Snow-Walker

by Catherine Fisher

  Then the woman moved with a rustle of silks.

  “Where are your friends?”

  “Your men have them.” Kari’s voice was low, but his hands were clenched and trembling. “You should have known that.”

  She shrugged lightly. “Perhaps I did.”

  “No,” he said slowly. “You didn’t.”

  A flicker of expression crossed her face, as if she was surprised, but it was gone before Jessa could be sure.

  Gudrun moved nearer to Kari. She was taller. She ran a narrow finger down his patched coat. Jessa saw, tied around her wrist, a wisp of dried snakeskin.

  “Not the clothes for the Jarl’s son.”

  “You took that away from me.”

  “I could give it back.” She smiled with real amusement and touched his hair. Jessa saw how he stiffened.

  “It’s too late.” He pulled away and went to the fire and tossed on a handful of kindling. Then he stood close up to the flames. The new wood crackled and spit; the sound echoed in the roof.

  “You’re afraid of me.” He said it steadily, but with an effort, looking into the leaping web of flame. “Because I’m the same as you—just the same. You invented all those lies so that no one would know it, but they only have to look. Any powers you have, I have too.”

  She smiled, smoothing her dress. “But I know how to use them. You don’t.”

  “I’ve been learning.”

  “Tricks played on fools. Not the real spells, not the twisting of minds, the webs of fear and delight.”

  She had come after him and reached out again, fingering the ends of his hair as if she could not leave him alone. “As for fear, I’m afraid of nothing.”

  “Except your reflection,” Jessa said.

  Gudrun turned quickly, as if she had forgotten her. “Silence!”

  “It’s true.” Kari looked up. “And you know it’s not the one in the mirror. I’m your reflection.”

  Gudrun was still a moment. Then she said, “Indeed you are. You and I are the same.”

  “No.” He shook his head, but she went up to him, clutched his hands.

  “Look at us. Together we could make the north such a kingdom of sorcery as has never been dreamed. I have let you live for this, watched you, to see what you would become.” Her cold eyes glittered. “And you’ve become me.”

  “No!” Kari stepped back. “You’re wrong. I would never join with you.”

  Gudrun straightened; her fingers stabbed the air; she snapped out a rune. Kari caught his breath. To Jessa’s horror, he staggered with a gasp of pain.

  “Stop it! Leave him alone,” she cried.

  But already he was lifting his head, straightening, white and unsteady. When he spoke, his voice was bitter. “You won’t do that again. Now feel its reflection.”

  He did not move or say anything, but the witch slowly bent before him like a candle too close to heat. Her eyes widened; she staggered to the table and clutched it, one hand gripping the edge, her knuckles white.

  “This is pain,” he said quietly, coming up behind her. “This is how it feels. And these are nightmares—see them? This is silence. This is fear.”

  Gudrun shuddered, shaking her head. She beat off something invisible with her hand; quick, nervous snatches. Kari stood and watched. Then he touched her hair. Jessa felt her heart thump with fear.

  “Are these the webs you mean?” he said softly. “You see I can weave them too.”

  Gudrun buckled into a chair. Her long hands lay on the table—Jessa could see them trembling. The hall was dark and silent.

  Then Kari turned away, and Gudrun’s hands were still. He went back to the fire. After a while he said in a sharp voice, “It’s over, your time of power. There are two of us now—a balance. I think you should go back to the place you came from; leave the Jarlshold to choose its own leader.”

  “You?” she said scornfully, raising her head.

  “Not me. They won’t want me.” He rubbed his hair wearily. “I’m too much like you.”

  “Kari!” Jessa cried.

  He turned and saw that the witch was standing, tall and pale. Her white gown fell in straight folds; it glinted like frost.

  “It’s not finished,” she said. “Has he told you about the serpent, this Brochael you’re so fond of? The serpent hugs the world; it devours itself. It will never be destroyed until the end of the world, when the great wolf of darkness snaps its binding, and the ship of monsters sails into the harbor. Far from here, far to the north, is a hall, all woven of white snakes; its doors face out to the eternal ice.”

  She held out her hands; drew them slowly apart. Jessa saw light gleam between them. The hall seemed to shudder; the shutters creaked as if something was pressing against them.

  “That is the place I come from,” Gudrun said. “The serpent is what I serve. And now it strikes.”

  She was close to him; her hands moved in a flash of light. Jessa screamed and grabbed Kari, hauling him aside as the knife slashed down. Gudrun turned and struck again; the blade whistled past Jessa’s face, slicing through strands of her hair. Kari grabbed it. With an effort he wrenched it out of her hand and flung it onto the fire.

  At once the flames roared up, higher than his head. Long coils of smoke poured out, twisting around his neck and arms. Smoke swept around Jessa’s waist, squeezing her tight, even though her hands went through it as she beat at it. She yelled and squirmed, but the serpent of smoke held her, hugging the breath out of her. Its tongue flickered at Kari, pinning him against the wall, blackening the stones and scorching the tapestry behind him into smoking holes. As he dodged, the cloth caught alight; a line of flame ran up the edge, crackling through the dusty threads.

  Kari scrambled through the smoke to Jessa. As he caught hold of her the weight on her chest seemed to burst; she breathed in, sick and dizzy.

  “Where is she?” he yelled, but Jessa shook her head and jerked back as the tapestry fell, a roaring sheet of flame, from the wall.

  “This way!” she screamed.

  They ran to the door and tugged. It didn’t move. Jessa slammed her palms against it and whirled around. “The windows, then!”

  But the windows were shuttered, the hall a closed cage of burning cloth. Smoke stung their eyes; they were coughing and retching. High overhead the roof tree crackled, spilling sparks like blossoms.

  Outside, a voice was yelling. Something thumped on the door.

  Jessa slammed and kicked at it. “How can we get out?”

  “We can’t.”

  He dragged her down and they gasped the cold air near the floor. Then she looked at him. To her astonishment she saw he was half smiling. She forced herself to be calm. “What are you going to do?”

  “This.”

  He kneeled in the smoke, his hands gripped into fists.

  And the smoke turned white. It gathered itself together into hard grains and fell silently. It fell from the darkness up there in the rafters; fell as a gentle, relentless snow, onto the flames, onto Jessa’s hair and upturned face. The air grew cold; the water on her cheeks froze. Soot hardened to a black glaze, and the flames sank. Tapestries stiffened into rigid folds and hard, crumpled masses on the flagstones.

  Slowly, easily, the snow fell, whitening floor and tables, hanging like frail lace on their clothes, and on Gudrun’s, as she sat in the center of the hall, watching them.

  She sat calmly in a great chair, her face expressionless. On a stool at her feet huddled the wizened old man Grettir, looking more ancient than ever. His long eyes watched them both carefully. Jessa stared back. Had they been there all the time, in all that flame and smoke?

  Suddenly someone outside yelled. The door shuddered, as if something heavy had struck it.

  The witch stood up and came forward. The old man followed her like a dog. She seemed slightly smaller, almost as if something had gone from her. Close up, Jessa saw the faint lines on her face as she kneeled thoughtfully by Kari.

  “It seems you’re right,” sh
e said. “There are two of us now.” She smiled at him. “So I will do you the greatest harm I can. I’ll give you what you want.”

  “What do you mean?” he muttered.

  “I leave it all to you,” she said. “With this curse. They will never love you, never trust you. Power like ours is a terror to them. You’ll see that. Your new Jarl will want to be rid of you as soon as he can.” She touched his shoulder lightly. “And you’ll use them, as I did. It’s what we always do.”

  Then she was on her feet, walking to the black folds of tapestry. She tugged them back, and there was the small arch Jessa remembered. The door shuddered again. Gudrun ignored it, and turned and tossed something down that rolled and lay on the stone flags. “Keep this,” she said. “One day I may come back for it.”

  As she turned he said, “You’re wrong about me. I’m not like you.”

  “We’ll see,” she said. Jessa thought she was smiling. Then she was gone, the old man close behind, into the stone passages behind the curtain.

  After a moment Jessa turned and ran to the door. She pulled the latch and it lifted easily; she tugged the heavy door wide. The men outside stared at her, but someone gave a great shout and grabbed her arms. She saw it was Brochael, with a crowd of others at his back.

  “Where’s Kari?”

  “Inside.”

  They surged past her. She saw Gudrun’s men standing uncertain outside, but she left them and followed Thorkil.

  “Where’s Gudrun?” he asked.

  She shook her head, suddenly tired.

  Wulfgar had picked the object off the floor. He gave it to Kari, who fingered the knotted snakeskin.

  “Search the hold,” Brochael said, but Kari shook his head.

  “You won’t find her. She’s gone.”

  “But where?”

  “Back. Wherever she came from.”

  “For good?” Brochael asked gruffly.

  Kari shrugged. “That’s more than I can say.” Suddenly he turned to Wulfgar. “Well. Here we are in your hall. It seems the Wulfings have come home at last.”

  The skald went over and kicked the frozen mass of the fire.

  “And not a moment too soon,” he remarked.

  Twenty-One

  Silence becomes the son of a prince.

  By morning the whole of the Jarlshold had been searched, but there was no sign of Gudrun or Grettir. How she had vanished from among them no one knew, but it was said later that a man who farmed up on the fells to the east had seen a woman, dressed all in white, walking swiftly and tirelessly over the snow, with a dark figure like a shadow behind her. Terrified, he had hurried indoors to the firelight.

  First thing in the morning the men of the Jarlshold and all the surrounding settlements had gathered in the great hall, staring at the travelers curiously. Many of them could not tear their eyes from Kari as he sat quietly talking to Brochael and Wulfgar. Jessa knew that the presence of so many people was making him uneasy; she caught his eye and smiled and he did the same. Wulfgar was voted Jarl with a great roar of approval, no one disagreeing, but afterward, in the crush and excitement, Kari was missing. She searched for him, pushing her way to Thorkil.

  “Have you seen Kari?”

  He shook his head. “Elsewhere, I suppose. Not used to all these people.”

  But when she asked Brochael, he paused for a moment and shrugged a little unhappily. “I have an idea where he might be. Come on.”

  As she followed him out of the hall, she heard silence fall behind her, and into it came the skald’s voice, clear and sharp, chanting an old song in praise of the Wulfings, a chain of words, lilting and proud. Looking back, she saw Wulfgar sitting in the Jarl’s chair, relaxing in it lazily, his fingers moving over the worn arms as Ragnar’s had done. Behind him, Thorkil leaned.

  She followed Brochael. They went down into a part of the Jarlshold she had never seen: a long dark corridor at the foot of a flight of damp steps. On each side were small rooms, their windows barred, and the stench from them stale and fetid.

  “Her prisons,” Brochael growled. “Full, till this morning.”

  His voice echoed in the stone tunnel.

  She followed him to the very end, deep in the rock under the hold. The door of the last room was ajar, and he pushed it open. They saw a very small cell, long neglected. The walls were dark with grime and soot. Old straw rustled under their feet; one tiny window let in the light.

  Kari stood at the far end of the room, looking at something on the wall. Jessa saw it was some faint scrawl of circles and spirals, almost worn away with age. His hair shone pale and clean, and he wore the new clothes that Wulfgar had given them all from the Jarl’s store. He turned around when he heard them.

  “Why come here?” Brochael asked gruffly.

  “Just to look. To see if I remembered it right.” After a moment he took the snakeskin bracelet from his pocket and fingered it, dropping it silently into the cold ashes in the fireplace. Then he came out and closed the door.

  Brochael put an arm around him. “Come on. The lord Jarl will be having his first feast tonight. Everyone will want to stare at you as he loads you with gold and gives us all rings and horses. Asgrim will be here within days, when he hears.”

  “I don’t want his gold,” Kari said. “But I would like Thrasirshall—whatever is left of it.”

  Brochael nodded. “You’ll get it! Who else would want it?” He grinned at Jessa. “And the new lady of Horolfstead will be wearing her best, I expect?”

  “All borrowed.” Jessa laughed.

  Kari laughed too. Then he turned and raised his hands, and made a small movement.

  As they watched it, the door faded out of sight.

  BOOK TWO

  The Empty Hand

  Dedication

  To Joseph

  One

  Darkness drowns everything

  and under its shadow-cover shapes … glide

  dark beneath the clouds.

  The creature moved down from the north, traveling quickly. All the long night it had blurred and flickered through blizzards, leaving its prints briefly on the open tundra, until the snow clogged them. It was a gray wraith on the glaciers, a shadow that trudged under black, frosted skies.

  Hunger drove it—aching hunger. And a voice, a clear, cold voice that had called it out of some unremembered darkness, had knotted and woven its atoms together with spells and words and runes, and had sent it south tormented by this emptiness nothing could fill. Who the voice was, it did not know. It hardly knew anything, even where it was going.

  The creature made a low moan that rang through the ice chasm around it. Sharp edges of snow fell soundlessly through its body. It climbed up and paused, turning its head north wearily, but the voice was still there, silent, insistent. It turned and trudged down the fellside.

  There had been a feathered thing on a frozen lake days ago, but that had been stinking and tasteless, a picked skeleton. Silver shapes under the ice had flicked away, unreachable. Head down, the rune beast stumbled on without thought. Stars glinted through it.

  Then it stopped and lifted its head.

  Dark shapes crowded the hillside below. The creature had seen nothing like them before. They stood, huge and rigid, sighing in the raw wind. The voice put a word, like a cold drop, into the creature’s ear.

  Trees.

  Dimly it realized that the air had been changing for a long time. Days ago there had been bitter roaring winds at the uttermost ends of the earth, high snows and glacial emptiness. Now it was less cold. Down here things grew.

  The rune creature glimmered between the trees and paused, deep in shadow. The wood was silent. There were strange new smells, teasing pleasures that tore at its hunger; pine and rotting wood and leaves and fungi; rich, decaying sensations. And beyond that, small, musky scents.

  Animals.

  The voice told it about animals, the sweetness of meat, the warmth of blood.

  It hurried on, eager, drifting and glinting throug
h the tangled undergrowth. Snow fell through its body silently.

  Two

  … Caught sleeping by the cunning of the thief.

  Oh, the fish was fresh all right. She wondered if it was even dead, it glared up at her so balefully from the wooden plate.

  And the ale was worse. Grimly she swallowed one mouthful and turned on the man mending nets on the step.

  “You’d better get me something else. Water, even.”

  “Water! Lady, you’ll poison yourself!”

  “I think I already have.” Jessa poured the thin pale liquid deliberately onto the straw. “I wouldn’t give this muck to my worst enemy.”

  Unruffled, the man stood up, gathering the torn net in his arms. “There’s another cask. It’ll cost you, though.”

  “I thought it might.” She pushed the platter across the table. “And while you’re there, you can do something to this. Cook it, preferably. If I’d wanted it raw, I could have speared my own.”

  The innkeeper nodded sourly. “With your tongue. It’s sharp enough.”

  He gathered up the plate in disgust and disappeared behind a woven blue curtain.

  Grinning, Jessa leaned her elbows on the table and folded her fingers together. It had been a good day. The market had been the best for a long time—they’d sold all the livestock, and the men had gone back to the farm with spices and yarn and leather and new swords. Under her coat hung a full pouch of silver. And Skapti was coming to meet her, the Jarl’s tall, thin, sarcastic poet. In fact he should have been here by now. They were sailing to the Jarlshold on the next tide, and she was looking forward to it.

  Someone came in, and she glanced up, but it wasn’t the skald. A small, scrawny man. He sat in a corner and called for ale.

  The room was warm; it smelled of food and dogs and smoke. All day it had been thronged with traders and peddlers and market women, but now she was the last of them. She gazed idly out over the wharf. The sun still hung above the horizon; a cold red globe, steaming over the sea. The nights were already getting shorter. Through the uncurtained doorway she could see the keels of upturned boats in the lurid light; gulls screamed and fought over the drying nets. As she listened, the clang of metal on metal from the smithy stopped, leaving a sudden stillness of sea wash and birds.