Snow-Walker (51 page)

“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.

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.

“Perhaps this is the place you fear most,” he said quietly. He felt drained already, weary from the desperate struggle to hold on to himself. Now he reached out and touched the hangings of quartz, setting them swinging. The bird wraiths stood behind him; he knew she saw them as he did: two tall men. One laid a narrow hand on his shoulder.

“Where is this?” she demanded, her voice clotted with wrath.

“You know where, though you've never been here. This is Thrasirshall. The place you sent me to die.” Shaking his head, he smiled wanly. “The strange thing is, it was here I learned how to live.”

Gudrun looked coldly around her, at the sparse room, at the bird wraiths. “I see. And now you think you're a match for me?” She laughed at him, her eyes bright, and he felt his heart sink, as it always did before her.

“My powers are too much for you, Kari. I've had years of practice. Try if you like, but remember this: Of all our people, only I can steal souls.”

He looked up at her, and knew his danger.

“Until now,” he said.

Moongarm looked sidelong at Signi. “What does it feel like?” he murmured.

She shook her head, the pale hair swinging. “As if I'm adrift. Nowhere.”

He crossed the room and picked up the ice chain. “That's a feeling I know about.” He ran it through his hands, over the sharp, broken nails.

“So why did you come with them?” she asked quietly. “Why here?”

“You've guessed why.” He flung the chain down and turned away from her, a lean uneasy figure in the white room. “Because the spell that's on me came from here. I didn't know that at first, didn't know who the woman was. I never saw her again. But as I wandered north, an outcast, hated, chased away from every settlement, I heard the tales of them, the sorcerers at the world's end, a pale, dangerous people. I thought then she must have been one of them. When I saw the boy, I knew. But he can't help me. And then, just now, there she was, standing in that doorway. The same woman.”

“Gudrun?”

“It was years ago, but I knew her. She looked at me, but I saw that she's forgotten me. Forgotten.”

“She's hurt us all....”

“But I asked her for this. I asked her! And I was glad of it. At first I thought she had made me more than a man. Not less.”

He brooded bitterly, watching the floor with his strange amber eyes. She felt sorry for him, and suddenly afraid.

“Moongarm…”

He crossed to the door. “I have to go. You'll be safe enough.”

“Moongarm, wait!” She stood up, the ice chain tinkling. “Leave it to Kari!”

Sword in hand, he looked back at her and shook his head. Then he opened the door and slid out.

Painfully Jessa picked herself up off the floor, where the thrashing of the snake had flung her. Hakon lay on his stomach, coughing for breath; he rolled over and stared at her.

A long wet stain scored the ice between them; it froze as they watched, into a stinking shimmer of crystal. The knife too was coated with ice; she wiped it in disgust against the side of her boot.

“All right?” Brochael asked.

Hakon nodded, getting up. “Was it alive?”

“As alive as I wanted,” Skapti said. “I could even have done with a little less.”

“Don't waste time!” Jessa snapped.

“She's right.” Brochael turned to the door. “Open it.”

She lifted the latch and pushed suddenly. The door swung wide without a sound, but despite their hurry none of them made any move to enter. Because what lay beyond the door was not a room, or a place in any world they knew. It was a nothingness, a mist of light, and figures loomed and moved in it, receding into distances that were too far. They knew this was the spirit realm, the place where Kari sometimes went in the darkness, under the stars. But if they were to go in, how could they ever get back? Jessa thought.