[500 Kingdoms 04] - The Snow Queen Page 9

  So she sat up and sang, for everyone with a Mage rune knew that the most powerful spells were sung, not spoken. There was something about music, and the way it was easy to get lost in it, the way it was easy to call up mental images of what you wanted, that made sung magic, for the Sammi at least, that much more powerful.

  Now it seemed that her spells had been very effective indeed. The cellars were full of beets, onions, turnips and cabbage, dried blueberries, lingonberries and cloudberries, dried mushrooms, sacks of rye and barley flour, sacks of whole barley, stacks of dried cheese, waxed wheels of aging cheese, casks of dried and salted fish, potted birds and meat. Hams and sausage hung from every ceiling. Cupboards were full of preserved pots of butter, lard, jam and honey. The entire village had been feasting for days on the traditional foods of Autumn, butchery-time—blood pancakes, blood dumplings, blood soup, fried cracklings, stews and soups rich with meat scraps, and dishes made with various organs that could not be preserved—for nothing, nothing went to waste, not even, or especially, in times of abundance. Fish had almost been leaping into the nets, and game flung itself in the way of the hunters. There were peddlers and traveling entertainers coming through at this time of year, and they generally tried to spend as much time as they could in the villages that had a reputation for generous hospitality. The Sammi did not have harvest fairs of the sort that Annukka had heard of; Autumn was too busy a time for that. But anyone that came through was more than welcome to partake of the ongoing feast of things that could not be stored for the Winter.

  One such peddler, very, very fond of Annukka’s sausages, had just been through. He had left with some of the first batch of the season stowed in his cart, and she was now the owner of a curious and very beautiful mother-of-pearl comb. That might have seemed a very uneven trade for a couple of strings of sausages, but he had confided in her that no one wanted it once they heard he had traded for it with one of the seal-people.

  Now she had no particular aversion for the seal-people, although it was generally held to be bad luck for someone who made his living fishing to have anything of theirs. After all, they might want it back, and their way of getting it back might well be to drown you….

  But the peddler, who she knew to be an honest fellow, had sworn he had come by it honorably. And it was a lovely piece, carved with swirling waves and fronds of kelp. She intended to give it to Kaari for her bride’s-gift.

  As she sealed up the door of the smokehouse, she smiled a little, thinking about that particular peddler. He was the one with the most beautiful pieces of amber, and sweet ambergris for making scents. Suvi-Marja had seen one particular necklace in his store, three big drops like huge drops of honey, suspended from a delicate chain of amber beads, and it was clear to anyone with eyes that she wanted the piece. Between the two of them, she and Kaari had managed to put it into Essa’s thick skull that this would be a grand betrothal token for Suvi, and even more cleverly, managed to make him believe that he had thought of it.

  I wonder if she has even taken it off to wash, Annukka thought with powerful amusement. Well, at least that was settled. She had known Essa since his birth, and never once had she known him to go back on a thing once he had decided to do it. That girl was as good as married this moment.

  But the recollection of the peddler suddenly made her frown, because goods were not the only things that peddlers brought with them. They also brought news. And some of his stories were…disquieting.

  There had always been tales of a strange, magical creature that some called the Winter Witch, some the Ice Fairy and others the Snow Queen. She was said to live up so far north—or else, in the mountains—that there was no other season but Winter there. That was not at all disturbing. There were all manner of things in that region that were magical in nature. If she were to concern herself with all of them, she would spend her time constructing defenses and never get anything done. This creature had been up there for generations, it seemed, and most of the stories were about people who had been stupidly or criminally foolish and had essentially gotten their comeuppance.

  But these stories were different. The creature had suddenly turned malicious, and rather than sitting in her fortress or castle or ice-cave or whatever it was she lived in, she was extending her domain into places she had never been known to walk before. There were stories now of a Winter come so early that the snow caught apples not yet ripe on the trees, and grapes were frozen on the vine. There were stories of a killing kind of cold that swept down out of nowhere and froze birds and animals in their place. And there were stories of young men just—taken. For no apparent reason.

  So far, none of those stories had been about anywhere too near the Sammi “kingdom” of Karelia. But Annukka knew her tales, and she knew that when bad things were on the move, they didn’t stop for borders.

  She bent down to apply the wax she was warming to the crack where the door met the frame. The rest of the smokehouse was tightly chinked with moss and clay, so this would be the only place where smoke could get out except the vent in the roof. It was taking extra care like this that made her sausages so good. And there was nothing like sausage on a cold morning.

  If the Sammi had an enemy, it was Winter. There was not enough in the way of riches here for anyone to want to conquer their land; they were in no way strategic; and the very nature of the people, so dependant on the reindeer herds as they were, made them difficult to confine and fight. Sammi warriors did not make stands. Sammi warriors faded into the forest and the snow, struck from shadows, let the landscape wear the enemy down. Not that they did not, individually, fight valiantly toe-to-toe with the best of them! But as an army, as a force—no. When they organized, it was to divide the enemy, make him come to ground of their choosing and fight him as ghosts in the night.

  But they could not do that with Winter. Winter was implacable. Winter’s cold sought you out and tried to kill you and could not be hidden from. The only defenses against Winter were food, shelter and warmth. As the days grew shorter and the nights longer, there was always that fear in the back of every mind: what if the sun faded and never returned? What if the night and the cold were forever? What if this was the season when the battle ended and Winter won?

  Annukka shivered and walked back to the house. She had another wheel of cheese to coat with wax before she put it down in the cellar.

  No one spoke of this fear, although the oldest songs, the strong magic songs, did. Strong magic had to acknowledge fear in order to conquer it. But that was what all the celebration at MidWinter was about, at bottom. There was the long watch through the darkest night of the year, the hope of driving back the dark with fire, of driving back hardship and privation with feasting, the driving back of the cold with the warmth of fellowship. And in the dawn, when the sun truly did rise again, there was rejoicing and a relief that was the stronger for being unspoken. The people had survived; they would live until Spring.

  Of course, people could—and did—die between MidWinter and Spring, but somehow it never seemed as terrible an omen—unless the year had been so bad that stores were scant to begin with. Even then, this village had a most fortunate location. There was good hunting and good fishing, even in the middle of Winter.

  But this year, unless the Winter never ended, there would be no need to fear the coming of the snow, even if it began early.

  She could not help the thought that followed, as she checked the pot of beeswax beside the fire to see if it had melted yet. And what if Winter never ends?

  She banished that thought with another. If there is some great and terrible Magic at work, then the Wonder-smiths, the Warrior-Mages, the Wise and the Shamans will band together and defeat it. It might be difficult to get the Sammi to fight together, but it was not impossible.

  That internal voice chuckled a little. Difficult? No more difficult than teaching a cat to herd reindeer.

  “Stop that, you!” she said aloud, glad that there was no one about to hear her. Well, other than the cat, who
jumped at the sound of her voice and looked guilty, then immediately turned the guilty look to one of nonchalance. “And you may stay out of the cheese!” she scolded, not sure what the cat was getting into before she made it jump, but knowing that the likeliest thing was the cheese it had been eyeing.

  The cat put his tail in the air and sauntered away, very clearly conveying that he had no interest in the cheese, and she was incredibly rude to think so, and worse to say so. After all, someone might be listening. A cat had his dignity to think of. The nerve!

  She was still laughing at the affronted cat when Kaari came flying up the path, face white, something wrapped in cloth in her hands. As she burst through the door, Annukka could see that she was sobbing.

  “Mother—Mother!” she wailed. “It is Veikko!” She held out the bundle before Annukka could say anything, her hands shaking. The cloth fell away from it, and Annukka saw a little silver cup had been wrapped in it. “Before he left, we shared a loving-cup!” The girl sobbed. “He knew the spell—he said that it would keep me from worrying if he couldn’t find a messenger to bring me letters, that as long as it was polished and shining, I would know he was safe. Last night it was fine, bright silver, not a speck of black. I looked at it just now—and look!”

  Annukka, who knew very well what the Loving-Cup spell was, since she had taught it to her son, looked at the silver vessel in mute horror.

  It was black from base to top, with only a thin silver line left near the bottom. Annukka knew exactly what this meant.

  Veikko was in deadly danger.

  Aleksia was back in the throne room, at the ice-mirror. Today, her gown was a sweeping creation of white velvet trimmed in white fox and lined with white mink, with a belt of plaques of silver holding faceted crystals, and a crown to match. Her hair was done up in a severe knot. She was warm and comfortable, but looked chilly and utterly unapproachable. It would take a very brave man indeed to do so. The throne room was especially cold today, because she expected Kay at any moment.

  Meanwhile Gerda’s second trial, her captivity among the robbers, was coming to a turning point, and Aleksia needed to keep a very sharp eye on it indeed. She was not inclined to trust any of this to luck.

  The robbers had learned that Gerda was not rich, that her parents were very far away indeed. Since they were all completely illiterate, to reach them and demand a ransom—even if one could be paid—one of their number would have to spend most of a month traveling to her city, and then, when he got there, somehow convince them that the girl he had was her. The rest of the band would have to trust him to bring back the money—and cows would be flying like swallows before that happened. And in his turn, he would have to keep from being captured; pigs would be joining the flying cattle if he managed it. The robbers themselves were not going to trust him with money for his journey out of their own stores, which meant that, to make that trip, he would be resorting to robbery, but doing so alone and out of the forest. The bandit in the forest and the robber in the city were two very different creatures. And neither functioned very well in the environment of the other.

  Though illiterate, they weren’t fools and had worked all of this out for themselves. That meant that anything they were going to get from Gerda in the way of material goods, they had already gotten.

  Now this group of men were looking at Gerda in an entirely different fashion. There were, after all, only two women here, and the Chief’s daughter was not to be touched, or even looked at impertinently. Not just because the Chief would gut the offender, but because Valeri would castrate him, then let her father gut him.

  Now, it was true that Valeri had claimed Gerda for her own personal servant. It was also true that Valeri had lost interest in things after a while. The pet rabbit she had once that had escaped, the fawn she had raised that became venison roast when she wearied of trying to keep it in a pen, the various “ladylike” pursuits she had attempted and dropped when she was no good at them. The truth was, Valeri was more at home in breeches than skirts, happier with her hair chopped short than being braided and fussed over, more apt with a knife and a bow than a needle and a pan. She’d had a fancy to play lady and had seized on Gerda to be her lady’s maid. But the men knew that, sooner or later, she would tire of the game and, they hoped, of Gerda.

  And even if she didn’t, the word of the Chief was law even to his daughter. If the men all banded together and demanded the girl, they would get her. They had not yet gotten to the point of banding together—each still hoped to get her for himself alone—but they would.

  And soon.

  Winter had already come to that forest, and there would be no more travelers coming through to be preyed upon. The band was snowed in; their hideout was part cave and part a stoutly built fortress of stone and massive logs. Aleksia was fairly sure that they didn’t know who had built the place originally, and probably would never have dared to use it if they had known.

  Trolls. Only trolls were big enough to have felled the trees these logs came from, and strong enough to move them here. Why they had built this place, Aleksia had no idea, nor why they had abandoned it. Perhaps a Hero had come along and tricked them into the sunlight. Perhaps they had just wandered off. They might come back today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now, or never.

  This mattered not at all to the current situation. And it was very important this time that Aleksia hear what was going on. Her point of view was a huge old mirror, very dusty and tarnished, that had been shoved over against the wall of this, Valeri’s room in the outer fortress. Her father, Aleksia had learned, had claimed this room as her nursery long ago because it had a fireplace. She had kept it because she liked her privacy.

  Aleksia could only hear and see through reflective surfaces, although it was surprising how many of those there were that people were not aware of. A drop of water in a forest, the shiny surface of a metal cup, even a bit of mica embedded in a rock wall—any and all of those were enough for her to see and hear through. So it didn’t matter how tarnished and dusty this old mirror was, it still served.

  “Give over,” Valeri said, pushing Gerda’s hands away from her head. “And hand me that knife. I’m tired of this.”

  Gerda picked up the scissors instead. “If you are going to have your hair chopped off, let me do it and make it tidy,” she retorted. “You don’t have to go about looking like a magpie’s nest.”

  The Robber Girl snorted, but let Gerda cut her hair for her, long black tresses falling around her like Autumn leaves. When she was done, Gerda handed her a hand-mirror and she surveyed the result and grunted her approval. Her hawk-sharp face was suited to the shorter hair, Aleksia thought. Having it braided up made such a face, all angles and planes, look even more angular than it already was. “This business of being a lady gives me a pain,” she announced. “It was fun to play at it, but it gives the men ideas. I don’t want ’em thinking of me as somethin’ they can pounce on.”

  “Like me, you mean,” Gerda replied steadily.

  There was silence in that cramped, cluttered room. Then Gerda bent over, picked up all the hair and tossed it into the fire without a word. Valeri took out her knife, cut the women’s clothing she was wearing off herself, and pulled on her usual leather breeches, heavy woolen shirt and leather vest. With a look of contentment, she strapped on a belt with two heavier knives on it, as well as a whip. She crammed a wool hat on top of her newly shorn head. “Now I feel like meself,” she said, with pleasure.

  Then she stopped, and looked sharply at Gerda. “You noticed,” she said. “’Bout the men, I mean.”

  Gerda raised her chin. “You’d have to be blind not to. And deaf. They’re just waiting, like crows watching something dying—”

  She caught herself and looked away. Aleksia smiled. This was going well….

  Valeri put her hands on her hips. “Aye, and they think I dunno. That I dunno my rabbit ended up i’ the stew an’ my fawn ended up there, too. They think I just forget things an’ don’t care about ’e
m no more.” She clenched her jaw. “Bet they’re just waitin’ for me to get tired of bein’ a lady an’ not needin’ you.”

  Gerda nodded wordlessly.

  Oh, very good, girls, Aleksia thought with approval.

  “Well, I might get tired of things sometimes, but that don’t mean I don’t care about ’em.” Valeri’s eyes flashed. “An’ what’s more, I haven’t forgotten about things since I was nine an’ they ate my deer. I see when my things disappear. I just don’t say anything. But I’ll tell you what, missy. They ain’t getting you.”

  And just like that, Gerda found herself with a rucksack in her hands, shoving things in that Valeri threw at her. Of course, half of those things were weapons, which Valeri then took back, muttering something about a rock being more use to someone like Gerda. But it certainly was not much more than an hour later that they had a tolerable pack put together, with a bedroll tied atop it and plenty of journey-bread in oiled paper inside the top. Gerda looked at it doubtfully, then back up at Valeri. “But how am I to get past the men out there?” she asked.

  Valeri grinned. “You just leave that to me. You put on them things, and be ready when I come for you.”

  Gerda shook her head, but obeyed, pulling on the thick woolen breeches—though she settled her discarded skirt over them, Aleksia presumed for modesty’s sake—the knitted wool shirt and the leather tunic. She put on two pairs of stockings to make the too-large felt boots Valeri had thrown at her fit, then crammed on the battered fur hat and sheepskin shepherd’s coat. And just as she was swinging the pack onto her back, Valeri reappeared.

  She put her finger to her lips, eyes sparkling with mischief, and beckoned. Gerda followed her out into a cavern that the bandits used as their main room. Aleksia flitted her point of view to the reflective surface of an overturned silver goblet.

  There were snoring bodies everywhere.

  Carefully, they picked their way through the sprawled bandits, Valeri leading Gerda deeper into the caverns. She stopped once to get a lantern and lit it with a candle left there for that purpose, then made her way to a hole in the wall only a little taller than a man. That allowed Aleksia to transfer her focus to the glass of the lantern.