There was nothing more. The red-haired man rose and came to me, murmuring that I should follow him. I did. Thus ended my first meeting with my grandfather, and thus began my first day as an Arameri. It was not the worst of the days to come.
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“I know you walked into the spirit world
with a servant of the enemy.
She walked in these lands and released a nest. My own servants should not have allowed her to escape, but their actions serve me regardless. You will spy out a fitting sacrifice, one whose blood is rich and strong. Because if you don’t, then on Hallows’ Night the hunt will track the girl you call your cousin until we corner her.”
Dismembered and her head thrown in a well.
I felt my courage flayed off my skin, an obsidian dagger slicing away filaments of hope.
Oh, Blessed Tanit. Gracious Melqart. Noble Ba’al. The threat of mage Houses, princes, and Romans hunting Bee through Adurnam seemed pathetic now. The mansa had been right, hadn’t he? We should have gone with the cold mages, for then none of this would have happened.
None of this would have happened now. But the Wild Hunt would track her down eventually, if not this year, then the next. It was only a matter of time for Beatrice Hassi Barahal, who walked the dreams of dragons in the unwitting service of the courts’ enemy. No one could stand against the Wild Hunt. No one.
Praise for Cold Magic
“An exuberant narrative with great energy and inventive world building…I utterly loved it.”
—Fantasy Book Critic
“Elliott pulls out all the stops in a wildly imaginative narrative that will ring happy bells for fans of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.”
—Publishers Weekly
Books by Kate Elliott
The Spiritwalker Trilogy
Cold Magic
Cold Fire
Crossroads
Spirit Gate
Shadow Gate
Traitors’ Gate
Crown of Stars
King’s Dragon
Prince of Dogs
The Burning Stone
Child of Flame
The Gathering Storm
In the Ruins
Crown of Stars
Jaran
Jaran
An Earthly Crown
His Conquering Sword
The Law of Becoming
Writing with Melanie Rawn & Jennifer Roberson
The Golden Key
Writing as Alis A. Rasmussen
The Labyrinth Gate
The Highroad Trilogy
A Passage of Stars
Revolution’s Shore
The Price of Ransom
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Map (1837)
Map (1838)
Author’s Note
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
extras
meet the author
introducing
Praise for Cold Magic
Books by Kate Elliott
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Katrina Elliott
Excerpt from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms copyright © 2010 by N. K. Jemisin
Maps by Jeffrey Ward
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Orbit
Hachette Book Group
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
www.orbitbooks.net
First eBook Edition: September 2011
Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-19635-2