“You’ve been in the White Forest, haven’t you? What are you doing there, Vikkommin? You promised you’d curtail how often you go. You know I don’t like it and neither would the Priestess-Mother.”
Vikkommin, strikingly handsome and with a rogue look in his eye, swept me into his arms. “Kiss me before you scold me,” he said, and I did. His lips pressed against mine, warm and like fine wine, and they sucked me in deep, into his love, into his passion, and I wanted nothing more than to strip off my clothes and climb into bed with him.
But there was something—something that struck me as odd . . . off-kilter. I pulled away, and catching my breath, I turned back to him.
“What are you doing, my love? What calls you to the forest? We have everything we could want here. Everything we could ask for.”
A flame shot wild in his gaze and he shook his head. “You truly believe that? You don’t understand, do you? I have to show you. If I show you, you won’t object. You’ll want to be part of this—and I want you to be. You’re my love, my soul mate, my chosen one. Pirkitta, let me show you what I have discovered.”
I sighed. He wouldn’t be content until I said yes, and I decided that maybe this was the best way to keep him out of trouble. If I knew what I was fighting, I’d know how to engage it.
“All right, then. Show me what you’ve learned from the White Forest.”
“Come here, then. Come and let me enter your thoughts. Let me show you what I’ve been learning. What I plan to teach you.”
He held out his arms again and I moved into them, shivering as he wrapped them around me in an embrace so tight I could not break it. He began to turn me, to spin me—or at least it felt like it—and we whirled onto the astral, our souls joined together.
“Look—look what I’ve found how to do . . .”
And then I entered his mind. The brilliant flames were there, flames of ice, so violent they rocked his soul. I screamed, trying to avoid the wash of the burning ice as the spiraling flames took shape into dancers, who spun around us in a circle of madness. Ishonar . . . the most dangerous of elements—somehow Vikkommin had tapped into the elemental power of ishonar.
“No—ishonar is reserved for punishment only. It is the most powerful form of ice, and we are never to touch it unless it be in urgent need with approval of the Elders.” I tried to break away, but the ishonar Elementals rushed at me and I stopped. “My gods, Vikkommin, you have control over them.”
It couldn’t be—no mortal could control this power. No sane mortal tried. It was like controlling dragons—it just wasn’t done. In fact, the ability to tap into the icy fires of ishonar had been passed to the silver dragons, and they were the only creatures alive who could use the magic as they wished without losing themselves to it. For there was a madness in the extreme cold, a fury when unleashed, that could bring the worst of nature’s wars—the ice ages—upon the world.
“You can’t control this! You can’t possibly hope to control this power.”
Vikkommin laughed and held me tighter. “Oh, on the contrary—I can control it. I have learned how to use it, and I will use it. Once we are in control of the temple, we will wage holy wars upon our enemies. We will freeze our enemies in Pohjola to the core. We will eradicate the fire giants. We will raise ourselves to be at the side of Lady Undutar herself. We will become gods with this power.”
And then I felt her—the Lady herself—coming through me.
“This is madness,” she whispered, and I spoke the words for her. “You dare to compare yourself to the gods? You will pay for this, and you will pay mightily.”
Without a second thought, I reached out—or perhaps Undutar did, or the both of us—and we ripped Vikkommin’s soul off the astral and thrust it into the nearest shadow form. To prevent him returning to his body, I leapt off the astral back into the room. And I gazed on my love one last time, before turning his body inside out. Everything faded, and the next thing I knew, I was screaming, and my world turned upside down from then on.
“OH, GREAT MOTHER. Vikkommin, how could you? How could you hope to ever . . .”
The memories kept flooding back. The sound of his body ripping as I tore him apart. The mad laughter of his soul as he nestled into the shadow. The scream caught in my throat as I killed the love of my life to prevent him from hurting others. He’d gone mad with power and there would be no stopping him.
In that brief glimpse of his soul, I’d recognized that he was even more powerful than the Priestess-Mother and he would rampage across the land and tear it asunder with the ishonar.
But how could I tell the Elders Council? How could I make the Elders believe, when even I was in shock and disbelief? And so the memories retreated, fading back into a little corner of my heart, and I locked them away.
Because I also knew there was danger to myself. For when Vikkommin had entered my mind to show me what he could do, he’d not only shown me how to use the ishonar myself.
Now, as the memories flooded back, I realized I also knew how to control the ishonar—I could make the ice burn and I could shift the weather in ways no mortal or Fae should be capable of. If the Elders had known what I could do, they would have instantly put me to death. Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I must have realized that and blocked off all memory.
Horrified that I was now far too powerful for my own—or anybody else’s—good, my first thought was to throw myself over the edge of the pit, but then Vikkommin laughed, and his laughter stopped me.
You never could handle the concept of being a goddess, could you? I see you remember now. But you do not frighten me—you are terrified to use your strength and you won’t use it for fear of setting off some chain reaction.
I stood my ground, staring at the glowing edges of his shadow form. He was less powerful down here. The darkness drained his strongest abilities, and what little light my hair gave off did him no good.
I had to make him come to me.
“You’ll never win. You may kill me, but the Lady is out for your death and you’ll never be anything but what you are now: a shadow of your former self. Because you can’t do it now, can you? You can’t control the weather. You can’t control the ishonar, and it beckons you and drives you mad.”
He let out a howl of rage and moved closer. Pirkitta . . . I would have shared this with you. I would have brought us back together and we would have lived together in the shadow. But you mock me—and I will destroy you.
I steeled myself. “I not only mock you, I spit in your path. I abjure what you have become. I deny you, Vikkommin. I deny your power and your shadow and the madness reeling within you.”
You! You deny me! I can tear you to pieces, I can make you into what I am and you have the gall to deny my power?
And then he moved. He headed my way and I picked up my wand. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but now that I had the power of the ishonar in me, I knew I could destroy him. I waited until he was within arm’s reach, and then I raised my wand.
“To the Gates of the Underworld I send thee, to the depths of Tuonela I command thee, to the arms of Tuoni I direct thee. Thou creature of darkness and shadow, thou power-mad sorcerer—you are no longer Chosen of the Lady, you are a vile creature, an abomination, and I send thee to the arms of oblivion.”
I focused and caught hold of one of the ishonar Elementals. She was dancing on the edge of my wand, and I thrust her forward, burning in all her frozen and brilliant glory. She rose up, growing larger, and her face, faceted in ice and bathed in purple fire, changed from sublime to monstrous as her mouth opened wide and she turned in Vikkommin’s direction.