Blue Heart

Her eyes were as blue as the sky in winter, as a bottomless lake.

'The eyes are said to be the vision of the heart, and your heart is a heavenly blue,' he said, running a hand over her molten silver hair. 'What is your name, little, dove?'

'P-P-Pilane,' she choked out, silver tears coursing sweetly down her cheeks.

He smiled.

He ordered the villagers to make a cage in which he would carry her back to Karse. He ordered it carved and painted, and lined in layers of the village's fine wool, to keep her warm and sheltered and safe.

He had captured the butterfly. Now he would bring his prize, his Pilane, back to his barony for all to see, see and lust after, but never to touch. Only he would savor that touch, at his leisure, and savor what came after touching.

The villagers made his cage in a day and a night, all of them laboring until they dropped from exhaustion. He left as soon as it was completed, under cover of the first snow of winter. He headed for White Foal Pass at a forced march, driving his own men as hard as he had driven the villagers. He wanted the journey to Karse, to safe-haven, to be as quick as possible.

Behind him, the remaining villagers could only gather to mourn their dead, and to pray to the gods for their special daughter. They held no illusions about what was to befall her, her beauty would serve to enchant him only for so long — and when it palled, he would feed his desires in other ways. They prayed, then, for something, someone, to send her quick release — through rescue, or painless death.

When the stranger rode into the village, it seemed that their prayers had been answered, and a rumor that he was the messenger of the gods went through the village on the wings of the wind.

He certainly looked anything but human, riding a tall, handsome white horse with strange, knowledge-filled blue eyes. And he himself was garbed in pristine white, his face heartstoppingly handsome beneath silver-streaked hair. But most startling of all were his silver eyes, as filled with knowledge, sorrow, and understanding as those of his steed.

What else could he be? And even though he protested otherwise, they knew he was goddess-sent.

He listened carefully to their story with a troubled and angry face.

'I can stop them,' he said, in a clear, edged voice, as sweet as springwater and as sharp as a blade of ice. 'I can stop them. But the danger is great, and there is a chance that your Pilane will not survive.'

'Better that than a life as that man's toy!' Mikhal snarled bitterly. 'Her life will be short enough in any case in his hands!'

Behind him, the rest of the villagers nodded or spoke their agreement. Some wept, but all agreed. Baron Munn's actions had left them no illusions.

'Go to White Foal Pass, then, as soon as the snow stops,' the stranger told them.

And then, he rode away.

That night, the light snow turned into a full winter storm, a blizzard the likes of which no one, not even Mikhal, had ever seen. Snow fell so thickly and heavily

that it was a struggle just to get from house to house within the village.

Then it became too cold to snow; the wind strengthened, and whipped the snow already fallen into huge drifts. The cold grew deeper and deeper.

The blizzard lasted until moonrise the next night, then died.

At first light, the villagers put on their snow-staves, loaded up their sleds, and followed old Mikhal along the goat-tracks to the pass.

They found the Baron's soldiers and horses, frozen, as if they had been struck down by a cold more deadly than any man could imagine, and all in a single moment. They found the Baron with his hands frozen to the bars of the locked cage, his dead eyes staring into it, as if he had seen something he could not understand.

But Pilane was gone, without a trace.

They never found her.