Bloodmind

by Liz Williams

  ‘Skadi, I am not even supposed to be here at all. I never thought I’d see another planet, another world. I went out into the wilds to die. This is like the afterlife for me.’

  ‘Then that proves it, doesn’t it?’ she said eagerly. ‘You can never have been intended to die. The spirits must have meant you to live – to come here and teach me.’

  I didn’t know what spirits she meant. I knew nothing about the beliefs of these people. But her grasp of my arm was so tight that it hurt. I heard myself say, ‘Perhaps that’s true.’

  ‘You can show me how to control the illusions, to make them real – without the aid of the machines. How to wield the ability.’

  I laughed. ‘You seem to be able to do that quite well enough yourself.’ But her words made me deeply uneasy. Make illusions real? I’d heard of a few folk doing that, stories from the very long-ago. No one could do it now. I folded the forest. Something told me not to betray my concerns, however. If she felt that it was a common trait of our people, maybe she’d be more wary of me.

  ‘Tricks,’ she said, almost spitting. ‘Technology and trickery. I have enough stuff in here,’ she tapped her forehead, ‘to power a planet, it sometimes seems. I want it gone. It makes me weak. I know that what I do doesn’t depend on it, or on their technology.’

  I could understand that well enough. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll teach you, if you wish to be taught. We’ll start now. Do you see those three, your enemies?’

  They were plainly visible a short distance across the icefield, huddled together over some piece of instrumentation. My niece made a sound in her throat like a growl. ‘I see them.’

  ‘Then watch and learn,’ I told her. I cast an illusion of my own, calling upon the swirling blankness beneath the ice, the cold rush of the air, the whiteness of the snowscape. It was easy to work with such a canvas. So little colour, just pearl and pale against the pink backdrop of the sky. I drew the blankness up around the three who stood on the ice and blotted them from view. I saw Skadi’s eyes widen as she half-realized what was happening. Then I reached out as if to reassure her and jabbed the pressure point below her jaw. Machines may not have let her down, but trust had. She crumpled to the ice but I caught hold of her and let her down as gently as I could. I estimated that she would be unconscious for a little while longer and I went down from the cairn of rock.

  My niece could not see them and neither could they see me. I cast further illusions, working with the world and with the materials at my disposal. Once, I looked up to see the warrior of Moon Moor standing close by on an outcrop of ice and she grinned again when she saw me. My heart sang in me, for I thought I knew why she had come. But I also knew there was more that I had to do and then she faded, the bright snowlight cascading through her and blotting her from view. My death would be a while longer yet.

  While Vali and the others chased shadows by the sea’s edge, I made myself busy by taking one of the long folding sleds that had come with the canoes. There was some kind of engine attached, but I didn’t bother with that; it was time to work with what I knew and understood. I looped the rope over my shoulder and dragged the sled back up to the cairn, where my niece lay unstirring. I must confess, I was glad to find her still there. I loaded her up onto the sled, anticipating difficulty, but she was quite light beneath all the skins and the sled glided smoothly on its long runners. I strapped Skadi down as best I could: the sled had clamps on either side, which suggested that it was intended for use in transporting prisoners. Then I located the sled’s harness, secured it over my shoulders and over my breast, and set off across the glacier. It was hard. I was too old for this. The volcano towered in the distance and there was still much of the long day to go. There would be time, I thought, if only my own strength did not give out first. There would be time.

  FORTY-ONE

  PLANET: MUSPELL (VALI)

  It didn’t take us too long to work out what had happened. Skinning Knife had been distracted by Sedra and it was inconceivable, Glyn Apt said, that the old woman could have killed her. So Skadi must have taken Sedra away, spirited her into the white wilderness before us. Perhaps she intended to slaughter and display her aunt as a warning to us, or perhaps she wished to hold her as a hostage. If that were the case, Glyn Apt insisted, and Eld agreed, then we would undertake no negotiations save those that took us close to Skadi. Sedra was expendable. I did not like the idea, but I had to agree. Besides, I did not think Sedra considered herself indispensable – but that wasn’t the point, at least if you were Skald and not vitki.

  Shortly after that, we discovered that one of the sleds was missing, and that confirmed Glyn Apt’s theory. We estimated that Skadi was maybe an hour ahead of us, and she knew the lie of the land better than we did, but the sled had made faint tracks in the ice and we followed them. We would halt when dusk fell, Glyn Apt decided. There might be other dangers beside Skinning Knife: night-hunting fenris, for instance.

  ‘And maybe other things,’ the Morrighanu added.

  ‘What kind of “other things”?’

  Glyn Apt looked uneasy, which was an achievement all by itself. ‘They tell stories about Therm, even in Morvern.’

  Eld laughed and Glyn Apt bristled. Eld said, ‘They tell stories about Morvern, even in Hetla. About how everyone has two heads and keeps a pet troll.’

  ‘You’ve seen Skinning Knife,’ Glyn Apt retorted. ‘Imagine what kinds of thing Morvern tells stories about.’

  It was twilight by the time we reached the slopes of the volcano: that deep greenness of sky with the veils of light already starting to drift across it. After Skadi’s attack, I’d increasingly begun to feel that this would be my last night on Muspell. It so nearly had been, and nothing we could do – technology, the seith – seemed able to protect me. With the aid of the Skald, I’d been able to develop techniques that on another planet – Nhem was one of them – could see me hanged for witchcraft, but Skadi made me look like a mere infant. I should have gone to her in that forest cottage, something whispered to me. I should have let her pare my soul from my flesh, strip me down to air and nothing. But then something else whispered to me that I’d fought Frey, who had called out the same kind of weakness in me, who had broken in through all the chinks and crevices in my armour. I’d fought Frey, and won. I wasn’t a witch or a member of a super-race. I was just a woman with abilities, who had been trained in a particular way. And so was Skadi.

  ‘I suggest we stop here,’ Glyn Apt said, cutting the motor of the sled. We’d been running quietly, gliding along, but with the motor dead, the humming in my bones stopped and the world suddenly seemed a place of vast silence.

  ‘It’s as good as any,’ Eld said. We were close to a long ridge of ice, with crevices that would provide shelter on three sides, if not from above. I agreed, but part of me wanted to go on, just get it over with. I held tightly to the memory of setting the visen pack on Frey, of realizing that he was finally, truly, dead. Aside from my brother, I reminded myself yet again, everyone who had ever hurt me was dead. Inductive logic was encouraging. But just because the sun has risen every day until now, it did not mean that it would rise tomorrow. At least, not for me.

  With these dismal thoughts at the forefront of my mind, I helped the others set up a rudimentary camp. Glyn Apt was to take first watch, while Eld and I slept huddled against the side of the sled. Cold, discomfort and fear had served to exhaust me; I drifted off almost at once, watching the arctic lights. After what seemed like a few moments, but which turned out to have been a couple of hours, I was awoken by Eld.

  ‘What is it?’ I was immediately awake, nerves jangling.

  ‘Glyn Apt’s disappeared.’

  Cursing, I got to my feet. ‘You mean we’ve been sleeping unprotected?’

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Eld said, ‘but I’m not unprotected even when I’m asleep.’ Then he evidently thought better of the vitki sparring. ‘Although with Madam Skadi, that seems largely irrelevant.’

  ‘Fi
rst Sedra and now Glyn Apt.’

  ‘Glyn Apt might have gone off after her. I don’t think the commander has much of a team spirit where non-Morrighanu are concerned.’

  ‘Either way, she’s likely to be dead,’ I said. Eld gave me a close look.

  ‘I know how you feel about Skadi. Believe me, I share it. But it’s a weakness, Vali, and that’s how she works. You’ve killed your enemies. You’re still here.’

  ‘Maybe so.’ But I felt barely alive, in this freezing northern midnight. She had done her work, the mind’s knife being the sharpest one of all.

  We scouted around the camp and found traces. Glyn Apt’s bootheel prints were rammed into the thin snow, marching with determination northward towards Therm. It looked as though Eld had been right, that the Morrighanu commander had decided to make the kill her own. Or sacrifice herself to save us? If she’d been Skald, or ourselves Morrighanu, I might even have considered it as a possibility.

  After a brief consultation, Eld and I thought we’d be better off without the sled. We set off in Glyn Apt’s tracks. It occurred to both of us that it might be a trap – Skinning Knife wearing someone else’s boots – but the depth of the prints suggested someone of Glyn Apt’s height and weight to me. Maybe that didn’t mean as much as it might otherwise have done, but either way, the tracks could lead to Skadi and I found that I was anxious, now, for confrontation.

  FORTY-TWO

  PLANET: MUSPELL (SEDRA)

  Of course my niece was angry when she woke to find herself up in the heights of Therm, in one of the lesser caves. She spat at me in chilly fury and I could see the bloodmind coming over her. Feir indeed, but I told her coldly that it was her first lesson.

  ‘Kill me, then,’ I said. ‘Do you think I’m afraid? Then there’ll be no one to teach you. Go to Mondhile alone and see how they treat you there. On our world, your kind are commonplace as insects and as easily swatted.’

  She stood uncertainly in front of me and I saw the bloodmind start to ebb. She had more control over it than I’d thought and that was impressive.

  ‘There’s not just death,’ she explained. ‘There’s pain.’

  I had to laugh. ‘I’m sure you’re an expert. But do you really think I don’t have control over my own death?’ It wasn’t true, but I couldn’t let her know that. I stood to face her and let my lips draw back from my teeth. ‘Do what you wish. Or choose to learn.’

  She did not apologize, nor was I expecting her to, but she inclined her head and stepped back. ‘Very well,’ she said and her voice was a little more submissive. ‘What do you choose to teach?’

  ‘Survival, among other things. Endurance. You have these qualities already. What you do not have is patience.’

  ‘They say patience is its own reward.’

  ‘Impatience has got you noticed.’

  That arrow struck home. She grimaced. ‘That’s true enough.’

  I touched her shoulder and she did not flinch or draw away. A wild thing, I thought, nothing more than that. But the people among whom she’d been living did not understand. They were wild themselves, but they’d learned to hide it under masks and patches.

  ‘But impatience,’ I said, softly, ‘will not necessarily get you killed.’

  Now that I’d got her away from her hunters, however, I was becoming aware that I’d let myself in for a substantial problem. We could not stay here. They would kill Skadi and maybe they were right to do so. Even settlements on Mondhile often slew people, when it was clear that they were feir and not mehed, who merely wanted to wander the world, without killing. Yet on Mondhile, at least, she would have some kind of place. But that meant we had to get there. And in order to do so, we’d need a flying vehicle. My niece could pilot one, maybe, but first we’d have to steal it. Problems were piling upon problems. I voiced these thoughts to her.

  Her eyes sparked. ‘I should like to see Mondhile. Nhema – a world of shit. Here – no place for me, though for a while I thought it was. When I learned of Mondhile, it sounded like a place of peasants and mad people.’ She said this with no trace of irony. ‘But then I met you.’ She laid her hand on my hand for a moment and it was oddly affecting. ‘We’ll go south.’ She was as excited as a girl newly returned from the world and I suppose I could not blame her. Her face shone. ‘We’ll steal a ship; it will be easy enough. They’re all distracted by the war. We’ll go to our world.’ And I think it was only then that I realized how greatly she wanted to belong.

  She slept after that. I think she was more tired than she cared to admit, for it was the sort of sleep that an animal sleeps: the sudden oblivion that follows furious activity. I watched her, as I had watched my sister while she slept in the hollows under the sky, or the burrows under the earth. I saw in her the woman that my sister had been and then the grief burst in me like a black bubble for that stolen girl, caged and used.

  If Skadi’s hunters came after us, I did not want to see them dead. But they were not my blood; my niece was. If they had to go, then I would see to it. And then we would go south.

  Skadi had been sleeping for around an hour when I heard the noise. It was stealthy and small, the kind of sound that an animal makes when it hopes not to be overheard. As quietly as I could, I got to my feet and slipped outside.

  It was still dark, but at these latitudes, that made little enough difference, and the moon was up. The cave lay behind a high pinnacle of rock. From most angles, it was well concealed: if I had not been expecting to find caverns, and if I hadn’t been used to sounding out terrain, I might not have spotted it. Whoever now stood behind the pinnacle was looking for something, with deliberate, measured movements. Human, I was prepared to bet, and not animal.

  I sent out hunting sense and someone was there to meet it. I felt as though I’d been slammed into a wall of ice. Breathless, I withdrew, but the person who stood there had recognized me and I knew them, too. The Morrighanu commander, Glyn Apt.

  ‘Sedra!’ Her voice had that whipcrack command but it didn’t work on me. But next moment I realized she hadn’t spoken out loud. It was the sense of my name that she’d transmitted, not the word itself.

  I liked Glyn Apt well enough. I didn’t want to see her dead. But nor did I want to fight my niece over her and if Skadi woke, that would be the end of the Morrighanu woman. I stepped out from behind the rock and tried to look frail and old and afraid. I clutched at Glyn Apt and she steadied me by the shoulders.

  ‘Where is she?’ So Glyn Apt was not able to sense Skadi, then.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I quavered. ‘She . . . she took one of the sleds. She strapped me to it. I don’t know what she had planned for me.’

  ‘But you got away?’

  ‘I chewed through the bonds. All she bound me with was a leather strap. Maybe she thought she wouldn’t need anything else.’ I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering. Must be careful not to overdo it, though. ‘Commander, I am sorry. She took me by surprise.’

  Glyn Apt gave a curt nod of the head. ‘You’re not to blame. We need to get you out of here.’

  ‘Where are the others? Are they with you?’

  ‘No. I chose to go my own way. I got tired of encumbrances. I followed the sled tracks to the foot of the glacier, then came up here. If your niece is not here, I will take you back down and then return.’

  I looked at her and saw the arrogance in her, so deep that it was almost buried. But I knew what that was like; I’d been that way myself, when I was younger. It’s a road to death, so much of the time. ‘You go first,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure of my footing on this ice. I’ll follow where you tread.’ A flicker of the hunting sense: Skadi was still asleep. I caught the twitch and quiver of a bloody dream.

  The Morrighanu should not have turned her back on me, but it would have made little difference. As we began to descend, I called up the dream of snow, sending the first soft flakes to touch Glyn Apt’s face. She looked up, puzzled, at the clear sky, and I conjured blizzard, sending it whirling out of the starry ni
ght. Glyn Apt stumbled, throwing an arm in front of her face.

  ‘Sedra!’ she called. ‘This – it’s come out of nowhere! We have to find shelter.’

  ‘You go on,’ I replied. ‘Don’t wait for me!’

  The Morrighanu turned. ‘I can’t even see you!’

  But then I saw what she had not. We were standing on a path of ice that wound down the glacier. The edge of this geographical track was close, dropping several times the height of a man. To me, it was clear enough, but Glyn Apt, believing in the blizzard, could not see it.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘Stay there!’ But it was too late. The Morrighanu took a flailing step from the path, and fell.

  I rushed to the edge of the drop. Glyn Apt was already far down the slope, tumbling over and over. When she reached the bottom, she lay still. I sent out hunting sense and found that she was still alive, but unconscious. She would not remain alive for long, in this cold, and I had no way of reaching her. I had intended only to distract her, not cause her death, but there was nothing to be done. Cursing, I left her lying there in the cold light and made my way back to the cave.

  FORTY-THREE

  PLANET: MUSPELL (VALI)

  Eld and I only found her because of the white bird. It plummeted towards us out of the greying sky and landed on Eld’s shoulder. I thought I heard it whispering, and then it was gone.

  ‘Automatic distress signal,’ Eld said, grim-faced.

  ‘From Glyn Apt?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s given me her location.’ He held out a hand and tossed an invisible something into the sky. Moments later, a raven materialized and flapped slowly off to the north-west. Using the sled, we followed, for though it was still the glowing arctic dark, the raven itself seemed to gleam and Eld told me that this was a function of its climatic regulators. I turned inward, to find the white bird in my own head, that little stolen snippet of Morrighanu tech, wakeful and watching.