The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

“There!” He points toward a jagged collection of rocks on the ridge to our left.

“Rocks?” I don’t see anything else.

“Something.” Snorri frowns. “Something fast.”

We walk on, bone tired. Here and there the earth is torn and fissured. Long tongues of flame lick out, flickering skyward, and the air is foul with sulphur, stinging my eyes and lungs. The gully broadens into a dusty valley, studded with boulders. The wind has carved them into alien shapes, many disturbingly like faces. I start to hear whispers, indistinct at first, becoming clearer as I strain to make sense of the words.

“ Cheat, liar, coward, adulterer, blasphemer, thief, cheat, liar, coward, adulterer—”

“Are you hearing this, Snorri?”

He stops and lets me catch up. “Yes.” He glances around, still spooked. “Voices. They keep calling me a killer. Over and over.”

“That’s it?”

“. . . blasphemer, thief, cheat, liar, coward, adulterer . . .”

“You’re not getting ‘cheat’ or ‘thief’?”

Snorri frowns down at me. “Just ‘killer’.”

I cup a hand to my ear. “Ah, yes, it’s clearer now. I’m getting ‘killer’ too.”

“. . . coward, adulterer, blasphemer . . .”

“Blasphemer? Me? Me?” I spin around glaring at the rocky faces pointing my way. Every boulder for fifty yards seems to sport a grotesque set of features that wouldn’t look out of place on the statues that decorate my great uncle’s tower.

“Anger: you have committed the sin of anger . . .” from a score of mouths.

“I’m not fucking angry!” I shout back, not sure why I’m answering but swept up by the tide of accusation.

“Lust: you have committed the sin of lust . . .”

“Well . . . technically . . .”

“Jal?” Snorri’s hand settles on my shoulder.

“Greed: You have committed the sin of greed . . .”

“Oh come on! Everyone’s done greed! I mean, show me a man—”

“Jal!” Snorri shakes me, spinning me to face him.

“Yes. What?” I blink up at him.

“Lust: You have committed the—”

“All right! All right!” I holler over the voices. “I lusted. More than once. I’ll put my hand up to all seven, just shut up.”

“Jal!” A slap and my attention is firmly back on the Northman. “These aren’t things the gods care about. This is your creed. This is the nonsense churchmen rail against.”

He has a point. “So what?”

“The deadlands are shaped by expectation, but there are two of us and our faiths don’t agree.” He lets go of me. “We were in Hel’s domain, where she rules over all that is dead. But—”

“But?”

“Now I think we’ve strayed into your Hell.”

“Oh God.”

“. . . thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain . . .” Bishop James’s voice, though my father’s second had never sounded quite so much like he wanted to peel my face off.

The underworld that Snorri’s twin-aspected goddess, Hel, rules over is a pretty horrendous place, but I have the feeling that my Hell of fire and brimstone, replete with sinners and with devils to roast them, might outdo it for nastiness.

“Let’s get back.” I turn around and start to retread our path. “How did we even end up here? You’re the believer.”

“ . . . unbeliever, unbeliever, burn the unbeliever—”

“I mean you’re the one with the strongest faith.”

“. . . faithless, faithless, harrow the faithless—”

“Not that my faith isn’t really strong too, praise Jesus!” I cross myself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and not that half-hearted wave of the hand that Father does but the deliberate and precise action that Bishop James employs.

“It might not be you, Jal.” Snorri’s hand on my shoulder again, arresting my motion. I glance back and he nods ahead.

Something flits across the gap between two of the larger boulders scattered across the valley floor. I catch only the edge of a glimpse— something thin and pale—something bad.

“This is our enemy’s Hell. He’s brought it with him on the hunt.” Snorri has his axe in his hands now.

“But, nobody knows we’re here . . .” I put my hand to the key, lying beneath my jerkin, just above my heart. Suddenly it feels heavy. Heavy and colder than ice. “The Dead King?”