Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

I glanced at him just as he looked at me and smiled. With his assured stride and broad shoulders, he made an attractive figure, especially when he smiled. He carried a spear, a longbow, and a knife, and I had to trust that he meant no harm to me out here in the forest where no one could hear my cries. I touched the hilt of my sword, expecting to find it had again become a cane with the daylight, but for some reason today of all days—a cross-quarter day—I swung a deadly sword at my hip. It was no ghost today. That gave me some comfort.

“Where are we going?” I asked, to distract his smile.

“Southwest. Toward the sea and Adurnam.”

“Won’t they assume I’m fleeing to Adurnam?”

“It seems likely, but the magisters think as city people do. They never walk long distances. They will think you mean to flee along one of the toll roads or take a boat on the Rhenus River.”

I shuddered. “I’d rather not take a boat on the Rhenus River. I’d rather walk.”

He smiled again. Perhaps he meant only to be reassuring, but the smile brought a flash of charm that made me wonder why his wife was so suspicious of a chance-met woman brought to her door. He was a man who knew who he was, and that made him powerful and, I supposed, enticing. “Tell me about the city. Which mage House rules there?”

“The Prince of Tarrant rules Adurnam. He doesn’t like the mage Houses. There’s a city council as well, like an assembly of elders. It passes ordinances and regulates the watch and the customshouse, such things. But because all members of the council are all appointed by the prince, many feel it is not truly an assembly that governs for everyone but only for the prince’s relatives, cronies, and supporters.”

“Would they be wrong?”

“It’s always been that way. But now people are beginning to speak out against the council, the prince, even the mage Houses.” This political turn made me uncomfortable. “Perhaps you would tell me more about the countryside hereabouts. What landmarks I should look out for. If there are shelters along this ridgeway, for I doubt I can survive a night camping in the open.”

We passed the morning in this wise, him talking about the land and me listening. I was good at asking questions. Anyway, there was always something I needed to know. The man who was not my father had taught me that, by leaving his journals as my only inheritance, even if those journals no longer belonged to me.

We moved higher up into the hills, following eroded ridge lines from whose height we saw occasional vistas open over the broad lowland valley, where the sacred and queenly Rhenus River flowed. A mist floated above the water, giving it the look of an unraveling satin ribbon. Where had my parents died? Or were they even my parents? Two people, among many, had drowned, and I had come into the keeping of the Hassi Barahal family. Had Aunt and Uncle known I was no Barahal, and had they deliberately raised me to sacrifice in Bee’s place? Or had they believed I was the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter? I recalled the scene of my hasty wedding, restaging it again and again in my mind. But all I could truly remember was Bee’s stunned expression and Uncle demanding “the documents” in exchange for me.

Wind shredded the clouds, and the lazy breath of snow subsided, but with the sun’s emergence from behind cloud, the air grew colder. About midday, the sun sweeping in its low curve above the horizon, we paused at a crossroads to pour water at an offering stone. The libation coated the stone with a frail skin of ice where it pooled. He offered me bread and salty cheese, which we ate standing up because it was too cold to sit.

After we had gulped down the food, he indicated a path that speared away up across rolling countryside, easy to see from the crossroads.

“That way,” he said.

My heart clenched as if a hand had squeezed it. “Are you leaving me here?”

“To reach Haranwy by dusk, I must return now. That is your path. If you follow the main way, it will take you across the chalk hills to Lemanis, if you know where that is.”

“It’s in the Romney Levels.” My uncle had plenty of maps. From there the drained levels opened in the south into the marshy Sieve and the river, difficult country to pass. But a decent series of roads ran from Lemanis west across the higher ground of Anderida to Adurnam. It was slower than the toll road, but it cost nothing except the time it took to walk it.

“How far to Lemanis?” I asked.

“Two days for a strong walker.”

I gestured toward the open countryside. “Anyone standing where we are might see me walking out there. Is this the safest way?”

“There is no safe way. Did you think there was?” He studied me with a bold gaze that made me frown, and my glare brought a curve to his lips that made me flush. “Vai is not the only man in the world—”

“I never thought he was!”

“—who might wish to do you harm. You are young, and female, and alone.”

The spark of challenge in his expression burned me. “Why did you help me?”

“We must do what is right.”

My breath steamed in the wintry air, but I found I had no answer to that. “My thanks to you and your people.”

I nodded and turned away from him, and I set my feet on the path, walking into the lonely afternoon. I heard his footfalls behind me as he moved back the way we had come, and soon enough I could no longer hear him and soon after that I could no longer see him.

I walked, and I walked, and I walked. I was accustomed to walking. Bee and I walked all over Adurnam. The path was easy to follow, its branching spurs never to be confused with the main route toward Lemanis. The sun shone without warmth. The trees spread in wild tangles below the highest ridges, but up here I was utterly exposed. Anyone from miles around, standing at the right vantage point, could see me. Yet what else could I do except walk? There was no safe way.

I made good time. I spotted no life beyond a hawk, a pair of grouse, and a hare springing away across a stony clearing. Even such villages and farmsteads as I glimpsed in the distance looked abandoned. The world might as well have been driven into hiding by the Wild Hunt.