Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

The call licked the air like fire and breathed all the way down into my bones. I knew I had to run. Run. Run.

The carriage slowed, scraped, and jolted to a halt. The eru leaped down, face creased in a solemn frown. Her third eye did not frighten me, for she only looked at me with two eyes. The third looked elsewhere, sidelong, as at a sight I could never see and would not wish to glimpse.

“My apologies, Cousin. We cannot convey you as far as we would wish.”

“Is that the mansa’s command, calling you home?”

The eru’s laugh made me shudder. “Is that what you think it is?”

I tried again. “You are a servant of Four Moons House, being called home.”

“We are not servants of Four Moons House. Although you will find a pair of us in each of the mage Houses. They believe or choose to believe we are their servants, but we are not their servants. Rather we are watchers in the service of a greater power that at all times keeps a tiny whisper of its attention for those among the human lineage who may become too powerful.”

The horn call blared a second time, gaining strength.

I clutched the lip of the window until my knuckles whitened. “You’ll abandon me here!”

“Alas, our masters call. We must obey the summons.” Her expression was difficult for me to read, composed with some portion of humanly compassion and yet a greater measure of something like disdain that was perhaps merely a degree of aloofness to the petty travails of a mortal creature like myself. Or else she was angry. Impossible to say. “As for you, you must depart into the mortal world, for it is not safe for you in the spirit world without a guide. Especially not this night, when the hunt rides. You must find the cunning and the strength to make your way on your own in the world you know. One thing: The cold mages cannot pursue you on Hallows Night and Hallows Day. They dare not walk abroad when the hunt rides. Yet this night of all nights is an ill time for every mortal creature. Find shelter when the sun goes down, and depart at dawn to gain what head start you can.”

“The djeli said I wear a spirit mantle. Tell me what that means.”

“It means we are cousins. Go now.”

She reached inside and firmly slid closed the shutters. An instant later, too quickly for her to have walked around the carriage, the latch of the other door clicked down and the door opened. I climbed out not into the autumnal beauty of the spirit world but into the shivering cold of winter’s twilight in my own. The clouds lay heavy and dark above; the last light drained like hope from the empty landscape of frost and field. There was no wind.

Sitting above, the coachman lifted his riding whip in salute.

The horn rang a third time around us, the sound rolling like thunder away over the hills.

The whip came down across the backs of the horses, whose hooves no longer touched the earth. The eru leaped up onto the running board, and from her back roiled a disturbance in the air. She was spreading wings.

A wind out of the north howled over us, almost bowling me over. The carriage and the eru and the coachman and the horses dissolved into a thousand shards of ice, and I was battered as by a vortex of bladed leaves so hard I shut my eyes.

And when the wind died and I opened my eyes, the eru and the coachman and the coach and four were gone. I stood alone, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but my sword and my bracelet and the clothes I wore, as snow began to fall and the gloaming of Hallows Night swallowed a now-silent world.

19

Broken woodland surrounded me. In the clearing in which I stood, snow dusted the grass. I had thought we were on the toll road, so smoothly had we traveled, but no road revealed itself to my searching and desperate gaze. Perhaps in the spirit world this was a line of power unseen to the mortal eye in the physical world, for I could see nothing but the last shadows of the trees beneath the darkening sky.

The hunt rides.

There! A taper wavered in the gloom to the north of me, then vanished. Voices lifted and faded, then lifted again in song underlaid by hands clapping and a drum’s accompanying patter.

East lay the House. Out of the north came the singers. Between south and west lay little enough choice except for a barest glimmer as faint as a thread of spider’s silk caught between two trees. It might be a path. Even if it wasn’t I could hide in the trees. Keeping my sword sheathed, I paced as swiftly as I could without breaking into a run whose haste might trip me up. A rustle like the pelting race of animals through brittle grass chased around me and quieted, but I dared not pause, knowing that spirit wolves—or a family of hunting saber-toothed cats—might have followed my scent out of the spirit world. Could the animals of the spirit world cross into ours, as I had crossed into theirs?

The enveloping canopy and loamy scent of spruce loomed before me. Beneath the trees, the path continued on as straight as if surveyed by Roman engineers, laid with a glamor so slight it was as if the track exhaled. It was easy enough to follow for a person with my vision.

Branches swayed above me. A weight dropped so fast down out of the trees that I flailed as netting tangled over my head and in my hands. I gave myself a single breath to strangle my panic, then crouched and pulled the sheathed sword free right on the earth between rope and soil. Pushing the sword’s hilt before me to lift the net, I wormed forward. When I found the edge of the netting, I peeled it back from my head just as two men stepped onto the path before me. I grasped the netting, dragged it up and sideways, and flung it with all my strength at them as I sprang in the other direction.

I slammed against another body. A hand’s powerful grasp chained my sword arm. The man who had captured me was tall and bundled in winter’s clothing. That was all I could tell, except that he smelled of sweat and wool. I dropped to my knees to get a new angle, my sword’s blade glittering as I torqued it toward his face.

He made a noise between gritted teeth, something between a grunt and a laugh. He got a knee up between us and kicked me back so hard I stumbled into the netting and slashed at empty air. But I had a cat’s grace. I did not fall, as they expected me to. My chest hurt, but I could still breathe.

The taper had reached me. In its flaring light, I found myself surrounded by seven men wearing quilted wool coats hung with charms and armed with the bows and spears of hunters. The eldest had a seamed face; the ends of many gray-streaked braids, each bound with an amulet at its tip, stuck out from beneath a wool cap drawn down over his ears. The youngest was a stripling, younger than me and wide-eyed with amazement at finding a creature such as myself alone in the forest with a sword on such a night.

“Ah!” said the man I’d slammed into, licking blood off his thumb. “I am cut by your blade. Does the cat scratch on purpose, or is it only startled?”

o;The djeli said I wear a spirit mantle. Tell me what that means.”