Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“I take it that a willing sacrifice need not be torn to pieces and have its head thrown down a well,” I remarked as I entered the coach.

“No reason to do that unless they try to escape or fight back.” My sire sat at his ease, one leg crossed elegantly. He looked past me at Rory, on the stoop. “Is that your brother? I do lose track, for there are so many of you.”

o;People will fear the prospect of cold mages and fire mages acting in concert. They’ll fear they will set themselves up as princes and lord it over all the people of the land.”

“People do that anyway.”

“I did feel sorry for those young fire mages. Imagine thinking that the best choice you have is to believe what James Drake is telling you! You’ll have to answer people’s fears, though. Naturally some magisters will abuse the knowledge and power they gain. I suppose that’s what you talked about with the blacksmith in that little village when we were escaping down the river.”

He smiled to let me know that no word of the conversation he had had with the blacksmith would pass his lips. “I also remember what the cacica told me. She said that the Taino believe every person is born with a kernel of power. Some waken it, and some never do. You were right to say that every child should have a chance to learn. Do you know, love, Beatrice and I are talking all the time about the things we want to do. All this work is going on for what she and I are hoping and planning for. But you never talk about what you’re thinking about. You must want something, Catherine. You can’t be happy merely to go along with our schemes.”

“I do want something.” I smiled, for I loved him and Bee so much, and all the rest of them, too. “Just don’t let Wasa get up to mischief. She has such a rascal spirit. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow night.”

It was almost twilight as we reached the gates of troll town. The mirrors and shards of glass that surrounded the district flashed so agonizingly that I turned my back before the pain ripped through me. I kissed him and sent him on his way. The drums called him. They were already dancing, the strangest rhythm I had ever heard, for it was shot through with the whistling and clicking of trolls. It was a new song being born.

I smelled liquor, and the fresh fragrance of the traditional crossing buns filled with plum jam or yam custard. A rollicking party was already under way, as the sailors would have it.

Another sound rose out of the earth like mist and filtered down from the sky like rain: the horn calling the Wild Hunt to ride.

I ran the short distance to the harbor office of Godwik and Clutch, for I had promised Bee and Vai I would sit in a room with four mirrors until the danger had passed. Rory sulked on the stoop, seated on the stairs with a morose eye turned on me as I came up.

“I can’t believe you never told them,” he said. “Even Chartji left for troll town without knowing. How could you, Cat? And making me go along with it, too. It’s not right.”

“What good would it have done? You know them, Rory. They would have insisted on trying to hide me, or fighting the Wild Hunt, or something equally foolish and pointless. They would have spent the last two months so unhappy and grief-stricken and miserable. It’s better this way.”

“I’m not sure you have the right to choose for them.”

The horn’s cry rose a second time, gaining strength.

I sat next to him, holding his hand. “It’s done now. Rory, this is your last chance to cross back over in your own body, for once I am gone you will only cross over by means of death. Do you want to return to the spirit world?”

He pressed his face into my shoulder, then shook himself, and tugged on my braid, and pushed me as a brother teases his sister. “No. My home is here now.”

The third call licked the air like fire and breathed all the way into my bones. I heard the clip-clop of hooves and the scrape of wheels on cobblestones.

Rising, I pulled four letters from inside my jacket. “This is for Bee, this for Vai, this for Doctor Asante, and the last is for Aunt Tilly and Uncle Jonatan. You know what to say to Chartji. Now you’d better go before he sees you.”

His lips were curled into the beginnings of a snarl as he snatched the letters out of my hand. “I’ll see you off. Someone ought to.”

Along the avenue, the lit Hallows’ candles set in windows went out one by one. The coach rolled out of the gloom, the four horses gleaming like moonlight. The coachman tipped his hat in greeting. The eru leaped down from the back of the coach. Clouds scudded over the bright stars and thunder rumbled like the feet of the leashed Hunt troubling the sky as it waited to be released.

I glanced at the heavens, and then at the door as the eru opened it and bumped down the steps so I could climb in. She nodded, a spark of blue flashing on her forehead.

“I take it that a willing sacrifice need not be torn to pieces and have its head thrown down a well,” I remarked as I entered the coach.

“No reason to do that unless they try to escape or fight back.” My sire sat at his ease, one leg crossed elegantly. He looked past me at Rory, on the stoop. “Is that your brother? I do lose track, for there are so many of you.”

The door closing cut off the view, but regardless my gaze had been caught by the large, gleaming object on the bench next to my sire. I had last seen the bronze cauldron in the temple of Carnonos watched over by my grandfather. The face of a horned man shone in the polished surface.

“Not a very good likeness, if you ask me,” said my sire, noticing the direction of my gaze. “Imagine! He had the effrontery to pour water into it and watch me every Hallows’ Night. I put a stop to that!”

“Did you kill him?”

“Kill him? Of course not! On Hallows’ Night, the Hunt gathers up the spirits of those fated to die in the coming year. We don’t kill them. You mortals kill each other, or you die of other causes. I only kill one mortal a year, and I do that because I am commanded to do so by my masters.”

Strangely, the moment the coach arrived, all my fear had melted away like ice under heat. The coachman cracked his whip. I pulled the shutter back in time to wave at Rory as we rolled away down the street.

“Then what did you do in the mortal world all these weeks?” I demanded.