“You’re thinking to leave the deadlands that way?” Snorri asks. “Because after the hall of judgment there’s a big dog named Cerberus, and if you don’t get eaten by him then it’s the River Acheron and the River Styx, that’s the rivers of woe and hate. The ferryman is supposed to be a—”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’m not dead. I shouldn’t be here. As soon as I reach the judges they’ll see that I’m in the wrong place and send me back home. It’s what they do—send people where they belong.”
“You think so?” Snorri looks doubtful, which is the opposite of what I need.
“I believe so,” I say. “And that’s what counts.” It strikes me that in this Hell a man of sufficient will, a man willing to sacrifice anything, might bend the world itself around his desire and create of himself whatsoever he wished. It also strikes me that I am not such a man.
Snorri’s long stride brings him level with me. “So all we need to do is to get you to the judges’ hall.”
“That is one of the weaker parts of the idea,” I admit, slowing to look about for clues, but of course there aren’t any. Just dust and rocks.
Snorri keeps walking. “You haven’t figured this place out yet.” He calls it over his shoulder. “Direction doesn’t matter. It’s like in dreams. The things you want come to you. The things you don’t want as well.”
I hurry to catch up. “We’re just going to walk in this direction?”
“Yes.”
“Until we find it?”
“Yes.”
“Kara said the door would be everywhere,” I say, always eager to avoid a long walk.
“If you see it before we get there let me know.” Snorri snorts. “Now what do you think this hall is going to look like? What are the judges’ names?”
We walk through a valley that slowly becomes a plain, beneath a sky that darkens by degrees, settling shadows upon us. All the while we talk about the underworld of Hades and the gods of Olympus and the legends that the ancients set about it all. After the Thousand Suns many lost faith with the God of Rome and turned to older gods whose failures lay too far back to recall. As we remember the shape and history of Hades we find ourselves walking into it, or rather that part of the deadlands shaped by the faith of those who believe such tales.
“What is it with pagan hells and dogs?” I ask. “And rivers?”
“What do you mean?” A defensive tone enters Snorri’s voice.
“The Greeks have the River Styx, crossed by a ferryman who dumps you on a shore guarded by a huge dog named Cerberus. The Norse have the River Gj?ll, crossed by a bridge that takes you to a shore guarded by a huge dog named Garm.”
“I don’t see your point.”
“It’s like you copied them item by item, just changing the odd detail and using your own names.”
The ensuing argument takes my mind off the unrelenting misery of walking the deadlands. Hell is hell, whatever mythology you dress it up in. Every part of me is dry. Every part hurts. Famine and thirst have set up home in me, bone deep. As the darkness grows, any hope in me wanes and my tongue lacks interest in conversation . . . but arguing, baiting the Northman, that still holds enough appeal to stop me lying down in the dust and waiting for my turn to blow on the wind.
Jalan.
It’s just the breeze, speaking my name into a pause in the conversation.
Jalan.
But when the wind speaks your name in the darkness of Hell there’s a chill that comes with it.
In time even the pleasure in enraging Snorri fades and I stagger on beneath a burden of unbearable pain and exhaustion. My surroundings might be only darkness and dust and a low but endless headwind, but in my mind I’ve returned to the singular hell that was our trip across the Bitter Ice. I’m there once more, with the Norsemen dying beside me step by step, Ein and Arne and Tuttugu, all of us trailing along in that white wasteland with nothing to draw us forward but Snorri ver Snagason’s broad back always moving on.
“Up!”
I find I’ve fallen to my knees, head bowed, unmoving.
“I got you.” Snorri’s hand closes around my upper arm and he lifts me to my feet.
“I’m sorry.” I stumble on.
“This place will wear any man down,” he says.
“I’m sorry.” I’m too exhausted to explain, but I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I had to be dragged through that door before I could live up to my promise, sorry to be leaving Snorri alone in Hell, sorry for his family, sorry I can’t believe in his quest, sorry I know he’ll fail. “Sorry for—”
“I know,” he says, and catches me before I fall again. “And no man who walks through Hell for a friend has anything to apologize for.”
“I—” A sound in the distance saves me from more foolishness, faint, then gone. “What’s that?”
“I heard it too.”
Having heard nothing but the wind for so long the strange cry seems full of portent.
It sounds again, a touch louder.
Jalan.
Louder than my imagination this time. A voice, speaking my name, or at least making the sound of it, making something unfamiliar of it.
“Run?” I find I have more energy left than I thought. Not enough to run, that’s just the fear talking, but enough to stagger along at a decent rate.
“Let’s keep going.” Snorri leads the way.
“But what is it?”
“What do you think it is?” he asks.
Jalan. It’s almost the way my Mother used to speak my name. The way a child might struggle to reproduce both syllables. I don’t want to say, as if naming my fear might make it real, but somehow I know what’s coming, what’s hunting us down. In Hell with its peculiar lack of directions, all your fears will find you soon enough. It’s my sister and the lichkin that has bound itself to her to make a corruption of her soul. If they kill me here my death will punch a hole through which they can emerge into the living world. The unborn queen, the rider and the ridden, birthed into dead flesh so many years after her conception. All my sister’s potential unleashed onto the world in the hands of a lichkin . . . To be honest, all that other stuff is just icing on a deeply unpalatable cake—I stopped caring after the “killing me here” bit. “Is that a light?” I point.
“Yes.” Snorri confirms that I’m not hallucinating through sheer terror.
JALAN! The howl comes from behind us, distant but by no means distant enough. JALAN! It turns out I can run.
Snorri jogs alongside me and with agonizing slowness the light resolves from one into a multitude, outlining the roof and many supporting columns of a towering building, all carved in white stone, just as we described it to each other.
Souls cluster in the darkness near the court. From time to time a new soul will run down the steps, a translucent recollection of a man or woman, not keeping a single shape but moving through memories of their life, moments of terror mostly. None of them lingers where the light falls, rather they run until the darkness takes them, as if the judges’ light burns them. They move away from Snorri and me too. Perhaps the life that still persists in us hurts to look upon with eyes where none remains.
We stop a hundred yards from the many-pillared hall. Walls rise behind the pillars, white and broad, every inch carved with scenes from legend. A doorway stands open, allowing the judged souls to flee their guilt. Our faces are cast into sharp relief by the slanting illumination. Even at this distance that light promises running water, warm air, green things growing.