Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  With a shake of his head he walked away.

  Bee was still in the nearby woods doing her business. I approached the eru, who stood beside a stream watching the flash and subsidence of ripples.

  “I want to thank you for coming at my call,” I said.

  Away from the others she wore her female aspect. “The law of kinship binds us. But there are other reasons to answer.”

  “Perhaps you can tell me what those might be,” I said, careful not to ask a question.

  “Perhaps my lips are chained.”

  “Perhaps the Master of the Wild Hunt chains you to his purpose.”

  Her gaze held a whisper of the wild fury of lofty winds where an eru might climb, when she is free to fly as she wishes. I could not see her third eye, but I knew it was there. “Perhaps I am not the only one who is chained. Chains reach deep and rise high, little cat. They may be anchored in the depths of the Great Smoke, or pull against us from the heights of the tallest peak. Do not mistake the servant for the master.”

  I thought of the courts atop the ziggurat feeding on the blood my sire brought them. Picking up a stone, I tossed it into the water. “I have been thinking about chains.”

  “Cat! Over here!” Rory knelt at the wall of a byre. “It’s all dried now, but Vai pissed here.”

  I saw nothing except scuffed ground and what looked like half-formed letters scraped into the dirt and then obscured by footprints. “You can distinguish different people’s urine?”

  “Can’t you? I shall never understand you Deadlands people. How do you distinguish who has been poking around where if you can’t smell?”

  “There’s a thought I am grateful had never occurred to me before now.”

  A scrap of leather cord had been half shoved into a hole scraped under the byre’s wall. I got hold of it and fished out the empty ring of an ice lens. The sight so congealed my legs that I sat down with a thump.

  Rory pried my hand open to see what I was clutching. “He left this here on purpose, so we would know he is with Drake.”

  All along the road to Arras and then on to Audui, every isolated staging post had been burned. Worst, at one hostel the corpse of a magister had been stuffed headfirst down a well. When we pulled him out by the rope tied around his feet, the seeping blisters over every bit of his reddened skin told the story of how he had died.

  “Over here.” Rory beckoned from beyond the hostel’s vegetable garden to an old and falling-down outhouse. He indicated a row of three stones and a pearl jacket button.

  The mansa came up behind us. “Four stones for Four Moons House. The estate of Four Moons House lies on the Cantiacorum Pike. If they stay on this road, they will pass it. If Andevai attempts an escape there, he can hope for assistance.”

  “I don’t think Vai will risk drawing Drake’s anger down on the House, or on his village. And I’m certain he won’t abandon the other mages.” But I rubbed the dirt off the button and tucked it into my bodice.

  The mansa insisted we break our headlong pace and spend one night at Audui’s resplendent mage inn. In truth the amenities of a bath, a change of underclothes, the promise of a comfortable bed, and a decent supper improved my mood considerably. The steward in charge told us there had been a plague of fires tormenting the countryside, a freakish set of frightful blazes no one could explain although they had passed as quickly as they had come.

  “How long ago?” I asked over a delicious meal of soup, roasted beef, yam pudding, fish in dill sauce, and apple dumplings.

  “Just yesterday did all the reports come in, Maestra,” said the steward in charge. “One of our own young grooms escaped a terrible fire yesterday at West Mile Post just four miles west of town.”

  “Can we talk to him?”

  The lad was brought, white and trembling. He had a tendency to jump every time a door closed elsewhere in the inn, but Bee hastened forward to take hold of his hand as if he were a long-lost kinsman. No lad his age could resist her radiant glamour.

  “You are the only one who can help us!” she exclaimed. “What was your name again?”

  “They call me Rufus, Maestra, for my red hair.”

  “Tell us everything you saw, Rufus!”

  “It was all fire, Maestra,” the lad whispered in a hoarse voice. “But the man gave me a message.” His gaze flashed toward me. “He said there would be a woman with black hair and golden eyes come after him. I was to speak to her when I saw her.”

  Had Vai managed to get a message to me? Hope surged.

  “Go on,” said Bee in her most encouraging tone.

  The lad handled the words as cautiously as a knife. “He said, ‘Nothing you can do will save him.’ ”

  I recoiled as if struck.

  Bee smiled. “Very good! Thank you for remembering. What did he look like, the man who spoke those words? Had he red hair and white skin, like yours?”

  He nodded, gulping down a sob. “He did burn the whole compound, Maestra.”

  “Had they prisoners?” asked the mansa. “Any they treat differently from the rest?”

  Concentration furrowed his brow. “Hard to count, I was that scared. But there was one they did hold away from all the others. Maybe he was sick, for he could barely walk. He was whistling a song, that one, and they did kick him to shut him up.”

  “What song?” I asked.

  Like any Celt, he could remember a tune after hearing it once. He hummed the melody the djeli had sung when he had led Andevai to the meeting with the Romans, the one I had first heard in the spirit world on the fiddle of Lucia Kante.

  The mansa handed the boy a coin. “You have done well.”

  We rose at dawn. At breakfast the mansa asked for coffee with a bowl of whipped and sweetened cream but I could not bear to touch it for it made me think of Vai so weak he could barely walk. Was he wounded? Beaten? Assaulted? Or was he simply exhausted to the edge of collapse? It would be just like Vai to believe he had to carry all the burden himself.

  A headache throbbed behind my eyes as we set out. I was so sick of being in the coach.

  As if catching my mood, the gremlin latch winked to life with a flickering sneer. “I have been very patient,” the latch said in a thin whine that put the lie to the statement, “but all your cousin and that unpleasantly large and frowning cold mage do to pass the time is argue about this thing called politics and law which means nothing to me! Could you not tell me stories instead? Or at the least, let the cold mage draw some of those pictures in the air like the other one used to do. I’ll tell you a secret if you do.”

  “Everyone claims to have a secret!” I said.

  “Cat?” Bee bent to look at me. “You’re very worn down, dearest, and now you’re babbling. Perhaps you should try to sleep some more.”

  “I can’t rest,” I said, “but perhaps the mansa could explain to us how young magisters are taught the basic skill of illusion. It would make the time pass, would it not?”

  To my surprise the gaze I fixed on the mansa, meant to be venturesome and coaxing and more likely appearing fractious and sour, softened his bearing. He had begun to treat Bee and me with the grave amusement shown by an exalted and wealthy uncle toward his impoverished but marginally respectable nieces, the ones who with better clothes and improved elocution might hope to make modest marriages to humble clerks. He drew the basic illusions every young magister was expected to master: a candle flame, a glinting gold ring, and a veil of mist that could be shaped into the shadows of living creatures. The slow play of shadow and light eased my mind and let me doze.

  The next day we moved into a dense lowland scrub forest as the great valley of the lower Rhenus River opened before us. Now and again we caught glimpses of the wide river glittering to the west. We passed a toll station, which had been burned. Threads of smoke ghosting up from its embers told us that Drake’s troop was not many hours ahead.

  As night fell the mansa lit globes of cold fire to light our way. Scraps of cloud lightened the moon-scarred sky. Very la
te we halted in a lonely meadow amid the creak of insects and a night breeze winnowing the grass. The coachman preferred to water and care for the horses at night, and I was grateful for the chance to lie down on a blanket on the ground. An owl’s white wings fluttered through the trees, and for an instant the weight of ice pressed down on me as if malevolent claws had reached across the worlds to throttle me. Then Bee put an arm around me and, comforted by her presence, I slept.

  At dawn I woke to see a big furry flank draped alongside me. The big cat snored softly, until I punched him in the shoulder to wake him up.

  “Rory! Where are your clothes? What are you doing?”

  After he dressed and as we ate our provisions, he told his story. “I decided to scout. Drake’s party is not even half a day ahead of us.”

  “I should have gone with you! I could have rescued Vai.”

  “No, you should not have gone. They have little mirrors hung up all about the camp, so they would have caught you.”

  “Like a troll maze! I wonder how Drake knew.”

  “Mirrors are no danger to me!” Rory smiled with the preening confidence of a male who accepts that he is lovely. “I scared their horses, so they lost more time because they had to round them up. Wasn’t that clever?”

  “Indeed.” The mansa’s puzzled frown would have amused me another time. Rory’s shape change had taken him aback in a way the confession of my parentage had not.

  “What about Vai?” I demanded.

  “He was tied up and staked to a post. The other cold mages were tied up, but they looked like sheep to me, so fearful of the wolf they hadn’t a bleat among them. I wasn’t sure if Vai had seen me but then he began to talk. I must say, I wouldn’t have used that tone of voice if I had been the one in captivity.”

  “What did he say?” asked Bee.

  “He said, ‘I’m surprised you can stand all these mirrors, Drake. They keep showing you how poorly you look in my clothes.’ And Drake replied, ‘I’ll see how poorly you look as you beg me not to destroy your mage House.’ ”

  “Gracious Melqart!” murmured Bee.

  “Then I had to run, for their riflemen started shooting. I fear I gave us away.”

  The mansa said, “He already guesses we’re following. Best we move quickly.”

  In another hour we reached a major curve in the road that opened onto a vista. The wide, flat valley at the confluence of the Rhenus River and the Temes shone in the sunlight. Horribly, all four ferry landings and the ferries were burning.

  I shrieked out loud, out of sheer frustration. “How far is it to the next ferry? We’ll have to go days out of our way!”

  The mansa tapped my arm. “Enough, Catherine! Drake’s people can’t have had time to hunt down and burn every farmstead along the river. We can cross by rowboat. Four Moons land begins on the other side of the river, so we do not need the coach anymore. Many a path runs through backcountry to the main house. We may still reach the estate in time to assemble enough magisters on the main road to crush James Drake’s flames.”

  Shaking with rage, I settled back into the seat as the mansa told the coachman his plan. Then the eru latched the shutters and closed the door, leaving us in darkness.

  The mansa shaped a globe of cold fire. “Are we to be shut up like prisoners?”

  A mouth glimmered on the latch. “I like it when he does that. Can he make more pictures?”

  “Obviously we are promised secrets and then denied them!” I snapped, giving the latch a dark stare, although both Bee and the mansa did stare at me, for they could not hear the latch. Rory yawned, looking amused.

  Two eyes like silvery stitches winked. “The other cold mage drew illusions of your face while you were sleeping, when he thought you weren’t looking.”

  Oblivious to the latch’s voice, the mansa went on. “Certainly these creatures have held their secrets close against themselves all this time. Servants ought not to act as if they are the masters. Such disrespect sows discord and disorder in the world.”

  “It’s starting to get very stuffy in here,” remarked Bee to the air.

  “Is that what you call a secret?” I said, to the latch. “I already knew that!”

  The mansa frowned. “I have indulged the two of you for many days now. But this is truly more than I can be expected to endure.” He reached for the latch.

  The gremlin’s mouth stretched until its line ran the length of the latch, ready to bite.

  For an instant I was tempted to let events play out on the unsuspecting mansa, but instead I set my hand on the latch so he could not. “Do not forget, Your Excellency, that the coach and eru serve another master.”

  “And you trust them?”

  The latch licked my palm with its scratchy tongue, then said, muffled by my hand, “Can I help it if all I ever know about is what I see in here? I thought you were asleep and didn’t know he had done that.”

  “I do trust them,” I said, removing my hand and giving the latch a stern side-eye glance.

  The mansa studied me with a thoughtful frown. “Very well. In this, you have the advantage of me.”

  Pressing my hands to my forehead, I breathed a soundless prayer to the blessed Tanit. “Blessed lady, let the righteous triumph and the wicked despair. Most of all, holy one, let me save his life and the lives of all those who do not deserve to suffer death at the hands of a man like James Drake. Not that any person deserves to suffer death in that wise, but you know what I mean.”

  I sat with face buried in hands for a long time, in a daze of such weary anxiety that I felt rocked as in a boat crossing a rushing river. When my sire had stolen Andevai on Hallows’ Night, I had been more angry than fearful. My sire was not a creature of emotion. He was cruel in the way storms were cruel: They cared nothing for your vulnerability as they crashed through your life. If he wanted something, he had a reason for it that could be addressed.

  But Drake’s reasons had melted in the fire of his resentment, the sense that what he had lost could be regained only through the pain and humiliation of others. He had turned in on himself until he had become a mirror that did nothing but reflect his grievances back into his own face. That made him dangerous, but it also made him vulnerable.

  The coach slowed to a halt. The door was opened from the outside, and the eru set down the steps so we could get out. Gritty ash burned in my eyes. Sobs and screams billowed with the smoke. We had come to a stop in a hamlet of inns, stables, shelters, and outbuildings. Every building in the village as well as two flat-bottomed ferries were on fire, a roaring blaze whose heat blasted our faces.

  “Get down,” said the mansa.

  Bee had her head out of the coach, staring at local men who were beating at a fire as they tried to reach someone inside a house. They were so frantic they did not notice us.

  “Sit down, Bee!” I dropped to my knees on the road.

  The hammer of cold magic snuffed out every fire within sight, the flames sucked right out. The furnace heat turned in an eyeblink to the crackling of timbers buckling and the groan and smash of a wall toppling over. Every person in sight now lay on the ground. All except the eru. The mansa stared disbelievingly at the tall footman in his impeccable dress who appeared untouched by the impressive display. The eru offered a mocking servant’s bow that made the mansa frown.

  “Dearest,” said Bee, clambering down, “are my eyes deceiving me, or have we crossed both rivers?”

  Amazingly, we had reached the western bank.

  Bee glanced up at the coachman, who sat upright and unruffled on the driver’s bench. “And yet why not? For it seems your goblin makers have their own secret magic.”

  He removed his cap and slapped it against a hand to shake off ash. “Shall we go on? I am built for a steady, enduring pace rather than for speed. But we are not far behind them now.”

  The eru turned to me. “Cousin, is it your plan to come upon them on the road? For if we continue in this direction, I think it likely we shall do so.”

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nbsp; “The fire mage has become quite powerful,” I said. “Can you aid us with your magic, Cousin? For I must believe that you and the mansa, together, ought to be able to kill his fire.”

  “If Drake sees us coming up from behind, what is to stop him from simply killing Andevai?” Bee asked.

  “Drake needs Vai. And Vai knows Drake needs him.”

  The mansa surveyed the village. The locals scrambled into the cold ruins, seeking survivors. “I do not like to think of what a company of fire mages led by a man with no conscience can do to Four Moons House if he chooses to practice his revenge there before he reaches his homeland.”

  A woman with a baby in her arms and a raw burn mark on her pale cheek shuffled forward to kneel before the mansa. “My lord mansa. What know you of this wicked spirit whose anger lashed out at us? You are come just in time. Otherwise we would have lost everything.”

  He pressed several sesterces into her hand. “No. I am come too late. I should have understood matters differently, and much sooner. Someone from the House will come to see what can be done with cleaning up and rebuilding. For now, you must do what you can.”

  Other supplicants began to approach, for it was obvious they knew who he was and did not fear to approach him in a respectful way. In their eyes he was a just master. He passed out coins to the survivors, emptying his purse in a rash manner that made Bee and me look at each other in disbelief. What if we needed that money later? To him it was trivial, something he expected to easily replace. He considered this generosity to be his duty. It was in this way, I supposed, that mages had built the edifice of their power over the generations.

  On we traveled. Because we were traveling west, the door in the coach that opened into the spirit world faced the direction I most needed to look. So instead of looking ahead toward the graveled drive and the gatehouse to the estate, I could only stare through the other window as a drizzle clouded the north. Stands of birches flashed silver. Spruce darkened the slopes. In the distance a ring of round houses marked a village several miles off the road. The afternoon light turned to a hazy orange glow.