Cold Steel

45

Four Moons House resembled a princely palace, with a broad forecourt, a grand portico reached by a series of stepped terraces, and an imposing building anchored by round rooms at either end and wings stretching behind to enclose interior gardens. A curtain-like shimmer of heat pushed smoke skyward from the back of the building. With cracks and bangs, windows, walls, and furniture shattered, broke, fell as the flames ate forward through the structure like a fiery leviathan devouring its helpless prey.

A troop of soldiers stood on the portico facing toward the House, their rifles trained on the doors to prevent anyone inside from venturing out. Six young fire mages were ranged along the steps, each with a cold mage huddled in front being used as a catch-fire, although it seemed to my eye that they weren’t trying to raise fire as much as simply control the six magisters. Most likely there were other fire mages elsewhere around the estate. I had no idea how many had followed Drake and how many had been left behind with Camjiata’s army.

About thirty people, mostly women, knelt on the highest terrace. White-haired elders and slender youths were treated with equal disrespect. I recognized Serena among them, but I did not see Vai’s mother or sisters.

Drake stood like a hero on the topmost step. Wrapped as I was within the threads of the worlds, I could easily see the geometry of his fire magic, the way he cast threads of backlash into all thirty of these mages. He had not the cacica’s skilled and delicate touch. In her hands catch-fires were lit with a nimbus glow as the threads of their magic spun north to the far ice and through the spirit world and back again into the mortal world. These catch-fires blazed too brightly, flooded with more power than they could channel even though it was shared between them.

Only one mage still stood, braced upright by sheer force of will.

The well of Vai’s power shone as radiant a blue as the sacred wells of the Antilles. Given so much fuel to burn, Drake’s fire raged. He was pouring his fire into the palace and his backlash into the thirty cold mages. Even split among them it was obviously too much for them to handle, for many were too young or too ill or too elderly to sustain the heat. Vai was pulling streams of backlash out of them and into himself, to stop any one of them from flooding and thus dying.

That was how Drake was controlling Vai: Not by using him as a catch-fire but by forcing him to protect the people he felt responsible for. Of course the mansa had named him heir! The mansa had finally understood that once saddled with the burden, Vai would never lay it down.

I ran back to the coach, hopping up onto the sideboard.

“Mansa! Drake has trapped many of your people inside the house. If the fire isn’t killed at once, they’ll all die. But he’s using all the remaining magisters as catch-fires. I don’t know how you can possibly kill that much fire.” I looked up at the eru, standing on top of the coach. “Cousin! Can you raise a storm?”

Cold wings opened as the eru bloomed into her true face. Her third eye blazed, blue ice. “Best hasten,” she said in a ringing bell voice. “The fire grows.”

Blades of sleet sliced the air as the coachman whipped the horses forward with a “Ha-roo! Ha-roo!”

As we swung around the corner, heat poured into my face and dark clouds surged overhead. The coach pulled up. The mansa climbed out and strode forward to face the man who was destroying his home. I leaped out after him, wreathed in my shadows, unseen.

Soldiers spun around to aim rifles at the coach, but every rifle clicked dead, for the mansa’s cold magic killed their spark. Snow hissed across the burning building. The flames began to die.

With an ease that astounded me, Drake flung a thread of backlash into the mansa. At once the falling snow ceased, and the mansa staggered as a twisting skin of light surged around his body. He had no choice but to let the backlash pour through him, because if he did not allow it to kill his magic, it would kill him.

“Now, Cousin!” I called, closing the door of the coach to protect Bee.

Drake’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of the eru standing atop the coach.

She spread her wings, their span like winter. Ice glittered along the manes and coats of the horses as she beat her wings to fan the storm. Cold cracked down over all, flames wavering beneath blasts of snow.

But fire beats back even winter. Drake threw such gouts of backlash into the cold mages that a child and then two elders toppled over. Vai frantically pulled more and more into himself, desperate to save the most vulnerable.

Flames leaped higher. The sheer frightening rush of fire stunned me. From deep inside the palace rose shouts and cries of such fear that they scoured my heart. I knew there were courtyards in which people could shelter, but I suddenly comprehended that none of it would be enough. Not even the eru’s magic would be enough.

I had to kill Drake. Wrapped in shadow, I started toward the steps.

The mansa was lit by a silvery mantle of backlash that he shed continuously into the far distant ice. As I came up beside him he caught Vai’s gaze across the gap between them. He nodded, and reached with his magic to pull all the backlash off Vai and into himself. The force of all that power smashed him to his knees. His body convulsed.

I dropped to my knees.

Momentarily free of backlash, Vai slipped an ice lens out of the neck of his jacket. In the Antilles the ice lens had allowed him to focus and amplify his weakened magic. His magic was not weak here. Its hammer slammed down so hard that my chin hit the dirt even though I was ready for it. The eru was flung to earth and the coach creaked, groaning. Even the coachman ducked his head.

Everyone was down, flattened, stunned. Everyone except Andevai. He was still standing. Even in torn, dirty, rumpled clothes, he looked magnificent.

The mansa was unconscious, scarcely breathing, a smoky odor swirling around his body. He could not help us. Still staggered by the sledgehammer blow, I pushed up, stumbled sideways, then forward, supporting myself on the tip of my sword.

“Catherine! Strike now!” I heard how weak Vai was by the hoarseness that burred his voice. He collapsed to one knee and barely caught himself on a hand. As Drake pushed himself up Vai lunged, grabbed Drake’s ankle, and jerked the fire mage to a halt.

Drake laughed as he tugged his leg out of Vai’s weakened grip. “I have played you all very well, have I not? For I have absorbed your strongest attack and still stand. You have nothing left.”

Every cold mage lit with the backlash of Drake’s fire magic. Horribly, so did the eru, for her magic, too, was caught in the funnel. She, too, became a conduit for his power. Only the coach and four remained impervious, and I breathed a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Tanit that I had insisted Bee remain inside.

Wild, bright fire flashed up from the wings and front of the House. The heat built like a furnace. So had Bee dreamed: Sheets of fire from which rose screams of fear and pain.

“Look for the glimmer of a blade, as I taught you,” Drake shouted to his fire mages.

Fire magic spilled down the length of my sword, seeking a path into the spirit world that the cold steel could not give it, seeking me. I tossed it away before the sparks burned me. The moment it left my hand, it became visible to the soldiers.

A rifle went off, and a bullet ricocheted off the drive next to my feet. Another shot spat on the ground by my heels. A third shot sprayed gravel onto the sword. I jumped away from the sword, still in my shadows. Sheets of fire crackled up the walls of the House. One catch-fire, then another, and a third and a fourth and a fifth cried in agony as the backlash overwhelmed them. Vai and the eru had become rivers of light, shedding backlash in flood tides into the spirit world.

Drake soaked up the power and let it roar. Walls crashed in along the back of the House.

Another bullet hit close to my feet, the gravel it kicked up stinging my ankle. If I picked up my sword, Drake would have me. If I waited, all the cold mages and those trapped in the interior courtyard would die. The soldiers began to march toward the coach, firing at will. The coachman looked at me, for although he could not be hurt, there was likewise nothing he could do.

I raced back, flung open the door, and leaped into the interior of the coach.

Bee said, “Blessed Tanit, Cat! What terrible thing is happening?”

“Close your eyes!”

I opened the door into the spirit world and jumped out.

Night shrouded the world, the air as frozen as the icy water in which my sire had tried to drown me. But I was not daunted.

Holding on to the latch so I did not flounder away from the coach, I called. “Sire! Father! You are bound to me as kin. Come to my aid!”

A breath as of wings fluttered so close by my face that I flinched, but I did not retreat. Fingers of ice tightened over my arm, their touch engulfing me under the weight of an ice sheet. His three eyes gleamed in the darkness, and the third was a pulsing knot of blood.

“Beware of what you ask for, little cat. Do you understand there will be a price?”

“Yes. And I will pay it. Only me. No one else.”

“Taken. What do you want?”

“Of your own self and will, you can only walk into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. But I am a spiritwalker. You can cross with me right now.”

“At last you understand.”

He laughed, and he sprang like a cat. He flowed like a viper. He struck like a raptor, the beat of unseen wings carrying me back through the coach. Bee sat as stiff as if she were encased in ice, but I had no time. I tumbled past her and to earth.

My sire was already standing on the gravel drive, as unruffled as you please. In his severe black jacket and trousers, and with his coldly handsome face, he looked like a man you never ever wanted to cross swords with because he would rather wait until you turned around and then stab you in back so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of seeing the light drain out of your eyes.

“Intriguing,” he said. “The cold mages pull heat and energy from the spirit world and lock it up in this world, thus stealing it from us, but this red-haired man is dispersing it through their bodies back into my realm. I would never have seen any of this if you had not escorted me through. I shall have to think about what this means.”

“Father! He’s going to kill all those people! Save them. Save Vai! I beg you.”

“You are a slave to the chains that bind you to others. That makes you weak.” His smile cut.

I licked a spot of blood off my lip. “No, it makes me strong.”

The history of the world begins in ice, so the bards and djeliw claim, and it got so cold so fast I was pretty sure the world was going to end right under my feet. A gossamer undulation like wings of frost flared at his back, and the veins of his closed third eye smoked like night on his brow.

He raised a vast pressure of cold that began to choke down the fire. Drake’s young fire mages collapsed first, crusted all over in a skin of ice. The soldiers cowered in fear, guns dead.

My ears throbbed. My eyes were sucked dry of moisture. My lips stung.

Drake saw us, for the shadows had been ripped right off me. I thought it must surely end quickly. What mortal could stand against the Master of the Wild Hunt?

But Drake blazed. The flood pouring through Andevai and the eru surged as an ocean tide around the fire mage. Like a volcano, Drake had become the flowing energy that consumes all in its path.

Soot spun in black tornadoes into the sky. Lightning sparked and flashed. The air above the palace grew so hot that a green aura of light appeared and twisted in the sky.

Ice and fire warred in perfect balance, neither able to retreat or to advance.

I ran forward to grab my sword. Drake did not notice. He dared not take his eye off the Master of the Wild Hunt, because no matter how powerful he and Andevai together were, fire mage and catch-fire, to falter even for an eyeblink would bring the ice crushing down.

I leaped up the steps, taking them two at a time. Just as I reached the top, Drake saw me coming. A thread of heat woke in my heart as he spun backlash into me with a fevered smile. Vai was blinded by the force of all that magic, and my sire was too far away to help me. It would take me only a few heartbeats to burn.

But I only needed one, for my sire had given me all the opening I needed.

I leaned into the thrust. Cold steel slid up under Drake’s rib cage and pierced the beating fury of his heart. I ran him through up to the hilt.

His brow wrinkled as if he were puzzled by how close I stood.

I shoved, just one step more, to make sure I really had him. He rocked back. Caught on my blade, he could not pull away. His eyes flared and sparked in sheer stymied fury. He tried to speak, but although his mouth opened, no sound came out, only a trickle of blood.

There flashed in an instant through my mind a hundred triumphant retorts and gloating taunts, but in the end I realized I simply did not care enough to speak. With a grunt of pain, for my hand hurt from clenching so hard, I jerked the sword out of his body and turned the blade to cut his throat. Blood poured down his chest, ruining the dash jacket he had stolen from Vai. I stepped out of the way as he toppled face-first onto the stone stairs.

With a sound like a monstrous beast inhaling, the flames vanished as all the fires went out.

Drake was dead.

Dead.

I had to secure our precarious situation. The cold mages sprawled limp on the steps, but I had not the leisure to worry about them. The fire mages were frozen. The soldiers stared in horror at my sire. While it was true that a great deal of magic was billowing off him, to my eyes he looked like a perfectly ordinary man. And while his clothes certainly were severe for being sewn out of unrelenting black, they were not otherwise exceptional or astonishing. But the soldiers dropped their rifles and fell on their faces, begging for mercy.

A moment later several young fire mages and a few more soldiers came running around the side of the building, chased by a saber-toothed cat. They, too, surrendered in abject fear, but the instant the cat saw the Master of the Wild Hunt, he turned tail and ran.

I knelt beside Vai and bent to rest my cheek lightly against his lips. The whistling of his labored breathing calmed me. He was alive. Yet that was not his breath whistling. A teakettle hiss shivered the air. Pinpricks of ice jabbed my skin. Crystals grew out across the scorched and blackened front of the building. Ice spread in curves and scallops, cones and six-sided lacework.

Years ago ice had devoured Crescent House.

Now ice was engulfing Four Moons House.

I could no more stop my sire than I could stop winter.

“Bee!” I cried, waving her forward from where she peered out the coach door. “Hurry!”

Without looking to see if she followed, I ran over the threshold into the building, looking neither to my left nor to my right. The path I had taken on the day the husband I had not wanted had brought me here remained fixed in my mind so clearly it took no effort for me to turn right, left, left, and then right to reach the long salon I recalled all too well. Its glass doors looked onto an interior garden enclosed by the wings of the House and a high stone wall behind.

The mural painted along the salon’s walls, depicting the Diarisso ancestors guiding their kinsfolk and retainers and slaves along the hidden paths of the waterless desert to safety, had peeled and smeared and turned brown in patches where flames had begun to eat through the walls. Yet the strong-as-iron women and handsome men clothed in gold and orange strode undaunted, their chains of magical power and secret knowledge wreathing them like vines. The paint glittered with flashes of light as ice penetrated the walls. It made the mural seem to move, as if the ancestors were walking still into the future they had made for themselves out of the devastation of what they had been forced to leave behind.

The glass doors opening onto the garden had cracked and shattered from the heat. I wrapped the hem of my skirt around my hand and opened metal latches so hot they burned, then kicked down the framework of glass doors sagging on their hinges.

I could not count the number of people trapped in the garden. Some had been trying to lift others out over the back wall, but judging from the shouts beyond the wall and the scorched tops of trees, I guessed that several fire mages and soldiers had been stationed there to prevent anyone from escaping. Nearby a big cat roared.

I hated Drake all over again. What manner of man cared more for his own perverted sense of honor and pride than for people’s lives?

Winter chased through the doors and kissed the air. Snowflakes drifted prettily through the chamber on a lazy wintry breeze. I shivered.

Bee did not need to be told what to do. How someone so small and lovely could bellow in quite that ear-shattering manner never failed to astound me. “Everyone! Listen! You will immediately follow me out the front doors. Now! If you stay behind, you will die.”

Her honeyed voice had the rare gift of impelling people to obey without pausing to needlessly quibble. Nor were the people of Four Moons House fools: A fire-ravaged structure would soon collapse. We did not have time to explain the real danger.

More than a hundred people had taken shelter in the garden, many of them children, women, and elders. The djeli Bakary leaned on his cane, so stiff with age he had not been able to ride with the mansa to war. I waved Bee over to help him. The old steadied the young. The young assisted the old. I sought out Vai’s mother and sisters, almost lost in the midst of the crowd as the flight began. Vai’s mother was wracked by coughing.

“Bintou, help your mother. Wasa, that’s a very fine new crutch you have. Don’t let go of it. Yes, you can take the puppy, too. I’m going to carry you.” Wasa’s weight felt like nothing when I hoisted her into my arms. Fortunately the puppy was frightened enough that it did no more than whimper in her thin arms.

Other people led the way out. Bee stayed with Bakary and the slow-moving elders at the rear. The building creaked and moaned around us. Ice bloomed in feathered ridges. Thin blades of cloudy ice popped out from the walls.

“Move! Move!”

A booming roar shuddered through the fragile chambers as part of the building collapsed. The ice kept spreading. Glittering spires grew up from the floors. Clear branches snaked down from the broken ceilings.

We staggered out onto the portico and its terraced steps. The cold mages were beginning to shake themselves, to rise, to drag their unconscious and injured brethren away from the building. I helped Vai’s mother and his sisters down to the gravel driveway, then ran back up the steps.

Serena lay in a pool of blood, doubled over in pain.

“Blessed Tanit!” I cried. “What injury have you taken? Let me help you away.”

She grasped my hand with more strength than I would have expected. “No injury of the kind you mean. I fear this is a miscarriage. Where is my husband?”

The mansa was alive but unconscious and unresponsive. Blistering burns had bubbled up on his neck and arms. Ash rimed his mouth, a smear of blood caught at the corner. Serena knelt beside him and, with the tone of a woman used to command, called others to her.

Four Moons House was being inexorably trapped in ice. Amid the clamor of voices, an eerie grinding noise drowned all until the speech of humans was nothing more than the restless tickling of insects. Thick pillars of blue-green ice shot up alongside the doors, spearing all the way to the high roof above. Ice encased the great edifice, every span of it locked away in a transparent cage.

Within the disorganized spill of people along the lower terrace, I found Vai sprawled on the steps. It looked as if he had woken enough to start pulling himself away and then collapsed again. His eyes fluttered. A word formed on his lips but he hadn’t the strength to get it out.

“Vai! Andevai! It’s me. It’s Catherine! Stay with me, my love. Don’t leave me.”

I looked for Bee and instead saw Rory, dressed only in trousers, padding toward me with an alarmed look on his face. He flung himself down on the other side of Vai, trembling with fear as he looked past me. Naturally I turned to see what frightened him so much.

Across the drive my sire dusted soot from his hands with a meticulous frown. He glanced at me across the gap between us and nodded to acknowledge the bargain we had agreed to. Then he gestured with his plain black cane as a lord does when he wants a servant to do something for him. The eru clambered up on the roof and tossed our luggage to the ground. My sire climbed into the coach. The latch winked as if reflecting light, or perhaps making a brassy gremlin scowl in my direction. My sire’s hand covered the latch’s face as he shut the door.

The eru furled her wings. The coachman tipped his cap at me.

“Ha-roo! Ha-roo!”

Wheels rumbled over the gravel drive as the horses first walked and then broke into a smooth carriage trot. The coach rolled away down the driveway. I waited for it to vanish into the spirit world, to cross the shadows and return my sire to his rightful home.

But it did not. It simply drove away back toward the main road, moving at a sedate pace as might a lordly man who has just paid a polite social call on a friendly neighbor.

I stared in consternation.

I had just let loose the Master of the Wild Hunt into the mortal world.