Snow-Walker

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.

“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.