Kate Elliott - Cold Magic

I saw no trace of my husband anywhere. Besides the grass, a ring of tumbled boulders patched with lichen was the only feature on the broad swell-of the hill's crest. At the lower limit of the stone ring partway down the steeper northern slope stood a proud oak that had not been visible from the fire circle. A tingling like the buzzing of bees trembled in the air as if an unseen presence did indeed reside here.

"There stood here once a shrine to Cernunnos the Hunter. In later years, it served also as an altar to Esus-at-the-Crossing, the Respected One, and another besides, whose name I cannot tell you. Yet now it sits neglected."

The eru had walked up beside me. In daylight, her appearance as a perfectly ordinary-if quite tall-woman of Afric origins was so strong that I wondered how I had ever mistaken her for a man. I wondered if I had also mistaken the third eye seen in the mirror, or the sparks of her magic, or the storm she had raised. Yet it seemed unlikely that the Houses, with their strict adherence to tradition, would allow a woman to perform work they would consider fitted for men.

"I see only the one track. How can this be a crossroads?"

"Can that truly be all you see here?" As familiar as a family member, she rested a hand on my forearm.

The knife of sight cut through the foggy veil obscuring the pinewoods below. Another land lay beyond, smoky within the mist, a summer woodland vista of stately oak and proud ash in

full leaf. The trees grew along a shallow valley marked particularly by a small lake heady with reed beds on the shore and a grassy hummock jutting up from the glittering waters. Andevai, or a cloudy apparition very like him, stood on the lake's bank. His right arm moved as if he were releasing something. A bright object flashed in the sun-where had sun come from? — and splashed as it struck the surface of the waters. Then it was swallowed beneath.

The footman removed her hand from my sleeve, and all I saw was fog rising in thickening streamers within the black pine.

"What was that place?" I demanded, out of breath, my heart thudding in my chest as heat flushed my cheeks.

"What do you think it was?"

"Was that the spirit world? Are you really an eru? How else could you see from our world into the spirit world?"

"Is that what you think?" she asked with a smile that annoyed me.

"Why did you call me 'cousin'?" I asked.

"Why do you think I did?"

"My mother's people are the Belgae. They live in the far north, in the Barrens. My father wrote that you can see the ice from their villages. The Romans fought them. The mage Houses civilized them. So maybe her forebears had congress with those who live on the ice." Certainly my mother had known there was something a little different about me. She'd warned me to keep quiet about it, as if she thought I had something that must be hidden. "Although as far as I know, my mother was perfectly human."

"That seems likely, looking at you."

I laughed, exhilarated, because I felt I was dueling with forces I did not understand. I could not understand it, but I did not fear her, not at all. "And I am the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter, My father's lineage came out of Qart Hadast in the north of

Africa. His people are Kena'ani sea traders, who in ancient days battled the Romans to a standstill. So that explains nothing. How are we cousins?"

"How are we not?"

"That's not an answer! Isn't it said the servants of the night court answer questions with questions?"

"Do you believe the courts exist?"

"How would I know? I know a lot of village tales about a day court and a night court that rule in the spirit world. I heard a distinguished lecturer once say that the courts are a metaphor, if in the Greek style. That they're simply a way for people to explain the cycle of winter and summer. Or that they're a story about the natural reversals of fortune people experience over the course of their lives."

"That is a story," she agreed.

"Do you believe the day court and the night court exist?"

"Do you think I can answer that question?"

"I do think so, but I think you won't. Scholars say the reason they have not been able to explain magic through scientific principles is because those who handle magic are so secretive."

"To which I would answer, trust what your eyes see." She wore no coat, only a flared jacket over loose trousers, all clean and neat and evidently without any susceptibility to the chill air that had now begun to seep even through the wool coat and into my bones because I was standing still.

"Everyone knows House magisters use sorcery to create illusions that appear real. And you've now appeared to me as a man, as a woman, and as an eru. How can I trust what my eyes see? Even you are not what you at first seemed."

"We must be what we are," she said with a laugh. "I have never been anything but what I seem. It is the chief gift of my people." She tilted back her head and shut her eyes, as if listening.

"What do you hear?" I asked.

"Do you not hear the djeli?"

I looked around but saw no one, nor did I glimpse any figure striding below on the misty edge of the pinewoods with a ball of thread or a kora, a bell, or a fiddle in hand.

She left my side and approached the ruined shrine. I did not follow her. The place made me uneasy, and I did not want to enter sacred ground. These were not my gods. Untying a leather bottle from her belt, she poured a clear liquid over the stones. Maybe she said something; the wind chasing the height tore away her words. Then she walked back, her stride easy and loose and strong. Grass rippled as a cold breeze combed through the clearing. Branches swayed in a silent dance. I felt in my bones the disturbing sensation that maybe there was a djeli or a bard imprisoned within the oak tree, its final burial place.

She walked past me. "Time to return. The magister will be finished." She laughed again, finding her comment amusing.

Although I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a run, which would make me seem as desperate as I actually was for answers or for sympathetic company, I simply could not catch her as she descended the hill. When I strode up, panting, to the roaring comfort of the fire, two brass mugs placed on the stone wall greeted me. I was gripped by such longing for a drink that no nagging thoughts of mist-shrouded vistas and glittering lakes mattered as much as the chance to raise a cup of hot tea to my lips. It was a pungent brew, redolent of distant shores and saturated colors. There was bread and cheese, too, neatly cut and laid out on a brass platter, and I wept a little, eating it, because I was so very hungry. As I drank and ate, the coachman and the footman inspected the carriage and checked the horses' hooves, making ready to depart.

I was just licking crumbs off my fingers when my husband appeared on the track, striding down from the top of the hill to the fire circle and the waiting coach. The rumbling strength of the flames weakened to a lick along the logs, rather as a rambunctious dog cowers under the table when its harsh master enters the room.

"That coat is appalling," he said as he came up. He frowned at the remaining mug and, with evident reluctance, picked it up and sampled the tea.

Food and drink had fortified me. "Appalling it may be, if one considers decently clothed servants appalling, but it is warm. You may have forgotten that my entire stock of traveling clothing and more fashionable warm coats-however lacking in your eyes-had to be abandoned at the inn in Adurnam. Or was I meant to freeze to death before I reached Four Moons House?"

He stopped sipping, his eyes raised to mine with the rim of the cup poised at his lips. He blinked several times, as at light breaking suddenly in a dim room, and lowered the cup. "I am at a loss as to what may have precipitated this outburst."