Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  This, I realized, was an invitation for me to sit rather than kneel. The attendant brought a stool, and I thanked her nicely and examined Grandmother’s face for Andevai’s lineaments. Like all of the villagers in these parts, she was what Brennan had called “tartan,” of mixed descent, lighter than Andevai and Kayleigh but without Duvai’s brown-gold hair. She was very weak, but her gaze was alert. A frail hand stirred on the blankets. Moved by what impulse I did not know, I took gentle hold of her hand and we sat for a time in silence, my hand warm against her cooler skin. I felt oddly comfortable, almost at peace, with drums talking nearby and her breathing as steady as a heart’s beat.

  “What is the name of this village?” I asked at last.

  “Haranwy. We are a well-fed village, through our hard work. Growers of grain.”

  “And hunters,” I added, more tartly than I meant, “who tell me they can walk in the spirit world.”

  “What would a city girl like you know of hunters? Or the spirit world? To attract the interest of Four Moons House, you must have been born into a rich or a princely family, or to one that has harvested many cold mages out of its fields.”

  What expression showed on my face I don’t know, but she chuckled again. “It is the fate of the young to believe the old know everything or the old know nothing. I am merely curious about my grandson’s destiny. We are rarely allowed to see him.”

  Kayleigh came in carrying a tray with water and a cloth for washing and a bowl of gruel topped with a strip of meat whose savor made my mouth water. She set the tray on my lap with a pleasing smile that made my own lips stir. Yet all at once I knew—as a goat must know in the instant before its throat is slit—what Andevai’s sister was about to say.

  “Vai is at the gate, on a very fine horse! They always say they’ll let him visit on the festival days, but then he never does. You never said, Catherine, that he was right behind you. Did you get separated on the road? I suppose he was looking for you! I don’t think he has the least idea you are here, though. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Kayleigh.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “How does the wind speak in the compound?”

  “Duvai let it be known at once that no one speaks until you give the word, Mother.”

  “Let the cold mage come to my bedside. As for the other, a closed flower waits until daylight to bloom. Even the beasts prefer a quiet byre in which to feast.”

  The girl shared a glance with me and rolled her eyes almost exactly as Bee would have done. Then she took herself out, sparing a grin—of happy complicity, assuming me to be as glad to hear news of Andevai’s arrival as she was—before she closed the door.

  My hands were shaking. I looked around the small house, seeking windows, but there were none, only a hearth set into one wall with a chimney funneling the smoke out and the attendant standing by the door. I was trapped.

  20

  “What did I ever do,” I muttered, “to deserve this destiny?”

  She sighed sharply. “I have let it be known that none will mention your presence here until I say to do so. Knowing the hunters ranged deep into the bush and seeing you arrive with your hair and those looks on a cross-quarter eve, people naturally wonder if you are a spirit woman or a real woman. That is why you were brought to me. My son is too ill to receive such visitors.”

  “Andevai’s father is ill?”

  “Vai calls him Father, but you would say his uncle. He is my elder son, who sired no sons of his own, alas. My younger son, who sired my two grandsons, has crossed over. Duvai waits too impatiently for the household to pass into his hands. That is the destiny of some men, to see in the passing of one they love an opportunity to better themselves.”

  Despite everything, despite all my efforts to stay strong, I began to snivel, trying to choke down my sobs.

  “If you sit in the corner, he will not see you. Not if I do not wish him to see you, and I do not wish it, for I know what is in your heart.”

  I wiped my nose with the back of my free hand. “W-what is in my heart?”

  “You fear Vai because you fear the mansa. What does the mansa want from you that he brought you into his house?”

  She had power as great as that of the mansa but so different it could not be named.

  “My death,” I said before I knew I meant to say it.

  Not even this surprised her. “Ah. A sacrifice. This corner”—she indicated the foot of her bed—“is darkest.”

  I carried the tray to the corner and sat in the darkness with my sword at my left hand and my cloak pulled around me, the hood over my head. I was still shaking but suddenly ravenous. At least if I was going to die, I would die with a full stomach! I quickly washed and then, cradling the bowl in my left hand, swept the meat to my lips with my right.

  The door opened.

  Duvai came in first and Andevai after him in a wave of cold that made the hearth fire shudder. They did not stand close. Andevai in his fine, expensive clothing made the humble room appear shabby and sad in comparison, and he held himself aloof, as if he feared he would ruin his clothing by touching anything in the room. Certainly he would have looked down his nose at his older brother, except that Duvai was half a head taller. The contrast was strong: Duvai was taller and bigger, and perhaps as many as ten years older than Andevai, and the hunter was an impressive-looking man with the confidence and pride that comes from being respected by those he lives among.

  “Here he is, Mother,” said Duvai in a clipped tone that so shocked me with its displeasure that I swallowed the last hank of meat before it was fully chewed. My gulp was, fortunately, covered by his scornful words. “My brother has come home at festival, by the generosity of the mansa who lifted him to a higher station and therefore protects us out of thanks for what a noble son we have given to a House full of sorcerers.”

  “I am here, Mother.” Andevai did not look at Duvai, and it was difficult to know whether it was pride, dislike, vanity, or envy that had cut the chasm between them. “I regret that I have not been here as often as I might have wished, but I am here now. I was following the toll road, and night came on just as I reached Haranwy.”

  Duvai gestured too broadly. His voice was deep, and his words unexceptional, but his tone was cutting. “We welcome him on a festival night, as we are required to do, now that he is a powerful man in the world. Perhaps his presence here will keep the Wild Hunt at bay on such a night. Or perhaps it will attract them, as honey attracts bears and carrion attracts wolves, they whose arrow and whose spear cannot be turned aside, not by any human power or cunning or strength. Not even by his.”

  I braced, my left hand at the sword’s hilt, but Andevai had more self-control than I had realized. His jaw tightened. The hearth fire dimmed, but it did not go out.

  His grandmother certainly did not fear him. “On Hallows Night, the masters cut out the souls of those who will cross over to the other side in the coming year. My son is infested with fever. His body will not outlast this winter. This I have seen. I also have few enough days left in this flesh, so I will see you, sons of different mothers, embrace this night. Even if you cannot like each other, then promise me for the sake of the village never to fight one another. I will always be watching.”

  Duvai grunted, almost inaudibly. “It will be as you wish, Mother,” he said.

  I had not thought it possible for Andevai’s haughty posture to grow more stiff, but it did. “It will be as you wish,” he echoed softly.

  The two men embraced, but I had seen snarling dogs more companionable. They parted awkwardly.

  Andevai went over and knelt on the pillow. He took his grandmother’s thin hands in his own and bent to kiss her hollow cheek. “I missed you, Mother.”

  Duvai snorted.

  This time the fire did go out, and a spurt of ash rose. Strangely, the tapers that lit the room kept burning undisturbed.

  “Let the festival be danced,” she said to Duvai. “I will hear and dance with you. On such a night,
trouble may come to the gate if things are not done properly.”

  “Of course, Mother,” he said with more warmth than before. He said nothing to Andevai but left. The attendant emerged from the shadows opposite and knelt at the fire to set new kindling.

  “Don’t bother,” said Andevai. “It won’t light until I’m gone.”

  She continued with her task as if she had not heard him.

  “You are come late, Vai. You who study the magic of winter are most at risk. You dare not walk abroad on the day when the veil is thinnest and the hunt rides. For I am sure the tales tell us that the ancient ones who rule in the other world distrust magisters most of all.”

  “They hunt down those who become too powerful and draw their notice, so we are told, but you can be sure I am not taught enough to become truly powerful. Not I, the son of slaves.”

  “Is that a bitter apple, son?”

  He grimaced. “I asked for nothing. I wanted to be a hunter, not a cold mage.”

  “Yet you are what you are.”

  “So I am. Now I am responsible for all of you, as I am reminded every day at the House. Trouble runs at my heels like a pack of wolves. The mansa has ordered me to kill a person.”

  “That is a heavy task. What manner of person?”

  “I have to do it. I have no choice. That is not why I came, Mother. This night and day I cannot travel abroad—no magister can, although our servants can ride where they wish, evidently.” How annoyed he sounded! How glad I was that the eru and the coachman had the power to tweak the noses of the proud House mages! “So I stopped to see you,” he continued, as humbly as an affectionate child. “The visits I make here are what sustain me through the rest of the year. It will be a colder winter than most….” He faltered, voice choked, and after a moment continued. “Best I go see Fa now, to greet him, and then to see my own mama. What news of my mama, Mother?” His voice trembled on the words. Beyond the walls of the house, the drums rolled loudly and in unison as youthful voices whooped and cried out, breaking into song.

  “The Hallows fire is being lit,” remarked the old woman.

  “There is no place for me at a fire’s lighting,” he answered curtly.

  The drums fell into a shared rhythm, one that made my shoulders twitch. I recognized the measure of the drum, calling “koukou,” which we’d learned from friends in the city. The sound came closer, as at a procession winding through the compounds of the village.

  “Best you wait until dawn to greet your mama. No good for her will come if she is woken now that the medicine has taken effect, for they dosed her before dusk. You may as well go on to the celebration. Let the old and ill take their needed rest while the young dance.” The procession’s clamor lessened as it moved away through the village. “If you go to Kayleigh now, she’ll fit you with proper clothes.”

  He lifted a hand to touch his fine, elegant jacket with a self-conscious lift of his chin. “Is Kayleigh well, Mother? Is there any trouble for her?”

  “No soldiers have trampled through our village’s fields since you went up to the House seven years ago.”

  He ducked his head as if the words pinched him. “But they will. There’s worse, Mother. The mansa himself told me today that he intends to take Kayleigh to his bed, to see if more magisters can be bred out of our bloodline. What am I to do?”

  “What can you do, Vai? The magister who sired your father on me did not ask my permission. The magister’s gift—if indeed it came from him—lay quiet in your father, but it has woken in you.”

  “More curse than gift.”

  “Truly, Andevai, if you could be shed of it, would you?”

  “No.” He cupped a hand over his eyes to shield his face. “Even to what I endure at the House, I will suffer it in order to learn.” When he lowered the hand, his expression was knit of iron. “It would not matter even if I wished. I belong to Four Moons House, as does this village. I must obey them, or it will be the worse for all of you.”

  “Has the mansa threatened you?”

  “That he chooses today to inform me of his plans for my sister? That he reminds me that without the medicine provided by the House, my mother will die? That he mentions this village’s obligations to the House? Are these not all threats? Because I failed to properly do what he asked me to do? Maybe there is nothing I can do to make it right no matter what happens. But my only leverage—as the Greeks would say—is to gain enough favor in their eyes by doing what I am required to do. Then, perhaps, the mansa will, one time, allow me to spare Kayleigh being dragged off to suffer his attentions.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He hissed in a breath. “I am trapped. What is one life set against all that?”

  “A question you will have to answer.”

  “They despise me, Mother. Whatever stories I may tell my mama so that she does not worry, you know the truth of it. I am nothing to them, only they cannot waste me because I am too powerful.”

  “Is there no other House where you can go?”

  “They dare not cast me out, because they know another House will take me. They will not trade me away because I am too valuable. Even if I ran away, no other House will shelter me. They wouldn’t dare risk the mansa’s enmity should he discover where I was hiding. Anyhow, if I were to leave my teacher on bad terms, what other teacher would take me in?”

  “Is there no life for you outside a mage House?”

  “Why do you even ask?” he cried bitterly. “Do you think I would be better off an outlaw starving in the hills? No princely house can take me in, because the mage Houses would turn on it and destroy it. No guild will take me, for the same reason. And, anyway, what guild would admit a poor village man with no guild connections, no property, and no craft? I suppose I might walk to a city and seek work as a laborer. No cold mage survives for long outside the protection of a House. People fear and resent us. My own father’s other son fears and resents me! Even a magister cannot stay awake always. You know the saying: Saber-cats, wolves, and mages can be killed when they sleep. But, anyway, let’s say I could. I might be able to escape them. Let’s say I could travel to Qart Hadast or into the Barren Lands or across the ocean to Expedition. I have skills, and I have power—then what? I could hunt, maybe. I remember what hunting magic I learned from Fa before the cold magic bloomed and the House took me away. But do you think I would abandon you and my mother and sisters and my kin and the village to the mansa’s anger? Because he will punish you to get back at me. So even if I could walk free, you cannot.”

  Even wrapped in my fur-lined cloak, I was by now shivering where I crouched. Crystals of ice skinned the surface of my uneaten porridge as the sorcery of winter radiated from him, released by his emotions. The fire was laid but not alight, and the elderly woman had vanished.

  “These are harsh chains,” said his grandmother in the same gentle tone she had been using all along, “although even you cannot say for certain what the mansa will do.”

  “Please say nothing to Kayleigh of what I learned! Let her have peace for as long as she can.”

  “Go on, Vai. You have friends who have missed your company.”

  He left.

  After the door closed behind him and the fire spurted up with a flicker and licked along the wood with gathering strength, I leaped out from my corner. I gulped down the last of the cold porridge before I set the bowl down on the chest at the foot of her bed and let her see the sword; although out of courtesy, I kept it in its sheath.

  “I thank you for the food, Grandmother, and your kind words, but I have to leave. I’m sorry for his troubles and for yours. I am quite sure that it is wrong for an entire village of people to be held hostage and in such an indenture for so long with no recourse, but I will not offer up myself just because—”

  “Why does the mansa want you dead?”

  Her question compelled me. It was as if she had ensorcelled my tongue. “Andevai married the wrong woman. He was sent to the Barahals to marry Bee, but he was tricked by B
ee’s parents into marrying me to save Bee.”

  “You were party to this deception?”

  “I knew nothing of it! The Barahals deceived me, too. They lied to me, just as they lied to him! I am expendable, to the Barahals and to the mansa.”

  “So you mean to run for the rest of your life, never able to rest?”

  The weary, horrible prospect unrolled before me like a path overgrown with vicious brambles. I would run and run and be torn until at last I collapsed with the wolves at my throat breathing death into my face. And yet even so, I could not accept defeat.

  “If I can survive until the winter solstice, then they might still wish to kill me, just for the revenge of it. But as soon as Bee reaches her majority, the contract expires. So she has a chance if I can find her before they do. I’ll never let them take her. Never.”

  The door opened. I whirled while pulling the sword half out of its sheath. Three elderly women entered, and by the time I accepted that these were not the mansa’s soldiers, several older men had entered as well, including Mamadi. I retreated to the foot of the bed with my back to the wall as the men set out the benches. Eight men and seven women of advanced years took a place, men on one side, women on the other. Last, Duvai entered, supporting a bent and frail man who could barely walk. He looked as old as the tiny woman in the bed, yet I guessed he was her son. He wore about his neck and had pinned to his clothing many amulets, and in his rheumy eyes I saw blindness.

  Duvai brought him to me. He traced the air around me without touching me, and a shiver of power crawled along my skin. Duvai helped him sit on the first bench. Still holding on to his nephew, the old man spoke to the assembly in a voice as hoarse as a frog’s spring croak. “The spirit world is knit into her bones. But she is not a spirit woman. Hers is true human flesh. Therefore, she did not deceive us in asking for guest rights. It is a serious matter to consider handing over one we have promised to shelter.”