The road to the city lay between the armies, one way to Ull, one way to Eliudnir.
The golems and centaurs stamped their feet in impatience. The archers and bowmen, the swordsmen, shieldmen and spearmen waited.
In the distance a screech rose, as Mulciber, the Chief of the Wraiths rode a horse of Óskópnir before the treacherous men and wolves and golems, rallying them to their Lord Belial. His cry grew louder, shaking the earth. The dead Queens wailed in the catacombs beneath Glasheim.
Mulciber turned, and with his sword, pointed to the armies of Sul.
The battle began.
The Dark Army moved forward, picking up speed as they ran over the ice and snow, men leading, followed by the golems and wolves, their crunching footfalls sounding the doom of Miðgarðir. The fairy archers notched their arrows, waiting. In unison they dipped their arrows in the buckets of lamp oil beside them. Runners ran down their ranks, human lads, so young they should not have to see war, and with torches lit the arrows. The archers fired their blazing arrows.
“Enfilin,” Elric commanded as the arrows landed on the earth and enemy alike. Flames shot up, surrounding the forefront of the Dark Army in a ring of fire, burning all within.
Gehrdon watched as they fired, again and again, the ashes of the fallen men spilling before the tor. She thanked the gods the sacred stones remained free of blood. She gripped hilts of her swords and waited.
Gehrdon glanced from Sestina as she reared before the centaur’s flanks, to Elric where he commanded magic against the armies of Belial, and to Gavial where he raised his sword in the air and rallied his men behind him.
She looked at the thousands of their enemy running toward the inferior forces of the four races, and her heart sank.
We cannot win, she thought, and pieced together her courage. The fury of battle raged in her warrior’s heart. No, but they would make the enemy pay.
Gehrdon drew her swords with both hands, raised them crossed over her head, and listened to the sound of her own heartbeat as she waited for the battle to be met.
The gap closed as the armies drew together. No one noticed the white storm clouds gathering above, blotting out the sun.
Gehrdon saw Elric look to Sestina. Her mother nodded. Gavial met Elric’s gaze and jerked his chin down in grim determination. The fairy drew his sword, and with his other hand planted the blunt end of his spear into the ground.
“Gefeoht abutan,” Elric shouted, swinging onto his horse. The flaming arrows ceased, replaced with a stream of regular arrows to cover them as they raced toward their doom.
Gehrdon began to gallop, swinging her swords through the air and readying herself. Her heartbeat pounded louder as the armies converged on Niðavellir, the Dark Fields.
They drew closer. Gehrdon could hear the guttural tongue of the shouting golems, the growls of the wolves, the berserker screaming of the treacherous men, and the screeching of the withered tree wraiths.
For a moment, it seemed as if time stopped as the armies converged. Nothing moved. The fate of our future will be decided here, Gehrdon thought, and leapt forward.
A deafening crunch sounded beside the shouting of the armies as the forces met. Spears drove through armor, swords clashed on shields and on swords. The Dark Army smelled the stench of death, as the spears of the fairies drove through their ranks.
Gehrdon twisted and drove down with her swords. Golems surrounded her, striking her armor with their iron swords. She screamed with bloodlust and drove harder, wilder, desperate to free herself from the quagmire of evil. Gehrdon screamed in rage as a golem leapt onto her back. She bucked, but his knees held tight, as he raised his axe come down on her neck.
The golem fell forward and off without completing his strike, and the golems around her scattered. Cahros ran past her, grabbing his sword from the fallen golem’s back and continuing into the fray.
Gehrdon pursued the golems. All around her fairies, men, and centaurs lay dead. They fell too fast, she thought as she watched thousands of the enemy push forward. A gleam off dark metal caught her eye as she glanced behind them.
A troop of golems moved toward the trees, ready to strike at the nymphs.
“Centaurs, follow me!” she shouted and raced toward the forest.
*****
The horses of the Fairy Queen left the forest road behind. The party saw the battle raging below. Gehrdon and a handful of centaurs raced towards the golems whose axes tore at the trees. The nymphs began to wail and scream and fade away.
Tears would not stop this death, Caer thought, determined.
“To me!” she shouted, unsheathing Hünjjuerad. She lead the fairies and the contingent Ull’s guards down the slope and onto the battlefield.
“Fordon,” Caer commanded.
Bolts of white lightning plummeted from the clouds. The space between the armies scorched and burned; snow melted into puddles, and again began to freeze.
Mulciber stared at the vengeful face of Caer as she drove Hünjjuerad into his robes. The wraith screeched, his wail piercing.
“Burn,” she commanded. The robes disintegrated, revealing the form of a man, flesh dry, withered and eaten away in many places, his thin face dominated by large red eyes.
At the sound of Mulciber’s screeching, the armies stopped and looked. Caer jerked Hünjjuerad free. Far away in Myrkviðr, Mulciber’s decaying tree home went ablaze. And before the armies at Niðavellir, the tree-spirit turned to ash and disintegrated.
Not a sound came from the woods as she cast her gaze on the Dark Army and rode between them and her people, her eyes fixed on a second wraith cowering before her. The Dark Army saw the face of a witch and a Queen, her hair drawn back into an intricate braid intertwined with gold, a circlet of gold on her head and her eyes gleaming with white-hot fury.
“Go away,” she told them, her voice echoing. The wolves howled; the golems stomped their feet; and while the men cowered the wraith screeched.
When they did not, Caer accepted their answer.
The sun broke free and streamed light on the Dark Army. The armies of Sul and Caer’s companions gazed on in surprise, smelling the stench of burning flesh permeating the plains and seeing the light unleashed.
Wolves howled as they retreated in fear. The golems ran into the woods towards the mountains, and the wraith waited for a moment before spurring his horse away. At last, the ranks of treacherous men were the only enemy remaining to be seen.
The lightning stopped. Snow crunched beneath the hooves of Caer’s horse, and the cold wind returned.
“The demon lost,” she announced. “Why do you fear me? Belial gathers evil to herself, as I gather good and truth. Who now serves Belial?” No one moved or spoke. “The whispers of the demon are as potent as her poison. If you serve Belial, leave now or face my wrath, and death at my army’s hands.”
Most ran for the woods; a few remained.
“Now have peace,” she told the army and the men who rejoined them. “Tomorrow we depart for Ull.”
She rode toward Vingólf.
Mab watched.
“Her thoughts are hidden,” Elric said in their language.
“She who walked in Óskópnir and found the gods knows her enemy will gather again,” Mab said. “Now she goes to the place of old and seeks guidance.”
*****
Belial screamed in frustration, her voice muffled by the retreat of her army. Frustrated and alone, she leapt off of her demon-bred horse and led it to a tree. The animal snorted, its breath a mist in the cold.
So Y Erianrod thinks she wins, Belial thought. Caer won this battle. But it would not be the last.
Belial went to Vingólf to wait after she watched the traitorous men flee.
This time Caer defeated her, thwarted her, and eluded her plans. Try as she might, Belial could not destroy Caer before the reckoning came.
The gods protected Caer. Long ago, when they made Caer, they wove a spell of protection around her. Because of this, she eluded Belial in the fore
sts.
Now, Belial thought, she needed a different tactic. If she could not destroy Caer, she would let Caer destroy herself.
Belial decided to set a trap for the daughter of her cursed sister. Caer would fall by Beren’s hand, or one that looked very much like it.
“Aknoensaia,” Belial spat. She transformed into the likeness of Beren. Belial peered into her reflection on Beren’s tomb of ice and smiled, satisfied.
In Vingólf, the Ice Queen appeared.
*****
The winds of change began to blow over the world of winter as Caer walked over the ice of the Vigil and gazed down at her mother.
“What comfort can you give me, my mother? A flame burns inside me, and I do not know how to wield my power, or use it without my fury.”
The Ice Queen said nothing, a tear rolling in the ice by her eye before freezing again.
“I swear by you, by all who live in this cursed winter,” she knelt. “I swear by all who have felt the pain of the demon and the sword and teeth of her servants, her blood will be spilled before this ends.”
Her mother said nothing.
Weeping sounds came from the woods around her. Caer looked around, trying to see who cried. She gasped as a vision took her away.
The leaves fell red and gold as the forests turned to winter, clutched by the frost of the demon’s heart. Nearby she felt a cold breath of wind, and the Ice Queen stood beside her.
“Why do you give me this vision?” Caer asked.
Belial chuckled inside, and outside she walked and cried like her sister. “You must guard against the doubt of your heart.” The wind blew colder, whipping Caer’s hair. “Blood spilled does not heal.”
“Should she live, mother? Not after all she did, all she took.”
The Ice Queen wept.
“The void made Miðgarðir, a land of winter, a world of pain. Perhaps the gods did not mean for this task,” The illusionary Beren said. “I do not think they meant you to face and to destroy this evil.”
Caer stood alone in the Vigil, back in winter. Confused thoughts muddled her mind, stretched her sanity.
Her mother didn’t know if Caer could destroy the evil plaguing them. And if she not, perhaps all hope should be lost.
The people below moved as fast as they could, preparing their pilgrimage to Ull, where all would dwell, where the stand would be made.
Caer gazed down on them and sighed as she trudged through the snow. She did not know what to say, or what to think, her thoughts a jumble from the vision of lost faith.
In the fields of Niðavellir, beneath the tor of Glasheim, blood stained a swathe of snow crimson. It seemed to Caer the earth itself bled.
The Ice Queen gave up against the demon sharing their blood.
She kicked the snow. How many times did she see her mother weep for the people she now abandoned? How many times did Beren wish for her daughter to return?
Now Beren abandoned all hope and faith.
Mab and the fairies, the centaurs, nymphs and what remained of the men prepared for the journey. What difference did it make? What difference did it make where the battle took place, if no hope remained?
Headred, beside Mab, observed Caer descend the hill. She seemed troubled and shaken. He needed to go to her, to comfort her.
Mab placed a hand on his chest. “She finds no comfort in the Ice Queen,” Mab said. “Her thoughts are confused, and darkness touched her spirit.”
“Belial,” he said through clenched teeth and looked around for the Dark Lord, as though Belial would linger among them. He went for his sword, but it disappeared. Mab held the weapon.
“Perhaps Belial touched Caer,” she wondered as she studied the sword before handing it back to him. “But perhaps not.” Still, even Mab felt the Ice Queen grew distant, as though some unseen force kept her from them.
“I will go to her.”
“Leave her alone in her thoughts.” She did not ask; she commanded.
He obeyed and gazed at Caer as she walked, so like her mother, alone in the winter without comfort.
Beren watched too from afar and thought of Belial’s trickery and her own impotence, as her tears shattered.
The long narrow path to Ull now became a basin in the snow, forged by the daughter of the Witch Queen of Sul.
Night came upon them fast. As they rode, Mab heard the whispers of the wind, the screams of the trees, and the howling of the wolves in the distance.
As the dawn came, it shone through the thinning trees. As they passed out of the woods and onto a steep plain, Mab perceived the trees close behind them, and she saw peering out the glowing eyes of wolf-men.
They neared the top of the cold mountains. Here the winter’s chill came upon them in full.
In Ull, mothers sang lullabies of the road to Glasheim. The forest surrounded some of the oldest roads in the world. Legends abounded about the strange creatures, and the spirits of the trees, inhabiting these woods.
The legends spoke of nymphs caught in eternal sleep beneath the bark of their tree-homes, never to awake so long as the winter endured. And they spoke of naiads imprisoned beneath the ice of the rivers, who watched the world, unable to walk among its people. Even in their sleep they watched and bowed as the great mortals and magicks passed through their lands.
In the dim shadows of the forest, in the pale moonlight, Mab believed she saw a tall tree goddess bowing.
Caer rode not far away, deep in her thoughts, wondering if her mother abandoned her, first to Fensalir, and now to the great Northern Kingdom of Sul. And in her heart she found hate.
Caer glanced beside the road where Beren walked, ever beside her, watching and waiting and weeping. It pained Caer to see Beren despair. It felt strange to see her. Beren’s presence fled from them, though her spirit remained. A wall of ice stood between them.
Do not trust words of despair and lies of deceit, Beren’s voice whispered in her mind. Trust the path of destiny set before you long ago. Beren vanished.
The people in the long procession before her, the army traveling to Ull, shouted as they came to the gates.
“Open the gates!” Elric shouted.
The gates creaked open. And a vision ensnared Caer.
She saw the city as it faded in the dusts of time. The fire of evil ripped through its stone walls, as Belial’s servants screamed in the heat of battle, as they tore down the statues of the gods who stood guard on the walls.
The city burned; rocks thrown by the Dark Army’s trebuchets crushed the houses. The people screamed and died as the wolves and golems wheeled the siege engines forward and pounded the gates and the walls. Tubes of iron and wood sent spheres of Belial’s fire at the White City.
The gates fell; the walls fell with them. The people screamed as the Dark Army slaughtered them. The centaurs fell. The fairies bled. The nymphs screamed and fled to their tree homes, soon to be caught in the fires tearing Ull down.
She saw the end: the wolves feasting on the remains, joined by the golems. Miðgarðir fell to the power of the Lord Belial and her shadow.
Mab touched Caer’s shoulder. She jumped.
“I know what you have seen. I have seen it as well.”
“The city will fall,” Caer whispered.
Mab nodded. “’Tis an evil vision, a shadow of what may be, if you fail.” Worry blossomed in Caer’s eyes. “Come, my child and rest while time remains, before the Dark Army comes upon us, and the world knows the endless evil of the demon.”
Caer let the fairy ride beside her into the city, her thoughts muddled in despair. She founded herself not to be their messiah. She did not see shadows, but what would be.
“Close the gates,” the guard shouted when the troop passed through. Caer rode on. The gates slammed shut, and the bars locked. They would not open again while the demon endured.
And the Ice Queen watched, her tears shattering on the frozen earth.
*****
Caer walked in the frozen halls of the Cast
le, lost in thoughts of hopelessness and eternal winter, and gazed at the city outside the windows.
Long ago Goewin built the castle, the first Witch Queen of Sul.
There she met the man she loved; there she became the first to face Lord Moloch. Several miles away stood Náströnd, the door under the mountain. The door beckoned to Goewin. She went, and she touched the Náströndir, heart of the world, the spirit she shared, and vowed to fight Moloch’s dominion.
The white city of Ull grew around the castle. The people seemed drawn to the castle, its beauty, splendor and scale, carved by magic from the white stones of the mountains; with windows and buttresses, towers and turrets, gates and gardens gleaming in Woden’s light.
Now the buttresses gleamed bright in fading sunlight. Woden turned his back on them, Mab thought, sadness overwhelming her heart, and drew away from the Witch who felt no hope.
Mab pondered and walked in Idalir’s garden. The healers tended to the sick; the people settled in and awaited the coming war. The sun set, and the land looked bathed in the brilliance of the dying sun.
Idalir became a place of great activity. The servants returned to its halls. The kitchens overflowed as the refugees from Glasheim took on cooking duties. Flames leapt from the great hearths, and warmth returned.
Mab passed the arch leading to the great hall, and the dais that once held the greatest of the Queens of Sul. It became a place of comfort at the end of the long winter, and she came to it now seeking answers for the woes of her heart. As she crossed the threshold she saw Caer in a window high above.
Caer prayed in a whisper, and Mab could not hear. But she knew the desire of the Witch’s heart, held since the finding of her destiny. Caer wanted to know the meaning of her vision, of failing Beren, though she did not tell Mab what she saw.
Mab knew of the talisman the girl carried: a circle of a moon, a sun, and the stars bound together by a single stone and tiny threads of silver, an unseen force of the gods. She knew it to be a powerful symbol, though not one to fear without cause. Though Caer did not seem to notice, Mab saw the specters of a bounding white stag of Cerdic observing them, and the dove, Cwen, on his shoulder. Y Erianrod could not see the unending gaze of the gods who watched over the one who came from their blood.