Snow-Walker

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 saw 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.