“You rush me from my home,” Beoreth muttered, highly indignant, “only to fool around like children.”
Caer smiled as he adjusted the reins, and with a single command the horse began to move.
“Think you would go into the winter without me, me-lady?” a voice rang out. Huma watched Caer, his eyes misty but clear. Sobriety clung to him, she realized.
“By all means come with us, my good centaur,” Headred exclaimed.
The goat-man started at being so addressed. “Never been called a centaur in all me life.” Huma reached for the bottle of ale by his side.
“Well, why not?” Headred asked. “Have all who meet you been blind?”
“You have not told him?” Huma asked Caer. “Why, I must tell the tale, I suppose. It all began with the Goat King and his relations with me mother…”
Caer laughed and felt Headred’s chest rumble behind her, as they rode on the path of light, toward the destiny awaiting them. She watched as Fensalir and the earthen hovel, her lifelong home, disappeared behind her in the curtain of trees.
Caer feared she might never see it again.
*****
The day passed. The long and arduous path of light, the ancient road, long ago became hidden with drifts of snow covering the ancient highway. As night fell, Caer felt her eyes hurting from the endless white.
The chill seeped into their clothes and fur covers. The breeze cut like a knife.
Her feet froze as they forged paths deeper than the one they rode in. In the moonlight the daggers of ice on the trees shimmered and seemed to drip tears.
The forest seemed immense, dark, and cold. Sounds rang out, the scampering of tiny paws on the snow; the bark ripped off a tree by the all-too-hungry mouth of a starving deer.
They crested a great hill deep within the wood. From the hilltop they glimpsed the distant tower rising at the base of Mount Kern. Caer inhaled as she glimpsed Ull a hundred miles away. In the moonlight it shone white-gray and ethereal. The city lit like a candle in the night, guiding their path.
The shimmering speck of Ull’s light met her eyes the next day. She stared and imagined the voices in the city, carried on the wind, of warmth and laughter and promise for safe places to rest. And for a moment she thought she saw a lady walk in the woods, not very different in appearance from Caer, her long white hair streaked with red, lips as blood, and her skin as pale as the snow, with a crown on her head.
The darkness wavered. Rough hands drew her out of the sleep. Headred’s face swam before her, his brow furrowed and his eyes concerned.
Headred also saw Beren gliding nearby. The Ice Queen watches us, he thought. Beside him Beoreth said nothing but glanced every so often at Caer.
“She cannot go on like this,” Beoreth said with chattering teeth. “She freezes and grows tired, Headred. We must rest.”
“We will rest soon,” Headred answered, the back hooves of their horse kicking at the snow. “We must journey while time remains.” Headred clenched his teeth and held her tighter.
“Have you no respect for the daughter of your queen?” Beoreth countered. “She cannot go on further this night.”
“I know of a place nearby where we can rest,” he snapped.
“She will die like this, Headred,” Beoreth challenged. “And what will happen if you let this happen? Would you submit to the rule of the demon rather than a Queen?”
Headred glared for a moment and sent his horse into a trot. “I know this, Beoreth. But the place I speak of lies not far from here. There we may be safe and warm for the night.”
“You are not so much a fool as you would have me believe,” Beoreth said, forging her way toward where a trail veered off the path and into the forest. “If the demon wins, Miðgarðir, and all within it, creature, men, and immortal, will be hers. You know this. You have foreseen it.”
Headred stared at her. “I would not follow such a trail,” he fired back. “Strange things have come into this wood in the years you have been gone. ‘Tis not safe.”
Beoreth turned back toward him.
“Drink this,” Huma suggested to Caer. “It’s fire-ale, made by my kindred in the north. It will warm you on our journey.”
Holding one arm around his waist, she took a gulp from the small bottle, and choked.
Beoreth chuckled even as she shivered with cold and took the bottle from her. Luck traveled with them, Caer thought, that the hairy goat-man came with them, and providence Caer insisted she buy the fire ale for him in Waterdam.
“The centaurs are masters in the making of ale and in the reading of the stars,” Beoreth said as she rode beside Caer and Headred. She took a swig, unbothered by the scorching. “They can make ale for any purpose, to sleep, to conceive life, to warm and to chill. And they read the stars to know what will come.”
“’Tis said the gods are the stars, their light shining down,” Huma said. “So signs within the heavens are the portents of the gods themselves, even as the magic of the witches runs through the blood of the gods in their veins.”
The fire ale, for good or for ill, did warm Caer, but made her even more tired, if not a little more aware. Headred took them off the road and up a hill to get his bearings. Caer saw forest for miles. In the distant east she thought she saw the sea, and in the north she glimpsed the mountains and the white beacon there. In the south and the west there she saw solely the sight of woods, trees of all kinds, endless untamed woodlands running to the horizons.
She felt each movement of the horse and Headred.
“Do we go to the City of Light?” Huma asked.
“Ull?” Headred asked. “I forget, my good centaur, you have been gone. When the winter came upon us, the people moved from within the gates of the city to where they would survive, most in the forests, and some over the great sea to lands far away in hopes of a better place. The faithful remain within the gates, but I have been there, and few now remain. As for those within the forest, their numbers dwindle with every passing year, as do the creatures which once dwelled there.”
“And those who went over the sea?” Beoreth asked. “What of them?”
“None now know what became of them, though my sire Hamald foretold dark fortunes for many nights before they left, and for many more after. I do not believe they yet live, though none can know, for they have not returned. They departed in spite of all warnings from the city Tír fo Thuinn on the coast. If they held straight their course, they might have landed on one of the Útgarðar isles.”
“If they went too far, they will have fallen off the ends of the earth, into oblivion,” Beoreth said.
“Most agree on their fate,” Headred went on, “They landed on the isle Múspell, or perhaps they stayed on the second isle, Magh Tuiredh, the isle of pillars. Let us hope for their sake they did not.”
“Why?” Caer wondered. Headred’s eyes clouded when they met her own.
“Death rained upon the isles not long after. We call them Múspell, the isle of flame, Magh Tuiredh, the isle of shadow. Nothing now can live there.”
A short way further the high ground sloped down into a small valley in the drifts of snow, where the trees grew thick and shadows shrouded all.
“Here we shall rest,” Headred announced. Without warning the fairy horse reared and deposited them in the snowdrift.
“Many thanks for the ride,” Caer told the horse, cursing magical creatures in all their forms.
The horse stared at her as if to say “you are welcome.”
“We’re supposed to sleep here?” Beoreth asked Headred. “We’re surrounded by a bunch of old trees in the middle of six-foot snow drifts.”
Headred grinned and pointed.
Hidden in the snow, a small hole into an earthen hut welcomed them.
“In my childhood, we knew this to be a safe haven in the pilgrimage to the fairy sidhes,” he explained, pushing aside the snow so they could step in. “So it continued to be. The prophets and other peoples saw reason for this place to remain,
for the weary to have rest.” Headred unveiled a rotting wooden door, collapsing at his touch. “We have not, however, used it in many years.”
Headred led the way inside, picking up the flint stones and lighting the tiny candle on the wooden table.
“Won’t he come in?” Headred asked Caer, motioning to the goat-man, who continued to drink ale and stare up at the stars.
“Sometimes,” Caer said through chattering teeth. “When he gets good and drunk and sees himself as a god in the heaven’s fortunes, he’ll come in and celebrate with sleep.”
“Aren’t the centaurs dangerous when they drink?” Headred knew Huma to be but half centaur. Still, it might be enough.
“Oh, not too much.” Caer muttered, as Headred lifted a stack of wood and threw it into the hearth. “It dulls their minds. Makes them weak and tired.”
Beoreth broke in: “Now, let’s get a fire started.”
*****
Caer sat on the floor of the hut, wrapped in a woolen shroud. She stared at the flames. It seemed so hard to believe, she thought. The flames licked the stone of the simple hearth, and the orange light flickered on the dull earth walls. So much happened to her in these last days her mind swam with doubt.
She asked herself, ever since Headred and Beoreth revealed her past to her, what she would do if she discovered it to be an illusion, a dream she would wake up from.
It couldn’t be, she decided. It felt all too physical, the heat of the fire and the cold of the snow, the feel of the horse beneath her and the ache of her body after the long journey, and the visions and revelations changing her life in a few short days.
This felt real, and so it seemed conceivable the existence she always knew never had been her destiny at all, but rather an illusion. The fate she went to would be the life she meant to be: her time in the safe haven one became no more than a comfortable dream she would never see again.
Everyone seemed to think of her as some kind of messiah. Did they know what they talked about? So many mysteries in this world existed.
“Are you lost in your thoughts?” Beoreth peered at her, a steaming goblet of amber liquid in each hand. “It’s a drink made by the priestesses for ceremony, but I’ve found it good on winter nights when a roaring fire cannot be made,” Beoreth handed her a goblet. “Many times I made it for my…” children, Caer finished for her and glanced down at the drink in guilt.
“It’s good,” she said, after taking a sip.
“What thoughts come to you?” Beoreth asked, setting her goblet down.
“There’s so much I want to know…” She trailed off and sipped the steaming drink, which made her feel warm and drowsy.
“Will you see those you left behind long ago?” she asked Beoreth.
“Perhaps,” Beoreth murmured, and Caer looked away, wondering what Beoreth thought of upon their return.
She turned to see Beren framed in the doorway of the hut and spilled half of the contents of her goblet onto the frozen floor of earth. In the wink of an eye Beren disappeared, and Caer found herself swept up in visions of what happened after her hiding.
In the valley beyond Ull, Náströnd, the door under the mountain rose before Belial.
Long ago men carved upon the door the symbols of a language now forgotten. Towering stone armor-clad warriors guarded the entrance to the passage with their eyes glaring at all passing.
She did not fear them.
Belial gazed into the mountain’s depths, knowing it held at its core the heart of Miðgarðir, a stone of neither good nor evil, the power she could not possess until the witches lay dead at her feet. Yet the blackness surrounding it became her kindred spirit. She would pass unharmed.
“Go now,” she commanded as the winds howled. “Go, wolves and golems, on the path over the mountain. Gather to you all who are my servants in the eastern wasteland beyond Sul. Gather the soulless men who in ages past became servants of my power, whose offspring now lie imprisoned in the wasteland. Gather wolves, your brethren, and the werewolves not already fallen. Call to the spirits of the trees whose hearts are rotten, and gather for me an army. For when we meet on the other side, the battle will begin.”
The golems and the wolf men bowed before her and slunk away into the thick shadows of the wood. Belial would continue under the mountain, alone.
“It does not have to be this way, my sister,” Beren said beside her, the snow untouched by her feet wherever she walked, and her skin white and frozen.
“Fool,” Belial spat at her, her hair and eyes black. “‘Twas this way long ago. My destiny the gods made for me, as yours they made for you, and your daughter’s for her. You must die, for me to live, and for all worlds to be mine.”
“So you think,” Beren said, tears flowing from her bright blue eyes.
Belial turned toward the door under the mountain.
“Why do you choose the darkness, my sister?” Beren called. “Why do you forsake what you are for the evil of the one who made you?”
Belial stopped, and for the first time, felt a light within her. Many years passed since she embraced it, since she admitted that part of her.
You are a demon, the voice inside her insisted, the voice of the demon Moloch, slain before her birth; her father. You are the Queen of the Darkness. She lies to you. You are destined to rule the world she kept from you, the world of the witches.
“Witch,” Belial said.
“I am,” Beren said with a smile. Color came for the first time in many years to Belial’s face. Perhaps there hope remained. “As are you.”
You are not like her, Moloch boomed. Your blood runs as black as the heart you bear. You know not good, and know not evil, only power. You are not like her, weak in her goodness. You are a Queen.
The color seeped out of the cold, dead demon once again.
“I am Belial, Queen of the Earth, daughter of Moloch. You are no sister of mine, save for an unfortunate accident of birth. I will have everything, and you will watch as I spill the blood of your daughter and bring my minions at last to Ull. This world will be mine.”
“So you believe,” Beren whispered, and bowed away.
Belial let the fury bubble inside her. And when she unleashed it, she flung Beren into the arms of an old dead tree. “Go to death. Or to the ice you made for your kingdom. I do not care any longer.”
“You forget, my sister,” Beren replied, turning back to Belial. “My body lies frozen. My spirit alone walks the earth. Your shadow can touch me no longer.”
Belial turned away and, after looking once more at the gloom beyond, stepped through the Náströnd and into the murky passage to the power she coveted.
Caer watched Beren and Belial fought, good against evil. They seemed tragic sisters, one born in night and one born in day, and so different.
“I think you should sleep,” Headred said, “for the time will come when the battle meets, and sleep will be farthest from your mind.”
Beoreth made up pallets on the floor before the hearth, leaving room for Huma beside them. As she worked she sang a song of sorrow, in a language Caer did not know. Caer listened as she drifted into long, peaceful sleep.
*****
Caer’s dreams turned to a world on the cusp of winter. Autumn leaves fell onto the frost.
A woman wandered in a flowing gown. She held the two pendants of the heavens, forged by her power for her daughter and another. She rubbed her stomach, full with child, and cried for what must be.
She watched and waited. Her tears glistened as the tears of the moon, her power the radiance of the sun, and in her hands she held the stars of the sky, whose light fell onto Miðgarðir and once gave life to a land now in death and winter.
The winter came; the woman bore a girl-child and hid the babe in the wilderness. The Queen’s body the gods took as payment for this life saved, and the lands of Sul became cold and dead.
In the forests she walked and waited. She watched as the baby grew to a child and a woman. She looked on as th
e one her child loved came to her, as a boy and as a man, in waking and in sleeping. And in her Vigil she prayed for the hope so long enduring.
And her tears shattered on the frozen earth.
Headred sat sleepless on the floor of the small hovel, not unlike Beoreth’s home. Even after Huma stumbled in and fell to the floor asleep beside the hearth, Headred remained awake. He thought, and he listened.
Wolves howled every so often. In the forests the servants of their enemy hunted Y Erianrod. Even now war brewed, and soon the shadow would unleash herself against these lands.
He would fight, and he would die, before he let the Mór-Ríogain touch a hair on Caer’s head.
“Arien lasol,” a woman’s voice sang outside of the cave. “Thriamus locam, esan nevol sharis.”
Few knew the fairy song the woman sang. It spoke of the beginnings of the world, when men awakened in the forests, and breathed the night air.
Quiet as a mouse Headred stood, and clutched the hilt of his sword. He drew the sword and listened to the quiet scrape of the metal. He pushed aside the blanket they put over the door to see what came upon them in the night.
The Ice Queen stopped before him, her icy gaze chilling him to the bone as it latched onto him.
“Milady,” he bowed, shivering, his teeth chattering.
“Her care you must now provide,” she said.
Headred glanced into the hut as Caer drew the covers up to her neck. “She stands for herself, as does her heart,” he replied.
“Her heart bleeds for her world. Your heart bleeds for her.”
“Do you come now to torment me with what I already know?”
The glimmer of a smile came to her frozen face. Headred blinked-- and she vanished.
Headred whirled to go back in and jumped. Beren kneeled beside her daughter. And as the mist of winters chill came from her mouth, she gave her daughter an icy kiss on the cheek.
A cold wind blew through the blanket. Headred shivered. When he turned around again, Beren disappeared.
“Are you awake?” Caer called.
“I stand guard,” he corrected. “Go back to sleep.”
“What could harm us here?” she asked, falling back onto the pallet.
What indeed, he wondered and glanced to where the Ice Queen walked. Beren watched over them. He wondered if she feared Belial drew close.
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