Excerpt from “The Usurper Queen Book IV: The Crown of Salt and Smoke”
“Then let me see what happens to the ones who stood where I stand,” she said. “Let me see where they burned, and why they rose.”
His eyes flicked, quick and bright as a fish turning in dark water. For a heartbeat, she thought he might refuse. Instead, he shifted his hand in hers so their fingers meshed like branches.
“Remember,” Freyr said softly. “This is a house of memory. You will be shown. You are not asked to approve.”
“I’ve approved of worse,” she said, and if her voice was dry, it was only to keep it from shaking.
“Truth will prove if you have the stomach for what is to come,” he spoke plainly. She wasn’t sure if it was a benediction or a warning or both.
Cold noticed her again in Odin’s shadowed rafters. Freyr slipped his cloak from his shoulders and placed it upon her bare form before he reached for her hand again, leading her deeper into the hall, where a crowd of people gathered that she hadn’t noticed before.
The hall was filled with bodies, and music rose to the rafters. The skald playing was likely the most skilled Indunna had ever heard. She wondered if she could sit for longer and listen, perhaps sample the life of Odin’s hall for a moment longer before death brought her there. Instead, Freyr’s arm on her shoulder pulled her forward.
“Be on your guard, you are as the Vanir here,” He whispered in her ear, before standing once more to his full height.
The golden-haired god led her through the throng. There, Indunna got a better look at the dais, at the center of the hall between the great roaring hearths. On the dais, a golden-tongued skald plucked a lyre, Bragi, surely; beside him sat a woman staring with fawning eyes. Her own namesake, Indun. Not far from them sat two identical men; likely, they were Odin’s twin brothers, Vili and Ve. Between them sat a woman worrying the glass beads hanging from the brooch at her throat. Her long hair was braided over one shoulder, and her face glowed with a maternal warmth despite the crease in her brow as she twisted the beads endlessly. If Indunna had to guess, the woman was Odin’s wife Frigg.
This could be any hall of any Jarl or Chieftain of old, where guests gathered on a winter night to stave off the cold and seek entertainment in safety.
As they stood among the crowd, a woman approached them, her golden hair unbound, her face poised and beautiful. Indunna knew she felt familiar, and when she looked closer, she realized that she was Freyr’s sister, Freja.
“They’ve been out there a long time,” Freja said in a low tone, as she moved closer to her brother’s shoulder.
He nodded absently, watching the Aesir shifting around them, watching them like unwelcome guests.
“Freyr, should we go to her?” The blonde woman asked, her curls cascading over her shoulders.
Before he could answer, the door to the hall burst open, and a man strode in with a woman at his side, caught in an iron grip. The woman was dressed similarly to how Indunna had seen the elves adorn themselves, in blue skirts, with tightly woven bands belting her dress tight against her ribs. Her long brown hair was worn in braids that fell midway down her back. She had a wicked smirk upon her lips, as if whatever had transpired between her and the man was amusing to her.
Behind the man, several of his cohorts entered with equal fury. A man with white blond hair and a horn on his belt pulled a younger red-haired boy deep in adolescence towards one of the hearths, where he pushed him to sit. Another man spoke quietly to the lead man, advising him of something none of them could hear.
The scene was becoming clear to Indunna. The man was Odin, before he’d traded his eye for the gift of foresight at the well of Mimir. The men with him were Mimir and Heimdall, his watchmen, his counselor; the boy she could only guess was a young Thor, before he became the hero of men.
The woman must have been Gullveig.
He whirled her around to face him, her braids and her skirts both billowing with the motion.
“I will ask it of you once more, woman,” Odin said to the hall. “You will teach me the ways of foresight, you will give me the gift of a seer.”
She was silent, though it looked as if it was taking all of her effort not to laugh.
“What comes to pass from your silence is your own doing; you have been warned, Gullveig, now speak,” Odin shouted.
She spat at his feet before lifting her chin high. “No,” Gullveig said, as if to a stubborn child. “Seidr bends the future when it should only be read. I won’t give you a knife to cut the world to fit your hand.”
Odin looked as if he might strike her, but he caught sight of Frigg behind Gullveig and stayed his hand.
“Then you’ve brought this upon yourself,” Odin motioned behind him, and Heimdall stepped forward, a spear was placed in Odin’s waiting hand.
Freja moved to intervene, but Freyr caught her by the wrist, his grip so tight on his sister’s arm that Indunna thought he might have bruised her sacred flesh.
Indunna’s eyes snapped back to the dais as a flash of motion caught her attention. The spear was thrust forward through Gullveig’s chest, with a sickening sound of bone breaking as the spear tip tore through her back on the other side.
A scream tore the air—she wasn’t sure if it was hers or one of the Vanir guests’
Odin’s chest heaved, though it was likely not from exertion; he was a strong man, everything a father of gods, a chieftain should be, strong and capable. But anger burned in his eyes, the need to know what would befall Asgard was driving him further than any of the assembled host had thought possible.
“Burn the body,” he sneered, as he pulled his spear from the crumpled form of Gullveig, who lay bleeding on the floor.
They all watched, horrified, as Mimir and Heimdall stepped forward, lifting the body and dumping it onto one of the hearths where her clothes caught fire first. The scent of burning hair filled the room, turning Indunna’s stomach as she watched Odin casually stride forward to his wife. He cupped Frigg’s face in his large hands and whispered something to her that Indunna couldn’t hear. Reassuring her as if he hadn’t just murdered a woman for not teaching him magic.
Freyr’s chest rose and fell, anger tight in it. His fingers were still tight on Freja’s wrist. Rage radiated from his magnificent form, but he made no move to avenge the woman lying burning on the hearth.
“Once burned,” Freyr said.
The feasting went on all around them, though the Vanir guests sat or stood numbly around the room. It felt like hours had passed, and the smell of burning flesh only intensified until Indunna thought she couldn’t stand it anymore.
Just as she was about to take a step back to flee the hall, to get a much-needed breath of fresh air, a laugh tore through the room, louder than the hum of conversation and the rhythmic plucking of Bragi’s lyre.
All heads turned to the hearth as a figure rose, charred and disfigured in the ashes. The laugh continued as she straightened, her burned flesh becoming soft and whole once more.
“Did you think your anger would be enough, All Father?” she shrieked, doubling over in hysterics.
Odin practically jumped to his feet, snatching his spear from the place it rested against the table beside him. “It can’t be…” He muttered.
The wicked laughter filled the room as Gullveig danced in the ashes, kicking embers out onto the floor. Indunna could practically hear the gothi’s warnings as a child in the temple. Warning all of the daughters present that Gullveig was a cautionary tale, the delight of every wicked bride. Now dancing naked in the flames, a scar shining white between her breasts from Odin’s spear, she looked the picture of the wickedness men feared.
A woman they couldn’t control.
Odin hefted his spear again, running through her throat this time, silencing the laughter and sending the hall into deafening silence.
Indunna watched horrified as the Vanir woman’s body fell once more into the flames, catching fire.
“Twice,” Freyr whispered.
This time, the feasting didn’t continue; all eyes remained on the hearth, the pyre for the undying woman.
She rose again, each time speared through and burned. Each time, the desperation in Odin’s face grew, and Indunna knew this was the moment that would set him searching for the foresight he’d become known for. The obsession to protect his hall from the end of days.
“Thrice burned. Thrice born.” Freyr’s hand finally released his sisters; his voice was stoic and cold.
Indunna turned to Freyr, panic lifting her voice, “Please, don’t make me stay and watch further, please.”
In Alfheim, she’d seen his cruelty, forcing him to watch her ancestor fall in dragon fire over and over to teach her a lesson, but this time, he did not make her watch further. Pitch-smoke became salt. Fire-heat became ice. Around her, Indunna suddenly felt the cold water of the rill.
“Sigmund stands where Odin stood then,” Freyr’s voice filled her mind, but even the midsummer warmth of it couldn’t shake the chill in her bones. “Obsession drives him to strike what he can’t command. He will cast the first spear. Wait. Prepare. If you answer in halves, Leifthasir will break into waves—law here, hunger there—until no one remembers it was one shore.”
Indunna took a deep breath, reaching out for the god in hope of more answers, but when she tried to speak, she found her voice gone, the air stolen from her lungs. She opened her eyes and realized that she had sunk beneath the glossy surface of the water, her body drowning as her spirit stood in Odin’s hall.
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