A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  And that…would be ill-advised. Not only was it possible he had left unpleasant surprises for anyone who tried such a thing—assuming he hadn’t warded the place the way she had warded her house—but he would probably know just what they had done when they finally met up with him, and as a consequence they might well be marked as thieves and unfriendly from the beginning.

  She jumped up and hugged Kaari, hard. “Want it?” she exclaimed. “This is the best thing you could have done! What does he want for it? Buy it! Hitch a deer to it and bring it here, quickly!”

  She chuckled as a bewildered Kaari hurried back to whoever it was that was selling her the sledge. It was no bargain—two swords and two daggers, and a silver coin to boot—but Kaari’s charms had worked on him as well.

  Lodestone be damned. She was going to enchant the whole sledge. Besides all the emotional contamination, anything that had once belonged to a magician generally was alive with the residue of magic. It should be easy for her to use that.

  This sledge was going to guide them to its Master!

  * * *

  Aleksia had thought that the frozen villages were a horror. Somehow this ice-coated forest was worse, because it was so beautiful. It was a deadly beauty, and had killed as surely as the Icehart had killed in the three villages.

  It had been a birch forest, and birches were some of the first trees to lose their leaves in the Fall, so all of the trees were leafless at the point when this had happened to them. And normally in the Winter, birch forests like this were gorgeous, with white snow on the ground, and papery white trunks with their black markings rising out of the snow, the mist of white twigs softening the starkness. Somehow, even in the dead of Winter, birch trees managed to look alive. Maybe it was because of how supple they were, how they bent gracefully to the wind. Maybe it was because beneath that paper-white bark there was a creamy glow, a hint of warm color, too subtle to really point out to anyone, but there if you had eyes for it. For the Bear, at least, that was not the whole of it. Birches had a scent of life to them, even in the worst of the Winter, a subtle perfume that promised that when Spring came, the birches would be the first to awaken.

  But not now.

  The trees glittered, reflecting the cold light lifelessly, the trunks smooth, perfect and encased in at least an inch of ice. Every branch, every twig, every bit of undergrowth was sheathed in ice, perfectly preserved, and perfectly dead. There was no scent of life here, only the cold breath of the ice. Birch trees did not restrict much light, and beneath the canopy there had been a lively tangle of undergrowth—bushes, vines, weeds—exuberantly flourishing in the shelter of the birch branches. And now all that was frozen as hard and dead as a stone.

  Aleksia stared. This was appalling. And this was where the men’s trail had led.

  Carefully, the Bear picked her way through the trees, digging her claws into the ice-crusted snow with every step, and the horror deepened as she worked her way inward. Here was a bird frozen in a bush, coated with ice…a rabbit with its eyes still wide open, coated with ice…a deer encased in ice like a statue, actually caught in midbrowse, a mouthful of grass pawed out of the snow, half-chewed, the individual stems poking out of its mouth also coated in ice.

  Every hair on the Bear’s body stood up, and not just because of the cold; she was afraid, instinctively afraid. Chills ran down her spine, and a coldness grew in her stomach as Aleksia fought against the rising discomfort that told her to flee, and won. For long moments, she stood there, shifting from paw to paw, with the ice-covered snow cracking beneath her weight.

  I have no choice. I must find out what is in here. This is no village, and there is no obvious reason for the forest to have been frozen like this. There are thousands of acres of forest just like this one—so why freeze it? She forced herself to go deeper into the forest. The Icehart—for she was sure that was what had done all of this—must have had a compelling reason to freeze an entire forest. Even for a supernatural monster or a great Mage, this kind of act took too much power for it to be random. Just as she was certain that there was something in each of the frozen villages that the Icehart had wanted to stop, so she was certain that there was something here that had threatened it.

  She had a fairly good idea what that something was.

  And in a small clearing in the heart of the birches, she found them.

  That is, she presumed they were the men she was looking for. There were two of them, in the midst of a tidy camp; both sitting, both as still as statues. One had a gray-blond beard and carried a kantele, his hands still on the strings as if he had been caught in the midst of playing it, the other was older, and had a sword strapped to his back. Both wore the clothing of the Sammi.

  They sat beside the remains of a dead fire, one on either side of it, looking sightlessly at the coals. The older of the two of them had a forked stick with a gutted, skinned rabbit on it; presumably he had been holding it over the flames. The other had a flask down by his feet. There was a hide tent behind them, and a stack of wood beside it. Both were covered in an inch of ice, just like the trees. From the look of things, they had been taken completely by surprise.

  These two were Ilmari and Lemminkal, and there was no sign of Veikko. She felt sickened, and if she had been a woman, she would have cried. She had never felt as close to anyone other than her Brownies as she had to these men. And now, to see them like this—it nearly broke her heart.

  The Bear prowled around the campsite, snuffling, hunting for clues. There were three packs, three bedrolls in the tent, three rabbits to be cooked—two skinned and waiting the fate of the first—three of everything, in fact, except men. The village had been bad enough. These two men, staring into the long-dead fire, were enough to send a strong man screaming away, running as fast as he could. It took everything that Aleksia had to keep from doing just that.

  A line of footprints led away from the camp; Aleksia followed them to where they ended.

  There was no sign of a struggle, but there was a small hand-ax lying in the snow, under a layer of ice.

  Aleksia nodded to herself. So, the third man, presumably Veikko, had been here, and had been abducted. If this was the work of the false Snow Queen, this only made sense. Veikko was young, handsome, and if the false Snow Queen was following Aleksia’s pattern, she would be abducting young men. Both Ilmari and Lemminkal were too old to draw her interest.

  So she had Veikko—or at least that was a good enough supposition to follow for now.

  All right. The help I was hoping for in the shape of those men is gone. I am going to have to find the false Snow Queen’s Palace, and learn what I can from it.…

  She sat down on her haunches to think, scarcely noticing that there was a little frozen bird cemented onto a branch beneath a coating of ice just under her nose. The ice prevented any scent from escaping, and she only caught sight of it because it was the wrong shape to be a stone or a last brown leaf.

  Poor thing. This is just wanton and indiscriminate slaughter. Why is this creature doing these things? It doesn’t make any sense. Why freeze an entire forest to get one man? Why kill an entire village?

  She shook her massive head after a time, deciding that she was just too sane to be able to fathom the reasons this creature had for what it was doing.

  Unless, of course, the false Snow Queen was trying to terrify the common folk, and eliminate any opposition. If she had decided that it was time to become a ruler and take over the land of the Sammi—

  I should concentrate on finding the Icehart and figuring out a way to stop it, and worry about the false Snow Queen’s motives later. While she thought, her warm breath puffed out over the little frozen bird.

  All right. I’ll try the most obvious. Let’s see if I can detect her magic from here, or find the Icehart itself.

  Aleksia turned her thoughts inward and went very, very still. Carefully, she “listened” first—some magic created a kind of resonance or hum that a magician could hear if he was in a quiet place…
and certainly this was the quietest place she had ever been in.

  But there was nothing.

  With a sigh, she moved to the next possibility: scent. Magic often had an aroma to it, and not only could she as a Mage herself sniff it out, but the Bear form was particularly well suited for this sort of thing. She lifted her muzzle to the cool air and took in long, deep breaths; dropped it to the ground and tried finding the scent there.

  But alas, again…nothing.

  Finally she unfocused her eyes a moment, and looked for the faintest traces of power, particularly Traditional power. If there was another magician near here, that power would accrue to him, like water flowing down a slope. So if the power was moving at all, it would be moving in the direction of the magician.

  She saw the magical energies as soon as she unfocused her eyes, like dust-motes in sunlight. And there was definitely a current to the movements….

  Unfortunately, the center for those converging currents was—herself.

  Bah.

  Right then, there was only one more possibility. Mirror-magic. And for this she wanted her own mirror, so she was going to have to go back to human form and get it out of the—

  Chiurp!

  The loud and cheerful sound, the first thing she had heard in this forest besides herself, would have been more than enough to make her jump with surprise and shock. Add to that the fact that it came from right below her nose, and was followed by a veritable explosion of brown feathers heading into the sky—well, that was enough to make her rear up, overbalance, and fall over sideways with the crash of shattering ice as she smashed into the ice-covered underbrush.

  She lurched to her feet again; the bird was already gone. But there was no mistake about it—it had been that tiny frozen sparrow in the snow just below her nose.

  She had thawed it by breathing on it. And it was still alive. If the bird was still alive—then this was an entirely different sort of spell than the one that had killed the villagers. Ilmari and Lemminkal were not dead! She could free them!

  Heedless now, she reared up on her hindquarters and pivoted, crashing back to the campsite where she had left the two men. She skidded to a clumsy halt beside them, then closed her eyes and listened to them.

  And to her shock, she heard what she had missed before.

  Heartbeats. Very, very slow, but heartbeats all the same.

  They were still alive! This wasn’t merely ice, this was magical ice, magical cold, that preserved the victims rather than killing them.

  She sat down on her haunches again, this time with a thud, and stared at the ice-bound figures.

  They were alive.

  So—now what should she do?

  CHAPTER 12

  COULD ALEKSIA THAW THE MEN? THAT WAS THE MAIN question. She might not be able to do it alone. For that matter, she wasn’t entirely sure how she had done it in the first place.

  All right, she told herself. Be calm. Think about this. They are safe enough as they are; this is clearly a special sort of spell that won’t harm them for now. If you thaw them, they might attack you. They will certainly want to know where Veikko is, and you cannot answer that. Nor can you prove that you are not the one that did this to them. The answer, I think, is to leave them be for the moment.

  By way of experiment, however, she tried thawing other creatures, with mixed success. Sparrows and other small birds took some time, but she could release them simply by breathing on them. Slightly larger birds took more time. Rabbits, however, required that she curl up around them and breathe on them. This suggested that she was going to need to use magic to thaw the men, and if she did that—well, certainly, if she was wary and watching, the false Snow Queen would know what she was about and put a stop to it.

  Caution was definitely the order of the day.

  So was getting out of the birch forest.

  Now that she knew the animals were still alive under their coats of ice, she felt terribly squeamish about eating them. It made no sense, of course, but…well, that was just how it was. And she was getting hungry again. Time for another transformation, and then to hunt for a place where she could safely become human.

  The transition to bird—a Gyrfalcon this time—was much smoother and quicker, now that she had spent some time as the Swan. She wriggled back into the harness so that her little pack was safely on her back, and then forgot about it. Vision was so much keener than a human’s it was almost painful. It was easier to get into the air as a Gyrfalcon, too; the body was smaller and a lot lighter than the Swan, and the wings were proportionally longer.

  Of all the forms she knew how to take, the Falcon was one of her favorites; light, swift, incredibly maneuverable; the sheer flying ability had something to do with that. But there was one thing that appealed to her that she really rather would not have had anyone else know about…

  A bird of prey was almost all hunting instinct. It had no conscience, no pity, and when hunting, was interested only in what it could catch and how fast it could catch and eat it. There was a certain freedom in such simplemindedness. And in order to hunt quickly and efficiently, she had to surrender to that simplemindedness.

  After pumping her way up into the sky, Aleksia gave free rein to the bird. Immediately it began looking for prey, scanning the earth below for tiny hints of movement, for things that were not white, knowing instantly, long before the human mind would have puzzled it out, rock, shadow, tree stump. Duck!

  Below her, an unwary duck was swimming as best it could in the small remaining bit of unfrozen pond. It had stayed too long. Now it would never leave.

  The Falcon did a wingover, what in a human would have been something like a cartwheel; she folded her wings tight to her body, the protective membranes closing over her eyes, and plunged down toward the unwary duck, using the sun to mask her approach. Too late, the duck spotted her. It flapped hard, running across the water, and then across the ice, trying to gain height, or failing that, to gain the safety of cover.

  Aleksia’s heart sang with elation and bloodlust. The Bird was supreme and was doing what she did best. She was hunting. And she was about to kill.

  Talons fisted, she plunged down toward the duck; she could see it laboring, see its chest heaving, see the desperate look in its eye as it glanced up and saw her too near, too near. Falcon instinct judged speed and height off the ground and made a split-second decision. Strike or bind?

  Bind.

  Her feet swung forward, talons extended, as she hit the duck where the neck met the back.

  They tumbled out of the air together, the duck flapping desperately, flailing at her with its wings, as Aleksia beat her own wings hard to slow their descent. She was the bird of the foot, as the falconers said, and her feet were her weapons. A talon found the heart and pierced it. The duck shuddered, made one final spasm, and was still. They landed in the snow, duck beneath her, cushioning the last of her fall.

  She did not hesitate. Half-mad with bloodlust now, she began ripping the feathers from her prize. In a moment, her beak would plunge into the bird’s sweet breast meat, she would drink blood that was still hot and full of the taste of fear and desperation, and then she would settle down to feed.

  * * *

  When the Falcon was sated, Aleksia transformed back to the Bear and made short work of what was left of the duck. When even the last bit of bloodstained snow was licked up, she looked around, as best she could, and took long, deep sniffs of air.

  And she scented what she had hoped to detect. Damp, chill—but not the chill and damp of snow and ice. This was cave-damp. A good place for her to become a human, and a good place for the Bear to sleep. She wished the last village was nearer, but it was not, and this was the best possible option for protection, from the elements, from wild creatures, and from the false Snow Queen and whatever she was using as her spies.

  The Bear lumbered off, following its nose.

  By a little past nightfall, it had found the cave. There was plenty of deadfall nearby and the Bear dra
gged in several large pieces, much larger than Aleksia could have handled. This was a good cave; it went back far enough that the bitter cold of Winter was held at bay, and the ceiling was high enough that smoke would pool up at the top. She could build her fire at the center of it.

  The floor was littered with dead leaves, the bones of small animals and rocks. The musky scent told the Bear that a fox had used it for a den, and recently. Well, if it came back it was going to get a surprise; it wouldn’t like the Bear or a human, but Annukka was inclined to leave it alone if it chose to just try and shelter here peacefully. As the Bear, she broke up the wood into fire-sized pieces; a simple enough trick for something of her weight and strength. The leaves and twigs that had blown in here would would supply plenty of tinder; there would be a good fire going here in no time.

  But right now, she needed to be a human again in order to do that.

  This form was, of course, the easiest of all, so long as she and not animal instinct, was in charge of her body. A moment of concentration, and there she was, gown and all—and she was quickly chilled and shivering without the Bear’s thick coat. Hurriedly, she built herself a fire, and used the fire-starter rather than magic to get it ablaze.

  Finally the fire was going well enough that she started to thaw; she held her hands to the dancing flames and basked in the warmth.

  It occurred to her rather ruefully that she could have made a better clothing selection for this excursion before she had left. Breeches and boots, a warm knitted sweater and a tunic all under a heavy cloak would have been just as easy to transform to feathers as her gown.

  But she was unused to wearing such things, and it might have been tricky to transform them back again.

  Oh, bah. She fumbled out the hand-mirror. The first thing to do would be to see if there was anyone who had already magically caught “sight” of her presence and was spying on her.