A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  And the two magicians turned identical expression of wariness on the women and their companion.

  CHAPTER 14

  BOTH MEN DREW THEIR SWORDS, OR DID SO AS BEST THEY could, and tried to look defiant and strong. Which was—less than awe-inspiring. They were still rather unsteady, and their hands had a perceptible tremble.

  But as they asked their questions, they were looking straight at Aleksia, who shook her head sadly, as much to herself as anything else. She knew exactly what was coming next.

  Nor was she incorrect.

  “The Snow Witch!” Ilmari spat, his gaze filled with anger. “Beware my steel, foul hag! We know your intentions, and we know your plans! What have you done with Veikko?”

  “I have done nothing with Veikko,” Aleksia said crossly, feeling very much put-upon and getting altogether weary of being blamed for what the false Snow Queen had done. “I might just as well ask you the same, and to as much purpose. You had the stripling, and you were responsible for him. You seem to have misplaced him. What did you do with him?” She looked the two men up and down; they were still wobbly on their feet, and she had the strong feeling that even she, untutored as she was in the art of bladework, could slap their swords aside without a great deal of difficulty.

  Now, at last, she could get her first truly good look at both of them. They were rather fine specimens of Sammi manhood, with similar, surprisingly youthful round faces with prominent cheekbones and startling blue eyes. Lemminkal Heikkinen boasted long gray-blond hair with two side-braids, and a beard that reached to the middle of his chest. He wore beautifully worked chain mail over thick brown woolen trousers and a black Sammi tunic decorated with embroidered bands, well-worn leather boots, with a heavy brown woolen cloak thrown back over his shoulders and clasped with a bronze pennanular brooch. Discarded on the ground beside him was a staff made from a gnarled sapling. Belted over the chain mail was the scabbard to the sword now in his hand.

  Ilmari Heikkinen, the younger brother of Lemminkal, was blonder, as his hair was not yet graying. He wore both his hair and beard shorter than Lemminkal, his hair reaching only to his shoulders and his beard close-cropped around his chin. According to everything that Aleksia had learned, he was a Wonder-smith, who created enchanted items like swords and knives. He wore a similar outfit to his brother, and at the moment there was a forge hammer stuck through his belt and a sword of his own making was in his hands.

  Both those sets of blue eyes were leveled at her. “I am also not the Snow Witch, or whatever you choose to call her,” Aleksia persisted. “In fact, I have never been here before. Until recently, this was an unregulated part of the world that was only loosely under my supervision. This—creature—that you call the Icehart or Snow Witch changed all that.” She drew herself up to her full height. “I am Godmother Aleksia, the Snow Queen, the Ice Fairy. My stronghold is the Palace of Ever-Winter, which I assure you is not in that direction!” She pointed to the north and west. “That way lies the dwelling of the one you seek to bring to justice. I seek retribution as much as you do, if not more. This creature is a murderer and a thief. She has stolen my identity, crudely copied my Palace and is ruining your countryside and decimating your villages, and I am here to put a stop to her!”

  It was a lovely speech, rather marred by the fact that she was wearing clothing she had slept in, stray hairs were escaping from her braids, and she had no visible support except for a rather bemused Bear and two women.

  “Brave words, carlin, but what reason have we to trust you?” Ilmari sneered. “And even if we did trust you, even if we did believe you, what army did you bring with you to oppose the Snow Witch, hmm?”

  She bristled. Carlin? I am no older than he! She was about to retort when Lemminkal said, dazedly, “Wait, what?” He rubbed his head and the tip of his sword dropped. He still looked stunned. Aleksia began to wonder if that was his perpetual expression.

  Oh, grand. This is Veikko’s mentor, the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal, who has about the same intelligence as his sword…or perhaps the sword is the smarter of the two. And on top of that, it looks as if he is going to fall on his nose in the next moment.

  But Lemminkal was shaking his head, and not as if he did not believe Aleksia, more as if he was disagreeing with what she was saying. “No, no, the Snow Witch and the Icehart are not the same thing! I am not even sure they are connected in any way—” At least some vague impression of intelligence was creeping back into his eyes; which effect was then marred by the fact that he turned as suspicious as his brother. “But why should we trust that you are what you say you are?”

  She graced both of them with a look of disdain. She was trying to make allowances for their heads being frozen, but really, of all of the Heroes and Champions she had ever worked with, these two were the dimmest creatures she had ever set eyes on! What had happened to the clever men she had listened to at their own hearth fire? “You should trust what I say because if I were not, I would not have bothered to bring the Wise Woman here and thaw you out.”

  The men exchanged silent glances. She was about to elaborate, when Lemminkal shook his head again. “The Icehart—” he began, and looked alarmed. “The time!”

  Ilmari cursed, and looked at the sun, now visible as it dropped below the level of the clouds and shone straight into the birch forest. Somewhat to her shock and dismay, Aleksia realized that it was setting. It had been scarcely midday when they all converged here and Annukka had begun her singing. It had seemed like no more than a moment had passed—yet clearly several hours had gone by.

  But why should this be a cause for alarm?

  “We are in great danger!” Ilmari said, all animosity momentarily forgotten. “This is the place from which the Icehart manifests! It was not the Snow Witch that froze us, it was the Icehart, and it is nothing like a mortal creature at all—”

  “It is a ghost of some kind,” Lemminkal interrupted, his face blanching. His eyes searched the clearing, as if looking for something. “A vengeful spirit. We faced it here. We think that it was awakened not long ago, and it has been looking for something ever since. When it does not find what it is looking for, it shows its displeasure and moves on.”

  “And in its wake, it leaves death,” Ilmari said grimly. “As you saw.”

  “But why were you not dead?” Annukka asked. She tucked her kantele away in the saddlebags, and turned back to face them.

  That is a good question, Urho rumbled. In fact, I can think of no reason why you should be alive.

  The brothers exchanged looks again. “Perhaps because we are Mages?” Lemminkal said weakly. “Perhaps the fact that we have magic all about us shielded us from the worst that the Icehart could do—”

  “But this place is very different from the villages. I was able to free birds and animals from the ice, and they lived,” Aleksia pointed out. “In the villages, everything was already dead and frozen that way, not sleeping under the ice.”

  “Then perhaps the Snow Witch’s spreading power and the Icehart’s magic clashed in some way—and it matters not!” Ilmari interjected, looking panicked. “This is the place from which the Icehart manifests! It appears at sundown and we must be gone before it returns!”

  “Ah…brother…” The last rays of the sun pierced gaps between the white trunks of the birch forest, lancing through the maze of trees like so many golden spears. And as swiftly as the light had come, it faded. Night descended as suddenly as a dropping curtain; they went without warning from golden light to a dim blue dusk, and the air abruptly became burningly cold.

  “I think we are too late…”

  The reindeer started; with their eyes rolling, they huddled together, shivering so hard they looked as if they were having fits. Something white and glowing softly ghosted through the tree trunks at the limit of vision. Obscured, revealed, only to be obscured again, it was drawing closer, but not in any direct fashion. Instinctively they all drew together, even the Bear and the reindeer. Then the deer froze, eyes staring fixedl
y, refusing to move.

  “Urho?” Aleksia whispered, hoping that the Bear’s senses would tell her something she did not know.

  It is a ghost. More than that, I cannot tell.

  So it was not some new manifestation of a Great Beast. Aleksia shivered. Life would have been much easier if it had been. She seldom had anything to do with ghosts. That was just not something she was an expert in. Godmothers rarely had to deal with such spirits. Godmothers tended to deal with the living, not the dead.

  Yes, but now you are part of the story, and you are subject to new rules, aren’t you? She was beginning to dislike that little voice in her head.

  By now, the poor deer were as rigid as statues. The temperature in the clearing was dropping more with every moment that passed, and a feeling of terrible menace increased proportionally. They watched in growing fear as the pale, glowing thing slowly drifted in their direction. She couldn’t make out anything of the creature except for the dim, blue-white glow of it as it advanced through the trees.

  Although “advanced” was a misnomer. It did not approach them directly. It was spiraling in toward them, slowly, a tactic that only made the tension mount as it sidled through the trunks. Aleksia’s body was rigid with the tension, and she shivered uncontrollably. And in the back of her mind, a little voice kept asking, in an increasingly hysterical tone, why she had ever considered facing this menace herself. What did I let myself in for? And, of course, the only answer was that she had taken herself out of the protected realm of the Godmother and placed herself right alongside of the true players in the situation.

  The pale form paused for a moment. Aleksia got the feeling that it was surveying them coolly. Then, suddenly, it disappeared. Or rather, the glow of it vanished among the trees.

  Aleksia held her breath. The others went very stiff, all of them listening as hard as ever they could. In the little clearing the silence was so profound that it weighed like lead on all of them.

  The only sound was that of their breathing. There was not even the sound of an ice fragment falling from one of the branches around them. It grew darker still, and the silence took on a menacing life of its own.

  The darkness pressed in on them, and the cold deepened. There was no moon, and the only thing that Aleksia could make out, peering as hard as she could into the darkness, was the vague pale shapes of the nearest birch trunks. Something had to be done. They could not bear this for much longer.

  Ilmari swore under his breath.

  Aleksia tried to speak; nothing came out. She swallowed, licked her lips and tried again. There was something she could do, now this moment, if only she could manage to offer it. Her stomach was knotted into an icy ball; she felt her hand shaking; and it was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering. This was so different from being on the other side of the mirror, watching the conflict about to take place, poised to interfere if she needed to—

  Oh, this was horribly unlike that.

  “Should I make a light?” she whispered.

  “Yes!” Ilmari barked, sounding relieved and frantic at the same time. Aleksia shivered, wondering what was going on in his mind. “Anything but this damned darkness! This is how it happened the last time—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, Aleksia had gathered personal power, called up the light spell in her mind, and with a little flinging motion, tossed an invisible bit of magical energy straight up. “Stay there,” she whispered to it. Then she gave the spell a little twist to activate it. The “ball” of power became a ball of light over their heads.

  The clearing was revealed with pitiless clarity. Kaari screamed. Annukka and Aleksia yipped and started back. The two men swore.

  The Icehart stood looming above them, not ten feet away.

  It could have been a sculpture made of the clearest ice, beautifully carved, exquisitely detailed, perfect down to the last hair, of a roe deer in the prime of life. Only this deer was twice the size of the largest reindeer that Aleksia had ever seen; it had a rack of antlers whose points glittered wickedly in the blue Mage-light, and she had no doubt that each point was sharper than a spear. It regarded them from clouded white eyes, the only part of it that was not utterly transparent. It exuded cold in waves, and as they stared at it, it finally moved.

  It opened its mouth and began to take a deep breath, its sides expanding as what passed for lungs filled. She could hear the hiss of its breath as it inhaled. She was terrified and puzzled all at the same time. What was this thing doing?

  Ilmari cursed frantically. “Brother!” he shouted. And as if that had been a signal, Aleksia found herself seized around the waist by a pair of the strongest arms she had ever felt. Ilmari lunged for the right, taking her with him. Lemminkal was doing the same with Annukka to the left, and Urho grabbed Kaari’s collar in his teeth and heaved her after the other Sammi woman before following Ilmari to the right. The Icehart continued to inhale, oblivious of them.

  Then the thing exhaled, as if letting go of an enormous sigh.

  They got out of the way just as the Icehart let out its breath, and where its breath passed, everything was instantly coated in ice. Despite her terror, Aleksia found herself gawking. This was the strangest magic she had ever seen. She could sense the power around them, and everything she knew told her it should feel evil and dark—and all it felt was alien. It was not even hostile. It was as if even emotion was chilled and numbed by the terrible cold.

  Everything that had thawed out was frozen again, and as Aleksia tried to get up, she felt her cloak tugging at her throat and shoulders. She grabbed a handful of fur and fabric and yanked hard. A shower of ice crystals followed as she pulled a corner of her cloak loose from the ground where it had been frozen into place.

  Just one touch of that breath and she would be as frozen as the brothers had been. And if Annukka was frozen, too—

  She whimpered a little in her throat.

  The men, however, were not waiting about for the Icehart to deliver another deadly breath.

  Moving as one, as if they had done this a thousand times, they attacked it, one to either side, while Urho roared and leveled a blow with a massive paw to its muzzle.

  The Icehart did not seem to move, yet somehow it evaded the Bear’s smashing blow, and fended off both the men with its antlers. One moment it was standing there; the next, it had ducked under Urho’s paw, then with a flick of its antlers, knocked both swords to the side.

  Then it reared, and one of its forehooves came crashing on Urho’s skull. The Bear went down as if it had been felled by a tree trunk, to lie semiconscious and groaning on the ground. Aleksia gasped and started to run to the Bear’s side; Annuka grabbed her by the elbow in a crushing grip and prevented her from doing so. Just as well, as the Icehart reared and spun again, and had she been beside the Bear, she would surely have been felled by those deadly hooves.

  The Icehart turned its attention to Ilmari. Moving its head in tiny circles, threatening him with its antlers, it lunged at him again and again. He darted out of the way, only to find that the Icehart had managed to drive him together with his brother, so that it only had to face one front, not two. The Icehart had them right where it wanted them. Now it could hunt them around the clearing until it could ready one of those terrible breaths to freeze them both where they stood.

  Aleksia sought through her memory for any sort of spell that would help in this situation, and cursed under her breath as she realized how woefully inadequate she was at combat. Fireballs? No, she had only seen those, never made them herself. Levin bolts? The same. A magical weapon, sword, lance, shield? No, no and no—they all took too long to create. Lightning? Nothing to call it down from.

  Light! she thought, finally, and with a cantrip of three words, caused another ball of Mage-light energy to appear in front of the Icehart’s nose. Only this time, instead of letting it build to a steady glow, she made it explode in a wash of brilliance.

  The Icehart started back, but Ilmari and Lemminkal also stumble
d backward with profane exclamations of pain. “Curse it, you fool woman!” Lemminkal spat. “I can’t see!”

  Hastily she summoned a spell for clearing the perceptions and graced both of them with it—and just in time. The Icehart shook off the effects of the light and lunged for them, taking care to come at them obliquely so that they could not separate again. They scrambled out of the way, as Aleksia pummeled her brain for something else that might work.

  So much of her magic had to do with ice and snow, and she was sure the Icehart was immune to the effects of both of these! A blizzard? No, that would handicap the men more than the Icehart. Ice underfoot? Same. Cold? It was already cold enough to burn, and the Icehart did not even notice it.

  She tried a spell of warmth, such as the ones that let her stay comfortable when her throne room was set to discourage Kay, setting it on the spirit in hopes of making it uncomfortable.

  The Icehart didn’t seem to notice, and the clearing became no warmer.

  She saw its flanks heave as it inhaled again, and shouted a warning; both men flung themselves to the side as it breathed out deathly cold for the second time.

  This time was worse. This time it wasn’t just a coating of ice it left behind; everything in the path of that breath was frozen.

  The men hadn’t yet gotten to their feet, and she saw it take another deep breath. They would not escape this breath. Desperately, she did the only thing she could think of. With an outflung hand she created a mirror of ice between the Icehart and the two men.

  The outrushing breath hit the mirror and—somehow reflected back. The mirror, ice already, became coated in the stuff, but it also sent the breath back to hit the Icehart full in the face. And the Icehart danced away awkwardly, shaking its massive head from side to side as it tried to free face, muzzle and antlers from the sudden overburden of ice coating it. From the way it blundered and slipped as it moved, Aleksia wondered if it had been temporarily blinded by its own power.