Snow-Walker

Eleven

The black raven

… shall have much to speak of.

He was taller, she thought, as they sat in the cleared hall with the torches being lit around them. But still as frail-looking, as brittle as ice.

Brochael, the big tawny man, was talking and eating at once, Skapti pouring him wine that he gulped down almost without noticing. “So it was a bad time to arrive then? I wondered what you were all doing there in the dark!” He grinned at Jessa, flung an arm around her, and squashed her against him till she punched him. “It’s good to see you again, little lass. Not so little now either. Married yet?”

“Idiot!”

Letting her go, he drank again.

Skapti glanced at Kari. “And you, runemaster. How are you?”

“Oh, well enough.” But Kari was watching the thralls who tended the fire, their terrified sidelong glances.

“You can go,” Jessa said to them sharply. They hurried out.

“Don’t mind them,” she said. “They’re new here. Wulfgar’s own men. Most of the people here won’t have seen you before. They’re bound to stare.”

“I know.” He gave her a quiet smile. She saw again that stunned silence in the mead hall, the crowd staring at Gudrun’s son, her image, the other Snow-walker, the sorcerer from the world’s end. For years only rumors about him had spread from hold to hold, about a creature kept prisoner in the uttermost north, and even when he’d come here before with herself and Wulfgar and Skapti, hardly anyone had seen him. Sitting here now, Jessa remembered his struggle with the witch that only she had watched, in this very hall—the blazing flames, the rune snow, the exhausting matching of two powers. And after it Gudrun had gone, walking into the night, leaving Kari her curse, and scars on all their hearts.

“They will never love you,” she said, “never trust you. Power like ours is a terror to them.”

Looking at him now, Jessa knew he was remembering that too.

Just then Wulfgar came back, and Vidar with him, walking with exaggerated care. The priest still looked pale, but his eyes were focused. He too stared at Kari.

“Vidar,” Wulfgar said coolly, “these are two of my greatest friends. This is Brochael Gunnarsson, and Kari Ragnarsson.”

Vidar’s eyes flickered briefly to Brochael. He nodded. “I’m honored. I’ve heard much about you … both.”

The big man slapped him amiably on the arm. “Feeling better?”

“A little.” Vidar moved away stiffly. “The aftereffects of the trance echo in my mind for a time.”

“I’m sure they do.” Brochael leaned back and stretched his legs out to the fire. “One soul is enough for any man, without inviting the gods in.”

Everyone hid smiles, except Vidar, who stared at Brochael coldly.

“Have you eaten everything, Brochael?” Jessa asked him. “Because it’s about time you told us why you’re here. Not just to see me, I suppose?”

He laughed gruffly, but she saw him look quickly at Kari. “You tell them.”

Kari turned the cup in his thin fingers. He seemed to be searching for the right words. At last he said, “We came to warn you.”

“You too?” Wulfgar leaned forward. “What about?”

Kari looked at him strangely. He looked so much like Gudrun that Jessa felt cold, and suddenly uneasy.

“Something’s coming,” Kari said slowly. “Something evil. She sent it.”

“Your mother?”

Vidar asked that, and they all frowned at him.

But Kari only nodded after a moment.

“How do you know?” the priest persisted.

“He’s seen it.” Brochael flung a bone to a hound under the table.

“Seen it?”

“That’s what I said.”

Nobody spoke. Jessa knew well how Kari could see things—in water, in shiny surfaces—things that were happening far off, or in the past. She also guessed he had some strange remote knowledge of Gudrun, wherever she lived out in the wilderness of the north.

“Kari,” she murmured, “we’ve already heard of this thing. Men came from an outlying district yesterday. They said it had killed a man up there, and livestock. They seemed to think it was coming here.”

“It is.” He rubbed dust and a smudge of mud from his face. “She’s formed it out of spells, deep spells, and runes and cold, out of snow and the dark between the stars. Out of her anger with us. I know it’s coming here—something here draws it. I’ve come to find out what. I’ve seen it twice, not clearly, blurred, but each time closer to the hold. It’s changing; I think it’s growing stronger.”

Vidar stirred. “I cannot always remember what the god says through me, but did not Freyr himself speak of a pale approaching evil?”

“He did,” Wulfgar muttered.

Vidar looked dubiously at Kari. “It might be this creature.”

Jessa looked up quickly, caught up by something in his tone. She saw he was staring at Kari in fascination. It made her angry, and the memory of the thief ’s face in the doorway leaped back into her mind. She wanted to be rid of him, to talk to Kari.

“You two must be tired out,” she said quickly. “We can leave all the talk till the morning. Then we can decide what to do.”

Brochael heaved himself up at once. “That’s the girl I know. Bossy.”

“And she shows me what a poor host I’ve become,” Wulfgar said. He stood too, tall and dark. “You’re both welcome, you know that. And I think we’ll need you, Kari. There are still ghosts and echoes here, it seems.”

Kari nodded.

“And where are the birds, those strange followers of yours?”

“In the roof.”

Everyone looked up. Two hunched shadows shuffled on a high rafter. Their small eyes glinted in the red light. One of them gave a low croak.

Vidar stared at them. “What are these? Spirits?”

“Ravens,” Skapti said slyly. “That’s all.”

“Indeed.” The priest turned slowly to Wulfgar. “Jarl, can I speak with you now?”

As Skapti led the others out, Jessa glanced back. Wulfgar was sitting in his chair and Vidar was leaning over him, talking rapidly and quietly, his hands spread. What was he up to now?

Upstairs, after some searching, they found an empty room with two sleeping booths built against the walls. Most rooms in the Jarlshold were empty, untouched since Gudrun’s time. This one was both cold and damp.

“Never mind! It’s a palace after Thrasirshall,” Brochael muttered.

“You weren’t expected,” Skapti said. “We’ve no farseers in this hold.” He grinned at Kari.

“Freyr forgot to mention it, then,” Brochael said drily.

“Yes.”

They exchanged an amused look.

“Well, you’ll need a fire lit.”

Jessa turned to the door but Kari said, “No. There’s no need.”

He squatted by the pile of sticks and peats in the square central hearth and did not touch them, did not even seem to move at all, but suddenly she caught the glint of flame deep among the kindling, and in a second it had caught and was a red line crackling down the edge of the dry wood.

He looked up at her.

“Now, if Vidar had seen that,” Skapti muttered, sitting down, “it really would have made him nervous.”

Jessa couldn’t laugh. She was amazed and a little frightened. Kari sat back watching her. He looked tired. “I’ve been doing what you said. Remember? You told me once that I should know what my powers are. Find out what I can do. So I’ve found out.”

Pulling her down beside him, Brochael gripped her cold hands. “You should see, Jessa! All these months, dreaming and sleeping and experimenting until I thought I’d never get a word out of him again! And then—fires lighting, yes, and voices and movements drifting outside the windows all night, as if visions hung there, or the Aesir themselves. Branches breaking into blossom.” He laughed gruffly, with a look at Kari. “And all sorts of things he won’t even tell me about.”

There was a hint of worry in that look, she saw. “But this creature. What about that?”

Kari stared at the new, noisy flames. “She may have sent it to destroy us. And it’s close, Jessa, somewhere very near. Yesterday the birds attacked it.”

“And how do you know that?” she said.

He gave her his brief, sidelong smile. “Because they told me.”