The Wheel of Osheim

“Hruga uskit’r!” Kara threw up her hands. “Give me the damn axe.” She reached for Hel, and Snorri moved it out of her reach.

“Or we could just push these buttons,” I said. And reached to jab three at once.

“No!” Kara’s shout to start with, Snorri’s rising over her.

Too late to stop me, though. The lights went out, leaving us in total darkness. A moment later a noise that could only be the door swinging closed sounded just next to me, a dull and heavy clunk with as much finality as any judge’s death sentence ever held.

“Ohgodwe’reallgoingtodiedownhere!” The words escaped me in a breath.

“Jal!” A sharp reprimand from Kara, protective of her young charge.

“You don’t have the key?” Snorri asked in an even voice. “Without the key I’ll agree, we might well all die down here.”

“The key!” I reached for Loki’s black little blessing, feeling over my chest for the lump of it beneath my jerkin. My moment of relief proved short-lived. Nothing! “It’s somewhere. I put it somewhere!” Fear-blunted fingers began a wild search.

“Just wait!” Kara snapped. “I have the orichalcum. Let me get it out and we can see—”

“Got it!” I found the key. It had slid around on its thong and hung almost under my armpit. I pulled it out, lifted the thong over my head, and got a good grip on the key’s glassy surface. As my hand tightened about it a distant laughter, perhaps imagined, seemed to mock me from the dark. “Hurry up with that light!” I held the key before me like a weapon, ready to ward off any unseen horrors, and stepped forward, swinging it. Somehow I’d managed to lose my bearings and the twenty-ton door was proving elusive.

Something ahead of me made a soft thump on the floor. I froze. Silence, save for Kara’s muttered cursing in Old Norse again as she hunted her skirts for the orichalcum.

“What’s that stink?” Snorri sniffed. “It smells like the hold of a longship in high summer.”

I could smell it too. I had to pat myself to make sure it wasn’t something those moments of blind terror had squeezed out of me—but this was something even less pleasant than sewage. It put me in mind of the rear dungeons at the debtor prison in Umbertide. The stink of death.

“Ah!” Light blossomed from Kara’s hand, revealing the chamber once more.

The gleaming door stood behind me. Directly before me lay the remains of the rotting Builder corpse, now in a loose heap on the floor. I gagged and took a sharp step back.

“How did . . .”

“You unlocked him!” Hennan pointed at the key in my hand.

“Try it on Taproot.” Snorri nodded toward the doctor still frozen in his own moment.

I glanced back at the door, wanting to secure our exit first, but Snorri waved me on. I shrugged and advanced on Taproot. Kara and Hennan stepped aside to give me access. “Do what you did over there,” she said.

I jabbed the key at Taproot, expecting to hit something but feeling just empty air. “Well, it worked with the dead one . . .”

Kara frowned and reached out toward the motionless man in front of us. Her eyebrows lifted as her hand encountered no barrier. “I don’t understand.”

“He blinked!” A shout from Hennan at my side. “I saw him.”

Kara stepped forward, extending her reach and set her fingers to Taproot’s arm.

“Dear lady!” Taproot pulled his arm back and swept into a bow that she narrowly avoided by means of a quick retreat. “Delighted to meet you. Prince Jalan Kendeth! Snorri ver Snagason! An unexpected pleasure. And who is this young man? A likely-looking fellow to be sure.” He stepped smartly into the space vacated by Kara and out of the booth. “Now that is an interesting key, Prince Jalan!”

“What the hell are you doing down here, Taproot?” I waved my arm at our surroundings in case he might have missed them.

“Ah.” He frowned and glanced across our number again. “Trapped by a witch. Minding my own business one moment and hexed the next. Happens to the best of us.” Stepping past me with the fluid motion of an eel, Dr. Taproot angled for the door.

“We have a box with your image in it.” Kara interposed herself. “That image directed us here—”

“That’s right!” I raised my voice above hers, strug-gling to regain control of the conversation. “A little talking you. Younger, and speaking a lot of nonsense, but it said you were in danger and told us to come here.”