Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

“Never mind,” I said. “We’ll just go on our way.”

“She must be sacrificed,” said the eru who had spoken before. “As a courtesy to you, if it is your wish, we will kill her and eat her at the welcoming feast, all except her head. Her head we will cast in the well to give strength to our water. Out of respect for you, our guest, we will show her this honor.”

Bee’s choked exclamation hit me in a wave of fear. I swept my blade in a slow circle, to mark each eru, ten in all. “I will take as many of you with me as I can, before I let you touch her.”

A melody like words flowed around the circle, then ceased when the first eru raised an arm. “Do you serve her, who is a servant of the enemy?”

“Why do you believe her to be your enemy?”

“Did she not come to seek a serpent’s nest? Do you not feel the enemy turning and turning again? Doesn’t this rising tide aid their servant because it forces us, who would drive her away, to hide within our wards rather than pursue her?”

“I think you are a servant of the night court,” I said, remembering the eru who had pretended to be a footman in the service of Four Moons House and what she had told me when we had stopped at Brigands’ Beacon so Andevai could make an offering. “Because servants of the night court have to answer questions with questions.”

She nodded in the manner of an opponent acknowledging a hit. “I am she who speaks for this hearth when the night court commands.”

Black wings fluttered. Out of the sky dropped a crow. No ordinary crow could cause such a reaction among fearsome eru. They took flight in a cacophony of wings until only the speaker remained. With a self-satisfied air, the crow folded its wings and cocked its head to consider me. A smear of dried blood mottled the tip of its scabrous bill. I was sure the blood was mine.

I could not resist a jabbing feint at the crow, just to make it hop back. I had feelings, too, even if Bee sometimes called me heartless.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten you,” I said as I touched the clotted wound above my right eye.

With its third eye, the speaker looked at the crow, and then at me with all three eyes. For an instant, I thought I saw a reflection in her third eye: turning wheels flashing along a road.

“The master comes,” she said. “The enemy’s servant will not escape.”

Bee had shoved her head out from under my skirts. “Look!”

She scrambled up, pointing toward the hills. At first all I noticed was eru fanning out like herders. They were shepherding antelopes toward the town walls, or corralling them within sturdy copses of shimmering trees. Beyond, a blur of fog avalanched down the distant slopes. Claws sharpened in my chest as though a foul beast had burrowed inside me and latched on to my heart.

“I don’t know what else to do, Bee,” I said as the fog grew. “You have to run for it. Take my sword. If I offer it to you freely, you can take it.” I held it out.

Sparks leaped from the blade, and where they struck her hands and arms, a shower of spitting flames poured like a sheath over her limbs. She yelped and snatched back her hand.

“Cold steel burns the servants of the enemy, so she cannot wield it,” remarked the speaker with a cruel smile. But her smile vanished as she looked past me. She knelt.

How the vehicle had bridged the distance so quickly I did not know. An elegant black coach pulled by four white horses rolled to a stop beside us. The horses had a polished sheen, like pearl. The first pair stamped, hooves striking sparks from the obsidian pavement, while the second pair waited patiently in their traces.

The coachman was a burly man wearing a perfectly ordinary wool greatcoat. He wore his short blond hair in the lime-whitened spikes traditional to Celtic warriors in the ancient days when the Romans with their land empire and the Phoenicians with their sea trade fought to a standstill, and the barbaric Celts shifted allegiance depending on what benefited them the most. Seeing me, he did not smile, but the corners of his eyes crinkled as with an inward chuckle. He tapped two fingers to his forehead in greeting.

A figure swung down from the back. I recognized the tall, broad-shouldered eru with skin the color of tar, her third eye ablaze with a sapphire brilliance, her wings a swirl of smoke. Power roiled in her like a storm about to burst free. I stepped between her and Bee as if I could fend off the brunt of the blow. My blade shone like a torch, its hilt turned to ice against my palm.

“Let it be,” said the coachman to the eru. “We are here for Tara Bell’s child, not for the other one.”

She settled back, wingtips fluttering as if a wind spun off them. I swallowed; my ears popped; the wind died.

“Greetings, Cousin,” the eru said. “The master has sent us to fetch you.”

Such a wave of despair washed through me that my strength failed. I stared at the two creatures I had first met in the guise of a humble coachman and a humble footman. Bee grasped my hand. Hers was cold.

I spoke in pleading whine I did not like but could not help. “We just want to go home.”

The splendor of her third eye sparked rays of light along the surface of the black road. “The master has summoned you.”

“Help her return to the other side, and I’ll give you no trouble,” I said desperately.

The coachman’s lips curved in a wry, weary smile.

“You will give us no trouble regardless, Cousin,” said the eru, not in anger but in sorrow. “You are bound, as we are bound. Get in the coach. Both you and the serpent. We have a long way to travel. The master is not patient.”

“Indeed, he is not,” said the coachman with a glance skyward as the crow flew. “We outraced the storm of his anger. Now it is time for you to take shelter.”

Over the hills boiled a black wrath of clouds. In the cloud’s heart, lightning writhed like so many coiling incandescent snakes. Its power hummed in my bones and my blood like a fever. The crow sped toward the storm as if to welcome it.

A horn wept from the walls as the herding eru chased down the last of their charges, and the kneeling eru broke free and fled.

My knees were turning to jelly. “Blessed Tanit. If we run, that storm will destroy us. If we go with them, you’ll be killed.”

“One thing at a time,” said Bee with astonishing calm as her hand tightened on mine. “Right now, our best chance is the coach.”

The eru opened the door and swung down the steps with the ease of practice. I sheathed my sword, climbed in, and sank onto the forward seat, into the same place I had sat when I traveled in this coach with Andevai.

Bee sat down opposite, her knees shoved against mine. “Don’t give up hope, Cat.”

The door closed. With a crack of the whip and a shout of “Ha-roo! Ha-roo!” the coachman got the horses moving. We turned in a sweep, and the coach lurched as the eru jumped on behind. We picked up speed. No coach in the mortal world ever ran so smoothly and so fast.

A blast of wind shook the coach. The shaking and shuddering pitched us off our seats. The coach bounced up, thudded down, pitched halfway over, righted itself. Like a ship caught in a typhoon, it rolled and yawed. We clung to each other as the gale roared around us with a howl so loud I saw Bee’s lips moving but could not hear a single word, nothing except the frightful mocking caws of a murder of crows flocking around us as if their flight were the wind.

Unseen claws squeezed my heart. If I did not obey, the master would crush me.

Terror, like grief, can make you numb. But when the first edge passes, as the storm gusts on and the coach settles, it can also make you angry. For who wishes to be subject to terror?

We struggled up to sit. After the battering we had taken, I was grateful the cushions were so soft. We caught our breaths.