Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  Watching him helped me not look at my hands groping through empty air or across illusory vistas that still looked to me like streaming masses of ribbons. Often I shut my eyes and felt along the rugged cliff rather than grow dizzy from the confusion between what I could see and what I could touch.

  Hadn’t it always been that way with Andevai? When I had first met him, I had seen one man, but I had had to discover the part of himself he kept concealed.

  “Catherine, are you paying attention? Don’t grab there. Up a little… with your right hand… there.”

  Often we rested on ledges no wider than my feet, leaning against the rock wall, and I was grateful for each respite because my forearms were beginning to burn and my fingers to get as dry as if they were being sandpapered. But we could not fully relax until we reached what I saw as a polished clamshell of a platform tucked along the curve of an ebony tower. After he smashed the rungs of what looked to me like a glass ladder that led up from below, we sat huddled against the wall and shared half of the water in the second flask. He dozed off, slumped against me. I could not sleep; my hands were smarting and my arms felt numb.

  Were the courts still feasting? No movement troubled the bridges and spans and balconies whose complex patterns haunted me. I stared at the beautiful city and I hated it for lying to me. I hated myself for seeing it as beautiful, for believing it must be so because all the tales said it was.

  People told so many stories whose fractured truths hid as much as they revealed. What we did not know could hurt us. What we chose to ignore could cause harm, maybe to ourselves and maybe to others.

  Vai sighed in his sleep. I rested my head against his. We had come by twists and turns more than halfway to the outer wall. I thought surely I could let him rest for a few more breaths, but then I heard a scuffling and scratching below and above. The rasp of tongues tickled the cut on my arm, and my blood oozed. The cursed creatures were tracking us again.

  Vai stiffened, going so tense that I thought he had woken, but he was still asleep. He murmured words in the village dialect he had spoken as a child. Most of the words slipped past, too thickly patois for me to understand. Then he spoke almost desperately. “Don’t touch me!”

  He jolted awake and shoved me away so roughly that he almost pushed me off the edge.

  I grabbed his arms, dragging myself to a stop with his weight. “Vai! It’s me. It’s Catherine.”

  He sucked in air. For an instant I was frighteningly certain he did not recognize me. Then all the air went out of him. He pulled an arm out of my grasp and rubbed his eyes.

  “What were you dreaming?”

  He looked away, jaw clenched. “Nothing.”

  I pressed a hand on his chest. He flinched.

  I sat back, withdrawing my hand. He curled his hands into fists, and I watched him climb the pinnacle of disdain as his expression settled into the scornful arrogance that had so scalded me when we had first been thrown together. One wrong word and he would lash out. Not with his fists—as Auntie Djeneba had once said, “He don’ seem like that kind”—but with words meant to cut and intimidate.

  “I don’t understand how you can see through the illusion,” I said soothingly. “I still see the city. The ziggurat is quite splendid if you don’t mind knowing you’re meant to be the main course at the feast. I’m ready to go on, if you are. You know I trust you, my love.”

  “We can’t get out of this foul pit quickly enough.” His voice was harsh, but I understood the anger was not directed at me.

  I took a swallow of water and offered him the rest.

  He wiped his mouth, his lips so dry they were cracking. “I hear them. They’re following us again. There’s one gap we have to clear. That gap is the one you described as a moat. But I have a plan for that. If you’re sure, Catherine, utterly sure the creatures can’t harm you.”

  “I’m sure,” I lied. I could have become an actress in the theater after all, because he did not guess how my heart trembled. “Remember, I was bitten by a salter and not infested. The teeth of the plague can’t take hold in my blood.”

  But even though it was true I could not be harmed by the bite of a human infested with the salt plague, the bite of a ghoul was rumored to be far more potent and virulent. I had to take the chance. Nothing mattered except that we escape, and this was the way we had to do it.

  We climbed, sometimes a little up or a little down but always transverse. Once I thought I was moving through a fall of water, only there was no pressure and no current, only grit sifting into my face, the dust and salt of the mortal world. Was this place pitted with gates into salt mines all across the mortal world? Now was not the time to find out.

  He had plotted our route well. Had we not had so many narrow ledges on which to take quick rests, I would never have made it, for my arms were beginning to feel they were being squeezed in a vise. Naturally he spoke no word of complaint, just massaged my forearms whenever we halted, although his, too, had become as hard as the rock we clung to. My legs trembled from fatigue, and my buttocks ached from all the pushing up and down and sideways.

  He whispered. “Look, love. Look. We’ve made it to the edge.”

  Below us a path paved with gems meandered alongside the moat. On its far side rose the outer wall, looking to my eyes like the forbidding face of an ice cliff. On the path roamed the personages of the courts, resplendent in their vivid robes and changeable aspects. Groups flashed along more distant bridges and ramps toward us, as if gathering to hear a poet sing.

  Vai unwound the kerchief he’d knotted around his neck. Easing his sword partway out of the sheath, he cut his skin for the first time.

  Red blood welled up.

  A cry shivered through the air. Dust spattered from the walls.

  Vai pressed the kerchief to his wound to sop up the blood. The greedy whispering of the courts scraped the air like fingernails down a chalkboard. Hadn’t they had enough blood? Could they ever be satisfied?

  “Catherine.” He handed me the kerchief, then clambered to where the moat ran narrowest. The liquid in the moat was churned into a froth of pinkish foam like spume bubbling from the mouth of a dying man. I probed with a foot down a wall I could feel but not see, and found a toehold. Easing myself down, I settled my weight on one aching foot; my calf cramped but I had to grit my teeth and endure it. I let go with my upper hand and groped for a lower place to grab. A hand, or claw, slammed up, dislodging my boot.

  So I leaped down among them. Cats always land on their feet. I plunged forward, smearing the blood that stained the kerchief onto any surface I could find: their robes, their outstretched hands. I rubbed a speck of blood on the path, feeling dirt beneath my fingers instead of the smooth silver walkway I saw with my eyes.

  The fine, elegant people turned on each other in a frenzy. I jammed the kerchief into the gaping jaw of a being wearing the face of a distinguished elderly man and dressed in the formal court clothes a man would have worn a hundred years earlier, all silk and gold-threaded embroidery.

  I shoved my way out of the clawing, jibbering crowd as they converged to tear at the one who was suckling on the cloth. A few had enough sense to smell Vai’s escape. I raced out in front of them.

  The interior maze ended without touching the outer wall. It was this gap we had to cross. He dashed across the moat as if there were no liquid in it and started climbing the outer wall, but he was still within reach of their teeth as he tested a grip. I followed him into the steaming waters, but the molten fire in the moat was an illusion. It was all grainy dirt.

  A creature glided toward me. She had the seeming of a woman whose coiled hair was laden with gold coins. I thrust. My sword pierced her. Pain shivered up my arm, but I pushed, leaning my full weight into her.

  She shattered, coming apart like a pouch of sand when it is ripped open.

  Where the grains soaked into the ground, the veil of illusion cleared. As if through glass, I saw the dusty surface of salt. I smelled the sun of the mortal world,
and heard the shrill whistle of wind blowing beneath an empty sky.

  “Catherine!”

  The exhalation of their breath iced my neck. To climb I had to sheathe my sword. Fear propelled me. I swarmed up the face of the cliff as he hoarsely called directions so I need not pause and look, for if I had hesitated, they would have grabbed me.

  “Up three hands, now right, another hand farther, so you see it? There! Your foot to where your knee is. In a half step. There, that’s right. Push up, it’s wide enough to hold you. See my left foot? Let go with your left hand. You grab where my foot was…”

  So we climbed, me sweating from the pain that flamed in my arms and hands. I was so exhausted I was shaking, but I was not going to lose him.

  He disappeared over the rim, then reappeared to haul me up beside him. I shrugged out of the pack. We lay panting side by side. The length of my blade was pressed into me by the weight of his leg alongside mine. I rested on my back, staring at the pewter bowl of the sky and what appeared to me now as the high white wall of the palace rising behind my head exactly as I had seen it before I had entered. Vai lay on his stomach, and he appeared to be looking over the edge of an escarpment as he stared into the pit we had escaped. I had to shut my eyes because I could not tell which direction was up. I felt dizzy. His ragged breathing was all the sign I needed to know that he, too, was fighting the toll taken by our exertions.

  “We’ve got to keep moving,” I said. “We’ve got to reach the jade doors and retrieve Queen Anacaona’s head. Someone is sure to come after us.”

  “We need to retrieve what?” Vai sat up as if he had finally woken out of a bad dream.

  I opened my eyes. “I’ll explain later. There’s a jade door with warded ground somewhere along this exterior. We can cross there.”

  We stumbled to our feet as I hoisted the pack. Vai stowed the tools and slung on the carpenter’s apron. His face was gray with exhaustion, but he trudged forward stubbornly. My entire body hurt as we staggered along the rim of the palace.

  I wanted to ask Vai if he saw the white stone walls rising beside us, if he saw a plaza stretching to all sides like a sheep-mown pasture, but the effort of forming words was too great. All I could do was look ahead, hoping we would soon reach the jade door and its warded ground.

  A cloud of crows swept past, flying as before a blow. Wind sheared across my back. I faltered, looking over my shoulder. A wrath of clouds boiled toward us. Lightning flashed, although no thunder sounded. Rain lashed the ground in sheets.

  I had seen that storm before. I knew what it portended.

  I grabbed Vai’s hand. “It’s my sire coming. We’ve got to run.”

  Light flashed on the horizon ahead of us. It splintered into a smoky tide like the crests of multiple waves tumbling toward us: a dragon’s dream.

  Vai’s hand tightened on mine as he sucked in a harsh breath.

  We were caught between Hunt and dream, between death and obliteration.

  A plain black coach rolled up, pulled by four white horses whose hooves did not quite touch the ground. A coachman sat on the front of the box. He had the white skin and short, spiky, lime-whitened hair of a man of Celtic birth. He wore a plain black coat, thin leather gloves, and a hat that he tipped up with the handle of his whip, greeting us. The footman hanging on at the back of the coach was no man but an eru; she appeared as a woman with black skin, short black hair, a third eye in the center of her forehead, and her wings neatly furled. She did not let go of the coach. Instead the door swung open. My sire beckoned from the interior.

  “Best hurry,” he said with a calm smile. “This coach is a refuge, a sort of warded ground all on its own. The tide is coming in fast. You’ll be safe inside here.”

  His sober dash jacket and neat black trousers made him look like a humble clerk on the way to his day’s work at his master’s offices. You would never have guessed he had recently hunted down and killed some poor soul in the mortal world, and then been forced to bow before the spirit courts and have all that power ripped from him to feed them instead. Not until you looked into his eyes. His gaze had as much mercy as a knife in the dark.

  “Do you imagine we believe you?” asked Vai in the tone of a man at his supper who has just been told that the crust of bread set before him is the haunch of beef he requested.

  “I imagine you have no choice but to join me. I have something of yours, Cat.” He indicated the Taino basket in which I kept the cacica’s head.

  “How could you get that?” I demanded.

  “I saw you hang it on the tree. Best hurry, Daughter.”

  I looked at Vai, and Vai looked at me.

  A smile brightened his weary face too briefly, but it was enough to strengthen me. There is more than one way to skin a cat. There were two doors in the coach, one that opened onto the spirit world and one that opened into the mortal world.

  Vai nodded.

  I swung up into the interior of the coach and gripped my sire’s arms so he could not slam the door in Vai’s face and thus leave him outside at the mercy of the tide.

  “Father! I missed you so much!” I leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, my lips warm against his cold, cold skin.

  I had the intense pleasure of watching my sire blink in bewildered astonishment.

  Before he could react, I snatched the basket off the seat and slung it over my body. Then I clambered past him. Grabbing the latch, I pushed down with all my strength.

  It did not budge. It did not shift at all.

  I hissed, “Open up, I beg you.”

  The latch’s eyes glimmered into life as two stripes of light on brass. Its mouth was a flat line. It said nothing. And it stayed stubbornly locked.

  The other door slammed shut. The coach lurched forward, swinging in a wide turn. I tumbled onto the upholstered bench opposite my sire as Vai pushed past me and, in his turn, grabbed the latch. Sparks spat with a cracking cascade of pops. With a grunt of pain Vai hit the bench and sat down hard next to me. He swore as he shook his hand.

  My sire touched fingers to the spot I had kissed. “A transparent ploy. Truly, I thought better of you, Cat. You might have known I would have anticipated such a move.”

  He rapped on the ceiling of the coach with his cane.

  “Back to the pit,” he said in a conversational tone I knew the coachman could hear. His gaze settled on me. “You’ve done well, Daughter. You’ve proven you are strong and stubborn, but still not quite smart enough. You’re still not quite thinking things through. Affection weakens you. I gave him a chance to survive so he would still be living when you found him. This time I will dump him straight into the pit. I don’t need him any longer. Let me assure your tender heart that he will feel no pain once they’ve drained his blood, for the blood of mortals is the force that gives the courts power over the rest of us. He’ll become something like them, only without a mind.”

  I hadn’t known I could move so fast. My sword slid like lightning out of its sheath. I knew exactly where to aim: up under his ribs at his heart.

  Vai slammed into me, jostling my point so it skipped off the upholstery and lodged in a corner. I cursed and tugged it free.

  “A killing blow will kill you, not him!” He kicked past my legs and shoved open the door that led back into the spirit world. “Stay where you are, Catherine.”

  “Vai!”

  “Better this than the salt plague, love.”

  He jumped out of the rushing coach into the path of the incoming tide of light.

  I did not think. I leaped after him.

  The dragon’s dream roared down over us in a rainbow of violent colors. The call of a bell split the world, air from water, fire from stone, flesh from spirit. The vibration rang up through the ground and down from the sky until there was no existence except the tremor of sound shivering the entire world as if the world were the drum being beaten.

  I threw my arms around him, and I kissed him. Let his embrace be the last thing I knew. He held me tightly. A cloak of m
agic rippled from around his body to envelop me as within wings.

  The tide ripped over us like sea spray followed by the pounding of a huge crashing wave. We were driven down as an abyss opened. Every part of existence yawed sideways, then tipped upside down. We fell into smoke as the world around us vanished.

  20

  Death wasn’t all bad, because it felt a lot like kissing Vai. Our embrace distracted me for longer than it should have. Then I remembered what had happened. Still clutching him, I broke off the kiss.

  Inhaled.

  I could not breathe.

  I could not breathe.

  I could not breathe.

  An undertow sucked me down.

  The abyss of the past is a black chasm. It is too dark to see clearly, yet its waters run all through us.

  I am six years old. In the drowning depths of the Rhenus River, my papa and mama are dying. As the water closes over my head, my mother’s strong hand slips out from mine. She has lost me, and I’ve lost her. I open my mouth to cry for her, but all that rushes in is smoke.

  We were going to die in the smoke unless I could find a gate and cut our way out.

  “Mama,” I whispered, clawing my way through dense fog toward a half-glimpsed beacon.

  For there she was, she and Daniel, in the shadow of the ice cliff. They were striding across a stony shore to meet the men who were pushing a boat down to the ice-gray waters for their escape.

  “Mama,” I said, louder, finding strength in desperation.

  She halted, dragging Daniel to a stop. “Did you hear something?”

  He looked up at the face of the ice. “Just the wolves and the wind.”

  “No, something else.” She rested a hand on her belly and extended the other arm as if hoping to touch something she could not quite see. “A child. I heard a child calling to me.”

  Blessed Tanit, keep me in your heart. Do not let me die.

  I will not die.

  I bit my lip hard enough to raise blood as I reached for and grasped the memory of her hand.