Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  A hand brushed my elbow, then took hold firmly as a male voice spoke in my ear. “He who tries to wear two hats will discover he does not have two heads.” Duvai indicated the door. “Dawn rises, and with it the open gate.”

  21

  I slipped out in his wake, as we sailing folk like to say. He walked with the rangy stride of a man accustomed to treks through trackless countryside. He handed me a wool cloak, its weave coarse and scratchy.

  “Put this on over the other. Such fine cloth marks you from a distance.”

  With the homespun cloak concealing my form, I passed through the inner gate beside Duvai without incident. The stripling was waiting in the shadow of a long thatched shelter where slabs of frozen meat hung from the rafters. He handed a pack and gear to Duvai and a smaller pack to me.

  “I can come—” he began brightly.

  “An obedient son brings wood to his mother’s hearth,” remarked Duvai. The lad took the hint and with a sigh of resignation watched us go.

  Duvai knew the land and the season. The barest hint of gray lightened the snowy landscape as we crossed the outer gate. If there were wolves in the shadows, they faded as day crept out from the thicket of night. Snow crunched under our feet.

  “Anyone can follow our trail,” I said, glancing behind at the footprints leading away.

  He said nothing, just kept walking southeast in a direction that led us away from both the House and the toll road. He set a strong pace, but I had long legs and the strength to keep up. Maybe he was testing me, for by the time we reached the edge of the land cleared and husbanded by the village, I was warm despite the cold. We halted beneath the snow-kissed branches of spruce. He knelt, scooped up a palmful of crisp snow, and blew it back the way we had come, a scatter of misted breath and a sparkle. A wind skirled over the ground, whipping the grass and rustling in the skeletal arms of the orchard. It rolled back over our footprints and, like the sweep of a brush, erased them.

  “Are you a cold mage, too?” I demanded, stunned by this display.

  He rose. “I am no cold mage. A good hunter must understand what lies around him. That is all. Best we go quickly and make distance.”

  We walked, Duvai in the lead and me three steps behind.

  “Why do you have two hats?” I asked his back. “I mean, what did you mean by that?”

  “I was speaking of Andevai. He tries to wear two hats, but no man can. He must be a magister of the House or a son of this village. He cannot be both.”

  “Why not? Can a person be only one thing?”

  “A person must know what he is.”

  “Be what you are,” I murmured, echoing the eru’s words.

  “To be what you are is the kernel at the core of every person,” he agreed. He strode at a pace that would tire me in time, but I was determined to show no weakness. In a way, Kayleigh had done me a favor by giving me that sleep in the warmth of her mother’s house.

  “What illness eats at your mother?” I asked.

  “She is not my mother,” said Duvai. “My mother was not willing to play second kora when her husband took another, younger bride, so she returned to her own village, taking her bride price with her.”

  “But not her son.”

  “The son remains with his father. My sisters grew up with her, under the hand of a Trinobantic lord instead of a mage House.”

  “Who is the better master, prince or magister?”

  “Why should I prefer one master over another? Do you?”

  His bluntness surprised me. “I do not, I admit.” I hesitated, but I could never keep a prudent tongue. “What happened to Andevai and Kayleigh’s mother?”

  “The city medicine keeps her alive. Suffering is what comes from love.”

  “That’s a hard way to look at it. How did the House come to take Andevai?”

  “Cold magic knows its own. Their seekers found him when his power bloomed the year he turned sixteen, and they took him away. That is what masters do—they take what they want.”

  “Yet you still live in the village.”

  “Do you believe it so easy to walk away? Maybe that is what they teach you in the city. But I wonder if people in the city are any freer than we are here. As long as we pay our third in crops and labor, we are left mostly alone. Others have far less than we do.”

  “The village will be punished when the mansa knows you helped me escape.”

  He laughed.

  “How is that funny?” I demanded.

  On the hard skin of snow, each footfall’s snap reverberated through the trees. There was no wind at all, and the deathly stillness was beginning to make me uneasy.

  “Do you worry for us? Even if you do, you did not walk up to my brother and give yourself into his hands. So your concern for my village is kind to my ears, but I am not sure how much it really means.”

  “I don’t intend to die for the mansa’s benefit. I’m just sorry I stumbled onto your village and brought you into this, ah, difficulty.”

  “Yet you would not have lived out the night had we not given you guest shelter.”

  I shrugged as I kept walking. “You’re right. Yet I would not change what I’ve done. And I’m still sorry for any trouble it may cause you.”

  He grunted in answer and picked up the pace. We had begun to climb into hill country.

  “You caught something in the spirit world,” I said to his back as I quickened my own stride to catch him. “That was no antelope seen on the tundra of this world, with that third horn.”

  He glanced at me sidelong as I came up beside him. “Few see the third horn. I would think you a spirit woman in truth for having the sight to see it. But Fa knows more than I do, and if he says you are human flesh, then you are human flesh just as I am human flesh.”

  “I am not a spirit woman,” I said, because something in the way he spoke made heat flush on my cheeks and down my neck. It wasn’t that he was flirting with me; this wasn’t flirting—it was more like hunting. “It must be dangerous to hunt in the spirit world,” I added, sure the words sounded curt. Maybe it was best they did.

  “So it is. But such a catch brings good fortune to the village. Its meat will feed the hungry, and the splinters of its bones will strengthen amulets, and its hooves will be melted down to a glue that will strengthen our bows. The powder of its horns will heal the sick. All these things, coming from an animal carried out of the bush, will give us protection against the evils of the coming year.”

  “Unless the mansa punishes your village for aiding me.”

  “None will tell him, and my brother does not know.”

  “Do you like your brother, Duvai?”

  “That is a question.”

  “My apologies. I was rude.”

  “You speak your mind but are willing to admit your faults.”

  I glanced at him just as he looked at me and smiled. With his assured stride and broad shoulders, he made an attractive figure, especially when he smiled. He carried a spear, a longbow, and a knife, and I had to trust that he meant no harm to me out here in the forest where no one could hear my cries. I touched the hilt of my sword, expecting to find it had again become a cane with the daylight, but for some reason today of all days—a cross-quarter day—I swung a deadly sword at my hip. It was no ghost today. That gave me some comfort.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, to distract his smile.

  “Southwest. Toward the sea and Adurnam.”

  “Won’t they assume I’m fleeing to Adurnam?”

  “It seems likely, but the magisters think as city people do. They never walk long distances. They will think you mean to flee along one of the toll roads or take a boat on the Rhenus River.”

  I shuddered. “I’d rather not take a boat on the Rhenus River. I’d rather walk.”

  He smiled again. Perhaps he meant only to be reassuring, but the smile brought a flash of charm that made me wonder why his wife was so suspicious of a chance-met woman brought to her door. He was a man who knew who he wa
s, and that made him powerful and, I supposed, enticing. “Tell me about the city. Which mage House rules there?”

  “The Prince of Tarrant rules Adurnam. He doesn’t like the mage Houses. There’s a city council as well, like an assembly of elders. It passes ordinances and regulates the watch and the customshouse, such things. But because all members of the council are all appointed by the prince, many feel it is not truly an assembly that governs for everyone but only for the prince’s relatives, cronies, and supporters.”

  “Would they be wrong?”

  “It’s always been that way. But now people are beginning to speak out against the council, the prince, even the mage Houses.” This political turn made me uncomfortable. “Perhaps you would tell me more about the countryside hereabouts. What landmarks I should look out for. If there are shelters along this ridgeway, for I doubt I can survive a night camping in the open.”

  We passed the morning in this wise, him talking about the land and me listening. I was good at asking questions. Anyway, there was always something I needed to know. The man who was not my father had taught me that, by leaving his journals as my only inheritance, even if those journals no longer belonged to me.

  We moved higher up into the hills, following eroded ridge lines from whose height we saw occasional vistas open over the broad lowland valley, where the sacred and queenly Rhenus River flowed. A mist floated above the water, giving it the look of an unraveling satin ribbon. Where had my parents died? Or were they even my parents? Two people, among many, had drowned, and I had come into the keeping of the Hassi Barahal family. Had Aunt and Uncle known I was no Barahal, and had they deliberately raised me to sacrifice in Bee’s place? Or had they believed I was the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter? I recalled the scene of my hasty wedding, restaging it again and again in my mind. But all I could truly remember was Bee’s stunned expression and Uncle demanding “the documents” in exchange for me.

  Wind shredded the clouds, and the lazy breath of snow subsided, but with the sun’s emergence from behind cloud, the air grew colder. About midday, the sun sweeping in its low curve above the horizon, we paused at a crossroads to pour water at an offering stone. The libation coated the stone with a frail skin of ice where it pooled. He offered me bread and salty cheese, which we ate standing up because it was too cold to sit.

  After we had gulped down the food, he indicated a path that speared away up across rolling countryside, easy to see from the crossroads.

  “That way,” he said.

  My heart clenched as if a hand had squeezed it. “Are you leaving me here?”

  “To reach Haranwy by dusk, I must return now. That is your path. If you follow the main way, it will take you across the chalk hills to Lemanis, if you know where that is.”

  “It’s in the Romney Levels.” My uncle had plenty of maps. From there the drained levels opened in the south into the marshy Sieve and the river, difficult country to pass. But a decent series of roads ran from Lemanis west across the higher ground of Anderida to Adurnam. It was slower than the toll road, but it cost nothing except the time it took to walk it.

  “How far to Lemanis?” I asked.

  “Two days for a strong walker.”

  I gestured toward the open countryside. “Anyone standing where we are might see me walking out there. Is this the safest way?”

  “There is no safe way. Did you think there was?” He studied me with a bold gaze that made me frown, and my glare brought a curve to his lips that made me flush. “Vai is not the only man in the world—”

  “I never thought he was!”

  “—who might wish to do you harm. You are young, and female, and alone.”

  The spark of challenge in his expression burned me. “Why did you help me?”

  “We must do what is right.”

  My breath steamed in the wintry air, but I found I had no answer to that. “My thanks to you and your people.”

  I nodded and turned away from him, and I set my feet on the path, walking into the lonely afternoon. I heard his footfalls behind me as he moved back the way we had come, and soon enough I could no longer hear him and soon after that I could no longer see him.

  I walked, and I walked, and I walked. I was accustomed to walking. Bee and I walked all over Adurnam. The path was easy to follow, its branching spurs never to be confused with the main route toward Lemanis. The sun shone without warmth. The trees spread in wild tangles below the highest ridges, but up here I was utterly exposed. Anyone from miles around, standing at the right vantage point, could see me. Yet what else could I do except walk? There was no safe way.

  I made good time. I spotted no life beyond a hawk, a pair of grouse, and a hare springing away across a stony clearing. Even such villages and farmsteads as I glimpsed in the distance looked abandoned. The world might as well have been driven into hiding by the Wild Hunt.

  Of that dreadful passage no breath stirred that I could discern.

  It is easy to think while walking.

  The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice. Here in the north, we live under the shadow of the ice, its ice sheets and massive glaciers, and no human can walk there without being killed or driven out. Daniel Hassi Barahal wrote that the Han people who rule in distant Cathay in the far east do not fear the ice, and the people who live near the belt of the world, known as the equator, rarely feel the ice’s breath because of the ever-present heat. But he also wrote that of these lands, he could only report what he had been told or read since he had not traveled there himself to vouch for its truth: Who is to say that our teachers know of what they speak or speak of what they know?

  This is what I thought I knew: Two thousand years ago, the Romans and Phoenicians had battled to a standstill, and in the end the Romans kept their land empire and the Phoenicians kept their ports and traded across the seas without impediment. Over time, as the empire of the Romans weakened, the Celtic chiefs broke away one by one and restored their ancient principalities and lordships, at times warring or feuding with their neighbors and at others allying against some more hated prince. But although the various Celtic peoples cast out their Roman overlords, they retained many things Roman: roads, bridges, aqueducts, a calendar, laws, literacy, and the city ways and city speech of Romans.

  When, about four hundred years ago, the Persians swept across the north of Africa and conquered the trading city of Qart Hadast, many Kena’ani merchant families were forced to flee to other ports and cities. Across Europa, Celtic princes were eager to welcome them in exchange for a tax on their profits.

  About one hundred years after the Persian conquests, the salt plague broke out south of the Saharan Desert, when ghouls crawled up from the depths of the salt mines and in their invading hordes tore apart the empire of Mali. The great diaspora, breaking in waves over a hundred or more years, flooded into the north, bringing West African refugees with their gold, their horses, and their magic. Refugees born to noble houses in the south married their wealth and honor into the princely lineages of the north. Others, feared and respected but never loved because of their sorcery, discovered brethren among the Celtic drua, and their secret societies flourished close to the ice; out of this partnership grew the powerful mage Houses.

  But the refugees did not only flee north. A fleet from the crumbling Mali Empire sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, guided by Phoenician navigators. They reached the distant western continent, which was later named Amerike in honor of the Celtic explorer Rhisiart ap Meurig, and there they met, in South Amerike, previously unknown human nations and, in the north, the venturesome trolls. Their interest piqued by the new arrivals, trolls sailed east in their own exploratory ships and made landfall on the coast of Iberia, and thus began commerce across the stormy and unpredictable Atlantic Ocean.

  Like-minded trolls and humans founded the city of Expedition on the Sea of Antilles, an inland sea separating the northern nesting grounds of the trolls and the southern continent with its human chiefdoms and kingdoms. But the in
habitants of Expedition proved to be a busy people with radical notions and an insatiable desire for new technologies that the mage Houses in Europa deplored and the princely houses might take or leave, depending on how it benefited them. In such tumultuous times, the old order will grow rigid and brittle as it strives to maintain the old ways.

  Twenty-five years ago, a young Iberian captain who called himself Camjiata rose from obscurity during one of the periodic wars between Iberia and Rome and decided that Europa would be better off if he ruled all of it. Some princes aided him; some, allied with Rome, fought him. In the end, the mage Houses combined with the Second Alliance to overthrow him. But even they feared to kill him outright, so they imprisoned him on an island and left him to rot. Yet peace did not come. The common people became increasingly restless, muttering radical words like rights and demanding radical steps like an elected assembly, but what power did ordinary people have? No more than did the daughter of an impoverished family, however far back we could trace our illustrious Kena’ani lineage. Which was to say, no power at all. Not even the power to know who you truly are.

  For who was I? Striding along, I felt no different in my physical form even though the djeli had told me I “wore” a spirit mantle. My hair, my hands, my strong legs, my height—none of this had changed. I still recalled the journals I had reread so many times I had passages memorized. I knew every wall and corner of the house where I had grown up and was acquainted with many a hidden alley in Adurnam. I had friends and rivals, if not so many as Bee. I sewed my own clothing, because we were too poor to hire it done. I loved yam pudding. These things made me Catherine.

  But there were things about Catherine I no longer knew.

  Sometimes you think so hard it’s as if you are talking out loud. Or perhaps I was talking out loud to myself, for I was sure I heard my name.

  “Catherine! Please! Wait!”

  I drew my sword as I turned. A cloaked figure hurried toward me along the path with a bulky pack bumping against her shoulders. When I looked beyond my pursuer, I saw no sign of any others approaching in her wake nor could I find on the horizon the landmark stone of the crossroads where Duvai had left me. I had walked a long way. Afternoon settled its wings over my shoulders.