The Bear nodded, and Annukka realized that what she had taken for shadow was the harness of the pack on his back. Who put a pack on a Bear's back?
“You don't think there is anyone with it — him — do you?” Annukka whispered.
The Bear swung his head toward her, and slowly shook it.
She blinked. “You understand me?” she asked, in a slightly louder voice.
It nodded. She paused, and thought about what she had just done. Was it possible that her song-spell had had an effect so soon?
“Are — you here to help us?” she asked the Bear incredulously.
The Bear nodded. Then, with a sigh, it flopped down next to the fire and closed its eyes.
Annukka and Kaari stared at each other across the great bulk of the Bear, both their eyes wide with astonishment.
“How are we going to feed him?” Kaari whispered.
Annukka had to shrug. “I don't know,” she replied, and shook her head “He's one of the White Bears. I suppose he can feed himself.”
But all she could think of at this point was the cautionary that she should have kept in mind when she began the spell in the first place. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
Aleksia huddled close to the fire and cupped her hand-mirror close to her face. In the depths of the mirror, a disembodied blue head with a curiously cheerful expression hovered in what appeared to otherwise be a void. For all that she was an expert in mirror-magic, even she had no idea where the mirror-servants and mirror-slaves were, how they could look through so many mirrors simultaneously, where that void was, or if it was even a void to them. She also had no idea if the disembodied heads had bodies, or if their appearance was some sort of joke. She had inherited Jalmari, along with the Great Mirror and the rest of the Palace.
Veroushka had made much more use of the mirror-servant than Aleksia had, but rather than allow him to think she didn't need him, when she had nothing specific for him to do, she had given him the rather open-ended task of “keeping an eye on matters in Kingdoms with no Godmother and report back on trouble to Godmother Elena.” Elena had never complained, so it seemed to suit everyone.
Now, whether he had always been self-reliant and able to act autonomously, or whether this had given him those abilities or strengthened the ones he already had, she had noted that increasingly he had been able to do mirror-magic all on his own. So now she was able to rely on him to do what she did not dare. The magical signature, if any, would be coming from the Palace of Ever-Winter, not from a cave in the frozen Northlands.
“So far as I can tell,” Jalmari said, “this imposter does not use mirror-magic, and I do not believe she is aware that you do.” He winked at her. He seemed terribly pleased with himself for his detection work.
Aleksia stared at him in disbelief. “How can she be a copy of me and not know mirror-magic?”
Jalmari pursed his lips. “Perhaps because she is not a copy of you. I have done a bit of spying on her, and other than the Palace, there is not much resemblance. She does have power over ice and snow, to a greater extent than you do, actually. Perhaps she got a name for being the Snow Queen and grew to like it while being unaware that there was another using that same title. Take that as a given, it is inevitable that when she came to build her Palace, The Tradition forced the design of your Palace into her mind.”
Well, not knowing mirror-magic meant that Aleksia could be as bold as she pleased about ferreting out information. “That makes sense. What kind of a Sorceress is she? Is she cautious, or reckless? Do you know how easily she can tell when there is other magic about?”
“I do not think she is careless…but I think she has grown accustomed to never encountering any sort of opposition,” he told her. “I know that I could slip in and around her Palace despite its barriers — for they are barriers to physical things and to attack, not to someone merely looking about.”
“Then I should like to see what I can, if you will.” Trying not to crow with glee, she asked Jalmari to find her a vantage point within the Palace itself.
The mirror clouded, then cleared, showing a room. The view shocked her. First, the interior of this place was…unfinished, as if it had been tunneled out of ice and snow, as if the exterior of the Palace had been created perfectly, but the inside left solid and the rooms cut in anyhow. And there was nothing warm or welcoming about this place; it looked better suited to hanging meat for storage than living in.
Then there were the servants. She had not expected to see Brownies running about, but she had expected to see human servants. Instead…
“What are those things?” she asked in a whisper. Jalmari's voice floated out of the mirror in much more normal tones. She stared. They looked like snowmen…well, snowmen made by a reasonable amateur artist. There was a human look about them, but like the walls, they also looked unfinished. No fingers, only shovel-like bits at the ends of their arms, with thumbs. Faces left mostly blank except for sketched-in features.
“Animated statues,” the mirror-servant replied. “They are made of snow and ice.”
Aleksia watched the crude things wandering about with a sense of astonishment at how much magical energy it must take to keep them all going.
“Why use those instead of human servants?” she wondered aloud.
“Ah, that I have an answer for,” Jalmari replied. “She hates people. Truly hates them. She won't have them near if she can help it. Those villages? She cleared them out because she decided that since she couldn't control them, she wanted them destroyed. At least, that is what things I have heard have led me to believe.”
“But what about — ” Aleksia began.
“I'll show you,” Jalmari said, interrupting her. She nodded, and the view changed. This time the viewpoint was from somewhere near the top of the walls, looking down.
And there she was. The false Snow Queen. Sitting on a throne that looked to be carved from the same
