“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 fixedly, 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 smash
ing 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 stumbled 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.
But it had not been so blinded that it could not continue to fight back. Even as the men closed in, swords swinging in deadly arcs, it swept its massive antlers at them and nearly knocked the swords from their hands. A shake of the head, and showers of ice exploded in every direction from it, like a thousand tiny knives. It lunged at the men, but this time they managed to split and attack it from the side.
Ilmari missed, Lemminkal hit, but his blade clanged and skidded on the beast's flank without so much as scratching it, and it reared and whirled on its hind hooves and lashed at him with its forehooves. He stumbled backward and it began another of those long inhalations, preparatory to one of its icy blasts.
Urho slammed into it from the side. Both of them tumbled to the ground. The Icehart got up first, but it had lost its breath, and the Bear managed to roll out of the way of its hooves.
The Icehart was now at the far end of the clearing. The Bear shuffled back to the women, standing at their side, head down, a splotch of red blood making an ugly mess of the white fur of the top of his head.
Ilmari and Lemminkal crouched at the side of the clearing about halfway between the Icehart and the women. They were not making a protective stance to shield the women. They were pressed back against the tree trunks, panting, faces cut by the close passage of antler tips and flying shards of ice. They were half ice as well; beards and hair crusted with it, and ice glazing their chain mail. To Aleksia's eyes, their movements were slowed. They had not completely escaped the Icehart's breath, and they were showing the effects.
Her heart was in her mouth. They were all the worse for wear, and the spirit did not even look winded.
The Icehart stood very still. It was impossible to say who it was looking at, given those strange, clouded eyes, but it was not moving, and it was certainly looking at something — or someone.
Annukka was fumbling with the pack on her terrified deer, and in a moment had brought something out. Aleksia was going to caution her against using her bow, unless somewhere in there she had managed to get hold of arrows capable of destroying a spirit, but it was not a weapon that she brought out.
It was her kantele.
Before Aleksia could say or do anything, Annukka had struck the first chords, and with a look of fierce determination on her face, began to sing.
With the sound of the first bars, the two men roused themselves with difficulty and brought up their weapons, moving sluggishly.
She is going to sing a war song to strengthen them, but will that be enough? Aleksia wondered. She searched for the energies of The Tradition; they were here, but unfocused, and all but useless. So, anything she put into Annukka's song would have to come from her own reserves, which meant she would somehow have to do that and create another ice-mirror shield if it came to that.
But with the first words, it was evident that both Aleksia and the men had been mistaken in Annukka's intentions. This was not a war song.
It was a love song.
Or rather, it was a song of love lost, gone beyond all regaining.
As Annukka sang, a great lump came into Aleksia's throat, and tears unbidden sprang into her eyes. She was not familiar with this particular ballad, but the subject was common enough. This was the lament of a woman left behind, her beloved gone — though this song made no reference to the circumstances, only the bereavement, the agony, the loss and the loneliness. The words hung in the clearing, sweet and mournful, bringing an ache to the chest and waking up the memory of every loss ever suffered in one's life. Aleksia remembered her sister's husband and she felt again the bitter agony of knowing that he and she were perfect for each other and yet she would never, ever have him. Was there ever any sadder situation than “I love you, but you will never love me”?
There is an empty space where you should be, the song said. It is a mortal wound that I will never recover from. Where are you? I would give all that I have to join you. Without you, the sunlight is dim. Without you, food is tasteless, flowers have lost their scent, birdsong has no melody. Without you, why is there Spring? Without you, life has no meaning. My friends try to comfort me, but there is no comfort to be had. I am alone in the darkness and cold of my own soul, and there is nothing good in the world without you.
Perhaps Annukka thought that, being a spirit, the Iceh
art might take pause at this song, and turn aside. After all, if this was a vengeful ghost there were generally only two things to be revenged to this extent — the loss of love or the loss of honor, and Annukka had a fifty percent chance that it was a loss of love.
But she surely did not expect the reaction that she got.
The Icehart itself froze.
The air around it chilled further, calling a flurry of ice flakes out of the air itself. A coat of frost formed instantly all over it, rendering it translucent. That bereavement in the song was amplified past all bearing, as if something in the Icehart resonated to it and sent it back out again. Aleksia wanted to fling herself to the ground and weep until there were no more tears left. Nor was she the only one; the men were weeping, Lemminkal silently, and Ilmari sobbing openly. Kaari's face was wet with tears.
It turned its frosted eyes toward Annukka, eyes that glowed for a moment. Aleksia took an abortive step forward to put herself between the Sammi woman and the creature, fearing an attack.
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