Beyond the Gap Read online

  He broke off. He was damned if he'd say he was sorry. He could still feel her fingers on the skin at the back of his neck. His hand tightened on the goblet till he feared the stem would snap. Somehow, the stolen caress infuriated him worse than all her infidelities. She'd lost the right to touch him that way. No, she hadn't lost it. She'd given it up, thrown it away. She took it back for a moment only because she wanted to provoke him.

  She knew how to get what she wanted. She commonly did.

  Her smile said she knew she'd scored, even if she might not know just why. Her teeth were white and strong, too. That also made Hamnet want to scowl; poppy juice and henbane or not, he'd had a horrid time with a tooth-drawer the year before.

  "So you're going traveling with the splendid Trasamund, are you?" she said, eyeing the tall Bizogot with admiration unfeigned and unconcealed. If she decided she wanted him, she would go after him. Yes, she knew how to get what she wanted, all right.

  And what would Eyvind Torfinn think of that? Hamnet almost threw the question in her face. Then he saw she was waiting for it, looking forward to it. Whatever the answer was, it would have claws in it. He didn't feel like giving her the satisfaction. "So I am," he said stolidly, and let it go at that.

  Eyvind Torfinn came up then, a winecup in his hand. He was a comfortably plump man getting close to sixty if he hadn't already got there. Maybe he wouldn't mind so much if Gudrid satisfied herself somewhere else every now and again. Hamnet drained what was left of his mead. Gudrid hadn't played him false because he failed to satisfy her. Adultery was a game to her, and she excelled at it as she did at most things.

  "Thyssen," her new husband said politely.

  "Torfinn," Count Hamnet returned. He had . . . not too much against the older man, who'd always seemed faintly embarrassed at acquiring his wife.

  "Dear Hamnet is going exploring with the wild Bizogot." Gudrid made it sound faintly disreputable. She eyed Hamnet, ready to finish him off. "What is it you're going off to look for?" Whatever it was, by the way she asked the question it couldn't have been more important than a small coin that had fallen out of a hole in a belt pouch.

  "The Golden Shrine," Hamnet answered, his voice still flat. Let her make what she wanted of that.

  Her lioness eyes widened, for a heartbeat looking only human, and amazed. "But that's a fable!" she exclaimed. "Nobody really believes it's up there, or wherever it's supposed to be."

  "Oh, no. That is not so. Many people do believe it." Gudrid looked amazed all over again, and even less happy than she had a moment earlier. Count Hamnet didn't contradict her; Eyvind Torfinn did. "I happen to be one of them myself," Eyvind went on. He turned to his wife's former husband. "Why would anyone think the chances of finding it now are any better than they would have been last year or a hundred years ago?"

  "Because the Gap has finally melted through. Trasamund's traveled beyond the Glacier." Hamnet Thyssen usually had as little to say to Gudrid's new husband as he could. Maybe the mead was what loosened his tongue enough to make him say, "So you believe in the Golden Shrine, do you, Earl Eyvind? Why is that?"

  As Gudrid had a moment earlier, he got more than he bargained for. Eyvind Torfinn didn't just believe in the Golden Shrine. He knew more in the way of lore than Hamnet thought there was to know. His talk went spinning back through the centuries, back to the days before Nidaros was even a hunting camp, back to empires far older than the Raumsdalian, back to other retreats of the Glacier—though he didn't know of any others where the Gap actually opened.

  By the way Gudrid listened to him, he might have been talking about a mistress he'd kept secret from her. Maybe she thought he was, and maybe she was right; knowledge was like that for some men. Hamnet Thyssen hadn't known Eyvind was one of them. Plainly, his former wife hadn't, either. After a couple of exaggerated yawns didn't make Eyvind Torfinn dry up, she flounced off, hips working in the clinging maroon wool knit dress she wore.

  Her husband never noticed. He was comparing and contrasting modern ideas about the Golden Shrine with those from bygone days. He knew more about ideas from bygone days than Hamnet Thyssen had thought any living man could. "And so you see," Eyvind Torfinn said with an enthusiast's zeal, "there is more than a little consistency about these notions through time. Not perfect consistency, mind you, but more than a little. Enough to persuade me something real lies behind all the guesswork and the legends."

  What Hamnet saw was Gudrid doing everything but painting herself against Trasamund. She all but purred when the Bizogot stroked her. If her gap wouldn't open for him, Hamnet would have been very much surprised.

  But that was not his worry now, for which—some of him—thanked God. He set a scarred and callused hand on Eyvind Torfinn's shoulder. "Your Splendor," he said, "his Majesty was talking about recruiting a scholar to accompany us on the journey north. I think you are the man we need."

  "I?" Eyvind Torfinn said in mild astonishment.

  "Certainly. You know so much about the Golden Shrine. Wouldn't you like to put what you know to use? Wouldn't you like to see the Temple with your own eyes?" If it's there to see, Hamnet Thyssen added, but only to himself.

  Eyvind stared at him. "I would like that very much," he said. "Whether I can make such a journey may be another question. Beyond the Glacier! I was not sure there was such a thing as beyond the Glacier. For all I knew, for all anyone knew, it went on forever."

  "I had the same thought when I learned the Gap has melted through," Count Hamnet said. "But Trasamund speaks of white bears and strange buffalo and other marvels he's seen with his own eyes."

  "Does he?" Eyvind Torfinn looked toward the tall Bizogot. By then Gudrid, with a sure instinct for self-preservation, no longer clung to him, even if she did hover close by. Seeing her set her present husband down a different thought-road. He swung back toward Hamnet. "Can you stand to make a journey with me, your Grace? I would not be grateful—I fear I would not even be long ungrateful—if you set on me the moment we passed the Empire's borders, or perhaps even before we passed them."

  "By God, your Splendor, by God and by my honor, I will do nothing of the sort," Hamnet Thyssen said. "You have my oath, the strongest oath I can give. If it is not enough to satisfy you ... If it is not enough to satisfy you, sir, then be damned to you. I don't know what else to say."

  "If we meet danger, I am more likely to prove a liability than an asset," Earl Eyvind said. "I am not young. I am not strong. I am not swift or graceful. I have not even practiced with a sword for many years, let alone unsheathed one in anger."

  "You know things," Hamnet said. "You know things I did not think anyone could know. Speak to Trasamund." Though not of your wife—she's not mine now. "Speak to the Emperor. Knowledge is always an asset."

  "Is it?" Eyvind Torfinn raised a bushy gray eyebrow. "Are you glad knowing . . . what you know about the lady who was once your wife?"

  "Am I glad? No," Count Hamnet answered steadily. "Would I rather know the truth than live in a fool's paradise? Yes, and she played me for a fool." And she'll play you the same way, if she hasn't done it already, and you may prove yourself a fool if you don't know that.

  "The Golden Shrine," Eyvind murmured. "Well, maybe, if you don't think I would slow you up too much."

  "Persuade Trasamund. I have no trouble with riding a little slower than I might have ridden otherwise, but I'm no hot-blooded, impatient Bizogot." And you have put horns on me, and Trasamund—I doubt not—will put horns on you, and if I should meet Trasamund's wife, if he has a wife... What a jolly gathering we would be then.

  "Well! The Golden Shrine!" Eyvind Torfinn said, and he waddled off toward the Bizogot jarl.

  * * * *

  Sigvat II was delighted that Earl Eyvind wanted to fare north, and delighted and amazed to discover him a scholar of the Golden Shrine. Trasamund was willing to bring him along, although amazed and less than delighted to discover him the husband of Gudrid. Hamnet Thyssen was . . . resigned. He would have had some strong opinions if he
thought Gudrid was coming along, but she seemed furious that Eyvind Torfinn could find the Golden Shrine more interesting, more attractive, than she.

  "She will spend my money while I am gone," Eyvind said to Count Ham-net when they met two days after the reception to plan what they could. On a journey into the unknown, they couldn't plan nearly as much as Hamnet would have liked.

  "No doubt you are right, your Splendor," Hamnet replied. She will spend your reputation while you're gone, too, he thought with mournful certainty.

  "I hope I have some left by the time I get home," Eyvind Torfinn said.

  "Maybe your chief of affairs should oversee your funds," Hamnet said. And who would oversee Gudrid's affairs? Hamnet Thyssen almost laughed at himself. No doubt Gudrid would take care of those on her own.

  Hamnet glanced over toward Trasamund. Did the Bizogot jarl speak fluent enough Raumsdalian to make that joke, or one like it, for himself? By the smirk on his ruddy, weathered face, he did.

  Earl Eyvind was either blind to what Gudrid was or resigned to it. Hamnet hadn't made up his mind which. He wouldn't have wanted to be either one, though he'd stayed blind for too long when she was his wife. Maybe he hadn't wanted to see. Considering all the strife that sprang up when he finally couldn't help it... He shook his head. He didn't want to consider that.

  "We still need a sorcerer," Eyvind Torfinn said. He was looking ahead again to the lands beyond the ice, not to what Gudrid would do while he wasn't here to watch her. "His Majesty was wise to suggest one."

  "I suggested one," Trasamund said in a voice like distant thunder.

  "Did you indeed, your Ferocity?" For the first time, Earl Eyvind eyed the Bizogot as something more than a dangerous and dubiously tame animal. Eyvind didn't seem to have imagined a brain might lurk under that handsome, well-muscled exterior. He blinked once or twice, revising his opinion.

  "I did." Trasamund proudly drew himself up straight. All Bizogots were full of ungodly gobs of pride—so it seemed to Raumsdalians, anyhow. A Bizogot jarl was apt to be proud even by the standards of his people. Having known quite a few clan chiefs among the mammoth-herders, Hamnet Thyssen had seen that for himself. And Trasamund was proud even for a Bizogot jarl.

  "Well, good for you, then." Eyvind Torfinn kept his voice mild. Even if Trasamund wanted to act irascible, that mildness left him not the smallest excuse. Eyvind's gaze swung back to Count Hamnet. "And where will we come by the wizard?"

  "Ulric Skakki is searching Nidaros for the best man," Hamnet answered.

  "You know this Skakki, don't you?" Eyvind Torfinn said. "I confess I had not met him before. He seems . . . versatile."

  "A sneak, a thief, a cutpurse, a knife in the dark, a pretty song to woo the ladies." Trasamund delivered his judgment before Hamnet Thyssen could. "A good man at your side, maybe not so good at your back." He mimed taking a knife in the kidney.

  "And what do you think, your Grace?" Eyvind Torfinn asked Count Hamnet—he valued a Raumsdalian's opinion more than the jarl's.

  But Hamnet said, "I think his Ferocity is a keen judge of men." He bowed to Trasamund. "I rode with Ulric Skakki once. We had some business to attend to for his Majesty—this was toward the end of the first Sig-vat's days." He made a sour face. "It was one of those nasty little things you wish you didn't have to do, the kind you don't like talking about afterwards. And we took care of it, and Ulric was .. . everything you said he was, Trasamund."

  "Did you let him get behind you?" the Bizogot inquired.

  "No. I'd already decided that wasn't a good idea," Count Hamnet answered. "As long as I could keep an eye on him, everything was fine."

  Trasamund nodded. That satisfied him. And hearing his cleverness and judgment praised pleased him no less than it would have pleased a Raumsdalian. He likes himself pretty well, Hamnet thought. No, Bizogots were no more immune to vanity than the folk of the Empire. Many people would have said they were less immune to it.

  "How far did you travel after you passed through the Gap?" Eyvind asked him.

  "I stayed beyond the Glacier for about three weeks all told," Trasamund said. "I wasn't heading out in a straight line to see how far I could go, you understand. I was wandering here and there, wandering wherever I pleased."

  "Drunkard's walk," Eyvind Torfinn murmured.

  "By God, I wasn't drunk!" Trasamund's cheeks flamed with anger. "I drank water all through that journey—well, almost all through it."

  Eyvind held up a plump, placating hand. "No, no—I meant no offense. The drunkard's walk tries to answer the question of how far from where you start you will end up if you travel at random for such and such a time."

  Trasamund's face remained thunderously suspicious. "How can anyone know that? And why would anyone care?"

  "It takes a good deal of calculating," Earl Eyvind allowed. "And why? Well, people like to find out whatever they can. Haven't you seen that?"

  "Didn't you come down to Nidaros, your Ferocity, because you knew Raumsdalians know more different kinds of strange things than you Bizogots do?" Hamnet Thyssen added.

  Trasamund made a discontented noise down deep in his broad chest. He had said something like that, so he couldn't very well deny it. "I meant you people know useful things, though," he said. If he couldn't deny, he could deflect.

  Count Hamnet looked over to Earl Eyvind. He thought the notion of a drunkards walk sounded silly, too, so he didn't know how to defend it. "Knowledge is strange," Eyvind Torfinn said. "You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carry different tools on his belt. Should he not carry different tools in his head as well?"

  Instead of answering him straight out, the jarl of the Three Tusk clan strode over to a sideboard and poured himself a goblet of mead. He drank it down in one heroic draught. Hamnet Thyssen suspected that was an answer of sorts.

  * * * *

  When Ulric Skakki brought a wizard back to the palace, Count Hamnet's first thought was of the drunkard's walk Eyvind Torfinn had mentioned. The sorcerer's name was Audun Gilli. He didn't look or act drunk. He looked like a man drying out after a long binge instead—and not like a man happy to be drying out, either.

  Count Hamnet recognized that look. He knew it better than he would have liked. He'd gone on a bender or two of his own as his troubles with Gudrid got worse. He'd been sober when he killed. That was something— not much, but something.

  Of course, if he were drunk when he faced Gudrid's first lover (or the first one he caught, anyhow), the other man probably would have killed him. At the time, he would hardly have minded. Now he saw living on without her as revenge of sorts.

  He also saw that Audun Gilli was in a bad way. He shouted for a palace servant. "Bring this man a mug of sassafras tea," he said, pointing to the wizard. "No, bring him about three. By the time he gets to the bottom of the last one, he may be a bit better off."

  "Bring me the hair of the hound—sassafras tea be damned." Audun Gilli's voice was a sorrowful whine.

  The servant looked toward Hamnet Thyssen. "Tea!" Hamnet snapped. The man bowed and hurried off. Audun Gilli's sigh said it was just one more defeat in a lifetime full of them. Count Hamnet paid no more attention to him—but then, how many people ever did? Hamnet rounded on Ulric Skakki. "By God, Ulric! Which gutter did you drag him out of, and why?"

  "Why? Because he'll do what we need, that's why," Ulric Skakki answered. "More to him than meets the eye." He sounded very sure of himself. From what Hamnet remembered, Ulric always sounded sure of himself. That didn't mean he was always right, though he had trouble recognizing the difference.

  "There could hardly be less to him than meets the eye," Count Hamnet said with something between a sneer and a cry of despair. "Look at him!"

  He glared at Audun Gilli himself. The wizard flinched under that fierce stare. Audun was a small, weedy man, the sort who didn't stand out in a crowd. He had a long, weathered-looking face, a scraggly beard—brown go­ing gray—and a nose that was his
largest but not best feature. The whites of his gray-blue eyes were yellowish and tracked with red. His hands trembled.

  They were a wizard's hands but for the tremor; Hamnet Thyssen could not deny that. They had narrow palms and long, delicate fingers—perfect hands for the complex passes some spells required. A wizard with the shakes, though, was like a blind archer; he was more likely to be dangerous to his friends than to his foes.

  The servant came in with three steaming mugs on a tray. He'd taken Hamnet literally, then. Good, Hamnet thought. He thrust a mug at Audun Gilli. "Here. Drink!"

  With a martyred sigh, the wizard obeyed. He did need more than one mug before Hamnet saw any improvement. He was on the third one before he seemed to see any improvement himself. "I never thought I'd be warm inside again," he murmured.

  "Well, that proves he wasn't drinking mulled wine," Hamnet said to Ul­ric Skakki. "What was he drinking? Anything he could get his hands on, that's plain. And why was he drinking it by the bloody wagonload? And, since he was drinking wagonloads of anything he could get his hands on, what in God's name makes you think he's worth even a counterfeit copper as a wizard?"

  "I don't do this all the time," Audun Gilli protested feebly.

  "Of course you don't. If you did, you would have been dead in the gutter where Ulric Skakki tripped over you, not just lying in it." Count Hamnet rounded on Ulric. "Now answer me—or else I'll throw him out on his worthless ear and take the cost of three cups of sassafras tea out of his worthless hide."

  "How can you take cost out of something worthless?" Audun asked, the first sign Hamnet Thyssen had that whatever he'd drunk hadn't curdled his wits for good.

  "He's had a hard time," Ulric Skakki said. "If you'd had that hard a time, you would drink, too."

  Since Hamnet had drunk when times got hard for him, and since Ulric Skakki probably knew as much, denying that didn't seem a good idea. In­stead, Hamnet turned back to Audun Gilli. "Well?" He made that more a challenge than a question.