Cold Steel

“Can it be done, Bakary?” the mansa asked. “She is not a djlelimuso, a woman of craft and words who can bind the threads of power.”



Bakary rubbed his gray beard. “I can see into the spirit world but cannot cross, while you can do neither, Your Excellency. I was taught that only the dead cross into the spirit world.” He glanced at Rory as he spoke the words. “Her flesh is living flesh, like ours, yet she has crossed.”



Did they not know that the hunters of Vai’s village could walk into the spirit world at the cross-quarter days in order to hunt? I kept silence.



The mansa released my chin. “Very well. Show me.”



I took the skull and tucked it into the basket. We climbed the stairs. A year and a half ago, I had descended them from the second floor while Andevai had ascended from the entryway. It was strange to return to the place where he and I had first looked on each other, face-to-face. Then, I had wanted nothing more than for him to leave us all alone. Now, I wanted nothing more than to find him.



I dragged the cover off the mirror.



Illuminated by the dregs of fading daylight and a single sphere of cold fire, the mirror reflected the seven people gathered on the landing. I had never realized how my hair writhed as if in a wind blowing off the spirit world. Did my eyes really gleam in that unexpected fashion, like polished amber? A sleek saber-toothed cat watched, waiting for my signal. No whisper of spirit-world magic tangled through Bee, but there was a smoky gleam in her eyes and on her forehead, as if a third eye was about to sprout there.



Lord Marius examined the mirror with the attention of a man trained to strike at the opportune moment. He looked exactly as he seemed. Amadou Barry stared at Beatrice. His visage had an avaricious glint that made him seem less handsome and more selfish.



The mansa’s cold magic chased around him like the currents of many streams. One of those currents lashed out into the silvery depths of the mirror as the air around us fell suddenly colder. He was pulling in energy from the other side with which to weave here, although I had no idea how he was doing it.



Of us all, Bakary’s was the most solid presence in the mirror: an old man with silver-black hair and a calm gaze.



The glittering chain with which another djeli had bound me to Andevai flowed into the mirror. I brushed my fingers across its gleam. Magic thrummed like a pulse anchored to Vai’s heart.



“Catherine? Where are you?” Vai whispered, as if he felt my attention. “Beware, love. Think with your mind, not your body.”



The tremor of his beloved voice so shocked me that I yanked on the chain.



It moved. Or I moved. Or the world moved.



Past the surface of the mirror, my gaze spanned the depths as if I were an eagle gliding above and watching the land roll past beneath. Mountains and valleys skimmed by below. Outside a walled town, peaceful eru worked and laughed and gossiped in the same manner as ordinary people did in the mortal world, only the eru were creatures of the spirit world with wings, third eyes in the center of their foreheads, and magic more powerful than that of any cold mage. The fields they farmed were sown in spirals. The beasts they shepherded were antelopes whose triple horns were studded by gemstones and glazed as with silver. A bloated beast like a slothfully blinking airship drifted past above the black line of a road and the warded triangle of a watering hole. A clan of tawny saber-toothed cats had gathered to nose at the pool, lick at a pillar of salt, and lounge in the shade of a tree.



Light flashed on the horizon. Where the land ended in a long straight shoreline, it met not water but the ashy ocean that we had traversed in the belly of a dragon, the Great Smoke. A tide of dark mist washed in, spilling over the land like the sweep of a broom. Beneath the smoke the land vanished. Only the road and warded ground remained unmoved and unchanged. My rope of magic held firm, but when the tide receded back into the smoky churn of the depths, the shoreline had changed.



The once-straight shoreline was now cut by fingerlike bays, as if the Great Smoke had taken bites out of the spirit land. The bloated air beast had vanished, although a large animal lumbered over a field of thorns, crushing all under its hooves. Eru rose in a cloud from the warded walls of their town, but they did not see me. I thought that maybe I wasn’t even really there, that the chain acted like a hunter’s scent to lead me toward my prey. Was this chain how Vai could always find me?



A white cliff towered above a lake riddled with icebergs. At first I thought it was an ice shelf, but as I swooped closer I realized it was a fortress built of crystal.



I slammed right into its wall.



The impact jolted me out of the vision. I found myself back on the first-floor landing with my right arm halfway into the mirror as if plunged up to the elbow in water, and the rest of me standing in front of the mirror blinking back tears. The heat of summer baked like sun on the arm that was thrust into the spirit world, while the rest of my body shivered in the cold house.