Cold Steel
Page 103

People stood with breath misting to watch us depart. I couldn’t tell if they expected a calamity to befall us before we left their sight, or if they wished to store away the memory to tell as a tale over and over again at the winter hearth: how they had seen the lord magister and the beast ride away into the night. It was as quiet as if death had blown a kiss over the world. The only sounds were the crunch of hooves on crusted snow and the moan of the wind. I could not stop shaking.
Our road was a broad cart track glistening with a lacework of frost under the moon’s light. We halted at daybreak in a hamlet of two farmsteads to feed and water the horses. Vai suggested I go indoors to warm myself at a hearth. The women hustled their children out when I came in, so I went back out again, not wanting the children to get cold. My hands hurt, and my lips were numb, and worst of all, a pair of crows now followed us. I was sure they were my sire’s spies.
It was a long, silent, cold day as we rode south. At midday, when we halted in an abandoned shelter for a short rest, Vai sat next to me on a crude wooden bench. I huddled in a shawl of misery, as mute as if the priest in the temple had cut out my tongue.
Vai addressed Devyn. “Is there no mage inn in your village? Surely magisters ride through your village every year or two to claim their tithe in servants and in furs. Now and again a child must bloom with cold magic. Why would Crescent House have built in such a forsaken northern place if there was not something they deemed valuable there?”
Devyn stared at his hands as he answered. “To our village, no magister is now coming. The death of Crescent House has to us brought the curse of the god. Each year after the night of bonfires when the sun turns south, we bring our trade goods and our children to the trade fair at Kimbri. There will you be finding House lodging, Magister.”
“It was the ice, wasn’t it?” said Vai suddenly. “The mages of Crescent House wanted to be close to the ice. Because our power is strongest here.”
Devyn gestured a sign to wipe away the secret knowledge he had unwillingly overheard. “If we wish to be reaching Kimbri before nightfall, then we must be riding, Magister.”
Afternoon shadows lengthened. We passed fields covered with rotting straw against the cold. As twilight sank down over us and the moon rose, a substantial village rose like illusion in the evening mist. Past clusters of thatched huts rose wood buildings with glass windows through which lamplight shone. We turned aside and rode to an ice-rimed meadow. Two cottages posed picturesquely on the bank of a stream, linked by a long enclosed walkway. Smoke rose from the chimney of one cottage. Devyn led us to the cottage with no chimney and thus no fire.
Lamps, seen through glass windows, guttered out as we approached. The door opened and men hurried out who had clearly been making everything ready for us. Their faces looked ghostly in moonlight. They made a deep courtesy.
My body ached, stiff with cold and with emotion I dared not claim.
Vai touched my arm, his forehead wrinkled with concern. “Catherine, let’s go in.”
Yet then my mother’s brother spoke. “Was there ever peace for her, before the hunter came to kill her?”
My gaze flashed to him. “They knew peace for a few short years.”
“The magister calls you Catherine. Is that the name Tara gave you?”
“Yes. She named me Catherine.”
His mouth was creased with sorrow; his weathered face held many lines, and none made me think he had ever laughed much. “Catherine,” he repeated. “Named after Hecate, the goddess of gates, who guards the threshold between the living and the dead. True it is, that the hunter sired you. But it is sure you are my sister’s, for I see Tara in every line of you. I loved her once. But she left us and she never looked back.”
“They loved me,” I said hoarsely, for I needed him to know that. I clasped the hilt of my sword in one hand and pressed the other to the locket hanging at my breast. “She was pregnant again with another child, with Daniel’s child, who would have been my brother or sister. They didn’t mean to leave me behind. They meant us to all be together.”
His words slipped into an older rhythm, as if only he and I were awake in the whole wide gloaming. “From what cloth is longing woven? Is it silver? Is it gold? Yet even fine garments wear out, while longing still clads me.”
His words caught in my heart and, on an impulse I could not control, I extended a hand toward him. He reined his pony away as if even the thought of my touch might contaminate him.
“Catherine, let them go,” said Vai, grabbing my mount’s bridle.