My meditations were interrupted by a small but extraordinary delegation from the Fae host. Fand, Manannan Mac Lir, and five large white-furred creatures hailed me and approached from the fairway leading to my green. I was pretty sure I knew who the furry folk were, but I was entirely surprised that Fand was willing to appear with them.
“Siodhachan. Well met,” Manannan said.
I rose to my feet and smiled. “Manannan. How pleasant to see you again. And you, Fand.”
The Queen of the Faeries gave me the barest nod of acknowledgment but said nothing. Her eyes did not meet mine but rather fixated below my chin at the cold iron amulet around my neck. Even that much civility from her was probably a remarkable concession.
The god of the sea said, “I’ve come to introduce you to my children, the yeti.” These were clearly not Fand’s children, but her expression was blank. “They wanted to meet you.”
“They did? The honor’s mine.”
Manannan and Fand stepped to one side and he introduced the tallest of the yeti, with extraordinary braids and silver threads worked into his facial hair. “This is the eldest, Erlendr.”
The yeti broke into a wide grin and extended a huge furred hand for me to shake. I took it, and it was not unlike wrapping one’s fist around an ice cube covered in felt.
“Oh, Master Siodhachan, it is such a pleasure! We are great friends of your apprentice, Granuaile, and wanted to thank you for sending her to us!”
“She speaks very highly of you as well.”
Erlendr took over the responsibility of introductions, and rarely have I seen or felt such joy in a meeting. Granuaile had told me how wonderful the yeti were, but in person I discovered they were not the sort of beings to which words can do justice. They were unique, their magic combining the elemental talents of their frost giant heritage with the binding skill of Druidry.
Hildr, the second eldest, immediately asked me a question: “Did Granuaile tell you about the hockey rink she made for us?”
“Yes, she did.” The way their expressions lit up, it was clear that Hildr had broached a favorite subject.
“It’s fantastic! We dream of playing in a proper game with humans someday. Perhaps we could rival the professionals of the NHL! Do you play hockey, Master Druid?”
“Sadly not. But I do enjoy watching the games live and making fun of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who manage to lose all the time in spite of having an enormous budget. And please, call me Atticus, no honorifics.”
Each of them had more to share about Granuaile in the most friendly, hairy, animated terms, and before long my face began to hurt from smiling so much. Skúfr asked me to relay that the ice sculpture of Jon Snow—“he who knows nothing”—was still standing in the Himalayas, and as far as they could tell he still knew nothing. Ísólfr hoped that he could share more of his poetry with her soon. And Oddrún, the youngest and smallest of them—but still far taller than me—asked about the whirling blade they made for her.
“Is it serving her satisfactorily? We all worked on it together.”
“Oh. Yes, well. Unfortunately, it was stolen from her by Loki.”
“Loki? The same one who is responsible for this thing we are here to stop?”
“The very same. He may have it on his person.”
The yeti did something with their fur, an involuntary reaction, perhaps; it fluffed out and then flattened, their expressions turning dour.
“That is most unfortunate news,” Erlendr said.
“I agree.”
Beneath me, the earth rumbled. We all looked north to the pond and saw that it was bubbling away, boiling into nothing. In short order it exploded, a gout of flame rising from the center of an ever-expanding cloud of steam, and the yellow-orange center of it kept building and building as a mountain formed where a lake used to dwell, boulder-sized chunks of granite and basalt falling and oozing as a volcano formed before our eyes. But it was unaccompanied by the standard payload of ash; it was all rock and flame, the sort of clear, pure eruption Eddie Van Halen played once, the sky remaining crystal clear, a sunny day for an apocalypse in Scandinavia.
Atop the rising cone a form took shape in the flame, a monstrous humanoid the height of skyscrapers, and once it solidified, a head and molten shoulders with arms of stone and a heart of bottomless rage, it erupted anew, fountains of flame rocketing into the sky and spreading in all directions.
The fire giant Surt, long confined to Muspellheim, had finally come to Midgard, and he had come to burn it all. Wounded, seething, and petty, he vented his long-pent-up fury upon the world, and his fire arced like missiles to far-distant lands, careless of what joy it burned down or what ruin it brought to innocent souls.
The heat of him singed my face, even from such a distance, and I knew my iron amulet would be no protection against his flame should it be directed at me. Right now, however, Surt’s fire was spreading vast distances, and we were standing underneath an expanding molten umbrella.
So this was how the prophecy of the sirens would come true. Surt’s long-simmering tantrum would set the world alight, and there would be no scientific explanation possible except for the sudden eruption of a volcano where no seismic activity previously existed. Satellites would reveal the epicenter of the fire, but only we at ground level could see the figure standing in the flames.
The yeti sighed collectively, at once awed and dismayed by the power Surt displayed.
“I think that’s our cue,” Oddrún said, and her elder siblings grunted in agreement. The youngest yeti turned to Manannan Mac Lir. “We love you, Father.”
“And I love you. All of you.” He embraced each of them in turn, told them of his pride and hope for their safety, assured them of his confidence that they could save the world from all-consuming flames. And then the yeti stepped away, puffed out their fur again, sparkling with new crystals of frost, and froze the ground beneath their feet. They skated together toward the fire on a ribbon of ice.
They were quite literally beneath Surt’s notice until the last second, when their single track split into five and each yeti crystallized their own shining path to a different part of Surt.
Erlendr rose highest on a pillar of rapidly melting ice toward Surt’s face, and once he reached the height of his collarbone he let loose with a tremendous blast of icicles aimed directly at the giant’s eyes. That provoked a violent reaction. The gouts of flame ceased erupting upward and exploded outward instead, over our heads into Lake Vänern and beyond, and the sky turned into a burning sheet of orange and black. The net result was that Erlendr simply disappeared behind a wall of orange, and both Hildr and Skúfr were consumed by globs of magma. Ísólfr, skating toward a knee, toppled from his ice sheet by a glancing blow but formed a ramp down to save himself like a downhill skier.
It was Oddrún, skating just above ground level, that Surt failed to notice until it was too late, distracted as he was by her siblings. Using her whirling blade, she pricked one of his massive toes—an exercise of stabbing it into the edge of a lava flow—and the effect was immediate and catastrophic, even if it was too late to save the other yeti. The towering form of Surt screeched as its soul was detached from its frame and sucked into the blade’s reservoir of energy. The limbs wobbled, destabilized, and then the entire body began to come apart like orange gelatin, raining down on the mountain. Both Ísólfr and Oddrún raced to escape the umbrellas of it, ice tracks melting behind them almost as soon as they passed. They did manage to clear the ruin, but their fur was blackened and singed in places. Surt did burn the world, fulfilling the prophecy of the sirens, but the yeti made sure he didn’t have time to burn it all down.
A cautious, ragged cheer rose up among the Fae host, but it didn’t last long. The portal to the Norse plane opened again, and this time the eruption was of a different kind: The undead, phantasmal draugar boiled out of Hel, armored and fearless, a horde intent on razing all that stood before them.
sifu Sun grips his staff so that it points at me but rests against his left hip, a stance I’ve seen only a couple of times before, very briefly, from Atticus, as a throwaway demonstration: “There is a style of fighting that uses this stance with a very long and heavy staff,” he said, “but that’s an impractical weapon to carry around with you, so we’ll skip that and focus on forms using the shorter staff you possess.” The Monkey King apparently wanted me to use Scáthmhaide in that style of fighting, and I ask him if my staff will be sufficient. He shakes his head at me.