Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  “A year and a day. If the marriage is not consummated, and there is no prenuptial agreement for an extension due to a known and forced separation of the two parties, then after a year and a day, it is no marriage. Does no one teach the law these days?”

  All blood and breath drained from me. A year and a day. I could be unbound from the marriage. Released from its chain. I sagged back, to find myself at the door.

  Bee glanced toward me, then back at the head of the poet Bran Cof. “Who spoke through your mouth?” she demanded.

  The head of the poet Bran Cof flinched.

  My pulse thudded in my ears. My hands curled to fists, nails biting into my palms. “You know who it is!” I said.

  Blessed Tanit! He wasn’t going to answer! But then he did.

  “He is my tormenter.” An ember of sympathy lit in his face, brief and not bright. “And soon, Tara Bell’s child, he will be yours as well.”

  “Answer her!” cried Bee.

  “My lips are bound. Of what passes on the other side, I cannot speak—” Then he was gone. Features as rigid as if carved from stone faced us in petrified silence.

  “Oh!” said Bee. “What happened?”

  The headmaster murmured, “So. That explains her.”

  An overwhelming compulsion to get out of the chamber took hold of me.

  “My apologies, Maester,” I said as I forced down the latch and pushed open the door. “My heart is so disturbed. I’ll just go pace out the labyrinth. They say it calms people down.”

  “Take Beatrice with you,” said the headmaster kindly. “You really mustn’t go alone.”

  “That explains her what?” said Bee to him, and turned. “Cat, where are you going?”

  “I have to go to the labyrinth. I don’t want to. But I just can’t stop.” I was amazed by how calm my voice sounded as I stepped into the hallway even though I did not want to.

  Hoofbeats rumbled on the street. Three shrill whistles pierced the peace of the academy halls. Orders were shouted in a ringing tenor: Lord Marius had arrived. “In here!”

  Bee grabbed our coats. I dashed to the stairs and ran down to the glass-roofed central courtyard, Bee behind me. “Cat! Stop!”

  “I can’t! It’s like I’m being dragged by the throat.” I wasn’t frightened, just numb. Something horrible was about to happen, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.

  In the courtyard, benches ringed the outermost paving stones of the labyrinth walk. Four fountains anchored the four compass points, each surmounted by one of the beasts who symbolized the four quarters of the year: the bull, the saber-toothed cat, the horse, and the serpent.

  “There she is!” Lord Marius’s battle-honed tenor filled the space as he and his soldiers appeared in the arch that led to the entry hall. “Catherine Barahal! Beatrice Barahal! Surrender yourselves. You are under arrest at the order of the prince of Tarrant and the senate of Rome.”

  I sprinted for the nearest bench as soldiers ran after us, some circling wide in order to cut off all roads of escape. Patches of snow like lichen mottled the roof. The sky was dark with fresh storm clouds, flaking a lazy trickle of snow.

  Lord Marius shouted, “We won’t harm you. I give you my word. It’s for your own good.”

  “So reassuring!” yelled Bee from behind me.

  A crow landed on the glass roof, and beside it five and then ten more. The din they made caused men to look up. A crack shattered the roof. Shards sprayed; men ducked and retreated. I leaped a stone bench and found my feet on the beginning stone of the labyrinth walk: This was not a maze but a winding walkway built to hone meditation and to help minds focus. When my cane touched the stone, the path blazed with the breath of the ice. My cane flowered into cold steel.

  “Halt!” A soldier overtook me.

  I thrust. Surprised, he parried, but it was clear he was hesitant to press for fear of hurting me. I drove him back ruthlessly. He slammed into the bench, tripped, and hit his head. Lay still. I whispered a prayer to Blessed Tanit: Let me not have killed him.

  More converged on me, too many to fight off. I raced inward on the labyrinth walk, my boots crackling on broken glass from the roof. The soldiers followed like wolves in pursuit, both they and I forced to stay on the path now that a glamour pulsed through it.

  A crow flew past so close I ducked. Black wings filled the air. Their caws deafened me. The roof cracked again, more glass showering down. On the blast of frigid air, yet more crows poured through the shattered roof to mob the soldiers. The courtyard became a smear of darkness, men flailing with swords and cursing, crows tearing with beaks and swiping with talons. Many voices clamored as the mobbing crows drove the soldiers back, but only one word had hooked me: Now.

  “Cat!”

  “Bee! Don’t follow me!” Slipping on shards, I cursed, trying to turn to go back, but my body lunged forward.

  “Never! I’ll never abandon you!”

  As the path spiraled in toward the grated well, my sword grew so bright and cold I thought its touch would sear my palm. If I let go, I might break free, but I could not uncurl my fingers.

  “You can’t escape!” Lord Marius’s voice sounded as far away as the distant explosion of musket fire. Or were those the cracks of illegal rifles?

  “The war begin.” So the Amazon had said. Had Camjiata’s agents set the prison hulk on fire? Had he coordinated his arrival in Adurnam with the Northgate poet’s hunger strike? Who had smuggled rifles into the city? Was it all just a coincidence?

  What had the headmaster meant? That explains her.

  I staggered to a halt beside the ornamental trellis. The grated opening of the well yawned at the toes of my boots, a round, stone-lined pit like a mouth waiting to swallow me. In ancient days, so the story went, the Adurni Celts had cast living sacrifices into this well. The iron grate that covered the maw had hinges and a lock, but the lock was missing. Shaking, I heaved open the heavy iron bars.

  O Goddess, protect me, for I am your faithful daughter.

  The hand of summer reached up from the well to choke me. It was fetid and rotting, and I could no more resist it than I could resist breathing. On that breeze I heard the exhalations of the dying and tasted the power of the blood that had sanctified the ground centuries ago.

  “I won’t go,” I whispered. “You can’t make me go.”

  Instinct—or Barahal training—tugged my head around. A huge crow plummeted down. That cursed crow had been following us for days. It beat the air before my face, and for an instant we stared, eye to eye. It had the same intelligence I did: thinking, planning, doing.

  I shrieked as it stabbed at me with its bill. I connected my sword’s hilt to its body, felt bones give way and crunch. Another crow was on me, stabbing as I wildly swung blade and arm, and then a third and a fourth. I twisted, dropping to one knee, and still they came.

  A crow stabbed me above the right eye with its beak.

  Just like that, they all flew off.

  No pain, only pressure. My eye clouded with warm liquid. Drops of blood scattered with a hissing like a nest of disturbed serpents. The stone rim crumbled away beneath my boots.

  “Blessed Tanit, spare me!” I pried the hilt of my sword into the ground but could get no purchase as I slipped. The spirit world was dragging me in.

  “Cat! Grab my hand!” Bee’s strong hand gripped mine.

  The stone rim steamed away like mist under the sun, and we fell.

  We plummeted, me beneath and she tumbling after. How deep was it? At midday, in summer, one could see the still surface of water glimmering far below.

  I tangled with Bee’s arms and the billow of her skirt.

  Water split beneath my back. My head went under, and then solid earth slammed me to a halt. Choking, drowning, I came up gulping and spitting beside her. We sat chest deep in the slimy muck at the bottom of the well. My sword gleamed faintly; no brown muck adhered to its length. A withered bundle of herbs floated on the surface half wrapped in a satin ribbon: someone’s re
cent offering. Far above, the opening narrowed to a round eye as if the day stared down on us. The ragged splinters of the glass roof shuddered in a wind we could not feel down here.

  A crow peered over, its eyes like twin eddies of black night swallowing all that is light and ease and hope. Satisfied, it took wing, flapping away.

  My hand groped for purchase in the sludge. My fingers slid across coins and fixed on a sloped, smooth object. Feeling along its length, I realized it was a bone. With a curse, I let go and tried to slither away, but I could not get my feet under me. Foul matter smeared my clothes and matted in my hair. The odor was like chewing on a hank of moldering cloth.

  “Cat,” said Bee in an oddly faint voice, “I feel strange, like the well…is swallowing me.”

  Dread cut like knives. I grasped her wrist and pulled, but she was receding as in the current of a river in flood.

  Panic ripped through me. I was going to lose her, as I had lost my parents when they had drowned in the Rhenus River. She would be torn out of my grasp and I would never see her again. I fixed my other hand around hers and dragged for all I was worth.

  “Help!” I cried, to no one. To anyone. “Help us!”

  “Beatrice! Catherine Barahal!” Faces appeared at the mouth of the well, so far above they might as well have been in Rome. With the daylight behind them, it was difficult to make out their features, but I recognized the voices of Lord Marius and Legate Amadou Barry.

  The legate shouted. “Is anyone down there? Call if you’re there!”

  “We’re here! We’re here!” But they couldn’t hear me.

  “You don’t suppose they’ve drowned?” said Lord Marius. “What a stink! I can’t see or hear a cursed thing down there. It might as well be tar.”

  “Get the magister. He’ll be able to see if they’re down there.”

  “We can’t trust him. His own master told me so. He’ll try to help the girls escape. He’s got the power to do it. You felt the force of that storm. Bold Taranis! If I had a regiment of such mages, I’d never lose a battle.”

  “God of Lightning, Marius! Listen to yourself. If the girls die it won’t matter either way, will it? Isn’t there rope? We’ll lower down one of the soldiers to look for them.”

  “Cat!” Bee’s voice came as from the other side of a river, calling across a turbulent channel.

  Her hand, trembling in mine, turned to sand.

  My fingers closed on grains dribbling away.

  She was gone.

  Gone.

  I had lost her.

  My thoughts shattered. I could not see or hear or think.

  Then I heard Andevai’s voice, shaken and hoarse. “It’s worse than I thought. I feel the wind of the spirit world. This is a crossing place, and it is open. Why haven’t you gone down already? Get me rope! Hurry! Catherine, speak to me.”

  “I lost Bee.” My voice was scarcely more than a whimper. It was all the breath I had.

  “I hear you, Catherine. I’m coming. Hold on.” His voice changed timbre as he turned his head away. “Cat’s down there, but she’s fading.”

  Lord Marius’s voice was sharp. “Is she dying?”

  “No. She’s fading into the spirit world. It shouldn’t be possible for humans to pass from this world into the spirit world except at the cross-quarter days.”

  “Are these the cold mages’ secrets? That they can move at will between this world and the abode of the ancestors? The ancient poets spoke of spiritwalkers. I never thought it was true.”

  “I’m tied in. Lower me down. Catherine, hold on!”

  His body appeared as a shadow, covering half the lit circle. I felt, as on my own body, skin parting beneath a slicing edge of glass as he cut himself. Blood’s hot stinging scent drenched me as in a waterfall. Did a cold mage’s blood have more power than that of an ordinary person? On the threshold between this world and the other side, the force of his blood swelled and surged like the ocean tide, for it was the essence of life in the undiluted form of salt and iron. I suddenly understood why I had not crossed. My blood had opened the path, but the stinking spew of muck we’d fallen into had coated my skin, sealing away my blood.

  A rope’s end spun down before my face. It bobbed, bounced, swayed. Clumps of dirt peppered the muck around me like grapeshot, loosened from the slime-dried stone shaft.

  “Catherine! I’m almost down. Hang on.”

  “I have to follow Bee. I can’t lose her, too.”

  I scoured away the mud above my eye. Pain burned where my fingers gouged out the clogged wound. Liquid pushed, trickled, and then streamed down my face.

  His voice rang closer now, almost on me. Astonished. “You’re all light!”

  A rich fat drop of my blood struck the slime in which I floundered.

  “I’m here! Grab my hand, Catherine.”

  His fingers brushed my hair, but his touch was as insubstantial as mist.

  His next words came as from the far side of the world. “The gate’s closing. I can’t grasp you. And I can’t cross. Catherine, I will find a way. I promise you, I’ll find you—”

  I fell through.

  10

  Into a river whose rushing waters tumbled me over and dragged me under. Skirts tangling in my legs, I pulled upward but my hands could not break the flashing surface. I sank into my past.

  I am six years old and the water closes over my nose and mouth as my mother’s strong hand slips from mine. The furious current wrenches her away.

  My lungs were empty. I was drowning. The current dragged me toward a shadow that resolved into a vast maw rimmed with razor teeth. The spirit world was going to devour me.

  Fingers with a grip like death fastened around my wrist. I thrashed.

  “Cat! Don’t fight me!”

  Bee’s voice! I went limp as she pulled. Then my mouth was above the water. I retched as air hit my lungs. The current tried to drag me back down. In panic I lunged upward through the shallows, shoving aside the body that was in my way and scrambling until solid ground met me. I collapsed, face pressed against a hot skin of stones.

  “There’s thanks for you!” Bee sprawled on the rocky shore, water purling around her.

  I heaved up a spew of sour-salty water. My whole body spasmed. “I thought…I was going to…lose you…just like my papa and mama…” I coughed out frantic sobs.

  “There, now, Cat. There, now.” The warmth of her hand on my back soothed me.

  Heat baked down on my hatless head. Wind murmured in leaves. Insects buzzed. A tremulous peace calmed my galloping heart. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t lost her.

  I rose. We had floundered to shore on a rocky island trimmed with a sandbar. The sleepy horizon smelled of the sea. A wide, estuarine river flowed past, alive with a flashing presence. A feminine face with skin the blue-green of turquoise breached the surface. Eyes like stones tracked us. A slick shoulder streaked with long hair the color of twilight rolled away beneath the water.

  Across the river stood tall trees leafed in summer glory. Far away, a winged creature perched on the blasted tip of a fire-scorched pine. On the far bank sat four wolves looking death in our direction. I was absolutely sure that they looked hungry and we looked delicious.

  Bee tugged on my elbow. “Do you think they can swim across?”

  “I wouldn’t like to stay and find out.”

  The brushy sandbar on which we stood was separated from the other bank by a stagnant, muddy channel. Downstream, where the back channel met the river, the water was covered with algae. A foul substance stirred beneath that green surface in the same way heating water shrugs just before it boils.

  “I guess we have to wade across that slimy-looking mud to get off this island,” I said. “Let’s get out of these winter clothes first.”

  We stripped off coats, gloves, and petticoats. I peeled off my wool challis riding jacket as well, because it was so hot. We rolled up our gear into separate bundles. She still had the knit bag.

  �
�At least you saved your sketchbook and the knife,” I said, my courage plunging. “I lost—”

  Light winked on steel. Not ten paces away, my sword rocked in the wavelets along the shore. In the spirit world, it appeared as the sword it was rather than disguised as a black cane.

  I pounced and swept it up. The blade flashed as if it had caught the rays of the sun, only there was no sun, nothing but a flare of gold on the horizon. The winged creature on the distant tree opened its wings and launched upward. It was not a bird of prey, as I had thought, but a winged woman, her skin as black as pitch and yet glowing as if she were a smoldering torch of power.

  “Beware! Beware! A dragon is turning in her sleep!”

  Did I imagine a voice, or actually hear one?

  The wolves tested the river’s shallows as if they had decided they were indeed hungry enough to try to reach us.

  Bee turned as she slung her bundled gear over her back. “Did you say something, Cat? Oh! Incredible! Your sword washed up!” She raised a hand to shade her eyes. “Is the sun rising?”

  A line of fire limned the sky. A blast of wind shook the trees like an unseen hand wiping clean the slate on which all is written. What came behind it was sharp and painful and obliterating.

  “It’s the tide of a dragon’s dream,” I cried. “Grab hold of me and don’t let go! If we’re swept away, we’ll go together.”

  I threw my arms around her in an embrace so tight she grunted in protest. Across the river, the wolves plunged into the current and began swimming across.

  A low bell tone shivered through the world. Its sonorous vibration splintered air from water, stone from fire, flesh from soul, here from there, now from now. The tone like a taut string passed through us as a knife slices parsnips, as a kiss unexpectedly filters through your entire being, as cold magic flows down a sword’s blade, as a choice propels you down a new path whose track you can never retrace once you have set your feet on it.

  My heart, my flesh, my bones, my spirit; all thrummed as if caught within the enveloping thunder of a drumbeat that boomed on and on. Within the hollow rolling sound, the space between the beats, there unfolded a long white shore of glittering sand washed by lapis-blue waters and trimmed by thick vegetation with fanned, fringed leaves and flowers so vivid in their reds and oranges and whites they were almost molten. I felt I was looking through a window onto another shore. Then, like a vase shattering into pieces, the world tipped and parted beneath me. An abyss loomed.