“Hit a bump and you tumbled out.” Tuttugu gestured toward what appeared to be a crude travois laid down on the trail.
“Can’t see a bump myself,” Snorri said. “Trolls dragged you for four days. Probably thought they could tip you out and nobody would notice.”
Kara stepped closer and started to squeeze bits of me through my tunic. They all hurt. “You’re fine,” she said, looking slightly apologetic. She wiped at some graze on my cheek with a piece of cloth smelling of lemons.
“Ouch!” I tried to push her hand away but she proved persistent. “I was dreaming again. . What the hell kind of spell did you put on me, völva?”
Kara frowned and put her cloth away, stuffing it into a little leather pouch. “It’s a simple enough working. I’ve never seen it have this much effect on someone. I. . I don’t know.” Her frown deepened and she shook her head. “I guess the Silent Sister had her reasons for choosing you as Snorri’s partner to hold her magic. You must have an affinity for it, or a susceptibility. I could test you tonight. .”
“You can keep that orichalcum stuff away from me is what you can do.” I flomped down on the heap of bracken covering the network of bark strips that joined the travois poles. “I’ve had enough of witches. North, south, young, old, I don’t care. I’m swearing off them.” I put my head back, spitting out the rain. “Let’s go!” I saw the smallest smile twitch across Kara’s lips at that, in defiance of her will, and to my surprise the trolls bent to their task, dragging me along as the whole column resumed its trek.
For a few minutes I lay with eyes closed, struggling to recapture the dream. The word “assassin” had been in the air, perhaps the key took that memory from me and unlocked a might-have-been, perhaps Taproot’s condolences for my mother had been balanced on rumours of the three visiting murderers that the Red Queen buried. Dreams though, like sleep, are elusive when you’re hunting them, and sneak upon you when you’re not. After a while the rain splattering my face became irksome and I sat up, wiping my face.
“Four days?” I looked from Snorri to Tuttugu, tramping along behind the trolls. “How come I didn’t soil my-” Glancing down I discovered I wasn’t wearing my old trousers but instead some sort of rough kilt. “Oh.”
“Hungry?” Snorri fished out some strips of dried meat and held them toward me.
I rubbed my stomach. “Not for that.” But I took them anyway and started to chew, discovering within moments that “hungry” was too small a word to cover it. It takes a lot of chewing to get through dried meat, so that kept me busy for a while. I call it meat rather than beef or pork or venison, because once it’s been adulterated against decay it’s really not possible to say what animal died to put it in your hand. Probably a donkey. The taste is similar to leather, of the kind that’s been worn as a shoe for several hot weeks. The texture is too. “Any more?”
• • •
“So where are we?”
I’d feigned weakness all night and planned to carry on doing so as long as the trolls would drag me. The travois was hardly a royal carriage but it beat walking. Now though as dawn broke, and the trolls spread out through the forest to hunt, and Snorri hung an oiled cloth between the branches to keep off the worst of the weather, I started to take more of an interest in proceedings.
“Central Gelleth.” Kara squatted down beside me. Tuttugu was sitting on a log nearby, tending a small fire above which a cauldron of stew simmered, hanging from an iron tripod. “According to Gorgoth you can plot a path from one side of the country to the other that never leaves the forests. A good thing too. The land’s in uproar, marauding army units everywhere, levies summoned by a dozen nobles all battling away. There’s been some kind of disaster around Mount Honas-they say the duke’s dead and all his armies burned. .”
“Mount Honas?” I’d never heard of it. But I knew the duke was a relative of mine, albeit distant. “Burned, you say? Damn fool of him to go poking around a volcano!”
“It’s not a volcano. His castle was built on it. Some kind of ancient weapon blew the mountain apart. Huge areas of forest to the north have been incinerated and miles beyond that trees are dying. While you were sleeping we spent two days walking through dead trees. Gorgoth said it’s Jorg Ancrath’s work.”
“Christ.” I remembered when Queen Sareth set me up to challenge the little bastard to a duel. Only he wasn’t so little after all, a six-foot stone-cold murderer, fourteen going on forty. “How long until we reach Rhone?”
“Less than a week. The town of Deedorf’s just ten miles off. We’re making good progress.”
“Mmm.” In truth I wasn’t that interested in where we were, what really concerned me was how far we had to go to reach civilization. One wet forest was very much like the next, be it haunted by Thurtan peasants hunting truffles, Gelleth charcoal men, Rhone loggers, or the charmingly rustic Red March foresters. They could all go hang as far as I was concerned. “This curse you put on me-”
“This enchantment you begged me to work,” interrupted Kara. “Yes. What about it?”
“I was close. Very close. Just before those trolls tried to kill me. .” I lowered my voice and became serious. “I dreamed of things I didn’t remember, but now I do. And I got close to the day she died. The summer when I turned eight. I might even have been dreaming of the actual day.” I took Kara’s hand, she flinched but let me hold her. “How do I get back to it? I need to finish this.” I can’t deny that the thought that I might sleep my way across the whole of Gelleth had occurred. Even better, I might then slumber another two weeks as Snorri and Tuttugu dragged me south through Rhone, and not wake until the Norsemen delivered me to the gates of Vermillion. With luck I might pass the entire excursion off as a nightmare and never think of it again. But those hopes aside-the desire to know the truth about my mother’s death drove me, the need to lay to rest the lies Loki’s key had infected me with. The thing had set a curse upon me and I would know no peace until the itch had been scratched-the boil lanced.
Kara bit her lip, vertical furrows appearing between her eyebrows. It made her look much younger. “Blood is the trigger.”
I lifted a hand to ward her off. “You don’t have to hit me again!”
“Bite your tongue.”
“What?”
“Bite your tongue.”
I tried but it’s not easy to deliberately hurt yourself. “I canth geth any bluth,” I told her, tongue trapped painfully between my teeth.
“Bite it!” Kara shook her head, despairing of me. Without warning she reached up and knocked my chin.
“Jesu that hurt!” I had a hand to my mouth, fingers reaching in to check my tongue was still attached. They came away scarlet and I could do nothing but stare at them, the colour filling my vision and my mind.
• • •
For a moment I don’t know where I am or why my mouth aches. I crashed into the eastern spire feet first and everything went grey. My mouth hurts and when I take my hand from it crimson drips from my fingers. I must have bitten my tongue in the impact-an ungentle arrival but a kinder greeting than I would have got from the ground had I gone over the edge of the roof.
The need to get away from the blind-eye woman proves more pressing than the need to moan and groan, so I wipe my hands off and get to my feet. Sweaty, tired, and too hot I begin the climb to Garyus’s window. In later years I often took the stairs, particularly if the weather proved inclement. But even in the months before I left the city with Snorri, when I found time between rising in the afternoon and setting out into Vermillion with my band of reprobates in search of sin, I’d scale the spire once in a while. Old habits are hard to break and in any event I like to keep my hand in. When a lady invites you from her bedroom window it’s good to know how to climb.
Arms trembling with fatigue, tunic sweat-soaked and torn, I haul myself through the window to Garyus’s landing. Sometimes an attendant waits there but today it lies deserted, the door to his chamber standing ajar. My ungainly collapse through the window has not gone without notice. I hear Garyus’s cough and then,