Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

“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 attenuated 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.”