Catherine Fisher - Snow-Walker

As they came closer Jessa saw it was the embers of a fire, the dull peats giving out a faint heat. Over it one man was huddled, wrapped in a dark blanket, and as he raised his head and looked at them, she saw it was Wulfgar.

His appearance shocked her. He was thin, almost gaunt. A dark stubble covered his chin and his red-rimmed eyes looked weary and unfocused. He smiled bitterly when he saw them. “Now I know I’m delirious. Are you dead then, all of you? Are you ghosts, come to haunt me?”

“A vision,” Kari said, crouching by him. “Nothing more.”

Wulfgar did not seem to hear him. He shook his head and gave a low, bitter laugh. “Of course you are. Dead at the world’s end, where I sent you. And all of us here caught in her spell, except me. Gods, I wish I was too.”

He clasped his hands around his sword hilt and turned away from them, staring into the flames.

Skapti stood rigid, watching him. Then he turned on Gudrun. “I could kill you myself for this.”

She smiled coldly at him.

“He can barely see us,” Kari murmured. “He thinks he’s imagining us.”

“But why is he still awake?” Jessa asked.

Kari crossed to the roof tree; the great ash trunk rose above him, glinting with frost. “Because of this.”

They gathered around him and saw, wedged into a deep cleft at the base of the tree, something that shone in the firelight. Jessa moved back to let the light through and suddenly they saw what it was: a small piece of crystal, covered with spirals. For a moment she wondered where she had seen it before, and then the memory came to her of Kari’s strange tower room in Thrasirshall. The crystals had hung there in long strings from the roof. She remembered them turning in the sun.

“This protects him?” Brochael asked.

“Yes.” Kari turned defiantly to the witch, who stood a little back. “You’ll never get it out. I made sure of that.”

The vision of the hall vanished instantly; they were in the candlelit room, and Signi was crying quietly into her hands.

“That doesn’t matter,” Gudrun said easily. “None of that matters now. I wanted you to come and you have.”

She touched his sleeve, teasing. “This is where you belong. Stay here, and I’ll release them, all of them. These can go; the Jarlshold will be free. I have no interest in them.”

“Kari, no,” Brochael warned.

The boy was silent.

“And think about this,” Gudrun went on quietly. “Here, you are one of us. No one will point you out because you’re different, or stiffen in terror if you look at them. I always enjoyed that, but I think it pains you. Among them you’ll always be an outsider, and that will never change, Kari, never, no matter how much they think they know you. Can you live with that all your life?”

For a moment they stood together, two identical faces, Gudrun’s watchful, Kari’s downcast. Then he pulled his arm away from her.

“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.

Twenty-Six

What do you ask of me? Why tempt me?

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.”