Spellbreakers (40 page)

“Who are you? You are not ... her.” said a voice, a
deep, unknown male voice, close to her ear.

She jumped, startled, and looked to the man in her
arms. He was old, grey, his cheeks sunken under his dark-lined eyes, his hair
lank and colorless. He had been tall once, she could see that, but now he was
bent almost double with age and weariness. She almost recoiled. But she had
come this far to bring him back.

My heart is as warm as the slopes of the Val d’Eran.
My will is as strong as the walls of Castel Argell
.

She kissed his pale wilted lips. “I am Princess Leal
of Escarra. I came to break the spell. The spell is broken! You are free now.”

He gave a deep, deep sigh, and as the warm air left
him so he stood straighter, and pulled himself together somewhat.

“How ... how long?” he asked.

“One hundred years, Kjetil Alversen. But she’s gone
now. I killed her. You are free. Come with me.”

“One hundred years...” he said, reeling, and the wind
blew colder, blinding sleet mixed in it, a
viento blanco
of destructive
violence. She felt ice cutting her skin; she felt him drawing away. She held
him tighter. She pressed her warm body to his.

“I need you! We need you!
Your help.
Please, stay with me!”

“How can I help you? My days are long past. Look at
me. I am an old, wasted man!”

It’s not true,
she
thought.
I saw your body lying in a tomb of ice, and it was not like this.

“I think,” she said, in his ear, against the raging
storm, “that this is the last bit of the spell. You
are
free. You can be
yourself again.
You
must believe in it!”

She slid along his body, holding him tighter, belly to
belly, chest to chest,
sex
to sex, willing the heat of
her own naked skin into his. She folded a leg around his bony hip, and she felt
his body stirring, answering.

That is it,
she
thought,
you are not a corpse in a crypt of ice. You are a living man. Be a
man to me, now.

The cold wind slowly abated.

He was warmer, as if some life had passed into him. S
he
was colder, and the contact of his skin was comforting now. He was younger
now,
his hair was white but fair, long and smooth around his
shoulders, flying free in a mild spring breeze.
I am winning,
she
thought,
surely the spell is breaking; surely it is not so cold any more.

She pressed her body to his, lightly grinding her sex
on his member,
calling
to that which was stirring in
him. The world around them was changing fast.

They were standing on a high moor. There was water
underfoot, rills and burns running through blossoming heather. The ground was
soft. Their naked feet were deep in the green-grey moss of the moors.

“Where is this?” she asked, holding him closer still.

“This is how this land was of old. Dalarna before the
Ice Waste grew,” he said. “It is all gone now.
Long gone
under the ice, like me.”
His voice came from far away, even if she was
holding him. She moved her body against his, felt his hardness on her skin. He
shivered, but only a bit.

She looked up at him. His white skin was smoother,
unlined, except for deep wrinkles round his eyes and at the corners of his
mouth. He was getting stronger even as she got weaker. She could hardly stand.
But
I must bring him back with me. He must live. He must want to live.

Either he was getting taller or she was shrinking.
With an effort she climbed around his hips, and sank along his shaft. Their
bodies came together without a check, flawlessly. He sighed deeply and held her
up and
close
. She felt the life in him answering to
hers. He had been strong once, so strong; she could feel it still. If only she
could hold on a bit longer, bring them both back, back to the world of summer
and leaves, and bird-song.

They were in balance, but only just. If only she could
think properly. If only she were not so tired.
So tired.

They were sinking in the mossy ground, but she felt no
fear, no bitterness. Nothing mattered much anymore.

“You cannot save me, Leal,” he said, with sorrowful
tenderness. “It was brave of you to try. But it will kill you. You are fading
away already. I cannot let that happen.”

“It is my choice,” she said sleepily.

He gently tried to push her away. But she was so tired
now, so tired. She clung to him for support. He was a boy now, slender like a
reed and merry-eyed, with flaxen hair done in a mass of tiny braids. He was
strong. He was so young. Surely they would make it back to the sunlight, back
to Elverhjem, back to Escarra.

“Come back with me,” she said again. Her words
slurred.

“You cannot take me with you, Leal.”

“I can. I will,” she said, holding on.

But even as she spoke, the trickling waters rose
around their knees.

“Let me go,” he said in a low, slow voice, as water
rose around their waist.

“Never!”

“Let me go, or it will be too late for you!”

“You must come back with me; you must—live!”

Water closed over their heads, shimmering blue-green,
marbled with sunshine overhead.

In that glistening twilight his face looked corpselike
again, but young, serene. His long braids floated around them as they
sank,
ghostly white in the aquamarine light. Their bodies
were still joined and floated weightlessly, almost. The water grew deeper
around them, and yet it was not cold at all, and she was not drowning, just
slipping into darker and darker depths, aquamarine, sapphire, cobalt,
ultramarine, down to the deepest indigo.

She could not swim. She was too tired, and now, in the
end, the darkness welcomed her. She realized that she would not make it back to
the light now, but now there was peace in that thought. She was not alone.

 
Indigo turned
to black.

Finally he hugged her close. His hands were firm and
warm on her back and neck. She knew now that even in the dark it would end with
happiness. She held him even tighter, her arms round his shoulders, her legs
round his waist, his member deep inside her. Her face found its place in the
warm hollow of his shoulder.
Locked forever.
Wherever
they went, they’d go together.
I do love him, in the end. He knew nothing
about me, yet he would have drowned alone and saved me.
Pure
heart.

“I—tried,” she said in her last breath, slowly,
because she was numb with sleep and the darkness was filling her eyes, her
ears,
her
mouth.

“It was—a—nice—try.”

Chapter Twenty

Time means next to nothing in the darkness between
worlds, and Leal had no idea how long had passed when she woke up in a warm
soft nest, with a very heavy hot blanket on her and the acrid smell of smoke in
her nostrils.

She opened her eyes. There was dim light around her.
Dim but not blue. She was not in the ice palace any more. She sighed with
relief, even if she had no idea where she was.
That
nightmare at least
was over. She felt ... good. The mind-numbing cold of the glacier was gone. And
as she remembered the cold, the last hours came back to her in a rush. She sat
up in the murk, suddenly, or at least tried to. In fact, she was so tightly
rolled up in the warm heavy cocoon all around her that she could hardly move.

“Ah, you are awake, finally,” said a muffled voice
beside her.

“Ljung!”

He was sitting a couple of yards away from her, in
front of a small fire. He was chewing on something, holding a knife in one hand
and a steaming mug in the other.

“I am happy to see you, too,” said Leal, falling back
in her slick, soft, warm nest. “What happened? Where are we? Where is...? Is
he...? How did you make fire? What are you burning?”

Ljung swallowed. “Dragon blubber,” he said.

“Dragon blubber?” She looked at him and then all
around, baffled. They were under the cover of some low dark roof, currently
full of greasy smoke.

“Where are we? Is this a tent?
A
house?”

“Dragon wing.”

“Oh,” said Leal. “And what are you eating?” she asked,
realizing that she was ravenous.

“Dragon steak.”

“I see.
All right.
Does it
eat tender? Can you make me one?” She tried again to free herself and sit up.
“What is this thing I am in?” she asked.

“Dragon heart.”

This made her stomach heave. She struggled to get out
of her nest, slithered free of it, and stared down at her own body. She was
dark with thick, black-red blood all over, like a newborn baby.

She opened her mouth to scream, but she was too
shocked to make the smallest sound.

“Hot cup?” asked Ljung, handing her his steaming mug.

“Dragon piss?” she asked weakly.

“Mh, no, actually tea.
Meadowsweet tea.
But I can
try to find some of the other stuff, if you prefer.”

An hour later Leal sat by the fire chewing the
toughest steak she had ever eaten. It was smoky and leathery, and had a strange
sulphur aftertaste. It was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. She had
washed herself with a pot of molten snow and put on her clothes, which Ljung
had warmed up by the fire.

“Tell me what happened, now. How did I get here?
And the dragon?
Is Hawkeneye...?”

“Whoa, whoa.
One question at a time, please.
We
brought you here.
After that ghastly old troll died, I waited for you. Daria and I, that is. She
made it to the palace shortly after, and she came in looking for us. You were
gone for hours, and there was no sign of life. So we came looking for you. You
were ... well, with Hawkeneye.
But.
We could not wake
you up.
Neither of you.
You were both frozen blue. We
feared you were dead, magic spell or no magic spell.
Both of
you.
But then I thought
,
they are not dead
until they are warm and dead. That is what they say in the north. And also, I
thought of something that the witch said. She was right in one thing, you know?
You did not have
enough
heart
to bring him back. But this old boy
did.” He said, patting the scaly flank of the dead dragon that served as wall
for their shelter. “So Daria and I carried you out here, with the help of her
new pet, I might add, and we sliced this beast open. The lindworm had it in the
end, although there was almost nothing left of him. It was still so hot inside
that we could not get close at first, and we just lay you on the snow between
its wings. But even he cooled down in time. I thought of that legend about the
hot springs.
That the blood of the buried dragons had given the
water healing powers.
So, when it was not burning any more, we put you
inside his heart. It was the strongest place. You should be dead, by all
accounts.
Or so frostbitten as to make no difference.
But you are as well as ever, I see.”

“I am indeed. And...?”

“
He
is alive, too. And well, apparently.”

“What ... what is he like?” she asked shyly.

“Very quiet and very much out of sorts, I reckon, but
pretty spry for someone who has spent a hundred years in an ice tomb. He woke
up a couple of hours ago and went out to have a walk. And clear his head a bit,
probably. Daria is keeping an eye on him, just in case he loses it.”

“Loses it? Loses what?”

“Well, all of it, I suppose. Finding out you went to
sleep and missed a hundred years of recent history can take you the wrong way,
I suppose. Imagine if he had a sweetheart somewhere.”

Leal met Ljung’s eyes.

“Did he?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know, honestly. But I suppose he might. It
sounds like women were going to some extreme lengths to get his attention. He
must have had quite the choice.”

Leal wondered what she had brought back from that icy
tomb. Was Hawkeneye the
hero
they had hoped for, or
would he turn out be a brokenhearted man without any will to go back to life?
And now that she had loved him for one night and saved him, was she meant to be
with him forever? Was there some unspoken rule in these things? She wished all
of a sudden that the Shining Ones had told her more about these enchantments
and the relative etiquette.

Leal sighed. She watched Ljung’s bent head as he
tended the fire. She wanted to scream,
I did not want this. It is only
destiny, only my goddamn destiny of being born to a king and queen. What I want
is
you.
And Daria.
And freedom.
But she had no idea how to say it.