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.”