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suspect.
It eventually happened to most of the Tuatha; they left their Cities behind
for humans. And if you think that the Curse of the Builder had nothing to do
with that, then you're more skeptical than I.
I once heard that Asa-Thor himself rescued the Builder, his hammer bringing
down one of the Cities in the process, and in thanking him, the Builder
blessed Thor and his sons, both human and Aesir. It would explain much it
would help to explain why there are five Cities instead of the seven that
there should have been, but save that story for another time. And it would
explain the talus pile that stands or more accurately, sprawls where one of
the cities should have stood. The wrath of Asa-Thor was . . . intense. And it
would also help to explain the story of how Loki came to be bound with those
same bonds, some time later. That story may be true, or it may not; certainly,
nobody ever heard Thor talk about it, and he was a great braggart, but more
capable of subtlety than he is usually credited.
Some say that the Builder had not just created hidden passages within the
mountains, but that somehow he had tapped into the Hidden Ways built into the
structure of existence, making them solid enough that those with the Gifts can
find their way among them.
There are some who say that it was but a man who released him from his bonds,
and in gratitude the Builder showed him and his family a way to the Newer
World. There are some who say he simply died in his bonds, and the Tuatha
began to search for his sons, knowing that he would have had to pass on the
plans to someone.
Some say that it was the capture of the Builder that finally poisoned the
Tuatha, and that he cursed them from his cell, and that is what finally drove
them from the Cities, off into the wilderness, leaving behind little of what
they once were.
As for me, I think much of it is true. I think he escaped for a time, and was
recaptured for a time, and escaped again only to be recaptured again; and
while he escaped once again he was, finally, getting weaker with age, and he
had not the strength to escape when later captured by humans, and he lay in a
dungeon for as long as memory, until he was freed fairly recently, until he
fled through a Hidden Way into the Newer World.
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That's what I think.
Hosea sat back. "I think you've said more than you know, and both more and
less than you should have."
Harbard snorted. "Oh? You'd have us talk of the Bri-singamen?"
Hosea looked off into the distance. "You would think he ought to know."
"Then tell him. You, of all, should be the one to tell that part."
"Very well."
The thing you must understand, Ian (Hosea said), is that when she was young,
Freya was not only the most beautiful of the Aesir, but the most beautiful
that there was. She really was one of the Vanir, actually, before they were
largely subsumed by the Aesir. Tyr was born a Vanir, although adopted by Odin,
somewhat later and like her father, Njord, and her brother, Frey, the Vanir
were, by and large, better looking than the Aesir, if often not quite as
bright.
* * *
Frida chuckled. "Nor were they as arrogant, most of them."
"Hush," Harbard said. "Or I'll leave. I've heard this before."
"Threats become you little, husband."
"Shh."
While (Hosea went on, with a glare at both Harbard and Frida) Odin sacrificed
his eye for knowledge, Tyr
"Tyr was of the Aesir," Harbard said, his jaw tense, his voice louder than it
needed to be in the closeness of the cabin.
"Eventually," Hosea said quietly, almost in a whisper. "Eventually. He was
adopted by Odin, and Odin was never one to acknowledge a difference between an
adopted son and a son of his blood, particularly not when the son was as much
of a red-handed killer as Tyr turned out to be, but he was born of the Vanir."
Hosea smiled. "I could understand why Odin would want him thought to be of the
Aesir; 'Tyr' means victory, and Odin was never one to spurn victory."
"No matter what it cost him," Frida said quietly. "You sometimes do not give
Odin his due."
Hosea nodded. "True enough."
Harbard just scowled.
 Tyr, as I was saying (Hosea went on), just sort of lost an arm by being
careless around Fenris wolf, and later claimed it was deliberate when Thor
laughed at him. You see the difference? The trade of something of value for
something of more value, as Odin did, versus simply being scarred?
Well, Tyr wouldn't, or didn't, until he was laughed at.
But I was speaking of Freya, sister of Frey.
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The Eddas, the sagas, were full of references to this one or that one wanting
her, of a giant stealing Thor's hammer and demanding Freya as his bride for
its return, or of the Builder wanting that as the price for the building of
As-gard. We know that Loki lusted after her as did Tyr, although few women
escaped that distinction. She was often confused with Frigg, Odin's first
wife, and I don't doubt that was because Odin often chose to so confuse her.
There were even some stories that she had come between Thor and Sif, although
that's hard to believe. The devotion that Asa-Thor had for his Sif would be
difficult to interrupt.
What is easy to believe is that many would have put the universe on a string,
and given it to her for a necklace, and that in some senses, one did.
Look in an astronomy text sometime, Ian. Ask an astronomer where's all the
matter?As far as the best instruments your science has to offer can tell,
there only exists about ten percent of the matter necessary to make the
universe cyclical, to eventually collapse down into the monobloc whence the
universe came, and to start it all over again.
No, if your scientists have found it all, there has been only one cycle of
the universe: Ginnungagap does not space the universe's lives apart, but
merely is the final heat death, the Ultimate Whimper instead of a slowly paced
rhythm of Big Bangs.
But that, of course, could not be true; a thing, be it a flowerpot or a
universe, does not simply come into being. It is created by something, in some
way. After the end and in the beginning when there was just the One God and
the monobloc, for that incredibly long and incredibly short time, the One God
pinched off a tenth of it all, and breathed life and change into it, then sent
it expanding out, pushing the envelope, and idly squeezed the rest of it into
several different pieces, planning to play with it later, perhaps, perhaps as
much as he had with the other tenth.
But he never did get around to it, and perhaps nobody knows why.
There are many who have tried to speak to the One God, and even more who
claim to have heard an answer, but the answers that they've heard are always
in generalities. The One God tells them, they say, to be virtuous or kind; he
never says how hot to heat the blade of a sword if you want to put a good
temper on it. He urges restraint, but never gives instructions on an
appendectomy.
I do think they believe that they talk to him. I think that he's not
listening.
But I digress. The point I was trying to make is that all that extra matter
was . . . collapsed into several seven, actually different pieces, and just [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]