Snow Queen fhk-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I have a peasant cook now,” she said, and with amusement saw his eyes light up. “Oh, yes, Urho. All your favorites, I do think. And down below your cave, where the snowline meets the treeline, just above the cairn of thirty stones beside the trout stream, there is a young lady. She is all alone, rather ill-equipped and marching with great determination to rescue her lover from wicked me.”

  What, another one? Urho rumbled with laughter. So, so, so. I should hurry, if I am to intercept her before nightfall.

  “Thank you, old friend. I will see you in a few days.”

  Look in on us between now and then. I will find shiny places.

  “I will,” she promised, and the mirror clouded over.

  She took a long, deep breath. Well, that was sorted. Kay was in love with Gerda after all, with emotions all the more potent for having been suppressed all this time. Gerda had grown a spine, not sitting down in the snow and weeping until someone found her and took pity on her, but marching over inhospitable territory with every intention of getting there by herself. The difficult part of all of this was over.

  Of course, she was not going to count this over until the lovers were reunited and on their way home together. Many a Godmother had been tripped up by being too confident of the happy ending.

  She rubbed her hands together to warm them. No matter how hard she tried, she was never quite able to keep herself completely warm here. She was about to get up when the glass clouded again.

  She blinked to see her mirror-servant appear in the depths of it. He hardly ever used this mirror. He hated it, actually. Despite appearing as nothing but a disembodied head, he swore the mirror made shivers run down his spine.

  “Jalmari,” she said, looking at the blue-shadowed apparition, closely. “Have you…done something to your hair?”

  The head somehow removed its hood, though there were no visible hands. What was revealed was a bizarre — at least to Aleksia's eyes — mound of white hair with tight rolls over each ear and some sort of tail with a black ribbon tying it back.

  “What in the name of all that is holy is that?” she asked, astonished. Jalmari stared back at her. “It is the highest of fashion in the Frankish Court.”

  “It looks like something died on your head,” she replied, too astonished by the sight to be anything except blunt.

  Jalmari sniffed. “Well, since you need me so seldom, I have been taking the opportunity to educate myself in the ways of some of the other Kingdoms. No one would take me seriously in Frankovia if I didn't wear my hair this way.”

  “No one will take you seriously here if you do,” she muttered, amused. “So to what do I owe the favor of an appearance?”

  Jalmari became intensely focused, so much so that his absurd hair vanished, leaving him with his normal curly black locks. “You wished to find information about your imitator, Godmother Aleksia,” he replied. “Well — this is what I have found — ”

  Look for magical trouble among the Sammi, centered on ice and snow. Hardly useful, since it was what she already knew, except that Jalmari had at least given her a small area to search in. My own searches lead me here, and no farther. This probably means that the players in this Traditional path have not moved yet. So look for powerful magic, Godmother. This has clouds of great danger about it.

  Outside of being able, like Aleksia herself, to see and hear anything in a place with a mirror in it, Jalmari's one powerful ability was to see directly the magic that The Tradition gathered about its instruments and pawns. Something about this particular river valley and village was aswirl with that magic. So Aleksia was looking through every reflective surface she could find in order to —

  “ — but Mother Annuka,” said a tearful voice, as the vague shapes in her mirror coalesced into two women of the Sammi, standing outside the doorway of one of their log houses. It must be harvest season by the look of things. The leaves of the trees above their heads were gold, and the sky was a crisp and chilly blue. One of the women was a stunningly beautiful girl, a maiden by the fact that she wore her hair uncovered and loose, with a studded headband of ribbon confining it, while the other wore a square felt hat with bands of card-woven decoration, or perhaps embroidery, around the hem. Both were dressed the same: in a woolen, high-necked dress with more fanciful bands decorating it at the neck, along the arms and at the hem, and aprons also decorated with embellished bands. The dresses were so short that, in many lands, they would be considered scandalous, which only made sense for someone who spent all Winter traipsing about in the snow. A dress that ended below the ankle would only end up soaked and sodden, heavy and ruined besides. In towns where roads were trodden down and paths swiftly cut, you could wear a long dress. Out here, where a “village” might consist of three huts, you adapted. So beneath the dresses, both wore woolen breeches, finished at the bottoms with yet more colorful bands, tucked into felt boots. In the deepest Winter, those boots might be sheepskin or reindeer hide rather than felt. The older woman's costume was black, the younger, a golden brown, and the style marked them as the Sammi, people who herded reindeer in the most northern regions of Karelia.

  So…why was the mirror showing her these two? There had to be a reason. When she was seeking like this, the mirror never showed her anything without a good reason.

  “ — Mother Annukka,” the girl repeated, only a step from tears, her face a virtual mask of fear, “this is scarcely the time for music!”

  The older woman was holding a lovely wooden kantele, a harp used mostly by the Sammi, and she gave the girl a sharp glance. Her eyes were a very piercing blue, and Aleksia found herself wishing that she actually knew this woman. Her face had a look of strength, bravery and wisdom about it. “Have you ever seen any true sorcery, Kaari?”

  The girl shook her head, and wiped her eyes. “No, only things like casting the runes, and the little household magics. You are the only Sorceress I know. Everything else I only know from tales.”

  “The greater Magies that I know all work through music,” the one called Annukka said, tuning the kantele with practiced fingers, one ear cocked to the sound as she plucked the strings too softly for Aleksia to hear. “Shaman use the spirit-drums, Wise Women and Wonder-smiths the kantele. So be still and learn.”

  Annukka's fingers moved deftly over the strings, and she began singing. Her voice was low, and very strong, though not loud; pleasant, but by no means the level of a great musician or a bard. Yet there was power, great power, behind it. Even through the mirror, Aleksia could feel it. “Oh, Road that leads out from my door,” she sang, “Who led my son to seek his fate. Now I command you to tell me where his wyrd has led e’er ’tis too late.”

  Now the girl probably could not tell this — and surely thought the woman was daft for singing to a road — but the power behind the song took even Aleksia aback. This was a Wise Woman indeed! For those with the eyes to see it, power flowed around her, golden as honey, as if she was immersed in a swirling river of light.

  The dust of the road stirred, the fallen leaves moved as if twirled by an errant breeze.

  Leaves and dust began to fall into a pattern; Aleksia felt the hair on her neck prickle, and the girl stepped back a pace, her mouth forming into a little O of surprise. Then there was a kind of grinding noise, and a face gradually formed out of the dust, the bared earth, with the leaves settling into its hair and lips.

  The blank eyes were two stones, the ruts of the road forming a suggestion of nose, cheekbones, eyelids and eyebrows. The lips moved, and words formed, somehow, sighing into the air with the sound of rocks grinding against each other.

  Veikko took me northward, it is true. The Road groaned. He followed me into the forest. He spoke with many people who could not help him find a Master, until at last, he came to the home of the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal Heikkinen. There he was accepted as the Master’s apprentice. But they left there some time ago, and they did not go by road or track. I have not seen him. I cannot find him. Perhaps the sun has seen them, but I hav
e not.

  There was a final groan as of the earth settling; the breeze sprang up and scattered the leaves; and then — there was no face, no face at all. There were two stones near one another, but they didn't look like eyes anymore, and the ruts were merely ruts. Aleksia shook her head, marveling. It not only took great power to bring the inanimate to life, it also took great passion. This woman, living unnoticed in a tiny Sammi village — how was it that Aleksia had never known of her?

  And — Lemminkal Heikkinen? Surely there could not be two Mages with that name — And she wasn't done yet, it seemed….

  “Now hear me, bright and golden sun,” Annuka sang, turning her face to the sky.

  “You who sees where pathless travelers go. Where is my son out wandering? He is in danger! I must know!”

  The sun did not form a face — but another voice, like the distant roaring of flames, did come out of the sky above them. Veikko and his Master were told of a terrible creature in the North, where only the reindeer herdsmen are. They call it the Icehart, and they say its breath can slay entire clans in a moment. They went in search of it, to test Veikko. But I have not seen this creature myself, and I have not seen them since they passed under the snow clouds. Perhaps the Moon has seen them.

  Veikko! So it was the magicians she had watched for so long! It seemed she had given up too soon. Aleksia pursed her lips. The Icehart? That was something entirely new to her…. And it certainly sounded like something this imposter would think up.

  But Annukka was already turning to the west. The sun was only just up over the trees and the moon had not yet set. The determined set of her chin told Aleksia that the woman had not even begun to run out of magical strength. And indeed, the magic of The Tradition was so thick around her it could practically be cut with an ax.

  “Oh moon, who shines down through the dark upon the trackless snowfields white — where is my son? I cannot tell! You must have graced him with your light!”

  The pale ghost of a day-moon seemed to shiver as it touched the horizon, and a silver voice whispered out of the western sky. The Warrior-Mage and his apprentice followed on the track of the Icehart, which only travels by night. They traced it through three villages where it had slain every man, woman and child with its icy breath. But then they fell under a shadow of sorcery, and I saw them no more. Perhaps the North Wind can say where they are, but I cannot.

  Then the moon, as if hurrying to get out of sight before Annukka could ask it more questions, dropped below the horizon, leaving the sun in sole possession of the sky.

  Annukka did not even pause for breath, but swept her fingers across the strings, and cried out, “Oh, North Wind, child of ice and air, who cannot be kept out or stayed — where is my son? Oh, hear me now! He can’t be found! I am afraid!”

  For a moment there was nothing. And then —

  Leaves dropped off the trees around the two women as if their stems had been cut, and the falling leaves swiftly turned white with a rime of frost as they fell, and the air itself thickened and whitened with ice-fog. The women's skirts were plastered to their legs, as a wind carried the leaves in a swirl around them. Although probably Annukka wasn't paying attention, Aleksia counted nine full circuits around the two, before the ice-fog settled before them, and formed into a vague and puffy face that changed from moment to moment.

  I saw your son and his Master, the North Wind said, in a voice like the howl of a blizzard heard from leagues away. They followed the Icehart until it led them to its Mistress. She is called the Snow Queen and she lives in the Palace of Ever-Winter, on the side of the Mountain. She took them captive and into her Palace. And there they remain.

  Before the stunned women could reply, the North Wind swirled itself up and away through the cloudless sky, leaving the frost melting behind it.

  And Aleksia was jumping to her feet, fists balled at her sides, her temper flaring and overriding every bit of calm she had ever learned in her life.

  “You wretched, ill-begotten liar!” she screamed at the mirror. “Wait until I get my hands on you!”

  Aleksia was employing every technique she knew to cool her temper. She had tried counting, tried willpower and now she was out, on the slopes of the mountain called Varovaara, pushing herself to exhaustion in a trek around what passed for a garden up here — ice and snow sculpted into fanciful shapes, immaculately groomed paths and feeding stations for wild birds. Her breath puffed out in little clouds, her feet were getting numb and still she wanted very much to hurt something. She was going to summon the North Wind herself, but before she did so, she knew she had to get herself under control. Rare indeed was the magic that benefited from being performed in a rage; most of the time, control was needed. The icy air did nothing to cool her temper, a glance upwards at the sun through the thin screening of ice-clouds only made her angrier. The Road, the Sun and the Moon had all told the truth. The North Wind had lied. How had it dared? She wanted, very badly, to summon it now, to hurl something at it, to indulge in a fit of temper completely unbecoming of a Godmother. It had said she was a murderer of dozens of people! If this was the kind of rumor that had reached Godmother Elena's ears — well, no wonder her fellow Godmother had looked at her sideways for a moment!

  And at the moment, she had no other target for her ire than the North Wind. Oh, how she would like to strangle the creature! Not that she could — you couldn't strangle a wind — but she wanted to!

  She continued to circle the garden until at last sheer weariness, and nothing else, wore down her anger. By then her feet were sore, her hands were half-frozen and it took several moments of concentration to invoke a heat spell to thaw herself out, and that by itself was an indication of how unprepared she had been to work any magic at all. Only when she was sure she was steady did she take a strong stance in the center of the garden, clear her mind, and summon.

  She didn't chant her summons aloud, nor did she sing it. She didn't have to; she was a Godmother, after all. By ice and by fire, I summon a liar! she called fiercely in her mind, concentrating on the North Wind, for she knew it as only a Great Mage or a Godmother could; knew its true name and incorporated that into her image of what she sought, knew that right now, in its own mind, it was not identified by anything it knew of itself more strongly than that word. Liar.

  The world became very still, the potentials of magic swirled all around her, then exploded outward. There was the sound of shattering ice crystals, thousands of them. A flash of blue-green light, like that seen from the inside of ice-caves. A whiff of the sharp, wet scent that comes just before snow starts to fall.

  And it was there.

  It brought with it none of the theatrical freezing of leaves and swirling of eddies of ice-fog. Not now, and not with her. It knew that it was in very, very deep trouble. And although it was one of the four named winds, it also knew that a powerful enough set of human magicians, or even a single Great Mage, could hurt it, or even imprison it. The Sammi were well known for imprisoning and releasing Winds — though only the most powerful and terrible of Sammi magicians would dare to imprison one of the named winds — so it stood to reason that a Godmother could do the same.

  After all, once, long ago, a great and evil Witch of the Sammi had imprisoned the Sun…and had kept all four of the Winds in chains.

  So the North Wind huddled on the ground in a spreading pool of ice-fog at Aleksia's feet, looking rather like a ghost, although a good bit more fantastic. In form, it looked like a skeletally thin, long-nosed man. Its hair and its beard were spines of ice, and its “clothing” did not move at all, being basically only the North Wind's imperfect mimicry of clothing. It had an extremely long and pointed nose, with, as the final touch, an icicle permanently clinging to the end of it. And just now, it looked utterly miserable and quite afraid.

  “Do you know who I am?” Aleksia asked, not loudly, but with great intensity and just a little magic behind the words.

  The North Wind shivered, cowered and wailed — a sound like a hundred
lost souls. Ice crystals formed at the corners of its eyes and tinkled down its cheeks to fall with little ticking sounds into a pile in the snow. You are the Snow Queen, the Godmother Aleksia! It wept. Do not harm me! Do not chain me!

  Well that was a satisfactory reaction. “Perhaps I should melt you instead,” Aleksia replied threateningly, allowing one hand to glow with a heat spell.

  The North Wind wailed again. I am sorry! I am sorry! I lied to the mortal women!

  “Yes, you did. Did you think I would never find out about it?” Aleksia's voice dropped to a dangerous purr. “You lied, and about a Godmother! You placed the deaths of dozens of mortals at my doorstep. I will be blamed for this, and mortals will come here looking for revenge. It was not enough that you lied, but you compounded the lie by bringing trouble down on my head! I am not amused!”