David Drake: Godess of the Ice Realm

She was looking at Garric. Her cheeks were so puffy that Her eyes seemed to be set at the bottom of deep tunnels, but Garric recognized Her nonetheless.

He was looking at his childhood friend, Ilna os-Kenset.

And as he realized that, the net of wizardlight that She had woven in the air dropped onto Garric, freezing him in his tracks.

As Ilna entered the huge domed hall which she'd seen so recently through Her eyes, the net of wizardlight drifted down over her. Ilna's expression was colder than the winter stars.

The Tree growing from the enthroned figure dominated the vast chamber. Its trunk was deceptive, as thin and supple as a willow's at first glance. At the back of Ilna's mind she had the impression that the Tree was too thick for even this huge room to hold. Its leafless limbs squirmed on currents of wizardlight, brushing over every peak and valley of the world; branching and spreading to branch again.

Chalcus saw Her net falling. He threw up his left hand to keep it from tangling him, but that touch froze him. The net continued to settle, draping his head and shoulders. Ilna stepped around him and continued toward the center of the hall.

The Tree in its full splendor looked as it had when Ilna first saw it in Hell. What she'd brought back with her to the waking world had been a relatively slight thing, but it would have grown.

Grown to look like this towering monster, visible only to her of all those in this chamber.

Soldiers were gathered in the center of the room; more men had been running toward them from an entrance close to where Ilna had shattered her own door in the wall. In a scene much like the one she'd just viewed through Her memory, a net of wizardlight had locked most of the men stiffly. A few were trying to crawl away; none of them would succeed.

The chamber held inhuman creatures of more sorts than Ilna had fingers to count them. Her net had trapped those as well; it would convert them to Her purposes in the same fashion, if nothing prevented that from happening.

Ilna smiled like light dancing from a sword blade. Something would prevent it.

She walked forward, feeling a faint tingle from the wizardlight eddying about her. The net was at shoulder level now and dropping lower.

Nearby crouched a thing whose body was a great cat's but whose eagle's head was crowned with great green feathers. A group of soldiers braced themselves to receive it, their shields raised; two of the men had javelins cocked to throw. The encounter had become a tableau when Her net had fallen across it. In their concern with each other, neither monster nor men had been aware of what was settling on them.

Ilna detoured around the corpse of a giant with a brow that jutted like a warship's ram to protect its single central eye. It lay on its back with three pikes, two broken and one whole, sticking up from its chest. Judging from how deep the pikes were driven in, the creature must have run itself onto the points and continued struggling forward on pillar-like legs until death finally caught up with it.

Ilna sniffed. That massive skull must hold a brain no bigger than a squirrel's. Of course there were plenty of ordinary men she'd say the same about.

Garric and Cashel were where she expected to find them, in the middle of the front line. Sharina was there too, her blond hair draped about her shoulders like a shroud. She'd been swinging an axe when the net halted her in mid-stroke.

As white as a slug and fatter than Ilna had believed a human could become, She sat on the throne looking out over the frozen soldiers. Of course She wasn't human any more; Her soul was merely the soil in which the Tree had sprouted to spread its tendrils across the world.

The net of light reached the floor, locking Garric and his whole army beneath its spell. From the throne Her hands wove power in subtle patterns; those hands and Ilna herself were the only things moving in the huge room.

She turned Her head toward Ilna. Her fat white fingers twisted; crimson wizardlight looped out to knot around Ilna like a snake throttling a vole.

The coil slipped through Ilna as if her body were water; she felt only the quivering chill she'd get from a draft when a winter storm rattles the shutters. She walked on, looking up and smiling more broadly. She met the deep-set eyes of the thing she hadn't allowed herself to become.

"Who are you?" shouted the thing on the throne.

"I'm Ilna os-Kenset," said Ilna. "I'm who you used to be, when you were human."

This close to the throne, Ilna had to choose her footing with care. The ice was broken into chunks, and everywhere lay the skeletons of the men who'd followed Her until she tore out their blood and souls to feed her wizardry.

"I have power over you!" She cried from the throne. Her fingers writhed again, molding forces into a tool and sending them curling toward Ilna as an azure noose. "I have power over all things!"

Ilna shrugged through this coil as she had the first one, as she had the net that held the others in the chamber. "You don't have any power except what the Tree allows you," she said calmly. "And the Tree has no power over menow -since I broke away from it."

Ilna looked up at the round face and bloated white body. "As you did not in your world," she said. "And as you can't ever do now."

"Ilna?" said a voice Ilna knew well. "I'm so glad you've come back!"

It was not Her voice. It was the voice of the friend Ilna never had, the one who understood her and cared about her, as nobody had ever cared about Ilna os-Kenset.

It was the voice of the Tree.

"You have no business with me," Ilna said. "Not any longer."

She wasn't sure her lips were moving. The huge ice hall faded to flickers at the edge of her awareness. She stood in a gray limbo with neither light nor texture. Before her was the Tree, its sinuous branches weaving a slow dance of mastery and evil.

Ilna smiled; and if it was a grim expression, there was pride in it nonetheless. Not mastery over me. Not any longer.

"None of them understand you, Ilna," said the Tree; its voice was soothing, loving. "I'll make sure that you get what you deserve."

"You have no-" Ilna shouted, but the remainder of the words froze on her lips. Time stopped, then flowed down a channel different from the one which she had lived.

The vagabond Kenset brought Ilna to Barca's Hamlet as an infant, but divine parentage already shown from her face. As a child she never lacked for anything. Barca's Hamlet became known as a paradise on earth where winters were moderate and crops bountiful. This blissful series of events was rightly credited to the presence of the Divine Ilna.

Some of those in the borough found the pain of their own inadequacy too much to bear in the light of the Divine Ilna. Her uncle Katchin and his slattern wife swam out to sea one night; their bodies were never recovered. The next day Garric's shrewish, self-important mother Lora hanged herself in the panty of the inn. Neighbors regarded the deaths as part of the blessings Ilna brought on the community.

Ilna allowed Garric to attend her. It pleased her to see the light of adoration in his eyes. He never presumed to touch her, of course, realizing that no human was worthy of the Divine Ilna. She was whole in herself, a fit subject for worship but unmoved by it as by all else around her.

Around Her; She was divine.

Realizing the inadequacy of their resources, the folk of the borough carried Her in state to Carcosa. The ancient capital received Her with fitting enthusiasm, rebuilding the Old Kingdom palace for Her. Delegations arrived from Sandrakkan and Ornifal, from Blaise and from rocky islets too small to have a name recognized by any but the handful of fishermen inhabiting them.

The rich and powerful brought gold and jewels and sometimes tapestries; She looked with amused contempt on the finest fabric which humans could weave. The poor could offer only their worship, but that they gave Her unstintingly.