Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(42)



“Is this a binding of some kind?” I asked.

“Added it last night,” Brighid said. “Protection against fire. I know your aura protects you from my fire to some extent, but that won’t protect the armor itself or your sword. Pointless to have your skin immune and not what you’re wearing. You’ll cook in this otherwise.”

“Not sure I understand,” I said. “Are you planning to set me on fire?”

“How do you think we’re getting to Svartálfheim?” Brighid replied. “We’re flying there aflame. We have to follow the roots of Yggdrasil down to Niflheim and then cross a considerable distance to get to the dark doors of Svartálfheim.”

I tried my best not to geek out. I had always wanted to fly like a mutant superhero, and flying with Brighid was bound to be a smoother ride than the jerky, twitching ascent to Asgard that Perun gave me one time. I covered my excitement by saying, “You know how to get there already?”

“Aye. Scouted it soon after Eoghan told me the Morrigan’s message. The entrance is guarded.”

She wrapped the scabbard and handle of Fragarach in a ribbon marked with the same bindings as the armor, and then we were ready. We shifted separately to the same point on earth—or Midgard—where one of the main roots of Yggdrasil was bound. It was an idyllic stretch of Sweden with a fair blue lake that Freyja had turned into a portal when we had to visit Hel. Brighid likewise made a portal next to the root of the Midgard tree that was bound to Yggdrasil’s, albeit a much smaller one.

“Jump through,” she said, “and I’ll catch up as you fall. I don’t want to set this tree on fire.”

So I cannonballed through the portal and fell into shockingly cold air, the sky of Midgard gone and replaced by the gray dismal mist of Niflheim. I got about five seconds of free fall next to the root of Yggdrasil before I was cocooned in warmth and bright orange flame surrounded my vision. Brighid appeared on my right, gesturing that I should straighten out headfirst like her, and once I did she redirected our flight, pulling us into a horizontal trajectory a thousand feet or so above the great wyrm Niddhogg, who was stretched out fatly as he munched at the root of Yggdrasil. We banked west and Brighid pointed out two specific rivers originating from the spring of Hvergelmir.

“That one is the Vir,” she said, indicating the one on the left, which threw up a curtain of steam into the air, “which borders Muspellheim. We will follow that and then turn north at a waterfall, cross a snowy plain, and find the entrance hidden on a wooded hill. Sentries watch from among the trees.”

I nodded, not wanting to shout through fire, and watched the miles disappear underneath us. The lava-scorched crags of Muspellheim were occluded by the steam rising from the Vir River, and I hoped we might see a fire giant from a distance. But all too soon we had banked across the vast sea of snow, never sparkling like it does in sunlight but gray, slick, and wet, like mucus under the cloud cover. A few islands of stunted pipe-cleaner trees poked up in the distance—the hills Brighid spoke of—and off to the east was an anomalous blob of black and light blue that somehow managed to wink and gleam in the dishwater light of Niflheim.

I pointed to the blob on the snow and asked Brighid, “What’s that over there?”

Her head swiveled to examine the oddity and then, when it didn’t make any sense to her eyes, she altered our course to take a closer look. A minute or more revealed that we had not been seeing a single thing but many things made one by distance. What we were looking at was an army of ?sir in blue glass armor—the Glass Knights—accompanied by a battalion of stout dwarf elite infantry, the Black Axes. They were marching toward Svartálfheim. The dwarfs would have new runes on their axes that could cut a dark elf in smoke form and force him into corporeal solidity; the Glass Knights had defensive runes on their tiled armor that rendered them invulnerable to the dark elves’ knives, much like my cold iron aura. It allowed them to wait in safety until the dark elves could no longer maintain their smoke form and then shoot them with fléchettes as soon as they solidified.

Once I explained this to Brighid, we pivoted in midair and shot ahead of the army to warn the dark elves.

The entrance to Svartálfheim boasted no intricately carved stone doors or huge walls, no pillars or obelisks or massive sculptures outside to celebrate and prop up the cultural ego. It was a simple pair of wooden doors set in the hillside, albeit dark like ironwood or ebony, and manned by four bored guards. High enough and wide enough to move in some fabulous furniture but far short of grandiose.

To their credit, the guards did perk up at the approach of a fireball in the sky. They dissolved into black smoke as we touched down, melting snow into a puddle beneath our feet.

“Hold!” Brighid said in Old Norse as soon as she extinguished her flame. “I am Brighid, First among the Fae, and I come in peace to bring you news.”

One guard solidified and spoke, though he was nude now. Their clothes had all fallen away when their bodies turned to gases.

“You do not come dressed for peace,” he said.

“My armor and sword are not for you. They are for the army of ?sir and dwarfs approaching your doors even now.”

He cocked his head in disbelief. “The ?sir have come to Niflheim?”

“Yes. And we are here to fight for the Svartálfs. Please alert whoever needs to know and either allow us entry or bid them come here.”

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