The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume One

by Lindsay Smith

  “No,” her grandfather’s voice said quickly. “Not a Host. She must come over to the Ice. You know that.”

  Tanya nodded. For the Flame to gain control of a Host—the results could be devastating. The Flame wanted magic to burn through the fabric of reality, to leave the Earth scorched and blackened. They claimed it was the only way to start anew, that the burned-away reality would prove more fertile for change. The idea terrified Tanya. Yes, the Ice ways could be frustrating, so rigid and tied to the past, but at least they didn’t mean annihilation.

  “I am only suggesting,” her grandfather’s voice said, “that you must approach her differently, if she is not of the Ice. There are procedures, vnuchka, proper ways of acting.”

  Tanya sighed. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Well, I don’t know what influences you’re under, living so far away! You mustn’t forget where you come from. Remembering that, remembering your heritage, that will help you recruit the Host.”

  Tanya rubbed at her forehead. “I was hoping for a bit more specific advice, Dyedushka.” The voice in the radio always seemed to have a stronger obedience to the established order than the grandfather she remembered. She sometimes thought her grandfather’s spark of magic had been designed to be the perfect bureaucrat, the type of man no human could ever actually be.

  Her grandfather’s voice laughed, although in the distortion of the radio it was not the warm laugh of the man who had sat with her by the fire telling her stories of magic and sorcery. It was broken and brittle. Cold. A winter laugh.

  “You always want specific advice, my little bird, when the best advice comes from the past. You are too modern. Our ways have worked for thousands of years. We take the cautious approach. When the time is right, the Host will come to you. For now, you must concentrate on keeping her away from the Flame. These things cannot be forced. If they were forced, we’d be no better than our enemies, is that not so?”

  Tanya rankled at the idea that her grandfather’s construct thought she wanted to use Flame methods, wanted anything to do with their riotous, transformative magic.

  “The Host is vulnerable,” she said. “I don’t think it’s wise to take such a passive approach—”

  A burst of angry static erupted out of the speakers. “It is not a passive approach, Tatiana Mikhailovna. It is our approach, born out of centuries of practice. Wait. Watch. Keep her away from the Flame. When the time is right, then we will act.”

  Tanya’s face flushed hot. She knew there was no point in pushing the matter. Her grandfather had designed his construct to be the perfect sorcerer of the Ice; it won every argument just by digging in and staying there. The one unifying Ice practice, really. Staying put.

  “Fine,” Tanya said. “We’ll continue what we’re doing. But if the Flame recruit her—”

  “You won’t let that happen,” her grandfather’s voice said. It was starting to distort; it was pulling away, ending the conversation before she did. “You are a daughter of the Ice and of Russia both. You will not bend to the whims of your enemies.”

  The static flared on enemies, swallowing her grandfather’s voice whole. Tanya stared down at the box sitting on her table. It was just a broken, dead radio now.

  • • •

  Gabe followed Alestair through a knot of snow-covered trees, a string of curses running through his head. It was too quiet out here in the woods to mutter them aloud; any sound, from the crunch of snow under their feet to the huff of their breath, was amplified in the empty forest.

  “Almost there,” Alestair called out, glancing over his shoulder. He strode through the frozen wilderness outside Prague as if he were strolling through a London park on a sunny spring afternoon. “Tell me, old boy, what do you feel?”

  “Cold.” Gabe peered up at the tangle of black tree branches overhead. Alestair hadn’t been forthcoming about why they were here—as he had driven Gabe to the outskirts of the city, he’d made small talk about his time in the field, discursive little stories that had the whiff of fishermen’s tales about them. Any questions Gabe asked about where they were going, and why, Alestair had deflected, eyes twinkling.

  Up ahead, Alestair chuckled. “Funny. But try to focus. We’re getting closer, and I’m sure you’ll be able to feel something. You just have to try. Give it the old college try, that’s what they say in America, isn’t it?”

  Gabe grunted in response. It was colder out here than it was in the city, and the air knifed across his face. He could barely feel his nose.

  “What am I supposed to be—”

  “Shhh,” Alestair said, still picking his way through the snow. “Concentrate.”

  Gabe sighed. He didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to be concentrating on. There was nothing out here but trees and snow and ice. Even the wind was still.

  A few years back he’d watched some trashy horror movie as part of a double feature: a gaggle of wild-haired women sacrificing goats in the woods, calling down Satan. He wondered if Alestair had seen the same movie. Seemed unlikely. This whole trip felt like an interagency prank. Take the American out to the woods, scare him a bit, send him back.

  But then he felt a prickle of electricity run over his skin, like he’d brushed against a live wire.

  “What the hell?” He stopped and glanced around, his muscles tense. The prickle was still there, although it didn’t hurt, not exactly.

  “Ah.” Alestair paused. “I see we’ve found it.”

  “Found what?” The prickle was deepening into a low magnetic hum. Gabe felt it in his bones, his skeleton a lit-up fluorescent sign.

  “The ley line.” Alestair stood beside him and closed his eyes. With his blond hair, he looked angelic out here in the snow. “It’s been a while since I’ve stood on one in the wilderness.” He looked over at Gabe. “There are so many distractions in the city, you don’t always feel the power of the lines. Too much noise, too much movement.” Alestair flicked his hand around dismissively. “It’s a bit like the stars, I always thought. You’re aware of them in the city, but when you step out into the wild, they’re magnificent.” He gazed upward, even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and the sky was the steel-gray of a gun barrel.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Gabe asked. The hum didn’t seem so strong anymore—was it actually fading or had he just gotten used to it? His head was starting to hurt, that stinging pre-headache that always announced the imminent arrival of a migraine. Fantastic.

  “Magic, my friend, magic.” Alestair thumped Gabe on the shoulder. “If you take five steps to the left here, you’ll be away from the ley line.”

  There it was again. Ley line. It was a phrase Gabe had heard before—although he couldn’t quite place it. Jordan, maybe? That didn’t seem right. He associated it more with San Francisco hippies. Crystals and incense. Ley lines.

  Still, Gabe stepped off to the left. The humming faded away, although the pain in his head remained. Alestair was studying him, his expression unreadable.

  “You brought me all the way out here to show me magic exists?” Gabe shook his head. Laughed. “I already know magic exists. Trust me. I’ve seen that shit.”

  Alestair smirked. “You’re quite mistaken. I brought you out here to show you how magic works.”

  Gabe’s stomach went leaden. He looked at his tracks in the snow, the blurred patch where he had stood, and felt his bones vibrating inside his skin. “I don’t care how it works,” he muttered. “I just want to know how to deal with it. I just want the headaches to stop.”

  “Of course you do, and as I promised Jordan, we’ll find a solution. But until then, you’ll need a means of controlling them. And that means understanding magic.” Alestair looked over at him, his eyes crinkling. “I’m afraid you’re a part of this world now.”

  Gabe scowled, feeling sick at the idea that Alestair was right.

  “Fortunately, anyone can learn magic, just as anyone can learn to play the piano. And just as with the piano, learning�
�s no guarantee you’ll be good at it, but at the very least you’ll understand what you’ve gotten yourself into.” Alestair breathed out a puff of white air and walked over beside Gabe. He gazed out at the woods. “Magic is part of the earth itself,” he said. “It formed out of the elements into a pattern of lines that have no sense of queen or country—they existed long before we did.”

  Gabe shifted his weight. His headache pulsed. Always the worst possible time.

  “If one wishes to cast a spell,” Alestair went on, “one only has to reach out and pluck those ley lines—metaphorically, of course—in the right pattern. Spellwork really is like music. Do you play anything?”

  Gabe shook his head. He was trying to work his way around the pain in his head to sort this out. Lines of magic. Strumming a guitar.

  “Ah, no matter.” Alestair smiled. “Musicality isn’t required of a sorcerer.”

  “I don’t want to be a sorcerer,” Gabe said. “I want to undo what happened to me in Cairo.” He paused, remembering the heat of that back room. There was that tangle of bodies, that weird ceremony—

  He frowned. Alestair was still smiling at him.

  “Is Cairo on a ley line?” Gabe asked, voice low.

  “I think he gets it!”

  “Is it or not?”

  “It is.” Alestair dipped his head in a nod. “A rather powerful one, if I recall correctly. Are the pieces starting to fall into place?”

  “Maybe.” Gabe walked closer to the ley line, and he felt the humming at the back of his jaw. He took a step back; the humming disappeared. “It’s just so damned weird.”

  Alestair chuckled. “You’ll get used to it. You may even start to recognize the ley lines in Prague, as well. Several major ones runs through the city.”

  “Have you ever”—Gabe felt stupid using the word—“plucked it?”

  Alestair glanced over at him. “I have,” he said, with a slow smile. “I once coordinated a spell with a sorcerer in Taipei and another in Abidjan, in Côte d’Ivoire—not an easy affair, but certainly easier these days. Technology is a marvel, even if it isn’t magical.”

  “Coordinated?” Gabe thought of Cairo again. Was that what he had stumbled upon? Some kind of coordinated spell?

  “Well, of course. An individual sorcerer can’t do the big spells himself.” Alestair grinned. “It’s yet another inconvenience of the Cold War. Access to lines can be difficult, for all that the miracle of long-distance phoning has given us. You need a point in East Berlin, another in Canada—it can be difficult. But we find a way. Rituals—the preferred term for those coordinated spells—have a long history on both sides of the sorcerous divide. All the major spells require a formal ritual, with a multitude of sorcerers plucking at the ley lines simultaneously. But an individual can still do a few tricks. Here, let me show you.”

  Alestair stepped onto the ley line and then broke off a twig from a tree growing nearby. He held the twig up. Gabe felt like a bored nephew watching an uncle’s magic trick. But then Alestair closed his eyes, and murmured in a language that Gabe didn’t recognize. It was guttural and ancient and Gabe felt a creeping sensation at the back of his neck, as if he were being watched. The pinprick of pain in his head flared. And at the same moment, so did Alestair’s twig, a tiny yellow flame shooting up into the cold air.

  “Nothing much more than a parlor trick, really, but—Gabriel!” His voice seemed far away. Gabe clutched at his head. The pounding drilled deep into his brain, and he landed on his knees in the snow with a shout.

  “Gabriel!” A hand on his back. Alestair was kneeling beside him. “Oh, dear, is it one of your headaches?”

  “Yeah,” Gabe muttered. The tide of pain was subsiding; but like the tide, it left a residue in its wake. Gabe dug the heel of his hand into his forehead.

  “And it struck as I was pulling the fire, didn’t it?” Alestair helped Gabe to his feet and guided him through the snow, away from the ley line. The pain quieted a bit more.

  Gabe nodded. That language, that had done it. Those eerie words. “What were you speaking?” he asked, turning to look up at Alestair.

  “A spell.” Alestair led Gabe over to a nearby tree, and Gabe leaned against it. The pain was gone except for one stinging point. “In an ancient language, the name of which has been lost to time.”

  “I thought coming out here was supposed to help me.” Gabe gazed at the snow-covered forest. Jordan had promised Alestair would be able to help him, but they were no closer to a cure here in the wilderness than he had been sitting in the back room of Jordan’s bar.

  “I’m trying to help you, yes.” Alestair ambled through the snow, his hands tucked in his pockets. He didn’t look at Gabe. “But your headaches are magical in origin, which means you have to understand magic if you’re to truly defeat them. I can’t simply wave a magic wand and make them go away.” Alestair fluttered one hand lazily through the air.

  “Too damn bad,” Gabe muttered. In truth he had hoped that was exactly what Alestair could do—say a few unsettling words on a ley line and banish the headaches completely. “They’re interfering with my job.”

  “I imagine they are, here in Prague.”

  Gabe nodded. He pressed his back against the tree. Wet snow seeped through his trousers, chilling him.

  “This is a good thing, though,” Alestair went on. “The first step to finding a cure—a true cure, not just treatment for the symptoms—is to understand the disease.”

  “Do you understand the disease?” Gabe peered up at him.

  Alestair paused. For the first time, a breeze gusted through the forest, rattling the branches of the trees.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I will. That I promise you.”

  2.

  Joshua Toms was feeling conflicted. Frank wanted to see him and Gabe in his office, which could mean one of two things: Gabe was about to get another dressing down for that massive recruitment failure three nights ago and Josh was inexplicably being called in to watch, or the university lecture they were attending in half an hour was a hell of lot more exciting than Josh had been led to believe.

  “Dammit,” Gabe muttered from his desk. “This couldn’t wait until after we got back?”

  “We have plenty of time,” Josh said, pushing away from his desk and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. Gabe stood up, pushed a hand through his hair. He didn’t look like he felt well. His skin was grayish and pale, and he had a permanent band of sweat ringing his forehead. A week ago, Josh might’ve thought Gabe was hungover. But after what happened with Drahomir, he didn’t know what to think.

  “Yeah, wouldn’t want to miss the lecture,” Gabe said, sounding defeated.

  Josh didn’t answer, just headed toward Frank’s office. He didn’t like the university assignments, either. No one did: they were boring work, tedious, and never amounted to much. But they were part of his job, and he was going to keep sitting in on those lectures as long as Langley required it. Even if he was pretty certain this particular assignment was a direct result of Gabe’s screwup the other night.

  Josh rapped on Frank’s office door. Gabe slipped up beside him, hanging his head and rubbing his fingers over his brow.

  “You feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Gabe muttered.

  “Come in,” Frank called out, and Josh pushed the door open. Frank sat at his desk, half-hidden behind stacks of paper.

  “Close the door,” Frank said, gesturing at the two of them to step inside. “Have a seat. I know you’re on lecture duty. This shouldn’t take long.”

  Josh glanced over at Gabe, who had managed to straighten himself up in Frank’s presence. Not that it helped much.

  Josh sat down stiffly, not sure what to expect. Frank leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers. He wasn’t looking at Gabe. Maybe this wasn’t about Drahomir after all.

  “We need to talk about ANCHISES,” Frank said.

  Josh perked up, heart fluttering in his chest. There’d been whispers ar
ound the office for weeks about that name, that op. All rumors—nothing substantial. Still, Josh had let himself get his hopes up. As a junior officer, taking part in such a potentially important op would be a tremendous boost to his career. “Are we on board, sir?”

  Frank looked at him. “That’s the plan, Toms. Assuming you two can show me you’re capable.” Frank glanced over at Gabe when he said, “You’ll be capable, won’t you?”

  “Sure thing, sir,” Gabe said.

  “Good.” Frank paused, taking the two of them in. Josh perched on the edge of his seat, hungry for details. “You ever heard of Maksim Sokolov?”

  “The Soviet scientist?” Josh glanced over at Gabe, who leaned forward, his expression intense.

  “The one and only. It appears he’s had a change of heart regarding his political allegiances.”

  “A defector,” Gabe murmured.

  Frank scowled. “Glad to see you haven’t totally lost your touch, Pritchard.”

  Gabe flinched at that, looked away. Josh felt a momentary twinge of pity.

  “You’re right, though,” Frank went on. “Sokolov will be attending a physics symposium here in Prague in a little over a month, and our office has been put in charge of exfil. This is a big one, boys, and we don’t have a lot of time to get ready.”

  Josh forced back a gleeful smile. Finally, a chance to work on something big, something that actually mattered. Sokolov was one of the USSR’s top physicists, a man whose brilliance could be seen sparkling behind his hard eyes even in photographs. He’d helped design the Luna 1 engine back in the fifties, and even though the US had won the Space Race, the Stars and Stripes now permanently flying on the surface of the moon, his defection would be a major coup.

  “The op will taking place during the symposium itself, which means we’ve got to clear the building. That’s where you two come in.” Frank waggled his finger back and forth between them. “I need a full report of the Troja campus, and the hotel where the symposium’s taking place. I want the layout, possible points of entrances, exits, hideaways—the works. Nothing’s too obvious. We need a hard plan if we’re going to do this right.”