Snow-Walker

by Catherine Fisher

  It was then he realized they were not even looking at him. They were staring, all of them, over his shoulder. Slowly he too turned his head.

  Wulfgar was standing on the steps behind him.

  The Jarl was white-faced, his dark hair tousled. Skapti hung anxiously at his side, as if to steady him should he stagger, but Wulfgar just stood there, letting the blustering echoes drift away into silence.

  Jessa felt a great wave of delight and relief surge inside her. The men shouted, whooped, murmured into stillness, but Wulfgar only waited, his eyes on Vidar, unsmiling.

  Then, painfully, he came down the steps and faced the priest. Their faces were masks of flame and shadow.

  “It seems I made a mistake,” the Jarl said quietly. “I thought there was only one evil thing among us. But all the time there were two. As well as the witch’s sending there was yours, and yours is worse. Lies. Treachery. Making me doubt my own friends. A net of slander spun over my own hold. Ambition. And murder, almost.”

  Vidar stumbled back one step. The men closed on him quickly, but Wulfgar stood still.

  “And the worst thing is that I thought you were my friend, my adviser. We laughed together, hunted, ate together. I liked you, Vidar. And all the time that was a mask, was it? All that time you were plotting my death, plotting against all of us. Was any of it real? Any of it?”

  For a moment the priest went to speak; then his lips closed. Wulfgar gave him a hard, bitter look.

  “Not a good answer.”

  He turned away deliberately.

  Vidar took one step forward quickly; then he screamed in pain, flung down the knife, and crumpled over his blackened hand, moaning and cursing.

  On the floor the hilt smoked. The stench of burning rose from it.

  Three men grabbed the priest and hauled him up.

  Wulfgar, startled, glanced at Kari. “Thank you. From what Skapti tells me, you owed him that.”

  Kari nodded. He went over to the priest. “But you’re wrong about one thing, Wulfgar. This man has no power of his own. I think this was Gudrun’s doing too, in a way. Remember what she said to me. No one will trust you, she said. She sent this, just as she sent the other thing.”

  He came forward. Vidar clutched his burned hand warily and tried to back away, but the men gripped him.

  “Have you ever looked at reflections?” Kari asked him quietly. “I don’t have one—mine is in a far-off place, far to the north, beyond the bears and the icebergs, where the world plunges into nothing. That’s where she is, my reflection. Identical, yes, but opposite. Reflections are opposites. One lifts the right hand, the other the left. Haven’t you noticed that?”

  The priest stared at him, his narrow face blank, as if he had exhausted all feeling.

  “Why did you do it?” Skapti asked.

  Vidar still looked at Kari. Then he said, “Because sorcery is wrong. It corrupts. Because Wulfgar allowed you to come here and I knew that you were dangerous. I believed what I said about you. One day you will destroy us. That’s why Gudrun left you here.”

  Kari was silent. Jessa knew he had been wounded; Vidar’s words hung in the air like a dark chill.

  Suddenly she spoke out. “You did it for your own ambition,” she said. “No other reason.”

  Kari looked at her, a grateful flicker. Tension broke. The men moved, agreeing.

  “Well said,” Skapti muttered.

  As if in answer, one of the ravens squawked oddly, and Kari glanced up at it.

  “Wulfgar, we still have Gudrun to deal with. Her creature is coming. Clear the hall quickly. Get your men out. This is my fight now.”

  Lowering himself with a wince of pain into the chair, Wulfgar said, “You heard him. All of you, out.”

  “I’m staying,” Jessa said firmly. She went over and kissed Wulfgar gently on the forehead.

  “What’s that for?” he asked, smiling.

  “For being alive!”

  He shrugged. “Thank a hard life. And Skapti—who’d bully anyone back to existence.”

  The skald folded his lanky arms. “I’m staying too. If I have to make songs about this creature I need to see it.”

  “That’s never stopped you before,” Brochael murmured.

  Hakon watched the last of the men hurry out. He wondered if he should go with them, and then remembered he was free—for the moment at least. Skuli had scuttled off already. He’d make up his own mind. And though he was afraid, he wanted to stay.

  “As for Vidar,” Wulfgar snapped, “he can stay too. Let him see what this sorcery is.”

  By now the hall was almost empty, and dark.

  “If this fails,” Kari said, turning to Wulfgar suddenly, “you must all get out and burn the hall with the thing inside. No sword will hurt it, Wulfgar. Promise me you’ll do that.”

  “No promises,” the Jarl said lightly.

  Kari shook his head ruefully. “You’re a stubborn man.” Then he turned to Brochael. “Go and open the door.”

  “What!”

  “Open it. Wide. And keep yourself behind it.”

  For a moment the big man looked down at him, bitterly anxious. “I hope you know what you’re doing, little prince.”

  “So do I,” Kari said wryly.

  “It could kill you.”

  Kari shook his head. “Haven’t you realized why she sent it here yet, Brochael? Not to kill. To be killed.”

  Brochael stared at him. Then he jammed the sword into his belt and turned away without a word. As he walked down the hall his boots rang on the flagstones; he grasped the wooden bar and heaved it aside with a mighty effort, the rumble echoing in the high rafters.

  Then, slowly, he dragged the great door wide.

  The night was black. Stars glinted.

  Snow swirled in, sliding over the door with a faint, uneasy hiss.

  Twenty-Eight

  Gliding through the shadows came

  the walker in the night.

  It strode now, through the marsh.

  Water splashed its face; the green slime of algae clotted it; mud splattered the spread claws.

  Snow, like a white dissolving mist, opened and closed mysterious pathways about it, gave it glimpses of stars and water and a huddle of dark buildings against the dim sky.

  Ahead, low in the distance, was the hall, lit with red light. From its wide-open door a mist of flame light breathed into the dark, as if the building was a great crouching dragon, lying asleep, its fires low.

  Eagerly the rune beast stalked through the mists and the cold fog wraiths that drifted from the marsh; it breathed cold clouds against the stars. Snow stuck to its sharp face.

  It came to the edge of the mud, to firmer ground. Already its hunger was immense. Here it became unbearable. Hunger was the empty world about it, the vast, frosty silences of the sky. Hunger was her voice in its ears, in its belly, in its sharpening, tangled mind.

  Everything is ready now, she whispered. Everything.

  Her voice was a cold breeze among the houses. She crossed its path like a shadow, slinking into the grass. You’ll see. My snake bond grips him, and he’ll use it. I left it for him. I left it for you.

  Among the houses now, the dark timbers. Inside them the rune creature sensed terror, the humans crouched and listening, the smell of fear, the snorting, restless animals. It strode down the pathways the snow made, down the long dark openings of its pain, and ahead the hall rose like a fortress unlocked, a grim black wall of snow-dusted stone.

  The door was open, a red mouth.

  The creature stopped, one great hand on the wall.

  In that opening lay the end of all its hunger; dimly it knew that. And yet even from here it could sense him, the one who waited, the one who had reached out and touched it, a strange, cold touch. And it gathered all its strength and made the question in its mind, knotted it together from sounds and memories and fears.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Whatever he says, she answered. He will unleash you, no
t I. The power is his, and I’ve made sure he will hurt enough to use it. Feast, my friend.

  The creature stood, silent.

  Then after a moment it crouched under the lintel, and went in.

  Twenty-nine

  The monster strained away;

  the man stepped closer.

  The monster’s desire was

  for darkness between them.

  The thing loomed in the doorway.

  In the dim spaces of the hall it rose against the rafters, a pale glimmer wreathed with mist and smoke, snow scattering from it.

  Before it, Kari seemed very small, in a wilderness of stone.

  Brochael hung back in the shadows of the doorway, watching.

  It was not an animal. Not a man either exactly, but like one, Jessa thought, very like one. Its eyes moved, fixing on Kari; it roared and slashed at him viciously.

  Kari flinched, but held his ground.

  The creature seemed wary of coming closer. It swung quickly and looked behind it, but Brochael jerked back out of sight.

  Then Kari spoke to it. “Listen to me.”

  The rune beast stared. For a moment Jessa thought a flicker of recognition showed in its face.

  “This is what you want.”

  Kari held out his hand. The snakeskin band dangled from his white fingers.

  The creature looked at it, making a peculiar wordless murmur in its throat.

  “She left this here. She left it for me, and it drew you here. Over all the miles, through forests, over mountains, this was what you hungered for. It has enormous power. I think it has enough to enslave you or to set you free. Enough to fill all the emptiness in you.”

  He turned it, thoughtfully, in his fingers. The skin gleamed, fire red.

  Wulfgar stirred uneasily. “Wasn’t that Gudrun’s?” he breathed.

  Jessa nodded, unable to speak. She remembered Gudrun flinging it down like a challenge, her cold voice saying, “You’ll use them, as I did. We always do.”

  Now Kari held the shadow bringer still, by what power she dared not think.

  The creature’s claw reached out; Kari stepped back. There was a tense pause; then with a roar of pain the beast struck out. With one blow it sent him reeling; Wulfgar leaped up, and Brochael raced out of the shadows with a yell.

  The rune beast hung over Kari for a moment; then with a whisper of dismay it turned, bewildered, from side to side. And Jessa saw there was a cage about it; a cage of light that glittered in the dull flame light, thin filaments that ran from roof to floor, like water.

  The creature crumpled, hugging itself; for a wild moment it slashed and struggled against light and sorcery, but as if it realized how useless this was, it huddled still again, eyes bright.

  Painfully Kari picked himself up. He looked down at the snakeskin.

  “This is the key to your cage,” he said, slipping it on. “This. And she left it for me to use against my friends.” He glanced back quickly at Jessa and the others, a quizzical, unreadable look. “They don’t trust me. They lock me away. They’re afraid of what I have, and she wants me to hate them for that and move against them. Doesn’t she?”

  The creature stared at him, only its eyes following his movements. He fingered the soft skin gently. “This would unleash you. You could destroy all of them, and you couldn’t touch me.”

  “Listen to him,” Vidar snarled. “He’ll kill us all.”

  “No,” Jessa said grimly. “He’s just making his point.”

  The rune beast murmured, a strange sound.

  “Exactly,” Kari said, as if he understood it. “I don’t hate them. They know that … most of them. I won’t use her gift against them. But if I don’t, what do we do with you? Because you’re hungry.”

  He reached out his hand. The creature watched, its great head alert.

  “I know that hunger,” Kari whispered. “I knew it for years, here—the emptiness, the darkness, without faces, without language, without warmth. Dreaming of nothing, my mind walking in white snowfields.”

  The creature snarled; Kari jerked back, waving Brochael away.

  “Be careful!” Jessa murmured.

  “He knows what he’s doing.” But Skapti stood stiff, fists clenched.

  “So you see,” Kari said, “I daren’t use this thing and I must. That’s what power is.” He seemed almost to be talking to himself now, Jessa thought, and her heart thudded as she saw him lean forward again.

  “She sent you here for me to kill. For me to taste how that felt, and to want to taste it again. Oh she’s clever, my mother.” He looked closely at the creature, curious. “She left us both empty, didn’t she?”

  The beast strained away, as if it feared him.

  Kari held out the bracelet.

  Jessa forgot to breathe; she saw Brochael jerk forward.

  “Take it,” Kari whispered.

  For a moment the creature’s eyes met his. He stepped closer, among the bars of light.

  “Kari!” Brochael’s cry burst from him, but the Snow-walker took no notice. He crouched by the creature’s head, and dropped the snakeskin band over one sharp claw.

  “Take it. Let it feed you. Then both of us can break free.”

  Hands empty, he scrambled back.

  Jessa gripped the back of the chair. Now, she thought, anything could happen.

  The creature was staring at the tiny thing. Then it stood up and gazed intently down the smoky hall, as if it had seen all the silent, anxious watchers for the first time, had woken from a long sleep, or shaken off some nagging, insistent voice. It murmured, and there were almost words in the sounds it made to Kari, and he answered too, something Jessa could not hear.

  And quite suddenly, though he did nothing, she knew that Kari was the focal point of the hall, that all the darkness and tension spread from him, and the danger too, and for a moment of sharp fear she knew he had them all in the power of his mind. Her vision shifted; for that time he was not the Kari she knew. He was someone else. A stranger. An alien.

  The beast stumbled back. It shimmered; already through it she could see the doorway with its glint of stars. Thinner, frailer, the creature opened itself; snow fell through it now, it was delicate as melting ice, dissolving back into the runes and atoms the witch had forged it from. Kari wasn’t doing it; the creature itself was fleeing with its prize. And as it drifted away among mists, it subtly distorted, and at the last she was almost sure it was a man’s shape that was there, as if the long emergence was ended. For a second it wavered, between being and nonbeing. Then it was gone, and the hall was dark.

  And they were all standing on a wide snowfield.

  The sky was gray; the wind howling toward them over empty crevasses, so that Jessa’s hair whipped back and she gasped with the sudden biting cold. Behind her Skapti swore; Vidar cried out in fear.

  The landscape was immense, a cracked glacier pitted with ravines, the snow gusting over it.

  And far off a woman was walking toward them, a woman with long silvery hair, and she walked quickly, but all the time she came no nearer, until at last she raised her head and looked at them, and stopped.

  Jessa stared at Gudrun. The Snow-walker was older; her smooth skin finely lined, her lips thin.

  She glanced at them all, then at Kari.

  “So you wouldn’t use it?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Even after they betrayed you?”

  “That was your doing.”

  “Not all of it.” She shook her head, wondering. “But to give it away. That I didn’t expect. Sometimes you surprise me, Kari.”

  He stepped toward her, through the blue shadows. “Leave us alone now. Leave them alone. We have nothing that you need.”

  Almost sadly, she shook her head, and Jessa’s stomach tightened with fear.

  “I can’t,” the witch said. “I need you. I find I want to draw you back to me.”

  Kari gripped his fists. “I’ll never come.”

  For a moment she looked at
him strangely. “No?” Then she looked beyond him, at Wulfgar and the others. “As for you, I lay this fate on you, my lord. The thing you love best, that thing I will have some day.”

  Wulfgar kept his voice steady. “Not if I can prevent it.”

  “Guard your hall well, then.” She turned away to Kari with a hard smile. “Don’t consume yourself with power, my son. Keep some for me.”

  Wind gusted snow into their faces.

  Then they stood alone on the great stone floor of the hall.

  Thirty

  Our sole remedy is to turn again to you.

  Wulfgar drank deeply, and put the cup down. “Her words are poison. I’ll remember them, but not worry too much. This time we’ve defeated her. As for Vidar, he seems to think a little differently about you now.”

  Kari nodded, and Brochael gave Jessa a broad smile, stretching out his legs to the banked-up fire.

  The hall was securely barred; for a moment they sat in silence again, among the crack and crackle of the flames.

  Then Jessa said, “What will happen to him?”

  “I’ll let him try the dungeons for a day or so. Then”—Wulfgar shrugged and winced—“then the men of the hold will judge him in open court. You’ll have to speak, Jessa.”

  “Oh, I’ll speak!” She turned her cup in her hands. “I’ll have plenty to say about this thief friend too. A purse of silver, Wulfgar. Vidar promised that if his man was involved, remember?”

  “I think,” the Jarl said evenly, “we might get that much from him.”

  Brochael put his arms heavily around Skapti and Hakon. “And what about this one? Can we do nothing for him?”

  Hakon let the strong grip hearten him. He looked sidelong at Jessa; she was watching Wulfgar.

  The Jarl nodded. “Jessa and I have spoken about it. Hakon, how much was your family’s debt to Skuli?”

  “Sixty silver pieces.”

  “Gods, that’s not much for a life of thralldom,” Brochael growled.

  “It’s enough, if you haven’t got it.”