Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

“I was speaking of Andevai. He tries to wear two hats, but no man can. He must be a magister of the House or a son of this village. He cannot be both.”

“Why not? Can a person be only one thing?”

“A person must know what he is.”

“Be what you are,” I murmured, echoing the eru’s words.

“To be what you are is the kernel at the core of every person,” he agreed. He strode at a pace that would tire me in time, but I was determined to show no weakness. In a way, Kayleigh had done me a favor by giving me that sleep in the warmth of her mother’s house.

“What illness eats at your mother?” I asked.

“She is not my mother,” said Duvai. “My mother was not willing to play second kora when her husband took another, younger bride, so she returned to her own village, taking her bride price with her.”

“But not her son.”

“The son remains with his father. My sisters grew up with her, under the hand of a Trinobantic lord instead of a mage House.”

“Who is the better master, prince or magister?”

“Why should I prefer one master over another? Do you?”

His bluntness surprised me. “I do not, I admit.” I hesitated, but I could never keep a prudent tongue. “What happened to Andevai and Kayleigh’s mother?”

“The city medicine keeps her alive. Suffering is what comes from love.”

“That’s a hard way to look at it. How did the House come to take Andevai?”

“Cold magic knows its own. Their seekers found him when his power bloomed the year he turned sixteen, and they took him away. That is what masters do—they take what they want.”

“Yet you still live in the village.”

“Do you believe it so easy to walk away? Maybe that is what they teach you in the city. But I wonder if people in the city are any freer than we are here. As long as we pay our third in crops and labor, we are left mostly alone. Others have far less than we do.”

“The village will be punished when the mansa knows you helped me escape.”

He laughed.

“How is that funny?” I demanded.

On the hard skin of snow, each footfall’s snap reverberated through the trees. There was no wind at all, and the deathly stillness was beginning to make me uneasy.

“Do you worry for us? Even if you do, you did not walk up to my brother and give yourself into his hands. So your concern for my village is kind to my ears, but I am not sure how much it really means.”

“I don’t intend to die for the mansa’s benefit. I’m just sorry I stumbled onto your village and brought you into this, ah, difficulty.”

“Yet you would not have lived out the night had we not given you guest shelter.”

I shrugged as I kept walking. “You’re right. Yet I would not change what I’ve done. And I’m still sorry for any trouble it may cause you.”

He grunted in answer and picked up the pace. We had begun to climb into hill country.

“You caught something in the spirit world,” I said to his back as I quickened my own stride to catch him. “That was no antelope seen on the tundra of this world, with that third horn.”

He glanced at me sidelong as I came up beside him. “Few see the third horn. I would think you a spirit woman in truth for having the sight to see it. But Fa knows more than I do, and if he says you are human flesh, then you are human flesh just as I am human flesh.”

“I am not a spirit woman,” I said, because something in the way he spoke made heat flush on my cheeks and down my neck. It wasn’t that he was flirting with me; this wasn’t flirting—it was more like hunting. “It must be dangerous to hunt in the spirit world,” I added, sure the words sounded curt. Maybe it was best they did.

“So it is. But such a catch brings good fortune to the village. Its meat will feed the hungry, and the splinters of its bones will strengthen amulets, and its hooves will be melted down to a glue that will strengthen our bows. The powder of its horns will heal the sick. All these things, coming from an animal carried out of the bush, will give us protection against the evils of the coming year.”