The Liar's key

THIRTY-SIX

I dreamed a pleasant enough dream, recalling the heady days when I’d traded on the floor of the Maritime House, those early days when it seemed I could do no wrong. The first lesson I’d learned there had been the most important. It concerned the value of information. No other currency held such worth in Umbertide. A rich man’s wealth could be won and lost on a single pertinent fact.

I hadn’t bought a controlling share in the failing Crptipa Mine on some nostalgic whim. I hadn’t bought it against the possibility that one day I would want to get into it in a hurry. I’d bought the concern because I had a pertinent fact. A fact that represented long odds on a very significant change. I knew something. Something important. I knew that Snorri ver Snagason meant to go there.

I came round to find Hennan slapping me with considerably more enthusiasm than the task warranted, and the tatters of my dream were swept away.

“Kara?” I struggled into a sitting position.

Snorri knelt beside the völva. She lay, propped against the pillar where Aslaug had pinned her. Snorri had stripped her layers and lifted her undershirt to reveal ugly red weals across her ribs left and right. Some charm or spell must have denied her flesh to Aslaug’s touch because the legs had thrust right at her. They must have seared Kara as they skidded over her skin, diverted from her vitals and left just pinning her by her clothes.

“A bitten tongue is the worst of it.” Snorri looked across to me and abandoned Kara. He took my arm and hauled me to my feet.

“Jal.” He brushed me down and stood back, looking solemn. “I knew you couldn’t be bought.”

“Hah.” I rubbed my forehead, expecting my fingers to come back bloody. “You know I’m a man of honour!” I grinned at him.

Snorri gripped my forearm in the manner of warriors, and I held him back. We had a little moment there.

“What happened to your-” I pointed at his side, his jerkin holed in a score of places, ripped and discoloured, the crystal growths gone.

He patted his side and winced. “I don’t know. When I threw that sword a chunk of the stuff cracked away. I pulled off the rest. It didn’t seem. . attached any more.”

“Kelem’s spell is broken.” Kara hobbled over, supported by Hennan. “We could leave now?”

Snorri looked over at the völva and the boy, red-haired like his middle child. I wanted him to see the wife and son he could have, the life that could lie before him, not to replace what lay behind, but something. . something good. Better than Hell in any case.

Snorri bowed his head. “I can’t leave.” He looked down at his hands, as if remembering how they had once held his children. “Show me the door. I’ve come too far to go back.”

“I don’t know which it is.” Kara waved her arm at the columns marching away from us, the distance stacking them closer and closer until the eye lost their meaning. “That was Kelem’s speciality. We came here to find Kelem, remember? Not the door. That lies everywhere. We just needed someone who could see it. And Jal has given him to the dark.”

“He would never have told you, Snorri,” I said. “He wouldn’t have let us leave either, not with this.” I held the key up. “Thank God sunset came when it did.”

Kara gave me an odd look. “It’s not sunset for a couple of hours and more.”

I laughed at her. “Of course it is.”

“I don’t think so, Jal.” Snorri shook his head. “Time gets turned around down here, true enough. But I’m with Kara. I can’t believe I’m out by that much.”

“It’s you, Jal.” Kara nodded. “You don’t understand your potential. You bind yourself about with these rules, with lies you tell yourself to avoid responsibility. But you made Aslaug come. You found the door to her. You made it happen.”

“I. .” I closed my mouth. Perhaps Kara had it right. Now I considered it I would be surprised to find it dark if I climbed out of the mine right now. “Snorri has potential too. You said it yourself. He lights the orichalcum brighter than you do.”

“It’s true,” Kara said without rancour.

I looked up at Snorri, not sure whether to say it or not. “If you want death’s door badly enough, then in this place you’ll find it.” I shook my head. “Don’t look for it, Snorri. But if you do, and you find it, I will open it for you.” And then madness took my tongue, “And go with you.” I think it’s a disease. Being treated like a brave and honourable man becomes an addiction. Like the poppy, you want more of it, and more. I’d eaten up the cheers offered for the hero of the Aral Pass, but to be treated as an equal by the Norseman made those cheers dim, those thrown petals pale. There’s a sense of family in that warriors’ grip. A sense of belonging. I understood now how Tuttugu, soft as he was, got drawn along with the rest of them. And God damn it, it had got to me too.

“Come with me, brother!” Snorri started to stride down the hall like a man with purpose. “We’ll open death’s door and carry Hell to them. The sagas will tell of it. The dead rose up against the living and two men chased them back across the river of swords. Beside our legend Beowulf’s saga will be a tale for children!”

I followed, keeping a brisk pace so the uncertainty nipping at my heels couldn’t catch me. Kara and Hennan hurried along behind. My sister waited beyond the door, unborn, altered, hungry for my death. But Snorri had released his own child from that fate. . surely a Kendeth could do the same? My head swam with visions of the parades they would hold for me in Vermillion on my return, the honours Grandmother would heap upon me. Jalan-conqueror of death!

It didn’t take long for the foolishness to start to fade. I just had to remember the Black Fort to realize how little appetite I really had for this nonsense. For the longest time I hoped my over-enthusiastic boasts wouldn’t be put to the test, that Snorri’s search would be fruitless, but in time he stopped, one hand set against a pillar that to my eyes looked exactly the same as every other.

“This one.”

“You’re sure?” I peered into the depths of it, trying to see something amid the pale fault lines stacked one on another, reducing its clarity to a misty core.

“I’m sure. I’ve stood a moment from death so many times. I know the feel of its threshold.”

“Don’t do it.” Kara pressed between us. “I beg you.” She looked up at Snorri, craning her neck. “The unborn could be waiting for you on the other side. Would you really unleash such things into the world? You’ve no weapons to stop them save steel. And once they hold it open. . how long before the Dead King comes?” She turned to me. “And you, Jal. You heard what Kelem said. Your sister will hunt you down and eat your heart. Go through that door and how long do you think it will take her to find you?”

Snorri set both hands to the crystal. “I can feel it.”

“They’ll be waiting for you!” Kara grabbed his arm, as if she could hold him back.

Snorri shook his head. “If we were in the deadlands and I asked you where the door to life lay. . what would you say?”

“I-” She pursed her lips, seeing the trap before I did. “It makes no more sense for it to be in one place there than it does for it to be in only one place here. It would be everywhere.”

“And the unborn will be waiting. . everywhere?” Snorri offered her a grim smile. “There will be nothing waiting for us. Jal will give you the key. Lock the door behind us.”

I saw the calculation cross her face. Quick then gone. Skilfar had sent her for no reason other than this moment-the key offered freely, no trace of Loki’s curse on it.

“Don’t go.” But the conviction had left her voice. That made me sad, but I suppose we’re all victims of our ambition.

“Stay.” Hennan, his first word on the subject, his bottom lip pushed up as if to steady the upper, eyes bright but refusing to say more, too used to disappointment. His years seemed too short to have beaten the selfish out of him, but there it was.

Snorri bowed his head. “Jalan. If you would do the honours?” He gestured to the crystal plane before us.

I always thought that phrase about blood running cold was a flight of fancy but the stuff seemed to freeze in my veins. There’s a thing about being stuck between fear and pride, even though you know fear will win in the end it seems impossible to let go of the pride. So I stood there frozen, my face a rictus grin, the key trembling in my fist as if eager.

“Kara, Hennan.” Snorri had them both in his arms in two quick steps, swept from their feet, lifted tight against his chest. “I would stay if I thought I could be the friend you needed.” He held them close, squeezing any question or protest from them. A moment later he let them go. “But this thing.” He pointed at the key, at the door. He waved at the world about us. “It would eat me away until nothing was left but a bitter old Viking without a clan, hating himself, hating whoever had kept him from his task. Fool’s errand or not, it is my errand. It is my end. Some men have to sail to the horizon and keep going until the ocean swallows their story-this is the sea I must sail.”

“All men are fools.” Kara spat the words at the floor, wiping at her eyes. I agreed with her in this instance. She sniffed angrily and passed Snorri her last rune. “Take it!”

Hennan watched Snorri, a single tear cutting a channel through the dirt across his cheek. “Undoreth, we. Battle-born. Raise hammer, raise axe, at our war-shout gods tremble.” He said it high but firm, without a waver, and I swear, that whole time it was the only moment I thought Snorri might crack.

But he pointed at the key, waving me forward, not trusting himself to speak. I advanced on the door, my mind screaming at me to run, thoughts colliding in their attempt to find a way out. Perhaps Kara and Hennan needed an escort, perhaps they wouldn’t be safe. The men who hunted us from Umbertide must be in the tunnels, searching.

I set my fingers to the crystal, trying to sense something there, trying to hear the note and understand what had drawn Snorri to this pillar. Nothing. Or so I thought, until the moment I moved to draw my fingers away, and in that second I felt it, saw it, a dryness, a thirst, an emptiness. No sense of anything waiting, just a hunger that I’d seen before in dead eyes.

“God save us.” I set the key to the crystal and there was the keyhole, as if it had always been there, waiting since time started. The others watched me. “Shouldn’t you take the boy, Kara, get away from here?”

“I need to lock the door,” she said.

I set the key in the keyhole. Turned it. And felt a year of my life take flight. I used the key to draw the door back, just a fraction, just enough for a line of flat orange light to show. The hall’s air hissed into that crack as if Hell drew in a breath, and I struggled to keep the door open, taking hold of the edge. Where my fingers reached around I felt the dryness, as if the skin were peeling back, my flesh already withering on the bone.

I took the key out and, with a reluctance so thick it seemed I reached out through molasses, I set the key in Kara’s outstretched hand. I almost snatched it back. It seemed too final. Perhaps she saw that in me for she tucked it into her pocket quick enough. The moment passed-the moment which Kara had waited a thousand miles for. Had Skilfar truly sent us to the ends of the earth just to give Kara time to work that magic, to have the warrior fall for her charms, or failing that to come to terms with the wisdom of her counsel, and give over Loki’s key of his own free will? Might not Skilfar have shown Snorri the door then and there in her cavern on Beerentoppen if she’d wanted to? Surely that cold bitch knew her own paths to it?

“Gods watch us,” said Snorri. “We ask no aid, only that you witness.”

“Damn that, God help me! The heathen can make his own way if he wants!”

Snorri shot me a grin, took the door and heaved it open. The light seemed to shine through his flesh, offering only his bones, the broader grin of his skull. And in a moment he was through.

The door slipped from my grasp and slammed shut behind him. I’d blame it on sweaty fingers if they weren’t more parched than they had ever been. I should have reached to open it again but my arms kept by my sides.

“Oh God, I can’t do it.” My voice broke.

“There’s no shame in that.” Kara reached out to touch my shoulder and in that moment I fell into her, wrapping both arms around her, wracked by a sob, half of it shame and half the mourning of another friend, perhaps my only friend, now as good as dead.

I’m not proud of what my hands did at that point. Well. Just a little proud, because it was clever work, no doubting that. I knew that Loki being a fellow of tricks and thievery, if he existed-which he doesn’t because there’s only the one God and he’s quiet enough that I’m not always sure of him even-anyway, I knew that his curse prohibited the strong taking the key by force but surely Kara had already shown me that a bit of stealing would be in the spirit of the thing. I stepped back sniffing, one hand rubbing at my eyes and the other concealing Loki’s key now grown conveniently small as if it approved of the deception. I’m not sure how long I expected it to take for Kara to notice it was missing-unless she forgot about locking the door she was pretty much bound to discover its absence within moments. Frankly, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. All I knew was that there was no way in Hell I was walking into Hell and that now I had the ticket to Grandmother’s good books in my hand, quite possibly the ticket to the throne when she vacated it. Moreover, I was now the owner of a salt mine that had suddenly gained access to the largest and most lucrative deposit of salt north of the great Saha in Afrique, thus making me a very rich man indeed. It wasn’t a salt mine any more, it was a gold mine! Adding those two to the other thousand or so reasons not to go with Snorri left me convinced that any personal shame was well worth the price. After all. . always take the money! I had my price, and it turned out to be “everything.” And my shame had only two witnesses, both of them heathens. If they didn’t like it I’d just take to my legs and not stop running until I reached home.

Home-there’s a magic word. I hadn’t properly appreciated it on my first return but this time I would be going home the rich and conquering hero and I’d damn well enjoy it. After all, did I not say: I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play, or bravery.

Consistency! That’s the finest virtue a man can possess. Somebody famous said that. Famous and wise. And if they didn’t then they damned well should have.

Somehow all these thoughts managed to cram themselves through my head in the moments of silence that stretched between me, Kara, and Hennan. Warmed by the memory of home, I even started to think everything would all be all right. Kara would probably soften to me on the way back. . show me her northern delights. .

When the door banged open and a thick arm grabbed the neck of my shirt, hauling me backward through it, I didn’t even have time to scream.