The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(55)

I’d heard enough. Opposite to Snorri. Coward to his hero, thief to his honesty. Lech to his fidelity. Magic as mud to his shining potential. All I had to console myself with was prince to his pauper . . . I was glad at least to find myself as suited to sorcery as a paving slab. Magic always struck me as hard and dangerous work . . . not that there are any words you can put before “work” that makes it sound attractive. Certainly not “dangerous” or “hard.”

? ? ?

Our marching order changed as the miles passed. The boy grew weary and fell back with Tuttugu whose burst of energy from being healed now seemed spent. Snorri, Kara, and I, however, shed our tiredness. I found a dark excitement building in me. Each time I trod through the shadows cast by standing stones I heard Aslaug, her message now a simple promise—“I come.” And, although I feared her arrival, the threat of it bubbled through me like black joy, twisting my lips into a smile that might scare me if I had a mirror to see it in.

Cresting a ridge somewhat higher than the rest we paused, and turning back saw the enemy for the first time since the hut. We waited for Tuttugu and Hennan to struggle up to our position.

“I count twenty of them,” Snorri said.

“There were that many at Arran’s roundhouse before they attacked,” said Tuttugu, panting. “Close on a score.”

“Didn’t you manage to kill any of them?” I didn’t try to keep the complaint from my voice.

“Six, I think,” Snorri grunted. “They’re following us with the others.”

“Ah.” I turned to Kara. “Did you remember the necromancer when you said magic was our only hope? Because it looks like she’s following us in.”

Five or six hundred yards across a broad vale our enemy came on in a tight knot, their pace unhurried but relentless. I took a few steps to put more distance between Snorri and me. The skin along the side facing him burned and I swear for a moment I saw cracks reach out toward him from my arm, like black lightning forking into the air.

We pressed on, hurrying down the far side of the ridge, the heather catching at our ankles. At the bottom we waited for Tuttugu to draw level with us again.

“The sun will set soon. We’ll make our stand then.” Snorri cast a sideways glance my way. “Baraqel will lend me strength then too. He comes closest at dawn, but the dying of the light is another time when he can draw near—especially here.”

I nodded, suddenly not trusting the Norseman an inch. Every word he uttered sounded like a lie and when I blinked I could almost see Baraqel’s wings spreading from Snorri’s shoulders. Even so, ahead of us lay the Wheel and every nightmare ever whispered of in fireside tales. I wouldn’t run into it to avoid an axe. Besides, once Aslaug showed up I had the feeling that she wouldn’t be letting me run anywhere other than straight at the foe, whoever they might be.

The wind still blew, fitful now, edged with memories of winter. The land lay strangely silent, the lone cry of a curlew seeming an impertinence. I could smell rain approaching.

“Not much go left in them,” I told Kara as Tuttugu drew near. Hennan looked half-dead on his feet, though I’d heard no word of complaint from him. The boy wiped at his nose as he came closer, dry mud still in his hair from where I had brought him down when he raced to stand with his grandfather.

Tuttugu drew level and lifted his axe in greeting, the blade dark with dried blood, exhaustion written in the gesture.

Snorri grabbed the back of Hennan’s jerkin as he passed and hoisted him off the ground and onto his shoulders with one arm. “You can ride,” he said. “No charge.”

Tuttugu looked my way. “And Jal carries me?”

I laughed despite myself and slapped a hand to his shoulder. “You should come to Vermillion, Tutt. Fish off the bridge for your living and come out with me of an evening to scandalize the highborn. You’d love it. If the heat doesn’t melt Vikings.”

Tuttugu grinned. “The war chief of the Undoreth endured it.”

“Ah, but even Snorri went crispy at the edges, and he did spend most of his time in nice dark prison cells . . .”

“Wh—” Tuttugu bit his reply off and stopped to stare.

As we crested another fold in the terrain an archway stood revealed in our path. Weathered stone, tall as a tree, narrow, and set with deep graven runes. Kara hurried ahead to examine the carvings.

“Well, that’s nice.” I walked through it, ignoring Kara’s hiss of warning. A considerable part of me had hoped, albeit without conviction, that I’d find myself somewhere new on emerging from the other side of the arch. Somewhere safe. Sadly, I just arrived on the grass opposite and looked back at the Norse, their hair wild across their faces in a sudden gust.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something to set our backs against,” said Snorri.

“A work of the wrong-mages.” Kara craned her neck to stare at the runes above her. “A doorway to other places. But opening it is beyond any skill of mine. And like as not those places are worse than this one.”

“Sounds like any one of these wrong-mages could take the Empire throne and bend the Hundred to his will if their magic is so strong.” I followed her gaze up the stonework. Runes had been worked on my side too. Some of them reminded me of those the Silent Sister set climbing across the walls of the opera house and suddenly I felt those awful violet flames again, my ears filled with the screams of those I left to burn.