The Liar's Key

I woke, shivering, and feverish once more, to the sound of gulls and the distant crash of breakers.

“Tie the jib off!” Kara’s voice.

“Turn her! Turn her!” Snorri, tight with anxiety.

“Big one coming!” Tuttugu, sounding as weary as I felt.

I lifted my head, unhooked a sore arm from the mast, and rubbed the salt crusts from my eyes. The sky lay a pale blue, ribboned with the remnants of rainclouds. The sun stood overhead, bright but without much warmth. I inched myself round to face the way the Errensa was pointing, unwilling to completely relinquish my grip on the mast. The wave before us ran on ahead, revealing a dark coastline of cliffs and coves, the high ground topped with grass and bushes. And beyond the headlands . . . nothing . . . no surly Norse mountains reaching for the sky and telling you to sod off. At last we’d reached Maladon. A rough enough dukedom to be sure, but with the decency to do whatever had to be done on the level rather than perched on the side of a ridiculously steep slope or huddled in the narrow margin between snowy uplands and icy sea. A weight lifted off my heart.

A delicious few seconds of hope, and then I noticed how the only sail we had was a scrap of tattered cloth strung between the bow and the mast, and just how big those breakers were, and how white they foamed before drawing back to reveal the black teeth of the rocks. The next second I noticed how upside-down we were and how cold the water rushing into my mouth was. For several minutes after that I spent most of my time thrashing wildly and gasping for air in between the breaking crests of waves that plunged me under then rolled me over and over before releasing their grip just in time for the next one.

I don’t recall finally crawling ashore, just the sand-level view of Snorri walking along the beach to find me. Somehow he’d kept his axe.

“Maladon,” I said, grabbing a handful of it as he hauled me to my feet. “I could almost kiss you.”

“Osheim,” Snorri said.

“What?” I spat out grit and tried to frame a better question. “What?” I asked again. Nobody goes to Osheim. And there’s a bloody good reason for it.

“The storm blew us east. We’re fifty miles past Maladon.” Snorri puffed his cheeks out and looked across the sea. “You all right?”

I patted myself down. No major injuries. “No,” I said.

“You’re fine.” Snorri let go of me and I managed not to fall. “Kara’s down the beach with Tutt. He cut his leg on the rocks. Lucky it’s not broken.”

“Seriously, Osheim?”

Snorri nodded and set off back, walking where the waves swept the sand, each of his footprints erased before he’d taken another ten steps. I spat some more grit and a decent-sized pebble from my mouth and followed with a sigh.

The Builders left us quite a few reminders of their era. Reminders that even someone like me, whose primary use for history books was for beating smaller princelings around the head with, could hardly ignore. A man who ignored the borders of Promised Land would find his skin falling off while twisted monsters ate his face. The Engine of Wrong in Atta, the bridges and towers still left scattered across the continent, the Vault of Voices in Orlanth, the time bubbles on the Bremmer Slopes, or the Last Warrior—trapped on Brit . . . all these were well known, but none sent the same shiver up my spine as the Wheel of Osheim. It seemed that almost every fairy tale our nurses had spun to entertain my brothers and me when we were small had happened in Osheim. The worst of them happened closest to the Wheel. The tales Martus demanded, the most bloody and most twisted, all started, “Once upon a time, not far from the Wheel of Osheim,” and from there on it was time to hide behind your hands or cover your ears. Come to think of it, the women who looked after us when we were little were an evil bunch of old witches. They should have been hanged, the lot of them, not set to watch over the sons of a cardinal.

•   •   •

We sheltered in a dell behind the headlands, Snorri and me, while Kara poked around on the nearby heath and Tuttugu returned to the beach to see what might be salvaged from the wreck or lying washed up on the sands. Tuttugu’s leg still bore an angry red scar, but Snorri’s healing touch had rendered it serviceable, closing an ugly wound that had turned my stomach to look at. The effort had left Snorri flat on his back but far less incapacitated than on other occasions and before long he was sitting up to fiddle with his axe. Steel and saltwater are a poor mix and no warrior will leave his blade wet. I watched him work, pursing my lips. His swift recovery struck me as odd since the Silent Sister’s spell was supposed to have faded over the winter according to Skilfar, and such things should be harder, not more easy.