The Liar's Key

Ullamere Contaph steps forward. He looks up at her, raises his broadsword, and although she is only a princess it is “Red Queen!” that he roars.

“Red Queen!” The army take up the shout. “Red Queen.” Weapons raised. “Red Queen.” Their voices are thick with emotion, though whether sorrow, triumph, or both and more, I cannot say.

FIFTEEN

“Wake up!”

“What?”

“Wake up!” Kara’s voice.

“No,” I told her. “It’s still dark and I’m comfortable.” Well, almost. Something I was lying on kept digging into my back.

A hand shook me. Hard.

I yawned and sat up. “I know why they call my grandmother the Red Queen.”

“Because she’s Queen of Red March.” Tuttugu, somewhere behind me.

“You’d think so. But no.” I touched the ground around me. Unyielding, damp, gritty. “Why does it smell so bad?” I rubbed my aching spine and patted the ground behind me, finding the long hard object I’d been lying on. “What the hell is this thing—”

A sudden light showed me Kara’s face, Tuttugu’s hinted at dimly, further back, and some larger shape in the deep shadow that must be Snorri. The light came from Kara’s hand—a glowing bead of silvery metal.

“Orichalcum,” I said, shaping my mouth around the word. Suddenly I remembered. “The arch!” I glanced around and saw nothing but darkness. “Where the hell are we?”

“I don’t know,” Kara said, which was disheartening, given that she was the one who is supposed to know things.

“Nowhere good,” Tuttugu offered. Spoken in the dark it sounded true. “Where did you get the spear?”

I looked down and found that the object I’d been lying on was indeed a spear. Kerwcjz’s spear. I’d taken it from the warlord in my dream . . . or in Grandmother’s memories. “How the hell did I—”

“I don’t know where we are. The works of the wrong-mages are beyond me,” Kara said. “But without guidance we should have come out as close as possible—we’ve fallen back somewhere where the world grows thin. Somewhere cracked by recent magic. Powerful magic.”

“Isn’t that going to take us closer to the Wheel?” Recent powerful magic didn’t sound good. “Why isn’t it ever ‘somewhere with cheap booze, expensive women, a race track, and good views of the river’?”

“The arch is designed to serve the will of the user. I led the way and I was trying to get us out of there . . .”

“Where’s the boy?” I remembered him as the last dregs of dreaming left me and the fear started to settle on my shoulders. “Snorri! Have you seen . . .” The name escaped me. “. . . the boy?”

“Snorri’s not here either,” Tuttugu again—closer to my ear than I’d expected. “I hope he’s with Hennan.”

“But . . .” I was sure I’d seen him. I shook my head, decided the dream must still have had its claws in me. “What is that smell?”

“Trolls,” said Tuttugu quickly.

“You smell trolls every time the wind changes—Snorri told me you’ve never even seen one.” Please don’t let it be trolls. I’d never met one either and didn’t want to. The scars Snorri had showed me from his own encounter told all the story I needed to hear.

Kara moved in closer and we huddled over the glow of the orichalcum, three pale faces illuminated in a sea of darkness. “It sounds as if we’re in a cave,” she said.

“We should get out.” I hoped somebody else would supply the how.

“Before the trolls eat us,” said Tuttugu.

“Shut up about the damn trolls!” Fear raising my voice. The darkness seethed with the bastards now, put there by my imagination—which took some doing since I didn’t know what the things looked like. “Snorri says you wouldn’t know a troll if one—”

“He’s right this time!” Snorri’s voice, a way off but coming closer.

“Snorri!” I tried hard not to sound too much like a damsel in distress.

“Is Hennan with you?” Kara asked. I could see she was relieved too, though she kept it from her voice.

“Yes.” Snorri came close enough for the glow to catch him, a smaller figure just behind.

Hennan hurried across and attached himself to Kara’s side. I can’t say the same idea hadn’t occurred to me. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a tinderbox in that sa— Wait. Tuttugu’s right? Is that what you just said?”