The Liar’s Key. Mark Lawrence

rowing boat, longer, with more elegant lines and a deeper hull. Snorri ceased his labour at the oars still fifty yards clear of the shore and the hidden rocks further in. The tall mast and furled sails wagged to and fro as waves rolled beneath, gathering themselves to break upon the beach.

      ‘Jal! Get out here!’ Snorri’s boom across the water.

      I stood, unwilling, watching the breakers smash, collapse into foam, and retreat, clawing at the shingle. Further out the sea’s surface danced with rain.

      ‘Jal!’

      In the end one fear pushed out another. I found myself more afraid of what might be descending from the mountain beneath the cover of darkness than of what might lurk beneath the waves. I threw myself into the surf, shouting oaths at the shocking coldness of it, and tried to drown in the direction of the boat.

      My swim consisted of a long and horrific repetition. First of being plunged beneath icy water, then thrashing to the surface, gasping a blind breath and finally a few seconds of beating at the brine before the next wave swamped me. It ended abruptly when a hooked pole snagged my cloak and Snorri hauled me into the boat like a piece of lost cargo.

      For the next several hours I lay sodden and almost too exhausted to complain. I thought the cold would be the death of me, but hadn’t any solution to the problem or the energy to act on it if an idea had occurred. The others tried to wrap me in some stinking furs the woman had stashed away onboard but I cursed them and wouldn’t cooperate.

      Dawn found us adrift beneath clear skies a mile or two off the coast. Kara unfurled the sail and set a course south.

      ‘Hang your clothes on the line, Jal, and get under these.’ Snorri thrust the furs at me again. Bearskins by the look of them. He pointed to his own rags flapping on one of the ropes that secured the sail. A woollen robe I’d not seen before strained to cover his chest.

      ‘I’m fine.’ But my voice emerged as a croak and the cold wouldn’t leave me despite the sunshine. A few minutes later I snatched up the furs with poor grace and stripped, shivering violently. I struggled to keep from toppling arse up between the benches, face in the bilge water, and I kept my back to Kara since a man is never flattered by a cold wind – not that she seemed interested in any case.

      Wrapped in something that used to wrap a bear, I huddled down out of the wind close to Snorri and tried not to let my teeth chatter. Most parts of me ached and the bits that didn’t ache were really painful. ‘So what happened?’ I needed something to take my mind off my fever. ‘And who is Kara?’ Did he still have that damn key was what I really wanted to know.

      Snorri looked out over the sea, the wind whipping a black mane behind him. I supposed he looked well enough in that rough-hewn barbarian sort of way but it always astonished me that a woman would look twice at him when young Prince Jal was on offer.

      ‘I think I’m hallucinating,’ I said, somewhat more loudly. ‘I’m sure I asked a question.’

      Snorri half-startled and shook his head. ‘Sorry, Jal. Just thinking.’ He slid down closer to me, sheltering. ‘I’ll tell you the story.’

      Tuttugu came forward to listen, as if he hadn’t seen the tale unfold before him the previous day. He sat tented in sailcloth while his clothes flapped on the mast. Only Kara stayed back, hand on the tiller, gaze to the fore, occasionally glancing up at the stained expanse of the sail, pregnant with the wind.

      ‘So,’ began Snorri, and just as so often before on our travels he wrapped that voice around us and drew us into his memories.

      Snorri had stood in the prow, watching the coast draw near.

      ‘We’ll beach her? Yes?’ Tuttugu paused by the anchor, a crude iron hook.

      Snorri nodded. ‘See if you can wake Jal.’ Snorri mimed a slap. He knew Tuttugu would be more gentle. The fat man’s presence cheered him in ways he couldn’t explain. With Tuttugu around Snorri could almost imagine these were the old days again, back when life had been more simple. Better. In truth when the pair of them, Jalan and Tuttugu, had turned up on the quay in Trond Snorri’s heart had risen. For all his resolve he had no love of being alone. He knew Jal had been pushed into the boat by circumstance rather than jumping of his own accord, but Tuttugu had no reason to be there other than loyalty. Of the three of them only Tuttugu had started to make a life in Trond, finding work, new friends, a woman to share his days. And yet he’d given that up in a moment because an old friend needed him.

      An hour later and the beach lay far behind them. Snorri had climbed high enough to break clear of the pines, thick about Beerentoppen’s flanks. Tuttugu came puffing from the tree-line a minute later. They turned north and wound around the mountain on a slow and rising spiral. Snorri aimed to bring them to the north face where they could ascend directly, searching for the cave. They saw few signs of life, once an eagle, wings spread wide to embrace a high wind, once a mountain goat, racing away across broken slopes that looked all but impassable.

      Within two hours they had the north to their backs and were ready to climb in earnest.

      ‘Troll country, I’d say.’ Tuttugu took a suspicious sniff, nose to the wind.

      Snorri snorted and put his water flask to his lips. Tuttugu had never so much as smelled a troll, let alone seen one. Still he had a point: the creatures did seem to like volcanoes. Wiping his mouth Snorri started up the slope.

      ‘There!’ After another hour’s clambering Tuttugu proved to have the sharper eyes, jabbing a finger toward an overhang several hundred yards to their left.

      Snorri squinted. ‘Could be.’ And led off, placing each foot on the treacherous surface with caution. Between their path and the cave lay a dark scree slope where any slip would likely see them sliding halfway back down in an ever-growing avalanche of loose, frost-shattered stone. Twice Tuttugu went down sharply on his backside with a despairing wail. Their luck held though and they made it to the firmer footing at the base of the cliffs into which the cave was set.

      Snorri led again, Tuttugu in his wake sniffing. ‘I can smell something. It’s trolls. I knew it.’ He fumbled for his axe. ‘Bloody trolls! I should have stayed with Jal—’

      ‘It’s not trolls.’ Snorri could smell it too. Something powerful, animal, the kind of rankness that only a predator can afford. He shrugged the axe from across his shoulders, and took it in two hands, his father’s axe, recovered from the Broke-Oar on the Bitter Ice. Slow steps took him closer to the cave mouth, the dark interior yielding secrets as it grew to encompass his vision.

      ‘Hel’s teats!’ Snorri breathed the oath out before closing his jaw, which had fallen open. In the shadows a monster slumbered. A hound that might stand taller than a shire horse, and wide as the elephant in Taproot’s circus. It had that blunt yet wrinkled face of dogs bred for fighting rather than the hunt. One canine, of similar size to Snorri’s fingers and thumb all funnelled up together, protruded from the lower jaw, escaping slobbery jowls to point toward a wet nose.

      ‘It’s asleep.’ A hoarse whisper at his shoulder. ‘If we’re very quiet we can get away.’

      ‘This is her cave, Tutt. There aren’t going to be two. And this must be her guardian. It’s not here by chance.’

      ‘We could…’ Tuttugu rubbed furiously at his beard as if hoping to dislodge an answer. ‘You could lure it out and I could drop a rock on it from up there!’ He pointed to the cliff top.

      ‘I think that might … irritate her. I’ve met this woman, Tutt. She’s not someone you want to irritate.’

      ‘What then? We can’t very well walk up and pat the puppy.’

      Snorri took a hand from his axe and dug beneath his furs to touch Loki’s key. Immediately he felt them, Emy, Egil, Karl, Freja, as if it were their skin beneath his fingers not the slickness of obsidian. ‘That’s exactly what we’ll do.’

      With the need to run trembling in every limb, Snorri advanced into the cave, axe lowered, quiet but not creeping. A few