The Liar's key

SEVEN

I woke the next morning under sail and with a head sore enough to keep me curled in the prow groaning for the mercy of death until well past noon. The previous evening returned to me in fragments over the course of the next few days but it took an age to assemble the pieces into anything that made sense. And even then it didn’t make much sense. I consoled myself with our steady progress toward home and the civilized comforts thereof. As my head eased I planned out who I would see first and where I’d spend my first night. I would probably ask for Lisa DeVeer’s hand, assuming she hadn’t been dragged to the opera that night and burned with the rest. She was the finest of the old man’s daughters and I’d grown very fond of her. Especially in her absence. Thoughts of home kept me warm, and I huddled in the prow, waiting to get there.

• • •

The sea is always changing-but mostly for the worse. A cold and relentless rain arrived with the next morning and plagued us all day, driven by winds that pushed the ocean up before them into rolling hills of brine. Snorri’s dreadful little boat wallowed around like a pig trying to drown, and by the time evening threatened even the Norsemen had had enough.

“We’ll put in at Harrowheim,” Snorri told us, wiping the rain from his beard. “It’s a little place I know.” Something about the name gave me a bad feeling but I was too eager to be on solid ground to object, and I guessed that even driven as he was the Norseman would rather spend the night ashore.

So, with the sun setting behind us we turned for the dark coastline, letting the wind hurl us toward the rocks until at the last the mouth of a fjord revealed itself and we sailed on in. The fjord proved itself a narrow one, little more than two hundred yards wide, its shores rising steeper than a flight of stairs, reaching for the serrated ridges of sullen rock that cradled the waters.

Aslaug spoke to me while the two Norsemen busied themselves with rope and sail. She sat beside me in the stern, clad in shadow and suggestion, impervious to the rain and the tug of the wind.

“How they torment you with this boat, Prince Jalan.” She laid a hand on my knee, ebony fingers staining the cloth, a delicious feeling soaking into me. “Baraqel guides Snorri now. The Norseman doesn’t have your strength of will. Where you were able to withstand the demon’s preaching Snorri is swayed. His instincts have always been-”

“Demon?” I muttered. “Baraqel’s an angel.”

“You think so?” She purred it close by my ear and suddenly I didn’t know what I thought, or care overmuch that I didn’t. “The creatures of the light wear whatever shapes you let them steal from legend. Beneath it all they are singular in will and no more your friend or guardians than the fire.”

I shivered in my cloak wishing I had a good blaze to warm myself by right now. “But fire is-”

“Fire is your enemy, Prince Jalan. Enslave it and it will serve, but give it an inch, give it any opportunity, and you’ll be lucky to escape the burning wreckage of your home. You keep the fire at arm’s length. You don’t take a hot coal to your breast. No more should you embrace Baraqel or his kind. Snorri has done so and it has left his will in ashes-a puppet for the light to work its own purposes through. See how he looks at you. How he watches you. It’s only a matter of time before he acts openly against you. Mark these words, my prince. Mark-”

The sun sank and Aslaug fell into a darkness that leaked away through the hull.

• • •

We drew up at the quays of Harrowheim in the gathering gloom, guided in by the lights of houses clustered on the steepness of the slope. To the west some sort of cove or landslip offered a broad flattish area where crops might be grown in the shelter of the fjord.

An ancient with a lantern waved us alongside his own boat where he’d been sat picking the last fish from his nets.

“You’ll be wannin’ me ta walk you up,” he said, all gums and wisps of beard.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Father.” Tuttugu getting onto the quay with far more grace than he showed on land. He stooped low over the man’s boat. “Herring, eh? White-Gill. Nice catch. We don’t see them for another few weeks up in Trond.”

“Ayuh.” The old man held one up, still flipping half-heartedly in his fingers. “Good ’uns.” He put it down as Snorri clambered out, leaving me to stagger uncertainly across the rolling boat toward the step. “Still. Better go with you. The lads are twitchy tonight. Raiders about-it’s the season for ’em. Might fill you full of spear before you know it.”

My boot, wet with bilge water, slipped out from under me at “raiders” and I nearly vanished into the strip of dark water between quay and boat. I caught myself painfully on the planks, biting my tongue as I clutched the support. “Raiders?” I tasted blood and hoped it wasn’t a premonition.

Snorri shook his head. “Not serious stuff. The clans raid for wives come spring. Here it’ll be Guntish men.”

“Ayuh. And Westerfolk off Crow Island.” The old man set down his nets and came to join us, making an easier job of it than I had.

“Lead on.” I waved him forward, happy to trail behind if it meant him getting speared rather than me.

Now that Snorri had mentioned it I did recall talk of the practice back at the Three Axes. The business of raiding for girls of marriageable age seemed something that the people of Trond felt beneath them, but they loved to tell tales about their country bumpkin cousins doing it. Mostly it seemed to be an almost good-natured thing with a tacit approval from both sides-but of course if the raider proved sufficiently unskilled to get caught then he’d earn himself a good beating. . and sometimes a bad one. And if he picked a girl that didn’t want to get caught she might give him worse than that.

Men emerged from the shadows as we walked up between the huts. Our new friend, Old Engli, put them quickly at their ease and the mood lightened. Some few recognized Snorri and many more recognized his name, leading us on amid a growing crowd. Lanterns and torches lit around us, children ran into the muddy streets, mothers and daughters eyed us from glowing doorways, the occasional girl, bolder than the rest, hanging from a window recently unboarded in the wake of winter’s retreat. One or two such caught my eye, the last of them a generously proportioned young woman with corn-coloured hair descending in thick waves and hung with small copper bells.

“Prince Jalan-” I managed half a bow and half an introduction before Snorri’s big fist knotted in my cloak and hauled me onward.

“Best behaviour, Jal,” he hissed between his teeth while offering a wide smile left and right. “I know these people. Let’s try not to have to leave in a hurry this time.”

“Yes, of course!” I shook myself free. Or he let me go. “Do you think I’m some sort of wild beast? I’m always on my best behaviour!” I stomped on behind him, straightening my collar. Damn barbarian thinking he could teach a prince of Red March manners. . she did have a very pretty face though. . and squeezable-

“Jal!”

I found myself marching past the entrance into which everyone else had turned. A quick reversal and I was through the mead-hall’s doorway into the smoke and noise. Mead-hut I’d call it-it made Olaafheim’s hall look big. More men streamed in behind me while others found their seats around the long benches. It seemed our arrival had occasioned a general call to broach casks and fill drinking horns. We’d started the party rather than crashed in on it. And that gives you a pretty good picture of Harrowheim. A place so desolate and starved of interest that the arrival of three men in a boat is cause for celebration.

“Jal!” Snorri slapped the tabletop to indicate a space between him and Tuttugu. It seemed well meaning enough but something in me bridled at the gesture, ordering me to my place, somewhere he could keep an eye on me. As if he didn’t trust me. Me! A prince of Red March. Heir to the throne. Being watched over by a hauldr and a fisherman as if I might disgrace myself in a den of savages. Me, being watched over by Baraqel even though I no longer had to suffer him in my head. I sat down still smiling, but feeling brittle. I snatched up the drinking horn before me and took a deep swig. The dark and sour ale within did little to improve my mood.

As the general cacophony of disputes over seating and cries for ale settled into more distinct conversations, I began to realize that everyone around me was speaking Norse. Snorri gabbled away with a lean old stick of a man, spitting out words that would break a decent person’s jaw. On my other side Tuttugu had found a kindred spirit, another ginger Norseman whose red beard spilled down over a stomach so expansive it forced him to sit far enough back from the table that reaching his ale became a problem. They too were deep in conversation in old Norse. It was starting to seem that the very first person we met was the only one among them who could speak like a man of Empire.

Back in Trond most of the northmen knew the old tongue but every one of them spoke the language of Empire and would use it over beers, at work, and in the street. Generally the city folk avoided the old tongue and its complications of dialect and regional variation, sticking instead to the language of merchants and kings. In fact the only time the good folk of Trond tended to slip into Norse was when seeking the most appropriate swear word for the situation. Insulting each other is a national sport in Norseheim and for the very best results competitors like to call on the old curses of the north, preferably raiding the stock of cruel-things-to-say-about-someone’s-mother that is to be found in the great sagas.

Out in the sticks however it proved to be a very different story-a story told exclusively in a language that seemed to require you swallow a live frog to pronounce some words and gargle half a pint of phlegm for the rest. Since my grip on Norse was limited to calling someone a shithead or telling them they had very pert breasts I scowled at the company and opted to keep my mouth shut unless of course I was pouring ale into it.

The night rolled on and whilst I was deeply glad to be out of that boat, out of the wind, and to have a floor beneath me that had the decency to stay where it had been put, I couldn’t really enjoy being crammed among two score ill-smelling Harrowheimers. I had to wonder at Engli’s tale of raiding since the whole male population seemed to have jammed themselves into the mead-hall at the first excuse.

“-Hardassa!” Snorri’s fist punctuated the word against the table and I became aware that most of the locals were listening to him now. From the hush I guessed he must be telling the tale of our trip to the Black Fort. Hopefully he wouldn’t be mentioning Loki’s key.

To my mind the Norse vilification of Loki seemed an odd thing. Of all their heathen gods Loki was clearly the most intelligent, capable of plans and tactics that could help Asgard in its wars against the giants. And yet they spurned him. The answer of course was all around me in Harrowheim. Their daughters weren’t being wooed, or seduced, they were being taken by raiders. In the ancient tales, to which each Viking aspired, strength was the only virtue, iron the only currency that mattered. Loki with his cunning, whereby a weaker man might outdo a stronger one, was an anathema to these folk. Little wonder then if his key carried a curse for any that sought to take it by main strength.

Had Olaaf Rikeson taken it by force and drawn down Loki’s curse, only to have his vast army freeze on the Bitter Ice? Whoever had given Snorri that wound had more sense than the Dead King. Using half a ton of Fenris wolf to claim the key might seem a more certain course but such methods might also be a good way to find yourself on the wrong end of a god’s wrath.

“Ale?” Tuttugu started filling my drinking horn without waiting on my answer.

I pursed my lips as another thought struck me-why the hell did they call them mead-halls? I’d emptied several gallons from various drinking horns, flagons, tankards. . even a bucket one time. . in half a dozen mead-halls since coming north and never once been offered mead. The closest the Norse came to sweet was leaving the salt out of their ale. While pondering this important question I decided it time to go empty my used beer into the latrine and stood with just the hint of a stagger.

“Still getting my land legs.” I set a hand to Tuttugu’s shoulder for support and, once steady, set off for the door.

My lack of the local lingo didn’t prove an impediment in the hunt for the latrine-I let my nose lead me. On my return to the hall the faintest jingle of bells caught my attention. Just a brief high tinkle. The sound seemed to have come from an alley between two nearby buildings, large, log-built structures, one sporting elaborate gables. . possibly a temple. With a squint I could make out a cloaked figure in the gloom. I stood, blinking, hoping to God that this wasn’t some horny but myopic clansman who was going to attempt to carry me off to a distant village even more depressing than Harrowheim.

The figure held its ground, sheltered in the narrow passage. Two slim hands emerged from dark sleeves and pushed back the hood. Bells tinkled again, and the girl from the window revealed herself, a saucy quirk to her smile that required no translation.

I cast a quick glance at the glowing rectangle of the mead-hall doorway, another toward the latrines, and seeing nobody looking in my direction, I hastened across the way to join my new friend in the alley.

“Well, hello.” I gave her my best smile. “I’m Prince Jalan Kendeth of Red March, the Red Queen’s heir. But you can call me Prince Jal.”

She reached out to lay a finger across my lips before whispering something that sounded as delicious as it was incomprehensible.

“How can I say no?” I whispered back, setting a hand to her hip and wondering for a moment what the Norse for “no” actually was.

She wriggled out from beneath my palm, bells tinkling, setting her fingers between her collarbones. “Yngvildr.”

“Lovely.” My hands pursued her while my tongue considered wrestling with her name and decided not to.

Yngvildr skipped away laughing and pointed back between the buildings, more sweet gibberish spilling from her mouth. Seeing my blank look she paused and repeated herself slowly and clearly. The trouble is of course that it doesn’t matter how slowly and how clearly you repeat gibberish. It’s possible the word “pert” was in there somewhere.

High above us the moon showed its face and what light it sent down into our narrow alley caught the girl’s lines, illuminating the curve of her cheek, her brow, leaving her eyes in darkness, gleaming on her bell-strewn hair, silver across the swell of her breasts, shadows descending toward a slender waist. Suddenly it didn’t really matter what she was saying.

“Yes,” I said, and she led the way.

We passed between the temple and its neighbour, between huts, edged around pigsties where the hogs snored restless in their hay, and out past log stacks and empty pens to where the slope mellowed toward Harrowheim’s patch of farmland. I snatched a candle-lantern hanging outside one of the last huts. She hissed and tutted, half-smiling, half-disapproving, gesturing for me to put it back, but I declined. A tallow stub in a poorly blown glass cowl was hardly grand theft and damned if I were ending the night with a broken leg or knee-deep in a slurry pit. Wherever Yngvildr planned to get her first taste of Red March I intended to get there fit enough to give good account of myself.

So we stumbled on in our small circle of light, out across a gentle slope, the earth rutted by agriculture, holding hands now, her occasionally saying something which sounded seductive but might well have been an observation on the weather. A little more than a hundred yards out from the last of the huts a tall barn loomed up at us out of the night. I stood back and watched as Yngvildr lifted the locking bar and drew back one of the plank-built double doors set into the front of the crude log structure. She looked back over her shoulder, smiling, and walked on in, swallowed by the darkness. I considered the wisdom of the liaison for about two seconds and followed her.

The lamp’s light couldn’t reach the roof or the walls but I could see enough to know the place held hay bales and farm implements. Not many of either, but plenty to trip over. Yngvildr tried once more to make me abandon the lamp, pointing to the doorway, but I smiled and pulled her close, kissing the arguments off her lips. In the end she rolled her eyes and broke free to close the door once more.

Taking my hand Yngvildr led the way deeper into the barn to a point where a ladder led up to a split-level above the main hay store. I followed her up, taking time to admire the grubby but well-formed legs disappearing into the shadows of her skirts. At the top a large pile of loose hay had been formed into something vaguely nest-shaped.

Now a hay barn in Red March in the spring or fall can be a half-decent place to tumble the odd peasant girl or friendly farm lass, though they never tell you quite how itchy straw is in those bawdy tales, or how sharp, or how it gets into all manner of places where neither partner in the enterprise really ever wants to get anything sharp or itchy. A hay barn in Norseheim in the spring however is akin to an icehouse. A place where no sane man, however keen he might be for a spot of slap and tickle, would part with any layers, and where anything that pokes its head into the frigid air is apt to shrivel and die. I set the lamp down beside us, and with my breath pluming before me, wondered if there were any way I could slip back to the mead-hall right now while retaining some shred of pride. Yngvildr on the other hand seemed keen to proceed as planned and with smiles, gestures, and presently with impatient jerks of the head as she went to all fours, indicated that I should hurry up with my end of the bargain.

“Just give me a minute, Y-Yng-. . dear lady.” I held my hands out over the lamp to warm them. “Cold air is never flattering to a man. .”

Norse women can be quite proactive and Yngvildr proved no exception, backing me to the wall and rucking up a considerable number of coarse skirts to initiate proceedings. A bit of numb-fingered fumbling and with the bare minimum of undressing Yngvildr and I were locked together in a style not uncommon in farmyards, with me providing the somewhat abused filling in a sandwich between the barn wall and my latest “conquest.”

Despite the biting cold, the itchy straw, and the hard planks I did eventually start to enjoy myself. Yngvildr was after all attractive, enthusiastic and energetic. I even began to warm up a bit and start ringing her bells. Reaching forward I took hold of her shoulders and put some effort into seeing what kind of notes I could get out of her. The ringing became louder as our excitement mounted. . and more deep throated. .

“That’s it! Louder! I’ll bet no Norseman has rung your-”

The realization that even the best lover in the world wouldn’t be able to coax so deep or multitudinous a clanging from Yngvildr’s tiny copper bells caught me in mid boast. I opened my eyes and, still being rhythmically pounded back against the wall, peered over the edge of the upper floor to see that the lower barn was full of cattle, with more of the beasts coming in through the door, each with a large cow-bell around its neck.

“You-offff! You didn’t-offff! Close the door properly!”

Yngvildr appeared too occupied to care or notice and seemed to think my commentary was me urging her to greater efforts. For a few moments more I knelt there, trying not to let my head bang the timbers.

“Yes. . perhaps we could quiet things down. .” Her enthusiasm appeared to be attracting more cattle by the second. “Sssh!” It made no impression on her. I stared, somewhat helpless, down at the bovine sea below and those that weren’t busy helping themselves to the hay, or just crapping on the floor, stared back up at me. It wasn’t until I heard over the noise of Yngvildr’s bells, her panting, and the clanging of cow-bells, the sound of men approaching that I started to panic.

“Dear lady, if you could just-offff!” I banged my head quite hard that time, adding anger into the mix of rising panic and involuntary lust. “Shut up!”

It sounded as if there were quite a few Harrowheimers approaching, their voices more curious than alarmed. Presumably when they saw that the cows had entered the barn it would inject a little more urgency into the situation. Lord knew what they’d do if they caught the foreigner in the act of despoiling their maiden!

“Time to stop, Y-” I banged my head again while struggling for her name. “Stop! They’re coming!”

Unfortunately Yngvildr seemed to take my urgency as further encouragement and proved wholly disinclined to stop. I could just make out the glow of a lantern off in the field through a small window above the doors.

“Get! Off!” And with considerable effort I managed to shove Yngvildr far enough to disengage and free myself from the wall. As she fell forward, onto her face unfortunately, her shoulder caught the lamp and sent it tumbling.

“Oh shit!” It’s remarkable how quickly fire takes hold of straw. I backed away on my arse, kicking out at the burning clumps nearest to me. They promptly dropped over the edge into the main barn. Seconds later a great mooing went up from below us, rising rapidly into notes of animal panic. Yngvildr rolled over, hay stuck to her mouth, and looked about in bewilderment-an expression that moved quickly through fury to terror.

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” I tried beating at the burning hay but just helped the fire to spread. Meanwhile down below the cattle had gone into full stampede, ripping off the barn doors in their eagerness to be outside. By the high-pitched yells just audible over the general din of the herd it seemed as though the locals drawn by the cows’ unusual behaviour were having their curiosity rewarded with a good trampling.

“Come on!” Always the gentleman I led the way to ensure it was safe, sliding down the ladder at reckless speed without a care for splinters. Already the air hung thick with smoke, hot as sin. Choking and wheezing I made for the back of the barn, reasoning there must be a door there and that would be closer. Also, although the fire headed my list of priorities in a big way, I didn’t want to jump from it directly into the frying pan. Slipping out the back might allow me to escape unobserved and weasel out of the whole thing.

“Shit!” I stopped in my tracks, confronted by a small door blocked by several bales of hay, all already smouldering. Yngvildr staggered into my back, sending me stumbling forward toward the nearest bale, across which flames flickered into being as though angered by my approach. The smoke blinded me, filling my eyes with tears and swirling around so thickly that only flames showed through. Yngvildr thrust something into my hand, choking out words rendered no less comprehensible by her lack of breath. It appeared to be some kind of farm implement, two sharp iron spikes on the end of a wooden haft. Somewhere at the back of my mind the word “pitchfork” bubbled up, though I probably would have applied the same label to any number of peasant tools. More gibberish as Yngvildr shook my arm and pushed me forward. The girl had clearly gone mad with fear but keeping a cool head and showing the innovative thinking we Kendeths are famed for I set to hefting the burning hay aside with the device. The severity of the situation must have coaxed new strength from my muscles as I managed to toss the bales left and right despite my lack of breath and each of them outweighing me. With the last of my energy and with the fire roaring at my back I kicked the door open and the both of us burst out together.

The light of the blaze through the doorway cast a sudden cone of illumination into the darkness, catching five or six grey-clad men hurrying away across the field. I didn’t care what they were up to but in the heat of the moment, and discovering with a yell that the pitchfork I held clutched before me was on fire, I threw the thing at them. My interest in the implement ended the second it left my scorched hands as I realized that my cloak was also ablaze.

• • •

Yngvildr and I hobbled back across the field, accompanied by the agitated lowing of the herd and lit from behind by the spiralling inferno that had consumed the barn within moments of us escaping it. As we reached the margins of the village we found our path blocked by dozens of Harrowheimers, all standing around their huts and hovels, open mouthed, their faces glowing with the reflection of the fire at our backs. Snorri loomed large among them.

“Tell me you didn’t. .” The look he shot my way made me fairly sure that bits of my cloak were still smoking.

“I-” I didn’t get a chance to start lying before Yngvildr wriggled out from beneath my arm where I’d been using her for support and began talking at a startling rate and volume. I stood, somewhat bewildered, as the wench gestured her way through some great pantomime of what I presumed must be recent events. Part of me expected her to drop to all fours for a full display of just how the southern monster had despoiled the flower of Harrowheim.

Yngvildr paused to snatch a breath and Tuttugu called to me, “Which way did they go?”

“Um-” Fortunately Yngvildr saved me from having to invent an answer while guessing what she’d said. With her lungs refilled she launched into the next stage of her tale.

“A pitchfork?” Snorri asked, glancing from Yngvildr to me, an eyebrow raised.

“Well, one improvises.” I shrugged. “We princes can turn most objects into a weapon in a pinch.”

Yngvildr still had plenty of go in her and continued to spill her story with the same volume but the crowd’s attention wandered from her, drawn into the shadows where three warriors were emerging from the field, one brandishing what looked to be the pitchfork in question and barking out something that sounded uncomfortably like an accusation. I took Yngvildr protectively by the shoulders to use as a shield.

“Now see here! I-” My bluster ran out temporarily while I tried to think what defence I might offer that wouldn’t get me used as a target for axe-throwing practice.

“He says, when they caught up with the raiders they were pulling this out of their friend’s backside,” Snorri said, a grin cracking within the close-cropped darkness of his beard. “So, you rescued Yngvildr and chased off, what? Six of them? With a pitchfork? Splendid.” He laughed and slapped Tuttugu across the shoulders. “But why would they fire the barn? That’s the bit I don’t understand. There’ll be hell to pay over it come the clan-meet!”

“Ah,” I said, trying to give myself pause for all the lies to sink in. Yngvildr appeared to be a highly creative girl under pressure. “I think maybe that was an accident? One of the idiots must have taken a lamp into the barn-probably they were planning to collect a few girls there before setting off for home. Must’ve got knocked over in the excitement. .”

Snorri repeated what I’d said in Norse for the gathered crowd. A silence trailed his last word and two score and more of Harrowheim’s eyes stared hard at me through the flame-lit gloom. I figured if I shoved Yngvildr at the feet of the nearest ones and ran for it I might lose them in the night. I’d tensed for the shove when without warning a cheer went up, beards split into broad smiles full of bad teeth, and before I knew what was happening we’d been swept along the muddy streets and back into the mead-hall. This time they managed to squeeze twice as many bodies into the place, half of them female. As the ale started to flow once more and I found myself squashed between Yngvildr and an older but no less comely woman that Snorri assured me was her sister rather than her mother, I started to think a night in Harrowheim might have its charms after all.

• • •

We left on the morning tide with sore heads and foggy recollections of the night’s events. The rain had let up, the relentless wind had relented, and the true story of how their largest barn got burned flat had yet to emerge. It seemed the best time to depart. Even so I would have dallied a day or three, but Snorri had an urgency about him, his humour gone. When he thought no one watching I saw him hold his side above the poisoned wound and I knew then that he felt that pull, drawing him south.

Sad to say neither Yngvildr nor her still less pronounceable sister came to see me off at the quay, but they had both managed a smile when Snorri hauled me from the furs that morning and I let that warm me against the cold wind as we set sail.

As the distance took Harrowheim I didn’t feel quite so well rid of this Norse town as I had of Trond, Olaafheim, and Haargfjord. Even so, the glories of Vermillion beckoned. Wine, women, song. . preferably not opera. . and I’d certainly search out Lisa DeVeer, perhaps even marry her one day.

• • •

“We’re going the wrong way!” It had taken me the best part of half an hour to realize it. The fjord had narrowed a touch and there was no sign of the sea.

“We’re sailing up the Harrowfjord.” Snorri at the tiller.

“Up?” I looked for the sun. It was true. “Why? And where do I know that name from?”

“I told it to you four nights ago. Ekatri told me-”

“Eridruin’s Cave. Monsters!” It all came back to me, rather like unexpectedly vomiting into your mouth. The völva’s mad tale about a door in a cave.

“It was meant to be. Fated. My namesake sailed here three centuries ago.”

“Snorri Hengest died here.” Tuttugu from the prow. “We should see Skilfar. She’ll know of a better way. Nobody comes here, Snorri. It’s a bad place.”

“We’re looking for a bad thing.”

And that was that. We kept going.

• • •

“So, who was Eridruin?” Sailing on a fjord is infinitely preferable to sailing on the sea. The water stays where it’s put and the shore is so close that even I might make it there if it came to swimming. This said, I would rather be sailing over rough seas away from any place famed for monsters than sailing toward it on the flattest of millponds. “I said, who was-”

“I don’t know. Tuttugu?” Snorri kept his eyes on the left shore.

Tuttugu shrugged. “It must ache Eridruin’s spirit to be famed enough for his name to survive but not quite enough for anyone to remember why they remember it.”

A stiff breeze had carried us inland. The day kept grey, the sun showing only brief and weak. By late afternoon we’d covered perhaps thirty miles and seen no sign of habitation. I had thought Harrowheim’s raiders came from further up the fjord, but nobody lived here. Tuttugu had the right of it. A bad place. Somehow you could tell. It wasn’t anything as simple as dead and crooked trees, or rocks with sinister shapes. . it was a feeling, a wrongness, the certain knowledge that the world grew thin here, and what waited beneath the surface loved us not. I watched the sun sinking toward the high ridges and listened. The Harrowfjord wasn’t silent or lifeless, the water lapped our hull, the sails flapped, birds sang. . but each sound held a discordant tone, as if the skylarks were just a note away from screaming. You could almost catch it. . some dreadful melody played out just beneath hearing.

“There.” Snorri pointed to a place high upon the stepped shore to our left. Like a dark eye amid the stony slopes, Eridruin’s Cave watched us. It couldn’t be any other.

The Norsemen lowered the sails and brought us into the shallows. Fjords have deep shallows, diving down as steeply as the valleys that contain them. I jumped out a yard from the shore and managed to wet myself to the hips.

“You’re just going up there. . right now?” I looked about for the promised monsters. “Shouldn’t we wait and. . plan?”

Snorri shouldered his axe. “You want to wait until it gets dark, Jal?”

He had a point. “I’ll guard the boat.”

Snorri wound the boat’s line around a boulder that emerged from the water. “Come on.”

The Norsemen set off, Tuttugu at least looking as though he would rather not and casting glances left and right. He carried a rope coiled many times about him, and two lanterns bounced on his hips.

I hurried after them. Somehow I could think of no horror worse than being alone in that place, sitting by the still water as the night poured down the slopes.

“Where are the monsters?” It wasn’t that I wanted to see any. . but if they were here I’d rather know where.

Snorri paused and looked about. I immediately sat down to catch my breath. He shrugged. “I can’t see any. But then how many places live up to their reputation? I’ve been to plenty of Giant’s This and Troll’s That, without a sniff of either. I climbed the Odin’s Horn and didn’t meet him.”

“And the Fair Maidens are a great disappointment.” Tuttugu nodded. “Who thought to set that name on three rocky isles crammed with ugly hairy men and their ugly hairy wives?”

Snorri nodded up the slope again and set off. In places it was steeper than stairs and I reached out ahead of me, clambering up.

I climbed, expecting attack at any moment, expecting to see bones among the rocks, drifts of them, tooth-marked, some grey with age, some fresh and wet. Instead I discovered just more rocks and that the growing sense of wrongness now whispered around me, audible but too faint to break apart into words.

Within minutes we stood at the cave mouth, a rocky gullet, fringed with lichen above and stained with black slime where the water oozed. Twenty men could march in abreast, and be swallowed.

“Do you hear it?” Tuttugu, more pale than he had ever looked.

We heard it, though perhaps the cave spoke different words to each of us. I heard a woman whispering to her baby, soft at first, promising love. . then sharper, more strained, promising protection. . then terrified, hoarse with agony promising- I spoke aloud to overwrite the whispers. “We need to leave. This place will drive us mad.” Already I found myself wondering, if I threw myself down the slope would the voice stop?

“I don’t hear anything.” Snorri walked in. Perhaps his own demons spoke louder than the cave.

I took a step after him, out of habit, then caught myself. Fingers in my ears did nothing to block out the woman’s voice. Worse, I realized there was something familiar about it.

Snorri’s progress slowed as the cave floor sloped away, as steep as the valley behind us, but slick with slime and lacking handholds. The gradient steepened further, the cave narrowing to a black and hungry throat.

“Do not.”

A tall man stood between Snorri and me, in the shadow of the cave, in the space through which Snorri had just walked. A young man, clad in a strange white robe, sleeved and open at the front. He watched us through stony grey eyes, unsmiling. All the other voices retreated when the man spoke-my woman with her dead child, and the others behind her, not gone but reduced to the pulsing hiss you can hear in a seashell.

Snorri turned, taking the axe from his back. “I need to find a door into Hel.”

“Such doors are closed to men.” The man smiled then-no kindness in it. “Take a knife to your veins and you will find yourself there soon enough.”

“I have a key,” Snorri said, and made to resume his descent.

“I said, do not.” The man raised his hand and we heard the bones of earth groan. Plates of stone shattered away from the cavern roof, dust drifting in their wake.

“Who are you?” Snorri faced him again.

“I came through the door.”

“You’re dead?” Snorri took a step toward the man, fascinated now. “And you came back?”

“This part of me is dead, certainly. You don’t live as long as I have without dying a little. I have echoes of me in Hel.” The man tilted his head, as if puzzled, as if considering himself. “Show me your key.”

“Who are you?” Snorri repeated his first question.

Across from me Tuttugu stopped pressing the heels of his hands to his ears. His eyes widened from the slits they had been. He grabbed up his axe from the rocks and crawled to my side.

“Who? Who was I? That man is dead, an older one wears his skin. I’m just an echo-like the others echoing here, though my voice is the strongest. I am not me. Just a fragment, unsure of my purpose. .”

“Who-”

“I won’t bandy my name before a light-sworn warrior.” The dead man seemed to gather himself. “Show me your key. It must be the reason I am here.”

Snorri pursed his lips then released one hand from the axe to draw Loki’s key from beneath his jerkin. “There. Now, if you won’t help me, shade, begone.”

“Ah. This is good. This is a good key. Give it to me.” A hunger in him now.

“No. Show me the door, ghost.”

“Give me the key and I’ll allow you to continue along your path.”

“I need the key to open the door.”

“I thought that once. I had many failures. I called myself door-mage but so many doors resisted me. The key you hold was stolen from me, long ago. Death was the first door I opened without it. Some doors just require a push. For others a latch must be lifted, some are locked, but a sharp mind can pick most locks. Only three still resist me. Darkness, Light, and the Wheel. And when you give me the key I will own those too.”

Snorri looked my way and beckoned me. “Jal, I need you to lock the door after me. Take the key and give it to Skilfar. She will know how to destroy it.”

“I have something you want, barbarian.”

The door-mage had a child at his side, gripping her neck from behind. A small girl in a ragged woollen smock, bare legs, dirty feet, her blond hair thrown across her face as the man forced her head down.

“Einmyria?” Snorri breathed the name.

In one hand the child held a peg doll.

“Emy?” A shout. He sounded terrified.

“The key, or I’ll break her neck.”

Snorri reached into his jerkin and tore the key from its thong. “Take it.” He strode forward pressing it carelessly into the mage’s hand, eyes on his daughter, bending toward her. “Emy? Sweet-girl?”

Two things happened together. Somehow the mage dropped Loki’s key, and in reaching to catch it as it fell he let go of the child’s neck. She looked up, hair falling to the sides. Her face was a wound, the dark red muscle of her cheeks showed through, stripped of skin and fat. She opened her mouth and vomited out flies, thousands of them, a buzzing scream. Snorri fell back and she leapt on him, black talons erupting from the flesh of her hands.

I glimpsed Snorri amid the dark cloud, on his back, struggling to keep the child-thing from ripping out his eyes. Tuttugu lumbered forward, shielding his face, swinging his axe in an under-arm looping blow. Somehow he missed Snorri but caught the demon, the force of the impact knocking her clear. For a second she scrabbled at the muddy slope, shrieking at an inhuman pitch, then fell away, wailing, into the consuming blackness. The flies followed her, like smoke inhaled by an open mouth.

With that deafening buzz receding I noticed the laughter for the first time. Looking away from the cave’s throat I saw that the mage remained crouched on the ground, the key still before him on the rock. He wasn’t looking at Snorri, just the key. He tried again to pick it up but somehow his fingers passed through it. Another awful, bitter laughter broke from him, a noise that ran through my teeth and made them feel brittle.

“I can’t touch it. I can’t even touch it.”

Snorri scrambled to his feet and rushed the man, throwing him back with a roar. The mage went tumbling, fetching up hard against a rock. Snorri scooped up the key and rubbed his shoulder where he’d barged his foe aside, an expression of disgust on his face, as if the contact sickened him.

“What have you done with my daughter?” Snorri advanced on the mage, axe raised.

The man didn’t seem to hear. He stood, staring at his hands. “All these years and I couldn’t pick it up. . Loki must have his little jokes. You’ll bring it to me though. You’ll bring me that key.”

“What have you done with her?” Snorri, as murderous as I’d ever heard him.

“You can’t threaten me. I’m dead. I’m-”

Snorri’s axe took the man’s head. It hit the ground, bounced once and rolled away. The body remained standing for long enough to ensure it would feature in my nightmares, then toppled, the neck stump bloodless and pale.

“Come on.” Snorri started to climb down the cave’s black gullet, backing into it on all fours, feet first, questing for edges to hold his weight. “Leave him!”

I turned away from the remains of the man, the ghost, the echo, whatever it was.

The whispers rose again. I could hear the woman crying, the sound rasping on my sanity.

“Jal!” Snorri calling me.

“I said, do not!”

I turned, looking for the voice. My eyes settled on the severed head. The thing was staring at me.

I struggled to speak, but a voice deeper than my own answered instead. Somewhere deep below us the earth rumbled, the sound of stones that had held their peace ten thousand years and more now speaking all at once, and not in a whisper but a distant roar.

“What?” I looked to where Snorri hung, confusion on his face.

“Better run.” The head spoke from the floor, lips writhing as the words sounded inside my skull.

The roar and rumble of falling rock rushed toward us, rising from deep below, a terrible gnashing, as if the intervening space were being devoured by stone teeth.

“Run!” I shouted, and took my own advice. My last glimpse of the cave showed me Tuttugu running my way and Snorri behind him, still trying to haul himself clear of the drop-off.

I sprinted out beneath the hanging lichen and recoiled off Tuttugu as our paths crossed. The impact sent me sprawling and probably saved my life as my terror would have seen me racing out onto a killingly steep descent toward the fjord.

“Quick!” I wheezed the word while trying to haul air back into my recently emptied lungs.

Tuttugu and I staggered out onto the slope, clinging to each other, a rolling cloud of pulverized stone billowing behind us. We fell to the ground and looked back as the cave exhaled dust, like smoke whooshing from the mouth of some vast dragon. Buried thunder vibrated through us, resonating in my chest.

“Snorri?” Tuttugu asked, staring at the cave mouth without hope.

I made to shake my head, but there, emerging from the cloud, grey from foot to head, came Snorri, spitting and coughing.

He collapsed beside us, and for the longest time none of us spoke.

Finally, with the last traces of dust drifting out across the water far below, I stated the obvious. “No key in the world is going to open that for you.”