The Liar's Key

“The sun’s coming down,” Kara said unnecessarily.

“I know.” The arch’s shadow stretched toward the Wheel, dark with possibility. I felt Aslaug’s breath on the back of my neck again—heard the dry scratching at the door that held her back.

The Red Vikings came on over the ridge, close enough now for me to see the detail on their shields: sea serpent, pentagon of spears, the face of a giant with the shield boss its roaring mouth . . . The fatal wounds Snorri had dealt out now glistened in the red and dying light—a man split from collarbone to opposite hip, another headless and led on a tether, more behind. Somewhere in that crowd Edris Dean watched us from behind a Viking face guard. Was the necromancer there too, in furs, a shield on her arm? Or did she spy from some remove, set apart, as so often before? Suddenly my bladder declared itself beyond full.

“Do you think there’s time—” I began, but those bastard Red Vikings cut me off with their battle cries and started to charge.

It turned out there was time. I drew my knife and with wet legs prepared to face the onslaught of nearly two dozen Norsemen.

Something changed.

Although it made no sound the archway drew my gaze from the charging axemen. The whole of it lay black and darkness spilled from it, streaming cold about my ankles, thickening the shade before us.

“Jalan.” Aslaug rose from the shadowed ground as a woman might rise beneath her bed sheets, shrouded at first, her form uncertain, then drawing them about her, tighter and more tight, until at last she stands framed before you. She faced me, her back to the enemy, and I stood filled with her power, seeing the world with perfect clarity, darkness smoking from my skin. “This is no place for you, my prince.” She smiled, eyes gleaming, black with madness.

The first of the Hardassa, a fleet-footed young reaver, sprinted toward Aslaug, ready to bury his axe between her shoulder blades. Instead he came to a jerking halt, impaled on a sharp-ended black leg, thin as an insect’s and seemingly emerging from Aslaug’s back, though I couldn’t see from where or how. This was new—she was actually here in the flesh. “Shall we go?” she asked as the man died, choking on his blood. She gestured toward the arch with her eyes.

Snorri met the next wave of men, carving through the first one’s face with exquisite timing, long arms at full stretch. He leapt clear of the man a half pace behind, rotating to hack into the small of his back as momentum carried the fellow past. Tuttugu—already backed against the other side of the arch—slipped sideways with commendable skill and let the first of his foes hew stone so that his weapon was shaken from his grip. Tuttugu answered by burying the wedge of his blade in the man’s sternum.

More men came from Tuttugu’s left, keeping away from the yawning oblivion within the archway. Kara threw her runes at them, hurling a meagre handful. Each became a spear of ice, thrown with more force than even Snorri could manage. The shafts pierced shields, mail, flesh and bone, leaving the enemy staring in confusion at the holes punched through them.

“Jalan?” Aslaug asked me, drawing my attention back from the melee. Small hands gripped my leg. The boy. God knows why he chose me for protection . . . Another two Hardassa reached us, trying to swerve around Aslaug. Both fell, sprawling forward, snared in web-like strands of darkness. “You need to leave,” she said. Behind her, the man transfixed on her insect leg lifted his head and eyed me with the consuming hunger of those returned from death. From his wide-open mouth came that wordless roar that dead men keep in place of language. Aslaug flicked him off in a crimson shower as he started to struggle. “Mine is not the only magic here.”

Snorri caught an axe just below the blade as it blurred toward him. He twisted into the attacker, a powerfully built redbeard, until his back pressed the other man’s chest, with the back of his head pressed against the other man’s nose guard. Arms outstretched, still trapping the axe, his own blade free on the other side, Snorri rotated into more attackers. Their blows thudded into the back of the redbeard Viking that he now wore as a cloak. Snorri let the man fall, dragging his Hardassa axes with him. Unencumbered once more, he hacked across his two closest foes.

A tearing sound behind me, and the archway pulsed with sudden light, like a bright wound in the darkness. From the resulting maelstrom of swirling blackness shot with motes of brilliance, Baraqel emerged, golden-winged, a silver sword in his hand—too bright to look upon, advancing on Aslaug. At the same time the ground about us began to boil, bones rising to the surface like bits of meat in a soup set above the flame. Bones and more bones, skulls here and there. The peaty soil vomited forth arm bones, leg bones, one piece finding another, and joining, linking with old gristle and stained sinew that had withstood the rot.