Snow-Walker (25 page)

As he turned bitterly away he saw the skald again, sitting with his long legs stretched out, touching the strings of the kantele into soft, tuneless notes. Next to him sat the girl Hakon had noticed that morning, her long hair loose, her sharp, clever eyes watching him.

Jessa Horolfsdaughter. The sorcerer's friend.

She beckoned him over.

For a moment he hesitated; then habit took over and he went.

“How can I serve you?” he asked sullenly.

“I don't want you to serve me.” She laughed. “We thought you might like some wine.”

Astonished, he watched her pour it. The cup was gilt, with tiny red enameled birds around it, wingtip to wingtip. He picked it up, left-handed, awkward.

“We saw you watching the war band,” the skald muttered, twanging a string near his ear. “A short life, the warrior's.”

“But a proud one.”

They both looked at him.

Jessa said, “We think you did well, saving the children. Skuli should have been grateful, though by the look of him I doubt that.”

He shrugged.

“Have you always been with him?” Her tone was friendly, and though he resented the question, he answered it. “Not always. I was born a free man. But my parents died and I was no use on my uncle's farm, not after… Well, I was sold to Skuli to pay off a debt.”

They were both silent. Distaste, he supposed. Good, let them feel it.

“But your hand.” The poet turned his thin sharp face. “You can't use it?”

“No.” Hakon was used to this curiosity. He lifted it with the other, feeling the cold of the skin. “There's no feeling, nothing, from the wrist down.”

They didn't ask, but he told them anyway. “It was done to punish me. For theft.”

Jessa looked startled. “You stole?”

“I was five years old. I took some food from a plate when my uncle had guests. Important guests. I was beaten, but then she said that wasn't enough. She gave me her own, lasting punishment.”

Skapti sat up. “She? You don't mean…”

“Yes. The Jarl's wife. The witch. She touched my hand with one long finger, and it turned to ice. There was no pain, nothing, but I couldn't open my hand and I never have been able to since. She seared me with her sorcery and she laughed. I remember her, every look of her, and when I saw him today I saw her again.” He stood up. “Your friend's mother did this, lady.”

Jessa frowned at him. “She did worse to her son. You can't blame him.”

Hakon nodded calmly. “But he's still her son. He has her blood, her powers.” Remembering Vidar's words, he echoed them, deliberately mocking. “You can't ignore that.”

Jessa knocked on the wooden door and Brochael opened it.

“Come inside,” he said abruptly.

The small room was dark, with only the fire to light it. The shutters hung half open; a few stars glittered in the deepening blue sky.

Kari sat on the floor, his knees drawn up and his thin arms wrapped around them. His eyes were closed.

“Is he asleep?” she whispered.

He looked up at her then and said, “No. Just a bit tired. Sit down, Jessa.”

Brochael had eased his weight down on the bench, so she sat on the floor, leaning back against his knees. In the warm comfort of the room they were all silent for a moment, but there was an underlying unease, as if the two of them had been quarrelling before she came in, though she could hardly believe that.

Kari watched the flames. Their light flickered on the pale edges of his hair.

“Can you see anything?” she asked eagerly.

“Not yet. Give me a while.”

She flicked a satisfied look at Brochael, but it faded instantly as she saw how he was watching Kari, with an unhappiness in his face that shocked her. Then she saw the reason.

Tied around Kari's wrist, half-hidden by his dark sleeve, was a small, knotted bracelet made of snakeskin.

She recognized it at once, with a kind of horror.

It was the bracelet Gudrun had worn. Two years ago the witch had taken it off as she left and thrown it down on the floor—a reminder of her power, her long tyranny over them all.

“Keep it,” she'd said.

But Kari had thrown it away; he'd locked it in the dungeon far below the hall, the damp cell where he had been a prisoner as a small child; a child without speech, unable to run, not knowing what people were, what the outside air was like. It had been there ever since, she supposed.

And now?

Jessa's mind raced. He'd obviously been down there. He'd opened the room, picked the snakeskin from the ashes … but why? Why would he? She tried to catch Brochael's eye, but he wouldn't look at her. His usual cheerful smile was gone; she had never seen him look so confused, so miserable. She glanced back at the bracelet. Kari must have a reason for this. They shouldn't start thinking stupid, unforgivable things. He wasn't Gudrun. He wasn't.

“Look!” he said to her suddenly, and she jerked her bewildered gaze back to the flames and saw there was something there. It drifted and blurred; became shapes that moved behind the peats and black, smoldering chars of wood, but she couldn't see it clearly. And then suddenly, it was Gudrun.

The sorceress was looking out at them, as if reflected in a pool or a lake, the water rippling over her face, her silvery hair, the ice blue dress she wore glinting with crystals and snow shards. She was speaking, and Jessa heard the words close, almost inside her ear, so that she put up her hand and scratched at it.

There are plans working here. And not only mine. And each one thinks he plans for himself and is unseen. But I see.

Jessa looked at Brochael and saw that he heard it too; his lips were tight with distaste. Kari sat silent, knees bent, looking away. Then the image dissolved into flame light and the ripple of heat over wood, but her voice still hung and echoed as if from somewhere far distant.

Feast yourself. Take the dark one if you want, the Jarl, the arrogant one. But leave my son alone.

Kari looked up at that. He looked so much like Gudrun that Jessa almost thought it was he who had spoken.

“Who's she talking to?” Brochael asked gruffly.

Kari shrugged. “Perhaps this beast of hers.”

“So it's Wulfgar she wants dead. I'd have thought it would have been you.”

Kari watched him sidelong. “So would I. We may have missed something. She may be keeping something worse for me.” He twisted the laces of his shirt around his fingers. There was silence a moment, then he said, “And is this your thief, Jessa?”

Vidar sat among the flames. It was some dark, shadowy place, and he was leaning forward, and her heart leaped as she saw the thin rat-faced man drinking opposite.

“That's him!”

“Looks a skulking little cutthroat,” Brochael observed.

“He tried to cut mine. Where is he?”

“I don't know.” Kari watched the men. “I think he's near, in the hold or not far outside, but I can't tell. I do know this is happening now, right now.”

“Vidar's got his sword,” Brochael growled. “He doesn't wear that in the hold.”

“But he can't be far because he was here an hour ago.”

“One of the farms then. It's fair to think he'd get this scum away, if he thought you'd seen him. What are they planning?”

But the images spluttered, became burned wood. Kari shook his head wearily. “I've lost it.”

Brochael looked at Jessa. “Will you tell the Jarl?”

“No!” It was Kari who answered quickly.

“Why not?”

“Because he trusts Vidar. He doesn't trust me. And we have no proof.”

Surprised and uneasy, Jessa said, “Of course Wulfgar trusts you.”

“No, Jessa.” He gripped his fingers tight together. “Vidar is turning him against me. I know that, I can see it, the fine threads of mistrust that he's spinning, like a web over this hold. It began long ago, before you came, before we came.”

“That's nonsense,” Brochael said gruffly.

“No, it isn't. Think about it, Brochael! To Vidar, I'm the pale approaching danger. I'm Gudrun's son. I was the last Jarl's son. He wants Wulfgar to see me as a threat.”

Jessa clenched her fists without noticing. “But Wulfgar knows you!”

“Does he?” He turned his strange, colorless eyes fiercely on her. “None of you know me, really! Sometimes I don't think I know myself, what I might do. This is her curse, remember, that you'll never quite trust me, that I might turn on you as she did.” He looked away bleakly. “And I might! I can feel it in myself.”

“We can all do evil—”

“Not like I could!” He gripped her fingers suddenly; she felt him trembling, as if he suppressed fear.

“Power, Jessa. Feel it? It's burning in me. Sometimes I want to cry out with the strength of it, let it rage in a crackle of light and flame. Things call to me out of the snow, out of the endless wastes—wandering things, spirits, elements. And people—I can't be near them because I want to change them, to move them, to slide into their minds and make them do what I want them to do. And I could, and they'd never know! But I daren't, because that's how she started....”

Numb, she stared at him. “We trust you.”

Brochael gripped his shoulder. “I know you better than you know yourself. I taught you to speak, boy. Carried you out of her prisons myself. You'll never be like her.”

Kari watched them a moment, calming himself. “So why didn't you ask me about this?”

He slipped the snakeskin band off, held it up on one long finger. “Why not, Jessa? Because you weren't sure?”

In all honesty, she couldn't answer him. No words would come.

“Don't go skulking off again, thief-thrall.” Skuli's breath stank; he swayed as he stood. All evening, Hakon knew, he'd been flat on his back among the dogs and the straw.

He dragged a blanket into a corner by the fire and lay there, listening to the group gambling in one corner, the sleepy talk of the house carls about the fire. This was the man who owned him; this drunken, potbellied fool. He thought of wild, impossible things—running away, hiding out here, appealing to the Jarl—but all the while he knew he was dreaming. A runaway thrall was hunted down—everyone saw to that. None of them wanted their own thralls trying it. And what would Wulfgar want with a one-handed man? Best to go back to the sheep and learn how to forget.

He thought about them all at the high table that night, their fine clothes, their easy ways, their freedom. Going where they wanted, saying what they thought. They would all be on the hunt tomorrow, even Jessa, and he'd be left here.

Then he remembered the thing in the wood and felt a shiver of pride. He'd been the only one even to glimpse it, that pale shadow in the snow, the flicker of strange, colorless eyes that had stared into his. It had been hungry, raging with hunger. It was only now, quite suddenly, that he realized that.

And surely it would be difficult to find. The hold was full of men, they'd been riding in all day, but out there the fells were endless and the forests black. Somewhere in those snowfields the creature was waiting. Maybe waiting until now, until it was dark. He shivered, pulling the rough blanket closer. His right hand lay outside the folds, but he left it there. He could never feel anything with that, even the cold.

Deep in the night, something woke him. Opening his eyes, he saw the hall was black; the last fire had burned low, it was a red smolder in the shadows. Sleeping shapes breathed and snored about it.

Lying still, he listened, and fear prickled on his skin. Outside the hall, something was moving. It shuffled and scraped; tiny unnerving sounds in the night's silence. He lay rigid and unbreathing from noise to noise. A scrape against the wall; the bang of something heavy. Then footsteps, slow footsteps near the door.

He sat up quickly.

The windows were safely shuttered, the door barred. Men slept around them, their swords close at hand. The fire stirred peacefully. But Hakon knew it was out there. It was prowling the hold.

He wished someone else would hear it and wake up, but no one did. Guthlac, Wulfgar's steward, slept near the fire, wrapped in a warm fleece. Hakon decided to wake him.

But then a noise at the door made him jerk his head; with a whisper of terror he stared across the hall. It seemed to him suddenly that the great wooden structure was not as solid as it had been, that the bar across it was somehow less distinct. He gripped the blanket tight, stared harder through the dark. Was he imagining it? No. There was a faintness there, a fading, and suddenly he knew that the door was going, dissolving in some sorcerous mist. He turned to shout, to jump up.

And found he couldn't move.

Just couldn't. Hand or body. And couldn't speak. For a moment of terrible, sickening fear he thought the paralysis had shot from his hand through his whole body and would be there forever.

And then he saw Kari.

The boy was watching him, standing in the shadows just at the foot of the stairs. He was a pale ghost against the drift and blackness of the tapestries; Hakon could see the silveriness of his hair; his thin, turned face.

“I'm sorry,” Kari murmured, “but I don't want the others woken.”

Helpless and furious, Hakon watched him walk across the dark spaces of the hall, across a long circle of moonlight that stretched from the ring window, high up. Two black shadows swooped after him; with a crawling of his skin Hakon saw that they were ravens, two huge birds that flapped and rustled their great glossy wings.

What was he doing? Hakon struggled to move even one finger, but it was impossible. His body was held rigid.

Kari came up close to the door. Now there was almost nothing left of it, a mist, a blur of darkness, and beyond that something else that moved, white and indistinct.