I feel I was somewhere else, somewhere sandy, doing something important. There was something I had to remember, something vital … but quite what it was escapes me even as I search for it.
‘Take my body? They … they can do that?’ More spluttering. My chest aches. I wipe my hands on my trousers. They’ve seen better days. ‘The dead can take your body?’
Snorri shrugs. ‘Best not get in their way.’ He waits for me to recover, impatient to follow the souls we saw.
‘Dust and rocks.’ I’m not ready yet. I rasp a breath in. ‘Is that as scary as Norse storytellers can make the afterlife?’
Again the shrug. ‘We’re not like you followers of the White Christ, Jal. There’s no paradise foretold, no roaming in green pastures for the blessed, no everlasting torment for the wicked. There’s only Ragnarok. The last battle. No promise of salvation or a happy ending, only that everything will end in blood and war, and men will have one last chance to raise their axes and shout their defiance at the end of time. The priests tell us that death is just a place to wait.’
‘Marvellous.’ I straighten. Holding out a hand as he tries to move off. ‘If it’s a place to wait why be in such a hurry?’
Snorri ignores that. Instead he holds out a fist, opening it to reveal a heaped palm. ‘Besides, it’s not dust. It’s dried blood. The blood of everyone who ever lived.’
‘I can make you see fear in a handful of dust.’ The words escape me with a breath.
Snorri smiles at that.
‘Elliot John,’ I say. I once spent a day memorizing quotes from classical literature to impress a woman of considerable learning – also a considerable fortune and a figure like an hourglass full of sex. I can’t remember the quotes now, but occasionally one of them will surface at random. ‘A great bard from the Builders’ time. He also wrote some of those songs you Vikings are always butchering in your ale halls!’ I start to brush myself down. ‘It’s just pretty words though. Dust is dust. I don’t care where it came from.’
Snorri lets the dust sift through his fingers, drifting on the wind. For a moment it’s just dust. Then I see it. The fear. As if the dust becomes a living thing, twisting while it falls, hinting at a face, a baby’s, a child’s, too indistinct to recognize, it could be anyone … me … suddenly it’s me … it ages, haggard, hollow, a skull, gone. All that’s left is the terror, as if I saw my life played out in an instant, dust on the wind, as swiftly taken, just as meaningless.
‘Let’s go.’ I need to be off, moving, not thinking.
Snorri leads the way, following the direction the souls took, though there’s no sign of them now.
We walk forever. There are no days or nights. I’m hungry and thirsty, hungrier and thirstier than I have ever been, but it gets no worse and I don’t die. Perhaps eating, drinking, and dying are not things that happen here, only waiting and hurting. It starts to hollow you out, this place. I’m too dry for complaining. There’s just the dust, the rocks, the distant hills that never draw any closer, and Snorri’s back, always moving on.
‘I wonder what Aslaug would have made of this place.’ Perhaps it would have scared her too, no darkness, a dead light that gives no warmth and casts no shadows.
‘Baraqel would have been the best ally to bring here,’ Snorri says.
I wrinkle my lip. ‘That fussy old maid? He’d certainly find plenty of subject matter for his lectures on morality.’
‘He was a warrior of the light. I liked him,’ Snorri says.
‘We’re talking about the same irritating angel, yes?’
‘Maybe not.’ Snorri shrugged. ‘We gave him his voice. He built himself from our imaginations. Perhaps for you he was different. But we both saw him at the wrong-mages’ door. That Baraqel we could use.’
I had to nod at that. Yards tall, golden winged with a silver sword. Baraqel might have been a pain but his heart was in the right place. Right now I’d be happy to have him in my head telling me what a sinner I was if it meant he would spring into being when trouble approached. ‘I suppose I might have misjudged—’
‘What?’ Snorri stops, his arm out to stop me too.
Just ahead of us is a milestone, old, grey, and weathered. It bears the roman runes for six and fresh blood glistens along one side. I look around. There’s nothing else, just this milestone in the dust. In the distance, far behind us, I can just make out, among the shapes of the vast boulders that scatter the plain, one that looks crooked over to the right, almost like the letter ‘r’.
Snorri kneels down to study the blood. ‘Fresh.’
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ There’s blood running in rivulets down the face of the boy who’s speaking, a young child not much taller than the milestone. He wasn’t there a moment ago. He can’t be more than six or seven. His skull has been caved in, his blonde hair is scarlet along one side. Blood trickles in parallel lines down the left side of his face, filling his eye, dividing him like Hel herself.
‘We’re passing through,’ Snorri says.
There is a growl behind us. I turn, slowly, to see a wolfhound approaching. I’ve seen a Fenris wolf, so I’ve seen bigger, but this is a huge dog, its head level with my ribs. It has the sort of eyes that tell you how much it will enjoy eating you.
‘We don’t want any trouble.’ I reach for my sword. Edris Dean’s sword. Snorri’s hand covers mine before I draw it.
‘Don’t be afraid, Justice won’t hurt you, he just comes to protect me,’ the boy says.
I turn so I have a side facing each of them. ‘I wasn’t afraid,’ I lie.
‘Fear can be a useful friend – but it’s never a good master.’ The boy looks at me, blood dripping into the dust. He doesn’t sound like a boy. I wonder if he memorized that from the same book I used.
‘Why are you out here?’ Snorri asks him, kneeling to be on a level, though keeping his distance. ‘The dead need to cross the river.’
The hound circles around to stand beside the milestone, and the boy reaches up to pat his back. ‘I left myself here. Once you cross the river you need to be strong. I only took what I needed.’ He smiles at us. He’s a nice-looking kid … apart from all the blood.
‘Look,’ I say. I step toward him, past Snorri. ‘You shouldn’t be out here by y—’
Suddenly the hound is bigger than any Fenris wolf ever was, and on fire. Flames clothe the beast, head to claw, kindling in its eyes. Its maw is a foot from my face, and when it opens its mouth to howl, an inferno erupts past its teeth.
‘No!’ I screamed and found myself face to face with the djinn, at the heart of the sandstorm. Somehow I’d resisted its attempts to drive me out of my body again. Perhaps that child’s hell-hound had scared it out. It certainly scared a whole other mess right out of me, double quick!
I saw the djinn only because each wind-borne grain of sand passing through its invisible body became heated to the point of incandescence, revealing the spirit shaped by the glow, trailing burning sand on the lee side where the wind tore through it. Here before me was a demon as I had always imagined them, stolen from the lurid imaginations of churchmen, horns and fangs and white-hot eyes.
‘Fuck.’ My next discovery was that being chest-deep in sand made running away difficult. And the discovery after that was worse. Through the storm I could make out a body, lying sprawled on the dune behind the djinn. A momentary lull allowed a better view … and somehow it was me lying there, slack-jawed and sightless. Which made me the one doing the watching … an ejected soul being sucked down into Hell!
The djinn held position, just before me, illustrated by the glowing sand tearing through its form. It just stood there, between me and my body, close enough to touch. It didn’t even have to push me, the dune seemed eager to suck me down. Scared witless, I dug my arms down and tried to draw my sword but the sand defeated me and my questing hand came up empty. I grabbed the key off my chest, unsure of how it was going to help … or if it even was the key, since there had appeared to be an identical one hanging about my
body’s neck when I glimpsed myself during the lull. I clenched the key hard as I could. ‘Come on! Give me something I can work with here!’
In the instant of my complaint the sand about me fell away revealing a trapdoor incongruously set into the dune, with me two-thirds of the way through. And as the sand fell through it, I fell too. I managed to get both arms out and hold myself there, dangling over a familiar barren plain lit by that same deadlight. ‘Oh, come on!’
Finding little purchase on the dune, and still slipping into the hole by inches, I grabbed the only other thing there. Part of me expected my hands to burn, but despite its effect on the sand I’d felt no heat from the djinn, only the blast of its wordless rage and hatred.
Beneath my soul’s fingers the djinn felt blisteringly hot, but not so hot that I was ready to let go and fall into Hell, leaving my body as its plaything. ‘Bastard!’ I hauled myself up the djinn, grabbing horns, spurs, rolls of fat, whatever came to hand. With a strength born of fear I was two-thirds out of the trapdoor before the djinn even seemed to realize what had happened. Surprise had unbalanced the thing and though my soul might not weigh as much in the scales as some, it proved enough to drag the djinn forward and down whilst I climbed up.
Within moments the two of us were locked together, each trying to wrestle the other down through the trapdoor, both of us part in, part out. My main problems were that the djinn was stronger than me, heavier than me – which seemed deeply unfair given how the wind blew through him – and blessed with the aforementioned horns and barbs, together with a set of triangular teeth that looked capable of shearing through bones.
It turns out that when it’s your soul doing the wrestling the sharp spikes and keen edges are less important than how much you want to win – or in my case, win clear. Panic may not be much help in most situations, but well-focused terror can be a godsend. I jammed Loki’s key into the djinn’s eye, grabbed both his dangling earlobes, and pulled myself over him, setting a booted foot to the back of his neck and pitching him further into the trapdoor … where his bulk wedged him fast. It took me jumping up and down on him several times, both heels mashing into his shoulders before, like a cork escaping an amphora, he shot through. I very nearly followed him down, but by means of a lunge, a scramble, and a good measure of panic, I found myself lying on the dune, the winds dying and the sand settling all about me.
Quickly I pulled the trapdoor closed and locked it with Loki’s key, finding in that instant that it vanished leaving me poking the key into the sand. I shrugged and went over cautiously to inspect my body. Re-inhabiting your own flesh turns out to be remarkably easy, which is good because I had visions of the sheik and his men turning up and finding me lying there and soul-me having to trek along behind while they slung me over a camel and subjected me to heathen indignities. Or worse still, they might have passed me by unseen beneath my sandy shroud and left me to watch my body parch, the dry flesh flaking in the wind until I sat alone and watched the desert drown my bones… So it was fortunate that as soon as I laid a soul-finger on myself I was sucked back in and woke up coughing.
I sat up and immediately reached for the key around my neck. How much of what I’d seen had been real and how much just my mind’s way of interpreting my struggle with the djinn’s evil I had no idea. I even harboured a suspicion that the key itself had drawn those scenes for me, calling on Loki’s own twisted sense of humour.
The caravan outriders found me about half an hour later, crouched on the blazing dune, head covered with the ill-smelling blanket I snatched from my camel. The Ha’tari escorted me back to Sheik Malik, prodding me along before them like an escaped prisoner.
The sheik urged his camel out toward us as we approached, two of his own guards moving to flank him as he came. Behind him at the front of the caravan I could see Jahmeen, slumped across his saddle, kept in place by his two younger brothers riding to either side. I guessed the sheik would not be in the best of moods.
‘My friend!’ I raised a hand and offered a broad smile. ‘It’s good to see there were no more djinn. I was worried the one I drew off might not be the only attacker!’
‘Drew off?’ Confusion broke the hardness around the sheik’s eyes.
‘I saw the beast had taken hold of Jahmeen so I pushed it out of the boy and then set off at once, knowing it would chase me for revenge. If I’d stayed it would have sought an easier target to inhabit and use against me.’ I nodded sagely. It’s always good to have someone agreeing with you in such a discussion, even if it’s only yourself.
‘You pushed the djinn out—’
‘How is Jahmeen?’ I think I managed to make the concern sound genuine. ‘I hope he recovers soon – it must have been a terrible ordeal.’
‘Well.’ The sheik glanced back at his son, motionless on the halted camel. ‘Let us pray it will be soon.’
I very much doubted it. From what I’d seen and felt I guessed Jahmeen had been burned hollow, his flesh warm but as good as dead, his soul in the deadlands enjoying whatever his faith had told him was in store for a man of his quality. Or perhaps suffering it.
‘Within a few days, I hope!’ I kept smiling. Within half a day we would be in Hamada and I would be rid of the sheik and his camels and his sons forever. Sadly I would be rid of his daughters too, but that was a price I was willing to pay.
4
Hamada is a grand city that beggars most others in the Broken Empire, though we don’t like to talk about that back in Christendom. You can only approach it from the desert so it is always welcome to the eye. It has no great walls – sand would only heap against them, providing any enemy a ramp. Instead it rises slowly from ground where hidden water has bound the dunes with karran grass. First it’s mud domes, made startlingly white with lime-wash, half-buried, their dark interiors unfathomable to the sun-blind eye. The buildings grow in stature and the ground dips toward that promised water, revealing towers and minarets and palatial edifices of white marble and pale sandstone.
Seeing the city grow before us out of the desert had silenced everyone, even stopping the talk of the Builders’ Sun, the endless whys, the circular discussions of what it all meant. There’s something magical about seeing Hamada after an age in the Sahar – and believe me, two days is an age in such a place. I was doubly grateful for the distraction since I’d been foolish enough to mention that much of Gelleth had been devastated by one of the Builders’ weapons and that I’d seen the margins of the destruction. The sheik – who obviously paid far more attention to his history lessons than I had – noted that no Builders’ Sun had ignited in over eight hundred years, which made the odds against a man being witness to two such events extremely long indeed. Only the sight of Hamada had stopped him from carrying that observation toward a conclusion in which I was somehow involved in the explosions.
‘I will be glad to get off this camel.’ I broke the silence. I wore the sword I had taken from Edris Dean, and the dagger I’d brought out of Hell with me, both returned on my request after the incident with the djinn. In Hamada I would swap my robes for something more fitting. With a horse under me I’d start feeling like my old self in no time!
There is a gate to the west of Hamada, flanked on each side by fifty yards of isolated wall, an archway tall enough for elephants with high, plumed howdahs on their backs. The Gate of Peace they call it and sheiks always enter the city through it, and so, with civilization tantalizingly close, our caravan turned and tracked the city’s perimeter that we might keep with tradition.
I rode near the head of the column, keeping a wary distance from Jahmeen, not wholly trusting the djinn not to find some way back into him and escape the deadlands. The only good thing about that final mile of the journey was that the last of our water was shared about, a veritable abundance of the stuff. The Ha’tari poured it down their throats, over their hands, down their chests. Me, I just drank it until my belly swelled and would take no more. Even then the thirst the deadlands had put in me was still there, parching
my mouth as I swallowed the last gulp.
‘What will you do, Prince Jalan?’ The sheik had never once asked how I came to be in the desert, perhaps trusting it to be God’s will, proven by the truth of my prophecy and beyond understanding. He seemed interested in my future though, if not my past. ‘Will you stay in Liba? Come to the coast with me and I will show you my gardens. We grow more than sand in the north! Perhaps you might stay?’
‘Ah. Perhaps. First though I mean to present myself at the Mathema and look up an old friend.’ All I wanted to do was get home, with the key, in one piece. I doubted that the three double florins and scatter of smaller coins in my pocket would get me there. If I could ride Sheik Malik’s goodwill all the way to the coast that would be well and good – but I wondered if his approval would last the journey. In my experience it’s never that long before any ill fortune gets pinned to the outsider. How many weeks into the desert would it be before his son’s failure to recover soured the sheik and he started to look at events in a different light? How long before my role as the one who warned him of the danger twisted into painting me as the one who brought the danger?
‘My business will keep me in Hamada for a month—’ The sheik broke off as we approached the Gate of Peace. A twisted corpse had been tied above the archway – the strangest corpse I had seen in a while. Scraps of black cloth fluttered around the body: beneath them the victim’s skin lay whiter than a Viking’s, save for the many places where it was torn and dark with old blood. The true shock came where the limbs hung broken and the flesh, opened by sword blows, should have revealed the bone. Instead metal gleamed amid the seething mass of flies. A carrion crow set them buzzing and through the black cloud I saw silver steel, articulated at the joints.
‘That’s Mechanist work,’ I said, shielding my eyes for a better view as we drew nearer. ‘The man almost looks like a modern, from Umbertide but inside he’s…’
‘Clockwork.’ Sheik Malik halted just shy of passing beneath the arch. The column behind us began to bunch.