Catherine Fisher: Snow-Walker

“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.

Twenty-Seven

The children of darkness, the doombringers.

“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.