He has a point. “So what?”
“The deadlands are shaped by expectation, but there are two of us and our faiths don’t agree.” He lets go of me. “We were in Hel’s domain, where she rules over all that is dead. But—”
“But?”
“Now I think we’ve strayed into your Hell.”
“Oh God.”
“. . . thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain . . .” Bishop James’s voice, though my father’s second had never sounded quite so much like he wanted to peel my face off.
The underworld that Snorri’s twin-aspected goddess, Hel, rules over is a pretty horrendous place, but I have the feeling that my Hell of fire and brimstone, replete with sinners and with devils to roast them, might outdo it for nastiness.
“Let’s get back.” I turn around and start to retread our path. “How did we even end up here? You’re the believer.”
“ . . . unbeliever, unbeliever, burn the unbeliever—”
“I mean you’re the one with the strongest faith.”
“. . . faithless, faithless, harrow the faithless—”
“Not that my faith isn’t really strong too, praise Jesus!” I cross myself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and not that half-hearted wave of the hand that Father does but the deliberate and precise action that Bishop James employs.
“It might not be you, Jal.” Snorri’s hand on my shoulder again, arresting my motion. I glance back and he nods ahead.
Something flits across the gap between two of the larger boulders scattered across the valley floor. I catch only the edge of a glimpse— something thin and pale—something bad.
“This is our enemy’s Hell. He’s brought it with him on the hunt.” Snorri has his axe in his hands now.
“But, nobody knows we’re here . . .” I put my hand to the key, lying beneath my jerkin, just above my heart. Suddenly it feels heavy. Heavy and colder than ice. “The Dead King?”
“It might be.” Snorri rolls his shoulders, blue eyes almost black in the deadlight and fixed upon the rock the creature has vanished behind. “If he’s somehow been alerted to our presence he could just want revenge for us keeping the key from him.”
“About that . . .”
The creature steals any further conversation, emerging from the shadows at the rock’s base and starting to run toward us with appalling speed. It drives forward on bone-thin legs, the power of each thrust veering it to one side, only to be corrected by the next so that it threads an erratic path through the boulder-field, weaving around them and leaving the stone faces screaming their horror in its wake. The thing puts me in mind of the white threads you’ll see in the muscle of a man laid open by a sword blow. Nerves, one of my tutors called them, pointing to the nightmarish drawings in some ancient tome on anatomy. It looks like a nerve: white, thin, long, dividing into limbs which in turn divide into three root-like fingers, its head an eyeless wedge, sharp enough to bury itself in a man.
“Lichkin.” Snorri names the beast and takes three paces toward it, timing his swing. He roars as the head of his axe tears through the air, muscles bunching as they drive it forward. The lichkin blurs beneath the blow, surging up to catch Snorri by the neck, the other hand on his stomach, lifting him high off the ground and slamming him down with a sick-making crunch. Dust billows up around the impact and I can’t see how he landed, though with so many boulders around it’s unlikely to be well. “Shit.” At last I remember to draw my sword. It sings out of the scabbard, the deadlight burning along the runes that mark its length. My hand is shaking.
Snorri’s axe rises, unsteady amid the billowing dust, and the lichkin snatches it, continuing the motion to bring it round and down in a circle that buries the blade roughly where I expect Snorri’s head to be. The impact is dull and final. I can just make out the axe handle, pointing up unsupported as the lichkin abandons it and stalks toward me, the dust still rising smokelike about it. Terror comes off the thing like heat off a fire.
“Oh crap.” I thrust my off hand down the neck of my jerkin and bring out Loki’s key. “Look, you can have it, just let me—”
The lichkin charges and it’s so fast I think I must have been frozen in place. One moment it’s there at the edge of the dust cloud and the next it has one hand wrapped around my throat and the other around the wrist of my sword arm. The thing’s touch is foul beyond imagining. Its white flesh joins mine, seeming to merge. It feels as if innumerable roots are sinking into me, burrowing between veins, each afire with an acidic agony that leaves no space even for screaming.
I’m held, useless and immobile while that white wedge of a face inspects me and all I can do is beg to die, unable to get the words past a jaw locked so tight that I expect my teeth to break in the next moment, to just shatter all in one go.
The lichkin’s head tilts down toward Loki’s key, held between us, pointing forward, my arm rigid and paralysed.
I glimpse some large and smoking object, past the lichkin’s head, rushing toward us. At the last moment I see it’s Snorri, dust rising from him with each pounding step. He’s empty-handed, as if he thinks to tear the creature apart by main force. The lichkin turns, faster than thought, and catches him by the shoulders. Despite its thinness the lichkin is rooted to the ground and absorbs all the momentum of the Viking’s charge, needing just a single sharp step backward.
I stand, still frozen in the moment. Edris Dean’s sword has fallen from the hand the lichkin released but not yet hit the ground. My eyes follow its progress and see that in stepping back the lichkin has driven itself against the black shaft of Loki’s key, the head of which has pushed an inch into the white flesh.
All I can do is turn it.
And as the key turns the blackness of it invades the lichkin’s alabaster, darting along its length in ebony threads, each in turn forking and branching, staining, corrupting. Gravity reaches for me and I’m falling, pulling the key clear, but even as I hit the ground and the dust rises all around, I see the lichkin start to come undone, as if it were a thousand strands, a thousand thin white tubes, now grey and putrefying, each peeling apart from the next, the whole thing opening, spreading, falling.
“Vermillion!” A banging on the carriage roof, the rough voice of whatever lout currently had the reins. I sat up with a jerk, soaked in sweat.
“Oh thank Christ!” Shudders ran through me. I looked at my wrist, expecting to see the scald mark of the lichkin’s hand still there. Lisa gave a sleepy murmur, face hidden by her hair, head in my lap. The old priest, Father Agor, narrowed pale eyes at me in disapproval.
“Did he say Vermillion?” I raised the shade and peered out, squinting against the brightness. The suburbs of Vermillion bumped past. “At last!”
“We’re there?” Lisa, blinking, face creased where she lay on me, strands of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth.
“We’re here!” My grin so broad it hurt my face.
Lisa gripped my hand and smiled back, and suddenly all was right in the world. At least until I remembered Maeres Allus.