The village was larger than it seemed from the river, with a pair of temples and a blacksmith’s forge at the intersection of two cart tracks. The crossroads was marked by a stone carved with the image of a seated man with antlers on his head, who held a snake in one hand and an armband in the other. Called Carnonos in my mother’s village, he had other names elsewhere and was often called a god, but I knew the figure was a depiction of the Master of the Wild Hunt, who in the old tales guided the souls of the dead across the veil that separates this world from the spirit world. My father had recorded one such tale in a journaclass="underline" Everyone knew the worst thing in the world was to walk abroad after sunset on Hallows’ Night, when the souls of those doomed to die in the coming year would be gathered in for the harvest.
The Hallows’ Hunt was, my father had opined, a way for people to comprehend the unexpected nature of death. The old tale had not spoken of blood and chains. Had the Wild Hunt always hunted blood to feed the courts? Not according to the old tales. Likewise, had young women always walked the dreams of dragons? For it certainly seemed that dragons had somehow planted a seed whose fruit had become dragon dreamers.
Had the worlds always been one way, or did the worlds also change, shifting and transforming?
A hammer’s pounding started up at the forge.
“Maybe we’d better go back,” I said.
“Blacksmiths have no love for cold mages, it’s true,” said Vai, “but we can use this to our advantage.”
“How is it to our advantage to have a blacksmith have no love for you, Andevai?” Bee asked.
“Why would you give speeches to gatherings of people, Beatrice,” he responded in exactly the same tone, “when so many are hostile to what you have to say?”
“Because I may change their minds if only they hear and understand the important things I have to tell them!”
“Just so,” he agreed.
Folk gathered to watch us approach the forge. Inside, the bellows kept pace, and the fire kept burning despite Vai’s halting twenty paces away. That was part of the blacksmith’s magic. A white-skinned man with a burn-scarred face and work-marred hands emerged, wiping his palms on a cloth. He spoke with a rough dialect, but I was beginning to get an ear for it.
“Ye is a magister,” the man said. “We like not having truck with yer kind, mage. Some of them mage House soldiers was a-coming through here yesterday. They carried the banner of Five Mirrors, but they had riding with them some men wearing tabards marked with the four phases of the moon.”
Vai showed no emotion, but it was all I could do not to react to the mention of soldiers from Four Moons House. The courier simply could not have gotten there and back so quickly.
“We thanked them kindly and showed them the road out of here. Yet they still went a-taking a lass and a lad and four stout sacks of turnips with them, as they are having the right to do. So if ye must take anything from our peaceful village, take it, and then with our favor, ye may walk out that road likewise, and be quick about it.”
“Perhaps I am the one the soldiers are looking for,” said Vai.
The blacksmith looked him up and down, for he was wearing his laborer’s clothes, having packed away the precious dash jackets. “Ye is a workman’s son, not a fancy magister.”
“I am a village-born lad, but I am a cold mage likewise. You know how it is with the mage Houses. They take what they want and bind it to them.”
“That, indeed!” said the blacksmith. The village folk murmured in agreement, as they would make interjections when a djeli told a tale. I could not help but notice that men stood in the front ranks with the women and children in a separate group at the back.
Vai went on. “Besides that, I have something to tell you. For many generations have blacksmiths and cold mages stood at odds. You know this to be true.”
“I know it,” said the blacksmith, and from within the crowd people echoed, “I know it!”
“Blacksmiths keep the secret of fire, and a dangerous secret it is,” said Vai.
“That’s true,” said the blacksmith, “but ye must be knowing it is no fit subject for standing out in the public square, to be speaking of such mysteries. Especially not in front of women.”
“There is a way for fire mages and cold mages to work together,” said Vai, “as I have had reason to learn in the western lands across the ocean, which are ruled by a people called the Taino.”
The blacksmith’s blond hair was shaved to stubble, although he had a long beard. He scratched his bristly hair now. “Ye speak like a madman. Why have ye come here?”
“I speak truth. We seek to escape the mage House. I admit we need food and drink, but that is not all we are about.” He glanced at Bee with a lift of his chin.
As in the game of batey, she took the pass. “Are you a free village? Do you rule your own selves? Or are you bound to a prince or a mage House, all that you have and your own labor and children besides chained by law and custom as their property? I know the answer from the words you have already spoken.” Some nodded, while others stared with frowns, wondering what path her speech would take. Perhaps they weren’t sure they wanted to hear such words from a woman. “You are not the only ones who dislike the tithes and chains by which people are bound. We are bound likewise, yet we fight.”
“How can ye fight?” said the blacksmith with a curt laugh. “Best to give them what they want and see their backs as they are leaving.”
“Words can fight when enough people know there can be another way,” I said.
Vai said, “Let fire mages and cold mages work together, and we can break down the power of mage Houses and princes.”
The blacksmith’s sneer stung like the ashy smoke of the forge. “And raise up ourselves in their place? A friendly offer, lad, but this thing cannot be done. We of the brotherhood hold our secrets close to keep ourselves alive. We who live with the fire burning within us live one breath away from our death. This ye are knowing, and likewise I have said more than enough. We are wanting no trouble here. Begone, and we will pretend we never saw ye if any are come to ask.”
“I do not know by what secrets and rituals blacksmiths protect themselves from the backlash of fire, but I do know there is a way for cold mages to protect fire mages. If they trust each other.”
Several of the old men laughed, as if this were the greatest joke they had heard in an age.
The blacksmith’s frown made me think he might melt into white-hot slag just from anger. “Ye’s a tale-teller, lad, is that it? A wanderer trying to taste a piece of bread with what words ye have to spend. The two lasses’ pretty looks are a better lure than yer blasphemous promises.”
The old men gestured for the villagers to move away as from a fight.
Vai did not budge. “You know better than to speak insultingly of another man’s wife to his face, much less to hers, so I will let that pass for this once. This is what I know: Cold magic feeds me, but the backlash of fire magic devours itself. Yet I can teach you how to pour the backlash of fire through the threads of my magic and thus harmlessly into the bush—the spirit world—where it cannot harm you. This is the truth. I swear it on my mother’s honor.”
By no other vow could he have so forcibly impressed them. The blacksmith looked startled, but the outright hostility drained from his face.
“I will talk to ye in the forecourt of the temple of Three-Headed Lugus,” he said at length, “if ye are willing to enter the god’s sanctuary.”
“I am a carpenter’s son. My father and uncle made offerings to thrice-skilled Lugus, whom they called Shining Komo with three hands and three birds.”