The Wheel of Osheim

by Mark Lawrence

  ‘Wrong-mages must use this place for something, otherwise the years would have covered it over long ago.’ Kara stepped to the edge of the shaft and peered down, holding the orichalcum out. ‘There are rungs.’

  Kara went down first and I was happy to let her. Snorri followed, then Hennan.

  ‘Why am I last?’

  ‘It’s your imagination that’s trying to kill us,’ Snorri called back from the shaft.

  Kara’s illumination reached past the other two, casting a confusion of light and shadow on the ceiling above the hole. I shuffled my feet and waited for the boy to get out of the way so I could join them in the shaft. ‘Why is that?’ I called after them. ‘Why me?’

  I couldn’t make out the reply but I knew the answer already. My imagination had been attacking me my whole life – only here it had the weapons it needed. A vast underground machine, the crowning glory of the Builders, and all those engines deep below us now waking from their slumbers and devoting their energies to allowing my fears to make war on my hopes.

  A quick look through the doorway showed the ground starting to heave in the spot where I buried Cutter John. Moments later I was on that ladder down into the unknown, with Hennan complaining I was stepping on his fingers.

  ‘Are we safe here?’ I peered around the tunnel, suspicious of every shadow.

  We stood a little over a hundred yards beneath Osheim’s surface in a pipe-like tunnel perhaps six yards in diameter. Running along the centre, above our heads, a black pipe just a yard wide, stretched away into the darkness. I could see no means of support for it. Bands of silver-steel ringed the tunnel every few paces, each six inches across, like some kind of reinforcement. A hum, at first barely audible, filled the whole place, though after at short while, even though it grew no louder, you could feel it in your bones.

  I coughed to check that everyone hadn’t gone deaf. The sound echoed away into the darkness. ‘I said—’

  A sound from above cut me off. Someone missing a foothold.

  ‘No,’ Kara answered.

  ‘How’s he even climbing? He’s only got one fucking arm!’ It wasn’t fair. I’d escaped Cutter John twice, against all odds, only to deliver myself to him on the third occasion. Not even to him – to my own worst fears concerning him, wrapped up and made flesh by the power our idiot ancestors had left us.

  ‘I left Karl and walked up the valley where he had stood guard,’ Snorri said, moving away into the shadows. ‘In places the bones were heaped chest-high.’

  Kara and Hennan followed. I stood for a moment, ears straining for Cutter John’s descent but heard only Snorri’s voice and that old magic of his folded about me, drawing me on. I walked after them, my feet pursuing the ancient passage the Builders had left us, while my mind followed the Norseman back into Hel, too busy with his tale for the moment to bother plotting its own destruction.

  30

  Snorri moves up the gorge, past the remains of the demons his first-born son has slain in defence of his step-family.

  Above him the gyre in the sky tightens and narrows. Soon, Snorri knows, he will stand beneath its centre, at the eye of an invisible storm.

  The gorge widens into a valley, angling down now, out of the highlands. Snorri hobbles on, his wounds stiffening, the injury to his shoulder still pumping blood, the pain all through him like white wire.

  Ahead the valley reaches a neck after which it falls away too swiftly to be seen again, and beyond this narrow point a view opens up such as Snorri never imagined to see in Hel. He stands, his eyes filled with the Uulisk Fjord, soft with mist, its slopes spring-green, black woolly goats dotting the Niffr slopes high on the far side where the sun touches the land with gold. There should be a village here, houses scattered all the way down to the water’s edge – but all Snorri can see are the eight quays stretching out their slim fingers across the fjord, and a hundred yards back up the slope, a single house. Familiar even at this distance. His house.

  Ice fills his veins. The gyre in the sky centres above that lone house. The great turning in the heavens, the labyrinth of stone beneath it, all have led him here, to his past, his present, a place with no future. Snorri sets his jaw, holds his axe close against his chest, and walks on, so full of broken emotions that he seems a man on fire, and yet the hand around his heart clutches colder than ever.

  As he walks Snorri sees that slaughter has been done here too, the carnage strewn about. An arm here in the shadow of the rocks, a head there, offal strewn across a broad swathe of stone. Not misshapen demons but men, or beings like them, and not just men, but women too, shieldmaids armoured in the fashion of the north and bearing axes, spears, hammers. Each of them though, whether tall or short, broad or narrow, shares one trait that speaks of their origins. Every person there lies white-fleshed on the right, black on the left, the same with their armour, each axe or sword cast in a metal white as milk, their shields so black they might be holes cut into the day.

  ‘Servants of the goddess.’ Snorri kneels, wincing, to inspect a shieldmaid. An axe blow has sheared through the side of her helm. Hel must have sent her and the others to retrieve Freja’s soul and those of the children. Whoever killed them has not been gentle, but this was not the work of Karl’s sword. Snorri studies the woman’s white eye, reflecting the gyre above his shoulder, and her dark one, like a polished black stone. Her lips are drawn back in the snarl she wore when struck, the teeth behind serrated like a sawblade. Not human, then.

  Though Hel has no sun there is a sun here in this memory of the Uuliskind, and it is setting. Ahead of him in the neck of the valley, black against the sunset, a lone warrior, wide, armoured in ill-matched pieces, arms spread, a buckler held in one hand, an axe in the other, its blade a wedge for piercing mail.

  ‘Sven Broke-Oar?’ For a moment Snorri knows fear. The giant is the only man to have bested him: his strength is not human. Weak from loss of blood and crippled by his injuries, he knows this fight to be beyond him. Still on his knees the Northman whispers a prayer, the first to pass his lips in an age. ‘All-father, I have done my best. Watch me now. I ask only that you give me the strength that has left me.’ The prayer of a man who has met his challenges with an axe and a brave heart. The prayer of a man who knows this will not suffice. The prayer of a man who will not live to speak another.

  Snorri rises with a snarl, careless of his wounds, knowing that the gods are watching him. He stands, clothed in the ichor of demons and the scarlet of his own blood, hardly distinguishable from the beasts he has slain in such numbers.

  ‘I am ready.’ If Hel has set Sven Broke-Oar between him and his family then Sven Broke-Oar will die the second death. ‘Undoreth!’ he roars, and as if his shout is a spear launched at the heavens themselves the sky turns red as blood behind him. And then he charges.

  The warrior holds his ground as Snorri races toward him. He wears an outsized shoulder guard of spiked black iron, a pot helm, visored to offer only a slit for his eyes and perforations at the mouth. Black bands of iron around his chest and middle girdle a thick shirt of leather and layered padding. Iron plates sewn to leather trews defend both legs. Every part of his armour bears the signs of battle, bright cuts, dull crimson splashes, dented metal, torn leather.

  Twenty yards remain between them. The warrior raises his axe above him. Ten. The warrior tilts his head. ‘Snorri?’ Five. And lets the axe fall.

  Snorri, filled with battle-rage, swings his own axe in a decapitating arc, razored steel driven with the force of both arms. At the last moment mind over-rides muscle, and screaming with effort he pulls the blow, able to rob it of most of its power. Hel’s blade strikes the warrior’s gorget, coaxing a bright sound from the metal collar before falling away.

  ‘Snorri?’ Gauntleted hands fumble with the helm’s hinged faceplate.

  Snorri lowers his axe and uses it to support himself, heaving in laboured breaths.

  The faceplate comes free.

  ‘Tutt?’

  ‘I knew you’d come.
’ Tuttugu smiles. He lacks his beard, his chins raw where it was ripped away. The red slice Edris Dean’s knife made still marks Tuttugu’s throat, his face pale. His eyes though, they shine with joy. ‘I knew you’d make it.’

  ‘What in Hel’s name? What … Tuttugu … how?’

  ‘Ssshhh!’ Tuttugu raises a hand. ‘Don’t speak her name – not here. She’ll send more of her guards, and they’re hard to beat.’

  Snorri looks back at the body-strewn valley. ‘You did all this?’

  Tuttugu grins. ‘They didn’t all come at once.’

  ‘But still…’

  ‘I couldn’t let Freja and the children be taken, Snorri.’

  ‘But Karl…’

  ‘Karl could fight the demons, they’re just beasts following their instincts to hunt down stray souls. But to go up against Hel’s servants as they carry out their orders? That could get him thrown out of Valhalla. We couldn’t have that.’

  ‘But you…’

  ‘I haven’t taken up my place yet, so they can’t throw me out. When you’re bound for the halls you keep your body in Hel … or a copy of it I guess… Anyway, I went looking for Freja instead of going where I was supposed to.’

  Snorri reaches out and sets his hand on Tuttugu’s shoulder. ‘Tutt.’ He realizes that he hasn’t any words.

  ‘It’s all right. You’d do the same for me, brother.’ Tuttugu clasps Snorri’s wrist then moves on to lead the way.

  Snorri looks once more, out across the gorge that Tuttugu has held against all comers, then follows his friend down the slope toward the still waters below.

  A rowing boat lies close to shore, tied to a boulder in the shallows. Just beyond the rock the fjord’s bed shelves sharply down, becoming lost in clear dark water. Snorri wades out and takes the rope. The awful thirst in him cries out to drink, but he hasn’t come for water.

  Snorri climbs in, takes the oars. Tuttugu scrambles over the side to sit in the stern, and Snorri rows them out across the lake. There are no signs of pursuit back where the valley joins the fjord. The sky is the sky of the living world, dark with cloud, swirled as if by a god’s finger into a great spiral right above them. Thor’s work perhaps. Will the thunder speak before this journey ends?

  An evening mist clings to the waters. The freshness of the air speaks of early autumn, carrying hints of wood smoke, fish, and the distant sea. Each dip of the oars draws him closer. In the valley fear had seized him – fear that his strength would not be enough to win through, and that at the last the way of the warrior would not bring him to his heart’s desire. Now a new fear grows in him, its voice louder with each pull of the oars. What will he find? What will he say? What future is there for them? Snorri came to save his children, and instead feels more a child himself with each passing moment – scared to face the family he has failed – scared that he will be unequal to whatever task might be required of him now.

  Instinct slows his oars. He raises them, dripping, and the boat bumps gently against the Long Quay. Snorri loops the rope over an ancient post and clambers onto the walkway, his injuries making an old man of him.

  The slopes before him are those he was born upon, where he was raised from cot to manhood, where he raised children of his own. Tuttugu and Snorri fished from the quays as boys, ran riot among the huts when the longboats sailed in spring, chased girls. One in particular. What had her name been? A grin twists Snorri’s mouth. Hedwig, Tuttugu’s sweetheart when they had been nine. She’d chosen Tutt over him, perhaps his only victory in all those years, and Snorri had taken it with poor grace.

  Tuttugu stands with Snorri at the foot of the climb, waiting. Snorri catches himself delaying. Only his house lies on the slopes. His path is clear. And yet he stands here, not moving. The breeze tugs at him. Grass bends to its tune. High above on the ridges, goats move along their slow paths. Out over the fjord a gull slides down the wind. But none of them make a sound, not one single sound. And the house stands, waiting.

  ‘I’ll watch the lake,’ Tuttugu says.

  Courage comes in many forms. Some strains come harder to one man than the next. Snorri digs deep for the courage he needs to do this thing that has held him for so long, drawn him so far and by such strange paths. He puts one foot in front of the next, does it again, and walks the beaten path that he has walked so many times before.

  At the door to his house Snorri has to dig again. Images of the night Sven Broke-Oar brought the dead to Eight Quays fill his vision. The sounds of their screaming deafens him, their screams as he lay helpless beside the hut, buried by the snowfall from the roof.

  Blind he puts his hand to the door, fumbles the latch, pushes through.

  The hearth lies cold, the bed beneath furs and the furs beneath shadows, the kitchen corner tidy, the ladder to the attic in is proper place. They stand, all three, with their backs toward him, Freja between her children, a hand on Egil’s shoulder, the other on Emy’s head. All three silent, unmoving, heads bowed.

  Snorri tries to speak but emotion grips his throat too tightly and he can form no words. The air comes from him in sharp panting breaths – the kind a man might make when a spear runs him through and he seeks to master the pain. He feels his face twist into a grimace, cheeks rising as if they might somehow hold back the tears. In the doorway of his house Snorri ver Snagason falls to his knees, pressed there by a weight greater than the snow that held him down, his strength stolen more effectively than by any venomed dart. Wracked by sobs, he tries to speak their names and still no sound will break from his lips.

  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 h
as 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.’