“Strong and sweet!” His smile mocked me, for he understood perfectly my look of horror. “You are truly my daughter, to have sought and bound such rich blood as this.”
“No!” At last I spotted Camjiata making his way toward the end of the ball court, hoping to escape Vai’s cold steel and my anger. “That’s your prey!”
“The fire weaver?” His gaze lifted to the cacica. “So rare it is to find one such as her. I knew there was tremendous power hiding behind their spirit fence. But I couldn’t get through it to find out. Yet after all, the smell of the cold mage’s blood delights me far more.”
“No! No!” Camjiata was almost out of sight. “Him! Over there!”
My sire stared right where I pointed. “I see only darkness. There is no one there. Do not try to deceive me.”
The Master of the Wild Hunt was blind in the mortal world except to the flare of those who channeled the energies that bind the worlds, that weave life to death and death to life, order and disorder. He could not see Camjiata to take him, even if he could be bothered to want to.
“Stand away!” The cacica’s voice cracked over the night like thunder. Fire flared in every lamp. Light blazed to reveal the Taino soldiers restoring order. The coach, with the coachman and footman, appeared as a perfectly ordinary coach at rest except for the fact its wheels did not touch the ground. What looked like low-hanging dark clouds churned above, chased by flashes of light like fireflies. The pack of hunters had not yet been released.
“Stand away, fire bane,” she called, addressing Vai before she commanded the assembled crowd. “Opia travel at their will. We have no quarrel with them, even if they invite in the spirit lords who are not welcome here. But the salt dead may never walk in Taino land lest we all be poisoned. Those who will not stay on the other shore must be destroyed by fire.”
Her gaze touched Juba’s. In that exchange I saw her sorrow and his defiance: She had favored him over his brother, and I could not tell whether he had never forgiven her for her weakness in loving him more than Caonabo, or if she would never forgive herself.
“That is the law,” she proclaimed.
Sparks shimmered to life on a hot gust of wind as she struck.
“Not my Cat.” Vai pulled me hard against him while yanking the last ice lens out from under his jacket.
Fire kindled in my heart. Abby, and the other prisoners, screamed. Prince Caonabo shouted in protest, but there was nothing he could do. The cacica was a fire mage of unimaginable power with a net of fire banes to absorb the conflagration.
Vai’s ice lens bloomed as he channeled his magic and his anger and his fear for me into it; the curve of the lens amplified its power. The cacica’s fire was vast and complex; its tendrils spanned the ball court and the plaza and farther yet, for the net of her fire magic spanned the island itself. Its threads reached as far as a sick man’s bed in distant Sharagua halfway across Kiskeya, where the constant pulse of her magic kept her dying brother alive.
All that fire, the fire bane and his ice lens killed.
Every lamp snapped out.
In far Sharagua, the heart of the cacique stopped beating. Lips parted to release his spirit into the night.
Snow spun down in a beautiful shower of sparkling white, dusting the ground.
“Catherine!” Vai pressed his mouth to mine, just a touch, to mark that I still breathed.
Darkness and silence settled over the land.
Yet out of that darkness, the cacica spoke, unmoved and unperturbed. “I will enforce the law as I must to protect the people. There can be no exception. And I will not be defied.”
A flame wavered into life, a single oil lamp catching fire. For after all, there was no limit to the source of fire as long as it had fuel with which to burn. As on an inhalation, she gathered her power back into her and began casting it off into her catch-fires. Filaments of cold magic streamed away in a growing flood, her net brightening as she gathered her power. Cold mages weren’t the only ones who could get angry.
She was certainly going to kill me, and possibly Vai in the bargain. I cast one last despairing glance toward poor Abby and the other prisoners, but I simply had run out of time and chance.
“Vai! Run!” I cried.
The cursed fool did not budge. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
A shadow quite inverse to the size of its human form loomed over us like a thundercloud.
“This has all been quite illuminating and much more diverting than my usual hunt.”
My sire’s right hand fell like fate on Vai’s shoulder. With his left, he grasped the chain and slipped the now- clouded ice lens into his palm as he might admire a lovely flower, then closed his fingers over it.
“I will take him now. You’ve done well, Daughter.”
I raised the machete. “You will not! He’s not the one I mean you to take.”
“Whenever did I give you the impression that your wishes, desires, or intentions mean anything to me?” His grasp had paralyzed Vai.
He glanced up at the sky toward the hunters and killers who, when he called, would sweep down to rend and dismember their prey. No human on the ground could see them; perhaps humans could not see the Master of the Wild Hunt either, not really, for he walked half in and half out of the world, perceived as fear and hunger but not truly seen.
The dusting of snow evaporated in a wave of rising heat. I was caught between an immensely powerful fire mage who was about to kill me, and the Master of the Wild Hunt, who was about to kill the man I loved. I could not fight, and I could not run. I had to think with my mind.
For the truth was, why would my sire appear as a good-looking young male? Why would he even care how he looked? I knew something about dealing with vain men.
“Father,” I said, “I know you do not hold me in any affection, but I am the weapon you forged, the one you alone can wield. Are you going to let that fire weaver destroy me? It makes you look careless. It makes you look weak. But I guess you can’t stop her.”
Killing fire pinched at my heart in that instant. I reached for Vai so that touching him would be my last memory before death consumed my flesh and mind.
My sire exhaled. Luminescent snow winked into existence, obliterating the heat. The white flakes were so scintillant they dazzled and blinded. My heart beat on, untouched.
He murmured, “Fire is the serpents’ weapon. You know how I hate and loathe serpents.”
Ice crackled across the stones.
“Kill her.”
The clamor of the hunt dusted down over us as his words released them. They flowed out of the heavens like nightmare, surging forward in a squall of sleeting rain whose icy touch cut skin and caused blood to flow. Deadly hounds loped down the risers, biting and clawing as they passed. I could not tell if they were solid or merely the shadows that haunt dreams, but their touch spread like poison. Hulking dire wolves snarled, and hyenas laughed mockingly as Expeditioners and Taino alike were eaten up by stark fear, even the disciplined soldiers.
Many people tried to run, but the crush was so great they only trampled each other. Others froze, unable to move. A few tried to fight, blocking with arms or clubbing with rifles or slashing wildly with their ceremonial spears. Yet they could do no damage to the sleek cats and men with animals’ faces who pushed through the ball court. A cloud of wasps stung, each touch raising a drop of blood. Bats swooped through, accompanied by silent owls. A red-gold-and-black-banded snake slithered over my sandaled foot; tiny frogs with skin as bright as jewels hopped alongside.
All swarmed toward the cacica’s platform.
“Son,” said my sire. “Did you not hear me? Kill her.”
With a glance at me as if to apologize, Rory sighed. He bent, and he flowed. Where a man had stood, a huge saber-toothed cat leaped in silent beauty. The change came so swiftly that people running across the ball court to escape the hunt had no time to break out of his path as he bounded to the platform.
The cacica was no fool. Nor was she a coward. She faced the hunt as she drew deep into the fire, but before she could release it, the great cat drove her down beneath claws and teeth. He snapped her neck with a casual shake.
He, my amusing, insouciant Rory. He was his father’s son.
The pack-wolves, snakes, cats, hounds, wasps, raptors, all-converged on the body, rending and tearing.
