Winter Witch Read Free

Ellasif. His expression was so fierce that for a moment Ellasif expected him to throw the weapon in her face.
    “Attend your task,” he growled, reciting Red Ochme’s first rule of battle.
    A wave of shame swept Ellasif. Everyone in White Rook knew what to do in case of an attack. She was expected to be in the loft, greeting anything that crossed the fire moat with an arrow to the throat. Nothing, not even tending her mother, should have kept her from her battle task. Everyone in the village had already obeyed his or her duty.
    Everyone but Ellasif.
    She acknowledged Jadrek’s reproof with a curt nod and ran back into the house. She barred the door behind her. Straight to the bed she strode, pausing only briefly when she heard Red Ochme call for fire arrows. She longed to be in the battle, not on its edge.
    Marit bowed her back in another fit of agony. Her breath came in faint gasps. Ellasif hurried to the foot of the bed and saw that the babe was finally emerging. She cradled the crowning head and slipped her fingers around the tiny neck to make sure the cord wasn’t entangled. All seemed well. There was no reason the child could not be born now.
    “Once more,” she urged.
    Marit’s eyes fluttered open. Her gaze focused on her daughter’s face. Ellasif smiled with more confidence than she felt and gave her mother an encouraging nod.
    Her mother gave one final effort, and the newborn slid into her sister’s waiting hands.
    “A girl,” Ellasif exulted, holding the infant up for their mother to see.
    Marit smiled and fainted dead away.
    And so it happened that Ellasif was the only witness to her infant sister’s first breath. What followed was not a newborn’s wail but merry peals of laughter.
    Shock froze Ellasif’s limbs, and dread gripped her heart with fingers of ice. Everyone knew that first-breath laughter was the sign of a tiren’kii.
    She stared at the bloody infant still tethered by its birth cord, still laughing. She wondered how this could be her newborn sister, this tiny creature so new to life and so soon fated to die. She was cursed.
    The folk of White Rook would sooner carry a haunch of venison through a sow bear’s den than allow so dangerous a child to live. No one knew exactly what the tiren’kii were, nor why they occasionally possessed Ulfen newborns, but understanding such mysteries held little allure for Ellasif’s people. What they did understand was that such children were dangerous, their spirits tainted by the fey powers harbored in nearby Irrisen. No such child could be suffered to live among the Ulfen.
    And yet, Ellasif thought, this was her sister. She had sworn to protect this child.
    A new voice joined the chaos of storm and battle, a sound born of the unholy marriage of a beast’s roar and an eagle’s cry. It reverberated in the deepest recesses of Ellasif’s body, chilling her liver and paralyzing her lungs. It was a sound she had heard before only from a great distance, a sound that had made her huddle under her blankets and recite the three prayers she remembered over and over until dawn.
    It was the shriek of an ice troll.
    Marit’s eyes snapped open, the reflex of a warrior coming fully awake at the sound of danger.
    “Ellasif, to the loft,” she croaked. She sounded even worse than Ellasif had feared earlier.
    Ellasif laid the infant down on her mother’s belly. Marit gripped her eldest daughter’s wrist with startling strength. Her fever-bright eyes burned.
    “Take the babe to the loft,” she commanded. “You swore to care for her. I hold you to your oath.”
    Before Ellasif could respond, her mother slipped back into unconsciousness.
    Ellasif set her jaw and went to work with sure hands. Everything lay ready: a knife to cut the cord, clean linen thread to tie it off, a soft blanket in which to wrap the babe. Moments later, Ellasif climbed the ladder to the loft, one hand holding the rungs, the other clasping the bundled infant to her shoulder.
    She laid the