Sleipnir

The walls were hung with tapestries—also woven from hair—and with heavy furs of animals I didn't recognize. Strange carvings of bone and ivory stood on smaller tables and shelves, and one massive piece of furniture seemed to be a wardrobe for clothing. Briefly I wondered what Death wore. Another ghostly fire blazed in a fireplace which must've required regular harvesting of giant sequoias. A heavy table stood beside it, laid with one place setting.

The central fixture of the room, however, was a bed on a raised platform. Silver skulls—human ones—topped stout posts at all four corners. Hangings of shimmering cloth obscured the occupant I could just barely see. Death reclined at her ease.

"So, you are the man who dares enter my kingdom before his time."

Her Bette Davis voice didn't sound angry; just intrigued.

"Come closer. I would look at you."

Baldr nodded toward the bed, so I moved across the carpets and approached the shimmery hangings, not without considerable trepidation. Unlike Baldr, Hel was very much alive. Her voice came again, chill as the wind and sleet outside.

"My home appears to distress you. What would you have me dwell in? A shining, fairy-tale palace full of warmth and light? Once those things were mine; but those who banished me made certain such were taken from me forever. Instead I wield a terrible power, and do not miss such trivialities."

She moved behind the hangings, nothing more than a shadow and a voice.

"My table is set with Hunger and Famine. I repose at my leisure in the Sickbed you mortals dread. My draperies—do you not admire them, the way they shimmer and lure you? They are Glimmering Misfortune, shining with elusive promise until you are ensnared. Come closer, mortal—or have you already come too near and tangled yourself forever?"

The hangings billowed out. For an instant, I was engulfed in a smothering cold stench, like a slaughterhouse. I lunged backward, and found the Biter in my hand. The stench vanished, and I was free.

"Very good," she purred.

The draperies subsided. A slim white hand pulled them aside. A fetid smell of sickness assaulted my nostrils and sent me back still another step. The goddess rose gracefully and let the hangings drop back into place. I tried not to stare. Then sternly repressed an idiotic urge to grin. I seriously doubted she would appreciate being laughed at.

But... honestly... !

She was half black, half white. The colors split right down the center, from head to foot. And—God help me—she looked as if she'd stepped right out of the hammiest Star Trek episode ever filmed. Her dark right side was the deep ebony of southernmost Chad, with long, black hair intricately braided and knotted in an arrangement that fell to her waist. Her left side was fairer than Baldr, with masses of silvery-blond hair braided just as intricately as the right side. Where the two colors met at the crown of her head the braids were interwoven, forming a banded pattern that reminded me unpleasantly of snakeskin.

The gossamer thin veil she wore left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and was held in place only by a snarling wolf's-head brooch at one shoulder.

Her gaze caught mine, and all trace of amusement drained away, leaving me clutching the Biter with a sweaty hand. Her eyes were crimson. They glowed hot like coals. When she smiled, her teeth were sharp, white fangs. She was beautiful, in a terrifying, compelling fashion. I understood, deep in my gut, why men throughout the ages had been repelled by—yet fatally attracted to—the angel of death. I found myself wanting to embrace her, to stretch out on her pallid bed and let her come to me... .

The Biter flared in my grasp. A flash of brilliant green light reflected the anger that flashed abruptly through my whole being. Hel was playing games, and I was cast in the role of toy. I blinked sudden sweat from my eyes.

Hel smiled, and gestured as if to say, "You can't blame me for trying." I discovered that I was shaking.

Her voice was a sultry purr, like a self-satisfied cat, and her eyes glinted briefly.

"Enough amusement, for now. I can see that you are a strong hero, so there is little to gain by deception. Come, sit at my table."

"Unh-uh." I stayed right where I was.

"Baldr," she said, a trifle wearily.

"It's all right to sit down," he said from the shadows. "Just don't accept anything from her table and you'll be fine."

She gave Baldr a pained glance; then gestured us to chairs. We sat; she joined us. I kept my grip on Gary's knife, and it kept its grip on my arm. Hel lifted a goblet and drank deeply; then set it down and contemplated me again. Her expression was impossible to interpret, shadowed here and highlit there by the eerie glow of an orange sculpture suspended above her table. I glanced at it only long enough to determine that the carving showed something utterly unspeakable being done to a pregnant woman, then hastily averted my gaze.

Hel's eyes narrowed slightly. "What I must know is why you have come to Niflheim. Can you answer that?"

I cleared my throat, and was irritated with myself for having to do so. "I want to speak with Loki."

Hel sat back slightly, which left her face in deeper shadow.

"That is what Baldr said. I did not believe him."

Hel fell silent. I had no idea what to say in response to that. I'd only been telling the truth, after all; sitting here was not my idea. The longer she remained silent, the more I sweat. I caught a glint in her eyes as her look sharpened, and the brief flash of sharp teeth as she licked her lips with the tip of a pointed tongue.

"Precisely what did you want to discuss with my father?"

"I have reasons for wanting information about Sleipnir."

"And those reasons are?"

I had to clear my throat again. "Private."

Her blond eyebrow rose. "I see." She picked up a knife—its handle was carved with scenes of blasted crops, skeletal men and beasts—and cut into a slice of meat on a dish shaped like a starving child's bloated belly. My jaws worked. I clamped them shut on nausea when she bit into the bloody meat and chewed thoughtfully.

"You realize that I am vitally interested in anything to do with Loki?"

I was aware of the reasons, and nodded.

"Good. You do understand why?"

I nodded again. Odin had imprisoned her father. He had also imprisoned her and her two brothers, simply because they were supposed to make trouble at some future, unspecified time. Given the gods' unshakable belief in predestination, I supposed it made sense from their point of view, despite the fact that they themselves believed the action would prove futile. Eventually the siblings—Fenrir and the World Serpent—were supposed to escape. Their wretched treatment ensured a well-whetted appetite for revenge. It looked to me like self-fulfilling prophecy; but then, given what I now knew, it was easy for me to point out what looked like flaws in Odin's thinking.

An idea nudged the fringes of my awareness then; but Hel spoke again, and I couldn't devote any attention to it.

"You are indeed an odd mixture of signals and portents, mortal. I wonder whose side you choose in this conflict? Mine? Or Odin's?"

The name was spat out. Her eyes flashed, daring Baldr to protest. He held silent. Wise man.

I sympathized with her, truly I did. The part of me on the side of justice cried out for the wrong done her to be righted.

Unfortunately, the day Hel's wrongs were redressed, everything I had ever known and loved was supposed to come to a fiery end; a consideration that tended to push me toward Odin's side of the bargaining table—where I emphatically did not want to be.

"Let's say I'm on my side," I answered, forcing a tight smile. Truth, Justice, and the American Way... Gary would've been proud.