The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(169)

? ? ?

I came round to find Hennan slapping me with considerably more enthusiasm than the task warranted, and the tatters of my dream were swept away.

“Kara?” I struggled into a sitting position.

Snorri knelt beside the v?lva. She lay, propped against the pillar where Aslaug had pinned her. Snorri had stripped her layers and lifted her undershirt to reveal ugly red weals across her ribs left and right. Some charm or spell must have denied her flesh to Aslaug’s touch because the legs had thrust right at her. They must have seared Kara as they skidded over her skin, diverted from her vitals and left just pinning her by her clothes.

“A bitten tongue is the worst of it.” Snorri looked across to me and abandoned Kara. He took my arm and hauled me to my feet.

“Jal.” He brushed me down and stood back, looking solemn. “I knew you couldn’t be bought.”

“Hah.” I rubbed my forehead, expecting my fingers to come back bloody. “You know I’m a man of honour!” I grinned at him.

Snorri gripped my forearm in the manner of warriors, and I held him back. We had a little moment there.

“What happened to your—” I pointed at his side, his jerkin holed in a score of places, ripped and discoloured, the crystal growths gone.

He patted his side and winced. “I don’t know. When I threw that sword a chunk of the stuff cracked away. I pulled off the rest. It didn’t seem . . . attached any more.”

“Kelem’s spell is broken.” Kara hobbled over, supported by Hennan. “We could leave now?”

Snorri looked over at the v?lva and the boy, red-haired like his middle child. I wanted him to see the wife and son he could have, the life that could lie before him, not to replace what lay behind, but something . . . something good. Better than Hell in any case.

Snorri bowed his head. “I can’t leave.” He looked down at his hands, as if remembering how they had once held his children. “Show me the door. I’ve come too far to go back.”

“I don’t know which it is.” Kara waved her arm at the columns marching away from us, the distance stacking them closer and closer until the eye lost their meaning. “That was Kelem’s speciality. We came here to find Kelem, remember? Not the door. That lies everywhere. We just needed someone who could see it. And Jal has given him to the dark.”

“He would never have told you, Snorri,” I said. “He wouldn’t have let us leave either, not with this.” I held the key up. “Thank God sunset came when it did.”

Kara gave me an odd look. “It’s not sunset for a couple of hours and more.”

I laughed at her. “Of course it is.”

“I don’t think so, Jal.” Snorri shook his head. “Time gets turned around down here, true enough. But I’m with Kara. I can’t believe I’m out by that much.”

“It’s you, Jal.” Kara nodded. “You don’t understand your potential. You bind yourself about with these rules, with lies you tell yourself to avoid responsibility. But you made Aslaug come. You found the door to her. You made it happen.”

“I . . .” I closed my mouth. Perhaps Kara had it right. Now I considered it I would be surprised to find it dark if I climbed out of the mine right now. “Snorri has potential too. You said it yourself. He lights the orichalcum brighter than you do.”

“It’s true,” Kara said without rancour.

I looked up at Snorri, not sure whether to say it or not. “If you want death’s door badly enough, then in this place you’ll find it.” I shook my head. “Don’t look for it, Snorri. But if you do, and you find it, I will open it for you.” And then madness took my tongue, “And go with you.” I think it’s a disease. Being treated like a brave and honourable man becomes an addiction. Like the poppy, you want more of it, and more. I’d eaten up the cheers offered for the hero of the Aral Pass, but to be treated as an equal by the Norseman made those cheers dim, those thrown petals pale. There’s a sense of family in that warriors’ grip. A sense of belonging. I understood now how Tuttugu, soft as he was, got drawn along with the rest of them. And God damn it, it had got to me too.

“Come with me, brother!” Snorri started to stride down the hall like a man with purpose. “We’ll open death’s door and carry Hell to them. The sagas will tell of it. The dead rose up against the living and two men chased them back across the river of swords. Beside our legend Beowulf’s saga will be a tale for children!”

I followed, keeping a brisk pace so the uncertainty nipping at my heels couldn’t catch me. Kara and Hennan hurried along behind. My sister waited beyond the door, unborn, altered, hungry for my death. But Snorri had released his own child from that fate . . . surely a Kendeth could do the same? My head swam with visions of the parades they would hold for me in Vermillion on my return, the honours Grandmother would heap upon me. Jalan—conqueror of death!

? ? ?

It didn’t take long for the foolishness to start to fade. I just had to remember the Black Fort to realize how little appetite I really had for this nonsense. For the longest time I hoped my over-enthusiastic boasts wouldn’t be put to the test, that Snorri’s search would be fruitless, but in time he stopped, one hand set against a pillar that to my eyes looked exactly the same as every other.