Our Lady of the Snow Read online

  He turned and ran, pelting, forging through the blizzard, towards the kennels.

  ****

  “I don’t care what you must do!” Pola’s voice rose, sharp with strain and with furious, commanding energy. “Enlist every servant in the palace! Find the Imperator, and find Father Urss!”

  The officers ran at her bidding, leaving the huddle of stewards, ladies-in-waiting and physicians who had grouped round Pola and Grand Mother Beck in the throne room. The imperial physician was still kneeling at Beck’s side. As the door banged echoingly he looked up and met Pola’s hunted stare.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. It is too late. There’s nothing I can do to help her now.”

  Beck’s eyes were open and she seemed to be gazing thoughtfully at the high, molded ceiling. But she saw nothing; nor ever would again.

  Pola turned away, putting the back of one hand to her mouth, and sucked in a long breath. Beck dead, and Kodor had killed her. He had not intended to—she told herself fiercely that he could not have intended to. But he had killed her. Why? What had he wanted from her? That parting shot—Osiv is not dead. And a plot, to murder Nanta and Mother Marine… She didn’t understand!

  She breathed in again, and when she spoke her voice was flawlessly controlled.

  “Have Mother Beck’s body removed and laid out in the Sanctum chapel. Tell the Sisters she must have the ceremony due to her. I am going to my chambers. The moment Father Urss’ whereabouts are discovered, send word. And ask…” She paused. She had been about to say, “Ask my father to attend on me.” But she did not want Duke Arec. She was Imperatrix, and she did not need him.

  “No matter,” she said, and walked, tall and stately and dignified, from the room.

  ****

  “The tears of the Lady are the blessing of the snow… The tears of the Lady are—are the blessing of the snow—oh, Lady help us, Lady protect us, sweet Lady let us come safely through this day!”

  Marine’s prayers were a desperate litany, barely audible even to her own ears over the hiss and rumble of the sleigh’s rushing. Her mind and body had fused into one single chord of terror; the old horror of travelling, their breakneck speed, and, most fearful of all, the thought of what might even now be pursuing them from the Metropolis and along this forest road. Tree-trunks were flashing past so fast that she dared not look at them for fear of the vertigo that threatened every moment. Though there was daylight beyond the branches, the forest was gloomy as dusk. And the snow drove, drove, drove in her face, freezing her lips and nose and brows, turning the fringes of her , hair to a hoary white.

  But amid all her terror there was a tiny shred of comfort and courage; for the frost sprites still raced with them. She had glimpsed their forms flickering and flying beside the sleigh, sometimes merging with the blizzard but always there, never tiring. And beside her, under the protection of the furs, Nanta stared ahead, her face a mask of snow through which her eyes

  burned, and a strange, sweet smile on her lips. Though it made no sense, she too gave Marine courage. The sprites had come for her and they would protect her; while they were together Marine knew, against all reason, that there was nothing to dread.

  The sleigh careered on, the dogs tiring but goaded relentlessly by their driver. Far behind them on the road, a sled drawn by three animals ran like the wind, its lone occupant yelling his team on, his grey eyes fixed on the runner-tracks he followed. And in Kodor’s hurtling wake, distant as yet but slowly closing, came something else. He knew it was there, he felt it like a roaring vortex; a thing of hate and vengeance that would never, ever tire. If it overtook him before he reached his destination, Kodor knew that it could, if it chose, destroy him. If it did not overtake… He didn’t know. But there would be hope.

  Far from the forest, in the palace, the search continued for Father Urss.

  Who was crouching on all fours, like a wild animal, in a forgotten room where the searchers would not think to look. The mortal man that Urss had been was swamped and crushed to nothing by the power that channelled through him, but he smiled a smile of joy and fulfillment. For the God was speaking and the God was commanding. The God was reaching into the mortal world, pursuing the one, the special one, who had been hidden in this world so long ago and who had eluded all his searching until the night when the Corolla Lights returned to dance in the sky. The Lights had shown the way, betraying their source and bringing the prey into the open. Urss understood everything now, and he was the God’s faithful servant. Through the medium of his body and mind, the God wielded power. And he would prevail.

  Chapter Twenty

  The hunting lodge stood in a clearing created for it, surrounded by a high, gated picket fence that protected it from the forest’s predators. As the sleigh slithered to a juddering halt the gate was pulled open, and through the snow Marine saw the glint of bobbing lanterns.

  The mutes recognized the driver at once, and they hurried forward, signaling a greeting, lowering their weapons and hastening to help the sleigh’s passengers. Expecting to find Kodor, they stopped in consternation as they saw instead the white faces of two women gazing back at them. One half-raised his crossbow again; the other turned to the driver in angry alarm.

  “It’s all right!” the driver said hastily. “Don’t you know her? Don’t you—”

  He got no further, for suddenly Nanta stood up, casting off the furs. She stepped from the sleigh, ignoring the fact that the snow was almost up to her knees, and walked straight towards the gate.

  “Nanta!” Marine called. “Nanta, wait! We should—”

  Nanta turned and looked at her. She smiled. And Marine fell utterly silent as she disappeared through the gateway.

  The driver stared after her with a strange, almost reverent expression on his face. The mutes stared, too, but their awe was tempered with a sense of their own duty. Nanta, whom they still had not recognized, was going into the lodge, and in the lodge was their Imperator, whom they were pledged to protect against any threat. And now the other woman was trying to follow, and she was a religious, and their Imperator did not like religiouses.

  They stepped into Marine’s path, and she found herself looking at the bolt of a crossbow, aimed at her waist.

  “No!” She shrank back, raising her hands in supplication. “No, please—I mean no harm, I am a friend!” Did they understand? “The Imperator sent us!” she added pleadingly.

  The mutes shook their heads, disbelieving, but the sleigh driver came to Marine’s rescue. “She means Prince Kodor,” he said. “Maybe she doesn’t know yet, see? And what she says is true.” He pointed through the gate. “That’s the Imperatrix.”

  The mutes’ eyes widened. They started to lower their weapons. Then abruptly from inside the fence came a joyful shout.

  “Nandi!”

  Going in at the gate, with one mute as escort while the other helped the driver to unharness the weary dogs, Marine was in time to witness Nanta’s reunion with Osiv. Osiv was dancing in the snow, jubilantly hurling handfuls of it into the air and rushing every few moments to Nanta and hugging her. Nanta stood still. She was staring at Osiv, and on her face was a look stranger even than the cold, sapphire stare fixed on her face throughout the hectic journey. It was a look of wonder, of certainty, of understanding; and mingled among those emotions was an excitement that communicated itself across the distance to Marine and stopped her in her tracks.

  Nanta said: “He knows.”

  “Knows… ?” Marine was at a loss.

  “Yes!” Nanta’s excitement was increasing; it was as if her body could barely contain what was surging in her mind. “This is why I was drawn here, this is why we had to come! Osiv knows. He has seen it all, in his memories and in his child’s dreams. The truth, Marine. The truth about me.” She flashed a wild, alien look towards the forest, back in the direction they had come. “The truth about us.”

  Marine tried to say something, but there were no words to say. This was beyond her, far outside the sphere of anyth
ing she had ever known or envisioned.

  Nanta turned to her again, and she recoiled from the harsh light in her eyes. “When I was born,” Nanta said, “were you there?”

  The question seemed random, crazed, but Marine tried to answer. “No…”

  “Who was?”

  Random. Crazed. Why is she asking this? “I—I don’t know. Your mother, Karetta, of course; but—”

  “Was she?” Nanta smiled. “I wonder.” Abruptly she turned again and, still smiling, extended a hand towards Osiv. “We must go in.”

  “Yes, yes, go in!” Osiv agreed, shouting. “All go in!”

  Nanta touched his jaw with one hand. Immediately Osiv quieted, gazing back at her with a quizzical, fascinated expression. The snow was falling on Nanta and she had no furs to shield her but only her gown and cloak. She looked, Marine thought, like a sculpture made of ice.

  “Little one,” she said fondly. And walked into the lodge, leaving them all silent behind her. Marine stood motionless, staring at the lodge but not seeing it. Nanta’s words: Was she? How could Karetta not have been present at her own child’s birth? It was a mad riddle, an impossibility. But in a forgotten pocket of her memory, a thought was stirring. A rumor. A hint. Karetta had failed to conceive for so long, and then suddenly, almost when hope was abandoned, Nanta had come. A letter from another cousin; Marine recalled it now, in essence if not in detail. Gossip, or a sly jest; the implication that Karetta and her husband had not created a child at all, but had adopted a foundling, an unwanted waif without pedigree or provenance. Marine had dismissed it at the time: the cousin had not married well and was known to be jealous of Karetta. Now, though…

  Now…

  A faint, strangled sound, like a half-formed cry of pain or shock, escaped from Marine’s throat, and with jerking steps she started to flounder towards the lodge in Nanta’s wake.

  ****

  When Kodor reached the lodge, he knew that the thing of hate was not far behind him. He could sense it as an ache in his bones, bitter and ugly and insane. It had not found him yet, for it seemed that the snow hampered it. But it was seeking him and before long it would find what it wanted.

  He was out of the sled even as it slithered to a standstill, and by the time the mutes with their lantern appeared he was through the gate and plunging through the still-deepening snow towards the lodge door. The sleigh was in the compound—so they were here, they had reached safety—and his heart quickening, Kodor clapped the mutes on their shoulders in thankful appreciation and hurried inside.

  The lodge had six rooms, and in the largest of them Marine sat before a blazing log fire. She still wore her blue robe, but the soaked veil and wimple had been taken away to dry. Without them she looked very different: younger, almost vulnerable. She rose quickly to her feet as she saw Kodor, and he said without any preamble: “Where’s Nanta?”

  Marine’s gaze slid uneasily to an inner door. “She is with her—with the Imperator, sire—I mean, Your Highness.”

  Kodor smiled thinly. “Titles are becoming confusing, Marine. Shall we dispense with them?” He started towards the door but she said quickly, “Sir, please, I think it would not be wise to disturb them. Nanta has—she is—” She faltered, shivering despite the room’s heat, and Kodor demanded,

  “She is what? What?”

  “I…don’t know; I can’t explain, can’t begin to tell you Since we departed—no, no; I mean, since we arrived, something has—”

  Unable to bear her floundering any longer, Kodor interrupted. “Is Nanta ill?”

  “No. No, not ill. Not at all. She—she called the frost sprites. In the courtyard, when Father Urss tried to—”

  “I know what Urss did.” And I know what Urss is, now. “They came to her?”

  Marine nodded. “They ran with us on the journey; but when we arrived, they vanished. Yet I think Nan… the—”

  “Nanta.”

  “Yes. Nanta. I think they are—might be—with her now.”

  Nanta, Osiv and the frost sprites… It was beginning to make sense. Suddenly a shudder ran through Kodor; not from within himself, but from outside. Power, anger—it was trying to touch him, wanting to use him as its conduit. The thing of hate and vengeance was almost here.

  “I have to see her.” He strode for the door. “No, Marine,” as she moved to block his way, “don’t attempt to stop me. This is between Nanta and me. It’s nothing to do with you, and I’m only sorry that your mere presence here means you have to be involved.” His hands came down on her upper arms, gripping. “You can do one thing for us. Just one.”

  Her pale face gazed up at him. “What is it?”

  “Pray to the Lady. Not to the God; to the Lady. Pray with all your strength.”

  He left her gazing bewildered at his back as he opened the door and entered the room beyond.

  The shutters were tightly closed and the room was dark but for two candles that burned in a sconce near the empty hearth. It should have been bitterly cold, but it was not. There was warmth in the air, and a scent that was almost but not quite familiar; like a forgotten perfume from childhood memory. Nanta knelt on the floor, near the candles. Osiv was curled beside her. His head was in her lap and she was stroking his hair. At first Kodor thought he was asleep, but then he saw the faint gleam of his eyes, alert, watching. Nanta raised her head, saw Kodor. She did not greet him or smile. She only said, “Osiv. It’s time to play the game again.”

  “Yes,” said Osiv. “Play the game. Nandi and me. And Kodi.” He blinked.

  “Kodi play, too?”

  “Oh, yes. I think he must. I think we all must.”

  Kodor said: “You know, don’t you? You know what’s coming.”.

  She nodded.

  “It followed me.”

  “It had to. He had to.”

  Something welled up in Kodor and spilled over. “Nanta, how could we have—”

  “Hush.” Nanta raised a finger to her lips, silencing him. “We can’t be sure of anything, not yet. We just…feel it.”

  Kodor swallowed. A sense of oppression was beginning to build up, not in the room but around it; as though something was slowly, inexorably wrapping itself around the lodge like a suffocating blanket. “What of the others?” he said softly. “Marine and the servants.”

  “I don’t think he will harm them. I’m not even sure that he can.” She looked away. “It doesn’t matter, Kodor. This is for us to face, not them. They must do their best, but we can’t consider them.”

  He was a little shocked by her sanguinity; but then, perhaps, it was only to be expected. Then at her feet Osiv stirred again. “The game, Nandi,” he said, a little crossly. “Play the game!”

  “What is the game?” Kodor asked.

  Now, Nanta did smile. “Osiv has been playing with the frost sprites,” she said. “Since he was brought here, they have come to him and they have been his friends and companions. They drew things from his mind, Kodor; things he has seen, in reality and dreams, for all of his life but could never communicate to anyone else. Now, with the sprites” help, he can show us what he knows.” She looked fondly down at her husband. “Osiv understands far more than we have ever realized; far more than we do. I think perhaps it’s his innocence. He is more willing to believe what to us—as we were—would seem impossible.”

  Suddenly, swiftly, she stood up, pushing Osiv gently away from her. “When I first arrived here, Osiv and the frost sprites played their game and I played it with them,” she said. “Now, we must play it again; and you must see it, too.”

  The oppression was growing. The thing was so close now… “Nanta, is there time?” Kodor asked uneasily.

  “Yes, there’s time. There has to be.”

  Moving to the middle of the room, she took hold of his hand. Her touch sent a tingle through his fingers that spread into his arm and seemed to diffuse throughout his body. From the floor Osiv watched them, eyes wide with eager anticipation. Still keeping the link with Kodor, Nanta looked at hi
m.

  “Come, Osiv. Shall we begin?”

  To Kodor’s astonishment, Osiv rose to his knees and began to sing. It was more of a crooning, but his pitch was perfect and the melody had a gentle, repeating lilt.

  “I didn’t know he had such a voice…” Kodor whispered. Nanta only smiled. Then she, too, joined in the singing, and words formed: a calling, a summoning.

  “Come you! Come you! Come you!” It was a sweet chant, their voices blending perfectly. “Come you!”

  Kodor felt the presence of the frost sprites before he saw them. When they appeared, he knew at once that they were the same ones who had guided and guarded Nanta at the palace. Her friends. Her servants.

  The sprites each took one of Osiv’s hands and lifted him to his feet. Then one reached out to Kodor. He hesitated; the sprite smiled, encouraging him, and he felt the icy touch of its long fingers clasping his. Nanta took the hand of the other sprite and they formed a circle, facing inwards. The chant fell away, changing now to a gentle, wordless humming in which the sprites joined with tones like tiny, frosty bells. Then, within the circle of their linked hands, a light that was not of the candles began to grow. Pale, all but colorless, it strengthened gradually, forming a tall oval like a mist-filled mirror; and an image took form within it. A bier; and on the bier lay a figure wrapped in an ice-blue shroud. White hands showed above the shroud, clasped as though in prayer.

  Nanta had fallen silent since the sprites began to sing with Osiv, but now she spoke. “Since I was a child,” she said softly, “I have seen this image in my dreams. It is the Lady. And she is dead.”

  She heard Kodor’s violent intake of breath, and she squeezed his fingers tightly in a silent warning. “I did not understand its meaning,” she continued. “But today, Osiv and the sprites have shown me. Look, Kodor. Look, and see.”

  A second figure was appearing in the mirror of light. Huge, dark, it stooped over the bier, and Kodor felt an appalling shudder run through his marrow. A thing of hate and vengeance—he could sense it, a part of himself and yet not a part; for it was something far beyond humanity and he was only human.