The Snow Queen (35 page)

But at least the men were still thawed, slowly helping each other up off the ground, looking dazed and a little confused. Aleksia surveyed them without betraying that she already knew them. That would only excite their suspicion. And despite her familiarity with them, she had to wonder how much of what she had listened to was boast and how much was reality. They had great reputations, they had tales enough, and they looked the part of Heroes, but would they measure up? She found herself praying that they would and not just because they would double the strength of this party.

Because she wanted to listen to Ilmari again. And this time, have it not be something of a sham.

Annukka looked around in something of a daze herself. “What happened?” she asked, shaking her head. “I remember that I meant to do a spell-song to help Aleksia free Ilmari and Lemminkal, but I do not remember anything past the first few bars. This is most peculiar. I have never done anything like that before.”

“You brought the Spring, Mother Annukka,” Kaari said, her eyes vague and a little unfocused, as if she was still a little lost in her own vision of Spring. Well that was as good an explanation as any for now.

“And…you saved us…Wise One,” Ilmari managed to get out, struggling to stand. “I do not know how, but I do not doubt the result.”

“Yes,” Lemminkal confirmed, then his gaze sharpened and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. “You saved us indeed. But that brings up a very good question. Who are you? Where do you come from? How did you find us? And why did you save us?”

“Yes, and who sent you? And how did you get here?” Ilmari added. “The last three villages we came through are dead and we nearly fell prey to the same thing that destroyed them. Why aren’t we dead as well? Why aren’t you?”

And the two magicians turned identical expression of wariness on the women and their companion.

BOTH MEN DREW THEIR SWORDS, OR DID SO AS BEST THEY
could, and tried to look defiant and strong. Which was—less than awe-inspiring. They were still rather unsteady, and their hands had a perceptible tremble.

But as they asked their questions, they were looking straight at Aleksia, who shook her head sadly, as much to herself as anything else. She knew exactly what was coming next.

Nor was she incorrect.

“The Snow Witch!” Ilmari spat, his gaze filled with anger. “Beware my steel, foul hag! We know your intentions, and we know your plans! What have you done with Veikko?”

“
I
have done nothing with Veikko,” Aleksia said crossly, feeling very much put-upon and getting altogether weary of being blamed for what the false Snow Queen had done. “I might just as well ask you the same, and to as much purpose. You had the stripling, and you were responsible for him. You seem to have misplaced him. What did
you
do with him?” She looked the two men up and down; they were still wobbly on their feet, and she had the strong feeling that even she, untutored as she was in the art of bladework, could slap their swords aside without a great deal of difficulty.

Now, at last, she could get her first truly good look at both of them. They were rather fine specimens of Sammi manhood, with similar, surprisingly youthful round faces with prominent cheekbones and startling blue eyes. Lemminkal Heikkinen boasted long gray-blond hair with two side-braids, and a beard that reached to the middle of his chest. He wore beautifully worked chain mail over thick brown woolen trousers and a black Sammi tunic decorated with embroidered bands, well-worn leather boots, with a heavy brown woolen cloak thrown back over his shoulders and clasped with a bronze pennanular brooch. Discarded on the ground beside him was a staff made from a gnarled sapling. Belted over the chain mail was the scabbard to the sword now in his hand.

Ilmari Heikkinen, the younger brother of Lemminkal, was blonder, as his hair was not yet graying. He wore both his hair and beard shorter than Lemminkal, his hair reaching only to his shoulders and his beard close-cropped around his chin. According to everything that Aleksia had learned, he was a Wonder-smith, who created enchanted items like swords and knives. He wore a similar outfit to his brother, and at the moment there was a forge hammer stuck through his belt and a sword of his own making was in his hands.

Both those sets of blue eyes were leveled at her. “I am also
not
the Snow Witch, or whatever you choose to call her,” Aleksia persisted. “In fact, I have never been here before. Until recently, this was an unregulated part of the world that was only loosely under my supervision. This—creature—that you call the Icehart or Snow Witch changed all that.” She drew herself up to her full height. “I am Godmother Aleksia, the Snow Queen, the Ice Fairy. My stronghold is the Palace of Ever-Winter, which I
assure
you is
not
in that direction!” She pointed to the north and west. “That way lies the dwelling of the one you seek to bring to justice. I seek retribution as much as you do, if not more. This creature is a murderer and a thief. She has stolen my identity, crudely copied my Palace and is ruining your countryside and decimating your villages, and I am here to put a stop to her!”

It was a lovely speech, rather marred by the fact that she was wearing clothing she had slept in, stray hairs were escaping from her braids, and she had no visible support except for a rather bemused Bear and two women.

“Brave words,
carlin,
but what reason have we to trust you?” Ilmari sneered. “And even if we did trust you, even if we did believe you, what army did you bring with you to oppose the Snow Witch, hmm?”

She bristled.
Carlin? I am no older than he!
She was about to retort when Lemminkal said, dazedly, “Wait, what?” He rubbed his head and the tip of his sword dropped. He still looked stunned. Aleksia began to wonder if that was his perpetual expression.

Oh, grand. This is Veikko’s mentor, the Warrior-Mage Lemminkal, who has about the same intelligence as his sword…or perhaps the sword is the smarter of the two. And on top of that, it looks as if he is going to fall on his nose in the next moment.

But Lemminkal was shaking his head, and not as if he did not believe Aleksia, more as if he was disagreeing with what she was saying. “No, no, the Snow Witch and the Icehart are not the same thing! I am not even sure they are connected in any way—” At least some vague impression of intelligence was creeping back into his eyes; which effect was then marred by the fact that he turned as suspicious as his brother. “But why should we trust that you are what you say you are?”

She graced both of them with a look of disdain. She was trying to make allowances for their heads being frozen, but really, of all of the Heroes and Champions she had ever worked with, these two were the
dimmest
creatures she had ever set eyes on! What had happened to the clever men she had listened to at their own hearth fire? “You should trust what I say because if I were not, I would not have bothered to bring the Wise Woman here and thaw you out.”

The men exchanged silent glances. She was about to elaborate, when Lemminkal shook his head again. “The Icehart—” he began, and looked alarmed. “The time!”

Ilmari cursed, and looked at the sun, now visible as it dropped below the level of the clouds and shone straight into the birch forest. Somewhat to her shock and dismay, Aleksia realized that it was setting. It had been scarcely midday when they all converged here and Annukka had begun her singing. It had seemed like no more than a moment had passed—yet clearly several hours had gone by.

But why should this be a cause for alarm?

“We are in great danger!” Ilmari said, all animosity momentarily forgotten. “This is the place from which the Icehart manifests! It was not the Snow Witch that froze us, it was the Icehart, and it is nothing like a mortal creature at all—”

“It is a ghost of some kind,” Lemminkal interrupted, his face blanching. His eyes searched the clearing, as if looking for something. “A vengeful spirit. We faced it here. We think that it was awakened not long ago, and it has been looking for something ever since. When it does not find what it is looking for, it shows its displeasure and moves on.”

“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.