The thing you love best, that thing I will have …
On the eve of Wulfgar’s wedding, Gudrun’s chilling threat is fulfilled. The people of Jarlshold are trapped in a sorcerous web – overwhelmed by a desire to sleep. Cast into the frightening netherworld of their dreams, they awake to find themselves faced with a reality that is even more terrifying …
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
About the Author
Also by Catherine Fisher
Copyright
For Tess
All chapter-head quotations are taken from
Voluspa, translated as The Song of the Sybil
in Norse Poems, edited and translated by
W H Auden and Paul Taylor.
Faber and Faber Ltd.
Outside I sat by myself when you came.
THE SWORD WAS of heavy beaten iron, with a narrow groove down the centre of the blade. On the pommel, tiny gilt birds with red eyes watched each other, and two dragons wound their bodies round the hilt, notched and scratched.
‘It’s not new,’ Brochael observed.
‘It’s perfect.’ Hakon’s voice was so stunned that almost no-one heard him. He looked up at the house-thrall who had brought it. ‘Tell Wulfgar … tell the Jarl that I’m grateful. Very grateful.’
The man went and whispered his message in the Jarl’s ear, and they saw Wulfgar grin and wave lazily down the long crowded table.
Hakon held the sword tight, turned it over, scratched with his thumb-nail at a tiny mark in the metal. His right hand, still slightly smaller and weaker than the left, clasped the hilt; he slashed with it sideways, at imaginary enemies.
Jessa jerked back, ‘Be careful!’
‘Sorry.’ Reluctantly, he laid the sword on the table, among the greasy dishes. Jessa smiled to herself. She knew he barely believed it was his.
‘Better than that rust-heap you had before,’ Brochael said, emptying the last drop of wine thoughtfully onto the floor. ‘Now it needs a name.’ He reached over for the jug and re-filled his cup. ‘And here’s the very man. What are some good names for a sword, Skapti?’
The tall poet lounged on the end of the bench.
‘Whose is it?’
‘Hakon’s.’
Skapti touched the blade with his long fingers. ‘Well,’ he said, considering, ‘you could call it Growler, Angry One, Screamer, Rune-Scored, Scythe of Honour, Worm-Borer, Dragonsdeath …’
‘I like that one.’
‘Don’t interrupt.’ Skapti glared at him. ‘Leg-Biter, Host-Striker, Life-Quencher, Corpse-Pain, Wound-Bright, Skull-Crusher, Deceiver, Night-Bringer … Oh, I could go on and on. There are hundreds of sword-names. The skald-lists are full of them.’
‘You can’t name it until it’s done something,’ Jessa said firmly. She poured Skapti some wine.
‘You mean killed someone?’ Hakon sounded uneasy.
‘Drawn blood.’ Brochael winked over the boy’s head. ‘The blade must drink, that’s what they say. Then you name it.’
Skapti tapped the hilt. ‘Where did you get it?’
A burst of laughter along the table rang in the noisy hall. Then Hakon said, ‘Wulfgar gave it to me. To mark his wedding.’ He reached out and touched it lightly, and the firelight glittered in the metal, like a splash of blood.
Jessa shivered then, though the mead-hall was warm and smoky, and her scarlet dress heavy and spun of good wool. For a moment even the clatter of dishes and conversation seemed to fade; then the foreboding passed, and the talk rose about her again.
She looked along the table.
Wulfgar sat in the middle, leaning forward in his carved chair, his dark coat edged with fur at the collar. He was listening as Signi whispered something close to his ear; then he smiled and closed his hand over hers.
‘Look at him,’ Jessa laughed. ‘Oblivious.’
‘Ah well, I don’t blame him,’ Brochael said dryly. ‘She’s a fine girl.’
Fine was the word, Jessa thought. Signi’s hair was long and fine, delicate as spun silk, pale and golden. Her dress moved as she turned on the seat; gold glinting at her wrist and shoulders. A fine girl, refined; the daughter of a wealthy house. They had been betrothed to each other for years; since they were both children, Jessa knew. And now Wulfgar had come into his land and power, now he was Jarl, they were to be married. Tomorrow at noon. Midsummer’s Day.
The table was thronged with Signi’s family and kin; they had been travelling in all week from outlying farms. Wulfgar’s friends had made room for them; the Jarl’s guests always had pride of place.
Jessa looked round at Brochael. ‘Is Kari still asleep? Perhaps we should wake him.’
He frowned down at her, then looked across the room towards the door. ‘If you like. There won’t be anything left to eat if he doesn’t come soon. But you know how he is, Jessa, he may not want to come.’
She nodded, standing. ‘I’ll go up and see.’
Crossing the hall, between the tables, she dodged the serving men and thought that Kari could hardly be asleep. The noise of the Jarl’s feast was loud, and all the doors were open to the light midsummer night, the sun barely setting even now, the pale sky lit with eerie streaks of cloud. At this time of year it never really got dark at all. She slipped through the archway, up the stone stairs, and along to a room at the end, where she tapped on the door.
‘Kari?’
After a moment he answered her. ‘Come in, Jessa.’
He was sitting in front of the dying fire, his back against the bench and his knees drawn up. Firelight lit his pale face with red, leaping glimmers; his hands were red, and his hair, and for a moment she thought again that it looked like blood, and went cold.
He glanced up, quickly. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ She came inside. ‘It was just the light on you. It’s dark in here.’
He looked back at the fire. ‘You were scared for a minute. I felt it.’
The two black ravens that followed him everywhere stood on the windowsill, looking out. One of them stared strangely at her.
She perched on the bench, rubbing her foot. ‘I’m never scared. Now are you coming down? Brochael’s eating and drinking for ten, but there’s still plenty left.’
‘Has Wulfgar asked for me?’
‘No. He knows you.’ If it had been anyone else, she knew, Wulfgar would have taken their absence as a deliberate insult, but not Kari. Kari was different.
His mother was the witch, Gudrun, the Snow-walker. After he was born she had locked him away for six years, never allowing him to be seen, but he had grown to be as powerful as she was, and to look like her, so that the people of the hold made him uneasy, with their covert, frightened glances. Kari avoided crowds, and Jessa understood why.
Now he made no attempt to move, his best blue shirt picking up soot-smuts from the dirty floor.
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ she asked, anxiously.
He pushed the long silvery hair back from his eyes. ‘No.’ But he sounded puzzled, not quite sure.
‘Tell me,’ she said after a moment.
Turning to her, his face was drawn, uneasy. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Jessa. It’s just that tonight, since the twilight began, I’ve felt something. A tingling in my fingers. A shiver. Coldness. It worries me that I can’t think what it is.’
‘Do you think it’s this wedding?’
‘No. I think it’s just me.’ Suddenly he stood, pulling her up. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s go down. I’d like to see Hakon’s new sword.’
Jessa stopped dead. ‘He’s only just been given it. How did you …’
His pleading look silenced her.
As they walked up the crowded hall a ripple of hush followed them, as if conversations had faltered and then gone rapidly on. People were only just beginning to get used to Kari; it took them such a long time, Jessa thought irritably. His pale skin and frost-grey, colourless eyes disturbed them; when they saw him they remembered Gudrun, and were afraid.
But Wulfgar was pleased. ‘So you came!’ he said, lazily. ‘I wondered if we’d have the honour.’
Kari smiled back, glancing at Signi. ‘I’m sorry. Brochael says I have no manners; he’s right.’
The blonde girl looked at him curiously. Then she poured him a cup of wine and held it out. ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Kari,’ she said, in her soft, southland accent. ‘You and I need to be friends. I want to know all Wulfgar’s friends. I want them to like me.’
He took the cup, his eyes watching her face. ‘They will, lady.’
She flushed, glancing at Wulfgar. ‘Is that a prophecy?’
Wulfgar laughed, and Kari said, ‘It’s already come true.’
He raised the cup to drink and stopped; so still that Jessa looked at him. He was staring into the wine as if something had poisoned it, and when he looked up his face was white with terror.
‘She’s here,’ he breathed.
Alarmed, Wulgar leaned forward. ‘Who is?’
But Kari had spun round, quick as a sword-slash. ‘Close the doors!’ he yelled, his voice raw and desperate over the hubbub. ‘Close them! NOW!’
Skapti was on his feet; Wulfgar too.
‘Do it!’ he thundered, and men around the hall moved, scrambling from tables, grabbing their weapons. Jessa caught Kari’s arm and the red wine splashed her dress.
‘What is it?’ she gasped. ‘What’s happening?’
‘She’s here.’ He stared over her shoulder. ‘Gods, Jessa. Look!’
Mist was streaming through the high windows; strange glinting stuff, full of shadows and forms, hands that came groping over the sills, figures that swarmed in the doorways. In seconds the hall was full of it, an icy silver breath that swirled and blinded.
Women screamed; angry yells and barking and sword-play rang in the crowded, panic-stricken spaces. The fires shrivelled instantly, hard and cold; candles on the table froze. The mist swirled between faces, and people were lost; Jessa saw Wulfgar tugging at his sword, then he was gone, blanked out by a wraith of fog that caught her and seemed to drag her by the arms. She tore herself away and somewhere nearby Kari called out; then he was shoved against her so hard they both fell, crashing against the table. She grabbed him and screamed ‘Kari!’, but he didn’t answer, and putting her hand to his face her fingers felt wetness. She held them near to her eyes and saw blood.
‘Kari!’
In the uproar no-one heard her. Pale unearthly forms of men and dogs moved around her; a sword slapped down hard nearby as men fought amongst themselves, against their shadows. She scrambled up and was knocked back by a blow from something cold and hard; crumpling on hands and knees she felt the side of her face go numb and tingle; then the pain grew to a throbbing ache.
Someone grabbed her; she flung him off but he gasped, ‘It’s me!’
She recognized the sword. ‘Hakon! What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Kari’s hurt. We need to get him somewhere safe!’
They felt for him in the mist and grabbed him under the arms; then Hakon dragged him back under the table, kicking benches out of the way. They crouched over him, shocked.
‘It’s Gudrun!’ Jessa stormed.
‘What?’
‘Gudrun! She’s doing this!’
Around them the mist closed in. Shapes moved in it; they thought they saw huge men, tall as trolls, creatures from nightmares. A fog-wolf with glinting eyes snarled under the table; the legs of distorted, monstrous beings waded past them through the hall. Frost was spreading quickly across the floor; it crunched under their feet and nails; they breathed it in and the pain of it seared their throats, clogged their voices.
‘Getting cold,’ Hakon’s voice whispered, close to her.
‘Me too.’ She struggled to say ‘Keep awake’ but her lips felt swollen, her tongue would not make the sounds.
Cold stiffened her clenched fingers.
‘Hakon …’ she murmured, but he did not answer. She felt for him; his arm lay cold beside her.
Around them the hall was silent.
Now the white grip of the ice was creeping gently over her cheek, spreading on her skin. With a great effort she shifted a little, and the fine film cracked, but it formed again almost instantly, sealing her lips with a mask of glass. She couldn’t breathe.
Crystals of ice closed over her eyelids, crusting her lashes.
Darkness froze in her mind.
A farseeing witch, wise in talismans,
Caster of spells.
LOST IN THE frost-spell, each of them walked in a dream. Brochael dreamt he was in some sort of room. He was sure of that, but couldn’t remember how he had come there. He was holding open a heavy door; a chain swung from it, rusted with age. In his other hand was a lantern; he raised it now, to see what was there.
In the darkness, something made a sound. He swung the light towards it.
It was squatting on the floor, pressed into a corner. A small, crouched shape, twisting away from the light. Heavily, Brochael crossed the dirty straw towards it. The door closed behind him.
The red flame of the lantern quivered; he saw eyes, a scuttle of movement.
It was a boy, about six years old. He was filthy, his hair matted and soiled, his clothes rags. Crusts of dirt smeared his thin face; his eyes were large, staring, without emotion.
Brochael crouched, his huge shadow enveloping the corner of the stinking cell. The boy did not move.
‘Can you speak?’ He found his voice gruff; anger mounting in him like a flame. When the boy made no answer he reached out for him. With that trembling touch he knew this was Kari; he remembered, and looked up, and saw Gudrun there. She put out her hand and pulled the boy up; he changed, grew older, cleaner, taller, so that they faced each other, among the shadows.
The lantern shook in Brochael’s hand.
He could not tell them apart.
Hakon dreamed himself in a white emptiness. As he reached for his sword it slid away from him; alarmed, he grabbed it and the whole floor rose up beneath him, became a surface of glass, slippery, impossible to grip. Desperately, palms flat, he slipped down, down into Gudrun’s spell, and below him was an endless roaring chasm, deep as his nightmares.
An idea came to him, and he stabbed the sword into the ice to hold himself steady, but out of it wriggled a snake that wound around his hand, the cool scales rippling between his fingers. He lost power and feeling; the fingers were forced wide and the snake gripped his wrist so tight the sword fell from his numb fingers; it toppled over the brink, and fell, and he fell after it, into nowhere.
Skapti’s nightmare was very different. For him it meant standing in a green wood, watching the mist from a distance. He knew it was a spell. Shapes moved in it; his friends, he thought, each of them lost.
Under his long hand the bark of the tree was rough; leaves were pattering down around him in the wind – at least he thought at first they were leaves, but as he looked at them again he saw they were words. All the words of all his songs were coming undone and falling about him like rain. He caught one and crunched it in his fingers; a small, crisp word.
Lost.
He let it fall, angrily, chilled to the heart.
Then he saw her standing in the wood; a tall white-skinned woman laughing at him. ‘Poets know a great deal, Skapti,’ she said, ‘and make fine things. But even these can be destroyed.’
As he stared at her the words fell between them, a silent, bitter snow.
Signi had no idea she was dreaming. A tall woman bent over her and helped her stand.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, brushing her dress. ‘What happened? Where’s Wulfgar?’
The woman smiled, coldly, and before Signi could move she fixed a narrow chain of fine cold links to each of her wrists. Signi stared at her, then snatched her hands away. ‘What are you doing?’
She gazed round in horror at the frozen hall. ‘Wulfgar!’
‘He won’t hear you.’ The woman turned calmly, leading her out; Signi was forced to follow. She tugged and pulled, but it was no use. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, fearfully.
Gudrun laughed.
As they left the hall it rippled into nothing, into mist.
Wulfgar knew he had lost her. In his dream he ran through the empty hold looking for her, calling her name. Where was everyone? What had happened? Furious, he stopped and yelled for his men.
But the night was silent; the aurora flickering over the stone hall and its dragon-gables. He raced down to the fjord-shore, and ran out onto the longest wharf, his boots loud on the wooden boards.
‘Signi!’ he yelled.
The water was pale, lit by the midnight sun. Only as he turned away did he see her, fast asleep under the surface. Eels slithered through her hair, the fine strands spreading in the rise and fall of the current. When he lay down and reached out to her, thin layers of ice closed tight about his wrist.
The water held him, a cold grip.
Only Kari did not dream. Instead he slipped out of his body and stood up, looking down at the blood on his hair. Then he edged between the fallen tables and the dream-wrapped bodies of his friends to the door of the hall, flung wide. Outside the watchman lay sprawled, his sword iced over, the black wolfhound stiff at his side.
Stepping over them, Kari hurried out under the dawn-glimmer and looked north. Down the tracks of the sky he watched shapes move; heard voices call to him from invisible realms. He answered, quickly, and the ghosts of jarls and warriors and women came and crowded about him.
‘What happened?’ he asked, bitterly.
‘She came. She took one of them back with her.’
‘Who came?’
They stared at him, their faces pale as his. ‘We know no names. Names are for the living.’
‘You must tell me!’
‘She. The Snow-walker.’
His mother. He wondered why he’d been so urgent; he’d known it would be her. He nodded and turned back slowly, and they made room for him, drifting apart like mist.
Coming back into the hall he gazed across it, at the frosted trunk of the roof-tree, where it stood rising high into the rafters. Two black forms sat among its branches.
‘Go out and look,’ he said. ‘There may be some trace of her. Look to the North.’
‘It’s unlikely,’ one of them croaked.
‘Try anyway. I’ll wake these.’
As they rose up and flapped out of the window he moved, reluctantly, back into his body, feeling the heavy pain begin to throb in his head, the bitter cold in fingers and stomach.
He rolled over, dragging himself up unsteadily onto his knees, fighting down sickness. Then he grabbed Jessa’s arm and shook it, feebly. ‘Jessa! Wake up. Wake up!’
It was all a dream, Jessa knew that. She stood on the hilltop next to the grazing horse and looked down at the snow-covered land. Fires burned, far to the south. A great bridge, like a pale rainbow, rose up into the sky, its end lost among clouds.
On the black waters of the fjord she was watching a ship, a funeral ship, drift on the ebb tide. Even from here she could see the bright shields hung on each side of it, and they were burning, their metal cracking and melting, dropping with a hiss into the black water. Flames devoured the mast, racing up the edges of the sails.
And on the ship were all the friends she knew and had ever known, and they were alive. Some were calling out to her, others silent, looking back; Skapti and Signi, Wulfgar and Brochael, Marrika and Thorkil, her father, Kari, Hakon with his bright new sword, and looking so desolate that her heart nearly broke.
Gudrun was standing beside her. The witch was tall; her long silver hair hung straight down her back.
‘My ship,’ she said softly. ‘And if you want them as they were, Jessa, you must come and get them.’
‘Come where?’ Jessa asked, furious.
‘Beyond the end of the world.’
‘There’s nothing beyond the end!’
Ah, but there is.’ Gudrun smiled her close, secret smile. ‘The land of the soul. The place beyond legends. The country of the wise.’
Then she reached out and gripped Jessa’s arm, painfully.
‘But now you must wake up.’
And it wasn’t Gudrun, it was Kari, his face white, blood clotted in his hair. He leaned against her and she struggled up from the floor, holding his arm. Ice cracked and splintered and fell from her hair and clothes; she felt cold, cold to the heart.
‘What happened? You look terrible!’
‘I hit my head,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t see properly.’
Making him sit down she stared around. The hall was dim, lit only with the weak night sun and a strange frosty glimmer. A film of ice lay over everything; over the floor, the tables, the sprawled bodies of the sleepers, over plates of food and upturned benches. Wine was frozen as it spilt; the fires were out, hard and black, and on the walls the tapestries were stiff, rigid folds.
In the open doorway she could see where the mist had poured in and turned to ice; it had frozen in rivulets and glassy, bubbled streams, hard over tables and sleeping dogs. The high windows were sheeted with icicles.
No wonder no-one had been ready. Swords were frozen into scabbards; shields to their brackets on the walls. A woman lay nearby holding a child, both of them white with frost and barely breathing.
Jessa shivered. ‘We’ve got to wake them! They’ll die otherwise.’
He nodded, stood up and walked unsteadily to the fires. As she shook Hakon fiercely she heard the crackle and stir of the rune-flames igniting behind her.
It took a long time to wake everyone. Some were deep in the death-sleep, almost lost in their dreams, their souls wandering far among spells. Brochael awoke with a jerk, gripping her shoulder; Skapti more slowly, raising his head from the table and looking upwards, as if the roof was falling in.
Gradually the hall thawed and filled with noise; murmurs grew to voices, angry, questioning; small children sobbed and the warmth from the fires set everything dripping and softening.
‘Get those doors shut!’ Brochael ordered. One arm around Kari, he parted the boy’s hair. ‘That’s deep. Get me something, Hakon, to stop the blood.’
‘Where’s Wulfgar?’ Jessa ran to the high table. It was overturned on its side. A knife had been flung in the confusion and was frozen, embedded in the wood. She scrambled over, tugging benches and chairs away, crunching the frozen straw underneath. She saw his arm first, flung round Signi, and with a yell to Skapti she tried to drag the heavy table off them, until men came and pushed her aside, heaving the boards away, crowding round the Jarl.
They helped him sit up, breathless and sore.
‘What was it?’ he managed.
Jessa crouched. ‘It looks like Gudrun’s work. Some sort of spell. A few people are hurt, but none are dead. Are you all right?’
He rubbed soot and ice from his face and nodded, turning to Signi. She lay cold on the straw, Skapti bending over her. The skald looked up, anxiously. ‘I can’t wake her.’
Wulfgar grabbed the girl’s shoulders, his hands crushing the fine silk. ‘Signi!’ He shook her again.
She lay still, still as death, but they saw she was breathing. Her face was clear, and her eyes opened, but there was no movement in her, no flicker of recognition.
‘Signi?’ Wulfgar said again. ‘Are you all right?’
When she still did not speak he lifted her, and Jessa righted a chair and they sat her in it, but her head lolled slowly to one side, the long hair swinging over her face.
A woman began to cry, in the crowd.
Wulfgar chafed her hands. ‘Get her waiting-women. Get Einar …’
‘It’s no use.’
Kari’s voice was harsh, and they turned, surprised. He stood by the table, Brochael’s great arm around him.
‘What do you mean?’ Wulfgar yelled.
‘She’s gone. Gudrun has taken her.’
‘Taken her!’ The Jarl leapt up. ‘She’s not dead!’
‘Not even that. Taken her soul, taken it far away.’ He put his hand to his head as if it ached, and for a moment Jessa thought he would fall, but he looked up again and nodded at the centre of the hall. ‘Look. She left her mark.’
The roof-tree was split, from top to bottom.
Carved deep in the wood a white snake twisted, poison bubbling and hissing from its jaws.
The gods hastened to their hall of judgement,
Sat in council to discover who
Had tainted all the air with corruption …
THEY CARRIED SIGNI upstairs and laid her on the brocaded bed in her room, with a warm fur cover over her and the fire crackling over the new logs. But nothing they did could wake her, no voice, no entreaty. She breathed shallowly, so slowly that it frightened them, and both the herb-woman, Gerda, and the physician, Einar Grimsson, tried every remedy they knew, filling the chamber with exotic scents of oils and unguents and charred wood. They even tried pricking her skin with sharp needles, but she never moved, though the red blood ran freely. Finally Wulfgar stopped it all and ordered them out.
When Jessa tapped on the door a little later, he was still sitting on the edge of the bed, his wine-stained coat held tight around him.
‘Well?’ he said, without turning.
She came into the room, Skapti behind her.
‘Kari says it was some kind of supernatural attack.’ The skald leaned against the shuttered window. ‘I think he’s right – there are no footprints outside, no horse tracks, no evidence of any armed force.’
‘But we saw them! Some of the men are wounded.’
‘I know, but what we saw were visions, Wulfgar, mind-shapes, nothing that was real. Everyone seems to have seen different things. Some of the men may have fought each other, or against wraiths and shadows – none of us knew what was real. We were all spell-blinded.’
‘Can you remember,’ Jessa said slowly, ‘what you dreamed?’
Skapti looked at her, absently. ‘No. Not really. Except that it was full of pain.’
Wulfgar got up suddenly and stormed around the room. ‘How could she do this! And why Signi? She’s never even met Gudrun! If the witch wanted revenge on us why didn’t she kill us all there in the hall?’
Jessa stirred, on the bench by the fire. ‘This is what she said she would do.’
They both stared at her blankly, so she dragged the loose brown hair from her cheek and said, ‘Don’t you remember the night we all saw her, in that strange vision? The night the creature came? She was standing in a snow-field. She said she wanted Kari to come to her, and he wouldn’t. Then she turned to you.’
‘I remember.’ Wulfgar stared darkly across the room. ‘She said “What you love best, that thing I will have.” But I never thought it would be this.’
He looked down at the girl on the bed. Her eyes were closed now, as if she slept.
‘Sit down,’ Skapti said gently. ‘We need to think.’
Wulfgar came over and slumped beside Jessa on the bench. All his usual lazy elegance had left him. He put his head in his hands and stared hopelessly into the fire. ‘What can we do?’
Neither of them could answer.
In the awkward silence they heard footsteps outside. Then Brochael opened the door and ushered Kari in.
The boy looked frail; he went and gazed down at Signi and they saw the deep raw cut across his forehead.
‘You should be in bed,’ Wulfgar muttered.
‘That’s what I said,’ Brochael growled.
Ignoring them both, Kari came and sat by the blazing logs.
‘What do we do?’ Wulfgar said again.
Kari watched him bleakly. Then he said, ‘It’s only too clear what we have to do. Gudrun has made sure we have no choice. We have to go to her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s where Signi is.’ He glanced again at the still shape on the bed. ‘That isn’t her, it’s just her body, her shell. It’s empty. She’s not there.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve been into her mind, Wulfgar, and it’s blank!’ He ran long fingers through his hair and then said, ‘Gudrun has done this to make me come to her.’
‘Come where?’ Jessa asked, remembering her dream.
‘I don’t know. Far away.’
‘The land of the White People.’
He shrugged. ‘Wherever that is.’
Skapti came forward, intrigued. ‘They say it’s beyond the end of the world. A place of trolls, a giant-haunt. They say the ice goes up to touch the sky. No-one could live up there.’
‘The snow-walkers live there. My people,’ said Kari, grimly.
Wulfgar looked up suddenly. ‘All right. If you say that’s what we have to do to get her back, we’ll do it. I’ll take as many ship-loads of men as I can get; a war-band …’
‘A war-band is no use,’ Brochael said, unexpectedly. His huge shadow loomed on the wall, the firelight warm on his tawny hair and beard. ‘The last Jarl sent a war-band up there and no-one ever came back.
‘He’s right,’ Kari said. ‘Besides, only I need to go.’
There was an uproar of protest, everyone speaking at once until Brochael’s strong voice silenced them. ‘You can’t go! Even if you got there, she’d kill you!’
‘She could have killed me here.’ Calmly Kari rubbed his forehead. ‘She doesn’t want that. She wants me alive.’