Spellbreakers (36 page)

They walked uphill on the clean-swept firn for two
hours before Ljung called a pause. By then Daria was famished, but Ljung
finally relaxed, and in the lee of a small icy hump they sat down with their
faces to the blessed sun and ate a cold but hearty breakfast.

“Will they follow us again?” asked Daria in a whisper.

“I don’t know. I never went past the seracs before.
Leif thinks that they belong in the labyrinth and never go far from it. Let us
hope so. But there are other dangers on the ice. We have a full day of marching
and another camp before we are in Waste Heart. There is the palace of the Ice
Queen, or so say the legends. Let us hope that we don’t have too much trouble
today. Tomorrow is your big day, Princess Leal.”

Leal was visibly taken aback by Ljung’s use of the
title. She did not comment, but she ate her last morsel of cake, took a sip
from her flask of cordial and got up with a set expression.

“All right then. Let’s get this done.”

They walked all day, making their way up and further
up in the ice clad mountains. The sun shone brightly overhead, and it soon
became astonishingly warm. They shed their mittens and scarves, then their fur
coats and finally their fur trousers, until they had stripped down to their
lighter woolen suits again. It made their packs heavier on their shoulders, but
the walking was infinitely easier, and despite the difficult terrain and the
slope they made good time. Except in the most exposed spots the ground was not
green ice, but packed white
firn
, old snow on its way to becoming ice.
It was not a bad ground for walking, but there were crevasses gaping here and
there, often hard to see until one was almost on top of them. They all wore a
veil of sheer black silk over their faces to filter the glare of the sun on the
snow, or they would have been blind in an hour.

Sometimes they crossed a pass in the ever rising
mountains, and the windswept ice was blue and hard on the ridges. These were
the most dangerous places, to be negotiated with infinite caution, climbing in
wary switch-backs up the ice face. There was always a breeze blowing down the
narrow passes, and the breeze always carried small bits of ice that tinkled on
the ice beneath like a perpetual wind chime. Compared to the ghastly laughing
voices in the seracs, it was a marvelous, soothing sound.

They saw nothing and nobody all day. When the light
faded they walked on as long as they could. Then the surface of the snow became
more and more indistinct in the gathering dusk, and they took a long break,
eating and resting in the shelter of an ice cave.

“We might walk some more if the moonlight is clear,
but even I don’t trust tackling this in the dark,” said Ljung, studying the
sky, where some scattered clouds were gathering. “Get your blankets and furs
out and sleep. I’ll keep watch and see what happens.”

They didn’t walk any further that night. Before the
moon had climbed a hand’s breadth from the horizon, the clouds closed in,
wrapping the glacier in impenetrable mist.

****

The mist on the firn was as blindingly white as the
storm had been, but without any sound. The gale of wind had almost worn them
all out with all-engulfing, all-shattering noise. The white mist almost got
them by a silent creeping madness. They spent two days in the ice cave. There
was absolutely nothing to see outside. They could tell day from night because
the mist changed from white to grey to black, although never completely black,
but other than that the whole world, rocks, sky, horizon, might have been made
out of fleece.

Ljung found it unsettling, but for the two human girls
that depended so much more on eyesight for orientation it was positively
nerve-racking.

The silence was absolute. There was no movement in the
air, and even the tinkling ice had stopped. There was no sound and no sight, as
if they had been locked in a particularly empty room of their mind. By the end
of the second day, even Daria’s courage was beginning to flag.

At some time around midnight of their second night in
the cave, Ljung thought he could just make out pale human shapes, as vague in
the mist as to be nearly invisible. They peered into the cave without making a
sound, beckoning to him with misty fingers.

I will not follow you, however much you call me,
he thought
.

After a long while, a voice as soft as a falling
dandelion seed called out to him by name. It was Naya’s voice.

Ljung heart jumped in his throat. For a moment he
almost got up and ran out on the snow, but then rational thought stopped him.

No. No! Naya is gone! I saw the blood running down her
breast! I felt her heart stopping!

The voice called and called. He pressed his hood
around his ears. He might have succumbed to the call had he been alone. But
Leal woke up.

“Did you hear that?” she asked. Her voice was real and
alive, and the other faded to the mist whence it had come. “It was my sister’s
voice.
Sperança.
She died last spring!”

 
“It’s just a
trick,” said Ljung. “Don’t listen to the voices. They are no better than the
isvættir
in the seracs. They might even be the same sort of people. They just want you
to stumble outside in the darkness and break your neck.”

They huddled together, holding tight to each other.

The next day Leal stood on the edge of the ice cave
covered in all the clothes she had brought and a blanket. It was hard to stay
warm. The fog froze to their clothes in a thin crust that cracked as they
moved, as if the glacier was trying to swallow them quietly.

“How long will this last?” asked Leal for perhaps the
fifth time that day. Ljung answered patiently, for the fifth time, that he didn’t
know, but that at this time of the year the weather was changeful. Something or
other would happen soon.

Hopefully, it will not be something worse.

Later, when the night turned the world to dark
nothingness they all three lay under all their blankets, in all their clothes.
It was hard to tell that under all those plush layers there were living bodies,
a lover’s silky thigh, her known skin and scent. There was not much latitude
for romance in such extremities of weather, and yet the closeness had never
been so utterly precious.

The third morning in the cave came with a long wailing
cry. Ljung shot up, sitting abruptly and scattering blankets. Daria and Leal
woke up and looked at him in alarm. They were ready for monsters, shadow, death
and perdition. Instead, Ljung laughed.

Outside the cave, the mist had a golden sheen to it,
and the melancholy cry kept calling and calling. He whistled up to the sky, and
a white shape plunged out of the mist like falling ice.

Tuula had found them again, and the sun was burning up
the clouds.

The glacier and its fell spirits had not defeated them
yet.

****

They began their last march in high spirits. The
sunlight alone would be enough to justify that. Tuula’s return was also an
encouraging sign. There was nothing rational about it, just the joy of seeing
her flying up there, unconquered by the storm, gleaming in the sun.

They walked for most of the morning before taking a
short
pause,
and then again until the early afternoon.
The mountains rose higher and higher, crest after crest, ridge after ridge.
They walked on doggedly, and reached the last pass as the sun was halfway on
its western course. From the height of the pass they looked down on the other
side.

The northern slope was not half as steep as the
southern one, just a little shallow descent to a vast, lake-like blue bowl.

They were looking down on the blue heart of the
glacier. Leal wished that Julie was here to see it. She might have been able to
describe this color. Leal wasn’t. She had never imagined such a purity of blue.
There was a depth of fresh snow on this side, presumably deposited here by the
storm that had almost killed them above the seracs.

“It’s getting late,” said Ljung. “We must either get
down there quick or go back and camp under the pass. Spending the night in view
of the palace doesn’t look like a good idea.”

Because they could see the palace from here.
It was not a legend. It was down there, blue in the
blue.

Going back seemed intolerable to Leal. She had been
riding, sailing and walking for two months to get here. She would not go back
one step now.

However, going down quickly over the soft snow was not
an easy task. At the end, Ljung threw all caution to the wind, unslung his
pack, placed it in front of him sat on the snow, and after a bit of rather
comical floundering, skidded down the slope like a child crazy with happiness
at the first snowfall of the year. Leal and Daria exchanged a glance and did
the same, following much faster in the path he had carved.

“Well, I hope that was not the last fun thing I do in
my life,” said Daria when they were at the bottom. Ljung helped her up from a
drift of deep snow where she had gotten wedged. They were all powdered white.

The blue ice looked deserted. Nothing moved except
Tuula circling high in the sky.

 
The palace was
a green-blue line on the horizon. It was hard to focus on the details in the
glare of the sun. It had perhaps a pillared front, and a tall roof with beams
carved in fantastic twisting shapes, all made of glittering ice.

There was still a wide expanse to cross between the
slope they had just descended and the glittering palace. It was flat and blue,
but textured and striped with drifts of windblown snow and darker crevasses. It
would still be quite a walk to get there, perhaps two miles or so.

Leal took a deep breath and stepped forward. Her
shadow was long before her.

Before she could take another step, Daria grabbed her
hand and turned her back. She looked straight in her face, her eyes piercingly
intense.

“Whatever happens in that palace, princess, we are
here for you, you understand? I know you think you must do this alone, but the
fact is, you are not alone. We will always be there for you.
Always.”

Leal opened her mouth to speak and then shut
it,
because there was nothing at all she could say. She put
a gloved hand on Daria’s shoulder and smiled. Ljung nodded solemnly. Leal put
her other hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s do this thing,” said Leal hoarsely.

There was a knot in her throat, but in fact she had
not felt so good since Elverhjem.

She had been so afraid that her love for Daria and
Ljung might doom her quest. Now she could see that it was what made her strong
enough to even attempt it.

Chapter
Eighteen

They had walked perhaps two hundred yards over the
unreal blue ice, when a dark shape appeared in the whiteness ahead with a great
baying and hurled itself across the intervening distance. It was a loping
growing figure, four legged and shaggy.

“Another warg?” asked Daria.

Ljung squinted in the glaring afternoon light and
slowly shook his head.
 
It was not a
warg. As it came closer it looked like a gaunt wolfhound, but a wolfhound of
fearsome, unbelievable size. It was hard to judge its height at first, but as
it
came
closer, scattering snow in its path, it became
obvious that it was almost as large as a horse.

It was almost shocking to see something black and
solid in this world of white and blue. The laughing shapes in the seracs were
hardly more improbable.

“It’s a garmr,” said Ljung somberly.

Leal didn’t like the look of the animal one bit. She
was fond of dogs, but even without his monstrous size, this had all the
appearance of a stark mad animal. There was blood slavering down its jaws,
matting the fur on his chest, and his eyes were yellow-red, as if a flame
burned at the bottom of his pupils. It was deranged with fury, as it charged
howling towards them.

“
Ljung,
now would be a good
time to use that bow of yours,” said Daria urgently.

Ljung took off his right glove with his teeth and
nocked an arrow.

The hound loped on. It was no more than twenty yards
away.

“Ljung!”
Daria’s
voice was taut with alarm. Leal had never heard her sound so scared.

Ljung pulled, aimed coolly, and loosed. It was a
straightforward shot. There was no way he could miss. The arrow flew straight
and true, and hit the huge hound square in the chest. The beast went down in a
shower of snow and blood, with a loud snarling yowl.

It was a nasty sound, full of rage and menace, not the
high pitched yelp that even a very large dog will utter if in pain. All three
travelers regarded the beast as it groveled on the ground. All three were
confused. It had been a deadly shot, yet there was a flurry of kicked snow, and
a furious snarling. It was hard to see anything clearly, but it didn’t seem as
if the dog was dying.
On the contrary.
The flailing
dark shape seemed to swell. By the sounds it made, it was a painful process.