Cold Fire (12 page)

“He came down the well after us, trying to help us, Bee. I haven’t had time to tell you yet.” I surveyed the woman for signs of razor teeth or hidden tentacles. This was not the frail old grandmother whose bedside I had attended in the village of Haranwy on Hallows’ Night. Here, in the spirit world, she appeared as a younger woman in the prime of life, old enough to be the age of my mother, had my mother lived, but not so old that she had begun to bend beneath the burden of age. Vai had the same beautiful eyes. “He would have come after us into the spirit world, but because it wasn’t one of the cross-quarter days, he couldn’t cross. It’s so obvious!”

“What’s obvious?” demanded Bee.

“He went home to ask the hunters of his village to hunt for me in the spirit world.”

“His actions you understand perfectly,” said his grandmother.

“It’s what I would do, in his place,” I said.

“Very noble of you, I’m sure, Cat,” retorted Bee, “but it must be many days’ ride from Adurnam to his village, so he can’t have gotten there yet.”

“The days pass differently here. An hour here might be a week there. He would have plenty of time to go ask his kinsmen for help. I understand the locket is a talisman. But I don’t understand how you are come here, Grandmother.”

She said nothing. Heat settled over us in a sweltering mantle.

“You must be dead.” My words emerged stiffly.

Bee sat back with an exhalation.

Fati looked at me, still saying nothing.

“He must have found you when you were dying. Because the dead cross over into the spirit world, he asked you to seek me out once you got here. I never thought…” My fingers curled over the locket. “If you’re here, then my parents are here somewhere as well. I could find them.”

“Maestressa, please forgive our bad manners.” Bee shifted forward. “I hope you suffered no pain. I hope we find you at peace. I’m sorry.”

“For what are you sorry?” she said with a gentle smile. “The crossing awaits us all.”

Belatedly I lowered my gaze, as one did with elders. I absolutely believed she was who she claimed to be, although I could not explain why. “My apologies, Grandmother. You and the villagers helped me at great risk to yourselves. When I said I wasn’t sure I could trust you, when I was there in your house, I didn’t mean it to be rude.”

“Mmm. Yes. You were rude. But you were frightened, and you are young. We all make mistakes.”

“You are generous to forgive me.”

“Have I forgiven you? I choose to help Vai because he is a very good boy.”

“He wasn’t that good of a boy,” I muttered. “He was arrogant, contemptuous, and unkind.”

“Then he forgot the manners his mother and I taught him.” She bent a gaze on me that made me duck my head like a scolded child. “Do you appreciate what he has done? To come so far, against the will of the mansa, is no light choice for him.”

“I appreciate his efforts to make sure Four Moons House doesn’t recapture us. But I can’t believe the mansa would do anything to harm such a powerful young cold mage.”

“I do not believe you comprehend what he risks for you. You think you know what it means to be born into clientage, to be bound by law and custom to serve another, but you do not know.”

“We in the Kena’ani are raised to serve our households,” I retorted, not nearly as belligerently as I might have. “As I did, when my aunt and uncle gave me to Four Moons House against my will. They would have given me to whatever cold mage came to collect me. It happened to be him.”

“Do you suppose that was chance? Your destiny was chosen before you were born.”

“I don’t believe that!”

“I don’t either,” said Bee stoutly, and loyally. “Although I do have to wonder why I was cursed with this gift of dreaming.”

“You’re no help,” I muttered with a grimace at Bee.

Fati gave me a look that made me feel small and petty. “He placed three strands of his hair behind the portrait in the locket, to help you find him. A thread ties you together, because of the binding the djeli wove over you, which is a chain that reaches between worlds. Seek him in your heart, and you will know where he is. But if you have no heart to seek him, then he is the one who will search in vain.”

“Cat didn’t ask to be married to him,” said Bee. “I am sure you cherish your grandson. I’m sure he is loyal to his family. But it isn’t fair to scold her as if she had asked for a pretty bauble and then tossed it carelessly away because it didn’t match her gown. She was betrayed by my mother and father, by our entire clan. She shouldn’t be taken to task for something she never asked for.”

“It’s all right, Bee,” I said, for I couldn’t bear to see his grandmother’s expression harden into disapproval. “My apologies for my sharp tongue, Grandmother. I can’t truly understand what it means for your village to have endured clientage for so many generations. We studied law at the academy, but…well…it was words in a book. I admit I feel a more personal concern now.”

“You can be sure,” said Fati, “that Four Moons House has bound you tightly to him. And he belongs to them, just as my village does. When they wish to make use of you, they will do so.”

“Unless I free myself.”

“Do you think it is so easy to free yourself ?”

I glanced at Bee, and held my tongue.

Fati raised her eyebrows as if she knew we had secrets we weren’t sharing. “Anyway, girls, enough talking. We must seek a path or a warded place.” She rose, brushed off her skirts, and walked away from the river.

Bee and I exchanged a glance.

“I like her!” whispered Bee.

“The hunters will cross at Imbolc,” Fati called over her shoulder. “My grandson plans to be with them.”

“How romantical!” said Bee as we hurried after her. “I wish some man would rescue me!”

“Isn’t that what Legate Amadou Barry was trying to do? During the riot? Rescue you?”

“He was trying to capture and cage me,” she snapped.

And wasn’t that what Andevai would end up doing, if he brought me back to Four Moons House? Uneasiness rose in my heart, like a chain being reeled in. The world seemed made of cages. Walking gave me something to do instead of think about chained marriages and forbidding mage Houses and a voice commanding me to come
now
. We strode through a grassy landscape, skirting thickets of flowering bushes. Tiny translucent unicorns flitted between the blooms, wings flashing like thinnest glass.

Bee ventured closer. “How pretty!”

They coalesced into a swarm and stung at her. Stumbling away, she batted at the cloud as a haze of scintillant wings engulfed her. I swept my sword back and forth through them until they scattered to settle on the bushes, snorting, with teeth bared.

“Ah!” she said, pressing a hand to her face. “They attacked me!”

Fati said, “Let me see your chin.”

After a pause, Bee lowered her hand. Several bumps swelled redly, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. “Nasty creatures!”

A few took to the air, and I brandished my sword, and they retreated.

“Stay beside me,” said Fati.

We walked on. In places, the ground bottomed into swales, thick with white-barked aspens, their round leaves flashing like mirrors. Butterflies and dragonflies winked where pools of water had given birth to thickets of reeds and flowering lilies. Overhead, a pair of crows paced us.

“Do all the dead bide in the spirit world?” I asked. “Could I really find my parents?”

Fati had a long stride. “See this grass around us? You might say it comes from a seed, but a seed alone is nothing. It needs water and soil, and it needs the desire to grow. Without these, no grass can become grass. No thing is only one thing unchanging. Right now I walk in the body in which I walked on the other side. This form remains mine only until the tide of the spirit world reaches me. Then I will change, as all things change. So I cannot know what form your parents have taken, or how they have changed.”

“Vai said that those who are caught in the tide of a dragon’s dream never come back.”

“How can you come back if you have not departed?” A smile softened her mouth. “Vai is a very clever and a very obedient and a very hard-working boy, but I am sorry to tell you, Cat, that he does not know everything he thinks he does.”

Bee laughed.

I said, “But if all the dead people come here after they die, then where are they all?”

“A fish sees the eagle only as a shadow within the water, but the eagle sees the fish for what it is.”

I scratched my bruised chin. “You’re saying we can’t look at things here in the spirit world and assume that what we think we see means what we think we see is what we think it is.”

“Cat, that made no sense at all,” said Bee.

“It made perfect sense! Think of the headmaster! We think we see a man, but maybe he’s the eagle and we’re the fish who only see the eagle’s shadow. Grandmother, do you know anything about dragons?”

“I know a story, a long story. I am no djelimuso to tell it with the proper introductory remarks and blessings. It is the story about how my ancestors the Koumbi Mande came north across the desert out of the Mali Empire to escape the salt plague. So it happens, after many trials, the remnant reached the city of Qart Hadast and did not know where to go next.”

Bee looked at me, and we didn’t mention that Qart Hadast was the city the Barahal family had originally come from, the city the Romans called Carthage.

“The mansa’s sister Kolonkan was a powerful sorceress. She stood on the shore of the sea with one foot on the sand and one in the water. She saw beneath the waves smoking mountains which the Romans call Vulcan’s Peaks. In the very fire of one of those peaks, a female dragon had coiled in its nest and laid its eggs, and now she slept. Into the creature’s dreams, Kolonkan walked. ‘Maa, please advise me,’ called Kolonkan. ‘Where shall my people go?’ The serpent answered, ‘One of the daughters you will bear will serve me, and your people will go north, to the ice.’”

“How can a dragon nest in a volcano?” Bee said. “Wouldn’t the molten fire destroy eggs?”

“My apologies, Grandmother,” I said hastily, poking Bee. “We are listening.”

“Mmm.” Fati was clearly a woman not accustomed to being interrupted. “The tale goes on. That is the only mention I know of a creature the Romans would call a dragon or serpent.”

We walked a while in silence. Grass swished along our legs. Insects buzzed sleepily without massing in a swarm to afflict us. The cursed crows floated above. A jumble of shapes like boulders came into view on the horizon.

“Grandmother,” I asked at length. “Do you know who my sire is?”

She looked me up and down. “Why would I know that?”

“You can’t tell somehow, because you’re an ancestor now?”

She chuckled. “I have no such power. I am newly born into this place. I know nothing more than what I knew before. I would tell you if I knew. A child ought to know its sire. For if you do not know what ropes hold you, then you might as well be a tethered goat. So it seems you and your cousin have undertaken a journey to discover the heart of your own selves.”

“I would like to know what it means to walk the dreams of dragons,” said Bee with a look a mule might give its handler. “Did this sorceress Kolonkan’s daughter walk the dreams of dragons? Is that what the story meant?”

“Mmm. This is knowledge that is not mine.”

“Not yours to share? Or you just don’t know?”

“Bee!” I said in an undertone, pinching her arm. “It’s rude to interrupt an elder.”

“I’m the one fated to be dismembered and my head thrown into a well! I assure you, Aunt, I do not mean to be rude.”

“Mmm, yes, you are drenched in
nyama
.”

“What is that? Energy? Heat? Light? Magic?”

“It is the foundation stone. It is a thread. It is that which can be shaped. A potter molds nyama like clay. A blacksmith forges nyama into steel. A hunter must know how to protect himself from the dangerous nyama released when he kills an animal, by adding it to his own. Cold mages manipulate nyama. How any of them do this I do not know, for I do not know their secrets.”

“Cat told me she once met a djeli who called nyama the handle of power. Is that like an axe handle? If you can grip it, then you can wield the axe’s blade?”

“I would not say so. But those who can shape nyama can shape and change the world.”

Bee nodded. “With the right connections to power and a strong will, you can shape and change the world! Like Camjiata did, and means to again.”

“Bee!” I whispered, “we’re supposed to listen to elders, not interrupt them!”

“How are we supposed to learn if we don’t ask questions?” cried Bee.

“We are here,” said Fati.

Slump-shouldered sandstone towers rose before us, marking the four corners of a walled town. The eroded walls looked much as a seashore castle built of sand looks after a wave runs over it: melting ruins soon to be obliterated. No dogs barked. No wagons rolled or voices called. Not even the wind moaned. If anything lived in the dusty, deserted ruins, I could not hear it.

A road as black and slick as obsidian speared away from the half-collapsed main gate. As straight as a Roman military road, it cut through uninhabited countryside toward distant hills. A shadow raced toward us from those hills.

“The tide comes,” said Fati. “Get up on the road, for it is warded ground. Hurry.”

I grabbed Bee’s hand and ran, even though I was suddenly sure that the instant I touched the pavement something terrible and irrevocable would happen. Yet I had to get there. Perhaps that desire was part of the compulsion that had driven me to the well.

“Aunt, hurry!” called Bee over her shoulder.

“Onto warded ground I cannot cross,” said Fati. “You must go forward alone. This is your journey. My path is different.”

The knife of darkness cut over us just as we stumbled up onto the road. Bee flung her arms around me. Fati stood in daylight, surrounded by grass. With me in shadow and her in the bright, I could see clearly how my husband resembled her in the planes of his face, the glow of his complexion, and the clarity of his eyes. A vibration rumbled like drums in the earth. A towering wall of fire washed toward us, scorching the grass to ashes. Fati smiled, lifting her hands in greeting.