Prince of Fools

THIRTY-ONE

The crackle of logs, burning in a hearth. I relaxed. In my dream it had been the fires of hell waiting to feed on my sin. I lay for long minutes just enjoying the warmth, seeing only the play of light and shadow through closed eyes.

“Run!” I jerked into a sitting position as I remembered the strong-room, the unborn, the doors opening.

“What the hell?” I looked down at the furs that had slid from me, at the smooth skin where I’d been skewered through, no doubt puncturing several of the squidgy, vital organs that men are packed with. I pressed the region, and apart from a little tenderness, nothing. Running my hands over myself, patting and pinching, I found no injury worse than the odd bruise.

I looked around. A hall in the Black Fort, Tuttugu walking towards me with a slight limp.

“You’re dead!” I cast about for my sword. “I saw you hit that wall!”

Tuttugu grinned and grabbed his belly. “Padding!” Then, more serious, “I would have died if I hadn’t been healed. You would too.”

“The unborn?” Snorri had said there were a dozen or more. The spit dried from my mouth, and spread hands were all I could manage to frame the question.

“Any of them that weren’t destroyed have fled. Necromancers, Red Vikings, corpse-men. . all gone,” Tuttugu said. “How are you feeling?” He seemed a touch apprehensive.

“Fine. Good. Better than good.” Fingers pressed to where my thigh had been cut produced no twinge at all. “How is that possible?”

“You’re not feeling. . evil. . then?” Tuttugu pressed his lips into a line, his face a mask.

“Um, no. . not especially.” I looked around for Snorri but saw nothing apart from heaps of furs and some supplies tight-bound into bails. “How did this happen?” I couldn’t heal myself.

“Snorri did it.” Tuttugu sounded grim. “He said a valkyrie-”

“An angel?”

“He said valkyrie. He said the valkyrie helped him. There was more but he couldn’t speak much at the end. He said. . but there are no male valkyrie. . I think the valkyrie was a god. .”

“Baraqel? Did he say Baraqel?”

Tuttugu nodded.

“At the end?” My stomach became a cold knot. I recalled how much any healing had taken from me. “Is he-”

“Dead?” Tuttugu limped to the heaped furs. “No. But he should be.” He pulled a wolfskin aside and there lay Snorri, pale but breathing. He looked to be asleep rather than unconscious. The broken bones in his face had been repositioned and the skin sewn over them. “I’ve done what I can. We can only wait now.”

“How long have I been sleeping?” It seemed important, even with our enemies fled.

“All day, Jal. It’s nearly sunset.”

“But if Snorri. . Baraqel, you said? And healing. . So he’s light-sworn now.” I looked again where my wounds should be. “Then the one who’s dark-sworn is. .”

Tuttugu nodded.

“Ah.”

I lay back. It would be a long journey back to Vermillion, and if we didn’t beat the arrival of winter, then the Black Fort would be our home until spring. I’d make it, though, and I’d take whatever still remained of my newfound courage and stand before the Red Queen’s throne and demand she get her damned sister to take this spell out of us.

All that, of course, depended on no one being able to talk me out of it between now and then.

Somewhere the sun was setting. I closed my eyes and waited to see just how persuasive Aslaug would be.

• • •

Six weeks later and the first deep snows of winter came, falling from leaden skies, driven by a cruel wind.

“Bring me another ale, will you, Tuttugu, there’s a good chap!”

Tuttugu gave a complacent shrug, pushed his roast chicken to one side, and went to fill a tankard at the barrel.

Outside, the streets of Trond lay clogged with snow. I didn’t care. I snuggled back deeper into the fur of what must have been a white bear every bit as big as the one Snorri vaulted in the Blood Holes. Very cosy. Nobody came or went without good cause, and the Three Axes tavern saw little trade-which was probably the reason the owner had sold me the whole place, lock, stock, and no small number of barrels, for just two of the diamonds pried from Mother’s locket.

It was good to have so many fears lifted from me, so many cares shed, to be safe and warm in the grip of winter. The only worries to trouble me now in the long nights were little ones, or at least far away. The problem of Maeres Allus seemed small compared to the problem of how to get home. In fact, the only thing to steal my sleep, at least the only noninvited thing, was the thought that though the Unborn Captain had frightened me to the point at which my heart forgot to beat, and though his gaze was a terrible thing, those weren’t the eyes that had watched me through the slit of that porcelain mask back in the opera so very many miles and months ago. That stare had been worse still and haunted me even now.

• • •

Life is good.

Today Astrid has to be about her work in town, but I have the lovely Edda to warm me up instead. Snorri says it will end in tears and has taken to giving me disgusted looks as if I should have learned something by now. My own opinion is that if I keep juggling, then all the balls will stay in the air (even Hedwig, a beauty I’ve my eye on and daughter to Jarl Sorren) and my comeuppance will never come down, however richly deserved. Aslaug agrees. She is, it must be said, far more agreeable than Baraqel ever was. I’m amazed Snorri took against her so.

Yes, I should grow up, and yes, I will, but there’s time for that tomorrow. Today is for living.

So here we are, snug in the Three Axes with nothing to do but do nothing. Winter has us locked in, safe from the outside world, trapped in our own little inside world. Ironic when our prize was a key that can open anything, and here we are locked in, kept in Trond until the spring unlocks the ice and sets us free.

For a time back there in that awful fort, with Baraqel nagging at me and my rotten little existence coming rapidly to a sharp point, I did start to wonder if I could have made a better job of the business of living. I started to see my old life of wine, song, and as many women as would have me as something shallow. Tawdry even. On the trek across the ice and in that long dark night within the Black Fort, I will confess to wishing for my time over, to promising I would treat everyone better, set aside ugly prejudice. I resolved to seek out Lisa DeVeer, vow fidelity, throw myself on her mercy, to be the man my age demanded, not the child it allowed. And the horror of it all was that I really meant it!

It didn’t take Aslaug long to talk me down. All I truly needed was someone to let me know I’d been fine as I was, slap me on the back and tell me that the world was waiting for me out there, and to go and get it!

As for Snorri, he’s gloomier than ever now that Baraqel lectures him each dawn. You’d think with his family lost and his vengeance exacted, he would move on. Tuttugu has. He goes out ice fishing with the locals now that the harbour has frozen over. Even has himself a girl in town, so he says. Snorri, though, he broods on the past. He’ll sit there on the porch when it’s cold enough to freeze waves in place, wrapped up, axe across his lap, staring at that key.

Now I like keys by and large, but that thing, that piece of obsidian-that I don’t like. You look at it and it makes you think. Too much thinking isn’t good for anyone. Especially for a man like Snorri ver Snagason who’s apt to act upon his thoughts. He sits there staring at it and I can tell the ideas that are spinning in his head-I didn’t need Aslaug to tell me that. He has a key that will open any door. He has a dead family. And somewhere out there is a door that leads into death, a door that swings both ways, a door that shouldn’t ever be opened, a door that couldn’t ever be opened.

Until now.