wait. I do remember this one.’ Kara had told me. Hel, ice-hearted, split nose to crotch by a line dividing a left side of pure jet from a right side of alabaster. ‘She watches the souls of men, her bright eye sees the good in them, her dark eye sees the evil, and she cares not for either … did I get it right?’ I hop on one leg, massaging my toe.
Snorri shrugs. ‘Close enough. She sees the courage in men. Ragnarok is coming. Not the Thousand Suns of the Builders, but a true end when the world cracks and burns and the giants rise. Courage is all that will matter then.’
I look around at the rocks, the dust, the barren hills. ‘So where’s mine? If this is your hell where’s mine?’ I don’t want to see mine. At all. But even so, to be wandering around in a barbarian’s hell seems … wrong. Or perhaps a key ingredient in my personal hell is that nobody recognizes the precedence of nobility over commoners.
‘You don’t believe in it,’ Snorri says. ‘Why would Hel build it for you if you don’t believe in it?’
‘I do!’ Protesting my faithfulness in all things is a reflex with me.
‘Your father is a priest, yes?’
‘A cardinal! He’s a cardinal, not some damn village priest.’
Snorri shrugs as if these are just words. ‘Priests’ children seldom believe. No man is a prophet in his own land.’
‘That sort of pagan nonsense might—’
‘It’s from the bible.’ Snorri stops again.
‘Oh.’ I stop too. He’s right, I guess. I’ve never had much use for religion, except when it comes to swearing or begging for mercy. ‘Why have we stopped?’
Snorri says nothing, so I look where he’s looking. Ahead of us the air is splintering and through the fractures I see glimpses of a sky that already looks impossibly blue, too full of the vital stuff of life to have any place in the drylands of death. The tears grow larger – I see the arc of a sword – a spray of crimson, and a man tumbles out of nowhere, the fractures sealing themselves behind him. I say a man, but really it’s a memory of him, sketched in pale lines, occupying the space where he should be. He stands, not disturbing so much as a mote of dust, and I see the bloodless wound that killed him, a gash across his forehead that skips down to his broken collarbone and through it into the meat of him.
As the man stands, the process is repeating to his left and right, and again twenty yards behind them. More men drop through from whatever battlefield they’re dying on. They ignore us, standing with heads bowed, a few with scraps of armour, all weaponless. I’m about to call out to the first when he turns and walks away, his path close to our own heading but veering a little to the left.
‘Souls.’ I mean to say out loud but only a whisper escapes.
Snorri shrugged. ‘Dead men.’ He starts walking too. ‘We’ll follow them.’
I start forward but the air breaks before me. I see the world, I can smell it, feel the breeze, taste the air. And suddenly I understand the hunger in dead men’s eyes. I’ve been in the drylands less than an hour and already the need that just this glimpse of life gives me is consuming. There’s a battle raging that makes Aral Pass look like a skirmish: men hack at each other with bright steel and wild cries, the roar of massed troops, the screams of the wounded, the groans of the dying. Even so I’m lunging forward, so desperate for the living world that even a few moments there before someone spears me seem worth it.
It’s the soul that stops me. The one that punched this hole into death. I meet him head on, emerging, being born into death. There’s nothing to him, just the faint lines that remember him – that and the howling rage and fear and pain of his last seconds. It’s enough to stop me though. He runs over my skin like a scald, sinks through it, and I fall back, shrieking, overwritten by his memories, drowning in his sorrow. Martell he’s called. Martell Harris. It seems more important than my own name. I try to speak my name, whatever it is, and find my lips have forgotten the shape of it.
‘Get up, Jal!’
I’m on the ground, dust rising all around me. Snorri is kneeling over me, hair dark around his face. I’m losing him. Sinking. The dust rising, thicker by the moment. I’m Martell Harris. The sword went into me like ice but I’m all right, I just need to get back into the battle. Martell moves my arms, struggles to rise. Jalan is gone, sinking into the dust.
‘Stay with me, Jal!’ I can feel Snorri’s grip on me. Nothing else, just that iron grip. ‘Don’t let him drive you out. You’re Jalan. Prince Jalan Kendeth.’
The fact of Snorri actually saying my name right – title and all – jolts me out of the dust’s soft embrace.
‘Jalan Kendeth!’ The grip tightens. It really hurts. ‘Say it! SAY IT!’
‘Jalan Kendeth!’ The words tore from me in a great shout.
I found myself face to face with the thing that used to be Sheik Malik’s son, Jahmeen, before the djinn burned him hollow. Somehow the memory of that Hell-bound soul pushing into me, stealing my flesh had brought me back to the moment, back to fighting the djinn for control using whatever tricks I’d learned in the drylands.
The grip on my wrist is iron, anchoring me. And the pain! With my senses returned to me I found my whole arm on fire with white agony. Desperate to escape before the djinn could slip from Jahmeen and possess me in his stead I headbutted him full in the face and wrenched my arm clear. A heartbeat later I drove both heels viciously into my camel’s sides. With a lurch and a bugle of protest the beast took to the gallop, me bouncing about atop, hanging on with every limb at my disposal.
I didn’t look back. Damsels in distress be damned. Before I’d broken that grip I’d felt a familiar feeling. As the djinn had tried to move in, I in turn had been moving out. I knew exactly what Hell felt like and that was exactly where the djinn was trying to put the bits of me it didn’t need.
About a mile on, still following the channel between the two great dunes that had hemmed us in, my camel stopped. Where horses will frequently run past the limit of their endurance given enough encouragement, camels are beasts of a very different temperament. Mine just decided it had had enough and came to a dead halt, using the sand to arrest its progress. An experienced rider can usually pick up on the warning signs and prepare himself. An inexperienced rider, scared witless, has to rely on the sand to slow them down too. This is achieved by allowing the rider’s momentum to launch him or her over the head of his or her camel. The rest takes care of itself.
I got up quick enough, spitting out the desert. Put enough fear or embarrassment into a man and he’s immune to all but the very worst pain. Back along the winding route I’d ridden between dune crests a sandstorm had risen. Four main things worried me about it. Firstly, unlike dust, sand takes a hell of a wind to rise up into the air. Secondly, rather than the traditional advancing storm-wall, this storm appeared to be localized to the valley between two dunes, no more than two hundred yards apart. Thirdly, the wind was hardly blowing. And finally, what wind there was blowing toward the sandstorm and yet it seemed to be advancing on me at quite a rate!
‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ I leapt toward my camel and scrambled up his side. Somehow my panic panicked the camel and the damn thing took off with me halfway into the saddle. I lay, sprawled across its hump for twenty yards, hanging on desperately, but it’s hard enough to stay on a galloping camel if you’re in the right place and sadly sometimes desperation isn’t a sufficient adhesive. My camel and I parted
