A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  She passed over the second village without stopping, flying on through the night. Whatever was there, she could not help it now. And there would be no clues here as to what had happened to the missing men. When dawn broke, she reached the third village and set down in the midst of it.

  She was starving; the frozen grasses had not been enough to sustain her, and since this village, like the others, had been destroyed without warning in the night, there was no way that she, in Swan form, could get at grain that had been locked up in homes and barns. But there was something she could do.

  Reaching around with her beak, she picked open the single buckle that held her harness together, and carefully began working her way out of it. Once it was on a heap on the ground, she hunched herself down on the ground to preserve heat, tucked her head under her wing and began to concentrate.

  The Bear form was easier; she had, over the years, spent some little time in it with the Bear, who enjoyed a bit of company now and again. It took a great deal less time to remember what being a Bear felt like, the weight of the limbs, the way the head hung low on the shoulders, the roll of the walk and the vividness of scents. This time, she was acutely circumspect; she cast all around herself for any hint of another magician before she hunted for magic power to augment her own.

  She was not at all surprised to find Traditional magic swirling around her in little eddies and whirls. After all, she was part of this story now, and as such, she was going to attract it. The magic seemed—well—confused, however. As if it couldn’t quite understand what she was doing here, nor why.

  Good. That at least meant that, for a while, she wasn’t going to get any pressure to conform to a particular story-path.

  She gathered up all the rags and tags of the magic she could find, wove it into her own power, and again, concentrated on the new form she wanted until it felt as if she was going to snap under the burden. Then she let it go.

  The Bear uncoiled herself from the sleeping position she had been in, stretched forequarters, then hindquarters, then gave herself a good shake. Raising her nose to the faint breeze, she went hunting for food.

  She didn’t have to hunt far; her nose told her that a nearby building was a chicken-roost, and a single blow of her powerful forepaw destroyed the door. Under any other circumstance, she would have felt guilty about such destruction of property, but there wasn’t anyone left here alive to use those buildings anymore, and probably no one anywhere near to inherit them, either. This village was dead now. When Winter passed, people would be afraid to live here, afraid of ghosts, or that there might be a lingering curse on the place. The buildings would be destroyed, the frozen animals eaten, if not by herself, then by real Bears and other predators, and by wind and weather. There was nothing to feel guilt over.

  Her heavy jaws made short work even of chickens frozen hard, and feathers were an irrelevant gustatory detail to a Bear. She ate them, feathers, beaks and scrawny legs, and all.

  Appetite sated, she prowled the village, looking for signs that the men had been here. Signs there were, in plenty; the most notable was that the houses were open and lying empty, just as at the first village, all but one. That one, the stoutest in the village, was locked, barred, and the door sealed. She could smell nothing, which meant no other predator could, either. She guessed that the men had gathered up the bodies of all the villagers and sealed them in here, presumably as they had in the first village.

  She paused for a moment to consider whether she should take her human form, and finally decided against it. If there was anything spying on her right now, nothing she had done so far was out of character for a real Bear. But she could do some things as the Bear that would make it easier for her in Swan form, and still look and act like a normal Bear while doing them.

  She hunted through the village until she found the paddocks for the reindeer, and broke into the barn building, and then into the bins that held their Winter grain. There were only a few dead deer in the paddock; most of them had been out with the village herder. Probably this was who had brought the news of the Icehart out to Ilmari and Lemminkal. And naturally, he would not want to stay anywhere near; he must have taken the herds far, far south by now. If she had been in his place, that is what she would have done. With the herds of the whole village—even if it was a small one—he would be welcome wherever he chose to settle.

  Poor herder! He would likely have nightmares for the rest of his life. And guilt, for having survived when his village did not.

  Of course, other wildlife would be at the grain as soon as fear was overcome by hunger. She didn’t begrudge sharing the grain with the creatures of woods and fields. With this unnatural Winter holding the countryside fast, life was going to be hard on the wild things.

  With that accomplished, she stood in the middle of the building, swaying on her feet in a kind of daze until she came to herself and realized that she was exhausted. With a shake of her massive head, she considered her surroundings, decided that it was as good a place to den up as any, and lumbered over to a straw-filled corner to curl up for a nap.

  When she woke, the sun shining at an angle in through the wrecked door; it was late afternoon. She made a good meal on a frozen goat, and lumbered out to the edge of the village. She ate snow to clear her nose and mouth and cleanse them of any other scent, then stood very, very still, breathing slow, deep breaths with her eyes closed.

  There. Human. But fresher scent than the rest. She opened her eyes to discover her head had swung to the right. Still taking the scent in, she followed it until she found what she was looking for.

  A human would never have seen it, not unless he was an expert tracker. Beneath the cover of new-fallen snow, the faintest of depressions. Footprints. She snuffled, and concluded with satisfaction that there were three different scents there. It could only be the men that she hunted.

  She went back to where she had left her harness and pouch, and pawed and wriggled until she got the harness around her head and over her shoulders. Then she returned to where she had found the scent. With her head down, she began to track it.

  She was, of course, not as good as a dog would be. But a Bear was not at all bad at following scent, and this was a Bear’s nose with a human mind behind it.

  She followed the trail, shuffling along with the Bear’s clumsy, and deceptively slow-looking gait, past sunset, past moonrise and on into the night. She felt good—well-rested, with a full belly—and there was absolutely no reason to stop now. A Bear’s eyes were not very good, so traveling at night was not exactly the problem it would have been for a creature that depended more upon sight. And as for the danger of attackers—there wasn’t much that would be foolhardy enough to attack something as large and powerful as she was, not this early in the Winter. Later, perhaps, when wildlife began to starve, she would have been in danger from wolf packs. But not now, and not as long as there were frozen dead things back in that village. The only danger she was in would be from human hunters, and the only human hunters there would have been out here were all back in that village—dead.

  Well, there was the possible danger from this Icehart, whatever it was…but so far, its chosen victims all seemed to be humans; the animals it had slain were simply the unfortunate creatures that shared space with its intended victims.

  Or the intended victims of the Witch. Although it didn’t make any sense—would the Witch have wiped out three full villages for no apparent reason?

  It was a shame that the wretched North Wind had so poor a sense of direction, otherwise she could have gotten the location of the Witch’s stronghold from him. But the Winds didn’t really understand human concepts like maps. After all, the Winds went where they chose, and there wasn’t much that could stop them, so what did they need with maps or directions?

  On she lumbered. The scents got stronger under tree-canopy, but only because the trail wasn’t hidden under snow. Whatever had happened to the missing men, they hadn’t come back this way.

  By the time
the sun rose, even the Bear form’s strength was beginning to flag. The scent actually was stronger, though, so at least it was more recent. She was tracking them across the side of a forest ridge now, and considered stopping and curling up for a nap, then decided to press on at least as far as the ridge ahead of her. So far she hadn’t seen a good place to curl up anyway; there might be better cover ahead.

  And then, just as the full sun hit the valley below, she crested the ridge—and stopped dead in her tracks.

  Below her was a sight that was both stunningly beautiful and utterly horrible.

  For as far as the eye could see, the sun reflected blindingly off the branches of a forest of trees of ice.

  CHAPTER 11

  ANNUKKA STOOD WITH ONE ARM AROUND KAARI, COMFORTINGLY, as they stared at the wilderness ahead of them. Behind them was the village where Veikko had found his mentor, the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal; it was from here that he, Ilmari, and Ilmari’s brother Lemminkal had departed. The villagers all agreed that they had gone to track down something called the Icehart, which was some sort of monstrous creature that had killed everyone in three separate villages. They had learned of this Icehart from a reindeer herdsman who had returned to his village to find everyone dead, frozen—and from all appearances, it had happened in a single moment in the middle of the night. He claimed that he had seen it, at a distance, moving away from a second village, to which he had gone for help. He had called it the Icehart because it looked like an enormous, ghostly stag, and wherever it went, it killed with cold.

  And that was far more information than they had gotten before. At least now they knew to watch out for ghostly reindeer.

  It was Lemminkal who had linked the Icehart with the Snow Queen, and according to those who had spoken to him before the three men left, he was determined to eliminate both the monster and its mistress. Ilmari was more circumspect and rather less confident that they could take on the Snow Queen themselves.

  Annukka and Kaari had decided to climb up from the valley where the village lay to have a look at what lay ahead of them as they followed the men. From this vantage, on the side of the mountain, what was before them was daunting, a patchwork of alpine forest and glacier, mountains already deep in snow. This was where the road had lost track of Veikko, because after this village, there was no road. And there was no use in calling up the North Wind again, because even if it would answer, which was dubious, the Winds were notoriously bad at being able to give good directions to humans. “Oh, over that mountain and to the east” was usually the best they could manage.

  “Now what do we do?” Kaari asked, looking bleakly at the literally trackless wilderness in front of them.

  “For one thing, we switch to sledges,” Annukka replied. “Which means that we will be able to carry more supplies with us. That is no bad thing.”

  “But how are we going to find them?” Kaari wailed. “There’s no road to follow, and any tracks they made are gone by now!”

  Annukka hugged her shoulders harder. “Don’t despair. I have an idea.” She turned Kaari about, faced her toward the village and gave her a little shove. “You go get us sledges and supplies. And find out what, if anything, has been happening here since the men left. I will see if my idea will work.”

  Kaari got a firmer hold on herself, and nodded. She turned back to the village as Annukka walked down the slope to their camp, ducked under the flap of their cobbled-together tent and sat down on her bed to rummage through her pack. They had set up their tent here in the shelter of one of the reindeer sheds because this was a small village and had no inn. This was probably why the only witness to the appearance of the Icehart had taken his deer herd and moved on.

  Which was a great pity, because Annukka would have liked to have been able to question him herself.

  As for a way to track the three men into the wilderness, she had an idea, indeed. But it was nothing that she, nor anyone she knew, had ever tried. She had gotten this notion earlier today when one of the men of Ilmari’s village had offered to sell them a lodestone, demonstrating for them how it always pointed to the North Star.

  “But if it always points to the North Star, why would you need it?” Kaari had asked, shaking her head in puzzlement. “You can see the North Star!”

  “You can’t during the day,” the man had said, with some impatience.

  “But then you can see the sun,” Kaari had replied, with the patience she used when speaking to particularly dense little boys. “The sun will tell you where North is.”

  “Well then, you can’t see the North Star at night when it’s cloudy!” the man responded, and Annukka got the impression that if it hadn’t been Kaari he’d been talking to, he would have lost his temper.

  “Why would I want to travel at night when it is cloudy?” Kaari asked, looking at him as if he was mad. “For that matter, why would I want to travel at night at all if there was no road to follow? It would be of much more use if it pointed to something other than the North Star—like the village you needed to go to.” She looked at the lodestone indulgently, with the air of a girl who is looking at something that she considers to be a particularly foolish “boy’s toy.” Annukka had seen that look before, on the faces of most of the women she knew, when men came trotting up with some wonderful “new” thing that was allegedly better than any previous iteration of such a thing. Men never understood that look, and generally went off, aggrieved, to show the prize to another man, who certainly would understand why it was better, shinier and altogether superior to anything else that anyone had that was like it.

  Now truth to tell, Annukka could certainly see a great deal of use for something like the lodestone. What if they had not had the road to follow when they were making their way through dense forest? You could see neither sun nor stars under trees like that and the only way of getting one’s bearings would be to climb a tree at intervals. You could wander in circles forever in such a place, and people had. People had died under such circumstances.

  So she had quietly traded for the lodestone herself from the fellow after soothing his wounded pride; a couple of copper coins from the bandit’s loot, a handful of charms and one of the swords they clearly did not need. He had told her then that it came from a much larger piece of metal that had fallen from the sky, and showed her how it was also attracted to iron. Interesting, that, but not terribly useful. On the other hand, she could use that to make sure it didn’t go astray, by storing it with the ax.

  But what if such a thing could be made that pointed to other things? People, for instance? Kaari had been right; something that pointed to another object or person would be very, very useful. Especially now, when they didn’t know where to begin looking for the three missing men.

  If she could just work out a way to make a lodestone that pointed to Veikko…There should be a way to do so with magic. Loathe as she was to use it, nevertheless if ever there was a time to start, it was now.

  But how to get it to point? She would have to have something of his, she thought. If only I was home when I had thought of this. I have so much of his: his baby clothing, a lock of his baby hair… When he had left, Kaari had given him a lock of hers, but he had not done the same. She supposed that was partly caution and partly a lack of sentiment.

  After a thorough rummage through both her belongings and Kaari’s, she had to give that idea up. Neither of them had so much as a hair from Veikko’s head, nor any token from him that would have much magical attachment to him. But although disappointed, she was not discouraged. There should be a way to do this, and she would find it.

  In the meantime, that lodestone would serve to guide them so that they did not go completely astray. They did know the general direction that the men went in when they were told about the strange creature that was killing whole villages. That would be the place to start.

  Meanwhile, she would find a way to make this new sort of lodestone point to Veikko.

  When Kaari returned, though, it was with the news that she coul
d find only one sledge. Annukka was outside the tent again, looking to repack what they had to fit on sledges and trying to reckon what else could be traded for. They still had several swords, knives and bows that were fundamentally useless to them—but this village had been the home of a Mage-Smith, which meant that the weapons were somewhat devalued here.

  On the other hand, with their resident magicians gone, some people were feeling anxious about magical protections. Her charms were unexpectedly welcome, it seemed.

  But the droop of Kaari’s shoulders as she approached warned of trouble. “I tried, Mother Anukka,” she said, as soon as she was within hearing distance, “but they would only sell me one.” She looked stricken, as if she felt she was personally to blame somehow.

  That was an unwelcome development, but Annukka tried to put a good face on it. She shook her head, and patted Kaari’s shoulder. “Never mind,” she said, kindly. “We haven’t got so much that we need more than one, and we’ll be able to rest one deer while the other pulls.”

  Kaari bit her lip. “Well, there is another complication. I am not sure you would want this sledge, Mother Annukka,” she said reluctantly. “I am told it belonged to Veikko’s Master, the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal…”

  And that was when it struck Annukka like a blow. They might not have anything that belonged to Veikko—but Kaari had just bought the sledge that had belonged to Veikko’s Master! Now that was an unexpectedly good stroke of luck! A man spent a great deal of time with his sledge, and a surprising amount of emotional contamination rubbed off onto it. When it got stuck, or was reluctant to slide properly, anger seeped into it. When it was running smoothly and men were racing against each other, pleasure, excitement and other good things seeped into it. While not quite as “personal” as other effects might be, this was still as close as she was going to get without breaking into the Warrior-Mage’s house.