Archive of Our Own

As I gazed up at the walls of Sternberg rising above me, I felt I was coming home. Not just home, but...Home. If that makes any sense. Which I've had on good authority that it seldom does to those who've never experienced a true homecoming. Especially after being dead for the better part of a year. And yet here we were, me and Florian.

I tried to recall that day, the day I'd been escorted out on what had turned out to be my greatest adventure. It seemed so long ago, yet like only yesterday. And like today.

On that late summer day, fields had rippled in golden straw, or long furrows for the planting to come. Pears and plums had hung from the orchard trees. The hawthorn berries in the hedgerows had not quite begun to redden. Truck gardens had bulged with cabbages, aubergines, radishes, carrots, beans, and turnips.

Under the afternoon sun warming us, those same fields rippled green with the spring's promise. A few white flowers still clung to the orchards and the hedgerows. Newly-seeded vegetables sprouted alongside the previous season's overwintered plants.

Mule-drawn carts still trundled along the roads, hauling their loads from field and forest or the trade routes from down the Weser or Elbe. Goatherds still drove half-dozens of animals.

I watched from my perch atop Florian's snow-white horse. People waved or bowed, as befitting their stations. I waved back enthusiastically.

Ahead, the road rose up slightly to the stone bridge crossing a secondary channel to the island on which the castle had been built generations before. The cobbled road curved to the left. To the right rose a sheer rock wall. To the left, houses and shops crowded the verge. The remnants of last night's rainfall still trickled in the gutter.

Florian and I made our way upward. I waved to the well-wishers pausing from their work, and to the children pausing at their games.

“It's the Princess!” “The Princess? You mean she hasn't died?” “Hope springs eternal!” Those and other comments floated through the gathering throng, often swallowed up in part or in whole by the other voices around them.

I caught the occasional query about what in Heaven's name Florian was doing there. Which I supposed was well-earned. While Weiberluchs and Thuringia had not been on the friendliest of terms for as long as I could remember--indeed longer than I'd been alive, or so said Papa—open war had not troubled our mutual borders for three generations. Still, the lingering distrust between our respective populaces rankled me.

As we neared the gate-house, I spotted the low wall surrounding the outer gardens, the wall Florian had scaled the day we'd met. Above it all rose the castle's curtain wall and beyond that, the gleaming whitewashed stone and tall, elegant, tile-roofed spires I'd come to both love and loathe.

I craned my neck upward. A few guards stood atop the wall, helms and crossbows gleaming in the sun. “Home,” I whispered.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Florian asked for perhaps the dozenth time.

“Yes. No. I don't know.” I looked into his eyes. “But I have to. This place is my home, my birthright, my revenge against my stepmother.”

He nodded. “As you wish, your Majesty,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.

“Not yet, I'm not,” I sighed.

A column of soldiers came to attention outside the gatehouse. Greaves clanked on the cobbles.

One man stood slightly aside from the others. Unlike them, he wore no armor, only a tabard bearing my arms.

“The Queen is dead,” he announced. “Long live the Queen!”

“Long live the Queen!” echoed a chorus of voices at least several score strong.

I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. I glanced at Florian, his arms already upraised to assist me. I allowed him, fearing I might fall and land the both of us in a heap. Such a grand entrance would, I was sure, never do.

I lighted on my feet and nearly turned an ankle. I wondered, for what had to have been the hundredth time, who had chosen my shoes that morning the previous summer. I made a mental note to review my wardrobe.

My eyes caught Florian's and he nodded. I slipped my hand from his and walked through the main gate, every staccato footfall echoing off stone and the steel-clad gates standing open. After perhaps two-score strides that felt like a hundred, I emerged into the main courtyard.

I half-lurched to a stop. There before me stood what I could only describe as a welcoming committee. A committee composed of every resident of Sternberg.

I knew many of them on sight. A few I remembered from my girlhood, when I had still been allowed to run about the halls during those carefree days. Others I knew more recently, from my years working as a scullery maid away from my stepmother's prying and spiteful eye.

All stood with heads bowed in respect or fists to chests in salute.

I cleared my throat. “I thank you all for your welcome. It is with both gladness and sorrow that I return through these gates this day. My late stepmother the erstwhile queen has done many great things. Terrible things. But great. I cannot undo what she has done, but I do hope to bind the wounds she has opened. In the meantime, I should like to meet with the Regent.”

“Of course, Highness,” said the man in the tabard. He cleared his throat. “There is but one problem.”

I cocked my head. One problem? The first, I was to learn, of a great many. “What sort of problem?”

“No Regent has been appointed, Fraulein Konigin.”

“Oh. I see.” Or, at least, I thought I did. I was vaguely aware that I could not legally rule until reaching my majority at the age of eighteen. I recalled at least one conversation I'd had with my father some years before, during which he'd tried to explain, in terms he thought a young girl might understand, how such things worked. Of course, my stepmother had not intended that I survive long enough, even before her recent attempts. Which led me to my predicament. Namely, that I was both queen and not yet queen.

“Then,” I continued, “we shall, according to law, have to appoint one. I should like to know whom my late father the king had in mind.”

“We...we don’t know, your Highness.”

I sighed. “Then we shall have to find out. Please show me his journals.”

“His...his journals?”

I frowned. “Is there a problem with that?”

“In the days following the late queen’s funeral rites, we searched. But we found nothing.”

I grunted. “He hid them,” I said.

“He...he did?”

I nodded. “He distrusted my stepmother.”

“Then the rumors were true?”

I barely resisted rolling my eyes. “Which ones?”

“That she arranged to have your father the king killed, for one.”

Unbidden tears stung my eyes despite the blur of years.

I turned to Florian. “Prinz Florian, would you care to advise us on this matter?”

The herald spluttered. “But your Highness! He’s...he’s...Thuringian!”

My eyes narrowed. “And your point?” I said, injecting as much edge as I could manage. Which, if I had to admit it, was probably not much.

His face blanched. “Erm...uh...” He cleared his throat and swallowed audibly. “I...er...”

“I will tell you exactly what’s wrong with Thuringia.” I paused. A silence fell like a summer rain. “Nothing,” I said at length.

He took a deep breath, fidgeted, then finally said with wavering voice, “As you wish, your Highness.”

I turned toward Florian. “Your Highness?”

Florian cleared his throat. “It would be my honor and pleasure, Konigin Snow,” he said, and added a deep bow for emphasis.

I smiled. “Hans, see to his Highness’ horse. Florian, you’re with me. Everyone else, as you were.”

I strode with head high across the dressed flagstones toward the main entry. People parted before me like water and I passed between open doors.

My feet moved as though on their own accord, carrying me across the polished marble tiles, my mind barely registering the pattern of our...my...heraldry inlaid in black and pink granite, tourmaline, olivine, peridot, lapis lazuli, malachite, onyx, garnet, and jasper.

I briefly recalled the hours I'd spent as a child tracing the patterns in the stones with my fingers and watching the way the sunlight spilling through the windows sparkled and sometimes sank into the depths of some of the more translucent bits.

I ascended a tightly-twisting staircase not more than twice my own shoulder-breadth. Even with its pale marble treads, the space closed in with an oppressive darkness lit only from the occasional arrow slit. Panes of Venetian glass stood open in wrought-iron frames, and warm early summer air wafted through.

Up and up I went, always on the balls of my feet, winding counter-clockwise until I stepped out onto a corridor floored with polished alder planks pieced together in mesmerizing geometric patterns. I walked past several closed doors to a double door at the far end. I frowned at the large lock bolted to the door.

“Drat,” I said. “I was afraid of this.”

“Are you sure your father's journals are in here?” Florian asked.

“If they're anywhere, they're here. My stepmother had this room sealed the day after Father passed. She possessed the only key.” I peered at the metal and wiped a thick layer of dust from it. “From the look of things, she hasn't made much use of it in some time.”

“Do you know where she kept that key?” he asked.

“No. Fortunately...” I pulled two small pins from the ribbon in my hair. At Florian's inquisitive noise, I added, “One learns a thing or two working alongside the staff. Now, please be quiet.” I knelt down, tipped by ear toward the lock, and went to work. “Cantankerous thing,” I muttered a short time later. Not long after that, it clicked open.

I stood up, and replaced my hair pins. “There,” I said triumphantly. “Nothing to it.”

“I'm beginning to suspect that you're a girl of hidden depths,” he said.

I cast him a look. “Beginning?” I smirked, unbarred the doors and pushed them open.

Everything within appeared exactly as it had the day Father had breathed his last. My mind dragged me back to that day. I saw myself standing beside his bed, felt my small hand in his large one, his tired brown eyes locked onto my own, heard him whisper with rattling breath how much he loved me, watched the light fade from his eyes moments after his chest fell for the final time, felt the burning in my eyes and the tears streaming down my cheeks.

“Snow?”

I turned around and looked into Florian's shadowed face. “The last time I was in this room...” I closed my eyes and just breathed through my nose.

“You never grieved for him, did you?” It was more of a statement.

“Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe I don't know how. Or I didn't have the time after that, after Stepmother put me to work.”

He nodded. “Let's shed some light on the subject, shall we?”

I nodded and he walked to one of the heavy draperies that still hung shut over every window, and hauled one pair of them open. Sunlight spilled into the room, scattering through thousands of motes of newly-disturbed dust. I waited until he'd opened the other draperies as well, and pulled the stiff panes open.

“Right,” he said, “those diaries of his.” He walked over to a small set of shelves mounted to the wall. Only a dozen or so codices occupied the space, the rest taken up with miscellaneous trinkets given to him by various dignitaries over the years, some of them I knew to be in exchange for my hand in marriage. I still bristled at the very idea that I could be bought like a war horse.

“Oh, he wouldn't leave them in plain sight. Not where my stepmother could find them.”

Florian cocked his head. “He wouldn't? Didn't he trust your stepmother?”

“Are you joking? Nobody trusted her!”

“Then why did he marry her?”

I rolled my eyes. “Politics, of course. No, no. He kept not only his thoughts and reflections in there, but also state secrets. Matters he entrusted only to me.”

“You? Weren't you but a child then?”

I snorted. “Of course I was. And if he only trusted a child with state secrets, that should tell you something about the trustworthiness of everyone else he knew.”

“Or he was interested in cultivating plausible deniability and compartmentalization.”

I blinked at him. “I'm afraid my statecraft education was cut short.”

Florian explained both terms briefly.

“I see,” I said pensively. “Do you think an army could breach this castle?”

He let out a snort of derision. Then, “Apologies. You, er, haven't seen many other castles, I take it.”

“None,” I said.

“Granted, I would not want to be one of the first soldiers ordered to storm this place. But give it a month or two?”

“A month!”

“I take it your warcraft education was likewise abbreviated.”

“Very,” I glowered. I picked an obscurely abstract object from a shelf, all angles and circles.

“What's that?” he asked.

“A key,” I said. “A key to a key. Or, more accurately, a key to a key to a key to a...well, you get the idea.”

I took two steps across the room and paused. “Erm...no offense, but you probably shouldn't see any more.”

Florian looked at me quizzically. “Why? Aren't we to be married?”

“We aren't married yet. Besides, there's the matter of that plausible deniability and compartmentalization you just told me about. And I swore an oath to Papa.”

Florian sighed through his nose and shook his head. “This is a mistake,” he said as he turned around.

“Out of the room, please,” I said.

He grumbled something under his breath, but stepped outside and pretended to gaze out the window through the opposite wall.

I watched him for a few moments before crossing to the opposite wall and inserted the key into one of several bits of plaster molding beside the fireplace. It took me several tries to line it up properly. Even then, I had to practically hang on it with all my weight. My shoes slid forward and I nearly tumbled onto the floor.

I muttered something that should have earned me a severe scolding and kicked off the offending footwear. I tried again. This time, a section of molding pivoted unwillingly away from the wall. I reached inside and removed another object, an ivory pipe carved in the shape of two elephants mating.

I blushed furiously and padded swiftly back across the room to where a large candlestick sat on a table. Each of its faces displayed in bas relief the same motif of two mating elephants. Did the creatures truly look like that? Or had they been contrived in the mists of antiquity? Papa had once assured me of their veracity. I still harbored my doubts.

I slid the pipe into one of the faces and twisted. The whole disk turned a fraction of an arc and clicked. I twisted the other way until it clicked again. Back and forth, back and forth, a good half-dozen times before it practically came out in my hand. Its back side was a confusing arrangement of pins, rods, gears, and disks. Bleeding-edge mechanicals, Papa had told me.

I carried the whole thing to the sturdy, intricately-carved table where Papa had frequently sat. I crawled underneath and slid the metal assembly into a recess and turned it several ways from Sunday. A panel slid open. I took it, turned it around, twisted another knob...on and on, back and forth, from one side of the room to the other, back to the desk several times, until I felt sure to fall over from dizziness.

“What on earth are you doing in there?” Florian inquired.

“It's quite complicated, I assure you,” I said.

“Are you sure your stepmother didn't find it already?”

“If she did, I'll be impressed. Not that I'd put it past her, you understand. She's...was...quite conniving, you know.”

“So I've heard.”

At long last, a panel in a bookcase slid open and I pulled out several codices, each identified on its spine. I set them on a small wooden table beside the bed and began to flip through the pages. After what felt like forever but was probably only a few minutes, I found what I'd been looking for.

I blinked. “Really?” I said. “Really!? Oh, you have got to be jesting with me!”

“Snow?” said Florian from the corridor.

I let out a near-growl. “We have a problem,” I said. I closed the book, returned it and the others to their place, and began the laborious task of reversing the keys-of-keys procedure. At last, I scooped up my shoes and padded out of the room.

Florian looked at me, the light behind him haloing his hair. Goodness, he looked gorgeous like that. Before I could stop myself, I grabbed him and kissed him.

At length, I pulled breathlessly away. “We have a problem,” I said again.

He blinked. “Er...what sort of problem.”

“Papa's list of Regents.”

“List?”

“In case one died, or became otherwise indisposed.”

“I see. And the problem is...?”

“All other things being equal, that half his choices are...were...appalling.”

“Were?”

“They're all dead or indisposed,” I said flatly. “Or, in a few cases, disposed of.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

I looked at him. “Scullery maids overhear everything. And I do mean, everything.”

“Are you absolutely certain your stepmother didn't have a regent in mind?”

I leaned against the wall and clacked my shoes against it a few times. “Not...completely,” I said at length. “She did try to kill me. Twice. That I know of. The second time, she succeeded.”

“Surely you overheard...something.”

“Not when I was near. Nor has anyone else said anything. Of course, everyone was absolutely terrified of her. Even so,” I shook my head. “No, she was always a very private person, even before Papa died.”

“Did she write anything down?”

I sighed. “I...I don't know.”

“Shall we find it?”

I chuckled.

“Something amuses you?”

“I must be the only princess in history trying to avoid taking power.”

“It doesn't look that way to me.”

“It doesn't?”

“Most of those people in your welcoming committee are afraid of you.”

“Afraid of me! Why, Florian, that's preposterous.”

“Is it? Snow, they think you're going to be just like your stepmother.”

“What? Whyever would they think that?”

“You tell me. How well do you know them?”

“Like aunts or uncles. Siblings I never had, a few of them. I daresay half of them watched me grow up. We were like family!”

He sighed. “I didn't mean to offend you. I apologize. But that's what I saw.”

I exhaled heavily. “No, you're probably right. My stepmother ordered each and every one of them not to speak to me except as it directly pertained to my duties, under penalty of death. A few disobeyed. Half of them I never saw again.”

“That's family?”

“Is it not?”

He shook his head. “If that's family, I would not look forward to meeting your enemies. Now, I suppose we should go in search of whatever your stepmother may have written down.”

“I suppose so. Though I don't suppose I shall like it overly much.”

I led the way back down the spiral stair to the entry hall. The sunlight had shifted somewhat in the time we'd been upstairs and one of the rectangles spilled across part of our white lynx on green.

“Your Highness?”

I stopped in my tracks and took in the frightened face of a young woman perhaps a few years older than myself. “Yes?” I said at length.

She curtsied low. “Gertrude, your Highness. I was to be your maid-in-waiting. His lordship instructed me to wait here for you.”

“Oh. I see,” I said, although I wasn't sure I did. “Then what?” I asked.

“Erm,” she havered. “I...I'm afraid I don't quite understand your meaning.”

“Oh. Eh...what were his lordship's instructions for after you had finished waiting for me?”

She blinked at me as though I had suddenly grown a third eye upon my brow.

Florian cleared his throat. “If I may?” he said. We both looked at him and he continued. “I believe, if I am not mistaken, that Fraulein Gertrude is to accompany you.”

“Accompany me? Where? And to what purpose?”

“Everywhere and for whatever you need, of course.”

I frowned at Florian, and then at Gertrude. “It would seem that taking my rightful place as queen is going to be a fair bit more complicated than I thought.”

“You didn't,” Florian began. “Ehem...how much attention did you pay to those statecraft talks by your father?”

“How does having a maid-in-waiting relate to statecraft?”

Florian sighed through his nose. “I think this might be a topic for discussion over supper.”

I nodded. “If you say so.” I resumed my tramping across the entry hall and pushed open the double doors to the Great Hall. The barrel hinges creaked audibly.

Inside, more sunlight spilled through tall and high windows and flooded a polished plank floor relieved of the trestle tables that periodically occupied it during feats. At the far end of the room stood a dais and on that, my late stepmother's peacock throne.

“By Mitra, that thing is hideous,” I said as we drew nearer.

“Oh, I don't know,” said Florian pensively, “I think it projects a certain...what is that word...”

“Narcissism?” Gertrude offered.

“Not...quite what I had in mind,” he said.

“Although,” I said pensively, “you're not wrong, Fraulein. My stepmother was nothing if not vain. Among other things, of course. Still, I should like to commission a replacement for this.”

“Perhaps something less...bright?” Gertrude suggested.

“Less birdy?” said Florian.

I considered the gaudy monstrosity for several moments. “It needs more cats,” I declared.

“A lion throne?” Florian suggested.

“Lynx,” I said.

I led the way through another door, and up another spiral stair, this one ending not at a corridor, but at a modest antechamber some half-dozen paces wide and tiled with small squares of alabaster arranged in a sort of spiral pattern. The door on its far side was also locked. I snorted and went to work on it as I had on my father's. At length, the door swung open into a near-darkness cut only by the light filtering through the arrow slit in the stair behind us.

I crossed to one window and threw open a pair of scarlet draperies. Through the glazing, I had a clear view of the outer cloister garden far below, and the well where Florian had surprised me that day. I let out a pensive sound.

“Snow?” said Florian.

“It makes sense now,” I said. “Stepmother must have seen us the day we met.”

“And then arranged for the Huntsman to kill you,” Florian said.

I nodded. Behind me, heavy fabric rustled. I turned around to find Gertrude tying the draperies away from another window across the room. I directed my attention to a small table two paces to my left. On it sat a ceramic bird, two sheets of blank parchment, and an empty crystal wine glass bearing the deep purple remains of what I presumed to have been wine.

I picked up each object and gave it a cursory study before returning it to its place.

“What are we looking for, your Highness?” Gertrude asked.

“Anything my stepmother wrote,” I said.

“Do I want to know why?”

“By law,” I said, “I may not ascend the throne until I reach my majority. A Regent must rule in my place until then.”

“And if there is no Regent?”

I frowned. “Then my uncle Ragnar Haddingsson, Jarl of Langeland in the Southern Isles, assumes overlordship.”

“Jarl Ragnar?” said Gertrude. “He visited three months ago.”

I whirled around. “He did? And I wasn't told?”

“I...I'm sorry, your Highness,” she stammered.

“No, no. It's not your fault. I will, however, have words with Meister Hermann.”

Florian cleared his throat. “You, erm, haven't exactly given him or anyone else the opportunity to meet with you.”

“Ah. There is that, I suppose.” I sighed and resumed the search.

Some time--and a considerable amount of lifting, tipping, prodding, and tapping—later, I leaned against the door frame, tapping the heel of one of my shoes against the wood. “Well...bother,” I said at length.

“Indeed,” said Florian.

“Now what?” Gertrude asked.

“We look elsewhere,” I said.

Florian asked, “Would it be so bad if Ragnar were to run things for a little while?”

I frowned. “I don't know. Gertrude, what do you think?”

“M...me, your Highness?” she stammered.

“Ja, you. You've met the man. I only know of him by reputation. What do you think of him?”

“Uh...well...besides the rumors...which are only rumors, you see....er...”

“Gertrude,” said Snow, “please stop stammering. You were always a friend to me. You know I'm not my stepmother. So you know that I won't clap you in irons or anything.”

Gertrude exhaled heavily and nodded. She visibly collected herself and blurted, “The man is an ass, your Highness.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That...was not exactly the sort of assessment I was expecting.”

“He kept staring at my bosom, your Highness. If he were to take overlordship here, he would bed every unmarried woman in this place within a fortnight. And, I daresay, as many of the married ones as would.”

I frowned. “That's according to the rumor.”

“A reputation,” said Florian, “that precedes him, even in Thuringia.”

“I have met lecherous men before,” said Gertrude. “They always have a certain...air about them. His is as strong as them all.”

“If he's anything like his reputation...well, let's say that if he'd been alive to sack Medalen, he would have personally plowed his way across Angleland, as it were.”

I snorted. “Well, then, he can stay on his island,” I declared. “Florian, if you and I wed, then Weiberluchs and all its holdings transfer to Thuringia in general, and you in particular, ja?”

“That's my understanding, ja.”

I snorted again. “Bloody politics,” I grumbled.

“Are we finished looking, then?” Gertrude asked.

“No, not exactly,” I breathed. “If Stepmother left any written instructions, they will be legally binding. It would be highly awkward if such were to be discovered later. Best to find it now and get it all over with...whatever it is.”

“Did your father leave any other instructions?” Florian asked on the way back down.

“Nothing I noticed. For which I am grateful. Oh, he did have a few ideas about whom I could marry. But withstanding any formal agreements...let's say I'm grateful I won't have to try to wheedle my way out of that.

“As for Stepmother? As far as she knows, she killed me. Still, she must have a hidden lair somewhere.”

“But don't you know this place intimately?” Florian asked.

“Most of it. There are a few places I was never allowed to go. Oh, I did try, mind you. But without success. Now that I have, well, mostly-free run of the place, I intend to try again.”

At length, we emerged back into the throne room. I tried and failed to avoid looking too closely at the Peacock Throne. Instead, I stuck my tongue out at it on my way by. I paused, glared at it, raised one of my shoes, and held it like that until my arm began to shake. At length, I hurled it at the offending edifice with a half-shriek. I spun on the ball of a foot and stomped off down the hall.

I stopped a few paces outside the door, and just stood there, eyes closed, jaw clenched, bosom heaving. At length, I became aware of someone standing near me.

“Angry?” said Florian.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “What gave you that idea?” I glowered. Then, “I'm sorry, Florian. I just...I don't know. But...I have an idea.”

I turned back toward the hall. Gertrude stood a few paces away, holding my shoe in an outstretched hand.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.” I took the shoe and walked back into the hall.

“Snow?” said Florian.

I just walked, back to the base of the stair down which we'd just come. I stopped and peered.

“What are we doing?” he asked once more.

I tapped pensively at my chin. “I'll know it when I find it,” I said. I stepped into a darkened alcove that led behind the stair, an empty space perhaps half a dozen paces wide and half again as many deep. Several long stone slabs made up most of the floor and an old chair sat in one corner.

“Now what?” Florian asked.

“I find,” I said, “that if I just sit down and think...” I sat in the chair and leaned back. It pivoted on its back legs, one front pulling something up through a previously unseen gap in the floor. Something below made a loud CLUNK, and sections of the floor began to subside beneath Florian's feet.

He tottered first one way, then another, then toppled over, tumbling slowly head over heels as the floor resolved into a descending stair.

“...the solution presents itself!” I half-squealed.

I waited until the grinding, thumping, and yelping stopped. Silence reigned.

“Your Highness?” said Gertrude. “Did you kill him?”

“Oh, dear, I certainly hope not. Florian?” I called. “Florian!”

“Ow,” he replied, his voice distant.

Gertrude and I looked at each other, then back at the black hole at our feet. A coarse cry echoed up from far below.

“Florian!” I took a step downward.

Gertrude grasped my arm. “Your Highness,” she half-whispered, “you cannot see down there. Can you?”

I looked down to where the steps vanished into blackness.

“Snow?” came Florian's voice.

“I'm still here,” I called back.

“I...I think my leg is broken.”

“What?!”

“I said, I think my leg is broken.”

“Ja, ja, I heard you. Um...can you put any weight on it at all?”

“Not so much, no.”

“Bother,” I breathed. “I'm coming down.”

“No, don't. It's pitch dark down here.”

“Um...” I turned toward Gertrude. “Go get help.” She nodded and scurried off. “Gertrude has gone for help,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Stay there and talk to me?”

“Um...very well.” I paused. “How about I tell you a story?”

“Make it a short one.”

“Once upon a time, there was a man named Gilgamesh, who lived in the land of Persia. Of course, it wasn't called that at the time...”

I'd barely made it to the story's inciting incident, when Gertrude returned with several other members of the staff, three, guards, and a rather officious-looking man I only recognized in passing.

“Prince Florian fell down the stairs,” I told them. “He says he's broken his leg.”

“My word!” said two of the staff and the officious man in near-unison.

A flurry of activity began, and before I could have recited half the Pralaya of Manu, the guards and two of the staff had plunged into the darkness carrying two small lanterns produced from Mitra-knew-where and re-emerged all but carrying Florian.

He grimaced when he saw me.

“I am so sorry!” I gushed at him.

“No need,” he said through clenched jaw.

“Nonsense,” I said. “It's my fault you broke your leg.”

“It was an accident,” he insisted.

“But...”

“Snow,” he said, “it was an accident. No more, no less. Hold up,” he added to his assistants. “Snow, I...saw a few things down there in the lantern light. Impressions, mostly. Shadows of shadows. But enough that...” He breathed in, held it, then breathed out again. “Vlad, his hands crimson.”

My eyes widened. “She...she didn't!”

He nodded. “I strongly recommend...” He paused as a grimace washed across his face, though of pain or of horror, I couldn't tell. “...having a small work detail clean up the human remains.”

I felt the color drain from my face. “What...what else?”

“Tables...several codices...glass jars and bottles...possibly more.”

I nodded. “I want those things to remain untouched. I have to know what she was doing down there.”

“Are you sure you want to?”

I shook my head. “No. But I must.”

I turned to the officious man. “Take Prince Florian to the Chirurgeon. Then arrange a detail in accordance with his recommendation.” I swallowed and forged on. “Notify next of kin if you can find them. If you can't, bury the victims in the Field of the Unknown and have standard last rites performed. And if they follow other ways, I'm sure Mitra will sort it out.”

Florian placed a hand on my shoulder. “Snow,” he said softly, “you had nothing to do with any of this.”

I gazed into his eyes. “As if that matters,” I choked. “I am Queen now. As such, I bear the responsibility of cleaning up my stepmother's mess. Beginning with arranging decent burials for her victims. Which I'm sure will be small consolation for their survivors.”

After seeing to Florian, I retired to the chambers I'd occupied before Stepmother had so unceremoniously relegated me to a life of servitude. I paced the room several times, asked Gertrude to light a small pillar candle of beeswax infused with lavender and mint, then paced some more.

My bed looked far too small for me. Which I supposed to be no surprise, given that I'd barely passed my eleventh winter the last time I'd been allowed near it. A small table stood by the bed, a large chest by the wall, and a wardrobe against the opposite wall.

I tossed my shoes onto the bed and pulled open the wardrobe. I fingered the brocades, velvets, and silks inside, and grunted.

“Highness?”

“All too small,” I sighed. “Gertrude, we have some work to do, and what should be a generous amount of time to do it in. I mean to visit with both a cobbler, and a seamstress. In the meantime, please clean those shoes up and return them to whomever they were borrowed from. And this dress...” I fluffed the dirty, torn fabric. “...has seen much better days. Pieces of it should be good enough to repurpose. I'm going to want something a little more, er, workaday. And I am in desperate want of a good bathing. Let's go.”

I paused below the final step to my stepmother's erstwhile lair. Even through my new linen sleeves and soft leather ankle boots, the cold, damp air pricked at my skin. Despite the dozens of aromatic smudges smoldering about the room, foul odors hung in the air like tannery vapor. I coughed twice and swallowed hard.

Gertrude hovered beside and slightly behind me, a bit closer than I was sure was necessary. “It'll be alright,” I said to her. She let out a half-whimper in reply.

Torches burned in sconces along the wall spaced three arm-spans apart. Their glow bathed a cavernous space in flickering yellow-orange. Chains and shackles hung from the walls, some of them glinting in the light, others dull with rust and blood. Brown stained the floor and support columns.

A set of rough plank shelves stood against one wall. Bottles, jars, and flasks, some glass and some salt-fired stoneware, cluttered the shelves. A few steps from that, a large cauldron still mostly full of a thick and fetid liquid, sat supported by a trivet over the charred remains of a fire.

Several sturdy tables stood at the center of the space, both strewn with a wide variety of objects, some familiar, others I could only guess. On one lay a stained cloth and on that, well over a dozen metal objects lay in a neat row.

I picked up one of them, a rod with a cork-screw at one end, and peered at it, turning it one way and then another before returning it. I picked up another, a spatulate tool with a hollow at one end. I gingerly lay it back on the table and wiped my fingers on the cloth.

A gleaming silver bowl, strange symbols tooled into its rim, sat nearby. Beside that lay once-pale sponges dark with old blood, and beside those, a large dark stain.

“Your Highness,” Gertrude whispered, “what is all of this? Whatever is it for?”

“I don't know exactly,” I whispered back. “But whatever it was, it was very messy. You noticed all those dark stains?”

She nodded.

“That's blood.”

“Vlad, his hands crimson,” she said with shaky voice.

I nodded. She squeaked.

I shivered and stepped to the next table. Two large pillar candles of dark tallow stood in a pair of candlesticks decorated with twining organic patterns. Between them lay a large book open near the middle. I peered at it.

Across both pages spread strange illuminations like trees or flowers surrounded by flowing text, the likes of which I had never seen, even in my father's library.

Another book sat beside it. On its deep red leather cover was embossed a symbol like a five-pointed, interlaced star with some strange additions like small circles trailing in and out. I opened it to one of the first pages and read some of it aloud. “'That is not dead which can eternal lie.'” I grunted. “Nein,” I said to no one in particular, “that's not cryptic at all.”

Beside the book, on the center of a white silk cloth, lay a sturdy ring. I peered at it. At first glance, it seemed an ordinary ring of gold. Yet something about the color looked off, the hue warmer, with a distinctive reddish cast, yet not that of copper or bronze. Markings appeared and disappeared, flickering at the edge of sight.

From somewhere just beyond consciousness, a faint voice stirred the corner of my mind. Along with it, the feeling of pounding blood, as though my own echoed in the chambers about me.

I stared at the ring for several long moments, each heartbeat reflected back at me tenfold. My hand reached slowly for it, as though of its own accord, as though drawn by some unseen force. I paused briefly, my fingers hovering above the metal. A moment later, my fingers touched its surprisingly warm surface.

That warmth spiked into an intense heat, as though a fire were pouring out of it, wreathing my arm in flame. The image of a great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame, flashed through my mind. A woman's triumphant laughter, deep and resonant, rose and echoed in my head.

Then the world tilted in several impossible directions at once. Everything went even darker than it already was and I slipped out of the world.

My eyes fluttered open on a searingly brilliant light. I slammed them shut again and groaned.

“Oh, thank Mitra,” said Gertrude's voice. “She's waking up.”

I turned my head and cracked my eyes open again. Gertrude stood there as though standing on a wall, one side light by bright sunlight. My sense of direction returned to me and I moved to sit up. She placed an arm about my shoulders and helped.

“Thank you,” I said. “What happened?”

“You picked up that ring and then fainted, your Highness.”

“Picked it up? I recall touching it. But...” I felt a heavy object in my hand. I opened my fist and stared at the ring. It still vibrated in my palm like a bumblebee, but the other effects had passed.

“You wouldn't let go of it either,” Gertrude added.

I stared at it for several moments before closing my fingers around it once more. “Florian?”

“In the garden, when last I looked. The Chirurgeon set and splinted his leg and gave him strict instruction to stay off of it. Of course, he ignored it.”

“How long was I...?”

“Three days, your Highness.”

I sat bolt upright. “Three days?!”

Gertrude nodded. “We were all quite worried. Especially Prince Florian. He paced...well, hobbled, really...back and forth in the Great Hall. Then in the outer cloister garden. He barely ate, and that only after the chirurgeon practically sat on him.”

I smiled. “How long have you been here with me?”

“The whole time, your Highness. Or...nearly so.”

My smile fell. “Gertrude, go get some rest. Have a meal. Take a walk. I'll be fine for a while.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. If anyone asks, refer them to me.”

“Yes, your Highness. Thank you, your Highness.” She curtsied and withdrew from the room.

“I thought she'd never leave,” said a familiar voice.

I jerked my head around and blinked. Before me stood a tall woman I was almost sure I'd never seen. A pair of intense green eyes blazed from a severely beautiful face. Dark, lustrous hair hung in twin plaits over her shoulders.

She wore a simple dress in the Nordic style. Between brightly-polished bronze broaches hung a festoon strung with amber, colorful glass beads, the ebony claws of what might have been bear, and a pair of boar's tusks. About her brow sat a silver circlet set with several rubies.

The recognition hit me like a brick. “S...stepmother?” I stammered.

“Who else?” she replied with that all-too-familiar voice.

“But...you...you're dead!” I blurted.

“Only mostly dead,” she corrected.

“Mostly dead? There's no such thing.”

“Ah, there's where you're wrong, dearie. There's sort-of-dead, mostly-dead, and all-dead. When you're sort-of-dead, which is what you were after eating that apple I gave you, there's hope. When you're all-dead, there's only one thing to be done.”

“Which is...?”

“Rifle through their purse and look for loose coin. But mostly-dead? Ah, that's somewhere in between. And here we are.”

“But how did you wind up being mostly-dead? The dwarfs told me you were struck by lightning and fell.”

“Yes, well.” She made to examine her fingernails for a few heartbeats. “Inconvenient, that,” she said at length.

“But how are you here?” I asked.

She pointed at the Ring. “That's how.”

I frowned. “I...I don't understand.”

“Of course you don't. You've passed but fifteen winters.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means, dearie, that you're young, inexperienced, and naïve. Especially when it comes to magic.”

I frowned. “Magic? There's no such...thing.” My voice trailed off, leaving the last word half-whispered. I stared off into the middle distance as my thoughts crashed over and around one another. At length, I whispered, “Scheisse.”

“That's one way of putting it,” my stepmother said.

My gaze drifted to her face, an ethereal eyebrow expectantly raised. I stood up and immediately regretted it. My vision swam, my legs wobbled, and I had to brace a hand on the wall to remain upright. I stood like that for a time, until I could be reasonably sure I wouldn't simply topple over again.

I cast a glance at my late stepmother. “You could do more than hover there, you know.”

“Such as...?”

I exhaled. “Such as, oh, I don't know, offering me a helping hand? Oh, wait, you wouldn't. Why? Because you tried to kill me. Twice!”

She shrugged slightly. “More than that, really.”

“Typical,” I snorted. “And now you have me alone, practically in your clutches. You're officially dead. No one would suspect you. Anyone would return to find me laying on the floor, or in this bed, and assume I'd experienced a relapse or a fit of, oh, I don't know, hysteria or something. So what are you waiting for?”

“I'm incorporeal, dearie.”

I snorted. “How convenient for you.”

She chuckled. “Not so convenient as you might think. Besides, as it happens, I need you alive.”

“Oh, really. For what?”

“Have you not guessed? My life is bound to yours.”

“You're lying.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Am I?”

“Ja!”

“Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I don't know, because you're evil?!”

“Now, now, Snow, you wound me.”

I snorted. “Hardly.”

“Be that as it may, you're stuck with me.”

“How do I get rid of you?”

“Get rid of me?” She laughed. “Oh, dearie, that's not so easily done. Nein, on second thought, it is.”

I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “Enlighten me,” I said flatly.

“Nothing terribly convoluted. Just...death.”

Both eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?”

“You have to die to be rid of me. Or, rather, ridding yourself of me will kill you. But that's very much the same, isn't it?”

I considered that for a few moments. “Hardly.”

She shrugged. “Have it your way. Notwithstanding, you must choose. Oh, but choose wisely.”

I let the words hang in the air far longer than I thought necessary.

“And?”

“I'm thinking,” I said.

“Me or death. Death or me. Me, me, me, me-me me-me-me....”

“Shut it. There has to be another way.”

The door opened and Gertrude buttled in. “You're Highness,” she began, “I'm afraid I forgot...oh!”

“Gertrude! It's not what it looks like.”

She looked at me as though I'd grown a third eye. “You aren't feeling well enough to be up and about?”

“What? Oh...better enough, I suppose. I meant her.” I nodded toward Grimhilde.

Gertrude looked in that direction and then back at me. “Who?”

“Grimhilde.”

“The late queen? Your Highness, whatever are you going on about?”

I gestured toward Grimhilde. “Don't you...oh, dear.” I looked at Grimhilde. “She can't see you, can she?”

Grimhilde grinned.

Gertrude frowned. “Are you sure you haven't taken a bump to the head?”

“No, I'm not sure. I must be going mad. Yes, that's it. This is what going mad feels like.”

“I won't tell if you don't,” said Gertrude.

I blinked. “But...”

“Your Highness, if you be mad, then it surely must be the very best kind of madness.”

“I don't understand.”

“Your late stepmother was a monster. That's putting it lightly. But you? There is not a man, woman, or child in all of Valtland who would not overlook a bit of madness. Well...perhaps a few. But only the ones with aspirations of power.”

“Gertrude,” I said, “that describes every last member of every ruling family in all of Valtland. Except for Florian,” I added swiftly. I glanced at Grimhilde, one ethereal hand on an ethereal hip, and back to Gertrude. “What was it you forgot?”

“Oh. Would like breakfast?”

“Oh, Mitra! Breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses...”

She nodded and turned to go.

“Gertrude?”

She stopped and turned back to me. “Highness?”

“Arrange for that meal to go, please. And then have a pair of horses saddled.” I padded over to my chest, pulled out a fine silver chain, fixed a larks-head knot about the Ring, and slipped it over my head. “We're making a house call.”

Gertrude and I reined in a pair of dappled grey mares a stone's throw from a small cottage I hadn't seen in what felt like a week. Faint white smoke curled from its chimney. Late afternoon sun cast one side of the little building in sharp shadow and lanced streamers through the rising smoke.

I dismounted and nearly stumbled. Only a quick grip on the saddlery saved me from a particularly ungraceful spill. Gertrude slipped off her own horse with practiced ease.

I smiled at her. “Show-off,” I said.

“Highness?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Snow,” she corrected.

A glimmer of motion in my peripheral vision half-materialized into Grimhilde. “You were right,” she said. “You're quite mad.”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“I'm bound to you, remember?”

“Oh, joy,” I glowered. I pulled off a pair of saddlebags laden with codices from Grimhilde's lair and from Father's library, and a few odds and ends from the lair.

“You're wasting your time,” she said.

I rounded on her. “You weren't very forthcoming when I was rounding this up. No,” I corrected myself, “you weren't forthcoming at all. You were unhelpfully cryptic or outright stonewalled me at every turn. Since I can't very well pump you for information, I have to turn somewhere. Now, if you don't mind, and even if you do, I have work to do.”

I spun on the ball of a foot and stalked across the two dozen paces to the front door and knocked. After a moment, I called, “Doc? Grumpy? Bashful? Anyone home?”

“What terrible names,” Grimhilde muttered.

“Shut up,” I grumbled to her.

“Snow,” said Gertrude, “that is...a little disconcerting.”

I sighed. “You have no idea.”

Moments later, the door opened. Doc stood there, beaming up at me. “Snow?” he said. “Snow! Well, I'll be. Come in, come in.”

He stood aside and I ducked under the lintel, Gertrude on my heels.

“Who's your companion?” he asked.

“Doc, this is Gertrude, my maid-in-waiting.”

He doffed his hat. “Delighted, my dears,” he said.

“What,” said Grimhilde, “you're not going to introduce me?”

I rolled my eyes and nudged the door closed with a foot.

Doc motioned to the dining table. “Please, please, pull up a chair. Are you hungry? You must be. I just made up a batch of stew. Not as good as yours, my dear Snow. But it should warm you.”

He pulled a pair of stoneware bowls from the table and began spooning into them the contents of a large earthenware cookpot still simmering over a small fire in the hearth.

Meanwhile, I eyed the table. Miscellaneous objects once again cluttered its surface, though not nearly so egregiously as when I'd cleaned it off during my previous visit. A few wooden bowls sat stacked up, and beside them, a couple of tankards, one laying on its side. Near that, a quarter-loaf of coarse bread lay on a rough cutting board. At the head of the table sat another tankard above which buzzed a few fruit flies.

Doc waved at a small cask sitting on a small trestle table in the corner. “Mead?” he said.

Gertrude looked at me. I nodded.

She drew a quarter tankard for each of us, handed one to me, righted one of the small chairs and sank onto it until she nearly kneed herself in the chin. She took a sip of her mead and smiled.

Doc spooned some soup into a third bowl and stalked to the table. “Won't you sit down, dear?” he said to me.

“Oh, no,” I said. “We have ridden out from Sternberg and...” I winced. “...I'm afraid it has been far too long since I've sat a horse.”

“Mm,” he said. “Dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle, eh?”

“You could say that, ja.” I took a sip of my mead. “Oh! This is delicious! It has a fruity tang to it.”

“I added lingonberries to the mash,” he said.

“Lingonberries? Wherever did you get them?”

“Trading in Bremerhaven,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Dopey knows a bloke who knows a bloke who...well, you get the idea.”

“Dopey?”

Doc chuckled. “Best haggler in all of Valtland, my dear. Possibly the best between here and the western end of the Silk Road. Of course, you'd never know it just looking a him. But then that's why he's so good at it, hm? No one expects him!”

Grimhilde said, “No one expects the Iberian Inquisition, either.”

“No one asked you,” I muttered.

“Sorry?” said Doc.

“It's complicated,” I said.

He took a pull of his mead and said, “I don't doubt it.”

As I reached for the bread, Doc asked, “Have you washed?”

I stopped and eyed him. “Ja,” I said at length.

“When?” he prodded.

I raised an eyebrow. “Recently.”

We both laughed and I tore a small piece off the bread, dipped it into the soup and took a bite. “Oh!” I said once I'd swallowed. “What's in it?”

“Rosemary, sage, thyme, saffron, and turmeric. Turnips, kale, garlic, and truffles. And the boar that very nearly killed Sneezy last week.”

“Goodness!” I exclaimed. “Was he hurt?”

“Only his pride. Would have been, if he hadn't slipped on a bed of moss covering what turned out to be a particularly nice truffle colony.”

“I'm terribly sorry,” said Gertrude, “and if you don't mind my asking, sir, I recall her...Snow...mentioning that you, um, stammer.”

“Mm.” Doc gestured to his mead. “Mental lubrication,” he said.

“In other words,” said Gertrude, “you drink and you know things.”

Doc let out a hearty belly laugh.

“I have it on good authority,” I said, “that far more harm than good comes of too much lubrication, as you put it.”

“Too true, too true.” He sat down and propped his elbows on the table. “And now, I sense that you traveled all this way for more than a social call.”

I sighed. “I'm afraid so. I'm in a spot of trouble. One that involves my late stepmother.”

What remained of Doc's laughter subsided. “Again? But she perished.”

I cast a glance at Grimhilde. “Not...completely.”

He cocked his head. “I've always thought death was an all-or-nothing sort of a thing.”

“It's apparently more complicated than that.”

“I see,” he said pensively.

“You'll never get anywhere with him,” Grimhilde said. “He doesn't know enough. Or drink enough.”

I shot her a look and returned my attention to Doc.

“You keep looking aside,” he said. “At what?”

I sighed. “It would seem that her ghost is haunting me.”

Doc cocked an eyebrow. “No offense meant, of course, but are you sure that long sleep of yours hasn't clouded your mind? You aren't going mad, are you?”

I groaned. “That's a distinct possibility.”

I briefly recounted my experience in Grimhilde's lair. I pulled the chain bearing the Ring from beneath my bodice. It dangled there, glinting in the sunlight spilling through the small window near the table. “Through this, apparently.”

Doc gasped.

“She says the only way to sever our bond is for me to die. Assuming, of course, that she isn't lying to me.”

“She would do that, wouldn't she? But of course, that's the thing about lies. The more of them one tells, the more one has to cover for them, and the more lies one has to make up about that, and so on. No, Grimhilde was always far too crafty to tell many lies.”

“I told you so,” Grimhilde said.

“But what,” said Gertrude, “is that? Besides the obvious, I mean.”

Doc sipped his mead and said, “One of the most dangerous objects known to mankind.”

“That isn't very reassuring,” I said.

“You say your stepmother had it?”

I nodded. “And she won't tell me how she came by it, nor anything about its role in her haunting of me. But I may have found some clues in these.”

I pulled the codices from my saddlebags and laid them carefully on the table.

“This one,” I said, indicating the heavy volume covered with battered undyed leather, “she said she acquired from a Khazar named Voynich. This one,” I added, indicating the one with the cryptic interlaced star, “well, she wouldn't tell me. It just says, 'The Howling' on the frontispiece. She won't tell me about its provenance.”

Doc sucked in a breath.

“You know these?” I asked.

“I know of them,” he said. “That one in particular, 'The Howling,' you called it, it's also known as the Book of the Laws of the Dead. And they may be even more dangerous than that Ring.”

I frowned and turned to a random page in the Voynich manuscript. “'A skwartigbeest for all and to none its bite,'” I read aloud.

I turned to one of the first pages in Book of the Dead. “'That is not dead which can eternal lie,'” I read aloud.

“All quite cryptic,” I said. “And both volumes are full of that. Well, more or less. Some of the illustrations are strange, horrific, or both.”

Doc peered at the parchment and frowned. “I thought you were kept subservient all your life.”

“I was. Why?”

“Who taught you to read?”

“No one.”

“You taught yourself? Impressive.”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

Doc raised an eyebrow. “Then how do you know what that says?”

I shrugged. “I don't know, I just look at it, and understand what it means.”

Doc rubbed his chin pensively. “Fascinating.”

He pulled out a wax tablet, scrawled something on it and showed it to me. On it, he'd written three lines of text, each differing markedly in appearance. “What do these say?” he asked.

“Cat...cat...cat,” I said. “I...don't understand.”

“The top is Old Norse written in the Elder Futhark. The middle, Greek. The bottom, Latin.”

Doc scribbled briefly and again showed me the tablet. Below the three lines, he'd written three characters. I peered at them and blinked. “What is that?” I asked at length.

“Letters, of course.”

“If you say so.”

Doc hmmmed. “How long have you been able to, as you put it, look at writing and simply know what it means?”

“As long as I can remember. But what does it have to do with these codices?”

“The Howling was penned in Old Arabic by Alhazred. The Voynich manuscript...hard to say. But the writing looks to be in Ancient Brythunian.”

“Brythunia? But...that was back before the Great Cataclysm shattered Hyborea and rent it asunder. How did this survive?”

“That's another great mystery.”

“I gather that Grimhilde managed to interpret some of this. At least, she's implied it. How else did she know how to bind her spirit to the Ring, and thence to me?”

Doc took a long pull from his mead, swished it around his mouth a few times, and swallowed before saying, “I'm sorry, my dear. This is far beyond my ken.”

“But surely you must know someone who might.”

Doc rubbed his chin pensively. “Der Walpurgisnacht is three days hence.”

“Der Walpurgisnacht?” I said.

“Mm. Der Walpurgisnacht. In the shadow of the Brocken.”

“The Brocken? Why, that's in the Harz Mountains, on the other side of the Dark Forest!”

“So it is.”

“And it will take me three days to travel there.”

“Be that as it may, that's where you might find more answers.”

I pulled a piece of pork from the soup and chewed it while I gathered my thoughts. “Gertrude,” I said at length, “please ride back to Sternberg and tell Florian I'll be home in a week.”

“Snow?”

“Please?”

“The hour grows late,” said Doc. “Do consider staying the night.”

“Oh, no,” I said, “we couldn't possibly.”

“Nonsense. The others won't be back for days.”

“Oh?”

“They're trading in Bremerhaven. Poor Bashful hasn't seen his wife in far too long.”

I blinked. “Wife? He has a wife?”

Doc chuckled. “Most of us do. A miner's life imposes certain inconvenient social realities.”

“Indeed,” I said.

Across the room, Grimhilde paced around the other side of the table, singing softly.

Red, the blood of angry men
Black, the dark of ages past
Red, the color of desire
Black, the color of despair!

I groaned. Doc raised an eyebrow. “She's...singing,” I said.

“Oh?”

“You don't want to know.” I sighed. “Very well. I suppose it won't hurt to have a fresh start upon the road tomorrow. Same arrangement as last time?”

Doc nodded.

“Gertrude,” I said, “would you please see to the horses?”

She nodded. “Of course.” She stood up and let herself out.

Doc stood up and padded over to a corner where a large cabinet stood against the wall. He pulled a key from somewhere I couldn't see and worked the lock. At length, the door opened, he pulled something out, and returned to the table.

He dropped two leather sacks, one black and one undyed, onto the table with a pair of tinkling clunks. “Those should buy you whatever you need.”

I undid the rawhide drawstring on one and shook several uncut jewels into my palm.

“Those are some of the flawed ones, I'm afraid,” he said. “But anyone with an eye for it should see their value anyhow. The others are flawless.”

I hefted the remainder of the bag and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I'm only going to the Brocken,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Well...ja.”

“I'm not. Not sure at all.” He laid two other objects onto the table. On each of a pair of sturdy leather belts hung a stiff leather scabbard, one three hand-breadths in length, the other that of my arm.

“Your father wanted you to have these when you were old enough, but your stepmother would never have allowed it.”

I grasped the longer one by its leather-wrapped hilt and pulled. A gleaming kriegsmesser slid from its sheath with a dull ring. The patterns flowed along the blade like water rippling on a pond. “It's beautiful!” I gushed.

“Damned straight I would never have allowed it,” said Grimhilde.

I glared at her and returned my attention to Doc. I swung the blade around in several arcs.

“Oh, my dear and fluffy Lord,” Grimhilde groaned.

“What?” I demanded.

“You're going to take someone's head off doing that, and not intentionally.”

I eyed her, then asked Doc, “Is it sharp?”

He chuckled. “Oh, my, ja. These blades, they will most certainly cut.”

I peered at the blade and the way the firelight danced off the Damascene patterns, then slid it back into its scabbard. I pulled the knife and examined the similar patterning. I dragged my thumb sideways across the edge before resheathing it.

“I wish I knew more about bladesmanship,” I said. “That is,” I added, “more than what I've seen in Father's library.”

Doc grunted assent. “Alas, we shan't have much time for that.”

“Alas,” I echoed. “But thank you. I shall keep watch for a teacher, shall I?”

“Well, then,” he said with a smile. “If I'm not mistaken...” He paused to take a long sniff. “...the cherry strudel should be nearly finished. Once Fraulein Gertrude has returned, shall we have some?”

“Oh, ja, please! That would be marvelous.”

Lowland forest drifted by, the leaves of beech, chestnut, ash, elm, hawthorn, and birch soughing overhead, their trunks of grey, brown, and white rising like often-mossy columns from the forest floor. Forget-me-nots, arnica, lady's mantel, lily-of-the-valley, and soapwort among others peppered the ground.

The way before me wound rutted and sometimes muddy a stone's throw from the riverbank. The sun rose inexorably along its arc, the shadows and filtered light ever-shifting. Through the occasional gap in the trees lining the river, fields and crofts spread out across the upland. Sheep and kine grazed in some, others yellowing with ripening wheat and barley.

I cast a glance to my left, where Grimhilde's ghost pretended to walk apace with my horse. “I can feel you judging me,” I said at length.

“Oh, can you, now?”

“Ja. I can.”

“You're journeying with the intent to discover how to finish killing me,” she pointed. “How many times do I have to tell you that it won't work?”

“At least once more,” I said.

“It won't work,” she said.

“We'll see about that,” I snorted.

“Me, me, me, me-me, me-me, me....” she half-sang.

I rolled my eyes and returned my attention to road before me. I passed first one fork, and then another, where less-traveled paths led to steadings or the occasional village. After a while, all signs of civilization drifted behind me as the road bent to begin its climb into the hills.

As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, I nudged my horse off the road, through several score paces of open forest, and into a small grassy clearing perhaps two score by five score paces. I wasted little time relieving her of saddle and tack, brushing and rubbing her down, then putting her to graze.

I blew air out through my lips. “Why, oh why, did I decide to do this myself?”

“I don't know, dearie,” said Grimhilde, “why did you? And stop whining.”

I glared at her. “That was rhetorical,” I grumbled. “And I wasn't whining,” I added.

“You're in a fine mood.”

“I'm being tormented by my arch enemy.”

“Tormented? Psh. I doubt you know a thing about true torment.”

“I suppose you would know.” I turned away and went about preparing a cold supper of bread, hard cheese, and a few prunes.

As I ate, I read a couple of pages from the Voynich manuscript, the Howling, and a couple of substantially smaller volumes I'd brought from the library. When I could no longer see, I spread a woolen blanket about myself and bedded down on a layer of moss with the saddle as a pillow and sought sleep.

With the last light, a song flitted through my mind.

In the middle of the forest
There's a clearing by a stream
Where a mother holds her newborn
And the child begins to dream....

The sun hung high, just before its zenith. The road with its promise of an inn with a soft bed and a warm meal lay far behind me. The broad-leaved trees had thickened, then thinned, then given way to an unending march of pines and a featureless carpet of needles punctuated only by a few clumpy understory plants with no visible flowers. I had only the slope of the land to guide me onward and subtly upward.

“At this pace,” I said, “I should reach the Brochen well ahead of der Walpurgisnacht.”

“At this pace,” said Grimhilde, “we should reach the Brochen.”

“Ja, ja, we,” I conceded.

The horse plodded along, hooves crunching on the beds of needles. The scent of pine sap filled the air. From somewhere deep in the forest came the intermittent hammering of a woodpecker. Now and then, a jay squawked as it flitted through the trees in a flurry of grey and blue.

I paused for luncheon of more bread, cheese, and prunes, and hung an oat sack for the horse. I sat against a tree working my way through the Howling codex until the sun slipped far enough past zenith that I could navigate.

“Have you learned anything from that?” Grimhilde asked after a while.

I cast her a considering glance. “You had this in your possession for...how long?”

“Long enough.”

“Mm-hm. Long enough for what?”

“My, aren't we curious?”

I leaned my head back against the tree for several long moments before closing the codex and crawling to my feet. “If you had directed half as much effort toward deciphering these codices as you did toward plotting my demise, I daresay you would know them backward and forward, inside and out.”

“Who says I don't?”

“Because you practically hover over my shoulder every time I open one of these.”

“Dearie, I hover over your shoulder anyway.”

I rolled my eyes while I mounted my horse.

“Terrific,” I said as I nudged her into motion once more.

Half the sun's disk still hung over the shoulder of Bocksberg, perhaps a half day's ride west of the Brocken. I considered the kindling I'd prepared, a wad of dry lichen pierced with dozens of pine-wood shavings and small twigs, sewn around with pine needles, and tied on with a woven cord of grass and more pine needles until a blob of tinder as thick as my wrist and twice the breadth of my palm clung to a stick the size of my finger.

I held it up into the waning sunlight with one hand, held the thumb and forefinger of the other on either side of it, and focused, feeling for it with my mind. The sunward side felt much warmer than the shadowed side. I twirled the stick slowly back and forth, spreading the sun's warmth around all sides and forcing it inward with my mind. It flowed along edges, through the drier bits, the damper bits like dark voids in my mind's eye.

I collected the heat near my tingling fingertips. The air between them began to hum, then glow slightly, dull red at first. I resisted the urge to pull my hand away. That kind of mistake one only makes once, and I'd made it on the day I'd first learned to kindle fire. I'd spent a week gripping everything between three fingers and my palm, all while waiting impatiently for the blisters on my thumb and forefinger to heal.

Instead, I pushed. The dull red brightened from rust to blood-red to the hue of a poppy before brightening even more through madder and saffron. I shoved. The air wrapped itself around the tinder with fine tendrils like spider's webbing. For a moment, I recognized the fiery eye I'd seen in Grimhilde's lair, and for that moment the air-fire pushed back against me. A heartbeat later, flame erupted deep within the tinder and flared outward.

I released my fingers, but not without singing the hairs on my middle finger, leaving the fire to lap lazily about the stick. I cupped my palm around the globe of flame and quickly knelt down and held it against the small pile of kindling I'd prepared, and gently blew.

The fire licked the pine shavings and the twigs. They smoldered at first, then glowed and caught fire. I added a few more smaller sticks, which likewise caught, the original tinder wad long since consumed. By the time the sun had completely slipped over the hill behind, a small fire blazed on the small clearing I'd made.

“There,” I said, “that should do it.”

“Do what, exactly?” Grimhilde asked.

I sighed through my nose. “Warm my hands and ward off the wolves, of course.”

“What wolves?”

I rolled my eyes in the falling twilight. “The ones who would very much like to make a meal out of me.”

“Oh, I wouldn't worry so much about that if I were you.”

“That's easy for you to say. You're dead!”

“Only mostly dead.”

“Details.”

“An important one, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Ja, well, the devil is in the details as well.”

“Snow, I'm hurt.”

“If you're hurt, I'm the Queen of Kashmir!”

“Are you really?”

I snorted in reply. “Do you know the first thing about wolves?”

“The first thing, the last thing, and most of the other things in between.”

“Of course you do,” I said dubiously.

“You don't believe me.”

“Of course I don't,” I snapped. “You tried to kill me. Twice. The second time, you succeeded.”

“Must you bring that up so often?”

“It happens to be relevant so often.”

She leaned toward me, her figure still emitting an subtle ethereal glow in the falling darkness. “In case it's escaped your notice, dearie, it's in my best interest to keep you alive. So if I say you need not concern yourself about wolves, then you need not concern yourself about wolves.”

I lay another couple of sticks into the fire, and then one the size of my wrist atop those. I waited until they caught, then leaned back against the rock behind me, my knees against my chest. I exhaled heavily, my breath coming out in a faint plume.

“That's still easy for you to say,” I glowered. “You can't die and you don't sleep.”

“But you can and you do.”

“So says Dowager Queen Obvious.”

Grimhilde snorted.

I glanced at the horse. She stood a dozen paces away, eyes glinting in the firelight. “What do you think?” I asked her.

She looked at me, blew air through her lips, then went back to staring out into the darkening forest.

“Which means what, exactly?” I asked. Then, “Ah, right. You don't particularly care. You're a horse.”

I spent a fair bit of time feeding sticks into the fire and tumbling thoughts over and around one another in my mind. The very last of the twilight's indigo faded from the sky, plunging the world outside the fire's soft glow into total darkness.

A long, lonely howl rose up somewhere far off in the forest. Another echoed it. Then another, and another. A chill ran down my spine, thought better of it, and ran back up.

I eyed my late stepmother. “You said there weren't any wolves.”

“I said you didn't have to worry about them,” she corrected.

“And now?”

“You still don't.”

I gestured in the general direction of the howling. “Oh, really?”

“You're here. They're over there.”

“That isn't very reassuring.”

The horse nickered and fidgeted, hooves thumping against the rocky ground.

“She doesn't sound very reassured either.” I placed the end of a branch the size of my arm into the fire.

A short while later, the wolves howled again. “Is it my imagination, or are they a lot closer now?” I asked.

“It's not your imagination,” Grimhilde said.

I stared at her.

“They may just pass us by,” she added.

“Pass us by? Pass us by?! And what if they don't pass us by?”

“That would complicate matters.”

“You don't say.”

Some time later, the howling sounded again, even closer than before. I gasped.

“You could run,” Grimhilde suggested.

“I have a rock at my back, a fire before me, and a sword at my side. I give up the first two by running.”

At length, a pair of shining spots appeared in the trees. Another joined it. And another...and another...until a half-dozen pair of pale yellow orbs hovered a few score paces from me. Ever so slowly, they advanced. At length, around each pair of orbs a dish-shaped face materialized in the firelight. At each center protruded a dark snout below which a pale swath spread outward and downward. A pair of similar pale patches marked their ears.

My pulse rose with the rest of me. The horse whinnied and my sword rasped against its scabbard. One by one and step by step, the wolves padded out from between the trees. They eyed both me and the horse in turn. She nickered again.

“Go away!” I shouted. “Shoo! Shoo!” I made large shooing motions with my arms.

One of the wolves snorted. The horse snorted in return. I knelt down, snatched up a stout stick from the fire, and thrust it toward the nearest wolf. “I said, go!”

The wolves continued to advance.

“What do I do?” I asked Grimhilde.

“Besides not die?”

I cast her a look.

“Fight them, of course.”

“What?!” I blurted.

“And by that, I mean, not die.”

“Imagine that,” I said sarcastically.

I shoved my firebrand and sword again at the nearest wolf. It shrank back, but renewed its advance a moment later. I repeated, with the same results.

“You're going to have to do that like you mean it, dearie,” said Grimhilde.

“I am doing it like I mean it!” I punctuated it with another ineffective thrust toward a wolf. It stepped aside, snapped at the stick behind where it burned, teeth clicking together, and stepped back a pace. I swung, missing it by several handspans.

To my right, the horse kicked at another wolf. It jumped back, regrouped, and lunged again, jaws snapping. The horse backed up, then turned and fled into the night.

“Wait!” I called after her. “Where are you going? Come back!”

The wolf facing me lunged again. I lunged to meet it and smacked it upside the head. It yelped and leaped back. The odor of singed hair briefly met my nose.

I barely caught a flurry of activity to my right. A wolf snarled. From somewhere above and behind me, a coarse, shrieking yowl shattered the night. In my peripheral vision, a tawny streak hurtled out of the darkness, and slammed into a wolf. A cacophony of yipping and screeching tangled up with two bodies scuffling at the edge of the firelight. After a few long moments, the two shapes separated.

The wolf raised itself from the ground on shaky legs, head hanging, tongue lolling out, four dark slashes glinting in the light. The other resolved itself into a cat as long as my own arm-span, tufted ears laid back, stubby, black-tipped tail twitching behind it, muscle rippling beneath a spotted tawny coat. A pair of gleaming eyes cast the occasional glance at me from both sides of a blunt snout.

For moments that felt like hours, the wolves, the cat, and I stood studying each other in a tense near-silence broken only by the occasional growl.

The wolf nearest me broke the detente first. It growled and lunged at me. I shoved my sword at it, catching it along the side of the snout. It yelped and jumped back.

“Serves you right,” I snarled. “Are you going to leave me alone now?”

Another wolf made a move toward the cat, its attempt likewise ending in a flurry of yowling and snarling.

“If you know so much about wolves,” I said to Grimhilde, “now would be a good time for a suggestion or two.”

“You seem to be doing well enough.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“They're afraid of you.”

“Really?” I said sarcastically. “I hadn't noticed.”

“If they weren't, they would be tearing you apart by now. And believe me, violent death is severely overrated. I wouldn't recommend it.”

“You don't say.”

The wolves milled about a little more, then they all advanced together, one paw at a time. A few bared their teeth and let out soft growls. The lynx growled back and let out a coarse hiss.

“Snow,” said Grimhilde, “whatever it takes, do not stop hitting, understand?”

I nodded. My heart climbed into my throat and lodged there, pounding like a war drum.

I swung my firebrand and sword, back-forth, back-forth, side-side-side. “Go away!” I shrieked.

Two wolves jumped for me. One took a glancing blow from my torch. The other grabbed it two handspans behind where it burned, and wrenched it from my grasp.

To my right, another scuffle ended in more yipping. Other wolves continued to round the slowly dying fire. I held my sword in front of me with both hands and the lynx backed up to within a pace of me. My back bumped against the rock behind me.

A wolf snapped at me. Then another...and another. Something other than fear began bubbling up in the back of my mind. Something more than rage, but less than calm.

“That's it!” I snapped in return. “When I said go away, I mean go...the hell...AWAY!” I screamed. I punctuated it with a sweep of both hands. Something shimmered just at the edge of sight. It flowed out from me like a Skellige wind. It rolled the wolves head over heels and scattered the fire like a giant's stride.

The canines yipped and cried and thudded over a score or more paces. I saw them as shadows within shadow picking themselves up to flee into the night. After that, nothing moved but the soft glow of scores of pulsing embers, nothing heard but my pounding heart and the lynx's occasional snort.

My knees buckled and I slid down the rock. My sword slipped from my grasp as I continued staring into the night. Finally, I managed, “What...the hell...was that?”

“You tell me,” said Grimhilde.

I looked at her. “Did...did you do that?” I asked.

She chuckled. “Of course not.”

“Then...then...h-h-ow?” I stammered.

“Magic, of course. Impressive, too. Had I known you had that in you, I might have considered apprenticing you.”

I met her eye and blinked slowly several times. “I...I don't even know how to respond to that.”

“You, dearie, have a lot to learn. But now that we know you have such potential...”

“Potential for what?” I interrupted.

“Don't interrupt me, child,” she snapped. “Now that we know you have such potential to become a powerful sorceress...”

“What if I don't want to be...”

“What did I just say?” she half-snarled.

“I don't...”

“Helgerdis at Dredmoor.”

I glared at her. “I have no desire whatsoever to become a queen-sorceress bent on world domination!”

“Oh, come now. It could be fun.”

“Your idea of fun is highly questionable.”

“Be that as it may, you'll have plenty of time for thinking tomorrow, regardless of which direction you walk. Now, put that blade away and get some sleep.”

I fumed at her, then picked up the sword and put its tip to its sheath.

“Stop. Oh, for the love of all that is holy, wipe it off first. That's a good way to ruin a blade. You have a lot to learn about that, too.”

I glared at her, but wiped the dirt and small bits of wolf blood onto the hem of my tunic.

“You're despicable,” I glowered.

“Sticks and stones,” she said with a shrug.

I put the sword and its belt behind me, pulled a blanket from my satchel, draped it over myself, and settled my head on the satchel. The lynx padded over, curled up behind me, and began to purr.

“At least you like me,” I muttered to the cat.

“What am I,” said Grimhilde, “chopped liver?”

“More like chopped haggis,” I mumbled.

“I heard that. And what would you know about haggis anyway?”

I opened one eye and peered at her. “Enough to know I prefer it to you. Now, would you shut up and let me sleep? Or would you rather I make some addle-brained mistake tomorrow and break an ankle?”

“Oh, well, since you put it that way...” Her form faded from my view. I exhaled heavily and settled my head on my makeshift pillow. Shortly, several footsteps sounded beside me and something large and warm settled against me. Oh, you have got to be jesting with me, I thought.

I laid awake for some time, the lynx purring at my back, before sleep finally took me.

I felt warmth on my face before much of anything else. I cracked one eye, only to promptly slam it shut against the spear of dawn light spilling between tree trunks. I tried to roll away, only to bump immediately against a warm mass at my back. I groaned.

The mass writhed slowly, and I presently felt something damp nudge my cheek and ear. Something palm-sized with several prickles pulled at my shoulder. A deep purr rumbled in my ear.

“Alright, alright,” I mumbled, “I'm awake.”

It took me considerably longer and several more nudges and pawings before I collected the resolve to so much as sit up.

A couple of paces before me, the charred remains of my fire lay splayed out away from me, as though a giant had sneezed it all over the little flat where I'd made my camp. At its edge, the land fell sharply away. The sun's rays spilled over a distant hill, bathing a vast tract of forest with golden light. Paw prints covered the ground. A few bits of grey hair clung to pine bark where a couple of the wolves had bounced off the trunks.

“Lazy bones, sleeping in the sun,” Grimhilde sang, “how're you ever gonna get your day's work done?”

“Already with you?” I groaned.

“If you'd slept this late as a scullery maid, I'd have had you flogged.”

“If you still had flesh and blood,” I retorted, “I'd...I'd....”

“You'd what?” she laughed.

“I'm sure I'd think something unpleasant.”

“Yes, well. All that notwithstanding, you've been burning daylight already.”

I rummaged into my satchel, pulled out a small chunk of pumpkin bread, bit off a piece, sat back against the warming rock, and chewed slowly.

“What did I just say?”

I waited until I swallowed. “The pumpkin spice must flow,” I said, and took another bite.

“You can breakfast while you walk.”

“And what did I just say?” I retorted after finishing my current bite.

“You're the one interested in der Walpurgisnacht. And might I remind you that you're minus one horse.”

I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose. I chewed a few more times, swallowed, and said, “Oh, very well. I suppose.”

A few paces away, the lynx stretched in a quintessentially feline manner, paws nearly the size of my hand splayed out, intimidating claws extended. I swallowed. “Good morning, Herr Luchs,” I said.

The lynx cocked its head quizzically and took a step forward. Then another...and another.

With each of its steps, I took one backward until I'd backed up against the rock. Grimhilde laughed derisively at me.

“If you make it eat me,” I said to her, “my ghost will throttle yours.”

“Yes, yes, of course you will,” she replied.

Far too soon, the cat had come nose-to-snout with me.

“Don't eat me!” I breathed.

The cat took one more step closer, rubbed the side of its head against mine twice, then pulled back slightly and repeated the action. I raised a hand in warding, but it merely nudged it aside in typical feline fashion. I tentatively stroked it behind one ear and it began to purr.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose you're not so much of a threat after all, are you?”

Purr, went the lynx.

I continued scritching it behind the ear and it continued to lean into my hand and purr.

“But whatever shall I do about you?”

The cat seemed to consider this for a few moments before resuming its insistence upon being petted. Faced with the unpleasant alternative of having my arm ripped open, I was more than happy to comply.

Grimhilde chuckled in the corner of my mind.

“No remarks from the gallery, if you wouldn't mind,” I said.

“Would I do that?”

“Oh, you mean provoking a lynx? Now, whyever would I possibly think you might do a thing like that?”

“Oh, please. I need you alive.”

“Thank you.”

“I said alive, not necessarily in one piece.”

I rolled my eyes. “And for a moment, I thought you might be going soft on me.”

“Perish the thought. Besides, a few scars and you would no longer be the fairest of them all.”

I jerked my attention away from the cat and glared at Grimhilde. “The fairest of them all? Is that what this has all been about?”

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean.”

“Kuhscheibe.”

She chuckled. “Such language. But, no, we can't have you bleeding out all over the place.”

“For these small things, I suppose I should be grateful,” I glowered. “But that doesn't mean Herr Katze here won't try something on his own accord.”

“She seems to like you.”

“She?”

“She has teats. And no pizzle.”

I sighed through my nose. “You'll have to forgive me for being more concerned with the teeth and the claws than with the, er, other bits.”

“Will I?”

“Must you be so abrasive?”

Grimhilde said nothing.

“Hrmph,” I said aloud, and returned my attention to the lynx. “So you're a she-cat, are you?”

The lynx pulled away, looked at me, and sneezed, ears briefly flapping.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She licked at a paw, stroked it over her snout, then licked it again.

I sighed. “Well, I suppose if you were going to attack me, you'd have none it by now, ja?”

The cat gazed at me.

“Now that we have all that out of the way,” I continued, “I really must be going, if that's all the same to you.” I petted the lynx a few more times and said, “I thank you for your help. That was most considerate of you. Now I'm afraid I must go. And I'm equally afraid I will miss you.” After a pause, I bent down and kissed her on the top of her furry head.

I straightened up and brushed the needles and lichens out of my skirts and leathers, and returned my attention to the saddle, tack, and accouterments abandoned by my horse. I blew air out through my lips. I fastened the sword belts around my hips and settled them before slinging the saddlebags over my shoulder and hefting the saddle with a grunt.

“You can't be serious,” said Grimhilde.

“Don't have much choice,” I grunted.

“Of course you do.”

“No, I really don't.”

“Are you really going to carry all that all the way to the Brochen?”

“Or until my arms fall off,” I insisted.

“Perhaps you were right,” she said, “you really are mad.”

“Shut up,” I growled.

After several paces, I heard a soft rustle behind me. I paused and craned my head around to find the lynx standing there just behind me.

“I must be going, even if it's not all the same to you.”

I took several more steps, then looked back over my shoulder. Again, the lynx stood the same few paces behind me.

“Very well, but do be aware that you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.”

The cat took a few paces toward me and butted her head against my hip.

“Silly feline!” I laughed.

I'd just rounded the crest of a small ridge when I heard a soft crunch behind me. I turned around to see the lynx pause with one paw in the air, lick it, then settle back onto her haunches.

I blinked. “Fraulein, whatever are you doing?”

The lynx blinked at me, sneezed, and licked the other paw.

“Oh, I see.” Though I really didn't.

The lynx stood up, padded over to me, and rubbed against my hip. I giggled. “Oh, is that it? You think you want to come with me, do you?”

“That's ridiculous,” said Grimhilde.

I glared at Grimhilde and returned my attention to the lynx. I rested the saddle on a log, let my hand fall toward her and she head-butted my palm. I obliged and began petting her head.

“Well, now,” I said. “I suppose if you're going to accompany me to, well, wherever it is we're going...”

“Der Brocken,” said Grimhilde.

“To wherever it is we're going,” I insisted, “you're going to need a name. After all, I can't just keep on calling you 'Fraulein Luchs, now, can I? So, let's see....” I paused in thought.

“Again with the daylight,” said Grimhilde.

I ignored her. “Not Grimhilde,” I said. “That would just be confusing. “Hedewigis. Nein? Guda. Judith...Berta...Binhildis...Kirstyn...Engel...Osanna...” I kept going despite Grimhilde's protests. By the time I'd exhausted the ones I knew off the top of my head, the sun had climbed at least two more diameters into the sky.

“This is futile,” said Grimhilde.

I cast a glare in her direction. “Well,” I said to the lynx, “I suppose I could just call you Forest.”

The cat nudged me and began to purr. I giggled. “Well, I suppose that settles that! Come along, Forest. We have an appointment.”

The last of the sun's disk sank over the shoulder of the Brocken. For several moments, ruddy-golden light rimmed the mountain's rock. Vivid scarlet, violet, and rose light blazed across puffy clouds high above. The tree tops still showed deep green in the sunset. Below that, the forest already lay in twilight.

I glanced at the cat's direction, visible only as a grey-ish, vaguely cat-shaped blob. “I wish I had your eyes,” I said to her.

“I can see just fine,” said Grimhilde.

“Of course you can,” I replied. “You're dead.”

“Mostly-dead,” she corrected.

“Hrmph.”

I tore my gaze off the sky and willed my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I took several steps along the path, tripped on a root, and sprawled into the duff. I bit back a curse.

“I can see start fires,” I muttered into the mould, “understand other languages, and shove objects around. Would it have been too much to ask to see in the dark?”

“Choosy, aren't we?”

I raised my head and glared in Grimhilde's direction. “Shut-up,” I grumbled.

The night became complete for a while, the darkness stretching on forever through time and space. At very great length, the sky began to glow a slight silver. As I staggered to a crest in the trail, a rising quarter-moon speared me in the eyes.

It climbed toward its zenith as my trail dropped toward a stream. I sloshed across it, slipping twice, and emerging up the opposite bank a sodden mess. At the next crest, I plopped the saddle over a log, sagged against it, and gnawed on a half-stale pretzel.

“Snow,” said Grimhilde, “you're killing me.”

“Nonsense,” I said around a bite, “you're already dead.”

“You're killing yourself,” she pointed, “which kills me.”

I continued chewing, then pulled out a chunk of summer sausage and gnawed on that. At length, I said, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might prefer death to being haunted by you?”

“But Snow, you don't know what you'd get.”

“I know what I have,” I snapped.

“Well, excuse me,” she replied.

Even after my rest, I could barely haul the saddle off the log.

“You could leave that,” Grimhilde said.

I shot her a glance and stumbled onward. The night eventually blurred into one long drudgery, my vision along with it. At one point, I fancied hearing a song.
.
On the hills, the fires burn at midnight
Superstition plagued the air
Sparks fly as the fires burn at midnight
Stars are out and the magic is here
I wished on the seven sisters
Bring to me the wisdom of age...

I became aware of a faint glow as my eyes drifted open. An expanse of well-worn and frequently-patched canvas hung a few armspans above my face. As I sat up, a woolen blanket and a sheepskin fell away from me. From where I'd been laying, I looked out through the end of an A-frame tent onto a clearing.

I crawled to my feet, ignoring the screaming soreness in every muscle of my body, even ones I'd never known I'd had, and padded out from beneath the canvas.

My bare feet stepped out onto dewy grass. In one direction, the clearing sloped gently toward a stream, and then more abruptly toward a wall of pines. In the other, it swept at least a furlong toward another forest wall. At the middle of this lay a large pile of ash, a few wisps of smoke rising up to join the dawn mist hanging over everything. A few other tents and two wagons stood here and there and by them dozed horses and a few goats. Over it all hung a sky already pale yellow with a coming dawn.

A squeak of despair escaped my throat and I fell to my knees. A dozen thoughts flew through my mind.

“Ah,” said a voice from behind me, “I see you're upright. You gave us quite a fright.”

I craned my head around. A woman stood a half-dozen paces between me and the wagon behind the tent in which I'd been laying. I winced.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“I...mostly...I think,” I managed. Then, “No. Not really.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

I let my gaze drift from her back toward the meadow. “Der Walpurgisnacht,” I said.

“You just missed it, I'm afraid.”

I looked sharply back at her. “I...missed it?”

She nodded.

My head fell and I moaned. “Now what am I going to do?”

“You sound as confused now as you were when we found you,” she said.

I looked back at her once more. “Found me?”

“Mm-hm. Ingrid found you laying in the middle of the track about half a league off. She brought you back here. Where is your horse?”

I exhaled heavily, my breath coming out in a white cloud. “She ran away at the Bocksberg.”

She gasped, eyes widening. “You mean you dragged all of that over more than four leagues?”

I nodded.

She cocked her head. “Why?”

I briefly recounted the incident with the wolves.

“Oh, dear me,” she said. “You must be desperate.”

I nodded.

“So who are you,” she said, “where do you come from, and why are you here?”

“Snow, tochter von Leopold.”

She grunted. “I thought so. What drove you here?”

“I need answers and I was told I might find them here.”

“Who sent you, if I might be so bold?”

“Doc.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Doc...oh, you mean Thorin?”

I frowned. “Thorin?”

She nodded. “Thorin Eichenschild. He was a great warrior back in the day. He goes by Doc to distance himself from that unfortunate business with Rome. Do you not know?”

I shook my head. “He never mentioned it.”

“Mm. He wouldn't, would he? But first, you must be absolutely exhausted.”

I nodded. “You have no idea. Or,” I added, “perhaps you do?”

“Mm,” she said. “I cannot say I have ever carried a saddle and tack over four leagues of hill country, but I have carried a child that far many times over. Not the same, of course, but that was tiring enough. You had better have something to eat and drink first.”

“Thank you. I would appreciate it. I can pay, if it helps.”

“No, no need. Just pay it forward.”

“Pay it forward,” I repeated pensively. “Very well.”

She padded over to a small fire near the wagon and returned later with a stoneware tankard half-filled with a steaming beverage. “Thank you,” I said and I took a tentative sip. A riot of competing scents and flavors assaulted my senses. “What is it?”

“Chamomile, licorice root, self-heal, lavender, lemon balm, and hibiscus.”

I took another sip. “Delicious. Thanks you,” I said again.

She eyed Forest. “And the lynx?”

“She, er, tagged long, as it were.”

“Your familiar?”

“My...it's a little too soon to know.”

“How long has she been with you?”

“Since the wolves, two sunsets ago.”

She shrugged. “Long enough. I can't say whether she's smarter than the average cat, but it seems she knows what love is.” She peered in the general direction of where I perceived Grimhilde's form. “And I sense you have another companion.”

I blinked. “You do?”

She nodded. “I sense great malice from...her.” She looked abruptly at me. “Whom did you bring to this place?” she demanded.

I exhaled heavily. “Oh, thank Mitra! I thought I might be going mad.”

The woman frowned. “That always remains to be seen, even at the best of times.”

I took a breath, held it for a few moments, then slowly let it out again. “I'm being haunted by the ghost of my stepmother.”

“I take exception to you putting it like that, you know,” Grimhilde said to me.

“I don't care,” I replied.

“The Evil Queen?” said the woman.

I rolled my eyes. “The Highly Annoying Erstwhile Queen, perhaps,” I said.

“I beg your pardon,” said Grimhilde.

I turned aside and said, “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” she replied.

I rolled my eyes.

“Why did you bring her here?” the woman asked.

“I had no choice!” I protested.

“You always have a choice, my dear.”

“She's bound to me.” I pulled the chain with the Ring out from beneath my tunic. “Through this, apparently.”

The woman drew a ragged breath. “Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“My stepmother had it in a chamber beneath Sternberg.”

“Where did she get it?”

“I don't know. She hasn't told me, despite my asking.”

The woman hrmphed. “If I were to hazard a guess, it's probably because if you knew, you would waste little time in ridding yourself of it. Of course,” she added, “it's also possible that even she doesn't know where it originally comes from.”

“Well,” I said pensively, “I noticed a few mentions of what seems to be this Ring. A couple of drawings and some accompanying text.”

I pulled first the Howling and then the Voynich manuscript from my haversack.

The woman's eyes narrowed. “The Book of the Laws of the Dead,” she glowered. “I might have known she'd dabble in that.”

“Ja, ja, I know that much. And that the Howling was penned by Alhazred long ago. Howling demons sang to him with fiendish songs of grief. Sounds positively dreadful, if you ask me. It is said that he went thoroughly mad in the process. Which does not surprise me, if the drawings in it are to be believed.”

“You should not let on that you have those on your person. It would not go well for you.”

“How did my stepmother come to have it in her possession, and what did she want it for?”

“The Evil Queen had her fingers in a great many places. Her reach was far and broad. Had it not been for you, many of us believe she would have been another Helgerdis.” She pointed at both codices. “If she truly knew or understood what is written on those pages, she would have been unstoppable.”

“Yet it sounds like you do,” I said.

“Only by third-hand hearsay.”

I flipped through both codices and opened them to where they showed drawings of the Ring and the text surrounding them. “Is this it?” I asked.

The woman peered at the pages. At length, she nodded. “If only we had some idea what the text meant.”

“They both talk about how the Ring must be taken to the place of their forging and returned to those same-self fires. And there are some rather cryptic descriptions of the location.”

“You...can read that?”

I shrugged. “More or less.”

“More or less?”

“It's really that I just look at it and know what it means.”

“Interesting,” she said pensively. “If I were you, I wouldn't let on about that either.”

I nodded. “What I really need to know, is how to break the bond between myself and Grimhilde.”

The woman made a pensive sound. “I'm afraid I cannot help you. Only a few of us possess that much knowledge and magic. Two of them were present last night, as befits our festive rites. But they departed long before the rising sun began to color the sky. Even then, they might not have been of much help either. The answers you seek may yet lie within those pages.”

“I'm doomed,” I half-wailed. “All it says is something about a mountain of fire.”

“There aren't many of those. No,” she added, “on the other hand, there are. Iceland...Vesuvius...Taupo...many others.”

“Where would I start? Finding the right one could take a lifetime!”

“Legend has it that the Ring was forged long ago.”

I gestured at the codices. “The writers of these knew about the Ring. It must therefore have been made before the Great Cataclysm shattered Hyborea. Which means I'm looking for a mountain that already stood then, and stands still.”

“Not many of those. In fact, I know only of one that might be that old. It stands far up the River Faro, close to its source.”

“The Faro? Why, that's in Masr!”

“So it is. You, my dear, have a very, very long journey ahead of you. That is, if you want to be rid of your stepmother.”

I nodded vigorously.

“Oh, gee,” said Grimhilde, “thank you oh so very much.”

I glared at her. “If you weren't such a bitch, perhaps I'd drop the whole thing!” I snapped. “But, no, you just have to continue being a complete arschloch!”

“My, my, aren't we pissy?”

“No thanks to you.”

The woman cleared her throat. “If the Ring and those codices don't drive you utterly mad,” she says, “it very much sounds like your stepmother just might.”

I snorted. “Ja, well. Hopefully, she understands that if I go mad, I'm likely to do something nonsensical and inadvertently get myself killed. And that would certainly spoil her after-life.”

The woman smiled thinly. “Ja, I bet it would.” She stepped over to her wagon and began rummaging around. “If you're to save the world from a thousand years of Grimhilde's rule,” she said over her shoulder, “you are going to need some help.”

“Her rule?” I said.

“Surely you don't think she means to simply hover over your shoulder and make testy remarks in your ear for the rest of your life, do you?”

“I...hadn't exactly thought that far.”

The woman grunted. “If you know her even half as well as we do...and if you don't, then you have not been paying a lick of attention...then you must realize that she now means to rule all of Valtland and then some, and she means to do so through you.”

“Me?”

“You. And do you know why it just might work?”

“Because no one would suspect me?”

“Exactly.” Presently, she returned with a simple, well-worn leather haversack, perhaps a little larger than one of my codices. A large flap with a bronze clasp flopped over the top and at at least three-quarters of the way to its bottom. A sturdy leather strap, secured by brass rings, looked long enough to allow the satchel to hang more or less at my hip. “Which is why you will need this.”

“That?”

“You can't very well go bouncing about the known world with a pair of saddlebags thrown over your shoulder, now, can you?”

“I...don't understand how that will help,” I said dubiously.

The woman smiled. “Put one of the codices into it,” she instructed.

I gently took the satchel, opened the flap, and slid the Howling into it.

“Now the next one.”

“But...”

“Just try it.”

I frowned, then slid the Voynich in behind it.

“And your foodstuffs?”

I pulled the remains of a dark rye loaf from a saddlebag and half-shoved it in behind the Voynich codex. I looked at the woman with raised eyebrows. “Magic,” I said.

She nodded. “It's...larger on the inside than it is on the outside. It will hold whatever you wish to put into it.”

“A veritable bag of holding,” I said.

“Just so.”

I eyed the Bag of Holding. “This must be priceless!”

She shrugged. “Think of it as an investment in the pursuit of world peace.”

“I can still pay,” I said.

“Pay it forward.”

“At least accept my saddle and saddlebags. I shan't need them anyhow.”

She smiled and nodded. “Then we have an accord. Will you linger for breakfast?”

My stomach growled embarrassingly.

“Perhaps for brunch as well, from the sounds of it.”

“That's awfully kind of you.”

“We share what we can.”

Some time later, I stood beneath a late morning sky, my belly full of spaetzle, schnitzel, sauerkraut, and knockwurst. I'd stuffed as much kasenkreiner, hard cheese, oat cakes, and dark rye bread into the Bag as she would hand to me.

We clasped hands and her bright hazel eyes bore into my own. “The gods be with you,” she said.

“And also with you,” I replied.

After a half-dozen steps, I paused. “You know,” I said, turning about, “I never caught your...”

The words died on my tongue. The meadow before me lay vacant, save for the lightly-smoldering remains of the bonfire and the depressions where I'd lain and where the wagon's wheels had pressed into the grass. No other sign remained that anyone had visited the place.

I smiled, and turned back around, Forest at heel. A song bubbled out of me.

Hark to the calling of the road
Feel the dust beneath our feet at the first sigh of dawn
Hark to the calling of the road
When the sun reaches its zenith, look our way and we'll be gone...

“Forest,” I said, “why do I sometimes have the feeling that you're eviscerating me with your eyes?”

She paused in her washing, sneezed, then resumed, licking a paw twice, then rubbing it across her face, over and over.

“If she were going to eat you,” said Grimhilde, “she would have tried it by now.”

I tore my gaze from the cat and the upper Danube beyond, and eyed my late stepmother. “And just how, exactly, would you have had me defend myself?”

“You have a sword, do you not?”

I cocked my head in a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me gesture.

“I suggest you practice with it. Anyone who knows their way around a blade will immediately recognize that you do not,” she pointed.

I blew air out through my lips, my breath diffusing the firelight before vanishing. “Very well,” I half-sighed.

I stood up, drew the blade from its scabbard, and began whirling it though loops, arcs, and thrusts.

“Stop,” Grimhilde ordered after a minute.

“What? But you said...”

She pressed an ethereal hand to her equally ethereal forehead and groaned. “Dearie, that is not a kitchen knife. So stop treating it like one.”

“But...”

“Silence.” She stepped in front of me and eyed me for several uncomfortable moments. “Hold your blade out at arm's length.”

I eyed her, then complied.

“Not up and down.”

I sighed, and turned it level with the ground.

“You, dearie, have a lot to learn if you're going to stay alive out here. If you can't learn from me, you might as well put that back and return home on the morrow.”

I stood still, the blade still held out, and met her eye.

“Good. Now, while you're standing there, we'll begin.

“First and foremost, your opponent is not a side of beef, a leg of lamb, or a fillet of fish. They will not simply stand there and let you stick them with the pointy end.

“Second, whatever mischief of mayhem they intend to perpetrate upon you, they will do it. Resistance rests solely in your hands.

“Third, mercy is for the weak. When a man faces you, he is an enemy. An enemy deserves no mercy!”

“My arm's getting tired,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed, but she ignored me. “Fourth, your blade, whether that sword you hold, a dagger, or a stub of broken wine bottle, is an extension of your own arm.”

My arm started to shake. I slowly began to lower it.

“Who said you could put your arm down?” she snapped.

“But...”

“Silence!” she spat. “An enemy will not care how tired you are. They will not fight fairly. Fair fights are for the lost. Now, hold your blade out to the side.”

I moved my arm sideways, the blade level with my shoulders.

“You must possess absolute control of your weapon. If you cannot hold it, you cannot wield it.”

My arm began to shake again.

“Is your arm tired?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Why is that good?” I grunted.

“Because that builds the strength you now lack.” She paused for at least a dozen heartbeats. “Now you may lower that blade, but slowly.”

I let it fall to my side as slowly as I could. Still, the flat slapped my leg.

Grimhilde grunted. “A strike with a sword is not like chopping wood.” She moved into a combat stance I'd occasionally observed during my years in servitude. “Instead,” she continued, holding her own hand flat like a blade, “serve the soup.” She slowly and deliberately sliced her bladed hand through the air, pivoting it about her elbow, and ending abruptly with outstretched arm. She held it for a second before returning to her previous posture. “Now you try it.”

I struck the same stance.

“Bend your knees...not that much...that's better. Proceed.”

I moved my arm with the sword in the same motion I'd just watched her execute.

“Not...terrible,” she said. “Again.”

I repeated the movements. Once...twice...at least a dozen times, Grimhilde correcting me all the while.

“You are a girl of not quite sixteen winters. Most opponents will outmatch you. They will be larger, stronger, tougher, and more experienced. You must compensate with speed, accuracy, and obstinacy. Combat is a dance. And like all dances, you must also use your legs. Those have large muscles, and you must use them. And for the love of the gods, move your feet! How else will you dodge that vicious broadsword strike thrown at you by an Osmani, or slip from the grasp of a Maghreb slaver?”

I blinked. “Osmani? Maghreb?”

“Among others.”

“I thought you didn't want me to take this Ring to its Mountain.”

“Oh, I don't. I'm even less interested in having you get yourself killed, seeing as how you seem bound and determined.”

“Ah, so our respective interests overlap, do they?”

“Indeed. You can't very well get rid of me if you're dead.” She paused. “Actually, you can, but then, well, dead.”

“Either way, I'll be rid of you,” I retorted.

“As I've said, me or death, death or me.”

I regarded her for several long moments, then practiced serving the soup. Once...twice...thrice. After the dozenth time, Grimhilde said, “You should also work on your blow recovery.”

“My what?”

She sighed through her nose. “The more blows you can deliver, the better. You must strike faster and more often than your opponent. Like so.” She went through the soup-serving motion, then pulled her arm back in a tight loop, ending where she'd started.

I mimicked the motion. Once...twice...thrice.

“Not bad. Keep practicing.”

I did.

After the two-dozenth time, Grimhilde said, “Now faster.”

I did.

“Now, keep doing that for a while. Become accustomed to the movement. Your goal is not to have to think about it. The more you have to think, the more you'll get in your own way. And believe me, you'll have plenty of other things to think about while you're fighting.”

“Allaaaaaaaahu akbar! Allaaaaaaaaaahu akbar!”

God is the greatest, god is the greatest. The meaning echoed in my mind as clearly as if called in plain Valtlandic. I had my doubts. Not that I cared at that moment whose god was the greatest, so long as they wouldn't complicate my life any further.

The rest was lost in the babble of waterfowl greeting the dawn in their own way. I watched the sky blaze in the east with the promise of another scorching day of a seemingly endless Masreyan summer.

Already, the several minarets rising over the Temple of Asura shone in the sun. To the west, the polished alabaster summits of the pyramids rising above the low rocky bumps gleamed almost painfully. The rest of the sprawling city of Agrabah still lay all but hidden in shadow.

A few strides from our boat, a fish rolled. A hide clad in large scales glinted bronze in the dawn gloaming. From atop a wooden box, Forest gazed intently at it as its broad forked tail vanished below the surface, her whiskers quivering.

“Ja,” I said. “Me, too.”

Slowly, the boat glided upriver. Half a league toward shore, a small flock of wading birds rose chattering into the sky. Forest chittered at them, following them with her head. I took another bite of date cake and chewed pensively.

“Forget it, girl,” I said.

I watched the vessel's single sail billow out a little more as it began to fill with a slowly-rising morning breeze. The ship heeled over slightly and began to make a little more headway against the river's current. It was going to be a long day to Karnak and even longer to wherever we were headed.

I sat back, settled my scarf around my head, and began to sing.

Raise your mug to the Legends of the Frost
Through our tales it will never be lost...

I looked down past the slab's lip at the slowly-seething mass of liquid fire far below. The air shimmered like one gigantic forge. Which, in a way, it was. Far below seethed an orange miasma roiling with red and yellow. The blood of the earth, they said.

Sweat beaded up on my skin and quickly dried, adding to the growing salt rime and stinging my parched lips.

The Ring beat against my chest like a hammer on an anvil. I grasped the chain around my neck and ponderously pulled the Ring from beneath my tunic. The heartbeat thudding from it beat counterpoint to the growling chuff-chug booming up from below. I gazed at it for many of my own heartbeats. As always, I felt like I was falling into it.

“It's so...beautiful,” I said softly. “So...precious.”

“Yes,” said Grimhilde. “So very precious.”

I tore my gaze from it and settled it on her, standing but a few paces behind me, hands clasped serenely before her. Her face told an entirely different story. Wide eyes bore into mine, the terror blazing so plainly within them. Their meaning shouted across the blur of tears. All the conversations we'd had merged into one single moment of clarity.

“You don't have to do this,” she said.

“Look down, Grimhilde,” I rasped, “you're standing in your grave.”

“Look down, Snow White,” she replied, “you're setting us ablaze.”

“You could have been a friend to me, but no.”

“Look down, look down, oh don't you dare let go!'

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and began to sing again.

Stare into the dark as the abyss keeps calling
Try to take a step but then the mind keeps stalling
Can a single question just go on forever
As a single thought goes on, it's now or never

I shook my head, my matted hair slapping me in the cheek. “This has to end, Grimhilde. Neither of us can live like this.”

I held the Ring on its chain out at arm's length toward the gaping maw of the earth's gullet. Grimhilde's eyes went wide. I held it there for a few moments, then willed my fingers open. The weight left my hand. Grimhilde's eyes grew even wider, if that were possible, and her mouth fell open.

I turned back to the sight of the Ring tumbling slowly downward. “It is done,” I croaked. “Now we meet our destinies.”

She screamed in my mind. The same moment, the entire cavern lit up with a blue-white flash. It hit me and sent me sprawling halfway across the cavern. I hit the rock hard and rolled twice. I fought for breath, each sound drowned in an angry growl from the whence I'd dropped the Ring.

I braced my arms and knees against the rock and half-crawled into a kneel. I craned my neck around in time to see a fountain of molten rock arc into the air. Then a second...and a third. I heaved my body onto my tottering feet and shoved myself toward the door.

The ground shook once, twice, and I lurched toward the door. “Run, Forest!” I bellowed on my way past her.

Forest twisted around and shot out of the chamber. I lunged through the opening and vaulted off the rocky path. My feet hit the loose talus and quickly sank into the shifting rocks.

Several of the smaller bits wedged themselves between my feet and my sandal straps. I took another step, then another, and another, bounding down the slope, each step a clatter of moving, shifting rocks.

Ahead and a bit to my right, Forest bounded effortlessly along the edge of the talus strip that stretched downslope almost as far as I could see to where it nearly vanished in a deep cleft bounded by fins of jagged rock.

The clattering intensified. Was it my imagination, or was the entire talus slope shaking? With my own frantic movement, it was impossible to tell.

Ahead, a tall slab of rock cleaved off the fin to my right and began to fall. It hinged at the base and toppled in apparent slow-motion. From behind me, a wave of heat slapped my back.

The distance closed. Barely a half-dozen paces ahead of me, the slab crashed down atop the talus. I pulled one foot out of the rock, then the other, gathered my will, and leaped. Both feet slapped down on the upper edge of the slab. My feet erupted with sharp pains. My left sandal slipped briefly.

I craned my neck around just in time to see a river of lava surge over the twin fins in ripples of red and orange streaked near-black, and rush into the valley down which my rock slid ponderously.

“Scheisse!” I cried.

I tore my eyes off the pursuing lava and called for Forest. Moments later, she bounded from the wall to the right, alighted a dozen paces in front of me, and turned to look at me as though running from an erupting volcano was all in a day's work for her.

I half-crept to the middle of the rock. I knelt down and placed one hand on the rock, feeling for its energy. When I found it, I felt the lava collide with its rear edge. I lifted with my mind. Moments later, the rock tilted almost imperceptibly, rising slightly, the heat along with it. It lurched.

“Steady...steady...” I muttered.

Ahead, the valley made a turn to the left. I gripped the rock and braced for impact. A moment later, the rock's right-hand edge grazed a boulder. It rolled across the rock's nose and over the opposite edge. The entire slab ground against the wall.

I held on as the slab ground and lurched its way past the fin. Another furlong later, it ground into a narrowing and tilted slightly upward. I turned in time to see lava strike the stern from beneath. It tilted upward even more. Lava piled up and continued to lift, pouring around its edges. I turned and climbed toward it. A gobbet broke off and seared my shoulder on its way by.

Behind me, Forest yowled. I gritted my teeth. The rock shook, then lurched down-valley again, the stern dropping ponderously. I tore my eyes away from the lava driving us downward and craned my head around.

Far below, the slab, the avalanche of smaller rocks, and the lava that carried us surged inexorably toward the upper Faro. On its far side rose a wall cloven vertically and just downriver a stream emptied into it.

I worked my way back to the slab's center as it lurched and jolted its impossible way downward. It side-swiped another wall, dislodging several rocks. I caught one and gathered my will. Just below and less than a furlong from where the whole mess would surge into the Faro, another fin jutted out directly ahead.

I noted our apparent speed and the rhythm with which the slab rocked up and down, side to side as it rode its river of molten rock. I counted down mentally, hurled the rock toward the stern, then slammed it down. It hit the slab and kept going. The bow tipped upward, cleared the fin, and rode over it.

I shoved with my will. The slab lurched forward again, and all the grinding and shaking stopped. The far side of the valley continued moving toward us. I pulled upward, willing the rock to remain aloft.

Out...out...then it began to tilt. First by the nose, then to port.

“Get ready to jump, Forest!” I shouted.

I ran up the rock toward the starboard edge, then forward. She jumped first, easily clearing the distance. I followed. For a terrifying moment, nothing lay between me and the Faro dizzyingly far below.

I threw my arms out before me. My hands grabbed a root an instant before the rest of me slammed into the rock, filling my eyes and mouth with soil and grit.

Another instant later, the slab hammered the wall some ways below me. It shook violently. Several paces to my right, a tree broke free and topped past me with a whoosh. Several heartbeats later, the slab hit bottom with a great boom, followed shortly by an even greater boom and growl as the lava met the river.

I hauled myself upward, hand over hand, each body-length its own war. After what felt like forever, the ground leveled out and I collapsed onto my back, panting like a dog.

A few moments later, Forest nudged me.

“Give...me...a...moment,” I heaved.

She nudged me again.

I groaned. “Fine,” I croaked, and rolled back onto my belly and clawed myself to me feet again.

I followed her through the woods. For how long, I didn't guess. To the west, rising ash reddened the sinking sun. Twilight had nearly fallen by the time she brought me to the side of a high stream. Both of us shoved our noses into the clear water and sucked it up as though it were lift itself.

When I'd had my fill, I flopped onto my back and sucked deep, ragged breaths. After a dozen, or maybe two, I became aware of a sharp and familiar tang in my nostrils.

Forest twisted around, tilted her head upward, and scented at the air, nose twitching. At length, she sneezed, looked toward the Faro, then away from it, too two steps upstream, paused, twisted around, and looked at me.

“Oh, no,” I groaned. I levered myself back to my feet.

My eyes flew open. The tang of smoke pricked at my nose. I sat up, took a breath, and immediately wished I hadn't. I coughed twice, and moved to a kneeling position, straining to see into the night.

Off toward the west, a yellow-orange glow filtered through the haze between the trees and filled the night sky. Far above, a crescent moon cast just enough light to see a faint haze and Forest's tawny fur. A familiar crackling drifted across the distance. Every few moments, something boomed or thudded.

Out in the darkness, an animal scurried through the understory. Then another, and another, until the night seemed filled with the feet and wings of fleeing wildlife.

Forest mewed plaintively.

I tensed my muscles. “Run, Forest,” I said.

She took off upstream, away from the oncoming blaze. She trotted swiftly toward the stream and turned upslope. I followed her through the vegetation, mostly by sound. Leaves and vines caught at my clothing and slapped my arms, legs, and face. Now and then, an insect buzzed past my head.

I plunged onward, driven by terror and obstinacy in equal measure. I stubbed a toe and barked a shin several times. I stumbled after her. Every muscle in my body seemed to cramp up in rapid succession. I paused, leaned against a tree, and began massaging my legs. “Stop, Forest!” I cried.

Moments later, I heard her patter up to me. She nudged my hip.

I massaged first one calf, and then a thigh, then a hamstring. “Give me a moment,” I grunted.

The pains in my muscles subsided presently. “Right, Forest. Let's go.”

She padded off through the underbrush. I blundered after her, listening for her vocalizations. Vegetation caught at my clothing and slapped at my arms, legs, and face. Every so often, something with wings flew past my head.

In the darkness lit only by the stars and the barest sliver of a crescent moon, I could not have told how far I'd gone nor how long it might have taken me to cover that distance. Every time I paused for breath, I looked back over my shoulder. And every time, the fire's glow seemed just a little brighter.

A warm breeze blew at my back, driving a choking smoke with it.

“Skellige wind,” I breathed. How I was going to outrun that, I had no idea.

I shoved my nose and mouth into the sleeve of my tunic and took several breaths through that. It cut some of the smoke and left my nostrils filled with the smell of weeks-old sweat that had not come out during any of the times I'd washed either myself or my clothing.

More of the same followed. After a long while, a rushing sound met my ears. At first, I mistook it for a waterfall. Until I noticed the unevenness of it, the crackling, and the occasional booming sound. Over my shoulder, I could see tongues of flame licking through the forest canopy and lighting up the darkness. I turned away, only to curse myself for killing my night vision. I willed my eyes to re-adjust and blundered onward, following Forest's intermittent calls.

The way ahead steepened, the vegetation thickening along with the smoke. Behind me, the sounds of burning forest grew progressively louder. I began to feel the heat on my back, see the glow lighting up the night and the fleeting glimpses of creatures fleeing the flames.

I ran faster, my footing more sure. I barged through the leaves, the orange-green giving way to pure darkness beyond for a few more strides before another gap in the foliage let more firelight show me the way.

Every time I glanced over my shoulder, the advancing flames seemed that much closer. As though the fast I ran, the harder blew the Skellige wind. Its crackling sounded like so much crinkling papyrus and parchment all wadded up together after having baked in the sun for a month. Its heat felt like a bladesmith's forge.

I tripped over a root, then half-turned my ankle on a rock, went sprawling into the humus, and banged one elbow on something hard, and scraped my cheek against something rough. I lay there for several moments before heaving myself back to my feet.

The fire pursued me like a living thing, hungry, ravenous, devouring everything in its path, seemingly drawn straight to me. For every two paces I ran through the forest, it ran three. It never fell, never paused for breath, never stopped. By the time I'd covered another furlong, its searing breath breathed down my neck.

Above me, a tree went up like cheesecloth soaked in tallow. Bits of burning debris rained down. A piece glanced off my shoulder as I attempted to dodge. A branch hit a shrub five paces away and caught it on fire. I veered the other direction. A smaller tree caught fire, then another far above me as the fire ate through the canopy.

Fire light blazed all about me now, throwing light and dwindling shadows in all directions. Skellige winds buffeted me before rising straight upward. I slid again, and tumbled toward the one remaining sliver of shadow.

One leg splashed into the creek. I rolled away and a burning branch crashed down where my head had been moments before. My hand sank into wet, coarse gravel. Bit by bit, I crawled deeper into the stream. By the time I'd waded up to my waist, the fire raged all around me, the smoke sucked upward, the air hot. I tore a broad strip of cloth from my soggy tunic and tied it over my mouth.

“Forest!” I bellowed, and bellowed it again. “Here, kitty, kitty!”

Moments later, Forest sprang from the half-burning understory and landed with a great splash in the water. She resurfaced shortly and swam to me. I tore off another swath of cloth and held it out to Forest. She turned her head away once, twice, and thrice.

“Forest,” said, “this will help you breathe. Trust me, would you?”

Forest considered this for a few moments, then apparently relented. I sank down up to my neck and held Forest squirming and yowling in my arms as the fire raged around us.

Branches blazed, bark burst, cinders rained down, and at long last, the Skellige wind swept over us. It marched onward and forgot all about us.

At great length, I opened my eyes on a strange landscape, all darkness cut with the spotty orange glow of embers smoldering in the night. I squeezed my eyes against the drifting smoke that burned them and dragged myself to the bank and collapsed onto gravel warmed by the inferno. Soon, exhaustion took me and I knew no more.

My eyes fluttered open upon a ravaged landscape reduced to shades of grey. Charred trees rose above a grey scape through which ruddy soil showed. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from scores of logs, branches, stumps, or simple patches of ground.

A light breeze stirred the ash which danced off a few paces to scatter back to the ground. A film of ash drifted along the stream. Nothing else moved.

The sun hung as a ruddy disc a little over halfway to zenith. Beams of light streaked through the billows of smoke rising from the forest burning to the east.

I cleared the skim of ash off the water and splashed my face. I sat back against a charred log and watched Forest plunge into the water, shake herself off, and set to grooming her fur.

“We're alive,” I breathed. “We're alive!” I tipped my head back and laughed. I let the giddiness blow itself out before looking about at the destruction around me. “Now what?”

“That was impressive,” said an all-too-familiar voice.

I yelped, coughed, and spun around.

“I really didn't think you had it in you.”

I blinked, rubbed my eyes, turned to splash some water into my face, then turned back around. The figure of Grimhilde remained.

“How are you still here?” I demanded.

“Nice to see you, too,” she replied.

“But...but...the Ring!” I stammered.

“Mm. Yes, well. Slight miscalculation.”

“Slight miscalculation!” I half-coughed. “You could have told me.”

“Me? You're the one who's been perusing those volumes. You know far more about what's in them than I do.”

“I'm not having this conversation,” I rasped. “I've had neither enough water nor enough mead for this.”

I turned back to the stream and drank again, but with restraint. At length, I sat back against a tree and pulled my battered legs against my battered chest. I desperately needed a thorough bathing, but lacked the strength just then.

“I suppose we're stuck with each other, then,” I croaked.

“Yes, I suppose we are.”

I closed my eyes and began going over the pages of the Howling in my mind's eye, searching for any clue my stepmother may have missed.

“Ignoring me again, are we?”

I opened my eyes and glared. “If you must know, I'm consulting the Book of the Laws of the Dead.”

“It's in your satchel, dearie.”

I pointed to my head. “It's also in here.”

“Are you sure you haven't forgotten a detail or two?”

“Forgotten? Grimhilde, this mind does not forget!” I said, poking myself in the head. “I haven't forgotten a single thing since the day I stopped suckling at Mama's breast. It was a drizzly Tuesday.”

“Of course it was.”

I closed my eyes again, but quickly gave up. “I'm also too tired for this. I've barely slept in three days, haven't eaten in four, and nearly died twice. So if you want me to continue avoiding accidentally killing myself out of utter exhaustion, you'll let me be. Or is that too much to ask?”

“Are you asking me?”

I eyed my stepmother. “Yes. No. Maybe.”

“Make up your mind, girl.”

I glared at her. “I should have been dead by now. We should have been dead.”

“Yet here we are.”

I nodded. “Here we are,” I agreed.

“Nice hair, by the way.”

I blinked. “Did you just compliment me?”

She shrugged.

“And my hair, of all things.”

She shrugged again.

When no further commentary seemed forthcoming, I added, “Very well, why my hair?”

She gestured toward the water. “See for yourself.”

I sighed heavily. “You have got to be the most un-helpful guide in the history of guides.”

I cleared the ash that had collected anew on the water's surface and peered at my reflection in the settling surface. I gasped at what I saw. All my life, my hair had been black as ebony. Some time since I'd last seen my reflection, it had gone white as snow. I grabbed a lock of hair and pulled it before my vision. I was just as white as it had appeared in the water.

“H...how?” I stammered.

“How indeed.”

“When? When did this happen?” I demanded.

“When you fed the Ring to the Earth.”

“And you didn't tell me?” I growled.

“You were too busy avoiding nearly-certain death.”

I snorted. “You and I have got to work on our communication.”

“I didn't want to distract you.”

“Of course you didn't.”

My stomach growled. Forest stopped grooming and looked at my belly. “Ja, ja,” I said.

Half a dozen cupped-hands' worth of water damped my hunger. I searched the scorched forest for any sign of anything edible. Every twig on every branch had vanished, reduced to ash, their leaves and fruits along with them.

I climbed to my aching feet. Every muscle in my body protested. My skin resisted. Even my hair hurt, though whether that had anything to do with its mysterious change in color, I had no idea. I had barely taken a half-dozen steps when my foot squished into something.

I looked down, half-expecting to have trodden some pile of exotic droppings, or the bloated corpse of some equally exotic animal. Instead, half of a fruit the size of two of my fists lay pinched between my foot and the ground. Some of its pulp had squished out through a ruptured rind. I bent and picked it up.

Its skin looked watery, like a poached plum's. It smelled sweet, like crabapple preserves. I raised it to my mouth, paused, and cast Grimhilde a glance. She stood there watching me expectantly. I pressed the opened end of the fruit against my lips and sucked gently.

A small gobbet of pulp passed my teeth to sit on my tongue. It bore just a hint of tartness along with mild sweetness. It had a slightly mealy texture. I detected just a hint of citrus, and not much else. I swallowed and waited a little. When no immediate harm seemed evident, I sucked a little more.

When I'd consumed the sweet flesh and tart rind, I licked my fingers. “If you let me poison myself,” I said between licks, “not only will my ghost haunt yours, I will slap you silly!”

“I'll be sure to note that in my diary,” she said dryly.

An hour and several kinds of fruit later, I reclined satiated against a fallen log. I let out a very unladylike belch.

“Excuse you,” said Grimhilde.

I rolled my eyes, and held out the remains of one fruit to Forest. She sniffed at it. “You need to eat something, girl,” I told her.

She sniffed at it again, pulled back to sniff at the air, then turned around and trotted off through the wreckage.

“Forest!” I half-whined after her. Great, I thought at length, now I'm left alone with my worst enemy, and I can't so much as kick her in the shins.

And here I was, thinking you were warming up to me.

I looked at her sharply, my mouth hanging slightly ajar. Can you...hear my thoughts?

Her mouth turned up in a thin smile. Of course, dearie. After all, I'm inside your head.

And just how long have you been able to do that?

Long enough.

Would you care to vague that up for me?

Not really.

Do I have that Ring toss to thank for this?

Oh, no, it's always been a thing.

I half-jumped to my feet and glared at her. Are you telling me I could have talked to you without making a fool of myself THE ENTIRE TIME???

She laughed in my mind. Oh, dearie, what would have been the fun in that?

It's not supposed to be fun, I growled. I am queen and I need people to respect me. But I suppose that after being ruled by you, that shouldn't concern me.

Oh, don't be silly. You're in politics now. Everything should concern you.

Have it your way, dearie. But I reserve the right to say I told you so.

And I reserve the very same right.

Then it seems we've reached an understanding. Ah, and here comes your feline friend.

I turned to see Forest padding through what remained of the forest, carrying something in her mouth that looked nearly as big as she was. It took her dropping it into the ash at me feet to finally recognize it as the carcass of something vaguely deer-like.

I sucked in a breath. “Oh, you poor thing!”

Grimhilde snorted. I didn't think you were so squeamish.

I turned my head and glared at her. I'm not, I glowered at her.

Nor that violent death bothered you.

It doesn't. But neither does it mean I don't have compassion.

Forest began to purr. I returned my attention to her and the poor deer-thing. “You knew I needed this, didn't you?” I asked her.

She sneezed, her ears briefly flapping, and resumed purring.

I nodded. “Alright, then. We'll share.” I pulled out my knife and went to work.

See, Grimhilde said at length, all those years as a scullery maid taught you plenty.

I finished the slice I'd been making and exhaled through my nose.

I returned to my work and before long, a couple dozen strips of what amounted to venison lay on a bare rock. I peered at it, then released the remainder to Forest.

I looked around for anything unburned. After several long moments, I picked up a stout stick half the size of my wrist and snorted. “You might be in luck,” I told Forest. “I might be relegated to an all-fruit diet for a little while.”

I gathered my thoughts as I had so many times before, and focused on the stick. My mind danced over the charred bark, through what remained of the cambium, and eventually into the pith. I pushed.

The whole thing erupted into a searing yellow flame. I yelped and dropped it onto the ground. It lay there, seething like lit olive oil or bacon grease.

“What the hell was that?” I blurted.

You tell me, dearie, Grimhilde thought at me.

I looked at her. “You know,” I said, “so long as we're out here with no one around, we may as well just talk in the usual manner.”

She shrugged. “Have it your way.”

I picked up a second stout stick and nudged the burning one beside the rock bearing the meat, then repeated the incendiary process and waited. “Well,” I said after a little while, “I guess it'll do.”

I ate my meal with more of the half-boiled fruit, gobbets of it occasionally dribbling down my chin.

“Why are you so fixated on being the fairest of all, anyway?”

“Why shouldn't I be?”

“Whatever did I do to you? Nothing, that's what. And you know what else? By all rights, I should hate you right back. But I don't. No, I rather pity you.”

“Pity me? Why on Earth would you...”

“Shut up!” I ignored her mental gasp and forged on. “When I was a young girl, I tried to love you. I really did. And you rejected me. My father wanted to love you. And he tried. But you rejected him as well. You rejected love! And for that you are to be pitied.”

“As fairest of them all,” she began.

“Your mirror lied to you,” I interrupted. “You were not the fairest of them all. Your outward beauty hid an inner ugliness. Why are you still so obsessed with that anyway? No one remains fair forever. The smooth skin, the plump lips, the shining hair, the...well, all those things that so many people think equate to beauty, all those things will fade, and then we pass on to...” I trailed off.

“What?” Grimhilde asked. “What is it?”

“That's it. That's why you're so obsessed with beauty.”

I began to sing.

Are you scared of your life, are you scared of your death?
Though that day will arrive, well it hasn't come yet.
For our meeting with death though it has been delayed
You have run your hands over the edge of your grave

“ENOUGH!” she roared.

“Is it, isn't it? You think that once you have the first wrinkle, the first grey hair, the first creaky knee, that marks the beginning of that downward slide.

“I've felt you constantly pushing against my mind the entire time we've been joined like this. Oh, it was subtle at first. Or, at the very least, I either didn't notice, or didn't recognize it. But now? Ever since I began my trek up the Faro, you've been practically shoving. You want my body, don't you?

“Well, do you know what? You can't have it! Why? Because I'm not finished with it yet. And when I'm done with it, I'll have more scars on it, I'll have stretch marks from having babies, wrinkles from being in the sun a lot, and so much more. And...and you know what all those things really are? No, they're not the marring of one's beauty. That's what you're thinking, don't deny it. They're the marks of a person who has done things, had experiences, grabbed life by the lips and yanked!”

“How would you know all that?” Grimhilde demanded.

I pulled the Howling from the Bag. “This is how,” I said. “This, and spending every waking moment with you since I allowed myself to fall under the influence of the Ring in the first place. You do want my body. That's the sort of thing written on these pages. That, and more. Things mankind was never meant to know. And in case you're wondering, I have no idea why it hasn't driven me entirely mad.”

I opened the cover and tore a sheet of its parchment from its binding.

“Snow? What are you doing?”

“These are truths mankind was never meant to know,” I said. With a flick of my mind, the parchment smoked, curled, then burst into flame.

“NO!” she shrieked.

“Oh, don't worry,” I half-snorted. I pulled another sheet and burned that, too. “I've committed all of this to memory.” I burned a third. “And perhaps it has driven me quite mad. You tell me, though.” I burned a fourth. “Am I mad?”

“For burning a priceless artifact?”

“If I want, I can dictate it to someone.” I burned a fifth page.

“Or you could learn to write,” she suggested.

I shrugged, and burned a sixth page. I kept going, watching the text and the drawings of those terrible, nightmarish creatures shrivel up in the flames, until finally I consumed the cover with its strange estoile and the boards beneath.

“And since it seems I've dodged what would have been my death, we're taking the long way home.”

“The long way?”

I nodded. “We're going to see the wide world.”

“What? What do you mean, we?

“What do you mean, what do I mean? I'm going exploring, and you're going to help me.”

“You can't be serious. You'll get yourself killed!”

“You've done a good job advising me so far. And you're still motivated.”

“Motivated!”

“Me or death? Death or me? Me, me, me, me-me, me-me-me....”

“Oh, stop it.”

I grinned. “Besides, it's not as though you have much of a choice, is it? Oh, we're going to have so much fun together!” I gushed.

Grimhilde snorted. I laughed again.

“Now, bring me that horizon!”

I set off across the slope, a spring in my step, and a song rising from my throat.

I am rebirth, I am the tear in the ties
Wake me when I die again
I am rebirth, cycle of spirit denied
Get back up and try again...

I stopped outside an unfamiliar gate. I gazed up at it, my breath coming out in white clouds.

“Well, that's new,” I said.

“Who goes there?” a guard demanded from atop the city wall that had only existed on parchment when I'd left.

“Me!” I replied.

“Ah...ja, Fraulein, I can see that. I'm not blind, you know.”

I shoved my hood back from my head. “Can you see me now?” I asked.

“I could see you two minutes ago. Still don't answer a thing.”

I groaned. “I am your queen!” I declared.

“Pull the other one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Cheeky, isn't he?” said Grimhilde.

So it would seem, I replied.

“Let's try this again,” I said. “Please open the gate.”

“On whose authority?”

“My own, of course!”

“Not buyin' it, Fraulein.”

“That's Konigin Fraulein to you.”

“Snow White has black hair,” he insisted. “Prinzessin Snow, that is,” he added.

I groaned. “Look, are we going to do this the easy way, or will I have to resort to the hard way?”

“What, you and your dog?”

“She's a cat,” I corrected. “And if she hears you call her a dog one more time, I disavow all responsibility for what she might do to you.”

“Ah-ha,” he said dubiously.

“I mean it,” I said. “Her blades will kill.”

“That much I'll believe,” he said.

“Open up, or I open it for you. Easy or hard?”

“Ah...I'll have to go with hard, I think, Fraulein.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don't say I didn't warn you!”

I rested a hand on the hilt of my sword and let my mind dance along the gate, finding all the gaps between the boards, and nudged. I watched the wood lighten with expanding frost. It creaked and crackled.

“What is this?” a familiar, muffled voice sounded from within.

“I'm sorry, your Highness,” the guard said, “but see, there's this strange woman with a large cat what wants in.”

“And?” he prompted.

“An' I have my orders, sir.”

I rolled my eyes. “Florian!” I called.

Rapid footsteps sounded from within and long moments later, Florian emerged onto the wall. He stood there regarding me across the several-score paces between us.

“S...snow?” he finally stammered.

“Ja!”

“Oh, by Mitra...” He gave the guard a box upside the head and disappeared from sight. “Open the gate!” came his muffled command.

A few moments later, another guard said. “It's stuck, sir!”

I sighed. “I'm dreadfully sorry about that,” I called. “You'll want to stand aside. This might take a few minutes.”

I waited a beat, then pushed at the gate with my mind. Mist wafted off the boards, lazily at first, then with increasing rapidity until the ice on and between the planks sizzled, jets of steam blossoming outward. At length, it died away and stopped altogether.

“What the bloody hell was that?” asked an unfamiliar voice from within.

“I don't know,” said Florian, “but whatever it was, I declare it to be above your pay grade. Try it again.”

The sound of wood scraping against wood and steel vibrated through my feet and at great length, one of the great gates ground open.

Florian bounded across the way and caught me up in his arms.

“Snow!” he squealed in a most decidedly unmanly fashion.

Like I cared. I giggled as he lifted me off the ground and twirling me around several times before returning me abruptly to me feet.

He gazed into my eyes for several long moments. “Where were you? We looked all over!”

I cringed. “I'm terribly sorry about that. An afternoon turned into an overnight stay, which turned into a week, one thing led inexorably to another, and...”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It doesn't? I'd have thought my long absence would have complicated things here. ” I made an encompassing gesture at the wall. “Someone's been busy as of late.”

“We've, uh, had a little trouble with the Southern Isles. And Flanders. And Alsace. And Brandenburg. And don't get me started with Iberia.”

I grunted. “So I've heard. It seems the whole region has gone thoroughly to hell since I left. I even resolved a situation with Brandenburg just last week. It required a little aggressive negotiation.”

“Aggressive negotiation?”

I jerked a thumb over each shoulder over which the heads of two bearded axes protruded. “I had to apply Zer and Storen.” At Florian's frown, I added, “Because when I use them together, they destroy.”

“I...see.” He blinked. “Wait, that was you?”

“You heard about that?”

“My love, I think everyone's heard about that from here to Napoli by now.”

“You think so?”

He frowned. “A woman with white hair and a large cat single-handedly shattered the largest mercenary army assembled in over a century. Is that an exaggeration?”

“Not by much.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”

“No, but I'll probably tell you about it anyway. Eventually.”

“Let me guess,” he said, “it has something to do with the ice on the gate.”

I nodded.

He held me out at arm's length and slowly looked me up and down, from the top of my snow-white head, to the small scars on the tip of my nose, left cheek, right jaw, the interruption of my left eyebrow, my woolens and riding leathers, his eyes tracing the parts of my body that had filled out as of late, and down to my black leather jack-boots. A hand went to my hair and gently pulled its single braid over my shoulder. “What happened to your hair?”

I chuckled. “It's complicated.”

“I don't doubt it.”

He proffered his arm as he turned. I slipped my gloved hand into it as I fell into step beside him and heard Forest fall into step beside me. My footfalls echoed beneath the gate.

“So,” I said, “what brings you here? I thought you were going back to Thuringia once your leg healed.”

“I did. I've been traveling back and forth in my oversight capacity.”

“Oversight? Of what?”

He sighed. “Snow, you've been gone for so long. Few in Weiberluchs have supported Jarl Ragnar. In your absence, more and more of them deferred to me for leadership. Especially here. The legalities are admittedly questionable. But that's the thing about law, isn't it?”

“You mean, that it's only illegal if you get caught?”

He chuckled. “Or if someone decides to challenge you in court. The last two years have been their own special kind of headache.”

I stopped abruptly. “Two years?!”

“Plus a few months. You didn't realize that?”

I shook my head. “After the first few weeks, the days just started to merge together one after another. In some places, you wouldn't hardly know a winter had passed at all.”

He peered at me quizzically. “Where did you go, anyway?”

“That, my prince, is a long story.”

“We have a little time.”

As we walked through town, I regaled him with some of my adventures, my tales punctuated by frequent pauses to greet my adoring populace.

“You traveled the wide world, and you didn't bring me anything?” he teased.

I snorted and punched him in the arm.

“Ow.”

“Oh, that did not hurt, silly,” I teased back. I replied in song.

A princess returned under winter's sky
Time had grown short and she had to decide
So as she strode back over the land
A gift for her prince was there in her hand
It was the glow of a night, it was the heart of a song
It was the tear of a child who could never belong
It was the wish of a soul on a star's distant light
Somehow Mitra smiled on her during a cold winter night

At very great length, we passed through the gate-house of Sternberg, between a phalanx of guards at attention, and eventually into the main garden.

I looked past him. “What is that?” I pointed toward a topiary.

He craned his head around and followed my outstretched arm. “When you didn't return, I had that made. I, um, don't think they got your nose quite right.”

I strode across the intervening ground and examined the shrubbery in question. “Who did this?”

“A nascent guild called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. They mean to sell their services to the growing merchant class. I think they may be a bit ahead of their time, however.”

“They do excellent work. It's a little, er, twiggy, though.”

“They tell me it will fill in. It was a whole lot twiggier, as you put it, when they first finished with it. I can probably have them adjust your nose.”

“No, no, it's perfect. But the resemblance is remarkable. How did they do that?”

“I sketched you on a slate.”

I whirled around and gawked at him. “You...you did?”

He nodded. “I did.”

“You missed me that much?”

“Missed you? Snow, I was out of my mind with worry!”

I sighed. “I'm awfully sorry about that. I only meant to be away for an afternoon. That turned into an overnight stay, which turned into a week, and one thing just kept leading inexorably to another.”

“Did you solve your problem with Grimhilde?”

“Not exactly.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's complicated.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So I've gathered. And I see you picked up a stray...that's the biggest cat I've ever seen. Bigger than those Norwegian forest cats.”

“She's a lynx.”

“A...a lynx?”

I nodded. “Her name is Forest.”

“And what's this?” He brushed a thumb across the still-pink scar on my cheek, and two of the others on my face.

“I got into a fight. Well, several fights. I guess this means I'm no longer 'the fairest of them all.'”

Florian furrowed his brow. “Snow, honey, you will always be the fairest to me.” He leaned down and kissed me.

I kissed him back. The kiss deepened. After a time, we let each other up for breath.

“I missed that,” I breathed.

“So did I.”

A smile spread across my lips. “Do you know what else I missed?”

He shook his head.

My smile broadened. I pulled away and began to sashay across the grounds. “Oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out,” I teased.

“Don't even think about it,” Grimhilde chided me.

Too late, I told her.

“But you two aren't properly wed.”

Bite me.

Florian took several strides toward me. I quickened my pace. He quickened his. Before I knew it, we were both running toward the castle, laughing. We skidded and slid around corners, up stairs, around the staff, until I let him corner me in my chambers.

“Well?” I prompted.

“First,” he said, “we should get you out of all that leather.”

“Oh, really?” I purred.

“Really.”

“Well, then....” I loosened the thong securing the end of my braid and teased it apart, letting my hair, wavy from its plaiting, fall about my shoulders.

I looked at the baby in my arms, so small, so helpless. So perfect. At length, she opened her little eyes, bright green irises, and locked onto my own. I gasped.

“Snow?” said Florian.

For a long moment, I said nothing. Then, “It's her,” I whispered.

“I know. And she's perfect.”

I looked sharply at my husband. “Nein. I mean, it's her.”

“Her...?”

I raised my eyebrows expectantly, practically willing him to understand.

At length, his jaw dropped open. “You don't mean...?”

I nodded. I'd neither seen nor heard from Grimhilde since a few days after my homecoming. For the last nine months, only a faint lingering presence hovered somewhere barely within my perception. But the scream she'd made not long thereafter still sometimes echoed in my mind.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“The only thing we can,” I said.

“Snow, she tried to kill you!”

“Ja. Ja, she did.” I paused. “Nein. She did more than that. She tried to destroy me. And if we do what I know you must be thinking, she would have succeeded. So...I have to destroy her.”

“How? How do we do that without...” He let the rest hang in the air.

“Grimhilde tried to annihilate me. But she miscalculated.”

“Miscalculated?”

“Do you remember what I told you about what happened after I tossed the Ring?”

He nodded.

“She meant to evict me from my own body, to send my soul to Mitra-knows-where. Because she was afraid of her own death.”

“You said the two of you developed an understanding.”

“More of a detente. But she never got over her fear.” I looked back into Ariana's green eyes. “Well, it looks like you got your extension after all, doesn't it?” I returned my attention to my husband. “No, we must destroy her. Utterly.”

“Snow, if I had a pfennig for every person in this realm who wanted to do that, to take revenge, I could buy all of Europe.”

“Revenge? All the terrible things she did, all the horrors she perpetrated, it cannot be atoned for, nor repaid, only undone. To do that, we must undo her, make something, some-one, else in her place. That is my revenge!”

“How?”

“This is not the sort of war one can win on the edge of a blade. It must be won by the beat of a heart.”

“So what do you propose?”

I peered at him. “We have to love her, of course.”

“You told me you tried that, back when you were a girl.”

I sighed. “I didn't understand then how much damage had already been done to her.” I looked again into Arianna's eyes. “I don't know if she's even aware. But if the scream Grimhilde made when you and I made Arianna is any indication...” I looked up again. “Be very grateful you never heard that.

“So we're going to love her. Unconditionally. As far as anyone is concerned, including ourselves, she's our daughter and Grimhilde is long gone.”

I looked down at my baby girl and began to sing.

I am the way, I am the light
I am the dark inside the nights
I heal your hopes, I feel your dreams
And in the dark I hear your screams

Don't turn away, just take my hand
And when you make your final stand
I'll be right there, I'll never leave
And all I ask of you is believe, believe

I whirled around amid a mid-December snow-flurry, hand-in-hand with Arianna. Already passing her ninth winter, it still amazed me how much she'd grown. I paused in the song I sang to let her carry it to conclusion herself.

Green is in the mistletoe and red is in the holly
Silver in the stars above that shine on everybody
Gold is in the candlelight and crimson in the embers
White is in the winter night that everyone remembers

We together erupted in laughter. I watched the white flakes settle on her mouse-brown hair, just like her father's.

“I love you very much, dear,” I told her.

“I love you too, Mama!”

I knelt down and hugged her closely, like I'd never let her go.

“Mama,” she asked at length, “why does this night have a star?”

I pulled back and followed her gaze up into the late December sky. “So we'd know that we can see that far.”

“Oh,” she said with the sense of wonder only a child ever seemed to be able to muster.

I smiled, and said, “Shall we go for supper? It's strudel night.”

She grinned up at me and together we trudged through the snow toward the promised warmth.

“Your Majesty?”

I turned to Gertrude. “Ja?”

She curtsied. “The envoy from Corona prepares to depart. I believe they await a response.”

I grunted assent. “One moment, please.”

I gazed across the garden toward where Arianna played patiently and gently with her brother and a trio of Forest's latest litter of kittens.

Arianna, I sent.

Yes, Mother?

What do you think of young Frederic?

The prince of Corona?

Yes, that's right. Do you like him?

I suppose. He's very kind.

You two looked to be having a great deal of fun together.

Oh, ja! He's my best friend in the whole world. Well...my best boy friend, I mean.

I smiled. Do you think you could marry him some day?

Marry him? Yes...no...maybe...I don't know, Mother, I've just passed my ninth winter!

Yes, of course. How silly of me.

Very silly.

But you do like him?

Of course I like him!

I turned to Gertrude. “Please send a message to our cousins Corona. Tell them, 'Temba, his arms wide.'”

Gertrude curtsied again and withdrew.

I turned back toward where the children had resumed their play. I rested my hands on the stone railing and began to sing.

I am rebirth, I am the tear in the ties....