The Liar's Key
“Send them back,” I hollered. Kara might have dealt harshly with Aslaug before but the völva was dark-sworn and the forces of night were hers to command if she had the will. Their allegiance hadn’t shattered just because she had crossed one of their number.
I didn’t need to urge Kara—the effort of her working showed in every line as she raised her arms in rejection.
“Out, night-spawn. Out lie-born. Out daughter of Loki! Out child of Arrakni!” Kara repeated the incantation that had once driven Aslaug from her boat, her hands held before her, clawed in threat. All around her the darkness drew back, as if sucked through the doorway by a straw, down into the realms of night.
“I don’t think so, little witch.” Aslaug speared Kara with two black legs, pinning her to the next column, her robe tenting up around the impaling limbs.
Kara raised her head, bloody about the mouth and snarled, “Back!”
“Go back, Aslaug!” I shouted, and she turned that beautiful, terrifying face toward me.
“You can’t just use me like that, Jalan. I’m not something to be cast aside once you’ve had what you wanted.” I could almost believe the hurt on the stained ivory of her face was real.
I held my hands palm up in apology. “It’s what I do . . .”
Snorri’s short sword, thrown point over hilt over point, hammered between Aslaug’s shoulder blades.
“Back!” Kara screamed.
“Back!” I shouted. I couldn’t even feel bad about it.
And with darkness bubbling around the sword blade jutting from her chest, with her hands clutching at the sides of the column, with her black legs scrabbling for purchase against the retreating tide, Aslaug fell back, shrieking, into the night from which she came.
I rushed forward, tripping on a spider leg, and almost pitched headfirst after the demon. In the last moment I managed to catch at the door, invisibly thin, and slam it shut before me, smacking my face into it a split second later. Clinging on to consciousness, I fumbled the key forward and locked the door again.
“Christ on a bike.” I fell back into my own darkness and didn’t even feel my head hit the ground.
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.