In Idalir, the Castle of the Sun, at the heart of the city Ull, the Queen slept in her bedchamber. Berwyn told Gavin what happened, and they cleared the castle, allowing the Queen to mourn and to sleep in blessed dreams of solace, aided by a potion from Berwyn.
But Berwyn dreaded the evil descending upon them, covering the Castle of the Sun with shadow. Moloch torments her, Gavin thought. He seeks his last revenge on the Queen who destroyed him.
Gavin watched the shadow and prayed for the coming dawn, for the demon at last to flee, and for Miðgarðir again to be made whole. And in the coming clouds he saw a great, black dragon, its eyes the eyes of the Dark Lord, and a bloody wound in its side. He moved to sound the alarm as an enchantment came over him, and he collapsed, asleep.
In the Castle of the Sun, the dragon became a man.
In Idalir footsteps echoed and became lost in the night. Enyd awakened, groggy from the potion. Something seemed wrong, she thought and forced herself to stand and walk to the door of her chamber.
“Who goes there?” Enyd gazed out into the dim halls of the castle, but found no answer. She listened, but she heard and saw nothing now. Far below, the wise woman and her daughter slept in the kitchens beneath the spell of the dark cloud covering the city.
Enyd glanced, terrified, out of the window of the tower she slept in, at the mists shrouding Ull. She felt the chill of the wind coming from it, which blanketed the whole of the battlements in evil power from the diminished spirit.
Enyd cried again for her lost husband.
The footsteps sounded again, and the bedchamber door creaked open.
“Cuthred!” she shouted and ran into the cold arms of her love.
His side still bled. His eyes stared into hers, and he took her mouth to his, tasting in passion and fury, taking what he would. And she gave to him all she could.
“Come,” he said, his voice growling and tired. He took her hand and led her to the bed. “Come and lie with me, my love.”
“You are wounded,” she said, wiping from her hand blood oozing from his side, staring at the blood appearing black in the moonlight and shadows. “The healers must see to this.”
“It can wait.” He pressed his mouth to hers again and unleashed his pain in passion. “It must wait.”
The wound looked gruesome. His torn shirt and doublet revealed his ripped skin. Blood seeped down his side and oozed onto his leggings. Before she could stop him, he straddled her, pushing her onto the bed, ravaging her mouth, his blood staining her white gown.
Her fingers felt where the sword plunged into his side. He ripped her gown from the neck, tearing it in fury, in want, and in need. As he pushed his mouth to hers, she screamed, feeling the death upon his skin.
Something evil came in the night.
The Dark Lord laughed as he let her scream, unheard by the others in their enchanted sleep. A spike of pain thrust between her thighs, as her eyes rolled back into her head. The body of the man faded as Moloch grew weak; the vision of Cuthred disappeared to reveal the face of a monster, evil as death and chilled as stone, exacting his revenge. She felt it, his magic working in her body, the cold, empty feeling of his child in the pit of her stomach.
There will be a child, she heard the voice of Mab in her mind, a child of great evil and power, who will bring damnation upon us all.
I must not sleep, she told herself, as she wept. I will not sacrifice this life to his will. The child will choose the destiny of the gods, as all have done. She will be my child, my good. With her sister she will grow, and she will know love. This I vow.
In the confines of the chamber down the hall, ten-year-old Beren awoke as the shadow diminished. She too felt the emptiness growing inside her mother, and in the stillness of the night, she cried for what she knew would come.
As the seasons passed, the Queen became great with child, and the eyes of the demon’s servants watched Sul.
The sun shone on the Idalir’s gardens. The dawn came, bright and full, as the handmaidens rushed about calling for more pillows to be sewn or another table as they set up the place where the baby would sleep.
Across a blanket spread on the ground, Beren stared at Enyd in anger and terror.
Inside Enyd’s taut stomach the baby kicked, full of life. She ignored the chills spiking through her womb and the emptiness weighing on her heart.
Nine months passed since the demon gave her this life. Nine months passed since Beren awoke, came to Enyd’s bedchamber and kissed her face.
“The child will be evil, mother,” Beren informed Enyd in that moment.
“She will be your sister,” Enyd replied and looked at her daughter’s face, twisted with incredulity.
But worse seemed the gaze of Mab.
Mab knew already what occurred. But her words upon returning seemed harsher than Beren’s, colder than the icy blood creeping through Enyd in her time with child. Her gaze pierced, saw the child of the line of demons and of the witches. In her heart the Fairy Queen wept, and in her voice shadows broke.
“She will bring damnation upon you,” Mab chided Enyd out of the hearing of the others. “Her evil will bring an age of second darkness. Her heart grows cold, even now, for in her she carries the spirit of her malevolent father.”
“She will know good,” Enyd replied. “She will know the path she must take.”
“One path alone stands before her,” Mab said, sadness overcoming her being. “The path of shadows, which leads to death, and winter will cover these lands.”
And when she left, Enyd seized by the pain her unborn daughter brought in the Queen’s womb and kept her hope and her doubts.
She forgot Beren in the months before the birth, though she did not give birth to the shadow inside her. Beren means nothing now, the shadows of Enyd’s mind whispered. Let her pass into the mists, as all whom you loved have passed into the mists.
And so she did.
“Mother,” Beren said, staring at the blanket beneath them. Water pooled around Enyd. Before she understood her water broke, it froze on the ground beneath her, the ground still warmed by the summer sun. Enyd screamed as pain ripped through her body, as the child struggled to be free.
“Call for Berwyn and Beoreth,” she gasped to Beren. “Call for them now!” She cried out in agony, as the contractions came upon her once more.
Beren ran, searching with tear-streaked eyes, knowing her mother would die, and knew the evil her sister already bore upon her, and on Miðgarðir.
And when she returned, it began.
Beren grew terrified the more her mother screamed.
Healing women, carrying hot water and clothes, rushed to where the Queen brought forth her second child.
“Breath deep, milady,” Berwyn said, looking at the bloodied cloths littering the floor of the tower they took Enyd to, and the ill they foretold for the mother. “The child comes soon.”
Enyd’s eyes stared at them, blank, in pain and in the cold clutching her body, frail from birth pangs and the shadows stealing her mind.
“Push once more, milady,” Berwyn whispered, knowing Enyd would die.
Enyd screamed one last time and pushed her daughter out. Above Ull, clouds raged. Enyd’s blue irises diminished, replaced by her pupils, as black as the child she moments before carried. Those eyes locked on Beren in fury and vehemence, by the will of the child Berwyn held.
Beren looked at the baby in disgust. Her pale skin, cold as death, drew taut and wrinkled, like a corpse. Beren knew the death upon the child though she never held her. Born with a full head of black hair, Beren’s sisters eyes gleamed as globes of onyx, red in the light of the sun. They glared at Beren, laughing in silence at her new life.
The world of mortals would fall, Beren saw, by the power the Dark Lord and Enyd gave this child of evil.
Enyd’s head fell back onto the pillow, and the color returned to her eyes.
“Let me hold the child,” she asked. Berwyn offered the child to her mother, and put her hand to her
mouth in horror as the dying mother held the demon child. Berwyn tried to hide her grimace.
Enyd looked at her younger daughter, felt her innate death merge with her own as her life began to pass from the world. After a moment she handed the child back.
“Her name will be Belial,” she murmured to Berwyn. “Care for her and Beren as though your own.”
“Milady, please do not say such things,” Berwyn pleaded, holding the child out from her, as if Belial became a horrible plague.
“Beren,” Enyd called.
“Yes, Mother,” Beren said, crossing to the pallet and looking at her mother’s pale, frail form.
“Care for your sister. Teach her the ways of the witches, of magic. Fulfill what I have vowed, so she will not know the evil of her father.”
“Already she knows,” Beren said. “Always she will be evil.”
But Enyd did not hear her; her spirit already offered up to the gods.
“Come, Beren,” Beoreth said, taking her arm and leading her away. “Let us go out into the sun and warm ourselves.” As the young healer led the future Queen from the room, Beren glanced back to see the unmasked horror of the ordeal on Berwyn’s face, and her sister’s dark eyes as she scanned the world she conquered by being allowed to be born. Life and intelligence beyond her years pervaded the newborn’s essence; Beren felt sure of it.
And at the edges of Miðgarðir, far beyond the lands of Sul, frost crept onto the trees and the grasses, the rivers and stones, as the cold death of winter came into the lands of magic. The day would pass when the winter would come upon them all.
*****
“Belial, second daughter of the witch queen Enyd, neither demon nor witch, and yet both,” Beoreth continued, taking over where Headred left off, “with the power of the gods and of the demons. The balance of magic this birth overturned, and as she grew so also did her evil, until it consumed her with blind hatred for her sister, and a love of power, a desire to rule Sul and the whole of the world.
“The Wars of Darkness began anew in Sul, and hope began to fade. A prophecy the gods gave, foretold by Headred, boy child of Hamald, Lieutenant of King Gareth.”
Caer stared at Headred as remembrance flickered across his features. He saw it all, she realized, as a flame welled up inside her. He came upon them, and he warned them the evil would come.
“A daughter would be born of Beren,” Headred said, “conceived as the gods danced in the heavens, born as the gods mated in the light of the moon. She alone would bring hope to the hopeless and drive back the evil.
“Fearing the wrath of the gods, Belial hid and sent out spies. In desperation, fearing the demon Queen would not suffer her daughter to live, her husband gone and her armies failed, Beren watched as her lands turned to eternal winter and sent her child away in secret, never to know her magic, hoping one day she would return and accept her destiny.
“Alone, her power diminished. The gods exacted a payment for saving her world, her craft, and her people. Forever Beren would remain in the frost and winter, neither mortal nor immortal. She would bear the burden of her people with each passing day, ever and always to exist as the Ice Queen.” Headred finished his tale with misty eyes.
Beren warned them now, sent them down this strange path where they now huddled for warmth.
“We should sleep,” Beoreth said, taking another swig of fire ale and passing it around. “One does not know when this storm will end, and our journey will continue.”
One by one they drifted off. Caer leaned against Headred’s powerful chest and concentrated on his heartbeat as he held her. And as she listened to him breathe, and the longer breaths of those who slept, she drifted into cold, fruitless dreams of ice, and fiery dreams of passion with the man she held.
The moon shone full when Caer awoke; the embers of the fire glowed in the cave. They huddled together for warmth; while they slept she flung herself on Headred’s dreaming form, her arm over his chest. Headred’s chest rose and fell as he slumbered warm beneath her and the blankets and fur, at peace in his dreams.
Caer stood, unwilling to disturb the others. She slept enough. She felt ready to wake, and to know all she needed about her world.
Bundled in a thick blanket and wrappings, she walked to the cave mouth. In the distance rose the mountains, but Kern, rising into the royal blue sky, seemed more distant than before. She could not see the road, just endless forests.
“You wake,” Headred said behind her. Caer jumped and turned. He stood, wrapped as she, in the moonlight, dark, handsome, and very alluring.
“I dreamed of you,” she said as he joined her in the mouth of the cave. He wrapped his arms around her, for warmth and for what he desired most at this moment.
“I would love nothing better than to hear you say such things every night.” He brushed his lips over the nape of her neck.
“I shall tell you every night for all of eternity,” she murmured and turned to face him.
“We are two halves of one whole, bound together by the magic of the Ice Queen.”
“We are bound by love found in dreams of peace,” she replied. “Magic does not form such bonds, even I cannot believe it does.”
“’Tis so,” he agreed. Their lips brushed together. “The dawn comes.” He held her tight and close.
She attuned herself to the beat of his heart and breathed as the beat of the pounding in her chest matched his. She turned to view the heavens. “Tell me about the stars. You said you read them.”
“Aye, ’tis the gift of the gods to tell the tale of the future in their dance.”
“Tell me.”
“The time comes,” Headred’s words seemed heavy. “You should learn of your world. I tell you now the tale of the gods, their birth and their rise, and the beginning of the world of magic and the lands of Sul….
“In the beginning the gods made but one world, with three lands within it. In the north lay Niflheim, the lands of cold and ice; in the south lay Muspellheim, the lands of fire; and between the two lay the chaos, Helrög.
“From Muspellheim, the river of fire flowed into the void and into the lands of ice. In the void, the river filled the empty chasm of Helrög and made the great plain of Miðgarðir rise from within it. And in the lands of ice, the ice became water, and the water took form in the void and became Woden, the Lord of all, and Frigg, his consort.
“They awoke in the void and looked upon Miðgarðir, alone and dim, and began to shape Miðgarðir and the heavens. From the ice they made their children, from the lands of fire they made the sun to be Woden’s chariot, and the moon to be the throne of Frigg. The heavens themselves they shaped as their abode and built their hall upon it, a hall filled with warmth and light.
His finger traced a path in the air before their faces, showing her the position of the stars he spoke of. “I tell you now the line of gods, from Woden and Frigg. Four children they formed from the ice and gave to them life: Heimdall, the wisest of the four, Frey, Freya, and Thor. Frey took Sol, spirit of day, as a wife, and she bore to him a son, Hrimthurs, and a daughter, Brimhild. Freya, Frey’s sister, took Nott, the spirit of night, as husband, and bore two sons: Grim, who ruled death, and Grima, god of the sick.
“Miðgarðir, the world, gave birth to life, the trees and their roots; the heart of the gods they put at its center, in the mountain called Ithin-hora by the fairies, which men call Himinbjörg. From the ice they made the lands of the north, and children of the gods to dwell in Miðgarðir among the gods while the mortals slept in the night and day.
“The gods gave the world above to men, and kept the heavens and Elphame for themselves. While they created many worlds within the cosmos, most the gods and their children, the fairies already claimed.
“The god Grim made the centaurs before the time of men. The horses he loved so much could not come with him to dwell in heaven. There mortals have always been forbidden to go, for the places of the gods are the halls of eternal life. These Centaurs he made his childre
n, the readers of the fates. When time passed men awoke as they slept in the forests of Miðgarðir.
“Now it came to pass Heimdall went out walking and heard a voice of great beauty singing in the wood, the voice of a mortal woman. Veleda by name, and she fell in love with Heimdall. Because of her love for him, she left Dana, her mortal daughter, in the care of her mortal husband, Gunner, and went with Heimdall to the place of the gods. But the children she bore for Heimdall the gods cursed in punishment for Veleda’s treachery to her mortal family, and the children of Heimdall and Veleda would serve always others. Mab, their daughter became the mother of the fairies, and from their line also came Aske, Mab’s brother, father of the human prophets, who would foretell the fate of Miðgarðir.
“Grim, the huntsman, bade his brother Grima to take a wife. Grima and his wife loved in the skies and bore a daughter, Morrighan, a sorceress of great power. She brought forth the magic of the gods into Miðgarðir, and her kindred considered her beautiful among their number.
“Hrimthurs’ son Heimer, of a mortal mother, took Morrighan as his wife. Morrighan bore Heimer a son, Cerdic, skilled in war. Cerdic took for his realm the red star of the heavens, and war as his domain. Morrighan saw a mortal child in the river of souls whom she loved, and refusing to let her go, took the child for her own, and gave her the life of a god. This daughter, Cwen, the beautiful goddess of light whose realm the North Star, bore not the blood of Morrighan and Heimer, nor the blood of any god.
“Finn, Morrighan’s brother, took a mortal wife, and conceived a son, Oberon, the husband and consort of Mab. From Oberon Mab gave birth to the first of the fairies, who chose to live immortal lives like gods. They made their realm in Elphame, the immortal land of the fairies, which mortals call the Fairy Sidhes.
“Cerdic loved his fair sister beyond his own life and sought always to guard Cwen’s beauty from those who would take her and diminish her light. Finding no lover for himself in his eternal task, his heart grew bitter. One day Morrighan came upon Cerdic in his vigil, watching his sister’s realm, and realized what happened. She told him the truth—Cwen could not be counted by blood as her daughter. On the same night he went to Cwen and told her of his love. He told her the truth of her birth: their love unbounded.