his honour ever since against heated opposition who ‘had it from a trusted source’! It was common knowledge that the Duke of Grast sodomized small boys in the privacy of his castle, common knowledge that the Red Queen practised forbidden sorceries in her highest tower, common knowledge that the Silent Sister, a parlous witch whose hand lay behind much of the empire’s ills, was either in the Red Queen’s palm or vice versa. But until this brutish Norseman glanced her way I’d never encountered any other person who truly saw the blind-eye woman at my grandmother’s side.
Whether convinced by the Silent Sister’s pearl-eyed stare or the Red Queen’s command Snorri ver Snagason bowed his head and spoke of the dead.
‘In the Jarlson Uplands the frozen dead wander. Corpse tribes, black with frost, stagger in columns, lost in the swirl of the frostral. They say mammoth walk with them, dead beasts freed from the ice cliffs that held them far to the north from times before Odin first gave men the curse of speech. Their numbers are unknown but they are many.
‘When the gates of Niflheim open to release the winter, and the frost giants’ breath rolls out across the North, the dead come with it, taking whoever they can find to join their ranks. Sometimes lone traders, or fishermen washed up on strange shores. Sometimes they cross a fjord by ice bridges and take whole villages.’
Grandmother rose from her throne and a score of gauntleted hands moved to cover sword hilts. She cast a sour glance toward her offspring. ‘And how do you come to stand before me in chains, Snorri ver Snagason?’
‘We thought the threat came from the north: from the Uplands and the Bitter Ice.’ He shook his head. ‘When ships came up the Uulisk in depths of night, black-sailed and silent, we slept, our sentries watching north for the frozen dead. Raiders had crossed the Quiet Sea and come against the Undoreth. Men of the Drowned Isles broke amongst us. Some living, others corpses preserved from rot, and other creatures still – half-men from the Brettan swamps, corpse-eaters, ghouls with venomed darts that steal a man’s strength and leave him helpless as a newborn.
‘Sven Broke-Oar guided their ships. Sven and others of the Hardassa. Without their treachery the Islanders would never have been able to navigate the Uulisk by night. Even by day they would have lost ships.’ Snorri’s hands closed into huge fists and muscle heaped across his shoulders, twitching for violence. ‘The Broke-Oar took twenty warriors in chains as part of his payment. He sold us in Hardanger Fjord. The trader, a merchant of the Port Kingdoms, meant to have us sold again in Afrique after we’d rowed his cargo south. Your agent bought me in Kordoba, in the port of Albus.’
Grandmother must have been hunting far and wide for these tales – Red March had no tradition of slavery and I knew she didn’t approve of the trade.
‘And the rest?’ Grandmother asked, stepping past him, beyond arms’ reach, seemingly angled toward me. ‘Those not taken by your countryman?’
Snorri stared into the empty throne, then directly at the blind-eye woman. He spoke past gritted teeth. ‘Many were killed. I lay poisoned and saw ghouls swarm my wife. I saw Drowned men chase my children and couldn’t turn my head to watch their flight. The Islanders returned to their ships with red swords. Prisoners were taken.’ He paused, frowned, shook his head. ‘Sven Broke-Oar told me … tales. The truth would twist the Broke-Oar’s tongue … but he said the Islanders planned to take prisoners to excavate the Bitter Ice. Olaaf Rikeson’s army is out there. The Broke-Oar told it that the Islanders had been sent to free them.’
‘An army?’ Grandmother stood almost close enough to touch now. A monster of a woman, taller than me – and I overtop six foot – and probably strong enough to break me across her knee. ‘Who is this Rikeson?’
The Norseman raised an eyebrow at that, as if every monarch should know the tawdry history of his frozen wastes. ‘Olaaf Rikeson marched north in the first summer of the reign of Emperor Orrin III. The sagas have it that he planned to drive the giants from Jotenheim and bore with him the key to their gates. More sober histories say perhaps his goal was just to bring the Inowen into the empire. Whatever the truth, the records agree he took a thousand and more with him, perhaps ten thousand.’ Snorri shrugged and turned from the Silent Sister to face Grandmother. Braver than me – though that’s not saying much – I’d not turn my back on that creature. ‘Rikeson thought he marched with Odin’s blessing but the giants’ breath rolled down even so, and one summer’s day every warrior in his army froze where he stood and the snows drowned them.
‘The Broke-Oar has it that those taken from Uuliskind are excavating the dead. Freeing them from the ice.’
Grandmother paced along the front line of our number. Martus, little me, Darin, Cousin Roland with his stupid beard, Rotus, lean and sour, unmarried at thirty, duller than ditchwater, obsessed with reading – and histories at that! She paused by Rotus, another of her favourites and third in line by right – though still it seemed she would give her throne to Cousin Serah before him. ‘And why, Snagason? Who has sent these forces on such an errand?’ She met Rotus’s gaze as if he of all of us would appreciate the answer.
The giant paused. It’s hard for a Norseman to pale but I swear he did. ‘The Dead King, lady.’
A guard made to strike him down, though whether for the improper address or for making mock with foolish tales I couldn’t say. Grandmother stayed the man with a lifted finger. ‘The Dead King.’ She made a slow repetition of the words as if they somehow sealed her opinion. Perhaps she’d mentioned him before when I wasn’t listening.
I’d heard tales of course. Children had started to tell them to scare each other on Hallows Night. The Dead King will come for you! Woo, woo, woo. It took a child to be scared. Anyone with a proper idea of how far away the Drowned Isles were and of how many kingdoms lay between us would have a hard time caring. Even if the stories held a core of truth I couldn’t see any serious-minded gentleman getting overly excited about a bunch of heathen necromancers playing with old corpses on whatever wet hillocks remained to the Lords of the Isles. So what if they actually did raise a hundred dead men twitching from their coffins and dropping corpse-flesh with every step? Ten heavy horse would ride down any such in half an hour without loss and damn their rotting eyes.
I felt tired and out of sorts, grumpy that I’d had to stand half the morning and more listening to this parade of nonsense. If I’d been drunk too I might have given voice to my thoughts. It’s probably a good job I wasn’t, though – the Red Queen could scare me sober with a look.
Grandmother turned and pointed at the Norseman. ‘Well told, Snorri ver Snagason. Let your axe guide you.’ I blinked at that. Some sort of northern saying, I guessed. ‘Take him away,’ she said, and her guards led him off, chains clanking.
My fellow princes fell to muttering, and me to yawning. I watched the huge Norseman leave and hoped we’d be released soon. Despite the call of my bed I had important plans for Snorri ver Snagason and needed to get hold of him quickly.
Grandmother returned to her throne and held her peace until the doors had closed behind the last prisoner to exit.
‘Did you know there is a door into death?’ The Red Queen didn’t raise her voice and yet it cut through the princes’ chatter. ‘An actual door. One you can set your hand against. And behind it, all the lands of death.’ Her gaze swept across us. ‘There’s an important question you should ask me now.’
No one spoke – I hadn’t a clue but was tempted to answer anyway just to hurry things along. I decided against it and the silence stretched until Rotus cleared his throat at last and asked, ‘Where?’
‘Wrong.’ Grandmother cocked her head. ‘The question was “why?” Why is there a door into death? The answer is as important as anything you’ve heard today.’ Her stare fell upon me and I quickly turned my attention to the state of my fingernails. ‘There is a door into death because we live in an age of myth. Our ancestors lived in a world of immutable laws. Times have changed. There is a door because there are tales of that door, because myths and legends have grown about it over centuries, because it is set in holy books, and because the stories of that door are told and retold. There is a door