Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  To honor her, I stood. “No one knows what happened during that expedition, just that most of them died and a very few survived. I can only think of one way to interpret what you’ve just said. You trapped them somehow, on the ice, maybe even in the spirit world. She agreed to have sexual congress with you to save the lives of the others. She did it to save my father’s life, because she loved him.”

  “That male did not father you.”

  “He fathered me in every way that counts. You only sired me.” My voice rasped with unshed tears, thinking of what my mother had agreed to, and how she must have loved me anyway and risked her life and everything she knew to make a life for me. Had Daniel known? Or had she borne this secret alone, hoping the hunter might forget both her and the child? I would never know.

  “That you are as you are is a gift that comes from me only. You must be what I made you to be. Forged like cold steel out of many layers, you are strong, resilient, and able to adapt in a moment’s reaction.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  He extended an arm. The crow hopped from its perch to tighten its claws over the bronzed muscles of his forearm. I thought the tips of those claws drew blood, but because of the way the crow’s shadow—the only shadow my light could not dispel— fell across his body, I could not be certain.

  “I want you to spy for me, Daughter.”

  I am not a young woman who craves attention or draws notice to herself through dramatic gestures or heedless bravado. But I admit it. I laughed.

  “To spy for you! That would be no hardship for a person of my background and training. But I’m sure there’s a hook in the bargain that is about to catch in my lip.”

  “You may address me as ‘Your Serenity,’ or ‘my prince.’ Or as ‘Father.’”

  “Are you mocking me?” I demanded.

  “No, I am suggesting it would be both prudent and wise for you to show respect for your master and procreator.”

  “I have never been told I am prudent or wise. But I suppose I could address you as ‘Sire.’”

  He betrayed no reaction to my impertinent words and sardonic tone. But the turtle came alive, head easing out from the shell as its eyes opened to look toward me with an unfathomable gaze. My sire tapped it on the head, and it withdrew again. He clapped his hands twice.

  Ice smoked over between two of the toads. Within an alcove, a stout man who had no head sat upright on a bench. Two dripping-wet women clothed only in long hair the oil-brown color of seaweed pressed to either side of him. The headless man lurched up, shedding the females leeched to him. With the shuffling gait of a blind man in a strange room, he carried over a tray with two glasses on it. He paused in front of me, and I took a step back, for I had a sudden fear that he might grope me, and I was sure I would scream if he did. He wore a patched tunic with trews beneath, calves bound with cord over soft leather summer boots. Rings adorned his fingers. A buttery-gold torc spanned his neck, whose severed trunk oozed greasily, as if it had never quite healed but could not quite bleed.

  “Drink with me to seal our bargain,” said my sire.

  “I dare not drink or eat what is served to me in the spirit world lest some property within trap me further.”

  “Take the cup, Catherine Bell Barahal.”

  My hand took a cup. It was filled with an amber liquid.

  The headless serving man carried the tray over to my sire, who plucked the other glass from it. The headless man shuffled back over to the bench. The water spirits clutched at him. Their clinging seemed obscene, for while their hair in streaks concealed most of their bodies, what made the display so disturbing was that, beneath his trews, the man was visibly and powerfully aroused. Dear me. Blushing, I looked away to examine the carpets on which I stood, many layers strewn haphazardly across the floor as if to cover a mighty stain seeping upward.

  No, this was not helping at all.

  Mastering myself, I looked toward my sire. By now my clothes were half dry, my skin coated with a sticky salt grime, and my hair lifting away from my neck in knotted tangles as it dried. I was exhausted—that went without saying although naturally, as Bee would have commented, I would have mentioned it anyway—but I was no longer frozen and disheartened. He hadn’t smitten me yet.

  “Is that Bran Cof, the poet? The one you torment?”

  He sipped at the amber wine as if considering its taste or my faults.

  “Are the creatures who sleep in the ice your slaves? Or do they serve you willingly out of their own natures?”

  Despite his silence, I was beginning to get the impression that my bold manner amused him.

  “Does the Wild Hunt hunt at your pleasure, or for some other purpose?”

  “Does no one teach the law these days?” he said mockingly. “Let me educate you, little cat. On Hallows’ Night, the Wild Hunt rides into the Deathlands. It culls the spirits of those who will die in the coming year. I am sure you already know the story. The hunt rides on the night of sundering because that is its nature and its purpose.”

  I bowed my head, for I remembered the story my father had told me long ago about the Wild Hunt and a young hunter who had sought and found the other half of his soul. I remembered the day I had escaped from Four Moons House, when I’d heard a horn’s call on Hallows’ Eve rising out of the earth like mist and filtering down from the sky like rain. That call had penetrated my bones and my blood and my heart. No one fated to die in the coming year could escape the hunt.

  “But that is not the only reason the Wild Hunt rides. Blood, Daughter. We must have blood. One mortal life feeds the courts for a year. The stronger the blood, the richer the feast.”

  “The day court and the night court,” I whispered. “That’s what they’re called.”

  “All serve the courts,” he agreed.

  “The enemy doesn’t serve them.”

  Movement stirred in the ice, and I realized I had gone too far. An owl swooped out of the empty air to settle on the perch. Its golden eyes chained me. I fell into the rip current of its gaze.

  I was trapped in the banded, breathing heart of the ice. It was as cold as death and as heavy as the weight of an ice shelf groaning down to crush one fragile human heart. Beneath winter’s aching cold lies a deeper cold that leaches blood and heat into a vessel where stolen sparks can be shaped into more obedient forms.

  “The ice is alive. Not as you and I are alive. It’s not a creature or a person. But it lives, although I couldn’t tell you how or why.” The recollection of Brennan Du’s words roused me.

  I had been standing. Now, as if I had been brutally hammered by the power of a cold mage’s anger, I found myself on hands and knees although I had no memory of falling. I had dropped the cup, and it had rolled an arm’s length away.

  I inhaled hard, air hit my lungs, and the dizzy whirling dread subsided.

  Until I looked up to his masked face.

  “The blood of the enemy is poison,” he murmured, as if he had once sipped it. “But the enemy found a way to enter our world through mortal hands, through the females who walk the tide of dreams. So must the courts enter the mortal world likewise, through mortal flesh. You will go to a place in the Deathlands that is surrounded by the Taninim, they who rule the seas. You can reach there because of the flesh you wear that you inherited from your mother’s blood and bone.”

  Did “surrounded by the Taninim” mean an island? Was it possible the Wild Hunt could not reach islands? Or only one particular place? I knew better than to ask such a question directly.

  “Sire, you already have servants who walk in the mortal world. Like the eru and coachman who brought me here. They pretend to serve the mage Houses, but they are really there to spy on the cold mages, aren’t they? To make sure no magister becomes too powerful a threat?”

  Had he not been wearing a mask, I would have guessed he smiled, yet it would have been a smile one could not wish to see on a face. “Cold mages serve the courts without knowing they do. They comprehend in an atten
uated way the power of the courts and do their best to avoid the Wild Hunt’s notice. They understand that if they spread their net of power too widely or grasp at too much, the courts smell a scent of power, and the Wild Hunt is unleashed to hunt them down.”

  “That’s a clever way to control the power of the cold mages,” I agreed with what I hoped was a smile of rueful admiration, preparing my flattery in order to attempt a leading question.

  “Do not play false with me, Daughter. I can smell it.”

  To give myself a moment to think, I picked up the cup. It had not lost a single drop of the amber wine. “How shall we communicate while I am in the Deathlands? Can you see through my eyes and speak through my mouth?”

  “Ah. You’ve pleased me with a clever question instead of an impertinent one. No. Your mother’s flesh blinds me to you except on Hallows’ Day. I will send my servants if I need to speak with you.”

  My heart’s pulse thundered in my ears as a sense of relief flooded me. Well, then. Once I left this hall, he could not oversee or control my actions. Yet perhaps he was hiding a hook. “If that’s so, why send me? Why not send your other servants?”

  “By your service, you shall receive answers. Until then, you will simply obey.”

  He raised his cup to his lips, gaze on me; my hand raised my cup to my lips. Without drinking, he lowered his hand; without drinking, I lowered mine. I had to; his will forced me.

  “You take my point,” he said. “We have reached a turning in the path. A power stirs in the mortal world. It pours from one vessel into another, and its motion churns and heats and cools the threads that bind the worlds. The courts whisper, for they are troubled. Has a cold mage reached too far and grasped for too much? Does an unknown power rise out of the lair of the enemy? This is your task: Find that power, identify it, and lead me to it, on the coming Hallows’ Night.”

  My heart constricted. Or at least, that’s what the tightening sensation in my chest felt like. I touched my chin, where Andevai had cut me with cold steel. I knew what it was to discover, too late, that you have been chosen to be the sacrifice.

  “Why should I betray anyone, when I know it means you’ll kill them?” I demanded.

  “On Hallows’ Night, the Wild Hunt will ride, as it does every year. We will cull the spirits of those who will die in the coming year. And we will take the blood of one mortal creature. Why should you find that power, identify it, and lead me to it? Because otherwise I will choose which mortal’s blood we take. My eyes and ears have followed you and your companions, Daughter. I know you walked into the spirit world with a servant of the enemy. She walked in these lands and released a nest. My own servants should not have allowed her to escape, but their actions serve me regardless. You will spy out a fitting sacrifice, one whose blood is rich and strong. Because if you don’t, then on Hallows’ Night the hunt will track the girl you call your cousin until we corner her.”

  Dismembered and her head thrown in a well.

  I felt my courage flayed off my skin, an obsidian dagger slicing away filaments of hope.

  Oh, Blessed Tanit. Gracious Melqart. Noble Ba’al. The threat of mage Houses, princes, and Romans hunting her through Adurnam seemed pathetic now. The mansa had been right, hadn’t he? We should have gone with the cold mages, for then none of this would have happened.

  None of this would have happened now. But the Wild Hunt would track her down eventually, if not this year, then the next. It was only a matter of time for Beatrice Hassi Barahal, who walked the dreams of dragons in the unwitting service of the courts’ enemy. No one could stand against the Wild Hunt. No one. Unless the story was true that the headmaster had snatched his assistant from the jaws of the hunt. Yet he had sent Bee into the spirit world, despite its dangers.

  “Let me repeat myself, so you fully understand me.” The Master of the Wild Hunt did not need to shout. His voice pierced me to the bone and crushed my heart. “There can only be one sacrifice. And there will be one. That is the law.”

  So he settled his chains on me, for there was no one to help us, and no one to trust.

  I’ll do anything to save her.

  Anything.

  Would Bee forgive me when I did?

  “Now we seal our bond with a drink, Daughter. Pick up the glass.”

  He drank, and therefore I drank. The liquor tasted of bees and fate, nothing more. I hated it.

  But he was satisfied.

  “You serve me now. I release you to your hunt.”

  The crow flapped off his arm and straight for me. As I flung up my arm to fend it off, it raked me above the left ear with its talons. Pain burned along my neck. Blood welled. The crow plunged at me again. I jerked sideways, unable to fix myself on the springy ground made by the carpets. My blood spattered, flecks spraying around me.

  The owl’s eyes spun like time’s hands racing forward. The hall of ice began to blur and distort as if it were melting. The carpets dissolved as the ground gave way beneath my feet.

  I cried out as a warm wave washed over me.

  Then I was drowning in a wild wind-capped sea under a hot bright blue sky.

  14

  I had always been too frightened of water to learn how to swim. Salt water streamed into my nose and mouth, its taste foul and warm. My feet were weighed down by my winter boots, and my legs tangled in my skirts. The salty brine caressed my face.

  It’s all over. Give up. Let go.

  A solid object thumped into my legs. The force of its impact lifted my face above the water. I sucked for air, inhaled more water, and sank. From beneath, I was pushed up again. I breached the surface flailing while being dragged sideways by my skirts.

  My hand scraped across the gray-white flank of an aquatic creature with a massive fin and dead, flat eyes. Its viciously sharp teeth were caught in my petticoats and skirt. Thrashing and mauling, it dragged me along as it tried to get its jaws out of wool and linen.

  The thought of becoming supper for this monster concentrated my mind wonderfully. I fixed my hand around its fin and hauled myself over its wide body. Part of the skirt ripped free, strips of fabric fluttering like ribbons through the water. My cane caught against its teeth but did not break. I punched its eye. It peeled away more quickly than I could move.

  I floundered toward a curtain of white and green and blue that bobbed above the waves. A drop of blood stained my sleeve. Had it bitten me? Oh, Gracious Melqart, let me not be bleeding to death here in the unkind sea! But then I remembered the crow tearing at me to draw blood to open the gate.

  A shadow circled beneath me in the water.

  My boot scraped a prominence. I braced on the excrescence as the monster streaked toward me with astonishing speed and breathtaking decisiveness. My sword was again a cane, so it was no use. As the cursed monstrous fish drove in with its maw widening, I fisted a hand.

  Look for the opening. Do not flinch.

  I punched its snout. The impact sent me floating back. To stop myself I dug my boots in among the knobs of the underwater shelf. The monster sheared away. I stood with head and chest above the wind-whipped wavelets. Land lay a short swim away through waters more green than blue: a long stretch of white sandy shoreline backed by lushly green trees swaying in a strong wind. Above, the hard bold blue of the heavens spanned existence. Was that the peak of a tower jutting above the trees to the right?

  Two shapes moved out of the trees. Human shapes. People!

  Blessed Tanit! I might be saved if I could just reach land!

  I scanned the waves but spied no gliding predator. Kicking and stroking, I paddled clumsily through the water until my boots touched sand. I did look back then, but saw nothing except a school of fish flashing away. As I walked out of the sea, water streamed from my hair. My skirts and petticoats wrapped in tatters against my legs.

  I dropped to my knees on cool white sand as fine as the sugar we tasted at festival days. The warmth of the wool riding jacket toasted my skin, making heat prickle down my arms and across my bac
k. I fumbled with the buttons and yanked it off. My tightly laced linen bodice and the loose linen shift plastered my body. Sucking in air made me retch. I coughed up seawater and my dreams and hopes and fears until my throat was raw. But I was pretty sure I was going to live.

  Two people limped toward me across the beach, a male in front and a female behind. He wore a dirty sleeveless shirt and loose trousers unraveling at the hems. She had on a patterned skirt tied around her hips and a loose, sleeveless shirt that exposed her brown arms from shoulder to hand, a sight rarely seen in Adurnam except in high summer.

  As the man lurched up, I rose warily and spoke in a friendly way but without cringing.

  “Greetings of the day to you, Maester. Maestressa. Salvete.”

  He extended a hand in the radicals’ manner of greeting.

  I reached out in answer, and only then did I think to wonder why his skin had an ashen cast instead of being brown and healthy; only then did I notice the dead, flat shine of his eyes.

  He grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward him.

  The woman screamed.

  And he bit me.

  He bit me.

  I shrieked. I kicked him in the knee hard enough to topple him as I yanked my arm out of his grasp. I freed my cane and began pounding him over the head and shoulders. Yet he kept trying to get up. He grasped for me with my blood on his lips, smacking them together as if I were water and he parched.

  “Let up! Let up, yee!” The woman stumbled to a halt out of range of my cane, holding her side as if winded. She was my age, with black hair twisted into locks and dusted with sand.

  I leaped back, cane raised. She crouched beside the man. My blood smeared his hand, and he started licking it.

  From the direction of the barely-seen tower, a high sweet bell tolled over the island like a warning call.

  “He bit me!” He had bitten right through the sleeve of my undershift just below my elbow, leaving a tattered edge.

  She jerked her chin sideways, and the spasmed blink of her brown eyes made me recoil. “Reckon yee wait. Dey come quick.”