Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  Vai did not let go of my hand as he kept us running. A gusting trumpet cry chased us. A dark shape launched into the air and, twisting, landed with a ground-shaking thud right in front of us. Together we stumbled to a halt and stared down Leviathan. Rory stalked up beside us, trembling but determined to stand with us.

  The dragon was now far larger than it had been on the lawn earlier in the day. Although clouds shrouded the sky, stars glimmered in its scales like a vision of unknown shores. The head lowered to peruse us. Eyes like emeralds spun in dizzying circles. Through those spinning eyes I watched as through a window into a hazy mist where shadows of figures shuddered into view and melted away. Was that my mother, staggering through a chaos of battle, one eye bleeding and her lower arm horribly shattered so bone stuck through the torn flesh? I swayed at the sight of her blood and pain.

  “Lord of All!” Vai shut his eyes so as not to be caught in the whirlpool. “The creature has cut the thread of my magic. I can’t touch the ice.”

  He tried to push me behind him so it would eat him first, but I twisted out of his grasp and stepped forward. Bee yanked me back.

  “Both of you, move away!” Stepping in front of the beast, she had the look of a scrumptious honeycake set before a ravenous dame.

  “Salve, Your Excellency! Our apologies for interrupting your dinner. I am sure you recognize us as harmless bystanders. Please let us pass to the safety of the house. We will be perfectly happy to stay out of your way until the soldiers who are trying to arrest us have gone.”

  The leviathan exhaled with a snort of smoke. Sparks glimmered before dissipating like cooling steam. It heaved itself one big flop toward us.

  Never run when they have you in their sight. If you ran, they couldn’t help but chase you.

  Its maw opened to reveal a predator’s teeth slimy with fluids and moist substances I did not care to name. Fetid carrion breath mingled with smoke to bring tears to my eyes. Vai’s hand tightened on mine, and I knew he was going to throw himself forward to give me time to escape, so I snaked my foot out, meaning to trip him as soon as he lunged.

  “Don’t move, you idiots!” said Bee without looking at us.

  A pale man crunched into view on the gravel drive, skirting the flank of the beast. “Move slowly off to the side so you do not stand between him and the challenger,” said Kemal.

  We edged sideways onto the grass as Kemal calmly collected our abandoned gear. Vai had sheathed his sword and now had one arm around me and the other around Bee. My panic had ebbed enough that I guessed it soothed him to feel he was protecting us. I even leaned against him, and his hand tightened on my waist to comfort me. I was shaking, it was true. I did not mind a bit of manly comfort. Rory nudged up against me, and I caught his hand in mine.

  Gravel ground under its belly as the beast squirmed forward. It nosed up to the steaming carcass of the beast it had just killed and began to feed, ripping and swallowing the tender flesh and sucking at streams of blood and internal fluids. Bee hid her eyes. Vai grunted, looking down.

  “It can’t possibly still want to eat us after it eats all that,” Rory muttered, watching with a predator’s measuring interest.

  Kemal set the bags and packs beside us. “My apologies, but you cannot stay here.”

  Bee pleaded with a fervent gaze. “The mage House troops are going to arrest us. Please.”

  Her pleading surely seemed like torment to him. “You cannot stay here.”

  “The headmaster owes me a favor,” said Bee.

  “The headmaster is gone. That he spoke to you earlier today is astonishing enough. It was the last time he appeared in human form. Any adult male who challenges for the crown does so in our ancestral form, what you would call a dragon. Those males who refuse to compete remain in the form of a man so they pose no threat. The flesh of each rival who is consumed strengthens and grows the winner. The last survivor earns the right to crown.”

  Vai’s gaze flashed up. “Is that a polite euphemism for mating?”

  I was pretty sure Kemal’s skin darkened with a flush. “We are not like you. The strongest male proves he has the strength and therefore the right to crown. To crown means to become female. Thus will he enter the river and become she, and thus she will cross by water into the ocean of dreams, what you call the Great Smoke. The mothers live there. Now I have told you more than I ought,” he finished, with a glance at Bee. “You must leave at once.”

  Bee had not given up. “Is there some other refuge? A boat? Horses? A hidden path?”

  “No.” He hustled us back up the drive. The noise of feeding mercifully faded behind us.

  Lamplight winked as the gatekeeper peeped out. “I can’t open up. Trapped inside and like to be crushed and spat out is what you get for demanding the right to go where you ought not. Fools!”

  “Let them out,” said Kemal.

  “You’re not even worm enough to make me,” said the gatekeeper, with a laugh.

  Perhaps the night’s fraught events had worn Kemal’s mild temperament threadbare, but I thought it more likely that he responded as a young man might who feels he has been insulted in front of a woman he wants to impress. Kemal punched him up under the ribs with a strong undercut from his right, followed by a swift uppercut to the jaw from his left. The man went down.

  “That was bruising!” said Rory, shaking out of his anxious slouch. “Have you studied the science of boxing?”

  A horn shrilled from the road. Behind, the leviathan trumpeted in answer to its challenge. Heat grew at our back. The dragon was dragging itself closer.

  “Hurry!” Kemal pushed us through the open door of the gatehouse. Even in such dire straits, I could not help but notice that the hearth fire burned unstintingly as Vai passed. We tumbled out on the other side of the gate as the gatekeeper skittered back into the safety of the gatehouse and slammed and locked the doors. The bellows breath of the dragon sucked in and out like the rhythm of the forge. It was definitely larger than it had been before it had eaten the last claimant.

  Worst, the soldiers were closer than we had realized.

  “There is the Diarisso mage!” In the aura of the gate lamp, soldiers clattered out of the night even as the cold fire guiding them vanished as though blown out.

  The mage House troops spread into a semicircle that pinned us in front of the gate. We were caught between the claw and the teeth, as in the old tale of the slaves fleeing ancient Kemet who were trapped between the pharaoh’s army and an uncrossable sea.

  “How could you abandon us like this!” Bee cried accusingly at Kemal.

  Rory muttered, “Eaten or shot, which ought I prefer?”

  Vai swore out of bitter frustration as his magic failed him.

  I could barely lift my cane.

  “I can’t reach my magic!” cried the mage riding with the troop. “What power traps it?”

  “Kill all but the Diarisso,” shouted the captain.

  Soldiers dismounted and swarmed forward with swords raised. Anger kindled in Kemal’s face, like buried light cutting through a concealing veil. He feared for Bee, certainly, but the knowledge that he had unwittingly walked her to her death surely scoured his pride as well. Or maybe it was only years of frustration at being told he must not desire what was so completely out of his reach and which was now to be torn from him forever.

  He forgot himself.

  And became what he really was.

  First a pale man flashed as if he had become mirrors all catching tomorrow’s sunlight. The iron of the gates crumbled and, in a rush as of wind, poured into an eddy that he began absorbing. The substance filled and changed him. A creature formed as of polished iron swelled out of the vanishing figure of the man. It grew so monstrously fast that as I took in a breath I still saw the man, and as I exhaled a dragon filled the open gateway. Its mouth could have swallowed a pony. Whiskers like ropes lashed in a wind I could not feel. A crest rippled along its ridged spine in a delicate lacework of steel. Its tail whipped around and toppl
ed several of the cypress trees. Its roar crackled like the fury of a blazing fire sweeping over us.

  The soldiers fell over each other in their haste to retreat. The horses scattered as one rider sounded the alarm on a horn: Ta-ran-ta-ta! A distant horn answered, echoed by a third.

  Close at hand a trumpet cry shook the air. Huddled against the door of the locked gatehouse, we turned to see the black dragon rise to confront this new challenger.

  31

  Once I had feared the fury of a magister powerful enough to rule as the head of a mage House more than I had feared the frightful tales of the great powers that lie invisible to us.

  What a naïve girl I had been.

  Two monstrous dragons reared up to attack each other, heedless of the tiny mortals scrambling away beneath them. Heat poured off them in battering waves. The tops of the cypress trees caught fire.

  I grabbed Vai’s arm, for Bee’s comment had jogged my memory at last. “There’s a rowboat at the river’s edge. Bring everything. Rory, hurry!”

  We dashed past the ruined gate and the closed doors of the gatehouse, heading toward the house. With a shrill scream the black launched itself against the smaller iron dragon. When their bodies collided, the ground actually shook.

  Ash and burning needles spun down over us as we ran down the drive. Vai was cursing; he was a man unaccustomed to being rendered impotent in such a devastatingly comprehensive way. When I looked around, Bee wasn’t with us.

  “I have to go back and look for her!” I shouted.

  “Rory, find the boat, make sure there are oars.” Vai shoved the bag he was carrying to Rory. His apron of carpentry tools wrapped him like armor. “Catherine, I won’t leave you, so don’t ask it of me.”

  Heavily laden, Rory staggered toward the river. Vai and I hunkered in the cover of the trees as the two dragons came rolling past in a frenzy of talons, teeth, and lashing tails. They broke apart. The dragon who had been Kemal beat its wings, the draft driving us to the ground. A thread of blood trailed past my hand with a stench like the forge. The black dragon rose onto its hind legs; its body blocked out half the sky.

  A small person ran into the gap between them.

  “Bee!” I screamed.

  Vai threw me onto the ground, and himself on top. I squirmed and poked but his weight and that of the laden apron trapped me. “Hate me if you wish, but you can’t save her this time. She can only save herself.”

  She was refulgent with anger. “Enough, Your Excellency! You have triumphed over all your challengers! Now go and do what things your kind do when all this rending and roaring is over!”

  As she spoke she retreated until she stood beneath the iron-gray dragon. It could have crushed her with its talons or snapped her up in one gulp, but fearlessly she pressed a hand on its belly.

  “Please, Kemal. You don’t need to challenge him. Turn back into a man, and I’ll give you a kiss.”

  “That will work,” said Vai, his mouth against my ear.

  It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t being sarcastic.

  The black dragon inhaled so deeply that the sparks and smoke swirling around us were sucked into its nostrils in a prelude to a fresh attack. Hail peppered down. Vai took the brunt of the impact but uttered not a sound.

  The hail ceased, leaving the ground covered with iron pebbles. Vai rolled off me, rubbing his head and cursing under his breath.

  The gleam of the black dragon’s scales cast a hazy light over the two figures on the gravel drive. Kemal had become a man again. He knelt, head bowed, his left arm and leg streaked with blood.

  “Come with me,” Bee said coaxingly. She helped him to his feet and toward us along the drive. Their shuffling progress spun in the mirrors of the dragon’s eyes as it watched them go.

  I would have run forward but Vai held me back. “Catherine, there are times when you must stop and think and not just leap. If you rush out there, your movement or whatever scent you have of the spirit world may startle it into attacking.”

  “Thank Tanit!” Bee staggered up. She listed heavily to one side with Kemal leaning on her. “Help me. He’s injured, and stunned.”

  Vai got an arm around him, and Bee let go.

  “I was so frightened!” I hugged Bee so hard she grunted.

  “Ouch! Cat! Let me go. Where’s Rory?”

  “We sent him ahead to secure the rowboat.”

  The dragon bellowed so loudly we all cringed. A horn cry answered, followed by a second and a third. Drums pulsed from the heart of the city. Was the Treverni prince raising his militia?

  “Will the mages be foolish enough to attack?” I asked. “Can weapons hurt a dragon?”

  “Best not to find out,” said Kemal. “My people are few in number. He has now ingested the seed of five males. We must coax him to the river. Once in the water, he will crown. Once he becomes a female, he will dive for the Great Smoke.”

  “Very well.” Bee boldly walked onto the drive. “Your Excellency, a part of you must surely still be the headmaster. I need that part of you to listen attentively. Soldiers are coming. You must depart. Otherwise the soldiers will attack the academy with the hatchlings in it. You are a rational and educated man. You can’t want all those young ones killed. So let us move.”

  “She’s magnificent!” Kemal breathed.

  “Or insane,” muttered Vai under his breath. “Are you sure she’s safe from him?”

  Kemal grimaced. “We do not eat people. They smell bad and are not at all nourishing. Among the lore of my kind, it is said humans are poisonous. Cold mages most of all.”

  “How have you cut the threads of my magic?” Vai asked.

  “I know nothing of such secrets. Why would I?” Bitterness shaded his expression but then, remembering what he had just done, he smiled.

  After a hesitation, Vai spoke. “My apologies for any discourtesy I showed you the first time we met, Maester Napata. I’m not just saying that because you saved our lives.”

  Kemal staggered along between us, looking unaccountably cheerful for a man who had taken several gashes to the flesh. “My thanks, Magister. Be assured I am accustomed to such treatment from cold mages. Although to be honest, your arrogance had a particularly memorable flair that made it all the more striking.”

  I glanced past Kemal to Vai, not sure how he would react to this gentle sarcasm.

  “My thanks,” he said with a slight flutter of his eyelashes. I wasn’t sure if he was suppressing a sneer or a laugh. Then he smiled. “I often practiced for many hours in front of a mirror to be sure of bringing it off to its full effect.”

  Both Kemal and I laughed.

  We hobbled around the kitchen wing. In front of the pier, guarding the rowboat, we discovered Maestra Lian holding a burning lamp in one hand and in the other a poker with which she was threatening Rory. He had an oar in each hand as he tried to dodge past her.

  “Maester Kemal!” she cried. “This person steals the boat!”

  He let go of us and limped to her. “Maestra Lian, let him pass. His Excellency is about to depart.” He took the poker from her to use as a cane. “Some ruse must be devised to confuse the soldiers and send them away. I fear for the hatchlings.”

  “Tell them I wove the illusion of a dragon with cold magic as we were escaping,” said Vai. “Their belief in my exceptional abilities will trouble them for months.”

  “If not years,” Rory said, lowering the oars. “Can I get in the boat now, or is that dragon-stinking man going to poke me with the iron stick?”

  I poked him. “Rory, don’t be impolite! Maester Napata, my apologies. What will you do now?”

  Kemal gestured toward the building. “I inherit the position as headmaster. That was always His Excellency’s intention.”

  A shape like the void of night thumped down to the shore. I felt as with the skin of the grass that crushing weight, the ancient fire of its soul, and the spark of a new being about to shed the husk of its old form.

  Bee’s flow of words w
as the leash on which she led the beast to water. “I do not mean to sound inconsiderate or ungrateful, but I do think it most unfair that I should risk so much and yet be told so little. I realize human people are of little interest to your kind except insofar as we hinder your lives or aid you. But, for example, I would wish to know who that very old man was who kissed me and then died! Was he one of your kind, for I am sure he must have been. Why did he say he was waiting for me? He called me his death!”

  Because of the cloudy light chasing along its black scales, she was able to see us standing by the pier. She waved cheerfully, looking not one bit frightened.

  The dragon slid into the river. The touch of the water peeled away the skin of the beast. As his old skin sloughed off, a slender creature with pearlescent scales unfolded sleek wings. Its crest fluttered in a rainbow of shining color. It looked very like the leviathan that had carried us across the Great Smoke, only much smaller. The water boiled white as she swam in a wide arc out into the current and back to the shore.

  Stars peeked through rents in the cloud cover. The head breached. Water poured off the long neck as she towered above us. Her scales reflected us as in a mirror:

  The shadow of Rory’s cat spirit limned his body like a cloak.

  The glittering threads of Vai’s cold magic flowed like sparkling ribbons that were being sucked into the void of the dragon’s massive weight.

  Maestra Lian and Bee each bore the ghost of a third eye shutting and opening on her forehead.

  As for me… two Cats melted together, one wreathed in the shadowy threads of magic that bind the worlds while the other was plain, solid flesh.

  Bee turned to Kemal. Unfolding around him in the manner of a male peacock’s bright tail, he wore a fan of brilliant colors shaped into the translucent illusion of the dragon that was his true nature. I thought it unlikely he could have looked away from Bee’s smitten regard even if the world had ended and we had all been swallowed by fire and ice.

  Her voice’s hoarse tremor was no doubt enrapturing to a man who had been hopelessly infatuated for so long. “I have never seen anything as magnificent in my life as you becoming a dragon.”