Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

  My nose twitched, and I sneezed.

  “More smoke and more fire.” Rory rubbed at eyes reddened by days of breathing ash.

  The coach jolted to a halt.

  The mansa flung open the door, then sucked in a harsh breath. “We are too late.”

  I scrambled out after him.

  The turnpike from Audui to Cantiacorum was built atop the old Roman road in layers of crushed stone. South of the road a high stone wall demarcated the perimeter of the main estate of Four Moons House. A wide fan driveway fronted four arches, each ornamented with a phase of the moon. Between turnpike and wall lay a garden and the gatehouse supervised by the women magisters who tended the purification baths and gave or revoked permission for visitors to enter.

  Ruin engulfed the gatehouse and the stables behind it. The carefully pruned hedges poured a greasy smoke into the air. Every tree was on fire. A dead woman sprawled on the steps, her face turned away from us and her bare back a grotesque fabric of savage burns.

  When a magister powerful enough to rule as the head of a mage House is struck rigid with fury and he is standing not ten paces from you, you will be glad he is fighting on your side.

  A powerfully cold wind rocked the coach. As the mansa started walking to the gatehouse, icy sleet began to fall. I drew my sword.

  “How did they get past the gate?” I asked. “Is it not protected by a cold magic binding?”

  “She who holds the keys to the gates must be alive to close or open them.” His right hand clenched as he looked toward the body on the steps. He let out the hard exhalation of a man determined to get on with the painful task that has to be done.

  “Was she your kinswoman?” I asked, for she had hair the same color as his.

  “My sister,” he said curtly. “Let Rory scout in his cat form. Go around to the back. I think they will not think to use a cat as a catch-fire. Go on.”

  Rory shed his clothes and turned from man to cat. He nudged my hands, licked Bee, yawned assertively at the mansa, and loped off. We got in the carriage.

  The shadow of the arch passed over us as we entered the estate.

  “Here is a riddle,” the mansa said as we rolled down the wide avenue past black pine and a reed-choked pond. “Fire will burn as long as it has fuel and is not doused by water. If this man Drake uses Andevai as a catch-fire yet cannot fathom the well of Andevai’s power, what then?”

  “I told Vai once that the potency of his cold magic is the inverse of his modesty,” I said.

  “Cat, are you saying that by using Andevai as his catch-fire, Drake becomes as powerful as Andevai is vain?” Bee smiled at me with brows lifted in the way she had that provoked me to mischief. Her smile broke through the wall of relentless concentration I had raised around my fears. We broke into hysterical giggles.

  The mansa stared as if to scold us but instead sat back with a stiff but honest smile. “I suppose a little levity cannot harm our cause. Anyway, it may well be an apt analogy that should give us pause, given what we know of Andevai’s monstrously bloated conceit.”

  Bee snickered. I wiped tears from my eyes.

  He set a fist on the window’s rim and studied the orchard as we passed. The first time I had been driven this way, I had seen Kayleigh walking in the orchard among the field hands. Vai had halted our carriage to greet her. I had begun then to comprehend that the man I thought I saw was merely the clothes he showed to the world. What made him who he truly was ran far deeper. Just as it did in all of us.

  The main house lay almost two miles from the road. Smoke boiled up above the trees, shimmering with heat.

  “What better way to humiliate Vai than by destroying the House he has pledged to uphold and maintain?” I cried. “And likewise practice for the greater destruction he means to visit on his own home?”

  “I fear you are right,” said the mansa. He did not take his gaze from the smoke. “My surviving troops and magisters will be days behind us on the road. Beatrice, you must remain in the coach so you do not yourself need rescuing. Catherine, are you ready?”

  Shared laughter had polished away the weight of my dread. I knew what I had to do.

  “Mansa, the only way to kill James Drake is with cold steel.”

  “Andevai taught us how to pull the backlash off another and into ourselves, so I will keep the fire mages from using you as a catch-fire for long enough that you can reach him,” he said without the least sign that he appreciated the irony of protecting me after he was the one who had once demanded I be killed. “I will not let you burn. Best you scout first, however.”

  “Be safe, dearest.” Bee grasped my hand, kissed my cheek, and let me go.

  I pushed down the latch as we rumbled along the drive. As the door swung open I leaned out, feet in the coach and body braced on the door. The coach came to a halt just out of sight around the last curve of the drive from the House.

  I hopped out. The coachman touched the brim of his cap in salute. The eru leaped onto the roof of the coach in a tremor of unseen wings. I wrapped the shadows around me and ran alone up to the House.

  45

  Four Moons House resembled a princely palace, with a broad forecourt, a grand portico reached by a series of stepped terraces, and an imposing building anchored by round rooms at either end and wings stretching behind to enclose interior gardens. A curtain-like shimmer of heat pushed smoke skyward from the back of the building. With cracks and bangs, windows, walls, and furniture shattered, broke, fell as the flames ate forward through the structure like a fiery leviathan devouring its helpless prey.

  A troop of soldiers stood on the portico facing toward the House, their rifles trained on the doors to prevent anyone inside from venturing out. Six young fire mages were ranged along the steps, each with a cold mage huddled in front being used as a catch-fire, although it seemed to my eye that they weren’t trying to raise fire as much as simply control the six magisters. Most likely there were other fire mages elsewhere around the estate. I had no idea how many had followed Drake and how many had been left behind with Camjiata’s army.

  About thirty people, mostly women, knelt on the highest terrace. White-haired elders and slender youths were treated with equal disrespect. I recognized Serena among them, but I did not see Vai’s mother or sisters.

  Drake stood like a hero on the topmost step. Wrapped as I was within the threads of the worlds, I could easily see the geometry of his fire magic, the way he cast threads of backlash into all thirty of these mages. He had not the cacica’s skilled and delicate touch. In her hands catch-fires were lit with a nimbus glow as the threads of their magic spun north to the far ice and through the spirit world and back again into the mortal world. These catch-fires blazed too brightly, flooded with more power than they could channel even though it was shared between them.

  Only one mage still stood, braced upright by sheer force of will.

  The well of Vai’s power shone as radiant a blue as the sacred wells of the Antilles. Given so much fuel to burn, Drake’s fire raged. He was pouring his fire into the palace and his backlash into the thirty cold mages. Even split among them it was obviously too much for them to handle, for many were too young or too ill or too elderly to sustain the heat. Vai was pulling streams of backlash out of them and into himself, to stop any one of them from flooding and thus dying.

  That was how Drake was controlling Vai: Not by using him as a catch-fire but by forcing him to protect the people he felt responsible for. Of course the mansa had named him heir! The mansa had finally understood that once saddled with the burden, Vai would never lay it down.

  I ran back to the coach, hopping up onto the sideboard.

  “Mansa! Drake has trapped many of your people inside the house. If the fire isn’t killed at once, they’ll all die. But he’s using all the remaining magisters as catch-fires. I don’t know how you can possibly kill that much fire.” I looked up at the eru, standing on top of the coach. “Cousin! Can you raise a storm?”

  Cold wings opene
d as the eru bloomed into her true face. Her third eye blazed, blue ice. “Best hasten,” she said in a ringing bell voice. “The fire grows.”

  Blades of sleet sliced the air as the coachman whipped the horses forward with a “Ha-roo! Ha-roo!”

  As we swung around the corner, heat poured into my face and dark clouds surged overhead. The coach pulled up. The mansa climbed out and strode forward to face the man who was destroying his home. I leaped out after him, wreathed in my shadows, unseen.

  Soldiers spun around to aim rifles at the coach, but every rifle clicked dead, for the mansa’s cold magic killed their spark. Snow hissed across the burning building. The flames began to die.

  With an ease that astounded me, Drake flung a thread of backlash into the mansa. At once the falling snow ceased, and the mansa staggered as a twisting skin of light surged around his body. He had no choice but to let the backlash pour through him, because if he did not allow it to kill his magic, it would kill him.

  “Now, Cousin!” I called, closing the door of the coach to protect Bee.

  Drake’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of the eru standing atop the coach.

  She spread her wings, their span like winter. Ice glittered along the manes and coats of the horses as she beat her wings to fan the storm. Cold cracked down over all, flames wavering beneath blasts of snow.

  But fire beats back even winter. Drake threw such gouts of backlash into the cold mages that a child and then two elders toppled over. Vai frantically pulled more and more into himself, desperate to save the most vulnerable.

  Flames leaped higher. The sheer frightening rush of fire stunned me. From deep inside the palace rose shouts and cries of such fear that they scoured my heart. I knew there were courtyards in which people could shelter, but I suddenly comprehended that none of it would be enough. Not even the eru’s magic would be enough.

  I had to kill Drake. Wrapped in shadow, I started toward the steps.

  The mansa was lit by a silvery mantle of backlash that he shed continuously into the far distant ice. As I came up beside him he caught Vai’s gaze across the gap between them. He nodded, and reached with his magic to pull all the backlash off Vai and into himself. The force of all that power smashed him to his knees. His body convulsed.

  I dropped to my knees.

  Momentarily free of backlash, Vai slipped an ice lens out of the neck of his jacket. In the Antilles the ice lens had allowed him to focus and amplify his weakened magic. His magic was not weak here. Its hammer slammed down so hard that my chin hit the dirt even though I was ready for it. The eru was flung to earth and the coach creaked, groaning. Even the coachman ducked his head.

  Everyone was down, flattened, stunned. Everyone except Andevai. He was still standing. Even in torn, dirty, rumpled clothes, he looked magnificent.

  The mansa was unconscious, scarcely breathing, a smoky odor swirling around his body. He could not help us. Still staggered by the sledgehammer blow, I pushed up, stumbled sideways, then forward, supporting myself on the tip of my sword.

  “Catherine! Strike now!” I heard how weak Vai was by the hoarseness that burred his voice. He collapsed to one knee and barely caught himself on a hand. As Drake pushed himself up Vai lunged, grabbed Drake’s ankle, and jerked the fire mage to a halt.

  Drake laughed as he tugged his leg out of Vai’s weakened grip. “I have played you all very well, have I not? For I have absorbed your strongest attack and still stand. You have nothing left.”

  Every cold mage lit with the backlash of Drake’s fire magic. Horribly, so did the eru, for her magic, too, was caught in the funnel. She, too, became a conduit for his power. Only the coach and four remained impervious, and I breathed a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Tanit that I had insisted Bee remain inside.

  Wild, bright fire flashed up from the wings and front of the House. The heat built like a furnace. So had Bee dreamed: Sheets of fire from which rose screams of fear and pain.

  “Look for the glimmer of a blade, as I taught you,” Drake shouted to his fire mages.

  Fire magic spilled down the length of my sword, seeking a path into the spirit world that the cold steel could not give it, seeking me. I tossed it away before the sparks burned me. The moment it left my hand, it became visible to the soldiers.

  A rifle went off, and a bullet ricocheted off the drive next to my feet. Another shot spat on the ground by my heels. A third shot sprayed gravel onto the sword. I jumped away from the sword, still in my shadows. Sheets of fire crackled up the walls of the House. One catch-fire, then another, and a third and a fourth and a fifth cried in agony as the backlash overwhelmed them. Vai and the eru had become rivers of light, shedding backlash in flood tides into the spirit world.

  Drake soaked up the power and let it roar. Walls crashed in along the back of the House.

  Another bullet hit close to my feet, the gravel it kicked up stinging my ankle. If I picked up my sword, Drake would have me. If I waited, all the cold mages and those trapped in the interior courtyard would die. The soldiers began to march toward the coach, firing at will. The coachman looked at me, for although he could not be hurt, there was likewise nothing he could do.

  I raced back, flung open the door, and leaped into the interior of the coach.

  Bee said, “Blessed Tanit, Cat! What terrible thing is happening?”

  “Close your eyes!”

  I opened the door into the spirit world and jumped out.

  Night shrouded the world, the air as frozen as the icy water in which my sire had tried to drown me. But I was not daunted.

  Holding on to the latch so I did not flounder away from the coach, I called. “Sire! Father! You are bound to me as kin. Come to my aid!”

  A breath as of wings fluttered so close by my face that I flinched, but I did not retreat. Fingers of ice tightened over my arm, their touch engulfing me under the weight of an ice sheet. His three eyes gleamed in the darkness, and the third was a pulsing knot of blood.

  “Beware of what you ask for, little cat. Do you understand there will be a price?”

  “Yes. And I will pay it. Only me. No one else.”

  “Taken. What do you want?”

  “Of your own self and will, you can only walk into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. But I am a spiritwalker. You can cross with me right now.”

  “At last you understand.”

  He laughed, and he sprang like a cat. He flowed like a viper. He struck like a raptor, the beat of unseen wings carrying me back through the coach. Bee sat as stiff as if she were encased in ice, but I had no time. I tumbled past her and to earth.

  My sire was already standing on the gravel drive, as unruffled as you please. In his severe black jacket and trousers, and with his coldly handsome face, he looked like a man you never ever wanted to cross swords with because he would rather wait until you turned around and then stab you in back so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of seeing the light drain out of your eyes.

  “Intriguing,” he said. “The cold mages pull heat and energy from the spirit world and lock it up in this world, thus stealing it from us, but this red-haired man is dispersing it through their bodies back into my realm. I would never have seen any of this if you had not escorted me through. I shall have to think about what this means.”

  “Father! He’s going to kill all those people! Save them. Save Vai! I beg you.”

  “You are a slave to the chains that bind you to others. That makes you weak.” His smile cut.

  I licked a spot of blood off my lip. “No, it makes me strong.”

  The history of the world begins in ice, so the bards and djeliw claim, and it got so cold so fast I was pretty sure the world was going to end right under my feet. A gossamer undulation like wings of frost flared at his back, and the veins of his closed third eye smoked like night on his brow.

  He raised a vast pressure of cold that began to choke down the fire. Drake’s young fire mages collapsed first, crusted all over in a skin of ice. The soldiers cower
ed in fear, guns dead.

  My ears throbbed. My eyes were sucked dry of moisture. My lips stung.

  Drake saw us, for the shadows had been ripped right off me. I thought it must surely end quickly. What mortal could stand against the Master of the Wild Hunt?

  But Drake blazed. The flood pouring through Andevai and the eru surged as an ocean tide around the fire mage. Like a volcano, Drake had become the flowing energy that consumes all in its path.

  Soot spun in black tornadoes into the sky. Lightning sparked and flashed. The air above the palace grew so hot that a green aura of light appeared and twisted in the sky.

  Ice and fire warred in perfect balance, neither able to retreat or to advance.

  I ran forward to grab my sword. Drake did not notice. He dared not take his eye off the Master of the Wild Hunt, because no matter how powerful he and Andevai together were, fire mage and catch-fire, to falter even for an eyeblink would bring the ice crushing down.

  I leaped up the steps, taking them two at a time. Just as I reached the top, Drake saw me coming. A thread of heat woke in my heart as he spun backlash into me with a fevered smile. Vai was blinded by the force of all that magic, and my sire was too far away to help me. It would take me only a few heartbeats to burn.

  But I only needed one, for my sire had given me all the opening I needed.

  I leaned into the thrust. Cold steel slid up under Drake’s rib cage and pierced the beating fury of his heart. I ran him through up to the hilt.

  His brow wrinkled as if he were puzzled by how close I stood.

  I shoved, just one step more, to make sure I really had him. He rocked back. Caught on my blade, he could not pull away. His eyes flared and sparked in sheer stymied fury. He tried to speak, but although his mouth opened, no sound came out, only a trickle of blood.

  There flashed in an instant through my mind a hundred triumphant retorts and gloating taunts, but in the end I realized I simply did not care enough to speak. With a grunt of pain, for my hand hurt from clenching so hard, I jerked the sword out of his body and turned the blade to cut his throat. Blood poured down his chest, ruining the dash jacket he had stolen from Vai. I stepped out of the way as he toppled face-first onto the stone stairs.