Catherine Fisher - Snow-Walker

They were open.

Grettir stopped on the bottom step. When he got his breath, he wheezed, “From here you go in by yourselves.”

“While you lock the doors?” Brochael grabbed the old man’s arm roughly. “Oh no. Show us where Signi is.”

Grettir shrugged. “It makes no difference in the end.”

“It might to you, if you want to live. Where is she?”

“Through the hall. Up the stairs.”

The hall was bitterly cold, a palace of ice. It was bare of furniture; snow lay in tiny waves on the floor, crunching as they walked over it, but its splendor was in the light that came through the ice; a pale shimmer of blue and green, a refraction of stars and snow, eerie and cold. On some of the walls were hangings, all white and silver, and shields of strange metals. Ice girders held up the roof; thin spindles of ice hung from each windowsill, and great curtains of it, formed over years, massed here and there, sprawling out into the floor to make pillars and columns of intricate crystal. It was a frozen house, without sound, or welcome.

On the far side of the hall were some stairs leading up.

“These?” Brochael snapped.

Grettir nodded.

Kari leaped up the first steps lightly; the others clattered after him.

“Where are they all?” Hakon breathed to Jessa. “We’re walking into a trap, I’m certain.”

“I know that. We all do. Stick behind me if you’re scared.”

He smiled, but it was a wan effort.

The ice steps led up between glinting walls. Then they came out into a room at the top. Crowding into the doorway behind Hakon, Jessa caught her breath.

The room was a blaze of candles; white candles of every size and thickness. The flames burned straight, with no breeze to flutter them. In the center of the room was a white chair, and Signi was sitting in it, staring at them. She held out her hands.

“I almost hoped you wouldn’t come,” she said sadly.

“We had to.” Skapti crossed to her.

“Is Wulfgar…?”

“He’s not with us. He had to stay at the hold.”

Her dress and hair seemed paler here, drained of color; her skin had a strange, glistening tinge. The back of the chair was a network of ice strands, hung and looped, great chains of it. They dropped from her sleeves and wrists, unwound and slithered after her as she stood up and crossed the room.

She tried to touch them, but her fingers passed through Brochael’s and he shook his head.

“How do you like your sword, Hakon?” she asked.

Puzzled, he glanced down at it. “Very much, but the gift was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” She looked at them carefully, at their worn clothing, and windburned, unshaven faces. Fear crept into her eyes. “How long?”

“Weeks.”

She pressed her fingers together, pale and trembling. “I didn’t know. There’s no time in this place. Nothing but silence and cold, no one to speak to or touch…” Her eyes darted to the doorway, where Grettir stood. He smirked at her.

Kari fingered the chains thoughtfully.

“Can you?” Jessa asked him.

“No. This is Gudrun’s spell. Only she can.”

“You should leave here!” Signi put her wraith hand on his; only he could feel her, frail as a leaf. “You shouldn’t have come, Kari. It’s you she wants! She only brought me here to bring you.”

“I know that.” He turned to Grettir reluctantly. “Where is she?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Then show me where. But I want to know that nothing will happen to my friends. Either way. I want to be sure of that.”

“Oh no!” Jessa said firmly. She caught his arm tight. “You’re not vanishing on me again! We’re all in this.”

He tried to tug away, but she had been expecting this; she held tight.

“Jessa—”

“No, Kari.”

Grettir watched them, amused. “Touching,” he murmured.

“Keep out of this,” Brochael growled. He put his hand on Kari’s shoulder. “She’s right.”

Kari glanced at them both. “I don’t want to hurt you—”

“Nor will you.”

“But you have to let me go! Please, Brochael!” He squirmed away from them.

“Not without us.” Brochael caught him again firmly. “Listen, Kari. Jessa is right. We’re all in this; it isn’t just you. You can’t take it all on yourself.”

“And what good do you think you will be to him?” a cold voice mocked. “The boy is no kin of yours, Brochael Gunnarsson. He’s nothing of yours. He’s mine. And always will be.”

Brochael stood still. His face hardened, and as he turned he put his arm around Kari and they stood together, looking at the woman in the doorway.

Twenty-Five

His hands he washed not nor his hair combed.

She looked older.

She was still tall, though, and pale, her long hair braided and caught in a shining net. Her coat was the color of snow shadows, blue and dim in the strange ice light, her eyes colorless and impossible to read.

She stepped quickly into the candlelight, her silks and furs swishing, and she smiled at them, that cold, indifferent smile that had terrified Jessa so long ago.

Glancing at Kari, she said, “You only have to look at us.”

They all watched her, uneasy. Gudrun had worked her spell on each of them, Jessa thought. She had once made Hakon a thrall, crippled in one hand, useless but for slow, endless labor. She’d sent Jessa herself into the terror of Thrasirshall, stolen Wulfgar’s kingdom, made Skapti an outlaw scavenging for years on favors and carrion. Brochael she had banished to die with her son, and from him, Kari, she had taken everything, left him unable to speak, walk, even to think, not knowing what people were. His very father had never seen him. And then she’d murdered his father.

Each of them had deep cause to hate her. Only Moongarm stood aside.

Gudrun crossed the room and put her hands out to Kari. “I knew you would come home.”

“This isn’t my home.” He stepped back.

“Yes it is,” she said seriously. “You’ve seen that, seen the people here. My people and yours. I heard you think it, Kari. You can’t deny that.”

He turned away, then back to face her abruptly. “You’ve offered me this before. I don’t want it.”

She nodded and smoothed her dress in the old gesture that Jessa remembered. “Then let me show you something that you do want. All of you. What happened in the Jarlshold was my spell, yes, but the dreams that destroyed you were your own. Dreams of mortals. Destructive, dangerous. Look here, and see what you do to yourselves.”

In the middle of the room she opened her hands, almost carelessly, and spread a coldness about her, a darkness in the air that surrounded them all swiftly. The room faded; they seemed to be standing in snow, knee-deep in it, somewhere outside.

Jessa looked around fearfully. It was the Jarlshold, she knew. But how it had changed!

The silence was deathly. Thick snow coated everything; icicles hung over shutters and sills. Between the riven clouds a few stars glimmered, and showed her that the snow was unmarked. The settlement seemed totally deserted.

Gudrun opened the door latch, the familiar door to the hall. It opened slowly.

“It was cunning of you to leave a guardian,” she said, glancing at Kari. “Otherwise I should have had them all by now.”

They stepped warily into the hall.

It was frozen, stiff with ice. Gloom hung in its spaces, a silence of sleep. Walking in the vision over the stone floor, Jessa saw sleeping forms all around her, huddled up, barely breathing in the searing cold. They were all here now—the fishermen, farmers, children, thralls, the women and the war band, some crumpled where they had fallen, others covered with blankets or furs.

Ahead of her, deep in the gloom, a glint of red light showed, smoldering, barely alive. Someone was still awake.