Cold Magic (44 page)

“It’s best if we leave the path,” I said hoarsely.

The wind died as the words left my lips.
Died
was not the right word. It was as if a vast bellows had been turned inside out and sucked the wind back into the lofty caverns where the tempest is born. The temperature dropped from cold to frigid; my lips tasted the fall as though I pressed ice to my mouth.

“There’s a cold mage with them,” I said, barely able to voice the words because I could not find enough heat in my lungs. “They’re tracking us.”

I saw no sign of pursuit. They might not yet have come into view. But strangely, although the wind had utterly failed, an odd motion drew ripples across the clearing behind us.

Something was wrong with the light on the grass.

In Southbridge, Andevai had woven an illusion.

“They’re in the field,” I gasped, heart racing so hard I heard its hammering as hooves thudding on the ground. “Magic conceals them.”

I started to bolt, blindly, down the path, but Rory tugged me to a halt. “Is there a crossroads?”

“I don’t know.” I was becoming frantic. They would kill me if they caught me. To force its prey into a panic is exactly what the predator desires. I had to think. “The ancient forts are built where lines of power intersect. Cold Fort lies on the highest point at the southwesternmost sweep of the ridge.”

Perhaps our stillness made our pursuers bold. Or perhaps the magister riding with them wasn’t very strong or simply became tired of holding the illusion, now that we were so close. From the field behind us, a bolt came sailing over our heads. Suddenly I saw seven horsemen pounding toward us, six in soldier’s livery carrying crossbows, with sheathed cavalry swords dangling along their flanks.

Rory said, “Into the trees.
Now.
” He pushed me.

Terror grew wings on my back, and I ran, wishing I was an eru with wings that might fly me into the safety of the spirit world, if you could call that place safe.

I heard a man shout, “I knew that jo-ba was lying. He’s in league with her.”

I heard the hammer release, the sing of a bolt.

A sharp sudden scream of warning.

As I reached the edge of the underbrush, I cast a look over my shoulder to see a saber-toothed cat hurtling in among the horsemen, muscles bunching as it sprang to topple the lead horseman from the saddle. Confusion reigned as the horses bucked and sidestepped, trying to get their heads out from under the reins so they could flee the deadly beast’s massive claws. Two horsemen had pulled out of the fray and were racing toward
me
. Branches scraped my arms as I shoved through the tangle of bushes. The fabric of my cloaks caught, dragging me to a halt, and I twisted, yanking at the cloth to free myself. Branches snapped as a rider drove his mount into the undergrowth. I plunged farther in, but once beyond the leafless fringe of deciduous trees, I entered the yew forest whose dense canopy sheltered no concealing undergrowth.

I spun as the soldier broke out of the bushes, crossbow raised as he sighted in the gloom. A bolt hissed past me; he dropped the crossbow on its leash as I untied my outer cloak. Closing, he drew his sword. I swept the cloak open and flung it over the head of his mount. Ducking to my right, I threw myself behind a tree trunk. He grappled with the cloak, cursing as the horse shook itself into a halt under a low-lying tree limb. His head slammed hard into the branch, but I was already running. My riding habit was cut for practicality, not fashion; the Barahals took their riding seriously. The fabric did not hinder me as I dashed deeper into the woods. The trees had a brooding majesty, but all I could truly discern were the possibilities these gnarled boles offered for dodging armed riders. Another was gaining on me. This young man had a fashionable coat rather than a soldier’s kit. He had a sword, and he rode well, and by the way he shouted a command over his shoulder to a soldier spurring his horse to follow, I guessed he must be the magister who had woven the illusion.

I clambered over the moss-covered ruins of a fallen tree, raced along the trunk to the exposed roots, and jumped down, using the cane for balance as I caught myself in a crouch. Then I kept running, having gained two more breaths of distance between me and them, because they had to go around and furthermore were hampered by young trees and shrubs that had taken advantage of the opening in the canopy to steal light for growth. I saw and heard no sign of the others. Of what had happened to my brother I dared not contemplate.

Abruptly out of the forest appeared three soldiers, bearing down on me with swords raised. Bright tabards wrapped them, marked with the four moons of their house: full, half, crescent, and new. Yet light glinted on their iron helmets; sun would not glint so beneath a canopy too dense to allow undergrowth.

The light and shadow must reflect and darken consistent with the conditions of light at the time of the illusion.
So Andevai had murmured in the carriage when he’d thought I was asleep.

I ran straight into them, brandishing my cane, and where it slashed through the illusion, the hard glare of its cold steel blade shone. Cold steel cuts cold magic.

A shout of anger chased me as I ran on. I scrambled into a gully and splashed across a stream whose eddying shallows were rimed with fingers of ice. I broke onto a path crowded with uncut bushes and winter-sleeping beech and ash, and lashed my way through to emerge into a long, narrow clearing. The ruins of an old rectangular building whose entrance was crowned by a Roman arch greeted me. Holes had been dug about the tumbled walls as though thieves were seeking buried treasure. I was for a moment alone. The holes made the approach to the arch and the ruins behind it a maze deadly to running creatures. Blessed Tanit watched over me, for there was a big hole somewhat triangular in shape, like her sigil, directly in front of the archway. I spread my other cloak over the hole and weighted the ends with bricks and kicked and flung leaves and debris to cover it. I heard the cursed magister’s mount snorting as he pushed past the thicket and rode into the clearing. I backed under the arch.

He had the haughty pride magisters were famous for, the curl of lip, the spark of cold fire in the eye. He wore the fine clothes whose weave and tailoring were apparent even at thirty paces and carried a sword hammered out of cold steel in his right hand. Seeing me, he glanced over his shoulder, looking for his companions.

“That’s right,” I shouted at him. “We’ve played you for a fool. You think your cold magic is so powerful, but you’re blind. A lowborn slave wields more power than you will ever handle or know. How it must burn!”

Young men can be very predictable. If Andevai had endured such a difficult time in Four Moons House despite his ability and the benefit the mage House gained from it, then his age mates within the House, the aspiring magisters born to that status, must truly envy and despise him for what he possessed that they lacked.

With a grimace on his dark face, he spurred the horse straight at me.

I actually started to laugh, and that only made him more angry, and more blind.

The beast plunged where my cloak gave way, stumbling to its knees into the hole. He lost his seat and slid over the side, grasping desperately at the saddle. I loosed a prayer heavenward: Blessed Tanit, do not harm the innocent beast. Then I lunged forward. I whacked the magister on the head, and as his body went limp, I dragged him free, wrenching his leg out of the stirrup. Grasping the reins, I hauled the horse out of the hole and led it a few paces, but its gait was smooth. It was spooked but uninjured. I mounted just as an actual soldier burst onto the scene. The magister moaned, crying out, and I urged my fine steed forward, past the ruins and into the woods on an overgrown track. This was a cursed good horse, strong and willing.

“Go after her! There’s a reward if you bring back her thrice-cursed corpse.”

A whistle shrilled, and answering whistles rose from the wood.

I had a choice between two paths. I sent my steed down the leftward track, which soon opened into a decent trail. We went flying along past a farmstead and, not long after, a compound of a half dozen round houses fenced by a round palisade. A pair of children, standing outside, shrieked and called after me; they had brown faces, heads wrapped against the cold. A man, much lighter, appeared in the low doorway of one of the houses. He raised a hand as though to hail me; then I saw his gaze fix behind me. As I passed, he ran to grab the children.

A wagon track offered a wider route. I turned right, heading for Cold Fort. The woods fell away into cleared fields, and another lordly house rose away to the right like a dollhouse. Beyond the cultivated lands rose the ridge, with at least two lighter scratches on the slope marking paths chewed through the turf to reveal chalk soil below. Away to the right, a road intersected this track. On it, heading my way, galloped four riders. The sight struck my breath right out of me as brutally as a sword cut to my chest. I crooned to the horse, asking for more speed, more heart. He opened up stride like a warrior, and we reached the intersection before them and hit the path up the slope.

Naturally we slowed, and someone loosed a bolt at my back, but either his heart wasn’t in it or his aim was bad, for the bolt stuck, shivering, in the hillside. Three breaths later, a sting like an insect’s bite burned my right leg, and I looked down to see a bolt caught in the folds of my skirt. With a curse, I grabbed it and flung it away, but warmth trickled down my leg.

“Up! Up!” I said, willing the gelding to climb. I looked down to see the quartet meet up with the single soldier. They conferred; then a trio started up the path behind me while the other two headed onward. Did they mean to climb to Cold Fort on another track and cut me off?

But I had made my decision and chosen my path. I had lost Rory, maybe forever. I had to reach the temple and hope I could cross into the spirit world, where they could not follow. My leg was beginning to throb. At least, I thought bitterly, I had blood already drawn to open a gate onto the other side.

My horse, as befitted the mount given to a son of the House, was superior to theirs in courage and conformation. He was magnificent, a princely horse eager to show me his mettle. We reached the ridgeline having gained on our pursuers. Wind cracked over us. The land spread away below: the yew wood; a lordly house with gardens and corrals and a stockade within which a surprising number of cattle, as small as carved playthings, crowded despite the late season when normally most would have been slaughtered.

I turned my mount toward the massive earth ramparts of the old hill fort. Pillars and a roof marked a temple within the ancient walls. As I rode along the undulating ridge slope, I spotted figures atop the ramparts, signaling. Did priests live in the temple year-round?

Behind me, the trio was closing, and on the road below, the pair had dismounted and, leaving their horses, climbed on foot. Farther away, I saw a dozen riders converging in the area from which I’d come, maybe in the hamlet where the man had gathered in his children. As if called by sorcery, six horsemen appeared in the earthwork’s narrow front gap.

Fiery Shemesh! They had reached Cold Fort before me. I saw no sign of Rory.

Only one direction was left to me, a rash run down to the west where the town of Mutuatonis sprawled by the River Ouse with a hazy cap of smoke rising from its busy hearths.

“Catherine Hassi Barahal!” A man’s voice called from the soldiers waiting at the gap.

So they would lure me in with hearty cheer and false promises before they cut my throat!

“Catherine!” the man repeated, gesturing to get my attention.

Before I plunged down the slope on my final doomed run, I hesitated. I knew that voice.

“Brigid’s luck!” interposed a stentorian tenor. “I did not believe you, brother. Yet here she is, just as her cousin said she would be!”

The men at the ramparts were not wearing the livery of Four Moons House. They wore the green-jacketed uniforms of the Tarrant militia. The officer in charge was a tall, lean Celt with a thick mustache, a clean-shaven chin, and short hair stiffened into lime-whitened spikes. Four troopers flanked him, two with hair stiffened and lightened in the same manner while two kept black hair clipped tight against their heads. The sixth man seemed slighter than the others, although equally martial in his tailored military garb. He beckoned with a wave of his hand.

“Maestressa Barahal! It
is
you! Come on! Come in! Beatrice told us to meet you here, to bring you in to safety.”

Blessed Tanit.

For the soldier who called me in was none other than Amadou Barry, the academy student Bee was so currently infatuated with.

The officer was the cousin of the Prince of Tarrant. After offering me a soldier’s cloak to drape over my shoulders, he sat me down on a bench beside a brick hearth sheltered by a slate roof. There, warming his hands at the fire, he introduced himself as Marius.

” ‘Marius’ because,” he explained with a chuckle, “I was destined to be an officer in the Tarrant militia from the day I was born. That’s what we younger sons do: train for war, go to war, die in war, or limp home to our hearths to await our next raid. Not that we do any raiding these days. Although my neighbors have some cursed plump cattle that could do with a little exercise.”

Plump cattle made me think of Rory. Was he dead, or had he gotten away? Despite the crackling fire and a mug of mulled wine brought by one of the temple priests, I could not get warm. Negotiations had begun at the ramparts, where Amadou Barry stood in heated conversation with the furious cold mage whose face, I was glad to see, was stained with dried blood. Twelve crossbowmen stood on the earthworks above, weapons trained on the mage. The angle of the gap and the outer ridge of ramparts hid the House soldiers from my view.

“Amadou will set him right,” said Lord Marius, following my gaze. “There is not much a magister dares do to us in such circumstances, although I dare say he might try. But we outnumber his forces. My lads are certainly better trained and more experienced.”