[500 Kingdoms 04] - The Snow Queen

by Mercedes Lackey

  Ah.

  That inner voice was right, absolutely right. Even if she convinced one or more of them to come with her, they would be more hindrance than help. At the first sign of trouble they would freeze, or run or—

  Or if this Snow Queen is powerful enough, they might go over to her side. Why not? By going over to her side, they can bargain to be rid of Veikko and to get Kaari at the same time. And, oh, she hated to think that of her own people, but…people were people and temptation was temptation, and it was not wise to put people under the burden of a temptation that they simply could not resist.

  She clamped her lips shut at that point, grasped Kaari by the elbow, and pulled her away, back up the path to her home. No one followed. Not even Kaari’s own mother.

  The two of them kept silent until they were back inside Annukka’s house. Then it was Kaari who had an outburst—not of words, but of angry, frustrated tears.

  “Not one of them!” she sobbed, her anger so hot Annukka could have toasted cheese on it. “Not one! Why? When have we ever done anything other than do them all favors, over and over and over?”

  Now, Annukka could have shared her thoughts with the girl, but…

  That would accomplish nothing other than to make her angrier. She might then rush out with accusations, and that would only make things worse.

  She tightened her lips, grimly.

  “This is what we are going to do,” she said, finally. “First, you are going to get my reindeer from the herdsman. While you do that, I will pack. You and I are the same size. You can share my clothing, and I have plenty. I never got rid of the things I wore before I was married and they will suit you well enough.” She sighed. “I had always hoped to have a daughter, you see….”

  Kaari blinked and stared at her, but she went ruthlessly on. “By not going home and packing up yourself, we will make people think that we are not planning to leave until later, and they will not think to try and stop us tonight.”

  Kaari’s eyes widened. “They would dare?” She gasped.

  “Oh, certainly,” Annukka replied. “Especially now that they know for certain that I can work greater magic and am a Wise Woman. You are the treasure of the village, and I am the one that can keep them safe against the dark, and do you think they would let us go without a struggle? Hardly.” She shook her head. “They are frightened now. Something that was only rumor and legend has come to life and taken one of us, and they are very, very eager to make sure it doesn’t coming knocking on their doors.”

  “But—”

  “People are people, and often enough they act like frightened sheep, child.” Annukka set her jaw. “So, you get the deer, I will pack. I wish there was snow, now—we could have carried more on a sledge. Perhaps we can barter for one when we get farther North. Get all four deer, mind. Now go.”

  The truth was, she had no further idea than that, yet—but in order to be free to act on any ideas she might have, she and Kaari would have to be out of the village. She had no doubt at all that eventually the others would work themselves up to doing whatever they thought needful to keep the two of them from leaving.

  And…she smiled grimly…she was going to have just a little revenge. After she had packed up everything that she and Kaari could carry, she would work a little spell on her house and outbuildings. Nothing would be able to break into them once she was gone. Even if the Winter was long and hard, and people were growing hungry, she would see to it that they got not one bit of good out of the things she had stored there….

  Well, one exception. She was not going to punish the children for the faults of their parents. She would make a small addition to the spell. A starving child would be allowed to pass her guardian, go in and eat its fill. But it would not be permitted to take anything out.

  Be sensible, indeed. Well you can tell the Spirit Bear I shall leave to be sensible, and we will see how far that gets you.

  They left by moonlight. They waited until the knocking at the door had stopped, until the village had settled. Annukka, taking advantage of the need to wait, had put some very careful crafting into her house-guardian. It wouldn’t exactly hurt anyone, but it couldn’t be hurt, either. And it almost certainly would frighten anyone that encountered it out of his or her wits.

  Kaari did not go home after fetching Annukka’s reindeer, despite her mother asking her to. She simply refused to see her own mother, hiding in Annukka’s bedroom until her mother went away.

  After that, Annukka closed the door of her house, pulled in the latchstring and refused to answer knocks herself. Eventually people stopped trying to make them come out and “be sensible.”

  Perhaps they thought they were clever, lurking outside silently for some time, waiting. They forgot that she was a Wise Woman. The irony of the situation was not lost on Annukka; they didn’t want her to leave because she was a Wise Woman, but when it came to practical things, like being able to tell when there were people lying in wait outside her house, it never occurred to them that she would not be caught that way.

  On the other hand, that just wasn’t something she’d ever done before. It seemed her lifelong habit of being circumspect in the use of magic was reaping unexpected benefits.

  She considered setting a spell to keep the villagers sleeping while she and Kaari slipped away, but decided against it. It was a dreadful waste of magic, for one thing, and for another, what if something happened to the village while they were all spellbound? It was easier to muffle the reindeer’s hooves in sacks of bran, lead them out of the village silently and only mount up after they were well away. The moon was rising late anyway and was nearly at the full. They would get the benefit of its light right up until the dawn.

  Not many people rode reindeer; they were amenable to pulling sleighs and sledges, but not many of them cared to be ridden. Now, as a Wise Woman, Annukka had only ever been able to coax a few of her beasts into allowing a saddle on their backs. Strangely enough, they objected less to a pack than to a rider. Some of the villagers had thought it odd that through all these years she had persisted in trying to find deer that would allow themselves to be ridden. She had never done so with an eye to slipping away one dark night; mostly, she supposed, it had been a matter of seeing if it could be done at all.

  Now, of course, she was very glad that she had.

  Reindeer, deer in general, were easier to move at night than horses. With the moon up, the only thing they objected to was the bags on their feet, and she couldn’t blame them for that. And once she and Kaari felt safe enough to stop and take the bags off, they moved out at an easy amble that would cover a surprising amount of ground without the danger of stumbling and breaking a leg.

  There was some awkwardness with Kaari getting herself up into the saddle; riding anything was fairly unusual for the Sammi. Annukka knew that before the night was out, they would both be in pain from this. Reindeer were not comfortable animals to ride; their gaits were all jolting, and their spines prominent. And riding in general used entirely different muscles than walking. Still, better a bit of discomfort than the alternative of being a virtual prisoner in her own home.

  She thought she might catch Kaari looking back, and having second thoughts about this. Instead, Kaari seemed impatient to put as many leagues between herself and the village as possible.

  “No regrets?” she finally asked, as the deer followed the main road, the same one that Veikko had taken, under the silvery moonlight.

  They were riding side-by-side here, for the road was just wide enough to do so. Kaari did not turn her head to look at Annukka, but her voice was steady. “Yes,” she replied. “But I would have more if we did not do this.”

  That was enough for Annukka.

  Aleksia bit her lip in vexation. Like the villagers, she had assumed that Annukka and Kaari would wait at least a few days, if not longer, in order to try and persuade at least one of the stalwart young men to come along with them. Now she looked for them in the glass, only to discover that her viewpoint was fr
om a bit of harness-brass on a moving reindeer, ambling through the night.

  This was unfortunate. She needed more time—time to try to find out what Loviatar had done with Ilmari, Lemminkal and Veikko; time to discover where the Witch Loviatar had her stronghold; and possibly to discover what the Icehart was. If Godmothers were manipulators by nature, she was going to have to be a master manipulator now, and that wouldn’t be possible if the two women rushed into things and upset them.

  And there was still one piece of unfinished business on her plate.

  While she decided what to do about Annukka and Kaari, she checked her glass for Gerda.

  Instead of an image, she heard the Bear’s voice in her mind.

  We are sleeping in a cave, Godmother, very near your Palace. I trust you are ready for us.

  She had to chuckle at the amused tone of his mental voice. If her lad pines any more for her, he is going to wither away into a shadow. That is assuming he doesn’t starve to death first. My cook is outraged.

  Since they were in an ice-cave, there were plenty of reflective surfaces to carry her magic, but the image, of course, was of blackness.

  We must salvage the temper of your cook, by all means. Tomorrow, then?

  He was a good friend, was the Bear. I am not quite sure…

  Then we will wander in circles until you are ready. I think you should send them home in one of your sleighs. She is of no use in a wilderness.

  Aleksia had to shake her head. All the braver, then, for setting out into one. Thank you, Bear.

  The Bear chuckled, and the mirror slowly filled with white mist before clearing again.

  All right. The women were on the road going north and would not depart from it for a while. Now, what was on or near that road that she might be able to use?

  “Mother Annukka, if I have to ride another step—” Kaari ended her sentence with a groan of real pain. The sunrise had been glorious, the woods to either side of the road were a riot of golds and scarlet, punctuated by the greens of the great fir trees. Neither woman had been able to appreciate the view.

  As Annukka had anticipated, they were both in pain. Riding stretched and exercised muscles that were used in no other ways, and no matter how sturdy one was, no matter how used to doing hard labor, one would still be sore from riding.

  “There is a stream down there.” Annukka pointed to a place where the road was cut by a foaming brook. It was shallow enough to ford, but more than deep enough to support fish. “We can stop there, rest and eat.”

  “And sleep?” Kaari begged.

  “Taking it in turns.” She cursed herself now for not thinking of getting a dog. But in the village she hadn’t needed one, neither as a guard nor as part of a sled-dog team, for she had always had a riding reindeer or reindeer trained to harness. If she had “kidnapped” one on the way out, not only would that be wrong, it would only have run home again. But she surely wished for one now. If they’d had a dog, they could both have slept. The half-wolf sled dogs of the Sammi were loyal, as vigilant as their wild cousins and could be counted on in a fight.

  But then again, the deer would have been understandably skittish around a dog like that, for it would remind them too much of wolves. That was one reason why those who had dog teams did not usually bother with reindeer. Trappers and hunters used dogs, mostly, and herders used the deer.

  Bah, my mind is wandering.

  First things first. Get down the hill and get a camp set up. Not just any camp, either, a relatively hidden camp.

  Dismounting was a bit of an ordeal, actually. Kaari tried to be stoic, but a whimper escaped her, and as they went about the chores, they were both hobbling stiffly. Annukka’s thigh muscles screamed at her as she moved; she knew that Kaari could not be in a much better state, her youth notwithstanding. The only good thing about the pain was that it took both their minds off their worry about Veikko. They watered the deer at the stream, which poured over its rocks with great enthusiasm, then tethered the deer in a thicket that would hide them enough that they would look like a wild group, but still give them enough browse within reach that they would be contented there. Then they found another spot, close to the deer but just out of reach of the tethers, where they could tuck their bedrolls under a bush and be invisible from the road. The nearness of the stream was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Any sounds someone might make sneaking up on them would be covered—but so would any noises that they might make. Annukka was not going to chance a fire; the sun would warm them enough while they slept the morning through. At the moment, she was most concerned about others traveling on the road. There could be bandits very easily, and not everyone that traveled openly was going to be safe.

  “No tea?” Kaari said wistfully as Annukka laid out some cold food for both of them, barley bread, dried blueberries and water. “Willow-bark tea would be welcome right now.”

  “Here—” She handed Kaari some strips of willowbark to chew. “It’s bitter but it will do the same thing.”

  Kaari made a face, but took the bark—really the inner bark of the tree, that carried the pain-killing properties—and began chewing it. Annukka chewed her own bitter-tasting bark until there was nothing more to taste, then spit the wad of pulp out. “Do you want to sit up first, or shall I?” Kaari asked, doing the same.

  Well the answer obviously was, I would like you to, but Kaari was not at all used to riding, ever, and at least Annukka had some practice in it, so she was probably the least sore of the two of them. “I will take first watch,” she said, and tried not to sigh as Kaari wrapped herself up in blankets and rolled under the bush. A moment later, the sound of her even breathing told Annukka that despite frantic worry over Veikko, anger at the villagers and fear of what was ahead of them, exhaustion and pain had taken their toll, and she had succumbed to both.

  Now the question for Annukka was, what should their course be?

  Go straight to the last place I know Veikko was, I suppose. I can get the Moon to show me, I expect.

  She could, if she wanted to draw attention to herself by working a Great Magic.

  Drat.

  There was always a price to be paid for doing magic, and in this case, the price would be exposing herself and Kaari to possible discovery by the Snow Queen. That was not an option. Not now. She rubbed her aching thighs as she considered other courses of action.

  If she didn’t ask the Moon to show her—well, she needed to be clever, then. She knew that Veikko and his Master had gone looking for the Icehart. She could go to the village where Lemminkal lived, and do the simplest thing, which was to find where Veikko and Lemminkal had gone from there and keep listening for tales of the Icehart. Find the Icehart, and the Snow Queen was probably not far away.

  That, at least, would not draw as much attention. One definite advantage they had was that the Snow Queen would probably not expect two women to come after the men.

  So far, the loving-cup still retained that sliver of silver, which meant that Veikko was not dead. While that remained, there was hope. And until she and Kaari could find out exactly what had happened to Veikko and his Master, all either of them could do was to hang on to hope.

  Meanwhile, although they had gotten away with as much as she could manage, they were still not as prepared as she liked for this journey. Food, at least, they had in plenty, all things that were light—dried fish and meat, dried cheese, dried fruit, barley. The only fresh food she had packed were things that they would eat before they spoiled. They did have all of her herbal medicines, all of the things she used for healing. They had bedrolls. They did not have a tent. They had her bird bow, arrows, knives. They did not have bigger bows. They had Winter clothing, and thank heavens, she had finished the cloak for Kaari. They had a fire-starter and a cooking pot and an ax. They did not have a big enough ax to actually cut anything large, and she would have to use her cooking-knife to butcher things. They did not have fishing gear—and probably there were a great many other things that one needed for camping
that they simply did not have. They were going to have to trade for things along the way…fortunately that, for a Wise Woman, was not an issue.

  She slipped out from under cover of the brush to gather the long, flexible stems of dried sweetgrass, keeping a careful eye on the road as she did so, and ducked back under the concealment as soon as she had enough. Once there, she deftly began weaving it into tiny charms. The fragrant dried grasses mingled their scent with the Autumnal tang of fallen leaves. The sun was warm on her back now, and if it had not been for the ache in her legs, and the circumstances that brought them here, she could have been supremely content.

  And, on the other hand, with Veikko in peril, she could have been frantic. But a Wise Woman learns how to put her own woes aside when the need calls.

  With each charm she wove, she softly sang a spell as she worked, binding the magic into the weaving. A little goat for luck, a six-pointed star for health, a four-armed cross with the seed-heads at the end of each arm for prosperity, a forge hammer for protection—she refused to make love-charms unless she knew the person asking for them, but these four symbols were always in demand. Once, her husband had spent long Winter hours carving little trifles for her to put such spells on; she hadn’t had the heart to tell him that they weren’t as effective when she didn’t make them herself, so she had compromised by weaving grass cords to string them on and wove the spells into those.

  When she had a dozen, the sun was halfway up the sky; she woke Kaari, and told her to wake her when it had reached the zenith. By then she was so tired, she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

  And it seemed as if she had barely closed them when Kaari was shaking her awake again. As she moved, it also seemed as if every muscle stretched and strained by that long night ride had stiffened, and now she hurt twice as much as she had when she had gone to sleep. But she wasn’t going to set a bad example to Kaari by complaining; instead, she built a very tiny fire with almost no smoke; they made willow-bark tea to share and toasted some cheese and barley bread. Then they packed, harnessed the deer and resumed the journey.