The Ice Queen

By Richard Wright, Jr

I was there.

I remember when darkness came into the world, when it unleashed a plague of damnation upon the races to which the world was given. I remember when the unholy heir of darkness was born, and when her father fell.

A second war begins. The cold grip of death stretches over the world in ice and winter, for the heart of evil and the heart of the world are bound to one another. The heir of darkness rises as her father, and blood flows in rivers upon the frozen earth. A prophesied messiah rises to stand against the gathering dark. The tears of the fairies fall for the world that is frozen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Wright, Jr
• Release date: Jan 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465939760

Richard Wright, Jr

R. Boardman Wright is an author of fantasy and science fiction based out of Northwest Arkansas. He is inspired by the world around him and often finds himself living out worlds of wonder in his mind. He currently maintains residences in Southern California and Northwest Arkansas with his partner, and is currently pursuing a masters degree in psychology with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy.

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The Ice Queen

By R. Boardman Wright

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Richard Boardman Wright

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Girl and the Prophets

Chapter 2: The Walk of the Fairies

Chapter 3: Wolfsbane

Chapter 4: Prophecies of the Light

Chapter 5: A Hidden Past

Chapter 6: Visions and Symbols

Chapter 7: Goodbye to the Haven

Chapter 8: The Road to the Door

Chapter 9: Nymphs, Wolves, Fairies, and Golems

Chapter 10: The Door Under the Mountain

Chapter 11: The Council

Chapter 12: Many Meetings

Chapter 13: The White City

Chapter 14: The Castle of the Sun

Chapter 15: The Healing of Headred

Chapter 16: Eliudnir Unleashed

Chapter 17: The First Blood

Chapter 18: The White Gate Closes

Chapter 19: The Gathering Dark

Chapter 20: The Last Battle

Chapter 21: The Road South

Epilogue: The Golden Age

Every land, every people, every world, remember a tale, told or sung from the depths of time.

I walk among the silver palaces, amidst the golden glades beneath the mortal world, within the realm of my kindred, and I remember the legends and myths I saw in so many ages of the world.

E elphame miðgarðir esari natham.

I watch Miðgarðir from Elphame below.

Long ago, in times of myths and magic and legends, a shadow grew, a darkness so terrible, so evil, it covered the earth in eternal winter. None could stand against it, none but the light. When hope became lost a woman bore a child who would save her people.

My tale begins in the forests of the Miðgarðir, before the memory of the race of men who now walk the earth. In the lands of winter, in an earthen home in the deepest parts of the wilderness, a little girl lived with the wise woman whom she called her grandmother. Long ago, her grandmother told her, the wolves took her parents’ lives.

But how do I begin to tell this tale of truth? Ah yes, it comes to me now, a beginning worthy of this history I now lay down for you.

You see, once there was a legend…

*****

Six years of winter passed by for Beoreth in the small earthen home where she lived, six years of fear she would be discovered, and all would be lost. The hovel lay at the edges of the kingdom of Sul, one land of Miðgarðir, in the ancient tongue meaning middle-world, encompassing all between the gods in heaven and the fires of Muspellheim, the land of souls below. Deep within Fensalir’s haven, Beoreth lived far from Ull, the White City, where once dwelled the Witch Queen of Sul. Beoreth knew Ull well, and once called the city home. Fensalir, the safe haven in the wilderness of the kingdom of Sul, resonated as a glimmer of hope in the bitter winter. The path of light began in the havens. The long road wound through the lands of magic. At its end, in the distant northern mountains where the top of Mount Kern ascended to the skies, the White City rose.

Beoreth’s heart ached to think of Ull, of all she left behind. No word came since the fateful night six years before, a night Beren, Witch Queen of Sul, gave Beoreth a task to save their world, and raise her daughter far from the Demon Lord plaguing these lands.

Caer, the girl she called her granddaughter, played with simple wooden toys on the earth floor by the fire. Beoreth stood at the wooden table nearby, crushing herbs to help the rheumatism plagued her limbs, her apron swaying over her ample middle.

Beoreth took the steeping water from the fire and began to brew the tea. Flaming auburn hair drawn into a simple braid flowed down Caer’s back. When the sun or the firelight struck it, one could almost see the fire flickering within the small child’s soul.

Caer wore a blue gown of simple homespun, woven by Beoreth, the woman she called her grandmother, who raised her in her parents’ stead. How little Caer knew. How much she could not know, not now, not yet.

Not until the time came when she would rise and fight the darkness.

Beoreth looked out the small window at the Black Mountains in the west, and the clouds boiling and raging beyond them, over Eliudnir, the towers of the Demon Lord. Her aging eyes scanned the Myrkviðr Forest to the west of Sul as she searched those places every night for six years; every night she feared the shadow would come for the child.

Caer’s hands stopped playing with the toy; she stood, bored and listless, half walking and half swaying to the table where Beoreth mixed her draught. There she laid her elbows on the table, staring at her caretaker as though she would bore a hole in her.

Grandmother, Caer drawled, her tone long-suffering, in a way only a little girl could, a tone which melted even the hardest of hearts, tell me a story.

Beoreth sighed, and knowing she would not say no, continued to mix as she spoke.

"The gods made races to rule the world. They made men first, the mortal children of the gods. Legend tells they came from the dust of the earth, and awoke upon it in the ancient days.

The fairies-- Beoreth smiled as the child’s face lit with the name of the fair folk who dwelled beneath the mounds no more than a day away. Fairies of the fair hair, beautiful face, and pleasing form, dwell in immortality in the silver palaces in golden glades beyond the realm of mortal men. Their brethren are the prophets who foretell the future, for the prophets are mortal and wise, born also of gods and men. Born of both men and gods, the fairies chose immortality removed from Miðgarðir above in Elphame, lands beneath the earth the gods gave men, while their brethren the prophets chose a mortal life.

Beoreth watched the bowl, crushing the herbs into dust, The nymphs, whose life comes from the spirits of the trees and waters where they dwell, are long-lived, and little by little suffer the ravages of time afflicting all other creatures. The centaurs, who gaze at the stars and foretell their meanings, live in their cave cities of the far north, and on rare occasion interfere with the affairs of the other races.

While Beoreth continued her tale, Caer’s tiny hands and feet latched onto the wood and with unexpected strength hefted her weight onto its top. When she finished her elbows fell onto the table again, and propped her head between her hands to listen more. At long last, Caer seated herself on a stool, under Beoreth’s watchful gaze.

"But the gods yet needed to finish their creation. The myths tell among all the races not one did they find fit to rule the lands the gods loved so, and the earth became dark with sorrow. In this time the mortal King Gunner married the beautiful mortal Veleda, who bore him a daughter, Dana. The god Heimdall took as his wife Veleda; Mab and Aske their children. Heimdall and Veleda committed so grievous an adulterous offense the gods forbid their children to rule or to walk in heaven with the gods. With Oberon, son of Finn and Eleya, Mab became immortal and the mother of all fairies. Aske chose mortality, and became the father of all prophets.

When all the hope of the gods failed, Woden, Lord of the gods, walked in the ancient forests of Miðgarðir. There he heard a voice with the beauty of a singing bird, and he found its owner Dana, the mortal maiden. In the glades of the forests he loved her, and she bore to him a daughter.

Caer’s head lay on her arms on the table, and Beoreth smiled as she paused. The child would sleep, and just as well, for these places could grow dull, and life could become listless. Sleep became their sole escape.

"The heavens raged, but the words of the god Heimdall calmed them. The daughter of Woden would grow with the power of gods and the knowledge of men; for the child would not be cursed as the fairies and the prophets, his children with his mortal wife Valeda. The children of Heimdall, born of a mortal woman, chose to live as mortals, or to be immortal and banished beneath Miðgarðir in the sidhes, and so became born the prophets and the fairies, mortal and immortal, one to tell the future and die, one to bear the gifts of magic far from their cousins, and to come into Miðgarðir yet never to dwell there, never to spread their wings and fly.

But not so with Woden’s daughter. She would hold the power of magic. At last a human would rule as the gods saw fit, for always would her line bear the blood of the gods. Though in the entirety of the kingdom of men no man could be found worthy to rule for the gods, one woman would rule the destiny of all.

Caer’s eyes closed, and though not sleeping, soon she would. Just as well, Beoreth considered as she continued to mix the herbs.

Beoreth wiped her hands on her apron and sighed. Six long years she feared, and the enemies of the light never came into the safe haven. One of the few places left in Sul Belial could not touch, the gods and the Witch Queen Beren wove their magic in Fensalir, and so Beoreth and Caer remained safe.

The fear passed, and the sun warmed the wise woman’s face.

Outside the world remained cold, hidden deep in the winter. Tonight they would see snow again, and ice as well; she felt it in her bones. She took a sip of tea, and spewed it out.

Old fool, she cursed, realizing she added too much ginger root and not enough kanjika root to the witches’ hazel and clarified butter. And to make matters worse, she looked at the stored roots and saw she needed more witches’ hazel to make the brew again.

Caer, she called. Caer lifted her head, her eyes swimming with sleep. Come and robe yourself. We must gather roots.

Yes, grandmother, Caer obeyed.

Beoreth watched as the girl wrapped herself in the fur Beoreth bartered for in the nearby village. Fear heralded the birth of this small girl, and yet innocence shone within Caer, a light in her eyes against the thickest dark.

Beoreth took her own shawl and concentrated on the path to the village, where she knew old man Hroth grew herbs in an indoor garden. Amused by the idea, she laughed. A greenhouse, he called it.

Come, grandmother, Caer called, bounding out of the house.

Beoreth sighed and followed.

*****

Night fell as Caer and Beoreth made their way home from Hroth’s greenhouse, the basket Beoreth carried half-full with medicinal roots and herbs grown in a greenhouse in the midst of winter.

Caer breathed in the cold air and sighed in gladness, thanking the gods as her grandmother taught her.

The young girl questioned on rare occasions the things her grandmother told her. Kindness and gentleness defined Beoreth. Caer felt the weight and responsibility for her, as if she could sense the presence of Beoreth at all times.

In her heart, she knew the stories already and knew their truth. She never questioned the legends of the gods or the creatures.

But to her core she felt no truth for the story of her parents that Beoreth told her. This story she questioned many times.

Caer’s mother and father, Beoreth said, lived not far away. One night the wolves came, hungry and dying, into Fensalir. Evil took Caer’s parents away, but not her. Baby Caer stayed with Beoreth on the fateful night, sick with fever.

Her grandmother said winter held the cold emanating from the demon of Eliudnir’s heart.

Caer danced between the trees, careful not to laugh lest Beoreth find her playing. Her grandmother searched for barks, picking and plucking what they needed for potions.

Caer looked around but did not see her grandmother any longer.

Grandmother? she called, wondering if she should go back home and wait..

Grandmother—? She turned, hearing footsteps.

Before her a centaur appeared from a cluster of trees and stopped. His animal half blended with the human half, a single creature born of two, tall and regal as though he galloped out of her wildest dreams. Caer gasped and stumbled back, falling to the snow with a soft crunch.

Are you lost, young human? The centaur thundered, neighing as he spoke.

No, I—I lost my grandmother. She pulled herself up, her eyes wide and never leaving him, impressed by the sheer size of the creature.

You should find her. He smiled down at her.

Caer nodded.

You have never seen one of my kind? His laugh boomed like his voice.

No, Mister Centaur, she said in earnest. Grandmother says your people live in the north, far away from Fensalir. She says you fight the Dark Lord, just like us.

No one, he said, in a low growl and appearing menacing, fights the heir of the Dark Lord. No one stands against her; no one can. He smiled again in the forced way of his people. Where are my manners? I am Cahros, son of Cheron.

I’m Caer. She smiled again.

"Caer, such a beautiful name for a beautiful mortal girl. Caer of the mortal realm, we do fight the darkness. We guard all of you from it, you most of all.

Caer cocked her head, Why me?

You are a child and children are special. We cherish all children.

Caer giggled at the lavish way the centaur spoke.

Caer? Beoreth called in the distance.

My grandmother. She turned to answer. Coming, Grandmother, you’ll not believe who I have found! Caer turned back to Cahros, and her face fell.

The centaur disappeared.

In his place she saw a small red bird, its wing wounded. It looks broken, she thought as Beoreth came up behind her.

What have you found, my child? Beoreth sighed at the wounded bird. It never failed to amaze her. Always Caer would find creatures wounded and ailing, creatures she wanted to help. Beoreth knew it to be her secret nature.

Come, child. She clutched the bag of herbs in her withered hand. We will brew a potion and heal the songbird when we return home.

Beoreth’s heart skipped when the bird squawked. Tiny pinpricks of light spun around it. The bird lifted off and flew away, healed by the will of the child before her.

Caer turned to her, stunned and joyful. Look, grandmother, Caer said, giddy and waving her hands, dancing in the snow. Hand magic.

Beoreth shook her head and wondered how long it would be before the secret she kept would be revealed and the girl would know the truth, and the lies, of the life she lived.

Time, it seemed, would be her answer.

*****

Night fell on Fensalir. In the snug home she always knew, Caer slipped into dreams.

Snow crunched beneath her feet in Ull, the city of her birth. The sun moved high in the sky, and the winter wonderland glittered.

Smoke rose from huts buried in the woods. What birds remained in the cold winter sang from shivering beaks atop ice-encrusted trees. In the distance, near the mountains to the north, a beacon of light shone on her face.

A doe pranced the thick woods and stopped to look at her before ripping bark off of a tree. It stared at her for a moment, and…

It bowed.

The doe stood and cocked its head. Follow me, the deer seemed to whisper, the thought hanging in its eyes.

Caer walked, entranced, through the snow after the doe, into a nearby thicket, along an ancient path. Caer pushed past frozen brambles, the thorns of dead rose bushes tearing at her skin.

Caer yelped and sucked on a bleeding wrist, not noticing the vines at her feet. She tripped, and with a gasp fell face first into the snowy thicket. Caer looked up at the deer.

Just as swift as she appeared, the doe ran from her, into the dark woods.

A woman stepped into the clearing and looked at her, in hope and in recognition, her hair, once flaming red, now white, the color of the winter, streaked with faint lines of what once was.

The woman’s eyes glistened with tears, her face young and full, her skin pale beneath the white furs and the robes surrounding her, her lips red as blood, her eyes blue and deep as the oceans. And those eyes cried tears of ice that fell and shattered.

She looks just like me, Caer thought. Caer always imagined her mother looked like this woman.

"Are you ready to return to me, my daughter?" the woman asked through her tears.

Caer shut her eyes and rubbed them. She knew the voice and the face of this woman were more than just reflections. A memory flashed in the child’s mind, of a baby’s cry and a mother’s tears. They met before: she was sure of it.

When she opened her eyes, the woman disappeared, and the dream around her changed again.

Afternoon sunlight streamed through the treetops of the woods. Caer stood in a circle of trees on which torches hung around Vingólf, the silent vigil. An altar engraved with the words of the goddess, used for prayer, meditation, and magic, lay beneath one of the torches.

A thick sheet of ice spread across the ground, and within it lay frozen the woman she just met. In dreams she stood here before; there the Ice Queen became her constant companion, a woman whose body remained untouched as the lands around her became as cold as the ice in her tomb.

A man stood nearby, gazing up at the heavens, a man she also knew in her dreams. He was a boy in her dreams who played with her in the frozen forests. One day he would become this man, tall and strong.

His hair grew longer, she mused. Emotions stirred within her. Waves of chestnut hair fell onto his broad, strong shoulders. Tall and with shadowy eyes, the man bore a semblance not of fear but of fury. As he prophesied aloud, his voice carried on the wind, his voice the voice of the man he would be and the boyhood left behind.

The fiery illumination of the torches faded, and the power of the altar and of the man disappeared. Ripped from this dream and into another, she saw and felt the shadows of the great western wastelands of Óskópnir.

The jagged rocks, the hopelessness and despair, the fire and the pain of the western wasteland beneath the boiling black clouds of the demon flew by as Caer floated to the place where the Dark Lord waited.

The souls of wicked men littered the ground, one of the few lights in this place of darkness. Golems moved in silence, the offspring of evil, made and bound in Óskópnir until evil controlled all lands.

Eliudnir, the fortress of the demon, rose before her, its sharp stone parapets black spears of death; the blood of the earth, flowing rivers of molten rock as they spilled from the ground, yet another light in this evil place, flames shining from the windows as a beacon of evil.

In the chamber the demon waited amidst the fire light, cloaked and hooded, her midnight eyes glaring as it waited for revenge and for power.

The shadows caressed the demon as she stood on the cold stone in the firelight, drawing Caer into its lair in waves of fury.

"Tell me where you are… she hissed, …where you wait for me."

BELIAL, the Ice Queen cried across the lands separating them, the kingdoms of light and dark, of ice and flame.

Caer’s dream winked out.

Caer felt cold snow beneath her back. She lay again in winter. So cold, and yet so comforting. She opened her eyes.

The Ice Queen stood before her, wrapped in furs. The sun remained at its place in the sky, as she stood in Fensalir.

The Ice Queen knelt beside Caer and touched a cold hand to her head. Her tears fell onto the snow and shattered as she looked into Caer’s eyes. Your time yet awaits you. Go back to the safe place, and sleep in peace for a short while, and return when the time comes.

She bowed before Caer. Until your time comes, she said again, as Caer’s dream dissolved, and she awakened.

*****

Snow covered the entire forest, the trees and the path to Ull and the haven. The snow crunched beneath the horses’ hooves as the man and the boy rode through the wood, covered in a thick blanket of winter.

Clouds in the heavens circled in cold delight over the last night’s storm. Headred thought of the warmth of their house in the city, and of the girl who he knew from strange dreams.

Sometimes she appeared in his dreams as a small girl. But more often he saw a woman, tall and beautiful, with flaming hair and piercing eyes, the eyes of the Ice Queen, her mother.

He didn’t remember much about the time before the Queen departed, a boy of but six years. The Ice Queen they called her, frozen in the world of her making, too weak to carry on, to fight the shadows and dark plaguing her people.

Not the truth, he knew, but what they said anyway.

He saw her, under the ice floor in Vingólf, the silent Vigil, in the woods by the sacred place. Many times he walked to the mount of Glasheim, the sacred place of Sul, where the people entombed the ancient Queens of Sul, where Enyd, the Ice Queen’s mother, lay in death, calm in sleep though she brought great evil into Miðgarðir.

And he strayed into the circle and looked upon the face of the Ice Queen.

There she lay. Streaks of white and auburn hair shimmered when the sun hit the ice. In the city the people whispered Beren’s soul walked on the frozen earth every night. Bound to the earth, and to the people within it, ever weeping for the Kingdom of Sul.

They called her a monster, a creature walking the night.

But Headred knew her to be a goddess, whose tears froze on her cheeks and shattered on the earth.

She appeared as the woman of his dreams. The meaning of his dreams became clouded, even to his father, Hamald. Why she walked with him in his dreams he did not know, her purposes unclear. After all, her own actions overturned fate.

He saw the Ice Queen and thought it to be a dream. At night, as the god and the goddess danced in the heavens, he walked on the frozen paths of Vingólf and Glasheim and prayed to foresee what would come.

And she stood before him.

Weeping, never speaking, with her hand pointing to the south, to this place he now rode through, she stood before him, pleading in silence with him to seek what lay in the south.

So they rode.

Hamald, his father, learned about the vision almost at once, waiting not far away from his son as they hunted for the meager winter meat. Through Hamald Headred understood what happened those many years before, on the night Beren’s daughter came into the world.

Some of what happened on the fateful night Hamald kept from his son, but the boy’s father knew the destiny forged long ago spoke of Headred as a man. Beren’s daughter would hold his heart, and her kingdom in another. She would make a choice between them. And one she would destroy.

And Hamald prayed the words did not mean what he thought they did.

Still, Hamald would not let it upset him now.

To the entrance of the fairy sidhes, the silver palaces in golden glades hidden from mortal eyes, Hamald and Headred went, to seek out vision in Elphame, land of their cousins the fairies, to understand the meaning of those visions.

The horses snorted through the ice crusting their nostrils. How many times, Hamald wondered, would they stop to thaw the horses?

Such became the life of winter. He looked beyond his destrier at the endless blankets of snow, the trees whose spirits sank low under the shield of ice covering them. When would it end?

Hamald stopped his destrier, and motioned for his son to do the same. They sat still in the cold and silence. Drink some fire ale, my son, while we have time, Hamald said, shivering. The cold seeped into his warm wrappings as he jumped down from the horse and retrieved the brew for the horses from a saddlebag.

Hamald took a swig from the flask and handed it to his son. His insides warmed. Color returned to Headred’s face.

Have heart, Headred, Hamald took the fire ale his son offered. There are places not like this. The magic of the darkness cannot touch the place where our cousins dwell.

How far away are the sidhes, father? Headred asked him, shifting in the saddle. Already they journeyed three days.

Not far, my son. Hamald replaced the fire ale in Headred’s saddlebag. Not far at all. Hamald climbed onto the saddle. Soon, my son, we shall see the places where the fairies dwell. Hamald’s eyes misted. The gates of Elphame, the fairy sidhes, are a mark of beauty, where green grasses grow and the warmth of the sun still shines. There visions can be seen, where the gods and their children walk, where we may learn the meaning of your prophecies.

A howl shattered their ride. Headred recognized the sound; many years passed since the wolves of the west strayed into Sul, ever watched by the vigilant eyes of the Ice Queen’s specter.

Stay here, Hamald told him, a gleam in his eye. He pulled an arrow from beneath the furs on his back. Its small swishing sound reminded him of the old wars as he placed the arrow in his bow and he rode into the wide wood.

Headred sighed as his father disappeared. In his heart he did not fear. Before his mother passed, he heard many tales of the battle his father fought in, not against one starved wolf but thousands of wolves and golems in the dark armies ranks. Legends of those battles spoke of Gareth, the King of Sul, the consort of the Ice Queen, and his father, Hamald. His mother spoke of the wolves and golems felled by his father’s arrow and sword.

The boy sat on his horse, waiting. His ears perked when he heard movement in nearby the trees. Headred felt fear for himself. His fingers clutched the dagger beneath his fur wrappings, as he turned to look in fear at what evil came upon him.

*****

Not far away, Hamald raced through the snow-covered woods with the fury of the winds, to the place where the wolf cried. And there he saw something he did not expect.

The wolf howled no longer. It returned to the form of a man, and lay naked and quaking in the snow.

Wolfsbane, a woman’s aged voice called him.

Hamald turned to face Beoreth in awe as the wise woman shuffled through the snowdrifts toward him.

You do not think I have been defenseless? she asked, and smiled.

‘Tis good to look upon your face, Hamald stammered, interested to see the wise woman, and knowing wherever she stood, the child of light could not be far away. And a werewolf ventured here, he thought.

He ventured too far from his brethren while they hunted in the west, Beoreth said, seeming to read his thoughts.

And you have killed him? He leaped from the horse and headed toward the convulsing man.

I have taken what of the wolf remains in him away, Beoreth walked beside the warrior and prophet lost to her for many years. No longer can he hunt men and eat their flesh, though Belial will haunt his mind until he dies.

What will you do to him now? Hamald peered at the man, whose struggles faded as the herb paralyzed him.

I will leave him here, she said. Nearby the writhing man howled in pain, the sound echoing around them. His suffering will end soon, whether by his brethren who search for him, or by the cold taking his life.

Hamald did not hesitate. He loosed his arrow into the chest of the werewolf, and blood stained the snow.

Why offer them food? He deserves as much for his crimes.

Hamald thought of the villages not so fortunate, when the wolves found their sustenance the flesh and blood of the living. For the wolves would not eat the flesh of the dead.

Aye, perhaps he does. She began to walk away.

Do you disapprove? he asked her and hooked the bow over his shoulder.

Nay, child. She continued to walk. What road do you travel to pass through Fensalir?

On pilgrimage.

She heard the fear on his tongue.

Headred foresaw dark visions, many and often. We go to Elphame where our brethren dwell, to seek answers.

What does he dream about? Beoreth spun, peering at him as if she knew the answers.

The Queen, he whispered.

And she froze.

They say she walks and she waits for the coming of the light. But you did not see the end. She lays in the ice of Vingólf, the Vigil not far from the city and the sacred place, He watched the tears bud in her eyes. "There she cannot move, and cannot speak. But they say her spirit wanders Miðgarðir. Headred saw her, and she bade him come here. She knows