Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

“What’s wrong?” Snorri stepped off the last rung, cramming himself in behind us.

“I don’t know.” I looked for a keyhole. Normally the key made its own.

“Try again.” Hennan hissing from behind me.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Sarcasm is wasted on children.

I pressed the key against the door, flat between my palm and the steel. “Open!”

The portal shuddered and a noise like a giant grinding his teeth started up beneath us, vibrating through the soles of my boots. “Open, damn you! In the name of Loki!”

I felt a sharp pain deep between my eyes and somewhere in the thickness of the wall an unbreakable something broke. The door grated back into a recess in the wall.

“Builder locks were made to hold,” Kara said and pushed me forward.

The room beyond lit as I stepped over the threshold. A great mirror dominated the far wall. I say it was a mirror, though it showed only the Lady Blue’s sanctum, and nothing in that room moved, so one might think it a painting. It stood maybe nine feet tall and as wide across as my spread arms. The edges fractured in strange patterns, breaking into tendrils of mirror and finally into a peculiar sparkling dust or smoke.

I took one more step before stopping, arms pinwheeling as I tried not to take another-not easy with the others crowding behind me. “Stop!”

“Why?” Kara at my shoulder.

I swept my arm around in answer, index fingers extended to point at the bright yellow crosshatching painted in a band across the floor, following up each wall and across the ceiling. “It’s not shielded.”

“How bad can that be?” Snorri grabbed my shoulder and thrust me forward.

In a heartbeat I found myself face to face with Cutter John, his face broken by his skull-grin that was far more terrifying than rage. Iron-hard fingers closed on my upper arm and collarbone. Snorri jerked me back and I came free with a scream, flesh torn and bruised where Cutter John’s grip had almost got a proper hold.

Snorri and I both fell back, the Viking stumbling into the wall while managing to slow my descent to the floor. Cutter John threw himself forward . . . and flattened against the invisible shields, spreading and dissipating like a liquid against glass.

“He’s gone,” Snorri said, heaving me up.

“What the hell were you doing?” I screamed.

“Testing.”

“Well test with your own damn self next time!” I straightened my shirt, then rubbed tentatively at the scrapes Cutter John’s fingers had left on me. They hurt. Wincing, I looked up to see Snorri taking my advice, stepping forward, axe-haft held across his chest like a bar to ward off attack.

The figure rose almost immediately, the ground opening, swallowing itself to reveal a fissure like that at the back of Eridruin’s Cave on the Harrowfjord, the one that had swallowed Kelem’s shade back into Hell.

Out scrambled Einmyria, muddy and howling, an awful noise that made me want to drive a knife into each ear to kill my hearing. As Snorri’s child raised her skinless face to us flies rose all about her, vomited from the pit in tens of thousands. I saw her hands, the end of each finger darkening into a cruel black claw. And then I saw nothing but buzzing flies until Snorri hurtled back across the yellow crosshatching and the whole nightmare broke into fading wisps like smoke rising into still air.

Snorri, back against the wall once more, stood doubled over, his face hidden behind the dark fall of his hair. For a long minute no one spoke. I watched the mirror, the false calm of Mora Shival’s inner sanctum, praying that the Lady Blue would not return from whatever business kept her elsewhere in her tower and see us as we saw her.

“I’m sorry.” Snorri spoke at last. “It was wrong of me to push you forward. It can be hard to understand the depth of another person’s fear.”

“We could throw something to break the mirror . . .” Hennan suggested.

“I’m all out of rocks,” I said. “And I’d rather not lose my sword. Plus, there’s no guarantee the mirror will break . . .” I shot Snorri a sideways glance. “An axe is a good throwing weapon . . .”

Snorri scowled and, stepping away from the wall, plucked the dagger from its scabbard on my hip then flung it at the mirror. It hit dead centre with enough force to bury it hilt-deep in a man . . . and bounced off to come skittering back over the painted boundary.

Kara moved between us as I picked up my dagger.

“If I set this to the mirror,” Kara opened her palm to reveal an iron rune tablet no larger than my thumbnail, “and say brjóta -which means ‘break’ in the old tongue, it will break.”

I gestured toward the mirror. “Be my guest.”

Kara narrowed her eyes at me, then advanced toward the boundary, arm extended, one finger reaching out to touch. She moved so slowly that sometimes I thought her motionless. Even so, the effect proved sudden. Darkness blossomed where her fingertip brushed the shield’s limits, spreading like drops of ink in water. Within moments night had swallowed the space beyond and a pervasive silence wrapped us.

No sound. I held my breath. And then the faintest creak. Perhaps a floorboard beneath a foot.

Kara pulled her hand back as if bitten. “I can’t go in there,” she whispered. I shivered at the thought of a darkness that could scare a dark-sworn mage. The fear made her look older, as if something precious had been sucked from her. She drew a deep breath as the darkness evaporated.

“I’ll go.”

I whipped around.

“I’ll do it.” A small voice, but firm. Hennan held out his hand to Kara. “Give me the rune.”

“You can’t.” Snorri shook his head. “You saw what it’s like in there. And it’s not what you saw that you should be worried about, it’s whatever is in you that’s going to come out. The effect is so much stronger down here than it was on the surface . . .”

Hennan ignored Snorri, holding Kara’s gaze. “You told them I should come. You said, ‘what could be more valuable than someone whose family has resisted the pull of the Wheel for generations?’”

“Yes but . . .” Kara faltered. “This is something different. You saw-”

“Anyone who comes close to the Wheel can call themselves a wrongmage.” Hennan spoke over her. “Jal made the ground open up and swallow someone.” He mimed it with his hands. “But most of them aren’t wrongmages for very long. The Wheel kills them.”

“Too right!” I said. “And it’s not a good death either. You’re mad if you want to go in there.” I found I didn’t want to watch the boy die.

“My grandfather’s grandfather was Lotar Vale. He worked his magics closer to the Wheel than almost any before or since, and he did it for ten years-then found the strength to leave! That’s why my family don’t feel the pull. Lotar’s blood runs in our veins. The horrors don’t come for us.” It would take a practised liar to spot the hesitation, but I could tell he was just guessing.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Kara said.

“Let him try,” Snorri rumbled.

“What?” Kara took the boy’s arm, as if he might throw himself across the boundary at any moment.

“He’s old enough to know his own mind. In two years he’ll be a man. Unless we fail here in which case nobody will be anything in two years’ time.” Snorri waved at the mirror. “If we don’t break it and the Blue Lady sees us, you think she’s going to take him on as her little helper? Or kill him with the rest of us?”

Kara said nothing but held out her hand, the iron tablet dark against the whiteness of her palm. Hennan took it, brushed a hand up through the red shock of his hair, glanced nervously back at Snorri and me, then put a foot over the boundary. Took another step. Wholly inside the unshielded area now, he looked back, lips twitching toward a smile.