Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (31 page)

The latch’s eyes glimmered into life as two stripes of light on brass. Its mouth was
a flat line. It said nothing. And it stayed stubbornly locked.

The other door slammed shut. The coach lurched forward, swinging in a wide turn. I
tumbled onto the upholstered bench opposite my sire as Vai pushed past me and, in
his turn, grabbed the latch. Sparks spat with a cracking cascade of pops. With a grunt
of pain Vai hit the bench and sat down hard next to me. He swore as he shook his hand.

My sire touched fingers to the spot I had kissed. “A transparent ploy. Truly, I thought
better of you, Cat. You might have known I would have anticipated such a move.”

He rapped on the ceiling of the coach with his cane.

“Back to the pit,” he said in a conversational tone I knew the coachman could hear.
His gaze settled on me. “You’ve done well, Daughter. You’ve proven you are strong
and stubborn, but still not quite smart enough. You’re still not quite thinking things
through. Affection weakens you. I gave him a chance to survive so he would still be
living when you found him. This time I will dump him straight into the pit. I don’t
need him any longer. Let me assure your tender heart that he will feel no pain once
they’ve drained his blood, for the blood of mortals is the force that gives the courts
power over the rest of us. He’ll become something like them, only without a mind.”

I hadn’t known I could move so fast. My sword slid like lightning out of its sheath.
I knew exactly where to aim: up under his ribs at his heart.

Vai slammed into me, jostling my point so it skipped off the upholstery and lodged
in a corner. I cursed and tugged it free.

“A killing blow will kill you, not him!” He kicked past my legs and shoved open the
door that led back into the spirit world. “Stay where you are, Catherine.”

“Vai!”

“Better this than the salt plague, love.”

He jumped out of the rushing coach into the path of the incoming tide of light.

I did not think. I leaped after him.

The dragon’s dream roared down over us in a rainbow of violent colors. The call of
a bell split the world, air from water, fire from stone, flesh from spirit. The vibration
rang up through the ground and down from the sky until there was no existence except
the tremor of sound shivering the entire world as if the world were the drum being
beaten.

I threw my arms around him, and I kissed him. Let his embrace be the last thing I
knew. He held me tightly. A cloak of magic rippled from around his body to envelop
me as within wings.

The tide ripped over us like sea spray followed by the pounding of a huge crashing
wave. We were driven down as an abyss opened. Every part of existence yawed sideways,
then tipped upside down. We fell into smoke as the world around us vanished.

Death wasn’t all bad, because it felt a lot like kissing Vai. Our embrace distracted
me for longer than it should have. Then I remembered what had happened. Still clutching
him, I broke off the kiss.

Inhaled.

I could not breathe.

I could not breathe.

I could not breathe.

An undertow sucked me down.

The abyss of the past is a black chasm. It is too dark to see clearly, yet its waters
run all through us.

I am six years old. In the drowning depths of the Rhenus River, my papa and mama are
dying. As the water closes over my head, my mother’s strong hand slips out from mine.
She has lost me, and I’ve lost her. I open my mouth to cry for her, but all that rushes
in is smoke
.

We were going to die in the smoke unless I could find a gate and cut our way out.

“Mama,” I whispered, clawing my way through dense fog toward a half-glimpsed beacon.

For there she was, she and Daniel, in the shadow of the ice cliff. They were striding
across a stony shore to meet the men who were pushing a boat down to the ice-gray
waters for their escape.

“Mama,” I said, louder, finding strength in desperation.

She halted, dragging Daniel to a stop. “Did you hear something?”

He looked up at the face of the ice. “Just the wolves and the wind.”

“No, something else.” She rested a hand on her belly and extended
the other arm as if hoping to touch something she could not quite see. “A child. I
heard a child calling to me.”

Blessed Tanit, keep me in your heart. Do not let me die
.

I will not die
.

I bit my lip hard enough to raise blood as I reached for and grasped the memory of
her hand.

“
Catherine!
Stop fighting me! You’re impossible to keep hold of when you wriggle like this.”

I slithered out of a grip that was dragging me through icy water, but my numb limbs
had no strength. The tide dragged me under as it hauled at my skirts.

A man lifted me above the water. I spewed all the cursed salt water I had swallowed.
My bitten lip stung. I sluggishly realized that Vai was carrying me out of the sea.
He dumped me onto a stony shore, then slapped me repeatedly on the back as I retched.

I found my voice, although it was sadly thin and mewling. “Why must I always swallow
seawater? It tastes so foul.”

Vai collapsed beside me onto the pebbled strand. He fumbled to unbuckle himself from
his carpenter’s apron, wheezing as he gulped in air.

I thought the weight of the pack was going to crush me. Rolling onto my side took
all my strength. The hard stones felt heavenly because they were solid. The sea sloshed
up to tickle my boots, then receded. Fiery Shemesh, but I was freezing!

The wind was coarse and unforgivingly cold.

Vai was still wheezing. I tugged my arms out of the straps to shed the pack. With
the sodden basket bumping on my rear, I crawled over to him, only to realize he was
not wheezing but laughing in a hoarse sort of way.

He smiled at me.
Smiled!

His smile acted as an infusion of hope. My lips twitched, fighting upward.

“Look!” He gestured.

A blustery gray sea stretched away from the shore. Across the channel, barely visible
under a haze of cloud, rose the blue-dark shore of another land. But that was not
the strange thing. A ship glided atop the waves, three-masted, sails unfurled but
unmoving despite the stinging breeze. As I gaped, wondering why I could not see any
sailors racing about on the deck or climbing the masts, one of the sails began to
ripple, then the second, and then the third. Where there hadn’t been one before, a
man appeared halfway up the mainmast.

It was illusion, taking form in front of my eyes as he wove cold magic with a speed
and dexterity that astounded me.

“We’ve been washed back into the mortal world, love.” The ship vanished as he sat
up and spat. “Gah. What I wouldn’t do for a glass of my mother’s hoarhound tea sweetened
with honey. Catherine! You’re shuddering.”

He pulled me against him. I could have sworn warmth radiated from his body, although
it was hard to feel anything. My wool skirt clung to my legs, the fabric crackling
as if it were actually beginning to freeze.

“There’s shelter,” he said. “Walk with me.”

The shoreline was stony beach. A little peninsula of land sloped up to a cliff of
ice that loomed over us like fate. There was no vegetation, nothing but rock and ice
and sand. Crevices and canyons had dug staircases into the ice cliff, pocked with
boulders. On the tiny peninsula, lying between ice cliff and icy sea, a deposit of
huge rocks formed a low cave.

“See if there’s any driftwood to build a fire,” he said. “The cave is the sort of
place it might get swept into and caught.”

“I c-c-can’t build a fire.”

“Did you pack no flint?”

“You’ll k-k-kill the fire.”

“As long as I can work cold magic, I will not freeze to death, but you will. Do you
hear me, Catherine? Tell me you understand what I’m saying.”

The wind gusted out of the north, sweeping over the lip of the ice. A voice flew on
that wind, dangerous and wild. A howl rose.

I staggered to a halt. “Do you hear that?”

“Come on, love. Just a little farther. We’ll see if there’s fuel for a fire and then
I’ll go back and fetch our gear…”

Wolves
.

We hadn’t escaped. The Hunt was after us. My sire had already found us. What did he
want from me? Or was he just angry that I had rescued first my cousin and then my
husband from him?

The presence of beasts stalking a person concentrates the mind wonderfully. The landscape
before me settled and I knew where I was. I had reached for my mother, and somehow
the connection between us had brought me to a place she had once walked. “They left
the other boat in the cave. We’ve got to drag it down to the water and get out of
here before the wolves come.”

His grip tightened on my arm. “Love, you’re raving. There’s no wolves, and no boat…”
I curled my lips in a silent snarl that made his eyes widen. “But let’s just go see
about the boat.”

We picked our way up the slope and in under the dank shadow. A huge slab of a boulder
made a weighty roof, giving the cave the look of a crude shelter of stone built by
a giant. I cleared debris off a hump to reveal canvas stretched taut over a rowboat.
The boat had been turned over and raised off the ground on stones. Two oilcloth bundles
with oars and oarlocks had been tucked along the underside of the benches, together
with an unexpected bounty of a spare flint, an iron pot, and a hunter’s knife.

“Lord of All. How did you know this would be here?”

“My mother reached out to me from the past and pulled me here.” I dragged the canvas
off the boat. It was big enough to seat six men, but I thought we could handle it.
Howls drifted off the height. “We have to get out of here before the wolves come.
Can’t you hear them?”

“It’s just the wind.” He rubbed my hands between his. “You need to warm yourself at
a fire before we try to cross the water. Your lips are blue. People can die just from
exposure to cold.”

Through chattering teeth, I spoke. “You have to believe me about my mother.”

He paused, then resumed chafing my hands. “I don’t see why not. The chain that binds
our marriage pulled you to me in Expedition.”

“That was the machinations of General Camjiata and James Drake.”

“Yes, that as well, but didn’t you ever wonder why you found me so easily the moment
you stepped onto the jetty? The chain that binds us drew you to me. You’ll always
be bound to your parents as well. We’ll rig these ropes so we can pull the boat over,
then haul it down on the canvas. But once we get it down there with everything in
it, then you must promise me if there are no wolves you’ll build a fire for long enough
to warm up and dry out that wool a little bit, and my coat and gloves, which you so
wisely brought. By the way the light falls I’m pretty sure it’s late winter or early
spring. It’s still morning, so we’ll have time to cross before dusk. Catherine? Are
you listening?”

“Yes,” I said, for the sound of his voice was so comforting.

We rigged the rope, flipped the boat, and dragged it over the stone beach to the water.
The work warmed me but at the same time sucked all energy from me. Afterward, it was
all I could do to stay upright, leaning on the stern, as he fetched our gear and arranged
it as ballast. The cold gnawed through my flesh to the bone. He set the oarlocks and
oars. Out of the dripping pack he unfolded the winter coat I had carried just for
him and put it on me. He looked me up and down. He had the worst frown on his face,
startling in its intensity. I had never seen that expression on him before. I had
no idea what to make of it.

“Catherine.” He spoke my name with what sounded like anger. “You are now returning
to the cave. I’ll build a fire and leave so you can light it and get warm…”

A howl skirled down on the wind. I watched him register the sound. His brow wrinkled.
Anger flickered in the twitch of his cheeks. His gaze lifted to the rim of the ice
shelf.

High up on the path, three shaggy wolves nosed into view. Four more wolves were already
most of the way down a canyon path that led from the rim to the beach. In our effort
to shove the boat to the shore, we hadn’t noticed them. They were huge. I smelled
their hunger.

Desperation sheared through me. I braced and shoved, but the boat shifted barely a
finger’s breadth. “We’ve got to go…”

“Wait.”

My cane stung my leg, woken by Vai’s cold magic. A change in pressure made my ears
pop. I dropped to my knees, sure I was about to be slammed into the ground.

A
crack
ripped through the air. A weird moaning noise followed, succeeded by a rushing whoosh,
and then by a rumble. His mouth curved into the sort of smile a man gives to his hated
opponent when he knows he has won and can rub it in the other man’s face. It was the
smile that had driven Drake to hate him so much that the fire mage had tried to get
revenge on Vai through me.

“Move!” he said with a laugh, throwing his shoulder to the boat.

The rumble grew to a roar. Vai slung me into the boat and hopped in, scrambling to
the oars. He rowed hard. I turned to look behind.

Ice calved off the high cliff. Caught in the collapse, the wolves tumbled and vanished
into the crash of ice. The boom of the avalanche filled the world as it buried the
canyon. White mist boiled up in sheets.

“Brace yourself, Catherine.”

A rolling tongue of ice and frozen snow spilled across the tiny peninsula, hissed
over the beach, and slumped into the water with a crackling roar like a hundred muskets
going off at once. A wave pitched us backward, but Vai kept the boat steady as we
were driven partway across the channel. Out in the middle of the water, the choppy
waves and wind caught us in a buffeting pitch and yaw. He set to, rowing hard, as
I shivered inside his wet wool coat.

“Can you row, Catherine? It would warm you up.”