Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,62
to her eyebrows, and within moments of stepping out into the snow her toes and fingers started to freeze. The electric lights strung for the Carnival were all on, providing plenty of light.
She watched Addie and Muirin’s team reducing an ice sculpture to powder snow. It was actually kind of fun to watch; the whole thing basically crumbled away like something right out of a movie. Like a vampire getting hit with sunlight, or a mummy crumbling away. She felt someone come to stand beside her, turned a little, and saw that it was Elizabeth, also bundled up.
“This is a bad idea,” Elizabeth said, sounding very unhappy.
“I’ve seen better,” Spirit said cautiously. “Somebody’s going to get frostbite if they aren’t careful.” She glanced over at the pile of wood with a cardboard-and-wood Viking ship on top of it. “I don’t know if that bonfire’s a really good idea, either—”
“That’s not what I meant,” Elizabeth replied, then shook her head.
Spirit waited, but Elizabeth was silent. “Well, what did you mean?” she prompted, as Addie and Muirin’s team moved on to the next ice sculpture, leaving a pile of tiny sandlike ice particles behind.
Elizabeth glanced around nervously. “It just seems like a bad idea. You know, like this might attract … something.”
Spirit shivered as she felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with the weather go down her back. She looked up at the moon in a mostly clear sky. “Well,” she replied, with a lightness she didn’t feel, “if you’re thinking it’ll attract what happened at New Year’s, even if the lights go out, there’s no way whatever it was is going to be able to put out the moon. So we won’t be in the dark and we will be able to see it.”
Elizabeth gave her a dubious look. “If you say so,” she replied, in a tone that said clearly she didn’t believe it.
Some of the snow sculptures, like the castle, had been built on wooden scaffolding. With the packed snow evaporated by another team, Burke and several others were tearing the scaffolding down and piling it on the unlit bonfire. The thing was going to be huge. They’d probably be able to see it in Radial.
At least it would be warm.
She got a cup of hot cider from the knot of kitchen staff setting up the grills and the tables with food on them. They didn’t look very happy, and she didn’t blame them. But at least once they got the grills going, they’d have a little warm patch where they were. She wrapped her cold fingers around the cup and sipped slowly. The cider tasted … thin, somehow. As if some vitality had been drained out of it.
She rubbed her eyes and stared at Addie’s team. There seemed to be a gray fog between her and them, and the sounds they were making as they took down another ice sculpture weren’t as loud as they had been a moment before. And were the electric lights getting weaker? She rubbed her eyes again. This was weird, very weird; it was like everything was getting dimmed down.
Someone shouted; she turned, and saw a line of cloaked and hooded riders silhouetted against the night sky, just beyond the lawn of the school. There was something wrong about them; it wasn’t just that they were wearing black, it was that the light somehow was sucked into them. She felt cold, horribly cold, staring at them.
Is this some prank from the kids in Radial? Please, let it be a prank …
But of course, she knew in her heart it wasn’t—which was only proved a moment later when one of the Riders let out a piercing whistle and they all plunged toward the students.
Someone screamed. That made everyone turn to look.
Spirit just knew that the terrible, paralyzing fear was going to clamp down over them all. She even braced herself for it, getting ready to fight it, even though fighting it hadn’t worked very well the last time.
But no—no, all that erupted was just plain old-fashioned panic.
People started shouting hysterically, and there was more screaming as the students scattered before the charge. As Spirit darted out of the way, something whistled over her head. A club of some kind, heavier than a bat, but swung expertly. It missed her, but not by much, and it forced her to take a tumble in order to escape the deadly hooves of another horse.