CHAPTER TEN
Inferno
A single moment of stunned silence greeted Elsa upon her return to the Kristensand town hall. Catalina, however, was not on her heels for long.
"So you did survive. I thought as much. But I see you've brought me a gift! Hello, Uriel."
"Your Majesty," the prince replied with courtesy as cool as the ice beneath their feet.
"Come now, is that any way to greet your dear stepmother?"
"No, but what I'd like to say is not fit for company. There are ladies present, yourself not included."
"Why did you do this, Catalina?"
"You forget your courtesies, Queen Elsa." The older woman regarded her with narrowed eyes. "I permitted you to address me without my style, but not to forget that I am a queen."
"You're a despicable, manipulative usurper," Uriel growled.
"Oh, Uriel. You never did like me nearly as much as your father."
"You enthralled him for two years. I may not have liked you, but this?"
"You give me too little credit. Christian truly did love me in the beginning. The poor, lonely old man. He took a great deal of convincing to declare himself king, of course. But by then I had what I wanted."
"He never loved you. How could he? He never knew what you were."
"What I am?" Catalina smiled, sickly sweet. "Don't you mean what we are? No need to put me on a pedestal."
"The eternal summer was never my doing, was it?"
She laughed. "Of course not. Though the circumstances did provide me with such a delicious opportunity. All I wanted when I came here was a title and respect, even if it was just a dowager… I never dreamed it would result in a crown of my own!"
"You're not queen yet. Not while I or any of my family draw breath in Kristensand!"
"Oh you dear, foolish boy," she hissed, eyes shining. "What do you think I set fire to the castle for?"
Uriel's eyes widened, shock stretching the angry red scars on the ruined half of his face. "You monster!" he roared.
"The people will never follow you," said Elsa. "They'll know the truth now."
"You really think so? I grant you, it would have been much cleaner if the princess had wasted away in her sleep and Uriel had vanished in disgrace… but I suppose I'll have to settle for stopping a murderous coup by the accursed Black Prince and his frozen concubine. Guards! Rally to your queen!" The soldiers in the hallway rushed to obey, surrounding Catalina in a ring of bared steel. "The summer will end when I kill you, and what will the people care for how? You'll find no friends here."
Elsa smiled. "Don't be so sure." She held out her hands, fingers splayed. Streams of blue light lit the hall, gusts of cold wind swirling into a dozen tiny cyclones. Man-shaped constructs of snow and ice sprang into existence, snowmen wearing the long coats and tall hats of Arendelle guards, long blunt icicles grasped like staves in their blocky white fists.
The two forces stared each other down for an instant before charging, the guards shouting battle cries, the golems crackling and crunching with every step. They crashed into a furious melee in the entrance of Kristensand's town hall.
Elsa left her creations to their duties, wasting no time as she sought out Anna and Kristoff in the chaos. The ice harvester was on the ground, bruised and exhausted but otherwise unharmed. Her sister was standing over him protectively, and Sven was watching over them both, antlers pointed dangerously at anyone who came too close.
"Anna! You've to get out of here!"
"And you've got to be kidding me!"
Elsa took her sister by the shoulders. "You have to spread word in the city about what's going on. Tell them about Catalina, and keep them away from here! I don't want anyone to get hurt."
Anna shook her head, red pigtails waving defiantly. "I'm not leaving you here to face down that crazy lady alone!"
"I'm hardly alone. Anna, please. Kristoff is in no shape to be here. You have to get him to safety."
Her sister looked down to where Kristoff was struggling in vain to get to his feet. She glanced back and forth between him and Elsa, anguish plain on her face. "Help me get him up," she said at last.
Sven knelt on his forelegs, and that was just enough for the two of them together to lift Kristoff onto the reindeer's back. Anna climbed up after him, holding Kristoff tightly about the waist to keep him from falling off. "You'd better be here when I get back!" Anna shouted. And with a chorus of hooves on the steps of the town hall, she was gone.
The battle between the guards and the snowmen was in full force. Elsa's constructs had the advantage, not only because they were resistant to weapons and immune to pain, but because they were fighting to disable their opponents and using their own bodies as weapons. They were smothering the guards in piles of snow, freezing them to the ground, to the walls, and to each other.
Uriel was at her side. In his left hand was a long rapier, its cupped hilt fashioned into a likeness of the sun. One of Catalina's guards broke through to charge them with a howl. Before Elsa could stop him with a blast of her magic, Uriel stepped forward, parrying the man's wild swing and halting his momentum with a series of lightning-quick thrusts. Without full use of his burned right leg, Uriel's sideways stance forced him to attack rather than defend in order to keep weight on his front foot. He drove the guard back with a flurry. The man backpedaled straight into one of the golems, which took the opportunity to disintegrate, bringing the guard to the ground in a confining heap of rapidly freezing snow.
He proved to be the last of Catalina's beguiled servants still standing. Elsa strode forward, heels clicking on the frozen stone. "Release these men," she ordered. "No one needs to get hurt."
"Only death will free those men from my flames," Catalina declared. She was pacing inside the wide archway that opened into the great hall, her golden dress swishing back and forth with every agitated turn. "And you'll have to do better than a few snowmen if you want to stop me!" She thrust out her right arm, and with a rumbling crackle a column of fire burst forth from her fingers.
Elsa dove to the side, feeling a wave of searing heat wash over her as the flames blasted through the air where she had been standing. She rolled as another burst of magical fire slammed into the ground next to her, ice gown ringing as the slashed skirt twirled around her feet. Stopping her tumble, she propped herself up with an elbow and held out her free hand. With furious concentration, she summoned a blast of ice that intercepted a third strike from Catalina, the two columns of magic annihilating each other with a roaring hiss and a burst of steam.
Catalina was giving ground, backing into the open space of the audience chamber, sending gouts of flame with both hands. Scrambling on her hands and knees, Elsa hid behind the edge of the archway. The last of her snow soldiers had been reduced to nothing more than piles of slush in the attack, but the magical ice restraining the charmed guards was still holding.
Uriel was sheltered behind the wall on the opposite side of the archway from Elsa. Another pillar of fire split the air between them. At their backs, the remnants of the battered door were snapping like burning twigs, and a few of the wooden beams that framed the main entrance were smoking. With a wave, Elsa extinguished the fires scattered through the entrance hall in a burst of cold air. She looked to Uriel. "Can you do anything about her flames? Contain them?"
"No," he said. "I can't influence fires that large and intense."
"I have to stop her, then." Elsa tensed, moving to peer around the edge of the wall.
"Majesty, wait! You won't stand a chance if she can focus her powers on you. If you go out there alone, she'll burn you to a crisp!"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"We both go. I can at least distract her, give her something else to worry about."
"That's crazy! I have my ice, but you'll be a sitting duck!"
"I'm not that helpless." Uriel raised his rapier as if in salute. His eyes were filled with light, and with a faint hiss the metal of the weapon began glowing a fierce orange. The air around it shimmered with waves of radiant warmth. "I can stand a little heat. And I'm following you out either way."
Elsa wanted to protest further, but the cruel truth was she had little chance against Catalina on her own. Her strongest ice, like the thick blocks she'd used to build her tower, could probably weather the other woman's flames for a short while, but Elsa needed time and concentration to summon them. "I'll try to make us some cover," she said. The prince nodded.
They dashed around the corners and into the audience chamber. Elsa ducked beneath a fireball aimed at her head, skirting as close to the walls of the chamber as she could. Holding out her hands, she summoned two steady streams of magical ice, trying to build up shelter for an approach against Catalina. If one or both of them could reach the queen without fear of her fire, they might have a chance to incapacitate her. The flimsy barriers Elsa could create in the short time she had were little more than thin, ablative shields, shattering into slush or bursting into steam with a single strike of Catalina's flames.
They found themselves under fire, literally. Every missed strike was setting ablaze anything and everything that would host a flame. Chairs and benches burned like campfires scattered across the ground. Tapestries and banners smoldered wherever they hung. The floors and walls were stone, but the high arched frames that supported the ceiling were all wooden beams. Their lower edges were already starting to catch, and smoke was filling the vaulted spaces beneath the roof with a black haze.
Grunting with frustration and blinking away the sweat of several near-misses, Elsa realized they were not making any progress. The room was already uncomfortably warm, and getting worse. The heat grew more intense the closer they got to Catalina. The queen's golden dress was smoldering on her body, and Elsa watched with horror as parts of it caught into open flame. But even as the fabric was consumed, the fire remained, seething around Catalina in thick whorls of white and brilliant orange.
"You can do nothing to douse the fires raging in the hearts of those that I've claimed!" she bellowed. "What hope do you have against the inferno that lives in me?" Her hair vanished in a burst of light, the deep brown consumed and replaced by thousands of filaments of red flame.
Above them the rafters were burning like torches, their old wood baked by near two years of constant, arid summer. Thick beams were wrapped in writhing blankets of bright blue heat. The planks that formed the base of the roof were groaning and cracking as the blaze washed over them.
"Stop this!" Elsa had to shout to be heard over the roar that surrounded them. "You'll burn down the whole city!"
"I will rule this city! If I must do so as queen of the ashes, then so be it!"
"No!" With a howl of rage, Uriel ran at Catalina, leaping from his cover of ice to rush at her back, rapier pulled back to strike. The woman rounded on him, summoning a ball of fire and throwing it straight at him. The prince's charge faltered as he raised his weapon to parry. The thin blade did little to block the magical fire, and he was thrown backwards, body and clothes smoking.
"Uriel!" Elsa screamed. With a wave, she sent a blast of cold air and snow to extinguish the tiny fires scattered over his still form. That moment of panicked action nearly proved fatal. She felt and heard the raging wave of flame surging towards her even before she saw it. In a desperate burst of magic, she began conjuring a barrier of ice before her, glittering blue streams of ice pouring from both hands.
Fire met ice in a terrible roar, and Elsa could feel the waves of blistering heat that seared the air behind her tenuous shield. Her gown was crackling and popping, and she could feel moisture on her skin that was cooler than the rivers of sweat already covering her. She grit her teeth, putting everything she could into her magic, freeing her powers in a way she had not done since forging her refuge on the slopes of the north mountain. It was still not enough. The blue wall before her was slowly but surely giving way under the fiery onslaught, the edges of the ice falling away in rivulets of meltwater faster than she could replenish them.
A sound rose, heard among even the growl of flame and frantic jingling of ice. The whole building shook, and even in the midst of her desperate battle of attrition, Elsa found her terrified gaze drawn by the new surge of noise. With a chorus of snaps that rattled her teeth, she watched as a part of the roof gave way with a thunderous groan. A jumble of flaming rafters, girders, planks and shingles came down in a single, massive tumble.
Catalina looked up with a startled gasp just as they fell upon her.
The flames assailing Elsa stopped as the queen vanished beneath the crushing, burning debris. For a moment, Elsa could only stare in sheer, stunned silence at the bonfire of rubble in the middle of the meeting hall. Her wits returned when another loud rumble shook the building. With a quick thought and a deep breath, she sent out a tremendous stream of freezing air. The wind howled through the open space of the audience chamber, beating at the flames with frigid determination. The fires twisted, sputtered, and finally faltered. They left only smoking patches and charred wood.
Gasping and trembling with fatigue, Elsa surveyed the damage with a discerning eye. The building was hardly safe, but at least with the fires out it was not in imminent danger of crushing her and Uriel. Uriel! Eyes wide, she searched for the prince. He was still lying in a heap of black clothing on the far side of the wreckage. But before she could even take a step towards him, Elsa was frozen in terror.
The pile of wreckage was moving.
Charred beams were stirring. Burned shingles tumbled down in a rain of soot. Puffs of ash appeared as wooden girders shifted, crumbling into pieces of charcoal. Elsa caught a glimpse of orange light, and for a second she wondered if there were merely some flames that had survived deep in the cocoon of debris. No. The light was moving, too. With a great heave, part of the mass gave way, and a thing in the shape of a human rose to its feet.
It was Catalina.
Her fiery dress was extinguished. Her skin, once a vibrant bronze, was black as soot and covered her like a brittle crust. Lines of orange light glowed like veins across the cracked surface. What might have been her hair was a blazing mass that glowed a dull red. It oozed in clumps down her back that sparked and sizzled as they broke apart and were exposed to fresh air. Two eyes, fiery orange and burning with tongues of open flame, stared at Elsa.
She took a horrified step back, bile surging sourly into the back of her throat.
"I will not be so easily beaten," a voice called out. It popped and crackled like an old log in a hearth fire. The abomination raised her arms and turned her head. She examined herself, flaming eyes narrowed. "Magic grows constantly within its wielder. Our bodies were not made to contain such power. Eventually, we become something else. Something more."
The thing that had been Catalina stepped forward. The stone of the floor became molten beneath her feet. The heat emanating from her was stifling.
Elsa gave ground, terrified and unable to inhale the searing air as Catalina stepped closer. Elsa coughed as the noxious reek of sulfur overwhelmed her, blinking against the haze that distorted the atmosphere. She sent a blast of ice at Catalina. It sublimated into steam before even reaching her, and the monster moved forward, uncaring.
"Why so fearful, Your Majesty?" she asked. As she moved, obsidian skin cracked and broke apart with fissures to reveal the orange light beneath. "This is the fate of all who would use magic. Embrace it! Relish it! We wither and die, but the power is eternal."
"No," Elsa gasped. Her legs pushed her away. Even that small motion was a struggle. Every fiber of her being was screaming for her to run. "I don't believe you." Fighting back her fear, she summoned a wall between them, one as thick and strong as her magic could possibly make. Elsa watched with horror as it boiled away, great chunks of ice sloughing into puddles merely by getting within arm's reach of the monster's radiant heat.
"Do you think your magic is immune? Ice consumes, just as surely as fire. Snow buries cities with an avalanche. Glaciers wear away entire mountains with their inexorable drift."
"You're wrong."
"Am I? Has your power not grown within you?" The monstrosity still strode towards Elsa. "A simple frost can steal the life from any living thing caught in its grip. Look at your pretty little dress: cold already cannot touch you. Soon, those you care for will be unable to either. A hug from your sister will leave her frostbitten. A lover's kiss will freeze their lips into brittle glass. Bit by bit, the warmth of your blood will fade, leaving you a walking sculpture, unfeeling and heartless."
The sight of Anna, frozen into a statue of pure blue ice, flashed before her eyes. "No!" Elsa shouted. She felt her retreat halt as she glared defiantly at the queen. Catalina finally stopped beneath the ferocity of Elsa's gaze. "I have magic, but it will never consume me. My powers are a part of me, but they are not all that I am."
A frigid gale rose, beating back the engulfing heat emanating from Catalina. Pure, crisp air filled Elsa's lungs as she stared down the molten thing before her.
New images flashed before her eyes. A soft white rain fell upon the people of Arendelle, their cheeks glowing as they skated around the castle courtyard. "I am snow, but I will never smother." A tower rose upon the side of a mountain, glittering white and red and orange in the sunrise. "I am frost, but I will never bite." Kai and Gerda welcomed her from her room with smiles. Kristoff handed Sven a carrot as the reindeer nuzzled his arm. Anna ran towards her, smiling and laughing. "And my heart will never freeze, because I love!"
Catalina laughed, sparks bursting from the depths of her glowing red throat. "And what good will love do against me?" she spat. "I am fire! I am eternal! I am the sun!"
"No," a voice said from behind her. "I am."
The point of a rapier emerged from Catalina's molten chest, glowing white-hot as it pierced her burning heart. Prince Uriel stumbled back, clothes smoking from mere proximity to her heat. Elsa could see the unscarred portion of his face blistering.
Catalina gasped, curling in on herself, clutching at the blade of glowing metal buried in her chest. The gasp turned into a hiss, which grew louder and higher with each passing moment. The veins of molten magic were getting brighter, new fissures appearing all across her obsidian figure as she shook and convulsed. When she opened her mouth to scream, no sound emerged, only a belch of thick, red magma.
The hissing was painfully loud, like a pot left so long to boil that it was about to burst. Prince Uriel tried to move back, but fell to his knees, overwhelmed by the heat. "Majesty!" he shouted. "Get down!"
Elsa complied in desperation, summoning a barrier of ice that surrounded her body. She did so a split-second before the elemental magic contained in what had been the Queen Regent of Kristensand detonated in a furious rain of red-hot power.
The sound of the explosion faded. Elsa dismissed her shield, sending out waves of freezing air to cool the spots where fragments of burning material had landed. Of Catalina, or the thing she had become, Elsa saw no other sign.
What she did spot, with a gasp of horror, was Prince Uriel.
The Black Prince's fine clothing was a mass of charred rags, and his body was a smoking ruin. Every bit of exposed flesh was terribly burned, red and black and bleeding. He was breathing in short, sharp gasps.
"Uriel!" The shout surprised Elsa, because it did not come from her. A girl was leaning against the wall at the edge of the chamber, dressed in a red nightgown. Her feet were bare, her legs and arms thin as reeds, and her shoulder-length auburn hair was matted and disheveled. She pushed herself off from the wall, stumbling across the room in a weary-legged sprint. She was heedless of the debris, some of which was still smoldering, nearly falling more than once in her haste. Elsa moved to help her, but the girl brushed past, not even seeing her. She fell to her knees at the prince's side.
"Sera?" he groaned.
"It's me, Uri." She reached two trembling hands towards his face, tears streaming down her cheeks as she struggled against the desire to touch his scorched flesh.
"You're awake…"
She nodded desperately. "Yes. Please, brother, hang on! I'll…" she seemed to lose her way as she struggled to find some words that would serve to comfort him.
Elsa heard a gasp from behind her. Anna and Kristoff had returned. The ice harvester was leaning against Sven, wearing a look of determination not to let the effort of standing show, and Anna was holding his hand. Elsa nearly fainted with relief at the sight of them. Through the arched entrance, the guards that Elsa's snow soldiers had incapacitated were shambling in as well. They looked disoriented and exhausted, but it seemed their minds and hearts were once again their own.
"It's all right," Uriel reassured his sister. His voice was growing softer, and his breaths were growing shallower. "You're safe, little sunset… that's enough."
"No it's not! I can't lose you, too!" Seraphim cried. "I don't want to be alone."
The prince called out weakly. "Your Majesty?"
Elsa was there in two quick strides. "I'm here," she said. The words made her feel like an intruder.
"Please… look after her. I've no one… else to ask."
"I will," Elsa promised, meaning it with every fiber of her being. "She'll be safe, I swear it. Thanks to you, the eternal summer is over."
"Good. Hate… summer." His voice was almost inaudible. His breaths were so shallow they had all but stopped. But even so it seemed the prince was trying to smile. "Always… loved… the snow."
He gave a sigh that was almost peaceful, and then Prince Uriel was gone.
Seraphim fell against his chest, her body shaking. "No…" she whispered in slow, hiccoughing sobs. Elsa's face fell. This was not the end she would have chosen. As she looked upon Seraphim – her cousin, a grieving sister – her mind raged at the injustice of it all.
Blinking back tears, Elsa raised an arm towards the sky. Through the hole where part of the roof had collapsed, the stars were shining. They were joined by a glimmer of magic, and then by something else.
In a slow, steady rain, snow began to fall.
The flakes fluttered down in ones and twos, landing amidst the rubble of the town hall and alighting on those who stood within. Each tiny fractal seemed to persist, even when it had no right to. The heat of the ground did not affect them. The dying embers did not melt them. Even the warmth of bare skin held no power over them.
Elsa felt her sister stand beside her. She looked as exhausted as Elsa felt. Anna leaned against her shoulder, hugging her around her right arm. "Your hands," Elsa said numbly. Dozens of tiny cuts covered Anna's palms and fingers, some already crusted with dried blood.
"I'll be fine," Anna said, staring at her hand as though it belonged to someone else. The sisters watched a single snowflake land upon Anna's upraised palm. The younger girl sucked in a surprised breath. "It's warm." The flake rested there, pulsing with soft white light that spread across her hand.
The cuts began to heal.
Flesh knit whole beneath a slow wave of icy white radiance. The crusted blood faded into smaller and smaller fragments, revealing the pure, unmarred skin beneath.
"Elsa?" Anna's head was flicking back and forth, as though she couldn't decide whether her hand or her sister deserved her surprised scrutiny more. "How…?"
Elsa could only shake her head. She watched as more snowflakes fell, their incongruous warmth and light washing across her face and arms and legs. In the heat of battle she'd acquired half a hundred tiny scratches and burns. They were fading like bad dreams.
Magic is a part of the world, not any one person, a voice whispered in Elsa's mind. It binds us all, none more so than those who wield it. She saw a hand held above her stomach, pulsing with white light; white light that had also seemed to be coming from her. A shiver ran through Elsa's body. She looked at Uriel.
His body was glowing.
Seraphim sat up, staring in stunned silence. The ruinous burns covering her brother's body, visible through his tattered clothing, were turning into smooth, unblemished skin. The masses of angry red blisters and blackened flesh on his face were healing. Even the old burns on the right side of his face and neck were becoming faded, less pronounced.
With a shuddering gasp of breath, Prince Uriel opened his eyes.
Elsa barely had time to notice the stunned disbelief in those two storm-grey orbs before they vanished again behind a mass of auburn hair. Seraphim threw herself once more upon her brother, but this time her tears and racking sobs were those of purest joy.