Snow-Walker

Twenty-Five

His hands he washed not nor his hair combed.

She looked older.

She was still tall, though, and pale, her long hair braided and caught in a shining net. Her coat was the color of snow shadows, blue and dim in the strange ice light, her eyes colorless and impossible to read.

She stepped quickly into the candlelight, her silks and furs swishing, and she smiled at them, that cold, indifferent smile that had terrified Jessa so long ago.

Glancing at Kari, she said, “You only have to look at us.”

They all watched her, uneasy. Gudrun had worked her spell on each of them, Jessa thought. She had once made Hakon a thrall, crippled in one hand, useless but for slow, endless labor. She’d sent Jessa herself into the terror of Thrasirshall, stolen Wulfgar’s kingdom, made Skapti an outlaw scavenging for years on favors and carrion. Brochael she had banished to die with her son, and from him, Kari, she had taken everything, left him unable to speak, walk, even to think, not knowing what people were. His very father had never seen him. And then she’d murdered his father.

Each of them had deep cause to hate her. Only Moongarm stood aside.

Gudrun crossed the room and put her hands out to Kari. “I knew you would come home.”

“This isn’t my home.” He stepped back.

“Yes it is,” she said seriously. “You’ve seen that, seen the people here. My people and yours. I heard you think it, Kari. You can’t deny that.”

He turned away, then back to face her abruptly. “You’ve offered me this before. I don’t want it.”

She nodded and smoothed her dress in the old gesture that Jessa remembered. “Then let me show you something that you do want. All of you. What happened in the Jarlshold was my spell, yes, but the dreams that destroyed you were your own. Dreams of mortals. Destructive, dangerous. Look here, and see what you do to yourselves.”

In the middle of the room she opened her hands, almost carelessly, and spread a coldness about her, a darkness in the air that surrounded them all swiftly. The room faded; they seemed to be standing in snow, knee-deep in it, somewhere outside.

Jessa looked around fearfully. It was the Jarlshold, she knew. But how it had changed!

The silence was deathly. Thick snow coated everything; icicles hung over shutters and sills. Between the riven clouds a few stars glimmered, and showed her that the snow was unmarked. The settlement seemed totally deserted.

Gudrun opened the door latch, the familiar door to the hall. It opened slowly.

“It was cunning of you to leave a guardian,” she said, glancing at Kari. “Otherwise I should have had them all by now.”

They stepped warily into the hall.

It was frozen, stiff with ice. Gloom hung in its spaces, a silence of sleep. Walking in the vision over the stone floor, Jessa saw sleeping forms all around her, huddled up, barely breathing in the searing cold. They were all here now—the fishermen, farmers, children, thralls, the women and the war band, some crumpled where they had fallen, others covered with blankets or furs.

Ahead of her, deep in the gloom, a glint of red light showed, smoldering, barely alive. Someone was still awake.

As they came closer Jessa saw it was the embers of a fire, the dull peats giving out a faint heat. Over it one man was huddled, wrapped in a dark blanket, and as he raised his head and looked at them, she saw it was Wulfgar.

His appearance shocked her. He was thin, almost gaunt. A dark stubble covered his chin and his red-rimmed eyes looked weary and unfocused. He smiled bitterly when he saw them. “Now I know I’m delirious. Are you dead then, all of you? Are you ghosts, come to haunt me?”

“A vision,” Kari said, crouching by him. “Nothing more.”

Wulfgar did not seem to hear him. He shook his head and gave a low, bitter laugh. “Of course you are. Dead at the world’s end, where I sent you. And all of us here caught in her spell, except me. Gods, I wish I was too.”

He clasped his hands around his sword hilt and turned away from them, staring into the flames.

Skapti stood rigid, watching him. Then he turned on Gudrun. “I could kill you myself for this.”

She smiled coldly at him.

“He can barely see us,” Kari murmured. “He thinks he’s imagining us.”

“But why is he still awake?” Jessa asked.

Kari crossed to the roof tree; the great ash trunk rose above him, glinting with frost. “Because of this.”

They gathered around him and saw, wedged into a deep cleft at the base of the tree, something that shone in the firelight. Jessa moved back to let the light through and suddenly they saw what it was: a small piece of crystal, covered with spirals. For a moment she wondered where she had seen it before, and then the memory came to her of Kari’s strange tower room in Thrasirshall. The crystals had hung there in long strings from the roof. She remembered them turning in the sun.

“This protects him?” Brochael asked.

“Yes.” Kari turned defiantly to the witch, who stood a little back. “You’ll never get it out. I made sure of that.”

The vision of the hall vanished instantly; they were in the candlelit room, and Signi was crying quietly into her hands.

“That doesn’t matter,” Gudrun said easily. “None of that matters now. I wanted you to come and you have.”

She touched his sleeve, teasing. “This is where you belong. Stay here, and I’ll release them, all of them. These can go; the Jarlshold will be free. I have no interest in them.”

“Kari, no,” Brochael warned.

The boy was silent.

“And think about this,” Gudrun went on quietly. “Here, you are one of us. No one will point you out because you’re different, or stiffen in terror if you look at them. I always enjoyed that, but I think it pains you. Among them you’ll always be an outsider, and that will never change, Kari, never, no matter how much they think they know you. Can you live with that all your life?”

For a moment they stood together, two identical faces, Gudrun’s watchful, Kari’s downcast. Then he pulled his arm away from her.

“Leave me alone!” he said bitterly. “You’ve done this to me before! I won’t let it happen again. We’ve come too far, been through too much. These are my friends; I trust them. They trust me.” He gripped his hands together and went on rapidly. “And I need them. I need them to keep me from becoming like you. I care about them, and about Wulfgar, and all the people you’ve stolen from themselves. I can’t turn my back on them. Not now.”

“Well said,” Brochael growled.

“Can you understand that?” Kari went close to her, almost pleading. He was as tall as she was now, Jessa noticed with surprise. Face-to-face he confronted her, snatching her thin hands. “Can you?” he breathed.

Gudrun smiled at him, almost sadly. “No,” she said. “And you know that means death for one of us.”

Her words were like a blow.

Brochael stepped closer but she looked through him, unconcerned. “I’ve never known you, Kari,” she said. “You and I have always been on opposite sides of the mirror.”

“We don’t have to be,” he whispered.

“I see now that we do. It’s too late, my son. Too late for everything.”

And they were gone instantly, both of them.

Jessa gasped with shock and rage; Brochael swore in fury. “Where are they?” he roared, swinging around. But the old man had gone too.