Snow-Walker

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.