It made it hard to move and hard to think. She had armored herself as best as possible against this very thing, and still the all-pervasive melancholy made it hard to move and think. And this was the second trap, this terrible lack of anything but ennui, this leaden weight on the soul that made it tempting, so tempting, just to lie right down and never move again. This place did not need monsters to keep it free of the living. And it did not need guards to make it deadly. Not all traps were violent, or needed to be. This was why the spirits of the dead stopped moving, stopped thinking, and went to sleep.
Aleksia kept moving, staring at the faces of the dead, until she became inured to what she saw there, and to some of the terrible things they had died of. What was perhaps the most disturbing about them was how they went about perfectly ordinary tasks with the signs of terrible deaths on them, or wrapped in shrouds instead of clothing. They moved slowly, dreamlike, in and around the ghostly houses and buildings that were only half there, chopping wood, cooking, washing and yet, not really accomplishing anything.
And then, finally, she saw what she was looking for, the signs that these people had been victims of the Icehart. An entire village full of people, many of them, men, women, children and even infants in the arms of some of the women. All of them with ice-rimed faces and hair, skin frost-covered, and wearing, not shrouds, but ordinary clothing that was also ice-coated.
She drifted closer to them, letting the eddies of the crowds carry her toward them. Finally she was in among them, and paused, then stood completely still, her eyes on her feet. It was very cold among these people, as if they still exhaled the freezing breath of the thing that had killed them.
One of the men finally noticed her. He sat knotting a net, or seeming to anyway, although the net never got any bigger. Of course it didn't. Nothing ever changed here. Nothing ever would.
“Do I know you?” he asked, with a vague frown.
She took care not to show any interest. That would point her out as being different, and that would be bad. “Do you?” she replied dully. “I do not remember…” Not remembering was a safe answer.
“Are you from my village?” He looked around at the others like him. “We all seem to be here. I think something happened, although…” Now it was his turn to trail off his words as uncertainty washed over him.
Hmm, he might not even remember dying. “What village is that?” she asked as if she really did not care.
“Inari,” he said promptly. “This is Inari. Although…it does not look like Inari.” He faltered. “I do not remember Inari having this much fog.”
“I am not from Inari,” she replied quickly. “I do not think you could know me.” She sidled away from him before he could ask many more questions, leaving him staring at the half-finished net in his hands.
She moved farther along, down something like a path, to the next village. The people here displayed similar signs of death by freezing. With luck, this was the second village that had been the Icehart's victim. This time, her quarry was a woman doing laundry, washing out shirts that showed no sign of dirt, spreading them to dry on gray- leaved bushes, Once again, she waited until the woman herself asked, “Do I know you?” It seemed this village had been named Purmo. Again, the villagers had no idea what had killed them, or even that they were dead. It was enough to make anyone weep with the pathos of it, but Aleksia did not dare show any such signs of emotion.
The third time, although the village was obviously the third victim of the Icehart's power, it took several tries before she could find anyone to talk to her. These villagers were already forgetting who and what they had been; most of them ignored her as if she was a buzzing fly. Finally, one of the children spoke to her; its little face contorted into a mask of concentration as it tried to remember just where it was supposed to be. This was the village of Kolho, or rather, this was what the villagers thought should be Kolho.
Now she had the names of all three villages. Unfortunately, no one had seen what it was that had killed them. For that matter, most of them were not yet aware that they were dead.
She made her way back to the riverbank, slipping around the villages, avoiding the spirits as much as she could. Now was the time to run, and swiftly, before she was unmasked; she had gotten what she came for, but this was the hardest part of the quest.
Getting back. Because the things guarding Tuonela were not to keep things out, they
were meant to keep things from escaping. Why should the guardians here be concerned about
anything getting in? Whoever tried would only end up dead and remain here anyway.
Not always true…but true enough. Some of the great Heroes of Sammi legends had
tried to come here and had died here. Of course, being great Heroes, according to the legends, they did not necessarily remain dead — but that was legend and not fact.
Now if she ran afoul of Tuonela's guardians…it would not be good.
She was going to have to deal with them and get past them without actually fighting them; the point was that she not be surprised, that she meet them on her terms and not theirs.
This would take some very careful maneuvering.
She went as far as the edge of the river before pausing. The moment she set so much as a toe into the water, the guardian would be alerted, but according to all three of the stories she had read, it was at the cave's mouth that she had to beware the most. Carefully, she looked around, made sure that there were no spirits nearby to catch her at what she was about to do, then took one of three tiny bundles that appeared to be a packet of leaves wrapped up in white thread out of her sleeve. She set the first down at the water's edge.
“Blood of my blood, my semblance be, Let them see you and not me.”
A kind of pillar of smoke arose from where the packet had been. A moment later, it was not a pillar of smoke anymore. An identical twin to Aleksia stood there, regarding her thoughtfully, as she was regarding it. It looked uncannily intelligent — thank goodness it was not — it was nothing more than a mindless, soulless copy that would do exactly what she directed it to. But this was good, because she was about to be very, very cruel to it.
“Dip a toe into the water,” she whispered to it, as she passed her hands across her own face, rendering herself invisible. “Then, when the spirits come to tear you apart, run.”
She withdrew a little way, and watched as the simulacrum obeyed her. As if the contact with the water had been a signal, spirits, eyes bright with anger, swarmed out of the fog to converge on the hapless duplicate. And, as directed, she ran. She fled along the shoreline and was soon out of sight, with the uncannily silent mob in hot
