Arvid sprang forward as Elva fell onto the tabletop. Martine cried out and shoved Sigurd aside to get to her. She was unconscious, bleeding from one temple, pale and waxy.
Martine grabbed a napkin and tried to staunch the bleeding, but head wounds always bled like stuck pigs and it soon turned red. He offered his own kerchiefs and Martine took them without a word. A couple of other women came forward to help and he saw Martine take a deep, deep breath and move back to let them come to Elva. He didn’t understand why she would do that—and then, as she closed her eyes and began to hum, he felt the cold hit.
One of the women dropped the soaked napkin onto the table. Elva’s blood froze as it fell and the napkin stood like a tent on the tabletop, in stark folds.
“He’s coming!” Martine said, and sang again.
“Sing!” Ash called, and lent his own voice to the choir—not his singing voice, that lovely smooth tenor, but the voice of power that Arvid had only heard him use once before, a voice like the screech of the rock being rolled across the burial cavemouth.
The people sang, but it was not enough. Martine was struggling, pale and trembling. He went to support her, but he couldn’t give her the kind of strength she needed. The Prowman joined hands with her and she took a breath of relief, but Arvid could tell she was having far more difficulty than Elva had. Martine, he remembered, had never been able to hear the gods directly. Only through the stones.
He could feel his fingers turning blue and stuck his hands under his armpits; the skin on his face was tightening, drying out with cold; his lips where he had licked them a few moments before were ice; his eyelids were beginning to stick together.
The cold was so intense that he could not feel anything, anything at all.
He held onto Martine but could not feel the touch. He leaned his head against her sleek black hair, but there was nothing except a sense of pressure.
They were all going to die, unless the Prowman could save them.
“Water?” he croaked, hoping She could do something, anything.
But every drop of water in the room had been frozen. The Prowman’s eyes were unfocused, staring at something, someone, far distant. He couldn’t hear. Didn’t speak. Martine leaned heavily against him, humming still, but even he could tell there wasn’t as much power as Elva had summoned. Not summoned—organized.
From every wall, from every shutter, a clicking, flicking noise started. Scratching, scraping… a small part of his brain thought of summer beetles, but then the shrieking began, and the hungry screaming, and he knew the ice wraiths had reached them. They were scrabbling at the doors and windows, trying to get in. To kill them. To eat them, as wind wraiths did? He didn’t even know. Perhaps merely to pierce them to the heart with their cold talons.
He should defend the hall, but he was so tired. Arvid had heard it was like this, being frozen to death. That you got tired, so tired, and then just fell asleep and never woke up. It had sounded peaceful, but it wasn’t. It was simply terrifying.
His eyelids were closing, but he couldn’t lie down, no, he couldn’t, mustn’t lie down, because Martine needed him, everyone needed him. He drew his sword and staggered toward the windows, struggling to stay awake. All around, the others were sliding down into sleep, even Sigurd. The singing slowed, became softer as voice after voice dropped out. He must not sleep, or there would be no one to protect Martine when the wraiths broke in.
Martine swayed and he staggered as her weight came on him, but he managed to stay upright. The Prowman was talking, “No, I can’t leave them,” and he agreed with that, Ash shouldn’t leave, but it was more important that he not fall asleep.
He was so tired. Perhaps it really was time to at least have a little nap. Just a few minutes…
And then, it paused. He could feel the advance pause. Outside, the scraping and shrieking was suspended, the silence terrifying. What was He planning to do next?
With a sense of something being sucked away, the cold withdrew all at once, the wraiths’ screaming began again but faded quickly into the far distance. The cold remained, but it was a natural cold, emanating from the ice, which still decorated every surface, every face.
It was deathly quiet. Most people were still asleep. Then he heard a small, small sound: a drop of water hitting the floor. Arvid looked up. The edging of ice which ran along each roof beam was melting, dripping. All around the room, ice was turning to water, and the drops hit and splashed faces, hands, backs, waking them all one by one.
They roused, and sat and looked up, and a woman started to cry with thankfulness. Arvid opened the doors and felt summer heat flood in, and distantly heard his people begin to cheer. The cold retreated sullenly, but it slid back and back, and out the door. The blood-soaked napkin melted.
Martine was still tending to Elva—it was as though she hadn’t noticed anything; but then Arvid saw that tears were streaming down her cheeks. The Prowman gathered Elva up and carried her upstairs, Martine following.
Outside, the sun came up, dazzling the world with brilliant reflected rainbows. Every surface was a mirror, fracturing and repeating the light, so that the ice which had almost killed them was for a moment, just a moment, a celebration of beauty instead of evil.
Ember, he thought. Somehow he was sure this was her doing, that the Ice King had turned away from them because of her. He wished he didn’t have the image of a snake, turning to better prey.