The Ice Queen

  “A centaur comes to the city,” Raed whispered.

  “Let him in,” she said.

  The centaur strode through the gates, regal and commanding, ignoring the looks of panic and distrust on the men around him. He chose to see Beren alone, the Witch Queen of Sul. His loyalty remained in her and the Queen he would serve. After all, Beren summoned him to the White City this night.

  The gates rumbled shut behind him.

  “We read in the heavens the plight of men,” he said in a low rumble. “I am Cheron. I come to your aid in your time of need.”

  “How much can one centaur offer?” Raed asked.

  Beren laid a hand on the guard’s shoulder.

  “We are swift, young human,” Cheron said. “In all things. No harm will come to your daughter while I am with her.”

  “And where did the centaurs hide when these wars began anew?” Raed asked in disgust. “The fairies? The nymphs of the wood and the waters? Why do they not all come to our aid?”

  “Time grows short,” Cheron’s rumble growing. “And we require secrecy for such conspiracies.”

  “Many thanks do I give you, Cheron of the centaurs,” Beren said. She gazed at the castle and smiled as her heart wept. “Ah, my wise woman bears my child to us.”

  Beoreth jumped when she saw the centaur. Centaurs rarely ventured in the kingdom of Sul, and the days had passed when the White City’s courts filled with the creatures of magic and woods and sidhes.

  Cheron stood six feet above the ground, with the legs and body of a horse, the torso and arms of a man, half-covered in thick hair. His tail glistened with melted snow, his mane long and straight, drawn back in an elaborate braid interwoven with golden ribbons, drawn bottom to top and crossing his forehead in an elaborate crown.

  “Beoreth,” Beren explained. “I present to you Cheron. He will take you to where you go.”

  “Milady,” Beoreth whispered, “I beg you to reconsider.”

  “No-o,” Beren laughed after her voice broke, “I still ask this of you, my friend.”

  The baby woke in the nursemaid’s arms and sucked on her tiny thumb.

  “Be safe, my daughter,” Beren kissed her baby’s cheek as tears fell down her face. She clasped the wise woman’s hand. “You must raise her as your own. She must not know who or what she comes from, or the power she and I bear. The gods protect her now, but we can ill afford to give anything away to the Demon Queen.”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “Beoreth,” Beren took the chin of her faithful friend and brought their faces together. “More thanks than I can give, old friend. Keep her safe in your care, and we shall see each other soon.”

  “Quick now,” Cheron boomed. “On my back, old human. Little time remains.”

  “I will do all in my power,” Beoreth said, as Raed lifted her onto a saddle placed on Cheron’s back.

  “Goodbye, my daughter,” Beren whispered as the gates opened again, and the centaur sped off into the dawn, her daughter and friend on his back. In secrecy, the spell woven by the gods kept them safe from the shadow. They would be safe, for a time.

  And her tears fell onto the frozen earth.

  *****

  The snow swirled around the hem of Beren’s dress as she walked through fresh drifts of snow in the morning light. So little she gained last night: so much her daughter would now lose.

  Behind her the sun, the chariot of Woden, peeked its head over the edge of the eastern horizon. White winter glistened as the lands of winter greeted a new dawn.

  In Ull, the people who slept began to awaken to lives changed forever. Perhaps they would understand their Queen’s undoing. Or they would claim her actions as treachery.

  In any case, it no longer mattered.

  Beren crested the hill before her and breathed deep. She felt so much pain now. In one night she bled and bore a child; bound her child through magical rite to a prophet; given her daughter to another to raise; and damned her kingdom to winter.

  One thing remained for her to do, she thought as she looked at the Vingólf, the forest hall. She started towards it.

  Always the people of Miðgarðir called the forest hall Vingólf. In the ancient languages it meant “the silent vigil,” a place of prayer to the gods, its door looking west to stones of Glasheim, the sacred place.

  Vingólf, a thick clustering of trees at the edges of the woods before the sacred place, made a large, open room in the forest. Even in Beren’s time, the priests kept an altar stone there. Iron brackets on the trees of the vigil held torches more for tradition than ceremony: they used it for rituals since the days of the first Witch Queens. High above the trunks of the ancient trees the thick branches formed a roof, leaving the forest hall dim in the new day.

  Beren stopped before the opening of Vingólf, took air deep in her lungs, and watched the mists forming from her breath. Beren entered the forest hall.

  Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She saw the brackets of the torches, forged by the smiths of Goewin, the first Witch Queen. The alter stone, covered in the ancient runes, sat blanketed by a thin layer of snow, blown in during the night.

  “æled,” Beren commanded and waved her hand. Blue flame ignited the torches, flooding the hall with light and illuminating the goddess who waited there.

  Frigg’s features seemed a mask of contemplation. Her pale skin glowed with the light of the moon, her home in the heavens; her radiant blonde hair looked almost white in the torchlight. Her silver eyes glowed as they scanned the witch, her hands folded over a silvery silk gown.

  “You will honor your agreement,” Frigg stated. Frigg did not question; she observed.

  “I will do as I agreed,” Beren said as a tear ran down her cheek. “And you will do as you promised.”

  “I will,” Frigg agreed.

  “When I first prayed to the gods to deliver my people from the abomination of Belial, I hoped they would give this power to me,” Beren said.

  Frigg neither moved nor spoke, but her piercing gaze seemed to see into the Witch Queen’s soul.

  “Instead you gave me a daughter,” Beren continued. “And through her the gods gave promise to my people. And yet it seems a double-edged sword, for even the gods must have known Belial would not rest until my daughter’s blood stained the lands of Sul.”

  “All things have a price, Beren,” Frigg replied.

  “And the price I now pay,” Beren said.

  “You will do as I asked of you?” Frigg asked. For a moment her emotionless features almost showed surprise. She expected Beren to hesitate.

  “Yes--” Beren stopped, choking on her tears.

  Frigg seemed to soften. The goddess stepped towards her.

  “Not all things will be lost, Beren, daughter of Enyd.” Her words, as cool as the night, seemed equally as radiant and peaceful. “I ask you atone for the life I save and relinquish yours for a time. For your sacrifice, I will make sure neither man nor creature serving your enemies, nor even your enemy Belial, will know of her until she learns of her past.”

  “She will be safe from Belial?” Beren asked through her sorrow.

  Frigg nodded.

  “Lay down, my child,” Frigg implored.

  “Until my daughter conquers Belial’s evil, I relinquish my right to the throne and the crown of Sul.” Beren’s chest heaved in sadness from the formal words, but she continued. “I forsake the witch’s rite, so my daughter may live. I will not live; I will not breathe in the mortal world, until the evil of my blood my daughter banishes forever from it.”

  “So be it,” Frigg commanded.

  A sound like the clap of thunder roared over Vingólf, and the crack, like ice breaking, could be heard in Ull. In the morning all eyes in the city turned to west, and many feared the demon’s armies drew near.

  In Vingólf, Frigg gazed upon the coffin of ice and beauty eternal of the Queen who laid there. Beren stared out of the coffin encasing her, her auburn hair splayed in an array behind her, her hands clasped o
ver her chest, and skin pale and smooth as a newborn babe’s.

  Beren, the Witch Queen of Sul, lay frozen in a prison of ice.

  Frigg turned and glanced upon the Shade beside her. The spirit of Beren gazed back at her, crying crystal tears, letting them shatter on the icy floor. Always the spirit of the Witch Queen would wander the world, searching for her daughter lost to her, and weeping for the people she could not save.

  In those moments, the Kingdom of Sul and the tide of the Dark Lord’s war, changed forever.

  *****

  Belial gazed upon the winter covering the sacred place. The time came: in the name of Moloch, Belial wrought her victory on Sul.

  Behind her marched the armies of Eliudnir, the werewolves and the golems, the griffins and men who served the Witch Queens once upon a time but served them no longer, the nymphs whose roots became old and rotted, men whom she corrupted. And behind them lay the carnage of Sul.

  Soon the lands would run in blood, and victory would be hers.

  BELIAL

  The demon staggered, almost falling into the snow as her sister’s voice called to her. Annoyance and horror flashed in her eyes. The dark skies followed and raged above her from Óskópnir recoiled.

  “So, witch,” she scoffed. “You have come to face me.”

  Belial heard silence as her answer.

  “Do you bring your child as well, sister?” Belial cackled, a cold cruel laugh. Above her, from stone-gray clouds, snow fell.

  Again she heard silence.

  No matter. She continued to walk, with rage and annoyance in her heart. The White City would burn, and Miðgarðir would be hers.

  BELIAL!

  The force of her sister’s magical call picked up the demon and threw her against one of the standing stones. Belial landed on her feet on the snow, her eyes furious.

  Belial gasped and saw what she looked for, torchlight pouring from within the shadows of the forest, shimmering between the trees of Vingólf.

  Belial strode through the snow, as her guard followed her into the land they meant to possess. Fenrir growled beside her, waiting to see the witch who haunted his master.

  The trees opened in a circle, a chamber in the wood where little snow fell. Thick ice covered the forest floor. In brackets on the trees torches burned with blue flames. But she found the hall empty.

  “Where do you hide, sister?”

  BELIAL.

  The force of the magic call shook the ground below them. Snow tumbled from the treetops onto the Dark Lord and her Lieutenants. Belial fell to her hands and knees, peering into the ice below.

  A frozen face lay there, a face she recognized. Belial screeched, her furious wail echoing as she looked up to the flaming sword of Cerdic and felt its heated blade on her neck, turning her back from the march into the lands of Sul. Beren’s triumphant laughter floated in the trees, laughter of victory and of the hope enduring.

  And the Dark Lord looked into the ground where her sister lay frozen.

  *****

  “Through my mother the demon remains a part of me,” Caer said, numb and cold with shock and with the realization of the woman who gave birth to her. She knew well the tale of the demon. Her body shook with hot anger at the man who lay on the bed before her. The woman she saw in her dreams must be Beren.

  “Like you, Belial did not know her mother,” Beoreth said, wrapping her arm around Caer’s shoulders as the prophet looked on. “The darkness lived within Belial from the moment of her conception within your grandmother. She chose not to fight the evil; she chose to join it and betray your mother and your kindred. I know you. You will choose to fight her and the evil she serves.”

  “You are not like the Dark Lord,” Headred pushed himself to sit, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and grimacing. “Thanks be to the gods because through you we are saved by their grace and love.”

  Caer’s mind wandered, and she watched in her mind’s eye as the two sisters fought, a battle of wills, both like their mother, and yet so different.

  She could see the beauty of what once existed, of a land untouched by shadow, and of what Beren sacrificed so they could be free.

  “I think you should ponder what we have told you,” Beoreth said, her eyes misting. “For the time will come when the battle comes upon us, and sleep will be farthest from your mind.”

  Beoreth handed Headred a pile of clothes, garnered from one of their neighbors, few and far between outside of the village of Waterdam. Headred gritted his teeth in pain as he laced his own boots, weary from recounting the story while his wounds still healed by Beoreth’s draught. Beoreth busied herself, stirring the pot over the hearth, leaving room for Caer to help beside her. As she worked, Beoreth sang a sorrowful song. Caer listened and let her thoughts drift away to the world she never knew.

  In the north, in the halls of her forbearers, her destiny lay. They spoke her name as though it became legendary. ‘Y Erianrod’ they sang, as unbelievable as it seemed to Caer. The man she loved in dreams foretold her destiny, and she feared it.

  Caer looked to the earthen wall of the hovel, to the unseen west, where the ominous shadows rolled and boiled beyond the black mountains.

  “I must go,” Headred announced. Beoreth hurried over and laid him, protesting, back on the bed. “I must seek visions. We must know the will of the gods.”

  Beoreth pondered for a few moments before she let him sit up again.

  “I will return,” he promised Caer, seeing frustration in her eyes. He kissed her forehead. “I have not forgotten the little girl I left behind so many years ago, or the woman I see in my dreams.”

  Caer smiled and watched him go, as she felt the cold begin to grow in her being, and the shadows permeating her lonely existence.

  Beoreth peered through the crack in the door. Outside, the woman she thought of as her own daughter stood in the frozen landscape of Miðgarðir and sighed. The wintry lands of Sul rose around them, even as the clouds gathered in the distance. Tonight more snow would fall, and perhaps tomorrow. If they began their journey now, it would mask their tracks.

  “What are your thoughts, my daughter?” she asked, pushing the door wider.

  Caer turned, tears welling in her eyes.

  “Do not call me daughter,” she told her. “Not when I live and others perish for me.”

  The weight of the world rested on her shoulders now, Beoreth saw. And she saw the pain it caused. She knew it. She felt it.

  “My Queen made her sacrifice,” Beoreth told her, “for the people and the land she loved. Without you they could not be saved from the demon.”

  “I curse the gods!” Caer whirled. “Or perhaps I curse you and this lie you tell, if the story you have spoken for all the years of my life has been a lie.”

  “Do not think of your life as a lie,” Beoreth said. “Do you not understand, child? We saved the light, so the light would live and drive back the dark.”

  “You lie!” Caer cried.

  Lightning forked from the skies and cracked at Beoreth’s feet. Caer’s face turned bone white, and Beoreth stood in the door, mouth agape. Inside her heart Caer felt the tiny candle burn bright with a golden light spilling through her like a wave of rapture, wave after wave of undeniable power and strength. And yet she feared its power, and what this showed it could do.

  “I did that?” Caer asked, her voice shaking.

  “You did, child,” Beoreth shook with shock, and a small bit of terror. “’Tis the power hiding inside you. It lives now again.”

  Caer stood, deep in thought.

  “What troubles you now, daughter?” Beoreth asked, rubbing an ancient, withered hand on Caer’s shoulder.

  “Nothing, dear mother,” she whispered.

  The winter glittered around her. She listened to the song of the nymphs in the trees and the frozen wells; she heard the mournful playing of the fairies, the soft hoof falls of the centaurs, and the chatter of mortal children as they played.

  And a song ros
e above all of these, calling to her from the mountain of the gods, beckoning her to come.

  Did her mother call to her now, across the lands and from the place where she slept in ice? What did she call Caer for, and what of the song she heard in dreams?

  Headred would know, she thought, and without question followed him into the wood.

  “Where do you go, Caer?” Beoreth called. “We must wait for Headred’s prophecy!”

  Caer did not hear her as she disappeared into the shadows and followed Headred.

  *****

  Mab watched the girl running through the woods, twisting and turning along the ancient path toward her love. The Fairy Queen’s gown of silver, embroidered with golden thread in patterns of falling leaves, fell to the floor of the golden wood. Her eyes pierced; her silver wings like a glistening spider web unfurled behind her.

  The Fairy Queen’s mind peered into mortal hearts before, but never peered into the heart of a witch; so much depth, so much beauty, and yet so much darkness and despair.

  All of the child’s life, from girlhood to womanhood, the Fairy Queen watched, and she waited. When Mab’s people traveled to the north, following the call the light should return, she remained.

  Soon Mab would leave and follow her people to await the coming of the light. The sidhes became dark and cold now, the laughter of the fairies diminished. Mab would not return there for some time. She would wait here, for the last of her people to join her, and together they would make the journey.

  Not, Mab thought, before the girl made her decision.

  Caer noticed the light glowing among the trees, soft white light of the moon shining as if the night came. The snow crunched beneath her feet; the wind whipped and whirled around her, its icy chill cutting through her with every step.

  Still she ran.

  A clearing opened before her. She saw the circle Headred drew, the sacred circle of light in the snow. And within it he stood, still as a statue, eyes dark as night, peering into the possibilities of what might be.