Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

So I leaped down among them. Cats always land on their feet. I plunged forward, smearing the blood that stained the kerchief onto any surface I could find: their robes, their outstretched hands. I rubbed a speck of blood on the path, feeling dirt beneath my fingers instead of the smooth silver walkway I saw with my eyes.

The fine, elegant people turned on each other in a frenzy. I jammed the kerchief into the gaping jaw of a being wearing the face of a distinguished elderly man and dressed in the formal court clothes a man would have worn a hundred years earlier, all silk and gold-threaded embroidery.

I shoved my way out of the clawing, jibbering crowd as they converged to tear at the one who was suckling on the cloth. A few had enough sense to smell Vai’s escape. I raced out in front of them.

The interior maze ended without touching the outer wall. It was this gap we had to cross. He dashed across the moat as if there were no liquid in it and started climbing the outer wall, but he was still within reach of their teeth as he tested a grip. I followed him into the steaming waters, but the molten fire in the moat was an illusion. It was all grainy dirt.

A creature glided toward me. She had the seeming of a woman whose coiled hair was laden with gold coins. I thrust. My sword pierced her. Pain shivered up my arm, but I pushed, leaning my full weight into her.

She shattered, coming apart like a pouch of sand when it is ripped open.

Where the grains soaked into the ground, the veil of illusion cleared. As if through glass, I saw the dusty surface of salt. I smelled the sun of the mortal world, and heard the shrill whistle of wind blowing beneath an empty sky.

“Catherine!”

The exhalation of their breath iced my neck. To climb I had to sheathe my sword. Fear propelled me. I swarmed up the face of the cliff as he hoarsely called directions so I need not pause and look, for if I had hesitated, they would have grabbed me.

“Up three hands, now right, another hand farther, so you see it? There! Your foot to where your knee is. In a half step. There, that’s right. Push up, it’s wide enough to hold you. See my left foot? Let go with your left hand. You grab where my foot was…”

So we climbed, me sweating from the pain that flamed in my arms and hands. I was so exhausted I was shaking, but I was not going to lose him.

He disappeared over the rim, then reappeared to haul me up beside him. I shrugged out of the pack. We lay panting side by side. The length of my blade was pressed into me by the weight of his leg alongside mine. I rested on my back, staring at the pewter bowl of the sky and what appeared to me now as the high white wall of the palace rising behind my head exactly as I had seen it before I had entered. Vai lay on his stomach, and he appeared to be looking over the edge of an escarpment as he stared into the pit we had escaped. I had to shut my eyes because I could not tell which direction was up. I felt dizzy. His ragged breathing was all the sign I needed to know that he, too, was fighting the toll taken by our exertions.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” I said. “We’ve got to reach the jade doors and retrieve Queen Anacaona’s head. Someone is sure to come after us.”

“We need to retrieve what?” Vai sat up as if he had finally woken out of a bad dream.

I opened my eyes. “I’ll explain later. There’s a jade door with warded ground somewhere along this exterior. We can cross there.”

We stumbled to our feet as I hoisted the pack. Vai stowed the tools and slung on the carpenter’s apron. His face was gray with exhaustion, but he trudged forward stubbornly. My entire body hurt as we staggered along the rim of the palace.

I wanted to ask Vai if he saw the white stone walls rising beside us, if he saw a plaza stretching to all sides like a sheep-mown pasture, but the effort of forming words was too great. All I could do was look ahead, hoping we would soon reach the jade door and its warded ground.

A cloud of crows swept past, flying as before a blow. Wind sheared across my back. I faltered, looking over my shoulder. A wrath of clouds boiled toward us. Lightning flashed, although no thunder sounded. Rain lashed the ground in sheets.

I had seen that storm before. I knew what it portended.

I grabbed Vai’s hand. “It’s my sire coming. We’ve got to run.”

Light flashed on the horizon ahead of us. It splintered into a smoky tide like the crests of multiple waves tumbling toward us: a dragon’s dream.

Vai’s hand tightened on mine as he sucked in a harsh breath.

We were caught between Hunt and dream, between death and obliteration.

A plain black coach rolled up, pulled by four white horses whose hooves did not quite touch the ground. A coachman sat on the front of the box. He had the white skin and short, spiky, lime-whitened hair of a man of Celtic birth. He wore a plain black coat, thin leather gloves, and a hat that he tipped up with the handle of his whip, greeting us. The footman hanging on at the back of the coach was no man but an eru; she appeared as a woman with black skin, short black hair, a third eye in the center of her forehead, and her wings neatly furled. She did not let go of the coach. Instead the door swung open. My sire beckoned from the interior.

“Best hurry,” he said with a calm smile. “This coach is a refuge, a sort of warded ground all on its own. The tide is coming in fast. You’ll be safe inside here.”

His sober dash jacket and neat black trousers made him look like a humble clerk on the way to his day’s work at his master’s offices. You would never have guessed he had recently hunted down and killed some poor soul in the mortal world, and then been forced to bow before the spirit courts and have all that power ripped from him to feed them instead. Not until you looked into his eyes. His gaze had as much mercy as a knife in the dark.

“Do you imagine we believe you?” asked Vai in the tone of a man at his supper who has just been told that the crust of bread set before him is the haunch of beef he requested.

“I imagine you have no choice but to join me. I have something of yours, Cat.” He indicated the Taino basket in which I kept the cacica’s head.

“How could you get that?” I demanded.

“I saw you hang it on the tree. Best hurry, Daughter.”