Cold Steel

Page 78

A tiered ziggurat towered above the rest of the city, its highest tiers like an eagle’s aerie wreathed with gold and silver wisps. Somehow, from this angle, I could see the entire edifice, even though that should have been impossible. Up the center of each face of the ziggurat ran a staircase. On three of these stairs, figures descended and ascended in constant motion. The fourth stair was riven by a cleft, a gleaming canyon that sliced into a dark interior. The top of the ziggurat lay flat and open like the holy sanctuary in a Kena’ani temple.
The scene on the top of the ziggurat reminded me of a princely hall as described in tales of the olden days told by Celtic bards. A half circle of lordly chairs stood on a dais. Four shone as if beaten out of gold, and four had a texture as black as the depths of a moonless night. No one I could see was sitting in them, yet I felt the whisper of presences ready to materialize. Musicians strolled through, strumming lutes and harps. Drummers played a soft rhythm like the pulse of the hidden earth. A crowd of lordly personages waited at long tables set with platters so bright their glitter made me blink. No one seemed to be eating. I wasn’t sure there was food or drink.
The lower levels of the ziggurat lay deserted, empty of life. Four bridges, one on each side, connected the four staircases on the tiered mountain to the rest of the city. A moat ringed the city below the outer cliff wall, filled with a viscous liquid. When I peered down from the ledge, its steamy current gleamed ominously, as if warning me I could not escape, because I was trapped by molten fire. The only way off my ledge was along a narrow bridge that vaulted into the maze.
Where almost everything is in constant movement, that which stands still stands out.
A man waited unmoving on one of the bridges. A swarm of personages in bright robes flowed past, breaking around him as water breaks around a rock.
I memorized a path from my ledge to him through the weave of bridges and balconies. No one tried to stop me as I hurried through the city. Either they did not know I was there, or I was too insignificant to matter. Despite the convoluted path I had to follow, I had no trouble reaching him. He stood facing a gulf of air. A wind rising up from the boiling moat whipped through his dash jacket.
“Catherine!” he called, smiling.
I ran to him, my heart pounding and my lips dry. But as I reached him I slowed. A sword’s length from him, I extended my blade instead of my arm.
“Show me your navel,” I said.
“Show me yours first, Catherine. How can I know it is truly you?”
“You said you would always know if it was me. What is the first thing you ever said to me?”
He laughed. “That I loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
I took a step back, disappointment a pinch in my heart. “That’s not the first thing you said.”
His laughter deepened into a roar as he changed into a saber-toothed cat.
“Am I a mouse, that you play with me before gulping me down?” I demanded. “If you mean to kill me, then I wish you would just get it over with.”
He turned sideways as if to swipe at me but hesitated when he caught sight of something behind me. Like a beaten animal he hissed, head hunched, ears down. I pressed back against the railing as I turned with my blade ready to block.
The personage who approached paid me no notice. I might as well have been invisible.
Such a proud and imposing woman could walk at her ease through any princely court or mage House estate. Her robes shimmered with peacock hues. A headdress and cloak of rustling ornamental feathers made me stare. Her graceful hands had long fingernails painted red, as if she had dipped them in blood.
“There you are, precious.” She fastened a gem-studded collar around the neck of the angry cat without the least sign that his size, teeth, and annoyance disturbed her. “It is time for the Hunt.”
Unexpectedly she turned, fingers closing like iron around my wrist. Her eyes had neither iris nor pupil; they looked like shards of ice stabbed into her face. Without so much as asking my leave or apologizing for the discourtesy, she pressed the raw cut to her lips.
Winter leaches warmth from the air. Ice forms into chains that bind quivering souls.
My heart, my thoughts, my very spirit drained into the chasm of winter, crushed under the weight of a glacial shelf. I was the food and the drink; I was the thread of power being tasted and sipped; I was the one bound and chained…
The hand released me. I collapsed to my knees, hacking as if I were coughing out the dregs of my soul. Despair curdled in my gut. I would never find him. He was already dead. Bee and Rory were lost in the mortal world where I could never reunite with them. My tasks undone, my promises unkept… all lost…