Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“They’re all ghouls, in their way. What you see as personages in elegant robes, I see as gaunt creatures clawing for my blood. They’re not solid on this side, not like the ones we just saw in the mine. Over here they can change their aspect, just as all spirit creatures can do.”

The way he set each tool down on the ground precisely in line next to the others told me more than words. He was calming himself through orderly action, methodical, precise, just as the cacica had observed. I could not help but watch his hands, the ones that knew exactly how to do the meticulous work he wanted them to do.

He glanced up as if I had made a noise, then raised an eyebrow in that way that made him look supercilious but that was also, I realized, just a way of showing he was puzzled or concerned. “Catherine?”

My lips parted but no words came out. No words I expected or meant to say.

“I love you so much, Vai.”

Had another voice and intelligence spoken through my mouth I would not have been more surprised. His eyes widened, as if I’d blurted out an embarrassing secret he knew he ought not to have heard. Yet the weary slump of his shoulders straightened with new determination as he turned the awl through his fingers and set it down beside the claw hammer. He unrolled the last fold in the heavy leather kit to reveal a set of chisels and a two-bitted hatchet.

“Catherine, can you trust me enough to step blindly off a cliff no matter how it looks to you?”

“Always, Vai. But what is your plan?”

He began to put the tools back. “I’ve had a lot of time to examine this pit. It is a maze, all connected to this central tower of rock. The maze walls are like low cliffs. If we stay on the walls, they can’t get to us.”

“They can walk on the bridges and balconies.”

“Those are paths within and above the pit. We should be able to climb sideways along the walls all the way to the edge without having to drop to the ground. I’ve been able to map out a route where it seems there will be plenty of foot- and handholds and a series of ledges where we can rest along the way.”

“Are you going to chip out handholds with a chisel and hammer?”

“I likely can’t get enough swing on a hammer but we do have them if we need them. We can easily smash stairs, if we need to. We’ll stay above and below the ghouls, climb out of the pit, find warded ground, and cross back to the mortal world. We have no money, but we can work our way wherever we need to go with my carpentry and your sewing. So you see, now that we are together, we have everything we need. Are you ready?”

I nodded. He ripped a scrap of cloth from one of the old pagnes and tied it around his neck like a buccaneer’s kerchief. Tying the apron back on, he rigged his sword and the hatchet so he could grab them easily. I bound up my skirts, binding my sword and the now-lightened pack across my back. We drained one flask of spring water and, thus fortified, set out.

Handing me a chisel, he said, “Don’t look at anything except me.”

For once, I had no teasing retort.

We worked our way off the balcony with its decorative ribbons. For the very first part I saw the same thing he did: the uneven face of the cleft. Its manifold protuberances and hand-width shelves were easy to negotiate. But then I had to follow him as onto open air. It was like walking out over a chasm. His shoulders bunching and releasing beneath his jacket became my lodestone. The sweat beading on the back of his neck fascinated me. He had a really beautifully shaped head, brown and lovely.

Watching him helped me not look at my hands groping through empty air or across illusory vistas that still looked to me like streaming masses of ribbons. Often I shut my eyes and felt along the rugged cliff rather than grow dizzy from the confusion between what I could see and what I could touch.

Hadn’t it always been that way with Andevai? When I had first met him, I had seen one man, but I had had to discover the part of himself he kept concealed.

“Catherine, are you paying attention? Don’t grab there. Up a little… with your right hand… there.”

Often we rested on ledges no wider than my feet, leaning against the rock wall, and I was grateful for each respite because my forearms were beginning to burn and my fingers to get as dry as if they were being sandpapered. But we could not fully relax until we reached what I saw as a polished clamshell of a platform tucked along the curve of an ebony tower. After he smashed the rungs of what looked to me like a glass ladder that led up from below, we sat huddled against the wall and shared half of the water in the second flask. He dozed off, slumped against me. I could not sleep; my hands were smarting and my arms felt numb.

Were the courts still feasting? No movement troubled the bridges and spans and balconies whose complex patterns haunted me. I stared at the beautiful city and I hated it for lying to me. I hated myself for seeing it as beautiful, for believing it must be so because all the tales said it was.

People told so many stories whose fractured truths hid as much as they revealed. What we did not know could hurt us. What we chose to ignore could cause harm, maybe to ourselves and maybe to others.

Vai sighed in his sleep. I rested my head against his. We had come by twists and turns more than halfway to the outer wall. I thought surely I could let him rest for a few more breaths, but then I heard a scuffling and scratching below and above. The rasp of tongues tickled the cut on my arm, and my blood oozed. The cursed creatures were tracking us again.

Vai stiffened, going so tense that I thought he had woken, but he was still asleep. He murmured words in the village dialect he had spoken as a child. Most of the words slipped past, too thickly patois for me to understand. Then he spoke almost desperately. “Don’t touch me!”

He jolted awake and shoved me away so roughly that he almost pushed me off the edge.

I grabbed his arms, dragging myself to a stop with his weight. “Vai! It’s me. It’s Catherine.”

He sucked in air. For an instant I was frighteningly certain he did not recognize me. Then all the air went out of him. He pulled an arm out of my grasp and rubbed his eyes.

“What were you dreaming?”

He looked away, jaw clenched. “Nothing.”