Into the Myths

The sky was on fire.

That was the first thing Archie knew. He woke on his back in cold grass, with the taste of iron in his mouth and the roar of a great wind in his ears, and when he opened his eyes the heavens above him were the color of a forge. Streaks of crimson and gold ran across it. Great black clouds rolled down from the north, lit from beneath by a glow that was not sunset, while far away, over the edge of the world, something vast and slow was burning.

He lay still, and breathed, and listened. Under the wind there was another sound. It rose from the east, from beyond the mountains, a long, deep, melancholy howl that rolled across the dark land and died into the thunder.

"That's not a dog," said Venn.

Archie turned his head. Venn was sitting up in the grass beside him, ten feet away, in a leather jerkin and a cloak of gray wolfskin, looking up at the sky with his mouth open. A great iron-headed hammer lay in the grass at his side, with a haft as thick as a man's forearm. Beyond him, Jin was sprawled on his stomach in a coat of boiled leather and ring mail, blinking dazedly. A scabbard of runic knives was strapped to his thigh. And a little way off, on her knees at the edge of a stream, Zoe was rinsing her face with water that ran silver in the firelight, with a tall bow of pale ash wood lying beside her, strung with a cord that glimmered like wire.

"Ragnarök," Jin said, hoarsely. "It's Ragnarök. The end of the world."

"Yes," said Archie.

"It's already begun."

"It looks like it."

"How do you know?"

Archie pointed.

…

Beyond the valley, rising out of the burning dusk, stood a tree.

It was so large that for a moment he took it for a mountain. A vast gray column of wood, the trunk wider than a cathedral, rose out of the plain and climbed into the clouds. Its roots coiled across the land in great arches, big as bridges, and under them ran rivers, and in the lap of each river sat a village, small as a toy. Its branches spread so wide that the whole horizon lay in their shadow. They had once been green. They were green no longer. They were gray, and bare, and brittle, and as the wind blew through them they shed a slow steady rain of dead leaves, ash-colored, that drifted down over the land like snow.

"Yggdrasil," whispered Zoe.

"It's dying," said Venn.

"It's been dying a long time."

"How can you tell?"

"The light's wrong," said Archie. He did not know why he said it. "Look at the base. It ought to be glowing. A tree that size, in a world like this, ought to hum." He stood. His knees ached. "It's quiet."

The great howl rose again, far away. Under it, close at hand, came a different sound. A clear sweet ringing, like a bell struck underwater, that grew and swelled until it filled the valley. They turned.

A woman was riding down the slope toward them.

She rode a white horse. It was a great, shaggy, powerful animal, with eyes like polished jet, and it came down the hill at a gallop with its mane flying and sparks flying from its hooves. The woman on its back wore a cuirass of silver scale and a winged helm, and a blue cloak streamed behind her. A spear lay across her saddle. Her face, beneath the helmet, was hawk-nosed, bronzed, and fierce, and her braided red hair whipped like a banner.

She reined in before them in a spray of earth.

"Einherjar!" she cried. "Four of you! And not a mark on any of you! Gods and monsters, you took your time!"

"I'm sorry," said Archie. "We—"

"Don't be sorry, be quick." The Valkyrie swung down from the saddle, a single fluid movement, and fixed him with one hard gray eye. "I am Brynja, daughter of Hlin. I ride for the All-Father. I've been sent to find the last four who would answer, and I am not at all certain I've found them." She looked them up and down. "You've an odd look about you. Where did you fall?"

"Fall?"

"In battle. Where did you die?"

Nobody said anything.

"Never mind," said Brynja briskly. "The dead don't remember. It's no matter. You'll do." She whistled, and the white horse trotted up behind her and shoved its nose into her shoulder. "You are einherjar, chosen of Odin, and you've come to Valhalla's last muster. The giants are marching. The wolf is loose. The sun is sick. And the only thing between all of us and the dark," she gestured at the vast gray tree, "is that."

…

They went with her on foot, down the long slope into the plain.

It was a strange march. The land was dying around them, and yet teeming. The roads were choked with the living. They saw farmers with their families, trudging through the mud with their goods on their backs; cattle driven in herds; women with babies slung in shawls. A line of dwarves came by, short and thick and bearded, hauling a cart with a broken wheel. A huge, bearded man in a bearskin carried an old woman on his shoulders and looked neither right nor left. A boy of perhaps eight led a goat on a string and stared at Venn's hammer with open awe.

"They're all heading for the tree," Zoe said softly.

"It's the only place left," said Brynja, over her shoulder. "Its roots shelter the nine realms. As long as the tree stands, the worlds hold. When it falls, so do they."

"And who's holding it up?"

"The Keeper."

"Who's that?"

Brynja did not answer at once. She seemed, Archie thought, to be choosing her words. When she spoke, her voice had lost its edge.

"A woman," she said. "Not a goddess. Not a giant. She was here before the oldest of us was born. She tends the tree. She has sat at its roots every day of this war and sung to it, and the wood hasn't died, for all the blight." She shook her head. "She is the bravest creature I have ever known. And she will not speak to anyone but the tree."

"Does she have a name?"

"Sera."

Archie's heart missed a beat. He heard Jin draw a breath beside him. The Guardian.

"She's waiting," said Brynja, and for the first time she smiled, a quick fierce flash of white teeth. "She said you would come. I didn't believe her."

…

The tree's roots rose out of the earth like the arches of a ruined city.

They walked beneath them for an hour. It was dark under the great coils, and cool, and smelled of moss and old leaf mold. Faint blue lights drifted through the gloom: motes, sparks, little wandering flames, that hung in the air like fireflies and moved away as they passed. At each turning there were encampments. Soldiers sat round small fires, polishing swords. A skald with a lyre was singing to a ring of weary faces. A woman bent over a wounded warrior, and the blood on her hands was black in the firelight.

"There's so many people," Zoe murmured.

"There's more than that," said Jin.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at them." He lowered his voice. "Look at what they're doing."

Archie looked. A huge scarred man in a mail shirt was sharpening an axe with the delicacy of a jeweler. A young girl was braiding a boy's hair. Two old women shared a loaf. A child slept with her head in a dog's flank. And nearly every face in the light of the little fires was turned, not to the east, from which the howl came, but upward and inward, toward the gray bulk of the trunk that rose above them like a wall.

"They're not afraid," said Archie.

"They're afraid," said Jin. "They're afraid out of their minds. But they're not running."

"Why?"

"Because she hasn't."

…

She was sitting at the foot of the tree, in the hollow between two enormous roots, with her back against the bark.

She was perhaps thirty. She was tall and brown and strongly built, with long black hair twisted into a heavy braid that hung over one shoulder and a face that might have been carved from dark wood: broad-cheeked, full-mouthed, calm. She wore a plain gray tunic and a belt of woven grass. Her feet were bare. Over her knees lay a small harp of pale bone, and she was playing it, softly, with her eyes closed, a slow murmuring tune that seemed to rise out of the ground itself.

It was the stillness that struck Archie.

He had seen frightened Guardians, and furious ones, and lost. He had never seen one at peace. Sera sat against the trunk of the dying world with her hand upon its bark, and she looked, for all the burning sky, like a woman in her own kitchen.

The music stopped.

She opened her eyes. They were deep brown, with flecks of gold in them, and they went across the four of them one by one, slowly, with a quiet and appraising kindness. She looked at Venn's hammer, and Jin's runes, and Zoe's bow. Last of all, she looked at Archie's shield.

It was a round shield of linden wood, painted blue. It was heavy. He had been carrying it all day without noticing.

"You are the Shieldbearer," she said.

Her voice was low and warm, with a faint slow accent that he could not place. It sounded as though it came from far away.

"I'm Archie," he said. "I—"

"I know who you are." She smiled. It was a small smile, but it transformed her face. "The tree told me. It has been saying so for days. Four are coming. One will carry the shield. He will not know why." She tilted her head. "Do you know why?"

"No," said Archie.

"Good." She set the harp aside. "It is better not to know. Sit. All of you. You're tired. You've come a long way."

They sat, in the hollow of the roots, on the cool moss.

For a while nobody spoke. The wind sighed in the dead branches above. Away to the east, far off, the great wolf howled, and Sera's hand tightened on the bark, and then slowly relaxed.

"I will tell you what you must do," she said. "And then I will tell you what I want. They are not the same."

"What do you want?" said Zoe.

Sera looked at her.

"I want to die here," she said, simply. "Under this tree. With the world."

The wind stopped.

"And you," she added, with great gentleness, "are going to try to talk me out of it."