[500 Kingdoms 04] - The Snow Queen

by Mercedes Lackey

  Now that she could see it happen, she could analyze the magic. And it didn’t merely look horrifying, it was horrifying. It ate at people, devouring them slowly from within. That was why the young men she took for herself didn’t last very long.

  But the oddest thing was, Aleksia was also certain that the false Snow Queen didn’t know this. As Jalmari replayed what he could to confirm this, they realized something else. She also never saw them die. She had no idea that at some point, each of them would wander out into the snow at night and just walk northwards until they stopped. All she knew was that they disappeared, which was an inconvenience to her, but nothing more. This was unexpected.

  “Is there a mirror in her room of magic-working?” she asked, finally.

  “There should be,” the mirror-servant said. “Why?”

  “Go as far back as you can—you don’t need to show it to me, but tell me if she ever had a mentor or if she has done all of her learning out of books.”

  While Jalmari searched, the Bear dozed with the mirror between her forepaws, and her back to the fire. The Bear form was good for that; dropping into a half-sleep that was as refreshing as a human’s full sleep. A cough from between her paws made her open her eyes again.

  “She inherited the tower and its contents from her grandfather,” Jalmari said flatly. “She never had a mentor.”

  “Then that explains a great deal.”

  The mirror-spirit nodded. “She looks up what she wishes to do in a book, she masters the spell and she looks no further than that. She would not be able to do this if she was not as powerful as she is—and that is the problem. She does not know to research what she wishes to do further. She thinks it is like a cooking book—you look up the dish that you want and you make it, and there are no other considerations other than eating it.”

  Aleksia nodded. “Like the young apprentice who tried to create a servant to do his chores for him but did not look further to discover that it would continue to work until it wore out. She has set in motion things of which she has no idea. And now we must be the ones to set them to rest.”

  The mirror-servant sighed. “Better in your hands than mine, Godmother,” he said. “Is there anything more?”

  “Not now,” she replied, and the mirror went blank.

  She pondered the situation that faced her for a long time, occasionally getting up to grasp another few pieces of wood in her teeth and drop them on the fire. She was faced with a Sorceress powerful enough to have learned her magic solely out of books. She must not have had much of a childhood and adolescence. And perhaps she had been one of those souls who, solitary by nature, preferred being left alone. But one day, long after most women had had their first love and either gotten over him or married him, she encountered a man that captured her. And she must have given him all the passion she had pent up for—perhaps—years.

  Now Aleksia had no idea why the man had not returned. But this Sorceress had been convinced that he had abandoned her, and passionate love turned to passionate anger. At that point, she had forsworn love, went out of her way to destroy lovers and had placed a barrier around her stronghold. Nothing could pass that barrier, and probably she was the only one that could open it.

  In keeping with the state of her emotions, she had locked her land in eternal Winter. Then—

  Well, all Aleksia could think was that she had become incredibly lonely. Why else would she have started to kidnap young men? But she couldn’t chance them abandoning her like her love had, nor did she want them to love her. She wanted them as objects, and that was when she had looked up and found the ice-shard spell. And she went no further than to find how to control them, not what the shard would do to them.

  Veikko, however, might last a bit longer due to being a Warrior and a Mage.

  Aleksia brooded over what she had seen in the mirror. The Imposter, it seemed, used to hate living things; but now she had lived so long that she had even worn out hatred. She seemed weary, more than anything. But the one thing that seemed to keep her going is the will to make others suffer as she did, when her false-true-love abandoned her.

  What an utterly miserable life.

  13

  ALEKSIA DROPPED THE LAST OF THE WOOD ON THE FIRE and dozed off in Bear form. By the standards of the Bear, the cave was pleasantly warm at this point. By spending a few moments shoving rocks into a ring around the fire, she was fairly certain that the cave would remain that way as long as she was asleep. There was something to be said for being in this form, besides the obvious. The Bear did not have nightmares. In fact, she rarely remembered the Bear’s dreams at all, and mostly they seemed to feature food. This night was no exception; she dreamed of feasting on honey, berries and fat, rich salmon. By the time she woke, the fire was down to coals and she had a better idea of what she was going to do.

  It was time to get help. She had been fairly sure she was going to need it when she started this—it had all the earmarks of the start of a quest, and The Tradition had very firm paths for quests. Even if you began one alone, even if you would say to your friends, over and over, “You can’t come with me,” at least one and probably more would find a way to follow you or otherwise get involved. She already had the Godmothers looking out for her at a distance, which might satisfy the need for questing partners, except that there were people out here already on the same quest. So she might as well give in to it and round them all up. At least that way they wouldn’t be stumbling over each other and interfering with each other’s plans.

  Now, knowing that the Sorceress in question did not know mirror-magic, made things a little more straightforward. At least Aleksia knew that she and her allies would not be spied on by means of reflective surfaces, so that meant they need only beware of the usual sorts of spying, and perhaps not so many of those. Most of the other ways she knew to spy magically were through agents, either animals or human, and she had seen no evidence of either. The Sorceress’s abilities seemed oddly patchy.

  Still, Aleksia was going to be vigilant. She would, either herself or through one of the others, keep one eye out for birds that never seemed to leave their trail, animals acting oddly and humans in general. Given the situation, any human out here had to be viewed with suspicion.

  But, yes, it was time to gather up the bits and pieces of this incipient quest-party and put together a united front.

  So, the first thing to do was to see where the two Sammi women were. After some hunting in the litter of the cave floor, she found where she had nudged the mirror aside in her sleep and invoked just a tiny trickle of magic to tell her where they were. Since they couldn’t be far from where she was now, it wouldn’t take that much magic.

  The source of reflection was—as might be expected—more ice, this time the frozen surface of a stream, which made a good road. Mentally she applauded their resourcefulness, since she was fairly certain that neither of them had ever spent this much time in the wilderness before. They appeared to be handling themselves well. But the women were not alone. In fact, they were accompanied by Urho the Great Bear, who was hitched to their sledge and pulling it along at a good rate.

  Well, that was a surprise. A pleasant one, but a surprise. She had not expected him to seek them out, even though he had known they were out there. Nor would she have asked him to; he was doing her a great enough favor by bringing supplies to her. I see you are working for your keep, she sent into his mind.

  Huh. I am feeding them, I will have you know! Urho replied with much amusement. Aleksia watched for any reaction from the Sammi but neither woman gave any indication that they “heard” this silent conversation. Good. At the moment she had rather they did not know that Urho could “talk.” Can you see where we are? he asked.

  With care, and one eye out for trouble, Aleksia moved her focus out and out, finally finding a bit of ice at the top of a tree, until she had a good idea where the trio was. Swiftly she moved back to another viewpoint of a bit of brass on Urho’s harness. I found the older men, but not the
younger one. The older men are both spellbound, and although I think I know how to free them, I would rather have some help along before I try. If you keep going straight on your current course, I can intercept you before you reach them.

  Then I will do that, Urho replied. Now you must be silent. Too much talk, too much magic, is dangerous. Be careful, Godmother. That warning came just as Aleksia detected a faint stirring that indicated something might have noticed her use of magic. Quickly, she severed the connection between them and went very quiet, magically speaking. She put her head down and thought Bearish thoughts; mostly about the dream she’d had that night, concentrating on how good the dream-food had been, licking the sticky honey from her paws, feeling the sweet juice slipping down her throat.

  The uneasy feeling passed. She waited for some time longer, just to be sure. Now was not the time to ruin everything by being impatient. Instead, she used the time to think, to analyze everything she knew about Traditional tales, to try to passively sense what was going on in the currents of Traditional power.

  The first thing that came to mind was this: there was no Traditional path for what was happening now. No one had ever impersonated a Godmother before. There were tales of beautiful, cold, seductive Sorceresses, of course. The Tradition was probably reinforcing everything about this woman that followed that path. But as for the rest…Aleksia herself was only following bits and pieces. Godmothers did not openly lead the opposition. Godmothers always worked behind the scenes. It was up to the Heroes and Heroines, the Knights, the Champions, the Wise Fools and the Brave Goosegirls and the like to be the ones to bring the Villains down.

  Yet, that was exactly what could not happen here. There was no time to bring a Champion this far North, and even if one could be brought, it would not be someone perfectly suited to the job and the enemy. And Aleksia knew very well what The Tradition did to “any old” would-be Hero or Champion that turned up under circumstances like those.

  The Tradition destroyed them. Or, more to the point, The Tradition strengthened the Villain so that he or she could do the destruction.

  No, the one thing that Aleksia could see was that the perfect Hero to oppose this Villain was—herself. The trick would be to get The Tradition to steer that course as well.

  Meanwhile, Traditional magic was eddying around the situation in a state of partial chaos, “looking” for patterns it “recognized,” and not finding them.

  All the more reason to put together a Questing Party. The Tradition recognized that. The more she could get The Tradition to recognize, the better off they all would be.

  Finally, it felt like enough time had passed since that tentative probe to be safe. She stood up on her hind legs, and willed herself back into human form just long enough to put the mirror away and loosely buckle on her pack. Then she transformed back to the Swan for the sake of speed and endurance and waddled out into the snow again, leaving behind the last embers of the fire to warm the cave for whatever else might seek its shelter.

  The air was as clear as crystal, the sun shining down out of a sky marked only by the thinnest wisps of cloud. The cold air struck her like a blow. Whatever else was afoot, the false Snow Queen was indeed extending her reach. By the sun, Winter had only just begun, but by the weather it was as cold as the day after the MidWinter Solstice.

  It was possible she was being strengthened by drawing on Veikko’s magic, either inadvertently or by deliberate draining. As Aleksia ran clumsily across the snow, wings pumping hard to get airborne, she considered that possibility, and decided rather grimly that things were progressing faster than she liked. She needed to meet with the Sammi women, win their confidence and formulate a plan, and she had to do so very soon. She could only hope that the women were as open to getting help from her.

  She actually passed over the trio laboring across the face of a slope below her as her powerful wings drove her forward; the four brown reindeer, the dark brown sledge laden with bundles, and the huge white Bear straining against the harness. They didn’t look up as she passed over their heads, but she sensed Urho’s attention. The Great Bear had his own mysterious powers, and they brushed against her magics like a friendly hand.

  She drove on, looking for two things: a place where she could get something to eat, and a good place to meet with Urho and the two women. Those would probably be exclusive, since she intended to eat as the Bear, and that was…messy. Not that Aleksia thought either woman was squeamish, but she also did not want them to think they might be on the menu.

  She found the first far sooner than she had expected.

  Something had brought down a deer and left it to die in the snow and Ravens were feasting on it. Aleksia was not at all averse to some opportunistic scavenging, and proceeded to land nearby, again making the transformation into the Bear form. Once in that familiar shape, she left her little pack lying in the snow and lumbered toward the carcass.

  The Ravens were loathe to surrender their prize, but there were only three of them, and Aleksia was willing to share. With the Bear’s massive claws she made short work of some crude butchery, and shortly she was feasting on the hindquarters that she had dragged some little distance off, while they were back to enjoying the rest of the deer.

  She tried not to think about what she was doing when the Bear ate, because to be honest, it was pretty horrific, even when it was something like a fish. When it was something like this—well, it was better to take a little absence from reality. She just sat back and thought about other things while the Bear instinct took over the body. When her stomach was full, she cleaned herself off in the snow, put her head down and headed off at the Bear’s best pace to find the place she had seen from the air where she would intercept Urho and the two women. It was a stroke of luck that it was only a few furlongs away; she could easily reach it before they did.

  This would have to be set up carefully, because although she knew that the two Sammi women needed her as much as she needed them, all that they would know, when they first saw her, was that here was a woman appearing in the middle of the wilderness—when, in fact, the North Wind had told them that the terrible creature that had stolen their son and beloved was a powerful Sorceress—who could, of course, appear out of nowhere in the middle of the wilderness. Even her appearance would tell against her; at this point she looked every inch the Snow Queen, and so…

  She would have to set things up so that there was enough doubt for her to convince them that she was not the enemy. With luck all The Traditional forces now moving sluggishly in favor of her putting together a Questing Party would work to keep the women from rejecting her and her overtures outright.

  She arrived at the site not even winded. Really she was fortunate in the lay of the land here. It was perhaps the most perfect place for a secluded campsite; another cave, where they would be able to get away from possible watchers. This one was more than big enough to hold all of them and the reindeer. Once again, she used the Bear’s enormous strength to drag some wood inside, and break it apart. She transformed to human again to clean out the rubbish, make a fire pit in the middle of the sandy floor and start the fire. Unfortunately, she had nothing with her to make things more inviting than that—not without using magic, and that, she was not going to do. Not only might that draw attention from the false Snow Queen, it might well make the women more wary. She needed to appear as ordinary as possible until they were convinced. When she was certain she could do all that was possible with the little that she had, she took out her mirror to watch for the trio to approach. And then she waited. This was going to be very interesting.

  Annukka could scarcely believe the difference that having the Bear with them made in their journey. They had crossed more land in the course of a morning than they had in two days with just the reindeer pulling. The White Bear’s great strength meant that there was nothing that would hang the sledge up for very long. And rather than having to feed him out of their stores, they found that the shoe was on the other foot. By evening of the f
irst day after he joined them, he was feeding them with his hunting. He could easily dig a hare out of its burrow, or find both ends and dig at one end while the women waited with a net-snare at the other. Annukka had the feeling that if he chose to, he could pull down a deer.

  Of course, when they came to the first dead village, that all became moot.

  When they had heard about the three villages, it had not really come home to Annukka, nor to Kaari, just what that meant.

  It meant a silent cluster of houses, with nothing moving. It meant dead animals and birds everywhere—not just the livestock, but the wild birds dropped out of the eaves, frozen in the bushes. It meant a quiet that was so nerve-racking that you wanted to do anything to break it.

  Still, with the entire village dead, that meant that everything here was pretty much at their disposal. She and Kaari didn’t exactly talk about it—but it looked as if the men had already done something of the sort, helping themselves to some gear and supplies, and that made it easier to go ahead and follow their example. It did give Annukka a bit of an odd feeling, as she and Kaari went meticulously through peoples’ belongings….

  But these weren’t people she had known. They were strangers whose faces she didn’t have to remember. She could only tell herself that surely the former owners approved. After all, she and Kaari were here to do something about the thing that had killed them. Surely that would be what they would want; surely they would be happy to see their things going to serve that purpose.

  Both of them needed more warm clothing. It was bitterly, bitterly cold, and it was not going to get better. If they did not help themselves to clothing and bedding, they might freeze.

  They picked one house and completely rearranged it, got it warmed and set things up to their liking. They slept the night in that house with a fire and in real beds and with the Bear sleeping like a mound of fur across the door, just in case. They cooked real food—and in fact, they decided to stay over a second day in order to bake bread and cook meats to add to their provisions. The one thing they didn’t have to worry about now that they were in weather suited to the heart of Winter was that anything would spoil. Not in this cold, packed on the sledge.