I saw your son and his Master, the North Wind said, in a voice like the howl of a blizzard heard from leagues away. They followed the Icehart until it led them to its Mistress. She is called the Snow Queen and she lives in the Palace of Ever-Winter, on the side of the Mountain. She took them captive and into her Palace. And there they remain.
Before the stunned women could reply, the North Wind swirled itself up and away through the cloudless sky, leaving the frost melting behind it.
And Aleksia was jumping to her feet, fists balled at her sides, her temper flaring and overriding every bit of calm she had ever learned in her life.
“You wretched, ill-begotten liar!” she screamed at the mirror. “Wait until I get my hands on you!”
Aleksia was employing every technique she knew to cool her temper. She had tried counting, tried willpower and now she was out, on the slopes of the mountain called Varovaara, pushing herself to exhaustion in a trek around what passed for a garden up here — ice and snow sculpted into fanciful shapes, immaculately groomed paths and feeding stations for wild birds. Her breath puffed out in little clouds, her feet were getting numb and still she wanted very much to hurt something. She was going to summon the North Wind herself, but before she did so, she knew she had to get herself under control. Rare indeed was the magic that benefited from being performed in a rage; most of the time, control was needed. The icy air did nothing to cool her temper, a glance upwards at the sun through the thin screening of ice-clouds only made her angrier. The Road, the Sun and the Moon had all told the truth. The North Wind had lied. How had it dared? She wanted, very badly, to summon it now, to hurl something at it, to indulge in a fit of temper completely unbecoming of a Godmother. It had said she was a murderer of dozens of people! If this was the kind of rumor that had reached Godmother Elena's ears — well, no wonder her fellow Godmother had looked at her sideways for a moment!
And at the moment, she had no other target for her ire than the North Wind. Oh, how she would like to strangle the creature! Not that she could — you couldn't strangle a wind — but she wanted to!
She continued to circle the garden until at last sheer weariness, and nothing else, wore down her anger. By then her feet were sore, her hands were half-frozen and it took several moments of concentration to invoke a heat spell to thaw herself out, and that by itself was an indication of how unprepared she had been to work any magic at all. Only when she was sure she was steady did she take a strong stance in the center of the garden, clear her mind, and summon.
She didn't chant her summons aloud, nor did she sing it. She didn't have to; she was a Godmother, after all. By ice and by fire, I summon a liar! she called fiercely in her mind, concentrating on the North Wind, for she knew it as only a Great Mage or a Godmother could; knew its true name and incorporated that into her image of what she sought, knew that right now, in its own mind, it was not identified by anything it knew of itself more strongly than that word. Liar.
The world became very still, the potentials of magic swirled all around her, then exploded outward. There was the sound of shattering ice crystals, thousands of them. A flash of blue-green light, like that seen from the inside of ice-caves. A whiff of the sharp, wet scent that comes just before snow starts to fall.
And it was there.
It brought with it none of the theatrical freezing of leaves and swirling of eddies of ice-fog. Not now, and not with her. It knew that it was in very, very deep trouble. And although it was one of the four named winds, it also knew that a powerful enough set of human magicians, or even a single Great Mage, could hurt it, or even imprison it. The Sammi were well known for imprisoning and releasing Winds — though only the most powerful and terrible of Sammi magicians would dare to imprison one of the named winds — so it stood to reason that a Godmother could do the same.
After all, once, long ago, a great and evil Witch of the Sammi had imprisoned the Sun…and had kept all four of the Winds in chains.
So the North Wind huddled on the ground in a spreading pool of ice-fog at Aleksia's feet, looking rather like a ghost, although a good bit more fantastic. In form, it looked like a skeletally thin, long-nosed man. Its hair and its beard were spines of ice, and its “clothing” did not move at all, being basically only the North Wind's imperfect mimicry of clothing. It had an extremely long and pointed nose, with, as the final touch, an icicle permanently clinging to the end of it. And just now, it looked utterly miserable and quite afraid.
“Do you know who I am?” Aleksia asked, not loudly, but with great intensity and just a little magic behind the words.
The North Wind shivered, cowered and wailed — a sound like a hundred lost souls. Ice crystals formed at the corners of its eyes and tinkled down its cheeks to fall with little ticking sounds into a pile in the snow. You are the Snow Queen, the Godmother Aleksia! It wept. Do not harm me! Do not chain me!
Well that was a satisfactory reaction. “Perhaps I should melt you instead,” Aleksia replied threateningly, allowing one hand to glow with a heat spell.
The North Wind wailed again. I am sorry! I am sorry! I lied to the mortal women!
“Yes, you did. Did you think I would never find out about it?” Aleksia's voice dropped to a dangerous purr. “You lied, and about a Godmother! You placed the deaths of dozens of mortals at my doorstep. I will be blamed for this, and mortals will come here looking for revenge. It was not enough that you lied, but you compounded the lie by bringing trouble down on my head! I am not amused!”
She did not go further and say what she wanted to — that she had now been marked as a murderer of dozens of innocent people — because the North Wind was not mortal and did not much care what mortals lived or died. In fact, the North Wind was personally responsible for many, many deaths every year, most of them, by any standard, innocent. Murder was a way of life to it; whatever this Icehart creature was, it didn't care how long the Icehart continued to kill. It cared only that she was angry, and it was only interested in somehow wiggling out of the situation it found itself in,
Don’t hurt me! It cried pitifully. It shivered uncontrollably as she glared down at it.
“Then tell me why you lied!” she snapped. The creature cried harder, more ice-crystals ticking onto the pile. Its shivering increased, and it shrank in on itself.
I — I — I cannot!
“You will,” she countered viciously, scowling down on it and allowing the heat spell to flare up in her right hand. There was a lot of satisfaction in this, truth to be told. It gratified her to have the thing so petrified of her. “Tell me who put those words in your mouth! You will — or you will pay! I can make your life far more of a misery than the one you are protecting can!” Of course, these were hollow threats. It wasn't as if a Godmother was allowed to torture anyone — or anything. But the North Wind didn't know that.
I dare not!
Aleksia growled, and held up her hand, glowing with heat and light.