Eliudnir, the fortress of the demon, rose before her, its sharp stone parapets black spears of death; the blood of the earth, flowing rivers of molten rock as they spilled from the ground, yet another light in this evil place, flames shining from the windows as a beacon of evil.
In the chamber the demon waited amidst the fire light, cloaked and hooded, her midnight eyes glaring as it waited for revenge and for power.
The shadows caressed the demon as she stood on the cold stone in the firelight, drawing Caer into its lair in waves of fury.
“Tell me where you are…” she hissed, “…where you wait for me.”
"BELIAL," the Ice Queen cried across the lands separating them, the kingdoms of light and dark, of ice and flame.
Caer’s dream winked out.
Caer felt cold snow beneath her back. She lay again in winter. So cold, and yet so comforting. She opened her eyes.
The Ice Queen stood before her, wrapped in furs. The sun remained at its place in the sky, as she stood in Fensalir.
The Ice Queen knelt beside Caer and touched a cold hand to her head. Her tears fell onto the snow and shattered as she looked into Caer’s eyes. “Your time yet awaits you. Go back to the safe place, and sleep in peace for a short while, and return when the time comes.”
She bowed before Caer. “Until your time comes,” she said again, as Caer’s dream dissolved, and she awakened.
*****
Snow covered the entire forest, the trees and the path to Ull and the haven. The snow crunched beneath the horses’ hooves as the man and the boy rode through the wood, covered in a thick blanket of winter.
Clouds in the heavens circled in cold delight over the last night’s storm. Headred thought of the warmth of their house in the city, and of the girl who he knew from strange dreams.
Sometimes she appeared in his dreams as a small girl. But more often he saw a woman, tall and beautiful, with flaming hair and piercing eyes, the eyes of the Ice Queen, her mother.
He didn’t remember much about the time before the Queen departed, a boy of but six years. The Ice Queen they called her, frozen in the world of her making, too weak to carry on, to fight the shadows and dark plaguing her people.
Not the truth, he knew, but what they said anyway.
He saw her, under the ice floor in Vingólf, the silent Vigil, in the woods by the sacred place. Many times he walked to the mount of Glasheim, the sacred place of Sul, where the people entombed the ancient Queens of Sul, where Enyd, the Ice Queen’s mother, lay in death, calm in sleep though she brought great evil into Miðgarðir.
And he strayed into the circle and looked upon the face of the Ice Queen.
There she lay. Streaks of white and auburn hair shimmered when the sun hit the ice. In the city the people whispered Beren’s soul walked on the frozen earth every night. Bound to the earth, and to the people within it, ever weeping for the Kingdom of Sul.
They called her a monster, a creature walking the night.
But Headred knew her to be a goddess, whose tears froze on her cheeks and shattered on the earth.
She appeared as the woman of his dreams. The meaning of his dreams became clouded, even to his father, Hamald. Why she walked with him in his dreams he did not know, her purposes unclear. After all, her own actions overturned fate.
He saw the Ice Queen and thought it to be a dream. At night, as the god and the goddess danced in the heavens, he walked on the frozen paths of Vingólf and Glasheim and prayed to foresee what would come.
And she stood before him.
Weeping, never speaking, with her hand pointing to the south, to this place he now rode through, she stood before him, pleading in silence with him to seek what lay in the south.
So they rode.
Hamald, his father, learned about the vision almost at once, waiting not far away from his son as they hunted for the meager winter meat. Through Hamald Headred understood what happened those many years before, on the night Beren’s daughter came into the world.
Some of what happened on the fateful night Hamald kept from his son, but the boy’s father knew the destiny forged long ago spoke of Headred as a man. Beren’s daughter would hold his heart, and her kingdom in another. She would make a choice between them. And one she would destroy.
And Hamald prayed the words did not mean what he thought they did.
Still, Hamald would not let it upset him now.
To the entrance of the fairy sidhes, the silver palaces in golden glades hidden from mortal eyes, Hamald and Headred went, to seek out vision in Elphame, land of their cousins the fairies, to understand the meaning of those visions.
The horses snorted through the ice crusting their nostrils. How many times, Hamald wondered, would they stop to thaw the horses?
Such became the life of winter. He looked beyond his destrier at the endless blankets of snow, the trees whose spirits sank low under the shield of ice covering them. When would it end?
Hamald stopped his destrier, and motioned for his son to do the same. They sat still in the cold and silence. “Drink some fire ale, my son, while we have time,” Hamald said, shivering. The cold seeped into his warm wrappings as he jumped down from the horse and retrieved the brew for the horses from a saddlebag.
Hamald took a swig from the flask and handed it to his son. His insides warmed. Color returned to Headred’s face.
“Have heart, Headred,” Hamald took the fire ale his son offered. “There are places not like this. The magic of the darkness cannot touch the place where our cousins dwell.”
“How far away are the sidhes, father?” Headred asked him, shifting in the saddle. Already they journeyed three days.
“Not far, my son.” Hamald replaced the fire ale in Headred’s saddlebag. “Not far at all.” Hamald climbed onto the saddle. “Soon, my son, we shall see the places where the fairies dwell.” Hamald’s eyes misted. “The gates of Elphame, the fairy sidhes, are a mark of beauty, where green grasses grow and the warmth of the sun still shines. There visions can be seen, where the gods and their children walk, where we may learn the meaning of your prophecies.”
A howl shattered their ride. Headred recognized the sound; many years passed since the wolves of the west strayed into Sul, ever watched by the vigilant eyes of the Ice Queen’s specter.
“Stay here,” Hamald told him, a gleam in his eye. He pulled an arrow from beneath the furs on his back. Its small swishing sound reminded him of the old wars as he placed the arrow in his bow and he rode into the wide wood.
Headred sighed as his father disappeared. In his heart he did not fear. Before his mother passed, he heard many tales of the battle his father fought in, not against one starved wolf but thousands of wolves and golems in the dark armies ranks. Legends of those battles spoke of Gareth, the King of Sul, the consort of the Ice Queen, and his father, Hamald. His mother spoke of the wolves and golems felled by his father’s arrow and sword.
The boy sat on his horse, waiting. His ears perked when he heard movement in nearby the trees. Headred felt fear for himself. His fingers clutched the dagger beneath his fur wrappings, as he turned to look in fear at what evil came upon him.
*****
Not far away, Hamald raced through the snow-covered woods with the fury of the winds, to the place where the wolf cried. And there he saw something he did not expect.
The wolf howled no longer. It returned to the form of a man, and lay naked and quaking in the snow.
“Wolfsbane,” a woman’s aged voice called him.
Hamald turned to face Beoreth in awe as the wise woman shuffled through the snowdrifts toward him.
“You do not think I have been defenseless?” she asked, and smiled.
“‘Tis good to look upon your face,” Hamald stammered, interested to see the wise woman, and knowing wherever she stood, the child of light could not be far away. And a werewolf ventured here, he thought.
“He ventured too far from his brethren while they hunted in the west,” Beoreth said
, seeming to read his thoughts.
“And you have killed him?” He leaped from the horse and headed toward the convulsing man.
“I have taken what of the wolf remains in him away,” Beoreth walked beside the warrior and prophet lost to her for many years. “No longer can he hunt men and eat their flesh, though Belial will haunt his mind until he dies.”
“What will you do to him now?” Hamald peered at the man, whose struggles faded as the herb paralyzed him.
“I will leave him here,” she said. Nearby the writhing man howled in pain, the sound echoing around them. “His suffering will end soon, whether by his brethren who search for him, or by the cold taking his life.”
Hamald did not hesitate. He loosed his arrow into the chest of the werewolf, and blood stained the snow.
“Why offer them food? He deserves as much for his crimes.”
Hamald thought of the villages not so fortunate, when the wolves found their sustenance the flesh and blood of the living. For the wolves would not eat the flesh of the dead.
“Aye, perhaps he does.” She began to walk away.
“Do you disapprove?” he asked her and hooked the bow over his shoulder.
“Nay, child.” She continued to walk. “What road do you travel to pass through Fensalir?”
“On pilgrimage.”
She heard the fear on his tongue.
“Headred foresaw dark visions, many and often. We go to Elphame where our brethren dwell, to seek answers.”
“What does he dream about?” Beoreth spun, peering at him as if she knew the answers.
“The Queen,” he whispered.
And she froze.
“They say she walks and she waits for the coming of the light. But you did not see the end. She lays in the ice of Vingólf, the Vigil not far from the city and the sacred place,” He watched the tears bud in her eyes. “There she cannot move, and cannot speak. But they say her spirit wanders Miðgarðir. Headred saw her, and she bade him come here. She knows that which comes, and I fear it comes too soon.”
“Aye, ‘tis,” she walked beside him, her feet crunching in the snow. They exchanged glances as they heard laughter before them, where Headred waited.
*****
“You are a boy,” the little girl behind him, nigh on six, said.
She looked very familiar to Headred as he sat on the horse and relaxed his grip on the dagger. “Of course I’m a boy.” He turned the horse around.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, almost invisible, wrapped in white furs against the unmarked snow. “I’ve never seen a boy before, you see. I’ve lived alone with my grandmother in these woods all of my life.”
“I’m Headred,” he said, puffing out his chest and trying to make a spectacle for the simple country girl.
“I know who you are.”
He looked at her again, realizing why he recognized her.
“I felt you coming and I came out when my grandmother left to meet you.”
Headred wondered about the Ice Queen he saw in visions and dreams. Did this have meaning? Perhaps, he thought, the answer would be found in seeking knowledge at the fairy sidhes.
“Do you have the same dreams as I?” he asked. Headred shifted, wondering if he saw the girl before in dreams he remembered little of. She seemed familiar to him.
“Aye,” she said, giggling again.
Headred almost slid off the saddle in mortification.
“I am Caer,” she announced.
“You shouldn’t be out alone,” Headred said. He regretted his words as tears came to her eyes; when they fell, her face reminded him of the Ice Queen. “I’m sorry,” Headred jumped from the horse in desperation. If his father returned and found he made the girl cry, it would mean a strapping.
“I know you,” the girl said with patience beyond her years.
Headred’s blood ran cold. In his mind, he saw a woman from his dreams, tall and beautiful, her eyes an unearthly blue. He saw what would come.
With the grace of the Ice Queen, Caer picked up a small branch, broken from its tree by the weight of ice. She twirled it.
On the end of the branch a single green leaf appeared, and shivered in the cold.
Magic, he realized and thought of the child lost to them all. “You use magic, yet evil haunts our kingdom and the witches’ children within it.” The experience made him uncomfortable. “Where did your grandmother go?”
“She walks in the woods not far from here.” Caer looked to the west, as though she could see the gnarled old woman. And from where she looked came the howl of a wolf, piercing the air.
“Stay behind me,” Headred shouted, drawing his dagger and pushing the girl back. But the sound did not reoccur. He sheathed his blade and turned to the girl.
“Does your grandmother know you walk alone?” he asked her. The fearful shout ringing through the clearing told him the answer.
“Caer!”
“Grandmother,” Caer said, and stared at her feet. Beoreth, Hamald thought, seemed equally as outraged as fearful.
“I told you to stay with me,” Beoreth said. “These woods are safer than most, but they still hide shadows.”
“I have a sword,” Headred said with pride, removing it from its sheath.
“I’m sure,” Beoreth glanced at the boy she delivered from his mother’s womb. He grew tall already, she thought.
“Before you go, there are things I must know,” Hamald whispered, convinced neither child knew the other.
“All I can I shall answer,” Beoreth watched the children.
“Does she show her power?”
Beoreth feared the answer she must give, the answer she dreaded for days. “Once, a small bit of magic. She healed a bird, and for all my gifts ‘tis a feat I could not do.”
Hamald breathed heavily. “Darkness remains in the west. Have care for her, for we do not know when it will reach out again, and the eyes of Belial search the lands for the child of light. If she finds her, Caer will die.”
“Aye,” Beoreth clutched Caer.
Hamald nodded in satisfaction and hoisted himself onto the horse. “Come, Headred, we have a long journey before us.”
Behind him Headred spurred his horse on. “We will meet again, I think, Caer of the Fensalir haven,” Headred called, and followed his father.
“Father,” he asked after a while. “Have we met the girl before?”
“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” Hamald said. “I do not remember all those we have met in our travels.”
“Oh.” Headred glanced at the few birds singing in the trees. “I saw something in her there, in the woods just now. I saw things in her destiny, of dark and light. Within Caer lies more than she appears.”
And so the world moved on, season after season of winter, of ice and snow, as Miðgarðir froze in the eternal damnation of the frost binding it.
The boy grew to be a man, a prophet like his father and his father before him. He dwelled in Ull, far to the north, and never forgot the little girl he met in the woods, the girl he saw in dreams as a youth, the girl who he dreamed grew to be a tall and beautiful woman, who resembled Queen Beren with flaming red hair and eyes as blue as the sky.
Caer did grow to be a woman, tall and beautiful, living in the safe haven of Fensalir with her grandmother. And as the years moved from cold to cold, she prayed the man she dreamed of would one day return to her.
Inside her a candle flickered in hope and burned in the loneliness of her heart.
*****
Caer snuggled in her bed in the earthen home and prepared to dream.
She felt the presence of her dream man somewhere in Sul as he also slept and dreamed. In her flights of fancy, Caer saw him as a prince or a King who would take her from the safe haven and make her his Queen far away.
The stars glimmered, wisps of clouds passing over them. The dream world grew warm.
In the light of the moon he walked towards her, towards his destiny.
“Do you walk in
dreams often?” he whispered as he drew near. “Or do you walk on the path of my sleep alone?”
“I walk in your dreams and those of no one else.” The deep chestnut of his eyes and his flowing hair reminded her of the boy she met in the wintry woods while awake, so long ago. She often wondered where he lived in the vast lands of winter.
“You bring good dreams. So little good remains in Miðgarðir now.”
“In the cursed winter,” she agreed. “You bring good dreams too.”
“Ah, but you are not real, I think. You are beyond me, somewhere hidden when I wake. I will feel my heart break when I awaken and you are not beside me.”
“If you always search, your heart will never break.” They walked through frozen forests. Beneath birch trees, in a thicket, they stopped and stood together in the moonlight.
“Aye, but I know this will fade in the morn,” he said.
Caer thought for a minute, and rose on her toes, kissing him on the cheek. “This does not fade,” she spoke, and drew away.
In Ull, where he slept, Headred’s hand touched his cheek and felt where she kissed him.
“Perhaps it will, my beautiful Queen lost in the wilderness, and you make it a good vision; perhaps it will sustain my heart through a long and empty life. Then again, maybe it will not fade. Perhaps you hide from me somewhere I have not been.”
“It will not fade, and one day, my prince, you will come to rescue me from the wilderness. One day we will meet, and dreams need not come between us.”
He smiled, but already the dream began to fade.
Frustrated and alone, Caer awoke in the hovel in the wilderness of Fensalir.
*****
“Do you think the stories are true, Huma?” Caer leaned against a tree, her bag containing the herbs and leaves she bartered for from Hroth dangling limp in her hand.
“What stories, fair lady?” the goat-man asked, his usual jovial laugh interrupted by a hiccup. The hairy goat-man gulped from his flask, coughing and sputtering as the fire ale went down.
“Princes come to rescue fair maidens,” Caer said, lost in thought, looking at the edges of Sul, at the mountains of mist where Kern rose into the heavens and disappeared. “I wonder if a prince would rescue me from this abysmal existence.”
The Ice Queen Page 2