women in their huts.’ She closed her eye and seemed to study Snorri with her empty socket a while. ‘They do say Loki’s key doesn’t like to be taken. Given, surely, but taken? Stolen, of a certainty. But taken by force? Some speak of a curse on those who own it through strength. And it doesn’t do to anger gods, now does it?’
‘I mentioned no key.’ Snorri fought to keep his hands from twitching toward it, burning cold against his chest.
‘Ravens fly even in winter, Snagason.’ Ekatri’s eye hardened. ‘Do you think if some southern mage knew of your exploits weeks ago old Ekatri would not know of it by now in her hut just down the coast? You came seeking wisdom: don’t take me for a fool.’
‘So I must go south and hope?’
‘There is no must about it. Surrender the key and the wound will heal. Perhaps even the wounds you can’t see. Stay here. Make a new life.’ She patted the hides beside her. ‘I could always use a new man. They never seem to last.’
Snorri made to stand. ‘Keep the gold, völva.’
‘Well, it seems my wisdom is valued today. Now that you’ve paid for it so handsomely perhaps you might heed it, child.’ She made the coin vanish and sighed. ‘I’m old, my bones are dry, the world has lost its savour, Snorri. Go, die, spend yourself in the deadlands … it matters little to me, my words are a pretty noise for you, your mind is set. The waste sorrows me, young and full of juice you are, but in the end, in the end we’re all wasted by the years. Think on it, though. Did those who stand in your path just start to covet Loki’s key this winter?’
‘I—’ Snorri knew a moment of shame. His thoughts had been so narrowed on the choice he’d made that the rest of the world had escaped him.
‘As your tragedies draw you south … wonder how those tragedies came to be and whose hand truly lay behind them.’
‘I’ve been a fool.’ Snorri found his feet.
‘And you’ll keep being one. Words can’t turn you from this course. Maybe nothing can. Friendship, love, trust, childish notions that have left this old woman … but, whatever the runes have to say, these are what rule you, Snorri ver Snagason, friendship, love, trust. They’ll drag you into the underworld, or save you from it. One or the other.’ She hung her head stared into the fire.
‘And this door I seek? Where can I find it?’
Ekatri’s wrinkle of a mouth puckered into consideration. ‘I don’t know.’
Snorri felt himself deflate. For a moment he had thought she might tell him, but it would have to be Skilfar. He started to turn.
‘Wait.’ The völva raised a hand. ‘I don’t know. But I can guess where it might lie. Three places.’ She returned her hand to her lap. ‘In Yttrmir the world slopes into Hel, so they say. In the badlands that stretch to the Yöttenfall the skies grow dim and the people strange. Go far enough and you’ll find villages where no one ages, none are born, each day follows the next without change. Further still and the people neither eat nor drink nor sleep but sit at their windows and stare. I’ve not heard that there is a door – but if you wish to go to Hel, that is a path. That is the first. The second is Eridruin’s Cave on the shore of Harrowfjord. Monsters dwell there. The hero Snorri Hengest fought them, and in his saga it speaks of a door that stands in the deepest part of those caverns, a black door. The third is less sure, told by a raven, a child of Crakk, white-feathered in his dotage. Even so. There is a lake in Scorron, the Venomere, dark as ink, where no fish swim. In its depths they say there is a door. In older days the men of Scorron threw witches into those waters, and none ever floated to the surface as corpses are wont to do.’
‘My thanks, völva.’ He hesitated. ‘Why did you tell me? If my plan is such madness?’
‘You asked. The runes put the door in your path. You’re a man. Like most men you need to face your quarry before you can truly decide. You won’t let go of this until you find it. Maybe not even then.’ Ekatri looked down and said no more. Snorri waited a moment longer, then turned and left, watched by a single eye floating in its jar.
‘Assassins?’ I lifted my head, the room continuing to move after I stopped. ‘Nonsense. You never mentioned any attack.’
Snorri lifted his jerkin. A single ugly wound ran down his side, far back, just past the ribs, salt crusted as he’d described. I may have seen it when Borris’s daughters were washing him back in Olaafheim after the Fenris wolf got hold of him, or perhaps he had been turned the wrong way … in any event I didn’t recall it in my inebriation.
‘So how much does it cost to hire assassins then?’ I asked. ‘Just for future reference. And … where’s the money? You should be rich!’
‘I gave most of it to the sea, so that Aegir would grant us safe passage,’ said Snorri.
‘Well that didn’t bloody work!’ I banged the table, perhaps a little harder than I meant to. I can be an excitable drunk.
‘Most of it?’ Tuttugu asked.
‘I paid a völva in Trond to treat the wound.’
‘Did a piss poor job from what I could see,’ I interjected, holding onto the table to keep from sliding past it.
‘It was beyond her skill, and while we stay here it only grows worse. Come, we’ll sail at dawn.’
Snorri stood and I guess we followed, though I’ve no memory of it.
I woke the next morning under sail and with a head sore enough to keep me curled in the prow groaning for the mercy of death until well past noon. The previous evening returned to me in fragments over the course of the next few days but it took an age to assemble the pieces into anything that made sense. And even then it didn’t make much sense. I consoled myself with our steady progress toward home and the civilized comforts thereof. As my head eased I planned out who I would see first and where I’d spend my first night. I would probably ask for Lisa DeVeer’s hand, assuming she hadn’t been dragged to the opera that night and burned with the rest. She was the finest of the old man’s daughters and I’d grown very fond of her. Especially in her absence. Thoughts of home kept me warm, and I huddled in the prow, waiting to get there.
The sea is always changing – but mostly for the worse. A cold and relentless rain arrived with the next morning and plagued us all day, driven by winds that pushed the ocean up before them into rolling hills of brine. Snorri’s dreadful little boat wallowed around like a pig trying to drown, and by the time evening threatened even the Norsemen had had enough.
‘We’ll put in at Harrowheim,’ Snorri told us, wiping the rain from his beard. ‘It’s a little place I know.’ Something about the name gave me a bad feeling but I was too eager to be on solid ground to object, and I guessed that even driven as he was the Norseman would rather spend the night ashore.
So, with the sun setting behind us we turned for the dark coastline, letting the wind hurl us toward the rocks until at the last the mouth of a fjord revealed itself and we sailed on in. The fjord proved itself a narrow one, little more than two hundred yards wide, its shores rising steeper than a flight of stairs, reaching for the serrated ridges of sullen rock that cradled the waters.
Aslaug spoke to me while the two Norsemen busied themselves with rope and sail. She sat beside me in the stern, clad in shadow and suggestion, impervious to the rain and the tug of the wind.
‘How they torment you with this boat, Prince Jalan.’ She laid a hand on my knee, ebony fingers staining the cloth, a delicious feeling soaking into me. ‘Baraqel guides Snorri now. The Norseman doesn’t have your strength of will. Where you were able to withstand the demon’s preaching Snorri is swayed. His instincts have always been—’
‘Demon?’ I muttered. ‘Baraqel’s an angel.’