of it nearly drained people to death!”
“That was a bad business,” Lemminkal agreed. “But you were young.” Ilmari snorted. “And an idiot. Enough, I haven't had my supper, and neither have you. Who brought us what today?”
There was no talk then, as the three men fell on their food like starving wolves, and with little more than grunts of satisfaction. And then, it seemed, they were minded to go straight to sleep. She broke her spell with a shrug. Perhaps something would turn up another day.
The deer were hitched and waiting, and Aleksia was dressed in her most impressive of Snow Queen gowns. She watched the preparations out of her window, readying the strongest of the All Paths Are One spell in her mind. She would otherwise have a very long way to go. And if only this was to be a pleasure trip! But alas…
This was a christening. She would be the only Godmother there. There was no reason for any evil Witches, wicked queens, dark Sorceresses to turn up, either. No, the reason she was going was an entirely ordinary one.
She was going to intimidate the stuffing out of King Bjorn of Eisland's Court. And the King, too.
“All is in readiness, Godmother,” said the Brownie Rosemary from behind her. And with a sigh, Aleksia went out into the bitter air that was held away from her by a spell, and with her driver's aid, stepped up and into her sleigh. As they drove out of her gates and over the pristine snowfields, she called up the spell she had ready. She had to wait until they were off the mountain and down among the trees for it to work, of course — you couldn't have the spell without a path for it to work on. And every Godmother as far away as Elena would know she was using it, too — it was very powerful magic — to twist space — and that sort of thing echoed and echoed again for anyone with the talent to recognize it.
Which, now that she came to think of it, meant that this false Snow Queen was not using Godmotherly magics much. Aleksia would know if she was. Elena would know. And that, of course, was how Elena knew that it wasn't Aleksia working mischief among the Sammi, for Aleksia hadn't used this magic for herself in a very long time. Not since she last visited her sister. As for using it to further or thwart The Tradition, every time she did that she wrote it down in her Commonplace Book, and any Godmother who cared to could have a copy of that just by telling her library to get it.
Aleksia chuckled wryly to herself as the sleigh entered the forest and she let the spell run free before her. Trust, but verify. She had no doubt Elena was doing just that. Well, good. Someone needed to. Godmothers rarely went to the bad, but it wasn't impossible, and Aleksia had very little peer supervision up here.
The journey was not instantaneous, so she had plenty of time to review everything she had done to get to the bottom of the mystery. If, indeed, there really was a mystery. She was beginning to doubt it. It was entirely possible that the Snow Queen had gotten the reputation as some sort of man-eating myth among the Sammi, and that what Elena had heard was nothing more than The Tradition putting force behind the myth. One day it might create a false Snow Queen — after enough people believed in the creature. But right now, it might well be only distorted echoes of her true deed coming back as some sort of hobgoblin tales.
Certainly there was no sign that the three Sammi magicians had heard anything about it, and they were the most likely to do so. It was clear from what she had seen and heard that people came to them from leagues and leagues around for the brothers to handle any magical difficulty, and Lemminkal was seizing on these pleas for help to further train his apprentice, Veikko. Already, since she had been eavesdropping on them, they had gotten rid of a troll, taken down a boar the size of a horse and gotten rid of a cursed talisman. If there had been a false Snow Queen out there stealing away young men, they would have heard about it by now. And they would have gone out to do something about it. Instead, they were doing what every other Sammi was doing at this moment — preparing for Winter.
She reluctantly concluded, as the sleigh came within sight of the King's Palace, that she was wasting her time watching and listening to them. Reluctantly, because she was enjoying being the secret member of their household. Listening to them gave her a sense of camaraderie, as if she really was there in person. She liked them all, and despite his flaws — and there were many — she very much liked Ilmari. He had a good heart, and a care to the people who depended on him and his brother for protection. She wished he was a little less boastful and a great deal less lecherous, but he really did not have any malice in him, and when he cared to be, he was witty, amusing and altogether good company.
Still, the illusion that she was part of their circle was just that, an illusion, and since they had proved of no use to her, it was time to give over her watch on them and turn her attention to other sources of information.
Just as she came to that conclusion, the sleigh arrived at the main entrance to the Palace. She descended from her sleigh, the personification of icy dignity, and was met by an honor guard of four of the ing's personal bodyguards. They looked very festive in new red-wool uniforms, with the King's arms embroidered across their tabards.
As she passed through the crowd, people pulled away to give her room to pass, conversations chilled and people avoided her icy glare. It was as she had thought. The King was up to no good.
Now, when The Tradition forced something upon someone, it was not always full of magic and wonder, and it was not always good. Often enough it could be as vicious and sordid as an evil stepmother wanting to be rid of her husband's children so her own could take their place in his care and affections.
Now in this case, the King had wedded…imprudently. He had lusted over the daughter of one of his lesser nobles and she was important enough — or rather her family was — that marriage was the only way to have her. She adored him. He, once his lust had cooled, was weary of her. She had presented him with only this living daughter, and that only after much striving. So now the stage was set for tragedy on a Kingdom-wide scale if he could not rein in his lusts and at least — if he must take mistresses — take only those who would not also demand marriage.
Her mirror told her that there was one of those too-ambitious harpies waiting in the wings, hidden among the ladies-in-waiting for a chance to spring her honeyed trap and catch herself a King. And if she did…well, there were not many ways by which a King could be rid of an unwelcome spouse, particularly not when that spouse still loved him. All of those ways had consequences for the entire Kingdom. One of those was civil war.
Which was why Aleksia was here.
She waited impatiently through the ceremony, waited until The Traditional moment for the giving of gifts came, and stepped forward. Ruthlessly, she drew on her magic, creating an island of warmth and light about the Queen and the child, and sending waves of chill and little eddies of snowflakes everywhere else.
“Wisdom, I give this child,” she said. “Beauty she will have in plenty from the blood of her mother and father, I need not add to that. But Wisdom I give her, and high Courage and Strength, so that she can be Queen and King
