Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

Did the sun escape a cloudy veil outside? A gleam shuddered within the reflecting angles of the mirrors like the spark of fireflies. A cowl of silvery light writhed around the head of the poet Bran Cof. Color washed the pallor of his face. There crawled beneath his skin a straining like insects swarming or a trapped prisoner trying to claw its way out.

She rolled blithely on. “I can’t endure these constant protestations about the chains women bind on men. In truth, the chains all bind women at the feet of men.”

His eyes opened, corpse-still one moment and full of ire the next.

“Bold Taranis spare me from the complaints of virgins!” His voice was resonant, as lovely as a caress, even in anger. “Especially ones whose black hair is a snare to entwine the helpless and whose dark eyes provoke the tenderhearted to grief. How I despise the beauty of women!”

“Only because you feel entitled to something you have no natural right to possess!”

“Your words dance like sun across ice, but their cruelty is sharper than the winter wind. You must be aware that whatever I might wish for in the Three Matters of Desire has long since been severed from me. You stand there, out of my reach.” He looked younger when he was angry. As the cut of his lips softened, he seemed to age. “A kinder woman would kiss me.”

“A kinder woman might well! I am not she. Anyhow, Your Honor, the last man I kissed died soon after.”

His gaze took her in from head to toe. “That I can well believe! An axe may be forged with all the cunning of a master smith. It may be decorated with the skill that draws the unwary eye as a lure coaxes a hapless trout. But an axe’s purpose is to sever the living heart of trees. Why are you here if not to persecute me with the promise of the sweet pleasure I can never again taste?”

“We were told you have a message.”

“You are not the one I bear a message for.”

“Perhaps my dearest cousin Cat is.”

His gaze did not waver from her bright face but something very unsettling happened in his eyes. It was as if his gaze turned inward.

“Yes, yes, you’ve interrupted me,” he said irritably, yet with an edge of fear. He was speaking to someone we could not see. “Of course you may speak. How am I to stop you?”

His eyes rolled back in their sockets until they showed only white. Shadows-not from this room-settled a curling pattern of insubstantial tattoos across his skin. His craggy features remained the same, but Bran Cof was no longer the personage looking out from those wintry eyes. The gaze studied Bee, then caught on the headmaster with a narrowing like a bow bent but not released. An arrow stabbed my heart. Maybe I gasped. Maybe I moved, shaking with apprehension. Maybe I made no sound and no movement and it did not matter.

Because the head of the poet Bran Cof looked at me. White ice eyes without pupil or iris fixed on me. My chest felt as hollow as if a killing claw had just torn out my beating heart to suckle dry its rich red blood.

The mouth spoke with a sharp, deadly voice.

“So after all, Tara Bell’s child survived and grew, as I had hoped. Your blood spilled on the crossing stone woke the bond between us. As I am bound, so must those bound to me as kin come to my aid. That is the law. Come to me, Tara Bell’s child. Now. ”

“Who are you?” Sheer rushing terror propelled me three steps back.

Bran Cof??’s eyes rolled down, the return of blue as startling as a sweep of piercing blue sky seen after days of snow. For all he was a cantankerous old lecher, his gaze had a keen intelligence that made me uneasy, for he knew things he wasn’t telling. “What message did my lips speak?”

I took another step back, thinking fast. “I’ll tell you, if you’ll answer a legal question.”

“Ah. A bargain. Done.”

Surprised, I took another step back to steady myself. “I want to know if there is any way to unbind a marriage sealed by a magical chain of binding.”

“Yes. Your turn.”

“I mean, besides death!” Why must my voice tremble so?

“Your turn.”

Curse him! “You said, ‘As I am bound, so must those bound to me as kin come to my aid. That is the law. Come to me, Tara Bell’s child. Now.’”

“Bad fortune for you, lass. In pity, I offer this: Only death can unchain a chained marriage. But there is one other way.” He attempted a coaxing smile that made him look grotesque. “I can tell you. But a poet has his price. A kiss from you, the girl whose eyes are amber, whose lips are the red of berries, a promise both succulent and sweet.”

I cringed away.

His smile broadened lasciviously. “I will have the kiss that already softens your mouth. You are waiting for a man to claim its honey.”

I flushed with utter, obliterating embarrassment.

He chuckled, enjoying my consternation. “He must be young and very handsome.”

I choked.

Bee said, “I’ll kiss him for you, Cat. I have experience kissing lecherous old men as well as young and very handsome ones.”

“You will not!” His bushy eyebrows shot up, and the corners of his lips spiked down. “I will have no kiss from you, serpent!”

“How can you stop me, stuck there on your pedestal?” She took a step toward him as I took one back. “I may kiss you however and whenever I please! I’ll suck all the life from you-such as you have life-and keep it for myself?!”

He squinched his eyes and lips shut, and I thought the head would harden back to its slumbering stone state without ever answering my question. Yet still the veins on his neck throbbed as with anger…and how could that happen, since he had no heart?

“I’ll be gentle.” Bee took another step toward him.

To my amazement he laughed with an unexpected flowering of charm. “Alas for the men trapped by her love! Alas for the men set free! She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest. Where she treads, desolation follows.”

“Enough!” I cried. “I’ll kiss you, if you’ll just answer my question.”

His eyebrows rose to a peak. “I was not finished declaiming! It is always so. The young lack manners, and the women like crows cannot stopper up their chatter!”

Imagine all this time I had been in awe of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof?!

Bee offered a mocking grimace. “It’s me, or no one. Anyway, Cat, I don’t think he knows. All those stories about how he mastered the Three Paths to Judgment. How his tongue silenced birds and humbled princes. He isn’t really a legal scholar. He’s probably just an old drunk.”

“Shame, girl! I’ll have you know there are three forms of marriage commonly recognized in the courts of the north. How the Romans and Phoenicians do things is a different matter, but I’ll come to that afterward. A flower marriage flourishes while the bloom is still on it and dies when it withers. It may bloom for a month, a season, or a year, depending on the verbal agreement between the two parties involved. A contract marriage is a business arrangement signed in the law court between two houses, clans, or lineages. A chained marriage is a binding marriage sealed by arcane keys known only to the wise, to the drua and the bards, and it draws a chain of binding magic around the couple. When there is a question of possible treachery, or a treaty or other obligation at stake, it binds the couple so there need be no concern among those who arranged the marriage that another party will default or there be trouble later. Thus, the only way out of such a binding marriage is the death of one of the parties involved. But do not forget that without consummation, there is no marriage. Has the young man had sex with you yet?”

The headmaster had politely turned his attention to the monograph. The assistant stared at the motion of pendulum and weights behind the glass door of the longcase clock, a blush curdling his white complexion.