I have no choice. I must find out what is in here. This is no village, and there is no obvious reason for the forest to have been frozen like this. There are thousands of acres of forest just like this one — so why freeze it? She forced herself to go deeper into the forest. The Icehart — for she was sure that was what had done all of this — must have had a compelling reason to freeze an entire forest. Even for a supernatural monster or a great Mage, this kind of act took too much power for it to be random. Just as she was certain that there was something in each of the frozen villages that the Icehart had wanted to stop, so she was certain that there was something here that had threatened it.
She had a fairly good idea what that something was.
And in a small clearing in the heart of the birches, she found them.
That is, she presumed they were the men she was looking for. There were two of them, in the midst of a tidy camp; both sitting, both as still as statues. One had a gray-blond beard and carried a kantele, his hands still on the strings as if he had been caught in the midst of playing it, the other was older, and had a sword strapped to his back. Both wore the clothing of the Sammi.
They sat beside the remains of a dead fire, one on either side of it, looking sightlessly at the coals. The older of the two of them had a forked stick with a gutted, skinned rabbit on it; presumably he had been holding it over the flames. The other had a flask down by his feet. There was a hide tent behind them, and a stack of wood beside it. Both were covered in an inch of ice, just like the trees. From the look of things, they had been taken completely by surprise.
These two were Ilmari and Lemminkal, and there was no sign of Veikko. She felt sickened, and if she had been a woman, she would have cried. She had never felt as close to anyone other than her Brownies as she had to these men. And now, to see them like this — it nearly broke her heart.
The Bear prowled around the campsite, snuffling, hunting for clues. There were three packs, three bedrolls in the tent, three rabbits to be cooked — two skinned and waiting the fate of the first — three of everything, in fact, except men. The village had been bad enough. These two men, staring into the long-dead fire, were enough to send a strong man screaming away, running as fast as he could. It took everything that Aleksia had to keep from doing just that.
A line of footprints led away from the camp; Aleksia followed them to where they ended. There was no sign of a struggle, but there was a small hand-ax lying in the snow, under a layer of ice.
Aleksia nodded to herself. So, the third man, presumably Veikko, had been here, and had been abducted. If this was the work of the false Snow Queen, this only made sense. Veikko was young, handsome, and if the false Snow Queen was following Aleksia's pattern, she would be abducting young men. Both Ilmari and Lemminkal were too old to draw her interest.
So she had Veikko — or at least that was a good enough supposition to follow for now. All right. The help I was hoping for in the shape of those men is gone. I am going to have to find the false Snow Queen’s Palace, and learn what I can from it….
She sat down on her haunches to think, scarcely noticing that there was a little frozen bird cemented onto a branch beneath a coating of ice just under her nose. The ice prevented any scent from escaping, and she only caught sight of it because it was the wrong shape to be a stone or a last brown leaf.
Poor thing. This is just wanton and indiscriminate slaughter. Why is this creature doing these things? It doesn’t make any sense. Why freeze an entire forest to get one man?
Why kill an entire village?
She shook her massive head after a time, deciding that she was just too sane to be able to fathom the reasons this creature had for what it was doing. Unless, of course, the false Snow Queen was trying to terrify the common folk, and eliminate any opposition. If she had decided that it was time to become a ruler and take over the land of the Sammi —
I should concentrate on finding the Icehart and figuring out a way to stop it, and worry about the false Snow Queen’s motives later. While she thought, her warm breath puffed out over the little frozen bird.
All right. I'll try the most obvious. Let's see if I can detect her magic from here, or find the Icehart itself.
Aleksia turned her thoughts inward and went very, very still. Carefully, she “listened” first — some magic created a kind of resonance or hum that a magician could hear if he was in a quiet place…and certainly this was the quietest place she had ever been in.
But there was nothing.
With a sigh, she moved to the next possibility: scent. Magic often had an aroma to it, and not only could she as a Mage herself sniff it out, but the Bear form was particularly well suited for this sort of thing. She lifted her muzzle to the cool air and took in long, deep breaths; dropped it to the ground and tried finding the scent there.
But alas, again…nothing.
Finally she unfocused her eyes a moment, and looked for the faintest traces of power, particularly Traditional power. If there was another magician near here, that power would accrue to him, like water flowing down a slope. So if the power was moving at all, it would be moving in the direction of the magician.
She saw the magical energies as soon as she unfocused her eyes, like dust-motes in sunlight. And there was definitely a current to the movements….
Unfortunately, the center for those converging currents was — herself.
Bah.
Right then, there was only one more possibility. Mirror-magic. And for this she wanted her own mirror, so she was going to have to go back to human form and get it out of the —
"Chiurp!"
The loud and cheerful sound, the first thing she had heard in this forest besides herself, would have been more than enough to make her jump with surprise and shock. Add to that the fact that it came from right below her nose, and was followed by a veritable explosion of brown feathers heading into the sky — well, that was enough to make her rear up, overbalance, and fall over sideways with the crash of shattering ice as she smashed into the ice-covered underbrush.
She lurched to her feet again; the bird was already gone. But there was no mistake about it — it had been that tiny frozen sparrow in the snow just below her nose. She had thawed it by breathing on it. And it was still alive. If the bird was still alive — then this was an entirely different sort of spell than the one that had killed the villagers. Ilmari and Lemminkal were not dead! She could free them!
Heedless now, she reared up on her hindquarters and pivoted, crashing back to the campsite where she had left the two men. She skidded to a clumsy halt beside them, then closed her eyes and listened to them.
And to her shock, she heard what she had missed before.
Heartbeats. Very, very slow, but heartbeats all the same.
They were still alive! This wasn't merely ice, this was magical ice, magical cold, that preserved the victims rather than killing them.
She sat down on her haunches again, this time with a thud, and stared at the ice-bound figures.