Snorri climbs in, takes the oars. Tuttugu scrambles over the side to sit in the stern, and Snorri rows them out across the lake. There are no signs of pursuit back where the valley joins the fjord. The sky is the sky of the living world, dark with cloud, swirled as if by a god’s finger into a great spiral right above them. Thor’s work perhaps. Will the thunder speak before this journey ends?
An evening mist clings to the waters. The freshness of the air speaks of early autumn, carrying hints of wood smoke, fish, and the distant sea. Each dip of the oars draws him closer. In the valley fear had seized him—fear that his strength would not be enough to win through, and that at the last the way of the warrior would not bring him to his heart’s desire. Now a new fear grows in him, its voice louder with each pull of the oars. What will he find? What will he say? What future is there for them? Snorri came to save his children, and instead feels more a child himself with each passing moment—scared to face the family he has failed—scared that he will be unequal to whatever task might be required of him now.
Instinct slows his oars. He raises them, dripping, and the boat bumps gently against the Long Quay. Snorri loops the rope over an ancient post and clambers onto the walkway, his injuries making an old man of him.
The slopes before him are those he was born upon, where he was raised from cot to manhood, where he raised children of his own. Tuttugu and Snorri fished from the quays as boys, ran riot among the huts when the longboats sailed in spring, chased girls. One in particular. What had her name been? A grin twists Snorri’s mouth. Hedwig, Tuttugu’s sweetheart when they had been nine. She’d chosen Tutt over him, perhaps his only victory in all those years, and Snorri had taken it with poor grace.
Tuttugu stands with Snorri at the foot of the climb, waiting. Snorri catches himself delaying. Only his house lies on the slopes. His path is clear. And yet he stands here, not moving. The breeze tugs at him. Grass bends to its tune. High above on the ridges, goats move along their slow paths. Out over the fjord a gull slides down the wind. But none of them make a sound, not one single sound. And the house stands, waiting.
“I’ll watch the lake,” Tuttugu says.
Courage comes in many forms. Some strains come harder to one man than the next. Snorri digs deep for the courage he needs to do this thing that has held him for so long, drawn him so far and by such strange paths. He puts one foot in front of the next, does it again, and walks the beaten path that he has walked so many times before.
At the door to his house Snorri has to dig again. Images of the night Sven Broke-Oar brought the dead to Eight Quays fill his vision. The sounds of their screaming deafens him, their screams as he lay helpless beside the hut, buried by the snowfall from the roof.
Blind he puts his hand to the door, fumbles the latch, pushes through. The hearth lies cold, the bed beneath furs and the furs beneath shadows, the kitchen corner tidy, the ladder to the attic in is proper place. They stand, all three, with their backs toward him, Freja between her children, a hand on Egil’s shoulder, the other on Emy’s head. All three silent, unmoving, heads bowed.
Snorri tries to speak but emotion grips his throat too tightly and he can form no words. The air comes from him in sharp panting breaths— the kind a man might make when a spear runs him through and he seeks to master the pain. He feels his face twist into a grimace, cheeks rising as if they might somehow hold back the tears. In the doorway of his house Snorri ver Snagason falls to his knees, pressed there by a weight greater than the snow that held him down, his strength stolen more effectively than by any venomed dart. Wracked by sobs, he tries to speak their names and still no sound will break from his lips.
Freja stands, golden hair coiling down her back, the woman who saved him, who was his life. Egil, fire-haired terror, cheeky, mischievous, a boy who loved his father and believed Snorri would wrestle trolls to keep him safe. And sweet Einmyria, dark as her father, beautiful as her mother, sharp, and clever, trusting and honest, too wise for her years, too short a time spent playing by the Uulisk.
“Only their sorrows are here.” Tuttugu steps in beside his friend, reaching down to put a hand upon his shoulder. “They didn’t need them any more. They won’t turn—their sorrow can’t see you, because you’re no part of it. When you leave this place they’ll be gone. But while you are here Freja and the children can hear you. What you speak here will reach them.”
Snorri wipes his face. “Where are they?”
Tuttugu sighs. “A v?lva told me this. One you’ve met before. Ekatri.
She came here.”
“She’s dead?”
“I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. That doesn’t matter. What she told me is the important thing, and it’s complicated so don’t interrupt me or I’ll forget parts and get it wrong.
“The magic that we see in the world—the necromancers, mages like Kelem, all that . . . it comes from the Wheel. It’s what the Builders did to us, to themselves. It made each of us capable of magic through nothing more than focusing our will. The Wheel allows wants to become real. Some of us are better at it than others, and without training none of us seem to be very good at it.
“The thing is—that even though most of us aren’t good at wielding the magic the Wheel gave us . . . together we can move mountains. When someone tells a story and that story spreads and grows and people believe it and want it . . . the Wheel turns and makes it so.
“All this.” Tuttugu flaps an arm at the fjord. “It’s here because we were told it was here, we wanted it to be here. I’m not just talking about this place. I mean all of Hel. I mean the souls, the rivers, every rock and stone, each demon, Hel herself, all of it. It’s not real—it’s what the Wheel has given us because the stories we tell ourselves have bound about us so tight, we believe them, we want them, and now we have them.”
Snorri heaves in a deep breath, his mind turning in great circles, as slow as the gyre above the house. “Where are my family, Tutt?”
Tuttugu grips his shoulder. “Before the Wheel there was an older magic, far deeper, less showy, more impressive. There still is. Nobody understands it. But we feel it’s there. Everyone has their own ideas about it, their own story to tell about it. Our ancestors told a story about Asgard and the gods. Perhaps it’s true. But this.” He waves again. “Is not it. This is the dream of men. Made for us.”
“Freja and the children are waiting by a gate that won’t open until the Wheel of Osheim is broken. Beyond it is whatever has always waited for us when we die. The true end of the voyage.
“You’ve seen this place. Didn’t it strike you as wrong? Is this really what we have waiting for us for all eternity?” The fat Viking slumps. “I’m no sage, Snorri. I can hardly pronounce ‘philosophy’, let alone make sense of it. But is this place where you want your children until the end of time? Even if Hel sends them to the holy mountain . . . Helgafell’s a place you can visit just like this one. Don’t you want something for them that is beyond our imagination, not a copy of it? That’s what Freja wants . . .”
“Who . . .” Snorri clears his throat, his words hoarse. “Who brought them to this gate?”
Tuttugu sighs again. “Ekatri. She said she knew you would come here, and that if you found Freja and brought her out, along with the children, it would be an awful thing for all of you, worse than death, not at first, but slowly, by degrees, you would start to hate each other, and in the end that hate would consume you all, utterly.
“Also you might break the world doing it.”
Snorri hangs his head. A hollow pain fills him, and next to it the complaints of cut and torn flesh are nothing.
“Speak to them, Snorri. They know you’re here. They’ve waited for you, and they will hear you. Go on,” Tuttugu says, his voice gentle. “They stayed because they knew you would come. Not because they needed you to come.” He turns to go, axe in hand.
Snorri glances through the doorway, down the slope to the lake. Three tall warriors are climbing from a scaled boat, each of them black on their left side, white on the right.