FrostFire

  This book is dedicated to Wonder Editor Annalie Grainger

  and Super Agent Nancy Miles, with the deepest gratitude.

  I’m not quite sure how, but you got me through it!

  “That I should love a bright particular star,

  And think to wed it, he is so above me:

  In his bright radiance and collateral light

  Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.”

  —Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

  In my dreams, the wolves come for me. I hear their voices echoing from the far-off mountains and the frost-bright stars. They sing of the hunt, and hot blood spilled on snow, and the scent of their prey’s fear on the wind. My fear.

  I am running. Always running. Shadowy fields blur past my eyes, the jagged skeletons of trees, frozen rivers marked in stark black by the unforgiving starlight. My bare feet sink into the snow, and the cold burns them. Breath crystallizes in the air before me. My heartbeat throbs through my body.

  But no matter how swiftly I flee, they are always just behind me.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The first time the Wolf took me I was eight.

  Before that I had thought I was normal. Even though the other children taunted me sometimes, calling me “Fatherless”, “Nameless”, their words didn’t touch me, because they were not true. I had a father. He was the great hunter who had fallen to the fangs of the Demon Wolf before I was born. Everyone knew his name. I was proud to be the daughter of Garin Aeskaar.

  I did not know then – no one knew – that he had left me much more than his name and his legend when he died.

  I broke a pot that morning. The heat burned through the cloth as I made to pass the earthenware bowl to my mother, and singed my palm. I dropped the bowl, splattering the strong-smelling herbal mixture over the packed dirt floor. Shards of red pottery flew everywhere.

  My mother’s hand struck out, and the right side of my face went numb.

  “Useless, clumsy girl,” she said, eyes narrowing to icy black holes in her face. “You’re just like your father… No, don’t try to tidy up! You’ll only make it worse. Get out. Go on! Get out of my sight!”

  I went at a run, belly turning over with a sick mixture of shame and defiance. My clumsiness had wasted a morning’s work and caused a mess, and I was sorry. But as the numbness wore off and the whole right side of my face ached and my hand stung, my guilt turned to anger. It wasn’t fair, because it had been an accident. And it would be useless to ask for any of Ma’s burn salve on the blister, or a bruise compress for my face. She never wasted those things on us. She sold them and hoarded the money in the hollow leg of the wobbly stool under the window.

  The sunlight was bright enough to make my tearful eyes water even more, but the air was cold. I rubbed at the goose pimples on my bare forearms as my feet crunched on the frozen ground. Spring rain the day before had turned the village paths to churned-up mud, but the night had brought frost, and turned the squelching, foul-smelling mess into hard swirls of earth that dug into the thin soles of my boots as I walked between the squat, beehive-shaped houses.

  I hurried past Elder Gallen’s house, where his wife was cursing their nanny goat in the front yard, and slowed down as I neared the blacksmith’s. Hot, iron-stinking air billowed out of the smithy, with the occasional burst of orange sparks. The rhythmic noise of metal bashing against metal was like music. On a normal morning I would have lingered there, enjoying the warmth on my skin, watching Eilik the smith pound the glowing iron into useful shapes on his anvil. But I could already feel my face swelling up. He would see.

  Eilik wouldn’t ask questions. He never did. But I would see that look in his kind eyes, the look that made me squirm. So I kept on, skirting the blacksmith’s yard and Elder Rangar’s broken cart, which was waiting for its new wheel, and went into the trees.

  It was quiet in the forest. A kind of companionable quiet. Birds called, bushes rustled, the wind played in the tops of the trees. None of them paid me any mind, and I liked it that way. I kilted my skirt up into my belt and wandered a little way, crunching through rotting yellow winter grass, letting my hands brush the rough red and grey bark of the towering trees.

  I reached the little clearing where me and some of the other village children sometimes played in the summer, and sat down on a fallen log. Gingerly, I felt my face. The skin was hot and puffy, tender under my fingers. All except for one place. I traced the puckered curve of the scar. It was always cold, that place. Even when the bruise darkened my skin, the mark would stand out like a spray of white wax on my cheek. No matter how many times Ma hit it, the scar never got red, never got hot. Never went away.

  It had been a part of me for as far back as I could remember. And for as far back as I could remember, Ma had hated it. She hated it when the villagers took to calling me “Frost” because of it. She was the only one who carried on calling me by my real name, Saram.

  Saram meant “sorrow”. That was what she wanted me called.

  I reached into my shirt and pulled out the leather thong that hung around my neck. At the end of the leather was a sharp, curving tooth, the size of my index finger and marked with fine yellow-brown lines. A wolf’s tooth. A tooth from the wolf that had killed Garin Aeskaar. My father.

  When I was little, before I started to grow so big and clumsy like my da, and Ma’s temper got so uncertain, I had asked her many times about the scar on my face. When had I got it? How did it happen? She only ever answered once. She said: “A wolf did it.”

  And when I asked, “What wolf?” she said, “The Demon Wolf.”

  That was the first time she hit me.

  My father and the Demon Wolf had killed each other before I was born. The Wolf could never have bitten me. But I liked to pretend that it had for the same reason that I wore its tooth around my neck. It made me feel closer to my father. I imagined sometimes what things would have been like if the Wolf had not killed him; if Ma had not left my father’s home in the North – where the grey eyes I got from him would have been normal – and made us live here in this village with people who whispered and looked at me sideways. But mostly I imagined that one day I would be strong enough to take his great axe, with its double-blades, down from its resting place above the mantel.

  One day I would be as strong as my father had been.

  My fingers clenched on the tooth, and I relished its sharpness. One day no one would hit me any more.

  “Oh, look! It’s Frost Eyes!”

  I groaned under my breath and stuffed the tooth back under my shirt. Ulem Gallen.

  “What are you doing out here, Fatherless?” I felt a shock of real fear when I heard the second voice. That was Marik Ersk, Ulem’s best friend. “Who said you could come into our forest?”

  I stood up and turned to face them, blood tingling. Ulem was
bad enough on his own, but at least he was slow and stupid and he got bored easily. Marik was something different. He had hated me and Ma since we hadn’t managed to save his mother from the fever last winter. He couldn’t hurt Ma – but with Ulem on his side he’d made hunting me into a sport. I’d had a black eye, pulled hair, kicked shins and ripped clothes from them, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Ulem’s father was in charge of the village. No one would take my side over his.

  They were coming at me from opposite sides of the clearing. I swallowed hard, my gaze darting everywhere as I searched for a gap in the trees.

  “Get away,” I said. I wanted the words to come out strong and angry, but they sounded thin and weak. I tried again. “Leave me alone!”

  “Listen to that!” Marik said mockingly. “Giving orders. We don’t have to do what a stupid fatherless girl tells us. You’re nothing. No one has to listen to you.”

  Ulem laughed. It was mean, flat laughter and it made his cheeks flush an ugly red. His small eyes were gleaming with excitement. “Your da died just to get away from you! Even your ma calls you Saram. No one wants you, Frost Eyes.”

  “Maybe we should do everyone a favour and get rid of her,” Marik whispered, creeping closer.

  I could hear Ma’s voice hissing in my head: Don’t fight them. Don’t annoy them. Stay quiet. Stay out of their way. We can’t upset the elders. Be a good girl and stay out of trouble.

  How, Ma? How am I supposed to get away without fighting now?

  I sucked in a deep breath, turned towards Marik – and ran. I shoved past him, shrugging off the hand that tried to grab the back of my shirt, and leaped down a shallow slope. They shouted angrily behind me. For a moment, I thought I’d made it.

  Then my foot went into a hole. My ankle turned. I toppled over, hands scrabbling uselessly at the undergrowth. I shoved myself back up, ignoring the throb from my leg – but it was too late. Ulem and Marik were at the top of the slope behind me and I’d never climb up the other side with this ankle. I was trapped.

  Marik’s eyes were angry and cold, the way they’d been every day since the priests had lit his ma’s funeral fire. He had a rock in his hand.

  I cried out with pain as it bounced off my chest. I clutched the bruised spot, anger driving Ma’s cautious voice from my head. “You throw rocks at girls now? Coward!”

  In answer, he stooped and hurled a piece of fallen wood. I jerked aside, but I couldn’t avoid the stone that Ulem threw at the same time. It smashed into my shoulder. I felt something crack and I screamed – but the sound was cut off as another missile slammed into my sore cheek. The pain made me dizzy. I fell to my knees, angry, frightened gasps choking me.

  Don’t fight them. Stay quiet. Stay out of their way.

  Something warm slid down my face. Warmer than tears. It dripped on to the back of my hand, where my fist was clenched in the dirt.

  It was red.

  Somewhere near by, a wolf began to howl.

  I stared down at the gleaming, scarlet drops on my hand. Rocks and clods of frozen mud and branches were still falling down on me. I couldn’t feel them any more. A deep, convulsive shudder moved down my spine, making my muscles twitch. The skin under the droplet of blood began to change. Silvery-white patterns like scars – like frost – curled across the brown skin.

  Shivers quaked my body. I was cold.

  So cold.

  The wolf was howling. Closer now. It was coming.

  Didn’t Ulem and Marik hear it? They should be running. Why weren’t they running?

  The howling drowned out everything else. It hummed through my bones, made my sight blur and my teeth chatter. But Marik and Ulem still couldn’t hear it.

  Only me.

  And I realized: It wasn’t out there. It was inside. The wolf was inside me.

  Do not fear, my daughter, it howled.

  I am here.

  I will protect you.

  Nine Years Later…

  One

  My mouth tasted of dust and iron.

  The cool white mists that rolled down the mountain slopes in the early morning had burned away, and the sun was directly overhead. Now and again, a sudden, blinding flash of light would pierce the silvery-blue-leaf canopy, dazzling me. I had learned to walk with eyelids half closed. My hips and feet ached like a half-healed bruise. Sweat itched at the small of my back, in the bends of my knees and elbows. Waving strands of dark hair had worked free of the braid pinned up around my head and clung damply to my skin no matter how often I tried to brush them back.

  I’d been walking a long time.

  I was blowing hair out of my face again when the dry earth gave way beneath my left boot. I lurched sideways and snatched at the waxy tree roots thrusting out of the hillside to drag myself away from the edge. The path was dangerously narrow and winding. If I tumbled off, it was a very long fall down the steep layers of terraces into the river I could hear thundering below. I’d likely never get the chance to climb back up again.

  I regained my footing, then sighed tiredly, letting go of the roots to shake red soil from my hands. The first few times the path had betrayed me, my heart had pounded and my fingers had shaken, but I was too weary to get excited about these brushes with death any more.

  The bush ahead of me rustled.

  I froze.

  Something was shifting in the foliage. Something big.

  A bandit? No. The bush wasn’t big enough.

  Animal, then. Leopard?

  I couldn’t outrun a leopard.

  My feet felt as if they had rooted into the crumbling earth. I swallowed hard, and slowly, slowly, slowly reached back for my father’s axe, which was secured across the top of my pack—

  A massive blue pheasant burst out of the bush. The fan-shaped copper tail nearly grazed my face as the bird flew upwards, filling the air with a frantic beating of wings that seemed to mock my speeding heartbeat. As it disappeared into the trees, my hand fell limply from the axe. Just a bird. Just a bird.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, taking deep, careful breaths as the world swam around me. Too weary to be excited by brushes with death? Oh, Father – the lies I tell.

  My stomach rumbled loudly, and I let out a weak laugh. My stomach cared nothing for fear. I scrubbed my face roughly with dusty hands. Then, turning off the path, I clambered up the slope until I found a thick clump of glossy purple shrubs that would hide me from anyone passing below. I sank down into the shelter of the leaves and shrugged off my leather pack. My shoulders crunched with the movement. I groaned, stretching out aching legs and rotating my feet in their heavy boots. From my new vantage point above the path, I could see the bright glint of water through the trees. The River Mesgao. Not far now. I just had to follow the river and it would take me where I needed to go. My blood surged with hope and longing – and fear.

  I had come such a very long way.

  Out of habit, I reached for Da’s axe first. Untying the hide straps that held it across the top of the pack, I took a moment to check the blades over. The axe was precious, and not just because it was nearly all I had left of my father. If I could not offer to split logs, bring down rotted outbuildings and drag out stubborn stumps, there would be no reason for anyone to offer me a bite of food or a night’s stay in their hayloft. I could not rely on luck or the mercy of strangers. Both were uncertain at best.

  When I was satisfied that the axe was in good condition, I opened my pack and looked at the contents with resignation. I’d traversed the foothills and crossed into Ruan through the low passes of the great Subira range as soon as the winter ice had thawed. Offers of employment had been scarce in the two weeks since. This part of the world seemed mostly inhabited by gnarled, bone-hard shepherds and goatherds who looked as if they had grown up out the red earth and grey rock of their mountain home. They stared at me, towering over them with my big awkward hands and feet, and my foreign-looking eyes and axe, and shook their heads wordlessly, faces a mixture of suspicion and scorn. Even if they did
need my help, they had little to offer in return. My food supplies were dwindling rapidly. All I had left now was a small package of dried mutton, tough and chewy, and the remains of a block of sharp white goat’s cheese. I’d had earned the cheese two days ago, climbing down into a ravine to retrieve a strayed nanny goat.

  I put away the meat, which would last longer, and slowly ate the cheese, trying to make each bite last as long as possible. I licked the white crumbs from my fingers and washed it down with a gulp of tepid liquid from a half-full waterskin. Unless I came across a farmstead or a village where I could trade labour for food soon, I would have to stop for a day or two and set up traps to snare fresh meat. I shrugged restlessly at the thought of the wasted time.

  I needed to keep moving. I needed to find the Goddess in the Fire.

  The quiet was shattered by a loud Maaah, followed by the tinny ring of a bell. I jumped and pressed a hand to my heart. After a moment, I heard the familiar clomping noise of hoofed feet growing closer. I put away my waterskin and closed up my pack, giving my hands a moment to steady. Calm down. No one wants to hurt you here. And this herd might bring a shepherd who requires your strong back.

  I leaned forward and peered cautiously through the leaves. There were four shaggy-coated goats with impressive horns ambling up the path, their goatherd behind them.

  He was dark-skinned, darker than me, with a bright red cap crammed down over unruly black curls. I guessed he was probably a year or two older than my own seventeen; square and burly and fit-looking, he moved lightly over the uneven ground, guiding his flock with a wooden quarterstaff. I grimaced. He would need no help from me. Anyway, I made it a practice to avoid young men, especially lone ones. Knotted-up old fellows with grey hair and bent backs were safer.

  I waited impatiently for him to move on. His steps were slow and his path meandering, as if he were lost in his own thoughts.

  There in the cool, shadowy cave made by the leaves, I could feel my eyelids growing heavy. I was tired from my weeks of travel. In a moment I’d be falling asleep and wasting half a day. I forced my eyes wide in an effort to stave off the sleepiness – and saw a glint of light in the scrub below the path.