Snow-Walker

Twenty-Six

What do you ask of me? Why tempt me?

Kari was standing in darkness.

Around him were many invisible people; he could feel their thoughts crowding him and he pushed them away. He knew this was the spirit world, the dream realm. Anything could happen here, so he made some light; it flooded the room.

He was in a small place, little more than a cell. A dirty bed lay on the floor in one corner, and on the hearth the ashes were cold. A tiny window let in starlight over his head.

He knew where he was. The memory came over him, sharp and bitter, and then it was a weariness, a familiar relentless numbness that crept over his mind.

He went across and kneeled on the gray blankets, fingering the scrawls on the wall, the marks made with a charred stick, all blurs and spirals.

“Why here?” he murmured.

“Because of all the places in the world this is the one you fear most.” She leaned against the damp wall looking down at him, as she always had. “They don’t know, your friends, about this terror, do they? About the nightmares of this room? Not even Brochael?”

Kari sat on the worn blankets, knees up, hugging himself. He rocked back and forth a little, saying nothing.

“How empty they were,” she said softly, coming to stand over him. “All those years in here.”

“You locked me in here. Abandoned me…”

“Years of silence. Fear. You remember them?”

“I can’t forget.” He looked up fiercely. “Why did you do that? It could all have been so different. For both of us.”

She shook her sleek head, kneeling before him, her silk dress rustling in the straw. “Among us, there can be only one soul thief. I knew that from the beginning.”

Kari barely heard her. He was fighting to stay calm, to beat off the terrors of his childhood. All around him he felt them coming out, from the walls, from the blown ashes, from the marks he had drawn years ago, a child without thoughts, frightened and cold, unable to speak.

He knew every inch of this place, had fingered every crack of it, crawled in every corner, watched the slow forming of frosts every winter, the moving wand of sunlight that stroked out the dreary days. Now it seemed as if he had never left. All that had happened since grew faint and unreal; he knew this place was the emptiness in him, the yearning, the source of all her power over him. As he crouched there he began to forget them all, Jessa, Skapti, even Brochael; speech began to die in him, so that he groped for words and had forgotten them, even their sounds. There was only the woman, the tall woman, and he could never escape from her, never. He had been here too long.

Far outside him, something flapped and squawked; he looked up with a great effort and saw a raven’s beak prising at the window bars.

Gudrun smiled. “Even those I can keep out.”

Miserably he put his hands out to her, and she took them. And with a strength and suddenness that astonished him, he felt her reach into him, deep among his thoughts and terrors and memories, until she touched, with a cold finger, his soul. And she began to tug at it, and he felt his personality quiver and fail, and as he slumped away from her against the stone wall, he knew numbly that she was drawing out his very being, dragging it from him, and he crumpled to his knees, clutching the gray blanket with a child’s thin fists.

“Stay with Signi,” Brochael ordered.

Moongarm stared at him. “I’m surprised you trust me.”

“So am I,” Brochael snarled. “Keep the door shut.”

He slammed it from the outside himself, the others behind him.

“They could be anywhere,” Skapti muttered.

“Not even visible.”

“I don’t care, Jessa!” Brochael was aflame with wrath. “We’ll tear this place to pieces till we find someone, somewhere! She won’t take him away from me. Never!”

He raced down the stairs; the others followed, reckless.

The ice hall was bare and silent; the rooms on each side of it deserted. Skapti flung their doors wide, one after another.

“Nothing!”

“She’s here!” Rubbing frost from his face, Brochael stopped. He slammed a fist into the wall. “She’s got to be.”

“She’d have a room,” Jessa said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“A room. A place of her own…”

“For her sorceries, yes, I know! But where?”

“High up, like Kari’s.” Jessa turned decisively. “There must be other stairs. Split up, quickly. Try every room.”

She ran into the nearest narrow entrance; it led her to a small storeroom piled with chests of strange white metal. Putting the point of her knife under the lid of one, she forced it open. A sudden yellow glow lit her face; she gazed down at huge lumps of amber, gloriously colored. A treasure beyond price. And the other chests would hold jet and ivory and silver, all Gudrun’s hoard.

But there was no time for it now. She slammed the lid down and ran back out. Skapti thumped into her. “Anything?”

“No. What about—?”

Hakon’s yell silenced her; it was distant, far across the hall. When they got to him, he was leaning against a wall of frost, breathless.

“There,” he managed.

The doorway was small, hung with icicles. Beyond it, steps descended into darkness. A cold, sweet smell hung in the air.

“Down?” Jessa muttered.

“She’s his opposite, remember?” Hefting the ax in his great hands, Brochael led the way grimly.

The stairs ran deep into the ice. As they clattered down them, the air grew colder, bitterly cold, their breath a glinting fog. Light faded to blue-green gloom. They knew they were far down in the ice layers, deep inside the glacier. On each side of them the walls became opaque, then mistily transparent; far inside them bubbles of air were trapped, like soft crystal shimmers.

Brochael stopped abruptly. “We were right.”

The doorway at the bottom was a small one, but carved deep in the ice above it was a great white serpent. It curled around the lintel, its sightless eyes glaring down at them. From within came sounds, a murmur of voices.

“They’re in there,” Hakon muttered.

Brochael gripped the ax. His face was set. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Brochael!” Jessa’s scream of warning was just in time. He turned and in the corner of his eye saw the movement flash; then the snake struck at where his head had been, its venom sizzling the ice.

“Gods!” He jerked back, shoving Hakon aside.

The snake hissed; a thin tongue flickered from its ice lips. Then quickly it unwound itself from the doorway, slithering down the pillars toward them.

Hakon was closest; he struck at it in disgust, and the sword sliced deep into the cold, impossible flesh. But it came on, slipping around his blade, his wrist and arm, and he yelled and squirmed in terror.

“Keep still!” Brochael roared.

He and Skapti tore at the wet, slippery body; it hissed and spat at them, darting at their eyes, tightening its muscles around Hakon with a fierce gripping pain that made him cry out. Jessa slid behind Brochael, knives in hand. The pale scaly back rippled before her. Choosing her time, she pulled her arm back and thrust, deep and hard.

Like a distant shock, Kari felt the stab.

For a moment his mind cleared; he reached out and pushed her away, knotting darkness and runes to a wild web of protection that she tore to fragments in seconds. Fierce and hungry, she dragged at him, and he struggled to fight her off, to stand. Outside, something thumped and thudded. From an immense distance a voice yelled, “Kari!”—a voice he knew, a voice that stirred him. And he remembered. He remembered the day when the door had opened and the stranger had come. A man such as he had never seen, huge and red and bearded, a lantern gleaming in his hand. And he knew that the man’s name was Brochael, and grasping that, he felt his life flood back to him, his thoughts and speech, the faces of his friends. Power surged in him; he stood up shakily.

Gudrun grabbed his hands again, her nails cutting deep.

“Stay with me,” she hissed.

Numb, he shook his head. Then, summoning all his sorcery, he tore her spell apart.

The walls soared upward, the window rippled, became a wide casement of glass, open to the sunlight. With a cry he let the cell split open; it became a tower room hung with long strings of threaded crystals that twirled and glittered in the cold, brilliant light. With a shrill kark of triumph the ravens broke through. They flapped through the window and perched, one on a table, the other on the rim of a bowl.

Kari sat down in his usual chair. He was weak with the effort it had cost him.

And Gudrun gazed around at it all, furious.