Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

The boat came loose. It began to tip and spin as the waves brought the prow around. In a moment, I’d be swamped.

I sucked in air, battled up to the seat, and grabbed the oars. Already, impossibly, the boat had drifted a hundred paces from the pier of stone where the coach-and-four waited. If the tide of a dragon’s dream washed the spirit world now, I would be lost. Changed. Obliterated.

“Tanit protect me! Melqart grant me wisdom. Ba’al give me strength!”

I set to the oars, working the prow back around. With my back to the swells, I rowed into the sea. The prow lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, my backside slapping on and off the seat each time. Water slurped in with each plunge.

I rowed, glancing over my shoulder as I set my sights on a nearby floe of ice that appeared as a sculpted tower. I rowed until my shoulders ached and my back throbbed. I rowed until the causeway was nothing more than a smear on the sea like a smudge of charcoal on one of Bee’s sketches that she had forgotten to erase.

The rowing kept my body warm and my boots kept my feet mostly dry, but I had begun to lose the feeling in my fingers. I could not think of the watery deeps. Instead, I thought of Bee, dragged away by a call neither of us understood. I thought of Rory, compelled to kill the enemy. I thought of Uncle Jonatan and Aunt Tilly. Of Bee’s sisters, amiable Hanan and annoying little Astraea. Of the charismatic general, Camjiata. I thought of handsome Brennan and thoughtful Kehinde, and of the trolls and their odd charm. Most strangely, I thought of my husband.

I thought: He would row beside me. He would not have left me here alone.

I was getting awfully tired of being someone else’s puppet. The salt that stung worst in my eyes was the pressure of angry tears. I was not going to give up now, even in the middle of that which I feared most. A wave crashed over the prow, and the boat sank up to its gunnels. The water embraced me with an icily heart-stopping grip.

Breathe.

In and out. That was the first thing. In and out, measured and steady. I fumbled at the buttons of my winter coat and tugged it off just as a wave plowed into my back, flinging me sideways into the merciless sea.

The ice of the water robbed me of breath. I had no air.

I dragged an arm free of the water and heaved myself over the gunnel, using the swamped boat to keep me afloat. The waves wrapped my sodden skirts around my legs. The shocking cold made my throat close and my chest tighten, and I was sure I would pass out. But I bit at the inside of my mouth until the pain brought me reeling back.

Breathe.

Kicking my way around to the stern, I pushed the boat toward the ice floe. As my legs grew inert and my heart grew numb, the shadow of the ice covered me. The boat nudged onto a shelf.

Gasping, spitting, retching, I crawled out. I had no feeling in my hands and little strength in my limbs, yet by fixing fingers onto knobs of pitted ice, I pulled myself out of the deadly water.

For a while, an eternity, I lay on the ice like a suffocating fish.

A whisper of warmth pulsed against my skin where the locket pressed between my breasts. It aroused me from my stupor. I took in a breath, salt water fouling my mouth. Shaking, I rose. I checked my sword, the loop twisted so tight my frozen fingers could not untangle it. The locket’s throbbing heat fed strength to me as I stared across the shelf toward a vertical fissure in the ice. The fissure led into blackness.

Really, what choice had I?

“Brave enough for my purpose,” said a male voice, smooth and cold. I saw no one, not a single sign of life. “Come, Daughter. I will look on you now.”

“I hate you,” I whispered to the empty ice.

He laughed, as if my squeak of outrage amused him. As if he could hear everything. And maybe he could, for would it not explain me?

Maybe that would teach me to keep my mouth shut and not speak when I ought to be silent.

My legs were as heavy as logs as I stumped into the fissure. If he hadn’t killed me by now, he might actually wish to see what manner of creature he had sired on Tara Bell. A warm breeze stirred the passage. A bell tolled three times, the vibration passing right through my flesh. I felt as if my soul were being rung to check its temper, as a person might flick a finger against a finely wrought glass vessel to see how pure the sound is.

Light bloomed to reveal an arch made out of two massive ivory tusks. The tusks were carved with crows and hounds and saber-toothed cats and an eru, and with the image of a girl no more than six years of age. She had long, straight hair and held a sheathed sword far too big for her.

The girl was me.

My body began to prickle and stab as sensation returned. I stumbled under the arch, which vanished, leaving me in a blast of humid air so fetid I hid my face behind my hands. The smell faded, and the light sharpened.

I lowered my hands.

To find myself and see myself in a maze of mirrors, reflected over and over again. Blessed Tanit! I was a mess! My complexion looked as lifeless as the underbelly of a dead fish; my hair clumped in knots and tangles to my hips; my clothes wrung around my body.

“Find me,” his voice said. “One is a gate, not a true mirror. Walk through it, and I will answer three questions.”

I turned, seeing myself turn over and over, I and I and I, each one of me alike. My thoughts lurched sluggishly as I blinked, trying to signal myself as I had blinked at Andevai in the troll’s nest. Why did I think of the troll’s nest? Of course: The upper floor had formed a maze of mirrors.