Snow-Walker (49 page)

“No. One man is dead already because of me.”

Moongarm leaped up, sudden and supple. “Then if you can't help, the gap will have me. The world's throat can take one more morsel.”

“No!” Kari jumped up quickly.

“You won't stop me, ravenmaster.”

“Won't I?” Kari gave him a cold, amused look. “I may seem frail, Moongarm, but I can hold you to life. And I will!”

The wind blew his hair into his eyes; he shook it away. The shape-shifter stared at him through the scatter of snow.

“Then you will. And I must fight and struggle with myself. But if I can, Kari, I'll escape it, wherever I have to go. To have a power you dare not use is worse than having none.”

“I know that,” Kari said bitterly. “Better than anyone.”

“Not much farther!” Brochael yelled.

He was lost in the snow squall ahead; Jessa couldn't see Hakon either. Behind her somewhere, Skapti slithered. She rested for a moment, crouched, her head low. Inside her frozen gloves her hands were blue and numb; her legs and back ached unbearably. She felt exhausted.

The bridge had been endless; first the climb high into nothing but sky and storm, and now the long scramble downward, slipping and stumbling on the glassy slope. Briefly she thought of Kari and her anger and worry flared. Where was he? She was uneasy without him. Brochael must be too.

She looked up again; the bridge led away into blown snow, but through that she thought she could glimpse something else now, a shimmer of colors.

“Come on.” Skapti gasped behind her. He settled the bag with the kantele in it more firmly on his back. “Not the time for dreaming, Jessa.”

“We're all hung about with dreams,” she said, scrambling up.

“Are we? Well, this wind will blow them off. They'll go sailing over the world's edge like spindrift.” A gust rocked him; he grabbed at her. “Us with them, if you don't get on!”

She felt her way on, one hand on the frail ice rail, the abyss roaring below. Her foot slid, testing the ice. Snow blinded her; she wiped it away, twice, and opened her eyes. The world was blurred. For a moment she stood still, in a sudden place of rainbows. Her hair and skin tingled; colored lights moved all about her, they crackled, spit blue and green and purple sparks, glimmered, rippled over her face. She shivered with the eerie charge.

“What is it?”

“Surt's blaze. The aurora!” Skapti yelled. “It's all around us.”

Blue and scarlet waves flowed over him; his clothes rippled gold and green. The crackle of colors enfolded them both, and under their feet the ice bridge broke the uncanny light and refracted it in a million tiny rainbows, deep within.

Not far ahead, someone called.

“That's Hakon.” Jessa scrambled forward, slid, fell on hands and knees.

Skapti hauled her up. “Be careful!” he warned.

The bridge descended; they walked blindly into the colored air, and wonderfully, after a few steps, they came out the other side, straight into a sudden cold stillness, the wind ending abruptly, as if an invisible wall of power held it back. The shock of that stillness, the relief of it, was enormous, and they both stopped, high in the sky.

Below them, they saw the land of the Snow-walkers.

Astonished, Jessa stared out at it. The sky here was black, the stars brighter than she had ever seen them, a shining dust flung to the horizon. Stretching from the foot of the bridge for miles and miles was an unbroken ice sheet, smooth as marble, empty and featureless. Mountains rose in the distance, strange jagged peaks shining in the starlight, and among them, huge even from here, a building, a hall or fortress, tall and white and smooth behind a great encircling wall.

In silence they looked at it, across the miles of ice, at Gudrun's hall, in its silent, empty land, long sought, long feared.

At the foot of the bridge Hakon and Brochael were sitting wearily.

Skapti said, “So this is the land of dreams.” His voice was oddly choked; she looked at him sideways and he smiled uneasily. “Poet's visions, Jessa. Rarely do they come true.”

“Visions? Isn't this real?”

“I don't know anymore. I think we left the world behind a long time ago. This is somewhere else, beyond the edge. The spirit realm.”

“I wish Kari was here,” she muttered.

When they got down to him, she knew Brochael was thinking the same. He gazed anxiously up at the rainbow bridge, arching into light. “Where is he?”

“He'll come.”

“If he doesn't, I'm going back. We can't do anything here without him.” He looked around uneasily. “Even the air smells of sorcery.”

It did. It was bitterly cold, and still, and had a strange tang of fear that Jessa found unnerving. Once or twice she thought she saw something move, out there on the ice, but the surface seemed empty, glimmering white.

Nothing would start a fire here, not even Brochael's tinderbox, and they were so tired that they lay down and slept as they were, in a dirty, wind-tangled huddle at the bridge's foot.

And it was then, in their sleep, that they knew the terror of the White People. Voices whispered around them faintly. Cold fingers touched their hair and faces. The Snow-walkers came walking through their dreams, touching, laughing, mocking. They made Jessa dream of home, her farm by the sea, and in an instant she saw it dwindle to a black, charred ruin, open to the rain. She saw Signi, in thin chains of ice, calling her name. She saw Wulfgar sitting alone in his hall, with a silvery woman at his shoulder, holding her hand out to him.

With a shiver of fear she opened her eyes.

They had been foolish to sleep; she knew that at once. Something had changed. Something was wrong. She stared around, dumbfounded.

A cage had been spun about them; fine spindly bars. They seemed easy to snap, but when Brochael struggled up and saw them, he tried to wrench them apart with his huge strength. Nothing happened. He couldn't even grasp them. He swore, and looked at Skapti in alarm.

“It's no use,” the poet said quietly. “Look out there.”

They turned and saw.

Sitting watching them was an old, old man, his face wizened, his hooded eyes evil and bright. Coats and cloaks muffled him; the blue starlight played over his face.

He smiled at them.

Jessa recognized him at once.

“Grettir!” she breathed.

The old man smiled at them, a toothless grin.

“What have you done to us?” Brochael roared.

“What my people do, loud man. What my people do. I've caught you.” He scratched his head with a long hand. “You haven't changed, girl. Still the fiery one. And here's Brochael Gunnarsson too, and the Wulfings' poet. All so far from home.”

Jessa sank down in despair.

“Who is he?” Hakon muttered.

“Grettir. Gudrun's counselor. He was with her when she ruled in the Jarlshold—a sly creature, nearly as evil as she is. Did you never see him?”

He shook his head, staring at the pile of their weapons out there on the ice, the dragons on his sword hilt gleaming.

“I suppose,” Skapti said drily, “you don't intend a feast of welcome?”

“Clever.” Grettir coughed, a harsh, racking cough, and spat. “No indeed. I've caught you in a cage of your own dreams. You can stay in there until you die—in this cold, very quickly. Then I might release you, and you can wander this land like all the other stolen souls. Unless of course…” He edged a little nearer, wheezing. “Unless you tell me where the boy is.”

They were silent, glancing at one another. Jessa knew no one would speak.

“I see.” The dwarfish man nodded. “Misplaced loyalty, I'm afraid. Do you think I would harm him? His mother wants him alive.”

“We gathered that,” Skapti said.

Grettir nodded, grinning. “Ah, I'd forgotten. Yes, we took the girl, if only to bring you here. If you knew that, I find it strange that you should have come.”

“You would,” Jessa said scornfully.

“So then. Where is he? Why is he not with you?”

“He came before us,” Brochael said. “He may be with Gudrun already.

Grettir laughed slyly. “Now, that does not become you, my friend. I've been waiting here for you for many of what you call days, though here the stars are eternal. And no one has come this way. I watched you come over the bridge, remember. I tasted your anxiety. He's not with you.”

“Maybe he's dead,” Skapti said gravely.

Grettir looked at him. “Maybe. In which case you can tell Gudrun, for I dare not. But I think we'll wait and see. I know this, that he has her powers, and he'll feel the cold gripping you, the agony of your deaths. He'll know your danger. So we'll wait. In this land there is no hurry.”

They turned away from his smug grin and squatted miserably on the frosty surface. Jessa felt so cold, a bitter cold that seemed to pass right through her. The frost cage held them firmly trapped.

“This is a nightmare,” she whispered.

Hakon nodded. “And we're helpless.”

“If Kari comes,” Brochael muttered, looking up at the bridge, “he'll walk straight into a trap. The old man must have something ready.”

“Kari might know.”

“And he might not. If only we could warn him! And Moongarm! What treachery has he brewed up?” He clutched his hands in frustration. “If only I could get out!”

“Kari's grown, Brochael,” Skapti said. “Grown in power. The old man might not have realized that.”

“It's too late anyway.” Hakon dropped his gaze from the bridge. Then he said, “Take a look, but don't turn your heads. Don't let him know.”

Above the bridge two tiny black flecks had soared out of the aurora light, becoming shadows among the starlight.

“The birds.” Jessa flicked a look at Grettir and saw with despair that the old man had noticed them too.

He chuckled and stood up unsteadily. “Ah. About time.”

“What are you going to do?”

He grinned at them. “Let me give you a lesson. Do you know the time to steal a soul? The best, easiest time? As a man dies. It comes loose then, comes free. Almost anyone might reach out and take it—valkyrie, demon, sorcerer, Snow-walker. To take a soul from a living man takes great skill, enormous sorcery. Of all of us, only Gudrun can do that. I can't. I must be content with a dead one.”

“You're going to kill him?” Jessa gripped the frost rails. “But you said—”

“I lied. His body will die. His wraith I will take to Gudrun. That's all of him she wants.”

His eyes lit; his long finger jabbed at the rainbow bridge.

“There!”

Two small figures had emerged from the nimbus of light; for a second they stood still up there, poised on the glassy arch. Jessa knew they were staring down at the empty land as she had done, feeling the relief of being out of the wind. Even from here she could recognize them—Kari's shining hair, pale in the moonlight, Moongarm just behind him, gripping the rail.

“Kari!” she screamed, leaping up. The others were shouting too, wild, useless warnings. For Grettir lifted his hand and spoke one word, a strange, ugly syllable.

And the bridge faded.

Like a rainbow fades, she thought, gripping her hands into hopeless fists. Through wet eyes she watched it go, lose substance, solidity, melt to a thing of light, through which the figures of her friends slipped, grabbed, fell, plunging down and down like small broken things into the mist. The storm of Gunningagap swallowed them abruptly.

Their fall had been silent.

“Kari?” Brochael whispered.

Jessa turned away, sick and furious. Grettir was still, eyes closed, as if listening for something, reaching for it. She gripped the bars and wanted to scream at him, to kill him, and then she stopped, drawing a tight, painful breath.

From the pile of weapons, Hakon's sword was being lifted, lifted by an invisible hand. It came floating through the air to the back of Grettir's neck and jabbed.

The old man stiffened, eyes wide. Astonishment and dismay passed over his face. Then he nodded appreciatively. “Clever,” he murmured.

Jessa grabbed Brochael's arm and forced him around. “Look!” She gasped, warm with joy. “It's all right! They're alive!”

Slowly Moongarm became visible to them all. He held the sword point against the old man's neck. “Sit down,” he snarled, “and do nothing, sorcerer. I wouldn't like to soil my friend's sword.”

The old man crumpled. He seemed ruefully amused. “She said you were unpredictable, Kari. I had not guessed how much.”

“Hadn't you?” Kari stood on the ice, the ravens flapping out of nothing about him. “Are you sure about that?”

Grettir looked up at him, and his face changed. After a moment he said gravely, “You have grown so much like her.”

Kari said nothing to that. He came over to the cage and gripped the bars.

“Can you do it?” Skapti asked.

“I think so.”

Hakon shook his head. “We saw you fall!”

“I'm sorry.” Kari looked at Brochael. “I had to make it look like that. We'd crossed earlier. I had a warning. Long ago.”

Brochael nodded, numb with cold. He reached out and touched Kari's sleeve. “I should have known,” he said, his voice gruff. “Get us out of here.”

The bars dissolved; they melted to nothing. And all the world went with them, into darkness and cold.

Someone was chafing her fingers and hands; numbly she felt the pain throb back into them, the hot pulse of blood.

She opened her eyes slowly. Brochael's bulk loomed against mist and starlight. He said, “You're all right. You're back.”

She was wrapped in blankets, chilled to the bone. A fire was burning on the ice, crackling and sparkling; for a moment she wondered how, and then realized Kari must have made it, a rune fire, but giving out wonderful heat. Then she saw the sack burning in it, and the thin, familiar spars of wood. It took her a long moment to realize what they were.