He stalked down the hill. He kicked the snow as he went, and in spite of his words, prayed his faith, and the faith of the others in her, would not be misplaced.
The sun sank behind the mountains. Behind them, Belial schemed in the fortress of Eliudnir and cast her will over Sul. Shadow and doubt lay over the light, an omen of what would be when the gates of Eliudnir opened.
“Eternal winter,” Mab remarked to Huma as the night began to still. Standing in the fairy camp, she watched the west and waited for Belial to unleash her wrath upon them, for Belial now knew the child returned. “Eternal suffering, eternal pain, eternal death. These things are now upon us, my friend.”
“I wonders if perhaps me mother would speak to me,” Huma mused, kicking his hooves in the snow and lifting the flagon of ale, drinking a swig.
Mab laughed.
After all the things she saw this day, she thought, the centaur wishes for family. And families might soon be broken in the blood and death of the coming war.
“Perhaps.” She looked toward Sestina, who strolled with Cahros. “But not now, I think.”
“She di’not want me, yeh know.”
Mab gazed at him in pity. “I know, my brave centaur. Do not go to her for guidance. More like a man than a centaur, Sestina loves her power. Look to those who see, as I do, the centaur who braved the wild for his friend; Caer, who needed him.”
Huma grinned and sipped ale. “No un’s ever liked me before, not ‘cept you and Caer.”
Mab smiled. “Well, ‘tis a privilege to have such a noble and brave centaur to guard us, while others must trust in themselves alone.”
Sestina glanced over. Sestina showed no emotion, but Mab felt sure Sestina recognized Huma—after all, as a half-centaur, half-goat, how could she not? She turned him away to wander and starve, all for her pride. Yet his sister Gehrdon loved him and cared for him, sheltered him in the harsh winter. She led him to Caer, and through the love and caring of Beren’s daughter Huma found some peace. In such times, a mother should hold her children close; yet Sestina, embarrassed by her firstborn son’s sire, shunned him. Mab thought she saw sorrow in the old centaur’s eyes, just for a moment, but Sestina walked the other way, returning to the centaur’s camp.
Such Mab knew to be the way of the world. For there might be, Mab knew, many sorrows to come in the coming wars, and it would be well for mortal hearts not to make grief where it need not be.
*****
The council ended. The races would not go to war, so a time of celebration began.
Caer sipped pear nectar wine, brought from the sidhes in crystal goblets shining like the pale blue sky. To her, after facing the demon, it seemed an inopportune time to celebrate. A war must be planned. And the fate of the world rested on her shoulders, as her mother before her also felt.
“I remember,” Mab’s whisper caught in the ears of her meditative listener, in the still and quiet of the pavilion where they rested. Around them others sat still, their cerulean goblets teetering in their hands, and sleep in their eyes, caught in an enchanted trance. Caer looked into the Fairy Queen’s dark eyes and listened. A fog crept over her thoughts, before visions took her mind.
“I remember when Moloch came into the world. I stood there when the Dark Lord took form, when he unleashed the plague of damnation. I saw when the power of the Witch-Queen faced the Lord Moloch, and his defeat. I saw when your father fell and when the heir of Moloch came to be….”
Darkness and shadow surrounded Caer. In her heart she felt the peace brought by the fairies’ magic. She floated on the edge of oblivion, in a place she did not know. Her vision cleared as the fog lifted a little, though the gloom remained. A light grew in the dimness.
Far below, in the raging red rivers of Muspellheim, in the cold reaches and frost of Niflheim, the primordial worlds of fire and ice, the chaos formed. Caer watched, entranced, as she floated down. Her feet touched the stone of the gods’ mountain rising from there. Helrög gave birth to Miðgarðir.
Miðgarðir rose out of the abyss separating the frost and the fire. In what seemed a few moments for Caer, she saw the vast waters beyond Sul, and the lands coming forth. Small bands of silver water streamed from the lands and ran to the oceans. Clouds passed Mount Kern, and the stars shown.
“Ah, but it did not begin there,” Mab’s voice came from somewhere beyond. “My tale begins in the depths of time when the gods made Miðgarðir and all of its children.”
The tops of the trees rose to greet Caer, the mountain growing smaller. The wind whispered and blew cool and radiant on her skin, in this twilight place without sun and moon.
Miðgarðir stopped its ascent, and she heard the soft crunch of earth beneath her feet, in the ancient forests. Beside her, as she came forth from the mountain itself, Mab stood, graceful and silent, her movement so light and swift she made no footprints. Her eyes spoke to Caer, drawing her into the forest.
Caer glanced down in wonder at the world of her ancestors. Hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of faces, bodies supine, skin white, and faces serene, the first men slept. She heard the story as a child; they would awaken in the radiance of the sun once the gods made it, and so would rule the day in good. Evil possessed the god even now formed in the abyss.
“The years moved from one to the next, and ages of the world passed by.” Mab’s soft voice floated to Caer as the world aged around them. “The gods made the sun, and the moon its companion, rose and fell. Men built cities and destroyed them, and for a time, peace reigned.
“Dana gave birth to the first witch. The lands the gods gave them men called Sul, spreading from the Mountains of Mist in the north where lay Keros, to the plains in the south, and from Mael Dúin, the great eastern seas to the Niðafjöll mountains of the west, where the gods cast Moloch down.
“Moloch, Lord of the deep abyss from which sprang all things, rose once in the heavens. The gods fought a war in their halls, and they cast Moloch down, into the mortal earth, to which they bound his power.
“And beyond the shadow grew in power and anger. His eye ever watched the heavens, though soon he cast his eyes on Sul, where lay the daughters of the gods, and he cast his shadow upon them.”
Mab stood beside Caer, on the peak of Keros, pain upon her features.
Caer’s eyes lingered on the fairy queen a moment and turned back to the plains of Niðavellir in the distance. There her vision drew her. Lightning, bright and powerful, flashed in the skies over the wasteland beyond those mountains. Rivers of liquid rock flowed around Moloch’s towers. Cruel laughter floated even to Ull.
“Open the gates, and destroy them all!” Moloch screamed, and Miðgarðir shook with the sound of the demon’s voice.
A thousand of the demon’s servants pulled the sable chains of Eliudnir’s gates, and they swayed inward, opened to the harsh reality in Óskópnir.
The one who waited within the gates sat draped in armor as black as the evil growing in his heart. He carried a sword and a mace, on his head rested a dark iron helmet as though a crown. His eyes gleamed solid ebony.
A golem sat on a wolf beside the Dark Lord. The golem raised his sword, and kicking the ribs of the wolf beneath him, shouted in the harsh tones of his kindred.
The towers emptied their armies upon Sul.
A touch on her arm drew Caer back. She blinked at Mab.
“The four races fought the first wars and blood fell onto the earth. I watched, and I saw my kindred fell on the cold earth above the fairy sidhes. Hope seemed lost, for it seemed none could stand against the demon.
“But in the White City hope rose again. Enyd prayed for the gods to deliver her people. Power, great and terrible, the gods gave to her in response, and with her power the Witch Queen drove Moloch back. But even she could not stand against Moloch. No one could.
“In the Myrkviðr Forest beneath the Niðafjöll Mountains, the armies met. In the sacred places Enyd wove her spell of hope, and far away the spell took root.”
&
nbsp; Mab pointed to the plains of Niðavellir. Caer’s vision drew her to the battle with Moloch, where the fate of Miðgarðir began.
The battle grew fierce, and the fighting hard. The allies fell like flies and took with them their enemies. But they knew it to be in vain, for nothing seemed enough.
King Cuthred knew it would never be enough. His arm stung as his sword connected with the demon’s Lieutenant. He drew back, sword resounding, as he blocked his enemy’s axe, avoiding decapitation. He sent his enemy backward, onto earth muddy with the blood of friend and enemy.
He needed but one stroke, and as black blood dripped from Cuthred’s sword, Moloch’s Lieutenant fell to ruin.
Oberon, King of the fairies, a good friend of Cuthred, fought upon the hillock not far away. Waves of the enemy poured onto the battlefield. Cuthred blocked his mind and sent himself with grim determination into a battle he could not win.
“Cuthred!” Oberon shouted. Cuthred’s sword connected with the neck of a golem and down into the heart of a wolf. They fell.
And as he turned to glance at his friend, his face froze. His insides went cold and stayed cold as Moloch pulled the iron sword from Cuthred, dripping with fresh blood.
Cuthred gasped and fell to his knees to the laughter of the victorious Moloch. Anger envigored the King, and with a thrust his sword connected. The blade melted and blew away as dust, leaving the hilt to fall to the ground from the Dark Lord’s unarmored thigh.
Moloch screamed, and the battle went still and silent. The demon’s blood fell, scorching the earth. Storm clouds surrounded him, sable as the night. Moloch’s screaming face appeared in a funnel of cloud touching the center of the battle where he laid. The whirlwind receded, carrying the screaming face of the Dark Lord into the air, cut from the body he lived in, a shadow of what himself, bleeding and dying.
And when the clouds disappeared, Cuthred closed his eyes, and his last rattled breath allowed his spirit to flee its prison, and escape to the gods he served.
“Cuthred slew Moloch, Dark Lord of the earth.”
Caer saw Mab on the day of the great battle, far from the battle, watching it from a hill, surrounded and protected by her kindred. Mab gazed at the battle her people won, and her gaze lingered on the cloud sweeping to the east, Ull where the Witch Queen screamed as Cuthred breathed his last.
“Bleeding and alone, the demon fled through the lands of light. With the armies at the plains of Niðavellir, at the edge of Sul, he saw his opportunity. Injured and dying, the Lord Moloch took Queen Enyd, and with his power conceived an abominable child.”
Caer saw Enyd in Ull’s tallest tower. A wise woman held a babe; in her eyes was an evil Beren, the little girl who stood not far off, knew too well. Enyd, weary from the birth, shuddered and breathed her last. Beren watched in apprehension as her mother gave birth to her greatest enemy.
Mab touched her arm, and Caer stood on the mountain once more.
“Years passed. Shadows gathered again in Óskópnir. The heir of Lord Moloch rose in the west, in Eliudnir. Belial shared the heart of Miðgarðir with her sister, the Witch Queen Beren, for the blood of the witches flowed in both of them. The Witch Queen felt the coming winter.”
The wind blew cold. The world grew older. The wastelands of Moloch remained as silent as they had been from the beginning of time. Shadows rose beyond the mountains, where Belial fled, and where evil consumed her.
“Eliudnir, the dark towering citadel of Moloch beyond the Niðafjöll mountains, rose anew. The child of the damned returned to the land of her father and spread evil.
“The great wolves howl in the night, made by the Lord Moloch, an abomination of their smaller kindred. The armies he forged from the abyss return to their master’s child, to serve and to fight, to spread her shadow over the earth like the plague.
“The Dark Lord Belial rose in the west. A second war began, when the blood of men flowed onto the frozen lands. For her heart, like the heart of her sister, remained bound to Miðgarðir. The cold depths of death stretch out over the earth, in ice and winter.
“The tears of the fairies fall for the frozen lands.”
A misty cloud ran before Caer’s vision, and the vision around her became a memory as the fog over her mind lifted.
She opened her eyes in the fairy pavilion to the revelry of men and fairies, drinking pear nectar and laughing. It seemed as though no time passed for them while Caer saw the past in visions.
Beside her Headred appeared uneasy, as though he sensed something amiss.
“Are you all right?” He leaned in, his breath on her skin bringing her to life again.
“What happened?” Headred’s eyes seemed tired, awakened from a strange, forgotten dream.
Headred glanced at her, troubled, and at Mab.
He knows not, Mab said in Caer’s mind. I have revealed this for you to know the nature of the evil you face.
Mab turned away to speak to the fairy beside her. Caer sipped her wine and pondered the visions of the Fairy Queen.
*****
“The races again gird themselves for war.” Headred leaned against the cushions in the pavilion, clutching a goblet of wine.
Caer glanced at him as she listened to Beoreth sleep nearby. “And together they will fight. Together they will die.”
She looked so much the Queen, he thought, a warrior Queen rallying her troops into battle, the weight of her destiny on her shoulders. She looked like Beren, tired and thoughtful.
Beyond the distant mountains, the fires of the Belial exploded into view. Belial knew Y Erianrod came among her people, and the time for the daughter of Beren to face her came.
She needed only to watch, to wait, and to act.
“We should sleep.” Headred broke the silence.
“We should dream.” She watched as the fires raged beyond the Niðafjöll Mountains. The exploding flames reflected in her eyes. The eruptions mirrored the fire of her own essence, trapped in Fensalir for so many years. But the fire within Caer would never be a destroyer, rather a blaze of power meant to destroy evil, and to rebuild from destruction.
But she turned away from fire and went to her love.
She dreamed about him many nights and never knew his name. Caer sank onto the cushions and leaned into Headred, felt his strong arms around her, and listened to the sound of his breath and the beat of his heart.
“The council disagreed, and many still do not trust you,” he said. “We share these lands, and yet we cannot save them if we let ourselves be swayed by the confusion and doubts of the shadow.”
“’Tis no longer.” She looked into his eyes. “The races should never be sundered, for what we have made will bring peace and prosperity again. None should let Belial divide what lives pure.”
He shifted and brought their faces together. His lips met hers and brushed against them, torturing and slow, taking them deeper until they became one.
And how many times in dreams did she love, and never know of the shadow haunting her cold winter steps, toward a destiny she never knew about?
“Tonight cannot be a night for fear,” he said. “The shadow does not yet hold power in these lands. Tonight will be a night of peace before the storm.”
“And should there not be a way to stop the storm? What will happen if Belial and I meet, and neither can destroy nor consume the other? What will love or promise mean if the winter always covers Miðgarðir?”
“She does not know love. Born of the witches and the demon, and she made a choice to determine the path she would take. Belial chose evil.”
Caer saw the pain in his eyes. “Why does she hunt you? Why did she not destroy you in the woods ere we met?”
Headred sighed and let his head fall back onto the pillows. “She desires Miðgarðir for her own. Belial desires all power, what she does not yet have and no one can hold. She desires to know all things, and so she needs me or my kindred.”
“A prophet.”
He nodded. “A child born into her da
rkness and damnation. A child who knows all what will be, could give victory to the armies of Óskópnir.”
Caer stared at him. His grin seemed a small expression under the shadows in his mind, but a smile nonetheless.
“Do not fear, my love. Belial would seize, and what she cannot have she would destroy, but she cannot take what you have already claimed. She cannot claim me with magic when I give my love to another.”
He brushed their lips together again, a symbol of the promise made long ago, a symbol of the promise they now made.
*****
Caer awoke in the stillness and beauty of the eternal winter’s night. As the moonlight filtered into the tent, she cradled the sleeping Headred against her breast and felt the soft rise and fall of his chest against her stomach.
She feared for him. The demon would not have him while she stood for him. Belial could not take what Caer loved.
“You have my heart, beautiful Headred,” she whispered and stroked his hair. “You have the love I alone give to you.”
In sleep he moved, wrapping his arms around her. And she possessed his heart, though not by his admission. Love seemed greater than the power she felt in the magic of the witches.
She could hear the shouts of men in the distance as they readied their people for war. They sent the women and children to Ull, where they would be safe for a time. The White City, deep within the kingdom of Sul, would be the last fortification to fall.
And when the time passed, if she failed, all would die who stood with her.
Caer hasnordin mesanat…
Mab’s voice spoke in her head, Caer’s her eyes drooped. Go to sleep, Caer…Iaenamar hithilas fweleras…
Sleep in dreams of peace…
Sleep ensnared her, and she dreamed with Headred’s arms around her. She felt safe in sleep. And this night might be the last for peaceful sleep and dreams.
At the edge of the tree-line, watching the camps, evil waited.
*****
The torches of the Vigil glowed in the darkness. The ice shimmered beneath them, showing the pale, frozen Queen, in immortal sleep, neither dead nor living, paying the price for saving her daughter’s life.
The Ice Queen Page 19