Frost Fever Page 3

  Much as I might fantasize about it at times.

  I climbed out of the van, wearing jeans, sneakers, and a tank top, my hair tied back in a greasy ponytail. I really needed a shower, and wondered if I should freshen up before seeing Morvilind. He might take offense if I showed up before him bedraggled and in need of a bath. On the other hand, he considered humans at best to be useful livestock, and making him wait would only irritate him.

  Best to get this over with.

  I squared my shoulders and headed for the door.

  Morvilind’s butler awaited me inside. Rusk was a paunchy middle-aged man who wore the formal garb of an Elven noble’s household servant, a long red coat with black trousers, the coat’s sleeves adorned with elaborate black scrollwork and a golden badge of rank upon the stiff collar. He gave me a look of irritated contempt. Rusk didn’t like me much. He considered me an intrusion into his orderly domain. I wondered if he knew the truth about what I did for Morvilind.

  “Miss Moran,” said Rusk. “I received your message and passed it to his lordship.”

  “Goody for you,” I said, starting down the entry hall. The floor was gleaming, polished hardwood, with airy skylights overhead. Various pieces of ancient art adorned the walls. Morvilind had a taste for the art of ancient Earth, and I had stolen quite a bit of it for him. “Doing your job and all. Do you want a cookie for it?”

  Rusk’s nose wrinkled. “Will you be attending to his lordship now, or will you…refresh yourself first?”

  I smirked at him. “Are you seriously suggesting that I keep his lordship waiting while I take a bath? I’m sure he’d love that.”

  Rusk’s scowl intensified. “His lordship awaits you in the library. I shall escort you there.”

  “Just what I wanted to do,” I said.

  Thankfully, Rusk said nothing after that. I enjoyed insulting him, but I didn’t feel up to it. I was tired, and fear churned in my gut as we walked through the opulence of the mansion. I wondered what Morvilind wanted me to do now. His tasks had grown more and more dangerous recently, and his last mission had almost gotten me killed several times.

  Morvilind’s library occupied a vast room at the rear of the house, with tall windows overlooking the bluffs and the turbulent waters of Lake Michigan. The floor was white marble, polished and gleaming. Books written in both Elven hieroglyphics and the common Elven alphabet covered the walls, along with countless volumes on ancient Earth’s history and peoples. Long tables ran the length of the room, holding books and scrolls and relics. An elaborate summoning circle had been carved into slabs of gleaming red marble before the high windows, a design intricate beyond my magical skill. I recognized maybe a quarter of the glyphs and symbols and runes in the design.

  There had been one addition since my last visit here. A glass display case stood to the left of the summoning circle, and it held the stone tablet Morvilind had ordered me to steal from Paul McCade. A ring of warding glyphs covered the case’s pedestal, likely to contain the dark magic within the thing.

  Before the summoning circle itself was a high table covered with computer equipment, complete with three enormous monitors arrayed in a semicircle.

  Lord Morvilind stood before the table, gazing at his monitors.

  He was tall and thin to the point of gauntness, his white hair closed-cropped, his skin so pale it was almost translucent, his blue eyes cold and ghostly, his Elven ears rising to sharp points. He looked old and frail and weak, but I knew that was a fatal assumption. For he wore the ornamented red cloak of an Elven noble, and beneath that he wore the gold-trimmed black robe of an Elven archmage. I had seen him use magic, and he wielded arcane force with a skill and power beyond anything I could achieve – beyond anything even most Elves could wield.

  If he felt like it, he could kill me as easily as I could swat a fly. Easier, really. Flies are agile, and he wouldn’t have to move to kill me.

  And if I didn’t do what he wanted, if I didn’t obey his every command, my brother was going to die.

  I went to one knee and waited. I could mouth off to Rusk all I wanted. I didn’t dare do the same to Morvilind.

  “My lord,” said Rusk. “Miss Nadia Moran to see you.”

  Morvilind nodded, not turning from his monitors. All three of them were showing news reports of some kind. The one on the right displayed world news. The Caliphate and the Imamate had gone to war over the city of Basra again. The High Queen let them go to war every few years, and then reined in the conflict when it started to spiral out of hand. The center and left monitors displayed American news, something about the High Queen’s war with the frost giants. The High Queen had been fighting an intermittent war against the frost giants even before the Conquest.

  Of course, after the Conquest, the High Queen had used human men-at-arms in her armies, my father among them. Which, in a roundabout way, was how I wound up kneeling before Morvilind.

  “You may go, Rusk,” said Morvilind, his voice a deep, resonant rasp. It always seemed strange to hear such a powerful voice come from such a frail-looking man.

  Rusk bowed and strode away, disappearing into the gleaming maze of the mansion. Morvilind did not turn around, and I waited. I would wait as long as necessary. I did not dare push Morvilind too far, not when he held Russell’s life in his hands.

  “It took you,” said Morvilind at last, “rather longer than I liked for you to respond to my summons, child.”

  “I was in Los Angeles, my lord,” I said. “I came at once.”

  “What were you doing in Los Angeles?” said Morvilind.

  There was no point in lying to him. “Selling some of the jewels I stole from the mansion of Paul McCade.”

  “Why?” said Morvilind.

  “Because I needed the money,” I said. My mouth kept going before my brain could stop it. That happens sometimes, and it’s gotten me into a lot of trouble. “If your lordship chose to pay me an allowance or a salary, I would not need to finance myself, and could answer your summons much quicker.”

  “I have no use for weakness,” said Morvilind, “or dependency. If I paid you a salary, you would become weak and dependent. Your wits would dull and you would grow complacent, and you would lose your edge. You would become useless to me…and that means your brother would die of frostfever. Would that not be tragic?”

  Hatred burned through me, and a dozen different barbed remarks waited on the tip of my tongue. Fortunately, this time my brain restrained my tongue.

  “Yes, my lord,” I managed to say in a neutral tone.

  The worst part was that he wasn’t entirely wrong. Morvilind granted me a twisted form of independence, but he kept Russell’s illness around my neck like a leash. One yank on that leash, and I came running. To survive, to save Russell’s life, I was willing to do almost anything…and I knew that had made me harder and smarter and more capable than I would have been otherwise.

  I hated Morvilind for that, too.

  “Frostfever, as it happens,” said Morvilind, beckoning for me to rise, “is part of the reason I summoned you here.”

  I crossed to his side. Morvilind tapped a command on the keyboard. The right monitor changed from a report about the High Queen’s edicts about the conflict in eastern Asia and instead displayed another report about frost giants. There seemed to be a lot on the news about the frost giants lately, come to think of it.

  “Tell me, child,” said Morvilind. “Have you seen the news recently? Some of the reports have even been added to the Punishment Day clips.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve been busy,” I said.

  That was true. I failed to mention that I thought the news was nonsensical bullshit, meaningless happy talk about the High Queen’s wisdom and beneficence. I also hated watching Homeland Security’s Punishment Day videos, the filmed punishments of criminals broadcast as an encouragement to moral behavior in the High Queen’s subjects. That might be me on a Punishment Day video someday, scr
eaming and helpless in front of a jeering crowd as the whip ripped into the bare skin of my back again and again.

  I had nightmares like that, sometimes.

  “Admirable diligence,” said Morvilind. “What do you know about the frost giants?”

  “Not very much, my lord,” I said. Morvilind’s various tutors had not mentioned the subject while I had been growing up, and I hadn’t dealt with them while stealing various things at Morvilind’s bidding.

  “Tell me anyway,” said Morvilind.

  I started to shrug, realized he might get offended, and thought for a moment. “They’re from a different world than Earth, like the Elves. Um…they have a king, they know how to use magic, and they can travel in the Shadowlands. They fought against the High Queen before the Elves found Earth, and after the Conquest, they kept fighting against her. They’ve tried to attack Earth several times, but the High Queen and the nobles have repulsed them every time.”

  “Quite incomplete, but essentially accurate,” said Morvilind. “More importantly, sufficient for our purposes. As you might recall, the Elven homeworld remains under the control of the Archons, rebels against the High Queen. Recently the Archons have been making war against the frost giants. Consequently, the Great King of the frost giants has decided to make peace with the High Queen Tarlia and ally with her against the Archons, and so has dispatched an ambassador to Earth to discuss terms.”

  “I see,” I said. A bitter thought flickered through my mind. If the frost giants had made peace with the High Queen fifteen years earlier, my father would not have been wounded with one of their weapons. The frostfever would not have claimed him and my mother. It would not have infected Russell, and I would not be standing here. Morvilind would not possess a vial of my heart’s blood, able to use it to inflict whatever magical torment he wished upon me.

  “Undoubtedly,” said Morvilind. He tapped a key, and the left screen shifted to show the image of a proud black-haired Elven noble in a long coat of red and gold. “The High Queen has chosen Duke Carothrace of Madison for the honor of receiving the frost giant ambassador.”

  Madison? That was the state capital of Wisconsin, only about ninety miles west of Milwaukee. I could get there in an hour and a half. Maybe less, if I took my motorcycle and ignored the speed limit.

  The alarm in my gut got tighter.

  Madison was close, which meant whatever Morvilind wanted me to do, he wanted me to do soon. The worst jobs I had ever gotten from him had come with a time limit. The less time I had, the less time I had to prepare, to plan, to make backups. The less time I had, the more likely it was that something to go seriously wrong. The last job with a time limit Morvilind had given me had been Paul McCade’s mansion last month.

  A lot of things had gone wrong during that job, and I had barely gotten out alive.

  “This,” said Morvilind, oblivious or indifferent to my alarm, “is the frost giant ambassador, the Jarl Rimethur.”

  He tapped a key, and an image of a strange, alien creature appeared upon the central monitor. At first glance, the Elves looked human, but the second glance removed that impression. You couldn’t miss the pointed ears, the sharper features, the larger eyes that gave them a distinctly alien look.

  There was no way anyone could mistake the creature on the screen for a human.

  For one thing, he was nine feet tall, maybe ten. His skin was a peculiar silvery-blue color, and a human couldn’t have skin that color without dying from oxygen deprivation. His hair was the color of gray ice, and his eyes glowed with a peculiar harsh white light, like the sun shining through a blizzard wind. He wore elaborate silvery armor, and a long black cloak lined with some kind of fur. From his neck hung an amulet upon a chain, a silvery disc inscribed with odd symbols. In its center rested a crystal like a pale blue eye, and it too gave off an odd light. In his right hand rested a sword wreathed with a cold blue mist. It was the sword of a frost giant, capable of inflicting frostfever from its wounds.

  A weapon like that had killed my father.

  “That is Jarl Rimethur?” I said aloud.

  “Correct,” said Morvilind. “Note the amulet about his neck. It is a relic called the Ringbyrne Amulet, and it has been in the possession of the frost giants for millennia.”

  The dread in my mind snapped into focus, and with cold clarity I knew what Morvilind intended me to do.

  “You want me to steal the Ringbyrne Amulet,” I said.

  “You deduce correctly,” said Morvilind. “Today’s date is August 3rd. Rimethur and his retainers will arrive from the Shadowlands in Madison on August 13th, in the three hundred and fourteenth year of the Conquest. Or August 13th, 2327, according to the old calendar.”

  “Ten days,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “You want me to steal a magical relic from a frost giant noble with only ten days to prepare.”

  “Your window of opportunity is brief,” said Morvilind. “According to his official schedule, Rimethur will only stay as a guest of Duke Carothrace for three days. Then his party will travel by car to Washington DC, where he shall meet the President and the other useless puppets that staff the government of the United States. After that, he will go to the Red Palace of the High Queen to discuss the actual terms of the treaty. Once he is in the Red Palace, you will have no chance of stealing the amulet. I suggest you do so while he is in Madison.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t do it.”

  Morvilind lifted his eyebrows, and I felt the cold weight of his gaze sink.

  “You are disobeying me?” he said, his voice mild.

  “No, my lord, of course not,” I said. “I’m saying that I physically can’t do this, no more than I could breathe underwater. He’s a frost giant, which means he has powerful magic of his own. He’ll be surrounded by Elven nobles the entire time he is here, and probably a few Knights of the Inquisition, which means I can’t use my spells around him because they’ll sense it. If I had more than ten days, I might be able to pull something off, but I can’t.”

  “You are naturally immune to frostfever,” said Morvilind. “That will give you an advantage, since many of the frost giants’ spells employ that effect.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I can’t do this.”

  “You will,” said Morvilind, calm as ever. “Your brother has only six more restorative spells before his frostfever is cured. It would be tragic if you failed and he died when we were that close to his final cure.”

  A wave of hate went through me, and I wanted more than anything to seize his neck and sink my fingers into his throat until he stopped breathing. But I couldn’t do that. The vial of my heart’s blood he carried permitted him to kill me with magic at any time. Not that he needed it. He could kill me with magic a dozen different ways before I could even raise my arms.

  And if I died, if I failed, he would stop casting the cure spells, and Russell would die in agony as the frostfever wracked his body.

  Morvilind had me boxed in so perfectly, so thoroughly, that there was no way out.

  Wait, that was wrong. He had made sure there was just one way out.

  To do what he wanted and steal that damned amulet without getting caught or killed.

  “I am confident you will find a way,” said Morvilind. He smiled briefly, which made him look about as warm as a January wind in Wisconsin. “I suggest you depart. You have a great deal to do, and very little time in which to do it.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I managed to say.

  I left his mansion without another word.

  Chapter 2: An Unexpected Cancellation

  I climbed in my van and drove back to Milwaukee proper, furious and terrified at the same time.

  I had done dangerous jobs before. I had stolen items from powerful Elven nobles, from the vaults of banks guarded by armed men. Yet Morvilind had never sent me to steal an item under such heavy security before, and it would definitely be under heavy security. Rimethur was an ambassador, so he would have his own guards, to say n
othing of whatever magic the frost giant himself wielded. Duke Carothrace and his chief vassals would be there, and most Elven nobles could work at least some magic. Probably Duke Tamirlas of Milwaukee would attend as well, along with at some of the other American Elven nobles, and the High Queen might even send some of her household from the Red Palace. There would be armed Homeland Security officers. Earth-manufactured bullets didn’t work very well against Elves and frost giants, but they worked just fine against any Rebels who tried to make trouble.

  More importantly, they would work just fine against me.

  How the hell was I supposed to pull this off?

  I stopped at a storage unit I rented at the edge of the city proper, a place I used to store equipment and items I didn’t want to keep in my apartment. I cleaned up the van, making it ready for the next time I would need it, and then swapped the van for my motorcycle, a Royal Engines NX-9 sportbike with a six cylinder engine.

  I liked that bike. It could go fast.

  I rode home, breaking the speed limit and weaving in and out of traffic. The bike’s speed and power gave me a sense of freedom, even if it was only an illusion. The rational part of my mind pointed out that I was scared and angry, and getting pulled over by some Homeland Security patroller would not help anything. For that matter, losing control on a turn and splattering my brains all over the inside of my helmet would not help anyone.

  I got my temper under control and slowed down.

  My apartment was in the basement of an old building on the edge of Wauwatosa, not far from the medical college. Thanks to forged documentation, my landlord thought that I was a medical student. So long as I paid my rent on time, I don’t think he bothered to check too closely.