Snow-Walker Read online

  “Can you see him?” he asked. “The man in the mirror?”

  She felt Thorkil tremble. Her own hands shook. When she spoke she hardly recognized her voice. “Yes. We can both see him. Clearly.” She watched her own mouth mumble the lie. Then Thorkil gripped her arm and drew her back.

  To their surprise the boy smiled and shook his head. “You think I’m insane,” he said. “I’d forgotten the rumors she puts about.” He caught Jessa’s eye and his face was grave again. “But the man is there. Look, Jessa, both of you. Look hard.”

  Sunlight glimmered in the mirror, stabbing her eyes like white pain. The polished surface blurred; she saw a sudden glint, a candle flame in a dark room, ominously dark, hung with rich, heavy cloths. In the middle of the mirror, on a great bed, lay a man richly dressed, his eyes open, his hands clasped rigid on an unsheathed sword. She recognized him at once.

  Then the sun glinted; the mirror was yellow and smooth.

  Before Jessa could speak, footsteps came along the corridor, and Brochael blocked the doorway. His face was a study in astonishment.

  “I had to,” Kari said quickly. “All our plans will have to begin, Brochael. The snow will melt, and she’ll come for us.”

  “Gudrun?” Jessa stammered.

  “There’s nothing to stop her.” He put the mirror down and spread his thin white fingers out over it. “He’s dead, Brochael. The Jarl is dead.”

  Without a word or a murmur of surprise Brochael sat down on an old chest near the door. Then he thumped the door frame. “She’s finished him! I knew she would!”

  Jessa went cold.

  “How was he when you saw him?” Brochael asked.

  She thought back to the Jarl sitting in his carven chair, his hard stare into the flames of the fire. “The last time,” she remembered, “he was shrunken. Dried up. But he was well, still strong. There was nothing wrong with him.”

  “Exactly. Nor with the Jarl before him—until she killed him.” Brochael reached up and caught her arm. “Sit down, girl. You look bewildered.”

  She sat herself down next to him; his great arm crept around her shoulders. “I can understand it,” he said. “And it’s the shock of seeing such a monster and creature of horrors as this, I suppose.”

  He gave Kari a wide grin.

  The boy smiled back, then got up and wandered over to the window. He was very thin; his clothes, like Brochael’s, were a cobweb of patches, sewn here and there with large, irregular stitches. He sat on the windowsill and leaned out.

  “I watched you from up here many times.”

  “We didn’t see you,” Thorkil said.

  “No.” Kari turned to look at him, Gudrun’s look of secret, close knowledge. “And neither did you see the door to this room, though you passed it more than once.”

  Thorkil frowned, fingering the arm ring.

  Brochael’s arm was warm and comfortable; Jessa leaned back against it. A sudden wave of relief washed over her. A shadow had lifted. Only now could she realize how she had dreaded to meet Kari—how she had not let herself imagine what he might be.

  “So it was you who knew we were coming,” she said, thinking aloud.

  With a kark and a flap one of the ravens flew in through the window onto the sill. Kari held out a finger, and the bird tugged at it gently. “I watched you come. I saw you in the storm, and then again, at the village called Trond. There is some power there; that old woman sits in a web of it. She often thinks about me.” He stroked the bird’s stiff feathers. “I’ve watched her thoughts.”

  “Is it the mirror?” Thorkil asked curiously, picking it up and turning it over. “Can you see things in that, anything you want to?”

  Kari seemed lost in thought; it was Brochael who answered. “Not just the mirror. Anything will do—ice, water, the side of a cup. He has her powers, Thorkil. That’s what she’s afraid of, the reason she brews all those filthy rumors.” He glanced at Kari and lowered his voice. “The reason she locked her son away and never even let him be seen.”

  Jessa felt him quiver, as if anger seethed in him. Kari turned. “You shouldn’t speak of it if it upsets you.”

  Brochael stood up suddenly and crossed to the fire. He began to fling kindling onto it, hard and fast, as if he hardly saw what he was doing. Watching him, Kari said, “She kept me in a room at the Jarlshold. I saw no one but her, and the old dwarf, Grettir. Sometimes I think I remember a woman, a different face, but only briefly. There was only darkness and silence in that place, long years of it, of shadows and sunlight moving slowly down the walls. Ice and sun and ice again, and voices and pictures moving in my head. She would come and speak bitter, fierce things, or she would just watch me stumbling away from her.

  “Then Brochael came. I don’t remember the journey, or the snow—isn’t that strange? Just this room instead of that one, and this great shambling man who came and talked and put his arm around me.” He half smiled at them. “No one had done that before. It felt strange, and yet I liked it. He taught me to speak, and to run, and to go outside without feeling terror of such open places. When she came and tormented my dreams, he woke me. Thrasirshall was no prison for me, Jessa. It was my freedom.”

  He paused and looked down at the mirror. “Now we have to leave it.”

  “Are you certain he’s dead?” Thorkil put in abruptly.

  “Yes.”

  “She may not have done it,” Jessa muttered.

  Brochael shook his head. “Oh, it has her mark. She has chosen her time; she’s ready. And you read his message—that was from a man expecting something. Now she’ll send her swordsmen out here. They may already be on the way. We have two, maybe three, days.” He looked at Kari. “Was the death today?”

  Kari nodded. They were silent a moment.

  “Where can we go?” Jessa thought of the ice-covered fells and moors.

  “Oh, I’ve still got a few friends.” Brochael gazed artlessly out of the window. “We’re not entirely alone.”

  “The ones who bring your food,” Thorkil muttered.

  The big man turned and grinned at him. “I knew you were puzzled by that. It’s been goading you like a gnat, hasn’t it?”

  “Who are they?”

  “Wait and see.”

  Jessa was chewing the ends of her hair. She thought how sudden everything was. “But there’s nowhere we can go where she can’t see us.”

  “Or where I can’t see her.” Kari sat on the chair by the window, his knees huddled up. “She’ll hunt us, yes, like a wolf, sly and sudden, but I’ll know. She and I are the same.” He glanced up at Brochael, a bleak, swift look. “And we have no choice, do we?”

  “None at all,” Brochael murmured.

  Twelve

  Brand kindles brand till they burn out,

  Flame is quickened by flame.

  They spent the rest of the day preparing for a hard journey. All the supplies of food were brought in from the outhouses; two hares that Brochael found in his snares were cooked and cut up. Water would not be a problem. The snow still lay here on the high ground, and as they traveled down, Brochael said, they would find the rivers awash with meltwater. Still, Jessa took care to bring in a few buckets from the hot spring and wash in luxury. She knew it would be a long time before that would happen again.

  Kari moved about downstairs, watching Brochael for a while, then he wandered outside, the birds flapping and hopping after him. Thorkil followed; Jessa closed the door behind them. Sitting down at the table next to Brochael, feeling clean and warm, she said, “You misled us, didn’t you? Deliberately.”

  “Not me. They’re Gudrun’s stories. You should blame her.”

  After a moment Jessa said, “It’s hard to believe she could spin such lies, even her… Kari is so…”

  “Ordinary?” Brochael asked slyly.

  “Well, no. Of course not…”

  Brochael laughed. “Exactly. He’s her image, Jessa, her copy. They say when he was born the midwife screamed out in horror—she could se
e, I suppose, that this was another of the Snow-walkers, another sorcerer. And Gudrun—I often wonder what she must have thought about this rival, the only one who might ever threaten her. So she shut him away and let the rumors run.”

  Jessa looked up. “And why didn’t she kill him? Many babies die. It wouldn’t have seemed so strange.”

  Brochael stopped his work. For a moment he did not answer; then he said, “That’s what worries me, Jessa. It’s worried me for years. She wants him for something. And I don’t want to think about what.”

  Later, as she picked out her warmest clothes and squashed them into a pack, she heard Thorkil come in behind her. He closed the door of the room softly.

  “Brochael says take as little as you can,” she said. “We’ll have to carry everything ourselves, remember.”

  He muttered something and sat down. She turned her head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Thorkil laughed briefly. “Nothing! We’re leaving this place, for a start. That makes me happy enough.”

  “Does it?” She threaded the laces of the bag swiftly. “I didn’t want to come here either—I think I was more frightened than you even—but since I’ve been here, I’ve been happy, in an odd sort of way. And now we know Kari’s not…”

  “Yes!” Thorkil breathed a sigh of exasperation. “Kari! Thinking he was some sort of deformed creature was bad, but I’m not sure the truth isn’t worse. He’s her, Jessa. Every time he looks at me I shiver.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s not her. He just looks the same. But that doesn’t mean they are the same.”

  For a moment they both sat side by side, thinking.

  Then she pulled his hair playfully. “Worrier. Be a warrior. And I see you’re still wearing the lady’s present, anyway.”

  He shrugged, and touched the arm ring. “That’s because it won’t come off.”

  Surprised, Jessa looked at it. “I thought it was loose enough before.”

  “A bit looser. Perhaps the cold here has made it shrink. Anyway, it won’t come off, and it doesn’t matter. No one can steal it this way.”

  She put her hand on the smooth snake and tugged at it, but he was right. It gripped his wrist without a gap.

  “Perhaps it’s swallowed a bit more of its tail.” He laughed.

  There was something in his voice for a moment that was new to her; a strange tone. But when she looked at him he laughed and stood up, his longish brown hair brushing the collar of the red jerkin. “Don’t worry, Jessa, I won’t bring much. I may like fine things, but I’m too lazy to carry them far!”

  And they both laughed in the cold room.

  That evening, around the fire in the darkness downstairs, they made their plans.

  “We’ll go south,” Brochael said. “After all, it’s the only way you can go from this godforsaken place. To the north is nothing but ice, mountains and seas of it, and mists. Beyond that, Gunningagap, the rift into blackness. Only sorcerers could live up there.”

  Jessa flicked a glance at Kari; he sat curled up against Brochael’s knees, his face a shifting mask of firelight and shadows.

  “And then where?” Thorkil asked. “A ship?”

  “No ship would take us,” Brochael said curtly. “And I don’t intend to try. The weather’s beginning to turn milder. Spring is coming. We’ll go overland—it will be hard, but safer. And there’s a place—an old hall, one of the Wulfings’ hunting halls in the mountains. That’s the place we’re going.”

  “Will we be safe there?” Jessa asked, surprised.

  Brochael shrugged. “As anywhere. But that’s the meeting place. It’s all been arranged, long ago. The Jarl’s death will bring them.”

  Kari shifted, as if the fire scorched him. One of the ravens gave a low croak; the flames crackled and hissed over damp wood.

  “And after?” Thorkil insisted. “What then? Will these mysterious allies of yours have swordsmen, horses, axmen? Will they fight against Gudrun?”

  “We’ll see.” Brochael gave his rich laugh. “You’re very curious, aren’t you, lad.”

  Thorkil shrugged. “Wary, that’s all.”

  And then Kari said, very quietly, “We should start tomorrow.”

  Brochael looked at him.

  After a moment he said, “What is it?”

  “A ship.” Kari watched the flames; his voice was quiet. “A ship with a dragon prow. She’s beached, on a rocky shore.”

  “Can you show us?” Brochael kept his voice low.

  Kari did not answer. His gaze seemed to be on something deep in the fire; Jessa stared too, trying to see.

  And then, in the shifting of a burned log, the ship was there. She saw it through the flames, as if it was behind them, a little beyond. Horses were being led off, down a steep ramp into the water that swirled and sank through the shingle. Men stood about, some holding torches that guttered and spat. She could smell pitch and resin, the salt tang of the fjord, hear a gull crying, far off.

  “That’s Trond.” Thorkil’s voice came out of the darkness. Jessa nodded. She had already recognized the steep cliffs, and among a group of men, Sigmund Graycloak, his hair swept across his face by the night wind.

  But the men coming from the boat were some she had seen about the Jarlshold; silent, rough men, each with a serpent mark tattooed down his cheek—Gudrun’s own choice. She counted ten or more. An ashen shield was flung down, then spears, heavy packs. Then the flames flickered in the draft, and there was only darkness behind the fire.

  She looked at Brochael. “How can they have gotten so far already? It’s impossible. It took us three days to reach Trond....”

  His bleak expression answered her; she caught her breath as the thought leaped into her mind. “She sent them out before? Before Ragnar was dead?”

  Brochael nodded silently, rubbing his beard. For a while no one spoke, each of them thinking. Jessa felt again that sudden urge of panic that she had known so long ago in the Jarlshall; could almost think she smelled Gudrun’s sweet scent, hear the drift and rustle of her movements.

  Raising her head, she stared at the flames.

  Gudrun looked back at her.

  The sorceress was surrounded by candles; a halo of light that lit the sharpness of her smile, the eager glint of her eyes.

  Transfixed with fear, Jessa hardly breathed, but Kari stretched out his foot and nudged a log. It shifted with a shower of sparks. Wood fell, settled. The fire leaped up; it showed Jessa the dark room, Kari’s face with a bleak pain in it, Brochael’s grim and angry.

  “Did she see us?” Thorkil whispered.

  “No.” Kari’s fingers shook; he clenched them. “She tries—often. But I won’t let her. Not anymore.”

  Behind him something shuffled in the darkness. The raven, with a hop and a flutter, perched on the chair behind Brochael’s shoulder. Its eyes were tiny red sparks in the flame light.

  Thirteen

  Odin, they said, swore an oath on his ring;

  Who from now on will trust him?

  They left at midmorning. Brochael had food ready. They ate it quickly, in a tense silence. Jessa watched Kari until he glanced at her with his sharp look, then she smiled. Doubtfully he smiled back.

  When everything was ready Brochael flung water on the fire and hauled a heavy pack onto his back. He picked up an ax and shoved it into his belt. “Well, I brought little; I’m taking away less.” He grinned at Jessa. “It will be interesting to see how the world has changed.”

  Outside they wrapped themselves in cloaks and hoods and thick gloves. The wind was cold; it was coming from the north and brought flecks of snow. Overhead the two ravens flapped against the clouds.

  “They’ll miss you,” Jessa said.

  Kari looked up. “They’re coming. They go where I go.”

  He turned and looked back at the hall, at the black walls trapped in their gleaming coats of ice. “It’s strange,” he whispered. “I feel as if I’m stepping out of myself, like a snake out of its ski
n.”

  “Come on.” Brochael caught his arm. “If her men catch us here, that’s just what we’ll all be doing.”

  Kari pulled a dark, ragged scarf up around his face. Then Brochael led them across the courtyard and under the broken archway, out into the snow.

  All that long afternoon they walked, one in the footsteps of the other, up the long slopes of the mountain. The wind whistled against them, as if it would push them back; the snow underfoot was soft under the top layer of thin, crunchy ice. They crossed the glacier carefully, slithering on the flat snow swirls, watching for cracks and crevasses, moving swiftly on the scree and tumbled stones. Once over, they climbed again, along the sheer side of the fell, heading south, floundering through the soft, wetter snow. By the time they reached the top, the sky was dark purple, with a few stars scattered across it, faint as dust. Far off in the north, a pale aurora flickered over the mountain peaks.

  Jessa was wet through and breathless. She paused, looking back at the long blue scar they had torn through the snow.

  Brochael looked too. “It’s a dry night,” he muttered. “That will still be there tomorrow—maybe even the day after. They’ll see it.”

  She looked at him. “They’ll be here tomorrow?”

  “Bound to be. They’ll ride hard.” He turned and trudged on after Kari and Thorkil. “When Gudrun wants a thing done, Jessa, it’s done.”

  By about midnight they had come back down to the treeline. Brochael let them sleep for a while in a thick pine wood, where the trees clustered so closely there was no snow; they lay on a centuries-thick quilt of needles and leaf mold, richly scented and full of tiny, scurrying beetles. Too tired to notice, Jessa slept.