changed beyond the wall. In Utgard, chaos reigned. The very nature of chaos ensured all boundaries designed to occlude it would eventually succumb to entropy. "Maybe the jotunnar will soon pass through the wall." Loki shook his head. "Some of them already have." Mundilfari groaned and let his head fall into his palms. "All that I have done, all I wrought for Midgard is failing." Every such salvation represented a temporary reprieve from Fate. The Vanr may have bought Mankind time, but that time had dwindled with each passing winter, just as the flames dwindled. "Naught lasts forever," Loki repeated. Mundilfari stared up at the night sky as if some answer might lurk there, among stars hidden by clouds and mist. "I hear whispers from Vanaheim. A wind sweeps through my mind and claims that some few precious, perilous treasures have vanished from the islands. When is gold worth more than gold?" "Idunn has taken some of the apples with her." Mundilfari might have gone mad, but the wind in his mind spoke some truths. The flames had told Loki much the same story. "What will she do?" Loki crooked the hint of a smile. "Fine. What will you do, fire-carrier?" The flames danced, writhing as if in response to the Vanr's question. Loki rose. "As ever, I will do whatever the future demands of me. I have to keep the flame alive." Fire is life. PART I Year 117, Age of Vingethor Fourth Moon, Winter 1 ODIN F lames from the pyre leapt high into the night, banishing mist and preserving the living, even as they consumed the dead, as they devoured flesh and dreams and hopes. Father. Odin stood at the forefront of the gathered crowd, staring into the flames, unwilling to look at the mass of people who had come to bid farewell to Borr, the great jarl. All the nearest Ás tribes had come. The jarls decked in their fine embroidered furs and golden arm rings, their thegns clad in fine mail, and even vӧlvur — witches learnt in secrets forever denied to men. All had come to pay silent respect to the greatest Aesir in living memory. The World was lesser now. The flames were a failing defense against the ever encroaching cold. One day, all fires would burn down to cinders. One day, the World would die. One day soon, mostlike. Odin's two brothers looked to him now, looked to see what he, the eldest, would do, what he would say. He had already spoken in their father's honor, his voice almost breaking. But his brothers, the rest of the Wodan tribe, and even the other tribes' jarls all waited for more of his words. As if some speech, some feeble gesture or deficient sentiment, might preserve the tenuous peace Father had struggled to hold between the tribes. All words would fall short, so Odin had none to offer. How disappointed they would be to learn the son could not match the father. Would not, if he could. Father's dreams of a united people smoldered and turned to ash around his broken body. Someone had betrayed him, murdered him. Tyr, his champion, had found his body rent asunder and crushed almost beyond recognition. A body left out in the mist might rise as a draug, damned to wander Midgard somewhere between life and death. Not Father. Too little remained of the man for that. His head, torn from his shoulders, had lain far from his body. And yet, his murderers had not claimed his spear, Gungnir. That had remained lodged in a tree trunk. The sacred weapon of the jarls of the Wodanar, granted to them by the Vanr Idunn during the Great March. It fell now into Odin's keeping. When he held it, he felt both strong and unworthy, filled with righteous wrath and the implacable need to avenge this wrong. By Frey's flaming sword and the spear of his father, he would do so! Odin would slaughter any and all who had so dishonored Borr and he would leave their carcasses to the anguish of fog. Odin had borne Father's head back himself, in trembling hands, unwilling to accept a litter for it, no matter how heavy it grew over the miles. Head and body both burnt now, on a mighty pyre just outside the town wall. Fists clenched at his side, Odin stood motionless until that pyre had dwindled down to embers. The others had left, he knew, drifted away one by one, leaving him alone with the cinders. Only ravens perched upon the trees accompanied him in his grief. In the town, his brothers threw a feast in Father's name. Odin had no mood to feast. Not this night. Footfalls crunched on the snow behind him. A hand fell on his shoulder. Jaw tight, Odin turned to see Tyr there. A powerful man with long dark hair and a trim beard, Tyr was taller than Odin — and Odin was a large man. Tyr bore the scars of a hundred battles, more perhaps. But he hadn't been at his jarl's side in the end. Odin fixed him with a glower and did not speak. Naught remained to say. "Valkyries have taken him to Valhalla by now," Tyr said. "Borr feasts with the Vanir." Odin shrugged the man's hand off his shoulder and turned once more to the pyre. If only he could believe Tyr. But surely his father's spirit did not rest easy, not while his murder stood unavenged. Thousands of ghosts dwelt in the mists, lingering just beyond firelight, wandering in eternal torment. Father would not rise as a draug, for such things inhabited their own corpses. But some other kind of ghost … perhaps. A fevered specter or wraith, watching as his son did naught to end his suffering. But then, whom could he take revenge against? No one in the village of Unterhagen had survived to tell the tale. When Father did not return from some secret meeting, Tyr had tracked him to the village. Odin followed with a small war band. The slaughter and savagery they found in Unterhagen suggested trolls — with the exception of trolls didn't usually kill the women, preferring to claim them as wives. Men, women, children — all lay dead, battered and beaten, their corpses spread across the village. Odin had walked there in agonized torpor, fearing what he'd find. Unterhagen lay in a small valley, only nine homes cluttered in a wooded valley a few days from Eskgard. A snowstorm had swept in and blanketed the massacre, forcing Odin and Tyr and the others to dig through the snow to even find many of the corpses. And they had found them. No corpse could be left to rot, for fear of the draugar. So they had dug through the snow until at last they had found a severed head. Father. They burnt the bodies of the freemen and slaves in three large pyres. But Borr was noble, of the line of Loridi, and thus deserved a funeral fit for such venerated blood. And so they brought what pieces of him they could find and paused. Waited while the other tribes braved the winter storms to come and pay last respects to the greatest of the Aesir. "You must speak to your guests," Tyr said. Odin scoffed. He had questioned all he could, trying to learn who his father had gone to meet. Searching for an answer, searching for the path to vengeance. No one had those answers. Not the vӧlvur, whose useless visions told him less than naught. Not the jarls nor their thegns. No one. "You do not well remember the Njarar War — " "Of course I don't fucking remember it. It was twenty winters back, I was four." Tyr scowled at his interruption. "You may not remember it. I do. By the end, more than half the ás tribes, the bet