Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Children

If there's one thing Loki Laufeyjarson never lacked for, it was children. He'd tell you they're a side effect of living a long life. This, like many things Loki says, would be a lie.

His eldest child is a daughter.

The story goes that once upon a time, the witch Gullveig came to the gates of Ásgarðr. Three times the gods killed her for it, driving spears into her breast, and three times was her body burned. When finally the deed was done for good, when Gullveig's magic resurrected her no more, all that was left was her blackened heart, burned upon her pyre. Loki, it is said, took this heart and ate it, and from this he birthed all the evil in the world.

This story, needless to say, is an exaggeration. Nonetheless, Loki does have an eldest daughter, and her name is Eimyrja.

Loki's second child was a son. We don't talk about that one, and neither does Loki. The boy was taken from him and, once the deed was done, Loki swore an oath that he would never lie with another such as the child's father. Like many oaths of Loki's, this is one he broke.

Children three through five were monsters. Their mother, Angrboða, the Grief-Bringer, was one of the íviðjur, the jötnar of Járnviðr, the Iron Wood. Her hatred of Ásgarðr was strong and so, at that time, was Loki's; fresh and raw from the loss of his second child. That spite and pain and rage became the couple's children. The first was Fenrir, the great wolf, who was bound in chains upon an island. The second, Hel, had half-corpse skin that saw her exiled to the lands of the dishonored dead. The third, Jörmungandr, grew so large in size it was thrown into the ocean, where it encircled the world with room to spare.

Child number six was a mistake. When Ásgarðr was still young, the æsir hired a stranger to build a wall around its borders. As always with the gods, they promised much in return for the task, under stipulations they thought could not be met. They had demanded the wall be built within three seasons, and that the builder have help from no other man. The builder agreed, so long as he could still employ the services of Svaðilfari, whom the gods thought of as his stallion.

Svaðilfari, needless to say, was no man. He was also not a stallion, but a jötunn of a kind the gods were not used to seeing.

Loki, of course, being a jötunn himself, knew Svaðilfari for what he was, and so encouraged the gods to take the builder's contract, thinking it amusing to see them bested.

When it looked as if Ásgarðr's wall would be built on time, the gods returned to Loki and threatened him with pain and death unless he could find some way to stop it. So Loki took the shape of Svaðilfari's people, and fluffed his feathers and flicked his tail, and the two went galloping off into the forest.

Needless to say, the builder was enraged at this seduction and, in his rage, the magic that had made him seem a man was broken, revealing him to be a jötunn. The gods called for Thor, the jötunn-killer, and by the time Loki returned from his pointless tryst, the builder was dead and Ásgarðr's wall unfinished.

Sometime later, Loki gave birth to Sleipnir, whose shape was that of his father and whose throat could voice no words. The gods took him for a horse, too.

Loki's last three children were with his wife, Sigyn. The first two were born as boys, Váli and Nari. Like their father, they were jötunn, but Loki hid their horns and feathers with the same skin curse that held his.

The children, of course, knew exactly what they were, thanks to the efforts of their mother. Sigyn would take them into the Járnviðr, where they would spend quiet nights with Angrboða's clan. She would watch them play with the young íviðja girls, and dream of the day their true skins could be revealed.

This day came, not long after Sigyn gave birth to Loki's final child, his daughter Eisa. By then, Loki's place among the gods had been rescinded. He was captured and imprisoned, bound by iron chains Odin made from Nari's entrails. Entrails obtained when Odin undid the skin curse laid on Váli, whose horns and feathers brought with them a terrible berserk. When it cleared, Nari was dead. In fear and shame, Váli fled into the woods.

For her part, Sigyn vowed to stay with her husband in his prison, but a vile cave was no place to raise a daughter. Nor, Sigyn thought, was Ásgarðr, having seen the awful fates given to her husband's other offspring. And so she sent Eisa away, to be raised by Loki's eldest, safe among the jötnar.

Nine children, all in all, called monsters by the gods, imprisoned and killed and exiled.

Nine children and, it must be said, three grandchildren. Born to Loki's hidden son, raised in ignorance of their lineage.

Their story is something else entirely.