Soldiers of Ice by David Cook Page B

feast on your cold meat,” the creature cackled near her ear before it released her. Its breath was chilling, without a hint of warmth either in spirit or body.
    The ranger didn’t answer, nor did the creature care. In springing hops, it leaped from block to block, bounding across the slide, but never far from where the Harper lay.
    Martine remained still, watching and gathering her strength.
    I’m too weak to get away yet, Martine calculated after noting the creature’s nimble speed as it crossed the treacherous tangle of the slide. She felt wary but not fearful, since the thing didn’t seem immediately intent upon killing her.
    Indeed, for the moment, it seemed to have forgetten her as it scrambled over the slide, poking here, sniffing there, all the time muttering to itself. Eyeing her weird captor, the ranger tried to match the creature to all the fiends she’d ever seen or heard of. With its stunted size and shimmering skin, it looked like a malevolent sprite sculpted from Soldiers of Ice
    69
     
    ice. Its form lacked gentle curves, each joint capped by glittering little spurs. Nothing about it matched her experiences nor any of the tales she’d heard. Glacier lore was not her strong suit.
    While the strange creature capered in the ghasfiy light of fading magic, Martine discreetly probed the snow for her gear, a search that turned up her sword and pouch but little More . Jazrac’s cinder was still there, she noted with relief, along with his dagger. She thought of statdng it in the snow in hope Jazrac might be at his crystal ball at that very moment, but she couldn’t. Calling for his help now was admitting her own failure—and she still had hopes of succeeding. All she needed was a little time to get away.
    “Who are you?” she called to the impish thing. The question was partially a stall and partially curiosity.
    “You talk—you talk again!” Sliding and bounding, the ice sprite careened down the slope to land not far from her feet. A stream of dislodged ice and snow clattered down after it.
    WZho are you?” she repeated.
    “Me? Me?” The thing sprang about in glee, all the while grinning in cold, false modesty. “Hot Breath, you were captured by Icy-white the Clever, Icy-white the Quick—”
    “The greatest of the…” It was a thin trick, but Martine was banking on the thing’s simpleminded vanity to finish the phrase.
    “yes, yes. The greatest of Auril’s children, the greatest of the mephits. Clever warrior I am to capture you. Vreesar will be much impressed with me.”
    Auril, mephit, Vreesar… Martine seized on the three clues, even as she nodded in false awe. Auril was the Frost Maiden, goddess of cold, and supposedly worshiped by the people of the far north, not that the Harper had ever seen one of these so-called ice priests. Mephits she knew even less about—some type of elemental imp or fiend. Still, it 70
    The Harpers
     
    was enough to confirm her suspicion. Shifting closer to her sword, she asked anyway.
    ‘q’his isn’t your home, is it?”
    The mephit stopped and looked all about, head snapping to and fro in nervous tics. “Home? Oh, no. Oh, no. This place is too warm. But Vreesar found the path and wanted to explore. Dragged me with him, he did. Made me come.”
    Her guess was right; something had passed through the rift. But how many, and how dangerous were they? She needed to know if all her work to seal the riff was too late.
    “Vreesar?”
    “Vreesar’s mean, bosses me around, thinks he can tell Icy-White what to do, but now look who caught Hot Breath.
    Now Vreesar’s just—” The mephit’s gaze strayed upward, looking at something behind Martine, and as it did, the bold words in its throat choked off in a stunted gurgle.
    “Vreesar is very clever—and quiet,” Icy-White concluded in a squeaked whisper.
    The mephit had barely spoken before Martine, her fighting senses coming back to her, scooted around to the side so she could see both the mephit and where