Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War)

by Lawrence, Mark

  I leaned back against the wall for a moment, closing my eyes and trying to convince myself that the grave-scent hanging in the air was imagination. Perhaps it was, or perhaps the pursuit had been as close as I feared, but either way the locking of that door was a good thing. A very good thing indeed. Snorri shot home heavy bolts, top and bottom. Better still.

  “Keep moving.” He waved me on, careful not to touch me; the air crackled and spat if we got too close and my skin glowed so bright I could almost light the way. Four doors stood between the hall and the strong-room. Snorri locked all four behind us, bolting them too in case the enemy held additional copies of the keys.

  With the last door sealed behind us we collapsed upon the sacks heaped around the walls. The lanterns revealed a small cubic room without windows or any exit but the one we entered by.

  “What’s in the sacks?” Tuttugu asked, patting one that protruded from beneath him.

  “Black corn, wheat flour, some salt.” Snorri gestured at two barrels in the opposite corner. “Crushed ice, and in the other one, whiskey.”

  “We could survive a month on this,” I said, trying to imagine it.

  “Daylight. That’s all we’re waiting for. In the morning we attack.” Snorri looked grim.

  As much as I wanted to argue, it made sense. No relief would come, no reinforcements were inbound. Either they would break in eventually, or we would starve in our own filth. Even so, I knew when it came to leaving, to actually putting ourselves in the hands of the unborn, they would have to drag me. I’d rather slit my wrists and be done with it.

  “What’s out there, Snorri?” I lay back and watched the shadows dance on the ceiling. “Did Aslaug tell you that? Did she say what she’d seen in the darkness?”

  “Unborn. Maybe a dozen of them. And the worst of them, the Unborn Captain. The Dead King’s hand in the North. All digging out troops for whatever war he’s planning. The troops are just a bonus. What they’re really after is Rikeson’s key. Not that Rikeson fashioned it. Aslaug says he tricked Loki out of it. Or Loki let it seem that way, but really it was Loki who tricked Olaaf Rikeson into taking it.”

  Tuttugu stretched out his leg, sniffing and pulling his furs about him. He wrinkled his nose, disapproving of the air.

  “Baraqel doesn’t tell me anything useful. I guess all the best secrets are told at night.” I didn’t pay too close a heed to Aslaug’s talk of Loki. It seemed the voices that the light and the dark used to speak to us were ones we’d given them, taken from our expectations. Only natural then that explanations should come to Snorri wrapped in heathen tales, whilst I got the true version, spoken by an angel such as one might see in the stained glass at the cathedral in Vermillion.

  Vermillion! God, how I wanted to be back there. I remembered that day, the day I left the city—that crazy chaotic whirl of a day—and before I had even broken my fast on that morning the Red Queen had been bending our ears, all of us grandchildren, and at the last when I was desperate to be off about my own plans, hadn’t Grandmother been talking of tasks, of quests, of hunting for . . . a key?

  “Smells like something crawled in here and died.” Tuttugu interrupted my thoughts. He sniffed again, casting a suspicious glance my way.

  I shushed him with a waved hand. The pieces were coming together in my mind. The Red Queen’s story about a door into death, an actual door. Who would ever want to open such a door?

  “The Dead King—”

  “Jal—” Tuttugu tried to cut across me.

  “I’m thinking!” But death’s door couldn’t ever be opened—the lock had no . . . “Loki’s key can open anything!”

  “Jal!” Snorri surging to his feet. “Get down!”

  An empty sack fell across my shoulders as I threw myself forwards, forgetting how much it would hurt. I heard grain shifting and spilling. The grave-stink intensified into something almost physical.

  “No!” Tuttugu screamed, and threw himself at whatever had risen behind me, axe raised. I hit the ground and my world lit with the agony of the impact against my broken ribs. A meaty thud and through slitted eyes I caught a glimpse of Tuttugu flying back across the room. He hit the wall with the kind of crunch that meant he wouldn’t be getting up again.

  I rolled over and the unborn towered above me, uncoiling long and scabrous limbs, shedding the full sacks and empty sacking that it had hidden beneath. A freshly skinned face peered down at me, the top of that wet and hairless scalp nearly scraping the ceiling. The eyes held the same feral hunger as those that had haunted me for all this long and wild flight from Red March, but they weren’t the same eyes that had set me running on the night of the opera what seemed a lifetime ago. These terrified but held little of that awful knowing.

  I lurched aside and tried to crawl for the door as a hand made of dripping flesh and too many bones reached down for me.

  “Jal!” Snorri leapt in. Snorri would always leap in. He hacked at the arm, sweeping it aside. The unborn clawed at him with its other hand, sickle talons shredding through many layers to the skin and muscle beneath.

  I almost made it to the door. What I would have done there if I had reached it I can’t say. Scrabbled at the cold iron in desperation, most likely. The unborn saved me from those broken fingernails by spearing a long and unclean finger through my side and dragging me back. I fought every inch of the way, kicking and screaming. Mostly screaming.

  Snorri charged again, soaked with his own blood, and the unborn caught him about the waist, raising him off the ground, talons sinking deep.

  “Die, you bastard!” A howl as his eyes darkened. And with the last of his strength Snorri ver Snagason swung his father’s axe, hauling the heavy weapon through the air in a sideways swing, turning in the unborn’s grip, driving its talons deeper still but adding momentum to his blow. The blade cut through lantern light, trailing streaks of darkness. It sheared into the unborn’s head, splitting that unholy skull, and with a roar Snorri yanked the axe clear, splattering grey filth as he cracked the monster wide.

  The unborn’s convulsions threw us both clear, scattering grain, salt, pieces of torn sack while it thrashed and diminished. I lay with blood pouring in a river from the dark hole the creature had put through me. Snorri found his feet again, though barely, swaying as he dragged his axe back towards the foe.

  By the time the Norseman made it across the room, all that remained amidst a welter of old bones and shed skin, curled and blackened, was a small red thing. It looked almost like a baby. And, falling to his knees before it, Snorri bent double and wept as though his heart had broken.

  THIRTY

  “We’re fucked up.” I raised my hand to wipe the blood from my mouth. The arm felt like someone else’s, almost too heavy to move. Too much blood to wipe. I must have bitten my tongue.

  “We are.” Snorri lay back, the sacks around him stained crimson. His leg looked uncomfortable, folded awkwardly beneath him, but if it bothered him he lacked the strength to move it. It bothered me, seeing him like that, without fight in him. Snorri never gave up. He never would, not with his wife and child so close. I looked at him again, sprawled, bleeding, defeated. And then I knew.

  “Tell me.” I lay on sacks every bit as bloody as those beneath him. We would both bleed to death soon enough. I wanted to know if this had ever been a rescue mission—if his wife and child could ever have been saved. “Tell it all.”

  Snorri spat blood and opened his hand to let his axe drop. “The Broke-Oar told me, back in the hall, he would have told me back when he had me captive. He told me not to ask, that day when they caught me—and he scared me out of it . . . I hadn’t the courage to ask. He said I shouldn’t ask or he would tell. And I didn’t, and he kept his silence.” Snorri drew a great slow breath. His cheekbone had been shattered; pieces of bone showed through the skin. “But in the hall with Aslaug filling me and his eyes put out, I asked him again . . . and this time he
answered.” Snorri drew a shuddering breath and my face grew numb, my cheekbones tingling, eyes hot and full. “Egil and the other children they gave to the necromancers. The lives of children can be fed to unborn and to the lichkin—horrors just as bad.” Another breath, hitched in. “The women were killed and their corpses raised, then used to mine the ice. Only Freja and a handful of others were spared.”

  “Why?” Maybe I didn’t want to know after all. My life was pooling crimson on the floor around me. Bright memories called to me, lazy days, sweet moments. Better to spend what time remained with them instead. But Snorri needed to tell me, and I needed to let him.

  Dying wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. I’d spent so long afraid, endured so many deaths in my imagination, but here I lay, close to the end, almost at peace. It hurt, yes, but I had a friend close by and a certain calmness enfolded me. “Why?” I asked it again.

  “I didn’t tell you.” Snorri gasped at some sudden pain. “I couldn’t. It wasn’t a lie. I just couldn’t say the words . . . too big . . . if you—”

  “I understand.” And I did. Some truths you can’t speak. Some truths come barbed; each word would tear you inside out if you forced them from your lips.

  “She— Freja, my wife.” A breath hitched in. “Freja was pregnant. She carried our child. That’s why they kept her. To make unborn. She died when they cut the baby from her belly.” A breath burst from him in a crimson spray, hurt escaping in the short wet gasps we men make to keep from crying like children.

  “Pregnant?” All this time and he hadn’t spoken of it. Our long journey a hopeless race against that baby’s fate. A tear rolled down my cheek, hot and slow, cooling as it met the frigid air.

  “I just killed my son.” Snorri closed his eyes.

  I rolled my head and saw once more the foetus curled amidst the ruin of the body the unborn had built—the core of it, the potential, misused and ill-spent by some horror that had never lived.

  “Your son . . .” I didn’t ask how he could know. Perhaps that bond between them had let the unborn know his mind, had led it to wait for us in this room. I didn’t ask anything—I hadn’t the words. Instead I spoke the smallest one—the one I should have used more in my short and foolish life.

  “Sorry.”

  We lay a long moment without speaking. Life leaked away from me, drop by drop. I felt I should miss it more.

  A squealing noise broke the silence.

  “What in hell?” I lifted my head a fraction. It sounded like—

  “Hinges!” Snorri rose, slowly, supporting himself on his elbows.

  “But you locked that door.” The squeal of iron on iron set my teeth on edge. “Bolted it too.”

  “Yes.”

  Another squealing sound. Louder this time, closer.

  “How is that possible?” Some energy returning to my voice now. A whining edge too, I’ll admit. “Why aren’t they having to break them down?”

  “They have the key.” Snorri reached for his axe, groaning.

  “But you bolted all the doors! I saw you.”

  Another shriek, the noise of old iron scraping across stone as the third door surrendered. Only one remained—the door I had my horrified gaze fixed upon.

  “The key. Rikeson’s key. Loki’s key. The key that opens all doors.” Snorri managed to sit, deathly pale, a tremor in his limbs. “It’s the Unborn Captain. They must have found the key under the ice.”

  Moments remained to us. I heard a dry scratching beyond the door and rust bloomed across the ancient black iron. It felt suddenly colder in that room, and more sad, as if a weight of sorrow had settled across my shoulders. More than I could bear.

  “Jal—it has been an honour.” Snorri held his hand out towards me. “I’m proud to have known you.” He brushed his palm over the blade of his father’s axe, slicing it open. “Bleed with me, brother.”

  “Ah, hell.” The bolts shot back on the last door with loud retorts. “I always knew you’d try this Viking shit on me.” The door started to judder open, inch by inch, pushing sacks aside. “Likewise, Hauldr Snagason.” I slit my palm on my sword blade, wincing at the deep sting of it, and held my hand out towards Snorri, cupping the blood.

  The door jerked open the last half of its swing, and there in the dying light of our lanterns the Unborn Captain waited, hunched within the confines of the corridor, a parody of flesh, drawn out into malformations of every kind, a plague of bones jutting out around a face that spoke only of awful needs.

  Somewhere out beyond the walls of the Black Fort the sun pushed its brilliant edge above the ice horizon and broke the long night.

  The air between Snorri and me spat and sparked as our hands shaped to grasp the other. My arm filled with light so fierce I couldn’t look at it. Snorri’s became jet, a hole in the world that ate all illumination and returned nothing.

  The unborn launched itself forwards.

  We clasped hands.

  The world fractured.

  Night interlaced day.

  Pretty much everything exploded.

  • • •

  The Silent Sister’s magic left us and pursued its prey. Detonations rang out throughout the keep, out into the dawn-dark courtyard, and off beyond the walls. The Unborn Captain had lasted less than a heartbeat. The twin cracks had run through him, dark had crossed light, and small pieces of him had ricocheted about the corridor as the cracks raced on.

  The force of the blast set us both on our backs and blew us apart. I lacked the strength to disagree and lay where the explosion had dumped me.

  The crack that had raced away from us began in the floor at the spot where we had clasped hands, the spot where our blood had mixed and spilled. The free end of it began to spread, slow this one, fracturing stone with a sound like breaking ice, the bright fissure woven with the dark one.

  “Christ!” I blasphemed. May as well die with a final sin on my lips.

  The crack veered towards me, blindingly bright, blindingly dark. I blinked at it and behind my eyes an echo of Baraqel stood, wings folded. “It’s in your hands now, Jalan Kendeth.”

  I cursed him to be gone and let me die.

  “It’s in your hands.” Quieter now, the image more faint.

  Snorri struggled to get to his feet, using his axe for support. Somehow the big bastard was actually doing it—too dumb to know when to quit. Still, it didn’t do for a prince of Red March to be outdone by a northern hauldr. I rolled, cursing, set the point of my sword into the gap between flagstones, and tried to heave myself up. It was too hard. Somewhere in the back of my mind Grandmother loomed, tall, regal, scary as hell in her scarlets. Get up! And, roaring with the effort and the pain, I did.

  A step back and my shoulders were to the wall, the crack a yard from me, sacks splitting as it fractured the stone beneath, corn kernels leaping into the air and turning inside out with curious popping sounds.

  When there’s nowhere to run you sometimes have to resort to extreme measures. Baraqel had kept talking about my line. The Red Queen’s image dominated my imagination in that moment, commanding, fearless, but over her shoulders I saw Garyus and the Silent Sister, and before her, my father. I’ve taken his name in vain time enough, called him a coward, a drunk, a hollow priest, but I knew deep down what had broken him and that he had stood his ground when my mother needed him and not surrendered to his demons until she was past saving.

  I stepped towards the fracture, that crack between worlds, knelt before it on one knee, reached out.

  “This is mine—I made it and the enchantment from which it spread started with my line; an unbroken chain of blood joins me to the one that set the spell.” And I reached out with my hand and with whatever else lay in the core of me and I pinched it shut.

  All along its length the fissure flared, darkened, flared again, and shrank back upon itself until only a foot of it remained,
bright and dark, leading out from the point where I pinched it between finger and thumb.

  The fracture flexed and groaned, miniature breaks spreading up from where I held it, out across the back of my hand, the pain excruciating.

  “I can’t hold it, Snorri.” I was already dying, but my great-aunt’s spell seemed ready to make that happen immediately rather than an hour hence.

  He had to crawl, heaving himself over the sacks, the thick muscles in his arms trembling with the effort, black blood spilling from his mouth. But he made it. His gaze met mine as he reached to close the other end.

  “Will it die with us? Will this be an end to it?”

  I nodded, and he closed finger and thumb on the other end.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The crackle of logs, burning in a hearth. I relaxed. In my dream it had been the fires of hell waiting to feed on my sin. I lay for long minutes just enjoying the warmth, seeing only the play of light and shadow through closed eyes.

  “Run!” I jerked into a sitting position as I remembered the strong-room, the unborn, the doors opening.

  “What the hell?” I looked down at the furs that had slid from me, at the smooth skin where I’d been skewered through, no doubt puncturing several of the squidgy, vital organs that men are packed with. I pressed the region, and apart from a little tenderness, nothing. Running my hands over myself, patting and pinching, I found no injury worse than the odd bruise.

  I looked around. A hall in the Black Fort, Tuttugu walking towards me with a slight limp.

  “You’re dead!” I cast about for my sword. “I saw you hit that wall!”

  Tuttugu grinned and grabbed his belly. “Padding!” Then, more serious, “I would have died if I hadn’t been healed. You would too.”