He looked up at the face of the ice. “Just the wolves and the wind.”
“No, something else.” She rested a hand on her belly and extended the other arm as if hoping to touch something she could not quite see. “A child. I heard a child calling to me.”
I bit my lip hard enough to raise blood as I reached for and grasped the memory of her hand.
21
“
I slithered out of a grip that was dragging me through icy water, but my numb limbs had no strength. The tide dragged me under as it hauled at my skirts.
A man lifted me above the water. I spewed all the cursed salt water I had swallowed. My bitten lip stung. I sluggishly realized that Vai was carrying me out of the sea. He dumped me onto a stony shore, then slapped me repeatedly on the back as I retched.
I found my voice, although it was sadly thin and mewling. “Why must I always swallow seawater? It tastes so foul.”
Vai collapsed beside me onto the pebbled strand. He fumbled to unbuckle himself from his carpenter’s apron, wheezing as he gulped in air.
I thought the weight of the pack was going to crush me. Rolling onto my side took all my strength. The hard stones felt heavenly because they were solid. The sea sloshed up to tickle my boots, then receded. Fiery Shemesh, but I was freezing!
The wind was coarse and unforgivingly cold.
Vai was still wheezing. I tugged my arms out of the straps to shed the pack. With the sodden basket bumping on my rear, I crawled over to him, only to realize he was not wheezing but laughing in a hoarse sort of way.
He smiled at me.
His smile acted as an infusion of hope. My lips twitched, fighting upward.
“Look!” He gestured.
A blustery gray sea stretched away from the shore. Across the channel, barely visible under a haze of cloud, rose the blue-dark shore of another land. But that was not the strange thing. A ship glided atop the waves, three-masted, sails unfurled but unmoving despite the stinging breeze. As I gaped, wondering why I could not see any sailors racing about on the deck or climbing the masts, one of the sails began to ripple, then the second, and then the third. Where there hadn’t been one before, a man appeared halfway up the mainmast.
It was illusion, taking form in front of my eyes as he wove cold magic with a speed and dexterity that astounded me.
“We’ve been washed back into the mortal world, love.” The ship vanished as he sat up and spat. “Gah. What I wouldn’t do for a glass of my mother’s hoarhound tea sweetened with honey. Catherine! You’re shuddering.”
He pulled me against him. I could have sworn warmth radiated from his body, although it was hard to feel anything. My wool skirt clung to my legs, the fabric crackling as if it were actually beginning to freeze.
“There’s shelter,” he said. “Walk with me.”
The shoreline was stony beach. A little peninsula of land sloped up to a cliff of ice that loomed over us like fate. There was no vegetation, nothing but rock and ice and sand. Crevices and canyons had dug staircases into the ice cliff, pocked with boulders. On the tiny peninsula, lying between ice cliff and icy sea, a deposit of huge rocks formed a low cave.
“See if there’s any driftwood to build a fire,” he said. “The cave is the sort of place it might get swept into and caught.”
“I c-c-can’t build a fire.”
“Did you pack no flint?”
“You’ll k-k-kill the fire.”
“As long as I can work cold magic, I will not freeze to death, but you will. Do you hear me, Catherine? Tell me you understand what I’m saying.”
The wind gusted out of the north, sweeping over the lip of the ice. A voice flew on that wind, dangerous and wild. A howl rose.
I staggered to a halt. “Do you hear that?”
“Come on, love. Just a little farther. We’ll see if there’s fuel for a fire and then I’ll go back and fetch our gear…”
We hadn’t escaped. The Hunt was after us. My sire had already found us. What did he want from me? Or was he just angry that I had rescued first my cousin and then my husband from him?
The presence of beasts stalking a person concentrates the mind wonderfully. The landscape before me settled and I knew where I was. I had reached for my mother, and somehow the connection between us had brought me to a place she had once walked. “They left the other boat in the cave. We’ve got to drag it down to the water and get out of here before the wolves come.”
His grip tightened on my arm. “Love, you’re raving. There’s no wolves, and no boat…” I curled my lips in a silent snarl that made his eyes widen. “But let’s just go see about the boat.”
We picked our way up the slope and in under the dank shadow. A huge slab of a boulder made a weighty roof, giving the cave the look of a crude shelter of stone built by a giant. I cleared debris off a hump to reveal canvas stretched taut over a rowboat. The boat had been turned over and raised off the ground on stones. Two oilcloth bundles with oars and oarlocks had been tucked along the underside of the benches, together with an unexpected bounty of a spare flint, an iron pot, and a hunter’s knife.
“Lord of All. How did you know this would be here?”
“My mother reached out to me from the past and pulled me here.” I dragged the canvas off the boat. It was big enough to seat six men, but I thought we could handle it. Howls drifted off the height. “We have to get out of here before the wolves come. Can’t you hear them?”
“It’s just the wind.” He rubbed my hands between his. “You need to warm yourself at a fire before we try to cross the water. Your lips are blue. People can die just from exposure to cold.”
Through chattering teeth, I spoke. “You have to believe me about my mother.”
He paused, then resumed chafing my hands. “I don’t see why not. The chain that binds our marriage pulled you to me in Expedition.”
“That was the machinations of General Camjiata and James Drake.”
“Yes, that as well, but didn’t you ever wonder why you found me so easily the moment you stepped onto the jetty? The chain that binds us drew you to me. You’ll always be bound to your parents as well. We’ll rig these ropes so we can pull the boat over, then haul it down on the canvas. But once we get it down there with everything in it, then you must promise me if there are no wolves you’ll build a fire for long enough to warm up and dry out that wool a little bit, and my coat and gloves, which you so wisely brought. By the way the light falls I’m pretty sure it’s late winter or early spring. It’s still morning, so we’ll have time to cross before dusk. Catherine? Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I said, for the sound of his voice was so comforting.
We rigged the rope, flipped the boat, and dragged it over the stone beach to the water. The work warmed me but at the same time sucked all energy from me. Afterward, it was all I could do to stay upright, leaning on the stern, as he fetched our gear and arranged it as ballast. The cold gnawed through my flesh to the bone. He set the oarlocks and oars. Out of the dripping pack he unfolded the winter coat I had carried just for him and put it on me. He looked me up and down. He had the worst frown on his face, startling in its intensity. I had never seen that expression on him before. I had no idea what to make of it.
