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

“I know,” he says, and catches me before I fall again. “And no man who walks through Hell for a friend has anything to apologize for.”

“I—” A sound in the distance saves me from more foolishness, faint, then gone. “What’s that?”

“I heard it too.”

Having heard nothing but the wind for so long the strange cry seems full of portent.

It sounds again, a touch louder.

Jalan.

Louder than my imagination this time. A voice, speaking my name, or at least making the sound of it, making something unfamiliar of it.

“Run?” I find I have more energy left than I thought. Not enough to run, that’s just the fear talking, but enough to stagger along at a decent rate.

“Let’s keep going.” Snorri leads the way.

“But what is it?”

“What do you think it is?” he asks.

Jalan. It’s almost the way my Mother used to speak my name. The way a child might struggle to reproduce both syllables. I don’t want to say, as if naming my fear might make it real, but somehow I know what’s coming, what’s hunting us down. In Hell with its peculiar lack of directions, all your fears will find you soon enough. It’s my sister and the lichkin that has bound itself to her to make a corruption of her soul. If they kill me here my death will punch a hole through which they can emerge into the living world. The unborn queen, the rider and the ridden, birthed into dead flesh so many years after her conception. All my sister’s potential unleashed onto the world in the hands of a lichkin . . . To be honest, all that other stuff is just icing on a deeply unpalatable cake—I stopped caring after the “killing me here” bit. “Is that a light?” I point.

“Yes.” Snorri confirms that I’m not hallucinating through sheer terror.

JALAN! The howl comes from behind us, distant but by no means distant enough. JALAN! It turns out I can run.

Snorri jogs alongside me and with agonizing slowness the light resolves from one into a multitude, outlining the roof and many supporting columns of a towering building, all carved in white stone, just as we described it to each other.

Souls cluster in the darkness near the court. From time to time a new soul will run down the steps, a translucent recollection of a man or woman, not keeping a single shape but moving through memories of their life, moments of terror mostly. None of them lingers where the light falls, rather they run until the darkness takes them, as if the judges’ light burns them. They move away from Snorri and me too. Perhaps the life that still persists in us hurts to look upon with eyes where none remains.

We stop a hundred yards from the many-pillared hall. Walls rise behind the pillars, white and broad, every inch carved with scenes from legend. A doorway stands open, allowing the judged souls to flee their guilt. Our faces are cast into sharp relief by the slanting illumination. Even at this distance that light promises running water, warm air, green things growing.

The air seems brittle here, alive with possibility. I get that same sensation when the souls of the dead break through from the living world and I glimpse blue sky through the tears they make. This is a place of doors. I can feel the key on my chest, cold then hot, vibrating at some pitch beyond hearing. When Kara said the door between life and death lay everywhere, that was just words. I could no more spot that door in the midst of Hell than I could in a market square on a warm day in Vermillion. But here . . . here it seems that home is just a touch away. Here it seems that the door I need might just fracture out of nothing and stand before me. The living world is tantalizingly close, it just needs . . . some small thing to happen, like a lost word finally tripping off the tip of my tongue, and I would see the door . . .

My name rings out again, a howl, loud now, echoing off the walls, an undulating noise empty one moment, violent the next, full of hunger and malice. I take another step into the light. “You should come with me, Snorri.” The words are hard to say. “You’ve seen this place. Nothing good can be brought out of it.”

I wait for the anger, but there’s none in him. He hangs his head, refusing to look at the glow before us. “Arran Vale.”

“What?” I want to go, but I stay.

“Do you remember Arran Vale?” he asks.

“Um.” I should be running but Snorri’s bravery won’t let me. His image of who I am pins me here. I should be sprinting for the hall— instead I stand and try to answer him. Arran Vale? My mind races through names and faces and places, dozens, hundreds, all encountered on our long travels. “Maybe . . . a valley in Rhone? Near that little town with the one church and three whorehouses, where—”