BANG. BANG. BANG.
This whole nightmare had started with Astrid pounding on my door, dragging me from a good dream. Every part of my return had been about the opening of one door or another. It had been a mistake to open that first door too. I should have stayed in bed.
And yet . . . somehow my hand found itself reaching out to the crystal column towering above us. Somehow I found myself drawing forth Loki’s key.
“No!” Kelem’s shout.
The clatter of metal limbs as his spiders raced toward me. The roar as Snorri threw himself into their path, heedless of his injury and pain, swinging his father’s axe.
Against all reason I found myself pressing the jet-black key to that impossibly flat surface, driving it into the neat dark eye of the keyhole that appeared beneath it . . . turning it as the voices rose behind me amid the din of combat.
The door blasted open with a force that sent me skidding across the floor. Midnight boiled out of it, imps of ebony, all horns and hooves and curling tails, huger and more terrible shapes rising behind them, wings canopied, bat-like creatures, serpents, shades of men, and in the midst of it all, surging forward, Aslaug, wrought in night-stained bone, her lower carriage a frenzy of arachnid legs that made Kelem’s toys seem delicate and wholesome.
“Take him through!” I screamed, pointing at Kelem, compelling the forces of night with whatever magic and potential lay in me, calling on the bond I had been sworn to. The horde, sighting their tormentor and would-be lord, surged through the narrow portal, borne on a wave of liquid night. Aslaug fell upon Kelem in an instant, a howling, tearing fury as if my own rage had infected her. The rest followed and in their frenzy the creatures of darkness flooded over the ancient mage, black imps sinking fangs into each wizened limb, inky tentacles reaching from the portal to whip around him. They hated him anyway, for presuming to rule them, for his endless attempts to open and own the night door, and for so nearly succeeding.
The dark-throng dragged Kelem away, a riptide of horror, his throne and platform scraping through the face of the column, a mess of stained and twisted silver-steel legs left twitching in his wake. In the silent moment that followed a faint laughter echoed, not in my ears, through my bones—a laugh both merry and wicked, the kind that infects the listener and makes them smile. It came from the key. A god laughing at his own joke.
Snorri and I lay where we threw ourselves in the moment, sprawled on opposite sides of the deluge.
“Die, you bastard!” I shouted it after the door-mage, scrambling to my feet. I hoped Kelem would suffer there in the endless dark and that as he did he thought of the Kendeths and of the debt he owed us.
Aslaug remained, the crushed body of a mechanical spider in her hand, silver legs giving the occasional jerk. She towered above Kara, her face furious. Snorri got to his knees and shoved Hennan behind the next pillar. “Stay there!” A handful of night-imps still prowled the perimeter of the darkness smoking around the portal and other, less wholesome, things writhed half-seen behind them.
“Send them back,” I hollered. Kara might have dealt harshly with Aslaug before but the v?lva was dark-sworn and the forces of night were hers to command if she had the will. Their allegiance hadn’t shattered just because she had crossed one of their number.
I didn’t need to urge Kara—the effort of her working showed in every line as she raised her arms in rejection.
“Out, night-spawn. Out lie-born. Out daughter of Loki! Out child of Arrakni!” Kara repeated the incantation that had once driven Aslaug from her boat, her hands held before her, clawed in threat. All around her the darkness drew back, as if sucked through the doorway by a straw, down into the realms of night.
“I don’t think so, little witch.” Aslaug speared Kara with two black legs, pinning her to the next column, her robe tenting up around the impaling limbs.
Kara raised her head, bloody about the mouth and snarled, “Back!”
“Go back, Aslaug!” I shouted, and she turned that beautiful, terrifying face toward me.
“You can’t just use me like that, Jalan. I’m not something to be cast aside once you’ve had what you wanted.” I could almost believe the hurt on the stained ivory of her face was real.
I held my hands palm up in apology. “It’s what I do . . .”
Snorri’s short sword, thrown point over hilt over point, hammered between Aslaug’s shoulder blades.
“Back!” Kara screamed.
“Back!” I shouted. I couldn’t even feel bad about it.