Cold Steel

Page 237

But fire beats back even winter. Drake threw such gouts of backlash into the cold mages that a child and then two elders toppled over. Vai frantically pulled more and more into himself, desperate to save the most vulnerable.
Flames leaped higher. The sheer frightening rush of fire stunned me. From deep inside the palace rose shouts and cries of such fear that they scoured my heart. I knew there were courtyards in which people could shelter, but I suddenly comprehended that none of it would be enough. Not even the eru’s magic would be enough.
I had to kill Drake. Wrapped in shadow, I started toward the steps.
The mansa was lit by a silvery mantle of backlash that he shed continuously into the far distant ice. As I came up beside him he caught Vai’s gaze across the gap between them. He nodded, and reached with his magic to pull all the backlash off Vai and into himself. The force of all that power smashed him to his knees. His body convulsed.
I dropped to my knees.
Momentarily free of backlash, Vai slipped an ice lens out of the neck of his jacket. In the Antilles the ice lens had allowed him to focus and amplify his weakened magic. His magic was not weak here. Its hammer slammed down so hard that my chin hit the dirt even though I was ready for it. The eru was flung to earth and the coach creaked, groaning. Even the coachman ducked his head.
Everyone was down, flattened, stunned. Everyone except Andevai. He was still standing. Even in torn, dirty, rumpled clothes, he looked magnificent.
The mansa was unconscious, scarcely breathing, a smoky odor swirling around his body. He could not help us. Still staggered by the sledgehammer blow, I pushed up, stumbled sideways, then forward, supporting myself on the tip of my sword.
“Catherine! Strike now!” I heard how weak Vai was by the hoarseness that burred his voice. He collapsed to one knee and barely caught himself on a hand. As Drake pushed himself up Vai lunged, grabbed Drake’s ankle, and jerked the fire mage to a halt.
Drake laughed as he tugged his leg out of Vai’s weakened grip. “I have played you all very well, have I not? For I have absorbed your strongest attack and still stand. You have nothing left.”
Every cold mage lit with the backlash of Drake’s fire magic. Horribly, so did the eru, for her magic, too, was caught in the funnel. She, too, became a conduit for his power. Only the coach and four remained impervious, and I breathed a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Tanit that I had insisted Bee remain inside.
Wild, bright fire flashed up from the wings and front of the House. The heat built like a furnace. So had Bee dreamed: Sheets of fire from which rose screams of fear and pain.
“Look for the glimmer of a blade, as I taught you,” Drake shouted to his fire mages.
Fire magic spilled down the length of my sword, seeking a path into the spirit world that the cold steel could not give it, seeking me. I tossed it away before the sparks burned me. The moment it left my hand, it became visible to the soldiers.
A rifle went off, and a bullet ricocheted off the drive next to my feet. Another shot spat on the ground by my heels. A third shot sprayed gravel onto the sword. I jumped away from the sword, still in my shadows. Sheets of fire crackled up the walls of the House. One catch-fire, then another, and a third and a fourth and a fifth cried in agony as the backlash overwhelmed them. Vai and the eru had become rivers of light, shedding backlash in flood tides into the spirit world.
Drake soaked up the power and let it roar. Walls crashed in along the back of the House.
Another bullet hit close to my feet, the gravel it kicked up stinging my ankle. If I picked up my sword, Drake would have me. If I waited, all the cold mages and those trapped in the interior courtyard would die. The soldiers began to march toward the coach, firing at will. The coachman looked at me, for although he could not be hurt, there was likewise nothing he could do.
I raced back, flung open the door, and leaped into the interior of the coach.
Bee said, “Blessed Tanit, Cat! What terrible thing is happening?”
“Close your eyes!”
I opened the door into the spirit world and jumped out.
Night shrouded the world, the air as frozen as the icy water in which my sire had tried to drown me. But I was not daunted.
Holding on to the latch so I did not flounder away from the coach, I called. “Sire! Father! You are bound to me as kin. Come to my aid!”
A breath as of wings fluttered so close by my face that I flinched, but I did not retreat. Fingers of ice tightened over my arm, their touch engulfing me under the weight of an ice sheet. His three eyes gleamed in the darkness, and the third was a pulsing knot of blood.
“Beware of what you ask for, little cat. Do you understand there will be a price?”