Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

They ignored me, so I walked past him and planted myself in front of the dais, facing up to their chairs.

“Peace to you,” I said with my friendliest smile. “Does this night find you at peace?”

A vast and horrible silence smothered the world. Their golden eyes chained me with a will as heavy as eternity. I fell into the rip current of their gaze, into the breathing heart of the ice.

At their deepest levels, the worlds vibrate. A force flows through every part of existence. Cold mages can redirect this flow; fire mages energize and disperse it. As for what exists in the spirit world beyond our ken, courts and dragons are just names we give to powers we do not comprehend and cannot escape.

Because I was my father’s daughter I could make a story of it, a way to understand and put words to something far bigger than I was: In the worlds there is an ancient and unending duel between dragons and courts. In the Great Smoke, the mothers of dragons dragged innocent girls into the ocean of dreams, using mortal women to midwife their fragile hatchlings.

Thus the duel tipped to favor the dragons, and so the other side had fought back.

In the old village tales written down by my father in his journals, the Wild Hunt did not take blood. Death comes to all things in the mortal world, and the Wild Hunt rode on Hallows’ Night to gather in the souls of those fated to die in the coming year.

Perhaps the cold mages had come to the attention of the courts because powerful cold magic caused changes in the flow and ebb of energy in the spirit world. Perhaps mages shone so brightly and their blood tasted so sweet that, once one had been taken to bind the Wild Hunt the very first time, the courts developed a taste for their blood and then a need for it and then a desperate craving. By drinking the blood of mortals they had in the end become what we called ghouls: creatures who devour the essence of others in order to live.

I did not have to devour the essence of others in order to live. I could live perfectly happily working in a humble office with my dear cousin, building up a respectable business that involved spying and sneaking, although obviously I would be first to volunteer to do the most dirty, adventurous, and strenuous work. I could sleep perfectly happily on a mat on the floor with the man I loved, even though obviously I would prefer to lie in a bed he had built for us, because it was more comfortable. I was eager to teach my brother to cheat at cards, to nurse Vai’s mother through her weak spells and nurture Vai’s sisters into women, to hope Luce survived the war, to get to know Doctor Asante, and to write about everything to Professora Alhamrai, and maybe even to return to Expedition someday to visit the people I had become so fond of. I wanted to introduce batey to Europa. That would be something, a ballcourt in every city and town!

The courts tried to hammer me flat under the crushing cold of the ice, they wanted me to be afraid, to give up, to give in. But I braced myself on my sword and warmed my hands on my locket. I answered the polite greeting they had not made, for they did not know how to reciprocate in the traditional way.

“I have no trouble, thanks to my power as a woman. I just want to clarify two things. There is one sacrifice each year. There cannot be another, and it is this sacrifice that binds the Wild Hunt and indeed all your servants for another year. So you all agree and accept me as the sacrifice?”

“We accept.”

They were so hungry and impatient and greedy that they threw their chains off my sire and onto me. Their touch tore at my skin as a hundred sharp nails of ice, a net of barbs poised to puncture me and drink me dry.

“That being so, you take my mortal blood. Is that not right? Mortal blood seals the contract by which you first bound the Hunt and all your other servants?”

They answered by tightening the chains. A bloody seam opened on my breast right above my heart. So rich and sweet blood streams, alive with the salt of life and the spice of power. They suckled the air to suck me dry, to use the salt of my life to yet again chain those who served them.

Blessed Tanit! It hurt.

My soul was being torn from my body, all life and love and courage and strength pouring through the gash.

But I still had a tongue.

I still had breath.

I had a plan.

“My mortal blood I sacrifice. But only my mortal blood. You have no right or claim to my spirit blood, the blood I inherited from my sire. So if you have taken even a drop of my spirit blood, then the contract is broken.”

48

The festive cacophony twirled on unceasing as I took in a breath and let it out, as I moistened my bone-dry lips. My legs and arms trembled, but I did not fall.

The throned presences leaned forward as if suckling on a suddenly dry teat. Stretched toward me a little more, as if puzzled. Then probed with talons and knife-bladed teeth. The sharp planes of their human-like visages wrinkled as they sniffed the air, as they tugged on the chains and, in increasing frustration, shook those chains to try to force the blood to flow.

But the chains no longer bound me because there was no possible way to separate my mortal blood from my spirit blood.

“I invoke rei vindicatio.” My voice rang clear above the hissing whirl of the courts as the chains slithered off my body and wilted like withering vines on the ground. “Without my blood to seal the contract, we reclaim ownership of our own selves.”

Insubstantial chains make no sound as they shatter.

What you hear are the defiant shouts as we rise.

My sire laughed with the howl of a man who has had to keep his contempt hidden for far too long. He sprouted eru’s wings, unfurling them to their full majesty and making ready to fly. The Wild Hunt scattered with a boisterous roar, fleeing the courts.

“Sire!” I cried, although it was surely hard to hear me in the clamorous storm of its departure. “Sire! How do I get out of here? How do I get home?”