Snow-Walker

by Catherine Fisher

  Their voices withdrew into the room. Coldness ebbed; the freezing fear slowly loosened its grip. Jessa heard Thorkil’s shudder of breath, saw his hand was shaking as he gently moved aside a fold of the cloth so they could see part of the hall.

  Someone was sitting in the Jarl’s chair, looking no more than a bundle of rich fabrics. Then he pushed his hood back, and Jessa saw it was a very old man, thin and spry, his hair wisps of white, his look sly and sidelong.

  “They leave tomorrow,” he was saying. “As you expected.”

  Astonished, Jessa stared at Thorkil.

  The woman laughed, a low peal of sound that made a new surge of fear leap in Jessa’s stomach.

  The old man chuckled too. “And they know all about Thrasirshall, the poor waifs.”

  “What do they know?” she said.

  “Oh, that the wind howls through it, that it’s a wilderness of trolls and spirits on the edge of the world. Not to speak of what the hall contains.” He spat, and then grinned.

  They could just see the woman’s white hands, and her sleeves. Gently Thorkil edged the curtain a little wider.

  Gudrun stood in the light from the window. She was tall and young, her skin white as a candle, her hair pure blond and plaited in long intricate braids down her back. Her ice blue dress was edged with fur. Silver glittered at her wrist and throat; she stood straight, her sharp gaze toward them. Jessa felt Thorkil’s instant stillness. Even from here, they could see her eyes had no color.

  “How did they take their news?”

  “The girl, quietly. Master Thorkil squealed, but Ragnar stopped that.”

  Gudrun laughed. “Even the Jarl needs his pleasures. I allow him a few.”

  “But there is one thing you may not know.”

  Her eyes turned on him. “Be careful,” she said lightly. “Even you, Grettir.”

  He seemed to shift uneasily in the chair. Then he said, “Ragnar gave the girl a letter. It was for Brochael Gunnarsson. It was a warning.”

  She laughed again, a murmur of amusement. “Is that all? What good will that do? Let them take it, by all means.” With a rustle of silks she moved to sit by him; Thorkil edged the curtain to keep her in sight.

  “None of it matters.” She rested her white fingers lightly on the old man’s shoulder. “Everything is ready. Ragnar is sending them there because I slid the idea of it into his mind, just as he speaks my words and eats and sleeps as I allow him.”

  “But the letter?”

  She shrugged. “He has a corner of himself left alive. As for those two, I have my own plans for them.”

  She put her lips near his ear, dropped her voice low. Jessa strained to hear. “I’ll have my hand on them,” the woman said. Then she whispered something that made the old man grin and shake his head slyly.

  “You have the great powers, Gudrun. Not many can touch you.”

  Instantly he was silent, as if he knew he had made a mistake. She leaned forward and ran the sharp point of one fingernail gently down his cheek. To her horror Jessa saw it leave a trail of white ice that cracked and fell away, and a blue scar in the skin as if some intense cold had seared it. The old man moaned and clutched his face.

  Gudrun smiled. “Be careful, Grettir. No one can touch me. No one.”

  She ran her fingers lightly through his hair. “Remember that.”

  She got up and wandered to the table, then to the fire. “As for the creature in Thrasirshall, you and I know what he is.”

  She stretched one hand over the flames; thrust it close. Jessa saw a single drop of clear liquid fall from the white fingers, as if, she thought, they had begun to melt in the heat. As the drop hit the flames they hissed and crackled, leaping into a tower of fire. Smoke drifted around the hall; it hung in long snakes that moved around the woman’s waist and feet, slithering over the flagged floor, blurring sight, so that to Jessa the fire faded to a halo of red, and Gudrun and Grettir were shadows without edges. Staring hard, she thought she saw something form among the flames, the dim outline of a building, a window, a room full of light, and someone sitting there, turning his head....

  Then the door of the hall slammed open. The thrall that Jessa had met earlier stood in the doorway, his arms full of wood. He stopped, frozen in terror.

  Gudrun whirled in the smoke. She was furious; snakes of gray mist coiled and surged around her. “Out!” she hissed, her voice hoarse with rage.

  The man stood there rooted, as if he dared not move. Jessa felt a pang of fear shoot through her—Get out! she thought, but he stayed, staring with horror at Gudrun as she jerked her hand toward him.

  Logs cascaded to the floor with hollow smacks of sound. The man crumpled, soundless. He crouched on his knees, sobbing and shaking. Gudrun walked up to him. She stood a moment, looking down, then bent and lifted his chin. Pain convulsed him; he shuddered as she ran her long fingers across his throat. “Out,” she whispered.

  He staggered up and crashed through the door. They could hear the echoes of his flight for a long time, hanging in the smoky air.

  Jessa breathed out with relief, but at the same time she touched the edge of the tapestry, and it rippled and swished. Instantly, Thorkil dropped it and flattened himself against the wall. There was silence in the hall. Jessa’s heart thumped against her ribs.

  Then Gudrun spoke. She was so close that Jessa almost jumped.

  “Kari won’t escape me, either. I’ve let him be far too long, to see what he would become. And yet, Grettir”—her voice turned away from them—“I have almost a desire to see him, to taste him, to use what he has.”

  Her hand came around the tapestry. Jessa almost screamed. The white fingers were inches from her face.

  “But they’ll be here tonight, both of those two. That will be my time.”

  Grettir must have moved; they heard his chair scrape the flagstones.

  “I will come.”

  “You must please yourself, old man, as ever.” Then she turned and flashed past them, under the archway and up the stairs, her light steps rising into silence above them.

  Thorkil let his breath out in a gasp and clutched Jessa’s arm. They were stifled; both wanted to run out, to breathe clean air, but the old man was still there, standing silently by his chair. Slowly he crossed to the courtyard door and unlatched it. Cold air rippled the tapestries to a storm of dust. When Jessa had wiped her eyes and peered out, the hall was empty.

  They ran straight to the door, squeezed through, and closed it. Smoke coiled out after them, dissipating in the wind. The watchman, half asleep, stared at their backs as they walked, too quickly, between the houses, among the children and the squalling hens. Once Jessa turned, feeling herself watched, but the windows of the Jarlshold were dark and empty.

  Three

  With a good man it is good to talk,

  Make him your fast friend.

  “‘I’ll have my hand on them.’ And she meant us.” Jessa watched Mord Signi stack the slabs of peat carefully onto the back of the fire, and jerk his hand out as the sparks leaped. “What do you think she meant?”

  “I don’t think,” Mord said, straightening. “Not about her.”

  He was a tall man; his gray hair brushed the low turf roof. He glanced over at his wife, folding Jessa’s clothes into a leather bag. “But I can’t let this go. Not without a murmur.”

  His wife put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s no use talking to Ragnar,” she said quietly. “Why should he listen?” Then she bent forward and whispered, so that Jessa only just caught the words. “Stay out of it. You have your own children to think of.”

  He turned aside, silent. Jessa felt sorry for him. He had been a kinsman of her father; he was a marked man in the Jarlshold. And his wife was right. No pleading would move Ragnar, and anyway, she, Jessa, wouldn’t have it.

  Mord came back to the fire. The hearth was a large, square one in the middle of the house, and around the walls were the sleeping booths, with their wooden screens and warm, musty hangings. By now
the fire was a hot blaze, licking and spitting over the new peats, throwing glows and shadows around the room, over Thorkil’s face, and Mord’s, worried and upset. Outside, the afternoon sky was darkening with snow. Winter lingered late, as usual, in the Jarlshold.

  Thorkil said, “Mord, tell us about Gudrun.”

  “Best not to, lad. I’d rather keep my tongue.”

  “But we need to know.” Thorkil glanced at Mord’s wife, with her youngest daughter pulling at her skirts. “We’re going there, after all.”

  She turned away from him. “He’s right, Mord.”

  Mord put down the peat he had been crumbling, got up slowly, and locked the door. Coming back, he sat closer to the fire.

  “It’s a stranger story than any skald’s saga. Much of it you’ll know, I’m sure. When Ragnar was a young man, the Wulfings were the ruling kin in the north. He was just one of many small landowners; your fathers were two more. But he was ambitious. He bought land where he could, stole it where he couldn’t, ruined his enemies in the Althing—that was the old law court—and gathered ruthless, cruel men about him. Still, he might have stayed as he was, if it hadn’t been for her.”

  Mord paused. Then he said, “Beyond the Yngvir River and the mountains, there’s only ice. It stretches, they say, to the edge of the world, into the endless blackness. Travelers—those that have come back—speak of great cracks that open underfoot, of mountains smooth as glass, of the sky catching fire. Beyond the icebergs even the sea freezes. No animals live there, not even the white bears, though I have heard a tale of a long glistening worm that burrows in the ice. It may not be true. But certainly there are trolls, and ettins, and some sort of spirit that howls in the empty crevasses.

  “In those lands live the White People, the Snow-walkers, a race of wizards. No one knows much about them, except that sometimes they would come to the northern borders and raid. Children would disappear from farms, and it would be said that the White People had taken them. Cattle too, and sometimes dogs.

  “One year the raids were so bad, the old Jarl sent Ragnar with a war band to march up there and settle it. They crossed the hills by way of the old giant’s road that passes Thrasirshall, and marched down the other side, straight into a white mist. It was waiting for them there, a solid whiteness that even the wind couldn’t blow away. Fifty men marched into that devil’s trap, and only one came out.”

  “What was it?” Thorkil asked.

  “Sorcery. Rune magic.” Mord shrugged. “Who knows? But three months later a ship came into the harbor at Tarva, a strange ship with dark sails and twenty oarsmen—tall white-haired men who spoke a fluid, unknown language. The old man, Grettir, led them—he was younger then, of course. Then Ragnar came out of the ship, and with him a woman, white as ice, cold as steel. To this day no one knows who she is, or what godforsaken agreement he made with them to save his life. But we soon found out what sort of a creature had come among us.”

  Jessa glanced at Thorkil. He was listening intently, his fingers working at the laces of his boots, knotting and unknotting, over and over.

  “The first thing,” Mord went on, “was that the old Jarl died one night in a storm. He was hale enough when he went to bed, but in the night he gave a sudden scream, and when they got to him he was dead. There was a mark, they say, like a spread hand, in the skin of his face; it faded away, till in the morning there was nothing left.”

  Thorkil’s head jerked up and his eyes met Jessa’s. Mord did not notice. “And his fingers—there was a web of ice all over them.... After that, it was easy. Rumors flew; fear built up. The Jarl had left no son. The Althing should have chosen another of the Wulfings, and there were plenty of good men—but they didn’t. Fear made them fools. They chose Ragnar.

  “Two disagreed, I remember. One was killed by a bear, the other froze in a drift on a dark night. None of his family knew why he’d left the house, but the little boy said a ‘white lady’ had called him through the window....” He looked up. “You must have heard much of this.”

  Jessa shrugged. “Some of it. No one tells you much when you’re small. But what about Kari?”

  Mord glanced at the door. His voice was quiet now, barely heard. “It happened I was with Ragnar when the news came; we were in the forest, watching them cut timber for the hold. ‘A son,’ the messenger said, but there was something about the way he said it. Ragnar noticed too. He asked what was wrong. The man muttered something about the midwife screaming; he seemed too terrified to answer. The Jarl almost knocked me over as he rode off. The gods help me, I’ve never seen a man look so stricken.”

  “Did the messenger see the baby?” Jessa asked.

  “No, but he didn’t need to. Rumors soon got around—you know them. The child is a monster. For myself I think the High One struck at Ragnar’s pride, and her sorcery. That’s the god’s way. They kept the child here for a while, called it Kari, but no one ever saw it except Gudrun and the old man. Ragnar has never set eyes on him.”

  “So he told us,” Thorkil muttered.

  “And she hates it. She’ll never even hear its name—Kari. When the creature was about five years old she got Ragnar to send it away, to the ruined hall in the north. I think she hoped it would die of cold. Brochael Gunnarsson was in prison—now he was one of the Wulfings’ men, and he had said something against her—so Ragnar took his land and sent him to be the child’s keeper. It was a hard revenge.” He sighed. “I was fond of Brochael—a good man. He may be long dead. No one has been near them in all this time.”

  “Until now,” Thorkil said grimly.

  There was silence.

  “If no one has seen him,” Jessa said suddenly, grasping at hope, “how do they know he’s so terrible?”

  “Why else would she lock him up?”

  It was a good answer.

  “Well,” Thorkil said, “we’ll soon find out.”

  Mord frowned at him. “Be careful, lad. Be discreet. They say she can bend your mind to her will.”

  Thorkil laughed coldly. “Not mine.”

  Jessa had been thinking. “Kari and this Brochael must be dead by now. How can they live up there?” How will we? she thought.

  “Gudrun would know. She has ways of knowing. That’s why, in these last years, your fathers and the Wulfings stood no chance. She was too much for them.”

  Thorkil stared bleakly into the fire. Jessa pulled absently at the ends of her hair. Mord caught his wife’s eye. “But that’s enough talk. Now we should eat.”

  The food at the Jarlshold was good and plentiful; they had broth and fish and honey cakes. Despite her worries Jessa was hungry. What would they eat, she wondered, at the ruined hall in the mountains? No crops would grow there; no animals would survive. She had never known real hardship; their farm had been a rich one. What would it be like?

  When they had finished, Mord rose and pulled on his outdoor coat. “Come on. It’s wise not to keep her waiting.”

  Outside, the sky was black, frosted with stars glinting in their faint colors. The moon was a low, silvery globe, balancing, it seemed, on the very tips of the mountains far off, lighting their frozen summits with an eerie bluish shimmer.

  By now the Jarlshold was quiet, and very cold. A few dogs loped past them as they walked between the silent houses; once a rat ran across the frozen mud. Like all the houses Jessa had known, these were low and roofed with turf, boarded and shuttered now to keep the warmth of the fires in. Smoke hung in a faint mist over the settlement.

  Only the hall was noisy; they could hear the murmur of sound grow as they walked toward it. The shutters were up again, but a circle of light flickered in the ring window high up in the wall. Laughter floated out, and voices.

  A doorkeeper sat outside, polishing a sword with a whetstone; a great wolflike mastiff sprawled at his feet. Mord nodded to the man and put his hand on the latch. Then he turned. “Don’t eat anything she gives you,” he breathed. “Don’t drink. Avoid her eyes. I don’t know what else to say. If she wants y
ou—she’ll get you.” Then he opened the door.

  Four

  Never lift your eyes and look up in battle

  Lest the heroes enchant you, who can change warriors

  Suddenly into hogs.

  It was as if some runemaster had waved a hand and transformed the place. All the fires were lit, roaring in the hearths, and candles and rushlights glimmered on stands and in corners, filling the hall with a haze of smoke and light. Long hangings, woven of red and green cloths, hung over the shutters, and the trestles were scattered with scraps of food and bones that the dogs pulled down and snarled over in the straw. The hot air stank of smoke and spices.

  Mord pushed them both forward through the crowd. Jessa glimpsed rich embroidery on sleeves, the glint of gold, furs, heavy pewter cups. The Jarl’s court was rich, rich on other men’s land. She lifted her chin, remembering suddenly her father’s grin, his raised hand. She had been only six when he rode out. His face was fading from her mind.

  And there was Ragnar at the high table with the witch next to him, her face pale as a ghost’s with its long eyes, her gaze wandering the room. Grettir sat beside her, watching Thorkil push through the crowd.

  Mord found them seats near one of the fires; a few men stood to make room and some of them nodded slightly at Jessa. So the Jarl still had enemies then, even here. Mord seemed uneasy; she caught him making discreet signals to someone across the room. Then a steward shouted for silence.

  Noise hushed. Men settled back with full cups to see what would happen—a skald with some poem, Jessa thought, or a lawsuit, considered entertainment just as good. A tall, very thin man across the room caught her eye. He grinned at her and tugged a bundle of herbs tied with green ribbon from a bag at his feet and held it out. A peddler. She shook her head quickly; the man laughed and winked. Then he moved out of sight among the crowd thronging the hearth.

  Thorkil nudged her.

  A prisoner was coming in between two of the Jarl’s men. He was a tall, dark, elegant man in a dirty leather jerkin, with a gleam of gold at his neck. He looked around with cool interest.