“Which must be the work of the Snow Witch…”
“It's what she wants,” Aleksia managed. “The more misery, the better.”
They had not seen the Icehart since camping here, and Aleksia was not at all surprised. If the creature wept because it had a broken heart now, setting foot in this place would drive it to fling itself off a cliff. She was not all that far from doing the same thing herself.
“Whatever made them like this is foul,” she said, finally. “Just foul. These folk are worse off than animals. Even animals have joy.”
“It is the ice in their hearts,” Lemminkal said, unexpectedly.
“What?” Aleksia turned to face him. She could have sworn she had said nothing about how Veikko had been changed.
“I…feel it,” the big man said, scratching his head in puzzlement. “It is a part of my magic to feel things. It lets me know what my foe is going to do, and it lets me know what his heart is like. There is ice in their hearts, a tiny grain of it, and it is the ice that has frozen them and made them cold and cruel.” He shook his head, showing his grief. “I cannot help them.”
“Only defeating the Snow Witch will help them,” Annukka responded, lifting her head as if it felt very heavy. Then she patted Lemminkal's hand comfortingly, and the big man put one of his massive paws over hers and held it as if it sustained him. “But how are we to do that if we cannot even get inside?”
Aleksia racked her brains. “We cannot fight her, we cannot force our way in — we have to trick her.” She went over the scenes of the Snow Witch in her mind, trying to think of a way to get past the barrier, past the snow-servants and into the Palace. “We have to get her to let us inside, or at least to let us get to Veikko. One of us at any rate.”
“You know, she's not an idiot,” Ilmari said crossly. “She knows we're here now, if she didn't before. She has probably figured out that we are here for Veikko. Just what do you propose to do about this? Make her forget all that and invite us in for a welcome feast?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flushed. “Forgive me. You did not deserve that. It is this place…”
She had felt a flash of anger, but suppressed it, because he was right. It was this place.
“No…” Aleksia said, slowly. “But I think I have an idea. What we need to do is make her think that we are weaker than we actually are. Contemptible. She will want to laugh at us, taunt us, and that will bring her to the gate. But we also need something to bargain with. Turn out your packs!” she demanded. “We need the sort of pretty things that women crave! She likes beautiful, rare things that no one else has. She collects them, as she collects beautiful, rare boys.”
They all went through their belongings, though in the end they had only two things that Aleksia thought would pass muster; a mother-of-pearl comb that was in Annukka's pack, a beautiful thing carved with seaweed and waves, and a nearly finished kantele, inlaid with so many tiny bits of metal and wire that scarcely anything of the wood could be seen, that had been among Ilmari's things.
“This is stunning,” Aleksia said, touching the silk-smooth mosaic with a wondering finger. “I have never seen the like. You are an artist, Ilmari.”
“I work on this in my spare time,” the Wonder-smith said sheepishly, looking pleased. “I started it for myself, but I never liked it — I thought one day I could give it to someone I wanted to impress.” He looked up at her for a moment, and she was flattered to see frank admiration in his eyes. “Perhaps one day I can make one for you.”
She felt herself blushing, and quickly went back to the subject. “Can you work some kind of spell on them, so that they become unique as well as beautiful?” Aleksia asked anxiously.
Ilmari looked at both pieces. “Well, this is easy,” he said, finally, pointing at his kantele. “I simply work a bit of magic into it so that it plays itself. But this — ” He held the comb in his hand for a moment, muttering over it. “I cannot think what one could do with a comb — ”
“What if it were to comb hair by itself, and magically untangle all knots?” Aleksia asked, thinking back to hours of misery as a child as her nurses would, none too gently, pull and tug on her hair and her sister to get them both presentable. The Snow Witch had only the crudest of servants, and surely they were about as gentle as Aleksia's nursemaids had been. Perhaps when the Witch had young men, they would do the office, but she did not always have them.
Ilmari turned the comb over and over in his hands, considering it. “Yes,” he said, finally. “I can do that. Should I do so tonight?”
“Please. I do not want to linger here any longer than we have to.” Aleksia looked at the village and shivered. “I think their heartlessness may be catching.”
“All right then, I will prepare my forge,” the Wonder-smith said, and then smiled a little. “And do not be alarmed at what I do. I shall not harm these things, though you would not know it to watch me at work.”
Indeed, they shook off some of their own low spirits as they watched him prepare the tiny forge. He built it painstakingly from flat rocks culled from the rubble at the base of the wall. When it was done, he shoveled coals from the fire into it, and began to alternately blow on it and chant over it. Aleksia could not hear what he was chanting, and truth to tell, she did not even really try. Every Mage had his or her secrets, and deserved to be able to keep them.
As he chanted and blew, the coals glowed, brighter and hotter, until at last they were white-hot. That was when he took a small pair of tongs from his pack, the forge hammer from his belt, picked up the comb in the tongs and placed it in the fire.
It should have crumbled, or burned up, or otherwise gone to bits. It did nothing of the sort. It, too, began to glow, until it was as white as the coals. He pulled the comb out with the tongs, placed it in a flat rock, and began to hammer on it, chanting in time to his blows. It was not just random hammer strokes, either. A tap here, a tap there, a heavy overhanded blow, all in time to the chanting — there was a pattern there, but Aleksia could not discern it.
It all blended into a rhythmical whole, though, not unlike Annukka's singing.
“Annukka — do you know any songs that talk of the beauty of a girl's hair?” Lemminkal asked quietly. “If you could sing them to the beat of the hammer — ”
Annukka nodded, and blended her own music with that of the forge-song.
Ilmari raised an eyebrow at her and caught her eye. He nodded and Aleksia felt the two songs blend into one, with an unspoken communication between the two Sammi. The spell-singing built to a crescendo, and both ended on the same note, as Ilmari seized the white-hot comb and thrust it into the snow. Steam rose in clouds around it, filling the camp for a moment, and silence rang hollowly in the absence of the spell-song.
When steam stopped rising in billow from the snowdrift, Ilmari reached gingerly into it and came out with the comb. It would not be fair to say that it was untouched — somehow, it had become more sensual to look at, shining like the light of the moon in his hand. He gave it to Kaari, who, as a maiden, wore her hair unbound — and at the moment, it was rather tangled and tousled from travel.
“Let's see if I'm still good at improvising.” The Wonder-smith chuckled. “Try it, Kaari.”
Kaari pulled off her hat and headband, and gingerly touched the comb to her hair.