Bloodmind (6 page)

Seliye took a step back when she saw this.

‘Is
she a man, do you think?’

I laughed. ‘A man with breasts?’ Nor was there any telltale lump at her groin, though I would not check further. But I think it crossed both our minds that she might be some sort of
spy, a man made to look like a woman, if such a notion were not too strange. Surely the men would not allow it, unless it was some kind of punishment.

And her hands were badly scarred: the skin pink and shiny, twisted across the knuckles. A lot of us have scars.

We carried her into the vehicle and the memory of that, too, is very clear. Bumping down the mountain, calling to the driver in an agony of anxiety to go more slowly, drive with more care, in
case we jolted something loose in her head and she died. She had a head wound. Later, she said she didn’t remember how she had come by it, but I thought she must have fallen. There was a deep
gash running down the side of her face, the blood matting her hair to the skin. The long hair suggested either that she had been travelling for a long time, or that she came from a part of the
north where the women’s heads were not shaved. It had taken my own hair a year to grow out, and now, even though it too was white, and coarse like animal hair, I still could not bear to cut
it.

I wish now that I could say I’d a feeling of disaster. But there was nothing. As we jolted in through the city gate, the high walls rising on either side and the gate swinging shut with
that creak that always meant sanctuary to me, I just wanted the new woman to wake, and smile, and know that she was among friends.

It was ac long ride across the sea. I had control over the immediate functions of the wing, but not over navigation: the settings were fixed and when I tried to access
them, a notice informed me that they were hidden. The warmth of the wing could protect me only so far, and after a while, strapped into the pilot’s chair yet with no real function (let alone
any idea of where we were actually going), I grew stiff and cold. The rushing sound of the water was hypnotic, sending me into a light trance. But I examined the nav-array and there seemed to be no
way of communicating with the selk, who must be far behind now.

I remembered Thorn Eld, smiling at me on the foreshore under the black-glass cliffs of Darkland; the things I had seen in that dreamscape forest outside Hetla. Travelling through the forest,
with its hallucinogenic conifers and the ashy floor, redolent of ancient fires, I would have believed anything. It was no surprise that everyone in the Reach was so superstitious, given the nature
of Muspell, and yet I doubt I could have lived anywhere else for long.

Eventually I shut my eyes and entered into the liminal state provided by the seith, trying to keep out the chill. But I found my thoughts turning inexorably to the mess that I had left behind me
on the Rock, to Idhunn and the selk.

Now that I thought back, I realized how little I really knew about Idhunn. She had given me a sketch of her upbringing and I knew that she came originally from a place called Whitland, a small,
remote island that was part of a chain called the Wraiths. They had gained their name because the region was so often shrouded in mist, a consequence of the differing currents that swirled around
the north-western parts of the Reach. Not even the most hidebound northerners expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for that part of the world. I think it explained why Idhunn had spent all that
time in the lamp room: that high tower from which one could see so much of the seas and the weather. But I knew very little about her family, or what had brought her from those misty islands to the
Rock. It was as though she had always been a member of the Skald, as unchanging as the fortress that housed it, and of course this was not true. I remember being surprised to discover that she had
become a Skald member only twenty years before, when she must have been in her mid forties at least. She had never spoken of her relationships, or children – I did not even know whether she
preferred women or men, though some intuition told me that it was probably the former. The closest friendships she had possessed within the Skald were, as far as I knew, with Hlin and myself.
Perhaps she had confided more in Hlin, since they were after all closer in age. I could not help wondering what had brought her to the Skald in the first place. People entered the Skald for all
sorts of reasons: personal conviction, a desire to follow a more spiritual path, although the Skald was not a religious order as such. And then there were the casualties – myself among
them.

Now, my friendship with Idhunn seemed somehow false, as though she knew everything of me and I knew little more of her than the shell she chose to present to the world. But then I told myself I
was being unreasonable. Wrapped up in my own problems, as I had been for most of the past seven years, I did not think I had even bothered to ask Idhunn very much about her personal life and she
tended not to take part in the gossiping sessions that some of the other women indulged in. The realization washed over me in a hot wave of guilt. I should have tried to find out more, and now it
was too late. She had saved my life and probably my sanity and now I could never repay her. I knew that this was often the way, when someone dies unexpectedly and you thought you still had years
together ahead, but that knowledge did not make it any easier. And then I reminded myself that I could repay her, even if I couldn’t get the truth out of Glyn Apt.

I could find her killer.

Several hours later, the wing reached the northern icefield, leaving the islands of the Reach far behind me. By the time I neared the edges of the ice, it was growing light. The wing soared
under the lunar crescent of Loki, hanging pale and prim in a greening sky. It seemed strange to know that I was on the farthest limits of the Reach, away from thoughts of war and occupation.

As soon as we came to a halt, a set of instructions crept onto the navigational array. When dawn came, I was to leave the wing at the edges of the ice, its stabilizers set onto remote. It would
remain here, barring accident, until my return. The icefield would be deserted, except perhaps for the occasional party of hunters, but I thought that was unlikely given the circumstances. The
Reach would be calling all able-bodied citizens into the armed forces: conscription was compulsory. Besides, anyone with any sense would
want
to fight. The Reach wasn’t a paradise but
remembering the narcoleptic look in the eyes of the citizens of Hetla, almost anything else was worth fighting for.

According to the instructions, I was supposed to meet the selk a little distance along the coast, at a place where the ice was breaking up into a series of floes. The channels would be too
narrow to navigate the wing through them and it would be difficult to traverse on foot. There was a lightweight canoe packed inside the wing itself.

I wanted to stay in the relative safety of the wing for as long as possible, and put off the moment when I would have to venture out into the icefield. Memories of my last visit to Darkland were
jostling close, and the seith could only limit their power, not banish it. But it seemed that I was to have no choice. I waited for dawn, and once more, I dreamed.

I was back on the ice. The fenris was standing over me, eyes golden-hot. My blood was staining the snow to a delicate pink and I stared down at the
rose-and-pale as though it was something from a fairy story. My torn face burned, but the beast did not stop: it devoured me, tearing me piece by piece. I could see my own eye, staring back at me,
and from its bed of snow, it winked.

I woke from my nightmare, heart hammering, and hit my head on the low ceiling of the wing as I came upright. This was not that day, the day on which the old Vali had died and a new one begun to
be born, though I did not then know that. This was not the day on which Frey had sent me out on my own bloody ingsgaldir, the initiatory journey of the vitki. My ingsgaldir had failed. Had I been
vitki, I would not have survived, and I only did so because a brave woman distrusted Frey and followed me, to shoot the fenris as it bent for the kill. She had been only a little late, and I had
kept the scars. I did not remember being brought away from the ice and sometimes, as now, it seemed to me that I had never left it; that part of me still remained on the icefield, my missing eye in
the beak of a black bird perched high on an icy crag, my blood still staining the snow, my bones whitening with frost until they cracked, to release what was left of my spirit after Frey had done
with it.

There’s a legend in the north that a woman stalks the icefield, half witch and half spirit. She carries a skinning knife made out of starlight and when she catches you, she uses that knife
to pare you down to the bone, stripping your flesh away, ridding you of all excess, but that excess is your body itself. She frees your spirit, whether you wish it or not. I felt as though
I’d met her, that day of my ingsgaldir.

But this was not that day. I kept telling myself that as I suited up in the cramped confines of the wing, wrestled the canoe from its tightly packed cocoon form, and left the wing behind me. It
had started to snow; the sides of the wing were spattered with the first fat flakes from those anvil cloud-heads. Across the curving expanse of the hull, they looked like wet meteor strikes and I
repressed a sudden shiver. All I needed now was to start spooking myself, so I set up the canoe and paddled out over the bitter water beneath the lightening northern sky.

I did not want to be late, so I left in good time, but the cold was biting, even through the protective layers of the slickskin. And I found that I was as scared of the darkness, just like a
child. I chided myself: the dark should be no threat to a northerner, one who lives so many days without any real sight of the sun. I told myself, too, that this brittle, fractured crust through
which I was making my slow way would be unable to support the weight of anything lighter than a seabird, let alone an animal the size of a fenris. But I found myself looking over my own shoulder
all the same, quick nervous glances that revealed only black cracks of water, the white glimmer of ice under Loki’s light, the fading stars. I do not know what I expected to see. My own
ghost, perhaps. I felt insubstantial, unreal. If Frey had left a spirit behind him, and I hoped he had not, it would not be here. He had died on another world, torn to shreds by other wild animals,
gone in a bloody instant. He was not here. He never would be here again. Once I had remembered this, I stopped looking back and stared ahead to the dawn sky.

There was a grey thread just above the horizon, spreading upward like frost. I found that I was hungering for dawn and the spring light, and soon enough it came. The edge of Muspell’s sun
Grainne touched the horizon’s line and the quick flare sent a thousand suns into my sight. I ducked, blinked, and when I could see again the sun was rising. Ahead of me was the long, sharp
point of the ice, a cliff a hundred feet high, jutting out into the paved mass through which I was threading the canoe. The slabs of ice glimmered in the light and at first I thought they were a
mirage. The realization sent shivers through me, close to uncontrollable, as though all of it had been some huge cruel joke and Frey would be there, the trickster waiting. But then the sea heaved
and the selk surged up out of the water, heads bobbing.

‘You have come.’

‘I have. Are we safe?’

Stupid question. The last time I’d been up here, someone had to drag me out of a beast’s mouth and carry my bleeding body to safety. The ice didn’t hold very positive
memories.

‘Who does this wing belong to?’ I added when the selk did not reply.

‘One who wishes you well.’

I knew of no one who wished me well, except the Skald, and this wasn’t a craft from the Rock. So why did I keep thinking of the vitki Thorn Eld?

‘Will you take me where I need to go?’

‘We will. It is still long and long. You cannot paddle your craft so far. Do you have a rope?’

‘Yes, but—’

Three of the selk swam around the prow of the canoe. ‘Attach it,’ one of them said. I did as they told me, then, following further instruction, looped the rope around the neck of the
nearest.

‘I’m afraid of hurting you,’ I told it.

‘You will not; you are light enough.’

It did not give me any more time to protest. We were off, shooting through the cracks and channels to the clearer water with a speed that frankly alarmed me. I did not want to risk the canoe
overturning, spilling me into the killing chill of the sea. But the canoe remained stable as we whipped along and soon we were out into the glassy calm of the edges of the ocean. If the rest of the
selk followed, I did not see them, but once I glanced down into the depths and thought I saw myriad bodies, twisting and turning with salmon-speed.

The day swiftly lightened. I watched as the edge of the icefield flew by, a long undulation of solidity like a white serpent, broken by immense cracks into which the canoe could easily have
become lost. The sight filled me with an old, atavistic dread: genetic memories perhaps of ancient Earth. It was said to have been melting icecaps and changing currents that had led to the drowning
of the world, forcing my own ancestors to flee outward. They had found Muspell: I did not think it was a bad exchange. And yet something in me still mourned old Earth, a world I had never known, a
place I would never visit, never call home.

Towards noon, the selk began to glide closer into the icy shore, bringing me up the course of a narrow inlet that was, indeed, one of these cracks. I had to fight down the panic as the blue
gleam of the walls started to close in. I felt as though I was drowning in a breath of cold, the water closing over my head to filter out the sunlight. Soon, the ice walls grew even closer together
until there was only a twisting chimney above me. The selk’s head shot out of the shadowy water.