The priest stared at him, his narrow face blank, as if he had exhausted all feeling.
“Why did you do it?” Skapti asked.
Vidar still looked at Kari. Then he said, “Because sorcery is wrong. It corrupts. Because Wulfgar allowed you to come here and I knew that you were dangerous. I believed what I said about you. One day you will destroy us. That’s why Gudrun left you here.”
Kari was silent. Jessa knew he had been wounded; Vidar’s words hung in the air like a dark chill.
Suddenly she spoke out. “You did it for your own ambition,” she said. “No other reason.”
Kari looked at her, a grateful flicker. Tension broke. The men moved, agreeing.
“Well said,” Skapti muttered.
As if in answer, one of the ravens squawked oddly, and Kari glanced up at it.
“Wulfgar, we still have Gudrun to deal with. Her creature is coming. Clear the hall quickly. Get your men out. This is my fight now.”
Lowering himself with a wince of pain into the chair, Wulfgar said, “You heard him. All of you, out.”
“I’m staying,” Jessa said firmly. She went over and kissed Wulfgar gently on the forehead.
“What’s that for?” he asked, smiling.
“For being alive!”
He shrugged. “Thank a hard life. And Skapti—who’d bully anyone back to existence.”
The skald folded his lanky arms. “I’m staying too. If I have to make songs about this creature I need to see it.”
“That’s never stopped you before,” Brochael murmured.
Hakon watched the last of the men hurry out. He wondered if he should go with them, and then remembered he was free—for the moment at least. Skuli had scuttled off already. He’d make up his own mind. And though he was afraid, he wanted to stay.
“As for Vidar,” Wulfgar snapped, “he can stay too. Let him see what this sorcery is.”
By now the hall was almost empty, and dark.
“If this fails,” Kari said, turning to Wulfgar suddenly, “you must all get out and burn the hall with the thing inside. No sword will hurt it, Wulfgar. Promise me you’ll do that.”
“No promises,” the Jarl said lightly.
Kari shook his head ruefully. “You’re a stubborn man.” Then he turned to Brochael. “Go and open the door.”
“What!”
“Open it. Wide. And keep yourself behind it.”
For a moment the big man looked down at him, bitterly anxious. “I hope you know what you’re doing, little prince.”
“So do I,” Kari said wryly.
“It could kill you.”
Kari shook his head. “Haven’t you realized why she sent it here yet, Brochael? Not to kill. To be killed.”
Brochael stared at him. Then he jammed the sword into his belt and turned away without a word. As he walked down the hall his boots rang on the flagstones; he grasped the wooden bar and heaved it aside with a mighty effort, the rumble echoing in the high rafters.
Then, slowly, he dragged the great door wide.
The night was black. Stars glinted.
Snow swirled in, sliding over the door with a faint, uneasy hiss.
Twenty-Eight
Gliding through the shadows came
the walker in the night.
It strode now, through the marsh.
Water splashed its face; the green slime of algae clotted it; mud splattered the spread claws.
Snow, like a white dissolving mist, opened and closed mysterious pathways about it, gave it glimpses of stars and water and a huddle of dark buildings against the dim sky.
Ahead, low in the distance, was the hall, lit with red light. From its wide-open door a mist of flame light breathed into the dark, as if the building was a great crouching dragon, lying asleep, its fires low.
Eagerly the rune beast stalked through the mists and the cold fog wraiths that drifted from the marsh; it breathed cold clouds against the stars. Snow stuck to its sharp face.
It came to the edge of the mud, to firmer ground. Already its hunger was immense. Here it became unbearable. Hunger was the empty world about it, the vast, frosty silences of the sky. Hunger was her voice in its ears, in its belly, in its sharpening, tangled mind.
Everything is ready now, she whispered. Everything.
Her voice was a cold breeze among the houses. She crossed its path like a shadow, slinking into the grass. You’ll see. My snake bond grips him, and he’ll use it. I left it for him. I left it for you.
Among the houses now, the dark timbers. Inside them the rune creature sensed terror, the humans crouched and listening, the smell of fear, the snorting, restless animals. It strode down the pathways the snow made, down the long dark openings of its pain, and ahead the hall rose like a fortress unlocked, a grim black wall of snow-dusted stone.
The door was open, a red mouth.
The creature stopped, one great hand on the wall.
In that opening lay the end of all its hunger; dimly it knew that. And yet even from here it could sense him, the one who waited, the one who had reached out and touched it, a strange, cold touch. And it gathered all its strength and made the question in its mind, knotted it together from sounds and memories and fears.
“What do you want me to do?”
Whatever he says, she answered. He will unleash you, not I. The power is his, and I’ve made sure he will hurt enough to use it. Feast, my friend.
The creature stood, silent.
Then after a moment it crouched under the lintel, and went in.
Twenty-nine
The monster strained away;
the man stepped closer.
The monster’s desire was
for darkness between them.
The thing loomed in the doorway.
In the dim spaces of the hall it rose against the rafters, a pale glimmer wreathed with mist and smoke, snow scattering from it.
Before it, Kari seemed very small, in a wilderness of stone.
Brochael hung back in the shadows of the doorway, watching.
It was not an animal. Not a man either exactly, but like one, Jessa thought, very like one. Its eyes moved, fixing on Kari; it roared and slashed at him viciously.
Kari flinched, but held his ground.
The creature seemed wary of coming closer. It swung quickly and looked behind it, but Brochael jerked back out of sight.
Then Kari spoke to it. “Listen to me.”
The rune beast stared. For a moment Jessa thought a flicker of recognition showed in its face.
“This is what you want.”
Kari held out his hand. The snakeskin band dangled from his white fingers.
The creature looked at it, making a peculiar wordless murmur in its throat.
“She left this here. She left it for me, and it drew you here. Over all the miles, through forests, over mountains, this was what you hungered for. It has enormous power. I think it has enough to enslave you or to set you free. Enough to fill all the emptiness in you.”
He turned it, thoughtfully, in his fingers. The skin gleamed, fire red.
Wulfgar stirred uneasily. “Wasn’t that Gudrun’s?” he breathed.
Jessa nodded, unable to speak. She remembered Gudrun flinging it down like a challenge, her cold voice saying, “You’ll use them, as I did. We always do.”
Now Kari held the shadow bringer still, by what power she dared not think.
The creature’s claw reached out; Kari stepped back. There was a tense pause; then with a roar of pain the beast struck out. With one blow it sent him reeling; Wulfgar leaped up, and Brochael raced out of the shadows with a yell.