Cold Fire

14

I had always been too frightened of water to learn how to swim. Salt water streamed into my nose and mouth, its taste foul and warm. My feet were weighed down by my winter boots, and my legs tangled in my skirts. The salty brine caressed my face.

It’s all over. Give up. Let go.

A solid object thumped into my legs. The force of its impact lifted my face above the water. I sucked for air, inhaled more water, and sank. From beneath, I was pushed up again. I breached the surface flailing while being dragged sideways by my skirts.

My hand scraped across the gray-white flank of an aquatic creature with a massive fin and dead, flat eyes. Its viciously sharp teeth were caught in my petticoats and skirt. Thrashing and mauling, it dragged me along as it tried to get its jaws out of wool and linen.

The thought of becoming supper for this monster concentrated my mind wonderfully. I fixed my hand around its fin and hauled myself over its wide body. Part of the skirt ripped free, strips of fabric fluttering like ribbons through the water. My cane caught against its teeth but did not break. I punched its eye. It peeled away more quickly than I could move.

I floundered toward a curtain of white and green and blue that bobbed above the waves. A drop of blood stained my sleeve. Had it bitten me? Oh, Gracious Melqart, let me not be bleeding to death here in the unkind sea! But then I remembered the crow tearing at me to draw blood to open the gate.

A shadow circled beneath me in the water.

My boot scraped a prominence. I braced on the excrescence as the monster streaked toward me with astonishing speed and breathtaking decisiveness. My sword was again a cane, so it was no use. As the cursed monstrous fish drove in with its maw widening, I fisted a hand.

Look for the opening. Do not flinch.

I punched its snout. The impact sent me floating back. To stop myself I dug my boots in among the knobs of the underwater shelf. The monster sheared away. I stood with head and chest above the wind-whipped wavelets. Land lay a short swim away through waters more green than blue: a long stretch of white sandy shoreline backed by lushly green trees swaying in a strong wind. Above, the hard bold blue of the heavens spanned existence. Was that the peak of a tower jutting above the trees to the right?

Two shapes moved out of the trees. Human shapes. People!

Blessed Tanit! I might be saved if I could just reach land!

I scanned the waves but spied no gliding predator. Kicking and stroking, I paddled clumsily through the water until my boots touched sand. I did look back then, but saw nothing except a school of fish flashing away. As I walked out of the sea, water streamed from my hair. My skirts and petticoats wrapped in tatters against my legs.

I dropped to my knees on cool white sand as fine as the sugar we tasted at festival days. The warmth of the wool riding jacket toasted my skin, making heat prickle down my arms and across my back. I fumbled with the buttons and yanked it off. My tightly laced linen bodice and the loose linen shift plastered my body. Sucking in air made me retch. I coughed up seawater and my dreams and hopes and fears until my throat was raw. But I was pretty sure I was going to live.

Two people limped toward me across the beach, a male in front and a female behind. He wore a dirty sleeveless shirt and loose trousers unraveling at the hems. She had on a patterned skirt tied around her hips and a loose, sleeveless shirt that exposed her brown arms from shoulder to hand, a sight rarely seen in Adurnam except in high summer.

As the man lurched up, I rose warily and spoke in a friendly way but without cringing.

“Greetings of the day to you, Maester. Maestressa. Salvete.”

He extended a hand in the radicals’ manner of greeting.

I reached out in answer, and only then did I think to wonder why his skin had an ashen cast instead of being brown and healthy; only then did I notice the dead, flat shine of his eyes.

He grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward him.

The woman screamed.

And he bit me.

He bit me.

I shrieked. I kicked him in the knee hard enough to topple him as I yanked my arm out of his grasp. I freed my cane and began pounding him over the head and shoulders. Yet he kept trying to get up. He grasped for me with my blood on his lips, smacking them together as if I were water and he parched.

“Let up! Let up, yee!” The woman stumbled to a halt out of range of my cane, holding her side as if winded. She was my age, with black hair twisted into locks and dusted with sand.

I leaped back, cane raised. She crouched beside the man. My blood smeared his hand, and he started licking it.

From the direction of the barely-seen tower, a high sweet bell tolled over the island like a warning call.

“He bit me!” He had bitten right through the sleeve of my undershift just below my elbow, leaving a tattered edge.

She jerked her chin sideways, and the spasmed blink of her brown eyes made me recoil. “Reckon yee wait. Dey come quick.”

My blood spotted the sand. When I glanced toward the green-blue sea, I was sure I saw a finned shadow churn the depths. I raised my bitten arm toward my lips.

She said, “Yee don’ want a touch dat. Let dey behiques suck it. Or yee become he.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Where yee hail from, maku?”

She had a firm grip on the man’s ankle. He was sniffing the air and groping toward me, but she was strong enough to hold him down.

A greasy slime of fear slid right down my spine. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He a salter.”

“A salter? Like salt plague?” I reeled backward. His dead flat eyes skimmed over me, looking not at me but at what lay beneath my skin: my hot, pumping, salt-laden blood. “Are you saying he’s riddled with the salt plague? The salt plague which makes your mind and body rot? The salt plague for which there is no cure?”

“Owo,” she said, which meant yes in one of the Mande languages.

The urge to retch rose so strongly I ran to the shade where vegetation probed the sterile sands. On hands and knees among the stiff-leafed plants I vomited up bile. My arm throbbed as if hot needles had been jabbed into my flesh and were engaged in a frantic dance aided by a swarm of impatient wasps. His flat, mindless gaze, as dull as an imbecile’s and less cunning. His lurching gait. The salt plague ate your body and your brain. There was no cure, no palliative, no hope, only a slow deterioration into living death.

The thud of footsteps made a counter-rhythm to the fear and pain drumming in my head. Maybe I was going to die, but I wasn’t dead yet. I shoved myself up. Figures swam into my vision.

“Salve. Salve, Perdita.”

Greetings, lost woman. The formal Latin soothed my ears.

A person moved toward me with palms outstretched in the sign of peace. “By Jupiter Magnus! It is Catherine Bell Barahal. How in the unholy hells you got here I cannot imagine.”

I brandished my cane. I wasn’t going to get bitten again. “Don’t come closer. I’ll kill you.”

“Catherine Bell Barahal. Look at me. We’ve met before.”

Five people stood in a cunning circle around me, so I couldn’t bolt. Behind, still on the beach with the sun’s glare washing their skin to the color of rotting corpses, the young woman was tugging on the thing that had bit me, trying to drag it away as it strained toward me. Three men and two women faced me. Four of the strangers were foreign. They had thick straight black hair very like my own and they looked a little like Rory but a lot more like someone else entirely: broad across the cheeks with high, flat foreheads and deep-set brown eyes, fit and healthy. In fact, they looked like people, nothing like the lurching man-thing that had bitten me. At least the monster in the water had been terrible in its perfectly awful beauty. Wouldn’t it have been better if it had killed me and I’d bled my life away in the water?

Blessed Tanit! I was going to die in the most horrible way imaginable.

My knees gave way. First I was standing and then I was on the ground.

One of the men crouched beside me, out of range of my cane.

“Catherine,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m not a salter. Hold out your arm.”

His calm tone convinced me to hold out my arm. A woman upended a vessel. Salt water poured over the wound. I must have yelped, but all I could hear was the pain.

“You’re faint. Drink this.”

I was dead anyway so if he meant to poison me it would be preferable to die quickly instead of slowly. He handed me a hollowed-out gourd and unsealed its cork. I lifted its rim to my mouth. A sweet liquor with the kick of strong alcohol coursed down my throat. I began to chug it, until one of the women spoke curtly, and the speaker took hold of my undamaged wrist and stayed me.

“Wait. Let it settle. Then you can have more.”

Its searing after-bite blasted along my throat. Finally he came into focus. He had hair the reddish-gold color commonly seen in western Celtic tribes who had not mixed with Roman legionnaires and the Mande refugees from the empire of Mali.

“You were with Camjiata,” I whispered. “In the law offices.”

“That’s right. I’m James Drake. You do remember me?”

The liquid churned in my belly. I broke into a sweat. “Was that man a salter who bit me?”

“Stay calm.” He spoke to the others. By their voices, it seemed they were haggling.

“My mind must be rotting already,” I cried. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

They came to a grudging consensus. The others moved off, taking the creature and the young woman with them. For some reason, the creature did not attack them.

“That’s because we’re speaking Taino,” he said, turning back to me. “It’s the common language in these parts. Drink up. It’s the local drink. It’s called rum.”

I drained the vessel. The liquor cleansed my mouth; it numbed and dazzled, spiking straight to my head. “Will rum cure me?”

“No. Rum can’t cure the salt plague. The seawater has flooded his saliva away. But I want to wash the bite again. You have to come with me. Please put the sword back in your belt. No need to wave it around.”

The sight of the jagged tooth marks bruising my forearm and the blood leaking sluggishly along my skin made me clumsy. I fumblingly fastened the cane to its loop. With a hand pressed to my back, he steered me to a sandy path that led into the trees. Birds clamored in a brazen assault on my ears. Where it was bright the sun was a lance piercing my eyes and where it was shadowed the earth was a monstrous presence trying to devour me. I could not get my balance despite my companion’s solicitous hand and respectful silence although I would have liked it better if he had talked to drown out my whirlpooling terror.

We came to a clearing around a circular pool filled to the brim with water as intensely blue as James Drake’s eyes. Next to the pool rose an unwalled shelter, just a roof thatched with dried fronds that shaded a table and bench. He sat me on the bench and gave me a second gourd of rum.

“What’s this for if it won’t cure me?”

“It’s to numb the pain and the fear. We don’t know each other, Cat Barahal, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Why does it matter if I trust you? I’m going to die. There’s no cure, and every bitten person dies.” Shaking, I took a long swallow of the rum. It was better than thinking.

A pot and several baskets hung under the eaves. He took down the pot, filled it with water, and hung it from a tripod. Then he put his hand on the wood beneath it. His lips parted, and flames curled up.

“You’re a fire mage,” I said, intelligently I am sure. I was finding it challenging to put words together because, between the rush of alcohol and fear to my brain, words wriggled away as soon as I had them in sight. “But fire mages all burn up when their fire runs out of control. Unless they learn the secrets of the blacksmiths.” I pressed my fingers to my brow, trying to reel in my scattering thoughts lest I start babbling secrets. “That drink went straight to my head.”

He came over, caught my chin with a hand, and looked me over carefully. “My apologies. I’m going to have to ask you to kiss me.”

“Kiss you!”

He offered a rueful smile. “As you so astutely observed, I’m a fire mage. If I press my lips to yours, the contact will allow me to know if the teeth of the salt plague have gotten into your blood.”

“Because you’re a fire mage, you can tell if I’m infested with the salt plague if you kiss me?”

“That’s right. And if I catch it quickly enough, I might be able to heal you.”

“ Heal me!?” I sucked in a shocked breath, mouth parted, heart pounding, blood pulsing through my veins and horrible, horrible death spreading through my blood. “Don’t mock me. There’s no cure.”

“In Europa they believe there’s no cure. Here in the Antilles, we know better. Healing is one of the gifts of fire mages. There are certain diseases we can heal by killing them within you before they kill you.”

If he was lying, I was no worse off than before. But what if he was telling the truth!

I leaned into him, and I kissed him on the mouth. He returned the kiss decisively, his lips warm at first, and then his kiss turned hotter until its heat coursed like sun through my body. I forgot I was dying and felt quite astoundingly alive.

He released me abruptly.

Panting, I sank back, hands propped behind me on the bench to hold me up. I was very confounded, warm and tingling all over. The liquor was making my head swim.

He stared at me as intently as if he saw something odd.

My bodice had been pulled askew, exposing half of my left breast. Blushing, I straightened the cloth. I could not catch my breath, and there was a part of me that badly wanted to kiss him again, as if his kiss or his magic had roused a slumbering beast within me.

He carefully eased my torn sleeve back and with a finger traced the bite mark. The jagged wound had gone pink at the edges, with ragged clots of darkening blood and clear oozing plasma. “It broke the skin.”

“Can’t you help me?” I whispered. I grabbed for the gourd of rum and drained the last of it.

“I can’t quite tell…but if I had your permission to try again…”

Why not? The last thing I wanted now was to be alone. When I nodded, he caught me close with another kiss. He was fire, and I burned into the core of me because I was being caressed by tendrils of sweet flame along my skin, and within my skin, and against my lips. Was this fire magic? For as it twined through my body, I wanted nothing more than to run my hands along his back and do more of this kissing; much more; much, much more. He broke off the kiss.

“Cat! Your claws are out.” He grinned. “Desire suits you. You’re all flushed.”

“I was bitten by a dying man with a rotted mind. Of course I’m flushed!” I was sure my bosom was heaving, because I still couldn’t catch my breath. “Can you really heal me? You’re not just saying that to take advantage of me? Offering me one chance to live before I die?”

His gaze narrowed, as if a spark of anger flared in his eyes. Drawing back, he released my arm. “Is that what you think this is? Let me tell you a few things about the salt plague. If a person is bitten by a salter, that person will become infested with what we call the teeth of the ghouls. They’re so tiny they are hidden from sight. At first, the bitten victim is harmless to others. But inside, they’re slowly deteriorating as the infestation grows within their blood. On the day the infestation flowers, they forget everything they ever knew except that they have to drink warm, living blood because their own is dried up. Now they bite. It’s all they live for. It’s all they know. In time, they become like salt, unmoving. Morbid. Worse than dead, for they crave and can never be satisfied, trapped in a pain-wracked, paralyzed body.”

“Stop! Please, stop!”

He softened. Pressing a finger under my chin, he held my gaze. “Cat, you have one chance. You’ve been bitten. But the teeth of the ghouls haven’t yet caught in your blood. If I can burn out all the teeth before they catch and hook in your blood, then you won’t become a salter. But we have to do it right now. It’s like a snake’s venom. I have to burn it out before it’s too late to stop it.”

The water he had set over the fire was boiling. I heard its burbling chatter, and the titter of birds in the trees, and the pulse of the sky like blood in my ears. My head floated as on clouds.

“Of course I want to be healed! Why are you waiting?”

His lips lifted into a faint smile as he brushed a hand lightly along my shoulder, pulling the fabric of my shift down just enough to expose the curve of a shoulder. Where his fingers touched my skin, desire purred into me. “A fire mage’s healing is called the kiss of life. I have to be much, much closer to manage it. My lips to your lips. My bare skin to your bare skin, all of it. For me to find and burn out all the teeth of the ghouls swimming your blood, there must be no barrier-none-between us. It’s the only way I can heal you.”

I could not think. But oh, Blessed Tanit! I wanted to live.

So I just said, “Yes.”