The Wheel of Osheim

THIRTY-ONE

“Ouch!” Something hit me in the face. And again. “God damn it!” I lifted my head and another metal rung passed within a finger of my nose. “Where the hell . . .” I appeared to have been slung over someone’s back. “Put me down!”

“If you want.” Snorri’s voice, very close to my ear. “But it’s probably better if I wait until we’re at the top. It’s a long drop from here and you might damage something important.”

I looked around, immediately regretting moving my head. When the white flashes of pain faded I could see we were in a vertical metal pipe, dimly lit by a glowing strip running its length. Below me Kara and Hennan were climbing, and below them the shaft ran perhaps another ten yards. I tightened my arms around Snorri’s neck, despite the fact that my wrists already appeared to be tied together.

“That old bastard hit me!”

“He said it was the only way to get rid of the one-armed man you keep conjuring up. Well, he said killing you would work too.”

“You don’t even recognize him, do you?”

“Who?”

“The one-armed man!”

“Should I?”

“Well, you’re the reason he’s one-armed!”

With a grunt Snorri heaved himself over the top of the ladder and shrugged me off onto the floor of a small chamber. I lay groaning as Kara and Hennan joined us. Screens and access panels dotted the walls, the remaining space being thick with pipework. Three narrow tunnels ran off, one vertically.

“Where are we?” What I really meant was where was Cutter John?

“Inside the machine,” Kara said. “The professor gave me a map to the place where we can use the key.” She peered down the shaft we’d just come up. “He said that the shielding is stronger in here, so your friend might take a bit longer to find us.”

“Except where it’s not,” Hennan added.

“Sorry?” I had a quick glance over the edge myself. Nothing.

“The shielding is stronger in most places. But there are unshielded areas too,” Kara said. “They’re marked with yellow warning signs.”

I clambered to my feet, using the wall for support, and pulled my hands free of their bindings. “Let’s get on with it then.” I gestured for Kara to lead on. She consulted the paper in her hand and led off down the passage to the left.

I walked at the rear, rubbing the back of my head. If having a walking stick broken over my skull hadn’t given me a headache then the pulsing of the dim lighting and the pervasive throb of the hidden machinery would have. The cramped conditions were claustrophobic on their own but it managed to be much worse than that. The still air held a sickly-sweet stink and the walls pressed close, as if at any moment the Builders’ engine might flex its muscles, snapping shut the already-tight voids within it.

Up ahead the passage opened into a chamber just big enough for the four of us to stand together, then led on. As I squeezed in Kara had just set her fingers to an irregular-shaped mirror panel set into the wall. The reflection it offered seemed fuzzy at the edges and several smaller reflections of Kara jumped into being where her fingers made contact. Without warning her face vanished from the mirror to be replaced by the professor’s.

“Ah, I see young Jalan has recovered! Let him be the one to use the key. An imagination as overactive as his has . . . drawbacks . . . as we’ve seen, but it should allow a strong bond with the key and enhance the effects of-”

“What is this thing?” I interrupted.

“What thing?”

“This!” I leaned past Kara and jabbed at the professor’s image. “It was a mirror.”

“Well.” The professor puffed himself up like a tutor about to dispense wisdom. “It would take very long time to list all its functions, but it serves a variety of important uses in the main analysis suite, perhaps communication being the most minor. You’ll see numerous such panels as you follow the route to the central processor, but they’re all actually the same object. It’s very difficult to explain . . . we call it a fractal mirror-”

“Break it, Snorri! Quick!”

Convinced by my tone, for once Snorri did as he was told, and with a violent thrust drove the horns of his axe into the professor’s face.

“You can’t break it!” The professor favoured us with an indulgent smile as the axe slid over his image, leaving no mark. “Why would you even want to?”

“The Lady Blue is going to use the mirror to come here . . . if she’s not here already. She can watch through mirrors and if she sees us, well, we’re in trouble: she doesn’t want the Wheel stopped.”

“If you break the mirror the magnetic confinement will become unstable. All manner of processes may drift beyond their designated bounds . . .”

“We’re here to turn the engine off. It doesn’t matter if we damage it a bit beforehand.” The Lady Blue could glance our way at any moment. The mirror was her last escape route from her tower in Blujen: she would hardly ignore it. The panic that had been bubbling away in me, up to about chest height, ever since I regained my senses now started to rise toward my eyes.

“Well . . .” Professor O’Kee pursed his lips. “You would have to go down to the original mirror in Hall E. It’s marked on the map. But if you break the prime image you might only have minutes left.”

“Before?”

The professor knotted his fingers into a single tight fist. “I would hurry.”

“Kara?” I turned to the völva, cold in my sweat.

She looked up from the map. “Follow me.”

I kept close to her heels, urgency nipping at my own. Three tight corridors, one left turn, two right, a ladder up, a ladder down. We passed facets of the mirror at three points, each time with the professor’s nervous face watching us pass. Each time my heart beat out the rhythm of my panic against my chest. Each facet was a window through which any number of horrors could be watching.

“We’re close,” Kara said, crouching to edge beneath another of the mirror facets.

“I need to see,” I said.

“What?” Kara’s mouth was a tight line.

To be observed and not know whether you are being studied or not is to be prey. The predator stalks from cover. “I need to see,” I repeated, taking the key. I moved to the mirror. For a moment it showed scattered images of Prince Jalan shimmering about the main reflection, each as pale with fear as the next, vanishing down the scale into insignificance. The professor’s face reappeared, frowning. Before he could speak, I set the key to the mirror. “Show me.”

The scene changed, from the alcove at the base of the engine and the bare stone floor beyond, to a luxurious room deep with woven carpets, lined by elegant sideboards, an inlaid box on one vomiting strings of pearls and golden chains across the polished top. And on every wall, mirrors, dozens of them, all sizes, all shapes, framed in silver, in wrought iron, elaborately carved timber gilded and gleaming, in bleached pine, splintered with misuse . . . nearly all of them shattered, their shards hanging like broken teeth, littering the floor.

“That’s her tower. Now we can see her too, if she comes in to spy on us.” I felt a little better. Not much.

Kara grabbed my arm and jerked me past the mirror. “Come on.”

Another corridor and a short descent brought us to a locked silversteel door. I tapped it with the key. Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Snorri stepped off the last rung, cramming himself in behind us.

“I don’t know.” I looked for a keyhole. Normally the key made its own.

“Try again.” Hennan hissing from behind me.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Sarcasm is wasted on children.

I pressed the key against the door, flat between my palm and the steel. “Open!”

The portal shuddered and a noise like a giant grinding his teeth started up beneath us, vibrating through the soles of my boots. “Open, damn you! In the name of Loki!”

I felt a sharp pain deep between my eyes and somewhere in the thickness of the wall an unbreakable something broke. The door grated back into a recess in the wall.

“Builder locks were made to hold,” Kara said and pushed me forward.

The room beyond lit as I stepped over the threshold. A great mirror dominated the far wall. I say it was a mirror, though it showed only the Lady Blue’s sanctum, and nothing in that room moved, so one might think it a painting. It stood maybe nine feet tall and as wide across as my spread arms. The edges fractured in strange patterns, breaking into tendrils of mirror and finally into a peculiar sparkling dust or smoke.

I took one more step before stopping, arms pinwheeling as I tried not to take another-not easy with the others crowding behind me. “Stop!”

“Why?” Kara at my shoulder.

I swept my arm around in answer, index fingers extended to point at the bright yellow crosshatching painted in a band across the floor, following up each wall and across the ceiling. “It’s not shielded.”

“How bad can that be?” Snorri grabbed my shoulder and thrust me forward.

In a heartbeat I found myself face to face with Cutter John, his face broken by his skull-grin that was far more terrifying than rage. Iron-hard fingers closed on my upper arm and collarbone. Snorri jerked me back and I came free with a scream, flesh torn and bruised where Cutter John’s grip had almost got a proper hold.

Snorri and I both fell back, the Viking stumbling into the wall while managing to slow my descent to the floor. Cutter John threw himself forward . . . and flattened against the invisible shields, spreading and dissipating like a liquid against glass.

“He’s gone,” Snorri said, heaving me up.

“What the hell were you doing?” I screamed.

“Testing.”

“Well test with your own damn self next time!” I straightened my shirt, then rubbed tentatively at the scrapes Cutter John’s fingers had left on me. They hurt. Wincing, I looked up to see Snorri taking my advice, stepping forward, axe-haft held across his chest like a bar to ward off attack.

The figure rose almost immediately, the ground opening, swallowing itself to reveal a fissure like that at the back of Eridruin’s Cave on the Harrowfjord, the one that had swallowed Kelem’s shade back into Hell.

Out scrambled Einmyria, muddy and howling, an awful noise that made me want to drive a knife into each ear to kill my hearing. As Snorri’s child raised her skinless face to us flies rose all about her, vomited from the pit in tens of thousands. I saw her hands, the end of each finger darkening into a cruel black claw. And then I saw nothing but buzzing flies until Snorri hurtled back across the yellow crosshatching and the whole nightmare broke into fading wisps like smoke rising into still air.

Snorri, back against the wall once more, stood doubled over, his face hidden behind the dark fall of his hair. For a long minute no one spoke. I watched the mirror, the false calm of Mora Shival’s inner sanctum, praying that the Lady Blue would not return from whatever business kept her elsewhere in her tower and see us as we saw her.

“I’m sorry.” Snorri spoke at last. “It was wrong of me to push you forward. It can be hard to understand the depth of another person’s fear.”

“We could throw something to break the mirror . . .” Hennan suggested.

“I’m all out of rocks,” I said. “And I’d rather not lose my sword. Plus, there’s no guarantee the mirror will break . . .” I shot Snorri a sideways glance. “An axe is a good throwing weapon . . .”

Snorri scowled and, stepping away from the wall, plucked the dagger from its scabbard on my hip then flung it at the mirror. It hit dead centre with enough force to bury it hilt-deep in a man . . . and bounced off to come skittering back over the painted boundary.

Kara moved between us as I picked up my dagger.

“If I set this to the mirror,” Kara opened her palm to reveal an iron rune tablet no larger than my thumbnail, “and say brjóta-which means ‘break’ in the old tongue, it will break.”

I gestured toward the mirror. “Be my guest.”

Kara narrowed her eyes at me, then advanced toward the boundary, arm extended, one finger reaching out to touch. She moved so slowly that sometimes I thought her motionless. Even so, the effect proved sudden. Darkness blossomed where her fingertip brushed the shield’s limits, spreading like drops of ink in water. Within moments night had swallowed the space beyond and a pervasive silence wrapped us.

No sound. I held my breath. And then the faintest creak. Perhaps a floorboard beneath a foot.

Kara pulled her hand back as if bitten. “I can’t go in there,” she whispered. I shivered at the thought of a darkness that could scare a dark-sworn mage. The fear made her look older, as if something precious had been sucked from her. She drew a deep breath as the darkness evaporated.

“I’ll go.”

I whipped around.

“I’ll do it.” A small voice, but firm. Hennan held out his hand to Kara. “Give me the rune.”

“You can’t.” Snorri shook his head. “You saw what it’s like in there. And it’s not what you saw that you should be worried about, it’s whatever is in you that’s going to come out. The effect is so much stronger down here than it was on the surface . . .”

Hennan ignored Snorri, holding Kara’s gaze. “You told them I should come. You said, ‘what could be more valuable than someone whose family has resisted the pull of the Wheel for generations?’”

“Yes but . . .” Kara faltered. “This is something different. You saw-”

“Anyone who comes close to the Wheel can call themselves a wrongmage.” Hennan spoke over her. “Jal made the ground open up and swallow someone.” He mimed it with his hands. “But most of them aren’t wrongmages for very long. The Wheel kills them.”

“Too right!” I said. “And it’s not a good death either. You’re mad if you want to go in there.” I found I didn’t want to watch the boy die.

“My grandfather’s grandfather was Lotar Vale. He worked his magics closer to the Wheel than almost any before or since, and he did it for ten years-then found the strength to leave! That’s why my family don’t feel the pull. Lotar’s blood runs in our veins. The horrors don’t come for us.” It would take a practised liar to spot the hesitation, but I could tell he was just guessing.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Kara said.

“Let him try,” Snorri rumbled.

“What?” Kara took the boy’s arm, as if he might throw himself across the boundary at any moment.

“He’s old enough to know his own mind. In two years he’ll be a man. Unless we fail here in which case nobody will be anything in two years’ time.” Snorri waved at the mirror. “If we don’t break it and the Blue Lady sees us, you think she’s going to take him on as her little helper? Or kill him with the rest of us?”

Kara said nothing but held out her hand, the iron tablet dark against the whiteness of her palm. Hennan took it, brushed a hand up through the red shock of his hair, glanced nervously back at Snorri and me, then put a foot over the boundary. Took another step. Wholly inside the unshielded area now, he looked back, lips twitching toward a smile.

“Hurry!” Kara waved him on.

The air began to seethe around Hennan as he turned back toward the mirror, with quick steps, hands out in front of him as if he were breaking through cobwebs. Half-seen shapes moved around him like figures made of glass, seen only as a confusion of surfaces catching and distorting the light.

As he neared the mirror one of the shapes darkened, taking on colour. Something snake-like wrapped his wrist as he reached out with the tablet.

“No!” Hennan sounded angry rather than scared. The snake, or tentacle, or tendril became glassy as he stared at it, turning insubstantial again, and Hennan pressed the tablet against the mirror’s surface.

“Brjóta.” For a moment the word hung in the air, trembling through the half-glimpsed horrors as the Wheel tried to give them form. In the next moment the mirror cracked with a splintering bang that left my ears ringing. A spiderweb of fractures ran across it, top to bottom. Immediately a klaxon rang out, strident, the light turning from a constant white to a pulsation of reds in shades from hot coals through to scarlet.

Hennan spun away, shaking off translucent hands, brushing past or through figures that loomed on all sides. He ran for us, each step slower than the next as if he were wading through a swamp. The air grew misty around him, but red as blood with the light’s warning.

“Don’t stop!” I roared.

A yard to go now. A thin crimson line opened along his cheekbone as a glassy claw sliced him. The mist took on a deeper stain.

All three of us stood at the boundary, screaming for him to push on.

He made it another foot, moving with agonizing slowness, before another cut opened up, this one deeper, running across his forehead, leaking blood.

We reached for him, though thankfully I had the sense to do it a split second later than the other two. Kara was quickest, lunging shoulder deep into the profound darkness that bloomed the moment her fingers crossed the boundary. Dark or not, she caught the boy and dragged him to us. I caught her in turn as she fell back. Her arm seemed unmarked but she lay in my lap, trembling as though dipped in the Norseheim sea, unable to catch her breath, eyes wide and staring.

“You’re all right.” Snorri lifted her from me.

I got up, pulling Hennan to his feet. With a rag from my pocket I wiped the blood from his eyes. We stood for a minute, all of us waiting for our hearts to stop trying to batter their way out of our chests. Kara shook herself free from Snorri and started to treat Hennan’s wounds with some paste from a leather pouch, the frightened girl banished once more to whatever part of her mind Kara kept her in, the völva back with us again, all business.

“We need to move.” I started back out through the door. Grandmother said the Silent Sister would know when the mirror broke. They would be beginning their final assault on the tower now and I wasn’t keen to find out if the Lady Blue had any more tricks up her sleeve.

Hennan brought up the rear and, glancing back, I saw the air around his shoulders mist briefly then fade, as if the shields that had once held to the painted boundary might now be failing, fractured as profoundly as the mirror.

Once I had them moving I let Kara lead the way with her map, and slipped into the middle of our little group just behind Hennan. “Good work there, lad.” I punched his shoulder in the way I’d seen Snorri dish out approval. “If I’m still marshal when I get back to Vermillion I’ll recommend you for a medal.” I rolled the word “when” silently in my mouth. I still didn’t know for sure what I would do once the key was in that final lock. I might have cut the Lady Blue off from coming to visit through the fractal mirror, but her words could still reach me. I could be a god in the new world-or burn with the peasants in the old . . .

“Look!” We reached one of the facets of the fractal mirror, finding it covered by a radial web of cracks, but Kara was pointing to the room beyond rather than the damage.

“I don’t see-” Then I did. The whole room gave the faintest of shudders and fine white clouds of plaster dust began to sift down over the polished furniture. “Come on!” Everyone’s time had been running out faster and faster. Now the Lady Blue’s time had run out, and somehow I didn’t think she would go gentle into her last goodnight.