A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Good.” Elena looked profoundly relieved. “Well then, which first?”

  “I need to get ahead of the women, so a Swan for swiftness and endurance.” Swans migrated hundreds of leagues without needing to touch down for rest. They ate grass and waterweeds, so they did not have to hunt. For as long as she could find things for a Swan to eat, she could stay in that fairly unobtrusive form. “I know where the men were last, and tonight is a full moon, so I can fly all night. Once I have discovered some trace of them—and I hope that will not take long—I can see if I can find where this false Godmother is. After that, I will know better what to do, though it will probably involve joining forces with the Sammi.”

  “Well, what is sauce for the goose serves the gander, as they say,” Elena replied thoughtfully. “As much magic as she must be using will surely blaze out in that wilderness. Just as you wish to avoid using magic as much as possible to avoid being detected, she will be easy to find once you are in the general area—”

  “Exactly.” Aleksia nodded. She turned to Rosemary. “Have you anything to add, my friend?”

  The Brownies put their heads together for a moment. “Yes,” Rosemary replied after the conference. “We don’t like any of this, but it’s not our business to meddle in the matters of Godmothers. You think you need to enter the story, well, then you probably do. We will do whatever we can to make it easy for you to do that.” She turned to the mirror, and faced Elena. “But we want you, Godmother Elena, to find Godmother Veroushka and get her back here as quick as ever you can. For one thing, once you find and get her here, there will be another experienced Godmother with everything that the Palace can supply, if Godmother Aleksia gets into trouble. This Palace is nearer to where she is going than any of you are. For another, begging your pardon, but this is a big territory for any Godmother to cover, and it shouldn’t be left unattended for long. No disrespect meant. But we know our business, as we have been tending to Godmothers and the Palace since Palace and Godmothers were here, and there’s plenty of pots that could boil over if they’re not watched.”

  Aleksia looked at the Brownie in astonishment that turned into admiration. It was nice to see one that thought for herself and stood up for what she thought was right and proper.

  And she had been rather nervous about leaving all those “unwatched pots” behind her, but could not think of any way she could be in two places at once.

  “All right, Rosemary, we will make that our priority,” Elena replied. “And while I am at it, I shall make a search among the Sorceresses to see if I can find one suitable to hold the Palace if we cannot find Veroushka. Will that suit you?”

  “I had druther a real Godmother,” the Brownie grumbled. “I’ve never been much impressed by all those airy-fairy magicking types as think that a big enough whallop will solve any problem. But a Sorceress would be better than no one. And maybe someone who knows how to fight with magic might be good if Godmother Elena gets into trouble.”

  Aleksia had to turn away from the Brownie to keep her from seeing the smile. The hand, for a moment in front of Elena’s mouth, told her that the other Godmother had the same reaction, despite how serious the situation was.

  Not that Aleksia was unhappy about getting Veroushka or a Sorceress here in her absence. Very much the contrary. It was a relief to know that someone would be here to handle trouble to her or a Godmotherly crisis.

  “I believe we have come to the best plan that can be made, under the circumstances,” Elena said, gravely, after taking her hand away from her mouth. “Aleksia, good fortune. There is no one else I would rather see dealing with this, and now I will leave you to get on with it.”

  Aleksia nodded gravely, and she and Elena dismissed their mirror-spells simultaneously.

  Then she turned to Rosemary. “Can you think of anything else that might serve to help?” she asked. “And thank you for demanding that someone replace me here. I think that the request came better from you than from me.”

  Rosemary sniffed with self-deprecation. “‘Tis your job to be the Godmother. ‘Tis ours to think of this place, this Palace and the needs of the territory, regardless of who is Godmother here.”

  Aleksia nodded soberly. That summed things up pretty well, actually.

  “As for what I think might help, I’d look to that great hulk of a Bear that’s down in the kitchen, eating enough for twelve,” the Brownie said promptly. “We can be putting a pack on him and sending him after you. He won’t be as swift as you, but I’ve seen those Bears on the move, and they can do a fair pace when they’re minded to it. Then once you come to earth, he can track you by scent. More to the point, he belongs there, so he won’t be drawing any attention to himself. It might be he’ll get to you about the time it’s too hard or dangerous to hunt for yourself. And it wouldn’t hurt to have him on your side.”

  Privately, Aleksia thought that the Bear was going to be of less use that way than help that Elena could send, but she kept that thought to herself. “Then that’s what we’ll do,” she said.

  Rosemary looked as satisfied as she was likely to. “Best get yourself going then, Godmother,” was all she said, as the others turned to leave. “If things are chancy as you think, no point wasting time.”

  Aleksia had no intention of wasting time. “All right then. I’ll want the white bird harness and the smallest pack on it. In the pack I’ll want my lightest hand-mirror, a fire-starter and a flute, in case I need to use Sammi magic. And a little blank book linked to the library; I’m rather sure Citrine has something of the sort about.”

  “Nothing else?” Rosemary looked as if she, too, was thinking.

  “The Swan can’t carry more than that even though the Bear form can, and I’ll have to cache it all somewhere if I become a bird of prey.” It was not the best solution, but at least shape-shifted she would not need to worry much about shelter or food, and the one thing she felt she absolutely had to have was a mirror.

  “I’ll get it ready. Where do you want it?” the Brownie asked.

  “The North Tower. And make sure my commonplace book is where any replacement can find it. That will tell her what I am watching, besides this situation.” Aleksia was already heading in that direction before the Brownie finished speaking. Now that the decision was made, she felt a sense of urgency, and a Godmother swiftly learned to trust her instincts once she had settled into the job. Whatever this was all about, the tale needed her. Needed her now.

  The North Tower hadn’t been used for a very long time; not since Veroushka had been in residence, in fact. Aleksia’s mentor had liked to shape-shift into a bird once every few days at the least; it had been her way of coping with the isolation of this place, Aleksia suspected, and her way of escaping the sense of being trapped in the Palace. Perhaps Aleksia had her own form of escape through her mirrors, and that was why she had not felt it so urgent to keep in practice shifting. The North Tower itself was nothing more than walls surrounding a spiral staircase that led to an enclosed and roofed platform with two enormous doors that opened up into thin air. When there was a guest here, the North Tower was kept locked; the last thing Aleksia wanted was for someone unwary to go exploring and fall from the top of it. Or jump…there had been guests who had been so despondent before the end of their tales that they might have done just that. No one in her right mind would go up there even to survey the countryside. The mirrors gave you a better view; there were mirrors set into the outside Palace walls facing every direction, and it was so cold and windy up here that unprotected flesh would freeze far too easily.

  There was an addition to the otherwise bare room since Veroushka’s departure: a full-length mirror. As might have been expected, Aleksia found it easier to do an initial shift from human to animal if she could see herself and use her own mirror-magic to help. Veroushka had shifted so often that her own body-memory made a mirror unnecessary.

  She stood before the mirror still fully clothed. Unlike Veroushka, who expected to return to a warm Palace with eve
rything she needed in it, and could thus drop her clothing and perform a simple shift without worrying about what she was wearing, Aleksia was going to have to do something a bit trickier, a combination of shape-shifting and transformation magic. Her gown was going to have to become her feathers—or her hair—or her fur. Since it was not actually a part of her, she would have less control over it than her own flesh.

  So, as she stared into the mirror, it was her gown she concentrated primarily on first, with the briefest of nods to her own form. With her eyes narrowed in concentration, she carefully gathered some of the magic of the Palace itself. The gown shimmered, shivered, became misty and indistinct as she bent her will and the magic on it. Then, with a feeling as if a little whirlwind whipped her clothing around her before wafting away again, and a brief hum of power, the image that looked at her from the mirror changed.

  The Aleksia that stood there was still recognizable as herself, but as a version of herself that was a strange hybrid of woman and bird. She nodded in satisfaction; she planned to become as big a Swan as could be credible. She had already lost her voice; the lengthened neck could not support it.

  She beat the wings against the air experimentally; they felt strong and sturdy. They would serve as a weapon at need; anyone who had ever experienced the power in a goose or Swan’s wings knew very well that a blow from one could knock a man unconscious if aimed correctly. And she was about to become the biggest Swan that had ever graced the sky, correspondingly strong. She was not proof against an arrow or a spear, of course, but she rather doubted that the false Snow Queen was going to use either against her in this form.

  Once again she gathered the magic of her Palace around her, and with it, her will.

  She stared fixedly into the mirror, while in her mind she summoned every memory of what it had felt like, as well as what it had looked like, when last she was a Swan. How her chest had thrust forward, her hips behind, and yet she had not felt overbalanced. The odd clumsiness of the webbed feet and the relatively short, bowed legs. How her neck had a kind of life of its own, her vision had been spread to either side rather than being focused in front, the feeling of having her nose and mouth merged into one and made hard, her tongue shrunk, and her sense of taste and smell dulled to almost nothing. She concentrated on all of these things, on what she saw before her and what she wanted to see. She held herself, poised like a diver, winding it all tighter and tighter, until it felt as if she must let it all go or explode.

  She let it go.

  There was a soundless burst of light just as Rosemary entered from the staircase, bundled in a warm fur coat and hat, harness in one hand. The Brownie shielded her eyes with her hands and exclaimed with indignation.

  When they could both see again, it was not Aleksia that looked back at herself from the mirror, but an enormous Swan.

  “You might have warned me,” Rosemary said crossly, hands on her hips. “You really might have.” She strode forward with the harness in her hands, and with a few brisk motions had buckled it on over Aleksia’s feathers. Stretching her neck to limber it, Aleksia gave herself an enormous shake to settle the feathers and her harness. The white harness blended into the feathers—no one would see it unless they were closer than Aleksia would like. She swiveled her head on the long neck to check the lay of the equipment-pouch; it sat perfectly square.

  Well that is one advantage of this form. I can see my own back.

  She nodded at the doors. Rosemary walked toward them, unlatched them and flung them open. A wave of frigid air engulfed both of them. Insulated by some of the warmest feathers in the world, Aleksia scarcely noticed, but Rosemary shivered.

  “Off you go then!” she exclaimed, then hesitated. Aleksia tilted her head to the side, waiting.

  “Good luck and godspeed, Godmother,” the Brownie said softly.

  Aleksia bowed her head in thanks for the wish. Then she went to the very edge of the opening, spread her wings to their fullest, stretched out her neck and called to the wind to fill her pinions. And when she felt the strength of the wind in them, felt as light as one of her own feathers, she pushed off the tiniest bit—and lifted to the sky.

  * * *

  The Swan did not need a compass or a map to know where she was going. She felt direction in her bones; she read it in the sky, in the pattern of the land. Wings beating strong and sure against the cold air, blood pumping in her veins, listening to her instinct, she arrowed across the sky, watching the land unroll beneath her. The snow that had threatened in her mirror was far from here; with luck, by the time she reached its present location, it would be gone. For her now was the sky graced only by wispy tails too far above her to be worth noting, and the sun on her back.

  Down from the mountains she came, out of the grip of always-Winter, down into the valleys where the first snows lay lightly on the firs and the meadows, down to the half-frozen lakes and the calls of the last geese that had not yet made up their minds to travel south. Go! she warned them with her mind, and they went, lifting off the lakes in skeins, heading into the south, to where warm waters lay, and grass still green, where there would be longer days and warmer sun, and goose-gossip and eventually, mate-choosing. All that she could feel in her bones, feel the Swan-instincts demand that she follow them and leave this place.

  But the Swan was weak in her at the moment, and she had lost nothing of herself yet. As the geese fled south, she flew on. She stopped at sunset, landing on a half-frozen lake, filled her belly with watercress and sharp-edged sedge and the bitter, frost-seared grasses at the edge of the lake. When the moon rose, she beat her way across the lake, half-running, and half-flying, legs and wings pumping, until the wind filled her feathers again and she was up and away.

  All night long she flew, until the moon began to descend, until she saw below her the trees that hid the forest spirits, and knew she had caught up with the two women. She passed over the forest in the last of the moonlight, and before it became too dark to see, followed the harsh scent of smoke to Ilmari’s village and set down in a poultry yard, where a surprised little girl, sleepy-eyed, with a bucket full of grain to feed to her chickens, found her. Carefully, the child poured a tribute of the grain in front of Aleksia, who bowed her head in thanks, and nibbled it all up, hungrily. The child ran off and returned with her mother, who brought more grain, and a slice of bread warm from the baking. They whispered to each other as she ate, and she caught some of the conversation in their accented Sammi tongue, as they noted the harness, the little pack on her back, and recognized her for something out of the ordinary. Well, this was Ilmari’s village. They should be used to wonders, or at least used to recognizing them when they saw them.

  When she was done eating, she closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment, feeling magic moving in her blood and bones. She needed to find a way to thank them and “pay” for the gift of food, otherwise that would throw off the balance of things.

  They were looking for something lost; every person always has something of value that has been lost and is looking for it. Finding such things took only a little, little magic, too small for her enemy to feel. It was what Annukka did back in her own village, what Ilmari had done without a doubt when he was still here.

  She felt the thing they were looking for as a bright warm spot to her left. She opened her eyes and followed the pull of it, out of the yard, to the garden, and the dug-up area where turnips had probably been planted. She began to peck at the clods, loosening them and turning them over with her beak until a glint of metal told her she had found what she was looking for. She pecked at the clod with all the force of her long neck and stepped back, fanning her wings in triumph as it split open.

  With an exclamation, the mother darted forward and pulled her silver ring out of the dirt. As she turned to Aleksia, tears of gratitude in her eyes, Aleksia bowed her head once, then turned away and set off again into the sky.

  It was, as she had hoped, a cloudless sky. The storm she had seen threatening had passed, leavin
g trees laden with new snow and the ground softened and blanketed in white. But this was not a good thing. This snow was too early for this part of the Sammi country. Below her, she saw herdsmen struggling to bring the reindeer across the snow into safe pastures, saw birds caught unawares on lakes that should still have been open and now had rims of ice. The birds, she warned to leave. The herdsmen she could do nothing for. All she could do was to speed on, but the Swan felt the wrongness of it in her bones, and was outraged. Winter had come too early. The false Snow Queen stretched her hand out with cold greed.

  By midday, she had reached the first of the stricken villages, and she descended to see what she could make of it.

  It was quiet. Far too quiet. No dogs barked, no roosters crowed and nothing moved between the handful of houses and outbuildings.

  She waddled ponderously through the snow to peer into the open doorways. Someone, possibly Ilmari, his brother Lemminkal, and young Veikko, had gathered the bodies of the dead humans and taken them away somewhere. Possibly they had been stored in one of the closed buildings until Spring and the thaw when they could be buried—possibly they had been burned on a common pyre. Aleksia debated transforming back to herself to investigate, but on reflection, decided against it. There was nothing she could do that had not been done, and she needed to be on her way.

  But this village was a quiet horror in and of itself. It was utterly empty, without a sign of anything living at all. But dead? Oh, yes. A sled dog frozen at his tether, pigeons stiff and white in the eaves—she knew if she looked around she would find more such victims, chickens dead in the roost, deer in the paddocks, goats in the barn.

  With a wrench, she launched herself back up into the clean sky.

  Nightfall found her halfway between the first village and the second, and when she found herself tiring, found it becoming too dark to fly, she had to drop down again to skid across the surface of a frozen lake, scuttling into hiding in the shelter of frozen bushes. There she sat, eating grasses that were still green, though frozen stiff, until the moon came up. She was glad there was no one to see her as she slipped and slid clumsily across the ice until she could get herself airborne.