“It’s a machine!” I seized on the idea. “You’re a machine. You turn it off!”

“The system is isolated to prevent interference. To approach it physically would be . . . difficult. The Rechenberg field fluctuates wildly as one approaches.”

“Oh well.” I reached for the box, eager to shut it. Every bad story that ever began starts with Osheim, and I knew just how bad things grew as you approached it. I would put my faith in Grandmother to save us. “Nothing can be done then.” My hand grew cold before my fingers even reached the box, as if I’d plunged it into cold water.

“Entanglement detected.” The original voice of the box, neither male, nor female, nor human. Our ancestor’s ghost flickered out of being to be replaced by an elderly narrow-faced man. He stood before us for a moment then faded into a younger woman with short hair and eyes ringed with dark circles, no beauty but striking. The man returned, then the woman. Both seemed familiar somehow.

“Stop,” I said, and the woman stayed.

“Asha Lauglin,” the ageless voice spoke and fell silent. The woman looked up and met my eyes.

“H . . . how did you die?” I withdrew my hand. Something in her gaze scared me.

“I didn’t die,” she said.

“You’re just an echo, a story in a machine, we know that. How did the real Asha die?”

“She didn’t die.” Asha glanced at Garyus then returned her gaze to me.

“What happened to her on the Day of a Thousand Suns?”

“She transmuted by force of will. Her identity became mapped into negative energy states in the dark energy of the universe.”

“What?”

“She became incorporeal.”

“What?”

“A spirit.”

“A dark spirit.” I stared at the woman. “Aslaug?”

“She became trapped in the mythology of the humans who repopulated the northern regions, yes. The belief of many untrained minds proved stronger than her will.”

I thought of Aslaug, Loki’s daughter, lie-born, her spider-shadow and the monstrous form of her that day when she came through the wrongmages’ door in Osheim. “I’m sorry.”

The Builder-ghost shrugged. “It’s not a unique fate. How many of us are trapped in the stories told about us, or by us?” She gave me a hard and quizzical stare that reminded me still more strongly of Aslaug.

I didn’t much like the implication and started to bluster. “Well I’m not—”

“There’s a story about a charming prince trying to snare you even now, Jalan. There’s another story you tell yourself that might pull you along a very different path.”

“You’re very talkative for a library entry.” I moved again to shut the box.

“I never liked to play by the rules, Jalan.” She gave that dark smile I knew so well.

A pounding on the great doors of the throne room drowned out any reply I had and the head of the palace guard pushed through without waiting for a reply.

“Steward, Marshal, the city is under attack! The dead are in the river!”

TWELVE

The attack came along both shores of the Seleen, heralded by the arrival of a raft of corpses floating with the current. The bodies, more than a hundred of them, looked by the remnants of their colours to be war-dead from the Orlanth advance into Rhone. When the boat crews had gone out to intercept it, it quickly became apparent that mire-ghouls had insinuated themselves among the mass, hanging onto the edges, just their dark heads above the water, or lying flat on top of the tangled bodies, blowpipes held close and ready.

“Have the Iron Hoof join us at the Morano Bridge!” I shouted orders as I rode toward the Horse Gate to depart the palace. After being made marshal I’d secured a fine charger named Murder, a huge beast and fiery with it. Damned hard to control, though, and on the point of breaking into a gallop at every moment. “Tell Prince Martus to keep the Seventh at the palace gates until we know the situ—Whoa!” I wrenched Murder’s head around and leaned forward as he tried to rear. “Tell him to send runners to all the wall towers.”

“Yes, Marshal!” The palace guard captain had followed me from the throne room with five of his men, receiving, and hopefully remembering, the orders I reeled off as I collected Murder from the stables. Now, with Captain Renprow and ten message riders from the regular palace guard around me, I waved for the gates to be opened. We would make for the Morano Bridge, the best viewpoint from which to see a great length of the Seleen’s banks, both east and west, upstream and down. The reports I had were already half an hour old: where the fighting might be now and what situation would greet us I couldn’t say. The Iron Hoof was nothing more than a drinking club for the richest sons of the aristocracy these days, but they had all been officers in the cavalry before Grandmother disbanded it, and whilst lancers would be of little use in the city, they would at least be able to get where they were going in a hurry.