The Liar's Key

Snorri shook his head. “If we were in the deadlands and I asked you where the door to life lay . . . what would you say?”

“I—” She pursed her lips, seeing the trap before I did. “It makes no more sense for it to be in one place there than it does for it to be in only one place here. It would be everywhere.”

“And the unborn will be waiting . . . everywhere?” Snorri offered her a grim smile. “There will be nothing waiting for us. Jal will give you the key. Lock the door behind us.”

I saw the calculation cross her face. Quick then gone. Skilfar had sent her for no reason other than this moment—the key offered freely, no trace of Loki’s curse on it.

“Don’t go.” But the conviction had left her voice. That made me sad, but I suppose we’re all victims of our ambition.

“Stay.” Hennan, his first word on the subject, his bottom lip pushed up as if to steady the upper, eyes bright but refusing to say more, too used to disappointment. His years seemed too short to have beaten the selfish out of him, but there it was.

Snorri bowed his head. “Jalan. If you would do the honours?” He gestured to the crystal plane before us.

I always thought that phrase about blood running cold was a flight of fancy but the stuff seemed to freeze in my veins. There’s a thing about being stuck between fear and pride, even though you know fear will win in the end it seems impossible to let go of the pride. So I stood there frozen, my face a rictus grin, the key trembling in my fist as if eager.

“Kara, Hennan.” Snorri had them both in his arms in two quick steps, swept from their feet, lifted tight against his chest. “I would stay if I thought I could be the friend you needed.” He held them close, squeezing any question or protest from them. A moment later he let them go. “But this thing.” He pointed at the key, at the door. He waved at the world about us. “It would eat me away until nothing was left but a bitter old Viking without a clan, hating himself, hating whoever had kept him from his task. Fool’s errand or not, it is my errand. It is my end. Some men have to sail to the horizon and keep going until the ocean swallows their story—this is the sea I must sail.”

“All men are fools.” Kara spat the words at the floor, wiping at her eyes. I agreed with her in this instance. She sniffed angrily and passed Snorri her last rune. “Take it!”

Hennan watched Snorri, a single tear cutting a channel through the dirt across his cheek. “Undoreth, we. Battle-born. Raise hammer, raise axe, at our war-shout gods tremble.” He said it high but firm, without a waver, and I swear, that whole time it was the only moment I thought Snorri might crack.

But he pointed at the key, waving me forward, not trusting himself to speak. I advanced on the door, my mind screaming at me to run, thoughts colliding in their attempt to find a way out. Perhaps Kara and Hennan needed an escort, perhaps they wouldn’t be safe. The men who hunted us from Umbertide must be in the tunnels, searching.

I set my fingers to the crystal, trying to sense something there, trying to hear the note and understand what had drawn Snorri to this pillar. Nothing. Or so I thought, until the moment I moved to draw my fingers away, and in that second I felt it, saw it, a dryness, a thirst, an emptiness. No sense of anything waiting, just a hunger that I’d seen before in dead eyes.

“God save us.” I set the key to the crystal and there was the keyhole, as if it had always been there, waiting since time started. The others watched me. “Shouldn’t you take the boy, Kara, get away from here?”

“I need to lock the door,” she said.

I set the key in the keyhole. Turned it. And felt a year of my life take flight. I used the key to draw the door back, just a fraction, just enough for a line of flat orange light to show. The hall’s air hissed into that crack as if Hell drew in a breath, and I struggled to keep the door open, taking hold of the edge. Where my fingers reached around I felt the dryness, as if the skin were peeling back, my flesh already withering on the bone.

I took the key out and, with a reluctance so thick it seemed I reached out through molasses, I set the key in Kara’s outstretched hand. I almost snatched it back. It seemed too final. Perhaps she saw that in me for she tucked it into her pocket quick enough. The moment passed—the moment which Kara had waited a thousand miles for. Had Skilfar truly sent us to the ends of the earth just to give Kara time to work that magic, to have the warrior fall for her charms, or failing that to come to terms with the wisdom of her counsel, and give over Loki’s key of his own free will? Might not Skilfar have shown Snorri the door then and there in her cavern on Beerentoppen if she’d wanted to? Surely that cold bitch knew her own paths to it?