“This is fabulous, Fjalar. I wish we could enjoy the hospitality of dwarfs more often,” she said.
<Thanks, Granuaile! It’s about time somebody listened to the hound! Now tell him his chin looks like a dimpled golf ball.>
Oberon made this last comment as Granuaile was taking a sip of mead, listening to Fjalar’s gracious reply. She managed both to spit mead and choke at the same time.
Fjalar and Frigg looked alarmed, and I looked like an ass because I laughed. Oberon chuffed.
“You’d better get used to it,” I said, pounding her on the back a couple of times, “because that’s the way it’s going to be. He’s like that all the time.”
“Thanks for the timely heads-up,” she wheezed. We then had to spend a few moments apologizing to our hosts for our terrible manners.
After dinner was finished and we had showered Fjalar with another round of compliments and thanks, he cleared away the dishes and brought us cups of Irish coffee.
“Many thanks, Fjalar,” I said. “You’ve researched your guests’ preferences well.”
“Glad I am that I could so satiate you, for I have a tale long in the telling to share, if your leisure serves.”
“No doubt this has something to do with Loki,” I said.
The dwarf nodded. “It does.”
“We know some of it,” I said. “We saved Perun from Loki in Arizona.”
Frigg’s brows rose in surprise, and so did the impressive hedgerows above Fjalar’s eyes.
“Perun lives?” Frigg asked.
“Aye, but his realm is indeed destroyed. He is now a guest of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”
Frigg leaned closer. “Did he say why Loki pursued him?”
“He said Loki had wanted to kill Thor, and since that option had been taken away from him, Perun would have to do.”
Frigg made no comment but shook her head to communicate her disapproval. Fjalar turned to her. “Then why in the nine realms did he come to us, fire-wreathed, rash, and wanton, screaming after someone named Eldhár?”
<Atticus, wait! SHUT UP!>
“Um, that would be my fault,” I said.
<Damn it, you never listen!>
“Your fault?” Fjalar said. His eyes widened. “You sent Loki Truthslayer to Nidavellir?”
<Clever Girl, quick! Choke him!>
Granuaile twitched but didn’t follow through. “I’m afraid so,” I said. “Sorry.”
<Auugh! Is the dwarf ever going to make tasty nom-noms for us again? NO. You’ve ruined everything! >
“
“Fjalar, he is our guest,” Frigg said.
“He is our enemy!” the dwarf roared. Despite her attempt to make him sit, he rose, pointing at me. “Thoughtless tongue of a tiny mind! Seven times seven hundred Shield Brothers dead—”
“What?” I said.
“Have patience, you see he is unaware!” Frigg said. “He could not have known what Loki and Hel would do.”
“What did they do?” I asked. “Fjalar, please, I do not know what happened. Tell me what they did.”
The dwarf glared at me, his fingers itching for an axe. Frigg never removed her hand from his shoulder. He took several deep breaths, his chin mottled with blood-lust, until he finally mustered the will to take his seat calmly.
“I suppose it is meet and proper,” he said, “that you should hear first why I mourn, beardless and braided. And then your woman and hound will know I have just cause, am truly honor-bound, to cut you down.”
Oberon growled at his words.
“Please,” I said to him. “Say on.”
Perhaps if we had warning, horns sounded with alarm, we could have mustered a stronger defense, offered tapestries of wards and fire-tested stone. As it was, our defense faltered, heat-ravaged, and our stone doors melted, slagged to ruin by the sulfur breath of volcanoes, Loki’s fury unchained. Nidavellir opened to him, he gave vent to his spleen, gall and bitterness churning in his eyes, madness made plain, spewing the venom he had choked down for so long in his bondage, deep in the darkness of that sepulchral cave. Our guards he set aflame and then bellowed above their screaming, demanding that we produce the wretched construct, dwarf-crafted, known as Eldhár. He paused for our answer, and we bore him honest tidings that nothing did we know of such a construct, but this he refused to believe, heart hardened against the truth, he who trades in lies like the winds trade in rumors of storms. Awash in fire, orange and yellow, he shot through tunnels and the noble caverns of Nidavellir, ancient dwarf-home, solid sanctuary until that day. Deeper and deeper he delved, past our cities and into rough- hewn mines, and even past these until he burned the raw, untouched rock, the virgin flesh of the earth. We lost him somewhere in the dark, his flames extinguished, his shrill demands for Eldhár fallen silent, grave-still, not even a whisper of misplaced anger in the abyss.
Then we wondered, and we sent out queries to Asgard, Vanaheim, and elsewhere: How had Loki won free? Was Ragnarok begun? Who was Eldhár? There are many dwarfs who hold that name, but none of the king’s smiths had crafted a construct of that calling.
We heard first from Odin Allfather, far-seeing, wise-ruling. He warned us to beware of Hel, cold and cunning, and to look for her spies in our realm; she must not learn that Loki was in Nidavellir. Straightaway we searched, seized, and questioned; her minions, death rattlers, stringy shadows of the eternal forlorn, we found in abundance, and held them captive. But our prudence came too late, availed us not!
Too open had we been about Loki’s arrival, too free with our questions and messages. Hel could not fail to hear that Loki Giantborn had come to Nidavellir, losing flame and voice and pain-racked visage in the black of some pit, far beyond where we feast and work and dwell.
To my shoulders fell the weight of the mountain, for such is the weight of my king’s command. King Aurvang, son of Vestri, golden-maned, mighty-thewed, many-wived, bold in battle, spake unto the king’s smith, who in turn spake unto me, and my task was made plain: The Stonearms, the king’s own hammers, needed armor to withstand Loki, proof against fire, wards against his wrath.
I am a Runeskald, one of seven, seniormost and filled with lore, who emblazons armor with the truth of runes, elemental forms, matched to thought and deed and purpose; weapons too, carved with kennings both old and new that I sing betwixt my workshop walls, always imbuing steel and stone with the poetry of life, the songs of war.
It had never been done before, warding armor so well against fire that a dwarf could withstand the implacable malice of Loki Kinslayer, flame-haired cruelty, molten-tempered mischief. But I was not asked if it could be done; I was told to make it so.
I sang to the steel and struggled with the runes for a sevenday, yet could not find the form and song that would keep steel cool in fire. In perversity, desperation driven, I plied my craft on leather and surprisingly found a measure of success. Pursuing it further, doubly determined, I sang of skin-sealed moisture, sinews hardened with courage, tanned hide of taut resolve that deflects danger, and of surfaces chapped instead of burned. And the runes I crafted were oblong and rounded, heat-shedding shapes of domed protection, sigils of steadiness in the face of fury, waves of quenching water to drown licking fingers of fire.
Into the smithy’s flames I tossed two shields of leather, one of my skaldic craft and one bereft of my attention. The standard shield burned, while the skaldic shield only charred and blackened around the edges. Heart-swollen and pride-puffed, I applied my hard-won skills to a set of armor, and it was during this time that Hel’s army came to Nidavellir.
News of her father had reached her pestilent ears, cold with patient malice. Swiftly, she assembled legions of
