She turned to see him, her eyes seeming to glow silver. “The light must heal the sorrows.” Her voice carried to him on the wind whipping her cloak, her grey form silhouetted against the angry fires of the enemy army burning ever closer to the city.
“I know the prophecies; I saw them!” he shouted. The wind brushed his hair back, and the snow fell thick around them.
“You know Caer must face Lord Belial for Miðgarðir to be restored.”
He stared at her as if madness overcame her mind. “She left the city?” Headred exclaimed in alarm.
A tear slid down her face. “She goes to the standing stones at Glasheim. There she will face Belial, and the fate of Miðgarðir will be forged.”
“She must not!” He met her sorrow with cold fury.
“She must.” The wind lulled for a moment. “For if she does not face the evil sharing her blood, Miðgarðir itself will pass into eternal winter and night.”
He stood before her for a moment, and she knew what he would do. Without another word, he ran down the stairs and ran through the city, after the one he loved.
She knew now as she always knew, what must be for hope to endure.
Mab waited on the gate tower. Yidrith carried her a steaming cup of healers’ as she listened to the howl of the wind and the wicked sounds coming through the woods.
A reverberation shook the earth. The golems shouted. In these endless hours of darkness, the wolves howled, and fires burned on the path. The roar grew louder, and as moments passed, fear gripped Yidrith’s heart.
Something evil came upon them.
The demon’s war machines appeared in the light of the enemy’s torches, rumbling from the forests on metal and wood wheels, great black shadows in the gloom.
“‘Tis the fate of the city,” Mab said. “The fires will burn here this night.”
“Will there be death?” Yidrith asked.
The machines settled in the snow. The yells of the Dark Army echoed in the city. Below, the men quivered at the sounds, the battle almost came upon them.
“Death and much more, Yidrith.”
Their enemies came to the gates. Far below, arguments broke out among the Lieutenants of the Dark Army as they waged war within their ranks.
“Fire the weapons now!” Fenrir growled.
“We wait for the Dark Lord,” Gorga said, his second-in-command Gulag by his side. “So she commanded.”
“We wait for a sign,” Fenrir corrected. “We are here, and I believe our arrival to be sign enough.”
“We wait,” Gorga insisted, and Fenrir howled.
*****
In Glasheim, the demon waited.
Not far off, Caer trudged through the snow toward her destiny.
The raging storms grew fiercer, deadlier than the heart of the demon who conjured them.
Caer walked, unaware of the time passing, or even the creatures and living things flying by on her journey to destiny. She did not see the Ice Queen beside her.
Destiny drove Caer toward her fateful meeting with Belial.
Caer did not believe herself to be the messiah the people thought, she pondered. The cold muddled her brain.
Beren knew, as all in these lands believed, her daughter would be the one to turn back Belial, and defeat her. Yet legend said the end of Miðgarðir would come, evil would overcome good in those final days, and Miðgarðir would be overturned in fire and water.
Caer lost hope. The messiah, the daughter of the Ice Queen, came among them, and as the reckoning drew nigh, fear and doubt plagued Caer’s heart.
The trees began to thin. Caer’s feet skidded on the ice as the path ascended. She did not notice the red, hungry eyes watching her from above in the rocks, the servants of Belial ready to kill her.
Belial’s power grew stronger here. Caer perceived it in her mind. Perhaps it felt stronger because Belial, waiting for the reckoning, sought to see Caer. Or perhaps because Belial now held sway over Miðgarðir and over what Caer could not yet rule.
A small stone rolled down the slope to her left, enough to capture Caer’s attention. She glanced and her vision caught the gleaming red eyes.
Two wolves leapt from the shadows. They landed before her and faced Caer. Tired and angry, her power exploded. White lightning streaked from the sky, leaving nothing but burned carcasses. Under her gaze the others wolves in the trees backed away.
Caer looked at their chief, the largest of them all, and in his eyes she could see the anger of Belial.
You will fail, the wolf snarled.
The wolves fell silent, and Caer walked on.
Caer passed over the rise. Before her lay a single hill in a field of snow, topped by the stones where Belial waited.
My daughter… The Ice Queen spoke, bringing hope to the despair lingering in Caer’s mind.
Miðgarðir began to fade, drawing Caer into visions, as Belial watched her enemy and Beren.
Caer waited in Vingólf, in a time before the endless winter. No snow, ice, nor frost clung to the ground. Caer felt the warm forest floor and saw the light shimmering through the trees green from their leaves.
“My daughter.” Beren stepped into the clearing.
Caer looked at her. “Why do you bring me here? Why would you ask this fate of me?”
The warm breeze of summer blew over them. Beren bowed her head and watched her tears fall. “You are the hope of Miðgarðir, my daughter. Truly the gods gave me through you the hope I prayed for.”
“You did not say that when last you brought me here.”
Beren gazed at her in sorrow. “Do not trust words coming from a cold woman. A heart such as Belial’s deceives and lies. It cannot be trusted, for it does not know truth.”
“Belial?”
Beren nodded.
“She sent me the vision?”
“She told your deepest fears, my daughter. Once I believed good lived in her, but I fear now her heart long ago became shrouded forever in evil and death.”
Caer thought of the demon who awaited her in the real world.
“You are the child the gods gave to deliver your people, the hope of your people, and Miðgarðir.”
Caer smiled and felt the candle flicker and burn once more within her, the power given to her by the gods restored.
The vision faded and the cold reality returned.
Caer gazed at the stones above her, standing where the gods once walked. The stones’ power began to fade; some broken and some toppled by men and age, but all who looked upon the henge knew their meaning.
Beneath the people of Sul raised a cairn, built of stones from the white cliffs. Once grass grew there, above the catacombs where the Kings and Queens of old lay in death, but winter covered the rocks with snow and ice.
Belial waited on the tor, watching as Caer made her way toward the place of the gods, fulfilling the destiny of Y Erianrod and Mór-Ríogain to meet and to forge the future of Miðgarðir.
One of them would not return home.
There could be but one Witch Queen of Sul.
Caer watched Belial, her black hair covered in snow, standing in the midst of the stones. The time of the reckoning came.
Caer clutched the pendant her mother forged, seeking strength to conjure magic.
Fate stood before them all. Too long the people of the old ways wondered at the future of Miðgarðir, the Queen whose task became to save her daughter, and Y Erianrod who would face Lord Belial.
“So we meet at last, my sister-daughter,” Belial said as Caer entered the place of the gods.
“We do.” Waves of snow seemed to blow toward her from the demon.
Caer saw the face of the demon who shared her blood, the cold, pale skin clinging to her bones, sable eyes and the ebony hair, dead fingernails on fingers protruding from her long, black cloak. Those fingers flexed and cracked as thunder rolled above.
Caer shook as a vision took her, and the demon’s first strike met her like the blow of a fist.
S
torms covered the world, and Lord Belial sat on the throne of Idalir. Caer no longer saw Belial as a Dark Lord, but a mighty Queen who ruled the lands in fear and chaos. Ull became a city of gloom and despair, where hope passed away.
Caer stood in the midst of the razed White City.
Spiked towers rose into the eternal night where once the temples and houses stood; the guardian statues crumbled beneath the shattered walls. She wept for what once existed and would never be again, as the demon cackled on her throne.
See what will be when you and your pitiful mother are gone…
Winter and death covered Miðgarðir, death and decay like the demon herself clinging to the foundations of the earth.
Ull glowed from the eternal flames of the Dark Queen Belial. The bodies of the dead: Cahros and Gehrdon, Sestina and Huma, Mab, Elric, and Girth, Gavial, Dunstan and Yidrith, lay rotting on the ground.
The wolves and golems feasted on the flesh of the fallen.
All you love will find death in your wake… Belial taunted.
Caer felt herself lurch forward as Belial ended the vision.
“Do you see why you cannot stand against me, child?” Belial called across the stone circle, her evil eyes gleaming. “You will lose.”
“I will win.”
The demon smiled, showing her rotted teeth. “You are a fool.” Snow churned and lightning slashed the sky. “You have already lost.”
Visions ensnared Caer’s mind again, taking her to Fensalir. Beoreth stood in the wilderness. Wolves encircled her, growling with hunger.
The wolves leapt on the old woman, tearing at her as she screamed. Caer raged in silence at the future not yet come to pass, and saw Beren’s fading spirit moving through Sul, watching and weeping.
Another vision awoke. Caer saw Headred as he ran to her through the winter, and in the mists shrouding the place of the gods, Caer knew.
Somehow, some way, there would be victory for the light.
*****
“Enough of this,” Fenrir growled.
Gorga’s overlarge mouth sneered at the wolf. Several wolves began to move and join Fenrir.
“He isss right,” the wraith, Gheris, hissed. “The time isss come for this city to burn.”
“And what do the men say?” Gorga asked Grislere, the self-styled King of Angrboða, the main village in the east of Sul.
Grislere, who led the traitorous men thus far, grinned. “Let it burn.”
Gorga waved, and as the Lieutenants of Belial watched, the missiles lit, and the trebuchets fired into Ull.
*****
Headred ran hard and fast, clutching the pendant Caer’s mother gave to him, the stone glowing in his hand as he rushed to Glasheim.
Caer stood there alone, facing the demon, and he needed to reach her.
The storm raged, swirling in the demon’s soul-born fury.
Trebuchets sent fiery missiles into the city, and stones fell from the buildings and ancient monuments of Ull, into the streets. The people screamed and ran. The pinnacle of the temple crumbled and fell.
If Caer did not defeat Belial, the city would not last through the night.
He rushed by the gate to the west quarter. Several feet of demon-conjured snow covered the streets. He realized where she went: the one way left out of the city.
The secret gate loomed before him, and the light of the gatekeeper shone in his eyes.
“Who goes there?”
“Open the gate for me, old fool,” Headred ordered.
The gatekeeper laughed. “The world ends, and he wants to leave, now does he?” the gatekeeper grinned, insanity creeping into his voice. “No one leaves the city, by the order of the guard. We all die together, they say, if we die.”
“I said, open the gates,” Headred shouted, and the gatekeeper laughed again.
“Yeh can’t turn me into a toad, yeh prophet.”
“You old fool,” Headred drew his sword and held it to the gatekeeper’s throat. “I can turn you into dead.”
The gatekeeper whimpered. “Everyone threatens the old gatekeeper, first the fairy and the witch, now you. Nobody loves him, no they don’t.”
At any other time, Headred may have found his diatribe amusing, but time flowed away. “Open the gate, you great fool or I’ll cut your throat and take the keys myself!”
The gatekeeper wept as he fumbled through the keys, and Headred forced the guilt down beneath his fury. “I’ve got it, now put the sword away.”
Headred sheathed his sword as the gatekeeper unlocked and opened the gate.
The cavern beyond stretched into the winter. At its end he saw Beren beckoning.
“Lock the gate behind me,” Headred yelled and ran.
The gatekeeper nodded as he cried. “Wonder who told me to lock it before?” He locked the gate and sat in the chair once more, in the room lit by a fire, and dozed off to sleep.
*****
Belial bombarded Caer with illusions of death.
The sky burned with the fire of Belial’s heart. Golems burned and pillaged and feasted on the flesh of mortals and the races. Children cried as wolves encircled them, and the wolves fought amongst themselves how to divide the spoils.
And the snow came down in endless torrents.
“It will be different,” Caer whispered. “It will not be like this.”
The light inside her grew brighter, stronger than ever. The candle of her soul became a roaring blaze. Caer sank to her knees, listening to the calls of the witches entombed beneath her, the strength of the gods’ council surrounding and permeating every part of her being.
Fury bubbled inside her, righteous fury. She saw the faces of those she loved, the places for so long suffering under the demon’s winter, the trees felled by the axes of Belial’s servants, the nymphs who screamed as they passed into mist, the centaurs cut down as they gazed at the heavens, and the fairies who cried in Elphame.
And in fury she felt her light lashing out.
In the real world, Belial’s eyes widened. The light ripped through her, lifting her off the ground, throwing her across the place of the gods. The snow stopped falling, leaving Sul covered in a blanket of white.
Belial’s head cracked against the stone of Woden. Her mouth filled with metallic-tasting blood, the color of midnight. Blood bubbled on the stone and disappeared as she fell to the snow.
Caer gasped for breath as she watched Belial stagger. The visions of death and bloodshed faded from Caer’s mind. She glanced down at Beren as the specter disappeared.
She felt relief, in her hands and knees in the snow. The shadowy shapes of the wolves gather nearby. The servants of the demon came to Belial’s aid. Caer wondered how they would face her witches’ magic.
“You cannot win,” she shouted as she stood, trying not to wince. “Your death will awaken Miðgarðir.”
“I do not think so.” Belial pushed herself to her feet, Moloch’s fury burning in her eyes. “Your end the gods made before your birth.”
Belial attacked again, but Caer stood her ground. The power of the gods welled inside her. Belial lifted off the ground and flew to the stones, and again she tasted acrid blood.
The battle raged between Mór-Ríogain and Y Erianrod in the place of the gods.
*****
The gates of Ull rumbled as the golems’ battering ram pounded. Atop the wall, Mab felt the earth quake. The ram hit again. The warriors bracing the gates fell back, some unconscious or worse.
“Warriors to me!” Gavial shouted. Dozens more appeared from the gloom of the streets. Together they hefted long iron tridents to brace the doors of the city.
Mab ducked behind the wall and looked at Sestina and Girth, with the archers of the centaurs and the fairies, atop the walls of Idalir. Blazing arrows flew from them. A line of golems, wolves, and men fell.
“Warriors, to me!” Gavial shouted once more. The gates creaked and cracked. They started to give way. A dozen more missiles flew over the city, one striking a tower of t
he castle. Blazes sprang up where the projectiles landed, shattering walls and homes.
So begins the end of this age, Mab thought, drawing her sword and descending the stair where Elric waited.
The battering ram pounded again, driving a hole through the gate. Golems roared in triumph. They toppled the statues of the gods and the witches, shattering the stone.
Three golems crawled through the hole. Mab look once more at the castle, in time to see Girth and his archers fire, killing the invaders. A cheer arose from the army, but the victory seemed short-lived. The ram hit the oak, iron bars burst, and the gates flew open.
Chaos engulfed the streets of Ull as the Dark Army poured in.
“Gods be with us,” Mab prayed, and swung onto her horse. Elric galloped beside her toward the fray as they watched the advance of the Dark Army through the city. Golems threw torches onto buildings, burning the city house by house. Cahros passed by, leading the ranks of centaur warriors, rallying them. On the other side of Mab, Yidrith gripped his sword, his mind racing, his face clammy, his eyes determined as he eyed the traitorous men in the midst of the Dark Army.
“We may die,” Elric remarked.
Mab smiled. “Let us die free.”
Together they led the charge, spurring the horses toward the enemy.
Mab thought of the last look on Oberon’s face as he fell before Moloch. She thought of Cuthred, who slayed Lord Moloch and died doing so, and of his daughter Beren who laid frozen in Vingólf. She thought of the many who perished in the longwinter. The Queen of the Fairies saw the blood of her enemies as she rode into the Dark Army, slashing with her sword.
The fairies and centaurs fired arrows flew into the ranks of golems and traitorous men. Nearby the other centaurs, led by Cahros, reached the gates. Yidrith followed the charge, exchanging blows with the golem called Gulag.
Mab’s horse bucked, sending her into the golems. Mab pushed herself up and swung, killing a golem. She turned to see her horse, brought down by a poisoned arrow, still living as the golems began to eat its flesh. Between the Fairy Queen and her dying horse, Fenrir growled, the blood of her faithful horse dripping from his fangs.
Far away, on a rise in the city, Cahros swung at Gheris. Mab, horrified, saw the wraith slash, drawing blood in the line across the centaur’s muscular stomach. Cahros crumpled.