Cold Magic

“As I am bound,” I said into the stone, “let those bound to me as kin come to my aid.”



Between one breath and the next, the carriage rolled up beside me.



“Cousin.” Within the scream of the storm, I heard the eru’s voice as clearly as I had often heard the bells ringing out over Adurnam in their nightly conversation. “We are here, beside you.”



I had trusted all my young life in the memory of my father, the bold adventurer. I had trusted the care and concern of my aunt and uncle, the generosity of the clan toward one of its daughters.



What allows us to trust? Kinship ought to, but it does not always.



What, then, causes trust to flower? A smile, perhaps. An offering of tea and bread to a hungry, chilled, and confused young woman, made without expectation of return.



Pillars mark crossroads, a branching of a track, a choice of direction.



I leaped down, groping. A strong hand met mine and closed over it, pulling. I slammed into the side of the carriage, found a latch, opened a door, and as the hand released mine, I crawled in, my skirt tangling in my sword. I fell hard onto one of the benches.



Opposite me, still and silent and calm, sat the djeli.



I wrestled the sword from my skirt, set my hand on the hilt.



The djeli raised a hand. “Listen,” he said, and there was that in his voice that expected one to stop and to hear. “I am no threat to you.”



I drew the sword but because I respected a man as old as he was, I let the blade rest lightly across my thighs and kept a wary gaze on him without staring him straight in the eyes. “You were coming through to get me.”



“No. I entered the carriage to speak to you. Unlike you, with your spirit mantle, I cannot cross into the bush. Just as the mansa cannot cross.”



“What do you mean, a spirit mantle?”



“You wear a curious mantle in the spirit world. I don’t know what to make of it, I admit. Do you?”



“How could you see me through the door of the carriage? You saw into the spirit world!”



“I can see because I would be no djeli could I not see. But I cannot walk there.”



“Did the mansa send those wolves to eat me? That storm to freeze me?”



“What magic the magisters wield, or their limitations, is not mine to know. My destiny is joined to that of Four Moons House because I speak the history of their lineage, the Diarisso lineage, and of an old war. Later, it becomes the tale of flight across the desert away from the salt plague. After this it becomes the story of those who joined hands and secrets and became the first cold mages.”



“But you also see into the spirit world. You are tracking me. What do you expect me to do? Give myself up to be slaughtered? Allow my dear cousin to be handed over as I was? I think not.”



On we rolled as a wind howled around the carriage but could not disturb the two of us sheltered within its confines.



He smiled, as the elderly can do, a complicated mix of amusement, sadness, wisdom, and calculation, and he had a crinkling at the eyes and a sympathy in the lips that made me want to like him. But I had not the luxury to like him. I shifted the sword on my skirts.



“You are no Barahal. So what are you, who can cross into the spirit world, and why are these servants aiding you and disobeying the master of Four Moons House?”



“Answer your own questions. I owe you nothing.”



He sighed. “You are correct that we sit at an impasse. I will get out at the gate, because I must. But you are still marked for death.”



“Is that a threat, or a promise, or a warning?”



“It is a phrase. To the Ancestors we will come, one way or the other. We are part of them, as they are part of us. So is it sung.”



He lifted his staff and I tensed, raising my sword, but he did not attack me. He rapped the roof of the carriage, a rhythm as much speech as beat. The carriage, bowling along like a well-thrown ball, slowed, steadied, and pulled to a halt.



I braced as the djeli opened the door that led into the mortal world. I set a hand on the latch of the door into the spirit world, ready to bolt, but he only stepped outside into the cold afternoon and said to me, in the words of the language we spoke within the Kena’ani clans where I had grown up, “Peace be with you and in all your undertakings.”



The words rang strangely; I had never expected to hear them here, and for once I was genuinely too surprised to speak. Beyond him I saw the wall that ringed the estate stretching away out of sight. Might I actually escape?



He shut the door, and we rolled on. I felt, as a string on a fiddle must feel when the bow commands it, a vibration pass through me as we crossed under the House gate. I heard a shout of surprise and cracked open the shutter. The gatehouse fell away behind, and young men in soldiers’ red came running after as if, like the wolves in the spirit world, they meant to pace us as far as their legs, or their magic, could carry them.