figures started to move father out in the plains, slipping in and out of the fog. The longer we walked, the more numerous they became. Soon, I heard the clash of steel and the clink of armor rising around us.
With the pounding of hooves, a warhorse charged out of the mist. The rider waved a banner, his mouth open in a silent scream, and a legion of the gleaming dead raced behind him. The hooves were the only sound the entire horde made, and as they rushed around us, I pulled Ali in close.
With glimmering dust clouding around us, the soldiers split into two factions, one on either side of the road. Ali pulled away from me, still looking furious.
We walked slowly, now, as a great battle raged on either side of the road. Dead men fought in complete silence, even as they stabbed each other with spears. Dead warriors lopped limbs with swords and bashed in skulls with battleaxes. The mud ran thick with their blood, but they rose again and pieced their bodies back together like grisly jigsaw puzzles.
But they wouldn’t bother us.
Ali was as silent as the dead warriors, and I knew she was seething like the mists around us.
When we’d finally moved past the silent battle, the fog thinned a little, and I could see a dark line rising from the fog, stretching out on either side. As we approached, it grew larger and larger until it was as taller than the highest skyscrapers in Boston. Taller even than the Citadel on Beacon Hill.
Before us loomed a massive iron wall extending in either direction as far as the eye could see. Great streaks of rust stained the wall, like giant smears of blood. Lines of dead shuffled toward it.
This was the wall surrounding Helheim itself. Not a defensive structure, but one meant to keep the souls of the dead trapped inside.
We followed the road north until a pair of towers came into view, jutting from the wall, flanking an entrance. Almost all the dead streamed into it, but a few turned to the right or left, ambling along.
The gate to Helheim.
When we were a hundred and fifty yards away, I stopped and pulled out my book—which I now realized was an old romance set in a time of pandemic, called Quarantined with a Bad Boy. I grimaced at the cover, then flipped it open to a mostly blank page.
I wrote, Let me go in to explore. I’m already dead, and it’s better that I go on my own. You’re mortal. I can’t die.
She nodded, still barely meeting my gaze.
I turned to see a shambling legion of the dead moving toward the gates. I blended into the crowd, walking among them until I was maybe a hundred yards from the entrance. I tried to look inside, but it was filled with a shimmering mist. From the other side of the gate, I could hear disquieting noises—howls, shrieks, and a low, unending ululation.
From the stories and legends, I knew that visitors to Helheim didn’t pass through the entrance with the rest of the dead, but I didn’t know why. I guessed that since my body was already dead, I was unlikely to be affected by any magic that might be in play here. Still, I had to be careful. I crept up closer.
I watched as a dead man with a white beard approached the gate, his body gleaming. He trundled forward, one foot in front of the other—but when he reached the swirling mist, he stopped, and his body seemed to freeze in place. With a gust of wind, his skin crumbled into dust. In the flickering instant as his body disintegrated, I saw a shadow pass into the opalescent mist.
This was why the other travelers in the stories had found alternate entrances. The main gate stripped a man’s body from his soul.
And since I had no soul, I’d become nothing but dust.
With rising frustration, I turned back to Ali.
Chapter 40
Ali
Marroc and I walked along the base of the soaring iron wall, close enough that I could reach out and touch it. My feet sank into the mud, and it pulled at my shoes, squelching with every step. At least we’d moved away from the unseeing eyes of the dead.
Water dripped down the wall in rivulets, streaking it with rust. The wall wasn’t entirely smooth. Strange bumps—rivets, maybe—marred its surface. I guessed it was attached to some sort of structure on the other side, but it was impossible