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

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.”