And that was when she nearly sideslipped out of the sky, she was so startled. Because following them, and staying just out of sight, was the Icehart. Moving in broad daylight, surrounded by an obscuring mist of ice-fog, passing like a ghost on the face of the snow.
Two days later Aleksia and Ilmari stood quietly just beyond the edge of the firelight, staring at the Icehart. It was doing nothing, except staring back at them. She could sense nothing from it by ordinary means and she hesitated to do anything to it with magic. For now, it was just following them, and given the results of their last confrontation, she did not want to goad it into battle.
“Do you still have the crystal?” Ilmari asked in an undertone. “It might want that…”
“But you don't think so,” she stated, staring at the ghostly stag. Moonlight glittered on the points of its antlers, and the misty eyes seemed to be looking right through them.
“You don't, either.” Nervously, he rubbed his neck.
“No, I don't,” she admitted. “But I also have no idea what it does want.” She stared at the strange beast. This was the third night it had come to stand at the edge of their camp and…do nothing. She felt for the crystal in her pocket. It was still there. She weighed all the considerations, and finally decided that, since two nights had gone by without it attacking, it was worth taking a risk.
“I am going to approach it,” she told Ilmari. She expected him to object, but instead, he nodded.
“I will go with you,” he said instead. It didn't sound like a request, but at this point her nerves were feeling so rattled she decided that not going alone was a very good idea. “Don't worry, I won't attack unless we are attacked first. But I would rather you did not go alone, Aleksia. It took all four of us the last time to defeat it. I would rather you had someone to guard your back.”
She nodded. And felt oddly touched. Because he had not blustered that she was merely a woman and could not face this thing — he had given her the courtesy of assuming she was his equal.
The two of them approached the strange deer, their feet making crunching sounds on the snow as they broke through the ice-crust atop it. Tonight there was just enough moonlight to be able to see the Icehart clearly.
It seemed to Aleksia that there was something odd going on with the Icehart's face.
The eyes…. around the eyes…there was movement.
Then as the Icehart looked away from her for a moment and at Ilmari instead, she realized what it was. She saw shining bits of ice dropping from its cheeks. She had seen that before — when Kaari had wept for the forest-spirits.
“It's weeping,” she said, so shocked that she was not sure she was really seeing what she thought she was. “Why would this thing be weeping?”
There was a silence from Ilmari, then the Wonder-smith sighed. “You may think me mad,” he said, slowly, “but I believe that it is weeping because it has a broken heart.”
She shook her head. None of this was making any sense. First the thing attacked them. Now it followed them, crying. It was clearly intelligent, yet it was not telling them what, if anything, it wanted.
She knew it was responsible, in part at least, for the deaths of dozens of people, and yet her heart went out to it.
“How can a spirit have a broken heart?” she asked, falteringly.
Ilmari sighed. “I do not know,” he replied, as the Icehart slowly stalked away, leaving them with nothing but questions. “Perhaps it, too, is a victim of the Snow Witch. Perhaps it has lost all it ever cared about to her. All that I know is that not even a Wonder-smith can mend a heart when it is broken.”
16
The village was named Kurjala, and Aleksia suspected this was an attempt at sarcasm, since the word meant “misery.” Certainly it lived up to — or down to — the name. The area seemed to be under a perpetual overcast. The houses were dark, and poorly repaired, and the people in them shabby and unsocial. Even the ice and snow in the streets was filthy. When they first approached the place, she had not at all been sure there was anyone living there. Only when they actually entered it did they see the occasional surly or furtive figure crossing a street ahead of or behind them, although doors were always firmly closed by the time they reached the spot where the figure had been seen.
Only after they came to what passed for a village market did they find anyone willing to speak to them. Once they showed their coin, though, people did come out. Money, it seemed, overcame just about every other consideration.
The barrier across the Palace gate that Aleksia had seen in her mirror visions had become a barrier around the entire Palace. There was literally no way to get past it.
The group was now camped outside the wall around the Palace, a good distance from the village at the front gate. They had originally thought to stay within the village, rather than camping, but a quick look through the place had convinced all five of the humans that this was absolutely the last thing they wanted to do. Urho, who must have had some way of telling what lay ahead of them here, had already been convinced that they should not chance the village.
It was full of the most repellant individuals that Aleksia had ever seen.
She remembered the fragment of conversation that she had heard in her mirror-visions. She had assumed that the speakers had meant that the people of this place were being killed by the Snow Witch if they showed any sign of human feeling.
The truth was far worse.
Once they were outside Kurjala and safe from observation, Aleksia took out her hand-mirror and did a touch of scrying. What she saw behind those closed doors shocked and dismayed her, and finally made her put the mirror away, feeling sick. There was no hope here, no love — no kind of human feeling or kindness at all. Even the children were heartless, competing grimly with siblings, if need be, and parents used them as virtual slave labor. But how was that surprising for children born to mothers who gave their bodies to men out of desperation, men who took them with no thought for anything past the fleeting pleasure of the night? There were no marriages here, only temporary alliances for purely material reasons. No real market, no inn, no places of worship or gathering; no beauty, no music, nothing that was not strictly utilitarian. There was, literally, nothing to lift the heart, or even touch it.
In villages this far north, villages that got so few visitors, newcomers were often greeted with enthusiasm and welcome and, if there was no inn, offered a bed with some prominent person of the village.
But here — that was, to put it mildly, not the case. One and all, the villagers turned the travelers away coldly, until Lemminkal offered them money from the bandit store, but even that only bought them fodder for the deer, supplies for themselves and permission to camp outside the wall, not house-room.
They huddled around their fire, looking at the dim lights of the village houses, feeling a depression of spirits so great that it was hard to muster the energy to do anything more than make camp, fix a meal and stare at the fire or into the night.
“Is this us?” Kaari asked, suddenly. “Or is it this place?”
That aroused Lemminkal. “It is the place,” the soft-spoken warrior said, with difficulty.