The air seems brittle here, alive with possibility. I get that same sensation when the souls of the dead break through from the living world and I glimpse blue sky through the tears they make. This is a place of doors. I can feel the key on my chest, cold then hot, vibrating at some pitch beyond hearing. When Kara said the door between life and death lay everywhere, that was just words. I could no more spot that door in the midst of Hell than I could in a market square on a warm day in Vermillion. But here . . . here it seems that home is just a touch away. Here it seems that the door I need might just fracture out of nothing and stand before me. The living world is tantalizingly close, it just needs . . . some small thing to happen, like a lost word finally tripping off the tip of my tongue, and I would see the door . . .
My name rings out again, a howl, loud now, echoing off the walls, an undulating noise empty one moment, violent the next, full of hunger and malice. I take another step into the light. “You should come with me, Snorri.” The words are hard to say. “You’ve seen this place. Nothing good can be brought out of it.”
I wait for the anger, but there’s none in him. He hangs his head, refusing to look at the glow before us. “Arran Vale.”
“What?” I want to go, but I stay.
“Do you remember Arran Vale?” he asks.
“Um.” I should be running but Snorri’s bravery won’t let me. His image of who I am pins me here. I should be sprinting for the hall— instead I stand and try to answer him. Arran Vale? My mind races through names and faces and places, dozens, hundreds, all encountered on our long travels. “Maybe . . . a valley in Rhone? Near that little town with the one church and three whorehouses, where—”
“Hennan’s grandfather, the grandson of Lotar Vale.”
“Who could forget Lotar Vale? The hero you’d never heard of until the moment that old man said his name!”
“Doesn’t matter.” Snorri raised his head to fix me with that steady blue gaze of his. “What matters is that Arran Vale had a history, roots, something to live for, something to make a stand over.”
“All I remember is that you and Tuttugu were about to throw your lives away beside some old farmer you’d met only moments before, and all to defend his hut and its worthless contents from Vikings who probably wouldn’t have even bothered taking it anyway.” The ground is trembling now, the dust starting to dance. My sister is close and coming fast.
“A life lived well is one you’re not prepared to compromise just in order to draw it out for another day.”
“Well . . .” Reading out the list of things I would do to live another day would consume all of the extra day in question.
“The point is that there are things I’m prepared to die for. Times when it is right to make a stand, whatever the odds. And if Tuttugu and I would do what we did for Hennan’s grandfather—an old man we didn’t, as you rightly say, know. Then what do you think I’m prepared to do for my children? For my wife? Whether I can win is not a factor.”
We have had this conversation before. I didn’t expect him to have changed, but sometimes you owe it to a friend to try.
“Good luck!” I slap a hand to Snorri’s shoulder and I’m off. The dark behind him looks thicker as if a storm is rolling down on us. She’s there at the heart of it, the one whose mouth knows my name—my nameless sister and the lichkin who wears her soul.
I’m five yards away when he says, “Show me the key.”
I stretch out my hands, one toward Snorri, the other toward the door into the judges’ hall. “I’ve got to go!” The hell-night is boiling blackness behind him, the howl coming again so loud it drowns out my objections. Every hair I own tries to stand on end.
Even so, I pull the key from my shirt on the thong about my neck and run back to him. Snorri takes the knife from his belt and puts the blade to his palm.
“Jesus, no!” I wave my hand in what I hope is a negative pattern. “What is it with you northmen and cutting yourselves? I remember what happened last time you tried this Viking shit on me. How about we just shake hands?”
Snorri grins. “The key will be our link. You back in the world. Me here. Blood will bind us.” He cuts his palm and I wince to see it done, the blood welling up where the point of the knife passed.
“How do you know any of this?” I’m still hoping there’s a way out of this without having to slice myself open. A dark mist is rising now, pushing back the light. The souls scatter. They know a bad thing is coming. Suddenly I find myself ready to cut my damn hand off if it means I can leave. Even so, I stay, Snorri’s friendship holding me just the same way it very nearly pulled me through the door into Hell. “Blood will bind us? You’re just making it up as you go, aren’t you?”
Snorri meets my gaze, a slight shrug in his shoulders. “If I learned anything from Kara it’s that in magic it is will that counts. The words, the spells, scrolls, ingredients . . . it’s for show, or perhaps better to say they’re like a warrior’s weapons, but it’s the strength of the warrior’s arm that is what truly matters. He can kill you with his hands, weapon or no weapon.” He reaches out and folds his bloody hand about the key. “This will be our link. When you open the door you’ll find me.”
The dark has grown thick about us, and cold. It’s as if Snorri doesn’t see it, though: there’s no fear in him. Me, I have enough for both of us. A howling rises with the midnight, the sort a thousand wolves might make . . . if you set fire to them. Close now. Close and closing fast.
“How will I even find the door? How will I know you’re ready to return? Christ, look, I’ve got to go—”
“You need to will it to be so.” Snorri takes his hand back. There’s no blood on the key though it drips scarlet from his clenched fist. “It will work—or it won’t. Kara was to open the way for my return. Kara, or Skilfar, if she had taken the key back to her grandmother as she promised her. Now all I have is you, Jal. So keep the key safe and listen for my call.”
I tuck the key away. “I’ll listen.” It’s not much of a lie. I don’t even know what “listen” means. On my chest the key grows warmer as if falsehoods please it. I try to think of some last words for Snorri. “Farewell” sounds pompous. “Stay safe” is obviously not going to happen.
“Give them hell.”
The howl sounds so loud and close it’s like a punch. I’m running, running toward the light, that marvellous, living light, my sights set on the doorway.
“Be careful!” Snorri shouts after me. “They will test you.”
I don’t like the sound of that, but test or no test, I’m going home.
I close on the doorway racing past the soul of a young woman just coming out. I can see her terror in the faint lines of her. She runs, cowering, as if some great eagle might swoop upon her at any moment. I do pretty much the same thing, only in the opposite direction.
The darkness washes after me like a wave racing up the beach, outpacing me to either side, freezing my heels. I fly through the doorway, contriving to trip on the doorstep, and sprawl headlong into the corridor beyond. Looking back in terror I see the blackness slam into the building, the doorway becomes a rectangle of night and a tremor runs through the floor, but not a wisp of the dark enters the passage where I lie and no hint of the horror outside can be seen. If she’s howling out there—I can’t hear her.
I stand up, brushing the dust off me, still eyeing the darkness outside nervously. Steeling myself I risk a glance away, into the judges’ hall. It’s not what I expect. No courtrooms, no souls queuing for the verdict on their lives, no trio of Zeus’s bastards sitting in judgment. There’s nothing but a long corridor, too long to fit within the building, though the structure is huge. At the far end something burning and bright—a blue, a green, a promise. All I need do is walk forward and I’ll be home. I sense it in my bones. I don’t even need the Liar’s key. This is a true path, one the just may walk.
I take a step forward and doors appear along both walls. A plain wooden door every ten yards, scores of them. I take another step and each one swings open, the closest ones first, then the next an instant later, and so on, creating a wave rippling off toward the distant blue-green promise.
It’s easy to pass by the rooms behind the first doors. The first to the left is empty save for a discarded purse in the middle of the floor, to the right also empty but for a scattering of silver coins. The next pair are empty save for a discarded sword and a small closed casket.