The Deluding of Gylfi (ebook)

Fire is life. Such were the words that sustained Men against a frozen world saturated by the soul-stealing Mist, an aphorism to buttress courage as much as to importune against allowing flames to dwindle. The words slithered through Gylfi’s mind as he trod through the moon-dark wood, the Mist retreating—if only just—from the sputtering flame of his torch. Almost, he could feel the ire of the hateful vapour, incensed to find a Man daring to venture forth at night, in a time when the Otherworld waxed.
Oh, but such was the point of this sojourn, he mused, packed snow crunching beneath his boots.
Only the evergreens still bore leaves, bowed as they were by the weight of the snow that, this far north, did not always melt even in summer. The rest of the trees were skeletal obelisks reaching desiccated fingers toward the gibbous moon, as if to claim succour from its wan light. He had passed beyond the bounds of his kingdom, into the wilds betwixt there and Lappmarken, lands all but forbidden to Sviars out of fear of witchery and ill urd—fate—that could befall a man who crossed such forces.
The völva—witch—Gylfi sought was not, so far as he knew, a Lapp, though rumour claimed she may have learnt somewhat of their arcana, forbidden to men. For a man to breathe in spirits, to allow them to penetrate himself, it was thought ergi—unmanly—by common folk who little understood the perilous cliff upon which Mankind found itself stranded, surrounded by forces beyond his ken. Lost in the dark, should not one tend toward any source of light, be it faltering flame or treacherous wildfire? Aye, Gylfi sought the wisdom of the Otherworld, though he would not let it be known that he longed to claim such Art.
Somewhere overhead, hidden in shadowed branches, a raven cawed, answered a moment later by another. The Mist coiled about Gylfi’s shins, hungry for a soul, almost sensual as it teased his legs. It would, given chance, worm its way into mouth and nose, fill lungs, and choke life from him, even as it froze and choked life from Midgard. The flame held the brume at bay. Still, when a sudden, fell wind swept over him, dragging at his fire as if to tear it loose from the oil-sodden rag about his torch, Gylfi’s heart clenched in primal dread. Fire is life.
With one arm, he sheltered the flame until the wind abated. The breeze had flung snow flurries and ice crystals into his hair, riming Gylfi’s furs and crusting his beard. Aye, it was an ill night to be about. He faltered, considered turning back, finding a glade to camp and kindle a fire. Daylight proved fleeting this time of year, and mayhap he ought to have awaited summer, when the sun would linger long overhead. Caution might have been prudent, but strange dreams had come upon him, night after night, intimating peril for Dalar, and Gylfi, like any good king, must think to his people.
Ever did his cousins at Uppsalir, especially Alrek, seek to reunite the Yngling house, perhaps even at the cost of extinguishing Gylfi’s branch of the clan. Maybe, they would have accepted him as jarl beneath them, even as they had made another cousin the Jarl of Jamtla. But Gylfi was a king and to surrender such a title would shame him beyond endurance, a cave lion allowing itself to be named a house cat.
So he pressed on, into the howling wind, mindful of predators that stalked the night. Dire wolves prowled these wilds, he knew, stockier than other wolves, and more aggressive, with teeth that could rend mail as easily as flesh. A pack could take down a mammoth; he’d seen it once in his days as a hunter, ere he took the throne.
The woods broke, opening into tundra, one illumined by the ghost lights that danced in winter skies. Moonlight silvered the Mist here, giving the plain the appearance of Niflheim, of Gylfi’s nightmares of Hel’s frozen underworld. He’d gone not a hundred paces beyond the tree line when he came upon tracks so heavy even fresh snow had not yet filled in the impression. Gylfi knelt, examining the spoor. Not quite the size of mammoth prints. A crash of woolly rhinos, he thought, roaming free between the glacial shelf off the mountains and the woodlands. Perhaps they had migrated out of Kvenland, for in winter an ice shelf oft bridged the narrows of the gulf. His hunters could have fine game, should they choose to venture so far afield, though he knew none would. There were worse predators than dire wolves or cave lions haunting the wild places, and men would have accounted him a fool for trekking here, even to consult a völva, much less one who clearly loved her solitude.
Aye, there were völvur enough on the fringes of Dalar town, plying herbcraft, called in as midwives, or even casting runes to divine a man’s fortunes. None had given him the answers he sought, and ever his dreams stalked the corners of his mind, sleeping, waking. A shadow passed in the dark halls of sleep, as of some fell vaettr—spirit—haunting him. He touched his iron brooch at the thought, warding against the Otherworld. Mayhap he found himself plagued by a mara, weaving for him nightmares as the Norns wove Urd, or perhaps by some disquieted ghost, wroth with him for a slight, real or perceived. Or, if not, if his dreams were warnings of peril impending, be it from others of the Yngling clan or even the Gautish tribe to the south, this he must know.
For to foresee a dread future and fail to strive against it was a grave shirking of responsibility handed to those given such knowledge.
His torch guttered as he pressed onward. Soon, he would need to replace it, though he had but a handful left, and still no sign of the witch’s lodge. Onward, he pressed, and again ravens cawed, promising to feast upon his corpse should he fall in these unknown lands. Considering the Mist might well give rise to a living ghost, he might account himself lucky to serve as raven-food.
In the distance, he saw a gleam, hazy through the Mist, and toward this he trekked, his steps quickening with anticipation. Firelight meant Man, for beasts and vaettir shunned such. At last, a hall came into view, its roof sagging beneath the weight of too much snow. Its fence was high, cut from solid logs, with the hints of iron spokes poking out from above the snows. The völva welcomed vaettir, aye, but only when invited; she would not want denizens of the Otherworld coming upon her dwelling unannounced. In likewise warding, torch poles rimmed either side of the main door, belching oily smoke into the night sky.
Gylfi pried open the ice-crusted iron latch of the fence; the gate creaked like aching bones when he eased it open. The sound must have alerted those within, for someone cracked the door ajar, though Gylfi could make out naught within the darkened hall.
“I seek the völva,” he cried from the gate. “I am a Man.” He placed his palm upon its iron latch to prove his claim.
“’Tis past the middle of the night,” a girl’s voice answered, younger than he’d have expected. But, of course, the völva would keep girls here, apprentices in training whom she no doubt set about work that thralls would have done in civilised halls. “Who comes calling at such an hour?”
For a moment, he considered lying, fearing his presence here might earn him the scorn of his people. But it would little behoove him to come seeking answers and refuse to reveal his purpose. “I am Gylfi, King of Dalar, scion of the Yngling clan.”
Hushed voices sounded within the hall and Gylfi shifted from foot to foot, for the first time wondering if they might turn him away after he had trekked so very far. “Leave sword and seax outside,” the girl said, after a moment more.
Taking the invitation, Gylfi removed his broadsword from his shoulder and unbelted his seax, then trudged to the house and leant both blades against the outer wall. He drove his torch into the snow, then he raised his empty hands, showing he was unarmed. The girl opened the door further. His torchlight spilled over her face, revealing ashy, flaxen hair, and a girl of no more than thirteen winters.
“She’ll see you soon,” the girl said, motioning Gylfi inward and indicating the fire pit where he might sit and warm himself. An invitation he immediately availed himself of, collapsing in a huff and shaking the rime from his furs ere tossing them aside to dry. Next he raked his numb fingers through a beard grown unkempt from too long in the wild.
With the shutters drawn tight, smoke from the pit made the hall thick and turned the light hazy, the fumes trickling through vent holes near rafters carved in the likeness of feral beasts and venomous serpents. The old house creaked with the wind. This place sat somewhere betwixt Midgard and the Otherworld, or at least such was the impression the völva sought to engender. Nestled in the shadow of the towering glacier as her hall was, Gylfi would have named that effort a success.
The woman who appeared through the smoke-haze looked more shadow than mortal, lingering as she did just beyond the firelight’s threshold. The crackle of the flame almost covered the sound of bones clinking in her hair. As she drew nigh, stepping half into the light, he beheld her face, weathered by time though not quite matronly. Her brow and cheeks bore runic tattoos that, in the scant illumination, seemed sinister, writhing in the flame-shattered shadows. In one hand she carried a staff, its tip carved in spirals, feathers dangling from strings wound into the grooves. In the other, the woman bore a spirit drum which Gylfi knew völvur used to enter their trances. Almost unconsciously, he brushed fingers over his iron brooch.
“Tell me, King, why come to my hearth at such a late hour, and alone, no less.” The latter, he thought a jibe, for all men who sought völvur came in supplication, be they king or thrall. To have brought a retinue would not only have damaged his reputation amongst his people but might have aroused the ire of the vaettir with whom völvur mediated. In this space, she was a queen, and he the subject of her whim, to aid or spurn as she saw fit.
“Ill omens plague my dreams, and I find myself compelled to seek a reading of the urd before Dalar. Those wise women nigh at hand have not the seidr needful to say what impends.” Witch or no, Gylfi found few men or women immune to flattery. As for the future, the cusp of summer was a time for making raids, aye, or war, if one was so inclined. Gylfi withdrew a silver arm ring from his wrist and laid it in the space between himself and the völva.
Though the woman made no move, the girl scampered forward, grabbed the treasure, and inspected it. She nodded to her mistress and disappeared into a side room. A moment later, the girl returned—the ring gone—now bearing a leather pouch, which she gave to the völva. The older woman snatched it and shooed the girl away, drawing loose the strings in well-practiced motion, before withdrawing a handful of something.
This, she cast into the space where Gylfi had left his ring. Rune-carved tiles of bone skittered along the rushes, and Gylfi leant forward, almost imagining he could see something in the pattern of their fall. When he looked up, the völva stared not at her runes but at him. Among the Kvens and Lapps, it was said, men could practice seidr, there named shamanism, and for such, those foreign peoples were much feared among Sviars. The most feared of all were the Witch-Queens of Pohjola, and again, Gylfi caught himself wondering if this völva had trained among their ilk. Wordless, the woman tore her gaze from his and pored over the runes, grumbling under her breath all the while. Every so oft, her tongue darted from between her teeth like a serpent snapping prey.
“What do you see?” he ventured when the silence had drawn on long enough to carry choking weight.
The woman sighed, dropped her chin to her chest, closed her eyes, yawning wide. “I see a quickening of the Mist. I see … wolves … ravenous, hemming in the lands of Man. A change I feel, shifting of the winds that may betoken weal or woe, though which none can say …” She breathed a longer sigh, her eyes popping open.
Gylfi tried not to squirm, tried not to accuse the woman of working false, though to his mind, she said little with many words. He had not trekked across leagues of frozen waste and perilous wild for vagaries he could have heard uttered in his own hall, by half-trained völva apprentices. “Surely the famed völva can offer more light about what impends.”
A sneer crossed her face. “It gluts itself on doomed men’s lives, reddens the dwellings of gods with crimson stains, whilst sun turns black and weather vicious. Would you yet know more?”
Skalds claimed, in the days of the Old Kingdoms, sorcerers great and terrible ruled, calling upon powers now faded from the world. This woman seemed but a pebble beneath such mountains of power, and yet, something about how she uttered her last words prickled his flesh with misgivings. A chill ran through him, heedless of the stifling warmth of the fire pit.
It became hard to swallow, hard to speak. “What urd lies before Dalar?”
“Herald the change … or be swept away in its tide.” A strangeness had settled into the timbre of her voice, only reinforcing the sense of unease that crawled up Gylfi’s spine. With a wide swoop of her arm, the völva scooped all the tiles away and rose, arching her back with an audible pop. “Rest yourself by the fire ‘til morn, if it please you.” She cast a weighty look upon him, which, though she did not speak, made plain what might befall any man fool enough to lay a finger upon a völva’s apprentice.
Not that such a threat would prove needful; Gylfi did not take girls so young to his bed, and after this night, such companionship was far from his mind. Almost, he had thought the völva a fraud, thought her rune-craft and ramblings theatrics to bring in silver. And yet …
No, Gylfi did not think to spend the night here, though fire was a welcome bulwark against the Mist. Instead, with mumbled thanks, he withdrew from the hall and its yard, closing the latch behind him. By the very Gates of Hel, this night had proved weighty, no mistake, and still, he had no true answer. Only, the völva seemed to confirm the import of his dreams, of a changing drawing nigh, and one, according to her, he must herald rather than vie against.
Instead, Gylfi took up his dwindling torch and hurried back toward the woods, uncertain whether the open tundra or the shadow-drenched forest offered more peril. All he could say at present was he would see himself well away from the völva’s hall ere he allowed himself a moment’s rest. He knew he moved with incautious speed, but it felt as though a flame now kindled in his own breast, demanding he fly from this place.
At last, he passed back into the wood. As he crossed the threshold, his vantage changed, the trees becoming the supporting pillars of rafters high overhead. He was within a long hall, one thatched with golden shields above the rafters. The light from twin hearths cast an orange gleam among the shields, leaving them nigh radiant above, whilst coils of the smoke slithered around them like linnorms—dragons.
“I …” Gylfi spun, looked behind himself, for he could not recall how he had come to such a place, nor had there been a hall here when he had passed this way earlier. Once more, he looked into the hall, and before him stood a man, juggling seaxes, seeming not the least concerned to have a full seven in the air at once. “Whose hall is this?”