Snow-Walker

by Catherine Fisher

  She must have been asleep a long time; the stars had moved around in their great silent wheel. Otherwise everything looked the same. The land glimmered, pale and empty.

  Kari was talking. “Halfway over I knew something was wrong, but not what. We had to come unseen.”

  Skapti shook his head. “It’s cost me a year off my life.”

  Brochael said nothing; he put his big arm around Kari and squeezed him.

  “And now what?” Hakon asked.

  “Now we go to Gudrun,” Kari said firmly. “Alive.”

  Grettir shook his head and smiled slyly. “For now, little prince. For now.”

  Twenty-Four

  The planets knew not what their places were.

  They walked through an empty land, without time. It was a country where nothing grew, where even the wind dared not come. Soft snow fell silently through the long, arctic night; it was a realm of starlight and sorcery, beyond the world. Since they had entered it, each of them had felt a constant fear, a strange diminishing of themselves. They were no longer sure who they were or how real this was—in this place anything could happen. Even the air was alive, tingling with power.

  They walked together in a group; only Kari walked a little way in front, the birds above him. He said nothing, but all his old apprehension seemed to have fallen from him. He had put on that coat of power, that air of remoteness they knew. He was ready now, Jessa thought. And for whose death? Because only he or Gudrun would survive. Once they had walked away from each other. But not now. This would be the end.

  The fortress loomed nearer, a hall built from icy blocks, fitted together with sorcerous skill. The gates were open. They were entanglements of ice, sharp shards of bright crystal. Grettir walked in between them, limping; the travelers followed him with drawn swords.

  A great courtyard stretched before them. They crossed it quickly, watching the high windows. Hakon glanced back. Only their footprints marred the smooth snow. And yet they all knew they were being watched.

  Only Kari saw them, as he passed by; the great host of the Snow-walkers, talking, laughing, amused, curious. They were a pale people, their faces as thin and delicate as his own. Children among the crowd stared at him; men and women with white snake marks in their skin. Gudrun’s people. His people. It moved him; apart from Gudrun he had never seen anyone who looked as he did. Turning away bitterly, he faced the doors.

  They were open.

  Grettir stopped on the bottom step. When he got his breath, he wheezed, “From here you go in by yourselves.”

  “While you lock the doors?” Brochael grabbed the old man’s arm roughly. “Oh no. Show us where Signi is.”

  Grettir shrugged. “It makes no difference in the end.”

  “It might to you, if you want to live. Where is she?”

  “Through the hall. Up the stairs.”

  The hall was bitterly cold, a palace of ice. It was bare of furniture; snow lay in tiny waves on the floor, crunching as they walked over it, but its splendor was in the light that came through the ice; a pale shimmer of blue and green, a refraction of stars and snow, eerie and cold. On some of the walls were hangings, all white and silver, and shields of strange metals. Ice girders held up the roof; thin spindles of ice hung from each windowsill, and great curtains of it, formed over years, massed here and there, sprawling out into the floor to make pillars and columns of intricate crystal. It was a frozen house, without sound, or welcome.

  On the far side of the hall were some stairs leading up.

  “These?” Brochael snapped.

  Grettir nodded.

  Kari leaped up the first steps lightly; the others clattered after him.

  “Where are they all?” Hakon breathed to Jessa. “We’re walking into a trap, I’m certain.”

  “I know that. We all do. Stick behind me if you’re scared.”

  He smiled, but it was a wan effort.

  The ice steps led up between glinting walls. Then they came out into a room at the top. Crowding into the doorway behind Hakon, Jessa caught her breath.

  The room was a blaze of candles; white candles of every size and thickness. The flames burned straight, with no breeze to flutter them. In the center of the room was a white chair, and Signi was sitting in it, staring at them. She held out her hands.

  “I almost hoped you wouldn’t come,” she said sadly.

  “We had to.” Skapti crossed to her.

  “Is Wulfgar…?”

  “He’s not with us. He had to stay at the hold.”

  Her dress and hair seemed paler here, drained of color; her skin had a strange, glistening tinge. The back of the chair was a network of ice strands, hung and looped, great chains of it. They dropped from her sleeves and wrists, unwound and slithered after her as she stood up and crossed the room.

  She tried to touch them, but her fingers passed through Brochael’s and he shook his head.

  “How do you like your sword, Hakon?” she asked.

  Puzzled, he glanced down at it. “Very much, but the gift was a long time ago.”

  “Was it?” She looked at them carefully, at their worn clothing, and windburned, unshaven faces. Fear crept into her eyes. “How long?”

  “Weeks.”

  She pressed her fingers together, pale and trembling. “I didn’t know. There’s no time in this place. Nothing but silence and cold, no one to speak to or touch…” Her eyes darted to the doorway, where Grettir stood. He smirked at her.

  Kari fingered the chains thoughtfully.

  “Can you?” Jessa asked him.

  “No. This is Gudrun’s spell. Only she can.”

  “You should leave here!” Signi put her wraith hand on his; only he could feel her, frail as a leaf. “You shouldn’t have come, Kari. It’s you she wants! She only brought me here to bring you.”

  “I know that.” He turned to Grettir reluctantly. “Where is she?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Then show me where. But I want to know that nothing will happen to my friends. Either way. I want to be sure of that.”

  “Oh no!” Jessa said firmly. She caught his arm tight. “You’re not vanishing on me again! We’re all in this.”

  He tried to tug away, but she had been expecting this; she held tight.

  “Jessa—”

  “No, Kari.”

  Grettir watched them, amused. “Touching,” he murmured.

  “Keep out of this,” Brochael growled. He put his hand on Kari’s shoulder. “She’s right.”

  Kari glanced at them both. “I don’t want to hurt you—”

  “Nor will you.”

  “But you have to let me go! Please, Brochael!” He squirmed away from them.

  “Not without us.” Brochael caught him again firmly. “Listen, Kari. Jessa is right. We’re all in this; it isn’t just you. You can’t take it all on yourself.”

  “And what good do you think you will be to him?” a cold voice mocked. “The boy is no kin of yours, Brochael Gunnarsson. He’s nothing of yours. He’s mine. And always will be.”

  Brochael stood still. His face hardened, and as he turned he put his arm around Kari and they stood together, looking at the woman in the doorway.

  Twenty-Five

  His hands he washed not nor his hair combed.

  She looked older.

  She was still tall, though, and pale, her long hair braided and caught in a shining net. Her coat was the color of snow shadows, blue and dim in the strange ice light, her eyes colorless and impossible to read.

  She stepped quickly into the candlelight, her silks and furs swishing, and she smiled at them, that cold, indifferent smile that had terrified Jessa so long ago.

  Glancing at Kari, she said, “You only have to look at us.”

  They all watched her, uneasy. Gudrun had worked her spell on each of them, Jessa thought. She had once made Hakon a thrall, crippled in one hand, useless but for slow, endless labor. She’d sent Jessa herself into the terror of Thrasirshall, stolen Wulfgar’
s kingdom, made Skapti an outlaw scavenging for years on favors and carrion. Brochael she had banished to die with her son, and from him, Kari, she had taken everything, left him unable to speak, walk, even to think, not knowing what people were. His very father had never seen him. And then she’d murdered his father.

  Each of them had deep cause to hate her. Only Moongarm stood aside.

  Gudrun crossed the room and put her hands out to Kari. “I knew you would come home.”

  “This isn’t my home.” He stepped back.

  “Yes it is,” she said seriously. “You’ve seen that, seen the people here. My people and yours. I heard you think it, Kari. You can’t deny that.”

  He turned away, then back to face her abruptly. “You’ve offered me this before. I don’t want it.”

  She nodded and smoothed her dress in the old gesture that Jessa remembered. “Then let me show you something that you do want. All of you. What happened in the Jarlshold was my spell, yes, but the dreams that destroyed you were your own. Dreams of mortals. Destructive, dangerous. Look here, and see what you do to yourselves.”

  In the middle of the room she opened her hands, almost carelessly, and spread a coldness about her, a darkness in the air that surrounded them all swiftly. The room faded; they seemed to be standing in snow, knee-deep in it, somewhere outside.

  Jessa looked around fearfully. It was the Jarlshold, she knew. But how it had changed!

  The silence was deathly. Thick snow coated everything; icicles hung over shutters and sills. Between the riven clouds a few stars glimmered, and showed her that the snow was unmarked. The settlement seemed totally deserted.

  Gudrun opened the door latch, the familiar door to the hall. It opened slowly.

  “It was cunning of you to leave a guardian,” she said, glancing at Kari. “Otherwise I should have had them all by now.”

  They stepped warily into the hall.

  It was frozen, stiff with ice. Gloom hung in its spaces, a silence of sleep. Walking in the vision over the stone floor, Jessa saw sleeping forms all around her, huddled up, barely breathing in the searing cold. They were all here now—the fishermen, farmers, children, thralls, the women and the war band, some crumpled where they had fallen, others covered with blankets or furs.

  Ahead of her, deep in the gloom, a glint of red light showed, smoldering, barely alive. Someone was still awake.

  As they came closer Jessa saw it was the embers of a fire, the dull peats giving out a faint heat. Over it one man was huddled, wrapped in a dark blanket, and as he raised his head and looked at them, she saw it was Wulfgar.

  His appearance shocked her. He was thin, almost gaunt. A dark stubble covered his chin and his red-rimmed eyes looked weary and unfocused. He smiled bitterly when he saw them. “Now I know I’m delirious. Are you dead then, all of you? Are you ghosts, come to haunt me?”

  “A vision,” Kari said, crouching by him. “Nothing more.”

  Wulfgar did not seem to hear him. He shook his head and gave a low, bitter laugh. “Of course you are. Dead at the world’s end, where I sent you. And all of us here caught in her spell, except me. Gods, I wish I was too.”

  He clasped his hands around his sword hilt and turned away from them, staring into the flames.

  Skapti stood rigid, watching him. Then he turned on Gudrun. “I could kill you myself for this.”

  She smiled coldly at him.

  “He can barely see us,” Kari murmured. “He thinks he’s imagining us.”

  “But why is he still awake?” Jessa asked.

  Kari crossed to the roof tree; the great ash trunk rose above him, glinting with frost. “Because of this.”

  They gathered around him and saw, wedged into a deep cleft at the base of the tree, something that shone in the firelight. Jessa moved back to let the light through and suddenly they saw what it was: a small piece of crystal, covered with spirals. For a moment she wondered where she had seen it before, and then the memory came to her of Kari’s strange tower room in Thrasirshall. The crystals had hung there in long strings from the roof. She remembered them turning in the sun.

  “This protects him?” Brochael asked.

  “Yes.” Kari turned defiantly to the witch, who stood a little back. “You’ll never get it out. I made sure of that.”

  The vision of the hall vanished instantly; they were in the candlelit room, and Signi was crying quietly into her hands.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Gudrun said easily. “None of that matters now. I wanted you to come and you have.”

  She touched his sleeve, teasing. “This is where you belong. Stay here, and I’ll release them, all of them. These can go; the Jarlshold will be free. I have no interest in them.”

  “Kari, no,” Brochael warned.

  The boy was silent.

  “And think about this,” Gudrun went on quietly. “Here, you are one of us. No one will point you out because you’re different, or stiffen in terror if you look at them. I always enjoyed that, but I think it pains you. Among them you’ll always be an outsider, and that will never change, Kari, never, no matter how much they think they know you. Can you live with that all your life?”

  For a moment they stood together, two identical faces, Gudrun’s watchful, Kari’s downcast. Then he pulled his arm away from her.

  “Leave me alone!” he said bitterly. “You’ve done this to me before! I won’t let it happen again. We’ve come too far, been through too much. These are my friends; I trust them. They trust me.” He gripped his hands together and went on rapidly. “And I need them. I need them to keep me from becoming like you. I care about them, and about Wulfgar, and all the people you’ve stolen from themselves. I can’t turn my back on them. Not now.”

  “Well said,” Brochael growled.

  “Can you understand that?” Kari went close to her, almost pleading. He was as tall as she was now, Jessa noticed with surprise. Face-to-face he confronted her, snatching her thin hands. “Can you?” he breathed.

  Gudrun smiled at him, almost sadly. “No,” she said. “And you know that means death for one of us.”

  Her words were like a blow.

  Brochael stepped closer but she looked through him, unconcerned. “I’ve never known you, Kari,” she said. “You and I have always been on opposite sides of the mirror.”

  “We don’t have to be,” he whispered.

  “I see now that we do. It’s too late, my son. Too late for everything.”

  And they were gone instantly, both of them.

  Jessa gasped with shock and rage; Brochael swore in fury. “Where are they?” he roared, swinging around. But the old man had gone too.

  Twenty-Six

  What do you ask of me? Why tempt me?

  Kari was standing in darkness.

  Around him were many invisible people; he could feel their thoughts crowding him and he pushed them away. He knew this was the spirit world, the dream realm. Anything could happen here, so he made some light; it flooded the room.

  He was in a small place, little more than a cell. A dirty bed lay on the floor in one corner, and on the hearth the ashes were cold. A tiny window let in starlight over his head.

  He knew where he was. The memory came over him, sharp and bitter, and then it was a weariness, a familiar relentless numbness that crept over his mind.

  He went across and kneeled on the gray blankets, fingering the scrawls on the wall, the marks made with a charred stick, all blurs and spirals.

  “Why here?” he murmured.

  “Because of all the places in the world this is the one you fear most.” She leaned against the damp wall looking down at him, as she always had. “They don’t know, your friends, about this terror, do they? About the nightmares of this room? Not even Brochael?”

  Kari sat on the worn blankets, knees up, hugging himself. He rocked back and forth a little, saying nothing.

  “How empty they were,” she said softly, coming to stand over him. “All those years in here.”

  “Yo
u locked me in here. Abandoned me…”

  “Years of silence. Fear. You remember them?”

  “I can’t forget.” He looked up fiercely. “Why did you do that? It could all have been so different. For both of us.”

  She shook her sleek head, kneeling before him, her silk dress rustling in the straw. “Among us, there can be only one soul thief. I knew that from the beginning.”

  Kari barely heard her. He was fighting to stay calm, to beat off the terrors of his childhood. All around him he felt them coming out, from the walls, from the blown ashes, from the marks he had drawn years ago, a child without thoughts, frightened and cold, unable to speak.

  He knew every inch of this place, had fingered every crack of it, crawled in every corner, watched the slow forming of frosts every winter, the moving wand of sunlight that stroked out the dreary days. Now it seemed as if he had never left. All that had happened since grew faint and unreal; he knew this place was the emptiness in him, the yearning, the source of all her power over him. As he crouched there he began to forget them all, Jessa, Skapti, even Brochael; speech began to die in him, so that he groped for words and had forgotten them, even their sounds. There was only the woman, the tall woman, and he could never escape from her, never. He had been here too long.

  Far outside him, something flapped and squawked; he looked up with a great effort and saw a raven’s beak prising at the window bars.

  Gudrun smiled. “Even those I can keep out.”

  Miserably he put his hands out to her, and she took them. And with a strength and suddenness that astonished him, he felt her reach into him, deep among his thoughts and terrors and memories, until she touched, with a cold finger, his soul. And she began to tug at it, and he felt his personality quiver and fail, and as he slumped away from her against the stone wall, he knew numbly that she was drawing out his very being, dragging it from him, and he crumpled to his knees, clutching the gray blanket with a child’s thin fists.

  “Stay with Signi,” Brochael ordered.