patient a moment, I will see if there is anything to be seen.”
The mirror clouded for a moment; she knew what he was doing, he was looking for currents of various sorts of magic, then seeing if they came from a single source. If there was one creature as good at mirror-magic as she was, it was her servant. And long before she might have gotten impatient, his face reappeared.
“This is truly remarkable!” Jalmari said without preamble. “If I had not seen this with my own — ah — well, since I don't precisely have eyes — ”
“What did you see?” she asked, anxiously.
“Look for yourself, Godmother — ” The mirror clouded again, and showed —
The Palace of Ever-Winter.
She frowned. “Is this a joke?” she asked. “If so, I find it rather — ”
The view in the mirror receded, to reveal that at the end of the grounds, where the snow-garden ceased, there was a wall. A wall of huge bricks carved of ice, with a gate in it made not of iron or wood or even more ice, but of a shimmering curtain of power. And on the other side of that wall, was a village where the glacier should have been.
“That, Godmother,” said the mirror-servant gravely, “is where your rival is.”
It had taken the better part of a day, as well as most of her energy, for Annukka to put the spell on the sledge, but it had been worth every moment and every bit of strength to do so. When she and Kaari left the village, she attached a third and fourth very thin rein to each front corner of the sledge and attached those to the reindeer's halter. When the sledge was going the right way, both reins were slack. The farther off course the sledge got, the more it tried to turn, and the more it tugged on the deer's halter, steering it. All she and Kaari had to do was to ride next to the sledge and make sure that the reindeer didn't stop to browse. Usually a smart tap with a long willow- switch took care of that.
And now that they had guidance, Kaari was less anxious. Annukka, however, was seriously concerned. She had taken the loving-cup from Kaari and would not let her look at it anymore, having caught her taking it out and staring at it a dozen times a day. But there was no improvement in the situation there; the main body of the cup was just as black as ever, and there was still only a rim of bright silver remaining. Annukka only wished she could tell for certain whether or not there was any diminishing of the remaining silver.
But the going was slow, even with guidance. Travel on the road, even when it was scarcely more than a footpath, had been much easier. Annukka had never cared much for driving sledges, which was why she had put so much effort into breeding and training deer to ride. There were always hidden obstacles under the snow that the heavy sledge would get stuck on, or that would threaten to turn it over.
In fact, it seemed to her that by the time the sun was setting, they had made discouragingly little progress. From Kaari's long face as they set up camp, she felt the same.
“We haven't even reached the first stricken village yet,” Kaari said quietly, as both of them stared into their little fire. “At this rate, it will be Spring before we get there.”
Perhaps the sledge hadn't been as good an idea as she had thought, but what else were they to do? Whatever they were going to need had to be brought with them. The villages they were going to look at were all tiny in comparison to their home, and there was no way of knowing how much, if any, provisions were intact in the houses after animals got in. Which they would, it was inevitable. In general, this far to the North, so both of them learned, a village could be no more than four or five houses, and earned the name only because most of the people living there were not related to one another. Even if they actually encountered a village with people in it, though they were hospitable, most people in a village that small could not spare much for the traveler. Ilmari's village had not been much larger than that, and with the early onset of Winter, they were looking at their stores with a worried eye. Coin did you little good if there was no food to buy with it. The deer could not carry all the supplies that they would need; the sledge could.
And there was the undisputed fact that the sledge was guiding them to the missing men. So the sledge was necessary, but it was slowing them down — and it might well be that time was running out for Veikko.
Help. Well, that was what they needed, wasn't it? With a sigh, Annukka got out her kantele.
She didn't want to worry Kaari more than she already was, so she opted for subtle magic rather than obvious. She didn't so much pick a tune as just let her fingers play something familiar. And rather than thinking the words to concentrate a spell, she simply held in the front of her mind the fact that they needed help. And all the while, to Kaari, she made it look as if she was strumming idly at the instrument. Kaari was busy mending the heavier clothing she had gotten at the village, and reinforcing seams; the wind was finding every single place it could leak in to chill them. Up until now, they had been sharing Annukka's clothing, but it was getting cold enough they would soon have to layer on every stitch they could. And even Annukka's spells of warmth woven into the cloaks wouldn't be enough to keep them comfortable.
Something coughed outside the circle of firelight.
Both of them froze. Was that just some animal? Annukka knew she hadn't heard anything creeping up on them. She peered into the darkness, but could make out nothing there.
It coughed again, whatever it was. And then what Annukka had thought was a huge snowdrift just at the very edge of visibility — moved. She felt as if someone had just dumped a barrel of icy water down her back. She wanted to scream, but nothing would come out.
Kaari squeaked, and then was still.
Slowly, ponderously, the giant white Bear moved into the firelight, its head swinging a little from side to side as it walked.
Annukka's throat and mouth dried and her heart pounded so hard she thought it was going to break her ribs. She stared at the enormous creature, at the tiny black eyes, the wicked long claws on its forepaws. This Bear could disembowel a person with a single swat of that enormous paw and not even think twice about it. The White Bears of the North were known to be deadly and unpredictable, except in one thing. They never let anything get between them and food. And two lone humans — surprised — without weapons, probably looked a lot like food to it.
They were going to die….
“Mother Annukka?” Kaari said in a small, strangled voice. “It's wearing a pack.”
