Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Snow awake and snow in sleep, again her dreaming took her under the ice where the white freeze swallowed her and she drowned in it. The bear, a giant whiter than the frozen land, stared down at her. She felt the warmth from its nostrils and woke afraid. The cold had stiffened but not numbed her, her thigh muscles screamed for release, her back refused to straighten. It was some time, rubbing, cajoling, encouraging as sometimes she had done to Egil as a child, before she could travel on. There was a pitiless cold, no longer the winter freeze she had known all her life but something far worse, a winter of cruelty, as Grimr had been a wintered man.

  Within a few more stubborn breaths, the sun would rise again. Grimr would throw open the great doors of his hall, and with eager dogs and excited jarls beside him, would begin the hunt. They were a long, long way behind, but if Grimr was not fooled by her trickery in first heading south but instead discovered her true direction, he would travel far faster than she, and catch her in less than the two days she had already taken. But she was hungry, would be painfully hungry by nightfall, and was already half dead from cold. Even though she had promised herself long life and happiness, now she hoped she would die before he found her. It would be better, and also seemed inevitable. Her shining knives in their grand scabbards, her beautiful bow and those iron tipped arrows, offered no defence against ice and starvation. There was nothing visible beyond the endless mountains. She had no strength for such a journey. Even without storms it might take a year. Perhaps only a bird could cross it. It was possible that it led, eventually, only to the end of the world and the land of the dead.

  Skarga began looking for the easier way since nothing could save her. And then the bank below, which had seemed just a scrape of ice over hard rock, proved false. As she stepped forwards, reaching for the soft slope, it crumpled completely beneath her. With a muffled scream, arms flailing, legs trapped by the weight of soaked skirts as her cloak clasp caught around her neck in a noose, Skarga sank into endless accumulated storm drifts. An arm’s length of this year’s, her boots into five year’s gone, her mind iced shut and the last steam of living breath condensed across the shining shifting surface as it closed behind her.

  Suffocating in snow, eyes wedged shut with snow, breathing snow, swallowing snow, lungs compressed, the weight and the freeze and the horror of snow, no freedom to kick or to push, but the sensation of greater forces hurtling around her. Finally the numbing imminent knowledge of all her past night terrors coming true.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  She had thought it was death but it was simply a pause in consciousness, a blink in life. She opened her eyes to ice immediately above her head. A deep, secretive darkness turned the bitter chill into a sheltered damp seclusion. She felt her own breath rise, felt the warmth of it in her own nostrils, felt it return in the drip, drip of condensation and melting ice directly to her mouth.

  She was flat on her back in a pocket of air broken into the snow bank, its ceiling two fingers from her face. Its weight pressed on her legs, it was hard and uneven beneath her, but around her head it was just sufficiently open. She was alive. There was no pain and if her bones were broken, then the utter freeze had numbed the sensation. She began to flex her fingers, then hands, then arms. All were free and strong. Then she wriggled her ankles and felt the crumbling ice fall away. By kicking her legs, bringing her knees up to her belly and crossing her arms over her chest, she widened her pocket prison into a cave. She rolled over, nose to snow, and over again. There was space. She sat, head bent to her knees. Nothing fell against her. She risked raising her head. There was no barrier. Excited, she scrambled upright and stood, breathing deeply.

  The air was stale with a smell of long forgotten things. Her sight adapted but there was nothing to see. Even as she stared into the darkness there was only snow, but walls of snow, seeming almost sculptured, curving in huge blocks up around her. She stood in a cave which led into a tunnel, and all of it was snow. In spite of the great darkness, she knew by sight and touch this was no natural pass beneath the ice but had been carefully built. She followed the curvature of walls, fingering their shaped slabs, discovering the cracks where each hewed brick of solid ice had been set against its neighbour. Then where she had hurtled through from above, fine snow dust was an unearthly dancing sheen. But suddenly, as she stared, the silver shiver became a shattering torrent as ice broke and thundered above her. The roof crashed open.

  Skarga fled. She ran into the ice tunnel, ducking, then crawling, escaping the collapse behind her. The space was first narrow and then flared, remaining low. She gasped and her throat was burned by cold. The roar of destruction was close behind and her nose was squeezed almost to her thighs, when she glimpsed a light ahead. The tunnel closed behind her in thunder, the pounding shuddered into settling drifts, and the spray of ice melted to benign trickles, a misted fog. Skarga came to the where the light gleamed. She tumbled into air again, and stood.

  Carved and glorious, Skarga saw a ceiling crossed by beams where two sconces held torches, small guttering flames with a smell of soot and tallow. Dragon’s shadow wings raced the ice walls with streaks of colour where reflections turned stark white to gold and deepest black to emerald. There was nothing else but a waiting emptiness in a stampede of light. The torches hissed and where they melted the snow behind them, a steady seepage dripped from wall to floor and there froze again.

  Turning, grinding a tiny circle in the ice beneath her boot, she saw no way out, no door, no entrance other than the tunnel through which she had come, now blocked. Skarga was as trapped as she had been in Grimr’s bed and just as frightened. But there was magic in her world after all. They said giants lived in the mountains of Jotunheim, and trolls in the underground passages beneath the rock. She might have tumbled into Utgard, or discovered the roots of Yggdrasil. She might be asleep and dreaming, or travelling those deeper dreams of everlasting death. But the tunnel she had crawled through was too small for giants and the beauty of the symmetrical walls too elegant for trolls. She was very much awake and she had neither died nor been dragged down by monsters. She had not fallen deep enough for the roots of the mountain, let alone the roots of the tree of life, and although the torch flames breathed dragon’s wings around the walls, there were no dreadful creatures nor worming things, no bodiless skulls nor headless bodies, and nothing threatened her at all.

  Then as the far wall split and a door within the snow bricks cracked open to cold shadows, she knew she was wrong. She was threatened after all. Whiter than the snow and shaming the walls into yellowing sepia, the beast from her dreams came shuffling into the light. First the curious, swaying head, moist black button nose, black beaded eyes and elongated snout, up into the massive shoulders and shaggy back. Claws sheathed, the paws turned inwards, each huge as a child’s tousled head on its pillow. The bear shambled closer, a living death.

  It was a giant after all. Its ears peaked above her head, the height of its shoulders still higher. Its fur glistened, reflecting torch flame. Each flank was a waterfall of snows, fur as soft and thick and beautiful as a winter storm. Its steps vibrated. It circled her, then came to stand at her side. With nowhere to run, Skarga leapt up to face it. She felt the condensation of its breath on her cheek. Without expectation of success, she kicked out, fists to its eyes and fingers raking its nose. She reached for the knife in her belt and stabbed her metal into its face.

  At first it appeared to sniff, confused, shaking its head a little as though puzzled. Then the bear lifted one huge paw and swiped her to the ground. Her feet left the ice, the knife slid across the room, and her head spun. She gazed up terrified as its mouth closed onto her. It opened its jaws in a burst of hot breath and took her between its teeth. Its grip was tentative and surprisingly gentle, but she felt crushed, and she whimpered. It shook her first, as though unsure of her reactions, and then began to trot with her back into the darkness of the doorway through which it had entered.

  Then Skarga saw the man who came after the bear.
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  He came out of the blackness as the bear had, and he wore the same fur, as if he was part bear himself. The great cape cascaded across his shoulders and down his back, gleaming white ripples to his thighs. It was clasped beneath his chin with a silver knot work buckle, and on one side it was stained and matted with a coarse dark patch, like old blood. He was golden haired and broad shouldered and unusually tall. Under the deep curve of one blue eye was a small scar, and as he smiled it lifted, like the keel of a tiny boat caught on a wave.

  With bear breath hot on her neck, Skarga stared, heard her heart beat race and her own gargled, wordless breathing. The bear dropped her at the man’s feet. She stared up at him, scrambling to her knees. He was so impossible, she found herself discovering the details of him, as if searching for proof of reality. She gazed up at the wild tousled hair across the high forehead, the coarse linen of a plain tunic belted in worn leather, the salt faded boots of a sailor, and the same fur cloak.

  She whispered, “I don’t understand.”

  “Naturally,” said the captain from the distant islands who had once called himself Grimr. “I should be exceedingly surprised if you did. But this is no prison, and you are no prisoner. Your fear is utterly unnecessary.” His expression showed neither sympathy nor disapproval, and just a tweak of impatience in the hint of a frown. He continued, “In fact, you have been rescued, though not by me.”

  The bear’s cold shadow remained. “Is it – safe?” asked Skarga, peeping desperately behind her.

  “I doubt if I would call Karr safe,” the man said. “Nor would he describe himself that way. But it was Karr who alerted me to your arrival. He will not hurt you.”

  Skarga shivered. “How are you here?” she mumbled. “And your cloak was left behind at my father’s hall. Did he send you after me? Where – is this place?” She paused, trying to summon thought and courage. “I am – lost – confused – I don’t know what I am.”

  As so often when she had known this man before, his reply made no sense at all. He said, “There is nothing so complicated as simplicity, and nothing as illusionary as reality.”

  She stared, shaking her head. “What has that to do with this?” whispered Skarga.

  “Everything,” he said. “Now you had better come with me.”

  She did not argue. The great bear pushed its snout at her back. She felt the cold pressure of its nose and she followed the man Grimr through the ice tunnel. Away from the torch flare there was an abrupt darkness, but the roof was high and the tunnel wide. She kept close to the white fur cloak. Shimmering like a beacon, it led her. At the end there was a small room, timber panelled. Like some windowless chamber in a longhouse, there was a central hearth with sparks of a small fire and smoke hanging beneath the beams in sweet scented fogs. Above the hearth a wide copper hood contained the flames and protected the ceiling from the rising heat. Across the icy ground were huge piles of furs, a thick lazy carpet of luxurious excess. The man who called himself Grimr bent and sat, lounging, one leg straight, the other knee bent, supporting his wrist. Skarga sat carefully, tucking her boots beneath her skirts. There was no one else and looking around, she saw the white bear had not followed. She was alone with Grimr. He had denied this was a prison, and although she could see no way out, for the first time in the two days of her frantic and freezing escape, she was delightfully warm. The man slung back the weight of his cloak and Skarga threw off her own. Asved’s wolf pelt sank back amongst the other furs, a layering of marten, beaver, sable and squirrel, goatskin and deer hide, sleek silken colours, black, white, red, gold and brown. A secret forest of animals whispered around her. Her hands disappeared into softness. She had a sudden yearning for a long and glorious sleep.

  “Afterwards,” Grimr said. “There are other matters to arrange first and I must answer some of your questions.”

  Skarga blinked. “You already do,” she said. “Before I ask them.”

  “Naturally. But I cannot read all your thoughts,” he said, “only those that lie at the tips of your mind, like an autumn leaf about to leave its tree. If you have deep avenues within, as thinking people do, then I cannot see them.”

  Skarga took a deep breath. “No one can read thoughts,” she said, “and I’m not stupid. Why do men assume all women must naturally be foolish? Or is it only me? Or is it only men with the name Grimr?”

  He smiled. “My name is not Grimr,” he said. “I’m called Thoddun.”

  She glared. “So you called yourself Grimr just to steal my father’s silver? Or for the pleasure of killing me? Or for the pure enjoyment of trickery and subterfuge?”

  The man now calling himself Thoddun leaned back against the nestling folds of his own white cloak and the furs beneath it, and grinned. There was no other light in the room but the tiny flames skipped and crackled across the hearth, and their dancing turned the man’s blue eyes deep red. “You could not understand,” he said.

  “Of course not. I’m too stupid.” said Skarga.

  He paused, regarding her, and then smiled again. “I and my crew had been travelling for some time, for the joy of the sea and the great open skies. I was also looking for something I find very rarely, but which is important to me.”

  Skarga thought of treasure or women for slaves, but said nothing because neither was rare, and both easily found. Instead, she said, “Your crewmen said your ship was swept to our vik after a storm. They said you saved them all when Jormundgandr itself rose from the seas. They said you were a hero.”

  “They – exaggerated,” smiled Thoddun. “I brought my ship to your father’s fjord by choice because I sensed something. I smelled what you might call magic, though I would call it by a different name. When we anchored, I discovered that someone known as Grimr was expected, and I was told why. I was interested, thinking that a woman considered cursed might account for the scent of magic.”

  Skarga sat forward. “You were looking for what? The curse? The power?”

  “The easiest way to investigate,” he said, “was to assume the title of the assassin.”

  “Go on,” she said. “Did you find this magic?”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I did.”

  Fear and desperation burst into hope. “Tell me,” she demanded. “Am I truly cursed? Are you cursed too, to recognise another? This place, the bear, and reading thoughts. Are you magic? You have a ship but you live deep in the snows. Are you a god? Tell me.”

  He laughed. “No, I’m no god. It is a curse perhaps, though one which I love. So I look for those who have the same power I have, to bring them together with others of our kind and help them, when they want help, as most of us do. When I smelled the power in the air and came to your home and heard the accusation of the curse, I took Grimr’s name in order to more easily carry you away.”

  “But you never helped me,” said Skarga, sitting back, bewildered. “I expected you to kill me. You almost did. You ignored me and hardly spoke, except to threaten me.”

  He nodded. “Because I soon knew you were not what I hoped. You no longer interested me.”

  Skarga was aware of the deepest disappointment. The hopeful golden light changed back to the stale shadows of inevitable failure. “I see,” she said softly. “I understand. You should have set me free somewhere along the way. You could have sent me to Saxony and let me start a new life.”

  He shook his head, wild gold tangles of hair catching the firelight. “But I found exactly what I’d known was close,” he said, “and I would never let that go.”

  Confused, Skarga said, “You make no sense. You said you realised I had no magic after all.”

  “No,” said Thoddun, quite gently. “You are not what I was looking for.” Then he looked up, the direction of his eyes a little over her shoulder, and his smile widened. He nodded, and said, “But he is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  He was still just a little boy, ten or eleven years old and very skinny, with unruly brown curls and a small sharp nose. But as she turned in
confusion, he ran to her and flung his arms tight around her, jumping on the furs beside her, almost toppling her backwards.

  Egil said, “You see? It’s wonderful here, but I love you so much too. He said you were close. So I begged him to save you and he did.”

  Skarga smoothed her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from the little narrow forehead. She whispered, “I saw you drown.”

  “You’re crying,” Egil accused her. “Besides, you can see I’m not dead. You would have been, but I made Thoddun save you back then too, just like he saved me.”

  “Touching though this scene undoubtedly is,” Thoddun interrupted, “I must ask you to do something first. We need wine, and it is certainly your turn to fetch it.”

  Egil leapt up at once, grinning, and scampered off. One minute she held him, the next he had gone. Skarga turned, completely bewildered, not knowing what to ask.

  As usual her lack of words made no difference. “No,” said Thoddun. “The child is alive in the normal sense, being neither ghost nor phantom. I brought him up from the sea where your brother thought to drown him, and I gave him my breath. Now twice rescued from ignominious murder, the brat is learning to be suitably grateful.”

  “I don’t understand,” whispered Skarga unnecessarily.