The screaming from the throne room grew more desperate. Something struck the doors leading from it with enough force that the echoes trembled through my chest.
The key. The key had ended a lichkin in Hell. But that had been pure chance. Luck. My gaze returned to the blackness of it, unlocking the memories of that victory, and in an instant they had sucked me in.
Snorri stands before me, a monotone giant clad in the blood-dust of Hell. A fissure behind him gouts tongues of crimson flame and the air is thick with the stink of sulphur. I’m holding Loki’s key before me at waist height and the lichkin has gone, just a black stain lingering where its corrupted remnants fell to the ground. The key undid it. The lichkin took a step back when it blocked Snorri’s charge and impaled itself, just an inch, but it was enough. I turned the key and the lichkin came undone.
Snorri’s gaze is on my hand. He thought the key was safe with Kara, back in the living world.
‘Well look at that,’ I say, opening my fingers to reveal the key fully. ‘The thing is…’ I struggle to come up with an explanation. ‘The thing to remember is that … without this we would both be dead.’ I hold up my other hand to forestall him. ‘And not the good kind of dead. The really, really nasty kind.’ I shudder, remembering the pain as the lichkin held me. I’ve never experienced anything close, and never want to again.
‘You brought that key into Hel?’ Snorri appears to have heard none of the words I so carefully brought up in my defence. ‘Into Hel?’
‘You heard the bit about saving both our lives?’
Snorri looks scared. It’s one of the more worrying things I’ve seen in a life that lately has been more or less one worrying thing joined to the next. ‘We have to get it out of here. You have to take it back, Jal. Now!’
I look around. A wide and dusty valley dead-lit by a sky the colour of old sorrow. Fiery vents, a scattering of disturbingly shaped rocks. ‘How?’ I’m not going to argue about leaving. I was doing my best not to come in the first place.
Snorri frowns, concentrating but unable to hold in his thoughts. ‘What were you thinking? This whole time you’ve being carrying…’ He looks so disappointed in me that I almost see his point.
‘The Ancient Greeks had a hall of judgment…’ I say, mainly to distract him.
‘The Greeks? What have the Greeks got to do with anything?’
‘Well…’ I often come up with my best plans by opening my mouth and listening to the words that come out. This time it doesn’t seem to be working. ‘Well … we’ve been trekking through your underworld, Hel’s domain. And now we’re in my Hell, or the Dead King’s Hell—’
‘But the Greek mythology we’ve both known our whole lives! So both of us can shape it. Brilliant!’
The truth was I’d had ancient Greek mythology beaten through my thick layer of disinterest in my early teens by a detested tutor named Soros using a blunt cane and sharp sarcasm. I still have no idea why it was considered necessary, even if some in those regions have taken up the worship again. I did, however, learn it well enough to avoid the cane, if not the sarcasm.
‘Anyway. The Greeks had a hall of judgment with three judges to direct the souls of the dead to their various rewards and punishments.’ I start walking again. The lichkin might only be a stain on the ground but it’s a stain I don’t wish to stand next to any longer than I have to. I spit to clear the sulphur taste from my mouth. It doesn’t work.
‘You’re thinking to leave the deadlands that way?’ Snorri asks. ‘Because after the hall of judgment there’s a big dog named Cerberus, and if you don’t get eaten by him then it’s the River Acheron and the River Styx, that’s the rivers of woe and hate. The ferryman is supposed to be a—’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I’m not dead. I shouldn’t be here. As soon as I reach the judges they’ll see that I’m in the wrong place and send me back home. It’s what they do – send people where they belong.’
‘You think so?’ Snorri looks doubtful, which is the opposite of what I need.
‘I believe so,’ I say. ‘And that’s what counts.’ It strikes me that in this Hell a man of sufficient will, a man willing to sacrifice anything, might bend the world itself around his desire and create of himself whatsoever he wished. It also strikes me that I am not such a man.
Snorri’s long stride brings him level with me. ‘So all we need to do is to get you to the judges’ hall.’
‘That is one of the weaker parts of the idea,’ I admit, slowing to look about for clues, but of course there aren’t any. Just dust and rocks.
Snorri keeps walking. ‘You haven’t figured this place out yet.’ He calls it over his shoulder. ‘Direction doesn’t matter. It’s like in dreams. The things you want come to you. The things you don’t want as well.’
I hurry to catch up. ‘We’re just going to walk in this direction?’
‘Yes.’
‘Until we find it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kara said the door would be everywhere,’ I say, always eager to avoid a long walk.
‘If you see it before we get there let me know.’ Snorri snorts. ‘Now what do you think this hall is going to look like? What are the judges’ names?’
We walk through a valley that slowly becomes a plain, beneath a sky that darkens by degrees, settling shadows upon us. All the while we talk about the underworld of Hades and the gods of Olympus and the legends that the ancients set about it all. After the Thousand Suns many lost faith with the God of Rome and turned to older gods whose failures lay too far back to recall. As we remember the shape and history of Hades we find ourselves walking into it, or rather that part of the deadlands shaped by the faith of those who believe such tales.
‘What is it with pagan hells and dogs?’ I ask. ‘And rivers?’
‘What do you mean?’ A defensive tone enters Snorri’s voice.
‘The Greeks have the River Styx, crossed by a ferryman who dumps you on a shore guarded by a huge dog named Cerberus. The Norse have the River Gjöll, crossed by a bridge that takes you to a shore guarded by a huge dog named Garm.’
‘I don’t see your point.’
‘It’s like you copied them item by item, just changing the odd detail and using your own names.’
The ensuing argument takes my mind off the unrelenting misery of walking the deadlands. Hell is hell, whatever mythology you dress it up in. Every part of me is dry. Every part hurts. Famine and thirst have set up home in me, bone deep. As the darkness grows, any hope in me wanes and my tongue lacks interest in conversation … but arguing, baiting the Northman, that still holds enough appeal to stop me lying down in the dust and waiting for my turn to blow on the wind.
Jalan.
It’s just the breeze, speaking my name into a pause in the conversation.
Jalan.
But when the wind speaks your name in the darkness of Hell there’s a chill that comes with it.
In time even the pleasure in enraging Snorri fades and I stagger on beneath a burden of unbearable pain and exhaustion. My surroundings might be only darkness and dust and a low but endless headwind, but in my mind I’ve returned to the singular hell that was our trip across the Bitter Ice. I’m there once more, with the Norsemen dying beside me step by step, Ein and Arne and Tuttugu, all of us trailing along in that white wasteland with nothing to draw us forward but Snorri ver Snagason’s broad back always moving on.
‘Up!’
I find I’ve fallen to my knees, head bowed, unmoving.
‘I got you.’ Snorri’s hand closes around my upper arm and he lifts me to my feet.
‘I’m sorry.’ I stumble on.
‘This place will wear any man down,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry.’ I’m too exhausted to explain, but I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I had to be dragged through that door before I could live up to my promise, sorry to be leaving Snorri alone in Hell, sorry for his family, sorry I can’t believe in his quest, sorry I know he’ll fail. ‘Sorry for??
?’
‘I know,’ he says, and catches me before I fall again. ‘And no man who walks through Hell for a friend has anything to apologize for.’
‘I—’ A sound in the distance saves me from more foolishness, faint, then gone. ‘What’s that?’
‘I heard it too.’
Having heard nothing but the wind for so long the strange cry seems full of portent.
It sounds again, a touch louder.
Jalan.
Louder than my imagination this time. A voice, speaking my name, or at least making the sound of it, making something unfamiliar of it.
‘Run?’ I find I have more energy left than I thought. Not enough to run, that’s just the fear talking, but enough to stagger along at a decent rate.
‘Let’s keep going.’ Snorri leads the way.
‘But what is it?’
‘What do you think it is?’ he asks.
Jalan. It’s almost the way my Mother used to speak my name. The way a child might struggle to reproduce both syllables. I don’t want to say, as if naming my fear might make it real, but somehow I know what’s coming, what’s hunting us down. In Hell with its peculiar lack of directions, all your fears will find you soon enough. It’s my sister and the lichkin that has bound itself to her to make a corruption of her soul. If they kill me here my death will punch a hole through which they can emerge into the living world. The unborn queen, the rider and the ridden, birthed into dead flesh so many years after her conception. All my sister’s potential unleashed onto the world in the hands of a lichkin… To be honest, all that other stuff is just icing on a deeply unpalatable cake – I stopped caring after the ‘killing me here’ bit. ‘Is that a light?’ I point.
‘Yes.’ Snorri confirms that I’m not hallucinating through sheer terror.
JALAN! The howl comes from behind us, distant but by no means distant enough. JALAN! It turns out I can run.
Snorri jogs alongside me and with agonizing slowness the light resolves from one into a multitude, outlining the roof and many supporting columns of a towering building, all carved in white stone, just as we described it to each other.
Souls cluster in the darkness near the court. From time to time a new soul will run down the steps, a translucent recollection of a man or woman, not keeping a single shape but moving through memories of their life, moments of terror mostly. None of them lingers where the light falls, rather they run until the darkness takes them, as if the judges’ light burns them. They move away from Snorri and me too. Perhaps the life that still persists in us hurts to look upon with eyes where none remains.
We stop a hundred yards from the many-pillared hall. Walls rise behind the pillars, white and broad, every inch carved with scenes from legend. A doorway stands open, allowing the judged souls to flee their guilt. Our faces are cast into sharp relief by the slanting illumination. Even at this distance that light promises running water, warm air, green things growing.
The air seems brittle here, alive with possibility. I get that same sensation when the souls of the dead break through from the living world and I glimpse blue sky through the tears they make. This is a place of doors. I can feel the key on my chest, cold then hot, vibrating at some pitch beyond hearing. When Kara said the door between life and death lay everywhere, that was just words. I could no more spot that door in the midst of Hell than I could in a market square on a warm day in Vermillion. But here … here it seems that home is just a touch away. Here it seems that the door I need might just fracture out of nothing and stand before me. The living world is tantalizingly close, it just needs … some small thing to happen, like a lost word finally tripping off the tip of my tongue, and I would see the door…
My name rings out again, a howl, loud now, echoing off the walls, an undulating noise empty one moment, violent the next, full of hunger and malice. I take another step into the light. ‘You should come with me, Snorri.’ The words are hard to say. ‘You’ve seen this place. Nothing good can be brought out of it.’
I wait for the anger, but there’s none in him. He hangs his head, refusing to look at the glow before us. ‘Arran Vale.’
‘What?’ I want to go, but I stay.
‘Do you remember Arran Vale?’ he asks.
‘Um.’ I should be running but Snorri’s bravery won’t let me. His image of who I am pins me here. I should be sprinting for the hall – instead I stand and try to answer him. Arran Vale? My mind races through names and faces and places, dozens, hundreds, all encountered on our long travels. ‘Maybe … a valley in Rhone? Near that little town with the one church and three whorehouses, where—’
‘Hennan’s grandfather, the grandson of Lotar Vale.’
‘Who could forget Lotar Vale? The hero you’d never heard of until the moment that old man said his name!’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Snorri raised his head to fix me with that steady blue gaze of his. ‘What matters is that Arran Vale had a history, roots, something to live for, something to make a stand over.’
‘All I remember is that you and Tuttugu were about to throw your lives away beside some old farmer you’d met only moments before, and all to defend his hut and its worthless contents from Vikings who probably wouldn’t have even bothered taking it anyway.’ The ground is trembling now, the dust starting to dance. My sister is close and coming fast.
‘A life lived well is one you’re not prepared to compromise just in order to draw it out for another day.’
‘Well…’ Reading out the list of things I would do to live another day would consume all of the extra day in question.
‘The point is that there are things I’m prepared to die for. Times when it is right to make a stand, whatever the odds. And if Tuttugu and I would do what we did for Hennan’s grandfather – an old man we didn’t, as you rightly say, know. Then what do you think I’m prepared to do for my children? For my wife? Whether I can win is not a factor.’
We have had this conversation before. I didn’t expect him to have changed, but sometimes you owe it to a friend to try.
‘Good luck!’ I slap a hand to Snorri’s shoulder and I’m off. The dark behind him looks thicker as if a storm is rolling down on us. She’s there at the heart of it, the one whose mouth knows my name – my nameless sister and the lichkin who wears her soul.
I’m five yards away when he says, ‘Show me the key.’
I stretch out my hands, one toward Snorri, the other toward the door into the judges’ hall. ‘I’ve got to go!’ The hell-night is boiling blackness behind him, the howl coming again so loud it drowns out my objections. Every hair I own tries to stand on end.
Even so, I pull the key from my shirt on the thong about my neck and run back to him. Snorri takes the knife from his belt and puts the blade to his palm.
‘Jesus, no!’ I wave my hand in what I hope is a negative pattern. ‘What is it with you northmen and cutting yourselves? I remember what happened last time you tried this Viking shit on me. How about we just shake hands?’
Snorri grins. ‘The key will be our link. You back in the world. Me here. Blood will bind us.’ He cuts his palm and I wince to see it done, the blood welling up where the point of the knife passed.
‘How do you know any of this?’ I’m still hoping there’s a way out of this without having to slice myself open. A dark mist is rising now, pushing back the light. The souls scatter. They know a bad thing is coming. Suddenly I find myself ready to cut my damn hand off if it means I can leave. Even so, I stay, Snorri’s friendship holding me just the same way it very nearly pulled me through the door into Hell. ‘Blood will bind us? You’re just making it up as you go, aren’t you?’
Snorri meets my gaze, a slight shrug in his shoulders. ‘If I learned anything from Kara it’s that in magic it is will that counts. The words, the spells, scrolls, ingredients … it’s for show, or perhaps better to say they’re like a warrior’s weapons, but it’s the strength of the warrior’s arm that is what truly matters. He can kill you with his hands, weapon or no
weapon.’ He reaches out and folds his bloody hand about the key. ‘This will be our link. When you open the door you’ll find me.’
The dark has grown thick about us, and cold. It’s as if Snorri doesn’t see it, though: there’s no fear in him. Me, I have enough for both of us. A howling rises with the midnight, the sort a thousand wolves might make … if you set fire to them. Close now. Close and closing fast.
‘How will I even find the door? How will I know you’re ready to return? Christ, look, I’ve got to go—’
‘You need to will it to be so.’ Snorri takes his hand back. There’s no blood on the key though it drips scarlet from his clenched fist. ‘It will work – or it won’t. Kara was to open the way for my return. Kara, or Skilfar, if she had taken the key back to her grandmother as she promised her. Now all I have is you, Jal. So keep the key safe and listen for my call.’
I tuck the key away. ‘I’ll listen.’ It’s not much of a lie. I don’t even know what ‘listen’ means. On my chest the key grows warmer as if falsehoods please it. I try to think of some last words for Snorri. ‘Farewell’ sounds pompous. ‘Stay safe’ is obviously not going to happen.
‘Give them hell.’
The howl sounds so loud and close it’s like a punch. I’m running, running toward the light, that marvellous, living light, my sights set on the doorway.
‘Be careful!’ Snorri shouts after me. ‘They will test you.’
I don’t like the sound of that, but test or no test, I’m going home.
I close on the doorway racing past the soul of a young woman just coming out. I can see her terror in the faint lines of her. She runs, cowering, as if some great eagle might swoop upon her at any moment. I do pretty much the same thing, only in the opposite direction.