The Ascension (6 page)

“Stop.”

The word wasn’t loud, but it was clearly
audible
above the icy wind. It was a woman’s voice,
imperious
in tone and with not a hint that it expected anything other than obedience. The bear pul ed back, retreating to join the circle of its fel ows with only the
querulous
hint of a growl.

Into that circle stepped a woman. She was no older than forty and walked across the snow, her feet seemingly glided on the powdery whiteness. They were bare, and her dress of dark silk seemed too flimsy for the Winter. Her hair was white, iridescent like glass with diamond facets, with blues and greens and hidden flashes of light running through it.

Her fingers seemed to be almost pure ice. She was beautiful, but there was a harshness to it that made Jack shiver. Her icy blue gaze, when she turned it on them, was one of absolute authority, promising
wrath
for any infraction. The polar bear that had growled hunkered down
submissively
beneath its glare.

“That’s… that’s the woman from my dream,” Kat breathed. Jack raised an eyebrow.

“I thought you said she was old and
wizened
.”

Kat shrugged.

“Ok, maybe I exaggerated. She’s older than me.”

The woman moved closer, regarding the pair of them through the shimmer of the shield around them in a way that said to Jack that she was trying to
assess
them in some way. She glanced back over her shoulder.

“Are these the two?”

“Yes, My Queen.” The voice that answered her was a deep, baritone rumble, and it took Jack a moment to realize that it was coming from the cowering polar bear. “I tracked them from the Apex where they first appeared in Feyland.” The woman nodded. She placed her hand casual y on the bubble surrounding Jack and Kat. Ice spread from her touch, so cold that it found the point at which even magic froze. In seconds, the bubble around them was more like a glass sphere, shattered into shards that looked jagged enough to slice

deep
lacerations
into flesh. The woman looked past them. “Take them to the Court.” Dark figures, seemingly made of a combination of ice and shadows, stepped forward.

They took Jack and Kat by the arms, lifting them to their feet gently, but with the unspoken
intimation
that they could be moved less gently if they wanted.

Jack found himself led from the circle of bears to a spot where a sled waited.

Next to him, the men of ice and shadow lifted Kat into the sled. It was a huge thing, formed with runners that probably used whole trees in their construction. The framework was of ice, but it was ice that looked more like steel, so cold that it had hardened to something stronger. The furs of creatures Jack didn’t recognize sat across the front of the sled, covering Kat to her neck, and Jack found himself bundled beneath them as wel . A pair of polar bears stood impassively as they were polar bears stood impassively as they were harnessed to the sled, and only then did the white-haired woman step onto the back of it.

Jack opened his mouth to ask her what was going on, but the woman
forestalled
his questions with a glance. She waved her stick above the bears and a tendril of ice shot from it to crack like a whip, spurring them into rapid motion. The sled sped across the snow so fast that it was al Jack could do to hang on. Beside him, Kat gripped the steely ice of the sled so hard that her knuckles turned white.

How long did they traveled like that, Jack didn’t know. With only the flat, unchanging sameness of the landscape as a guide, it was hard to keep track. Only when the sled approached a broken, ravine scattered section of the ice did Jack get a sense of any landmarks, and by then, he was too busy staring at the structure that rose above it al .

The castle stood at the center of a lake of
limpid
water that was somehow unfrozen among the ice. It towered with sides of sheer ice, reflecting the sun from every frozen surface of its
buttresses
and towers. Shadows clustered around it as though in flocks seeming to devour the
modicum
of light that made it there, and the only way through to the entrance seemed to be a single span of hardened ice as long as any bridge Jack had seen. The sled came to a halt before that bridge.

Jack looked up at the woman behind him, and she leaned down so that he could feel her cold breath on his face.

“Do you remember?” she demanded. Jack shook his head automatical y.

“No. Who are you? What is this place?”

“I am the Winter Queen, and this is my home, but that is not the question. The question is who
you
are, Jack Frost.”

“That’s not my-”

Before he could protest, the Winter Queen reached down to lay a frozen hand on Jack’s head.

The cold of it felt almost refreshing, like coming up for air after diving in deep water. Jack blinked.

“I remember. I’ve been here before. It’s crazy, but I’d swear I have.”

The Winter Queen smiled.

“You have.” She looked from Jack to Kat.

“Many years ago, the Summer Queen took my children, a boy and a girl, from me. They sent them to be raised by mortals, thinking that I would not find them. Yet now, just days before our greatest battle, my Jack Frost and my darling Katherine have returned to help me secure the
hegemony
of Winter.”

Jack looked over to Kat, who looked positively shocked for a moment before final y smiling.

“You know, this explains almost
everything
about my life. Do I get to wear lots of black?”

“As much as you wish,” the Winter Queen replied. Kat’s smile broadened.

“Perfect.”

The party continued, and Gem found herself starting to become
enervated
by the dancing, even if it was with Sparks. As good a dancer as Sparks was, they couldn’t dance forever, even if the musicians in the corner seemed
indefatigable
.

Besides, that wasn’t why they were there. Sparks deserved to enjoy his moment of
acclaim
as the Summer Prince, but sooner or later they had to start looking for Henry Word. As the next dance drew to a close, Gem pul ed back from Sparks.

“Tired already?” he asked.

“Wel , we have been dancing for a while now,” she pointed out. More seriously she added, “I’m going to have a look around and see if I can’t find out anything about where Henry Word went.” Sparks nodded.

“I’l come with you.”

“No.” Gem shook her head. She wanted Sparks to enjoy the celebration. She didn’t want to
foster
any il feelings among the fairy folk by taking their prince from them either. “Enjoy your moment.” Sparks caught her arm.

“Gem… I just wanted to say…” He paused, apparently trying to work out what he
did
want to say.

Or at least an
eloquent
way of saying it. “Al this… I feel like I’ve come home, but it doesn’t change what I feel. I care about you for
you
, not just because you’re beautiful, or the ruler of Anachronia, or anything like that. Now that I’m… not what you thought, I hope it won’t change things for you.”

Gem grinned.

“It turns out that you’re much more interesting than before. I think I can live with it.” That
elicited
a sigh of relief from Sparks.

“I was so worried that you might not feel that way.”

If Sparks had been worried about finding the right thing to say, Gem decided that he need not have worried. He had managed to convey his feelings perfectly. As a way of
elucidating
her own, she reached up to kiss him, only to pause as the Summer Queen’s hand settled on Sparks’ shoulder.

“I hope I am not interrupting,” the beautiful woman said, “but there are people you must meet, my son. In any case, you have both managed to
exasperate
my court by not dancing with more of them.”

The
chastisement
was a mild one, but even so Gem glanced around. A few of the fairy folk did indeed shoot
furtive
glances Gem and Sparks’ way, as though trying to work out whether to interrupt the pair of them.

“I’m sorry,” Gem said. “I’l go and mingle, if it wil help.”

That seemed to
mollify
the Summer Queen, who offered her arm to Sparks.

“In that case, my son can come with me and start to learn some of the more
convoluted
politics of my kingdom. I am afraid that people here do love their complicated schemes.”

She walked off, arm in arm with Sparks, and together the two seemed even brighter than they were alone. For a minute or two, Gem danced with one of the fairy men, whirling with him in a dance whose intricate
choreography
left her feeling flat footed and clumsy by comparison. When he politely suggested that she might like to take a moment to step back from the dance floor and rest, Gem took ful advantage of the opportunity, while her partner switched his attentions to a nymph in a
lurid
green bal gown.

Gem didn’t care. In fact, as far as she could see, the whole thing gave her the perfect opportunity to try to find out more about Henry Word. She looked out over the teeming bal room, with its nymphs and satyrs, woodland spirits and other strange dancers, and knew that someone there would have to have heard
something
. It was just a case of working out whom.

Gem found herself running through a rapid
medley
of conversations, each one seemingly a copy of the last. She would wander up to an individual or a group, and they would general y be more than happy to include her in the conversation.

Some of them were positively
obsequious
in their treatment of her, which Gem put down to the fact that as both a human and the ruler of a strange land, she was something of a novelty.

They would ask her questions about her land, and her past, and chatter happily about
tangential
things from the Summer Queen’s court. What colors were proving popular. The
officious
behavior of some of the fairies charged with overseeing their woodlands. Whose social gaffes had resulted in t he i r
ostracism
from the group this week. It reminded Gem a lot of the way people would gossip and bicker at her school.

A lot of the gossip and questions revolved around Sparks. The fairy folk, the women especial y, wanted to know al about him, and also about his connection to Gem. What had his life been like on this human world? Had he been treated badly there?

Were he and Gem an item? Gem did her best to keep her answers fairly
perfunctory
, remembering the Summer Queen’s words about intrigue and not knowing how much it would be appropriate to give away.

She didn’t have much luck finding out about what might have happened to Henry Word, though.

Every time she tried to steer the conversation around to the topic, Gem found people shrugging and saying that they hadn’t heard the name. If she pressed them, they merely said they did not know, and went back to their conversations. Increasingly, Gem felt those conversations starting to exclude her.

If she wasn’t going to tel them what they wanted to know about Sparks, it seemed that the fairy folk were going to stay
aloof
from her. A couple of times, Gem even half heard acerbic comments behind her back, but she knew better than to react to them.

Instead, she decided to look for Rio, on the Instead, she decided to look for Rio, on the basis that he might have found something out. Gem looked careful y around the bal room, looking for some sign of the dark-haired boy, but there didn’t seem to be any. When Gem managed to
accost
a passing fairy and ask after him, she found herself pointed wordlessly in the direction of a blonde-haired fairy woman in a flowing silk dress.

“Excuse me,” Gem said, “have you seen my friend Rio, by any chance?”

“The human boy?” The fairy woman quirked a lip. “It seems you weren’t watching him as closely as he was watching you. He treated me most
callously
, paying me no attention and then running off as he did.”

Gem winced. The last thing Rio would have wanted was to watch her with Sparks. He had probably run off somewhere to sulk about it.

“Did you see which way he went?”

“Oh,” the woman waved a hand vaguely at the doors, “I think he went… somewhere. Frankly, I tend not to keep track when they clearly aren’t interested in me. He didn’t even
compliment
me on my dress!” She twirled happily so that the skirt of it bil owed. Gem took the hint.

“It
i s
a lovely dress, and I’m sorry Rio didn’t pay you more attention. He can be a bit hard to understand sometimes.”

“Oh, not that hard,” the fairy woman said. “I think he went out into the garden.”

Gem nodded her thanks and set off in that direction, stepping out into the cool air of the garden.

She looked around, trying to find some sign of Rio, but there didn’t seem to be any. Gem kept walking, deciding that Rio had merely hidden himself away somewhere. She walked past the
ornate
fountains, trying to think of something that would make a suitable
conciliatory
gesture.

The howl of a wolf cut through the air, and Gem started. In her haste to rush after Rio, she had forgotten Dr. Brown’s warning that many of the denizens of Myriad could make a brief meal of a human. Deciding that even Rio wouldn’t be foolish enough to stay outside when there were wolves around, Gem turned and headed back towards the palace.