Free Frostfire by Lynn Viehl Page A

started to speak, he held up one gloved hand. “While you are there, you cannot contact Michael Cyprien or make him aware of your presence or your purpose.”
    Nick felt like spitting. “You have got to be kidding me.”
    Gabriel rested his hand on her shoulder before addressing Richard. “My lord, Michael is the American seigneur. For Nicola and me to enter his territory without his permission or knowledge—”
    “—is against our laws. I know, Gabriel. I wrote the damned law.” Richard sighed. “The situation is highly explosive. Were Michael to learn that this rogue was on his territory, he would have no choice but to conduct the hunt himself, alone. But I believe it is a trap, set to lure him into the hands of our enemies again. After what was done to Michael in Rome, I cannot take that risk.”
    “But it’s fine with you if Gabriel and I get snatched instead and tortured to death?” Nick looked sideways. “Baby, we are so out of here.”
    “Wait, ma belle amie .” Gabriel regarded the high lord. “You believe that Nicola and I can succeed where Cyprien would fail? Why?”
    “It’s because I can pass as human,” Nick guessed. “Cyprien can’t.” She glared at Richard. “And neither can Gabriel, in case you forgot.”
    “I have forgotten nothing,” Richard assured her. “But there are other reasons it must be the two of you. Very old reasons.” He shifted to gaze at the water cascading from the fountain top to the rippling pool in its wide basin. “I will tell you everything you wish to know, but you must swear to me never to speak of it to another soul.”
    “We swear,” Nick said flatly. “Okay, now tell us what the deal is.”
    “There have been many secret wars in which we have fought for our right to exist,” Richard said slowly. “Even now, our kind still struggle for survival—as you and Gabriel have witnessed yourselves. But not every warrior goes into battle to fight for life.” He pulled back his hood, revealing his part-human, part-changeling visage. “Some, my dear, go to war to die.”

PART TWO

    Snow Moon

    How the Ahnclann Came to Be
     
     
     
    W e have always lived on the mountain. We were here before the moon-skin, before the fur-thieves, before even the oldest of the dark-hair. We saw the first eagle, and the last river of ice. We were here before things were known and named by the two-leg. The elders say that when the Master of All Things brought the mountain itself from below, we sprang up with it.
    The rivers who came from the ice called us the Chahanat, but we called ourselves nothing, for we knew what we were.
    In the old times before the two-leg, we hunted through the trees and above the highest cliffs, in the darkness and in the storm. We made our homes in the deepest caves, and there mated, bore our young, and grew old. The dark-hair were the first to come to the mountain, but they named us for their fear. When they found our trails, they never followed them or tried to find us in the night. Nor did the fur-thieves who came later, once we had killed enough of them.
    In the old times we were many, but the fur-thieves brought pestilence that ate at us, taking our young and our old. They killed many dark-hair with the same sickness. Soon the last of the dark-hair left for the flatlands, but we could not. We were as bound to the mountain as it was to us.
    While our numbers dwindled, our males began fighting over our females, but it was for nothing, for many who survived the sickness became barren, and fewer and fewer young came. There was nothing that could be done, for there were no others like us. We had watched herds and packs and flocks of other creatures die out in such ways, and we knew that our end time was upon us.
    That was when the moon-skin came with their wagons, with their females and their young, and settled on the mountain. They made their own caves of cut trees and piled stones, and grew things and kept herds instead of hunting. Some of the females