Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“They tell me you walked out of the north, Magister. Surely on the road here you passed Crescent House frozen by the breath of the Wild Hunt. That is not fear. That is truth. Take her, if you must, for you are young and arrogant and you believe all will bow before you and your magic. But you are nothing but dust and salt, and less precious than salt. Go, as did my daughter Tara. Go, as did the Phoenician, Daniel, who believed he could stand beside her. Go, as did the captain who thought he had found a woman whose dreams would deliver up Europa to his ambition. The hunter will crush your defiance and destroy all that you love. The hunter cannot be defeated, because he is death.”

“Come, Catherine. We are leaving this cursed place.”

I followed Vai past the dead lamps and out of the sanctuary to where the village waited in silence. Snow drifted like frozen tears. I feared that the villagers meant to abandon us on the road to die of exposure, but even in this isolated place, respect for cold mages was akin to awe. Hot wine and a platter of warm porridge awaited him, which Vai forced me to share although I was neither hungry nor thirsty. Vai was presented with two pairs of fur-lined gloves and two voluminous fur-lined cloaks. He helped me into mine before wrapping himself in the other. Fresh horses were brought as well as a donkey to haul our gear. Devyn was assigned to accompany us with three older men, grim fellows bearing spears in a way that made me think they had once been soldiers in whatever war had brought Captain Leon to the north, before he became General Camjiata.

o;She did bear a child, because I am hers and in your heart you know I am hers!”

He raised his hands as if warding off an attack. “If you speak, the god will be hearing you!”

“Who will hear who does not already know?” I cried. Would my own grandfather reject me?

“The anger of Bold Carnonos fell upon this village. The magisters of Crescent House made offering of their magic to build an empire. So the god destroyed them.”

“He’s not a god! You just call him that because you fear his power.”

He raised the knife of sacrifice. “We do not want your poison here to call his anger back on us. Begone. Begone. Begone.”

Down the avenue of oak trees, lamps flickered and began to go out one by one. Vai appeared in a nimbus of cold fire, leading the pack horse.

“I heard you shout, love.” He tossed the reins to the ground and, drawing his sword, stepped between me and the man who refused to be my grandfather. “Holy one, you cannot possibly wish to anger a magister, and you especially do not wish to anger me. Because I promise you, no magister you have ever seen or heard tell of has done what I have done. For I have defied the hunter, and stolen his own daughter out of his very nest. Of course she has fallen in love with me and chosen to become my wife. She is no threat to you or to this village. You ought to rejoice and lay a feast to celebrate her arrival, for I assure you that everything about this woman ought to make you proud to call her your kin.”

The priest lowered the knife, his gaze fixed on Vai’s cold steel, which needed only to draw blood to cut his spirit out of his flesh and send him screaming into the spirit world. “The girl has bewitched you, Magister. The god toys with you. It will end in grief and blood. I see it in the cauldron.”

“You see your own fears,” I said hoarsely. “You know what happened to your daughter on the ice, don’t you?”

His pitiless gaze seared me. “I told her to smother the child the moment she gave birth. Do you know what she said to me?”

My heart dropped as if into the pit of my belly. I feared to know. Yet I had to know.

The old man’s malice gleamed in a face so much like mine. “She said, ‘Do you not think I did not try to rid myself of his hateful seed? Yet nothing I did would dislodge it.’ ”

“You don’t need to listen to any more of this, Catherine. We can walk out of here now.”

My feet would not shift. My grandfather’s hate pinned me to the earth. The memory of Tara’s defiance still enraged him.

“Yet after that, the shameless whore spoke of pride! She said, ‘But then I realized that it was loyalty that made the child, because I went willingly to the hunter to save the lives of the others. Loyalty will be her birthright. Do not think I will be ashamed! I will be proud! Because loyalty will be the bright light this child will bring to the world.’ ”

The glimpse into my mother’s heart stunned me.

“I told her she would come to a bad end,” he went on in a rheumy whisper. “The hunter never stops hunting. His children belong to him only. Blood binds them forever and always.”

He shut his seamed old eyes, pressing fingers onto the closed eyelids.

“I see the Hunt in the cauldron every Hallows’ Night. I saw Tara and the Phoenician, dragged down into the river. I saw a child torn from their grasp as Tara reached for her with the only hand left to her. I saw the water choke them and kill them. ”

“Enough!” snapped Vai. “I do not fear you, holy one, although I respect your age, as it is proper for the young to respect the old. You have poisoned your own well with fear and hate.”

The priest opened his eyes. Unlike Tara and Devyn he had dark eyes, and in the firelight they seemed to gleam with a golden brown almost like mine.

“They tell me you walked out of the north, Magister. Surely on the road here you passed Crescent House frozen by the breath of the Wild Hunt. That is not fear. That is truth. Take her, if you must, for you are young and arrogant and you believe all will bow before you and your magic. But you are nothing but dust and salt, and less precious than salt. Go, as did my daughter Tara. Go, as did the Phoenician, Daniel, who believed he could stand beside her. Go, as did the captain who thought he had found a woman whose dreams would deliver up Europa to his ambition. The hunter will crush your defiance and destroy all that you love. The hunter cannot be defeated, because he is death.”

“Come, Catherine. We are leaving this cursed place.”

I followed Vai past the dead lamps and out of the sanctuary to where the village waited in silence. Snow drifted like frozen tears. I feared that the villagers meant to abandon us on the road to die of exposure, but even in this isolated place, respect for cold mages was akin to awe. Hot wine and a platter of warm porridge awaited him, which Vai forced me to share although I was neither hungry nor thirsty. Vai was presented with two pairs of fur-lined gloves and two voluminous fur-lined cloaks. He helped me into mine before wrapping himself in the other. Fresh horses were brought as well as a donkey to haul our gear. Devyn was assigned to accompany us with three older men, grim fellows bearing spears in a way that made me think they had once been soldiers in whatever war had brought Captain Leon to the north, before he became General Camjiata.

People stood with breath misting to watch us depart. I couldn’t tell if they expected a calamity to befall us before we left their sight, or if they wished to store away the memory to tell as a tale over and over again at the winter hearth: how they had seen the lord magister and the beast ride away into the night. It was as quiet as if death had blown a kiss over the world. The only sounds were the crunch of hooves on crusted snow and the moan of the wind. I could not stop shaking.

Our road was a broad cart track glistening with a lacework of frost under the moon’s light. We halted at daybreak in a hamlet of two farmsteads to feed and water the horses. Vai suggested I go indoors to warm myself at a hearth. The women hustled their children out when I came in, so I went back out again, not wanting the children to get cold. My hands hurt, and my lips were numb, and worst of all, a pair of crows now followed us. I was sure they were my sire’s spies.