Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (48 page)

“You must let us in!” Bee cried.

“You can’t enter.” The guard eyed Rory with a look that made Rory curl his lips back.
“The master is dueling the last challenger. After that, the winner will banquet on
the remains. Go away, and be grateful I do not eat you, which I do not do solely because
of the nasty stink of your flesh.”

“Who do you think I am, that you speak to me in such a dismissive way!” Bee exclaimed.
“What of all those youthful hatchlings for which I am sure your kind ought to be grateful,
lest you otherwise die out like ash on a dead fire? Do not condescend to me. Take
us to Kemal at once.”

“That hapless worm!” He grinned to show his teeth. I could not
help but think of Chartji, whom I liked so much better! “He is no man. Or I should
say, he
is
a man. A sad creature that makes him, so shrunken and weak he cannot become his own
self.”

Bee lifted a fist, ready to slug him. He hissed at her in a way that made Rory snarl
and me grab for my sword.

Vai stepped between them. “If you do not wish your master to be disturbed, you do
better to hide us than to let the soldiers find us. If they do catch us here, we will
tell them everything. Then the entire mage House will descend upon you.”

This argument, delivered with Vai’s magisterial self-confidence, so struck the man
that he hustled us into the gatehouse and out the back way onto the grounds just as
the troop rode up. We hid in the dripping shadow of the hedge as soldiers tramped
through the gatehouse and back out again while the guard complained vociferously at
being rousted from his warm hearth.

Soldiers and mage continued south, still on the hunt. Without waiting for permission
Bee ran down the drive toward the house. That the guard did not chase her made me
hasten after.

“We must be cautious, Bee,” I called, trying to grab her sleeve. She could really
run when she wanted to. She slipped out of my grasp as she put on a burst of speed
despite the pack bumping on her back. Rory was lagging behind, reluctant to press
on, and weighted down with a bag in each hand. Vai had dropped back to prod him forward.
They faded into night’s gloom. Ahead twin lamps burned.

A large shape passed so close over my head that I ducked instinctively. An exhalation
of smoky mist spilled fiery sparks above my head. A second shape, bigger than the
first, swooped down. I tackled Bee. Rising to my knees, I twisted the hilt of my sword
to draw it, but the weapon hung inert in my hand, as heavy as lead.

“Down!” I cried.

With a dreadful smacking thunk, the second beast slammed into the first one and smashed
it to the earth a stone’s throw away. The impact shuddered through the ground.

Bee staggered to her feet. “We’ve got to get to the house!”

Thrashing and roaring, the beasts rolled toward the drive. Claws and teeth flashed
as deadly daggers, moist with fluids. A scaly tail thwacked down on the gravel drive
no more than three body-lengths
from where I was gaping like a lack-wit. Coming from out of nowhere, hands dragged
me backward.

“Run!” Vai shouted.

“Where’s Rory?”

“I sent him back to the gate. We’re cut off. Bee! Move!”

We abandoned our gear as we bolted for the safety of the building. A harsh shriek
scraped the air, curdling my blood. So frightful was the sound of teeth crunching
bone that I staggered, for the vibration of the noise ground through my own bones
in sympathy.

Dying
.

I am dying
.

My blood is hot and harsh, pouring into the throat of my remorseless rival. The strongest
has won the right to the crown
.

Vai did not let go of my hand as he kept us running. A gusting trumpet cry chased
us. A dark shape launched into the air and, twisting, landed with a ground-shaking
thud right in front of us. Together we stumbled to a halt and stared down Leviathan.
Rory stalked up beside us, trembling but determined to stand with us.

The dragon was now far larger than it had been on the lawn earlier in the day. Although
clouds shrouded the sky, stars glimmered in its scales like a vision of unknown shores.
The head lowered to peruse us. Eyes like emeralds spun in dizzying circles. Through
those spinning eyes I watched as through a window into a hazy mist where shadows of
figures shuddered into view and melted away. Was that my mother, staggering through
a chaos of battle, one eye bleeding and her lower arm horribly shattered so bone stuck
through the torn flesh? I swayed at the sight of her blood and pain.

“Lord of All!” Vai shut his eyes so as not to be caught in the whirlpool. “The creature
has cut the thread of my magic. I can’t touch the ice.”

He tried to push me behind him so it would eat him first, but I twisted out of his
grasp and stepped forward. Bee yanked me back.

“Both of you, move away!” Stepping in front of the beast, she had the look of a scrumptious
honeycake set before a ravenous dame.

“Salve, Your Excellency! Our apologies for interrupting your dinner. I am sure you
recognize us as harmless bystanders. Please let us
pass to the safety of the house. We will be perfectly happy to stay out of your way
until the soldiers who are trying to arrest us have gone.”

The leviathan exhaled with a snort of smoke. Sparks glimmered before dissipating like
cooling steam. It heaved itself one big flop toward us.

Never run when they have you in their sight
. If you ran, they couldn’t help but chase you.

Its maw opened to reveal a predator’s teeth slimy with fluids and moist substances
I did not care to name. Fetid carrion breath mingled with smoke to bring tears to
my eyes. Vai’s hand tightened on mine, and I knew he was going to throw himself forward
to give me time to escape, so I snaked my foot out, meaning to trip him as soon as
he lunged.

“Don’t move, you idiots!” said Bee without looking at us.

A pale man crunched into view on the gravel drive, skirting the flank of the beast.
“Move slowly off to the side so you do not stand between him and the challenger,”
said Kemal.

We edged sideways onto the grass as Kemal calmly collected our abandoned gear. Vai
had sheathed his sword and now had one arm around me and the other around Bee. My
panic had ebbed enough that I guessed it soothed him to feel he was protecting us.
I even leaned against him, and his hand tightened on my waist to comfort me. I was
shaking, it was true. I did not mind a bit of manly comfort. Rory nudged up against
me, and I caught his hand in mine.

Gravel ground under its belly as the beast squirmed forward. It nosed up to the steaming
carcass of the beast it had just killed and began to feed, ripping and swallowing
the tender flesh and sucking at streams of blood and internal fluids. Bee hid her
eyes. Vai grunted, looking down.

“It can’t possibly still want to eat us after it eats all that,” Rory muttered, watching
with a predator’s measuring interest.

Kemal set the bags and packs beside us. “My apologies, but you cannot stay here.”

Bee pleaded with a fervent gaze. “The mage House troops are going to arrest us. Please.”

Her pleading surely seemed like torment to him. “You cannot stay here.”

“The headmaster owes me a favor,” said Bee.

“The headmaster is gone. That he spoke to you earlier today is astonishing enough.
It was the last time he appeared in human form. Any adult male who challenges for
the crown does so in our ancestral form, what you would call a dragon. Those males
who refuse to compete remain in the form of a man so they pose no threat. The flesh
of each rival who is consumed strengthens and grows the winner. The last survivor
earns the right to crown.”

Vai’s gaze flashed up. “Is that a polite euphemism for mating?”

I was pretty sure Kemal’s skin darkened with a flush. “We are not like you. The strongest
male proves he has the strength and therefore the right to crown. To crown means to
become female. Thus will he enter the river and become she, and thus she will cross
by water into the ocean of dreams, what you call the Great Smoke. The mothers live
there. Now I have told you more than I ought,” he finished, with a glance at Bee.
“You must leave at once.”

Bee had not given up. “Is there some other refuge? A boat? Horses? A hidden path?”

“No.” He hustled us back up the drive. The noise of feeding mercifully faded behind
us.

Lamplight winked as the gatekeeper peeped out. “I can’t open up. Trapped inside and
like to be crushed and spat out is what you get for demanding the right to go where
you ought not. Fools!”

“Let them out,” said Kemal.

“You’re not even worm enough to make me,” said the gatekeeper, with a laugh.

Perhaps the night’s fraught events had worn Kemal’s mild temperament threadbare, but
I thought it more likely that he responded as a young man might who feels he has been
insulted in front of a woman he wants to impress. Kemal punched him up under the ribs
with a strong undercut from his right, followed by a swift uppercut to the jaw from
his left. The man went down.

“That was bruising!” said Rory, shaking out of his anxious slouch. “Have you studied
the science of boxing?”

A horn shrilled from the road. Behind, the leviathan trumpeted in answer to its challenge.
Heat grew at our back. The dragon was dragging itself closer.

“Hurry!” Kemal pushed us through the open door of the gatehouse. Even in such dire
straits, I could not help but notice that the hearth fire burned unstintingly as Vai
passed. We tumbled out on the other side of the gate as the gatekeeper skittered back
into the safety of the gatehouse and slammed and locked the doors. The bellows breath
of the dragon sucked in and out like the rhythm of the forge. It was definitely larger
than it had been before it had eaten the last claimant.

Worst, the soldiers were closer than we had realized.

“There is the Diarisso mage!” In the aura of the gate lamp, soldiers clattered out
of the night even as the cold fire guiding them vanished as though blown out.

The mage House troops spread into a semicircle that pinned us in front of the gate.
We were caught between the claw and the teeth, as in the old tale of the slaves fleeing
ancient Kemet who were trapped between the pharaoh’s army and an uncrossable sea.

“How could you abandon us like this!” Bee cried accusingly at Kemal.

Rory muttered, “Eaten or shot, which ought I prefer?”

Vai swore out of bitter frustration as his magic failed him.

I could barely lift my cane.

“I can’t reach my magic!” cried the mage riding with the troop. “What power traps
it?”

“Kill all but the Diarisso,” shouted the captain.

Soldiers dismounted and swarmed forward with swords raised. Anger kindled in Kemal’s
face, like buried light cutting through a concealing veil. He feared for Bee, certainly,
but the knowledge that he had unwittingly walked her to her death surely scoured his
pride as well. Or maybe it was only years of frustration at being told he must not
desire what was so completely out of his reach and which was now to be torn from him
forever.

He forgot himself.

And became what he really was.

First a pale man flashed as if he had become mirrors all catching tomorrow’s sunlight.
The iron of the gates crumbled and, in a rush as of wind, poured into an eddy that
he began absorbing. The substance filled and changed him. A creature formed as of
polished iron swelled out of the vanishing figure of the man. It grew so monstrously
fast that
as I took in a breath I still saw the man, and as I exhaled a dragon filled the open
gateway. Its mouth could have swallowed a pony. Whiskers like ropes lashed in a wind
I could not feel. A crest rippled along its ridged spine in a delicate lacework of
steel. Its tail whipped around and toppled several of the cypress trees. Its roar
crackled like the fury of a blazing fire sweeping over us.

The soldiers fell over each other in their haste to retreat. The horses scattered
as one rider sounded the alarm on a horn:
Ta-ran-ta-ta!
A distant horn answered, echoed by a third.

Close at hand a trumpet cry shook the air. Huddled against the door of the locked
gatehouse, we turned to see the black dragon rise to confront this new challenger.

Once I had feared the fury of a magister powerful enough to rule as the head of a
mage House more than I had feared the frightful tales of the great powers that lie
invisible to us.

What a naïve girl I had been.

Two monstrous dragons reared up to attack each other, heedless of the tiny mortals
scrambling away beneath them. Heat poured off them in battering waves. The tops of
the cypress trees caught fire.

I grabbed Vai’s arm, for Bee’s comment had jogged my memory at last. “There’s a rowboat
at the river’s edge. Bring everything. Rory, hurry!”

We dashed past the ruined gate and the closed doors of the gatehouse, heading toward
the house. With a shrill scream the black launched itself against the smaller iron
dragon. When their bodies collided, the ground actually shook.

Ash and burning needles spun down over us as we ran down the drive. Vai was cursing;
he was a man unaccustomed to being rendered impotent in such a devastatingly comprehensive
way. When I looked around, Bee wasn’t with us.

“I have to go back and look for her!” I shouted.

“Rory, find the boat, make sure there are oars.” Vai shoved the bag he was carrying
to Rory. His apron of carpentry tools wrapped him like armor. “Catherine, I won’t
leave you, so don’t ask it of me.”

Heavily laden, Rory staggered toward the river. Vai and I hunkered in the cover of
the trees as the two dragons came rolling past in a frenzy of talons, teeth, and lashing
tails. They broke apart. The dragon who had been Kemal beat its wings, the draft driving
us to the
ground. A thread of blood trailed past my hand with a stench like the forge. The black
dragon rose onto its hind legs; its body blocked out half the sky.