Chapter 901: Odin, The All-Father [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 901: Odin, The All-Father [II / Bonus Chapter]

His right eye was a deep piercing storm-blue, exactly like Thor’s, and it was fixed on Silas with an expression of open delighted curiosity.

And sitting beside him on the wide throne, so small next to him that she seemed almost like a child, was a woman.

She was human.

Silas could see it at once with his soul sight, the warm unmistakably mortal glow of her soul, though it burned brighter and older than any human soul he’d ever seen.

She looked perhaps fifty, with soft lines at the corners of her eyes and her mouth, and her chestnut hair was streaked with silver and pinned up in an elegant crown of braids.

The woman sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching Silas approach with a small gentle smile.

’I’m guessing she’s Thor’s mother…’

Her eyes were a clear light hazel, and they were the sharpest eyes in the entire hall.

Silas felt them settle on him and stay there, and for one moment, he had the uncomfortable feeling that this small human woman sitting next to the All-Father of Asgard saw more of him than any of the hundreds of gods watching from the tables.

The herald stopped at the foot of the golden steps and struck his staff on the floor.

TOK!

“The Lady Thor, Daughter of Odin, first heir of Asgard,” he announced, his voice ringing off the ceiling. “And her candidate for the Festival of Ancestors… Silas, Lord of Blessed Land, of the Umbral Basin.”

He bowed and stepped aside.

The All-Father looked down at Silas from his throne for a long moment, and the whole hall held its breath then he leaned forward, slowly, and put both of his huge hands on his knees.

“So,” Odin rumbled, and his voice was deep enough to rattle the golden plates on the nearest table. “You’re the one…”

Silas met his eye. “I’m the one, All-Father. Though I’d like it on record that I didn’t volunteer.”

“The one my daughter carried all the way up from the mud on her shoulder,” Odin said, “like a sack of grain…”

“That’s me,” Silas agreed. “She’s got a very sturdy shoulder… I’d recommend it, if you ever need carrying.”

“The one who said hello to Sigurd.” A slight twitch appeared at the corner of Odin’s beard. “Just hello… heh.”

“He was very proud of the dragon,” Silas said. “I didn’t want to interrupt, so I only commented on the bath.”

Somewhere off to the right, from the tables near the front, someone choked on their mead.

Odin’s twitch grew.

“The one who threw troll snot back in my Loki’s face,” he went on, and now his shoulders were starting to shake very slightly. “Loki… In front of witnesses…”

“She threw it first,” Silas said. “I just returned it to its owner. It seemed like the polite thing to do.”

’I need to not sound rude… I can learn some things from a god of course.’

“And the one…” Odin’s eye dropped to the enormous wolf-girl standing at Silas’s shoulder, who chose that exact moment to lean down and sniff Silas’s hair again with her tail wagging. “…who made my little Fenri sit.”

“She was very excited to meet me,” Silas said. “I’m glad she calmed down though.”

Odin stared at him then he threw his head back and laughed.

It boomed off the golden ceiling and rolled down the length of the hall and back again, rattling the plates on the tables and sending the two ravens on the back of the throne flapping into the air, croaking indignantly, and halfway through it, Silas realized exactly where Thor had gotten hers from.

’Of course it’s in their genes…’

“GWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, I like him!” Odin roared, slapping his knee so hard that the throne shook. “Frigga, I like him! A thousand years Sigurd’s been telling that dragon story at my table, and this boy just walks in and…”

He wiped his eye with the back of his huge hand, still wheezing.

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard in a century.”

“Father!” Thor boomed, planting her fists on her hips. “Stop cackling and let him come up! He’s got places to be! Mainly dinner…!”

“What? I’m being welcoming!” Odin beamed down at her. “You bring home a man for the first time in your life, my girl, and you expect me to sit quietly?”

He turned back to Silas, his single blue eye twinkling dangerously.

“Now. Come here, boy. Up the steps. Let me get a proper look at you…”

Silas climbed the golden steps and stopped in front of the throne, and up close, the All-Father was even bigger.

Silas had to tilt his head back to meet his eye, even with Odin still sitting down.

Odin looked him up and down slowly, with the frank, unhurried thoroughness of a farmer at a cattle market.

“Hmm,” he said. “Good shoulders… Decent height, for a mortal… Steady eyes.”

He leaned to one side and peered around Silas’s body as though checking his back for hidden defects.

“All your teeth?”

“All of them,” Silas said. “They’re accounted for.”

“Show me.”

’E-eh…? What are these people on?’

“He’s got all of them, Father, I already checked!” Thor bellowed from the foot of the steps. “Back when we were eating! He bit a boar bone clean in half!”

Several nearby gods turned to stare, and Silas closed his eyes briefly.

’Thank you, Thor,’ he thought. ’That’s exactly what I needed your father to hear…’

“I’m checking!” Odin protested. “It’s my right as a father! The old aunts are going to ask, and I want to be able to tell them myself…!”

Beside him, Frigga reached over and laid her hand gently on his enormous arm.

“Dear,” she said mildly, “you’re embarrassing your daughter…”

“I’m her father, Frigga. That’s my job…”

“And you’re doing it very well,” Frigga agreed, patting his arm. “Perhaps you could do it a little more quietly and in front of fewer people.”

Odin looked at his wife, then grumbled something into his beard that sounded like ’fine, fine,’ sat back on his throne and fixed Silas with a slightly more serious look.

“Very well, then,” he said. “The important questions… Who are you, boy? Where do you come from? And what, exactly, are your intentions toward my eldest daughter?”

Silas thought about that for a moment.

“I’m Silas,” he said. “I’m a Lord. I come from Earth, originally, and these days I hold a territory called Blessed Land, down in the Umbral Basin and my intentions…”

He glanced sideways at Thor, who was standing at the foot of the steps with her arms crossed, nodding along to everything he said as though she were listening to a battle report.

“Your daughter carried me here and told me I’m her candidate. She didn’t really ask so I’m still working out my intentions.”

There was a short silence then Odin’s beard twitched again, and Frigga’s gentle smile widened very slightly.

“Honest,” Frigga murmured. “How refreshing…”

“Earth,” Odin said slowly, and something in his voice changed. “You’re from Earth?”

“I am.”

“Hm?”

Odin held out his hand.

It was enormous, broad and scarred and calloused, and Silas looked at it for a moment, then reached out and took it.

The moment their palms met, he felt it.

The grip was like being held by a mountain, but underneath it came something else, something that slid out of Odin’s palm and into his like a cold silver current and rushed up his arm and into his chest.

It was searching and it reached the place behind his breastbone where his Gold Core beat steady and deep and bright.

Silas held still, neither pulling away nor pushing back, and simply stood there and let the current find it, and when it did, he let the Gold Core flare once so that the All-Father would feel exactly what he’d found.

Odin’s single blue eye widened.

For a long moment, the All-Father of Asgard sat completely still with Silas’s hand engulfed in his, and all the laughter drained out of his face.

Something flickered deep in that storm-blue eye like a man catching an unexpected glimpse of his own reflection and realizing how many years had gone by.

“Gold,” Odin said softly, so quietly that only Silas and Frigga could hear it. “A Gold Core… From Earth.”

“Yes,” Silas said, just as quietly.

Odin looked at him for a long, long moment then the moment passed, and the laugh came rolling back into his face like a tide coming in, and he squeezed Silas’s hand once, hard enough to grind the bones together, before letting go.

“Well!” he boomed, sitting back. “You’ll do! You’ll do very nicely, boy! Thor, I approve! He’s got a good grip and a good face and he didn’t faint, which already puts him ahead of every one of your other suitors…”

“They weren’t my suitors, Father, they were the court’s suitors!” Thor protested. “I didn’t pick a single one of them! One of them wrote me a poem about sky-cows!”

“…and he made Fenri sit, which I’d honestly thought was impossible,” Odin went on, ignoring her completely. “Fenri, come here, my girl. Let your old father look at you.”

Fenri, who’d been sitting at the foot of the steps with her tail swishing, hesitated, and her ears went back very slightly.

She looked at Odin, then at Silas, and then she padded up the steps with her chain clinking and stopped beside Silas.

She stayed there, a little behind his shoulder, close enough that her arm brushed his but she didn’t go to her father.

’E-eh…? Are you trying to get me into trouble…?’

Odin looked at her standing there beside a stranger, and something passed over his weathered face… soon it was gone.

“Ah,” he said, a little more softly. “Well. Good… Good, then.”

Frigga’s hand tightened on his arm, and then she leaned over and murmured, just loud enough for Silas to hear.

“Don’t sulk, dear… Your daughters have always had excellent taste in who to trust.” She patted his huge hand. “They certainly didn’t get it from your side of the bed…”

Odin’s beard twitched in a way that suggested he’d been losing this particular argument for several thousand years.

Silas kept his face perfectly still and decided that he liked the All-Father’s wife a great deal.

She seemed like a pretty good woman.

“Now then,” Odin said, clapping his hands together and making a visible effort to brighten again. “Since you’re here, boy, and since you’re from the Umbral Basin, you can help me with something.”

He leaned forward, and his eye narrowed with sudden intensity. “Do you know a Lord down there called Vespera?”

Behind Silas, at the foot of the steps, Thor made a sound like a kettle about to explode.

Silas didn’t let a single muscle in his face move.

“I know of her…” He said.

“Good! Excellent!” Odin slapped the arm of his throne. “Do you know what Muninn brought me last week? Gossip from the mud! Some Lord down there called Vespera marched into the World Council, called the King of the World a coward to his face, and then told the whole room that I, Odin, had personally invited her to Asgard!”

He slapped his knee.

“I’ve never invited her anywhere! I’d never even heard of her! Took a whole Basin by herself, they say, broke some fortress called the Unmovable Wall, and then went and lied in my name to win an argument.”

He grinned wolfishly. “I’ve been laughing about it for a week… I’d very much like to meet a woman with that kind of nerve.”

“Dear,” Frigga said mildly, without even turning her head, “the last time you got this excited about a strong mysterious woman from the other side of a battlefield, we ended up with Hela.”

She smoothed a fold out of her grey wool skirt. “And the time before that, Fenri… Perhaps let this one keep her distance.”

The silence that fell over the nearest tables was so complete that Silas could hear the ravens breathing.

“That was a long time ago,” he rumbled, with enormous dignity.

“So was the war, dear,” Frigga said serenely. “And yet here we all are.”

“She’s very… confident,” Silas said gravely. “Running a territory, terrorizing the World Council, telling stories about gods. You know how it is with Lords.”

“Hmph! Well, I’m not about to let a lie that good go to waste!” Odin’s single eye rested on Silas a beat too long, twinkling, and above the throne, one of the ravens let out a low croak that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

He shot one last wounded look at his wife, then turned back to Silas with great dignity.

“When you go back down to the ground, boy,” he said, “you’ll give this Vespera something from me… If she’s going to go around telling people I invited her to Asgard, then by my beard, she’s going to be right.”

He snapped his fingers, and one of the ravens leaped off the throne, swept down the length of the hall and came back a moment later with something clutched in its claws, which it dropped into Odin’s waiting hand.

It was a thick folded letter of heavy cream-colored parchment, sealed with a disc of dark blue wax pressed with the image of a spear crossed over a pair of ravens.

The seal glowed faintly with a cold silver light and Odin held it out to Silas.

’Is he fucking with me?’