“Because she is angry,” answered the Leanansidhe in her natural voice. “Because her voice is a part of her power, and her rage is too great to be contained.”
I swallowed. Mab had spoken a few words to me a couple of years back, and I’d reacted exactly as she described. I’d lost a few minutes of time during the episode her words had provoked as well. “Rage?” I asked. “About what?”
The shadowed figure let out a spitting hiss, another feline sound that made me flinch and cringe away from it as if from the lash of a whip. My godmother jerked sharply to one side. She straightened only slowly, and as she did I saw that a long, fine cut had been drawn across one of her cheeks. Blood welled up and dripped down slowly.
My godmother bowed her head to Mab, and the cold voice came from her mouth again. “It is not for my handmaiden to judge or question me, nor to speak for me upon her own account.”
Lea bowed her head to Mab again, and not a flicker of either anger or chagrin showed in her features. Again, Mab moved from one stone to another without crossing the space in between. It should have been getting easier to deal with due to repetition. It wasn’t. Each time she did it I realized that she could just as easily have reappeared behind me with foul intentions, and there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it.
“There are ancient proprieties to be honored,” Mab’s voice said, her tone measured and somehow formal. “There are words which must be said. Rites which must be observed. Speak your desire, mortal man.”
Now I really was shivering with the cold. I folded my arms and hunched in on myself. It didn’t help. “Power,” I said.
The shadowed figure froze in place and turned to stare at me. The burning green eyes tilted slightly, as if Mab had cocked her head to one side. “Tell me why.”
I fought to keep my teeth from chattering. “My body is badly injured, but I must do battle with the Red Court.”
“This you have done many a time.”
“This time I’m fighting all of them,” I said. “The Red King and his inner circle.”
The fire of her eyes intensified. “Tell me why.”
I swallowed and said, “They’ve taken my daughter.”
The shadowed figure shuddered, and her disembodied voice breathed a sigh of pleasure. “Ahhh. Yes. Not for your own life. But for your child’s. For love.”
I nodded jerkily.
“So many terrible things are done for love,” Mab’s voice said. “For love will men mutilate themselves and murder rivals. For love will even a peaceful man go to war. For love, man will destroy himself, and that right willingly.” She began walking in a physical circle now, though her movements were so touched with unexpected motions and alien grace that it almost seemed that there must be something else beneath the shrouding cloak. “You know my price, mortal. Speak it.”
“You want me to become the Winter Knight,” I whispered.
A laugh, both merry and cold, bubbled beneath her response. “Yes.”
“I will,” I said. “With a condition.”
“Speak it.”
“That before my service begins, you restore my body to health. That you grant me time enough to rescue my daughter and take her to safety, and strength and knowledge enough to succeed. And you give me your word that you will never command me to lift my hand against those I love.”
The figure kept its eerie pace as she circled me again, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. “You ask me to risk my Knight in a place of dire peril, to no gain for my land and people. Why should I do this?”
I looked at her steadily for a moment. Then I shrugged. “If you don’t want to do business, I’ll go elsewhere. I could still call Lasciel’s coin to me in a heartbeat—and Nicodemus and the Denarians would be more than happy to help me. I am also one of the only people alive who knows how to pull off Kemmler’s Darkhallow. So if Nicky and the Nickelheads don’t want to play, I can damned well get the power for myself—and the next time I call your name, I won’t need to be nearly so polite.”
Mab let out a mirthless laugh through my godmother’s lips. “You are spoiled for choices, my wizard. What reason have you to select me over the others?”
I grimaced. “Please don’t take this as an insult. But you’re the least evil of my options.”
The cold voice told me nothing about her reaction. “Explain.”
“The Denarians would have me growing a goatee and gloating malevolently within a few years, if I didn’t break and turn into some kind of murderous tardbeast first. And I’d have to kill a lot of people outright, if I wanted to use the Darkhallow.” I swallowed. “But I’ll do it. If I have no other way to get my child out of their hands, I’ll do it.”
Silence reigned for an unbroken minute on the mound.
“Yes,” mused Mab’s voice. “You will, won’t you? And yes, you know that I do not kill indiscriminately, nor encourage my Knight to do so.” She paused and murmured, “But you have proven willing to destroy yourself in the past. You won your last confrontation with my handmaiden in just such a fashion, by partaking of the death angel. What prevents you from taking a similar action to cheat me of my prize?”
“My word,” I said quietly. “I know I can’t bluff you. I won’t suicide. I’m here to deal in good faith.”
Mab’s burning eyes stared at me for a long moment. Then she began to walk again, more slowly on this, her third traversing of the circle around me. “You must understand, wizard. Once you are my Knight, once this last quest of yours is complete, you are mine. You will destroy what I wish you to destroy. Kill whatsoever I wish you to kill. You will be mine, blood, bone, and breath. Do you understand this?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
She nodded slowly. Then she turned to stare at the Leanansidhe.
Lea bowed her head again, and snapped her fingers.
Six cloaked figures appeared out of the mists, small, misshapen things that might have been kobolds or gnomes or any of a half dozen other servitor races of the Sidhe. I couldn’t tell because the cloaks had rendered them faceless, without identity.
But I knew the man they were carrying strapped to a plank.
Like me, he was naked. He had been shorter than me, but more athletic, heavier on muscle. But that had been years ago. Now he was a wasted shell of a human being, a charcoal sketch that had been smudged by an uncaring hand. His eyes were missing. Gone, but neatly gone, as if removed surgically. There were tattoos covering his entire face, particularly his sunken eyelids, all of them simply a word in different languages and styles of lettering: traitor. His mouth was partly open, and his teeth had been inscribed with whorls and Celtic design, then stained with something dark and brown, turning his mouth into living scrimshaw.
His entire body, in fact, was adorned with either tattoos or artistic, ritually applied scars. He was held to the plank with seven lengths of slender silken cord, but his emaciated limbs looked like they would never have the strength to overcome even those frail bonds.
He was weeping, sobbing softly, the sound of it more like an animal in horrible pain than anything human.
“Jesus,” I said, and looked away from him.
“I am somewhat proud of this,” Mab’s cold voice said. “To be sure, the White Christ never suffered so long or so terribly as did this traitor. Three days on a tree. Hardly enough time for a prelude. When it came to visiting agony, the Romans were hobbyists.”
The servitors slid the plank up onto the stone table, positioning Slate in its center. Then they bowed toward Mab and retreated in measured silence. For a moment, the only sounds were those of a cold, gentle wind and Slate’s sobs.
“For a time, I was contented to torment him to the edge of sanity. Then I set out to see how far over the edge a mortal could go.” Her eyes glittered merrily in the shadows. “A pity that so little was left. And yet, he is the Winter Knight, young wizard. The vessel of my power amidst mortals, and consort to the Queens of Winter. He betrayed me. See where it has taken him.”