Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“You promised,” I said.

“Yes, I promised.”

I gave him simple directions based on the bell towers and the high plinth that marked the site of the ancient village founded by Adurni Celts. I kissed him on either cheek, to seal our agreement, and waited at the tophet gate as he walked away down the main thoroughfare, lugging the bags. The wide avenue with its shops remained deserted, everyone in hiding.

I watched until he walked out of sight. Then I hurried up the hill, catching the others as they passed the old Kena’ani temple complex that was the original structure built on Academy Hill centuries ago. All that remained of the old complex was the walled sanctuary dedicated to Blessed Tanit and a grove of votive columns in commemoration of the holy trees felled during the Long Winter of 1572 to 1585. The gate into the sanctuary stood open. Within, a man wearing a heavy coat swept the porch of the priests’ house.

“The gate is always open,” the headmaster was saying to Bee, “due to an agreement made during the Long Winter, when the priests kept the gates open to provide warmth and sustenance to the destitute. It was that, or have the entire complex be burned down.”

“But it was destroyed anyway,” said Bee.

“Much of Adurnam burned at that time. Do you know what saved the city?”

“I do,” I said. “The arrival of the refugees from the empire of Mali. Certain of the refugees had secret magical knowledge, and they found common cause with the Celtic drua. From that union sprang the cold mages. With the rise of the cold mages, the Long Winter was vanquished. Or at least, that is the story we learned at the academy, Maester.”

“So it is. It makes you wonder, does it not? Is there some link between cold magic and the more clement weather of our time? For according to history and the evidence of old Roman ruins found north of Ebora in the uninhabitable Barrens, the climate was less clement, and the ice more advanced, two thousand years ago. What causes these changes?”

“There were no cold mages in the times of the Romans,” said Bee. “Were there?”

“Not as we know them, no. Ah, here we are.”

His chief steward waited on the front steps of the academy entrance.

“Owain,” said the headmaster as he paused at the top of the steps to catch his breath, “the academy remains closed to all callers for the day. Admit no one.”

“As you command, Your Excellency.”

A cascading boom cracked outside. Whoever was shooting off muskets and field cannon was nowhere near the hailstorm. The hum rising off the city reminded me of maddened bees being smoked out of their hive. I hurried after Bee and the headmaster, who had already crossed the wide entry hall.

Surrounded by buildings, the central court lay quiet under its glass roof. No one was around. Midwinter festival wreaths of mistletoe and pine withered atop a trellis arch. The trellis covered the grated shaft of an ancient sacrificial well. A hundred years ago, a now-famous labyrinth had been laid out as a paved walkway spiraling around the well, ringed by stone benches.

I followed the others upstairs to the headmaster’s office. The circulating stove set into the hearth gave off glorious warmth.

“Please,” said the headmaster. Bee and I took off our coats and draped them over the back of a red leather chair. His assistant closed the door and took the headmaster’s coat.

and paused as he was turning the key. He did not look at me. “Yes.”

“How?”

He slung the key, on its chain, over his neck. “It is not my place to speak of it.”

“Is he a dragon?”

As if goaded beyond measure, he met my gaze. “The headmaster of the academy is a man.”

“One just like you?” I demanded, for I sensed a riddle in his words.

His smile twisted scornfully, which startled me, for I had thought him a passive young person. “In the empire of the Avar, every albino child like me”—he touched fingers to his pale cheek—“belongs to the emperor. It is a crime punishable by death to hide such a child from the imperial governors. So I would answer you, ‘No.’ He is not a man just like me.”

“I take it that is all I am to hear on the matter.”

So returned the diffident exterior, like a shell covering vulnerable flesh. “My apologies, Maestressa.” He inclined his head with a polite bob of his shoulders and followed his master.

Bee and the headmaster were making their way slowly up the hill, the old man leaning on his cane and she with a hand beneath his elbow quite oblivious to his desire to eat either of us. Rory watched the headmaster’s back with a hooded gaze that did nothing to hide his wish to pounce.

“You promised,” I said.

“Yes, I promised.”