Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

“ These are doors.” I set a hand to the surface of the one before me and the key on my chest rang with the same note, making my skin tingle with the vibration.

I counted thirteen of them, all translucent save for the one dead centre of the left row. That one stood black as lies.

Snorri came to stand beside me. He seemed diminished in this place where the scale made ants of us all. He held his axe before him, the manacle cuts on his wrists burning red and angry. His whole body curled around the assassin’s wound and a crystal excrescence clad one side of him from hip to armpit, sharp with spiky outgrowths. “Which is mine? The black one?”

“They are none of them yours, northman.” The voice rang behind us, a grating atonal thing that reminded me of the clockwork soldiers.

Turning, we saw first a throne of salt, carved in pillars and roundels, grand as any king’s. The oak boards, upon which it sat, rested on the backs of several more of the silver-steel spiders, the meshing forest of their legs moving quick as bards’ fingers across lute strings to propel both platform and throne smoothly on.

Hunched in the salt chair like a stain against the whiteness of it, a wizened figure, a corpse I took it for at first, grey and naked, sunken, emaciated, the skin pierced in many places by sharp white crystals of salt, growing in clusters like frost on frozen twigs.

“These are my halls.” The head on that corpse-like body raised itself to view us, the glimmer of what might be an eye far back in the darkness of its sockets. Around a neck of bone and skin a device of silver-steel, bedded in the grey flesh and facing a perforated grille toward us. Similar contraptions sat in the necks of clockwork soldiers, generated their voices for them.

“Kelem-”

“You were not wise to come here, witch.” The mechanical voice cut across Kara. “Of Skilfar’s brood are you? Her judgment is usually better than this.” As Kelem spoke more spiders came into view, smaller ones, flowing over the back of his throne, some with bodies the size of hands, others no larger than a coin. They moved about the mage in a complex tide, shifting his body, changing the position of his arms, so that like a marionette he became animated in some dreadful approximation of life.

When you invest in self-deception as heavily as I do there come points at which a swift audit of the truth is forced upon you and I can attest that the sudden realization of what a fool you have been is as cruel as any knife thrust. In my mind’s eye we had sneaked into the mines and found the door Snorri sought while Kelem dreamed. Even with the spider leading us to Kelem I thought we might find what we needed before we reached him. Now it seemed that Snorri must trade away my last hope of salvation just to visit a place any knife could dispatch him to. And if Kelem chose not to bargain but simply to turn us into four columns of salt. . then all our hope lay in Kara’s spear.

“You sent assassins after me.” Snorri spoke past teeth gritted against agony. I could almost see the slow march of the salt growing across his flesh.

“If you believe that then it was foolish to come here, Snorri ver Snagason.”

“In Eridruin’s Cave you tormented me with a demon in the shape of my daughter.” Snorri lifted his axe.

“Not me, Norseman. Maybe some ghost of my past, feeling my will that you should come here to my home. But the past is a different country, I’m no longer responsible for what happens there. Age absolves a man’s crimes.”

Kara interjected, perhaps worried Snorri might attack and steal her chance with the spear. “But you sent no more assassins, no more shades. Did you think to bargain instead?”

“It is true-I do like to bargain.” Some rusty sound that may have been a laugh escaped the voice grille. “And it would seem you need something from me, Snagason. I could help you with this problem you have. .” A larger spider moved Kelem’s hand along his side, a gesture mirroring the line of the wound eating Snorri up.

“I seek a door. Nothing beyond that.” And Snorri straightened, his mouth set in a tight line of pain, the crystals cladding his side cracking, plates of salt falling clear.

Kelem scanned each of us, his sunken eyes lingering on me, then on Hennan, the legs of the spider that first raised his head now visible among the pale straggles of his hair. “I don’t believe you have the key, Snagason. Though it is a mystery why a man would give up such a treasure if he did not have to.” His gaze settled on Kara, lingering on the black and silver spear in her hand then moving to her face. “Give me Loki’s gift, little völva.”

Kara moved fast. Faster than when I punched her and she knocked me flat. Two short steps and she released Gungnir with a crack of her arm. The spear hammered into Kelem’s chest, pinning him to his throne, a throw Snorri would have been proud of.

None of us moved. Nobody spoke. A spider tilted Kelem’s head to look down at the spear. Another raised his arm to rest his forearm across the haft. “You took the wrong door, völva. They call me ‘master of the ways.’ Did you not wonder if I might not notice you passing through such portals as stand close to the Wheel of Osheim? I gave you this.” A salt-crusted finger tapped Gungnir’s dark wood. “I gave it to you to make you brave-”

“Sageous helped you.” I clamped my mouth shut on the words, not meaning to draw attention to myself.

Kelem looked my way, head tilted in acknowledgment. “My skills detected you. I guided the dream-witch to sew this into your visions. He was well paid. A hireling, no more than that. You’ve no idea how hard it was to lead your slow and plodding minds to this plan, to guide you to the tools, to place them in your hands. .” He returned his gaze to Kara. “And now that you have attacked me Loki will not mind if I simply kill you and take the key from your body. Even so, out of respect for your grandmother, I give you this last opportunity to hand it to me of your own free will.”

“I don’t have it.” Kara let her arms hang at her side, as limp as her hair, defeated.

A noise like nails on slate rasped from Kelem’s voice grille, perhaps as close to fury as he could come, this desiccated imitation of a man. His head turned sharply back to Snorri. “How. . how is it that the one with the greatest power does not also bear the greatest weapon? You gave Odin’s own spear to a witch when she didn’t even own the key. Are you mad?”

“It isn’t Odin’s spear,” Snorri said. “And when I face what lies beyond death’s door I will be carrying my own axe, the axe my fathers bore, not somebody else’s spear.”

“Say your piece, Snagason. You’ve come far enough to say it.” Kelem’s mechanical voice held a twang of amusement.

Snorri looked my way, eyes dark, no sign of blue in the curious glow of the crystals. “You should speak with Prince Jalan Kendeth, heir to the throne of Red March. My friend. The key is his.”

Kelem made a noise of disgust and jerked a dismissive arm at us. “The key you bear leaves a mark in the world. The longer it is still the deeper that mark. The more it is used the deeper that mark. Once you started your journey I had no good idea where to seek it. But now you stand before me. . I see it is true. The princeling has the prize.” His eyes, glittering deep in their dry sockets, settled on me. “I will buy the key from you. Shall we. . haggle?”

Kelem had wanted the key-bearer to attack him. He’d dropped the spear into our laps to make us bold enough to do it. If his plan had worked he could have killed us and avoided Loki’s curse just as Snorri had avoided it when the Unborn Captain had attacked him. Now his plan had failed the mage needed to have me give him the key willingly, or else steal or trick it from me. I doubted he was any good at picking pockets, but he did have deep ones of his own. . I wondered quite how deep he would dig to own it.