The Sword of Surtur Page 6

  Tyr pressed his way to the crimson and orange beams that would best facilitate their passage into Muspelheim. The varied colors of Bifrost were each attuned to one of the Nine Worlds, and by following those with the greatest affinity for the desired realm it was easier to keep the mind focused upon it and open the proper gate.

  The converse was doubly difficult, passage from another realm onto Bifrost, and impossible in many circumstances. Powerful enchantments kept the denizens of other worlds from reaching the Rainbow Bridge without an Asgardian to convey them.

  “Concentrate,” Lorelei enjoined them as they hurried along the prismatic span. “Keep focused.”

  Worry for Bjorn threatened to break Tyr’s concentration. He chided himself for being so undisciplined. He wouldn’t do his friend any good if he were to let himself go wandering away along the Rainbow Bridge. He redoubled his efforts and focused upon the fiery realm that was their destination.

  Abruptly a shimmering haze formed ahead of Tyr, redolent of the same colors as those he was walking through. His hand dropped to his sword and he clenched his teeth. He wasn’t sure what would be waiting for him on the other side of the gate, but he was determined it wouldn’t catch him unawares.

  “For you, father,” Tyr whispered as he plunged into the haze.

  Seven

  Heat was the overwhelming sensation when Tyr emerged from the portal. The rush of hot air into his face was like sticking his head in an oven. Even the Aesir’s brow was drenched in sweat within heartbeats.

  The heat was the most immediate of Tyr’s observations, but there were others equally dismaying. He’d traded the weird viscosity of the Rainbow Bridge for barren, rocky ground so hot that he could feel it through his boots. The terrain around him was lifeless and grim, without a speck of grass or hint of tree. Just gray, cheerless stone rising in great pillars and columns. The sky was starless and so black it might have been the roof of some gigantic cavern. No moon cast its rays down on the land, but it was well lit anyway. Everywhere it seemed to Tyr there was some vent in the ground belching sheets of flame into the air. Pools of lava bubbled and hissed, throwing off a menacing red light on whatever was near to them.

  Several of those pools were close to where Tyr stood. He could see the distortion in the air above the bubbling pits as they added to the ghastly heat. Muspelheim certainly lived up to its reputation as a world of fire and flame.

  Tyr turned about to look for his companions. He saw Lorelei beside him, her hair already damp from the withering atmosphere. She gave him an exasperated look, as though to say she was already regretting the plan she’d proposed to him and Bjorn.

  Bjorn! Tyr tried to find the huntsman, but saw no trace of him. Behind them was the Muspelheim side of the gate, a great slab of volcanic glass set into the side of a rock wall. The reflective surface gave off only fragmentary suggestions of what might lie beyond or within it. Tyr thought he saw Bjorn, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Concentrate!” Tyr urged his friend, though he knew there was no way his words could carry to him.

  “Tyr!” Lorelei cried out, alarm in her voice.

  He turned to see her pointing at the lava pools. Their bubbling had intensified, changing into churning undulations that sent liquid fire spurting up from their brims. As Tyr watched, an ashy gray arm reached up and took hold of the lip of the pit. It was followed by another. Pressing down on the ground, the arms drew a monstrous shape up from the pool. Craggy shoulders and a squashed, almost apish head appeared. Eyes like chips of obsidian stared from the brutish face. The rocky texture of the visage peeled back in an ugly snarl.

  “Magma troll,” Tyr cursed, giving name to the creature. Unlike the rock trolls of Asgard and others of their breed, those that dwelt in Muspelheim were utterly bestial in nature, without the capacity for rational thought. They had a certain cunning, though, and could be trained for specific tasks, much like a dog or horse. Watching more trolls draw themselves up from other lava pools, Tyr could easily guess the task these had been given. They’d been set here as guards to watch over the gateway.

  The first troll emerged fully from its lair, molten rock oozing from its body. It glared at Tyr with its dark eyes. The snarl expanded into an angry hoot as it clashed its huge fists against its chest. Standing twice as tall as the Aesir, it made for a formidable display.

  “If you want to fight, then fight, don’t talk about it,” Tyr taunted the troll. The stoneskinned beast charged at him, its great arms spread wide, its hands poised to rend him limb from limb. Tyr remained where he stood, waiting until the last moment to pivot to one side. The grasping fingers scraped against the shield tied to his left arm as he spun. As the troll’s momentum took it past him, he swung about and brought his sword chopping down. The stroke caught the brute’s arm at the shoulder and sheared it away. Molten, fiery liquid bubbled from the wound. The injured troll bellowed its fury, but a second sweep of the sword sent it crashing to the ground.

  “Who’s next?” Tyr shouted as he turned to face the other sentries. His confidence faltered when he saw that at least a score of the monsters had already climbed from the pools, with still more trying to rise. It looked as though their numbers might be limitless. “Now might be a good time for some of your magic,” he yelled to Lorelei.

  She’d drawn the piece of glacial ice from the satchel, the fragment stubbornly defying the heat of Muspelheim. It was also stubbornly defying her efforts to command its magic. “I told you, this is my sister’s magic. I’m only borrowing it,” she yelled back as she pointed the ice at the trolls and made arcane gestures with her other hand.

  “Borrow faster!” Tyr shouted as he intercepted a troll charging for her. A cleaving swing of his sword knocked its leg out from under it, while the following thrust settled its menace for good. Even as he rose from the fallen beast, another lunged at him. He smashed his shield in its face and caused it to stagger back. Before it could recover, his blade pierced its chest and sent it toppling to the ground.

  Three down, but there were still so many more. The twenty had grown to thirty, with still more climbing from the pits. “I can’t stave off this many,” Tyr warned Lorelei. “Use that mirror if you have to, but make ready to escape.”

  “Just a moment more, and I’ll freeze them all in their tracks,” she vowed.

  A bellowing troll charged at Tyr. A cleaving stroke to its side spilled it to the ground, but another followed close behind. He had to duck beneath its grasping arms and stab it in the belly. Narrowly he avoided being crushed under its bulk as it plunged forwards. “We don’t have a moment!” he exclaimed.

  More magma trolls rushed towards him, an entire clutch of the brutes, their dull eyes filled with malice. By ones and twos, Tyr could fight the monsters all day, but en masse they were too much to overcome. Caught on open ground like this, the trolls’ numbers must eventually prevail.

  Before the rush of brutes could close with him, Tyr was stunned to see one fall with an arrow in its head. A second pitched over as another arrow slammed into its chest. From the corner of his eye he saw Bjorn draw and loose a third arrow and send it speeding into another troll.

  “Better late than never!” Tyr called to his friend. Though they still faced overwhelming odds, a sense of relief rushed through him. If they were fated to fall here, at least Bjorn would die fighting instead of lost on the Rainbow Bridge.

  The unexpected arrows sowed confusion among the bestial trolls. For an instant they faltered. Tyr seized the moment and threw himself upon them. Before the monsters knew what was happening, his sword left three more lying in their fiery blood.

  Still there were too many. Tyr was forced back as the monsters remembered their anger. Even with Bjorn’s arrows to aid his sword, he knew they couldn’t prevail. For every troll he dropped, another climbed out from the lava pools.

  Suddenly the heat of Muspelheim vanished. Tyr saw his breath turn to frost and
felt the sweat on his brow freeze. A broad smile stretched across his face. Lorelei!

  From the shard of Niffleheim ice, a blast of intense cold rippled away from Lorelei. Many of the magma trolls caught in the surge were frozen solid by it, transformed from vicious beasts into immobile statues. More importantly, the magic inundated the lava pools, cooling them instantly and coating them in a layer of solid rock too thick for more of the monsters to break through. The freezing tide pushed onward, turning plumes of fire into crystallized formations and plastering the walls with frost.

  Tyr wasn’t certain how far the magic had spread, but it was enough that its power had engulfed the gate’s guardians. Some of the magma trolls had been spared the worst of the blast; he thought perhaps Lorelei had focused the power away so that he wouldn’t be frozen as well. Though a half-dozen of the brutes remained, their bodies had been slowed by the spell, their molten blood cooled by the ice of Niffleheim. When Tyr met their attack, he found them easily vanquished.

  Lorelei shivered in her armor as she returned the shard to her satchel. Bjorn hurried over to her and set his wolfskin over her shoulders to warm her. She smiled at him. “Could you imagine someone catching cold in Muspelheim?” she quipped.

  “There’s a good many magma trolls thinking the same thing right now,” Bjorn told her.

  Tyr turned away from the last of his adversaries and nodded to Lorelei. “Your spell might not have been as speedy as I’d have liked, but I’ll not argue with its effectiveness.” He waved his sword at the frozen trolls.

  “You were splendid,” Lorelei told him. “Your bravery was the equal of Thor’s.” She beamed. Tyr saw a flash of resentment in Bjorn’s eyes. It was only there for a moment, as though he immediately realized how unreasonable it was to envy the attention she was showing him.

  “I’d have traded bravery for a defensible position,” Tyr said.

  Lorelei laughed. “You make light of your courage, but you’ve shown me your mettle just the same.” She shrugged out of Bjorn’s cloak and came towards Tyr. “Why, your sword isn’t even stained!” she gasped, pointing at the weapon. “That is no Uru blade. Surely a son of Odin would carry no lesser sword. What manner of weapon is this?”

  Tyr hefted the gleaming sword and held it high. “This is Tyrsfang,” he said. “Fashioned from a tooth lost by Fenris when it took my hand. Frigga took it to the dwarves to tool into a blade and then brought it to the light elves to weave their spells upon it.” He flourished it in a sweeping display. “There is no other like it in the Nine Worlds. The people of Midgard have patterned their best swords after this one and prize them more dearly than a chest of gold.”

  Lorelei smiled at him again. “Yes, there is no other blade like it,” she said. “Nor is there any other like the warrior who bears it.”

  “We should be going.” Tyr awkwardly tried to change the subject. “Magic can be capricious, and we don’t know when the trolls will start to thaw. When they do, it would be best if we were well on our way to Surtur’s fortress.”

  Lorelei bowed her head in agreement, but there was a strange sparkle in her eyes when she looked at Tyr. Not so those of Bjorn. As he retrieved his cloak from the ground, the resentment was back in his gaze.

  This time it was much slower to fade.

  Eight

  As he walked beyond the area frozen by Lorelei’s spell, Tyr felt the withering heat slam into him like a physical force. His lungs felt like the bellows in a forge, drawing in the mephitic vapors of the flame. The ground was hot under his touch, and when he brushed against any of the rocky outcroppings that dotted the landscape, he found them almost blistering in their intensity. For absolute hostility, he doubted anything could match Muspelheim’s vicious atmosphere.

  The gate to Bifrost proved to be situated in a winding maze of jagged fissures, and as the three Asgardians progressed, the passages became narrower and with many divergences. Each time they took a turn, Bjorn made certain to score the rock with his axe and mark their path so they would know if they’d doubled back on their own trail.

  “We’ll not be led astray,” Lorelei assured them. She drew from the satchel a curious object. It resembled a jewel box, but was fashioned from some ruddy, opaque stone unlike anything Tyr had seen before. Her fingers plucked at some hidden catch and the top of the box sprang open to reveal a sliver of black metal far stranger than the material of the box. It seemed to smolder with an inner fire, little ripples of orange glowing deep within it. The sliver was kept fast to the box by little chains. As he looked on it, Tyr was intrigued to see the sliver struggle and twist against the chains. Lorelei turned, moving around until the black metal was quiet.

  “That is the direction we must follow,” she declared, snapping the lid shut.

  “You seem certain of that,” Tyr commented. “Was it not you who warned that magic was unreliable?”

  Lorelei rapped her finger against the box. “This we can depend on. A tiny shard from Twilight stolen by a dark elf sorcerer long ago. It strives to rejoin Surtur’s sword. Now that we’re in Muspelheim, it can be trusted to always point true to where the blade is.”

  Bjorn turned from marking the wall with his axe. “Then all we need do is let that box guide us,” he said.

  “Keep at your work,” Tyr told the huntsman. “If anything happens to that box, we’ll be grateful for those marks.” He frowned as another idea occurred to him. “We’ll need to come back this way once we’ve taken the sword. The enchantment will be useless to lead us after we’ve got what we came here for.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Bjorn said. He dragged the edge of the axe against the stone, striving to leave a mark deep enough that it couldn’t be missed.

  Tyr glanced at Lorelei. He was surprised that she hadn’t thought of this problem. “We have to be prepared for the journey back as well as the one ahead.”

  She nodded. “Quite right. I’m fortunate to have your foresight here to help me.” She pointed to the defile before them. “When Bjorn is finished leaving his mark, we should head this way. You’ll forgive my urging haste, but I don’t know how long my spell will hold the magma trolls.”

  It was a valid concern to have, but Tyr couldn’t shake a feeling that Lorelei was being evasive. Trying to cover an error in judgment on her part, or was it something more? Whatever the reason, he knew he wasn’t going to learn anything standing around in these sweltering fissures. “I’ll take the lead,” he told his companions. “When we come to the next crossroads, we’ll consult the box again.” He locked eyes with Lorelei. “To ensure we stay on the right path,” he added.

  The trio continued deeper into the winding maze, stopping frequently so that Bjorn could scratch the walls. Tyr began to wonder if there would ever be an end to these forlorn passages, but at last they turned a corner and saw the land open up before them.

  “So this is Muspelheim,” Bjorn muttered, dread in his tone.

  Indeed, the vista ahead of them was a forbidding sight. Great mountains loomed against the horizon, their slopes black as pitch and barren of life. Volcanoes ejected fiery spumes into the sky, illuminating the range with a hellish light. Enormous clouds of smoke blotted out most of the stars, swirling about like aerial tempests as the eruptions below pulled and pushed them. Between themselves and the mountains was a vast plain, its surface gouged by deep valleys and mottled with clumps of jagged stone. Glowing rivers of lava coursed through the desolation, steam seething from the streams as they gnawed at the rocky banks that enclosed them. Tyr noted an eerie phenomenon at once beautiful and horrible. In a parody of rainfall, cinders drifted down across the land, each flaming mote sizzling as it lighted upon the ground.

  “Glory is a prize that belongs to the brave,” Tyr encouraged his friend. “The more dangerous the road, the more glory waits at the end of it.”

  Lorelei consulted the fragment of Twilight, watching until it grew still. “In that d
irection we’ll find Surtur’s stronghold,” she said, pointing off to their right. Her expression was apologetic when she explained one thing the imprisoned shard couldn’t tell her. “I don’t know how far we have to go.”

  “We might get a better idea if we tried to fix the exact position,” Tyr suggested. He waved his hand off to their right. “Track along this way and gauge any difference in the shard’s bearing.”

  “A tactician’s notion,” Lorelei said. “But I think you misjudge how much the shard can reveal. Think of it as a lodestone on Midgard, ever pointing northward, but never telling how far north is.” She gazed out across the bleak, forbidding waste. “We know the direction we must follow. We would only squander time trying to tease the shard into telling us more.”

  “The time will grow no shorter if we stand here and talk about it,” Tyr replied, irked to have Lorelei reject his idea out of hand. His annoyance troubled him more than the rebuff, for he couldn’t explain why so slight a thing had irritated him. “The sooner we find the sword, the sooner we can be quit of this infernal place.”

  Bjorn nodded his agreement. “I’m truthful enough to say I’ll be glad to breathe the clean air of Asgard again.” His eyes darted to the side, his mouth curling with embarrassment. When he looked at Tyr again, he had a request to make. “You led the way through the passages, let me take over now.”

  Tyr could guess the reason for Bjorn’s awkwardness. Truth could be injudicious, and he repented exhibiting anything that might be confused for timidity before Lorelei. It wasn’t lost on Tyr that she’d made a definite impression on his friend, and Bjorn was eager to make the best show of his mettle that he could. His only fear was that Bjorn was deluding himself in his ambitions. He didn’t want to see Bjorn hurt, but neither could Tyr think of a way to turn the wolfhunter’s heart from the hope that had planted itself there.

  “Take the lead,” Tyr said. “Keep your bow at the ready. There are worse things than magma trolls that prowl Muspelheim.”