Sky Song

The battle raged before the palace. Tusk guards smashed at arrows with their ice spears and shadow-shields while the Fur Tribe leapt off their sleds and swung javelins. Wolverines and Erkenbears clashed, Balapan dived towards a rearing wolf and, nestled inside Woodbird, Eska realised there was something strange about the weapons the outlaws were wielding.

The Feather Tribe’s arrows were tipped with fist-sized silver balls which burst upon impact and turned the Tusk guards into statues of ice. And the wooden javelins the Fur Tribe launched seemed to unravel as they struck, casting a web of inescapable vines around their enemy.

And Eska knew what that meant: the tribes – both of them – were using magic to fight the Ice Queen.

Flint landed Woodbird on the bridge with a jolt. Down on the Driftlands, Tomkin and Jay were wielding weapons so fast the unravelling vines and ice explosions were just a blur in the moonlight.

Tomkin looked up at the bridge as Flint pulled Woodbird to a halt, then Jay tossed him a quiver and he raced towards his younger brother before thrusting the javelin into Flint’s hand and the quiver, filled with blizzard balls, at Eska.

‘Get Blu!’ he roared, turning back to the fight. ‘We’ll hold the guards!’

Leaving Balapan in the throes of the battle, Eska and Flint leapt out of Woodbird on to the bridge. They looked up at the arches leading into the palace hall.

They rushed forward together, launching off the bridge and flinging themselves on to the sill of an arch. Eska’s pulse quickened at the scene before her. It was as if she had never left. Just metres away lay the empty music box and beyond that the organ shrouded in icicles and the cluster of silver trees strung with baubles. A familiar fear rippled through her.

The Ice Queen stood before the trees, one hand curled round a black orb – her lips parted just before it – and her other hand wrapped round Blu’s neck. Beside them, Slither smirked, now and again taunting the fox pup that whimpered in Blu’s arms.

The Ice Queen lowered the orb and her expression soured. ‘So many interruptions.’ She slipped the orb into the pocket of her gown, then opened a welcoming arm. ‘Eska, darling. Back so soon?’ She paused. ‘But with no voice, no plan, no way to set all this right?’ She sniggered. ‘And with two tribes of children fighting a battle they’re sure to lose?’

Blotting out the Ice Queen’s words, Eska slotted the Frost Horn into her quiver, then pushed a blizzard ball on to the tip of an arrow, nocked it to her bow and pointed it at the Ice Queen. The candles in the chandelier hissed and the Ice Queen tightened her grasp on Blu’s neck.

‘Not so hasty,’ she laughed. ‘You wouldn’t want me to squeeze too tight, would you?’ Blu began to cry, but the Ice Queen’s gaze slid to Flint. ‘And who exactly is your ridiculous little friend?’

Flint squared his shoulders. ‘Flint, brother of the Chief of the Fur Tribe – and famous inventor.’ He readied Tomkin’s javelin in front of him. ‘I’ve come for my little sister and my ma.’

Eska and Flint leapt from the ice sill, but they hadn’t taken more than a few strides across the hall when a dozen Tusk guards stepped out from the shadows.

And Eska, filled with fresh rage as she thought of all that the Ice Queen had taken from her – her parents, her memories, her voice – narrowed her eyes and pulled back on her bow. The guards took another step closer. Then Eska fired. Her first blizzard ball hit true, sending one guard crashing to his knees before hardening into ice, but then another guard released a spear and only in the nick of time did Flint hurl himself forward, slashing the weapon in two with his Anything Knife before sending the willow vines coiling round the guard’s legs. Eska whipped another arrow to her bow, her muscles taut with fury, and back to back she and her friend gave the Tusk guards everything they had – for Blu, for Flint’s ma and Eska’s own pa and for a whole kingdom on the brink of the Ice Queen’s rule.

Eska’s face flared with sweat and Flint’s cheek was bleeding from where an ice spear had grazed his skin, but there were only two guards left now and, while Flint and Eska drew them closer, edging back towards the palace wall, Eska ducked beneath one’s legs at the very last moment, giving her and Flint the chance they needed to finish the guards off.

Panting, Eska looked up at the Ice Queen, but she simply thrust Blu towards Slither and reached for her crystal staff. Blu tried to wrench free from the shaman’s grasp, but he held her and Pebble fast.

‘You call this lump of uselessness a sister?’ the Ice Queen sneered. ‘What good is she to anybody?’

Eska started forward with Flint, her jaw clenched, but she wasn’t quick enough to stop what came next. The Ice Queen held her staff over Blu’s body and, though Eska and Flint were now tearing across the hall, they could see the black sparks shooting out of the staff and showering over Blu. The little girl’s body stiffened and drained of colour then, a moment later, she was nothing more than a statue carved from ice clutching a frozen fox pup.

And, in one deft movement, she smashed her staff into the statue and the ice shattered upon impact, falling as a shower of glinting crystals. Flint rushed close, but the broken pieces of his sister and his fox pup lay in a heap before him. Eska’s blood screamed as she knelt beside Flint and, in that moment of grief, both she and Flint let their guard down.

The Ice Queen seized Eska by the shoulders and Slither grabbed Flint, but the Ice Queen’s grip was stronger than her shaman’s – two pincers of ice digging into Eska’s bones – and she couldn’t wrestle free like Flint.

He staggered backwards, his eyes filled with tears, and Eska’s heart swelled with hope at the thought that Flint might be able to fix things. But Flint didn’t fight for her or call out to Tomkin in the battle outside. His eyes met hers – they were utterly defeated – then he turned and ran from the hall, and Eska could only blink after his fading footsteps.

Slither hastened across the room, but the Ice Queen shook her head. ‘Let him go – to his mute ma in the ice tower or just to weep at the loss of his silly sister. He’s a coward,’ the Ice Queen muttered, ‘and we’ve got more important things to deal with.’

Eska stared at the empty space where Flint had been, hardly able to breathe. How could he have deserted her when she needed him most? Shock and hurt coursed through her. She tried to wriggle free, but the Ice Queen dug her nails in harder, her grasp locking the muscles Eska needed to escape, and as she was dragged across the hall, past the silver trees and the organ, she realised where the Ice Queen was taking her. The music box. The prison she’d fought so hard to get away from. She shot a panicked glance towards the arches, but Balapan was nowhere to be seen.

The Ice Queen breathed on the glass dome and it vanished from sight, then she hurled Eska on to the pedestal. ‘The key, Slither!’

Slither fumbled in his pocket, then he drew it out and slotted it into the music box. The Ice Queen smiled as she uttered her spell and Slither turned the key:

‘Three turns to the left then half a turn right

With a key cut black as the deepest night.

The magic awakes, then limbs unfold

As the stolen child comes under my hold.’

The music began – soft and chiming – and, as the Ice Queen released her hold, Eska felt her body succumb to the music-box spell once more. The pedestal turned, Eska danced and her eyes blurred with tears. This wasn’t how things were meant to end. Blu was gone. Flint had abandoned her. Balapan wasn’t there to help. And somewhere in this palace her pa remained trapped.

The Ice Queen turned away with Slither until all that Eska could see was the dark stamp of the tattooed eye on the back of his skull. Confident that she was no longer being watched, Eska tried to swivel her own eyes round to her quiver. Was the Frost Horn still there? If she could just reach it, perhaps it could help her?

There was a low laugh and Slither spun round. ‘I have eyes in the back of my head, child, and I knew that if you thought we weren’t looking you’d give away your only escape route.’ He marched over to the music box and tore the Frost Horn from her quiver. ‘I’ll be having that . . .’

Eska danced on, the despair swelling inside her, then Slither drew back his arm and hurled the horn through one of the arches. Eska didn’t hear it crash to the ground – the din of the battle drowned the sound – but she knew that she was completely alone now. Without Flint. Without the Frost Horn. Without Balapan by her side. And without any plans to stop the Ice Queen from using her voice.

The Ice Queen breathed on the glass dome over the music box, then she sat before her organ and played. The notes sounded louder than ever before, then her anthem rang out – comprised of just one gloomy voice. A single bauble glowed from the trees and as the gold drifted from it towards the organ, the battle cries of the Fur and Feather Tribes dimmed. Then the Ice Queen swallowed the last of her stolen voices.

Eska’s heart sank and as she turned helplessly on her pedestal she watched the Ice Queen lift the black orb from her pocket. She breathed over the orb and a little hole in the top melted to show a golden liquid shimmering inside. Eska could feel the pull of all the words she had ever spoken coming from that glow and she knew then that this was her voice.

The Ice Queen drained the golden liquid in one terrible gulp and screwed the empty orb back on to her staff.

Eska hardly dared breathe. The Fur and Feather Tribes would surrender any moment now. The Ice Queen would capture them and swallow their voices to gain her immortality. Then she would wipe out the tribes and use Eska’s Sky Song to tear the Gods down. This was the start of the Ice Queen’s rule.

It was an eagle’s cry, sharp and high. Balapan swooped through an arch and as Eska saw her she realised why she had not heard the Frost Horn clattering on to the ice. The bird had caught it mid-flight and it was clutched in her talons now.

Balapan soared towards the music box and used the Frost Horn to smash the glass away. But neither the Ice Queen nor her shaman flinched.

‘Eska’s body is under my spell!’ the Ice Queen cried. ‘No beast can help her now!’

But the Ice Queen underestimated the eagle and the bond between it and the girl. Theirs was a connection that went beyond music-box spells, ice staffs and cursed statues. And, as Balapan hurled the Frost Horn towards Eska, she felt her body rage against the Ice Queen’s enchantment.

Out shot her hand, into it fell the Frost Horn, and as she closed her fingers around the tusk Eska leapt down from the pedestal and glared at the Ice Queen.