He felt the torch falling from his fingers and heard it rolling away.
And as he, too, toppled over, he thought he heard a voice. It was shouting something garbled, and the thing turned to face away from him. There was a feline yowl, and the thing screamed angrily, but also in pain.
“In the name of the Sun, creature of the nether realms, and of the Light and Life, I banish thee!”
But by then the cold and the blackness had claimed him.
11
Cold . . . the last time he had been this cold, he had nearly frozen to death in that blizzard. But that had been mere insensate winter, which had no real interest in whether he lived or died. It didn’t care what happened to him any more than the stars did. If he’d died, it wouldn’t rejoice, and since he’d lived, that didn’t matter to winter’s icy blasts either.
This cold had a terrifying life of its own, and it wanted him dead. It wanted far more than that, too, but it knew it would not get that—it knew that once he was dead, he would escape its reach, so there was a frustration there as well, behind the urgent need to kill him. It was determined that he would not escape. The mere possibility that he might escape sent it into a rage.
It wasn’t so much an entity as a force, a hatred for everything that lived, for every positive, good thing in the world. It would have liked to crush them all beneath its icy weight until there was nothing left in the world but cold, and dark, and despair.
It couldn’t get that, so it would settle for crushing him now, pulling the life out of him and enjoying his terror and grief until he finally escaped the thing into—well, wherever it was he would go that took him out of the possibility of pursuit.
Oh, that is not going to happen, ye bastard. Not today. I ain’t gonna die fer you.
He felt his will harden against it, mustered up a burst of strength from somewhere, and somehow thrust the thing away. It was a strange sensation, since he didn’t seem to have a body, exactly, and neither did it.
If I did have, I’d give ye such a shot in the good bits!
It moved to envelop him.
He eluded it.
“That’s right, outlander . . .”
Encouraged by that voice somewhere past the darkness, he thrust back again, harder this time. And with the memory of how he had fought against those assassins behind it. That seemed to help!
“Do you accept the Blessing of the Sun?”
He didn’t even hesitate at that. Of course he accepted the blessing of the sun! Light, life, warmth—he needed all of those and needed them now! He could feel the ice in his veins spreading out from the wounds the Entity’s creature had made, a cold poison that was intended to make him give up and die and let the thing add what was left of his life force to its power.
But he wouldn’t give up. And if something wanted to give him blessings, by the gods both small and big, he would take them!
As if he had opened a door with that thought, light blazed up around him, heat rushed into him and joined with him, filling him with strength. He sensed that he was only going to get one try at this, and as the Entity tried to engulf him again, oblivious to his new source of strength, he allowed it to surround him, a cloud of evil miasma enveloping him, trying to freeze and choke off life and breath.
He waited a moment for it to feel as if it had won. That moment of triumph would be its moment of weakness, when it dropped its guard.
He felt that surge of pleasure.
Then he exploded inside it like the sun bursting up over the horizon.
The howl that erupted from the wounded Thing was worse than anything its creature that had attacked him in the forest had produced. But it was mercifully brief, as the Entity evaporated into light.
He could feel he had a body again—a heavy, weary, slightly sick feeling body. But alive, and not being poisoned anymore.
And Mags opened his eyes, conscious of a strange weight on his chest, to find a pair of exceedingly blue, slit-pupiled eyes in a furry red face staring at him as the huge cat they belonged to nearly touched noses with him. It peered deeply into his eyes, and he was conscious of something that was far more than human searching for something within him
The cat pulled its head back as soon as his eyes were open. Mags was immediately aware of three things, and three things only.
The first was that he was lying on his back inside some sort of cave and was blessedly warm again. Every bit of that deadly chill seemed to have been driven from his poor, abused body.
The second was that the cat was extremely heavy, in fact, the largest feline he had ever seen in his life.
The third was that he felt as if he had been sliced to ribbons . . . he felt the wounds as present, but not the pain yet. But in a moment, he knew that the pain would start, and when it did, he was going to start screaming, and he was not sure he would be able to stop—
As if that thought had awakened the agony to its duty, the awful pain started at that very moment, and his mouth opened—
“That will be all, I think,” said a voice that sounded very irritated, and a hand touched his forehead, and he plunged back down into blackness.
* * *
It hadn’t been a bad blackness, that darkness that had followed the touch of finger to forehead. Not like the drug dreams he’d had, and certainly nothing like the place where the Cold Entity lurked. In fact, it had been a very, very pleasant blackness, a warm and fuzzy sort of blackness, a place of comfort and vaguely happy lassitude not unlike all those times he’d floated in and out of sleep in the Infirmary at the Collegium when he’d been badly hurt. He had the distinct sense that he was being cared for by someone who had no intention of hurting or imprisoning him and that he was safe, and the best thing he could do at the moment was to be calm and sleep and heal.
When he woke again, it was with a clear head—though he tested, and his Mindspeech still wasn’t back—to find that he was, indeed, in a cave. Above him was the rough rock ceiling, craggy and uneven, with light reflecting irregularly from it. He was lying on something extremely soft and comfortable and was covered with some fine, heavy fur blankets, because he could feel the fur soft against his chin. There was something else on him, weighing down his legs, in fact, and he tilted his head up to see that the cat was holding him down. It raised its head, gave him what he would have sworn was a look filled with smugness, then stood up, stretched, yawned, and sauntered off.
That was when he understood he was lying on a bed made up on the floor of the cave. The rough rock wall was within touching distance to his right. To his left there was a cut floor not unlike the Pieters’ mine. He appeared to be in a little chamber cut into the rock, with a passage leading out to where the light was. There was nothing else in the chamber but him, though he had to admit that the absence of any sort of a door was something of a comfort.
He heard footsteps, and a moment later a figure in the passage cast a shadow over him.
“Trouble not to untruths speak,” said a slightly irritated-sounding voice. “Demon-rider of the North, I know you are.”
He blinked. “Um, excuse me?” he replied. “I wasn’t riding that thing, it was trying to eat me. Or something.”
The figure came farther into the chamber, dropped down a three-legged stool, and sat down on it with the air of someone who was being put to a great deal of trouble. The cat came back in and made a noise that sounded like admonishment. The man snorted.
“Pardon it seems I must beg,” he replied, with faint sarcasm. “Reaylis is to saying thing you ride is to being like him, not demon.”
Mags put his hand up to his head, feeling a bit bewildered and very foggy. “Uh . . . right.” Reaylis . . . was the cat? Well, why not? Valdemar had talking horses, why shouldn’t Karse have talking cats? “Uh . . . why did you help me? Not that I’m
ungrateful! But—”
“Explanation long, time for eating, then sleeping.” The man shoved a bowl at him and put a cup down beside the bed. Both were pottery as rough as the cave walls. The bowl held some sort of fish stew, and since he hadn’t been given a spoon, Mags drank it straight from the bowl. The mug held nothing more sinister than water. The man snatched up both as soon as he was finished, and before Mags could say anything at all, stabbed a forefinger at his head, and the next thing Mags knew—
He was waking up again.
He was hungry, and he needed to use the privy. There was no sign of the cat this time and no sounds from outside the chamber. He decided to try to move.
He regretted the decision a little, because all those wounds he thought he had felt really did exist. They weren’t raw wounds, though; the pain was more ache than anything else, though when he pulled back the sleeve of the oversized shirt he was wearing, there were neat, clean bandages running all the way up his arm, so he couldn’t exactly look at his injuries.
It seemed the shirt was the only garment he was wearing, but it was so big it came down past his knees. The cat appeared as he was getting unsteadily to his feet. It looked at him with keen intelligence, meowed once, and walked away with its tail in the air. It had very odd markings, like nothing he had ever seen before: reddish-brown face, ears, tail and paws, the rest cream colored. There was a suggestion of stripes in the red parts.
Clearly, the cat wanted him to follow, so he did. It led him through a larger chamber that looked as if it served a lot of purposes and toward what looked to be a tunnel out to daylight.
That was exactly what the opening proved to be, and the cat directed his footsteps to a nicely constructed latrine, which he gratefully used. The area around the cave—or mine—mouth was well tended; there were a couple of benches, a small herb garden, a larger vegetable garden. Someone had left a basket of mixed vegetables on the bench. Mags eyed it, decided it wasn’t too heavy for his weakened state, and picked it up, taking it back inside. In the main chamber was an actual fireplace—it looked as if it had been built making use of a natural fissure leading to the surface, or perhaps an air-channel that had been cut—and an area that looked as if it was used as a kitchen. Mags washed the vegetables, then began peeling and cutting them up, thriftily saving the greens and peels together, in case his unknown host had a use for them that he couldn’t figure out.
The floor was uneven but smooth. The walls and ceiling were rougher. There was a dresser with shelves holding a few dishes, pots and pans, and implements on one side of the fire and a second holding some bags, boxes, and sealed or stoppered pots on the other. There was a small table with two benches just in front of the fire, a little table or stand near the entrance to “his” chamber with a big pottery basin on it. That was the extent of the furnishings.
There was a pot over the banked fire, keeping warm; Mags gave it a good stir. There was a bowl soaking in a pan of water; he cleaned it. And about then was when he ran out of energy, and he made his way back to “his” chamber to lie down.
He dozed a little and was awakened by his rescuer, who nudged his shoulder with a toe, since both hands were full. He sat up, and the man handed him a bowl and a mug again.
“Reaylis says I am to be thanking you for help,” the man said, and sniffed. “So I am thanking you.”
“You rescued me, you patched me up, you’re feeding me,” Mags pointed out. “I thank you, sir, and taking care of a few dishes and vegetables is scarcely going to repay what you did for me.”
The man hmphed. “Well. Correct thinking,” he said, sounding mollified. “You move. Come out. Sit in the sunshine. The Sun will give you His blessing.” He went to a chest in the shadows past the foot of the bed that Mags had not seen, and rummaged, “Here. Pants.”
He dropped a pair of worn linen trews on the foot of the bed.
Huh. The sun again. All right, this guy must be pretty religious. Again, vague memories of classes reminded him that the Karsites worshiped the Sun. If it’ll make him happy, I don’t mind sitting in the sun. ’Specially after being so cold.
He wondered if he ought to try saying something in Karsite, but his Karsite wasn’t any better than the priest’s Valdemaran. He suspected that the only reason he had understood what the Karsite captain had been saying to his captors was the pure accident of them using words he actually knew.
The man helped him to his feet and then led the way out. Mags paused just long enough to pull on the trews, then followed. As soon as they got into the main room, which was now lit by a variety of lamps and candles, Mags got a good look at him.
He wore long robes, which looked too big on him, of a faded red. They’d been belted up to a bit below his knees, making them more practical for wandering around in a forest. The sleeves had been tied up too, by the simple expedient of running a cord through both sleeves across his back and gathering them up that way.
He wasn’t old though; he looked to be in his late teens or early twenties. Much too young to sound as grumpy as he did.
His blond hair was long and braided into a single tail down his back. He had a square, severe-looking face, a mouth that looked as if it never smiled, and blue, deep-set eyes. His hands were big, and it was obvious he was used to doing a lot of hard work, for the fingers were callused and his forearms well muscled.
Mags moved slowly and carefully; it felt as if he might tear something open if he moved in a hurry. “My name is Mags,” he said, as they went down the tunnel to the outside. He noticed something he had not on his way out the first time: a door right where the tunnel joined the main chamber that swung outward. It would be very difficult in the confined space of the tunnel to get enough leverage to wrench it open, and almost impossible to batter it down. At some point someone had set metal brackets into both the door and the stone wall of the chamber to allow a stout bar to be dropped into them, holding the door in place.
“Franse,” said the man, shortly, over his shoulder. “Brother Franse.”
Mags had not been sure what time of day it had been when he had awakened, but now he was pretty certain it was afternoon. One of the benches had been situated in such a way that it caught the sun. Mags was very happy to sit down on it.
Franse went to work in the herb garden, pinching off a leaf here, a stem there, obviously collecting just enough for a particular dish or dishes. The garden itself looked as if it had been harvested recently, and Franse was just taking fresh herbs while they were still growing, before the frost killed them all.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Mags said diffidently into the silence, “what was it that attacked me?”
“Demon,” Franse replied, and he added something that sounded like curse words. “Sun-forsaken black-robes are to be sending, send every dark, the night to take. To be like wolves, like dogs, to be in their homes keeping people. To be making people like—baaaaaa!” He put his hands to his head like ears and bleated like a sheep.
So the thing hadn’t been after him specifically. He sighed with relief, and let the sun soak into him. It felt awfully good, actually, more so than he would have expected; in fact, the sun felt a lot like being bathed in a soothing salve.
The cat strolled onto the path from around some bushes at the end of the garden, tail high. It really was as big as he remembered; its head would easily come as high as his knee. It was a very handsome cat, with its striking cream and red markings. It paraded toward them, looking very self-satisfied, paused long enough to give Franse’s hip a rub, then sauntered over to Mags. It regarded him for a moment. Its blue eyes seemed to stare into him.
“Hello . . .” He tried to think of the cat’s name. “. . . Reaylis?”
That got a short huff of purr, and the cat got to its feet, then continued its leisurely stroll into the mouth of the tunnel.
“Was this a mine
?” he asked Franse, who straightened from his work, put his selected handful of herb bits into the basket at his side, and got up. At Franse’s puzzled look, he mimed digging and pointed at the tunnel.
“Aye. So Old Harald said.” Franse moved over to the vegetable side of the garden.
“Old Harald?” It seemed as if Franse treasured words more than gold, he was so stingy with them.
“Red-robe as was here before me.” Franse carefully examined his vegetables before selecting them. “Master of me. This you are liking?” He held up a bunch of beets. They looked beautiful. Then again, after days of nothing but broth followed by days of only what he could scavenge, anything would look beautiful. He was ready to bite into them raw.
“Um. Yes, thank you.” Mags paused, trying to think of something to say, but this time Franse actually initiated a question.
“You can being to arrow?” he asked, miming using a bow. “I am to be finding—” he mimed using a sling “—with you, you can to being to arrow?”
“Yes,” Mags said simply, then added, “I can shoot a bow and use the sling. But I am better with a bow.”
The man sighed. “Shooting. Shooting. Good. You will to be shooting damn rabbits that are to be eating—” he waved his arm at the expanse of his garden.
Mags mouth watered at the thought of meat for the first time in days. “Would it be safe for me to sit out here in the dusk? I mean, if you have these demon things prowling around, I’d rather not risk it, but dusk and dawn is when rabbits generally forage.”
Franse might not be able to speak Valdemaran well, but it seemed he understood pretty much everything Mags said.
He made a dome with his hands and looked to Mags.
“Safe? Sheltered?” He tried to think of one of the words from the old Chronicles that had mentioned magic. “Protected, shielded, warded?”
“Ah!” Franse nodded. “Warded is garden. Safe it is. To be not moving, you.” Franse got up and took his basket down into the former mine. When he returned, it was with a light bow and a quiver full of hunting arrows. Mags checked both over. The fletching on the arrows could stand being renewed, but the bow had been stored unstrung, and someone had been regularly conditioning the string. It was safe enough to shoot without snapping either the string or the bow and, almost as important, both light enough that he could pull an arrow quickly without tearing open his wounds and strong enough that an arrow from it would kill a rabbit within the small confines of the garden.
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