More converged on me, too many to fight off. I raced inward on the labyrinth walk, my boots crackling on broken glass from the roof. The soldiers followed like wolves in pursuit, both they and I forced to stay on the path now that a glamour pulsed through it.
A crow flew past so close I ducked. Black wings filled the air. Their caws deafened me. The roof cracked again, more glass showering down. On the blast of frigid air, yet more crows poured through the shattered roof to mob the soldiers. The courtyard became a smear of darkness, men flailing with swords and cursing, crows tearing with beaks and swiping with talons. Many voices clamored as the mobbing crows drove the soldiers back, but only one word had hooked me: Now.
“Cat!”
“Bee! Don’t follow me!” Slipping on shards, I cursed, trying to turn to go back, but my body lunged forward.
“Never! I’ll never abandon you!”
As the path spiraled in toward the grated well, my sword grew so bright and cold I thought its touch would sear my palm. If I let go, I might break free, but I could not uncurl my fingers.
“You can’t escape!” Lord Marius’s voice sounded as far away as the distant explosion of musket fire. Or were those the cracks of illegal rifles?
“ The war begin. ” So the Amazon had said. Had Camjiata’s agents set the prison hulk on fire? Had he coordinated his arrival in Adurnam with the Northgate poet’s hunger strike? Who had smuggled rifles into the city? Was it all just a coincidence?
What had the headmaster meant? That explains her.
I staggered to a halt beside the ornamental trellis. The grated opening of the well yawned at the toes of my boots, a round, stone-lined pit like a mouth waiting to swallow me. In ancient days, so the story went, the Adurni Celts had cast living sacrifices into this well. The iron grate that covered the maw had hinges and a lock, but the lock was missing. Shaking, I heaved open the heavy iron bars.
O Goddess, protect me, for I am your faithful daughter.
The hand of summer reached up from the well to choke me. It was fetid and rotting, and I could no more resist it than I could resist breathing. On that breeze I heard the exhalations of the dying and tasted the power of the blood that had sanctified the ground centuries ago.
“I won’t go,” I whispered. “You can’t make me go.”
Instinct-or Barahal training-tugged my head around. A huge crow plummeted down. That cursed crow had been following us for days. It beat the air before my face, and for an instant we stared, eye to eye. It had the same intelligence I did: thinking, planning, doing.
I shrieked as it stabbed at me with its bill. I connected my sword’s hilt to its body, felt bones give way and crunch. Another crow was on me, stabbing as I wildly swung blade and arm, and then a third and a fourth. I twisted, dropping to one knee, and still they came.
A crow stabbed me above the right eye with its beak.
Just like that, they all flew off.
No pain, only pressure. My eye clouded with warm liquid. Drops of blood scattered with a hissing like a nest of disturbed serpents. The stone rim crumbled away beneath my boots.
“Blessed Tanit, spare me!” I pried the hilt of my sword into the ground but could get no purchase as I slipped. The spirit world was dragging me in.
“Cat! Grab my hand!” Bee’s strong hand gripped mine.
The stone rim steamed away like mist under the sun, and we fell.
We plummeted, me beneath and she tumbling after. How deep was it? At midday, in summer, one could see the still surface of water glimmering far below.
I tangled with Bee’s arms and the billow of her skirt.
Water split beneath my back. My head went under, and then solid earth slammed me to a halt. Choking, drowning, I came up gulping and spitting beside her. We sat chest deep in the slimy muck at the bottom of the well. My sword gleamed faintly; no brown muck adhered to its length. A withered bundle of herbs floated on the surface half wrapped in a satin ribbon: someone’s recent offering. Far above, the opening narrowed to a round eye as if the day stared down on us. The ragged splinters of the glass roof shuddered in a wind we could not feel down here.
A crow peered over, its eyes like twin eddies of black night swallowing all that is light and ease and hope. Satisfied, it took wing, flapping away.
My hand groped for purchase in the sludge. My fingers slid across coins and fixed on a sloped, smooth object. Feeling along its length, I realized it was a bone. With a curse, I let go and tried to slither away, but I could not get my feet under me. Foul matter smeared my clothes and matted in my hair. The odor was like chewing on a hank of moldering cloth.
“Cat,” said Bee in an oddly faint voice, “I feel strange, like the well…is swallowing me.”
Dread cut like knives. I grasped her wrist and pulled, but she was receding as in the current of a river in flood.
Panic ripped through me. I was going to lose her, as I had lost my parents when they had drowned in the Rhenus River. She would be torn out of my grasp and I would never see her again. I fixed my other hand around hers and dragged for all I was worth.
“Help!” I cried, to no one. To anyone. “Help us!”
“Beatrice! Catherine Barahal!” Faces appeared at the mouth of the well, so far above they might as well have been in Rome. With the daylight behind them, it was difficult to make out their features, but I recognized the voices of Lord Marius and Legate Amadou Barry.
The legate shouted. “Is anyone down there? Call if you’re there!”
“We’re here! We’re here!” But they couldn’t hear me.
“You don’t suppose they’ve drowned?” said Lord Marius. “What a stink! I can’t see or hear a cursed thing down there. It might as well be tar.”
“Get the magister. He’ll be able to see if they’re down there.”
“We can’t trust him. His own master told me so. He’ll try to help the girls escape. He’s got the power to do it. You felt the force of that storm. Bold Taranis! If I had a regiment of such mages, I’d never lose a battle.”
“God of Lightning, Marius! Listen to yourself. If the girls die it won’t matter either way, will it? Isn’t there rope? We’ll lower down one of the soldiers to look for them.”
“Cat!” Bee’s voice came as from the other side of a river, calling across a turbulent channel.
Her hand, trembling in mine, turned to sand.
My fingers closed on grains dribbling away.
She was gone.
Gone.
I had lost her.
My thoughts shattered. I could not see or hear or think.
Then I heard Andevai’s voice, shaken and hoarse. “It’s worse than I thought. I feel the wind of the spirit world. This is a crossing place, and it is open. Why haven’t you gone down already? Get me rope! Hurry! Catherine, speak to me.”
“I lost Bee.” My voice was scarcely more than a whimper. It was all the breath I had.
“I hear you, Catherine. I’m coming. Hold on.” His voice changed timbre as he turned his head away. “Cat’s down there, but she’s fading.”
Lord Marius’s voice was sharp. “Is she dying?”
“No. She’s fading into the spirit world. It shouldn’t be possible for humans to pass from this world into the spirit world except at the cross-quarter days.”
“Are these the cold mages’ secrets? That they can move at will between this world and the abode of the ancestors? The ancient poets spoke of spiritwalkers. I never thought it was true.”
“I’m tied in. Lower me down. Catherine, hold on!”
His body appeared as a shadow, covering half the lit circle. I felt, as on my own body, skin parting beneath a slicing edge of glass as he cut himself. Blood’s hot stinging scent drenched me as in a waterfall. Did a cold mage’s blood have more power than that of an ordinary person? On the threshold between this world and the other side, the force of his blood swelled and surged like the ocean tide, for it was the essence of life in the undiluted form of salt and iron. I suddenly understood why I had not crossed. My blood had opened the path, but the stinking spew of muck we’d fallen into had coated my skin, sealing away my blood.