Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

He stared at me with a look I was sure was one of reproach for the inanity of the question. Then he licked his right paw.

“Why are you talking to a monstrous saber-toothed cat as if it can understand you?” asked Amadou Barry. “Where are we? With what magical illusion have you confounded my eyes?”

I ignored him. “Bee, take the head of Queen Anacaona out of the basket.”

“How can a skull help us?” Amadou picked up his sword from the ground and brandished it in what I supposed he thought was a manly way. “You two girls need protection. That’s why we must return to the house and the mansa.”

“In the spirit world, the head of Queen Anacaona is not a skull,” I snapped, really exasperated now. “Please be polite.”

“My apologies for the rude handling, Your Highness,” Bee said in a choked voice as she wrestled open the basket. I could hear how humiliated she was, and how hard she was trying to hide it. “We are hoping your wisdom and experience may aid us.”

I was watching Amadou Barry, astounded that the man was too blind to comprehend that he was no longer in a world where his patrician rank or military training meant anything. When Bee lifted the living head of Queen Anacaona out of the basket, he recoiled a step, then pulled himself up short, staring as the cacica blinked to get her bearings.

His mouth creased downward. “What cruel illusion is this?”

Queen Anacaona said, “Turn that way, Beatrice. There are four creatures running toward us. I suggest we move to a safer domicile.”

“There is no safer domicile, Your Highness,” I replied. “Legate, stay back.”

Naturally the legate moved up alongside me, no doubt to impress Bee. Even injured, he looked as if he knew how to handle himself in a fight. He just didn’t have any weapons that would work here. Bee dug into one of the packs and hefted a hammer.

Snarling, Rory sprang past me into the night. Two wolves dodged past him into the light shed by my sword. With a crosscut to the head, I sliced one hard across the muzzle and sidestepped with a turn to slash up under the belly of the second. Cold steel hit them like poison. They both collapsed. Snarls and growls punctuated a dirty fight farther out. I ran toward the sound to find Rory with his jaws at the throat of a third wolf, clamping down until the beast stopped thrashing and went limp.

“There’s one more,” I said.

Bee shouted a warning.

I bolted back in time to see the fourth wolf leap toward Bee as Amadou Barry jumped between them. I grabbed its tail and yanked it sideways with me as I fell. The animal landed square on top of me, punching the air from my lungs. It twisted, shaking up to its feet as its head swung around to bite my face.

Rory slammed into it, and they went rolling away into the darkness in a crash of noise, followed by a yelp. Rory paced back into view. He looked quite dreadfully powerful, muscles rippling beneath his dark flanks and shoulders. Facing into the darkness, he roared. His challenge shook through air and earth like a living thing. When he paused, the night had fallen as silent as if every creature near enough to hear thought it prudent to rethink its strategy.

“Cat?” Bee’s voice was remarkably level. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m not touched.” I was shaking, not with fear but with fight. I was ready to rip out the throat of the next creature that attacked Bee. “We need to move. Find a gate to get you and the legate back to the mortal world.”

“This is a constant nightmare of death!” cried Amadou Barry. “Have we truly crossed into Tartarus, where the ancestors bide? Where skulls are wreathed in the form of living heads? Where every monster seeks to kill?”

Ignoring him, I slung on the pack with Vai’s tools and started walking. “I’d call Rory’s pride to protect us, but we’ve no warded ground in sight where they can shelter if a tide rips through.”

I led with my sword, keeping my right shoulder next to the wall. Bee followed with the other two packs, slung on before and behind her, and the cacica’s head held out in front to guide us. Amadou Barry limped behind her, and Rory brought up the rear. The ground alongside the wall was stony, marked with patches of lichen. Eyes glowed in the night like pairs of fireflies, softly ominous.

“What is a tide?” Amadou Barry demanded. “Why is everything here attacking us?”

I couldn’t help but want to rub his nose in his ignorance. “Since you seem to think we do not know what we are about, I should like to inform you of what you do not know. Now and again young women are born who walk the dreams of dragons in their sleep.”

“I know that!” he protested. After a hesitation, he said, “Go on.”

“All you powerful men want Bee to make use of her dreams to fulfill your own ambitions.”

“We merely wish to keep her out of the hands of the Iberian Monster so he cannot use her dreams to conquer Europa.”

I snorted.

“If that was your only purpose, Legate,” said Bee in a low voice, “then I am surprised at the insulting offer you made me.”

“Bright Venus, but you Phoenicians are too proud!”

I cut in before they could tumble into what would seem too much like a lovers’ quarrel. “The tides of those dreams wash the spirit world like great waves of smoke. Where the smoke washes, the land is wiped clean. Every thing and every creature that is touched by the smoke is changed. Except for warded ground, which is what we’re looking for now. The creatures who live in the spirit world hate dragon dreamers and want to kill Bee.”