Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

Freja stands, golden hair coiling down her back, the woman who saved him, who was his life. Egil, fire-haired terror, cheeky, mischievous, a boy who loved his father and believed Snorri would wrestle trolls to keep him safe. And sweet Einmyria, dark as her father, beautiful as her mother, sharp, and clever, trusting and honest, too wise for her years, too short a time spent playing by the Uulisk.

“Only their sorrows are here.” Tuttugu steps in beside his friend, reaching down to put a hand upon his shoulder. “They didn’t need them any more. They won’t turn-their sorrow can’t see you, because you’re no part of it. When you leave this place they’ll be gone. But while you are here Freja and the children can hear you. What you speak here will reach them.”

Snorri wipes his face. “Where are they?”

Tuttugu sighs. “A völva told me this. One you’ve met before. Ekatri.

She came here.”

“She’s dead?”

“I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. That doesn’t matter. What she told me is the important thing, and it’s complicated so don’t interrupt me or I’ll forget parts and get it wrong.

“The magic that we see in the world-the necromancers, mages like Kelem, all that . . . it comes from the Wheel. It’s what the Builders did to us, to themselves. It made each of us capable of magic through nothing more than focusing our will. The Wheel allows wants to become real. Some of us are better at it than others, and without training none of us seem to be very good at it.

“The thing is-that even though most of us aren’t good at wielding the magic the Wheel gave us . . . together we can move mountains. When someone tells a story and that story spreads and grows and people believe it and want it . . . the Wheel turns and makes it so.

“All this.” Tuttugu flaps an arm at the fjord. “It’s here because we were told it was here, we wanted it to be here. I’m not just talking about this place. I mean all of Hel. I mean the souls, the rivers, every rock and stone, each demon, Hel herself, all of it. It’s not real-it’s what the Wheel has given us because the stories we tell ourselves have bound about us so tight, we believe them, we want them, and now we have them.”

Snorri heaves in a deep breath, his mind turning in great circles, as slow as the gyre above the house. “Where are my family, Tutt?”

Tuttugu grips his shoulder. “Before the Wheel there was an older magic, far deeper, less showy, more impressive. There still is. Nobody understands it. But we feel it’s there. Everyone has their own ideas about it, their own story to tell about it. Our ancestors told a story about Asgard and the gods. Perhaps it’s true. But this.” He waves again. “Is not it. This is the dream of men. Made for us.”

“Freja and the children are waiting by a gate that won’t open until the Wheel of Osheim is broken. Beyond it is whatever has always waited for us when we die. The true end of the voyage.

“You’ve seen this place. Didn’t it strike you as wrong? Is this really what we have waiting for us for all eternity?” The fat Viking slumps. “I’m no sage, Snorri. I can hardly pronounce ‘philosophy’, let alone make sense of it. But is this place where you want your children until the end of time? Even if Hel sends them to the holy mountain . . . Helgafell’s a place you can visit just like this one. Don’t you want something for them that is beyond our imagination, not a copy of it? That’s what Freja wants . . .”

“Who . . .” Snorri clears his throat, his words hoarse. “Who brought them to this gate?”

Tuttugu sighs again. “Ekatri. She said she knew you would come here, and that if you found Freja and brought her out, along with the children, it would be an awful thing for all of you, worse than death, not at first, but slowly, by degrees, you would start to hate each other, and in the end that hate would consume you all, utterly.

“Also you might break the world doing it.”

Snorri hangs his head. A hollow pain fills him, and next to it the complaints of cut and torn flesh are nothing.

“Speak to them, Snorri. They know you’re here. They’ve waited for you, and they will hear you. Go on,” Tuttugu says, his voice gentle. “They stayed because they knew you would come. Not because they needed you to come.” He turns to go, axe in hand.

Snorri glances through the doorway, down the slope to the lake. Three tall warriors are climbing from a scaled boat, each of them black on their left side, white on the right.

“Stay, speak,” Tuttugu urges. “I’ll deal with them.”

Snorri moves to stand by Tuttugu’s side, reaching for his own axe.

Tuttugu shakes his head, closing his faceplate. “You didn’t come here for this.” He turns away. “Neither of us can count the number of battles you saved me in. Now it’s my turn. Go.”

Snorri looks once more at his friend and nods.

“We’ll meet again in Valhalla.” Tuttugu grins. “I’m not facing Ragnarok without you beside me.”

“Thank you.” Snorri inclines his head, eyes full once more.

Tuttugu squeezes Snorri’s shoulder a last time and leaves the house.

As the long silence wore on I began to glimpse the tunnel, Kara’s orichalcum light throwing our shadows across the curve of the wall, no sound, our footsteps deadened by the dust of a thousand years.

“Did you speak to them?” My voice came rough and echoed ahead, following the arc of the Wheel, vanishing into the darkness.

“I did,” Snorri said. “And it gave me peace.” The Viking paced a hundred yards before he spoke again, and while he held quiet I started to hear distant hints of pursuit from behind us.

Snorri cleared his throat. “When I came out of the house Tuttugu was waiting for me. He said he would guard them as long as he could. I told him I would stop the Wheel’s engines and free Freja and my children from Hel. Or die trying.”

“Where will they go?” I hadn’t quite followed that part, or thought Tuttugu capable of delivering such a speech. But then, I’d underestimated the man time and again.

“To whatever has always waited for us beyond life,” Snorri said. “They will be free of the Wheel. Released from man’s dreams and stories and lies. You’ve seen it yourself, Jal. Is that where you want those you love to spend eternity?”

My mother was assuredly in Heaven, but on the other hand my father, cardinal or not, was definitely in Hell if the rules he occasionally preached held any truth. Most importantly though, it was not where I wished to spend forever.

“What’s this?” Hennan pointed to a sign fixed to the wall, so covered in grime that we had nearly passed it by.

“We don’t have time!” I stared back into the darkness, ears straining for those sounds again. At any moment Cutter John could race into view.

“International . . .” Kara was already rubbing dirt away from the sign with her sleeve. “Kollaboration . . .”

“It looks like gibberish to me, come on!” The lettering was alien, though faintly familiar.

“It’s an old version of Empire tongue, very corrupted.” She rubbed away more of the dirt. The sign seemed to be enamelled metal and in many places corrosion had broken up the surface beneath the grime. “I can’t read the rest. The first letters are bigger though. I.K.O.L. That last word might be ‘Laboratory’.”

“What’s a laboratory?” Hennan asked, looking up at me for some reason.

“It’s something that wastes your time while monsters creep out of the dark to kill you,” I said.

“There’s a picture here too.” Kara wiped at it with her filthy sleeve. “It can’t be . . .”

Despite my fears I moved to join her. Beneath the large title running several feet across the top of the sign were three pictures, side by side, head-and-shoulders portraits, painted with exquisite detail. A balding grey-haired man with glass lenses over his eyes; a middle-aged man, black-haired and serious, his face divided by a beak of a nose; and a young man with a wild shock of brown hair, his features narrow, eyes large and dark.