Mercedes Lackey - Snow Queen

The eyes…. around the eyes…there was movement.

Then as the Icehart looked away from her for a moment and at Ilmari instead, she realized what it was. She saw shining bits of ice dropping from its cheeks. She had seen that before — when Kaari had wept for the forest-spirits.

“It's weeping,” she said, so shocked that she was not sure she was really seeing what she thought she was. “Why would this thing be weeping?”

There was a silence from Ilmari, then the Wonder-smith sighed. “You may think me mad,” he said, slowly, “but I believe that it is weeping because it has a broken heart.”

She shook her head. None of this was making any sense. First the thing attacked them. Now it followed them, crying. It was clearly intelligent, yet it was not telling them what, if anything, it wanted.

She knew it was responsible, in part at least, for the deaths of dozens of people, and yet her heart went out to it.

“How can a spirit have a broken heart?” she asked, falteringly.

Ilmari sighed. “I do not know,” he replied, as the Icehart slowly stalked away, leaving them with nothing but questions. “Perhaps it, too, is a victim of the Snow Witch. Perhaps it has lost all it ever cared about to her. All that I know is that not even a Wonder-smith can mend a heart when it is broken.”

The village was named Kurjala, and Aleksia suspected this was an attempt at sarcasm, since the word meant “misery.” Certainly it lived up to — or down to — the name. The area seemed to be under a perpetual overcast. The houses were dark, and poorly repaired, and the people in them shabby and unsocial. Even the ice and snow in the streets was filthy. When they first approached the place, she had not at all been sure there was anyone living there. Only when they actually entered it did they see the occasional surly or furtive figure crossing a street ahead of or behind them, although doors were always firmly closed by the time they reached the spot where the figure had been seen.

Only after they came to what passed for a village market did they find anyone willing to speak to them. Once they showed their coin, though, people did come out. Money, it seemed, overcame just about every other consideration.

The barrier across the Palace gate that Aleksia had seen in her mirror visions had become a barrier around the entire Palace. There was literally no way to get past it.

The group was now camped outside the wall around the Palace, a good distance from the village at the front gate. They had originally thought to stay within the village, rather than camping, but a quick look through the place had convinced all five of the humans that this was absolutely the last thing they wanted to do. Urho, who must have had some way of telling what lay ahead of them here, had already been convinced that they should not chance the village.

It was full of the most repellant individuals that Aleksia had ever seen.

She remembered the fragment of conversation that she had heard in her mirror-visions. She had assumed that the speakers had meant that the people of this place were being killed by the Snow Witch if they showed any sign of human feeling.

The truth was far worse.

Once they were outside Kurjala and safe from observation, Aleksia took out her hand-mirror and did a touch of scrying. What she saw behind those closed doors shocked and dismayed her, and finally made her put the mirror away, feeling sick. There was no hope here, no love — no kind of human feeling or kindness at all. Even the children were heartless, competing grimly with siblings, if need be, and parents used them as virtual slave labor. But how was that surprising for children born to mothers who gave their bodies to men out of desperation, men who took them with no thought for anything past the fleeting pleasure of the night? There were no marriages here, only temporary alliances for purely material reasons. No real market, no inn, no places of worship or gathering; no beauty, no music, nothing that was not strictly utilitarian. There was, literally, nothing to lift the heart, or even touch it.

In villages this far north, villages that got so few visitors, newcomers were often greeted with enthusiasm and welcome and, if there was no inn, offered a bed with some prominent person of the village.

But here — that was, to put it mildly, not the case. One and all, the villagers turned the travelers away coldly, until Lemminkal offered them money from the bandit store, but even that only bought them fodder for the deer, supplies for themselves and permission to camp outside the wall, not house-room.

They huddled around their fire, looking at the dim lights of the village houses, feeling a depression of spirits so great that it was hard to muster the energy to do anything more than make camp, fix a meal and stare at the fire or into the night.

“Is this us?” Kaari asked, suddenly. “Or is it this place?”

That aroused Lemminkal. “It is the place,” the soft-spoken warrior said, with difficulty.

“Which must be the work of the Snow Witch…”

“It's what she wants,” Aleksia managed. “The more misery, the better.”

They had not seen the Icehart since camping here, and Aleksia was not at all surprised. If the creature wept because it had a broken heart now, setting foot in this place would drive it to fling itself off a cliff. She was not all that far from doing the same thing herself.

“Whatever made them like this is foul,” she said, finally. “Just foul. These folk are worse off than animals. Even animals have joy.”

“It is the ice in their hearts,” Lemminkal said, unexpectedly.

“What?” Aleksia turned to face him. She could have sworn she had said nothing about how Veikko had been changed.

“I…feel it,” the big man said, scratching his head in puzzlement. “It is a part of my magic to feel things. It lets me know what my foe is going to do, and it lets me know what his heart is like. There is ice in their hearts, a tiny grain of it, and it is the ice that has frozen them and made them cold and cruel.” He shook his head, showing his grief. “I cannot help them.”

“Only defeating the Snow Witch will help them,” Annukka responded, lifting her head as if it felt very heavy. Then she patted Lemminkal's hand comfortingly, and the big man put one of his massive paws over hers and held it as if it sustained him. “But how are we to do that if we cannot even get inside?”

Aleksia racked her brains. “We cannot fight her, we cannot force our way in — we have to trick her.” She went over the scenes of the Snow Witch in her mind, trying to think of a way to get past the barrier, past the snow-servants and into the Palace. “We have to get her to let us inside, or at least to let us get to Veikko. One of us at any rate.”

“You know, she's not an idiot,” Ilmari said crossly. “She knows we're here now, if she didn't before. She has probably figured out that we are here for Veikko. Just what do you propose to do about this? Make her forget all that and invite us in for a welcome feast?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flushed. “Forgive me. You did not deserve that. It is this place…”

She had felt a flash of anger, but suppressed it, because he was right. It was this place.

“No…” Aleksia said, slowly. “But I think I have an idea. What we need to do is make her think that we are weaker than we actually are. Contemptible. She will want to laugh at us, taunt us, and that will bring her to the gate. But we also need something to bargain with. Turn out your packs!” she demanded. “We need the sort of pretty things that women crave! She likes beautiful, rare things that no one else has. She collects them, as she collects beautiful, rare boys.”