Cold Steel

Delicately the beast closed its mouth over my body. Then I was drowning in a sea of smoke.

30

In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt. When it is woken, all tremble in fear.

In the depths of the black abyss, there drift in a watery stupor the Taninim, called also leviathans, and when they wake, their lashing tails smash ships into splinters and drive the sundered hulks under the waves.

In the depths of earth, wreathed in fire, lies coiled in slumber the Mother of All Dragons. Her smoky breath fills the ocean of dreams. She stirs, waking, and the world changes.

So we are told.

But of all the great powers in this world, one thing was certain.

No one could screech as loudly as Bee when she was truly outraged.

“LET. HER. GO!”

Thumps hammered its body, small fists pounding the leviathan’s massive flanks.

“How dare you? After I almost died unearthing a nest, is this how you repay me?”

Then she kicked him.

I wasn’t sure how I knew she had done that, only that I was spat out amid a rain of pebbles. After a moment the hail ceased. A dog crept up to me, ears down, and apologetically licked my face.

“Pah!” I shoved the animal away when it looked as if it meant to lick me again. Grabbing my cane, I staggered to my feet and spun to face the monster.

Bee sat on a bench beside the headmaster as Kemal Napata hovered anxiously behind. The headmaster had his hands on his knees, looking winded. His seamed black face and tall, slender frame looked exactly as I remembered them from Adurnam: those of an elderly man of Kushite ancestry with a scholarly demeanor and a calm heart. Sparks of green lit his eyes before fading into brown. The hounds swarmed over to press close to his feet.

Bee was in full spate, like the spring flood.

“I don’t care if her sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt and if the spirit courts are the most ancient enemies of your kind. I never asked to walk the dreams of dragons! Someone else decided on my behalf! Furthermore, when you tricked me into crossing into the spirit world, I almost died to save those hatchlings! And after all that, I am meant to watch while my dearest cousin is eaten?”

“Maestressa, you cannot speak to the noble prince in such a tone,” said Kemal, aghast, for Bee was leaning toward the headmaster as if her next move would be to punch him.

“What do you mean, I can’t speak to him in that tone? I am speaking to him in that tone, now that I know he is not a prince of Kemet at all but rather an impostor slithering about the world with some manner of secretive plot in hand that involves the death of perfectly gentle, mild, and blameless young women!”

By the angry flush mottling his cheeks, Kemal appeared as if he might be reconsidering his infatuation. Trying to gather up enough breath to speak, I wheezed my way into a coughing fit.

Bee ran to me. She patted my face. “Dearest! Are you going to live?”

“Really, Bee,” I said in a hoarse voice, “I was quite impressed by that diatribe until you described yourself as gentle and mild.” I eyed the evidence of the broken branches.

The headmaster got to his feet. Bee and I jumped back. I raised my cane defensively.

“Maestressas, might we retire into the house for a cup of tea? The warm fire would be welcome to my old bones.”

Bee squeezed my hand. “Surely you can understand that we may be reluctant to enter a den within whose walls we may be devoured at your leisure.”

“I fear you have read too many lurid tales, Maestressa,” he said in so kindly a manner that I began to think he must have reached the little grove of trees just in time to banish the monster, for this harmless old man could surely not have been the monster himself. “You will be safe within the house. I do not eat human flesh.”

“I heard half of your manservants have died,” Bee said rudely. “Did you eat them?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

Bee opened her mouth and then, after all, could grapple no words onto her tongue.

I pushed her behind me and swashed with my cane. “Back away slowly and we’ll make a break for it,” I muttered.

“Yes, I ate them,” he repeated, “but they were not men.”

“What were they, then?” she asked. “Trolls? And why did you try to eat Cat?”

“I did not try to eat her. I hoped she might see a memory in the tides of the Great Smoke.”

I had always respected the headmaster because his easy demeanor and impressive erudition stood in such contrast to my Uncle Jonatan’s short temper and small-mindedness. I didn’t truly know what sort of older man my father Daniel would have become, had he lived, but I had liked to believe he would have been something like the man who had patiently satisfied all factions whose children attended Adurnam’s academy college, without giving way to any one.