“Who are you?” Vai demanded.
The man glanced up as if to gauge how angry Vai was. In that moment, his gaze skipped to take me in. He ducked his head, hands clenching into fists.
“My lord, I am of the people called the Belgae. I am Devyn, son of the priest Mad Kirwyn, he who is beloved of Carnonos the god.” He studied me. “Your pardon I ask, my lord. How is this beast come to be walking beside you? Have you caught a spirit woman on the ice? She wears the black hair and golden eyes of the hunter. But the face she wears is the face of my dead sister.”
Vai looked from the man to me and back to the man. The shape of Devyn’s face was familiar because it was the same as my own.
24
Vai knew he could hammer them into the dirt, and because he knew it, they believed it.
“I am a magister of rare potency and considerable influence. My wife and I washed ashore north of here under unexpected circumstances. We seek shelter and assistance in continuing our journey south.”
“Your
Vai stared down the man until Devyn opened both hands and bent his head. “I expect my wife to be shown the same courtesy as you show to me.”
“Your pardon, my lord. My duty it is, to be escorting you.” He spoke to the others in a lilting run of words I could not really understand. To judge from Vai’s look of concentration, he was having a better time picking out meaning from the heavy dialect, and it didn’t appear he liked what they were saying.
Nevertheless, he handed over the food supplies we had taken from the cabin. In exchange they gave us all four horses, one for our gear. The two groups separated: We and Devyn rode south, while the village men continued north.
“How can they know you’re a cold mage just by looking at you?” I said in a low voice. “It can’t just be your good looks. Not every handsome man is a cold mage.”
“You can be sure I am wondering that myself.”
“Why every handsome man is not a cold mage?”
He smiled but did not take the bait. “We’re fortunate they were headed out to trap.”
“I thought with the horses and bows they might be hunting the wolf.”
“They consider the wolf to be the servant of their god, Carnonos. The god’s servant cannot be hunted. They’re troubled by you.”
“That wolf could be my half-sibling,” I muttered. “Blessed Tanit, Vai. Are these my mother’s people?” I glanced toward Devyn to find him watching us.
“The resemblance is remarkable.”
“If this is her village, and the channels we crossed are part of the Baltic Ice Sea, then it makes sense that the expedition she and Daniel were part of used her home as a staging point.”
“An interesting consideration. I will ask.”
But Devyn put off Vai’s questions by insisting only the priest could answer. We rode with little conversation for the rest of the day and well into the evening.
Night wrapped the world in silence. A full moon bathed the trees and the snow-clad earth in a glamour, painting the world in contrasts: the white shine of birch bark and the heavy branches of dark spruce. I felt like a forgotten ghost drawn back to an unremembered grave. It was so cold. Vai wrapped the fur blanket around me.
The road brought us to a clearing.
The moon overhead poured light on a princely hall that sat amid untended shrubbery gone wild. Its arched doorway was staved in as if kicked by a giant. Every window had shattered, and the roof had collapsed. On the lintel above the entrance was carved a crescent moon. Though the manor house rose two stories and had wings flying back on each side, a coat of ice as clear as glass encased the entire building.
Vai sucked in a breath. The mare, taking his mood, sidestepped skittishly before he brought her back under control.
Not a single plant had woven its way inside, despite the age of the ruin. The smashed floor revealed the rubble of a hypocaust beneath. Intact corpses were caught and preserved within the ice as if they had been frozen as they tried to escape.
“Blessed Tanit!” I murmured. “Gracious Melqart, protect us. Noble Ba’al, watch over your faithful daughter.”
“The spirit knows this place because she visited here before in her other form.” Devyn signed a ward against evil tidings.
“I am not a ghost or a wolf,” I said in a choked voice, but he would not look at me. To look at his face slammed me with the axe blow of memory. As a child, I had looked into a similar face, my mother’s face, as she bent to kiss me. A scar had ripped a lightning-like seam across the right side of her face, and she was missing one eye. The hole gaped like a skull’s socket, a gate onto the pain she had suffered. Yet her expression was serene and loving.
The memory opened a pit inside my heart. There was no safe place.
“Bad fortune to be here at midnight, haunted by spirits,” said Devyn. “Best we ride on.”
Vai did not budge. “This is the mage House that was destroyed by the Wild Hunt. Crescent House, it was called.”
“To this place the Hunt came, it is true, my lord. On Hallows’ Night, they were riding with claws and teeth. Bad fortune it is, my lord, to be lingering. Please let us be moving on.” He glanced toward me as if expecting me to turn into claws and teeth, and rend him.
I hated him for fearing me. The frozen shell of the House was a grave for those trapped within, woman, man, and child. The ice had spared no one.
“I am Tara Bell’s child!” In the muffled night my voice rang like a shout. “That’s why I look like her! I’m your niece!”
He looked at Vai. “I have no niece.”
“Don’t you understand?” I cried. “Don’t you see who—?”
“Silence!” Vai’s voice snapped.
I dragged in a bitter breath, fighting a flood of anger and an ebb of despair. Of course he was right: The last thing I needed to do now was make them more suspicious by informing them that their worst fears about me were true.
Devyn clipped his horse forward.
In a softer voice Vai said, “Catherine, I’m tired of the cold, love. I’m exhausted, and I hurt. I need to know you won’t freeze to death. Please, let’s get out of here.”
The sight of the ice-caged ruins and trapped corpses had truly shaken me, but it was his effort to disguise the tremor in his voice that made me realize that will alone was carrying him. I rode out of the ghost-ridden clearing, for I knew he would not leave if I did not go.
As if our movement unleashed it, the moon began its slide westward.
Soon the road passed pasture walls built of peat. If there were fields awaiting spring planting, I did not recognize them. Everything was strange to me. My moorings had slipped the dock and I had drifted free. I was riding the road my mother and father had traveled. We had just ridden past the estate where Camjiata’s wife, the dragon dreamer Helene Conde Vahalis, had been born and raised and had died. The general had been here, too, back in the days when he was merely Captain Leonnorios Aemilius Keita.
Why had it all happened? How had the four of them met: the ambitious captain, the loyal soldier, the half-
