Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

Hard to say, and, anyway, I was not about to ignore the words of an elder. As the fiddler’s bow pulled a tune from the strings and the drums answered in a counter-rhythm, I kicked the brick away and pulled the door to the supper room shut. At the table, I ladled more soup into my bowl.

“So, Maester Godwik,” I demanded as a song broke into full flower beyond the closed door. “What transpired in the villages to make you young bucks eager to leave?”

13

Godwik’s tale wound down many tributaries. He and his thirty-five compatriots were reduced to twenty-seven after battles with vicious saber-toothed cats, foaming rapids, a marauding troo, gusting winds, and a party of belligerent young bucks from a territory whose boundaries they had violated. But, at last, they reached the great wall of ice that marked the southernmost reach of the glaciers on the troll’s continent. Here, alas, Kehinde assaulted him with so many detailed questions about the color, texture, weight, height, volume, and consistency of ice that he never got to the sleigh of eru. Brennan and I by unspoken agreement rose to take a turn around the room. The other diners had quitted their tables some time ago, retiring, presumably, to their upstairs sleeping chambers for the night. We paused beside the door into the common room, where raucous laughter greeted the end of a rousing song.

“Let’s go in,” said Brennan.

“They said they were singing men’s songs.”

He had what my father would have called “a hearty laugh.” “I know this manner of old men. They were just seeing if they could intimidate you.”

“How do you know they’re old? You never went into the common room to see them.”

“They’ve been playing the songs old men play.”

He was easy to confide in. “Let me ask you, then. One of those old men—I’m sure he was nothing more than a humble farmer—ordered my… ah… my companion to sit down on the bench and drink with him. And he did!”

“Surely he would obey. They are elders.”

“He’s a magister.”

Brennan shrugged. “He’s Mande, as I am. If an elder says to sit, then you sit.”

“You’re Mande? Not Celtic? The Mande lineages came from West Africa.” I eyed his pale skin and reddish blond hair.

His grin flashed. “That’s where some of my ancestors came from. I’m also, by breeding, a Brigantes Celt. That’s where I get my looks. There’s probably the blood of a Roman legionnaire back there as well. Most everyone in these territories is tartan, aren’t they? In my village, we call ourselves Mande because we’re clients to a mage House whose founders came over from the Mali Empire.”

“Four Moons House?”

“For reasons I can’t explain, I really can’t tell you. My apologies.”

“None taken. It seems you left the village, though. The one north of Ebora.”

“I don’t know how much you hear about it down here, but many of the miners in Brigantia are angry about their working conditions and low pay. What can laborers do when the law courts are controlled by the prince and his jurists?”

“Surely jurists are impartial!”

He smiled sadly, as if sorry to be the one to rip the wool from my eyes. “Of course that is what they say. I’ve even encountered a few who are. Anyhow, the workingmen and women in my village spent ten years raising funds to sponsor two likely lads to attend the academy in Camlun. I was chosen mostly, I admit, because I was a good fighter and they figured I could protect the other lad.”

“Did you?”

He raised his left hand. His knuckles were scarred, and his little finger set crookedly, as though it had been broken more than once. “He learned enough to be taken on at law offices in Ebora. He is now a solicitor, a burr chafing at the robes of the courts.”

“I’m surprised the mage House allowed it. Couldn’t they have stopped you? The villagers are held in clientage to the mage Houses. Bound by old contracts or by entrenched custom to serve their masters in perpetuity. They’re practically slaves.” I thought of my own marriage and flushed. “My apologies. That sounds very offensive, doesn’t it? It’s what I was taught at the academy in Adurnam.”

He had a very nice smile, meant to be reassuring, and I felt my face grow warmer even as I reminded myself that an assured man like him could have no possible interest in an inexperienced and ignorant girl like me. “Legally it’s not an inaccurate description, just an incomplete one, as Godwik and Chartji and my age-mate who went with me to the Camlun academy would be sure to tell you. What rights you possess as a person who stands in a client status to a lord or a mage House will be different for different people. You remain, however, a dependent, an inferior to their superior rank.”

As I was now, bound to Four Moons House.

He went on. “But again, it’s never quite that simple. A powerful mage House remains powerful because its elders know how to harvest their fields. One of my great-grandmothers who worked a season up at the magisters’ estate house came home with more than her wages. That happens all the time. The child she bore wasn’t a cold mage—my grandfather, that was—so he stayed in the village. But the mages keep watch, to see if a cold mage sprouts in one of our stony gardens. Before my age-mate and I were allowed to leave, we had to stand before a mage seeker to make sure no thread of cold magic was wound into our bones and blood. Beyond that, they cared nothing for what we did as long as it caused them no immediate trouble. Honestly, I think it had not yet occurred to them that the law that protects privilege can also be turned around to break it down. We just have to be patient and hardheaded. But had I been a cold mage, even a weak one, I’d never have escaped. They’re harsh jailers, especially to their own.”

“Are they?”

“I expect their privileged sons and daughters are content. Why would they not be? Those without magic are well trained as clerks, administrators, and soldiers. As for cold mages, the only thing they need fear, so the stories tell us, is becoming too powerful and attracting the notice of the Wild Hunt.”

“Then you believe the Wild Hunt serves the unseen courts?”