Red Queen's War: The Liar's Key Part 12

"Turn her! Turn her!" Snorri, tight with anxiety.

"Big one coming!" Tuttugu, sounding as weary as I felt.

I lifted my head, unhooked a sore arm from the mast, and rubbed the salt crusts from my eyes. The sky lay a pale blue, ribboned with the remnants of rainclouds. The sun stood overhead, bright but without much warmth. I inched myself round to face the way the Errensa was pointing, unwilling to completely relinquish my grip on the mast. The wave before us ran on ahead, revealing a dark coastline of cliffs and coves, the high ground topped with gra.s.s and bushes. And beyond the headlands . . . nothing . . . no surly Norse mountains reaching for the sky and telling you to sod off. At last we'd reached Maladon. A rough enough dukedom to be sure, but with the decency to do whatever had to be done on the level rather than perched on the side of a ridiculously steep slope or huddled in the narrow margin between snowy uplands and icy sea. A weight lifted off my heart.

A delicious few seconds of hope, and then I noticed how the only sail we had was a sc.r.a.p of tattered cloth strung between the bow and the mast, and just how big those breakers were, and how white they foamed before drawing back to reveal the black teeth of the rocks. The next second I noticed how upside-down we were and how cold the water rushing into my mouth was. For several minutes after that I spent most of my time thrashing wildly and gasping for air in between the breaking crests of waves that plunged me under then rolled me over and over before releasing their grip just in time for the next one.

I don't recall finally crawling ash.o.r.e, just the sand-level view of Snorri walking along the beach to find me. Somehow he'd kept his axe.

"Maladon," I said, grabbing a handful of it as he hauled me to my feet. "I could almost kiss you."

"Osheim," Snorri said.

"What?" I spat out grit and tried to frame a better question. "What?" I asked again. n.o.body goes to Osheim. And there's a b.l.o.o.d.y good reason for it.

"The storm blew us east. We're fifty miles past Maladon." Snorri puffed his cheeks out and looked across the sea. "You all right?"

I patted myself down. No major injuries. "No," I said.

"You're fine." Snorri let go of me and I managed not to fall. "Kara's down the beach with Tutt. He cut his leg on the rocks. Lucky it's not broken."

"Seriously, Osheim?"

Snorri nodded and set off back, walking where the waves swept the sand, each of his footprints erased before he'd taken another ten steps. I spat some more grit and a decent-sized pebble from my mouth and followed with a sigh.

The Builders left us quite a few reminders of their era. Reminders that even someone like me, whose primary use for history books was for beating smaller princelings around the head with, could hardly ignore. A man who ignored the borders of Promised Land would find his skin falling off while twisted monsters ate his face. The Engine of Wrong in Atta, the bridges and towers still left scattered across the continent, the Vault of Voices in Orlanth, the time bubbles on the Bremmer Slopes, or the Last Warrior-trapped on Brit . . . all these were well known, but none sent the same shiver up my spine as the Wheel of Osheim. It seemed that almost every fairy tale our nurses had spun to entertain my brothers and me when we were small had happened in Osheim. The worst of them happened closest to the Wheel. The tales Martus demanded, the most b.l.o.o.d.y and most twisted, all started, "Once upon a time, not far from the Wheel of Osheim," and from there on it was time to hide behind your hands or cover your ears. Come to think of it, the women who looked after us when we were little were an evil bunch of old witches. They should have been hanged, the lot of them, not set to watch over the sons of a cardinal.

We sheltered in a dell behind the headlands, Snorri and me, while Kara poked around on the nearby heath and Tuttugu returned to the beach to see what might be salvaged from the wreck or lying washed up on the sands. Tuttugu's leg still bore an angry red scar, but Snorri's healing touch had rendered it serviceable, closing an ugly wound that had turned my stomach to look at. The effort had left Snorri flat on his back but far less incapacitated than on other occasions and before long he was sitting up to fiddle with his axe. Steel and salt.w.a.ter are a poor mix and no warrior will leave his blade wet. I watched him work, pursing my lips. His swift recovery struck me as odd since the Silent Sister's spell was supposed to have faded over the winter according to Skilfar, and such things should be harder, not more easy.

"Eggs." Kara came back from rummaging across the heather-covered slope behind us. In her cupped hands half a dozen blue gulls' eggs. You could probably tip the contents of all of them into a decent-sized chicken's egg and not fill it. She sat down on gra.s.s between Snorri and me, crossing her long legs, bare and scratched and grimy and delicious. "How long do you think it will take to get to Red March?" Looking at me as if I would know.

I spread my hands. "With my luck, a year."

"We'll need horses," Snorri said.

"You hate horses, and they hate you." It was true though, we did need some. "Can Kara even ride? Can Tuttugu? Is Kara actually coming with us?" It seemed a h.e.l.l of a journey to make on the whim of an old witch in a cave.

"If I still had the Errensa under me it would be a difficult decision," Kara admitted. "But perhaps the storm was trying to tell us something. No going back until we're done."

Snorri raised a brow at that but said nothing.

"No going anywhere for me. Ever. I'm not leaving Red March again. Not if I live to be a hundred. h.e.l.l, I doubt I'll set foot outside the walls of Vermillion again once I'm through the gates." Righteous indignation swelled, driven past the bounds of my usual stoic good humour. I blame my fever and the fact of being sat in a gra.s.sy hollow, soaked, cold, exhausted, days from the nearest warm bed, flagon of ale, or hot meal. I kicked at the sod. "f.u.c.king Empire. f.u.c.king oceans. Who needs any of it? And now we're in f.u.c.king Osheim. That's just great. f.u.c.k dark-sworn or light-sworn. I want some future-sworn. Could have seen that storm coming and got out of the way."

"The Builders watched the weather from above." Kara tilted a finger toward the heavens. "They could tell what storms would come but they still couldn't stop the storm that was big enough to sweep them all away."

"Every fortune-teller I ever met was a faker. First thing you should do to a soothsayer is poke them in the eye and say, 'Didn't see that coming, did you?'" My mood still ran sour. I couldn't believe we'd been delivered up on the sh.o.r.es of a place where all my childhood nightmares ran riot.

"What will happen when I let go?" Kara held out one of her tiny eggs between thumb and forefinger, positioning her hand above a stone breaking through the sod between us.

"You'll mess up this fine stone," I said.

"Now you're seeing the future." A grin. She looked younger when she smiled. "And if you lunged forward and tried to stop me?"

My lips echoed her smile. I quite liked that idea. "I don't know. Should we try?"

"And that's the curse of the future-sworn. None of us can see past our own actions-not us, not the future-sworn, not the Silent Sister, not Luntar, not the Watcher of Parn, none of them." Kara offered me the egg.

"Raw?" The sun had broken through and I was starting to feel human enough to eat. I couldn't remember when I'd last had a good meal. Even so, my appet.i.te hadn't returned to the degree where raw gull's egg looked like something I wanted oozing over my tongue. "No?" Kara shrugged, and putting her head back she broke the egg into her mouth.

Watching her it was hard to imagine that Skilfar or the Silent Sister might have been like this once-young women overburdened with cleverness and ambition, setting foot on the path to power.

"I wonder what it is that the Silent Sister sees with that blind eye of hers. Things she can't even speak of."

Kara wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "And if she moves to change them . . . she can no longer see how they will end. So how terrible does the future have to look before you reach in to that clear pool to change it and have the silt rise up all around your hand so you're as blind as everyone else-knowing it won't settle again until the day, the hour, the moment of the thing you most fear?"

"I'd change everything bad that ever looked like happening to me." I could think of a long list of things I would have avoided, with "leaving Red March" right at the top of it. Or maybe getting into debt with Maeres Allus should be at the top, because leaving Red March did actually save me from a horrific death at his torturer's hands. But then getting into debt had been such fun . . . hard to imagine all those years living as a pauper . . . I suppose I could have p.a.w.ned Mother's locket . . . My head started to spin. "Well . . . I suppose . . . It's a complicated business."

"And if you changed those bad things how would you know that the change wouldn't lead to worse things that would now wait for you unseen in the years to come?" Kara ate another of the eggs and handed the rest to Snorri. They looked lost in the wideness of his palm.

"Hmmm. Perhaps the evil old witch got what she deserved after all." It sounded as though looking into the future might be as much of a pain as looking into the past. The moment was clearly the place to be. Except this moment which was wet and cold.

An hour later Tuttugu returned carrying a makeshift sailcloth sack into which he'd loaded his salvage. There wasn't much of it, and nothing to eat save a tub of b.u.t.ter that had already been rancid when purchased in Haargfjord more than a week back.

"We should go!" Snorri slapped his thighs and stood.

"Better than starving here, I suppose." I set off, unburdened with sword, pack, rations, or any other defence against danger and privation other than the knife at my hip. A fine knife it must be said, also purchased in Haargfjord, a brutal bit of sharp iron, intended for intimidation, and not yet used in any more deadly endeavour than peeling fruit.

Snorri and Tuttugu followed in my wake.

"Where are you going?" Kara remained where we'd left her.

"Um." I squinted at the sun. "South . . . east-ish?"

"Why?"

"I . . ." It had seemed right. It occurred to me as I considered the question that something good waited for us in the direction I'd led off in. Something very good. We should probably hurry.

"It's the draw of the Wheel," she said.

Snorri frowned. Tuttugu ferreted about in his beard, hunting inspiration.

"c.r.a.p." Nanna Willow had told us this one a dozen times. Nanna Willow had come to us from my grandmother's personal staff, a stick of a woman, dry as bones, and not given to taking any s.h.i.t from unruly princes. When the mood took her she'd tell us fairy tales-some so dark they'd even have Martus wanting a nightlight and a kiss to ward off the spirits. And practically every victim in the abattoir of Nanna Willow's bedtime tales was led into Osheim by the draw of the Wheel.

"This is the right way." Tuttugu nodded as if to convince himself and pointed ahead.

For my part I turned on a heel and hurried back to Kara's side. "c.r.a.p," I repeated myself. Part of me still wanted to follow the line Tuttugu indicated. "It's all true, isn't it? Tell me there aren't boggen and flesh-mauls too . . ."

"The path to the Wheel grows strange." Kara spoke the words as if quoting them. "And then more strange. If a man ever reached the Wheel he would find all things are possible. The Wheel gives anything a man could want."

"Well . . . that doesn't sound too bad." And so help me my feet started taking me south again. South and a little east. Tuttugu set off again too, just ahead of me.

"It's the monsters that stop them reaching the Wheel." Kara's voice, an unwelcome nagging behind me. Even so, the word "monsters" was enough to stop both me and Tuttugu. We'd both seen more monsters than we ever wanted to.

"What monsters? You said anything a man could want!" I turned back, unwilling.

"Monsters from the id."

"From the what?"

"The dark places in your mind where you make war on yourself." Kara shrugged. "That's how the sagas have it. You think you know what you want, but the Wheel reaches past what you think you know into the deep places where nightmares are born. The Wheel grows stronger as you get closer. At first it answers your will. As you get closer it answers your desire. And closer still it dances to your imagination. All your dreams, each shadowed corner of your mind, each possibility you've considered . . . it feeds them, makes them flesh, sends them to you."

Tuttugu joined us. I caught a whiff of him as he drew close. Old cheese and wet hound. It was only when we had a moment apart that you noticed it. We probably all reeked after too long in that little boat and it would take more than a quick sinking to wash it off. "You lead us, volva," he said.

Only Snorri remained where he was, out on the moor with long gra.s.s dancing to the beat of the wind all about him. He stood without motion, still staring south where the sky held a purplish taint, like a fading bruise. At first I'd thought it was clouds. Now I wasn't sure.

"After you." I gestured for Kara to lead us. My imagination proved torment enough to me from one day to the next. Absolutely no way was I heading somewhere that could put flesh on any bone I dreamed up. Men are dragged down by their fears all the time, but in Osheim apparently that had to be taken far more literally.

Snorri remained where he'd first stopped, close enough to hear our conversation but making no move to return or go on. I knew what he would be thinking. That the great Wheel of the Builders might turn for him and bring his children back. They wouldn't be real though, just images born of his imagination. Even so-to Snorri the exquisite pain of such torture might be something he couldn't step away from. I opened my mouth to make some remonstration . . . but found I had no words for it. What did I know of the bonds that bind father to son or husband to wife?

Raised in a culture of war and death I would have pegged a Viking warrior to be the most able of any man to put such tragedy behind him and walk on. But Snorri had never been the man I'd thought would lie behind the beard and the axe. Somehow he was both less than the fantasy and more at the same time.

I turned and walked back toward him. Anything I had to say seemed shallow beside the depth of his grief. Words are awkward tools at best, too blunt for delicate tasks.

I almost set a hand to his shoulder, then let it fall. In the end I settled for, "Come on then."

Snorri turned, looked at me-as if from a thousand miles away-then twitched his lips, hinting at a smile. He nodded and we both went back together.

"Sail!" Tuttugu had returned to the ridge above the dell whilst I went to retrieve Snorri. Now he pointed out toward the ocean as we returned.

"Maybe we won't have to walk after all," I said as we reached Kara.

She shook her head at my ignorance. "You can't just wave down a ship."

"Why's he jumping up and down then?"

"I don't know." Snorri said the words in a voice that suggested a slow-dawning suspicion. He left us and jogged up the slope toward the ridge. Kara followed on at a more relaxed pace and I dogged her heels.

Both men were crouched by the time we reached them and Snorri waved us down too. "Edris," he hissed.

I edged alongside Tuttugu on my elbows, adding more mud to my costume.

"s.h.i.t." I squinted at the flash of sail miles and more off the coast. "How the h.e.l.l can you tell?"

I felt Tuttugu shrug beside me. "I just know. It's the cut of the sails . . . just the way of it . . . Harda.s.sa for sure."

"How is it even possible?" I asked, becoming aware of Kara moving up beside me, her braid runes tapping as the wind played them out.

"The unborn knew where to dig for Loki's key," she said.

"It was under the Bitter Ice! Anyone who listened to the stories knew-oh." The Bitter Ice stretched for scores of miles of ice cliffs and then reached back an unknown distance into the white h.e.l.l of the north. How did they know where to dig?

"Something draws them to it," she said.

"There's unborn on that ship?" Suddenly I wanted to be home very badly.

Kara shrugged. "Maybe. Or some other servant of the Dead King who can sense the key."

I shuffled back from the ridge. "We'd better move fast then." At least running away was something I understood.

THIRTEEN.

"We've got to move fast, but in which direction?" Snorri asked.

"We need to be away from the coast." Tuttugu hugged his belly with nervous arms, perhaps imagining a Harda.s.sa driving his spear into it. "Take away their advantage. Otherwise they'll pace us at sea and come in for us by night. And if they're forced to beach they'll have to leave men to guard the longboat."

"We'll aim south-west." Kara pointed to a low hill on the horizon. "We should reach the Maladon border in three or four days. If we're lucky we'll be close to Copen."

"Copen?" Tuttugu asked. I offered him silent thanks for not making me be the one to display my ignorance yet again.

"A small city on the Elsa River. The duke winters there. A good place to rest and gather our resources," Kara said. By which she no doubt meant "for Jalan to buy us food and horses." At this rate I'd arrive at Vermillion as poor as I thought I was when I left it.

We set off at a good pace, knowing the Harda.s.sa men would be better provisioned, better equipped . . . probably just plain better in all regards given that our second best warrior was likely a woman with a knife.

The sun came out to mock us, and Kara led the way, winding a path across slopes thick with heather and dense clumps of viciously spiked gorse.

"We're getting closer to the Wheel aren't we?" I asked an hour later, footsore already.

"Yes, we'll just cut through the outer edge of its . . . domain."

"You can feel it too?" Snorri fell back to walk beside me, his stride free as if his wound no longer pained him.

I nodded. Even with four hours until sunset I could sense Aslaug prowling, impatient. Each patch of shadow seethed with possibilities despite the brightness all about. Her voice lay beneath all other sounds, urgent but indistinct, rising with the wind, scratching behind Snorri's question. "It's like the world is . . . thinner here." Even with an arm's length between Snorri and me that old energy crackled across the shoulder facing him, buzzing in my teeth, a brittle sensation, as if I might shatter if I fell. With the old feeling came new suspicions, all of Aslaug's warnings creeping into my mind. Baraqel's hold on the northman would be strengthening with each yard closer to the Wheel. How long could I trust Snorri for? How long before he became the avenger Baraqel intended him to be, smiting down anyone tainted with the dark . . .