A Cavern of Black Ice

A Cavern of Black Ice

Sword of Shadows Book 1

A Birth, a Death,
and a Binding

Tarissa whispered a hope out loud
before looking up at the sky. "Please make it lighter than
before.
Please
." As her lips came together she looked
up past the wind-twisted pines and the ridge of frost-riven granite,
up toward the position of the sun. Only the sun wasn't there.
Stormheads rolled across the sky, cutting out the sunlight, massing,
churning, driven by winds that snapped and circled like pack wolves
around sheep. Tarissa made a small gesture with her hand. The storm
wasn't passing overhead. It had come to the mountain to stay.

Dropping her gaze, she took a steadying
breath. She couldn't afford to panic. The city lay a thousand feet
below her, rising from the shadow of the mountain like a second,
lesser peak. She could see the ring towers clearly now, four of them,
two built hard against the wall, the tallest piercing the storm with
its iron stake. It was a long way down. Hours of walk, even. And she
had to be careful.

Resting her hand on her swollen
stomach, she forced herself to smile.
Storms
? They were
nothing.

She moved quickly. Loose scree, bird
skeletons, and snags of wind-blasted wood tripped her feet. It was
hard to walk, even harder to keep her balance on the ever sharpening
slope. Steep draws and creases forced her sideways instead of down.
The temperature was falling, and for the first time all day Tarissa
noticed her breath came out white. Her left glove had been gone for
days—lost somewhere on the far side of the mountain—and
she stripped off her right glove, turned it inside out, and pulled it
onto her left hand. The fingers there had started to grow numb.

Dead trees blocked her path. Some of
their trunks were so smooth they looked polished. As she reached out
to steady herself against one of the hard black limbs, she felt a
sharp pain in her lower abdomen. Something shifted. Wetness spilled
down her thighs. A soft sting sounded in her lower back, and a wave
of sickness washed up her gullet, depositing the taste of sour milk
in her mouth. Tarissa closed her eyes. This time she kept her hopes
to herself.

Wet snow began to fall as she pushed
herself off from the dead tree. Her glove was sticky with sap, and
bits of pine needles were glued to the fingers. Underfoot the granite
ledge was unstable; gravel spilled from deep gashes, and husks of
failed saplings crumbled to nothing the instant they took her weight.
Despite the cold, Tarissa started to sweat. The pain in her back
chewed inward, and although she didn't want to admit it, didn't even
want to acknowledge it, her lower abdomen began contracting in
rhythmic waves.

No. No. NO. Her baby wasn't due yet.
Two weeks more—it
had
to be. She needed to make it to
the city, to find shelter. She'd even held back enough coins for a
midwife and a room.

Finding a lead through the rocks, she
picked up her pace. A lone raven, its plumage dark and oily as a
scorched liver, watched her in silence from the distorted upper
branch of a blackstone pine. Spying it, Tarissa was conscious of how
ridiculous she must look: fat bellied, wild haired, scrambling down a
mountainside in a race against a storm. Grimacing, she looked away
from the bird. She didn't like how it made her feel.

Contractions were coming faster now,
and Tarissa found that it helped if she kept on the move. Stopping
made the suffering linger, gave her seconds to count and think.

Mist rose from crevices. Snow flew in
Tarissa's face, and the wind lifted the cloak from her back.
Overhead, the clouds mimicked her descent, following her down the
mountain as if she were showing them the way. Tarissa walked with her
gloved hand cradling her belly. The fluid between her legs had dried
to a sticky film that sucked her thighs together as she moved. Heat
pumped up through the arteries in her neck, flushing her cheeks and
the bridge of her nose.

Faster. She had to move faster.

Spotting a clear run between boulders,
Tarissa switched her path farther to her right. Thorns snagged her
skirt, and she yanked on the fabric, losing patience. As she turned
back to face the path, the raven took flight. Its black wings beat
against the storm current, snapping and tearing like teeth.

The instant Tarissa stepped forward,
gravel and rocks began running beneath her feet. She felt herself
falling, and she flung out her arms to grab at something,
anything
,
to hold her. The mist hid everything at ground level, and Tarissa's
hands found only loose stones and twigs. Pain exploded in her
shoulder as she was thrown against a rock. Pinecones and rocks
bounced overhead as she tried desperately to break her fall. Her bare
hand grasped at a tussock of wolfgrass, but her body kept sliding
downward and the roots pulled free in her hand. Her hip bashed
against a granite ridge, something sharp shaved skin from the back of
her knee, and when she opened her mouth to scream, snow flew between
her lips, freezing the cry on her tongue.

She came to. There was no pain, just a
fog of ragged light lying between her and the outside world. Above
her, as far as her eyes could see, stretched walls of hand-polished
limestone, mason cut and smooth as bone. She'd finally made it to the
city with the Iron Spire.

Dimly she was aware of something
pushing far below her. Minutes passed before she realized that it was
her body working to expel the child. She swallowed hard. Suddenly she
missed all the people she had run from. Leaving home had been a
mistake.

Kaaw!

Tarissa tried to shift her head toward
the sound. A hot needle of pain jabbed at the vertebrae in the base
of her neck. She blacked out. When she came to again she saw the
raven sitting on a rock before her. Black-and-gold eyes pinned her
with a look that was devoid of pity. Bobbing its head and raising its
scaly yellow claws, it danced a little jig of damnation. When it was
done it made a soft
clucking
noise that sounded just like a
mother scolding a child and then flung itself to the mercy of the
storm. Cold currents bore it swiftly away.

Pushing
. Her body kept
pushing.

Tarissa felt herself drifting…
she was so tired… so very, very tired. If only she could find
a way through the fog… if only her eyes could show her more.

As her eyelids closed for the last time
and her ribs pressed an unused breath from her lungs, she saw a pair
of booted feet walking toward her. The tar-blackened leather melted
snowflakes on contact.

***

They applied the leeches to him in
rings of six. His body was crusted with sweat and rock dust and dirt,
and the first man scraped the skin clean with deer tallow and a
cedarwood wedge, while the second worked in his shadow with metal
pincers, a pitchpine bucket, and heavy buckskin gloves.

The man who no longer knew his name
strained against his bindings, testing. Thick coils of rope pressed
into his neck, upper arms, wrists, thighs, and ankles. He could
shudder and breathe and blink.

Nothing more.

He could barely feel the leeches. One
settled in the fold between his inner thigh and groin, and he tensed
for a moment. Pincer took a pinch of white powder from a pouch around
his neck and applied it to the leech. Salt. The leech dropped away. A
fresh leech was applied, higher this time so it couldn't attach
itself to skin that wasn't fit.

That done, Pincer stripped off his
gloves and spoke a word that sent Accomplice to the far side of the
cell. A moment later Accomplice returned with a tray and a soapstone
lamp. A single red flame burned within the lamp, heating the contents
of the crucible above. When he saw the flame, the man with no name
flinched so hard that the rope binding his wrists split his skin.
Flames were all he had now. Memories of flames. He hated the flames
and feared them, yet he needed them, too. Familiarity bred contempt,
they said. But the man with no name knew that was only half of it.
Familiarity bred dependence as well.

Thoughts lost in the dance of flames,
he didn't see Pincer kneading an oakum wad in his fist. He was aware
only of Accomplice's hands on his jaw, repositioning his head,
brushing his hair to one side, and pushing his skull hard against the
bench. The man with no name felt the frayed rope and beeswax wad
thrust into his left ear. Ship's caulking. They were shoring him up
like a storm-battered hull. A second wad was thrust into his right
ear, and then Accomplice held the nameless man's jaws wide while
Pincer thrust a third wad into the back of his throat. The desire to
vomit was sudden and overpowering, but Pincer slapped one large hand
on the nameless man's chest and another on his belly and pressed hard
against the contracting muscles, forcing them flat. A minute later
the urge had passed.

Still Accomplice held on to his jaw.
Pincer paid attention to the tray, his hands casting claw shadows
against the cell wall as he worked. Seconds later he turned about. A
thread of animal sinew was stretched between his thumbs. Seeing it,
Accomplice shifted his grip, opening the nameless man's jaws wider,
pulling back lip tissue along with bone. The man with no name felt
thick fingers in his mouth. He tasted urine and salt and leech water.
His tongue was pressed to the base of his mouth, and then sinew was
woven across his bottom teeth, binding his tongue in place.

Fear came alive in the nameless man's
chest. Perhaps flames weren't the only things that could harm him.
"He's done," said Pincer, drawing back.

'What about the wax?" breathed a
third voice from the shadows near the door. It was the One Who Issued
Orders. "You are supposed to seal his eyes shut."

'Wax is too hot. It could blind him if
we use it now."

"Use it."

The flame in the soapstone lamp wavered
as Accomplice drew the crucible away. The man with no name smelled
smoke given off from the impurities in the wax. When the burning came
it shocked him. After everything he had been through, all the
suffering he had borne, he imagined he had outlived pain. He was
wrong. And as the hours wore on and his bones were broken
methodically by Pincer wielding a goosedown padded mallet, Accomplice
following after to ensure the splintered ends were pulled apart, and
his internal organs were manipulated with needles so long and fine
that they could puncture specific chambers in his lungs and heart
while leaving the surrounding tissue intact, he began to realize that
pain—and the ability to feel it—was the last sense to go.

When the One Who Issued Orders stepped
close and began breathing words of binding older than the city he
currently stood in, the man with no name no longer cared. His mind
had returned to the flames. There, at least, was a pain that he knew.

The Badlands

Raif Sevrance set his sights on the
target and
called
the ice hare to him. A moment of
disorientation followed, where the world dropped out of focus like a
great dark stone sinking to the bottom of a lake; then, in the
shortest space that a moment could be, he perceived the animal's
heart. The light, sounds, and odors of the badlands slid away,
leaving nothing but the weight of blood in the ice hare's chest and
the hummingbird flutter of its heart. Slowly, deliberately, Raif
angled his bow away from the target. The arrow cracked the freezing
air like a word spoken out loud. As its iron blade shot past the
hare, the creature's head came up and it sprang for cover in a
cushion of black sedge.

'Take the shot again," Drey said.
"You sent that wide on purpose." Raif lowered his bow and
glanced over at his older brother. Drey's face was partially shaded
by his fox hood, but the firm set of his mouth was clear. Raif
paused, considered arguing, then shrugged and reset his footing on
the tundra. It never felt good deceiving Drey.