“Mind your tongue, hag,” he spat. “What have my men to do with you or you with them?”
“Only that, without you, who would protect us, my apprentice and I?” she whined. “They look at her with greed in their eyes and at you with envy. Have a care for daggers in the dark — ”
This time, the blow he aimed did connect. Kaari gasped and made as if to run to her, but the man grabbed her and pulled her roughly back beside him. “Mind your place, slut,” he growled, and commenced eating his stew. He offered Kaari none, which was just as well, seeing what was in it.
Annukka had rolled with the blow and made a great show of getting slowly to her feet as if he had hurt her greatly, when in fact she had gotten worse blows from her reindeer butting or kicking her. She hobbled away to serve the rest of the men.
As she brought them their portions, she made sure that they heard her muttering curses against him under her breath, but interspersed with those curses were little suggestions only they could hear, things that were not meant to register with them consciously.
“You would be a better, a fairer leader than he is. You are smarter, tougher, more cunning. You would never risk the curses of a Wise Woman. You would get her on your side and she would work her magic to bring you wealth and more women. And you would have the wench all to yourself. You should have her, you should be the leader. You deserve it. What has he done that he should get it all? He’s not as good a fighter, his luck is bad and he keeps all the best things for himself."
Their minds drank in her words, they ate her spells, and when they were all served she brought around the beer and wine in whatever containers she could find. But she had also worked a greater magic on the drink, making it a hundred times more potent than it had been. And with every flagon, mug and helmet full, she whispered into their minds.
You should challenge him. You should challenge him. You should challenge him….
And on the third round — they did.
She was not sure what started it, for her back was to them at the time. It might well have been that the fool finally decided he was going to try to have Kaari in front of them all, rather than just fumbling with her. All it would have taken, as raw as their tempers were, was a flash of breast to set them off. All she knew for certain was that one man began shouting. And suddenly the entire encampment was a battlezone.
She had been ready and had planned to get to Kaari, but before she could turn around, Kaari was at her side.
“I th-thought I g-guessed what you were about,” the young woman stammered, still white-faced, as they began to back slowly toward the cook-fire. There had been a man there guarding what she did, making sure she did not make off with a knife. Now he was gone, part of the melee, which was swirling around the erstwhile leader.
As soon as they reached the dying fire, she equipped them both with wicked long blades that she had been eyeing for some time. “Cut anyone who comes near us,” Annukka said grimly. “Go for the throat. They will be too drunk to defend themselves, I think.”
Kaari did not argue. Several hours of being mauled by a brute, with the promise of worse to come, was enough to make even the gentlest of girls prepared to take matters into her own hands. With one hand she held the knife; with the other she tried to put her clothing into order. Annukka's attention was not on her, but on the fighting and on what she was doing about it.
She sang a song so old that she didn't know the exact meaning of the words, only that she had been told it was a song of battle-madness intended to make men fight against their enemies until they were cut to ribbons. And since every man here seemed to consider every other man his enemy…
With ax and sword and knife, with sticks of wood still ablaze from the fire and with their bare hands, they tore each other apart.
It didn't last very long; it couldn't, not when you had men who were gouging out eyes and hamstringing each other. The leader went down first, with the killing blow being any one of a dozen lethal strikes aimed at him. Then they turned on each other.
At that point, Kaari hid her face. Annukka, on the other hand, watched the melee like a carrion crow, and whenever it moved, leaving behind wounded in its wake, she darted in with her long knife to finish those left behind before they could even realized she was bending over them. This wasn't revenge; this was survival. There could be no one left standing at the end of this but herself and Kaari.
And so it was.
Although she was white-faced and nauseous, Kaari was made of sterner stuff than Annukka had guessed. The young woman helped Annukka harness the deer and the two women used them to drag the bodies far from the camp and leave them in a heap for predators and scavengers. There was enough there to keep anything that showed up busy for one night at least; once morning came, she and Kaari would be gone.
One fire burned high that night with all the garbage Annukka threw on it. The bandits' clothing, the little they had not actually had on their backs, was not worth trying to save, so rank it was. But Annukka went carefully through everything she found and by the time the camp was cleared up, she had found enough copper and silver coins to make a small pouch bulge, two decent bows and the arrows with them and a lot of other weapons. She looked at the swords, but discarded them; neither she nor Kaari knew how to use them properly. The knives, however, would be of plenty of use, and she intended to have them concealed all over her person.
There was a lot more in the way of food gained than they had lost, too. And, surprisingly, a tent. It looked as if some attempt had been made, then abandoned, to set it up. It made her snort with contempt, although it did not surprise her, to see that these fools had not been able to assemble a simple tent.
It was probably midnight by the time the camp was clear and the two of them had sorted out what was useful and what was not.
“Mother Annukka,” Kaari finally said, swaying where she stood, “I c-cannot — ”
Annukka barely had the strength to push a bedroll toward her with a foot. “We both must sleep, and trust to the wolves out there to eat the feast we have left them and let us be.” Kaari did not even have the ability to do more than nod, drop down on the blankets and fall asleep. Annukka only waited to be sure that the fire was banked before doing the same.
8
“Aleksia,” Elena said slowly, gazing with concern out of the mirror, “I hope you are not taking on more than you can handle.”
Aleksia chuckled dryly. “So do I. This is why I am telling you just what it is that I am doing, so that if something does happen to me, the rest of you will know that this Witch was good enough to remove me and be able to take steps.”
“I had rather that didn't happen,” Elena replied, with a frown.
“Only because you would probably have to become the Snow Queen, since you are the one best suited to the job, temperamentally speaking.” Aleksia laughed at Elena's expression. “Oh, yes, and then where would that handsome Knight of yours be?”
“If that happens, I swear I will go to the Under world and bring you back, you wench,” Elena growled. Then her expression sharpened, and she peered closely at her fellow Godmother. “I just gave you an idea, didn't I?”
“Indeed you did! And a very good one!” Aleksia waved her hand at the mirror. “I promise, I will keep you informed every step of the way. Keep my book open in your library. Instead of writing down only what I have done, I will write what I intend to do as well, so that you have a good record. Now, I am going to go see what preparations I need to make to do this. It is going to take quite a bit of trickery on my part.”
After checking on Kay — still moping — and Gerda — still being led in circles by the Bear, and getting some good, sound advice on standing up for herself in the process — and making sure that there was nothing else that needed her attention — evidently The Tradition had decided she had enough on her plate — Aleksia retired into her library.
The Snow Queens had been in residence here for a very, very long time, and had been the only Godmothe
rs to cover an enormous amount of territory, and the library reflected that.
As Aleksia contemplated the huge, circular room that was the true heart of the Palace of Ever-Winter, she was struck once again by the likelihood that the first of the Snow Queens had been a true Fae, a real Fairy Godmother and not a human at all.
This room was twice the size of the throne room, with no windows at all. Instead, the entire ceiling was a skylight that poured light into the room by day. And by night, hundreds of lamps provided light to anyone who prowled the shelves. Hundreds. Because the room was easily ten floors tall, and it had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. In order to have access to the books, there were beautifully crafted wooden walkways circling the room on every bookshelf level. There were roughly two levels per floor, and the sensation of standing down on the floor and looking up at all those books was of seeing all the knowledge of the world in one place.
While this was probably not true, it was true that there were treasures here that existed nowhere else, because this was the repository for all of the books and scrolls rescued from what could have been a terrible disaster hundreds of years ago.
It had happened that the Kings and Queens of a desert kingdom now no more had decided that the capital city would house the greatest library in all the world. Because their land had been rich in gold, their wishes were commands. Within the lifetime of the first King to make this command, it had become a scholar's pride to send a copy of his work there. By the lifetime of the tenth Queen, there were very few books in the literary world that were not preserved there.
Then, disaster. Despite clever negotiations, despite using her own beautiful body as a bargaining tool, her Kingdom was invaded. And the invaders, caring mostly only for warfare, did not care about learning. So when during a riot, someone set fire to the Great Library, nothing was done to save the books.
But fortunately for the world, the Godmothers did care. Not everything was saved, as Godmother after Godmother worked magic to pull the books from their doomed homes into her own, but most were, and those that were not, had copies elsewhere.
Eventually all those books, either the originals or copies, found their way here.
Here, where thirteen Godmothers and thirteen Fae — who also cherished learning — worked together to create the perfect home for them, protected from fire, water, worm and rot. And then they worked a further magic, so that any one of the Godmothers and great Wizards who needed to consult one of the books here had but to go to his own library and look for it. And there it would be — a copy, perfect in every detail. Thus, over time, they ensured that none of these books would ever be lost again. What was more, the library continued to grow, with new books added to it daily. This was not just the past being preserved; it was, insofar as possible, just what the Kings and Queens of that long-lost land intended.
The room had that special scent of a good library: old paper and parchment, a hint of dust, the smell of aged leather. Aleksia had an appreciation for it, although she was not the book lover that some people were. She had had one of those as a visitor once, and he had stood in speechless awe for a good hour, then broke down and wept with happiness. He had been a very easy visitor to care for; she scarcely saw him except at meals.
Needless to say, Kay was not permitted here. If he had known such a place existed, it might well have erased Gerda from his mind.
It would take someone who devoted himself or herself full-time for several lifetimes to learn all the books here. Fortunately, the library had such a person.
Well, “person” in the broadest sense of the term.
“Citrine?” she called.
From somewhere up near the top of the room there came a rustling sound. “Up here, Godmother!”
A moment later, something unfurled itself and descended through the air in a tight spiral.
The tiny dragon — tiny by draconic standards — landed next to Aleksia neatly and precisely. Citrine was a Book Wyrm, one of a rare breed of dragon whose treasure consisted of books, rather than gold and gems. They tended to be small, but Citrine was exceptionally small, being only double Aleksia's height when she stood on all fours. She was a gorgeous little thing, golden yellow shading to deep gold on her extremities, and deep rose-gold eyes with a kindly look to them. She was, in fact, a dwarf. As such, she was easy prey for dragon-hunters.
But the Godmother who had been in residence four generations ago had been quick to offer the young dragon a home in the library and to officially designate it as Citrine's “hoard.” Citrine had been in charge of the library ever since.
“I need to know how I can get into the Underworld and back out again,” Aleksia said carefully.
Citrine cocked her head to one side, and regarded Aleksia thoughtfully. “I could be flippant and say that it is easy to get into the Underworld, but very hard to get out again…but more to the point, I think, would be to ask which Underworld. There are a very great many.”
“The Sammi one,” Aleksia replied, after a moment of mentally placing where the villages destroyed by the Icehart were.
“Tuonela, hmm? Give me a moment.”
Citrine flew up to about the middle of the room, and landed on the railing, her long neck extending as she scanned the shelves. After some time, she selected one book, and then another and finally a third. She pushed herself off the railing and glided down to the floor again.
“Here you are!” Quickly she leafed through the first book and marked a page with a slip of paper, then did the same with the second and third books. She handed all three of them to Aleksia, who took them with a nod of thanks.
“Don't forget to bring them back, Godmother!” Citrine blinked owlishly, then bared her teeth in a draconic grin that Aleksia knew was friendly, but would probably look horrifying to an outsider. She nodded her head and flew back up to the top of the room where she had been when Aleksia entered — probably reading another of the new books that had arrived.
With a faint smile on her face, Aleksia took the books back to her study. She was not at all sure that Citrine knew her name. The Book Wyrm was entirely focused on the books and what was in them. She might not recall what the information was, but if you told her what you were looking for, she could find the book it was in, and probably the page it was on.
With all that to remember, it was probably not surprising that Citrine could not remember the name of the Godmother-in-residence. That, after all, was irrelevant. Well, it was, right until the moment that the Godmother in question did something worth remembering and putting in a book. At that point, Citrine would know the Godmother's name and what she had done. She still would probably not recognize the Godmother if she saw her, but by all that was holy, Citrine would remember her name and in what book she had resided.
And truly, what did it matter what the name of the Godmother here and now was for what Citrine did? Godmothers came and Godmothers went, but Citrine would be here for several more centuries at least, growing slowly with the library, learning the books and what was in them, and serving as the living index to all of them.
No open flames were allowed anywhere in or near the library, but here in her study, she had a cozy fire and scented candles filling the air with the aroma of cinnamon. She settled down with her books, first to determine what languages they were in.
The Sammi were not ones for writing things down, depending mostly on their oral traditions. So all three books were in different languages, but — much to her pleasure — one was an account by one of the Great Wizards, one was a Godmother collecting the first-person accounts of Sammi Shaman and the last was of collected tales passed down in the oral tradition — which, to be fair, was a source much less reliable. It pleased her even further to learn that all three were fundamentally alike.
So she had a good account. She also had evidence that The Tradition would also give her some protection if she stuck strictly to the guidelines these tales offered. She closed the last book to find one of the Brownies at her elbow, tugging at her sl
eeve.
“Godmother, you must eat,” the little man said insistently. “You have not eaten for hours, and the cook is furious.”
She looked down at the worried face with amusement; both at his concern and at the idea that the cook would be furious because she had not eaten. It wasn't as if the food would be wasted. She insisted on eating the same things as the staff, and the leftovers, if they were things that did not store overnight well, kept a very healthy flock of Ravens fed. But she was touched as well as amused.
“If you will say that I beg the cook's pardon, but I was deep in studies, I should very much like soup and bread if he would be so kind.” She smiled at the little fellow. “You would help me immeasurably if you would return these books to the library. I shall go to the sitting room to wait for my soup.”
“Don't go wandering off and forget you have food coming, Godmother!” the Brownie replied, insistently. She did her best to repress a laugh. Whoever he had been talking to had evidently impressed him with the need to keep an eye on her, which was rather funny. She might not be the kind of rounded and odalisque-like creature often depicted as a fertility goddess, but she was not going to pine away in half a day.
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