Chapter 8 — First Signs of Ragnarök

The messenger waited for Frigg’s answer.

She still had one hand on Baldr’s arm. Her son stood beside her table alive, where a short while earlier there had been only reports of his death. Gina was near the doorway. Hermod had lowered himself onto a chair at last.

Someone had appeared inside my room and been seized. Almost certainly Loki. Baldr had returned before he could interfere.

I looked at Baldr for several breaths before Frigg answered the messenger.

Frigg told the messenger to have the prisoner moved and kept restrained. She gave no order to bring him here. The messenger bowed and left.

The floor moved under my feet.

The first movement was small enough that I thought I had shifted my weight. Then the cups rattled. The untouched one beside Frigg’s hand slid across the table and struck a stack of message tablets. A lamp chain swung above us.

Someone in the outer room shouted. The floor moved again, harder this time. One of the tablets fell and broke against the stone.

Baldr caught the table before it could turn. Frigg stepped away from him and looked toward the door.

“Find where it began,” she said.

People were already moving before the shaking stopped.

The first report came from inside the palace grounds. Part of a wall had split, and falling stone had blocked a road below it. Two people were trapped on the far side. The messenger had no count of injuries.

Frigg sent workers to clear the road and ordered the nearby rooms emptied until the wall could be examined.

Another messenger arrived before the first had gone. He carried water on his boots and the lower half of his cloak.

“The sea withdrew from the landing,” he said. “Then it came back over the steps. Boats were thrown against one another. The lower road is under water.”

“Was there another tremor?”

“Not there. They felt nothing before the water moved.”

Frigg asked where people were going and whether the higher route remained open. The man answered what he knew, then was sent back with instructions to move everyone away from the shore.

The next person did not wait to be called into the room. He came through the door with dirt on one cheek and a torn sleeve.

“There is fighting beyond the eastern farms. Not a raid. They came through the outer watch before anyone knew they were there.”

“Who came?” Frigg asked.

“We don’t know.”

Another voice came from behind him before Frigg had answered.

“The south road is still open.”

The man who had reported the fighting turned. “It was when I passed it.”

“How long ago?”

He looked toward the doorway. “Not long.”

Frigg asked again.

“Perhaps half an hour.”

Someone near the wall swore quietly. A tablet was pulled from beneath another stack and laid flat on the table. I could not read the marks from where I stood, but three people bent over it at once. One pointed to a place. Another shook his head and moved the finger farther east.

“That crossing is gone,” a woman said.

“Gone?”

“Cracked. A wagon went through the edge.”

Frigg looked toward the messenger who had just been told to use it. He had not left yet.

“Not that road,” she said. “Take the upper one.”

“The upper one passes the wall.”

“Then find whether the wall is still passable before you bring anyone to it.”

He went out. Another person took his place before the doorway was clear.

Reports arrived faster than anyone could settle them. One man had seen smoke but did not know what was burning. Another knew a bridge was standing and had no idea whether the road beyond it was usable. Someone sent to count injuries had turned back when the route behind him split.

Frigg began asking where each speaker had been, what they had seen themselves, and how long ago. When someone repeated what another person had told them, she sent them to find the source if the source could still be reached.

Two people spoke at once about different roads. Someone carrying a stack of tablets backed against the wall to let another messenger through. Hermod gave up his chair to a woman whose leg was bleeding through the cloth around it.

Questions remained unanswered because the people carrying them had to leave with new orders.

A messenger returned to correct something he had said on his first visit. The road he had called clear ended at a gate that would no longer open. He did not know whether the gate was damaged or held shut from the other side. Frigg sent two people to look and told him to guide families away from it until they came back. He repeated the order once, watching her mouth, then left again.

More people crowded in with reports from the damaged road, the shore, and the attack in the east. They spoke over one another until Frigg made them repeat the places, one at a time. She sent those who could fight toward the eastern road, then changed the order when another message said the route to them had cracked.

I looked at Baldr.

He was still beside the table while reports continued around him.

With each report, I recognized more of the Ragnarök I remembered after Baldr’s death. I still could not tell how these events were connected.

His return had not stopped what was happening.

Another tremor passed through the floor, weaker than the last. Dust slipped from the edge of the ceiling.

I heard the word Ragnarök in the outer room first. One person said it quietly to another, and the second did not argue.

Frigg called for reports from every road still open. She sent people to the damaged districts and others to hold the approaches into the city. Baldr said something low to her that I could not hear. She answered him, then pointed him toward Hermod and two waiting attendants.

Gina came to stand beside me.

“Your Library,” Frigg said.

It took me a moment to understand that she was speaking to me.

“Can it hold people?”

“It has space. Rooms. Water and food. I don’t know how many people it can hold.”

“Can they enter it?”

“Everyone we’ve tried could enter. One person at a time.”

Gina glanced toward the crowded doorway. “They have to reach the manuscript and touch a page themselves. If too many arrive together, they will block one another.”

Frigg looked from her to me. “Will you open it to them?”

Until now, the Library had been a private place.

Now people were being carried past the outer doorway.

“Yes,” I said. “Use it.”

Frigg turned to the room. She ordered the nearest endangered households moved toward a place with enough open ground to gather without blocking the roads. Those able to fight or clear routes were to remain outside. Children, older people, and anyone who could not get away from the damaged areas were to go first. The order changed twice as new reports reached her.

I did not hear the final version. Gina was already pulling me toward the door.

The streets had changed since I entered Frigg’s rooms.

People stood outside buildings, looking up at roofs and walls. A cart lay on its side where one wheel had dropped into a crack between paving stones. Men were unloading it by hand so the road could be cleared. Somewhere ahead, a bell rang without a steady rhythm.

Gina found a route around the blocked streets. Two of Frigg’s people came with us, clearing space when the road narrowed. No one stopped to explain what was happening. No one around us seemed to know.

We did not get far along the first street.

A section of roof had fallen across it. The beams had missed the building opposite but left only a narrow space between broken timber and the wall. People were trying to pass through from both directions.

Gina stopped before we reached them.

“Not that way.”

“We can fit.”

“Until something else falls.”

She pointed upward. Several roof tiles still hung at an angle above the gap. One slipped while I was looking at it and shattered on the stones below.

We turned back.

A man pushed past us carrying two blankets and a cooking pot. Behind him, someone was arguing with an older woman who wanted to go back into a house.

“My sister is inside.”

“She came out already.”

“I didn’t see her.”

Neither waited for an answer from us.

We crossed through a narrower lane behind the buildings. Water ran along one side from a broken pipe or cistern. A boy was filling buckets from it until one of Frigg’s people told him to move away from the wall.

Another tremor came before he had picked up the second bucket. Gina caught my sleeve and pulled me into the middle of the lane. Something struck the ground behind us.

I turned and saw a piece of decorative stone where I had been standing.

“You could have mentioned that sooner.”

“I did.”

“You pulled me.”

“It worked.”

She was already looking ahead.

The direct route toward my lodging was blocked by a cart turned sideways between two buildings. Its owner and three other men were trying to free a wheel while people squeezed around them.

Gina looked once, then took us through an arch I would have passed without noticing. It led into a courtyard, then through a narrow service passage and out onto another street.

“You know this way?”

“I know where it goes.”

We followed it.

People passed us carrying whatever they had taken with them: blankets, tools, baskets, a box with one broken corner. One woman carried a sleeping child. Another person had brought an empty bird cage and kept looking back at the buildings behind him.

At the next turning, a frightened horse had pulled a small cart across half the street. The shafts had caught against a post. Its owner held the bridle while two strangers lifted the cart far enough to turn it. We waited with everyone else. One of Frigg’s people joined them, and Gina watched the roofs until there was room to pass.

A woman on the other side asked us whether the shore road was safe. We had just heard that it was flooded. She changed direction without another question and called for the people behind her to follow.

They moved away from damaged walls, looked for relatives, cleared streets, and asked Frigg’s people which roads were open. No one around us seemed to be leaving Asgard yet. They were trying to manage the next street or the next building.

We reached my lodging while another tremor was passing through the city.

The building remained standing. Its front steps had shifted away from the wall, leaving a dark gap beneath the top stone. Inside, plaster and mortar covered the floor. A split ran up the stairwell beside the rail.

The landlady and the other tenants were outside. She saw me looking at the stairs.

“If you’re going up, be quick,” she said. “The last shaking made it worse.”

Gina went first. She tested each step before putting her weight on it. I followed, keeping one hand against the wall. The two people with us remained below to stop anyone else from entering.

My door stood open. The people Frigg had placed inside were gone, and so was their prisoner. The chair had been knocked onto its side. The manuscript was still open on the writing table.

My coat from the previous day remained over the back of the other chair. The cup I had used that morning sat beside the hearth with a dark line of tea dried at the bottom.

Papers had slid from the end of the table onto the floor. My writing case had opened when it fell, and two pens lay beneath the bed.

I looked at them.

“René.”

Gina was watching the crack beside the window.

“I know.”

I picked up the writing case, then stopped. Carrying it would take one hand, and the manuscript needed both.

I put the case back on the table. There were clothes, notes, and the little money I had left. I stepped around the fallen chair and went to the manuscript.

Another small movement ran through the floor. The window frame gave a wooden crack.

I closed the manuscript and lifted it with both hands.

“The return Book brings people here,” Gina said.

“It has every time.”

We both looked at the floor where Loki had probably appeared.

I was not willing to risk arriving here now. The damaged stairs were the only way down, and another hard tremor could make them useless.

“We leave the way back where it is,” I said.

Gina nodded. “I wasn’t going to touch it.”

Gina went down ahead of me again. I held the manuscript against my chest on the narrow turns, keeping both hands around it while plaster shifted beneath my boots. At the split beside the rail, she stopped below me and waited until I passed it.

The two people at the entrance moved the fallen mortar from the last step. One of them reached for the manuscript when I came down, then waited when I shook my head. I kept it until we were outside on level ground.

The landlady watched us leave the building. Her eyes went to the manuscript, then back to the crack above the doorway. She returned to helping another tenant carry a chest away from the wall.

We took the manuscript into the street.

The place Frigg’s people had chosen was a broad paved court with approaches from more than one street. It had no shelter from the cold, but there was room for people to gather without filling a doorway. Guards and household workers were already pushing carts and benches away from the centre.

The manuscript was set on a low table. I opened it to a page near the middle.

“One at a time,” Gina told the people around us. “Touch the paper. Don’t pull the page.”

They repeated the instruction to those forming a line along the court.

Repeating the instruction did not make everyone understand it.

A man near the front pointed at the manuscript. “And then what?”

“You arrive somewhere else,” I said.

“Where?”

“The Library.”

He looked past me as though the name might mean more to someone else. “Is it safe?”

I looked at the damaged roofs visible beyond the court. “Safer than here.”

He turned to Gina.

“I’ve been there,” she said. “There is room. Water. No fighting.”

The answer moved backward through the line in pieces. Someone asked whether families crossed together.

Those farther back could not hear Gina clearly. One person repeated that they were meant to touch the cover. The mistake travelled several places before a guard heard it and called the instruction back toward the table. Gina raised her voice and showed them the open page without touching it.

“The paper inside,” she said. “One person, then the next.”

“One person at a time,” Gina repeated.

That produced an argument farther back. A woman wanted her children sent first. The older child refused to let go of her hand. A guard tried to move them aside so the line could continue, and she snapped at him until Gina went over.

“You can follow immediately,” Gina told her. “You cannot hold each other while crossing.”

The woman looked at the manuscript. “Immediately?”

“As fast as the people in front of you move.”

Two workers dragged another bench out of the approach. Someone had put a basket on the table beside the manuscript; I moved it to the ground before it could be knocked onto the pages.

The line was already becoming wider than the space cleared for it. One of Frigg’s people began sending those who were not ready to cross toward the side of the court instead of letting them stop at the table.

People had begun arriving before anyone had worked out how to arrange them.

An older man was being helped toward us between two women. Behind them, a woman held a child against her chest while another child gripped her belt. More people were entering the court from both streets.

“You first,” I told Gina.

She put two fingers against the open page and disappeared.

The manuscript remained under my hands.

I looked at the first people waiting. “She is there to receive you. I’ll follow her. Keep the book here. Each person touches the page for themselves.”

One of Frigg’s people took my place beside the table.

I touched the paper.

The Library was quiet when I arrived.

Gina stood a few steps from the central pedestal. The familiar Asgardian book used as a replacement was still under the glass. Beyond it, shelves of blank volumes ran away beneath the steady ceiling lights. Nothing in the hall showed what was happening in Asgard.

“We need the centre clear,” Gina said.

We moved two chairs away from the place where people appeared. That was all we had time to do.

The older man arrived first. He stumbled, found Gina’s arm, and stared up at the lights. One of the women followed. Then the other appeared without him and looked around sharply.

“He crossed before us,” she said.

“He’s here.” Gina guided her aside. “Keep moving. Leave this space open.”

The woman with the children came next. One child appeared before her and began calling for her at once. She arrived, and the smaller child followed her a moment later. The girl caught hold of her skirt.

More people appeared. Gina directed them toward the nearest reading room and asked two of the first arrivals to keep the passage clear. I showed another group the water and returned before the centre filled again.

Someone asked where they were supposed to sleep.

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

There were chairs, tables, workrooms, empty shelves, and thousands of blank books. There were no beds. No place had been prepared for children, or for people who arrived without coats, or for the next person to ask where a healer was.

The water ran when I showed them how to use it. Cups were taken from the nearby room. A woman began carrying them into the hall without being asked. Another person pulled chairs into a row along the wall.

The questions came faster than the people did.

“Where will my husband arrive?”

“Here.”

“He was behind us.”

“Then he should come through here.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

Someone else caught my sleeve before I had finished answering.

“Can I go back?”

“Not now.”

“My daughter is still there.”

“The place we return to is damaged.”

“Then send me somewhere else.”

I had nowhere else to send him.

Gina heard the end of it and stepped between us before the next arrival appeared.

“Wait near the wall,” she told the man. “If your daughter crosses, she will arrive here. Don’t stand in the centre.”

He did not like the answer, but he moved. Another person appeared almost where he had been standing.

The clear space around the arrival point kept shrinking. People wanted to remain where they could see the next person come through. Families waited for whoever had been behind them in the court. Those who had arrived alone waited too, even when they did not know whether the person they expected had reached the manuscript yet.

Gina moved them back one group at a time.

“If you’re waiting, wait there.” She pointed toward the wall. “The next person needs somewhere to stand.”

The woman carrying cups put them down and began repeating the instruction to newcomers.

The older man who had arrived first was sitting now. One of the women with him found another chair and brought it beside his. Someone else moved a table out of the passage without asking where it belonged.

I found another room with chairs and sent people there when the hall became too crowded. The first three followed me. The fourth stopped at the doorway.

“Are we supposed to stay here?”

“For now.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

The room had tables, shelves, and light without flame. It was warm. That put it ahead of the court in Asgard. It still had nowhere to sleep.

When I returned, someone had found the small kitchen area. Cups were no longer the problem. A line had formed there, though nobody seemed to have decided that it should.

One child was crying because he wanted to know where his father was. Another had stopped crying and was staring at the ceiling lights. His mother kept looking toward the arrival point.

People who had entered without coats began asking whether there were blankets.

“There are other rooms,” I said.

“With blankets?”

“I haven’t checked.”

The woman looked at me as though I had designed the place badly. I had designed it for myself and a few visitors.

Gina passed behind her carrying another chair.

“Stop answering everyone.”

“They keep asking me.”

“Then give them work.”

She pointed toward two men standing near the shelves. “You two. Keep this passage open.”

Then she turned to the woman with the cups. “Can you keep people from taking them away from the water room?”

The woman nodded before I could say anything.

“If someone is waiting for family, send them to that wall,” Gina told another arrival. “Not here.”

He looked surprised. “Me?”

“You’re standing here.”

He started doing it.

The hall remained crowded, but people could move through it. Questions kept coming: where they should sleep, where the exits were, whether there was more food, whether the lights could fail, whether someone outside knew they had arrived.

I answered the ones I could. For the others, I said I did not know and moved on.

More people crossed. Someone appeared, stopped to look around, and was directed away from the centre before the next arrival.

For a short while the work was space, water, chairs, and keeping that centre clear.

A man arrived with blood down one side of his tunic.

He appeared standing, one hand still held out from touching the page in Asgard. His knees folded. Gina and I caught him badly between us and lowered him onto the floor.

“Cloth,” Gina called.

Someone gave her a folded cloak. She pressed it against the wound while the man tried to speak. I could not understand him.

“Is there a healer coming?” I asked.

No one knew.

A second wounded person appeared behind me. She kept her weight on one leg and had both hands wrapped around her forearm. The cloth around it was already dark. Two people moved toward her, leaving the man on the floor with only Gina.

“Not there,” Gina said. “Give us room.”

I pulled another chair aside. There was nowhere useful to put it.

Three more people arrived close together, each separately, with barely enough space between them for the previous one to move. One supported a burned hand against his chest. Another had blood across his face. The third turned at once and reached back for someone who had not crossed yet.

The Library had water, food, and rooms full of blank books. None of that gave us a clean place for the man bleeding on the floor.

Someone called for more cloth. Someone else asked where to put the next casualty.

Before either question was answered, another wounded person arrived.