A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  The wood on the fire today was cedar, and Aleksia was mirror-watching from her cushions. There was a terrible blizzard outside, and she had felt disinclined to get out of her bedgown. Instead, she had wrapped herself in a dressing gown of quilted silk lined with rabbit fur, tucked her toes into slippers that matched, and was enjoying a very late breakfast of battered sausage and tea while the wind raged at her windows and it looked as if there was nothing out there but a solid white wall.

  The idea that Elena had suggested was appealing, provided the poor guest didn’t perish of boredom. “I would not for the world want to replace any of the Brownies, but it would be nice to see someone new, not a servant, and someone that I didn’t have to discipline,” Aleksia said, with a melancholy sigh. “If it is at all possible—if you could find some compatible beings that could do their own work from here, I should love to play permanent host. You are very lucky to have the Order about you: Sometimes the lack of peers to talk with is very wearing. Especially once I am snowed in. I know I shouldn’t complain but—”

  Elena sniffed. “You have every right to complain. You hardly ever come down from the Palace, and none of us ever get up there. How often do you see someone not in a mirror? I would be lonely, too! It’s not as if you are close enough you can easily come down for a wedding or a christening. Mind, I would love to see you in person. The Champions—” Elena rolled her eyes “—they are all very hearty sorts. I have no one to discuss gowns and hair with, even the women want to talk of nothing but armor and weapons! Not that this is bad—it is just not something I care to debate for hours at a time. And I have not yet found a way to translate across the leagues instantly, or I swear, we would be having tea once a week.”

  “Nor have I…” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But it does occur to me that I might research stepping through a suitably enchanted mirror. The Elven-kind must do something of the sort, the way they can simply appear and disappear at will.”

  Elena laughed, and shook her head ruefully. “I am no inventive magician, really, to research this sort of thing. I will leave that to you—but—” she bit her lip “—I am glad that you contacted me, and brought this up yourself. It is good to know that you actually have not been able to invent such a thing yet. There are some troubling rumors I wish to apprise you of. All is not well in the North.”

  Something about the expression in Elena’s eyes put Aleksia on the alert. “I trust you are going to enlighten me.”

  “Well, unless you actually are turning to the bad, and you have found a way to walk through mirrors and are hiding this from me, the fact that I am speaking to you and that I know you are in your Palace, means that whatever is going on, it is not your doing.” Elena’s lips thinned. “Someone is causing…problems…in the vicinity of the Sammi. And she is using the name of the Snow Queen.”

  Suddenly the sausages were no longer so appealing. Aleksia set them aside to listen very closely to everything Elena had to say.

  * * *

  When Elena was finished and the mirror was back to reflecting nothing more interesting than her own face, Aleksia found herself in a very disquieted state. It was not greatly surprising that she should have heard nothing of this. To most people, everything out of their immediate geographic sphere was vaguely “over there” and concatenated into a single whole in their minds. Granted, a Godmother’s sphere did tend to be much larger than even the average monarch’s—but there were five hundred Kingdoms, and a great many places which, like the land of the Sammi, were not strictly Kingdoms at all, and there was a lot of distance between the Palace of Ever-Winter and the land of the reindeer-herders. The very nature of this mountainous country magnified the distances; the eagle might fly from here to there at will, but people had to find pathways through and over the mountains. So to Elena’s mind, rumors of something that might herald trouble seemed to be centered on an area very near the Palace of Ever-Winter, when in fact, it was not at all surprising Aleksia had heard nothing.

  She got up from her nest and allowed her attendant to help her into a gown, not paying much attention to it, until the Brownie was doing up her back-laces. Only then did she notice that her little servant had intuited that she was not going to want to see Kay in person today; this was not one of her Ice Fairy gowns, not a magnificent silk creation. In fact, when she was Princess Aleksia, her stepmother would probably have been horrified to see her in something so plain—it was a very simple, tight-sleeved gown of gray wool, without a single ornament. But the wool was not just from any sheep—it was from special flocks that lived only in the mountains, and grew fleeces softer than those of newborn lambs. Yarn spun from this wool could be made so fine that a lace shawl knitted from it could pass through a woman’s wedding ring. It made her look businesslike, even a bit severe; when she spoke to her various contacts via the mirror, they would know this was no light matter.

  She continued to plan what she would do as her attendant put her hair up in braids and wrapped it about her head, crownlike.

  That someone up to mischief would have the audacity to use the title of the Snow Queen…that made her angry and just a trifle alarmed. As the blizzard outside subsided, she made out a list of who might know something about these rumors. And it was going to take some organization on her part.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon until well after the sun had set and the moon was rising over the snowfields in front of her mirror, reaching out to those Witches and Sorceresses she knew who lived near the Sammi. Speaking with someone via mirror who was not expecting you to contact her was not just a matter of casting the spell and seeing them. Alas, no. She had to work a rather complicated bit of magic that would leave a message on whatever reflective surface was nearest them. It was simple—it had to be—just that she needed to speak with them. Then she had to wait for them to go to their own mirrors and initiate the contact. And, of course, none of this would happen in a controlled manner. At one point she had a conversation going in three different mirrors at once, resorting in desperation to her little hand-mirror that she used to see the back of her head when she was checking a complicated hairdo on the rare occasions when she made an appearance in public.

  None of those she contacted had heard any of the rumors that Elena had reported. All of them promised to probe their own sources of information. And that was the best she could hope for at this point. The thing was, the land of the Sammi was rather—unregulated. There were not many Witches and Sorceresses of the sort that made regular reports to the Godmothers. Truth to be told, the few who actually knew anything about Godmothers tended to think of them as…irrelevant to the condition of the Sammi. And it was very true that in the land of the Sammi, the creatures of legend, godlets and powerful nature spirits tended to interact with humans much more than they did in the more “civilized” parts of the world. It was a wild land, and everything in it was primitive and more than a bit unpredictable.

  That much she knew already; that evening was spent in her nest with books the Brownies brought from her library, and a great deal of hot tea. She learned that most magic workers among the Sammi were Wise Women and Shamans, who often were aware of Godmothers only vaguely, if at all. From a travel book by a Godmother, she proved what she had vaguely known already—that part of the world was full of demigods and nature spirits that were laws unto themselves and rather disdainful of the Godmothers.

  That gave her a moment’s pause. If it was one of them causing mischief, well…Aleksia would probably be able to tell right away if she could handle the situation herself.

  Tread cautiously here, Aleksia.

  Still, there were demigods, and there were demigods. A god of Winter would be able to squash her like a melting snowball, but a god of a single glacier did not even rate a level of concern. If she could not deal with the troublemaker on her own, well, quick delving into more books assured her that it had been proven before that not even a demigod could stand up to the combined power of two Godmothers and a Fae. Elena would certainly help
, and she had more than enough contacts among the Fae to call in a true Fairy Godmother. The Fae had created the mortal Godmothers in the first place, because, Aleksia presumed, they had grown tired of the constant meddling in human affairs that steering The Tradition required.

  With a goblet of hot mulled wine in hand, she went over all she had done that day. Finally, she concluded that there was nothing more to do at the moment, and with a resigned nod, she dismissed it from her mind. In the absence of information, the only thing she could do was allow her agents to gather it for her. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have quite enough to keep her busy at the moment.

  She put her wine down, and passed her hand over the surface of the mirror to look in on Gerda.

  The girl was braiding up another girl’s hair, in some small room heaped with a magpie’s treasure-trove of pirated goods. A bed was almost hidden under a riot of colored pillows, a truckle bed only partly shoved beneath it. Gaudy necklaces were festooned from a tarnished and blotchy mirror, and the dressing table was awash with silk ribbons, more jewelry, paints and powders, perfumes and kerchiefs. The owner of this room got whatever she wanted, and it seemed that what she wanted was Gerda to wait on her.

  Though Gerda looked desperately unhappy, she did not look ill-used. Ah, good. She seems to be holding her own. As Aleksia had known would happen, because she had nudged things in that direction with her own subtle magic, nothing had happened to her other than being robbed, imprisoned and frightened. The Chief of the band Aleksia had chosen had a daughter about Gerda’s age, and as Aleksia had made sure would happen, the daughter had taken one look at Gerda and claimed her as her own particular servant.

  No one dared to molest the young woman after that; the robber girl had been schooled in violence since she could crawl and had no compunction about enforcing her demands with whatever weapon came to hand. In particular, she was masterful with knives, and every man in her father’s band knew she could beat him to a pulp, then slice him up into ribbons if she chose. They already looked to her as her father’s heir, and while it was barely possible that one of them might challenge her, it was more likely that such a man would be beaten and become her right hand and partner.

  Aleksia had plans for her in good time, but she was not quite old enough yet. It amused her, though, to think of this wild girl righting all the wrongs of her father’s band and more as a Champion—yes, and turning the entire band from robbers into freedom fighters. There was a tyrant ruling over the Kingdom of Svenska—one of those things that Aleksia had not been able to prevent; it was not yet time for him to be deposed, but that time was coming soon, and Valeri the Robber Girl would be just the woman to do the job.

  That was at least three years away. First, Valeri had to do a bit of traveling and discover the truth for herself. Then it would be a matter of waiting until her father came to the end of all Robber Chiefs and she was called home. Yes, three years away, at the least. Perhaps as much as five.

  So now the Robber Girl was acting as she always had: deep down, fundamentally kind, but selfish, helping herself to what she wanted. At the moment she was wearing Gerda’s fine clothing; Gerda had been carelessly given some of the Robber Girl’s leathers and furs—which were actually going to stand her in much better stead on the road ahead than her original clothing would have. Gerda needed to win Valeri’s sympathy and to harden a little more under privation. In another week or so, it would be time for the next step.

  So Gerda was sorted. As for Kay…

  She passed her hand over the mirror and looked for him. He was not in his workshop, nor the library. Finally, she found him at the window in his bedroom, staring out at the snow, an expression of bleak loneliness on his face. On the windowseat beside him was a half-finished drawing, not of some clockwork mechanism, but of a girl’s face. It wasn’t very well done in comparison to his clockwork plans; in fact it was hardly recognizable. But the hair gave it away as Gerda.

  Well, things were coming along nicely there, as well.

  Time to look over the rest of her charges.

  This took a bit more effort. Concentrating hard, she called up the image of the energies of The Tradition, silently telling her mirror to overlay them on a map. It looked rather like a many-colored fog-bank over the landscape rendered in extreme miniature, and she saw a problem almost immediately.

  And just in time; a huge surge of Traditional power showed her where the trouble spot was, and she followed the train into the deep forest outside the tiny village of Gottsbergen in the Kingdom of Svenska. She made the mirror backtrack in time a little—it could look into the past, but unfortunately not move forward into the future. She watched as a cruel woman in Svenska sent her stepchildren out into the forest after nuts—it was, of course, just a little too early for nuts, but they didn’t know that. They were already far too deep into the woods to be anything but lost. This could go badly very quickly. With that much Traditional power building so quickly around them, they were a far-too-tempting target for the Tyrant, or to be more precise, the Tyrant’s pet magician. He would not even have to do anything, just allow them to die…or be killed. They could last for several days in the woods, getting hungrier, colder, with the power building all around them.

  She firmed her jaw, feeling a flush, not quite of anger, but of something close to it. This was why she had become a Godmother. Not for the sulky Kays. For innocents like these. And she put everything else out of her mind but the need to save them.

  Using her second mirror, while she kept an eye on the children in the first, Aleksia searched for someone who could help. A Witch, a Sorceress, one of the creatures of the Faean, like a Giant or a Unicorn, even a Wise Beast—

  But the woods were singularly empty. Blast it. Blast the Tyrant and his pet magician all to perdition! Between his purely mortal evil and his magician’s ability to track rivals for the pleasure of eliminating them and to hunt out the arcane beasties and other races for pleasure and profit, if there was anyone about, he, she or it was in hiding. For all practical purposes, there was no one nearby. She would have to work some magic at a distance. She could use the very magic boiling about these children to fuel it. But first—first, she made sure there was nothing about that could harm them in the time it would take her to search for a way to get them help. She set an “aversion” spell about them, that would make anything carnivorous avoid them. Crude, but effective.

  Sure now that they were safe for the short term, she set about finding a solution that would make The Tradition “happy.” In the second mirror, she searched for what she needed, and after a moment, found it in the Kingdom of Daneland. Just over the border was another, quieter eddy of Traditional power building up, where a lonely cottage stood, owned by a woodcutter and his wife. As the babes searched the underbrush fruitlessly for hazelnuts, she siphoned off some of the magic around them and cast the All Paths Are One Path spell directly ahead of them, putting the terminus in Daneland, just at the gate of that little cottage. She made sure the magical route would bring them there just at sunset. Then she waited, watching, holding both ends of the All Paths spell in her mind, keeping it balanced and ready; if someone else stumbled on that path at either end, it could make things very complicated indeed. They were already complicated enough. She was juggling two spells at a great distance, and one of them was potentially dangerous.

  When both of the children had finally put their feet on the magic path, she dismissed the aversion spell, then let go of the terminus at Svenska—with a sigh of relief, for more reasons than one. Among other things, now they were entirely in her power. Neither the Tyrant’s magician, nor any other, could interfere with them until she chose to let them go. Now, all she had to do was watch. If anyone from that cottage accidentally left and got tangled up in her spell, no worries; it only went straight back to the cottage.

  But no one did, and in the blue dusk, two tired children, crying because they were lost and hungry, stumbled out of her spell, out of the dark and ominous woods, right onto a
lovely little soft path that ended in a cozy cottage. And the middle-aged, childless couple who had longed all these years for children of their own, heard them and came rushing out—reacting instinctively and without hesitation—to the sound of children in distress.

  They could not understand each others’ language, of course. That wouldn’t matter. In a few weeks, the little ones would be prattling in Dansk, filling the lives of their adoptive parents with joy. They would have forgotten their stepmother, and as for their father, well, he would become something vaguely remembered in dreams.

  And as for the wicked stepmother…

  Another day, Aleksia decided. She wanted to think on an appropriate punishment, in case what her stupid husband came up with was not enough. Or in case she managed to feign innocence and convince him that she was not to blame.

  Having her own child taken by gypsies might serve the purpose…

  She would have to look into that. Then again…there might be a simpler way.

  It was very difficult to deal directly with The Tradition. You could not exactly “communicate” with it, and trying to do anything by brute force was a little like a flea trying to shift a warhorse. But if the flea bit the horse in exactly the right place at the right time…

  She spent a good hour putting together a subtle spell. It was nothing like a compulsion, more like—a suggestion.

  She turned it loose and it settled around the countryside like a cobweb, much too subtle for the Tyrant’s Wizard to detect. And if he did, he would not care about it. This had nothing to do with him, nor with the Tyrant.

  But from this moment on, every storyteller, every woman reciting tales to put the little ones to sleep, every gaggle of girls about a fire, every twopenny musician singing for his supper would be telling tales of wicked stepmothers who got what they deserved. This was the flea biting the warhorse, for the more these tales were recited, spun and sung, the more The Tradition would be impelled to make them come true. And who, at the moment, was the wickedest stepmother in all of the Kingdom?