The ice maiden didn’t look like she wanted to be there. There were leaves and small twigs stuck to her person, and they were already turning brittle from contact with the substance that passed for her skin. Unlike others Tala had encountered in the past, this one didn’t bother with any taunts or japes. She simply bared her teeth at them and struck at the ground with both hands, and Tala had to jump out of the way when a series of stalagmites jutted out from the forest floor, barely avoiding getting skewered by the sharp points.
“Rangers, stay back!” Tala could hear Alex yelling through their link.
“That’s an order!” This one from Maggie. “Holster your guns! At this range, you’re more likely to hit another ranger than the target! Stay back and give the Banders the space they need!”
Ken was already rushing in, Kusanagi at the ready. The ice maiden avoided his first swipe, manifesting a fresh shield made of ice to brace against his second. The adarna had fled, the firebird hightailing immediately after it.
“Loki, West!” Zoe shouted, and the two immediately gave chase after the birds. The girl whipped out her own segen; Ogmios whipped through the air, the tail end sending volts of electricity in the air before the ice maiden when she attempted to follow the duo.
“You will never have it,” the ice maiden hissed. “I will die and take you all with me before I ever let you have the adarna!”
“Lady, I didn’t even know what an adarna was until, like, ten minutes ago,” Ken said. Kusanagi glowed, split apart, and Ken was now holding twin swords—one a stark, shining silver and the other an impenetrable dark. Yawarakai-Te cut through the shield with ease, shattering it within moments. The black-bladed Juuchi Yosamu followed shortly afterward, loping through one of the ice maiden’s arms. The ice maiden didn’t bleed, but she shrieked and sent another barrage of shards at him with her remaining good arm.
Tala jumped to Ken’s side with her agimat, the magic-negating shield expanding to shelter him as well.
It almost worked. Most of the shards melted when they reached her defenses, but a few made it through all the same, and Tala winced when one grazed her arm. Ken’s swords flashed, slicing through the rest of the projectiles, and then he leaped to protect her in turn.
The ice maiden shrieked again when Ken cut down her other arm, leaving herself wide open for the kill. But with his blades already pointed at her, about to deliver the final blow, Ken paused. “What’s the adarna to you?” he asked. “And why are you so keen on finding it?”
The ice maiden smiled up at him, her eyes turning opaque. “Oh, but wouldn’t you like to know?” she purred.
Just as quickly, more icicles erupted, this time right out of her chest, hurtling straight toward Ken, but they melted abruptly before they could reach him. The ice maiden gasped, mouth falling open as water streamed out her lips. Behind her stood Cole, grim and hunched over her frame. Gravekeeper’s blade protruded out from in between her breasts.
“Answer him,” Cole growled, sweat dripping from his face.
Even dying, the ice maiden continued to resist. “Wonders,” she panted. “The seven… No…I will not… I must not!”
More icicles materialized, growing out of her legs, body, face, until she no longer had a woman’s shape. There were loud cracks of ice, the sounds reverberating from deep within her, and both Cole and Ken stepped back in alarm, the former withdrawing his blade.
“She’s gonna explode!” Zoe shouted. “Everyone, get clear!”
Tala managed to dive into the bushes just as the ice maiden exploded, bits and pieces of her flying outward in all directions, each one just as deadly as the shards she used as weapons. When the woods stopped ringing with the echoes of her dying screams, Tala peered out. There was nothing left of the ice maiden beyond a few puddles, and even those evaporated quickly, turning into fog in the warm air.
“She was loyal to her mistress till the very end,” Nya muttered.
“But she did give us something to work with.” Zoe moved to stand beside Cole, who was getting back to his feet, wincing. “You okay?” she asked softly, rising up on tiptoes so she could pick the leaves out from his hair.
“I’ll live,” the boy said, his normally expressionless face softening just a smidgen when he looked down at her.
“Wonders? What did she mean by that?”
Ken watched Cole and Zoe, looking a little envious, then cast a sidelong glance back at Nya. “I got a blister on my thumb,” he whined. “Would really like it if someone took a look for me.”
Nya rolled her eyes. “You’re so annoying,” she said as she took his arm, but in a voice warmer than the words suggested.
“You like me better when I’m annoying.”
“We’ve caught up to the adarna,” Tala heard Loki report through their shared comm link. “I’m…I don’t really know how it does it, but the firebird’s succeeding better than we are.”
“Bastard just wants to make a move, more like,” Alex muttered. “Any chance you can retrieve it?”
“Not very likely. It’s calm enough with the firebird, but it starts acting skittish whenever West and I try to get any nearer. I think it can recognize West as human even when he shifts.”
“I can try again,” Tala said promptly. “It wasn’t too nervous when I was trying to approach it.”
“You sure you’re up for it, Tala? I know using your agimat takes a huge chunk out of you nowadays.”
“I said I’ll do it. Give me a chance before you start judging what I can and can’t do.”
She hadn’t meant to sound snippy, but Alex backed off all the same. “All right. Whenever you’re ready.”
It was easy enough to find the coordinates Loki had provided. Tala and Nya set out while the others remained behind to help transport the immobilized rangers back to Maidenkeep. Tala’s attempts to undo the magic on them had not been successful, and she couldn’t help but feel despondent.
“Here,” Nya said quietly, pressing a small tonic into Tala’s hand. “Keeps your strength up. I take it a lot too. It hasn’t been easy since Ken drew the sword out.”
“Thanks,” Tala said, grateful.
The adarna was on another branch again, a little higher up than the one it was on before. The firebird had settled itself on another from an adjacent tree, still singing sweet nothings. The adarna was listening avidly but was doing little to close the distance between them. It turned when it heard them approaching and visibly tensed.
“We’re not having much luck,” Loki said.
West had already shifted back into human form and was in the act of putting on his pants. “It knows I’m not a real bird,” the younger boy confessed sheepishly.
The adarna shifted nervously, raised its wings.
“Don’t,” Tala called out, trying to make her own voice sound as soft and as harmless as possible. “We don’t want to hurt you. My friends dealt with the ice maiden that’s been chasing you. You’re safe now.”
The adarna seemed to understand. It relaxed slightly but remained watchful.
The firebird cooed and then flew back to Tala. She winced as it settled itself once more on her head. “Can you stop using me as your nesting place just because Alex isn’t available?” she muttered.
The firebird only sniffed.
Tala took a step forward. The adarna didn’t stiffen up or try to fly away again, so she took another.
“I know we’ve only just met,” Tala said, “but I think there might be other people after you for your, uh, unique abilities. We think it would be best if you stayed with us in the meantime. I don’t know how to make you trust us, but I promise to do my best to see you safely back to your home, wherever that is. I’m not as—”
The adarna leaped—not away but toward her. There was a muffled squawk as the firebird lost its position on her head and flailed awkwardly, managing to land upright on the ground at the last second, looking startled.
Tala stared down at it. Slowly, she reached up to feel warm feathers and heard soft sweet chirping from above her.
“Well, what do you know?” West sounded impressed. “The adarna wasn’t acting coy toward the firebird because it was the firebird. It wanted your head.”
“What?”
“It looks mighty comfortable,” Loki said, trying to sound reassuring. “I think it likes you.”
The adarna responded with a flurry of songs, as if in agreement.
Nya was already biting her lip in an attempt not to giggle, though she was slowly losing the battle.
“Somebody please get it off my head before Alex sees,” Tala pleaded faintly.
The firebird, not happy with this fresh turn of events, flounced on the ground and sulked.
The others had been diplomatic about it so far, but Alex could not stop laughing. The adarna was smaller than the firebird, but it was also so much more…decorative. Its tail had the scale and size of a tiny male peacock’s and, as far as Tala was concerned, the weight to match. It was like she was wearing the world’s most oversize, ostentatious hat.
The other Bandersnatchers were present, as was the Duke of Suddene, a young man who’d inherited a family curse in the form of a great shaggy beast. Lola Urduja and the Katipuneros were also in attendance, as was Captain Mairead of the Neverland pirates, who had accepted Alex’s offer to make Avalon their semipermanent abode. She patrolled the kingdom’s waters in exchange for good wages for her and her crewmates on the Jolly Roger, a spelltech ship that was second only in magical might to Maidenkeep’s Nine Maidens. All were most definitely doing their best not to look directly at Tala and the bird taking up residence on top of her head.
“I would really appreciate it if someone found a way to get it off me,” Tala said, liking her role as the adarna’s favorite perch less and less as time went by. The stares she’d garnered walking into Maidenkeep had been humiliating enough. Two interns had already run themselves into walls gawking at her. “It poops, remember? I don’t want that in my hair!”
“You’ll have to bear with it just a little longer, I’m afraid,” her mother said with the kind of straight face that told Tala she would be laughing herself the moment she found somewhere private to be.
“Sure.” Tala glared at Loki.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to. If you dare laugh—”
“I won’t,” the ranger said sincerely. “I think it looks really nice on you. Like—like a really fancy headpiece.”
That would have been a joke had it come from Alex or Ken, but not from them. Tala turned red, then focused her glare downward instead.
That Lola Corazon had returned to Avalon and was there with them at Maidenkeep’s briefing room had not diminished Lumina’s good humor. Even the normally cranky Makiling matriarch was doing her best to look everywhere but at Tala.
The firebird was once more safely ensconced on Alex’s head, though it arguably looked less ridiculous on the king compared to the adarna on hers.
“The good news,” Alex said, “is that the magical, uh, excrement doesn’t last for more than a couple of hours, and the rangers who were hit with it managed to recover with no other injuries beyond a faint headache. Which brings me to Lola Corazon. What possessed you to send an ibong adarna here to Avalon and with an ice maiden on its tail?”
“Filipino spelltech, unfortunately, is not on the same level as Avalon’s,” Lola Corazon said calmly. “The ice maidens were escaping with the ibong adarna, and there was very little we could do to stop them. So we used our own agimat to disrupt their portals and redirect them to a place we knew could deal with them more effectively.”
“Thank you for volunteering Avalon, Nay,” Lumina said, more brusquely now. She had not parted on good terms with Lola Corazon, although Tala’s mother had never been on good terms with the old woman to begin with. “Tell us how the ibong adarna came to be in your possession in the first place, since it’s been reported missing since the fifteenth century.”
Lola Corazon stared stonily down at the table before her. “That was a necessary lie of course,” she said.
“Nay!”
“Perhaps if you had been more enthusiastic in working with me than going off and getting married to that…that man, then I would have been inclined to share such secrets with you.” Lola Corazon squared her shoulders. “The Makilings and the Ma-i tribe have been protecting the adarna for far longer than you even know. Other cultures would have called it a firebird as well, though we opted to make a distinction for it. Neither the datu nor the Philippine government is aware of its existence, which was why I had to use back channels to reach out instead of our official communication. I will not apologize for keeping the rest of you in the dark. The fewer who knew about its existence, the more protection we could provide it.”
“Such good protection,” said Lola Urduja, whose own history with Lola Corazon had been turbulent at best, and the world’s longest and slowest catfight at its very worst, “that not only have the Snow Queen’s minions discovered its location and tried to take it by force, but you had to come to us in the end so we could fight your battles.”
“What I need to know first,” Alex said hurriedly, because Lola Corazon was already rising from her seat, and he wasn’t all that eager to witness the two duking it out again, “is why the Snow Queen is interested in the ibong adarna. Is it a weapon she intends to use, like my firebird?”
“The adarna is more than just a weapon to her,” the duke said, moving to stand himself. “It is, in a way, also a means to resurrect her father and open Buyan.”
Everyone stared at Tala. The adarna, perhaps because of exhaustion, was already asleep on her head.
“You mean this is the Snow Queen’s father?” West asked blankly. “Was Koschei the Deathless reincarnated as a bird with magical…magical, um…?”
“Turds,” Ken supplied.
“The adarna may be one of seven you will need to open Buyan and revive Koschei,” the Beast of Suddene said. “He was a woefully paranoid man, convinced that his own allies and subordinates would turn on him at any second. He allegedly kept part of his soul within the Alatyr, knowing that none of his people nor the Avalonians would ever choose to destroy it. Within that spelltech lies the means to reconstitute himself, I believe.”
“And how do you know this, milord?”
“I have found more of my father’s notes. As you know, Buyan and its miraculous tech were something of an obsession of his, and he was the foremost expert in the world on it before he and I were trapped in the frost. I am inclined to put my trust in his theories.”
“What’s an Alatyr again?” West spoke up.
“It’s similar to the Nine Maidens,” Loki reminded him, “but much more powerful.”
“And at a terrible cost,” the duke agreed. “During the war between Avalon and Buyan, Koschei gathered the seven most powerful magical artifacts in his keeping and divided parts of his soul among them, placing the remaining portion in the Alatyr. The fighting was turning badly in his favor then, for the Avalonians were stronger than even he thought.”
“But that would require someone he could trust to help him, wouldn’t it?” Zoe guessed shrewdly. “He wouldn’t have been able to reconstitute himself on his own. Was he relying on his daughter to do that?”
“Yes,” Lumina said quietly. “Except he wasn’t expecting the Snow Queen to fall in love with the enemy and to eventually side with Kay against him.”
“But she turned against Avalon eventually,” Loki pointed out.
“Ah,” the duke said triumphantly. “When we talk about history, we tend to be so much more favorable toward our own nations, and sometimes it distorts what really happened. Avalon historians would say that the Snow Queen was in the wrong, naturally. Even in your father’s time, this was considered fact, Your Majesty. The shock I felt, to reach out to some of my father’s old contemporaries only to find the absolute schmuck now occupying the top position in their Department of Educa—”
“Lord Suddene,” Alex said very patiently, “I’m afraid we’re deviating from the original discussion.”
“Ah yes, my apologies again. According to my father’s research, the Snow Queen had claimed that it was King Arthur himself and Merlin who had reneged on their alliance with her and had actively tried to kill her.”
“Arthur and Merlin?” Alex looked stunned. “But why?”
“They were always worried that she would grow powerful enough to wrest Avalon from them the way her father tried. They plotted to have her killed and then to frame Kay as her murderer.”
“Dad?” Tala burst out, shocked. “They were going to blame her death on Dad?”
“Two birds, one stone. Arthur was no longer certain of Kay’s allegiance and believed he would side with his lover should the time come. Far easier to get rid of two challengers to his authority and claim they deserved it. But as you know, history, when viewed through the lens of the victors, tends to be less truthful than the reality. And so it is that both the Snow Queen and Sir Kay, formerly of Camelot, became traitors instead.”
“Did you know about this, Lady Makiling?” Captain Mairead asked. “You’re married to him after all.”
“It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about often,” Lumina said quietly. “He always told me it was old history and that nothing could be done about it now.”
Alex had gone silent. Tala’s heart went out to him. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he finally asked.
The duke shifted uncomfortably from one hairy foot to the other. “Your father was adamant about not releasing details of my father’s research, Your Majesty. My father was, of course, opposed to the decision. It’s partly why Avalon academia turned its back on him, branded him a recluse and a conspiracy theorist. And I wasn’t sure that you wouldn’t follow in your father’s footsteps and do the same. I didn’t know you as well back then to know how you would react.”
Alex nodded. “Thank you for telling me now. I am sorry about the treatment your sire suffered.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Your Majesty,” the duke said, much more cheerfully now. “Father had always been an old bastard, regardless. Few people could stand him, even without his unconventional theories.”
“And that changes nothing,” Lola Urduja reaffirmed. “Whatever claims the Snow Queen made in the past, it does not condone her actions. So Koschei split his soul into eight parts, hid one in the Alatyr, and hid the rest all over the world. One lies within the ibong adarna apparently. What then must we do to ensure that the Snow Queen does not lay her hands on the others to successfully revive him?”
“It is not just to revive him,” Lola Corazon said tersely. “Only Koschei knows the way back to Buyan. That, I believe, and not his resurrection is the Snow Queen’s main goal.”
Tala remembered the quiet longing in the Snow Queen’s voice as she talked about returning to her home, the way she had pleaded for Kay to abandon them and leave with her. Tala could understand wanting to find a place to belong when so many people had made it so you couldn’t.
“How does she intend to do that?” Zoe asked.
The duke shrugged. “The Snow Queen is in possession of a mirror that allows her to control the hearts and minds of others through its shards, to do her bidding. It was also the mirror that Koschei used to split his soul into several pieces, allegedly a part of the Alatyr she was able to take away. She can’t use that to get back to Buyan, but my father believes gathering the rest of Koschei’s soul supposedly unlocks the way.”
“She’s never been able to find any all this time?” Ken asked.
“Father believed it was something of a last resort, as she had not been inclined to want to revive him either.”
“I’ve been going over the emails we retrieved from OzCorp servers,” Loki added quietly. “I think they’ve been researching what those seven items were. The Seven Magical Wonders of the world. The Snow Queen must have told them.”
“No one can actually say to a degree of certainty what those wonders are,” the duke confirmed, “though my father has made several educated guesses.”
“What were your father’s choices?” Alex asked curiously.
The duke typed rapidly at his computer, and a fresh display popped up on the large screen before them, containing at least four dozen or so items. “I combined both my father’s suggestions and a list of artifacts we found during our investigation of OzCorp’s documents.”
“That’s a lot of possibilities,” Nya said, alarmed. “Are you telling us that we’ll have to hunt down every one of these to find out?”
“Unfortunately so. We can only rely on conjecture for the most part. These ones my father singled out. We’ve pinpointed the current locations of the others.” The display called up more places and countries, linking them to the artifacts’ names. “Most of these kingdoms may not be aware of the significance of these relics and only consider them important cultural artifacts.”
“We’re going to need a lot of diplomacy,” Tala murmured, “to ask them all for permission, not knowing if we’d even be able to give them back afterward.”
“Your Majesty!” Dexter called out, alarmed. “I’m getting some fresh reports regarding the Snow Queen.”
Heads swiveled in his direction, and Alex visibly tensed up. “What’s happened?”
“There’s been an explosion at the Halden maximum-security prison in Norway, Your Majesty.”
Lumina shot up from her seat. So did Tala. “That’s where Dad is,” she whispered. “Dex, don’t tell me…”
“I’m sorry, Tala. I’m not hearing any confirmation yet from the Norwegian authorities, but it appears that several ice maidens have attacked the facility. Your father is the only one missing from the premises so far.”