by Liz Williams
We reached Glyn Apt after about an hour. She lay in a fold of snow at the bottom of a ridge. At first I thought she was dead, for when we gently rolled her over, her eyes were open and staring. The data stream was still except for a single trickle of numbers, and when I put a hand close to her mouth, I felt no stirring of breath.
‘She’s gone, Eld,’ I whispered, but he shook his head.
‘There’s no sign of vital damage. A fractured shin and wrist . . . a lot of bruising. Probably concussion. But she’s still alive.’ Wings flickered and I got the image of a heart, beating slow, slow, as if frozen. ‘She’s put herself into stasis.’
‘The Morrighanu can do that?’
‘Can’t the Skald?’
‘Sometimes. But it’s a rare ability.’
Eld shrugged. ‘It’s useful. Morrighanu often meet with accidents.’
‘How long will she stay like this?’
‘As long as she needs to. Months, if necessary. Or so they like to boast. I suspect it’s more a matter of weeks, or even days. And she’ll need to be brought round by someone else: she can’t bring herself out of it.’
‘So what are we going to do with her?’
‘Put her on the sled. Send her to the edge of the ice. It’s a clear run.’ For a moment I thought he was advocating that we send Glyn Apt to her death in truth, but then he added, ‘I’ll ask the raven to reprogramme her bird. It’ll take itself back to the warship. They won’t be able to land but they can send a copter with someone on the end of a line.’
‘All right,’ I said. It didn’t seem right to leave her here and if something happened to Eld and myself, at least Glyn Apt would be in a more accessible location.
We strapped her with care onto the sled and Eld sent the co-ordinates. The sled moved away and I watched it go: a strange sight, seeing that long narrow form hiss away into the arctic dark with the Morrighanu’s shrouded body on it. It reminded me of a funeral barge, gliding through the frozen waste. A light morning mist was creeping over the ice and soon the sled was lost to view. As soon as it had vanished, I turned to Eld.
‘I’m not going back. First Idhunn, then Sedra, now Glyn Apt.’ The names were like a rosary, beads on a killing chain.
Eld just sounded weary. ‘She’s going to be difficult to take down. You know that.’
‘You said it yourself. All my enemies are dead.’
Eld gave a slight smile. All except myself.’
Are you my enemy then, Eld?’
‘Do you know,’ the vitki said, as if the thought had only just occurred to him – I was sure it had not. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘I’ll take that as reassurance.’ I’d only had two hours’ sleep but I was wide awake, and itching to get going. ‘She’s up there, Eld,’ I said. I could see where Glyn Apt had rolled down the ridge, perhaps in an effort to get away. ‘She has to be.’
‘Well, then,’ he suggested, ‘let’s go.’
It was a hard climb, up over ice as smooth and sheer as glass, and ragged rocks. I was glad of the Morrighanu armour, feeling it rush and shiver across my skin in an effort to anticipate the next move and protect me. Eld, despite being older and (I considered) less fit, stayed close behind. We used a gravitational axe and pitons to get up the ridge, moving cautiously as we drew close to the summit. I did not want to find Skinning Knife’s booted heel stamping down on my fingers. But we crested the ridge without incident and found ourselves standing on a narrow ledge of ice. It curved upwards, towards a thin, twisted spire like ice candy.
And I could feel her now, like a prickling on the air. Just as I’d felt Gemaley, a predatory presence moving through Mondhile’s woods, close to her black fairy-tale tower. It was the same kind of sensation, but bloodier, more eager. It made me swallow, hard.
‘Eld,’ I said, without knowing what prompted me to say it, ‘Stay here.’
‘I don’t think so,’ the vitki replied, mildly. ‘I think you’ve proved whatever you have to prove. I know you work alone. So did I. So did Glyn Apt. Note the use of the past tense. You are not alone now.’
And I hadn’t been alone when Ruan had helped me on Mondhile, but even so . . . ‘I have to face her,’ I said.
‘No,’ Eld answered patiently. ‘We have to kill her.’
She was coming closer. I felt the blade of her sliding through the air. I turned my back on Eld and stepped around that pinnacle of rock.
But it wasn’t Skadi who stood there. It was Sedra.
She did not bother to pretend. She said, ‘She’s not for you. Leave her. I’ll take her from your lands.’
I didn’t have to ask where, but I said it anyway. ‘To Mondhile?’
‘If her mother had been left alone, that’s where she’d be. With her clan. Not someone born in a tank and raised in a cage.’
Maybe she would have been like Sedra herself: fierce, yes, but not mad. More like me, or so I liked to think.
‘Sedra, you’d never get her off-world. How do you plan to get her away from Therm? A hidden wing which in any case you wouldn’t be able to fly? You’ve seen the warship waiting. They have detection technology, they’d be able to trace you.’
Sedra shook her head. ‘She’s like wood washed up by the sea, twisted and wrong. But I can make her into something new.’
‘Are you so sure? She’s a born killer.’ That was Eld, at my shoulder. Sedra looked at him. ‘This is a matter for women, Eld. You’ve no place in this.’ She spoke gently enough and so did Eld.
‘So what did you tell Glyn Apt?’
‘She fell. I didn’t mean to make her fall, but she did and it’s done.’
‘She’s still alive,’ I said.
‘Good.’ I thought she meant it. ‘I don’t wish any of you dead. Just gone.’
Whatever Eld might have felt, given another few minutes, she might have convinced me. So much death already, so much destruction. Maybe you grow out of wanting to eliminate everyone who’s ever hurt you. Or maybe you don’t.
But then Skadi woke.
This time, because Sedra was evidently doing something to hold it back, I could see the process of illusion at work. Like the Morrighanu, like the vitki, Skadi used her birds. A huge predatory gull, beak razor-sharp, drifted out over the snow. I could see the reams of data flowing through it, but there was something else, too, lying deep within: a kind of glowing seed. I looked up past it to see Skinning Knife standing on the ledge outside the cage.
It was really the first time I’d seen her without her weaponries of illusion and terror, but she did not look ordinary. Now that I could see her more closely, I saw that she was nothing like Gemaley: tall and thin, yes, with pale hair, but her face was more rounded, less angular and harsh, the mouth delicate and long, and her eyes were black hollows, not beast-gold, with a spark deep within. She did not have Gemaley’s smiling delight in death, at least, not at this moment. Her face was grave and concerned, as though she was about to perform some unpleasant but necessary task. I had, however, no doubt as to what that task was to be.
The bird shed its wings, then its flesh, until there was something red and writhing coming towards us across the snowbank, and then nothing more than a flying cage of bone with that shining thing where its heart should be. Then the bone, too, was gone and the shining thing dropped to the snowbank. It hissed as it went in as though it was a real object, something hot. I saw a flash of numbers, and then Frey was standing in front of me: my dead lover, alive again, the golden eye gleaming but the grey eye gone, torn from a mass of ripped flesh. Frey grinned at me and whispered something that I could not hear. I felt a touch of the old weakness in me, but then I saw the numbers again and knew that Sedra was reining the illusion in. Frey wasn’t real, and I knew it, and my own seith rippled out and shattered the image into fragments.
Skinning Knife jumped down from the ridge. It was a drop of some fifteen feet to the ledge of ice, but she landed lightly in a crouch. I felt the rush of heat as Eld raised his weapon and fired, but she was already o
n the move.
‘Skadi!’ Sedra cried. I brought the gun up. Skadi, who had been ten feet away a moment before, knocked it out of my hand. She lashed out, but once more Sedra came between us. I saw a long, bloody slash appear in the old woman’s chest. She went down into the snow. Eld fired again and Skinning Knife shrieked, high and thin like a wounded seabird. She was once more on the top of the ridge and this time I followed, scrambling up the icy slope. She fled into the cave and I saw her roll as she hit the floor. But when I reached the place where she’d been, she wasn’t there.
I looked around me. The cave was a narrow funnel, running up into the rock wall. A warm breath came from it. I looked up, but Skadi wasn’t clinging to the ceiling. The funnel was the only way out, apart from the cave’s entrance, and I didn’t think she could have slipped past me. If I fired, there was the danger of ricochet. I shouldered the gun and drew the knife. Now that I knew she could be injured, it gave me confidence. It made her real.
Not liking the idea of encountering Skinning Knife in complete darkness, I decided to risk switching on the armour light. I went up the funnel of rock, sending out with the seith ahead of me, but I couldn’t feel anything. It was as though I was walking through a thick fleece, a cloud made solid but invisible. The path was steep and narrow, winding up into the heart of Therm, and it was getting warmer. I didn’t mind that, but I wondered just how hot it was likely to become. Therm was supposed to be dormant, but it would be just my luck if it decided not to be. I had to keep remembering to look up, and behind, but there was no sign of pursuit, or assistance from Eld. That worried me. I’d never liked the idea of turning my back on a vitki, and now here I was hoping for it.
No sign that anyone had ever been this way, but Skadi had been wounded. She’d been bleeding, but there wasn’t a trace of blood in the breastlight from my slickskin and I couldn’t smell anything, either. The rock floor of the passage was smooth, as if something burning had flowed down it and fused it into glass. And the air was growing colder again, which suggested that I was once more nearing the outside world.
Then I spotted it. A single drop of blood, crimson against the black glass floor. As I watched, it hissed into bloody steam. So she had been this way, after all. She did not need to cover her tracks: they were doing it for her. My spine prickled. There was the fleeting odour of burning blood, then a clear breath of air from further down the passage carried it away.
The passage ended in an arch that looked both ancient and man-made, though I hadn’t heard of anyone living in Therm besides Skadi. I switched off the light as soon as I saw the faint greyness ahead. I did not want to step through unprepared. The seith was still being blanketed and that told me she was there.
I edged forwards, closer and closer to the archway. I could see straight ahead now, to where dawn light was illuminating a long ledge. I couldn’t see what lay over the lip, but it had to be the wall of Therm, either inside or out. When I reached the arch I hesitated for a moment then went through in a roll, coming up again to stand beyond the doorway but closer to the edge. The knife was in my hand and ready.
At least I’d found out what was on the other side of the ledge. It lay above the caldera of Therm, and though the great hollow of the volcano was dark, there was a dim firecoal glow far, far below and the air was filled with the reek of old soot: it was like standing in Hellheim’s chimney.
Skadi was there. She was crouching on the other side of the ledge, some ten feet away from me. I could see her panting, like a wounded dog, but I couldn’t hear anything. Her eyes were fixed on me, as blank and glassy as the rock. It looked as though they were holes in her skull. She had a hand pressed to her side and blood was seeping through her fingers.
I didn’t want a discussion. Apparently, neither did she. She got to her feet and the seep of blood was no longer in evidence. Next moment, she was standing in front of me.
Panic, not competence, saved me. I was simply and sheerly so afraid of her that the seith came up in a great shielding rush and my feet took me backwards. Her eyes widened: I’d moved much faster than she’d learned to expect. I slammed back against the rock wall. She was there again and I was not. I was trying to keep close to the cliff face, away from the edge of the caldera, but it was hard. She drove me round and round in circles, but understanding was finally kicking in. I’d faced the feir before, on Mondhile. I could see what she was doing, see the illusions that she was trying to cast. Frey again, then the Hierolath, then Gemaley – she must have looked at the Morrighanu records. She knew who I feared and why. She tried to cast my brother, but my memories of him were distant ones now: I glimpsed a sullen youth, a man’s body but a boy’s cruel face and he was just a kid, I thought with contempt. Then it was Idhunn who was standing before me, or trying to: it was like seeing someone through a tank of water, too slow and shimmering to be real, but melting down all the same to a pool of blood and broken bone. It was this last that sparked the real anger in me. I rushed Skadi, feinted with the knife, and this time she was the one to pull back.
She lashed out. There was a blade along the side of her hand; I caught sight of the surgical instruments that were her fingers, scalpels gleaming under fingernails, cutting ridges across her knuckles. Her hands were red with blood but it was her own.
I thought: if you can be wounded, you can be killed.
The illusions were failing, now. Her grasp on me was fading and the realization of it showed in her face. I kicked out and felt her knee go out from under her. She went down and it filled me with a cold exultation, until I realized that it wasn’t emotion at all: there was something trickling down my side. I looked down. One of the blades had penetrated the armour. There was a long gash down my flank and it wept red. It made me stupidly slow; next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, hammered down against the rock, and she was over me. The blade was coming down, flashing in the growing red light, and I struck upwards into her face. I tore her cheek into a bloody flap. She made no sound at all. There was a cold cut across my arm, ripping the armour open again, but it was just one more scar, I told myself. I’d cut my own arm, often and over, and I laughed. Enough is enough. She was expecting continued avoidance. I leaped, caught her round the neck, and we rolled to the edge. She fought frantically, kicking and clawing, but I’d stopped caring what damage she did. I slammed her head onto the rock, put my knee in her side and shoved. She went over but as she did so, she clutched my wrist. Her full falling weight pulled my shoulder out of its socket and I screamed. The blades of her hand ripped into my skin, grating on bone, slipping on blood. If it hadn’t been for that, she might have held on. At the last, her face wasn’t anybody’s but her own, and it was bestial, feral, feir, not human at all.
‘You are the weapon now,’ the beast said. Then she added something and there was a gannet flying upwards, its razor beak aimed at my face. I jerked back and the movement pulled my wrist out of Skadi’s grip. The gannet was gone, but my head felt filled with feathers and a sudden blinding pain. I felt stuffed and flooded with knowledge that I did not understand.
Through it, I glimpsed Skadi going down into the caldera, falling and twisting in silence. I did not see her reach her death. I was too busy attending to my hand, clutching and crouching over it, trying to strap it up before I bled to death.
If it hadn’t been for Eld, I probably would have done. He was on the ledge a moment later.
‘She’s gone,’ I said. ‘Where were you?’
‘Sedra,’ he said. He knelt by my side and put his hand over mine, which hurt until the slickskin crept over it, joining us by a thin film. Then it separated, leaving me with a coating of flexible armour to stop the bleeding. It hurt like hell, but I wouldn’t die from it. Whether I’d use my hand again was another matter.
‘Sedra? She’s dead?’
‘Unfortunately, not. She went for me. She’s quite the fighter.’
‘I thought her niece had done for her.’
Eld grimaced. ‘So did I.’ He helped me up. ‘Where
is Skadi? Down there?’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t feel like giving a blow-by-blow account and Eld seemed to understand this. I did not look back down into the caldera. I did not want to see anything looking back at me, some last dying dream. Eld helped me along the passage and I leaned on him without shame. I was feeling increasingly light-headed, but all I could sense of Eld was a kind of calm relief, and nothing more.
Once we got out into the icy morning, the cold made me feel better, more grounded. That went the moment I saw Sedra.
I hadn’t expected so much blood. It stained the surrounding snow, which crunched pink under my boots. I knelt anyway. Her eyes were open. She whispered, ‘You are alive. That means she is not.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, meaning it. ‘But for you, not for her.’
‘Was it quick?’
‘Quick enough. She fell.’
Sedra’s eyes closed for a moment. ‘Quick enough, as you say.’ She hesitated. ‘There are other young women in my clan. Good hunters, good fighters. It was never meant to happen, that my niece should live.’
‘Sedra, I—’
‘And good enough for me. Not illness, some pain. But to be killed by a member of my clan – some think it’s an honour. I just think it’s family.’ And she grinned, and before I could say anything like goodbye, she died.
I stood, looking down at her. Her face was white as the snow, in death. I regretted it, almost as much as Idhunn’s death.
‘If you wished,’ Eld said, ‘we could have her body shipped back to Mondhile.’
‘It’s a generous offer, Eld.’ Surprisingly so, but I didn’t say that. I wondered whether we should let the glacier take her, or whether she would prefer to be with her niece in death. ‘I think perhaps we should. But there’s a war on.’
‘Well,’ Eld said. ‘You know my views about the war. We’ll take her anyway.’
I slept next to her corpse on the sled, all the way back to the coast. In my own sick dream state, she was company, and she spoke to me. I can’t remember what she told me, but she said that the day would come when I would recall it. My enemies were dead, she said. I did not need the knowledge now.