Page 80 of Lord of Fire and Ice

“Because it’s a baby, I expect,” Brandr said with a grin. Always looking out for someone else, his princess was back.

“She. Not it. And her name is Linnea. She’s not hurt, is she?” Katla snatched her up and examined her down to counting her toes. The child quieted and tucked its tiny thumb between a pair of rosebud lips.

Brandr sank down beside her. Of the three of them, only he was bleeding, but that’s how he’d have ordered matters if he’d been given a choice. He’d already decided the wound on his leg wasn’t serious. Blood had matted his trousers to his flesh, and it would bleed again when the wound was cleaned, but there was no major damage.

“What did you…before I…” Katla began. “I saw you and…there was…”

“What did you see?” He’d known this was coming, but he’d hoped to break the truth to her in a gentler way. Of course, there was nothing gentle about what he was.

“You were holding fire,” she whispered.

“Ja.” He blew on his palm. “Like this?”

The blue flame sparked to cheerful life. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to summon fire. As if his life had turned a perfect circle. Complete.

Katla scooted away from him, her eyes round as an owlet’s. “Are you a…seid-man?”

Brandr snorted. “What do you take me for? I dabble not in magick. You’ve been in my bed, and you’ve seen me fight. Do I seem the weak-wristed type who takes power by dark methods?”

“No, but…how else could you do that?”

One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve always been able to call the fire. I set any number of accidental ones when I was a boy, and was whipped for it more often than I like to remember. Mayhap if I’d told my father the truth of how the fires happened, he’d have seen the matter differently, but I doubt it.”

She leaned forward to peer at the tiny flames licking his palm but not raising so much as a blister.

“Some are gifted with prodigious memory. Others can sing the stars from the sky. I was given control of the fire.” He snuffed out the flame between his palms. “At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn’t understand it myself until I met a sorcerer in Byzantium and sat under his tutelage. According to him, there are four elements—earth, air, water, and fire. Once in a great age, someone is born with the ability to call a particular element to them, to shape and control it.”

“And you’re one of them?”

He grimaced at her. “I’m a fire mage, Katla. I don’t know how I do it, any more than I know everything involved in drawing a breath. It’s just part of who I am.”

“I see.” She stared at the burning sethus as the back wall collapsed in a shower of sparks.

“To control flame takes concentration,” he said as he rose and retrieved his sword. It was still implanted deeply in the big man’s chest. “I wasn’t able to stop the fire right away because…well, I was a little distracted.”

He pulled out the sword and cleaned the blade on the grass. “Did that worthless piece of shite harm you?” He shot her a piercing gaze.

“No, once I told him you’d be coming, he decided to wait until he’d dealt with you,” she said with a sigh. “Thank the gods.”

“It wouldn’t have been your fault.”

“Nothing happened.” She shook with delayed tremors but managed to settle herself. Then she asked in a small voice, “Did you start that fire?”

“No, not on the house, at any rate.” He shoved his sword back into the shoulder baldric. He pointed to the mound of cooling meat that used to be a man splayed on the ground. “That was his doing.”

“Oh.”

“I’m very careful about how and when I use my…ability.”

Brandr noticed a bulge beneath his slain enemy’s belt. He bent and fished it out. It was a small figurine of a pregnant female. He’d never seen its like, but the way his palm tingled, he sensed it was a thing of power.

“The return of the Old Ones and the Old Ways,” the man he’d killed had said.

Could this image have anything to do with that?