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

“Death isn’t what it was.” Luntar extended his skinless arm and studied it.

“The Builders are dead. They went to dust a thousand years ago.” But as I said it I recalled Kara’s words. The völva had told me on her boat that Baraqel and Aslaug were once human, Builders who had escaped into spirit when the world burned. She had claimed that others copied themselves into their machines before the end. Whatever that meant. “It can’t be the Builders? Even if they weren’t dead why would they wish us harm?”

“Do you recall how the Builders brought magic into the world in the first place, Prince Jalan?”

“Turned a wheel . . . I think that’s how Grandmother described it. They made it so a man’s will could change what’s real. But the Day of a Thousand Suns came and the wheel kept turning with nobody to stop it—the magic getting stronger.”

“That’s more or less it,” Luntar said. “But this wheel isn’t just a figure of speech. It’s not just words to paint a picture we can understand. There is a wheel. In—”

“Osheim.” The word escaped my lips despite strict instructions not to emerge.

“Yes.”

“These explosions in Gelleth and Liba though—”

“Ask the ghosts,” Luntar said. “It’s their work.” And then he was no longer there.

“How?” I stepped forward, waving an arm through the space the burned man had so recently occupied.

“The same way any other man leaves,” Garyus said. “He just made us forget it.”

“Well damn that! Why couldn’t he just stay and answer my bloody question? Why the hell be so mysterious about everything?”

With effort Garyus raised his head and smiled up at me. “I always felt those stories your Nanna Willow told you boys would have been a lot shorter if there had been some plain speaking in them. But perhaps you know the answer.”

“Bloody future-sworn!” I almost spat on the floor but Grandmother’s presence still haunted the throne room too strongly for that. Luntar saw a future that might be better than those that had burned him but if he steered us toward it, it would start to retreat, and if he answered our questions the whole possibility might evaporate like a morning mist. Even giving us the box would have blinded him to our paths now, making his vision less clear. Do nothing and see everything that will be with perfect and impotent clarity—or reach out to change things and like a hand touching water destroy the reflection of tomorrow. The frustration of it would drive me mad.

“Open the box?” Garyus placed the box in question on the small table I’d carried over. I placed a lantern beside it: afternoon had shaded toward evening and the shadows multiplied in every corner. “Open the box . . .” He tapped his fingers on the polished surface.

“That’s been known to go wrong in the past,” I said.

Garyus raised an eyebrow at that. “Pandora?”

“All the ills of the world.” I nodded. “Besides, he said it’s full of ghosts. That’s the case made for burying it right there.”

“He also said we should ask them our questions.”

I looked at the box and found my curiosity had dried right up.

“Are you scared, Jalan?” Garyus looked up at me, the light and shadow conspiring to make a monster of him. His deformity had that character— innocent one moment, pitiable even, the next sinister, malign. At those times I had no doubt he was twin to the Silent Sister.

“Scared doesn’t cover it.” The plasteek looked more like bone in the lantern light. Visions of Hell bubbled at the back of my mind and I wondered just how much of that place the art of the Builders might fit into one small box. “Petrified.”

“Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?” And Garyus opened the box.

“Empty!” A laugh burst from me, somehow small and hollow in the loneliness of the hall.

“It does seem to—” Garyus drew his hand back with an oath. One red fingerprint remained where he had touched the lid.

“Blood?” I asked, tilting my head to study the mark.

Garyus nodded, one finger in his mouth. “The thing bit me!”

As we watched, the crimson print faded, the blood drawn into the substance of the plasteek, leaving no stain. Something flickered in the air above the open box. A figure, there then gone, misty, as if formed and lost in a cold breath. Another came, flickering into being, a man’s shape, maybe eighteen inches high, gone.

“Kendeth.” The word came from the box, an ageless voice, calm and clean.