She ran back down, frowning.
Kari was sitting in his room with Hakon. As she came in she saw that he was carving another small bone circle with deft, skillful cuts.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.
Kari’s knife paused in midair.
“Tell you what?” Hakon asked in surprise.
“He knows.” She sat down between them. “It’s still here, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell us?”
Kari put the knife down on the bench and looked at it bleakly. “Keep your voice down, Jessa. If the holders know, they might panic.”
Hakon had stopped burnishing his sword. “What’s still here?”
“The spell. Whatever Gudrun sent.”
“How did you find out?” Kari asked quietly.
“The flowers.” She laid them on the bench. “The weather. The wind.”
“It’s not wind.” Kari picked up the ring of bone and turned it over. “Those are dreams, moving around us.”
“Can you see them?” Hakon asked, horrified.
Kari looked at him sideways. “I should have been ready for her!” he said, suddenly bitter. “Since she sent the rune creature last year, I’ve been gathering watchers around the hold. But she was too sudden, too fierce.”
“Watchers?”
Kari looked at him. “Ghosts,” he said.
Hakon paled.
Kari clenched his fingers on the bone disc. “You’re right, Jessa, the rune spell is still here. It won’t go. I can see it from the corners of my eyes, a coldness growing in the hold. It’s wrapped around Signi, but she was just the first. It will spread, an icy sleep, and one by one, without warning, they’ll all fall into it, their souls slipping away from them. Winter will close in. The fjord will freeze, the fires go out. Farmers, fishermen, thralls, they’ll all lie down and the ice will cover them slowly, month by month. Even the beasts. She’s wrapped the hold in its own dreams, and there’s almost nothing I can do about it.”
“Almost?”
He flipped the bone ring. “I have an idea. But most of all we have to find Signi.”
“That’s exactly what Gudrun wants.”
“Of course it is.”
They sat silent, feeling he had spoken prophecy, like a shaman reading the future. Perplexed, Hakon rubbed the dragons on his sword. “Have you told Wulfgar this?”
“Yesterday. As soon as I was sure. It’s another reason he has to stay.”
“But why should any of them stay?” Jessa said suddenly. “Why not clear everyone out of the hold—?”
His look silenced her. “No one can escape their dreams, Jessa. We five who go, I can protect. That’s all.”
“And those left?”
He spun the bone ring on the bench. “This.”
She picked it up and turned it over. “What is it?”
The smooth white surface was carved with small running lines. They seemed to move before her eyes, as if they rippled. He took it from her quickly. “It’s their defense....”
A babble of noise outside interrupted him, raised, urgent voices. Jessa jumped up and went to the window. After a second she said, “Come and see this.”
Hakon came behind her, Kari at her shoulder.
Below them a man was bent over in the mud; a small crowd gathering anxiously around him. He was shouting, his face white and desperate. As Wulfgar and Skapti came running up, the crowd moved back a little, and Jessa saw a small boy lying on the ground, curled up as if he was asleep. A handful of grain spilled from his closed fist; the hens still pecked at it hungrily.
“The children,” Kari whispered. “They’ll be the first.”
“Come on!” She pushed past him, ran down the stairs and out, and they both followed her without a word. The crowd fell silent as Kari made his way in beside Wulfgar.
“Has it started already?” the Jarl murmured.
Kari touched the boy’s forehead; the father glared, as if he would have pushed him away but dared not. For a moment Kari was still, his face remote, his colorless eyes watching the sleeping child. Then he looked at Wulfgar and nodded.
“What’s the matter with him?” the father yelled.
The Jarl caught him by the arm. “Summon your courage, Gunnar. The boy is asleep, that’s all. Take him home and put him to bed; I’ll send you some help.”
Watching him go he said, “It’s beginning, then.”
The door to the hall slammed wide, startling them all; inside they saw the tapestries billowing in the dream wind. A tiny flake of snow, no bigger than a shieldnail, sailed down and settled on Jessa’s sleeve. It did not melt for a long time.
“Find Brochael,” Wulfgar said grimly. “Tell him to get the men ready. We leave in the morning.”
Then he turned back and looked at Kari. “You said this will spread. How far?”
“The hold first. It’s already here—I can’t stop that. Afterward, over the whole realm.”
“Then we need some way to contain it, Kari. Anything.”
Kari nodded slowly. “I’ll do what I can.”
Six
Wider and wider through all worlds I see.
Late in the night Brochael woke up and turned in the cramped sleeping booth. It was too small for him, as they usually were, but this time he was glad of the discomfort, because the strange dream of the cell had come to him again, and the memory of it disturbed him.
After a moment he sat up with a mutter of irritation. It was cold in the stone room; the fire must have gone out.
He dragged the great bearskin from the bed, swung it around himself, and padded over the floor, scratching his tousled red hair. The brazier held a low glimmer of peats, and as he dropped new ones in, the light darkened even more, making the room a huddle of cold shadows. Still, it would blaze up eventually and last till morning.
He watched it sleepily for a moment, his mind avoiding the echoes of the dream. Gudrun’s sorcery still lurked here. It was not often that he thought about her—he hated the woman for what she had done to her son. Apart from Kari only he, Brochael, knew the full evil of that. And he feared her. As for Kari… All at once he realized how quietly the boy was sleeping, and turned quickly.
The bed was empty.
For a moment, rigid, Brochael stared at it. Then he shook his head, dragged the bench up to the warmth, and sat down, leaning back against the wall. The alarm that had flared in him for a second died down—he knew Kari well enough. The boy had strange gifts, and they drove him strangely. Often at home, in Thrasirshall, he would walk the snowfields and forests all night, the ravens flapping above him. Brochael knew he spoke to ghosts and wraiths and invisible things out there, things he could tell no one else about. He tugged the bearskin tight on his broad back. Wherever Kari was, it was his own realm. He was skillful there.
Under the oak tree at the edge of the wood Kari was digging, making a small pit with his knife in the moist soil under the leaf drift. Around him the night was silent, the wood a dank, rustling mass of darkness, rich with the smell of moss and wood rot.
When the hole was deep enough, he took a pouch from his belt, felt about inside for one of the small bone counters, and dropped it in.
“The last?” a voice croaked above him.
“Two more.” He straightened, stamping the soil down quickly, rubbing it from his hands. “One more to close the ring. Near the shore, somewhere.”
The moon glinted on his hair and face as he pushed through the tangle of bush and underbrush. Rowan saplings sprouted here at the wood’s edge, thorn and hazel and great fronds of bracken between them, chest-high. In the dappled silver light fat stems cracked and snapped under his feet. He struggled through, noticing the frosted crisp ends of the leaves, already dying. About him the night whispered; the dream wind brought him voices and murmurs and crystals of snow; two dark shapes drifted above him from tree to tree.