The Liar’s Key

‘Snorri?’ Tuttugu asked, staring at the cave mouth without hope.

I made to shake my head, but there, emerging from the cloud, grey from foot to head, came Snorri, spitting and coughing.

He collapsed beside us, and for the longest time none of us spoke.

Finally, with the last traces of dust drifting out across the water far below, I stated the obvious. ‘No key in the world is going to open that for you.’

8

We returned to coast-hopping, the Norseheim shore leading us south. Given that Snorri’s options appeared to have reduced to the wastes of Yttrmir in the distant and unwelcoming kingdom of Finn, or a poisoned lake in still more distant Scorron, he settled for seeking out Skilfar as originally planned, his quest so far having added only questions rather than answers.

Aslaug came to me that first night, just as on the previous one on the fjord while we sailed away from the collapse of Eridruin’s Cave, and warned me against the Norseman’s plans.

‘Snorri is led by that key and it will be his ruin, just as it will ruin any who keep his company.’

‘They say it’s Loki’s key,’ I told her. ‘You don’t trust your own father?’

‘Ha!’

‘Can’t the daughter of lies see through her father’s tricks?’

‘I lie.’ She smiled that smile which makes a man smile back. ‘But my lies are gentle things compared to those my father sews. He can poison a whole people with four words.’ She framed my face with her hands, her touch dry and cool. ‘The key is locking you in to your fate even as it opens every door. The best liars always tell the truth – they just choose which parts. I might truthfully tell you that if you fight a battle at the equinox your army will be vic-torious – perhaps though, your army would have won on every day that month, but only on the equinox would you not survive the battle to see the enemy routed.’

‘Well, believe me when I say I’m stopping in Vermillion. Horses, wild or otherwise, couldn’t drag me to Kelem’s doorstep.’

‘Good.’ Again the smile. ‘Kelem seeks to own night’s door. It would be better it were never opened than that old mage gain control over it. Get the key for yourself though, Prince Jalan, and you and I might open that particular door together. I would make you King of Shadows and be your queen…’

She broke apart in the gloom as the sun set, her smile last to depart.

We restocked on staples and water at isolated communities, and passed the larger ports by. Seven days’ sailing from Harrowheim’s quays brought us to within sight of Beerentoppen, our last landfall in the lands of Norseheim. Seven days best forgotten. I thought I’d seen the worst of travel by sea when the Ikea brought us north. Before I passed out I’d seen waves big as a man slamming into the longboat, the whole vessel rolling about and seemingly out of control. Between Harrowheim and Beerentoppen however a storm overtook us that even Snorri acknowledged as ‘a bit windy’. The gale rolled up waves that would overtop houses, setting the whole ocean in a constant heaving swell. One moment our tiny boat sat deep in a watery valley, surrounded by vast dark mountains of brine, the next second would see us hoisted skyward, lifted to the very crest of a foam-skinned hill. It seemed certain the whole craft would be flipped into the air by one wave only to come crashing down into the arms of the next for a final embrace. Somewhere in that long wet nightmare Snorri decided our boat was called the Sea-Troll.

The only good reason to let dawn find you awake is that the previous night’s wine has not yet run out, or that a demanding young woman is keeping you up. Or both. Being cold and wet and seasick was not a good reason, but it was mine.

The predawn glow revealed Beerentoppen hunched amid the marches of its smaller kin who crowded the coast. The faintest wisp of smoke marked it out, rising from a blunt peak. The range lay on the westmost tip of the jarldom of Bergen and from these shores we would head out into open seas for the final crossing to the continent.

I watched the mountains with deep mistrust while Tuttugu angled us toward the distant shore. Snorri slept as if the ocean swell were a cradle, looking so comfortable it made me want to kick him.

Snorri had told me that any child of the north knew Skilfar could be found at Beerentoppen. Come the freezing of the sea, ’til the spring thaw, Skilfar bides in Beeren’s Hall. Few though, even of the elders, snaggle-toothed and grey, perched upon their bench in the jarl’s hall, could tell you where upon the fire-mountain she might bide. Certainly Snorri appeared to have no idea. I glanced across at the big and shadowed lump of him and was considering where best to kick him when he looked up, saving me the effort.

As the sun rose across the southern shoulder of the distant volcano Baraqel walked along its rays. He strode over the sea, advancing when each wave caught the day’s sparkle. His great wings captured the light and seemed to ignite, the fire reflecting in each bronze scale of the armour that encompassed him. I tried to sink out of sight in the boat’s prow. I hadn’t thought I would still be able to see the angel, and not being in the habit of greeting the dawn with Snorri, I hadn’t put the assumption to the test.

‘Snorri!’ The valkyrie stood before us, feet upon the waves, looking down from a height little shorter than the Sea-Troll’s mast. I registered his voice with mild horror. Had Snorri been able to see Aslaug and hear everything I said to her? That would be awkward, and the bastard had never said a word about it…

‘I need to find Skilfar.’ Snorri sat up, holding the boat’s side, he hadn’t much time, Baraqel would be gone when the sun cleared the mountain. ‘Where is her cave?’

‘The mountain is a place of both darkness and light.’ Baraqel pointed back toward the Beerentoppen with his sword, the sunlight burning on bright steel. ‘It is fitting that you and…’ Baraqel peered towards me and I lowered my head out of sight. ‘…he … are bound there together. Do not trust him though, this copper prince. The dark whore has his ear now and whispers poison. He will try to take the key from you before long. It must be destroyed, and quickly. Do not give him time or opportunity to work her will. Skilfar can do—’

‘The key is mine and I will use it.’

‘It will be stolen from you, Snorri, and by the worst of hands. You serve only the Dead King’s cause in this madness. Even if you evade his minions and find the door … nothing good can come through it. The Dead King – the very one who has worked these wrongs upon you – wants death’s door opened. His desire that it be opened is the sole reason your people, your wife, your children died. And now you seek to do that work for him. Who knows how many unborn are gathered on the far side waiting to come through in the moment that key turns in the lock?’

Snorri shook his head. ‘I will bring them back. Your repetition will not change this, Baraqel.’

‘The breaking of day changes all things, Snorri. Nothing endures beyond the count of the sun. Pile a sufficient weight of mornings upon a thing and it will change. Even the rocks themselves will not outlast the morning.’

The sun now stood upon the Beerentoppen’s shoulder, in moments it would be clear.

‘Where will I find Skilfar?’

‘Her cave looks to the north, from the mountain’s waist.’ And Baraqel fell into golden pieces, sparkling and dying on the waves, until in the end they were no more than the dancing of the morning’s light amid the waters.

I lifted my head to check the angel had really gone.

‘He’s right about the key,’ I said.

Tuttugu shot me a puzzled look.

Snorri snorted, shook his head, and set to trimming the sail. He took the tiller from Tuttugu and angled the Sea-Troll toward the base of the mountain. Before long gulls spotted the craft, circling about it on high, their cries added to the wind’s keening and the slap of waves. Snorri drew the deepest breath and smiled. Beneath a mackerel sky with the morning bright around him it seemed that even the most sorrow-laden man could know a moment’s peace.

When we made shore later in the day Snorri and Tuttugu had to drag me out of the boat like a sack of provisions. Days of puking had left me dehydrated and weak as a newborn. I curled up on my cloak a few yards above the high tide line, determined never to move again. Black sand, streaked with unhealthy yellows, stretched down to the breakers. I poked half-heartedly at the stuff, coarse and intermixed with pieces of black rock made brittle by innumerable bubbles held within the stone.

‘Volcanic.’ Snorri set down the sack he’d carried from the boat and took a handful of the beach, working it through his fingers.

‘I’ll guard the beach.’ I patted the sand.

‘Up you get, the walk will do you good.’ Snorri reached for me.

I fell back with a wordless bleat of complaint, resting my head against the sand. I wanted to be back in Vermillion, far from the sea and somewhere a sight warmer than the godforsaken beach Snorri had chosen.

‘Should we hide the boat?’ Tuttugu looked up from securing the last strap of his pack.

‘Where?’ I flopped my head to the side, staring across the smooth black sands to the tumble of rocks that ended the cove.

‘Well—’ Tuttugu puffed out his cheeks as he was wont to do when puzzling.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on it for you.’ I reached out and slapped his shin. ‘You say hello to Skilfar for me. You’ll like her. Lovely woman.’

‘You’re coming with us.’ Snorri looming over me, blocking out the pale morning sun.

‘No, really. You go traipsing up your mountain of ice and fire after your witch. I’ll have a little rest. You can tell me what she said when you get back.’

In silhouette Snorri was too dark for me to see his face but I could sense his frown. He hesitated, shrugged, and moved away. ‘All right. I can’t see any barns for you to burn or women for you to chase. Should be safe enough. Watch out for any wolves. Especially dead ones.’

‘The Dead King wants you, not me.’ I heaved onto my side to watch them start up the slope toward the rocky hinterland. The land stepped rapidly up toward the Beerentoppen foothills. ‘He wants what you’re carrying. You should have dropped it in the ocean. I’ll be safe enough.’ Neither of them turned or even paused. ‘I’ll be safe enough!’ I shouted at their backs. ‘Safer than you two, anyhow,’ I muttered to the Sea-Troll.

To a city man like me there’s something deeply unsettling about being in the middle of nowhere. Excepting Skilfar, I doubted another soul lived within fifty miles of my lonely little cove. No roads, no tracks, no hint of man’s work. Not even scars left by the Builders back in the misty long-ago. On one side the bulk and heave of mountains, impassable to all but the most determined and well equipped traveller, and on the other side the wide ocean stretching to unimaginable distances and depths. The Vikings had it that the sea held its own god, Aegir, and he had no use for men, taking their ventures upon its surface as impertinence. Looking out across to the bleak horizon I could well believe it.

A light rain began to fall, driven across the sands at a shallow angle by the wind off the sea.

‘Bugger.’ I took shelter behind the boat.

I sat with my back to the hull, the damp sand under my arse, legs out before me, boot heels pushing little trenches into the stuff. I could have got in and wedged myself back into the prow but I’d had enough of boats to last a lifetime.

I retreated again into my dream of Vermillion, eyes fixed on the black sand but seeing the sun-baked terracotta roofs of the west town, threaded by narrow alleys and divided by broad avenues. I could smell the spice and smoke, see the pretty girls and highborn ladies walking where merchants sold their wares on carpet and stall. Troubadours filled the evening with serenades and the old songs that everyone knows. I missed the crowds, relaxed and happy, and the warmth. I would have paid a gold crown for just an hour of a summer day in Red March. The food too. I just wanted to eat something that hadn’t been pickled or salted or blackened on an open fire. Along the Strada Honorous or in Adam’s Plaza the hawkers roamed with trays of sweetmeats or pastry trees laden with dangling delicacies … my stomach rumbled loud enough to break the spell.

Gull cries rang out, mournful across the desolation of that shore. Shivering, I huddled deeper into my cloak. Snorri and Tuttugu had long since vanished over the first ridge. I wondered if Tuttugu was wishing he’d stayed behind yet. In Vermillion I would have a day of hawking with Barras Jon, or be out at the horse track with the Greyjar brothers. Evening would see us all gathered at the Royal Jug, or down by the river in the Ale Gardens, preparing for a night of wenching, or should Omar join us, dice and cards at the Lucky Sevens. God, I missed those days… Mind, if I turned up at the Lucky Sevens now how long would it be before Maeres Allus heard I was under one of his roofs and invited me to have a private word? A smile twisted my lips as I remembered Snorri hacking the arm from Cutter John, Maeres’s torturer. Even so, Vermillion would not be a healthy place for me until that bit of unpleasantness was sorted out.

The cries of the gulls, earlier so poignant against the bleakness of the landscape, had grown raucous and swollen to cacophony.

‘Bloody birds.’ I looked for a stone but none lay to hand.

Throwing the first stone … a simple pleasure. Once my life had been one simple pleasure after the next. I wondered what Barras and the boys would make of me, returning in my heathen rags, leaner, my sword notched, scars to show. Less than a year would have passed but would things still be the same? Could they? Would those old pastimes still satisfy? When I finally rode through the Red Gates would I really be back … or had the moment somehow passed, never to be recaptured? I’d seen too much on my journey. Learned too much. I wanted my ignorance back. And my bliss.

Something splatted on my forehead. I reached to wipe the dribbles from my cheek, fingers coming away gooey with white muck.

‘Fucking bloody…’ Weakness forgotten, I lurched to my feet, fist raised in impotent rage at the gulls circling overhead. ‘Bastards!’ I wheeled seawards, intent on finding a stone lower down the beach.

Not until I’d found my stone – a nice flatish piece of black-grey slate, smoothed by the waves and with that perfect round-in-the hand feel – and started to straighten up for my reckoning with the gulls did I notice the longboat. Still a ways out among the very first breakers, sail furled, forty oars splashing rhythmically as they drove it forward. I stood, jaw hanging, shocked into stillness. To either side of the prow a red eye had been painted, staring forward, heavy with threat.

‘Shit.’ I dropped my stone. I’d seen this before. A memory from our trek north. Looking down upon the Uulisk Fjord. A longboat made tiny with the distance. A red dot at its prow. These were Hardanger men. Red Vikings. They might even have Edris Dean with them if the bastard had escaped the Black Fort. Two Vikings stood in the prow, round rune-marked shields, wolf-skin cloaks, red hair streaming around their shoulders, axes ready, close enough to see the iron eye rings and nose guards on their helms. ‘Shit.’ I scrambled back, grabbed my sword, snatched up the smaller of three bags of provisions, started running.

A winter of over-eating and over-boozing had done little for my fitness, the only exercise I got happening under the furs. The breath came ragged from my lungs before I even reached the first ridge. What had been a dull ache of ribs crushed beneath the weight of the Fenris wolf rapidly flared into the pain of dagger-driven-into-lung with each gasp of air. On reaching the higher ground I risked pausing to turn around. The Hardanger men had their longboat beached with a dozen of them busy around it. At least twice that number had already started up the slope on my trail, scrambling over the rocks as if catching a southerner would make their day. And yes, in the midst of them, bareheaded, a solid fellow in a studded leather jerkin, sword hilt jutting over his shoulder, iron-grey hair with that blue-black streak and bound at the back into a tight queue. ‘Edris fucking Dean.’ I seemed to be making a habit of being chased up mountains by the man.

The land rose toward Beerentoppen as if it were in a dreadful hurry. I panted my way through dense clumps of gorse and heather, struggled through stands of pine and winter-ash, and scrabbled over the patches of bedrock that lay exposed where the wind wouldn’t allow the meagre soil to gather. A little higher and the trees gave up trying, and before long my path angled across bare rock unbroken by any splash of green. I kept on, cursing Snorri for leaving me, cursing Edris for giving chase. No doubts now remained about who had been keeping watch on us in Trond. And if Edris was here and dead things were hunting us too it seemed certain that at least one necromancer escaped the Black Fort with him. Quite possibly the scary bitch from Chamy-Nix who’d stood the mercenaries Snorri killed back up again.

Snorri and Tuttugu had left no trail so Beerentoppen’s broken peak was all I had to guide me. Baraqel had told them where Skilfar was but damned if I could remember what he’d said. I stumbled gasping and spluttering around the vast boulders that decorated any even vaguely flat surface, and skittered a dangerous path across slopes littered with brittle stones that may have been spat from the volcano … or dropped by pixies for all I knew.

One skitter took me a little too far. I hit a rock, tripped, and sprawled, coming to a halt not more than a foot from a drop big enough to be the killing kind. ‘Shit.’ The closest of my pursuers were three hundred yards off and moving fast. I got to my feet, hands bloody.

I’m very good at running away. For best results put me in a city. Among streets and houses I do well. In such surroundings a good sprint, tight cornering, and an open mind when it comes to hiding places will see a man clear under most circumstances. The countryside is worse – more things to trip you up, and the best hiding spots are often taken. On a bleak mountainside it comes down to endurance, and when a fellow has been wrung out by sea sickness, not to mention rolled on by the kind of wolf that would only need two friends to bring down a mammoth … well, it’s not going to end well.

Fear is a great motivator. It returned me to my feet and set me jogging on. I didn’t dare look back for fear of missing my footing again. I clutched my side, rasped in one breath after the next, and tried to keep from weaving across the slope. Hope is almost as bad as fear for goading a man past the point at which he should give up. Hope persuaded me I was opening a lead. Hope convinced me the next rise would reveal Snorri and Tuttugu just ahead. When, in a sudden pounding of footsteps, the Hardassa man caught up with me and brought me down, I fell with a wheeze of surprise, despite it having been inevitable from the moment I spotted their longboat closing on the beach.

The Viking crashed down on top of me, pressing my face to the rock. I lay panting while the rest of the pursuit gathered round. My view offered only their boots but I didn’t need to see any more than that to know they would be a fearsome bunch.

‘Prince Jalan Kendeth. Good to meet you again.’ A southern accent, a touch winded.

The weight lifted from me as my captor rolled clear. I took my time getting into a sitting position. Looking up, I found Edris Dean staring down at me, feet braced against the slope, hand on hip. He seemed pleased. The dozen Red Vikings arrayed around him looked less pleased. More of them stretched out back down the slope, toiling upward.

‘Don’t kill me!’ It seemed like a good place to start.

‘Give me the key and I’ll let you go,’ Edris said, still with the smile.

The thing about staying alive is staying useful. As a prince I’m always useful … as an heir and a figurehead. As a debtor I was useful as long as Maeres believed I might be able to pay him back. As Edris’s captive, too far from home to be a good prospect for ransom, my only real use lay in being a link to Loki’s key. ‘I can take you to it.’ It might only mean a few more hours of life but I’d sell my own grandmother for that. And her palace.

Edris waved a couple of the Hardassa men forward. One took the rations sack I’d been too preoccupied to ditch, the other started to go through my clothes, and not gently. ‘My friends here tell me there’s only one reason to put in at this shore.’ He pointed up at Beerentoppen. ‘I don’t need you to find the witch.’

‘Ah!’ The Viking was being particularly thorough and his hands were freezing. ‘Uh. But. You need me to…’ I hunted for a reason. ‘Skilfar! Snorri’s got the key and he’s going to give it to Skilfar. You’ve got to catch him before he gets to her.’

‘I don’t need you for that either.’ Edris took the dagger from his belt. A plain iron pig-sticker.

‘But…’ I eyed the blade. He had a good point. ‘He’ll trade the key for me. You don’t want to fight him – didn’t go so well last time. And … and … he might throw the key away. If he threw it as you charged him you could spend a week hunting these slopes and still not find it.’

‘Why would he trade Loki’s key against your life?’ Edris sounded doubtful.

‘Blood debt!’ It came to me in a flash. ‘He owes me his life. You don’t know Snorri ver Snagason. Honour’s all he has left. He’ll pay his debt.’

Edris twitched his mouth in a sneer, quickly gone. ‘Alrik, Knui, he’s your responsibility. Take his weapons.’

The pair searching me and my belongings took away my sword and knife. Edris strode past, setting a good pace, the others following in his wake. ‘You keep up now, my prince, or we’ll have to cut you loose and take our chances.’

Alrik, a dark-bearded thug, started me off with a shove between the shoulders. ‘Quick.’ The Red Vikings spoke the old tongue among themselves and some had a few words of Empire. Knui followed on. I had no illusions concerning what was meant by ‘cutting me loose’.

Hurrying after Edris, I kept a good eye on the ground ahead, knowing a twisted ankle would see me gutted and left to die. Now and then I stole a glance at the mountain slopes to either side. Somewhere out there the necromancer might be watching, and even in these direst of straits I had time to be scared of her.

Climbing to the Beerentoppen crater with Edris in the lead proved every bit as horrific as running before him. Staggering up ever-steeper rock-faces, hands and knees raw, feet blistered and bruised, panting hard enough to vomit a lung, I actually wished I could be back in the Sea-Troll bobbing about on the ocean.

Hours passed. Noon passed. We got high enough to see across the snow-laden peaks north and south, the going becoming even more vertical and more treacherous, and still no Snorri. It astonished me that without knowing he was pursued Snorri had kept ahead of us. Especially with Tuttugu. The man was not made for climbing mountains. Rolling down them he’d be good at.

Afternoon crawled into evening and I crawled after Edris, driven on by the threat of Alrik’s hatchet and by well-placed kicks from Knui. The peak of the mountain looked to be broken off, ending in a serrated rim. The slopes took on a peculiar folded character, as if the rock had congealed like molten fat running from a roasting pig. We got to within a few hundred yards of the top when Edris’s scouts returned to report. They yabbered in the old tongue while I lay sprawled, willing some hints of life back into limp legs.

‘No sign of Snorri.’ Edris loomed over me. ‘Not out here, not in the crater.’

‘He must be somewhere.’ I half-wondered if Snorri had lied, if he’d gone off on some different quest. Maybe the next cove held a fishing town, a tavern, warm beds…

‘He’s found the witch’s cave, and that’s bad news for all of us. Especially you.’