Snow-Walker Page 6

  They all leaned over it. Spindly brown letters were marked on the rough vellum. Brochael fingered them. “It’s brief enough.”

  He read it aloud. “‘From Ragnar, Jarl, to Brochael Gunnarsson, this warning. When I die she will come for the creature. It may be to kill, or it may be for some reason of her own. Take him south, out of these lands. I would not have him suffer as I have suffered.’”

  There was silence. Then Brochael folded the parchment. “Does he think I don’t know?” he said roughly. He picked up the candle.

  “Come with me,” he said. “All this gossip can wait until morning.”

  He led them to a thick curtain in one corner and pulled it back. Beyond it was the usual sleeping booth—it was well paneled in wood, the blankets patched and coarse. “The other is next to it.” Brochael put the candle down. “Not the silks of the Jarlshold, but just as warm. Sleep well, for as long as you like. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Where do you sleep?” Thorkil asked, looking at the damp blanket with obvious distaste.

  “Elsewhere.” Suddenly the big man turned, his shadow huge in the flame light. “The door will be locked—don’t let that alarm you. If you hear anything—voices, movements—far off in the building, ignore it. You are safe here. No one can get in.”

  There was a cold silence.

  “Good night,” Brochael said calmly.

  The curtain rustled. A moment later the key grated in the lock. “Well,” Thorkil muttered after a moment. “It’s almost as bad as I thought. Dust, fleas, rats.” He rubbed at the soiled red cloth of his jerkin and went off to find his own sleeping place.

  Wearily Jessa lay down in her clothes and wrapped herself in the rough, damp-smelling blankets. “But I didn’t expect Brochael,” she muttered quietly.

  “What?”

  There was no answer. When Thorkil came back and opened the curtain she was already asleep. He watched her for a moment, then reached out and snuffed the candle, and the flames in the eyes of the serpent on his wrist went out.

  Jessa threw two crumbling squares of peat on the fire and chewed the stale bannock that seemed to be breakfast. She watched Thorkil stagger in with the empty bucket and drop it with a clang.

  “That water froze as I threw it out.” He sat down and looked at her. “We didn’t get many answers last night. No one could have got here before us, could they?”

  She was thinking of the peddler. “I don’t know. Who would?”

  “And have you seen this?” He tapped the slab of goat’s cheese they had found.

  “Cheese,” Jessa said drily.

  “Yes, but where did it come from? Where are the goats?”

  That surprised her. She shook her head, thinking of the empty outbuildings and the untrodden snow. “Perhaps in some building at the back—”

  “They’d freeze. And Kari. Where’s he?”

  Jessa swallowed some crumbs. “I don’t want to know that.” She wiped her hand in her skirt. “Locked in some room, I suppose.”

  A scrape interrupted them; the key turned and Brochael ducked in under the low doorway. He had snow in his hair. He grinned at them cheerfully. “Awake! Sleep well?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  They watched him stand in front of the fire, his clothes steaming.

  Thorkil glanced at Jessa. “Look,” he said. “Are we prisoners here? Can we go anywhere we want to?”

  Brochael gave a gruff laugh. “We’re all prisoners, lad, but I’m not your keeper, if that’s what you mean. But there’s not much to see here. Empty rooms and snow.”

  He watched them for a moment, and they waited for some word of Kari, some warning of one door not to be opened, one corridor not to be explored. But all he said was “This was a palace once, centuries ago. They say a troll king built it of unhewn stone, and the great road that led up here too. Perhaps the world was warmer in those days.”

  He turned and began banking up the fire. Jessa couldn’t wait any longer. “What about Kari?”

  “Kari’s here,” he said, without turning. “But you won’t see him.”

  Afterward they put on coats and went outside. The sky was iron gray; a stiff wind cut into them down the side of the fell. On the white slope they could see the frozen tracks of Helgi’s horses, climbing up into the fringe of trees. And all around, like a white jagged crown, were the mountains.

  One courtyard at the back of the building had been swept clear of snow; in the center was a deep well, with faint steam rising from it. As they gazed down they felt warmth on their faces. Thorkil dropped a stone in. “A hot spring. Now that’s useful.”

  They tugged open doors and gazed into stables and barns and byres. Everything was held in a web of ice, glistening with a faint film of soot, as if the entire hold had once had its roofs burned. There were no animals, not even a trace of them, but in one storehouse they found a few casks of dried apples and nuts, some cheese, and two hares hanging next to a row of smoked fish. Thorkil looked up at them.

  “Fish! But where’s the lake? Where are the fruit trees? Under the snow? I tell you what, Jessa, they should have starved here a long time ago. That’s why she sent them here. And yet somehow they’re getting this food.” He put a finger inside the silver ring on his wrist and eased it around. “Someone must be bringing it.”

  Then they went into the hold itself, down a long corridor paved with stone and frost. Icicles hung from every lintel and sill. There were stairs leading up; they led to more corridors and passages, and empty rooms where the wind blew in through the bare windows.

  Passing one room, Jessa stopped. This one was very small and dark, with a narrow window opposite the door, through which the gray daylight fell like a wand on the floor.

  Something about the window puzzled her. Thorkil was far ahead, rummaging in an old rotting chest, so she stepped in and crossed the floor. Then she put her hand up to the window and touched it.

  Glass!

  She had only seen it before in tiny pieces, polished, in jewelry; never like this in a thick slab. Brushing the frost from it, she took her glove off and felt the surface, saw the trapped bubbles of air deep inside.

  “Jessa?” Thorkil called.

  “I’m in here.”

  She put her eye to the glass and looked through it. There was a courtyard below her, with trampled snow. A movement caught her eye; someone was walking through the clutter of buildings. Someone smaller than Brochael. As she tried to see, the shape warped and bent in the thick glass, slid into queer contortions. She stepped back suddenly. Had that been Kari?

  “What are you looking at?” Thorkil was at her elbow.

  “Quick! There’s something out there!”

  He looked out, blocking the light with his hands.

  “Can you see him?” Jessa asked impatiently.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. For a second I thought there was something. Just a flicker.” He looked at her. “Was it Kari?”

  “I don’t know. Someone small … it was all bent and twisted.”

  They were silent. Then Thorkil said bleakly, “I think I’d rather know than wonder like this.”

  That evening, sewing a tear in her sleeve, Jessa said quietly, “How did you know we were coming?”

  Brochael looked up from the fire, his face flushed with heat. “My business.” He stirred the oatmeal calmly.

  “Someone came before us?” Thorkil ventured.

  Brochael grinned. “If you say so. I just knew, that’s all. Ragnar sent you here because of your fathers. His idea of a pleasant exile. And to deliver his guilty little message.”

  “Did you know,” Jessa said, biting the thread, “that Gudrun wanted us to come as well?”

  That startled him. “She wanted it?”

  “We overheard,” Jessa explained. She looked up at him closely. “She not only knew we were coming, she said to the old man that it was her idea—that she’d made the Jarl send us.”

  Brochael stared back. “Did she say why?”

  “Not reall
y … it was hard to hear. She said she would have her hand on us.... I don’t know what that meant.”

  “Don’t you?” His face darkened; he looked older and grimmer. “Did she give you anything to eat or drink?”

  “Yes, but she drank it too.”

  He shook his head. “She’s a sorceress, Jessa. That means nothing at all.”

  She looked at Thorkil. “And when can we see Kari?” she asked, trying to sound calm.

  Brochael went back to stirring the porridge. “When you’re ready. When I think you’re ready.” He gave them a strange, sidelong look. “And if you really want to.”

  Ten

  It’s safe to tell a secret to one,

  Risky to tell it to two.

  To tell it to three is thoughtless folly,

  Everyone else will know.

  Time at Thrasirshall passed slowly. Despite the mysterious supplies, food was short and Jessa often felt hungry. After a while she got used to it. The cold was still intense; they were so far north the snow had not begun to melt. The weather made it difficult to get outside, but sometimes she and Thorkil scrambled up the fell and wandered into the silent woods. On one afternoon of pale sunshine they climbed a higher crag and gazed out at the desolate miles of land carved by slow glaciers. Brochael had told them there was nothing more to the north but ice, until the sky came down and touched the earth. Even the road ended here, at the world’s end.

  They ran all the way back to keep warm, floundering and giggling through the snow, Jessa in front, so that she struggled across the courtyard and burst into the room without warning. Then she stopped instantly, letting Thorkil thud into her back.

  The opposite door was closing; soft footsteps shuffled on the other side, fading to an echo in empty spaces. One chair was pushed back; a knife and a piece of carven wood had been flung on the table.

  Brochael leaned back and watched them, as if he was waiting for the questions. After a moment Jessa went to the fire, warming the sudden cold from her back. She watched Thorkil pick up the wood and run his fingers over the skillful carving.

  “Is he afraid of us?” he said at last.

  Brochael took the wood from him. “In a way. Remember, he’s seen few folk besides me. But it’s more than that. You’re afraid of him.”

  And they were. They knew it. They kept together most of the time, never went alone into the dim corridors. They spent time playing chess, mending their clothes, snaring hares, or at the unending task of fetching wood and kindling. Brochael watched them, as if he was biding his time. Some days he would vanish for hours at a time and come back without any explanation, and every night he locked the door with the iron key.

  Once late at night, hauling water from the well, they thought they saw candlelight flickering in one window high in the tower, and the two black birds that had startled Helgi always seemed to be flapping and karking up there, wheeling against the greens and golds of the aurora that flickered here every night.

  It was on one of those nights that Jessa had her dream.

  She had fallen asleep in the warm huddle of blankets and she dreamed the peddler came out of the darkness and put his hand on her shoulder. He shook her. “Wake up. I haven’t let you down. Look, I’ve melted the snow.”

  She got up and crossed to a large glass window and looked out. She saw a green land, a blue sky. Flocks of birds wheeled and screamed overhead: gulls, skuas, swifts. In the courtyard horsemen were riding; each horse had eight legs, like the horse of the High One; each was black with fiery eyes.

  She looked around, but the peddler was gone, and only a white snake moved across the stone floor and under the raised bed.

  Then she dreamed that the curtain opened and someone looked in. The figure crossed the room to her, looked down at her, and she saw it was Gudrun, her white hand stretched out. One finger touched Jessa’s cheek with a stab of ice.

  She woke at once and sat up, heart thudding.

  The curtain billowed. In the next room the key was grating in the lock.

  She leaped up, ran out of the booth, and flung herself on the closing door. The latch jerked in her hands.

  “Thorkil!” she screamed, feeling the door shudder; the wood cut her fingers. Then he was there, pulling with her. “It’s locked.” He gasped. “Too late.”

  And she knew he was right. She released the latch and stood there, listening. There was no sound, and yet they both knew he was there, standing just beyond the door.

  “Kari?” Jessa said softly.

  Nothing moved. There was a small knothole in the door. She could look through; she could see him. But she dared not.

  Then they heard him walk away, into silence.

  After a while they went and crouched by the hot embers of the fire; Thorkil stirred them up to a brief blaze.

  “Tomorrow,” Jessa said firmly, “we’ll find him. We’ll search every room and corner. Everywhere. Brochael needn’t know, either.”

  He sat down, easing the tight ring around his arm. “If he’s insane,” he said at last, “he’d be dangerous.”

  “Well, at least we’d know. We’ve got to find out.” She glared at him. “Are you coming?”

  He ran a sooty hand through his hair and frowned with annoyance. “Of course I am. Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

  In the morning they sat at the gaming board, waiting for Brochael to go out into the courtyard. At last, after five minutes, he had not come back. Jessa looked up. “Ready?”

  He shrugged. “It’s that or lose.”

  They had decided to start right up at the highest part of the tower and work their way down—there was still one staircase that was complete from battlement to floor, although even that had holes. They climbed slowly, their lungs aching with the cold, opening every door, prying into the forgotten crannies of the hall. Everything was the same as before: dark, frozen, echoing.

  “The candlelight was from a window this high,” Jessa said at last. “If we really saw it.”

  “Not these rooms. No one’s used them for years.” Thorkil sat wearily on the stairs, grinding the frost with his heel. After a while he said, “Perhaps Kari is kept underground. If you think about it, it might be. Brochael has always been so sure we won’t find him.”

  She nodded reluctantly. Nowhere had been forbidden to them. Wherever Kari was, they were unlikely to find it by accident.

  Thorkil got up. “Come on.”

  “Wait!” She turned quickly. “Did you hear that?”

  The corridor was a dim tunnel of stone. Dust moved in drafts over the floor. One drop of water dripped from a sill.

  “What?” Thorkil muttered.

  “A scrape … a screech. I don’t know. Something alive.”

  He glanced at her; her lips were pale, her gloved hands clenched in tight fists. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “But I did!” Then her eyes widened.

  “Look!” she breathed.

  Far down in the dimness, a door was appearing. It was forming itself out of nothing on the damp wall; a tall outline of dark wood, its latch shiny from use. A thin line of sunlight flickered underneath it, as if the room beyond was bright.

  Very quietly, side by side, they approached the door. Jessa half expected it to fade away again, to be just a trick of the shadows, but it remained, waiting for them.

  She reached out and put her hand on the latch. Something shifted inside; there was a rustle and a step and that peculiar low screech she had heard before. The latch was cold and hard under her fingers. She lifted it and let the door swing wide.

  At first she thought she was looking into her dream. The room was flooded with sunlight streaming in through an open window, a window leaded with tiny panes of thick, bubbly glass. On the sill the ice was melting; a raven perched there looking out, until the bang of the door startled it, and it leaped into the blue air with a screech. Someone was sitting near the window, hunched up in a chair, his back to them. A mirror was propped in front of him, and as Jessa glanced in it she sa
w herself and Thorkil framed in the dark doorway. Then the figure moved; he bent closer to the mirror, his straight silvery hair brushing the bronze. A throb of panic shuddered through her. He had no reflection, nothing! She saw only herself and the glitter of sunlight that filled the room.

  Then Kari turned and looked sidelong at them. She drew a sharp breath, heard Thorkil’s stifled mutter.

  His face was Gudrun’s. They were identical.

  Eleven

  What I won from her I have well used.

  He uncurled himself quickly and stood up. They saw a thin boy no taller than themselves, his skin pale and his eyes colorless as glass. With two steps he was across the room, staring at Jessa, her hair, her coat, feeling the fur on it with a murmur of delight, touching amulets and luckstones lightly; then fingering the rich red cloth of Thorkil’s jerkin as if he had never seen such color. With a shock Jessa realized that he probably never had. She flicked a glance around the room and back. This was not the terrible creature of the stories. She felt foolish, confused.

  Suddenly he stepped back. “Come inside,” he said. “Come and see where I’ve been hiding from you.”

  Slowly Jessa stepped forward. Thorkil hung back, near the open door. They were both alert, wary of this strange thin creature, his quick eagerness. Kari seemed not to notice. He caught Jessa’s arm and made her sit on a bench, pouring water for her from a wooden jug, showing her chess pieces he had carved—tiny, intricate things. His king was a perfect copy of Brochael, standing stoutly with folded arms. Despite herself, Jessa laughed.

  At once Kari’s mood seemed to change. He drew back. She felt as if all the excitement had suddenly drained out of him; now he was uncertain, nervous.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I took you by surprise. I’m not what you expected.”

  “No,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  He picked up a knife from the table and fingered it.

  Jessa stood up. Behind him she saw suddenly that the long room was hung with chunks of glass threaded on thin ropes; like crystal spiders they twirled and swung, speckling the walls with sunlight. And the walls were drawn all over with strange spirals and whorls, in dim colors. He turned and picked up the mirror. “Come and see,” he said rather sadly. “This is why I had to let you in. Everything has begun.” He held up the polished metal. Jessa saw only herself, her face blank with shock, and Thorkil behind her like a shadow. Kari looked at them.