“What are those?” Brochael marveled.
“Waterspouts,” Skapti said, unpoetic for once. “That much is clear. It must build up underneath. It’s a steaming cauldron down there; the earth forge, Hel’s anvil. The crust we walk on is weak; in places it breaks.”
Crossing the lava field took almost all day; the ground was ashen, choked with cinders, and fumes and plumes of smoke drifted from it. In places it had cracked and fallen away, and they saw in deep ravines below them the slow red magma, flowing and curling and hardening in dark, crusted clots.
Gradually, late in the afternoon, the air became cooler; they came to soil of black cinders. The rocks here were bigger; their surfaces pulverized and pitted with holes, riddled with tiny lava tunnels. Leaning against one for breath, Skapti said, “Look there.”
It was a small circular pool of water, clear as glass. The weak sun gleamed on it, making its surface glitter.
They were all thirsty, so they scrambled toward it over the rocks. Jessa’s foot slid into a crack and wedged. Kari waited for her while she tugged it out.
“I feel filthy,” she said irritably. “Covered with dust.”
“It hangs in the air,” he said, looking up.
They hurried after the others, who had reached the pool and were bending over it.
A raven squawked above them; it flapped past, brushing their faces with the draft of its wings.
Kari stopped dead.
She bumped against him.
“Look,” he murmured.
Astonished, she gazed over his shoulder. Skapti and Hakon were lying still, sprawled; as she watched, Brochael crumpled and fell, the water spilling from the leather sack in his hand onto the dry rocks. Moongarm lay beyond him.
Jessa clenched her fists. “It’s poisoned!”
“I don’t think so.” He nodded. “Over there.”
Jessa stared into the smoke. Slowly she made out a shape standing among its drifts and swirls; a woman, a young woman, her black hair tied back. She came forward, picking her way over and staring down at the sprawled men. Then she bent; when she stood up, she had Hakon’s sword in her hand. She stood over him, considering.
“No!” Jessa stepped forward. The woman turned, like an animal turns. She said something, moved her hand in some gesture, but Kari ignored it and came on, jumping down among the lava. Jessa followed.
Up close, the woman was strange. Her skin was shining with grease rubbed into it; her eyes were narrow and slanting. She wore thick furs, right up to her neck, and boots of the same, enviably warm. She stared at them both curiously.
“It won’t work on me,” Kari said.
“So I see.” The woman looked down at Skapti and laughed. “Pity. Three of my goats have been stolen. These are the thieves, I thought.” She looked back at him. “Do you pursue them?”
“They’re our friends.”
“Are they? And why has one of the Snow-walkers crossed the rainbow?”
Kari looked at her, unmoving. The words of the wraith soldier in the wood flickered into his mind, a glimmer of colors, a warning, a long fall into the dark.
Jessa glanced at him, then at the woman. “Have you killed them?”
“No. I can wake them. Or your friend can.”
“We didn’t mean to steal,” Kari said quietly. “We’ve come a long way. We’re looking for the land of the Snow-walkers.”
For a moment she looked at him, puzzled. Then she snapped her fingers; the sprawled sleepers stirred and she looked down at them scornfully.
“Get them up,” she said. “Bring them.”
Twenty
The old songs of men I remember best.
“She’s a skraeling,” Skapti whispered. “I’ve heard of them.”
From the back of the room the woman emerged, carrying cheese and fish. “So the barbarians of the south call us,” she said coolly.
She put the food into the sack and pushed it toward them. “This is for you to take tomorrow. It’s all I can spare.”
“Thank you,” Jessa said in surprise.
“Oh, I have a price.”
They looked at one another uneasily. The woman’s dark eyes noticed; she smiled through the smoke of the fire. “But first, tell me how you came to the ends of the earth.”
It was to Jessa she spoke, and Jessa told the story, as quickly and clearly as she could. The woman listened, sitting close to the flames, once or twice nodding her glossy hair. The smoky tallow dips that lit the small house reeked of goat fat; they showed only shadowy corners, a loom, a scatter of skins.
“And now,” Jessa said, “we need what you know.”
“Indeed you do.” The woman put her fingertips together. She looked at them all. “You are a strange company, to have come so far. Beyond the wood is a land of legends.”
“As is this land for us,” Skapti said, smiling.
“So all legends are true, then. But as for what lies before you…” She shook her head. “All I know is this. Two days’ walk to the north of here is the great chasm. Even before you see it, hours before, you will hear it, a raging of blizzards, a roaring of the elements. The wind will be a wall before you. Crossing the chasm is a bridge, a mighty structure of ice and crystals, lifted by sorcery. It comes and goes in the sky. It leads, they say, to the land of the Snow-walkers. Of that place I know nothing.”
She looked at Kari. “But I have seen them, once or twice, glimpsed them in the blizzard. They are white as ice, and have strange powers. Like gods.”
Kari shook his head. “Not that.”
“You should know, traveler.”
“What about you?” Jessa asked. “Why do you live here alone?”
The woman smiled again. “There are many of us. The others travel between sea and pasture, in the blizzards and the ice floes, with the flocks. This is the place of memory, the place between heat and cold, light and darkness. One of us is always here. I am the memory keeper, the story weaver. Here I weave the happenings and hangings of my people.”
“Their history?”
“Their memory. What is a people without memory? Nothing but a whisper on the ice. Later, Jessa, I will show you, all of you.”
“But your price for the food,” Brochael growled.
She looked at them silently. Then she said, “I have an enemy.”
“And you want us to…?”
“Ask him to leave.”
“And if he won’t?”
“Kill him.”
Skapti threw a worried look at Brochael.
The woman smiled, mocking. “The idea appalls you.”
“We’re not murderers, nor outlaws,” Brochael said heavily. “At least not all of us. Who is he? What has he done to you?”
She laughed, amused, and her laughter shocked them until Kari said, “Don’t tease them. Tell them what you mean.”
Touching his shoulder lightly, she said, “I mean to.” Then she lifted her eyes to Brochael. “He knows why I laugh. This enemy of mine is not a man.”
“A woman?” Hakon was appalled.
Her dark eyes lit; she shook her head. “Not a woman either.”
“An animal,” Moongarm said quietly.
“I thought you would know.” Spreading her hands to the blaze, she said, “Every night, in the starlight, a great bear prowls about this house. It hungers for the goats. It kills anyone that travels here. If it will not go, I would have that bear’s skin.”
She looked at Kari. “You must speak to it for me.”
Worried, Brochael said, “Look, a bear is a dangerous creature—”
“So are wraiths and ghosts and spirits. The Snow-walkers move among them, speak to them as I speak to you. Isn’t this true?”
Kari nodded. “I’ll try,” he said simply.
“And if it won’t go, we’ll do what we can,” Brochael muttered.