Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

part of my thoughts he read from my expression I did not know, but his gaze softened. “You never give up, do you, my sweet Catherine?”

“Never. While the courts are busy with their feast, we can go back the way I came, across the bridges and balconies to the ledge, and then back through the jade gate.”

“We can’t escape by their own paths. Some will scent me and come after me. They are faster than I am. The only reason I’m alive is that they can’t climb, and I got up here before they caught me.”

“They weren’t saving you for Hallows’ Night? Maybe after the feast they won’t be hungry for a while.”

He wiped a hand across his brow, smearing a fine white dust across his skin. “I am scarcely likely to take that chance. It’s safer for me to assume they will kill me the moment they get hold of me. But what do you mean by bridges and balconies?” Bands of exhaustion shadowed his eyes, yet he studied me with a look of concern, as if my situation worried him far more than his own dire straits. “Are your eyes veiled by their illusions?”

I rested a hand against his cheek. His skin seemed dry and warm. I hoped he wasn’t getting feverish. “Don’t you see the city? It’s beautiful, just as I thought it would be. All the ribbons and rainbows and bridges and fine white spires and the huge ziggurat with the feasting personages in their elegant robes… however horrible their meal…”

He gathered me against him. “You’re seeing an illusion, love. Close your eyes.”

I shut my eyes. At first I could not think past the sensation of his arms around me and the whisper of his lips against my hair. There was an odd pressure, like a dense jacket of air tucked tightly against his body, that reminded me of the way air felt just before a storm swept in. I swallowed, and my ears popped. My sword tingled.

I was feeling Vai’s cold magic.

“I thought you had no magic in the spirit world,” I whispered.

“I thought so, too. But in the spirit world it just lies so tightly against my body that I can’t reach with it and thus can’t weave magic here. Now keep your eyes shut, love. Here in the pit, your eyes lie to you. See with your heart and your body. They’ll never lie to you.” His voice was a coaxing murmur. He could have talked me into anything.

He had, hadn’t he? In Expedition he had known I was attracted to his handsome face and inviting body, so he had used words and food to persuade me that what I felt for him was love.

“Catherine, you’re not paying attention. We’re not standing in a city. It’s a pit.”

“Hush.” I pushed my awareness of him down as I listened to the story the wind was telling me. A salty dust tickled my nose. Wind scoured empty slopes, spraying grains of dirt. A weight like hot, drying brine masked my face.

“The cleft is a gate,” I whispered. “All the movement in the city eddies around a hidden gate, like water swirling around a submerged and open mouth that’s sucking water into it. It’s as if we have one foot in the spirit world and one in the mortal world. Dust and salt and sand are blowing in from the mortal world. Gather everything up. I think we can just walk out of here through this hidden gate.”

“I see no gate.” He released me. “Of course, I didn’t dare shed my blood to look for one. Anyway, the hunters of my village only know how to cross through standing stones, and then only on cross-quarter days. I have no means of marking time here.”

“I’m a spiritwalker, Vai. I can cut gates between the two worlds and bring you with me whether you’ve shed blood or not as long as you slip through before the gate closes behind me. I can feel there’s a gate already half open, right off this balcony.”

Together, we sorted through the gear to divide it between the two of us. He tied the carpentry apron securely around his body, then scooped up a handful of glittering dust.

I shouldered the pack. “Hold my right hand. Keep your sword drawn.”

I sliced a shallow cut on my forearm. Where the wall of the cleft cut deeper into the base of the ziggurat, I smeared my blood. Grit stung my eyes as I pushed through, pulling Vai with me right through the rock.

Hot sunlight poured its heat over my face. We stood at the base of a crumbling mine shaft. Sun blazed through the opening above. It was brutally hot. Sweat drenched me just from the effort of standing and breathing. Around lay discarded pickaxes, awls, and baskets, as well as a pair of sleds on runners, heaped with raw salt. Horizontal shafts shot off in different directions, fading into gloom.

“Lord of All,” murmured Vai at my back. “We’re at the bottom of a salt mine.”

By the flavor of the air and the presence of the sun, I knew we had crossed back into the mortal world.

19

“Which way did we come from?” I whispered, trying to get my bearings.

He indicated a trail of scattered salt receding into the darkness of one of the horizontal shafts, then opened a hand to reveal the last bits of the dust he had gathered. “I left a trail to follow. This seems too easy.”

“Except for being stuck at the bottom of a mine shaft with no rope or ladder.”

He looked up. “I may be able to cut hand- and footholds up the shaft. It’s cursed hot. I wonder if this is old Mali. Imagine if we have come to the birthplace of my ancestors…”

“To the very place where the salt plague began,” I whispered, shuddering.

A shuffling slip-slop echoed out of the darkness.