Cold Magic

Page 97

Wind shredded the clouds, and the lazy breath of snow subsided, but with the sun’s emergence from behind cloud, the air grew colder. About midday, the sun sweeping in its low curve above the horizon, we paused at a crossroads to pour water at an offering stone. The libation coated the stone with a frail skin of ice where it pooled. He offered me bread and salty cheese, which we ate standing up because it was too cold to sit.
After we had gulped down the food, he indicated a path that speared away up across rolling countryside, easy to see from the crossroads.
“That way,” he said.
My heart clenched as if a hand had squeezed it. “Are you leaving me here?”
“To reach Haranwy by dusk, I must return now. That is your path. If you follow the main way, it will take you across the chalk hills to Lemanis, if you know where that is.”
“It’s in the Romney Levels.” My uncle had plenty of maps. From there the drained levels opened in the south into the marshy Sieve and the river, difficult country to pass. But a decent series of roads ran from Lemanis west across the higher ground of Anderida to Adurnam. It was slower than the toll road, but it cost nothing except the time it took to walk it.
“How far to Lemanis?” I asked.
“Two days for a strong walker.”
I gestured toward the open countryside. “Anyone standing where we are might see me walking out there. Is this the safest way?”
“There is no safe way. Did you think there was?” He studied me with a bold gaze that made me frown, and my glare brought a curve to his lips that made me flush. “Vai is not the only man in the world—”
“I never thought he was!”
“—who might wish to do you harm. You are young, and female, and alone.”
The spark of challenge in his expression burned me. “Why did you help me?”
“We must do what is right.”
My breath steamed in the wintry air, but I found I had no answer to that. “My thanks to you and your people.”
I nodded and turned away from him, and I set my feet on the path, walking into the lonely afternoon. I heard his footfalls behind me as he moved back the way we had come, and soon enough I could no longer hear him and soon after that I could no longer see him.
I walked, and I walked, and I walked. I was accustomed to walking. Bee and I walked all over Adurnam. The path was easy to follow, its branching spurs never to be confused with the main route toward Lemanis. The sun shone without warmth. The trees spread in wild tangles below the highest ridges, but up here I was utterly exposed. Anyone from miles around, standing at the right vantage point, could see me. Yet what else could I do except walk? There was no safe way.
I made good time. I spotted no life beyond a hawk, a pair of grouse, and a hare springing away across a stony clearing. Even such villages and farmsteads as I glimpsed in the distance looked abandoned. The world might as well have been driven into hiding by the Wild Hunt.
Of that dreadful passage no breath stirred that I could discern.
It is easy to think while walking.
The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice. Here in the north, we live under the shadow of the ice, its ice sheets and massive glaciers, and no human can walk there without being killed or driven out. Daniel Hassi Barahal wrote that the Han people who rule in distant Cathay in the far east do not fear the ice, and the people who live near the belt of the world, known as the equator, rarely feel the ice’s breath because of the ever-present heat. But he also wrote that of these lands, he could only report what he had been told or read since he had not traveled there himself to vouch for its truth: Who is to say that our teachers know of what they speak or speak of what they know?
This is what I thought I knew: Two thousand years ago, the Romans and Phoenicians had battled to a standstill, and in the end the Romans kept their land empire and the Phoenicians kept their ports and traded across the seas without impediment. Over time, as the empire of the Romans weakened, the Celtic chiefs broke away one by one and restored their ancient principalities and lordships, at times warring or feuding with their neighbors and at others allying against some more hated prince. But although the various Celtic peoples cast out their Roman overlords, they retained many things Roman: roads, bridges, aqueducts, a calendar, laws, literacy, and the city ways and city speech of Romans.
When, about four hundred years ago, the Persians swept across the north of Africa and conquered the trading city of Qart Hadast, many Kena’ani merchant families were forced to flee to other ports and cities. Across Europa, Celtic princes were eager to welcome them in exchange for a tax on their profits.