She made a face and put down the empty bowl with a sigh. Outside, the sun was westering. She wasn't sure how far Valeri was going to take Gerda, but there was not a chance that Valeri would be coming with her. She hadn't packed up her own things, after all. No, Valeri would take her out of immediate reach of the bandits and then leave her to find her own way. That should be just about now.
6
Aleksia returned to the throne room feeling all the better for the meal and the chance to warm herself. She settled down to her mirror in a much better frame of mind than when she had left it.
The great mirror clouded for a bit as she reminded it of what it had last been reflecting, then the cloudiness resolved into the image she had expected, a look backward across the loping reindeer's back, the grin of Valeri as the sledge flew over the snow, and behind her, Gerda's white, strained face. Interestingly enough, they were out of the trees and tearing along a long, flattish slope. From the look of things — yes, Gerda was within striking distance of the Palace of Ever-Winter. With help.
Just as Aleksia recognized that fact, Valeri brought the sledge to a halt.
“And here is where I leave you!” she said cheerfully. She waved her hand in the general — and correct — direction of Aleksia's Palace. “What you want is over that way. Not sure how far, but it's there all right.”
“You aren't coming with me?” Gerda faltered, getting carefully up from the sledge. From the way she winced, it hadn't been an easy ride.
“Of course not! I've got the band to help look after! And when I do leave — ” Valeri's face took on a look of speculation. “When I do, it'll be t' see the world. No offense, but not t' go rescue some little girl's boy. So! Best of luck and off you go!”
And Valeri did not even pause to see Gerda sling the pack over her back. With a yell and a slap of the reins, she was off again, turning the sledge back along the track they had made, the reindeer's head high as he loped along. And Valeri did not look back.
Poor Gerda…standing there all alone in a vast expanse of white, she looked very small, and very lost. And there was no way, no way at all, she was going to get across the mountains on her own two feet. No matter how brave she had been so far, no matter how earnest she was, she was still a town girl. She simply did not know how to survive out there.
She was going to need help.
And now was the time for her Godmother to arrange for some overt aid.
Aleksia redirected the mirror for a moment, into the depths of an ice-cave. And there, as she expected, was what she was looking for. It did not at all surprise her to see Urho, the Great White Bear, looking back at her.
My scrying told me you might be needing me, said the slow, heavy voice in her mind.
Urho was one of the Wise Beasts, the sort that could speak and reason like humans. He was a frequent visitor to the Palace, and although she could not exactly call him good company, his stories were interesting, and he actually enjoyed breaking up the monotony of Winter with the occasional task for her. His usual tasks — for he was something of a Mage himself — were to see to it that the more inimical of creatures were reported, and if possible, kept far from her door, and to come to the aid of travelers wise enough to see him for what he was or innocent enough to trust him.
“I have a peasant cook now,” she said, and with amusement saw his eyes light up. “Oh, yes, Urho. All your favorites, I do think. And down below your cave, where the snowline meets the treeline, just above the cairn of thirty stones beside the trout stream, there is a young lady. She is all alone, rather ill-equipped and marching with great determination to rescue her lover from wicked me.”
What, another one? Urho rumbled with laughter. So, so, so. I should hurry, if I am to intercept her before nightfall.
“Thank you, old friend. I will see you in a few days.”
Look in on us between now and then. I will find shiny places.
“I will,” she promised, and the mirror clouded over.
She took a long, deep breath. Well, that was sorted. Kay was in love with Gerda after all, with emotions all the more potent for having been suppressed all this time. Gerda had grown a spine, not sitting down in the snow and weeping until someone found her and took pity on her, but marching over inhospitable territory with every intention of getting there by herself. The difficult part of all of this was over.
Of course, she was not going to count this over until the lovers were reunited and on their way home together. Many a Godmother had been tripped up by being too confident of the happy ending.
She rubbed her hands together to warm them. No matter how hard she tried, she was never quite able to keep herself completely warm here. She was about to get up when the glass clouded again.
She blinked to see her mirror-servant appear in the depths of it. He hardly ever used this mirror. He hated it, actually. Despite appearing as nothing but a disembodied head, he swore the mirror made shivers run down his spine.
“Jalmari,” she said, looking at the blue-shadowed apparition, closely. “Have you…done something to your hair?”
The head somehow removed its hood, though there were no visible hands. What was revealed was a bizarre — at least to Aleksia's eyes — mound of white hair with tight rolls over each ear and some sort of tail with a black ribbon tying it back.
“What in the name of all that is holy is that?” she asked, astonished. Jalmari stared back at her. “It is the highest of fashion in the Frankish Court.”
“It looks like something died on your head,” she replied, too astonished by the sight to be anything except blunt.
Jalmari sniffed. “Well, since you need me so seldom, I have been taking the opportunity to educate myself in the ways of some of the other Kingdoms. No one would take me seriously in Frankovia if I didn't wear my hair this way.”
“No one will take you seriously here if you do,” she muttered, amused. “So to what do I owe the favor of an appearance?”
Jalmari became intensely focused, so much so that his absurd hair vanished, leaving him with his normal curly black locks. “You wished to find information about your imitator, Godmother Aleksia,” he replied. “Well — this is what I have found — ”
Look for magical trouble among the Sammi, centered on ice and snow. Hardly useful, since it was what she already knew, except that Jalmari had at least given her a small area to search in. My own searches lead me here, and no farther. This probably means that the players in this Traditional path have not moved yet. So look for powerful magic, Godmother. This has clouds of great danger about it.
Outside of being able, like Aleksia herself, to see and hear anything in a place with a mirror in it, Jalmari's one powerful ability was to see directly the magic that The Tradition gathered about its instruments and pawns. Something about this particular river valley and village was aswirl with that magic. So Aleksia was looking through every reflective surface she could find in order to —
“ — but Mother Annuka,” said a tearful voice, as the vague shapes in her mirror coalesced into two women of the Sammi, standing outside the doorway of one of their log houses. It must be harvest season by the look of things. The leaves of the trees above their heads were gold, and the sky was a crisp and chilly blue. One of the women was a stunningly beautiful girl, a maiden by the fact that she wore her hair uncovered and loose, with a studded headband of ribbon confining it, while the other wore a square felt hat with bands of card-woven decoration, or perhaps embroidery, around the hem. Both were dressed the same: in a woolen, high-necked dress with more fanciful bands decorating it at the neck, along the arms and at the hem, and aprons also decorated with embellished bands. The dresses were so short that, in many lands, they would be considered scandalous, which only made sense for someone who spent all Winter traipsing about in the snow. A dress that ended below the ankle would only end up soaked and sodden, heavy and ruined besides. In towns where roads were trodden down and paths swiftly cut, you could wear a long dress. Out here, where a “village” might consist of three huts, you adapted. So beneath the dresses, both wore woolen breeches, finished at the bottoms with yet more colorful bands, tucked into felt boots. In the deepest Winter, those boots might be sheepskin or reindeer hide rather than felt. The older woman's costume was black, the younger, a golden brown, and the style marked them as the Sammi, people who herded reindeer in the most northern regions of Karelia.