Boda swallowed, but she only allowed herself to hesitate a moment before stepping forward. Two paces and the green light was all she could see. She squared her shoulders and reached out her hand to feel her way blindly ahead of her -
- and when it met the gateway, it struck something solid. She frowned and pressed harder, putting her weight behind it, but nothing could move her fingers an inch past the rim of the gate.
"I'll go first, if you like," Petronius said, his voice shaking.
Boda realised that he thought she was afraid. She was, but that wasn't the problem. She turned to face the two men. "It's closed. It won't let me pass."
Petronius looked at Vali. "Is there some incantation, some ceremony we need to get through?"
Vali shook his head. "None that I know. The gates may only be closed from the inside, but it should be possible to enter them from either."
Boda took a step back towards them. "So we came all this way for nothing?"
Vali approached her, leaving Petronius and Nero behind. "Perhaps not. There are other ways to pass into death."
They were face to face now, and she saw that his was white with strain. He rested his hand against her shoulder and licked his lips.
"What other ways?" she asked him.
He pulled her closer still, and she thought for a second that he was going to kiss her, but he just rested his forehead against hers. "Do you trust me?"
She stopped her instant, automatic response, and thought about her answer. Did she trust him? She liked him, but that was far from the same thing. And she knew he hadn't always been honest with them. She still knew so little about him. In all the time they'd been together, she'd never been able to induce him to tell her his lineage or his chieftain. She shouldn't trust him - but she did.
"Yes," she said. "With my life."
He smiled at that, pulling back only a little. "That's generally considered unwise. But I promise you this, you'll have everything you need to get to the end. Everything you need you carry within you."
At first she felt the knife in her back only as a blow against her spine. A second later and what had seemed like an impact transmuted into a piercing pain worse than any she'd ever felt. The hilt settled snug against her skin, and she felt the prick of the blade emerging through her chest to dimple her tunic.
She looked down at it stupidly for a second. It was exactly where her heart lay, huddled in its cage of ribs. Then, as she looked back into Vali's eyes, he pulled out the blade and the blood gushed free. She had one moment to watch it spatter the white marble around her, and then she could see only blackness and the agony was nothing but a memory.
PART FOUR
Cineri Gloria Sera Est
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The phantom sensation of a knife sliding through Boda's flesh followed her into darkness. She thought she was screaming, but she couldn't feel her mouth. She couldn't hear the sound she made. Something that was her was still thinking, but it no longer had a head with which to do it, only a cloud of thought, of anger and betrayal.
The cloud was already dissipating. There was a wind, here in this lightless, loveless no-man's-land, and it wanted to blow her apart. She felt memories drifting away from her. Was that her childhood, seeping out? She was seven and she was climbing a tree, an oak deep in the old forest, she was happy and laughing - and then it was gone. Lost in the darkness.
There was something at the core of her, something the wind couldn't touch. But with all her memories gone, what would that thing be? Nothing that was Boda. Boda... was that her name? She was already forgetting.
No. No. Boda was her name. She had a childhood, a good one, and she wouldn't let it go. Her life had been full, though it had been short, and it had given her courage and strength. She used them now, pulling inward on the cloud of consciousness that was dissipating outward.
Something that wasn't her hand reached out for her childhood first. It struck other things, other memories - a morning of brilliant sunshine on Crete; the pain of childbirth in the dark of a smoke-filled hut, and I've only seen thirteen summers, only thirteen, don't let this be my last - but they weren't Boda's memories and she batted them aside.
Then another flash, another moment. The weight of a sword between her two chubby palms and it's so heavy, so much heavier than she'd ever imagined. Will she one day carry it in her hand, wield it in defence of her tribe? It seems impossible and she sighs and hands it back to her father, who's smiling at her through his brown beard.
This, this is hers. She pulls it in and goes to collect more. Here's the moment when she first knew a man, fourteen years old and terrified that it would hurt as much as she'd been told. Three years later and there she is, bleeding the remains of her husband's child into the dirt. They tell her she's broken inside, that there'll be no more babies for her. Two weeks later and her husband cries as she leaves him for the life of a warrior. Another year and he's found someone else. Two, and she sees his fat, red-faced child, balanced on his wife's hip. Boda feels a moment of hurt, the pulling sense of roads not taken. Six months more and she's in her first battle and she knows this is what she was born to do.
More and more memories. Her sword sliding slick through blood. Boots in the soil of the forest, leaves churning beneath in a pleasant-smelling mulch. The hot-sweet taste of mead. Fire in her gut where a pike pierced it. The long agony of fever. Darkness - and then light. The feel of chains around her wrists as she's led to Rome.
The Arena. Josephus. His poor mutilated body. The catacombs, seething with corpses. The green light. The gateway to death.
The knife in her back.
All her memories, together once again. She gathered them inside her and slammed the door shut, locking them inside. And then she thought about her body, the one she'd had and lost.
She remembered how her hand felt, gripped around the pommel of a sword. The slight slipperiness of sweat on her palm, the coolness as the metal carried her heat away from her. She thought about water, the sweet relief of it in her mouth after a hard day's work, trickling down the valley of her thighs when she bathed. She pictured her own skin, pale when she first arrived in Rome, darkening over the months she spent there, but never the olive of the city's native sons. She pictured her skin, and she imagined it wrapping around her, enclosing all these sensations of body, these feelings of physical being.
She imagined ears growing from it, the improbable whorl of her lobes. Hair, fine and fair, the exact colour of her mother's. She felt it stirring in a breeze that wasn't there, itching with dust against her scalp. And lastly she thought of her eyes, their insensitive hardness behind her lids when she blinked. She pictured the little creatures of light that lived inside them when they were shut.
And then she imagined opening them.
She lay in a field of green grass, above her head a sky that was a different blue from any she'd ever seen. Reaching high, high into it, beyond where her new-old eyes could see, a great ash tree grew. Its leaves would have blocked the sun, had there been a sun here to block.
It was Yggdrasil, the world tree, which holds up every level of the world.
And Boda lay in the lowest level of them all, the realm of the dead.
Petronius stared in horror as Boda's body slumped to the ground, sliding through the arms Vali still held loosely around her.
He'd choked a protest when the knife went in, but now he found himself without words. His fingers fumbled at his own sword belt, but anything he could do would be no more than revenge. Boda was already gone. She was gone.
When his sword was trembling in his hand, the tip pressed against Vali's chest, he thought that revenge might feel pretty good. That sending the barbarian's blood to mingle with that of the woman he'd murdered would give him the closest thing to joy he was ever likely to feel again.
"Don't be a fool," Vali said.
Petronius knew that he was crying, and wasn't ashamed. She deserved his tears. "You low-born scum," he said. "She trusted you."
Vali bowed his head. Nero slipped from Petronius's side to stand beside Boda's corpse, and the other man rested a gentle hand against his head. Petronius saw with a sickening surge of rage that Vali left a bloody handprint in the child's fair hair.
Then Vali looked up again, and there was no apology in his eyes. There was - something. Something old and a little frightening and despite himself Petronius looked away.
"She gave me her trust," Vali said. "As I required. And now you must do the same."
"Why must I?" Petronius said.
The other man smiled, looking over his shoulder. "Because you have absolutely no choice."
Petronius's sword dropped as he spun. Somewhere in the back of his head, he'd heard the footsteps all along. He'd known they weren't alone. And now when he saw Sopdet, flanked on either side by the walking dead, he wasn't terribly surprised.
Her saw her shooting a troubled glance at the gateway between realms. But when she saw that the sick green light still shone through it, unbroken, she smiled. "A good plan," she said to Petronius. "What a shame that only I have the power to breach the land of death from this side."
Petronius was too shaken for bravura. He glared at her hatefully. "Then kill me. Kill me now, there's nothing left to live for."
She took a few more steps nearer, leaving her dead bodyguards behind. "I will, of course. But perhaps first I shall keep you a prisoner by my side, to share my full triumph. We'll walk the length of the earth, and where once the Pax Romana reigned, you'll see the Mortis Romana. Every person, every animal in the world will be a dead shell for the spirit living inside it. Only the trees and grass will remain as they were, green witnesses to the new world."
Her eyes were alight with a pleasure that was nowhere near sane. With her perfect rosebud mouth and fine high cheekbones and night-dark hair she should have been beautiful. But she wasn't. She was hideous.
And then, for the first time, her eyes gazed beyond Petronius, to the man she'd inadvertently stopped him from killing. Her already pale face drained of all colour and her mouth gaped open, a round black hole of shock.
"You!" she said.
Vali stepped forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with Petronius. He bowed ironically. "Fancy running into you here," he said. "What a pleasant surprise, sister."
Boda lay for a while, staring up at the sunless blue sky between the long thin stalks of grass. It must be late in the year, in this realm without time. The seed pods had released their burdens, to drift in the gentle breeze across her face. She blew them idly away, watching the non-patterns the seeds made in the air, and thought that this was very pleasant. As she'd told Vali, she had nothing to fear from death.
Vali. He'd sent her here. And - she sat up, brushing the grass out of her way - he'd sent her here for a purpose. She must close the gates of death the only way a person could, from the inside. He hadn't had the courage to come himself, so he'd stabbed her in the back to send her here by the fastest route. His betrayal hurt more than she could have imagined, but it didn't alter the job that needed to be done.
She rose to her feet, and now she could see the grass, stretching into the distance. It seemed to go on forever, without horizon. No mountain or hill or landmark marred its endless sameness. Only its colour changed a little, as a breeze blew over and through it, and the stalks bent this way and that, exposing first their soft yellow underside and then their harsher, greener outer husks.
After a while the sameness of the grass began to oppress her. Would this be it, for all eternity, the only view she'd ever see? Would she have no company but her own? She turned from the grass, back towards the monumental tree behind. Its branches were far overhead, lost to distance. But its roots lay tangled all around, their arches as high as those brick roads the Romans used to carry water throughout their lands. The very thinnest of the roots was thicker than her body.
She stood at their outer edge, and inside she saw a darkness, stretching deep and far. There, for the first time, she thought she saw something - the glimmer of a red eye. She backed away, choosing to circle the tree instead.
It was a very long way. She wasn't sure how far she walked, looking at the peaceful plain of grass when the darkness under the tree began to trouble her, and at the shadows under the roots when the emptiness of the endless land became too much.
She'd almost given up hope of seeing anything different when she found it. She saw the well first. It was a simple stone structure, no bucket dangling from a rope above, but when she came closer she saw that a curved onyx drinking horn sat on its rim. The water came almost to its top, its blue as unlike normal water as the blue of the sky was unlike any sky she'd ever seen.
Still, she realised suddenly that she was thirsty. The horn felt solid in her hand, and cooler than she would have expected. She dipped it in the water and raised the lip to hers.
"Only poison, to those who drink without permission," a deep voice said behind her.
She span, sloshing water from the horn onto the grass. But there was no one there and she stood, irresolute, looking at the dregs of water and wondering if she dared quench her thirst with them.
"You must seek my blessing first, daughter of man," the voice said again - and this time she saw its source.
His head was huge, but still only a little higher than her waist, the reason her eyes had passed over it when she first searched for the speaker. His severed neck rested against the ground, bloodless. His smile was broad and might have looked friendly if it hadn't been nearly two-feet wide.
"Mimir," she said, because now she knew him, the immortal giant traded as a hostage to the Vanir, who sent back only his severed head.
She dropped to her knees, bringing her eyes level with his. Each was larger than her own head, but they were mismatched, the left brown and the right the most vibrant green she'd ever seen, so bright it made the grass around it seem drab.
"Do you wish to drink, child of Midgard?" Mimir asked.
Boda licked her lips. She did, but now she knew that it wouldn't be to quench her thirst. This well was the Well of Wisdom and its waters would tell her everything she wanted to know - and possibly many things she didn't. "Yes," she said eventually. "I want to drink. I need to."
The giant's severed head couldn't nod, but its huge eyes blinked in acknowledgement. "So said the Allfather himself, when the seasons turned. He needed my wisdom to save his son, but the sun was killed all the same. Is it the same business that brings you here? Do you wish to undo what even Odin himself could not?" His mismatched eyes studied her keenly.
"No," she said. "That's not what I want."
"Ah." The word was a deep rumble in a chest that wasn't there. "Then you wish for the opposite, do you? The keeping done of that which the Father of the Gods wished undone?"
She bowed her head but didn't reply. If Odin's son had perished, he might be the god Vali wished to remain dead. But she couldn't know for certain until she'd drunk the water.
Mimir seemed to understand what her non-answer meant. "And what price will you pay, for this knowledge you seek?"
"Price?" She looked down at herself, and realised for the first time that she was dressed in nothing but a simple tunic, like the lowest of Roman slaves. In all the vast empty landscape around her, there was nothing she could give for what she wanted.
The giant laughed. "There is always a price, girl, and yours will be high. The Allfather gave me his eye in return for the knowledge he sought. And you? What will you give me, that could equal the value of that?"
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Petronius looked between Vali and Sopdet in appalled understanding. He was red-haired and she was dark, and she was dark-skinned and he was light, but for the first time, Petronius could see the resemblance between them. It was something in their eyes, something too ancient for their young faces. And the worst thing was, Vali had told them this truth right from the start, knowing that they'd never believe him. No wonder he'd murdered Boda. He must have been working with his siste
r all along.
But the look Sopdet gave Vali was far from loving. "You're too late," she said. "You can't stop me undoing what you've done."
He looked down his long, narrow nose at her. "If that was all you wished, sister, I wouldn't have gone to such lengths to prevent it."
Vali's words seemed to spark a conflagration inside her. Sopdet ignited with rage. Petronius took a step back, until he was pressed against the unyielding gateway to the other side. It was less frightening than this woman's anger, which seemed far larger and more pure than any woman should be capable of.
"You've already done all in your power," she said, "every single thing to keep us apart. You've walked the ends of the earth and beyond. You've done everything you can to keep him dead - but you can't do this!"
Vali seemed supremely calm. Petronius didn't understand how he could maintain that little half-smile in the face of Sopdet's fury. It could do nothing but provoke her. "It's certainly true, sister, that I can't step through this gateway unless you open it for me. But then you're going to do that very soon, so I see no problem."
"Am I?" Petronius could see Sopdet bite back her anger, struggling to mutate it into contempt. "There's a faster way to send you to the other side. Here in the realm of man, I can give you the same fate you gave my beloved."
Vali took a step back, until he was standing beside Petronius against the gates of death. Petronius flinched away from him, but Vali didn't seem to care.
"I think you'll open the gateway," he said. "Because you need to step through it yourself. And you need to step through it yourself, because my emissary has already crossed over." His eyes drifted down to Boda's body, on the steps beneath them.
For the first time, Petronius wondered why it had remained dead, when every other corpse in Rome had risen.
Sopdet looked at Boda and frowned. "That woman? Why should I fear her?"
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