sides. The wise can feel it. The wise fear it.
‘Given time enough, and peace, the wound you bear will heal. Time still heals all wounds, for now. And the scars left behind are our legacy of remembrance. But pick at it and it will fester and consume you. This is true both of the crack the Sister ran through your marrow, and of the hurt the Dead King gave.’
Snorri noted she didn’t speak of the assassin’s cut. He didn’t trust her enough to volunteer the information, and instead set his teeth against the growing ache of it and the southward tug that seemed to pull on him by each rib.
‘Give me the key and I will set it beyond men. The spirits you have borne, both the dark and the light, are of a piece. Like fire and ice they are no friends of our kind. They exist at the extremes, where madness dwells. Man treads the centre line and when he wanders from it, he falls. You carry an avatar of light now but he lies as sweetly as the darkness.’
‘Baraqel told me to destroy the key. To give it to you. To do anything but use it.’ Snorri had endured the same speech dawn after dawn.
‘The dark then, whatever face it took to persuade you, you must not believe it.’
‘Aslaug cautioned me against the key. She said Loki bled lies, breathed them, and his tricks would lay creation in ruins given but an inch. Her father would feed all darkness to the wyrm just as soon as break the light. Anything to upset the balance and drown the world in chaos.’
‘This is truly your will, warrior? Yours alone?’ Skilfar leaned forward in her chair now, her gaze a shiver that travelled the length of him. ‘Tell me – I will know the truth of it.’ The age of her wavered in her voice, a frightening weight of years that sounded little different from pain. ‘Tell me.’
Snorri set the key back against his chest. ‘I am Snorri ver Snagason, warrior of the Undoreth. I have lived a Viking’s life, raw and simple, on the shore of the Uulisk. Battle and clan. Farm and family. I was as brave as it was in me to be. As good as I knew. I have been a pawn to powers greater than myself, launched as a weapon, manipu-lated, lied to. I cannot say that no hand rests on my shoulder even now – but on the sea, in the wild of the evening storm and the calm of morning, I have looked inside, and if this is not true then I know no true thing. I will take this key that I won through battle and blood and loss. I will open death’s door and I will save my children. And if the Dead King or his minions come against me I will sow their ruin with the axe of my fathers.’
Tuttugu came to stand at Snorri’s shoulder, saying nothing, his message clear.
‘You have a friend here, Snorri of the Undoreth.’ Skilfar appraised Tuttugu, her fingers moving as if playing a thread through her hands. ‘Such things are rare. The world is sweetness and pain – the north knows this. And we die knowing there is a final battle to come, greater than any before. Leave your dead to lie, Snorri. Sail for new horizons. Set the key aside. The Dead King is beyond you. Any of the hidden hands could take this thing from you. I could freeze the marrow in your bones and take it here and now.’
‘And yet you won’t.’ Snorri didn’t know if Skilfar’s magics could overwhelm him, but he knew that having sought his motivations and intent with such dedication the völva would not simply take the key.
‘No.’ She released a sigh, the coldness of it pluming in the air. ‘The world is better shaped by freedom. Even if it means giving foolish men their head. At the heart of all things, nestled among Yggdrasil’s roots, is the trick of creation that puts to shame all of Loki’s deceptions. What saves us all are the deeds of fools as often as the acts of the wise.
‘Go if you must. I tell you plain, though – whatever you find, it will not be what you sought.’
‘And the door?’ Snorri spoke the words low, his resolve never weaker.
‘Kara.’ Skilfar turned to her companion. ‘The man seeks death’s door. Where will he find it?’
Kara looked up from the study of her fingers, frowning in surprise. ‘I don’t know, Mother. Such truths are beyond me.’
‘Nonsense.’ Skilfar clicked her fingers. ‘Answer the man.’
The frown deepened, hands rose, fingers knotted among the rune-hung braids, an unconscious gesture. ‘The door to death … I…’
‘Where should it be?’ Skilfar demanded.
‘Well…’ Kara tossed her head. ‘Why should it be anywhere? Why should death’s door be any place? If it were in Trond how would that be right? What of the desert men in Hamada? Should they be so far from—’
‘And the world is fair?’ Skilfar asked, a smile twitching on thin lips.
‘It – No. But it has a beauty and a balance to it. A rightness.’
‘So if there is a door but it isn’t anywhere – what then?’ A pale finger spinning to hurry the young woman along.
‘It must be everywhere.’
‘Yes.’ Skilfar turned her winter-blue eyes upon Snorri once more. ‘The door is everywhere. You just have to know how to see it.’
‘And how do I see it?’ Snorri looked about the cavern as if he might find the door had been standing in some shadowed nook all this time.
‘I don’t know.’ Skilfar raised a hand to stop his protest. ‘Must I know everything?’ She sniffed the air, peering curiously at Snorri. ‘You’re wounded. Show me.’
Without complaint Snorri opened his jacket and drew up his shirt to show the red and encrusted line of the assassin’s knife. The two völvas rose from their seats for a closer inspection.
‘Old Gróa in Trond said the venom on the blade was beyond her art.’ Snorri winced as Skilfar jabbed a cold finger at his ribs.
‘Warts are beyond Gróa’s art.’ Skilfar snorted. ‘Useless girl. I could teach her nothing.’ She pinched the wound and Snorri gasped at the salt sting of it. ‘This is rock-sworn work. A summons. Kelem is calling you.’
‘Kelem?’
‘Kelem the Tinker. Kelem master of the emperor’s coin. Kelem the Gate-keeper. Kelem! You’ve heard of him!’ An irritable snap.
‘I have now.’ Snorri shrugged. The name did ring a bell. Stories told to children around the fire in the long winter nights. Snorri thought of the assassins’ Florentine gold, remembering for a moment the fearsome swiftness of the men. Each coin stamped with the drowned bell of Venice. The ache of his wound built, along with his anger. ‘Tell me more about him … please.’ A growl.
‘Old Kelem stays salted in his mine, hiding from the southern sun. He’s buried deep but little escapes him. He knows ancient secrets. Some call him the last Mechanist, a child of the Builders. So old he makes me look young.’
‘Where—’
‘Florence. The banking clans are his patrons. Or he is theirs. That relationship is harder to unravel than any knot Gordion ever tied. Perhaps the clans sprang from his loins back along the centuries when he quickened. Like many children though they are eager to inherit – of late the banks of Florence have been flexing their muscles, testing the old man’s strength … and his patience.’ Skilfar’s gaze flitted to
