The creature ate greedily. Warmth moved in its throat; a welcome fullness flushed momentarily inside it. When it moved away, it left nothing but small bones and the stained, trampled snow.
Now it slid and slithered downhill, into a small valley where a stream ran deep under the ice. Smashing through the thick, bubbled lid, the creature bent and drank, crystals of ice forming instantly on its lips, thin icicles that snapped as it raised itself and roared. It tore berries from bushes, twigs and needles from pines, chewing them and spitting them out. Thought stirred in it; it crouched and scrabbled at the roots of a tree, flinging snow aside, but the topsoil was frozen deep and nothing lived in it.
The rune beast hugged itself, rocking silently. Snow from the branches above drifted down on it, dusting its limbs and shoulders. It was growing stronger. Slowly, meal by tiny meal, it was hardening, becoming less a web of runes and shadows, more a thing of hunger and teeth and frost. The voice in its head spoke endlessly to it, sometimes comforting, sometimes mocking.
Reluctantly the creature gathered itself and stood, swaying. It staggered on, always south. For long hours it trudged through the aisles of trees, torn at by brambles, soaked with falling snow. Somewhere far ahead was something it must have, a distant tugging at its nerves.
Only when the noise came did it stop.
The noise was strange, and the smell that drifted with it made the creature whimper with excitement and pain. It crouched in the snow, clenching and unclenching its long, clawed fingers. The sound was high, an echo, a clang. Not a tree murmur, not one of the feathered whistlers. In all the leagues of its journey the shadow maker had heard nothing like this. Silent, it dragged itself to a tree and stared around, clutching the mossed trunk.
It saw an animal, large, four-legged, gray-white. Branches sprouted from its head. The sound came from a tiny round thing that clanked and jangled on its neck. There were others too, behind, tearing lichen from the trees with their long, quick tongues.
This is good, the voice told it, laughing. You must strike now. You must feed. This is your strength that has come to you.
Five
There was laughter of heroes; harp-music ran,
words were warm-hearted.
She was kneeling by a small pool. Around her the courtyard was deep in snow, but the pool was liquid, silver-gray. Reflections of cloud drifted across it.
“Where?” she asked.
“I don’t know where,” the voice behind her said quietly. “But look, Jessa, look harder. Please.”
She bent closer. Her own face stared back, the long ends of her hair brushing the surface. And then, far under, far through, she saw the movement of something through trees, something large, pale, undefined.
“I can’t see it clearly.”
“Because I can’t, not yet. But it’s coming. It’s coming closer every day.”
A coal shifted. She opened her eyes quickly.
“Kari?” she murmured.
But the small room was empty and dim. The draft from the window had blown the rushlight out.
Stiffly she got up from the chair and crossed the room and looked out. The Jarlshold was dark. Stars glimmered over the smoke; the pale mountains on the other side of the fjord were jagged and immense against the black sky. She let the cold air freshen her. It was strange to have fallen asleep like that, though she hadn’t slept much the night before, what with talking to Skapti and then lying bundled in fur in the stern, feeling the ship rise and plummet beneath her.
And the dream. Already it was fading, and she groped after it. Kari had been there, and had said … but she couldn’t remember what. She wondered if he could be watching her now and made a face at the empty air. “That’s for Brochael,” she said aloud. But the room was silent, and wherever Kari was, he wasn’t here.
She slammed the shutter suddenly and latched it and went downstairs. The Jarlshall was busy, and the feast was for her. It was Wulfgar’s welcome, and rightly so, she thought wryly, after all the things they’d been through in the past, both outlaws, both hunted. She smoothed the embroidery on the scarlet dress old Marrika had sewn for her; it was tasseled and laced with sealskin and hung with ivory. On each shoulder she had pinned the two great discs of interwoven gold that had been her mother’s, and her grandmother’s before that, the last treasures of the family hoard. They felt heavy, and reassuring.
The hall was warm as she pushed her way through the crowd. Many of them knew her, some were old friends of her family, and it took her a long while to get to the high table, already tired with polite talk. Skapti had a chair ready for her, next to Wulfgar’s empty one.
“Place of honor.”
“Quite right,” she said, sitting. “So where’s the host?”
He grinned and sat beside her. “Down there talking. He’ll be along.”
“I hope so. I’m hungry.”
And the word broke the dream and she remembered it, the pool, and the white shape Kari had tried to show her, and the hunger. That most of all. But what she had seen was vague; she put it to the back of her mind. Later she’d remember.
She leaned her chin on her hands and looked down at the crowd, talking, arguing, carving meat, laughing. All those hands and faces. All those words. The three fires were well ablaze, roaring out heat; smoke rose straight to the roof where it hung about the smoke holes and the ring window. Doves flapped up there, restless. On the walls hung heavy tapestries, and Jessa remembered how some of them had burned with Gudrun’s rune fire on the night the witch had left. In the center of the hall stood the roof tree, a mighty pillar rising into the dark, its trunk carved with ancient signs for power and luck. In Gudrun’s time a white snake had been cut deep into the timber; Jessa could still see parts of its sinuous outline, scored over with new runes cut by Wulfgar’s priests and shamans.
She looked past and saw Wulfgar coming, but then Vidar caught his arm and came with him, talking all the time.
“Now what’s so urgent?” Skapti muttered.
“You don’t like him, do you?”
“Who? Wulfgar?”
She smiled impatiently. “You know who I mean, clever. This Vidar.”
The skald ran one long finger around the lip of his cup. “Sharp, Jessa.”
She thought of the innkeeper and frowned, but Wulfgar was sitting beside her now. “I’m sorry, Jessa.” He waved to the house thralls to serve, and great dishes began to appear, bobbing through the crowd. The food was good, and Jessa began to enjoy it. As they ate, Wulfgar told her he had begun a search for the thief.
“I’ll have no footpads—not if I can get rid of them.”
“Which you won’t,” Skapti muttered.
“We’ll see.” He looked down the long hall thoughtfully. “Things have begun to change, Jessa, and there’s so much more I want to do. Gudrun nearly destroyed us; she tainted us with evil, with the stink of witchery. No one dared speak out—you remember how it was. Sorcery doesn’t need weapons, or a knife in the ribs; it poisons courage, robs men of will, makes them fear shadows, things that move in the dark. We’ve finished with all that.”
She nodded, but was silent, thinking of Kari. Sorcery was in him too. Sorcery that had won Wulfgar his land. Had he forgotten that? Was that why Kari kept away?
Vidar was watching her. He’d been listening; that annoyed her. Now he said, “Wulfgar is right. We can do without such things.”
She couldn’t help it. “What about Kari?”
Vidar shrugged; Wulfgar looked uneasy. “Kari is different, of course.”
“And far away,” the priest added.
And you want him to stay away, she thought, watching him speak quietly in the Jarl’s ear. His eyes watched the men in the hall, darting from group to group.