The Ice Queen

  “It will not be in vain,” Caer told her.

  Athellind gazed at her. “Course it won’t be, child, Ye’re born to the power and magic of the witches. ‘Tis no greater light in the world but yours, and Belial cannot abide against it.”

  Caer walked in silence with her, and the healer left her alone in her thoughts.

  “What became of Waermund?” Caer wondered about the priest who betrayed them.

  “Most figure he died. No, I told them. I reckon he’s out there, serving his mistress Belial. Always a crafty one, that Waermund, from boyhood on. I knew him. Liked to make the girls cry, but not me, for I’d just as soon break his nose. More of a pain than it’s worth, I’ll tell you, to heal it for him afterwards.”

  Caer laughed. The laughter stopped as they came to the door.

  Inside the small room Headred laid on a featherbed, where he laid for three days, his face pale, the demon’s gouges on his naked chest the red of flames. It looked like an animal clawed him, but although it marked it did not break the skin, nor drew blood.

  “He grows feverish at times,” Athellind explained, “and cold other times. We give him herbs, but they ease his pain. ‘Tis all we can do for him now.”

  “They won’t heal him?”

  “One thing can heal the touch of the demon: the will of the injured person. And I’m sure Mab told you never a man’s or a woman’s will been strong enough yet.”

  “I guess hope is lost,” Caer whispered, as a single tear cascaded down her cheek, onto his skin as she leaned over him.

  “Don’t give up hope, my child. I knew his mum, and I knew his dad. Good people, and strong. Wolves killed his mother, nigh on two years ago. His father passed last year, by fever. But they fought, both Hamald his da’ and Weina his mum when her time came, and both of ‘em lasted long enough to make goodbyes.”

  Caer turned at the word.

  Athellind smiled. “If he awakens at all, he won’t need to make goodbye’s, ‘cause he’ll live. Just sit with him, child, talk to him, and let him know you’re here.” Athellind left them alone.

  Caer sat beside Headred as he slept, fighting the demon’s wounds with all his strength.

  The sun began to sink low when a knock sounded at the door. Caer’s attention to Headred wavered.

  The healer at the door offered a tray with two goblets and two steaming bowls of stew.

  “He should take some herbs. You should eat too, my dear, for if you do not eat the shadow may take you as well.”

  Caer took a steaming bowl and studied the stew inside. It smelled good, and when she sampled it, it tasted better than it smelled. The mug held what looked like water but tasted like wine.

  The healer spooned broth to Headred’s lips. At first, he did not swallow. She sighed in relief as his body gulped the herb mixture at last.

  “See there,” the healer said with a small smile, “he drinks the broth, and hope endures.”

  Caer ate her stew, relieved, as the healer spread soothing balm over the demon’s marks, and finished giving Headred the herbal brew.

  “You may sleep here tonight,” the healer offered, rising. “But perhaps we should leave him alone in sleep.”

  “I will stay here,” Caer answered, taking his hand and holding it.

  The healer sighed and left.

  “What do you dream of, beautiful Headred?”

  He didn’t move, but she thought for a moment she saw color in his face.

  The candle flickered and sent more color to his features. She knew it to be a trick of the light. He slept beyond her.

  They knew each other not more than a month, in spite of dreams and childhood meetings. And now as he died, and she could do nothing to stop it, not like before, when the wolves attacked him.

  The circle, she thought, and a light kindled in her mind.

  Perhaps if she could cast a circle, she could enter his dreams.

  She could lead him back to the living, to her.

  In a flash she stood up, searching for the saddlebag she brought from their horse.

  She found the bag and took out the small pouch of salt. Caer spilled it around the bed. Caer tried to remember Beoreth describing the ancient practices to her as a child. With the ritual dagger she drew a pentagram in the air above the circle and Headred.

  Nothing happened.

  “What must I do?” she asked. Did he call to the gods? Did he pray for guidance? “If you watch this now,” she announced to the gods, “If you see what Belial did to him, let me into his mind.”

  Nothing happened.

  Caer closed her eyes to block the tears. When she opened her eyes the circle of salt glowed with the light of the moon.

  Caer stopped herself from squealing. She felt sure the healers would object to this, but it felt hard to contain her excitement. She cast a circle.

  The last time she saw his visions, she touched the circle to enter his mind. But perhaps it needed more now, when she cast the circle.

  The energy coursed up her arm as it passed through the invisible column of air. No visions came to her, and she could not see into Headred’s mind. She stepped through, until she stood in the circle with him, and felt the energies convulse around her body, through her, until it touched ever part of her.

  His mind remained closed to her.

  “Can you hear me, Headred? Open your dreams to me. Let me help you.”

  Even as she spoke, cold came in waves over her body, pouring through her as the demon’s cold touch passed through him. She felt herself going under and felt the floor as she collapsed upon it.

  And after she saw only darkness.

  *****

  The winds howled around Glasheim; the screams of the demon echoed in the night.

  Headred fought until his strength failed. Sul fell, Ull burned, and his love lay dead. But death would not await him if the demon took what she wanted. His fate would be one worse than death, an eternity of punishment for Miðgarðir, and for him.

  Before him, among the stones, Belial cackled.

  Caer saw Headred as the shadows surrounded him, as the snow fell from the sky and piled on the ground. The earth moved on, cold and lost.

  “Belial!” she screamed.

  The demon turned toward her.

  “An active imagination you have, Headred, son of Hamald,” Belial taunted and flicked her wrist to send rocks at Caer.

  Nothing moved.

  The howl of the wind began to die. The snow stopped falling. The roiling skies and blistering cold could not stop Caer.

  Y Erianrod now faced Mór-Ríogain.

  “The child of light. She comes at last to face my wrath.”

  “Or you have come to face mine,” Caer retorted.

  The demon laughed. “I will have what I deserve. I will have all what I desire.”

  “You cannot claim him,” Caer whispered, but the whisper resounded. The stones shook with the magic within them, and beneath, in the catacombs, the mothers of old lived for a moment again.

  “Fool.” Belial faded from Glasheim as though she never walked there.

  “Rest, my love,” Caer said to Headred.

  Her mother floated toward him.

  “Help comes now.”

  The tendrils of shadow around him began to dissipate. Caer followed the Dark Lord Belial into the night.

  The towers of Eliudnir rose into the heavens. In the fortress the demon screamed, thrown back against the wall, again cast out by her inferior.

  The girl would pay, she decided and set to work. A potion would be needed, to ensure the boy never awoke. Caer saw the foul things Belial threw into a bowl to mash and heard Belial’s thoughts as she spoke to the poison she intended magicked into Headred’s veins.

  Belial gazed into the ball Waermund held.

  “I see her now,” Waermund told the Dark Lord, “in the lands of shadow, here with us.”

  Belial glanced up and around. “She comes here?” She laughed. “Do you think you can cast me out,
child, and you can come and spy on me in my lands?”

  Koshnoteth kataia.

  The force of the spell bombarded Caer’s physical body, still in the circle in the healing house, and she landed on the floor of Headred’s room, with the healers and Athellind looking down at her.

  Athellind pushed her in the chair beside the bed and pushed a cup of water to her lips until she drank. On the floor, the healer’s feet destroyed the salt ring. “Beren did such foolish things, and it cost your mother her life, and her kingdom.”

  Caer saw more fear than anger in the old healer. But Athellind looked worried as well. “I saw Belial.”

  Athellind’s face shot up. “Where, child?”

  “In his mind. I drove her out, I think.”

  Athellind closed her eyes and murmured to herself for a moment. “Your mother would have done the same. She would rather have died than let another suffer her sister’s wrath.” Athellind fingered the chain around her neck.

  “She made a poison. She’s going to try to kill him.”

  Athellind looked at her, pleased. “We can stop her, if you tell one of the women what you saw, we can make an antidote straight away. So the wench knows you’re here, eh?”

  “Yes.” Caer focused on Headred.

  “Don’t you fret now, child. You rest.” She handed Caer to another maiden. “We have work to do so he will recover.”

  Caer glanced back as the healer led her to another chamber. She tucked Caer into the bed as she would a sick child. And despite herself, she slipped into sleep and dreams.

  And she saw Belial raging in Eliudnir and the victory Caer made.

  Beoreth walked through the freshly fallen snow among the standing stones of Glasheim, her arms folded over her chest for warmth, thinking. No word yet arrived about the fate of Caer or of Headred. Not long ago Gehrdon galloped alone into the forest to seek news.

  The sky above cleared, and the stars shimmered, even as the skies over the distant wasteland writhed. And beyond the Niðafjöll Mountains, the fires of the demons gleamed, a sick, pale light.

  Beoreth heard hoofbeats and whirled. Gehrdon returned.

  “What news do you bring, old friend?”

  Gehrdon shook her head. “I saw their path, a path full of strange portents. Yet I have found death there.”

  Beoreth clutched her mouth.

  The centaur continued, “Not our own death, but the wolves and golems. I saw their carcasses scattered. I saw magic amiss there, but none such as I have ever seen.”

  Beoreth breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Have peace, Beoreth, for I feel they have reached the White City, and beyond Ull we still know nothing.” Gehrdon turned to walk away and stopped.

  Huma bounded toward them. “Me mother,” he shouted. “Me mother spoke to me!”

  Gehrdon smiled. “Have peace, my brother, and tell me what our mother said.”

  They could hardly understand Huma, as he shouted and ran. “Me mother’s not ashamed the goat got her with child her no more! She wants me to come home.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to the outlanders either.” He turned his nose up at Beoreth.

  Gehrdon looked at him. “Why not, Huma?”

  The goat man seemed uneasy. “The mortals who have gathered,” he began in hushed tones, turning sideways, trying to keep Beoreth from hearing. Beoreth found it amusing, his sister twice as tall as him. “They have council alone, and some believe they turn against us.”

  “Why would they believe men turn against us?” Beoreth interrupted.

  He seemed to think her stupid, in her opinion a very remarkable feat for the goat man. Gehrdon, however, nodded for him to answer.

  “Emissaries come to their camps,” he squeaked, feeling as if doing something very wrong. “Emissaries they say are from the Lord Belial. They want the men to join her against Caer.”

  Gehrdon glowered at the human camp, gauging the distance and the armaments.

  Beoreth looked stunned. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You call me mum a liar?” Huma asked, enraged.

  “Your mum focked a goat,” she retorted, angry and disturbed. “What else would she do?”

  “Peace, both of you,” Gehrdon soothed and reported on what she saw. “The men hold council, and two creatures have joined their number. I see them, cloaked in shadows. They serve Belial.”

  “Deliver us,” Beoreth prayed and hoped praying would be enough.

  *****

  Gavial glanced at the mortal council. Most went along with him thus far, but he doubted they would follow him now. For by happenstance he even discovered this council, and he attended to try to stop this madness.

  Around him sat the twelve self-styled kings of the lands of Sul, once the vassals of the Witch Queen, each as powerful as him, each with his own weaknesses: women, power, gold, glory. The bonfire lit their eyes with the flames of the demon as her servants whispered among them. No one knew the origin of the wraiths.

  “In the winter you have suffered,” one servant rasped and shook his head in sadness, clicking what might have passed for a tongue. “And yet, the demon made not this winter, as the fairies proclaim.”

  “Who made it?” one of the Kings asked.

  The servant laughed. “’Tis the work of Beren. Yes, your fabled witch and Queen. She did not tell you the whole truth about the birth of her sister Belial, a witch through her mother, and a demon through her father, the Great Lord Moloch.”

  “What truth do you mean?” Freotheric, one of the young men already persuaded to turn against Gavial, asked.

  The creature chuckled and turned to his companion. “They do not know,” he said to the other emissary, his tone scornful.

  “Tell them,” the deep voice of the other instructed. Gavial swore a demon hid beneath its cloak. The sound of his voice, the breath he exhaled, felt like a wind colder than death or night.

  “Your Queen, though first born of these lands, the gods did not mean to rule,” the servant explained. “You see, the good Queen Belial, the Dark Lord, yes, but she will be benevolent so long as you obey her, and her mother wished for her to rule Sul. Beren knew it to be her deathbed wish, in fact, and such things are powerful magic.”

  Gavial felt disgusted but listened as the servant droned on.

  “The gods didn’t like Belial very much, and so decided not to let her rule. The gods want you to serve them, and not to know their power grows weak. But soon there will be no gods. Even now Belial plans to conquer them all.”

  Gavial’s ears perked, for he knew enough about their lore to know Belial did not have the power to conquer the gods. But many in this council lived all of their lives away from the old cities and did not hear such things. They knew legends of great power, and great evil.

  “Even so, she wishes for men to have the kingdom of Sul as theirs when she defeats the child and becomes Queen of the earth. And so the gods and Beren damned your lands to winter. The witch you call the Ice Queen should not be the Queen at all, but a traitor, for she forsook her mother’s dying wish and tried to have Belial killed, rather than give her power.”

  The creatures made it seem so easy, to just take the world when the demon finished with it. There would be no men left, for even the races could not stand against Belial with no witch to help them. And though he did not trust the Witch Queens, he could not help but remember his father’s broken body brought to their family’s keep, the swords and spears of the golems still embedded in his back.

  “This ends now,” Gavial said, standing. The undecided Kings gasped, others looked at him in hatred, and the warriors who followed Gavial stood as well. “These are lies of the shadow. I dwelled as a vassal, a Lord of the Queen, when Enyd gave birth to Belial, and I knew the very day of her evil. ‘Tis her heart making the winter. She cares for no one, least of all men. She fears us, as she fears all races of free mind who could one day stand against her.

  “If you join her,” he shrugged, “count me no longer as
your friend.”

  Freotheric leapt to his feet. So did two of Gavial’s warriors, their swords at Freotheric’s throat.

  “Do you wish this, Gavial? You shall be King of nothing,” Freotheric boasted. Gavial’s warriors’ blades pointed at the necks of Freotheric and his followers. Freotheric’s sword dropped. The warriors of Freotheric followed suit.

  “So it comes to this,” Elric said as the centaurs and fairies stepped from the shadows, and the nymphs watched.

  Gavial, seeing the emissaries trying to sneak away, shouted and pointed. “Stop them!”

  Elric held up his hand. “Let them go. Let them return to their master so she learns she possesses no allies in this realm.”

  “Did you fools not hear her tale?” Freotheric said and stopped as the scimitar came closer.

  “I did,” Gavial circled Freotheric. “And yet I understand the truth; the demon Moloch ruled as the first Dark Lord, and his daughter takes his place. I fought against Belial, and I grasp what lies they told. I know when the gods made men they could not find one man worthy to rule, yet one witch could.”

  “And why should she?” Freotheric asked. “Tell me or kill me now!”

  “Because she can,” Gavial replied and stepped back, leaving his dagger in the man’s belly. “All who do not follow the Ice Queen and her daughter leave now and go to your new master!”

  Beoreth reached the King’s council just as Freotheric’s body dropped limp to the ground. Beoreth watched as almost half of the men began to pack up their equipment.

  “So it begins, as it always begins,” Elric sighed. “With chaos and discord.”

  “They will return,” Gavial said. “They will come and attack.”

  “We will be ready,” Gehrdon replied

  Beoreth shook her head. “What are we to do?” she cried, wondering where Caer walked now, and of the fate of Headred, Mab, and Yidrith.

  “Pray to the gods, wise Lady Beoreth,” Elric said. “The time of battle comes upon us. Let us make ready for war!”

  *****

  “Milady,” the healer whispered, as the moon shown through the windows. “Milady, you must awake!”

  “What happened?” Caer asked, sitting up and seeing the concern in the healer’s eyes.

  “Milady, we fear your love passes into shadow, and the demon’s power becomes too much for him.”

  “Take me to him,” Caer commanded as she stood and wrapped a robe around herself.