King and Emperor

that our quarrel is not with Christ nor with Christians, but with the Church that comes from Rome. Because while we listen to what you say, and consider it, if you said it to the Emperor and you were in his power, you would be lucky to earn death alone. The Christian Church brooks no rivals! Will not share power or the claim to truth. That is what our founder Duke Radbod saw and foresaw. That is why we preach the Way. So that everyone may choose their own way.”

“Everyone may choose their own way,” Shef repeated. “That is why we are here.” He drew a deep breath, for this was the moment of decision. “I think it is time for new ways.”

“New ways?”

“New pendants. New knowledge. Svandis has made a start, with her quill-pendant. It stands for the study of our minds, the writing down of all that has seemed to us most fleering. Mind-study, and mind-stuff. Who is the god that you have taken as your patron, Svandis?”

“No god,” Ivar's daughter replied. “No goddess either. A name in our myths. I wear the quill for Edda, that is to say ‘great-grandmother,’ for old tales and traditions.”

“Edo means ‘I write,’ in the Latin tongue,” observed Skaldfinn. “Svandis did not know that. It is the kind of accident the gods send. I think this is new knowledge we should accept.”

“Another pendant we need,” said Shef. “The sifr sign of the Arabs, the round hole that means ‘nothing.’ The powerful nothing. If I did not have my own sign I would take that one. It should be the sign for those who can reckon, and its god should be Forseti, who settles disputes and brings certainty.

“A third, the wings of Volund. For Tolman, and the fliers.” Shef looked round with his one eye, gauging support, trying to bend the uncertain to his will. So far they were with him. Volund-priests, priests of Forseti, they would be new but welcome. Way-priests always liked new trades, whether flying or lens-grinding or calculation. Now for the hard one.

“I say we need a fourth. For the likes of Steffi, who burned his hands to bring us light. We need men to wear a fire-sign. For Loki.”

Thorvin was on his feet immediately, hammer sliding from belt to hand, and there were looks of horror on the faces of Skaldfinn and Hagbarth, and Farman too.

“No man can take that sign! We let his fire burn, to remind us of what we face. We do not worship it, or him. Even if all that you said is true, about men creating gods, why should we create a god like him? The trickster, the father of monsters. The bane of Balder.”

“Why should we? We already have.” Shef looked round the room to see his words sink in. “If Hund is right, and he exists, then we made him. Made him out of fear and hatred. Made him kill the good and beautiful because we are jealous of it. Chained him so we did not need to blame ourselves. Drove him mad.

“He is loose now. I fear him more than you do. But what I am saying is this. Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor. For the bad as well as the good. If he attacks us, we will destroy him. But fire can be for us as well as against us.”

Thorvin looked round as if expecting thunder and a lightning-bolt from the cloudless sky. “Freedom for Loki as well as for Thor!” he repeated. “But he is the father of the monster-brood, you have seen them. You have met them.” His eye rested uncertainly on Svandis, as if unsure how far he could continue. Thorvin was convinced, Shef knew, that Ivar the Boneless, Svandis's father, had been a creature of Loki with a non-human shape in the other world of the gods. If it came to that, Shef believed it too. But then Loki was bound and crazed with pain.

“Freedom is not the same as lawlessness,” he said. “If a follower of Loki were to come and say that his worship forced him to sacrifice slaves at his barrow, or to cut women to pieces for his pleasure, we would tell him the penalty for morth-deeds is death. Under Wayman-law that is already true. It is what makes us different from the pagans. Now I do not know what made Loki kill Balder, what made men imagine a Loki and a Balder and imagine the one killing the other. But I do know that if we are to cure the maim of the world and bring back Balder, then we must believe in something other than eternal enmity.”

Farman stirred in his seat, and spoke in his quiet voice. He was an unimpressive man: the first time Shef had seen him, it had been in a Volund-vision, and there Shef had been the lame but mighty smith of the gods, Farman no more than a mouse-shape peeping up from the wainscoting. Shef still saw and heard him sometimes as a mouse, squeaking and peeping. Yet he was greatly respected. His visions, all agreed, were true ones. He and Vigleik were the far-seers of the Way.

“Tell us the story of the weeping for Balder,” he said, his eyes on Thorvin.

Thorvin looked uncertain, suspicious, sure that in some way his narrative would be challenged. Yet by the conventions of the Way he could not refuse to speak. “You know,” he began, “that after the death of Balder through the machinations of Loki Laufeyjarson, Othin built a pyre for his son and laid him on it. But before the fire was lit Othin sent his servant Hermoth, greatest hero of the Einheriar, into Hel to ask if there was any way by which Balder could be released. And Hermoth rode down over the Giallar bridge, and came to the gates of Hel, and leapt his horse over them.”

Shef too stirred in his seat, for though this was a story he had heard, it was not the one he had seen.

“He went on, and begged the goddess Hel to release Balder, but she refused, saying that Balder could only leave Hel if everything in the world, alive or dead, would weep for him. If any creature refused, then he must stay.

“So Hermoth rode back, and the gods instructed every creature in the world to weep for what had been lost, and so they did, people and animals and earth and stone and trees. But in the end the gods' messengers came upon a giantess sitting in a cave, and she said”—Thorvin's voice turned to the deep chant he reserved for holy song:

“No tears will Thokk trail on her cheeks for
Balder's burial. Bane alone got she
from the one-eyed one, wise though he be.
Let Hel hold what she has.

“And so the demand of Hel was not fulfilled, and Balder was not released. Instead he was burnt on the pyre, and with him his wife Nanna, who died of sorrow. Most men think that the giantess was Loki Laufeyjarson in another shape.”

“Well and truly told, Thorvin,” said Farman softly, “but there are questions to ask. You know that the spittle that runs from the mouth of Fenris-wolf is called Von, which is to say Hope, and that is to show us that to trust in hope, as the Christians do, and cease to struggle when there is no hope, is below the dignity of a warrior. But what then is the meaning of the giantess's name, Thokk—which means ‘thanks’ just as Von means ‘hope’?”

Thorvin shook his head.

“Could it not mean that the price of Balder back is no more than thanks?”

“Thanks for what?” rambled Thorvin.

“Thanks for whatever Loki may have done in time past.”

“The stories say that he was a good comrade when Thor went to Utgarth-Loki, to wrestle with Old Age and try to lift the Mithgarth-Serpent,” Hagbarth corroborated.

“Loki was a good comrade against Loki, then,” said Farman. “But when that comradeship was not recognized, and thanks given for it, he became what we have made him. Is the king's proposal not to thank and recognize the good Loki? To enlist him against the mad one?”

“Hermoth did not get into Hel,” Shef added with the crushing certainty that came from vision. “He was stopped by the gates. He cut a cock's head off and threw it over Grind-gate, and rode back. But before he rode back he heard the cock crowing on the other side.”

“So there is life even in the place of death,” concluded Farman. “Even where Balder is. So there is a chance… A chance of curing the world's maim and bringing back beauty to it.” He looked at Shef, aiming his words at him alone. “And that is how the old become young. Not like dragons, by clinging on to what is theirs. Like adders, by shedding their skin. The skin of worn-out belief. Old knowledge gone dead.”

He has shared more than one of my visions, Shef thought, even if I did not know it.

Thorvin looked round the table, conscious that the argument was slipping away from him, seeing faces that