Prologue
It is terrible now …
A call went out in the night. Frozen, frozen as the old songs, a spirit awoke in the frosty North.
To look around …
The spirit awoke and trembled, for he had well-nigh forgotten his pain. He was alone.
As a blood-red cloud …
Winds howled around the spirit as it flew from its tomb and felt the cold air, though it had no body or form, save what it felt. Joy, joy to be alive. Hate. Loneliness.
Darkens the sky …
The moonlight reflected a million blue-white glistening sparks on the snow that covered the ground. It bounced and slid down the ice-covered the rocks that reminded him of the pain he once joyed to watch, when men knew him.
The Heavens are stained …
The spirit sped past the flashing rocks and dove through the air, and now the icy, sparkling surface of the land moved fast below him. There was no blur. His vision would always be perfect.
With the blood of men …
Now the snow-crusted land glistened and disappeared below him, and he saw waves of water dancing in brilliant blue moonlight, lapping at him, flying under him and moving him forward, faster and faster. As the ocean sped underneath him he felt alone and angry. Who called?
The waves flew past in a hypnotic blur, and he remembered those he knew were gone, for he could no longer hear them. Where were they? He was alone. But he had been called.
As the Valkyries …
He was reborn! Unbound! He had been released and heard the call and could see his new life unfolding before him, his plans and his wishes, reflecting all in the glistening blue and white waves of the freezing ocean.
Someone, some mortal, some pitiful mortal had remembered, and had called!
Sing their song.
Now he could hear a heartbeat growing closer by the second, the heart of the one who had roused him from his slumber. The yet‑distant heart pounded in his ears with blood and life and possibility. He felt the coursing blood in the veins of he who had called, and he felt distinct delicious recognition when he felt the mortal’s blood run cold, as if suddenly aware of his approach.
Now the spirit saw a place, gigantic and cold and full of men whose dreams bespoke hymns he did not recognize; he heard the heart of he who had roused him. He saw the place where the mortal reposed, as the glistening blue waves in moonlight flew past and suddenly opened up to a shadow, looming long and large before him on the waves. The waves in shadow sped past him as the rock grew larger in his vision, and now he found an entrance, where men had taken the rock and carved themselves a home that was blasphemous to him. He flew inside.
And the so‑recently sleeping found a home in one who would never awaken. When the monk named Lucius of Avranches awoke at Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy, it was a different being that moved his mortal coil. And there was something he would need …
Rise, Loki. Break your bonds.
Late, late yestre’en I saw the Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
—The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
“But in the background arises the sinister form of the avenger, Macduff, who is himself an exception …”
—Sigmund Freud