Cold Fire (10 page)

“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.

The headmaster’s office had the odd quality of seeming larger than it was because mirrors hung on the backs of the doors. I saw everything twice: the wall of windows, the ranks of bookshelves reaching from floor to the crown moldings, the wide table with paper and books covering its entire surface, and the severed head of the poet and legal scholar Bran Cof atop a pedestal. The headmaster was watching me in one of the mirrors. I could see things in mirrors that others could not, threads of magic like the fine lines of spiders’ webs. In the mirror, he looked like a perfectly ordinary old man. No threads of cold magic wove around his form as they did around Andevai. No vast winged shape billowed from his slender frame. He looked as solid as the furniture.

“Natural historians speculate that mirrors reflect the binding threads of energy that run between this world and the unseen spirit world,” he remarked, as if he had divined my thoughts. “Do you suppose that is true, Maestressa Barahal?”

I glanced down at my scuffed and muddy boots. The ends of the laces had been chewed up as by hungry mice. The longcase clock ticked like the pacing of ethereal feet.

“My apologies, but we don’t have time for speculation,” said Bee. She walked to the corner where the head of the poet Bran Cof rested like a stone bust. I broke into a prickling sweat. I could not bear the thought of those eyelids snapping open, yet I could not look away no matter how much I wanted to. “When did the head speak? What did he say?”

The headmaster smiled enigmatically. “The very questions I meant to ask you. It was at dawn. I was seated here at my desk reading aloud, as is my habit. This day it happened to be a monograph on the salt plague which I recently received from one of my correspondents at the University of Expedition. Perhaps the same words will waken him again.” He glanced at a printed pamphlet lying open on his desk. “‘According to report, if a human is bitten by a ghoul, the onset of the disease is so swift and implacable that the victim will become morbid in less than seven days. However, if a human is bitten by a plague-ridden human, there are three distinct and slower stages through which the disease progresses, although the disease remains invariably fatal.’”

The head remained fixed. Bloodless lips kept their disapproving pinch. The lime-whitened spikes of his hair and the luxuriant droop of his mustache made his features look younger than what the heavy crow’s-feet radiating out from his deep-set eyes told of years and trials. Three scars like ritual marks formed a column beneath his right ear. Maybe the head was just stone after all.

Maybe it was all a mistake.

“If you have something to say, Bran Cof, speak now.” Bee’s voice rang above the whispering crackle of the fire burning in the circulating stove. “My cousin and I cannot wait forever.”

“Bee!” I cautioned.

“And furthermore,” she continued in the tone of an Immortal Fury who has just remembered an ancient slight and means to pursue vengeance to the ends of the Earth, “if you are really bound between this world and the spirit world as it is said poets and sorcerers and djeliw and bards can be—which I admit seems quite unpleasant, for wouldn’t it be rather like being forced to stand in a doorway all the time, neither going nor coming? Anyway, if you are so bound, then I wish you would not be so coy about it. I know you are a very famous legal scholar, one of the Three Even-Handed Jurists of the old Brigantes Confederation, so I would hope you would show us consideration now we are come before you, at your request. Yes, I am aware we are required to defer to poets, whose words reveal the world in ways we who are not poets could not otherwise see. And your fame as one of the Three Silver Tongues of the western Celts is naturally enough to awe and impress humble students like ourselves. But I must say, the constant references to women as roses with thorns seems a bit much. Men torment women far more than women torment men.”

Did the sun escape a cloudy veil outside? A gleam shuddered within the reflecting angles of the mirrors like the spark of fireflies. A cowl of silvery light writhed around the head of the poet Bran Cof. Color washed the pallor of his face. There crawled beneath his skin a straining like insects swarming or a trapped prisoner trying to claw its way out.

She rolled blithely on. “I can’t
endure
these constant protestations about the chains women bind on men. In truth, the chains all bind women at the feet of men.”

His eyes opened, corpse-still one moment and full of ire the next.

“Bold Taranis spare me from the complaints of virgins!” His voice was resonant, as lovely as a caress, even in anger. “Especially ones whose black hair is a snare to entwine the helpless and whose dark eyes provoke the tenderhearted to grief. How I despise the beauty of women!”

“Only because you feel entitled to something you have no natural right to possess!”

“Your words dance like sun across ice, but their cruelty is sharper than the winter wind. You must be aware that whatever I might wish for in the Three Matters of Desire has long since been severed from me. You stand there, out of my reach.” He looked younger when he was angry. As the cut of his lips softened, he seemed to age. “A kinder woman would kiss me.”

“A kinder woman might well! I am not she. Anyhow, Your Honor, the last man I kissed
died
soon after.”

His gaze took her in from head to toe. “That I can well believe! An axe may be forged with all the cunning of a master smith. It may be decorated with the skill that draws the unwary eye as a lure coaxes a hapless trout. But an axe’s purpose is to sever the living heart of trees. Why are you here if not to persecute me with the promise of the sweet pleasure I can never again taste?”

“We were told you have a message.”

“You are not the one I bear a message for.”

“Perhaps my dearest cousin Cat is.”

His gaze did not waver from her bright face but something very unsettling happened in his eyes. It was as if his gaze turned inward.

“Yes, yes, you’ve interrupted me,” he said irritably, yet with an edge of fear.
He was speaking to someone we could not see.
“Of course you may speak. How am I to stop you?”

His eyes rolled back in their sockets until they showed only white. Shadows—not from this room—settled a curling pattern of insubstantial tattoos across his skin. His craggy features remained the same, but Bran Cof was no longer the personage looking out from those wintry eyes. The gaze studied Bee, then caught on the headmaster with a narrowing like a bow bent but not released. An arrow stabbed my heart. Maybe I gasped. Maybe I moved, shaking with apprehension. Maybe I made no sound and no movement and it did not matter.

Because the head of the poet Bran Cof looked at me. White ice eyes without pupil or iris fixed on me. My chest felt as hollow as if a killing claw had just torn out my beating heart to suckle dry its rich red blood.

The mouth spoke with a sharp, deadly voice.

“So after all, Tara Bell’s child survived and grew, as I had hoped. Your blood spilled on the crossing stone woke the bond between us. As I am bound, so must those bound to me as kin come to my aid. That is the law. Come to me, Tara Bell’s child.
Now.
”

“Who are you?” Sheer rushing terror propelled me three steps back.

Bran Cof  ’s eyes rolled down, the return of blue as startling as a sweep of piercing blue sky seen after days of snow. For all he was a cantankerous old lecher, his gaze had a keen intelligence that made me uneasy, for he knew things he wasn’t telling. “What message did my lips speak?”

I took another step back, thinking fast. “I’ll tell you, if you’ll answer a legal question.”

“Ah. A bargain. Done.”

Surprised, I took another step back to steady myself. “I want to know if there is any way to unbind a marriage sealed by a magical chain of binding.”

“Yes. Your turn.”

“I mean, besides
death
!” Why must my voice tremble so?

“Your turn.”

Curse him! “You said, ‘As I am bound, so must those bound to me as kin come to my aid. That is the law. Come to me, Tara Bell’s child. Now.’”

“Bad fortune for you, lass. In pity, I offer this: Only death can unchain a chained marriage. But there is one other way.” He attempted a coaxing smile that made him look grotesque. “I can tell you. But a poet has his price. A kiss from you, the girl whose eyes are amber, whose lips are the red of berries, a promise both succulent and sweet.”

I cringed away.

His smile broadened lasciviously. “I will have the kiss that already softens your mouth. You are waiting for a man to claim its honey.”

I flushed with utter, obliterating embarrassment.

He chuckled, enjoying my consternation. “He must be young and very handsome.”

I choked.

Bee said, “I’ll kiss him for you, Cat. I have experience kissing lecherous old men as well as young and very handsome ones.”

“You will not!” His bushy eyebrows shot up, and the corners of his lips spiked down. “I will have no kiss from you, serpent!”

“How can you stop me, stuck there on your pedestal?” She took a step toward him as I took one back. “I may kiss you however and whenever I please! I’ll suck all the life from you—such as you have life—and keep it for myself !”

He squinched his eyes and lips shut, and I thought the head would harden back to its slumbering stone state without ever answering my question. Yet still the veins on his neck throbbed as with anger…and how could that happen, since he had no heart?

“I’ll be gentle.” Bee took another step toward him.

To my amazement he laughed with an unexpected flowering of charm. “Alas for the men trapped by her love! Alas for the men set free! She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest. Where she treads, desolation follows.”

“Enough!” I cried. “I’ll kiss you, if you’ll just answer my question.”

His eyebrows rose to a peak. “I was not finished declaiming! It is always so. The young lack manners, and the women like crows cannot stopper up their chatter!”

Imagine all this time I had been in awe of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof !

Bee offered a mocking grimace. “It’s me, or no one. Anyway, Cat, I don’t think he knows. All those stories about how he mastered the Three Paths to Judgment. How his tongue silenced birds and humbled princes. He isn’t really a legal scholar. He’s probably just an old drunk.”

“Shame, girl! I’ll have you know there are three forms of marriage commonly recognized in the courts of the north. How the Romans and Phoenicians do things is a different matter, but I’ll come to that afterward. A flower marriage flourishes while the bloom is still on it and dies when it withers. It may bloom for a month, a season, or a year, depending on the verbal agreement between the two parties involved. A contract marriage is a business arrangement signed in the law court between two houses, clans, or lineages. A chained marriage is a binding marriage sealed by arcane keys known only to the wise, to the drua and the bards, and it draws a chain of binding magic around the couple. When there is a question of possible treachery, or a treaty or other obligation at stake, it binds the couple so there need be no concern among those who arranged the marriage that another party will default or there be trouble later. Thus, the only way out of such a binding marriage is the death of one of the parties involved. But do not forget that without consummation, there is no marriage. Has the young man had sex with you yet?”

The headmaster had politely turned his attention to the monograph. The assistant stared at the motion of pendulum and weights behind the glass door of the longcase clock, a blush curdling his white complexion.

Bee said, “Cat, you look like a fish. Close your mouth.”

“A year and a day. If the marriage is not consummated, and there is no prenuptial agreement for an extension due to a known and forced separation of the two parties, then after a year and a day, it is no marriage. Does no one teach the law these days?”

All blood and breath drained from me. A year and a day. I could be unbound from the marriage. Released from its chain. I sagged back, to find myself at the door.

Bee glanced toward me, then back at the head of the poet Bran Cof. “Who spoke through your mouth?” she demanded.

The head of the poet Bran Cof flinched.

My pulse thudded in my ears. My hands curled to fists, nails biting into my palms. “You know who it is!” I said.

Blessed Tanit! He wasn’t going to answer! But then he did.

“
He is my tormenter.
” An ember of sympathy lit in his face, brief and not bright. “And soon, Tara Bell’s child, he will be yours as well.”

“Answer her!” cried Bee.

“My lips are bound. Of what passes on the other side, I cannot speak—” Then he was gone. Features as rigid as if carved from stone faced us in petrified silence.

“Oh!” said Bee. “What happened?”

The headmaster murmured, “So. That explains
her
.”

An overwhelming compulsion to get out of the chamber took hold of me.

“My apologies, Maester,” I said as I forced down the latch and pushed open the door. “My heart is so disturbed. I’ll just go pace out the labyrinth. They say it calms people down.”

“Take Beatrice with you,” said the headmaster kindly. “You really mustn’t go alone.”

“That explains her
what
?” said Bee to him, and turned. “Cat, where are you going?”

“I have to go to the labyrinth. I don’t want to. But I just can’t stop.” I was amazed by how calm my voice sounded as I stepped into the hallway even though I did not want to.

Hoofbeats rumbled on the street. Three shrill whistles pierced the peace of the academy halls. Orders were shouted in a ringing tenor: Lord Marius had arrived. “In here!”

Bee grabbed our coats. I dashed to the stairs and ran down to the glass-roofed central courtyard, Bee behind me. “Cat! Stop!”

“I can’t! It’s like I’m being dragged by the throat.” I wasn’t frightened, just numb. Something horrible was about to happen, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.

In the courtyard, benches ringed the outermost paving stones of the labyrinth walk. Four fountains anchored the four compass points, each surmounted by one of the beasts who symbolized the four quarters of the year: the bull, the saber-toothed cat, the horse, and the serpent.

“There she is!” Lord Marius’s battle-honed tenor filled the space as he and his soldiers appeared in the arch that led to the entry hall. “Catherine Barahal! Beatrice Barahal! Surrender yourselves. You are under arrest at the order of the prince of Tarrant and the senate of Rome.”

I sprinted for the nearest bench as soldiers ran after us, some circling wide in order to cut off all roads of escape. Patches of snow like lichen mottled the roof. The sky was dark with fresh storm clouds, flaking a lazy trickle of snow.

Lord Marius shouted, “We won’t harm you. I give you my word. It’s for your own good.”

“So reassuring!” yelled Bee from behind me.

A crow landed on the glass roof, and beside it five and then ten more. The din they made caused men to look up. A crack shattered the roof. Shards sprayed; men ducked and retreated. I leaped a stone bench and found my feet on the beginning stone of the labyrinth walk: This was not a maze but a winding walkway built to hone meditation and to help minds focus. When my cane touched the stone, the path blazed with the breath of the ice. My cane flowered into cold steel.

“Halt!” A soldier overtook me.

I thrust. Surprised, he parried, but it was clear he was hesitant to press for fear of hurting me. I drove him back ruthlessly. He slammed into the bench, tripped, and hit his head. Lay still. I whispered a prayer to Blessed Tanit:
Let me not have killed him
.

More converged on me, too many to fight off. I raced inward on the labyrinth walk, my boots crackling on broken glass from the roof. The soldiers followed like wolves in pursuit, both they and I forced to stay on the path now that a glamour pulsed through it.

A crow flew past so close I ducked. Black wings filled the air. Their caws deafened me. The roof cracked again, more glass showering down. On the blast of frigid air, yet more crows poured through the shattered roof to mob the soldiers. The courtyard became a smear of darkness, men flailing with swords and cursing, crows tearing with beaks and swiping with talons. Many voices clamored as the mobbing crows drove the soldiers back, but only one word had hooked me:
Now
.

“Cat!”

“Bee! Don’t follow me!” Slipping on shards, I cursed, trying to turn to go back, but my body lunged forward.

“Never! I’ll never abandon you!”

As the path spiraled in toward the grated well, my sword grew so bright and cold I thought its touch would sear my palm. If I let go, I might break free, but I could not uncurl my fingers.

“You can’t escape!” Lord Marius’s voice sounded as far away as the distant explosion of musket fire. Or were those the cracks of illegal rifles?

“
The war begin.
” So the Amazon had said. Had Camjiata’s agents set the prison hulk on fire? Had he coordinated his arrival in Adurnam with the Northgate poet’s hunger strike? Who had smuggled rifles into the city? Was it all just a coincidence?

What had the headmaster meant?
That explains her.

I staggered to a halt beside the ornamental trellis. The grated opening of the well yawned at the toes of my boots, a round, stone-lined pit like a mouth waiting to swallow me. In ancient days, so the story went, the Adurni Celts had cast living sacrifices into this well. The iron grate that covered the maw had hinges and a lock, but the lock was missing. Shaking, I heaved open the heavy iron bars.

O Goddess, protect me, for I am your faithful daughter.

The hand of summer reached up from the well to choke me. It was fetid and rotting, and I could no more resist it than I could resist breathing. On that breeze I heard the exhalations of the dying and tasted the power of the blood that had sanctified the ground centuries ago.

“I won’t go,” I whispered. “You can’t make me go.”

Instinct—or Barahal training—tugged my head around. A huge crow plummeted down. That cursed crow had been following us for days. It beat the air before my face, and for an instant we stared, eye to eye. It had the same intelligence I did: thinking, planning, doing.

I shrieked as it stabbed at me with its bill. I connected my sword’s hilt to its body, felt bones give way and crunch. Another crow was on me, stabbing as I wildly swung blade and arm, and then a third and a fourth. I twisted, dropping to one knee, and still they came.

A crow stabbed me above the right eye with its beak.

Just like that, they all flew off.

No pain, only pressure. My eye clouded with warm liquid. Drops of blood scattered with a hissing like a nest of disturbed serpents. The stone rim crumbled away beneath my boots.

“Blessed Tanit, spare me!” I pried the hilt of my sword into the ground but could get no purchase as I slipped. The spirit world was dragging me in.

“Cat! Grab my hand!” Bee’s strong hand gripped mine.

The stone rim steamed away like mist under the sun, and we fell.

We plummeted, me beneath and she tumbling after. How deep was it? At midday, in summer, one could see the still surface of water glimmering far below.

I tangled with Bee’s arms and the billow of her skirt.

Water split beneath my back. My head went under, and then solid earth slammed me to a halt. Choking, drowning, I came up gulping and spitting beside her. We sat chest deep in the slimy muck at the bottom of the well. My sword gleamed faintly; no brown muck adhered to its length. A withered bundle of herbs floated on the surface half wrapped in a satin ribbon: someone’s recent offering. Far above, the opening narrowed to a round eye as if the day stared down on us. The ragged splinters of the glass roof shuddered in a wind we could not feel down here.

A crow peered over, its eyes like twin eddies of black night swallowing all that is light and ease and hope. Satisfied, it took wing, flapping away.

My hand groped for purchase in the sludge. My fingers slid across coins and fixed on a sloped, smooth object. Feeling along its length, I realized it was a bone. With a curse, I let go and tried to slither away, but I could not get my feet under me. Foul matter smeared my clothes and matted in my hair. The odor was like chewing on a hank of moldering cloth.

“Cat,” said Bee in an oddly faint voice, “I feel strange, like the well…is swallowing me.”

Dread cut like knives. I grasped her wrist and pulled, but she was receding as in the current of a river in flood.

Panic ripped through me. I was going to lose her, as I had lost my parents when they had drowned in the Rhenus River. She would be torn out of my grasp and I would never see her again. I fixed my other hand around hers and dragged for all I was worth.

“Help!” I cried, to no one. To anyone. “Help us!”

“Beatrice! Catherine Barahal!” Faces appeared at the mouth of the well, so far above they might as well have been in Rome. With the daylight behind them, it was difficult to make out their features, but I recognized the voices of Lord Marius and Legate Amadou Barry.

The legate shouted. “Is anyone down there? Call if you’re there!”