Cover

Title Page

Dedication

To Anouchka, again, again.

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped this book cross over from Dream and onto your Kindles and bookshelves. To Jon Wood of Orion Books goes the rune of persistence, humour and enthusiasm. To Gillian Redfearn from Gollancz, the rune of energy and imagination. To Jenn McMenemy, the rune of success (which is also the rune of chocolate), and to Jemima Forrester, the rune of communication. The rune of fabulous artwork goes to Andreas Preis, and the rune of getting important things done to Sophie Calder. To Anne Riley, the rune of staying afloat when the paperwork threatens to drown us all; to Becca Marovolo the rune of believing in oneself, even when no-one else does; and to Mark Richards, the rune of putting things in their rightful places. To Peter Robinson goes the rune of quietly turning the Worlds when everyone else has gone to sleep, and to Kevin and Anouchka, the rune of Mexican food, big hugs, hot tea and always knowing where you belong.

It takes Nine Worlds to make a book, or so it seems from my side of the desk. Editors, copy-editors, proofreaders, designers, artists, sales and marketing teams, book reps, booksellers, website designers. And you, of course. The readers; the tweeters; the bloggers; the dreamers; the fans - all the people who open the door and step inside these worlds that we build. Without each other, we wouldn’t be here. The last rune goes to all of you. You know what it is. Use it carefully.

Characters

CHARACTERS

These are the people you’re going to meet in the pages of this book. A word of advice before you start: don’t trust any of them.

The Gods

(aka the Popular Crowd)

Odin – aka One-Eye, Allfather, the Old Man, the General. Leader of the Aesir. Knows how to sell himself (and others). Would throw his brother to the wolves (and did) for a percentage.

Frigg – Odin’s wife, the Seeress. Stepmother of . . .

Thor – the Thunderer. Likes hitting things. Not a fan of Yours Truly.

Sif – his wife. Nice hair. Also not a fan of mine.

Balder – god of peace. Yeah, right. Known as Balder the Fair. Handsome, sporty, popular. Sound a little smug to you? Yes, I thought so too.

Bragi – god of poetry. Two words: expect lutes.

Idun – wife of Bragi. Likes fruit.

Freyja – goddess of desire. Vain, petty and manipulative. Will sleep with practically anyone as long as jewellery is involved.

Frey – the Reaper. Twin brother of the above. Not a bad guy, but a fool for blondes.

Mani – the Moon. Drives a cool car.

Sól – the Sun. Drives a hot car.

Sigyn – handmaid of Freyja. Adoring wife. Possibly the most annoying woman in the whole of the Nine Worlds.

Heimdall – the Watchman. Not a fan. Has it in for Yours Truly.

Hoder – Balder’s blind brother. A better shot than you might think.

Mimir – the Wise. Odin’s uncle. Apparently, not wise enough.

Honir – the Silent. Never shuts up.

Njörd – father of Frey and Freyja. God of sea. Nice feet. Married to . . .

Skadi – the Snowshoe Huntress. Not one of my biggest fans. The words ‘forgive and forget’ don’t feature in her vocabulary. Has a thing about bondage. And snakes.

Aegir – god of the storm. Married to . . .

Ran – custodian of the drowned. Strangely enough, likes to party.

Týr – god of war. Brave, but not bright.

Others

(including: demons, monsters, warlords, freaks and other undesirables)

Yours Truly – Your Humble Narrator. Otherwise known as the Trickster; the Father of Lies; Loki; Lucky; Wildfire; Dogstar and various other epithets, not all of them flattering. Not the most popular guy around.

Hel – his daughter, guardian of the Dead.

Jormungand – the World Serpent, demon offspring of Yours Truly.

Fenris – aka Fenny, demon wolf, also the demon offspring of, etc.

Angrboda – or Angie. Mother of the three above. So shoot me. Turns out I’m not naturally monogamous.

Dvalin – a smith. One of the sons of Ivaldi.

Brokk – a smith. Good at sewing.

Thiassi – a warlord. Skadi’s father. Likes: ice-fishing; torture; foreign travel.

Thialfi – a fanboy.

Roskva – a fangirl.

Gullveig-Heid – the Sorceress. Renegade of the Vanir. Mistress of runes. Shapeshifter extraordinaire. Greedy, clever and spiteful. All my favourite qualities . . .

Lord Surt – ruler of Chaos. Or whatever you call the lord of a place that, by definition, has no rules.

Foreword

FOREWORD

OK. Stop. Stop right there.

That was the Authorized Version. The Prophecy of the Oracle, as told to Odin Allfather by the Head of Mimir the Wise, and dealing, in thirty-six stanzas, with all of the history of the Nine Worlds, from ‘Let there be light’ to Ragnarók.

Pretty neat, don’t you think?

Well, this isn’t the Authorized Version. This is my version of events. And the first thing you have to understand about this little narrative is that there is no real beginning. Or real end, for that matter; although, of course, there have been many of both. Multiple endings, multiple beginnings, woven together so tightly that no one can tell them apart any more. Endings, beginnings, prophecies, myths, stories, legends and lies, all part of the same big carpet; especially the lies, of course – which is what you knew I’d say, me being the Father and Mother of Lies, but this time it’s at least as true as anything you’d call history.

See, this is the thing about history. His story. That’s all it is. The Old Man’s version of events, which basically the rest of us are supposed to accept as the undisputed truth. Well, call me cynical, but I’ve never been one to take things on trust, and I happen to know that history is nothing but spin and metaphor, which is what all yarns are made up of, when you strip them down to the underlay. And what makes a hit or a myth, of course, is how that story is told, and by whom.

Most of what we know as history came to us from a single text: ‘The Prophecy of the Oracle’. It’s an old text, in an old language, and for a long time it was pretty much all the knowledge we had. From beginning to end, the Oracle and the Old Man had it all worked out between them; which made it all the more galling that we only found out what it really meant when it was too late for all of us.

But we’ll get to that soon enough.

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones’, as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words you can build a world and make yourself the king of it. King, or even god – which brings us back to the Old Man; that master storyteller; keeper of runes; lord of poetry; scribe of First and Last Times. Creationists would have us believe that every word of his story is true. But ‘poetic licence’ was always the Old Man’s middle name. Of course, he has a lot of names. So do I. And because this isn’t history, but mystery – my story – let’s start with me for a change. Others have already had their chance to tell their version of events. This is mine.

I’m calling it Lokabrenna, or in rough translation, the Gospel of Loki. Loki, that’s me. Loki, the Light-Bringer, the misunderstood, the elusive, the handsome and modest hero of this particular tissue of lies. Take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s at least as true as the official version and, dare I say it, more entertaining. So far, history, such as it is, has cast me in a rather unflattering role. Now it’s my turn to take the stage.

Let

there

be

light.

Book 1 Light

Lesson 1 Fire and Ice

LESSON 1

Fire and Ice

Never trust a ruminant . . .

Lokabrenna

ALL OF US CAME FROM FIRE AND ICE. Chaos and Order. Light and dark. In the beginning – or back in the day – there was fire coming out of a hole in the ice, bringing disruption, turmoil and change. Change isn’t always comfortable, but it is a fact of life. And that’s where life as we know it began, as the fires of World Below pierced the ice of World Above.

Before that, there were no Middle Worlds. No gods, no Folk, no wildlife. There was only Order and Chaos then, pure and uncorrupted.

But neither Order nor Chaos is very hospitable. Perfect order is immovable; frozen, unchanging and sterile. Total Chaos is uncontrolled; volatile and destructive. The middle ground – basically, lukewarm water – created the perfect environment for another kind life to emerge among the frozen Wilderlands and volcanoes erupting under the ice.

The Authorized Version goes like this, supported by the Oracle. From the meeting of Order and Chaos there came a giant being called Ymir, the father of the Ice Folk, and a cow, Audhumla, which licked at the salt that was in the ice and brought out the first man, Buri. From this I think we can all conclude that the cow was the primary instigator of everything that followed – war, Tribulation, the End of the Worlds. Lesson One: never trust a ruminant.

Now the sons of Buri and those of Ymir hated each other from the start, and it didn’t take long for them to go to war. Buri’s three grandsons, the sons of Bór – their names were Odin, Vili and Ve – finally killed old Ymir and made the Middle Worlds from what was left of him; the rocks from his bones; the earth from his flesh; the rivers from his steaming blood. His skull became the Firmament; his brains the clouds; his eyebrows the division between Inland and the Outlands.

Of course, there’s no way of proving this – let’s face it – rather unlikely hypothesis. All of the possible witnesses have disappeared, except for Odin, the Old Man, the only survivor of that war; architect and chronicler of what we now call the Elder Age and, as it happens, the only one (except for me) to have heard the fateful prophecy, delivered to him by Mimir’s Head when the Worlds were fresh and new.

Call me cynical if you like. But it all sounds a bit too convenient. The Authorized Version of events leaves out a number of details, which Creationists seem content to ignore. I personally have my doubts – not least about the giant cow – although even now you have to beware of how you express these sentiments. At one time, even to suggest that Odin’s account of things might have been metaphorical instead of literal would have resulted in cries of heresy and a good deal of personal discomfort for Yours Truly, which is why, even then, I was always careful to keep my scepticism to myself.

But that’s how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes. And that’s how, five hundred years later or so, a new religion with its new god came to supplant us; not through war, but through books and stories and words.

After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith; start a war; change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster; topple walls; scale mountains – hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that’s why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods; because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart.

Not that there was much of that when Odin was fighting the Ice Folk. There were no runes to write with then, and nothing but rock to write upon. But metaphor or otherwise, this is as much as I believe: that the world came into being through Change, which is the servant of Chaos; and only through Change has it endured. Much like Your Humble Narrator, in fact; adapting to suit the circumstance.

The snow hare changes its coat to white to go unseen in winter. The ash tree drops its leaves in the fall, better to survive the cold. All of life does the same – even gods – turning their coats to suit the turning seasons of the world. There should be a name for that kind of thing – in fact, it should be one of my names. Let’s call it Revolution.

Lesson 2 Aesir and Vanir

LESSON 2

Aesir and Vanir

Never trust a wise man.

Lokabrenna

THE WORLDS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING. It’s their nature to ebb and flow. That’s why, in the old days, the Middle Worlds were smaller than they are today – later, they expanded in the years of the Winter War, then receded again like pack-ice, only to expand again when Order came to claim them. That was always the way of things; that shift between Order and Chaos. And between the two, there was Yggdrasil, the pole that keeps the Worlds apart; known to some as the World Ash, and to some as Odin’s Steed. Trust the Old Man to get his name in there somewhere, as always, although that tree (if it was a tree) was planted long before Ymir was even a glint in Audhumla’s eye.

Some claim it wasn’t a tree at all, but some kind of cosmic metaphor. Its roots, they said, were in Netherworld, plunged in the Cauldron of Rivers, where the waters boil with ephemera born from the primary source of Dream. Its topmost branch was the branch of stars that crosses the sky on clear nights. There was no World through which it did not grow; it had a hold even in Chaos, where serpents and demons worked tirelessly to undermine its living roots. Ratatosk, the squirrel, carried news all over the Worlds by way of the great Tree’s branches – as did Odin One-Eye, of course; the ultimate collector of news, hoarding and distributing.

Some might suspect that the Old Man and Ratatosk might actually have been one and the same; certainly his business was all about gathering and disseminating information. It’s how his legend was born, as you know, and how it survived for so long. It’s also why he was the first to see the turn of the seasons; the waning of our influence and the beginning of our end.

Because it all has to end, of course. Everything dies – even Worlds; even gods; even Your Humble Narrator. From the moment the Worlds came to life, Ragnarók, the End of All Things, was written into every living cell in runes more complex than any we know. Life and Death in one package – with Order and Chaos acting not as two forces in opposition but as a single cosmic force too vast for us to comprehend.

I’m telling you this so you’ll understand how this story’s going to end; that is, not well for any of us. It all begins so hopefully, but these Worlds we build for ourselves are all just castles in the sand, waiting for the evening tide. Ours was no different. Odin knew that. And still, he kept on building. Some folk never learn.

So . . .

Having hacked out the Worlds from Ymir’s remains (literally or otherwise), Odin and the sons of Bór set out to allocate its territories. The Ice Folk claimed the Outlands, in the frozen North of the Worlds. The Rock Folk claimed the mountains that ran like a spine through Inland. Mankind – what we now call the Folk – made the valleys and plains their home, in the heart of the Middle Worlds. The Tunnel Folk (‘Maggots’, we called them) lived in the darkness of World Below, mining for precious metals. Darker creatures – werewolves, hags and nameless things released through the river Dream – found their way into Ironwood, the sprawling forest that cut across much of the south of Inland, before it tailed off into marshland, salt flats, and finally, the One Sea.

The sky, too, had its territories. Sun and Moon – which, Odin said, were fragments of fire released from the forges of Chaos – rode in the sky in their chariots, each trying to outrun the other. The night sky was ablaze with stars; silent, ordered and serene. And as for the gods – because by then Odin had awarded himself divine status – there was Asgard, a citadel with its head in the clouds, overlooking the Southlands; linked to the Middle Worlds by Bif-rost – a long and narrow bridge of stone that gleamed in the sky like a rainbow.

Of course, they weren’t quite gods. Not yet. Another tribe, the Vanir, had pretensions to godhood. The Vanir were bastard Firefolk, born from the dregs of Chaos and the promiscuity of Mankind, but they had powers that Odin’s people – the Aesir – could neither grasp nor duplicate. What’s more, the Vanir had runes with which to write down their own version of history; runes that, cunningly used, could ensure that their tribe lived forever in memory.

From the beginning Odin, whose ambitions lay that way himself, coveted these mysterious runes – letters from a secret script – and the powers that came with them. But the Vanir, predictably, weren’t interested in sharing.

There followed a series of skirmishes. The Aesir, though weaker in numbers, were by far the better tacticians but the Vanir had glamours and runes on their side, and managed to resist them. The Old Man tried to negotiate, promising gold in exchange for the runes, and for a while it almost seemed as if they would come to a peaceful arrangement.

The Vanir sent an envoy to Asgard to begin discussing terms. She was Gullveig-Heid, the Sorceress, and she was ready to take on the gods for every piece of gold they had. She was a mistress of the Fire; a witch, like all the Vanir; a shapeshifter; a worker in runes; an oracle; a wielder of glam. She frightened them a little, I think, except perhaps for Odin, who watched her show off her powers with increasing amazement and jealousy.

She came to them as a beautiful woman, clothed from head to foot in gold. Gold was in her unbound hair, and gold were the rings on her fingers and toes. She was the very glow and incarnation of Desire – and when she walked into the room, even Odin wanted her. She showed him the runes of the Elder Script tattooed on the palms of her hands and how she could use them to write his name on a sliver of stone, and then she showed him what else they could do, and promised to teach him – for a price.

Well, with Gullveig, nothing came free. Greed was in her nature. The price of peace with the Vanir was gold; every scrap the Aesir possessed. Otherwise, said the Sorceress, the Vanir would use their glam – their runes – to raze Asgard to the ground. And then Gullveig changed her Aspect from that of a beautiful woman to that of a grinning, gap-toothed crone, and laughed in their faces, and said to them:

‘So which one will it be, boys? The golden girl or the viper-snake? I’m warning you, they both have teeth, and not where you’re expecting them.’

The Aesir – never subtle – were outraged by this arrogance. That the Vanir should have chosen a woman to deliver their challenge was already insult enough, but her insolence and pride (both qualities I respect and admire) were enough to make Odin and his men lose control of what wits they had. They grabbed hold of Gullveig and threw her into the massive fireplace that burned in Odin’s banquet hall, forgetting that she was a child of the Fire, and couldn’t come to any harm.

Shifting to Fire Aspect, she laughed and mocked them from the flames and spat and promised retribution. Three times they tried to burn her up before the idiots realized the truth, by which time it was pretty clear that their chance at peace was over.

And yet the transition from dog to god is only a revolution away, and Odin was just getting started. The more he heard about the runes, the more he wanted them for himself, and the more frustrated he became. Because, as Gullveig had shown them, the runes were so much more than just a means of writing history. They were fragments from Chaos itself, charged with its fire and energy. The very language of Chaos was in those sixteen symbols; and with it, an awesome power.

Power to change the Worlds; to shape; to build; to rule; to conquer. With runes and the right kind of leadership, the Vanir should have made short work of Odin and his little band of revolutionaries. But they were Chaotic by nature, and had no proper leadership, while the Aesir had Odin as General, whose ruthlessness was almost as great as his cunning.

For decades the two sides were at war without either one gaining the upper hand; between them they scorched the Middle Worlds and reduced Asgard’s walls to rubble. Gullveig saw the futility of waging war with the Aesir and left, with a handful of renegades, to establish herself in the mountains. She had no intention of ever sharing the runes with Odin and his people and so she went to the Ice Folk, who lived in the far North of Inland, and threw in her lot with them instead.

The Ice Folk were a savage race, directly descended from Ymir. They hated all the Aesir, who had driven them into the Northlands and stolen their birthright – the new World, built from Ymir’s legacy. They hated the Vanir almost as much, but they respected Chaos, the fire of which ran through their veins, and when they heard Gullveig’s proposal, they accepted it eagerly. Unlike the Aesir they were a matriarchal people and they had no problem accepting a woman’s authority. Gullveig gave them a share in her glam and in exchange they taught her everything they knew about hunting, fishing, weapons, boats and survival in the cheerless North.

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