[500 Kingdoms 04] - The Snow Queen

by Mercedes Lackey

  She finally made it to the well, and it was only there that her “power,” if such it could be called, made her life just a little easier. She never had to draw up the heavy buckets of water herself; there were always a half-dozen volunteers to do so for her. And, of course, she would gently tease whoever volunteered until he had filled the buckets of all the women there. That was only fair. More of Kaari’s balancing act at work.

  Of course, she had to linger while the others got their buckets filled. That was only fair. If people actually wanted her company, who was she to be stingy with it, especially when she was being done a favor? She smiled at tall Ihanelma as he pulled up bucket after bucket of water, and she wrinkled her nose at him playfully. He laughed and puffed out his chest.

  “Do you think that trader, the one with the amber jewelry and colored ribbons, will come by pig-killing time?” asked Suvi-Marja anxiously. “I so want red ribbons to go with the bands on my new overgown.”

  Kaari did not smile, although she wanted to. Suvi-Marja wanted more than red ribbons. She was hoping her sweetheart would buy her an amber necklace to match her honey-colored hair. She didn’t so much want the jewel for itself as she wanted it as a token that he was serious about courting her. A fellow didn’t go to the expense of a necklace unless he intended something more than just a Summer frolic. A flower-crown was a sweet gesture, a ribbon betokened a bit of interest, but a necklace—now, that was an investment. Kaari made a mental note to be sure and drop enough hints that Essa would manage to understand what it was he needed to do. He was a fine fellow, big and strong and rugged of features, but a few sticks short of a roaring fire. His notion of courting her had consisted of standing at the back of a crowd and making calf-eyes at her. Thank heavens, he was being more forward with Suvi-Marja. Well, after she had pushed him into it a bit. It hadn’t taken much, just enough to get him over his initial shyness.

  “The trader has managed to come every year so far,” Kaari reminded her, as a breeze came up that made all their aprons flap like wings and brought with it the smell of drying hay. “You know he cannot resist Annukka’s sausage. He will be here in good time.” She smiled now. “I am going to weave the tablet-bands for my Winter dress tonight, and I know that the room will be full of my clumsy brothers, who are very loud, will step on my yarn, and probably will make me miscount at least three times. If you are going to weave, too, I should like very much to join you.”

  Suvi-Marja flushed with pleasure. “Oh, what a good notion!” And being good-hearted, she looked around the others at the well; most actually were older women who would be at their own hearths tonight, but Rikka and Ulla, two of their friends, were looking wistfully at her. “Let us all get together tonight!”

  “I have mittens to make,” Rikka said happily.

  Ulla shrugged. “Mother has warped the loom and you know she never makes sure she has enough yarn when she starts something. I can always spin.”

  “Done, then. After sunset?” Suvi-Marja smiled. And Kaari smiled, too. This was a painless exercise of her talent for once. Suvi-Marja was always too shy to think of inviting the other girls over. She had been something of an awkward little girl, plain of face, her hair being her one great beauty, and she had not much improved as she grew into womanhood, although she could cook as if her hands were enchanted, and her weaving and knitting were flawless. It was very clear what her runes had been—a double dose of Hearth. To have won Essa was, for her, a great triumph. Essa, bless his soul, would have been won over by a stone if it could cook and doted on him as much as Suvi-Marja did. His job as village woodcutter meant he would always have food on the table, and his skill with a carving knife meant that even in old age he would be able to make a living. So even if his thoughts tended to wander like a sheep without a shepherd, he was a good man, and would make a fine husband.

  “We can talk about our sweethearts,” Rikka whispered, making them all giggle, and Suvi-Marja blush as red as the ribbons she wanted to buy.

  “Oh, but that is hardly fair!” protested Ulla with a grin. “Yours total more than all of ours put together!” And she was right, for Rikka was a great flirt, and had swiftly gathered up all those disappointed when Veikko had pledged his troth to Kaari. Rikka really was the village beauty, and if Kaari had not had the wyrd she did, no one would ever have noticed her when Rikka was about.

  “Then we can tell ghost stories and roast nuts,” Suvi-Marja said firmly. “But I do not want to tell fortunes. I do not want to know what is to come for me.”

  “Oh, pish.” Rikka laughed. But for once, Ulla did not take her side; instead, the usually playful girl shook her head.

  “Not tonight, for fortunes,” the tall, angular girl said, looking disquieted. “Even at the best of times, so my mother says, such things can bring unwanted attention. And now—”

  Kaari looked at her sharply. “What do you mean, now?” she demanded.

  Ulla shook her head again. “I will tell you tonight,” she said only. “You know that my father got a letter from his cousin yesterday. It might be that this is a misheard tale. But I would as soon not tell it in the open, where any—thing—can hear.”

  And with that, she shouldered her buckets and headed briskly up the path leading to her father’s house, leaving the other three to stare at her retreating back. And by the looks on the faces of her friends, Kaari was not the only one to return home in a troubled state of mind.

  3

  OF ALL THE GODMOTHERS THAT SHE KNEW, ALEKSIA WAS the most adept with mirror-magic. Why that should be, she was not entirely sure. It might have been because of the nature of ice, so close to glass in its transparency and fragility, and most especially, in its reflective qualities. It might have been that it was not she who was so adept, per se, but that the position of Ice Fairy, perforce remote from everything, carried with it the compensating ability with mirrors, so that a friend and colleague was never more than a reflective surface away.

  “And how are things on top of the mountain?” asked Godmother Elena as she faded into view. “Quiet, I hope?” The glimpse of wall behind Elena told Aleksia that her fellow Godmother was in her own study, rather than in her workroom of the Order of the Champions of Glass Mountain. Elena spent roughly half her time there; she and her husband, who was the Preceptor of the Order, had agreed to that arrangement. It seemed to suit them. Aleksia rather thought that such an arrangement would suit her as well. It meant that Elena was able to travel at least twice a year, and got a real change not only of scenery, but of a way of life. She would meet new people as new young Champions presented themselves. She would be living in a place full of faces she did not know so well—here she was more familiar with their faces than the one that looked back at her in the mirror.

  Elena was possibly the closest thing to a friend that Aleksia had among the Godmothers, even though they had never actually met in person. Elena shared a bit of the Ice Fairy’s sardonic sense of humor, and was one of the few sympathetic about Aleksia’s rather onerous position among the Godmothers. Perhaps that was because Elena had a history of dealing with the same sorts of miscreants—one of whom had eventually married her. Those Godmothers who only had to reward the good and fend off evil simply didn’t understand how tedious it was to be regarded with hostility by the very people you were helping. Elena’s own Champion and husband had begun his acquaintance with her as one of her “problems.” In fact, she’d turned him into a donkey for a while. Aleksia didn’t often get to do things like that, much though she wished to at times; it was difficult enough to keep her reindeer in good condition up here, and they were cold-hardy in the extreme. It would have been very nice to turn the brats like Kay into beasts of burden rather than have them running about in her Palace.

  Aleksia rolled her eyes and described her latest charge. Elena shook her head, a single blond tendril escaping from her upswept hair to bounce against her cheek. “I ought to talk to some of the others around Led Belarus, and see about getting you some congenial company. Perhaps a
Snow Maiden, or someone of that sort. There must be some intelligent creatures that would find all that cold to be attractive. You are too much alone, Aleksia. I know you have your Brownies but—”

  “But they hardly stay more than a month before another takes his place. And my three faithfuls—” she paused “—I would not for the world say anything against them, but I can generally recite everything I expect them to say, and I do not doubt that they can do the same for me.”

  The wood on the fire today was cedar, and Aleksia was mirror-watching from her cushions. There was a terrible blizzard outside, and she had felt disinclined to get out of her bedgown. Instead, she had wrapped herself in a dressing gown of quilted silk lined with rabbit fur, tucked her toes into slippers that matched, and was enjoying a very late breakfast of battered sausage and tea while the wind raged at her windows and it looked as if there was nothing out there but a solid white wall.

  The idea that Elena had suggested was appealing, provided the poor guest didn’t perish of boredom. “I would not for the world want to replace any of the Brownies, but it would be nice to see someone new, not a servant, and someone that I didn’t have to discipline,” Aleksia said, with a melancholy sigh. “If it is at all possible—if you could find some compatible beings that could do their own work from here, I should love to play permanent host. You are very lucky to have the Order about you: Sometimes the lack of peers to talk with is very wearing. Especially once I am snowed in. I know I shouldn’t complain but—”

  Elena sniffed. “You have every right to complain. You hardly ever come down from the Palace, and none of us ever get up there. How often do you see someone not in a mirror? I would be lonely, too! It’s not as if you are close enough you can easily come down for a wedding or a christening. Mind, I would love to see you in person. The Champions—” Elena rolled her eyes “—they are all very hearty sorts. I have no one to discuss gowns and hair with, even the women want to talk of nothing but armor and weapons! Not that this is bad—it is just not something I care to debate for hours at a time. And I have not yet found a way to translate across the leagues instantly, or I swear, we would be having tea once a week.”

  “Nor have I…” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But it does occur to me that I might research stepping through a suitably enchanted mirror. The Elven-kind must do something of the sort, the way they can simply appear and disappear at will.”

  Elena laughed, and shook her head ruefully. “I am no inventive magician, really, to research this sort of thing. I will leave that to you—but—” she bit her lip “—I am glad that you contacted me, and brought this up yourself. It is good to know that you actually have not been able to invent such a thing yet. There are some troubling rumors I wish to apprise you of. All is not well in the North.”

  Something about the expression in Elena’s eyes put Aleksia on the alert. “I trust you are going to enlighten me.”

  “Well, unless you actually are turning to the bad, and you have found a way to walk through mirrors and are hiding this from me, the fact that I am speaking to you and that I know you are in your Palace, means that whatever is going on, it is not your doing.” Elena’s lips thinned. “Someone is causing…problems…in the vicinity of the Sammi. And she is using the name of the Snow Queen.”

  Suddenly the sausages were no longer so appealing. Aleksia set them aside to listen very closely to everything Elena had to say.

  When Elena was finished and the mirror was back to reflecting nothing more interesting than her own face, Aleksia found herself in a very disquieted state. It was not greatly surprising that she should have heard nothing of this. To most people, everything out of their immediate geographic sphere was vaguely “over there” and concatenated into a single whole in their minds. Granted, a Godmother’s sphere did tend to be much larger than even the average monarch’s—but there were five hundred Kingdoms, and a great many places which, like the land of the Sammi, were not strictly Kingdoms at all, and there was a lot of distance between the Palace of Ever-Winter and the land of the reindeer-herders. The very nature of this mountainous country magnified the distances; the eagle might fly from here to there at will, but people had to find pathways through and over the mountains. So to Elena’s mind, rumors of something that might herald trouble seemed to be centered on an area very near the Palace of Ever-Winter, when in fact, it was not at all surprising Aleksia had heard nothing.

  She got up from her nest and allowed her attendant to help her into a gown, not paying much attention to it, until the Brownie was doing up her back-laces. Only then did she notice that her little servant had intuited that she was not going to want to see Kay in person today; this was not one of her Ice Fairy gowns, not a magnificent silk creation. In fact, when she was Princess Aleksia, her stepmother would probably have been horrified to see her in something so plain—it was a very simple, tight-sleeved gown of gray wool, without a single ornament. But the wool was not just from any sheep—it was from special flocks that lived only in the mountains, and grew fleeces softer than those of newborn lambs. Yarn spun from this wool could be made so fine that a lace shawl knitted from it could pass through a woman’s wedding ring. It made her look businesslike, even a bit severe; when she spoke to her various contacts via the mirror, they would know this was no light matter.

  She continued to plan what she would do as her attendant put her hair up in braids and wrapped it about her head, crownlike.

  That someone up to mischief would have the audacity to use the title of the Snow Queen…that made her angry and just a trifle alarmed. As the blizzard outside subsided, she made out a list of who might know something about these rumors. And it was going to take some organization on her part.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon until well after the sun had set and the moon was rising over the snowfields in front of her mirror, reaching out to those Witches and Sorceresses she knew who lived near the Sammi. Speaking with someone via mirror who was not expecting you to contact her was not just a matter of casting the spell and seeing them. Alas, no. She had to work a rather complicated bit of magic that would leave a message on whatever reflective surface was nearest them. It was simple—it had to be—just that she needed to speak with them. Then she had to wait for them to go to their own mirrors and initiate the contact. And, of course, none of this would happen in a controlled manner. At one point she had a conversation going in three different mirrors at once, resorting in desperation to her little hand-mirror that she used to see the back of her head when she was checking a complicated hairdo on the rare occasions when she made an appearance in public.

  None of those she contacted had heard any of the rumors that Elena had reported. All of them promised to probe their own sources of information. And that was the best she could hope for at this point. The thing was, the land of the Sammi was rather—unregulated. There were not many Witches and Sorceresses of the sort that made regular reports to the Godmothers. Truth to be told, the few who actually knew anything about Godmothers tended to think of them as…irrelevant to the condition of the Sammi. And it was very true that in the land of the Sammi, the creatures of legend, godlets and powerful nature spirits tended to interact with humans much more than they did in the more “civilized” parts of the world. It was a wild land, and everything in it was primitive and more than a bit unpredictable.

  That much she knew already; that evening was spent in her nest with books the Brownies brought from her library, and a great deal of hot tea. She learned that most magic workers among the Sammi were Wise Women and Shamans, who often were aware of Godmothers only vaguely, if at all. From a travel book by a Godmother, she proved what she had vaguely known already—that part of the world was full of demigods and nature spirits that were laws unto themselves and rather disdainful of the Godmothers.

  That gave her a moment’s pause. If it was one of them causing mischief, well…Aleksia would probably be able to tell right away if she could handle the situation herself.

  Tread caut
iously here, Aleksia.

  Still, there were demigods, and there were demigods. A god of Winter would be able to squash her like a melting snowball, but a god of a single glacier did not even rate a level of concern. If she could not deal with the troublemaker on her own, well, quick delving into more books assured her that it had been proven before that not even a demigod could stand up to the combined power of two Godmothers and a Fae. Elena would certainly help, and she had more than enough contacts among the Fae to call in a true Fairy Godmother. The Fae had created the mortal Godmothers in the first place, because, Aleksia presumed, they had grown tired of the constant meddling in human affairs that steering The Tradition required.

  With a goblet of hot mulled wine in hand, she went over all she had done that day. Finally, she concluded that there was nothing more to do at the moment, and with a resigned nod, she dismissed it from her mind. In the absence of information, the only thing she could do was allow her agents to gather it for her. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have quite enough to keep her busy at the moment.

  She put her wine down, and passed her hand over the surface of the mirror to look in on Gerda.

  The girl was braiding up another girl’s hair, in some small room heaped with a magpie’s treasure-trove of pirated goods. A bed was almost hidden under a riot of colored pillows, a truckle bed only partly shoved beneath it. Gaudy necklaces were festooned from a tarnished and blotchy mirror, and the dressing table was awash with silk ribbons, more jewelry, paints and powders, perfumes and kerchiefs. The owner of this room got whatever she wanted, and it seemed that what she wanted was Gerda to wait on her.

  Though Gerda looked desperately unhappy, she did not look ill-used. Ah, good. She seems to be holding her own. As Aleksia had known would happen, because she had nudged things in that direction with her own subtle magic, nothing had happened to her other than being robbed, imprisoned and frightened. The Chief of the band Aleksia had chosen had a daughter about Gerda’s age, and as Aleksia had made sure would happen, the daughter had taken one look at Gerda and claimed her as her own particular servant.