Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

I emerged to find that the rain had stopped and that Kara was sitting on a broken-down wall, watching the slow turn of the stars above the tattered clouds.

“Checking up on me?” she asked as I drew near, stumbling over the unfamiliar ground.

“I wish people would check on me more often,” I said. “I could usually use the help.”

“Your grandmother and her sister have the Blue Lady trapped in there.” Kara nodded toward the glow above the roofs of Blujen.

“She deserves what’s coming to her.” I stood close to Kara now and leaned my hip against the wall she sat on. “She deserves all of it.”

“Does she?” Kara pursed her lips and returned her attention to the stars.

I opened my mouth but it took a while for the words to come out. “Of course! She wants to burn the whole world, Kara! Not a barn or a village or . . .” I looked around, “. . . a city. The whole damn world. Just so she can be empress of the fire.”

Kara sucked her lip. “The Wheel is turning. The wise say it can’t be stopped. All the Lady Blue is doing is pushing it a bit harder. Choosing her own time for the end. A time when some few might survive. If the end’s coming soon is it so terrible to make that end a little sooner?”

“Yes!” I spread my hands and gave her an incredulous look. “Hennan’s going to die one day . . . so let’s stab him now if there’s some advantage in it? The Lady Blue deserves everything my grandmother is going to give her.”

“I suppose she does, but that’s not the same as being wrong. Have you thought about what we’re doing, Jalan?”

“I haven’t thought about much else. The last thing I wanted to do less than go to Osheim was walk into Hell.”

She looked toward the tent at that. “Have you talked to him yet?”

“About Osheim?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “About Hel. About what happened to him when you abandoned him.”

“I didn’t . . .” Her scowl made me give up my denial. “He says he’s at peace. He doesn’t want to talk.”

“Men. Idiots all of you. Big or small. Young or old.” She shook her head. “He needs to talk. It’s not over until he tells his friends what happened. Any fool knows that. And you’re all he’s got left.”

“Hmmm.” I would place “having that conversation with Snorri” quite high on the list of things I didn’t ever want to do. “What exactly did you mean before, about the Lady Blue not being wrong? The key can save us . . . right? This isn’t entirely a fool’s errand? I mean . . . I don’t mind long odds . . .” Actually I did, I minded them very much. “But a suicide mission?”

“Skilfar says even if we manage to turn off the Builders’ machine in Osheim it might only delay things. The machine is pushing us to destruction but when you stop pushing something it often rolls on a way by itself, and if it’s reached a slope it can keep on going until it hits the bottom.”

“Skilfar says? How would she know? And how would you know what she knows?”

Kara smiled, reminding me of how I had once doted on her. “Individuals like my grandmother can reach out to trained minds across any distance, and when she chooses to speak to me I can reply.”

The warm feelings that had been stirring vanished in a moment as I imagined Skilfar watching me out of Kara’s eyes. For a moment imagination painted wrinkles across Kara’s face, tightened her skin there, loosened it here, pointed this, blunted that, and gave me the ice witch herself, weighing me with the coldest stare.

Kara ran a hand into her hair, as if looking for the runes she had once worn. It broke the spell.

“So we should just give up because it might not work?” I was less hostile to the idea than my question indicated.

“The key could be used to ease a passage from what comes before the conjunction to what comes after. Some might say it would be better to use the key to inherit the future rather than run such a risk to try to save the past.”

“But when the Wheel turns too far everything is going to burn-that’s what everyone keeps telling me!”

“The Blue Lady says there will be an afterwards. Unlike anything we’ve known. And those who pass through the conjunction will be gods in a new world. The Lady Blue isn’t destroying this world, that’s the Builders and their Wheel. She can’t stop it. Your grandmother can’t stop it. Skilfar can’t stop it. We’re all heading toward the falls and no matter how hard we paddle . . . we’re all going over. All the Lady Blue is doing is paddling forward, building up speed to make the jump to something new. She doesn’t care about the Dead King, she doesn’t want what he wants. He’s just the tool she’s using to crack the world open sooner rather than later.”

“You’ve been talking to her!” I knew it for truth as I spoke the words.

“I’ve seen her in my mirror.” Kara shrugged. “She’s not the devil, and I’m no sheep to be led by another’s opinion. I listen. I consider. I make up my own mind.”

“And?” I spread my hands.

“I’m undecided.” She straightened and slid from the wall. Spots of rain began to fall around us.

“But she’s evil! I saw her kill-”

“You say she’s evil because one of the people her cause needed to die was your mother. But the Red Queen’s cause has led to the deaths of thousands, plenty of them mothers. Look around you.” She swung an arm at the ruins.

“I . . . I expect . . .” I tried to find the words to explain why she was wrong. “Most of them probably ran for it.”

“Your people are the invaders. Snorri told me that he saw the onearmed man who tortured you-in a Red March tabard, here in Blujen, walking with soldiers.”

“Cutter John?” I found I was hugging myself and the night seemed colder, more full of terrors. “I thought that bastard would be dead by now.”

“Men who can get information from captives quickly are a valuable resource in war, Jal.”

“It’s a mistake. Red March doesn’t have an inquisition. We’re the good ones . . . I’ll tell the queen. I’ll-”

“Look behind the wall.” Spoken softly to the night.

The rain fell harder now and I didn’t want to look behind the wall.

“Make your own decision, Jalan. But do it with your eyes open.” She brushed past me, bound for the tent.

The rain started to fall in earnest and clouds had stolen the light of moon and stars, but a tongue of flame still licked from a pile of blackened beams ten yards past the wall on which Kara had been sitting. With a curse I hunched my shoulders against the coldness of the raindrops and leaned over the wall where it stood at its lowest.

A girl’s corpse lay curled at the foot of the wall. She lay there as she had lain for our whole conversation, as she had lain when we pitched the tent and while we slept, eyes to the sky filled with cold water. Half her face had been burned black, the skin peeling away in dark squares, but I could tell she had been young, pretty even, her hair long and dark like my mother’s. I almost pulled away without realizing the bundle against her chest was a baby. I wish I had.

We came into Blujen on a grey morning beneath a cold rain. Tears for the dead.

A squad of ten Red March infantry escorted us along the town’s high street. Fire had erased many of the signs of fighting but I didn’t have to look hard to see them. In one place bodies lay in a heap, civilians uniformed in mud, a silent mound. The Dead King would have them hunting me if I stayed long enough for him to register the key. I saw soldiers bringing timbers ready to build a pyre, taking their leisure and complaining beneath their loads. If they had been at Vermillion’s walls a week earlier they would be running to build it!