A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  “How was that possible, Godmother?” the Brownie asked. “I thought they were cursed to be that way forever.”

  “Well, all curses must have some way of being lifted,” Aleksia replied thoughtfully. “The Tradition requires it. Otherwise no one would ever have any hope at all. I sometimes think that The Tradition requires hope, that maybe it even feeds on hope somehow.”

  “Odd sort of thing to feed on if you ask me,” the Brownie muttered dubiously, looking out of the corner of her eye at Aleksia. “A good lamb roast, or a nice meat pie, now, that’s something a body can feed on.”

  Aleksia suppressed a smile. For creatures of magic, the Brownies could be very earthy and literal-minded. “If The Tradition were something we could bribe with a meat pie, our jobs would be a great deal easier!” she said, and was rewarded with a half smile from her small companion.

  Well, this was becoming more and more intriguing; she had spun a deliberately vague spell that the two women should be delayed without coming to much harm—and this was the result of it. She had felt a bit guilty about the bandit attack, for the younger woman had gotten a terrible fright out of it, but this—this was extraordinary. For as long as she had known about them, the forest spirits had been soulless and dangerous. To her knowledge—though admittedly, her knowledge was limited—there had never been so much as a hint that this situation could ever be turned around. But now, now they had been saved, so to speak. What was more, they had gone from being a danger to being protectors, of the innocent at least. This was a major change in the world, something that went right outside The Tradition, at least as she understood it….

  Although it was certainly true that stories of redemption were part of The Tradition, and always had been, this had her completely baffled. She sensed, though, that this involved something older and deeper than even The Tradition itself. Something that The Tradition had built off of—something so old and deep that, when invoked, it could effortlessly change The Traditional path that a story was set on and redirect it as easily as she could change her mind and redirect what the cook was preparing for her dinner.

  “Well, I need to make another excursion,” Aleksia said after a moment. “It will require an actual shape-change, and I may be gone for some time.”

  The Brownie gave her a penetrating look. “Something tells me you don’t intend to just go looking for information this time.”

  “No. This is going to be far more involved than that.” She considered her options for a moment, and realized that it was completely unfair for her to just arbitrarily decide that she was going to pick up and abandon the Palace—at least, not without some consultation with the other creatures involved in her work. “I should like you to be here, Rosemary, as I consult with Godmother Elena. This could be quite dangerous for me, and I’d want every safeguard in place that I can manage. For that, I think, I will need the help of the Brownies, and I should ask you to represent them.”

  The Brownie looked startled, and sat up straighter. “Me?” she said, eyes going wide. “You want my opinion? You want me to tell you what I think that you should be doing?” Unconsciously she smoothed her spotless apron with her hands, as if she was reassuring herself that she was the same person she had been a moment ago.

  “As a representative of the others, yes, please,” Aleksia told her. “This will be something new for all of us. I am about to enter a tale myself, and that will mean—changes, certainly.” That was an understatement. Rosemary looked more than a bit alarmed. “What kind of changes will be involved and what it will mean for all of you here, I am not sure. Godmothers have become active parts of tales before—certainly Godmother Elena has—but once you put yourself in the position for The Tradition to act upon you, you can lose some of your ability to act upon The Tradition.” She smiled down into the Brownie’s bright brown—and now worried—eyes. “But look on the bright side! While I am gone, there will be no Kays here to plague you!”

  The Brownie took a deep, long breath, ignoring that last attempt at humor. “Then we need to take every precaution,” she said with a decided nod. “We’ll need to make sure that, if you get into trouble, we can help. As ever, Godmother, we are yours to command.”

  Aleksia found herself grinning. Not smiling—grinning. No matter what came of this excursion, one thing was absolutely true. Nothing was going to be the same for her after this. And she was going to do things, get right out into the world and be a part of something! “Let’s go to the throne room then, and talk to Godmother Elena where you and whoever else wants to listen in can hear us. I would prefer it if you did all the speaking for the others, however, just to cut down on the possible chatter and confusion.”

  “Certainly, Godmother,” Rosemary said with great dignity. She had quite the air of authority about her, which was one reason why Aleksia had decided to ask her to represent the others. For another, she was not one of Aleksia’s three old friends among the Brownies. She knew what they would say—which was not to go. Rosemary, she thought, would be more impartial in her advice. And since she had been here, Rosemary had not been at all backward about taking charge of things. Aleksia had the feeling that Rosemary would take no nonsense from anyone, which was all to the good in this case. Some of the others were almost certain to be upset, and while Aleksia did want to hear what they had to say, she also was not going to be talked out of this.

  Now that Kay was gone, the throne room was a much more welcoming place. The light from the dome had taken on a warmer tinge, like the rosy kiss of the first light of dawn on a faraway mountain peak. The benches had their cushions back again, and the air itself was warmer. And there was a faint scent of mint in the air. Other than the cushions, this was none of the Brownies’ doing, nor Aleksia’s—this was the Palace itself, responding to the change.

  With a mental shake of the head, as she wondered just how much the Palace could do on its own at need, Aleksia took her seat on her throne and brought the ice-mirror to life with a flick of her hand. She felt both apprehensive at this moment, and excited. Her Palace was finally entirely her own again after getting rid of Kay. This was a time she usually savored—and instead, she was actually going to leave this place and head into what could very well be a great deal of physical danger for her. She would probably be facing the false Snow Queen herself. Godmothers were not trained in magical combat. She wondered, briefly, if too much isolation had made her a little mad….

  Then again, it seemed to her that this was something that was absolutely necessary. Well, that was what getting other peoples’ opinions was for, wasn’t it?

  After sending the message to Elena’s mirror-slave that she wanted to speak to the Godmother, she called up the images of the two questing Sammi women. She found a good viewpoint from one of the harness-brasses. They were still under deep forest canopy, still beneath the shadows of the thick evergreen boughs, in a semidarkness that had gone from cold and threatening to—somehow…protective. Even through the veil of the mirror she could feel that. This was not the shadow that hides menace. This was the peace of twilight, that promised a restful night to come. The transformation was startling, but Aleksia did not spend time contemplating it. Instead, she sent the mirror searching, darting from reflection to reflection—a drop of water, a bird’s eye, a glistening line of sap along a broken branch—until she found something high above the women, out of the shadows and up into the highest tops of the trees, so that she could see just where in the forest they were. It must have been another bird’s eye—by the way the viewpoint glided and circled, and from the astonishing clarity of vision, she suspected it was a hawk of some sort. But the important thing was that she could see the edge of the forest from here. She estimated the distance by eye, allowing for the fact that their progress would be helped, not hindered, by the forest spirits. After a moment, she reckoned that they would reach it in a day or so.

  She looked for another viewpoint, higher this time, and found another bird circling a dizzying distance about the earth. Here, the
edge of the forest looked like the place where a thick, green carpet had been cut and laid on a bare wooden floor. Beyond that edge, looking across meadows and more normal patches of forest, she spotted the distant fires of the village that had been Veikko’s destination, where his mentor, the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal, had lived. And beyond that…the start of the wide sweep of the glaciers, and the mountains that looked so very much like the ones where Aleksia’s Palace stood. This was where the mystery began, where the Icehart had killed entire villages, the wilderness where three men, all of them warriors, all of them magicians—even if one of them was only half-trained—had vanished.

  And she was planning to go into that. Maybe she was mad.

  It would take the women some time to get that far, but Aleksia did not want to put further obstacles in their way at this point. They were drawing too near to the place where the Icehart was, and given what had happened with the forest spirits, Aleksia did not want to chance them encountering the Icehart until she knew exactly what it was and what it could do. The name suggested a lot of things, but of course, a name could be completely deceptive. That it was some creature of the false Snow Queen, she had no doubt at all. And that made a very dangerous creature for the women to approach without help.

  She also made note of the dark clouds ahead; those were snow clouds, and heavily burdened ones; she also paid close attention to the leafless state of those few trees that were not pines and other evergreens. The women did not know that this lay ahead of them. When they emerged from the forest, they would move from Autumn to Winter. And if the false Snow Queen shared Aleksia’s powers, that would mean she would be stronger as the Winter deepened.

  She looked up at the sound of soft footsteps. Several of the other Brownies filed into the room, following Rosemary. Aleksia nodded a greeting to them, and turned her attention back to the mirror. Even as she surveyed the clouds, trying to judge how long it would be before the snows fell, the image clouded over, and was replaced with that of Godmother Elena. This was much sooner than she had dared hope; Elena must assume this was very important.

  Elena raised an eyebrow, and smiled. “Rid of your brooding brat, are you? You have more patience than I do, my dear.”

  Aleksia laughed. “That tale is safely ended, and I hope there will not be another to follow it. The lovers are united and rewarded and I think both have thoroughly learned their lessons.” Then she sobered. “However, it appears I must interfere more directly in the other tale of which I spoke to you. There is a false Snow Queen, and she is creating great deal of harm. I think that this calls for me to deal with her directly. And perhaps even confront her.”

  Elena nodded. “I had the feeling you might have to do just that.” Although the mirror through which she was speaking was not large enough to show more than her head and shoulders, it was clear that she took this as a cue to settle back in her chair. She was prepared for a long discussion on this. “All right. Unfold this tale for me. Tell me how it goes so far.”

  This time Aleksia recounted every tiniest detail, even though she knew she had already told Elena some of this. Elena’s very expressive face reflected interest, agreement and surprise in turn as Aleksia continued, although she did not once interrupt. Recounting all this served any number of purposes: it helped her to put her own thoughts in order, it reminded Elena of how all the events had tied together and it gave the Brownies a good summary.

  “That is why I believe I am going to have to take a direct hand,” Aleksia concluded. “These women are brave and resourceful, but the fact that this false Godmother probably has similar powers to mine leads me to believe they will meet with failure if they have to deal with her.” She frowned a moment. “And ordinarily that would be tragic, but not insurmountable—except that the business with the forest spirits leads me to think that there is enough going on with them that we need to be very cautious about anything happening around them.”

  “I am in agreement with you.” Elena’s eyes were dark with thought. “There is something new going on here—or something old. I am not sure which. There was no reason for the forest spirits to converge on them like that, for instance. If they were men, yes. But those creatures tend to leave women alone, if my memory serves me correctly. Something is moving up there, some magic I am not familiar with, and it is interacting with The Tradition in ways I don’t think we can predict. In order to react to this in time, you are going to have to enter the tale. But that does not mean you have to go on in there entirely without support behind you. I can watch you, and I can make sure there are others who do so as well.”

  “But the reason the Snow Queen—that is, my Tradition—is so effective is because of the mirror-magic,” Aleksia objected. “We can see things that you would never catch. None of you are nearly as good at this as I am.”

  “You forget, there are more ways of watching than through the mirror-magic,” Elena admonished. “Yes, it is the clearest and the strongest and no one is as good at it as you. But we have Fauna’s apprentice, who can see through the eyes of birds and animals directly rather than through reflection, and Regina, who speaks to the Winds, and myself—since my mirror-slave is a rather dab hand at watching through reflections himself. I can and will speak to the Faerie, and ask them to speak to the Fae creatures of cold and snow for me.”

  Aleksia nodded, although she was extremely dubious about all of this. Not that the other Godmothers couldn’t keep an eye on things, but that they would be able to interfere in time to do any good. That was part of the problem; she was a long way from the rest of them, and where she would be going was farther still. If Elena was right, and this did involve some ancient magic working along with The Tradition, it could be very dangerous to try to interfere. And by the time help got there, it could very well be too late to do anything but control the damage.

  Still, there was no doubt in her mind that something had to be done, if only to muster help for the Sammi if this spun out of control, or if the false Snow Queen proved too strong, or simply to quickly find a replacement for herself if something happened to her. That was imperative. There must be a Snow Queen in the Palace of Ever-Winter.

  “My next thought, now that I know in what direction the men went, was to try and hunt for them as unobtrusively as I could,” Aleksia said, without commenting further. “I thought the best way to accomplish that would be to undergo a shape-shift. Or rather, several of them.”

  “A full shift?” Elena raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever done one?”

  “Not since Veroushka left, but I was rather good at them then,” Aleksia replied with pardonable pride, for shape-shifting was a very difficult magic to master. “She was an excellent teacher.”

  “Godmother Veroushka was as good at shifting as Godmother Aleksia is at mirror-magic,” Rosemary put in quietly. “That was what she relied on as much as mirror-magic. And she was hardly ancient when she retired and left the position to Aleksia. She might be about somewhere, shifted, you know. Would be no bad thing to go hunting for her.”

  “You have a good point,” Elena replied, craning her head to try and see who had spoken, since Rosemary was just out of sight of the mirror. The Brownie obligingly moved into sight, and Elena nodded her thanks. “I’ll have someone get on to that. And do you know, I believe I will send our dragon Champions that way as well. It will take them a while to arrive, but if they go now, should something need dealing with, they will be that much closer to you than they are by staying here.” She spoke to someone out of sight of her mirror, then turned back to Aleksia. “Winged form is what you’ll take, I presume?”

  “I thought I would change into several forms, in fact, and yes, several will be winged. Peregrine, Gyrfalcon and Owl, Swan, too, if I can find some open water, and possibly Gull. But the hunting birds can at least allow me to feed myself without resorting to magic.” She was extremely reluctant to even consider using magic out there in the wilderness; if she did so, she would stand out like blood on snow. “And I will shift to Bear also.
It will probably be the safest form to rest in.”

  “Just don’t stay too long in those smaller forms,” Elena cautioned. “Shift to the Bear or something else big enough to have a real brain once in a while, even if you can’t cover as much territory that way.”

  Aleksia did not say what she was, with some wry amusement, thinking. That she knew, probably better than Elena, about the dangers of being shifted into something that couldn’t actually sustain human thought for long. That was the great danger of shape-shifting. You could easily find yourself losing bits of yourself, going more and more into the mind of the animal and thinking less and less like a human, until one day you realized—though dimly—that you couldn’t remember how to shift yourself back. And you might not care. Altogether too aware of that, Godmother Veroushka had actually insisted on having Aleksia experience that firsthand—having her shift into a house cat, and doing it during the Winter when no feline in her right mind would venture out into the snow.

  The experience had been, from the perspective of the human apprentice, terrifying. From the perspective of the cat, it had been Tuesday. The human had been in horror at how close she had been to losing her “self.” The cat had been relieved, for all those human thoughts and compunctions had interfered dreadfully with doing what she had wanted to do. The cat had not wanted to be a human again, despite the dim ghost of the human in the back of her mind screaming to be restored again. That was why Veroushka had insisted on doing the shift in company, for she was able to force the change on the cat.

  There was no such difficulty when the animal form had a large enough brain to fit all of the humanness into it.

  “I intend to rest as a Bear,” Aleksia assured her. “I had considered a dragon, but that is rather too obvious a creature. A Bear can defend itself, forage if it must, and I have been a Bear before.”