Mercedes Lackey - Snow Queen

Bind.

Her feet swung forward, talons extended, as she hit the duck where the neck met the back. They tumbled out of the air together, the duck flapping desperately, flailing at her with its wings, as Aleksia beat her own wings hard to slow their descent. She was the bird of the foot, as the falconers said, and her feet were her weapons. A talon found the heart and pierced it. The duck shuddered, made one final spasm, and was still. They landed in the snow, duck beneath her, cushioning the last of her fall.

She did not hesitate. Half-mad with bloodlust now, she began ripping the feathers from her prize. In a moment, her beak would plunge into the bird's sweet breast meat, she would drink blood that was still hot and full of the taste of fear and desperation, and then she would settle down to feed.

When the Falcon was sated, Aleksia transformed back to the Bear and made short work of what was left of the duck. When even the last bit of bloodstained snow was licked up, she looked around, as best she could, and took long, deep sniffs of air.

And she scented what she had hoped to detect. Damp, chill — but not the chill and damp of snow and ice. This was cave-damp. A good place for her to become a human, and a good place for the Bear to sleep. She wished the last village was nearer, but it was not, and this was the best possible option for protection, from the elements, from wild creatures, and from the false Snow Queen and whatever she was using as her spies.

The Bear lumbered off, following its nose.

By a little past nightfall, it had found the cave. There was plenty of deadfall nearby and the Bear dragged in several large pieces, much larger than Aleksia could have handled. This was a good cave; it went back far enough that the bitter cold of Winter was held at bay, and the ceiling was high enough that smoke would pool up at the top. She could build her fire at the center of it.

The floor was littered with dead leaves, the bones of small animals and rocks. The musky scent told the Bear that a fox had used it for a den, and recently. Well, if it came back it was going to get a surprise; it wouldn't like the Bear or a human, but Annukka was inclined to leave it alone if it chose to just try and shelter here peacefully. As the Bear, she broke up the wood into fire-sized pieces; a simple enough trick for something of her weight and strength. The leaves and twigs that had blown in here would would supply plenty of tinder; there would be a good fire going here in no time.

But right now, she needed to be a human again in order to do that.

This form was, of course, the easiest of all, so long as she and not animal instinct, was in charge of her body. A moment of concentration, and there she was, gown and all — and she was quickly chilled and shivering without the Bear's thick coat. Hurriedly, she built herself a fire, and used the fire-starter rather than magic to get it ablaze.

Finally the fire was going well enough that she started to thaw; she held her hands to the dancing flames and basked in the warmth.

It occurred to her rather ruefully that she could have made a better clothing selection for this excursion before she had left. Breeches and boots, a warm knitted sweater and a tunic all under a heavy cloak would have been just as easy to transform to feathers as her gown.

But she was unused to wearing such things, and it might have been tricky to transform them back again. Oh, bah. She fumbled out the hand-mirror. The first thing to do would be to see if there was anyone who had already magically caught “sight” of her presence and was spying on her. None can hide who clear can see. I spy you as you spy me, she murmured in her mind, passing her hand over the surface of the glass. It clouded over a moment, and then cleared and showed — nothing. Nothing but her own reflection. She breathed a sigh of relief. So. She had gotten this far without being detected.

She passed her hand over the mirror again, and let a tiny trickle of magic tell the mirror-servant Jalmari back at the Palace of Ever-Winter that she was ready to talk. She would speak through him now, and let him — or whoever Elena found to replace her — be the ones using all the magic.

It was dangerous enough using the transformation magic. Anything more than that was adding another layer of hazard. She could not, dared not, do that. Not now. Not yet.

The face of her servant appeared briefly. “All is well, Godmother. What is it that you need?”

“I think I may be close enough for this mirror to see where the false Godmother is, if she is being incautious about her own magic use,” Aleksia told him. “Do you think — ”

Jalmari laughed. “To borrow a phrase from the Djinn, 'your wish is my command, Godmother'. If you will be patient a moment, I will see if there is anything to be seen.”

The mirror clouded for a moment; she knew what he was doing, he was looking for currents of various sorts of magic, then seeing if they came from a single source. If there was one creature as good at mirror-magic as she was, it was her servant. And long before she might have gotten impatient, his face reappeared.

“This is truly remarkable!” Jalmari said without preamble. “If I had not seen this with my own — ah — well, since I don't precisely have eyes — ”

“What did you see?” she asked, anxiously.

“Look for yourself, Godmother — ” The mirror clouded again, and showed —

The Palace of Ever-Winter.

She frowned. “Is this a joke?” she asked. “If so, I find it rather — ”

The view in the mirror receded, to reveal that at the end of the grounds, where the snow-garden ceased, there was a wall. A wall of huge bricks carved of ice, with a gate in it made not of iron or wood or even more ice, but of a shimmering curtain of power. And on the other side of that wall, was a village where the glacier should have been.

“That, Godmother,” said the mirror-servant gravely, “is where your rival is.”

It had taken the better part of a day, as well as most of her energy, for Annukka to put the spell on the sledge, but it had been worth every moment and every bit of strength to do so. When she and Kaari left the village, she attached a third and fourth very thin rein to each front corner of the sledge and attached those to the reindeer's halter. When the sledge was going the right way, both reins were slack. The farther off course the sledge got, the more it tried to turn, and the more it tugged on the deer's halter, steering it. All she and Kaari had to do was to ride next to the sledge and make sure that the reindeer didn't stop to browse. Usually a smart tap with a long willow-switch took care of that.

And now that they had guidance, Kaari was less anxious. Annukka, however, was seriously concerned. She had taken the loving-cup from Kaari and would not let her look at it anymore, having caught her taking it out and staring at it a dozen times a day. But there was no improvement in the situation there; the main body of the cup was just as black as ever, and there was still only a rim of bright silver remaining. Annukka only wished she could tell for certain whether or not there was any diminishing of the remaining silver.

But the going was slow, even with guidance. Travel on the road, even when it was scarcely more than a footpath, had been much easier. Annukka had never cared much for driving sledges, which was why she had put so much effort into breeding and training deer to ride. There were always hidden obstacles under the snow that the heavy sledge would get stuck on, or that would threaten to turn it over.

In fact, it seemed to her that by the time the sun was setting, they had made discouragingly little progress. From Kaari's long face as they set up camp, she felt the same.

“We haven't even reached the first stricken village yet,” Kaari said quietly, as both of them stared into their little fire. “At this rate, it will be Spring before we get there.”