Its ceiling was high, its spaces vast. It was wide enough that in the center spread a sunless sea, and on the shore stood a dark tower, its windows not squares of light but of even deeper darkness.
Gizor and the rest of the dead fell back as Roric and Eirik continued warily forward. As they approached the tower they could see within its darkness a mist just a little denser than mist should be. Shining in it were two points of light like coals almost burned out.
Eirik dropped to his knees. “I serve you, lord,” he said as though the words were wrenched from him. “I have always sent men to you, and now I come myself.”
“With a little help from me,” muttered Roric.
Faint and cold behind them, from all the passages they had traversed, came the muttering of the dead who had seen the living walk by. Gizor One-hand and the other shadowy shapes massed together. “You come here alive in blood and breath,” said the voice from the mist, colder than any of the voices of the dead. “You have brought life to Hel where life has never been.”
When Eirik did not answer, Roric said to the glowing eyes, “I warned you what would happen if you tried to take over the realms of voima. For we are more than living mortals-we are mortals who have walked where only the immortals go.”
“You are the only power that all must obey in the end,” Eirik was still murmuring.
Roric ignored him. He stood with a hand on his hip, and a line from an old story flashed through his mind, “The hero faced down the lords of death themselves.” But he was not a hero, and in spite of his own bold words the one to whom all came in the end could never be faced down.
“The dead should fade, forgotten.” Again the voice in the coils of mist sounded uncertain. “If they did not, Hel itself would not hold them all.”
“And I have started to waken them?” said Roric. “And does this ”-he held high his charm-“bring a hint of voima even to the dusty halls of death? Shall I test more fully the effects of the Wanderers’ singing sword?”
“The dead… cannot wake. They must not wake.”
Too bad Eirik didn’t have his lyre, Roric thought. This would make a good song. “You hear them. You see them. They are waking now. Is two living men too many for you?”
“You do not want it, mortals,” said the voice from the mist, expressionless and cold. “You would not want the dead to become animate again, to rise from their burial mounds in mortal realms. If the dead do not stay dead, then the balance will be overturned and the earth shall collapse from too many of the living. One living man would not destroy the balance-I should be able to restore it. But two
…”
“Then listen to me!” Roric cried. “I shall leave, so that they may fade again, all those whose stories do not burn in story and song.”
“You cannot leave Hel,” said Eirik, turning on him, and his eyes too had turned to coals.
“Just watch,” said Roric. “First I ran from dishonor, when I knew that love and honor could not be found together. Then I determined to run no more, to fight dishonor by giving my life in battle. When you would not take it, Eirik Eirik’s son, I came here living. And I have discovered something. There may be honor in how one dies, but the real honor is in living one’s life as well as one can, until fate spells the end. There is no honor to be found in fleeing from failure to death.”
“Then what do you want?” growled Eirik.
“Life itself. All the powers of birth, growth, and love. I thought to find them in the realms of the lords of voima, but I found that even those lords can only guide and reflect that which comes from mortal life. And I shall not find those powers here. Love and birth come only to mortals who still live beneath the sun, but who know that they are not immortal and must seize life while they can.”
“All the burial mounds in the world,” said the voice so deep and so low he felt the words as much as heard them, “lead to this tower.”
“Then one should also be able to climb back the other way,” said Roric as confidently as he could. He backed away from the tower, looking around for some way that might lead out of here. “Outlaw! Are you coming with me?”
“No,” said Eirik quietly, almost in a mumble, then, “No! I was cast out, made a renegade, with all men’s hands against me. The woman I could have loved if she had given me a chance rejected me-and not even for another man, but for no one.” He lifted his head proudly. “But I have a power here that all the Fifty Kings cannot match. If there is no dying in Hel-as you and your friend Valmar made clear is not the case in the Wanderers’ realm! — then I have found the only way for mortals to become immortal. Only here, in the court of the forces of darkness, shall all men and women yield to me in the end!”
“I may be an outlaw too,” said Roric, in a voice he deliberately made loud and cheerful to echo through the halls of the dead, “but I know a woman who loves me. If not her lover anymore, I can still be her brother and do all within my strength to ensure her happiness.”
“You shall return here!” said Eirik harshly. “I shall be alive, a spot of color and breath and living blood, serving the all-powerful forces, when you come down gray from the mound where they put you.”
“Of course I shall return,” said Roric. “If life was valueless because short, it would have no meaning at all. If we thought only on the end that fate ordains, of the destruction of even the immortals, none of us would seek love or renewal. But before I see you here again, I-though not you-shall have been alive.”
Eirik looked at him a moment, an expression that might really have been a smile on his scarred lips. “I won’t need this sword any more,” he said suddenly, unbuckling it. “Take it back to the Wanderers. Tell them to send me my lyre instead! If I could make my songs for the dead here, maybe I could put a little life in their eyes.”
The dark misty shape swirled for a moment, as though concerned about maintaining the balance with even one living man here if that man was King Eirik. “I’ll see what I can do about the lyre,” said Roric with a grin.
But how was he, in spite of his bold words, going to get out of here and back to mortal lands? Suddenly Gizor One-hand stepped forward.
“I shall help you, Roric,” he said, his voice almost animate. “Someone who returned living from Hel would have his song sung for a thousand years-and they will also long tell the tale of the dead man who helped him. You can return via my burial mound. The way is above you. Jump.”
Jump? Roric looked up without seeing anything but a distant gray roof, but he had to trust Gizor’s word for it. He buckled on the singing sword and sprang upwards, on legs that suddenly seemed enormously powerful. Gizor jumped with him, pushing from behind. He grabbed for a handhold on the ceiling far above the sunless sea and tower of death. Over him a passageway opened, a passage leading upwards, and he kicked his way into it. He looked down between his feet for a last glimpse of the outlaw king. Then he turned away, thinking no more of Hel to which fate would still one day destine him, but would not yet. He thoughts were of Karin and her love.
The climbing was straightforward, even easy at first. Gizor was close at his shoulder. Roric went fast, his hands gripping first rocks, then soft earth. Constantly the passage opened before him.
But then the climb gradually became harder. Time slowly began to have meaning again, and he thought he had climbed two hours, three hours. As he rose out of Hel hunger and weariness assaulted him, and he thought with a grim smile that this must be a sign he was returning at last to mortal realms. The air here seemed thick and sour, leaden in his gasping lungs.
The passage up which he climbed ended abruptly. He paused, waiting for it to open again before him. But he now seemed surrounded by solid earth.