by Kate Elliott
Blood dripped from my jawline to spatter on my glove. Without meaning to, I flinched, and so the next drops falling split the air with the heat and life that abides in the blood of all living things. They fell like raindrops onto the base of the stone against which I still leaned, and when the drops splashed, too faint to be seen and yet thundering like a storm across the heights, the stone turned to mist against my shoulder and I fell through.
23
Into summer.
I broke into a sweat. Birds warbled and chirped and shrilled around me in a melodic uproar, and a huge crow fluttered down to earth a sword’s length from me. It tilted its head to peruse me first out of one eye and then the other in a way that reminded me oddly of the troll and solicitor Chartji, from the Griffin Inn. As I climbed to my feet, it cawed loudly and flapped away. I paced a circle around the standing stone to take in my surroundings.
That I had landed in the spirit world I did not doubt. Hillside rolled away on all sides into a green summer forest dense with trees I could not identify, although I recognized beech and ash. Was that a river glimmering far off to my left? I supposed that direction to be the east, but I could not be certain, because although the sky was not precisely cloudy, the heavens were veiled by a strange haze that concealed the sun. Yet the air held as much heat as if the sun were shining. Birds flitted over banks of flowering shrubs and waving grass that carpeted the open ground between the crest, where I stood, and the beginning of forest fifty or more paces below. Butterflies bright with blues and yellows and reds made the air seem alive with color, and the place smelled so overwhelmingly of life that I wondered if I might choke on it.
I stood on a path paved with grains as white and fine as salt ground by mortar into sand. It gritted under my boots as I shifted my weight. My chin stung. I stripped off my gloves and cautiously touched a pair of fingers to the wound, a petty, inconsequential cut still oozing blood. I ought to be dead. Maybe I was dead. Didn’t dead souls pass over into the spirit world? I pinched myself, and the bite of my fingers hurt, so either I lived or the dead felt pain.
Movement at the corner of my eye alerted me. An indistinct shape stalked the forest’s edge, shadows rippling. My hand tightened on my sword’s hilt, but when a pair of saber-toothed cats emerged from the trees, I felt as cold as if a winter’s wind had blasted down from the north. Cold steel offered no defense against such massive beasts. I looked both ways down the path. In the direction in which I was reasonably sure I had been walking, a change in the color of air marked where the hills fell away, and hazy, deep greens and muddy blues marked a lowland marsh. The Sieve was nothing more than a vast marshy wilderness, some of which had been drained and penned off into levels where crops could be grown. Last night—indeed, how had it become day?—I had glimpsed a burr of fire that surely identified the old Roman-founded market town of Lemanis.
Beyond the standing stone in the mortal world waited Andevai and his sword and loyal sister and attendant servant. The two cats ambling gracefully along the tree line below did not approach. A third, the one whose shadow I had first spotted, trailed behind them.
Stay on the path, the eru had told me.
I still had to warn Bee.
After tucking my gloves into my belt and loosening the tight chain of the heavy winter cloak so air could circulate around my back, I started to walk. I settled into a pace neither so fast it might appear as if I was running, a temptation even to lazy predators, nor so slow that I might seem weakened or injured, for every natural historian knows that hunting beasts are most attracted to those in the herd who lag behind. The hunt culls the sick, so it was always best to look strong no matter how exhausted one’s legs were and how the burden of running was beginning to weigh on one’s heart.
Blessed Tanit might protect me if she willed, but natural historians suggested that the gods were merely a story devised by humankind to explain the mysteries of heaven and earth. Even if that were not true, Fiery Shemesh, whose glorious, blazing disk I could not see within the silvery haze that made the sky, was likely no god of this world. The cats were this world’s creatures, beautiful, deadly, and aloof. They did not glance my way, but I knew they knew I walked the path. I had no food, no water, nothing but winter clothing, beneath which my flesh became slick with perspiration. Nothing but my determination, Bee’s bracelet, and a sword that had been given to me by an eru.
The biggest cat suddenly raised its head, and with the most astonishing grace imaginable, bounded up the slope toward me, head level and gaze intent. My throat tightened until I could scarcely breathe, and my heart stuttered, galump galump galump—only those heavy beats were not my pulse pounding in my ears but an actual drumbeat.
I glanced behind.
I did scream, then, or perhaps it was a shout of fury. Tears spill not only from sorrow. Sheer bloody outrage can make you cry.
The djeli Bakary had told me that he could see into but not walk in the spirit world, while cold mages neither see into nor walk there. Yet here came thrice-cursed Andevai on his horse, riding after me as if he crossed into the thrice-cursed spirit world as easily as snapping his fingers.
What choice had I? I turned, planted my feet, and made ready. I would have one chance to kill him before he cut me down.
The cat’s roar shattered birdsong. The horse skittered sideways; Andevai hauled it back onto the path, but two more cats—were there five now?—came running up on the opposite side, keening and roaring as they raced, muscles bunching and stretching. Their beauty was so startling that a person might smile at the terror of beauty before death closed in a pounce.
They did not touch the path, and it was clear Andevai knew they could not, but the horse could not know. He battled it as it shied and reared and, finally, dumped him sidelong off the path onto a stretch of grass. Relieved of his weight, the horse ran at me.
“Blessed Tanit, do no harm!” I croaked as the great cat rippled across the grass and with a leap came down on Andevai’s chest just as he was trying to get up. He was slammed back by the force of its weight.
I flung up the arm holding my sword to hide the awful kill. The horse broke sideways at the flash of steel and clattered to a halt, reins dangling and eyes flaring, not three paces from me. The cats had not pursued it. They were circling the cold mage.
He was not dead. He was not even bitten or clawed. The saber-toothed cat simply stood on him, pinning his sword arm and chest. It slewed its lovely head around to stare at me. Was it deciding which morsel looked more delectable? Or asking my permission to eat him?
“Oh, no,” I said, voice quavering and heart trembling. “Don’t look at me! I don’t want to be eaten. And I can’t… I can’t…” Even after everything, I could not say, Kill him.
I lowered my sword and whistled softly and wished I had an apple as I slowly, very slowly, reached for and took hold of the reins. The horse came gladly to a steady hand.
Aunt and Uncle could not keep horses, as they were too great an expense, but the scions of a mercenary house must learn to ride in case they are called away to travel in the service of the family. I knew how to set my foot in a stirrup and swing onto a saddle, how to gather reins in hand and brace myself awkwardly because the stirrups were set for a longer leg than mine. I used thighs and the pressure of my seat and a clucking sound made twixt tongue and palate to suggest to the equine that it ought to walk. A well-trained horse will move without much urging, especially if it is near to large predators and believes that moving will take it away from them.
We started down the path, but I turned in the saddle to see what was going on behind me.
He raised his head. His voice had a strength I admired, considering the position in which he currently found himself. “You can’t steal my horse!”
A second cat ambled over and kneaded its sheathed paws gently on his torso, while the first lowered its huge head and licked his face. He swore in a string of curses.
I laughed as I rode away. Maybe I wept, too, or perhaps that was
only sweat seeping down my cheeks. A shrill cry cut the air, and I felt my heart contract as with a fever, but after all I spotted a hawk gliding that had surely made the call. Surely it had been no human agony.
I put the horse through her gaits and settled on a shog that jolted me to my bones but seemed not too tiring to the horse, breaking it at intervals with a walk. After some time had passed and when I spotted a stream not too far afield from the path, I reined my doughty steed aside and let her water and graze while I made inventory.
One excellent horse. Two saddlebags, the first containing a very fine suit of fashionable clothing rolled up within heavy canvas, as well as various and sundry necessaries such as an exceedingly sharp razor, a spoon and knife of excellent polished silver since no doubt nothing available in rustic inns encountered on such a country path could ever touch the lips of a proud magister, and a hoard of coins. The second bag held provisions: dried meat, a half round of cheese, a leather bag filled with nuts, and apples, perhaps to sweeten the horse.
I took off both cloaks and tied them like a bedroll, making sure my gloves were secure. I did not think of my husband, not at all. It was not that I cared for him in any manner, because I did not and could not, but the thought of any person being mauled and devoured made me feel sick. Ought I wish I owned a crueler heart, one that exalted in death and savage vengeance? I could not, even though he had been commanded to kill me.
Blood drawn by cold steel in the hand of a cold mage ought to have cut my spirit from my flesh and dropped me as dead as dead. Instead, my blood on the stone had opened a pathway into the spirit world. My blood. An eru called me cousin. A djeli said I wore a spirit mantle. An aged, dying hunter had said that the spirit world was knit into my bones.
Maybe I was dead. I brushed impatiently at tears and squinched up my face. Was this Sheol, that he should pursue me into it? That made less sense than anything else.
I sucked in balmy air, moist and flavorful in my lungs, ripe with green and growing things, and forced myself to think things through, to pretend I wrote in a journal as a means to form order out of chaos. Wasn’t that what Daniel Hassi Barahal had done? He had recorded his observations for the family, as was his duty. But behind the words the Barahals might sell for profit lay another layer of his thinking: He was trying to make sense of the world he observed by setting it down in sentences—not to capture it, for the world can’t be captured and caged, but to see if he could discern a pattern beneath the bewildering variety, the confusions and contradictions and the beauty and the ugliness.
I was flesh and blood; I never doubted that. While I had no evidence that the Amazon Daniel Hassi Barahal had married was actually my mother, I had equally no evidence she was not. So if Tara Bell was my mother, then who was my father?
What if my father was a denizen of the spirit world?
The woman I believed to be my mother had said Don’t tell anyone what you can do or see, Cat. Tell no one. Not ever. If the spirit world was knit into my bones, didn’t it make sense she would want me to keep it a secret?
There. That wasn’t so hard, no matter how absurd and impossible it seemed, or how numb the thought made me feel, or how my hands began to tremble.
Had Daniel Hassi Barahal truly believed he was my father? Had Aunt and Uncle not known? Had they thought they were giving Four Moons House the right girl, against their will? Had Tara Bell lied to all of them? Could I never stop questions from chasing around my head? To distract myself, I offered an apple to the horse, who snuffled it appreciatively out of my hand.
“I suppose you have a name already,” I remarked.
She flicked an ear and raised her head. She was a big mare, and I suspected she had an even temper and a bold heart to take in stride crossing with her master into the spirit world. Her master, who was either being eaten or had fled back into the mortal world to consider his next course of action. I had to find a place to cross back. I considered the stirrups and had shortened one when the horse shied. I grabbed the reins and she stilled, eyes flaring and ears flattening.
I turned.
One of the cats had followed us. The big cats wore summer coats more shadow than sun, and this one had a pelt as dark as sable. It walked long and lithe, more of a lazy stroll, but halted at a reasonable distance just as if it could gauge the horse’s degree of panic. The cursed thing sat on its haunches and set about licking a paw, but I knew it was eyeing me.
“You’ve already had your dinner!” I shouted, and then clamped shut my mouth as I wondered if it were licking Andevai’s blood from its claws.
A cold shudder ran right down through my body.
“Horse,” I said in a level voice to my new best companion, “it is time to go, slowly and quietly, without fuss.” I led her to the path, and once on the path, I shortened the other stirrup and then mounted. All the while, the saber-toothed cat washed its paw and watched me as if I were a large and plump and exceedingly tasty deer it was gathering up the effort to chase. My steed and I commenced a steady walking gait, not too fast and not too slow, and cursed if the cat did not rise gracefully and pad after, keeping its distance but always keeping us in sight.
To be slaughtered in the spirit world. What did that mean for Andevai’s spirit? How awful one’s last moments must be. If he were dead, then I was free, but I could not precisely rejoice. It is easy to admire what you must not endure, so Daniel Hassi Barahal had written. If it was done, then it was done. I had only defended myself, and Bee.
But how on earth, then, had he managed, or even thought, to shout after me about his cursed horse?
I rode the rest of the day, husbanding my strength and that of the horse. Once we passed a boundary stone, but I avoided it and kept moving. The summer day seemed peaceful, and to think of crossing back into the teeth of winter made me wince. The cat still followed us, and twice when I had glanced back, I glimpsed a second cat, but later it vanished, leaving only the one. How easily you become accustomed to a fear that merely buzzes your shoulder but never alights. It was curious, that was all—a curious cat.
So it was that in the lingering summer twilight, half asleep in the saddle as I rocked in rhythm to the horse’s smooth gait, I came down into low country as flat as if it had been ironed. The chalk path gave out in a tangle of scrub vegetation, with thick forest beyond. The loss of a vantage point made me feel small. As I tried to decide what to do next, a hoarse cry like that of an anguished monster bellowed from deep within the forest. Twilight certainly had begun to draw a cloak over the world, and a chorus of frogs, of all things, rose from an unseen pool. The sable cat circled us and flowed over in its lazy way to stand before a wild blooming thicket with flowers strung like tiny bells from drooping branches. As the wind brushed through them, did they tinkle?
The cat yawned in a catlike way that happened also to display to great advantage its impressive saberlike canines, which measured the length of my forearms. I began to think the creature—it was male and probably young—was showing off. It vanished into the shrubbery with a flick of its tail. I pressed my mount forward enough to identify an overgrown track leading into the undergrowth and thence beneath the trees.
I could follow it. But a moment later, I spotted a thread of smoke away to the right, barely visible against the hazy sky. Smoke meant fire. Fire, I deduced, suggested a being not related to a cold mage. I turned away from the thicket and rode parallel along the flats beneath a line of ragged cliffs held together by clumps and tufts of grass.
I soon realized I had misjudged the fire: Whatever hearth expelled the fire came from the cliffs north of me, not from the flats. The twilight hung as though suspended, and it was not yet dark when I spotted a round stone tower, very like an ancient dun although as stout as if it had been built yesterday. I dismounted and led the horse up a track scraped into the earth to reveal chalk. As I came closer, panting at the steep climb, I heard fiddling. At the height, I paused under the canopy of a vast oak.
A bent old woman sat on a flat stone benc
h with a fiddle set to her chin. She sawed a mournful tune while a fire burned merrily within the confines of a circular hearth constructed of the same flat stone used to build the dun. The dun had a door, closed, and three high windows, shuttered, and an air of being entirely deserted, like a corpse whose spirit has fled. Beyond the fire and almost lost in the darkness stood a stone trough and next to it a well ringed by a waist-high wall of white stone and capped with a hat of thatch from whose supporting pillars hung a rope and a brass bucket. The horse whickered, smelling water, and the fiddler ceased in midsong and lowered the instrument.
Without looking around and in a voice that sounded much younger than her stooped form appeared, she said, “Peace to you on this fine evening, traveler.”
Hearing the village speech here in the spirit world surprised me, but I managed a reply to her back. “Peace to you. I hope there is no trouble.”
“No trouble indeed, thanks to my power as a woman. A fine afternoon and a fine day it has been.” She still did not turn around. “How does it find you?”
We ran down through an exchange of greetings until I finally asked, “My pardon, but is there some reason you keep your back to me, maestra?”
“Is there some reason you are unaware it is foolish to look any creature in the face in the spirit world before you are sure what manner of creature it is?”
“It is?” I blurted.
She laughed. “Na! Come. Into the light,” she said, by which I recalled my surroundings enough to realize that night had fallen and the spirit world breathed in darkness while her cheery fire alone lit the world. There was no moon, and there were no stars, yet neither did the haze that blinded the heavens feel like clouds. Here beyond the aura of light, I began to think the forest below the cliffs had begun to breathe and actually move. A twig snapped.
I led the mare out from under the oak and, staying well back, circled the hearth until I came around to stand behind another stone bench. I faced the woman across the fire.
