#this fic is skating by so quickly; we're quite close to an ending

[gerbiloftriumph]

The Silence Between Snowflakes

(also on ao3) ~ 6/8 - Fractals

~*~*~

The instant Alexander dropped below the entrance hall floor, he started clawing at the slide, trying to dig his toes into the walls, the slide itself, anything. His gloved hands slipped uselessly off the walls, and he skittered and bounced like a ball on a track, slamming into sharp bends that he couldn’t see in the dark. There were no footholds, no handholds, no outcroppings, nothing, and by the time he’d shook off the pain from crashing into another curve, there was no curve to grip (not that the slick walls would have afforded him any sort of leverage had he been prepared, anyway).

He didn’t know where this track was going, and he didn’t think it was anywhere good, and he wanted out. He wanted out right now.

Claustrophobic, shoved into a tiny, dark space, punishment for breaking a cup. Stretched and pulled like taffy for forgetting to wash a plate. Battered and bruised and frightened and angry and cold and tired and done.

He had rescued himself from Manannan. He would rescue himself again.

Fierce terror and anger rose in him, and he forced the emotions together, channeled them into what little fragmented magic he knew, and he snapped his fingers. At first, nothing, and he did it again, and again, muttering half remembered words he’d stolen from Manannan, and again, until finally the magic caught in his fingertips, and heat poured from his hands, and he slammed against the wall, and it melted away before him and sent him screeching down another road, one he made himself, and the new melted tunnel vanished beneath him and he felt himself falling, falling—but he saw in the split second before impact that he was probably going to land on something softer than the floor.

~*~*~*~

Normally, Graham liked mazes. Hedge mazes were lots of fun, he thought, and he’d always been fond of the corn maze Royal Guard Number Two organized every autumn. Even better when there were puzzles scattered around, just to make it extra tricky and entertaining.

But normally he wasn’t freezing to death, and normally he could see the sun, and normally he knew what the end goal was. Knew there was a way out. This one probably had a way out, but it didn’t seem to be following any rules, and he was starting to doubt. He felt like rooms were circling around, sending him in every direction aimlessly. He’d tried going through left-most doors, but then he’d gotten confused and turned around in a couple of the larger emptier spaces and now had no idea where he was headed. He was sure he’d already been in some of the rooms, corridors entwined and intersecting. There was an overall slow downward slope to his route, like he was going deeper into the castle, and he wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted.

The place seemed to be falling apart, too, perhaps a consequence of the castle moving and jarring against itself as it settled. He had to scramble over huge ice blocks and squeeze past fallen pillars. Had to find keys to doors that were locked before him and locked behind him again. None of which was an easy feat with his wrist entirely frozen over and his elbow starting to stiffen and his head starting to feel foggy (from the cold of the room or the cold of his arm, who could say). Strange carvings in the walls leered at him. Tunnels narrowed until he was hunched over, or swooped out so that his footsteps echoed around him.

He hadn’t found any signs of life. Just statues and sculptures that made him wonder if his curse had a solution at all. Distressingly realistic humans carved of clear blue ice, in all manner of dress and features, scattered the rooms. Reaching, cowering, curled up broken in pieces on the floor. He had the oddest sense they were watching him, moving when he wasn’t looking at them.

Sometimes, there were sounds, but mostly they were of the sinking ship ice-creaking variety that made him think the place was going to fall down on top of him.

Take this new sound, though. It was perfectly chilling. Sounded like someone screaming, but muffled by layers upon layers upon layers of ice, a fractured sound in the walls. Until, quite suddenly, it wasn’t muffled, and the ceiling opened up into a slushy hole, and Alexander, flailing, dropped out of it, landing on top of Graham. The two collapsed in a tangled heap of cloaks and scarves.

Startled and unwilling to immediately accept the presence of Alexander in this icy prison, Graham instantly slipped into the babbling safety of terrible jokes. “Aaah, ice to see you, son, but this is snow place for a prince. We’ve already had fall, you know. I winter why you’re here. Have you snowflaked on your mother? That’s a cold thing to do, you know.”

Alexander stared wild-eyed, uncomprehending. Frost slicked back his hair.

“Ah, sorry, not the time.” They stood a little unsteadily, and Graham leaned back to look at the tunnel Alexander had apparently blasted open. “That’s...” he struggled for the right word in his alarm, “impressive.” He glanced at his son, and he quickly smoothed his expression into bland kingly interest. “Could you explain why you’re here and not safe in the castle where you should be?”

“We were worried,” Alexander said, still breathless, still staring up at what he’d done. He knotted his fingers together. “You hadn’t...you just left, and we couldn’t...we had to come.”

“We?” The floor seemed to drop out from beneath Graham. “You’re not going to tell me your mother and sister are here, too, are you?”

“Um.”

“Valanice is here? Of her own volition? No one invaded Daventry Castle or forced her to come or anything, she decided on her own?”

“Yes.”

“Ohh, shining stars.” He was in trouble.

“You just left,” Alexander repeated defensively. “We weren’t going to leave you to freeze.”

“I’m not going to freeze.” And there was a sharp note of anger in his voice, he realized, a snap that he wasn’t sure if he meant or not.

Alexander looked like he wanted to argue, and his eyes were on Graham’s arm (which was definitely colder, definitely locking up, definitely aching), but all the fight went out of him. Especially after hearing the frustration in Graham’s voice, the words choked in his throat. Arguing wasn’t something that came naturally, not after Manannan’s treatment. Not after Graham’s irritated tone. Whatever he’d been going to say or do just...stopped. He hovered on the front of his toes, like a bird trying to take flight, and could do or say nothing more than that.

Graham sighed, and then smiled at his son, apologetically, gently. “Nothing like the Crackers for snowballing right into danger. I’m surprised Number One didn’t send you back.”

“We didn’t see him. We, um. We think something happened to him.”

“Hmm?”

“It looked like there’d been a fight. They were gone. All of them. We never even saw them.”

And that felt like a slap. Graham blinked. The castle had been empty, lonely. No human was here, he would have bet his adventuring hat on it. And yet. He glanced at the ice sculptures leering at them, wondering if they’d crept a little closer while he and Alexander were talking. Maybe not that empty after all.

But they couldn’t leave the way Alexander had come, that was clear. The hole was high above them, perfectly glossy with smooth ice, reflective as a mirror. And Graham wasn’t sure which direction he’d come from, now. His head was getting fuzzier, his thoughts starting to splinter. Going back wouldn’t do them any good: his own slide down into the maze was long and cold and slick and behind a series of locked doors by this point. They’d have to go forward. If only he knew which way forward was, and if only he could guarantee there was a way out in the end.

He’d been distracted by Alexander and news of Valanice for a few minutes, but the pain of his arm was coming back at double strength, slicing through his thoughts, a pain that pulled his attention in every direction and made him feel all the more helpless. Useless.

He rubbed at his frozen wrist, staring at the gaping hole above them. It really was something incredible. Alexander had blasted it with some sort of heat, but the slush had already refrozen into sharp, cruel icicles dangling above them. Deadly. Magic, deadly. His arm, deadly. He wasn’t at all sure he liked his son knowing how to do something Manannan could do. Magic. What if it killed Alexander just as soundly as it was killing Graham?

He drew himself up, took refuge in his knightly training and kingly history, found the confidence he needed to project. Regrettably, it sounded like chilly annoyance when he spoke: “We must find Valanice, Rosella, and the guards. We’ll figure things out as we go.” He chose a direction and set off, praying to all the stars that he wasn’t backtracking.

~*~*~*~

Gwendolyn spent the day trying to find Gart, and Gart kept avoiding her. Every time she thought she saw him down a hall or in a room, he managed to get away from her. She wondered if Aunt Rosella had taught him about all those alcoves and tunnels that she had liked to hide in as a child, and she wished she knew the castle as well as he did. Gwendolyn had grown up in the Green Isles, as far away from here as it was possible to get, and hearing Grandpa’s stories about the secrets of Daventry’s castle had sparked her interest.

But she knew she wouldn’t get to discover the twists and turns of the passageways. Gart was right about that. She would be going home soon, and he would stay here, learning to be a good king.

Her father Alexander had relinquished his claim on Daventry’s throne long ago, changing the line of inheritance to Rosella’s family. Gwendolyn knew it was because he’d fallen in love with her mother, Cassima of the Green Isles, and had submitted to her authority and rule on the other side of the world. He loved it, loved the little islands with all their characters and abilities and interests, loved the smells and the sounds and the feel of the place. Loved Cassima.

He had found a home, in the end. Gwendolyn couldn’t help but wonder if it was meant to be her home, too, or if, like her grandfather, like her father, she was meant to wander, to find something to call her own. She didn’t begrudge Gart’s inheritance, not even a bit, but she was jealous of his confidence that this was where he belonged. That he had so much trust in his future when she was questioning so much. When she wanted what was best for everyone, best for both countries, both families, both lives…but wasn’t sure how her happiness fit into the equation, too. Which made her feel guilty; she had so much good in her life. She didn’t deserve these doubts.

And yet. And yet, she doubted and worried and fussed, nevertheless, which just made her feel all the more guilty.

This was why the stories mattered so much. The stories were a way to explore and learn safely, to carve a road to decisions. If only Gart would listen to the stories, too.

Or if he would at least stop running away from her. She bit her lip, tugged up her hood, and hurried down another passageway, his name burning her throat as she called again and again with no response. Feeling lost in the labyrinth of the castle, not at all sure which way to turn next.

~*~*~*~

Royal Guard Number One shivered. “I hate being cold,” he muttered. His teeth chattered so hard that it sounded like he said every word twice. He was sitting on his helmet since that was warmer than sitting on the ice block chair that had been provided, blowing puffs of smoke as he tried to keep his fingers limber. Not that he had his sword to swing anymore, which made the exercise mostly pointless. Even with his quilted padding, even with his scarf and earmuffs and mittens and everything, he felt like he was turning to ice as solidly as Graham was.

He didn’t even have the others to huddle with for warmth: those strange living sculptures had easily determined he was captain of the little operation and had hastily separated him from the rest of the Royal Guard. He’d blinked away the cobwebs and shadows and pain just in time to find himself being flung face first into a frosty little cell. The door had slammed and locked behind him while he extricated himself from a snowbank.

In the distance down the hall, he had been able to make out No2 shouting something before being silenced, accompanied by an angry crack of ice against metal, and then...nothing after that. No sounds from his men or ice guards. Just the chilly creaking of the castle’s walls. He tried shoveling his way out (surely this place was no different than the pretend castles he had helped Rosella build when she was a toddler, a snow castle you could kick your way through in a pinch), but the blocks of ice were as hard as any actual dungeon wall he’d ever faced.

“I’m getting too old for this sort of nonsense.” He wondered how the others were getting on, and very much hoped they hadn’t been split up. Especially poor Larry, who possibly shouldn’t have been allowed to come considering how his bad arm locked up if it got too cold. Hopefully he and Kyle were together. If any of them had been hurt, those ice monsters were going to catch hell from Number One.

He had to get up and try to find another way out. He knew he did. But it was just so cold. In a minute, maybe, he’d stand up. If his knees weren’t frozen in place. For now, he blew on his fingertips again.

There was an incredibly loud crash from outside his door. It sounded like someone had knocked over a tray of glasses, shattering every single one on the floor and then stomping on them for good measure. He sprang to his feet, reaching instinctively for the sword he didn’t have, as the cell door swung open.

Princess Rosella leaned against the door frame, grinning at him. Around her, the anxious faces of the other royal guards appeared.

“Having trouble, Number One?” she asked.

“Not anymore, Princess Rosella.”

She handed him his sword, and he buckled it around his waist without looking at it, visually checking over all his men instead. They looked rattled, frost limning their uniforms, but otherwise all were accounted for, all seemed safe. He nodded sharply, satisfied, and marched out of his cell with his helmet tucked under his arm. Ice crunched beneath his feet like shards of glass.

“Ice guards,” Rosella said dismissively. “Not paying a shred of attention. Easy to break, turns out, if you can get them to hit the ground right.”

“Might I ask how you’re here, Princess Rosella?”

“You might,” she said, playing along as drily as him, and then she broke character by snickering.

Rosella, Alexander, and Queen Valanice (ohh, shining stars, if the queen was here then they were in trouble) had found Graham missing (No1 wasn’t even remotely surprised, just annoyed) and had hurried to the castle, where they’d been promptly trapped (meaning he couldn’t send her home, so don’t even try to order it, she insisted). They hadn’t found the king, or the royal guards, but they had found nasty little trap doors inside the hall, which split everyone up. Rosella’s slide had sent her bumping and shrieking with laughter down, down, down into what was probably a dungeon cell but which had been recommissioned into a breakroom by whatever minions this castle supported. Someone, likely not an ice guard, wasn’t pleased with all the snow around, and had made up a straw nest for taking naps in. She'd fallen into this nest, unharmed and giggly.

The cell-turned-breakroom was at the far end of a long series of twisting tunnels, made of dark blue and black ice that reflected her shadowy shape back at her. Her explorations went entirely unnoticed by anyone for a good long while. She’d eventually found the rest of the guards cuddled together in a heap of armor and scarves and gloves behind a locked door, and they’d hastily explained what was going on.

Armed with expectation, she wasn’t surprised when she saw her first ice guard, and she deftly dodged and slipped through the tunnels and open cells until she found the keys she wanted. It had been a feat worthy of anything her father had ever done on any of his adventures to sneak the keys out from the guard room unnoticed by the strange magic creatures. It had involved a bit of string, her tiara, and one of the windup Battle of Wits miniatures she had been carrying in her pocket from an earlier game with Alexander.

A sight to behold, totally memorable, a proper shame no one else had seen it. She gathered up the keyring and hurried away.

She had been unlocking the Daventry team door when the ice guard spotted her. It rushed her, grabbed her, and she would have been completely done for, adventure at an end—if the key for the cell hadn’t already been in the padlock, and if No3 hadn’t been turning it the rest of the way, and if the rest of the royal guards hadn’t burst out to protect their princess. The lone ice guard didn’t stand a chance.

Most of the sculptures from this dungeon area were now fuming behind locked doors, and a few more troublesome ones were now so much chunked ice, blue shreds of animation magic rising like steam before disappearing.

“Easy,” Rosella finished.

“Excellent job,” No1 said. He bowed to her, as befitting royalty. And then they exchanged a very complicated handshake that ended with a spectacularly silly fist bump and the two of them leaning back-to-back. No1 straightened quickly and gave an imperious glance over his men, silently suggesting that if anyone spoke of this moment again, they would be docked pay. “Now then. I imagine King Graham has ended up in some sort of unpleasant trap as well. Princess Rosella, would you perhaps like to assist in another rescue?”

“Always.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing down one of the long dark blue halls. “I heard the strangest noises coming from that direction. I didn’t check it out without backup, though—thought you’d be proud of that. We should probably investigate.”

“A fine idea. Shall we?”

“Let’s shall.”

~*~*~*~

The maze was definitely deteriorating. Walls sagging, pillars crunching. Perhaps the weight of the castle was heaviest here, pressing down on the honeycomb of tunnels. Maybe it was something to do with its movement, takeoffs and landings shaking things loose. Graham was vaguely certain he hadn’t been here before. But only vaguely. The rooms still looked about the same, the only difference being the types of statues leering at them, and his head was getting fuzzier and the pain of his arm was starting to pound in his ears in time with his heartbeat.

Graham dizzily recognized that Alexander had started taking the lead, but Graham was too preoccupied to say anything much about it. He was focused on his hand, cradling his arm, careful not to bump it against the debris and ice blocks strewn around the rooms that Alexander was pushing out of their way. Sometimes, Graham thought the ice blocks could have been moved a little faster. He almost said so, that anger rising in his chest again, a cold desire to hurt, but then decades of diplomatic leadership kicked in and he realized what he was about to say. He bit down sharply on his tongue and turned a snarky critique into a vague compliment, but then he was back to quietly moping and not paying much attention.

His teeth were starting to chatter as the ice snaked up his body. He yanked his cowl up higher, trying to trap warm air, to do anything to help. It didn’t help at all. Alexander kept glancing back at him, which made the puzzles take even longer, his fingers made clumsy by hesitation and uncertainty.

This room was different. Someone had shoved straw in the corner, between pillars and the wall and some ice blocks, making a sort of sleepy nest to sit in that was warm against the perpetual chill of the labyrinth. A hideaway, Graham thought, and that made him smile a bit, remembering how much he’d loved to hide in Triumph’s stable when he wanted away from everything. The scent of hay was comforting, and snapped through his bleary disinterest, made him stand straight and be aware of his surroundings again. Whoever had made up this little comfortable bed had access to the maze through a tunnel splintered through the wall by a fallen pillar. They must have taken an ice pick and made the tunnel just barely wide enough for someone to squeeze through single file.

“Ah. A short cut,” Graham said. “I’d bet that’ll take us out of the maze and into more inhabitable rooms.” Hopefully warmer ones, too.

Alexander nodded, inspecting the scrapes and scratches marring the narrow tunnel walls. The two men squeezed through the tunnel, which narrowed and widened and pressed and pulled. Alexander looked queasy and Graham’s arm ached, but they wriggled through without too much difficulty.

As hoped, this area felt considerably more lived in and used. The chilly silence of the maze was behind them. Graham could hear something metallic clanging and echoing nearby. He smiled at Alexander, pleased to have escaped. He pushed open a door—and walked into the center of a crowd of goblins.

There were probably two dozen rock goblins standing around. Most were clutching shovels and were in the middle of scooping snow out of huge hampers and wheelbarrows and into icy furnaces belching snowy clouds up huge chimneys. Some had ice picks, to break up heavier chunks of snow. All of them had scarves and hats and mittens dragged over their armor. Every head turned, and every eye was on Graham and Alexander, and the door swung shut behind them with a click, and Graham mumbled, “Oh. Zards.”

The goblins spun their shovels and held them like spears. Apparently, they didn’t have their real spears with them. The ones with the ice picks still looked as threatening as ever, though. All approached, slowly, encircling the two intruders, hemming them away from the door (not that there was anywhere to go—back into the maze wasn’t a real option). Their helmets revealed not a single emotion, and Graham stepped back unconsciously, swallowing. He’d run into goblins a handful of times since his awful experience in his twenties. They were part of Daventry, like the squirrels. And, like the squirrels, they had their own ruler. There were treaties. There were rules.

But goblins had never been the sort to follow rules.

Something sharp pressed against his shoulder blades, and he froze. It was a shovel, surely, but sharp and heavy enough to cause serious damage, and wielded by a spearmaster. He would never forget the pressure of a spear held against him, and it sent him spiraling back, back, back, and he felt young and inexperienced and out of place again, at a loss to defend himself and his friends. But this time, it was his son at his side, looking absolutely petrified with an ice pick point tickling his ear.

That couldn’t stand. His son had faced enough. Graham wouldn’t let anything hurt him now, not if he could help it. Graham’s fuzzy resolve hardened and he stepped forward, in front of Alexander, his good arm raised to defend, forcing his cold anger in his chest to help instead of hurt.

One of the goblins stepped forward to match him. It wore a hat with a fluffy white bauble sewn onto it, perched almost rakishly over its helmet. Goblins all had uniquely designed helmets, and this one’s forward swooping curl sparked a memory... “I remember you,” he said to it, sternly. “You stole my adventuring hat.” And had been one of the more enthusiastic ones when it came to flipping Graham upside down and shaking him hard to knock loose contraband in his prison cell—he'd had that goblin’s grip imprinted as a bruise on his legs for a month.

If it were possible to see expressions through those helmets, Graham thought the little fellow would be grinning. It swept itself into a low bow, flipping the multicolored scarf it wore like a lady’s ballgown skirt. Definitely one of Acorn’s scarves, Graham decided: he was sure he could spot the little artisan tag sewn near the ruffle. At least one mystery had been solved. Possibly more. Those were probably Amaya’s ice picks.

The shovel that had been at Graham’s shoulders swung low and the shaft whacked the back of his knees. He fell forward, landing hard on his knees. The same thing must have happened to Alexander, because he too fell with a startled cry. Graham remembered this, knew what would come next. Now that he was at the goblins’ level, they’d pull out the rope, bind his hands behind him, and march him away for stars knew what purpose.

But the goblins were chittering amongst themselves in their scratchy language, and there was a general movement of bodies and weapons as something new approached. Something hard clamped down on Graham’s shoulder, on his arm, as tight as a manacle and absolutely freezing. He looked up, startled, and Royal Guard Number One stood above him, entirely utterly horribly frozen through like Graham’s frozen arm, his icy cold hand grip—no, wait, not Number One. The mannerisms were wrong, the uniform just a touch off kilter.

Sculpture.

A living sculpture.

Who would possibly want ice guards to look like his Daventry ones? Well, everyone, honestly, Graham thought with a vague touch of glowing pride. No1 had trained the very best. It wasn’t surprising at all that someone would imitate that glorious Crimson Colada uniform for their own regiment. Even if this example of it was a little...abstract and malformed.

Which, he slowly realized, meant that whoever lived in this castle knew Daventry. Or at least had seen his royal guards before, knew of their uniforms. But who? How? Why?

What else did this ice castle have? If a yeti had walked around the corner walking a herd of wedzels on leashes, Graham would have thought it much more sensible. What next? Sentient scarves? Talking cats?

The goblins looked annoyed, like they’d lost something fun they’d been looking forward to playing with, shuffling back with fingers drumming on shovels and picks. Multiple ice guards hauled Graham and Alexander back to their feet, their hands digging like claws into the captives' shoulders. No need for further restraint, not with these things holding them.

The ice guards barked something at the goblins, and they skittered and scattered, rushing back to work. Their language was odd, brittle, and...backward? It somehow seemed reversed. But the goblins had understood well enough, and were back with their shovels, frantically scraping huge piles of snow into the furnaces, in seconds. As the ice guard harried and hustled the two royals through the room, past the bustle of workers, the king watched the furnaces. He was thinking of blizzards, of clouds heavy with snow, of a center to the storm that appeared to be coming from a single point. Number One may have been right after all.

Another ice guard, apparently there to watch over the goblins and prevent laziness, snapped something, and the goblins scurried to work faster. The last thing Graham saw was the forward-curl goblin straining under a very heavy load of snow, whimpering something unhappily. And then Graham and Alexander were dragged out of the furnace room and propelled along corridors and stairs, past alcoves and curtains and cheerless rooms, heading up, up, up, toward the center of the castle and the tower that loomed over everything.