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