[500 Kingdoms 04] - The Snow Queen

by Mercedes Lackey

  And that was far more information than they had gotten before. At least now they knew to watch out for ghostly reindeer.

  It was Lemminkal who had linked the Icehart with the Snow Queen, and according to those who had spoken to him before the three men left, he was determined to eliminate both the monster and its mistress. Ilmari was more circumspect and rather less confident that they could take on the Snow Queen themselves.

  Annukka and Kaari had decided to climb up from the valley where the village lay to have a look at what lay ahead of them as they followed the men. From this vantage, on the side of the mountain, what was before them was daunting, a patchwork of alpine forest and glacier, mountains already deep in snow. This was where the road had lost track of Veikko, because after this village, there was no road. And there was no use in calling up the North Wind again, because even if it would answer, which was dubious, the Winds were notoriously bad at being able to give good directions to humans. “Oh, over that mountain and to the east” was usually the best they could manage.

  “Now what do we do?” Kaari asked, looking bleakly at the literally trackless wilderness in front of them.

  “For one thing, we switch to sledges,” Annukka replied. “Which means that we will be able to carry more supplies with us. That is no bad thing.”

  “But how are we going to find them?” Kaari wailed. “There’s no road to follow, and any tracks they made are gone by now!”

  Annukka hugged her shoulders harder. “Don’t despair. I have an idea.” She turned Kaari about, faced her toward the village and gave her a little shove. “You go get us sledges and supplies. And find out what, if anything, has been happening here since the men left. I will see if my idea will work.”

  Kaari got a firmer hold on herself, and nodded. She turned back to the village as Annukka walked down the slope to their camp, ducked under the flap of their cobbled-together tent and sat down on her bed to rummage through her pack. They had set up their tent here in the shelter of one of the reindeer sheds because this was a small village and had no inn. This was probably why the only witness to the appearance of the Icehart had taken his deer herd and moved on.

  Which was a great pity, because Annukka would have liked to have been able to question him herself.

  As for a way to track the three men into the wilderness, she had an idea, indeed. But it was nothing that she, nor anyone she knew, had ever tried. She had gotten this notion earlier today when one of the men of Ilmari’s village had offered to sell them a lodestone, demonstrating for them how it always pointed to the North Star.

  “But if it always points to the North Star, why would you need it?” Kaari had asked, shaking her head in puzzlement. “You can see the North Star!”

  “You can’t during the day,” the man had said, with some impatience.

  “But then you can see the sun,” Kaari had replied, with the patience she used when speaking to particularly dense little boys. “The sun will tell you where North is.”

  “Well then, you can’t see the North Star at night when it’s cloudy!” the man responded, and Annukka got the impression that if it hadn’t been Kaari he’d been talking to, he would have lost his temper.

  “Why would I want to travel at night when it is cloudy?” Kaari asked, looking at him as if he was mad. “For that matter, why would I want to travel at night at all if there was no road to follow? It would be of much more use if it pointed to something other than the North Star—like the village you needed to go to.” She looked at the lodestone indulgently, with the air of a girl who is looking at something that she considers to be a particularly foolish “boy’s toy.” Annukka had seen that look before, on the faces of most of the women she knew, when men came trotting up with some wonderful “new” thing that was allegedly better than any previous iteration of such a thing. Men never understood that look, and generally went off, aggrieved, to show the prize to another man, who certainly would understand why it was better, shinier and altogether superior to anything else that anyone had that was like it.

  Now truth to tell, Annukka could certainly see a great deal of use for something like the lodestone. What if they had not had the road to follow when they were making their way through dense forest? You could see neither sun nor stars under trees like that and the only way of getting one’s bearings would be to climb a tree at intervals. You could wander in circles forever in such a place, and people had. People had died under such circumstances.

  So she had quietly traded for the lodestone herself from the fellow after soothing his wounded pride; a couple of copper coins from the bandit’s loot, a handful of charms and one of the swords they clearly did not need. He had told her then that it came from a much larger piece of metal that had fallen from the sky, and showed her how it was also attracted to iron. Interesting, that, but not terribly useful. On the other hand, she could use that to make sure it didn’t go astray, by storing it with the ax.

  But what if such a thing could be made that pointed to other things? People, for instance? Kaari had been right; something that pointed to another object or person would be very, very useful. Especially now, when they didn’t know where to begin looking for the three missing men.

  If she could just work out a way to make a lodestone that pointed to Veikko…There should be a way to do so with magic. Loathe as she was to use it, nevertheless if ever there was a time to start, it was now.

  But how to get it to point? She would have to have something of his, she thought. If only I was home when I had thought of this. I have so much of his: his baby clothing, a lock of his baby hair… When he had left, Kaari had given him a lock of hers, but he had not done the same. She supposed that was partly caution and partly a lack of sentiment.

  After a thorough rummage through both her belongings and Kaari’s, she had to give that idea up. Neither of them had so much as a hair from Veikko’s head, nor any token from him that would have much magical attachment to him. But although disappointed, she was not discouraged. There should be a way to do this, and she would find it.

  In the meantime, that lodestone would serve to guide them so that they did not go completely astray. They did know the general direction that the men went in when they were told about the strange creature that was killing whole villages. That would be the place to start.

  Meanwhile, she would find a way to make this new sort of lodestone point to Veikko.

  When Kaari returned, though, it was with the news that she could find only one sledge. Annukka was outside the tent again, looking to repack what they had to fit on sledges and trying to reckon what else could be traded for. They still had several swords, knives and bows that were fundamentally useless to them—but this village had been the home of a Mage-Smith, which meant that the weapons were somewhat devalued here.

  On the other hand, with their resident magicians gone, some people were feeling anxious about magical protections. Her charms were unexpectedly welcome, it seemed.

  But the droop of Kaari’s shoulders as she approached warned of trouble. “I tried, Mother Anukka,” she said, as soon as she was within hearing distance, “but they would only sell me one.” She looked stricken, as if she felt she was personally to blame somehow.

  That was an unwelcome development, but Annukka tried to put a good face on it. She shook her head, and patted Kaari’s shoulder. “Never mind,” she said, kindly. “We haven’t got so much that we need more than one, and we’ll be able to rest one deer while the other pulls.”

  Kaari bit her lip. “Well, there is another complication. I am not sure you would want this sledge, Mother Annukka,” she said reluctantly. “I am told it belonged to Veikko’s Master, the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal…”

  And that was when it struck Annukka like a blow. They might not have anything that belonged to Veikko—but Kaari had just bought the sledge that had belonged to Veikko’s Master! Now that was an unexpectedly good stroke of luck! A man spent a great deal of time with his sledge, and a surprising amount of emotional con
tamination rubbed off onto it. When it got stuck, or was reluctant to slide properly, anger seeped into it. When it was running smoothly and men were racing against each other, pleasure, excitement and other good things seeped into it. While not quite as “personal” as other effects might be, this was still as close as she was going to get without breaking into the Warrior-Mage’s house.

  And that…would be ill-advised. Not only was it possible he had left unpleasant surprises for anyone who tried such a thing—assuming he hadn’t warded the place the way she had warded her house—but he would probably know just what they had done when they finally met up with him, and as a consequence they might well be marked as thieves and unfriendly from the beginning.

  She jumped up and hugged Kaari, hard. “Want it?” she exclaimed. “This is the best thing you could have done! What does he want for it? Buy it! Hitch a deer to it and bring it here, quickly!”

  She chuckled as a bewildered Kaari hurried back to whoever it was that was selling her the sledge. It was no bargain—two swords and two daggers, and a silver coin to boot—but Kaari’s charms had worked on him as well.

  Lodestone be damned. She was going to enchant the whole sledge. Besides all the emotional contamination, anything that had once belonged to a magician generally was alive with the residue of magic. It should be easy for her to use that.

  This sledge was going to guide them to its Master!

  Aleksia had thought that the frozen villages were a horror. Somehow this ice-coated forest was worse, because it was so beautiful. It was a deadly beauty, and had killed as surely as the Icehart had killed in the three villages.

  It had been a birch forest, and birches were some of the first trees to lose their leaves in the Fall, so all of the trees were leafless at the point when this had happened to them. And normally in the Winter, birch forests like this were gorgeous, with white snow on the ground, and papery white trunks with their black markings rising out of the snow, the mist of white twigs softening the starkness. Somehow, even in the dead of Winter, birch trees managed to look alive. Maybe it was because of how supple they were, how they bent gracefully to the wind. Maybe it was because beneath that paper-white bark there was a creamy glow, a hint of warm color, too subtle to really point out to anyone, but there if you had eyes for it. For the Bear, at least, that was not the whole of it. Birches had a scent of life to them, even in the worst of the Winter, a subtle perfume that promised that when Spring came, the birches would be the first to awaken.

  But not now.

  The trees glittered, reflecting the cold light lifelessly, the trunks smooth, perfect and encased in at least an inch of ice. Every branch, every twig, every bit of undergrowth was sheathed in ice, perfectly preserved, and perfectly dead. There was no scent of life here, only the cold breath of the ice. Birch trees did not restrict much light, and beneath the canopy there had been a lively tangle of undergrowth—bushes, vines, weeds—exuberantly flourishing in the shelter of the birch branches. And now all that was frozen as hard and dead as a stone.

  Aleksia stared. This was appalling. And this was where the men’s trail had led.

  Carefully, the Bear picked her way through the trees, digging her claws into the ice-crusted snow with every step, and the horror deepened as she worked her way inward. Here was a bird frozen in a bush, coated with ice…a rabbit with its eyes still wide open, coated with ice…a deer encased in ice like a statue, actually caught in midbrowse, a mouthful of grass pawed out of the snow, half-chewed, the individual stems poking out of its mouth also coated in ice.

  Every hair on the Bear’s body stood up, and not just because of the cold; she was afraid, instinctively afraid. Chills ran down her spine, and a coldness grew in her stomach as Aleksia fought against the rising discomfort that told her to flee, and won. For long moments, she stood there, shifting from paw to paw, with the ice-covered snow cracking beneath her weight.

  I have no choice. I must find out what is in here. This is no village, and there is no obvious reason for the forest to have been frozen like this. There are thousands of acres of forest just like this one—so why freeze it? She forced herself to go deeper into the forest. The Icehart—for she was sure that was what had done all of this—must have had a compelling reason to freeze an entire forest. Even for a supernatural monster or a great Mage, this kind of act took too much power for it to be random. Just as she was certain that there was something in each of the frozen villages that the Icehart had wanted to stop, so she was certain that there was something here that had threatened it.

  She had a fairly good idea what that something was.

  And in a small clearing in the heart of the birches, she found them.

  That is, she presumed they were the men she was looking for. There were two of them, in the midst of a tidy camp; both sitting, both as still as statues. One had a gray-blond beard and carried a kantele, his hands still on the strings as if he had been caught in the midst of playing it, the other was older, and had a sword strapped to his back. Both wore the clothing of the Sammi.

  They sat beside the remains of a dead fire, one on either side of it, looking sightlessly at the coals. The older of the two of them had a forked stick with a gutted, skinned rabbit on it; presumably he had been holding it over the flames. The other had a flask down by his feet. There was a hide tent behind them, and a stack of wood beside it. Both were covered in an inch of ice, just like the trees. From the look of things, they had been taken completely by surprise.

  These two were Ilmari and Lemminkal, and there was no sign of Veikko. She felt sickened, and if she had been a woman, she would have cried. She had never felt as close to anyone other than her Brownies as she had to these men. And now, to see them like this—it nearly broke her heart.

  The Bear prowled around the campsite, snuffling, hunting for clues. There were three packs, three bedrolls in the tent, three rabbits to be cooked—two skinned and waiting the fate of the first—three of everything, in fact, except men. The village had been bad enough. These two men, staring into the long-dead fire, were enough to send a strong man screaming away, running as fast as he could. It took everything that Aleksia had to keep from doing just that.

  A line of footprints led away from the camp; Aleksia followed them to where they ended.

  There was no sign of a struggle, but there was a small hand-ax lying in the snow, under a layer of ice.

  Aleksia nodded to herself. So, the third man, presumably Veikko, had been here, and had been abducted. If this was the work of the false Snow Queen, this only made sense. Veikko was young, handsome, and if the false Snow Queen was following Aleksia’s pattern, she would be abducting young men. Both Ilmari and Lemminkal were too old to draw her interest.

  So she had Veikko—or at least that was a good enough supposition to follow for now.

  All right. The help I was hoping for in the shape of those men is gone. I am going to have to find the false Snow Queen’s Palace, and learn what I can from it….

  She sat down on her haunches to think, scarcely noticing that there was a little frozen bird cemented onto a branch beneath a coating of ice just under her nose. The ice prevented any scent from escaping, and she only caught sight of it because it was the wrong shape to be a stone or a last brown leaf.

  Poor thing. This is just wanton and indiscriminate slaughter. Why is this creature doing these things? It doesn’t make any sense. Why freeze an entire forest to get one man? Why kill an entire village?

  She shook her massive head after a time, deciding that she was just too sane to be able to fathom the reasons this creature had for what it was doing.

  Unless, of course, the false Snow Queen was trying to terrify the common folk, and eliminate any opposition. If she had decided that it was time to become a ruler and take over the land of the Sammi—

  I should concentrate on finding the Icehart and figuring out a way to stop it, and worry about the false Snow Queen’s motives later. While she thought, her warm breath puffed out over the little f
rozen bird.

  All right. I’ll try the most obvious. Let’s see if I can detect her magic from here, or find the Icehart itself.

  Aleksia turned her thoughts inward and went very, very still. Carefully, she “listened” first—some magic created a kind of resonance or hum that a magician could hear if he was in a quiet place…and certainly this was the quietest place she had ever been in.

  But there was nothing.

  With a sigh, she moved to the next possibility: scent. Magic often had an aroma to it, and not only could she as a Mage herself sniff it out, but the Bear form was particularly well suited for this sort of thing. She lifted her muzzle to the cool air and took in long, deep breaths; dropped it to the ground and tried finding the scent there.

  But alas, again…nothing.

  Finally she unfocused her eyes a moment, and looked for the faintest traces of power, particularly Traditional power. If there was another magician near here, that power would accrue to him, like water flowing down a slope. So if the power was moving at all, it would be moving in the direction of the magician.

  She saw the magical energies as soon as she unfocused her eyes, like dust-motes in sunlight. And there was definitely a current to the movements….

  Unfortunately, the center for those converging currents was—herself.

  Bah.

  Right then, there was only one more possibility. Mirror-magic. And for this she wanted her own mirror, so she was going to have to go back to human form and get it out of the—