Snow-Walker

by Catherine Fisher

  Moongarm stared at him. “I’m surprised you trust me.”

  “So am I,” Brochael snarled. “Keep the door shut.”

  He slammed it from the outside himself, the others behind him.

  “They could be anywhere,” Skapti muttered.

  “Not even visible.”

  “I don’t care, Jessa!” Brochael was aflame with wrath. “We’ll tear this place to pieces till we find someone, somewhere! She won’t take him away from me. Never!”

  He raced down the stairs; the others followed, reckless.

  The ice hall was bare and silent; the rooms on each side of it deserted. Skapti flung their doors wide, one after another.

  “Nothing!”

  “She’s here!” Rubbing frost from his face, Brochael stopped. He slammed a fist into the wall. “She’s got to be.”

  “She’d have a room,” Jessa said thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  “A room. A place of her own…”

  “For her sorceries, yes, I know! But where?”

  “High up, like Kari’s.” Jessa turned decisively. “There must be other stairs. Split up, quickly. Try every room.”

  She ran into the nearest narrow entrance; it led her to a small storeroom piled with chests of strange white metal. Putting the point of her knife under the lid of one, she forced it open. A sudden yellow glow lit her face; she gazed down at huge lumps of amber, gloriously colored. A treasure beyond price. And the other chests would hold jet and ivory and silver, all Gudrun’s hoard.

  But there was no time for it now. She slammed the lid down and ran back out. Skapti thumped into her. “Anything?”

  “No. What about—?”

  Hakon’s yell silenced her; it was distant, far across the hall. When they got to him, he was leaning against a wall of frost, breathless.

  “There,” he managed.

  The doorway was small, hung with icicles. Beyond it, steps descended into darkness. A cold, sweet smell hung in the air.

  “Down?” Jessa muttered.

  “She’s his opposite, remember?” Hefting the ax in his great hands, Brochael led the way grimly.

  The stairs ran deep into the ice. As they clattered down them, the air grew colder, bitterly cold, their breath a glinting fog. Light faded to blue-green gloom. They knew they were far down in the ice layers, deep inside the glacier. On each side of them the walls became opaque, then mistily transparent; far inside them bubbles of air were trapped, like soft crystal shimmers.

  Brochael stopped abruptly. “We were right.”

  The doorway at the bottom was a small one, but carved deep in the ice above it was a great white serpent. It curled around the lintel, its sightless eyes glaring down at them. From within came sounds, a murmur of voices.

  “They’re in there,” Hakon muttered.

  Brochael gripped the ax. His face was set. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Brochael!” Jessa’s scream of warning was just in time. He turned and in the corner of his eye saw the movement flash; then the snake struck at where his head had been, its venom sizzling the ice.

  “Gods!” He jerked back, shoving Hakon aside.

  The snake hissed; a thin tongue flickered from its ice lips. Then quickly it unwound itself from the doorway, slithering down the pillars toward them.

  Hakon was closest; he struck at it in disgust, and the sword sliced deep into the cold, impossible flesh. But it came on, slipping around his blade, his wrist and arm, and he yelled and squirmed in terror.

  “Keep still!” Brochael roared.

  He and Skapti tore at the wet, slippery body; it hissed and spat at them, darting at their eyes, tightening its muscles around Hakon with a fierce gripping pain that made him cry out. Jessa slid behind Brochael, knives in hand. The pale scaly back rippled before her. Choosing her time, she pulled her arm back and thrust, deep and hard.

  Like a distant shock, Kari felt the stab.

  For a moment his mind cleared; he reached out and pushed her away, knotting darkness and runes to a wild web of protection that she tore to fragments in seconds. Fierce and hungry, she dragged at him, and he struggled to fight her off, to stand. Outside, something thumped and thudded. From an immense distance a voice yelled, “Kari!”—a voice he knew, a voice that stirred him. And he remembered. He remembered the day when the door had opened and the stranger had come. A man such as he had never seen, huge and red and bearded, a lantern gleaming in his hand. And he knew that the man’s name was Brochael, and grasping that, he felt his life flood back to him, his thoughts and speech, the faces of his friends. Power surged in him; he stood up shakily.

  Gudrun grabbed his hands again, her nails cutting deep.

  “Stay with me,” she hissed.

  Numb, he shook his head. Then, summoning all his sorcery, he tore her spell apart.

  The walls soared upward, the window rippled, became a wide casement of glass, open to the sunlight. With a cry he let the cell split open; it became a tower room hung with long strings of threaded crystals that twirled and glittered in the cold, brilliant light. With a shrill kark of triumph the ravens broke through. They flapped through the window and perched, one on a table, the other on the rim of a bowl.

  Kari sat down in his usual chair. He was weak with the effort it had cost him.

  And Gudrun gazed around at it all, furious.

  Twenty-Seven

  The children of darkness, the doombringers.

  “Perhaps this is the place you fear most,” he said quietly. He felt drained already, weary from the desperate struggle to hold on to himself. Now he reached out and touched the hangings of quartz, setting them swinging. The bird wraiths stood behind him; he knew she saw them as he did: two tall men. One laid a narrow hand on his shoulder.

  “Where is this?” she demanded, her voice clotted with wrath.

  “You know where, though you’ve never been here. This is Thrasirshall. The place you sent me to die.” Shaking his head, he smiled wanly. “The strange thing is, it was here I learned how to live.”

  Gudrun looked coldly around her, at the sparse room, at the bird wraiths. “I see. And now you think you’re a match for me?” She laughed at him, her eyes bright, and he felt his heart sink, as it always did before her.

  “My powers are too much for you, Kari. I’ve had years of practice. Try if you like, but remember this: Of all our people, only I can steal souls.”

  He looked up at her, and knew his danger.

  “Until now,” he said.

  Moongarm looked sidelong at Signi. “What does it feel like?” he murmured.

  She shook her head, the pale hair swinging. “As if I’m adrift. Nowhere.”

  He crossed the room and picked up the ice chain. “That’s a feeling I know about.” He ran it through his hands, over the sharp, broken nails.

  “So why did you come with them?” she asked quietly. “Why here?”

  “You’ve guessed why.” He flung the chain down and turned away from her, a lean uneasy figure in the white room. “Because the spell that’s on me came from here. I didn’t know that at first, didn’t know who the woman was. I never saw her again. But as I wandered north, an outcast, hated, chased away from every settlement, I heard the tales of them, the sorcerers at the world’s end, a pale, dangerous people. I thought then she must have been one of them. When I saw the boy, I knew. But he can’t help me. And then, just now, there she was, standing in that doorway. The same woman.”

  “Gudrun?”

  “It was years ago, but I knew her. She looked at me, but I saw that she’s forgotten me. Forgotten.”

  “She’s hurt us all....”

  “But I asked her for this. I asked her! And I was glad of it. At first I thought she had made me more than a man. Not less.”

  He brooded bitterly, watching the floor with his strange amber eyes. She felt sorry for him, and suddenly afraid.

  “Moongarm…”

  He crossed to the door. “I have to go. You’ll be
safe enough.”

  “Moongarm, wait!” She stood up, the ice chain tinkling. “Leave it to Kari!”

  Sword in hand, he looked back at her and shook his head. Then he opened the door and slid out.

  Painfully Jessa picked herself up off the floor, where the thrashing of the snake had flung her. Hakon lay on his stomach, coughing for breath; he rolled over and stared at her.

  A long wet stain scored the ice between them; it froze as they watched, into a stinking shimmer of crystal. The knife too was coated with ice; she wiped it in disgust against the side of her boot.

  “All right?” Brochael asked.

  Hakon nodded, getting up. “Was it alive?”

  “As alive as I wanted,” Skapti said. “I could even have done with a little less.”

  “Don’t waste time!” Jessa snapped.

  “She’s right.” Brochael turned to the door. “Open it.”

  She lifted the latch and pushed suddenly. The door swung wide without a sound, but despite their hurry none of them made any move to enter. Because what lay beyond the door was not a room, or a place in any world they knew. It was a nothingness, a mist of light, and figures loomed and moved in it, receding into distances that were too far. They knew this was the spirit realm, the place where Kari sometimes went in the darkness, under the stars. But if they were to go in, how could they ever get back? Jessa thought.

  She glanced at Skapti. “Do we?”

  “No!”

  Brochael turned. “We have to! Kari is in there.”

  “And Kari knows far more about it than we do.” The skald crossed to him, took his arm with long, firm fingers. “I know it’s hard, Brochael, but we can’t just blunder in. We might not be helping him. We’d be putting ourselves in danger.”

  “He’s right,” a sly voice muttered.

  Grettir stood behind them on the stairs, a tiny, hunched figure in his coats and wraps. He rasped out a chuckle. “Go in there and you’ll wander forever.”

  “You would say that!” Brochael came back and caught the old man by the throat, all his frustration infuriating him. “Tell me the truth now, before I squeeze the life out of you. What’s happening to them?”

  Grettir still smiled. “A contest of souls, axman. And only one of them will come out of it alive.”

  He reached out at her, through sunlight and mist. Through unbearable coldness into empty places, into nothing. With all his power he reached for her soul—and touched ice. He took out his knife and began to dig at it, chipping and stabbing, kneeling on a glacier, out in the cold. Somewhere, she was laughing at him; he ignored that. A little way off, dark against the stars, all the Snow-walkers watched.

  It was hard, tiring work; fiercely he chipped at the ice and shards of it flew up in his face. He jerked back, afraid for his eyes. Hands pulled at him, voices murmured, but he shrugged them off.

  “Keep them away!”

  The bird wraiths moved behind him, menacing.

  And now, deep in the glacier, something gleamed; he pushed his fingers in among the crushed slush and tugged it out: a stone, a diamond, hard and glittering.

  It burned him and he almost dropped it. It became a snake winding over his fingers, a bird fluttering in his hands, a flame, a drift of vapor, a stinging wasp, but still he held it, through all the pain and the woman’s growing anger all around him.

  “Even though you’ve found me,” she whispered. “You won’t keep me.”

  “I will. This time.”

  She was there, feeling for his hands, opening his fingers, but he flung her off and held on.

  She came again, her hands soft on his. “I’m your mother,” she said. “Remember?”

  “I know that.” Despite himself, tears blinded him; he held the stone fiercely, huddled over it. “But that’s over. All of it. Everything is over.”

  Then she knew. With a scream of rage and fear she struck at him, became a coldness that closed about him tight, tearing at his life, but he held the diamond tight. And it was her soul that he held, and her power and anger and amazement, and he let it flow into himself, feeling that he knew her for the first time, knew all of her, and it terrified him.

  “Let me go!” her voice screamed. “Let me go!”

  Dragging all his energies about him, Kari began the webs; he conjured with runes and blackness and cold, pulled out every shred of power he had to wind about her, to hold her, to keep her still. Murderous with rage she tore at him, became a flame that burned him, lava that seared his hands, but he knew he was holding on, that he was winning, and the power in him grew and he wound the spells tighter, fiercer, binding them about her.

  Somewhere, someone was shouting, but he couldn’t think about that now, he had to imprison her; his hand slid to his pocket and he pulled out the crystal he had brought for this.

  Deep within it he embedded Gudrun’s soul, deep in the sharp glass facets, weaving spells about her with words that came from nowhere into his mind, as if all the sorcery of the Snow-walkers rose up and flooded him now. And when the spell was finished, when he was sure it was safe, he closed his eyes and let his mind empty, and there was silence, and exhaustion swept over him like a wave.

  “Is it done?” a harsh voice croaked in his ear.

  Numb, he nodded.

  “Then you must get back. This is nowhere. We’re lost here. Now, runemaster!”

  “Later,” he murmured.

  “Now! It must be now, Kari!”

  They crowded him close, anxiously. All he wanted to do was sleep, to lie down and rest, but he knew they were right, and he staggered up, his hand gripping the crystal.

  “Which way?”

  “Any way! It’s all one.”

  Nodding, struggling to think, he stumbled forward into the dark, into a mist that swirled purple and green and then white, ice white.

  And as the others stood at the door, they saw him drift toward them, loom suddenly out of nowhere, and Jessa swore that for a moment two men were with him, until the mist swirled and she saw they were only the ravens swooping out, eyes bright.

  But Kari was indistinct; he stumbled as he came, and just as he reached the threshold, he almost fell. Brochael caught him, but at the same time Moongarm pushed from behind and snatched something out of Kari’s hand, snatched it fiercely, hungrily, a small, glittering stone.

  “No!” Kari gasped.

  Brochael grabbed the man’s sleeve.

  “Let me finish this,” Moongarm said quietly.

  “No!” Kari struggled to stop him. “Brochael!”

  “You know it’s best,” the werebeast said. “I’ll take this where no one will ever find it. Where she’ll never get back. Call it my revenge. And it’s what you want, Brochael.”

  Slowly Brochael let go of his sleeve. Then he said gruffly, “It’s taken me too much time to come to know you.”

  “And now you do?”

  “I think so.”

  Moongarm nodded at him. “I’m glad, my friend.”

  And then he turned and walked through the doorway, deep into the mist, and as he walked his body twisted and blurred into a lithe, gray creature, shimmering, gone in an instant.

  Kari turned away, silent.

  And over his shoulder the others saw nothing but a small frozen room, every surface of it seamed with ice, and in a white chair Gudrun was sleeping, just as Signi had slept.

  Twenty-Eight

  Unsown acres shall harvests bear,

  Evil be abolished.

  Kari slept for a day and a night, almost without moving. The others stayed alert. They gathered in Signi’s room, not knowing what to expect, and Brochael prowled about uneasily, ax in hand. But no one came near them. The ice fortress stayed as it had always been, cold and silent.

  Finally Jessa and Hakon ventured out. Food was running short, and they needed to find out what the Snow-walkers were doing.

  Creeping silently into the hall, they saw a strange sight. Grettir was huddled in a small chair, his palms flat on the carved armre
sts. On a white bier before him Gudrun lay asleep; she lay still, barely breathing, her long hair loose, her dress smooth and white. Icicles already hung from her sleeves; crystals of frost had begun to form on her hair and skin.

  They walked up to her, and looked down in awe.

  “She looks as though she’ll wake up at any moment,” Hakon whispered.

  “She won’t.” Jessa looked down at the old man. “What happens to you?”

  Grettir stirred and looked up. His face was lined and gray. “That depends. Does the boy live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re all in his hands. He has the power now.”

  He stood up and shuffled toward the sleeping woman, and looked down at her thoughtfully. “She was cruel too often, but she was strong. She knew all the secrets; she took what she wanted. Until the end, she was never afraid.”

  He glanced at Jessa, who said, “She was evil. We all knew that.”

  “And now Kari comes into his inheritance. How different will that be?”

  “Very different,” she snapped.

  He laughed wheezily. “I’m glad you think so. But I know better. I know how their power gnaws them till they must use it; how it changes them. Even she was different once.”

  “But Kari’s got something she never had.”

  “What?”

  She smiled at him. “He has us.”

  For a moment he looked at her gravely, and at Hakon, and then he smiled too. “So he does,” he said sadly. “I hope that it will be enough.”

  He turned and hobbled away. “I’ll bring you some food.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We didn’t even ask him,” Hakon murmured.

  “That’s how this place is.”

  “And it’s Kari’s now. Will he stay here?”

  “I don’t know.” Thoughtfully she walked to the door.

  Grettir brought the food; strange stuff, most of it, but they ate it and saved some for Kari. When he finally woke up, he sat by Brochael for a while, listless and silent, no one wanting to bother him with questions. Finally, with an effort, he got up and went over to Signi.

  “You must go home now,” he said.

  The girl smiled at him, her silken dress pale. He touched her wrists briefly and the ice chains began to melt, dripping away rapidly.