The Ice Queen

  When he realized he loved Gehrdon, Cahros did not know. Whether when they rolled as foals, or when they walked in the moonlight and the snow as adults. Or perhaps he always knew, and she always knew.

  Now war came to them all, this he read in the stars. In war all perished. He would not leave her a widow, or she him. And so they waited, in the long years of winter. He shunned her advances for this task he took upon himself. The daughter of the cursed witch rose again in their world, and so Cahros would watch over her. Her light came, and the darkness would follow.

  “The heavens are dark tonight; the gods grow fearful in their dance,” he said.

  Gehrdon sighed as she came down from her perch above the hut, her hooves making the slightest of sounds in the snow.

  “Gods fear men, my love,” she said, her hands touching his back, as his own reached for her. “They fear what they cannot control, and never have they forgotten their greatest creation, the human heart.”

  “’Tis so, yes,” he said, and lapsed into silence.

  “What troubles you, my love?” Gehrdon moved before him, blocking the moon from his view.

  “What always troubled me,” he countered, “how not even we can control the human heart, and the choices it makes.”

  “Would you control her?” Gehrdon asked. “We are outcasts because our people care not for the troubles of men. You have always said this to be so.”

  He sighed.

  Her hand lifted his face to her own, brushing her lips against his “The heavens have long foretold this night Beren’s daughter would return. And long have they also foretold the shadows will return, and time will be short.”

  He said nothing, looking at the hut. Beren’s daughter slept in there, and he watched. He saw the signs in the heavens, and he knew.

  Something troubled her in her dreams. She dreamed of the north, the lands of her birth, awakening in her a power too great and terrible to understand, forged by the gods by their dance, power to bring balance to what the demon long ago destroyed.

  But could the gods now stand against such a power? Could witches, the Tuatha Dé Danann, descendants of Dana, hope to save Miðgarðir from the demons winter?

  “Do not fear, my love,” Gehrdon kissed his lips again, deeper than before. “We must have faith in the good, in the witches. Already it begins.”

  “But begun for good or ill?” He asked.

  She stared at him. “The daughter of witches grows stronger though her world remains frozen.” She dared to hope, a hope once a fool’s, now come to them in the eternal winter. “Through the curse of Moloch’s bane the rivers and streams flow under the ice. Trees have new life and sleep beneath the cold of the world. The nymphs dance in the snow, and the fairies laugh in their palaces.”

  “The Dark Lord returns to this world,” he growled. “Tor rises in red, his shield of blood in the sky. There will be death now. We cannot entrust the fate of this world to a human, even a witch.”

  “We must,” she countered, and turned away. “So the gods meant it to be. They who till the lands rule them, and the centaurs look into the heavens and foretell what will come to pass.” She took his lips to hers, with love and longing, and tasted him as though she would never do so again.

  “Look to the heavens for the sign,” She moved away, her hooves soundless on the snow.

  Cahros padded through the snowdrifts, his body numb with cold, and looked in to see the peaceful, sleeping face of Caer on the straw bed.

  He wanted to hate her. He wanted to betray her trust, and perhaps, long ago, he would have. But many nights ago the signs came, of light and life, of promise and love.

  And he knew now those things might come to pass, but foretelling the future in stars could be crude and difficult, though not all hope fled from his heart.

  The dawn in Sul cast long shadows over the world, from the mountains of mist in the north, where laid Ull, Glasheim, Vingólf, and Náströnd, to the hovel in which the child of light now slept.

  The sun hid its face beyond the mountains, but the sky arched blue and clear above. For a moment it seemed strange to see its light, and not the clouds of snow falling on most days.

  Cahros stared at the light and basked in its glow. One hundred and fifty years he walked on the earth, and for twenty of those years no seasons came to them in the long winter. Yet it seemed now for the first time he would gaze upon the sun and feel its heat upon his skin, warming his flanks.

  Water froze in icy daggers on the trees. He heard the sounds of the forest, the creatures as they awoke, the wind in the icy tree branches, and the remaining silence of the long winter.

  “Will you awake, my nymphs,” he asked the faces in the tops of the trees, the wild hair at their tops and the long, slender, rough forms. “Will you dance for me now, as the moon fades and the sun rises?”

  The trees did not answer. Their spirits slept within their wooden homes, clothed in bark. They would stay deep in their trees until the cold began to pass.

  Cahros turned away.

  For a moment he heard the song of the spirits of the woods rise around him as their sleep waned. They would not awaken yet, but their answer cheered his heart.

  A fool, it seemed, could hope.

  The night before, as the humans slept in the hut, after his love left him, Cahros stayed awake and alert, gazing at the stars, at the heavens and the dance of the gods.

  In the evening Cwen rose from the mists of the clouds, a shining beacon of light, set far in the north by the mountains, above the city of light. The chosen one, Caer, daughter of the Ice Witch, would reclaim the throne and the White City.

  A cloud of darkness passed over the moon and Cwen, the bright star of the north, the goddess of light. Evil drew near to their lands, the demon gathering her forces.

  Cerdic, god of war, a red star in the early light of dawn, rose hours ago. Where the bright evening star of Cwen drifted beyond the horizon, the faint red of Cerdic rose. The centaurs saw clear portents. War came to the kingdom of Sul. Darkness and war would come over them all.

  Selred and Denulf, the sons of Cerdic, rose not far from their father, though he looked at them and smiled. Fear and chaos would consume the world in the war of light.

  And as the night became morn, and the clouds cleared, Woden rose again over the world, drawing his chariot across the skies and giving light to the day. The King of gods gave light, his form overshadowing the celestial gods who waned in the north.

  The gods would have victory over the darkness, though men might not prevail. The light of the witch would be diminished, and she would fall.

  Nothing compared to the darkness warning him the heir of Moloch would return, an evil the heavens foretold would come to pass.

  The balance of the world sundered. The veil of life broken so long ago would shatter. As the demon had been born from the witch Queen, death was born from life. Death would come upon them as waves on a black sea in the war the demon Belial would soon make, carrying the souls of the innocent into the empty cold of the Dark Lord’s dominion.

  And the light of Caer would fade into the night of her birth.

  Many times Cahros pondered the ways of his people. The centaurs never revealed their portents to other creatures, especially to the men who long ago forsook them.

  Yet if the centaurs did warn, as his father taught him, no race would not now face Belial and her wrath. If the centaurs told Queen Enyd about the evil creeping across Cwen, she would have known, she would have foreseen.

  They did nothing, and the world paid dearly.

  And what would have become if they foretold to Beren? If they told her of the winter and the death, and the power growing in Belial, perhaps this winter would not be.

  Cahros read beyond the heavens. The chosen one, the child of light, would come to them as a Queen. In the morning she would rise and hear the call so long hidden from her, the call of the destiny of all lands in Miðgarðir.

  Watunasa licam amus sira? Watunasa isum basaledin? So
lani cavala gomanin. Thiapara fwer amar.

  Long have the demon’s towers been silent. Long the evil one looked and searched for the child who lost to her, who will destroy her. Long she sent her servants into the world to hunt for Beren's daughter.

  In the lands of the west, Moloch’s heir waits.

  The endless hunt for the light endured. Day and night, the Demon Queen searches for the child saved from treachery. With each passing year her anger grows; the loathing she harbors in her heart for the child she never saw shakes the world beneath her.

  No longer are the towers of Eliudnir silent. They awaken to take what they do not have by right or by force. In Sul, prayers are given to the gods: reveal to the world the light you have made, and let not this dark war happen.

  For without her, no one can stand together against the raging evil.

  *****

  In the Belial’s fortress, hidden in the shadows of the wasteland of Óskópnir, Waermund waited.

  The heavens hid from him in this accursed place. Above, storm and shadow raged and boiled in vicious unison, in the promise of evil for ages to come.

  Evil lingered in Eliudnir, demons and their kindred. Fire flowed in rivers; ash and soot filled the air and choked the mortals who walked here.

  Long ago he came to this place, after he betrayed the witches and the race of men to serve the demon. Wolves found him as he wandered the forest. In the moment they found him he remembered in the crystal his visions of the child, his words to his master of where the Ice Queen lay in dreams, his treachery to his world when he wandered in the woods in robes of velvet as black as his deeds. The crystal before him glowed, ancient and wise and dark; within his hand the globe’s surface swirled with shadows, and through it he watched Caer sleep. He once saw, as Belial did, neither good nor evil in the hearts of men. Power remained in the anarchy, overrun with foolish mortals and selfish creatures, begging to be controlled.

  And so Belial’s will, through promise of power, took root in his heart.

  Lightning flashed above the fortress, and its light shimmered in the shadows. By the fire he drew warmth from the nearby hearth.

  He could see the souls in the valley of the damned, the faint specters who once walked the world of magic, the men and women whose lust and greed consumed them and who would never again see the light. They walked in Óskópnir, pale skin glowing, and their eyes as black midnight.

  If his mistress won, no one would see the light again.

  He could feel her anger now, infinite and terrible, as she passed through the lands of magic. His death flashed through her mind, and in the fortress of Eliudnir in the wasteland, Waermund, son of Waerlith, cowered. Waermund shook as he picked up a goblet with his free hand.

  He held a goblet, the blood of a creature of magic squeezed into it, perhaps the leg of a Griffin or the heart of a Simorgh. Reverence lost to him, Waermund drained the goblet and felt black magic flow through him. He set the goblet down again.

  In darkness and fire he stared into the blue globe in his other hand. He saw into the lands beyond him the daughter of the Ice Queen, and the death of his master.

  And not for the first time, he feared Belial’s wrath.

  Light shimmered in the valley of Óskópnir, and the storms raged and boiled above. The shadow appeared at the doorway of the chamber.

  A thousand stars glimmered in Eliudnir, in the valley of the damned and the hills of shadow surrounding it. Lightning crashed, and the thunder of the gods’ anger roared.

  Waermund chose not to move as the wind picked up. It slammed him against the wall beside the blue hearth fire. Pain ripped through his chest where it hit the wall, and he tasted blood in his mouth.

  Lightning forked from the sky and through the window of the tower, slicing through the air as it met his chest. Cold tendrils, like a thousand cruel blades, snaked into his skin as his thoughts drifted away and darkness clouded his vision.

  Not yet, my worthless slave, she whispered. You will suffer first.

  Again and again the lightning struck him, and pain ripped through his body, its heat, its fire. The cloak he wore burned away, and his skin beneath charred.

  And he heard silence once more.

  She who knew all, she who saw all, she whose power men feared, appeared before him, fury in her eyes.

  Waermund’s heart clutched as her icy tendrils of wrath wrapped around him. Pain exploded in his eyes and each breath became a labor. The stones of the keep wavered before his eyes, and death began to consume him.

  One chance remained for him.

  “You still have a chance,” he shouted. The pain stopped.

  Waermund lay on the floor, gasping for breath, a mortal servant, betrayer of the Ice Queen, and thankful for his Dark Lord’s grace.

  Belial, Dark Lord of Miðgarðir as her father before her, saw a coward of a human, yes, perhaps a coward foolish enough to serve her purposes, but a coward nonetheless. When she finished her conquest, she would take great satisfaction in feasting on him.

  “Speak now, before I lose my patience.” She spoke with a hiss, glowering at the cursed stone in his hands.

  Within it the lands of winter opened before him. Y Erianrod, the child of light, slept in blessed dreams, the woman who raised her for many years nearby, and the equine paced beyond the door of their cold, earthen domicile.

  “Hope endures,” he whispered, his eyes fixed on the face of the demon. “The world of winter remains, the ice keeps its magic heart from beating. Soon she will return there--” He rose as he felt the anger in Belial’s cold heart diminish, “so also will the darkness again hold sway.”

  “If I succeed in those lands,” she replied, “you will pay for what you have done.”

  “My Lord…” he started and stopped when her dead fingers touched his lips.

  “If I do not,” she said, as sweet as honey, “you will pay with your life.”

  “My gracious master.”

  “Come, Fenrir,” she instructed the wolf-man who hid in the shadows nearby, watching and waiting. “We have work to do.”

  *****

  Years passed since the boy prophet met the strange girl in the woods as he traveled with his father. Headred grew into a tall and handsome man, with chestnut hair cascading to his shoulders, and deep brown eyes seeming to peer into the souls of others.

  He seemed a god among mortals. Women fawned over him, but he paid them no attention. He loved one alone, a woman of great beauty and power, a woman he met in his dreams.

  Amid the snow-covered forests, green hills rose in the frozen trees, and within them lay the doors of the fairy sidhes. Not far from the path of light the entrances to Elphame rose, hills of green grasses amid a land of winter. More, the winter could touch what lay on the earth alone, and so the realm of fairies remained unchanged, filled with spring, both entrance above and otherworld below.

  Headred walked the ancient path of his cousins beneath the hills and felt the warm air as it blew over their mounds. The wind whipped his chestnut hair, and he closed his eyes in anticipation.

  Here he would draw the circle and seek visions.

  He cast the sea salt around him, again in a pentagram within the circle, and cleared his mind. The salt melted a line in the snow, which began to glow bright even in the daylight, as the magic of the fairies and the prophets took root. He prayed to them to open his mind, to visions of what lay beyond.

  He prayed to be shown what would come.

  He clutched the talisman given to him long ago, the one whose mate he also carried, a circle engraved with the sun, the moon, and the stars, forged by magic, with a single blue stone in the center. The other belonged to Beren’s daughter, now lost to them for so long her very name defined legend. His robe shone white, for purity, and as the wind blew, it caressed the naked skin beneath it. He placed a circlet of gold on his head, as a son of the gods. At his side hung his athame, consecrated in the waters of the temple, and on his back a bow and arrow.

  The visions
began.

  Not far away, in the shadow of the trees, Belial waited. The prophet did not hear the wolves howl as they circled him, nor did he know the desire of the Belial’s heart. She would take the one bound to the light and make him her servant.

  A shadowy mist moved through the snow and disappeared in the light of the fairy mounds. There, not even Belial held sway. Her power could not touch beyond the mortal world, a world she could not yet claim power over.

  Come to me, son of gods, she called.

  The visions dissolved. Headred stood in Eliudnir, in a chamber lit by the amber glow of the nearby fire. He wondered why the circle disappeared, and how he came to this place. He knew it not to be the vision of the gods. Something, someone else called him to this place.

  The circle remains, The Demon Lord walked over the cold stones of her father's keep. You are with me now.

  She led him to another chamber in the tower. There the silence permeated all parts of his existence and clouded his thoughts.

  With him he saw the woman of his dreams, the one he loved from boyhood. Headred did not see the ebony cloak of the demon, her white, rotting skin or her piercing midnight eyes.

  Caer’s shade tossed her head and laughed. “I will make you my King, and together we will rule the world of winter,” she said, enticing him, letting the cloak slither to the floor.

  “As you wish,” he murmured, holding the dead body against his.

  “You have seen the one in your dreams…” she trailed her fingers on his back.

  Belial cackled. Headred watched a vision of his dream woman throw back her head and laugh as she held him, slinking over him. His fingers slid over Belial’s skin. How long he waited to touch the woman in his dreams, taste her, feel her move beneath him. But the one he saw now neither moved nor tasted, and where he wanted warmth, he felt the frost of winter.

  “Caer,” he whispered, and a light appeared in his mind.

  “My prey?”

  “Why do you bring me into this illusion,” he asked. He fought the evil winding around him. Belial grasped Headred’s mind as he fought for freedom.