Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

  “What attacked me?”

  Rory opened his jaws to display his teeth. Amadou raised his sword.

  “The cat is our ally,” I said sharply. I looked up, hearing the flutter of wings. “Down! Get down!”

  Of course he did not comply. Why would a patrician Roman legate who was also a Fula prince listen to a bastard girl whose mother was a northern barbarian and had been an Amazon soldier in the army of his most hated enemy besides?

  A creature with a human body and the head and claws of a harpy struck, claws closing on his shoulder. Hat and sword fell as he shouted in pain and shock. The beast lurched upward, trying to carry him away, but his mortal weight brought it to a crashing halt.

  I lunged. My focus narrowed to the beast’s emotionless face, for it looked not like a woman but like a creature wearing the mask of a woman. The tip of my blade pierced its golden eye. Its howl shuddered down my blade. I pulled back. My blade slid free as ichor sprayed. In a thunder of wings it sprang into the air and vanished from sight, bleats fading as it flew away.

  Bee dropped beside the legate, who lay facedown on trampled grass.

  “Bee, is he dead?” I demanded.

  “I’m not dead.” Amadou sat up with a wince. His fancy cape was shredded. Blood stained his tunic.

  Ghastly cries chittered out of the darkness. Huffing heat as of a steam engine chugging stirred the wind. Perhaps my tone was harsh, but I had no patience for ridiculous displays of masculine pride. “Next time you should listen to me, Legate. The spirit world will kill you.”

  “Legate?” said Bee gently. “May I help you rise—?”

  “I do not need your help.” He shook her off and rose with a grunt of pain.

  “You’re just angry that she spoke those truthful words to you which you do not want to hear and aren’t accustomed to hearing,” I retorted, for I could see Bee’s expression twist as she pretended not to be hurt by his curt rejection. “Why were you so stupid as to follow us?”

  “To take Beatrice back. You may remain in black Tartarus for all I care.”

  Bee gasped, but I forestalled her retort.

  “How do you intend to take her back, Legate? You have no idea where we are or what to do here. Your steel won’t cut the creatures here, although you can beat them with the hilt until they eat you. That creature would have killed you just now if Rory and I hadn’t fought it off.”

  Rory’s tail lashed in agreement.

  “Rory, if there are more creatures gathering out there to kill us, lick your right paw.”

  He stared at me with a look I was sure was one of reproach for the inanity of the question. Then he licked his right paw.

  “Why are you talking to a monstrous saber-toothed cat as if it can understand you?” asked Amadou Barry. “Where are we? With what magical illusion have you confounded my eyes?”

  I ignored him. “Bee, take the head of Queen Anacaona out of the basket.”

  “How can a skull help us?” Amadou picked up his sword from the ground and brandished it in what I supposed he thought was a manly way. “You two girls need protection. That’s why we must return to the house and the mansa.”

  “In the spirit world, the head of Queen Anacaona is not a skull,” I snapped, really exasperated now. “Please be polite.”

  “My apologies for the rude handling, Your Highness,” Bee said in a choked voice as she wrestled open the basket. I could hear how humiliated she was, and how hard she was trying to hide it. “We are hoping your wisdom and experience may aid us.”

  I was watching Amadou Barry, astounded that the man was too blind to comprehend that he was no longer in a world where his patrician rank or military training meant anything. When Bee lifted the living head of Queen Anacaona out of the basket, he recoiled a step, then pulled himself up short, staring as the cacica blinked to get her bearings.

  His mouth creased downward. “What cruel illusion is this?”

  Queen Anacaona said, “Turn that way, Beatrice. There are four creatures running toward us. I suggest we move to a safer domicile.”

  “There is no safer domicile, Your Highness,” I replied. “Legate, stay back.”

  Naturally the legate moved up alongside me, no doubt to impress Bee. Even injured, he looked as if he knew how to handle himself in a fight. He just didn’t have any weapons that would work here. Bee dug into one of the packs and hefted a hammer.

  Snarling, Rory sprang past me into the night. Two wolves dodged past him into the light shed by my sword. With a crosscut to the head, I sliced one hard across the muzzle and sidestepped with a turn to slash up under the belly of the second. Cold steel hit them like poison. They both collapsed. Snarls and growls punctuated a dirty fight farther out. I ran toward the sound to find Rory with his jaws at the throat of a third wolf, clamping down until the beast stopped thrashing and went limp.

  “There’s one more,” I said.

  Bee shouted a warning.

  I bolted back in time to see the fourth wolf leap toward Bee as Amadou Barry jumped between them. I grabbed its tail and yanked it sideways with me as I fell. The animal landed square on top of me, punching the air from my lungs. It twisted, shaking up to its feet as its head swung around to bite my face.

  Rory slammed into it, and they went rolling away into the darkness in a crash of noise, followed by a yelp. Rory paced back into view. He looked quite dreadfully powerful, muscles rippling beneath his dark flanks and shoulders. Facing into the darkness, he roared. His challenge shook through air and earth like a living thing. When he paused, the night had fallen as silent as if every creature near enough to hear thought it prudent to rethink its strategy.

  “Cat?” Bee’s voice was remarkably level. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m not touched.” I was shaking, not with fear but with fight. I was ready to rip out the throat of the next creature that attacked Bee. “We need to move. Find a gate to get you and the legate back to the mortal world.”

  “This is a constant nightmare of death!” cried Amadou Barry. “Have we truly crossed into Tartarus, where the ancestors bide? Where skulls are wreathed in the form of living heads? Where every monster seeks to kill?”

  Ignoring him, I slung on the pack with Vai’s tools and started walking. “I’d call Rory’s pride to protect us, but we’ve no warded ground in sight where they can shelter if a tide rips through.”

  I led with my sword, keeping my right shoulder next to the wall. Bee followed with the other two packs, slung on before and behind her, and the cacica’s head held out in front to guide us. Amadou Barry limped behind her, and Rory brought up the rear. The ground alongside the wall was stony, marked with patches of lichen. Eyes glowed in the night like pairs of fireflies, softly ominous.

  “What is a tide?” Amadou Barry demanded. “Why is everything here attacking us?”

  I couldn’t help but want to rub his nose in his ignorance. “Since you seem to think we do not know what we are about, I should like to inform you of what you do not know. Now and again young women are born who walk the dreams of dragons in their sleep.”

  “I know that!” he protested. After a hesitation, he said, “Go on.”

  “All you powerful men want Bee to make use of her dreams to fulfill your own ambitions.”

  “We merely wish to keep her out of the hands of the Iberian Monster so he cannot use her dreams to conquer Europa.”

  I snorted.

  “If that was your only purpose, Legate,” said Bee in a low voice, “then I am surprised at the insulting offer you made me.”

  “Bright Venus, but you Phoenicians are too proud!”

  I cut in before they could tumble into what would seem too much like a lovers’ quarrel. “The tides of those dreams wash the spirit world like great waves of smoke. Where the smoke washes, the land is wiped clean. Every thing and every creature that is touched by the smoke is changed. Except for warded ground, which is what we’re looking for now. The creatures who live in the spirit world hate dragon dreamers and want t
o kill Bee.”

  “This is the most outrageous tale I have ever heard,” he said, but the tremor in his voice made me realize he was actually listening.

  “Perhaps my vision deceives me,” said the cacica, “but it seems we are not going anywhere.”

  “These walls are certainly of greater circumference than the walls of Rome,” said Amadou, as if relieved to have the conversation change to a subject on which he might account himself an expert.

  “Who is this young man?” asked the cacica. “He has not asked to be brought to my notice. Yet he speaks as if I had requested his opinion.”

  “I do not need anyone’s permission to speak!” said Amadou.

  I squelched an urge to punch him.

  “Your pardon, Your Highness,” said Bee. “It was rude of me to forget my manners.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked Bee’s simpering expression as she introduced Amadou Barry to the cacica as a young man of high rank like to that of the nobles of the Taino kingdom. The cacica was not impressed by his grudging courtesy. I wasn’t either. But I had more urgent concerns. Ahead lay a sprinkle of drying ichor and a mat of white feathers whose pattern I recognized.

  “Blessed Tanit! We’ve come back to where we started. It’s not that we’re not going anywhere. We’re going in a circle around a wall with no entry. The chain that binds me to Andevai can pierce the wall but we can’t.” I poked at the wall with the tip of my sword. Its substance remained stubbornly hard. “He’s inside, but we have no gate.”

  “No gate?” remarked the cacica, in surprise. “You cut a gate once in the fence the behiques raised around Kiskeya, young woman. As you well recall, since it was through that gate my murderer entered my realm. Why can you not cut a gate here in the same manner?”

  Amadou Barry rudely spoke right over her words.

  “You just claimed to know what you are about in this place,” he said in the tone of a man who has had enough of the pretensions of the lesser folk. “It is time you girls gave up this fruitless quest and returned to Adurnam with me.”

  Bee turned to look out toward the horizon. “Cat! A light is rising. A dragon is turning in her sleep. I can feel the smoke of her dreams rushing toward us.”

  A blaze of white fire splintered the darkness, rolling toward us across a flat, grassy landscape.

  “Rory! Come here! Bee, get hold of him. Legate, grab Beatrice’s hand.”

  Shuddering with fear, Rory pushed up against Bee as I sheathed my sword and flung one arm around her and with the other grabbed a hank of Rory’s pelt. My hip was pressed into Rory’s heaving side.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Amadou Barry.

  “Legate, if you don’t grab hold of her now, you will be swept away—”

  “Blessed Tanit!” exclaimed Bee.

  The tide of the dream, like daylight, illuminated a crowd of animals creeping toward us out of the night. The beasts seemed oblivious to the tide because they were so intent on murdering Bee.

  “Brave Jupiter! I shall fight them off!” Amadou advanced like a hero, sword raised to threaten the beasts.

  The tide swept down, ripping through them, tearing a gash through the world.

  “Amadou!” cried Bee, dropping the hammer. “Grab hold of my hand!”

  The light cut through me. The earth fell away as the world tipped to spill me into an abyss through which I would fall for eternity. But Bee was my rock. She was the pillar that no earthquake or storm could dislodge. She was warded ground.

  Amadou Barry did not reach for her. The tide struck him full on. One moment I saw his body clearly, streaked with currents of shining smoke. Then he tumbled into an unseen gash in the fabric of the world. The tide of the dream streamed on, leaving us trembling in its wake as the earth shuddered back into solidity under our feet.

  Rory nudged me, and I let go of Bee and knelt to bury my face in his thick black pelt. After I caught my breath, I raised my eyes.

  Bee did not move. In one hand she still held the head of Queen Anacaona. Her other arm was extended, but her hand was empty.

  She swayed as if caught in a gust of wind, then crumpled to her knees and began weeping.

  The tide had taken him.

  I was so furious at Amadou Barry for being an idiot who wouldn’t listen that I simply could not speak one word.

  Those who are caught in the tide of a dragon’s dream never come back.

  The head of Queen Anacaona stared across a stony plain, now empty of life. The tide had swept away the animals who stalked us. Even the wind had died, leaving flat red earth and a cold gray sky. Behind us the impenetrable wall now appeared as a windowless but modest tower no larger than a watchtower on a Roman wall. The tower was the only object visible in this parched desert. There were not even hills marking the horizon.

  “My ancestors built a fence around our kingdom so the tides of the Great Smoke would not trouble our ancestors,” the cacica remarked, as if she were accustomed to seeing people vanish in such an abrupt and shocking manner. “All of Soraya, our spirit land, became warded ground. Therefore, our wise and beloved grandparents remain close beside us, to advise us in times of need and to celebrate with us at the festivals.”

  “Why didn’t he hold on to me?” The way Bee’s voice cracked broke my heart, or it would have, had I a heart.

  “Because he couldn’t bring himself to trust us,” I said.

  Tears streaked her face. “Don’t you care?”

  “I don’t have time to care! Not if I want to save your life and rescue Vai.” Feeling helpless made me want to kick something. I kept thinking Amadou Barry was about to step into view from around the tower, but we were alone. “Why did the chain bring me here only to abandon us in this desert?”

  “I believe this must be a puzzle,” said the cacica. “A piece that fits inside another piece. Just as the behiques of the Taino kingdom built fences to protect our lands, might not the lords of these spirit lands have built fences to close off their places of power? In the palace at Sharagua there are walls inside walls where only some have the privilege and power to enter, and others are forbidden. Could this tower be a gate onto such an inner and more sacred realm?”

  “If it is, I don’t know how to cut a way through! Bee! That’s enough! We can cry later!”

  After taking in a breath, she wiped her eyes. Her voice was a slobbery mess, but her words were clear. “The hammer wasn’t swept away.”

  On shaking legs she rose holding the cacica’s head in one hand and Vai’s hammer in the other. She would have looked comical if she hadn’t worn red, puffy eyes and a mask of tragedy.

  “Does no one listen to the wisdom of the elders?” asked the cacica. “Are young people taught nothing in these days? Are they all as disrespectful as that unpleasant young man? It is blood the maku spirit lords crave, and blood that feeds them. Life pulses in our blood. They who are without life will drink of the salt of our blood so they can mask themselves in the shape of the living. Blood will cut a gate that they wish to remain closed.”

  Of course! What was I thinking? Blood cuts the gate.

  Rory hissed. Wisps of clouds scudded our way. The earth stirred as if hidden carnivores were pushing up from underneath. Out on the plain a pack of lean wolves trotted into view. They would never stop trying to kill Bee.

  I nicked my arm and smeared the dribble of blood on the wall. The blood bubbled, eating into the wall until the surface dissolved into a jumbled mass of translucent crystal. When I laid my shoulder into it, the substance crumbled away to form a crude tunnel, something like the gate I had cut in the Taino spirit fence.

  “Go! Go!”

  Rory and Bee pushed past me and vanished into a blaze of bright light. Salt stung my eyes and made the fresh cuts on my arm burn. Behind me an animal growled, and teeth snapped close by my feet. I flung myself toward the light, and slammed into stone hard enough that the impact momentarily stunned me.

  A blowsy breath warmed my cheek. A tongue licked my closed eyes.

/>   “Stop that!” I opened my eyes to find myself embracing a granite pillar about the height of a man. To my left rose a sapling oak. To my right shone a clear pool. We had crossed onto warded ground. Rory nudged me again, and I let go of the pillar.

  “Cat! There you are! I thought we’d lost you!” Bee clutched me, her fingers digging into my already-raw cut. Her nose was red from weeping, but her eyes were shining in a belligerent way that boded ill. Yet she spoke in the charming voice she had used at the academy when she wanted to disarm and distract our teachers. “Look who I found, dearest!”

  Blessed Tanit. The chain of binding had pulled me right to him.

  Vai stood at a prudent remove, his arms crossed on his chest and his mouth set in a crooked line that made him look both annoyed and amused. The sight of him took my breath away.

  “I’ve been telling him all about the lovely wedding journey Prince Caonabo and I took to the amiable Comanche nation,” Bee chattered on as I stared.

  “Here you are, Cat. I knew you would come for me.”

  His familiar voice pulled me out of my shock. He was wearing the clothes he had had on in the coach on Hallows’ Night. Seeing him so solid and so close hit me as hard as if I had been hammered. His skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes as a smile sharpened his face.

  My lips parted. “Vai…”

  “I was waiting for you,” he added in his silkiest voice.

  Bee ground her heel into my instep. “And I told him all about the decorative little palace my darling Caonabo and I are building so it will be ready in time for the birth of our long-awaited and much-to-be-cherished child.”

  Rory hissed, ears flicking back. Bee brandished the cacica’s head and the hammer.

  I dumped my pack on the ground to leave myself room to maneuver as I confronted the man wearing Vai’s face. “You are not my husband. You are my sire. How did you know I was here?”

  His laughter had a cruel edge. “I smell and hear and see and taste all. Your voice and your emotions are fingers walking along my skin. I knew you would come after him. Still, you have surprised me, Daughter. You have brought me the dragon dreamer. I did not expect you to hand her over in exchange for the man.”