Cold Magic

Outside the stockade, our party was greeted by a group of young men and women putting the finishing touches on a heap of debris—wood, dry dead leaves, desiccated undergrowth—piled just beyond the entry gate. We passed through the open gate to the outer stockade. Inside, on a path leading between gardens, the men conferred in low voices and then the party split up. The old man and the other four adult men with the beast headed off to a shelter where coals glowed in a damped-down hearth fire. Duvai gestured to me, and with the stripling almost bouncing in his excitement, we headed for the inner gate. Two young men armed with spears and longbows—no muskets, of course, in territory beholden to a House—stood at the inner gate.

“Peace to you. How are you all?” I asked the guards as we came up.

“Well. We are well thanks to the mother who raised us,” they mumbled, glancing at the tall man as if for direction, but he only lifted an eyebrow.

“And everyone in the compound?”

“Well. They are well.” They refused to look me in the eye—naturally, as I might be a spirit who had walked out of the spirit world specifically to do them mischief. But I could not ask after members of their families, because I did not know them, and they glanced aside and beckoned to the tall man and said, in what they clearly hoped would be an undertone, fearing to insult me in case I was what they feared, “Duvai, what is this? Did you bring it with you or did it follow you?”

I knew the custom of the countryside. Daniel Hassi Barahal had written of it in his journals.

“I ask for guest rights.” If I surprised the gate guards, which I did, I surprised the tall man even more. Perhaps he had genuinely thought me a spirit and was now realizing he had been mistaken. By the lights of the torches at the gate, I could see he was older than me, well grown and good-looking, old enough to be called fully a man but not yet middle aged. There was something about him that seemed familiar, and it was only because I had just been thinking about Andevai—as unfortunate as it was that I should ever feel obliged again to think of him—that I wondered if I saw a resemblance between the two, although Duvai’s hair and complexion were lighter.

The men at the gate said what they must. “Enter and be fed. Enter and sleep without evil dreams.”

With an exhalation of relief, I crossed between the torches and into the enclosure within which compounds and houses clustered. Dogs barked but quieted quickly, recognizing the tall man and accepting me as one of his companions.

In the dusk it was difficult to count the structures, but the enclosure ringed a fair amount of ground. I estimated there were at least two dozen tapers, which meant at least a dozen compounds burned tapers at their entrances. Even in sophisticated Adurnam, every household burned a taper or a lamp at the door on Hallows Night. At the far end of the village opposite the gate rose a larger round structure, its conical thatched roof like a hat blocking the heavens. From that direction came the sound of a drum talking an easy rhythm, at which the stripling laughed and essayed several steps until the tall man curtly cut him down with a few words. The drum died, as if the man had silenced it, but its demise was followed by laughter, a short rapid phrase of song, and a second, lower-voiced drum beating out an exploratory bass. Out of this desultory introduction, a woman’s deep alto rose in a long stream of melody whose power halted me in my tracks.

“Feet hasten where there is news to be delivered,” said the tall man to the stripling, and the lad hurried off into the dark. “A warm hearth on a cold night is welcome,” he said to me, and I took that as an invitation.

We entered a compound whose doors, opening onto a common courtyard, stood close together like friendly relatives. Every door was ornamented with a burning taper, and women were working and talking and making jokes. A child ran along the narrow alley between the buildings, and a pair of women laughed as they crossed the broad, open space with baskets atop their heads. I smelled some manner of glorious cooking; surely that was meat sizzling!

As we approached a door almost opposite the compound’s gate, a woman about Duvai’s age came to the door to greet him. When she saw me, she frowned. She was a short, lovely woman, wearing a striped wool robe. Inside, a cast-iron stove, surely a sign of prosperity in a humble village like this one, gave off heat.

“Peace to you, on this evening,” I began as a pair of toddlers, a half-grown lad, and a middle-aged woman gathered on the other side of the threshold to stare at me.

The woman did not invite me in; instead, she came out and drew the tall man apart and spoke in an undertone while folk emerged from the compound doors to see what was going on. I felt like an exhibition at one of the academy’s lectures. Young and old, female and male, dressed in rustic clothing, these were country folk, not poor precisely because none had the starving look of the beggars I saw on the streets of Adurnam, but the compound was certainly without any of the niceties city people expected. A freestanding brick fire pit cradled a blaze that beat back the night’s gloom. Several log benches and stone mortars rested beneath a big, leafless tree.