Cold Steel

Page 240

Serena lay in a pool of blood, doubled over in pain.
“Blessed Tanit!” I cried. “What injury have you taken? Let me help you away.”
She grasped my hand with more strength than I would have expected. “No injury of the kind you mean. I fear this is a miscarriage. Where is my husband?”
The mansa was alive but unconscious and unresponsive. Blistering burns had bubbled up on his neck and arms. Ash rimed his mouth, a smear of blood caught at the corner. Serena knelt beside him and, with the tone of a woman used to command, called others to her.
Four Moons House was being inexorably trapped in ice. Amid the clamor of voices, an eerie grinding noise drowned all until the speech of humans was nothing more than the restless tickling of insects. Thick pillars of blue-green ice shot up alongside the doors, spearing all the way to the high roof above. Ice encased the great edifice, every span of it locked away in a transparent cage.
Within the disorganized spill of people along the lower terrace, I found Vai sprawled on the steps. It looked as if he had woken enough to start pulling himself away and then collapsed again. His eyes fluttered. A word formed on his lips but he hadn’t the strength to get it out.
“Vai! Andevai! It’s me. It’s Catherine! Stay with me, my love. Don’t leave me.”
I looked for Bee and instead saw Rory, dressed only in trousers, padding toward me with an alarmed look on his face. He flung himself down on the other side of Vai, trembling with fear as he looked past me. Naturally I turned to see what frightened him so much.
Across the drive my sire dusted soot from his hands with a meticulous frown. He glanced at me across the gap between us and nodded to acknowledge the bargain we had agreed to. Then he gestured with his plain black cane as a lord does when he wants a servant to do something for him. The eru clambered up on the roof and tossed our luggage to the ground. My sire climbed into the coach. The latch winked as if reflecting light, or perhaps making a brassy gremlin scowl in my direction. My sire’s hand covered the latch’s face as he shut the door.
The eru furled her wings. The coachman tipped his cap at me.
“Ha-roo! Ha-roo!”
Wheels rumbled over the gravel drive as the horses first walked and then broke into a smooth carriage trot. The coach rolled away down the driveway. I waited for it to vanish into the spirit world, to cross the shadows and return my sire to his rightful home.
But it did not. It simply drove away back toward the main road, moving at a sedate pace as might a lordly man who has just paid a polite social call on a friendly neighbor.
I stared in consternation.
I had just let loose the Master of the Wild Hunt into the mortal world.
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Rory tugged on my arm. “Is he gone, Cat? I know he saw me! I was afraid he would make me go with him.”
“He’s gone, Rory. You’re safe.”
“His children are never safe. No one is ever safe!”
“No, you’re all safe,” I said with certainty, and I hugged him.
Fortunately I did not have time to dwell on the bargain I had made. There was simply too much to do, with night falling over the displaced population of Four Moons House. Before anything else we sent runners to the nearby villages of Haranwy and Trecon. Then I cleaned the blood off my sword and hunted down the rest of Rory’s clothes.
The icy sculpture of Four Moons House glittered as the moon rose. Moonlight coruscated through the many facets of the ice, splintering light across the terraces and driveway. In this eerie weave of shadow and bright, Bee and the stewards counted heads and sorted people by injury and need. The cold mages who had been Drake’s prisoners were, like the mansa, injured and unconscious. Three were dead. The cold mages who had been at Four Moons House, like Serena, had absorbed some measure of backlash, but on the whole they had not been badly harmed, although all the pregnant women had gone into labor.
All the fire mages were dead. I pitied them, but I could not mourn.
Mostly I sat with Vai’s head in my lap. No sign of injury marked him but he lay oblivious, the only movement the shallow rise and fall of his chest and the sluggish pulse at his throat. Wasa huddled next to me, petting the cowering puppy. Bintou fetched water for us from the well, and the cool liquid slowly eased her mother’s coughing. I even got a little down Vai’s throat. As the evening wore on I slipped in and out of a doze, glancing up now and again to search for Bee. She was always there, busy managing people. I just hadn’t the strength.
In the middle of the night, wagons trundled up under the light of an almost-full moon and a clear sky. Andevai’s half brother Duvai led the contingent from Haranwy. All were men, all armed with their hunter’s bows, spears, scythes, and a few illegal rifles. I went to greet them.