Cold Fire

9

“Who are you?” Sheer rushing terror propelled me three steps back.

Bran Cof??’s eyes rolled down, the return of blue as startling as a sweep of piercing blue sky seen after days of snow. For all he was a cantankerous old lecher, his gaze had a keen intelligence that made me uneasy, for he knew things he wasn’t telling. “What message did my lips speak?”

I took another step back, thinking fast. “I’ll tell you, if you’ll answer a legal question.”

“Ah. A bargain. Done.”

Surprised, I took another step back to steady myself. “I want to know if there is any way to unbind a marriage sealed by a magical chain of binding.”

“Yes. Your turn.”

“I mean, besides death!” Why must my voice tremble so?

“Your turn.”

Curse him! “You said, ‘As I am bound, so must those bound to me as kin come to my aid. That is the law. Come to me, Tara Bell’s child. Now.’”

“Bad fortune for you, lass. In pity, I offer this: Only death can unchain a chained marriage. But there is one other way.” He attempted a coaxing smile that made him look grotesque. “I can tell you. But a poet has his price. A kiss from you, the girl whose eyes are amber, whose lips are the red of berries, a promise both succulent and sweet.”

I cringed away.

His smile broadened lasciviously. “I will have the kiss that already softens your mouth. You are waiting for a man to claim its honey.”

I flushed with utter, obliterating embarrassment.

He chuckled, enjoying my consternation. “He must be young and very handsome.”

I choked.

Bee said, “I’ll kiss him for you, Cat. I have experience kissing lecherous old men as well as young and very handsome ones.”

“You will not!” His bushy eyebrows shot up, and the corners of his lips spiked down. “I will have no kiss from you, serpent!”

“How can you stop me, stuck there on your pedestal?” She took a step toward him as I took one back. “I may kiss you however and whenever I please! I’ll suck all the life from you-such as you have life-and keep it for myself?!”

He squinched his eyes and lips shut, and I thought the head would harden back to its slumbering stone state without ever answering my question. Yet still the veins on his neck throbbed as with anger…and how could that happen, since he had no heart?

“I’ll be gentle.” Bee took another step toward him.

To my amazement he laughed with an unexpected flowering of charm. “Alas for the men trapped by her love! Alas for the men set free! She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest. Where she treads, desolation follows.”

“Enough!” I cried. “I’ll kiss you, if you’ll just answer my question.”

His eyebrows rose to a peak. “I was not finished declaiming! It is always so. The young lack manners, and the women like crows cannot stopper up their chatter!”

Imagine all this time I had been in awe of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof?!

Bee offered a mocking grimace. “It’s me, or no one. Anyway, Cat, I don’t think he knows. All those stories about how he mastered the Three Paths to Judgment. How his tongue silenced birds and humbled princes. He isn’t really a legal scholar. He’s probably just an old drunk.”

“Shame, girl! I’ll have you know there are three forms of marriage commonly recognized in the courts of the north. How the Romans and Phoenicians do things is a different matter, but I’ll come to that afterward. A flower marriage flourishes while the bloom is still on it and dies when it withers. It may bloom for a month, a season, or a year, depending on the verbal agreement between the two parties involved. A contract marriage is a business arrangement signed in the law court between two houses, clans, or lineages. A chained marriage is a binding marriage sealed by arcane keys known only to the wise, to the drua and the bards, and it draws a chain of binding magic around the couple. When there is a question of possible treachery, or a treaty or other obligation at stake, it binds the couple so there need be no concern among those who arranged the marriage that another party will default or there be trouble later. Thus, the only way out of such a binding marriage is the death of one of the parties involved. But do not forget that without consummation, there is no marriage. Has the young man had sex with you yet?”

The headmaster had politely turned his attention to the monograph. The assistant stared at the motion of pendulum and weights behind the glass door of the longcase clock, a blush curdling his white complexion.

Bee said, “Cat, you look like a fish. Close your mouth.”

“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 recent 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.