A Cavern of Black Ice (116 page)

The cavern soared three stories high
and was as wide as any cave he'd ever seen. It was massive and
utterly cold: a boundary between worlds. When he looked into the ice
he saw shapes shifting and undulating in the place where the cave
wall should have lain. Black fire burned within. He saw the shades of
hooded things, of beasts with many heads and wolves with thrashing
tails, and things that were not men, not quite. He saw nightmares and
shadows and darkly craven things, yet when he looked again the ice
was still.

The voices were hysterical now. They
pleaded with their mistress, begging her to turn back, to flee the
cavern, to reach in another place.

Raif felt Ash pulling her hand free of
his, and he hated to let it go. She felt his resistance and turned to
face him, and already he could see that she was changing. Her eyes
were taking on the colors of the Sull. No longer gray, they shone
silver and midnight blue. Her jaw was hard set, and her chin was
raised, but her lips were red where she had chewed on them. Looking
at her, he realized one thing: He could not help her in this.

The ice pick he had jammed through his
belt was no use here. Tem, Drey, Corbie Meese: No clansman could do
more than stand and watch. There was nothing of flesh and blood to
fight, no necks or soft stomachs that would yield to an ax. Just
shadows and black ice. When Ash reached she would do so alone.

Unbidden, the image of the women and
children fleeing Hailsmen on the Bluddroad came to him. He had stood
and watched then, too.

Watcher of the Dead
. A shudder
began at the base of his spine, but he made himself rigid and stopped
it. He would show nothing but strength to Ash.

She looked at him for a long moment,
pinning him where he stood. Slowly she stripped off her gloves and
let them fall to the floor. Her coat slipped off with a single shrug,
and suddenly she was standing in the cavern wearing a plain gray
dress, with her silver gold hair flowing loose over her shoulders.
Gently she smiled at him, and gently she spoke. "It's all
right," she said. "I'm here, and I know what I must do.
It's just dancing ice from now on."

He did not smile. Fear for her consumed
him. She knew he could heart-kill beasts—she had seen him do so
with her own two eyes—yet she did not know he was Watcher of
the Dead. He should have told her sooner… for he could not
tell her now.

"You must let me go, Raif."

He did not know he had taken hold of
her arm until she pulled it back. She began to turn from him, and
dread rose in his belly at the thought of her standing alone. He had
to protect her. He, who had watched Bludd women and children die on
the Bluddroad, seen Shor Gormalin brought home over the back of his
horse, and killed three Bluddsmen in the snow outside Duff's, had to
keep her from harm.

In his frustration, he tugged at the
cord that held his lore. The hard, black piece of bird ivory jabbed
against his gloved hands. Raven lore. He took it and weighed it in
his fist. It had warded him all along. And perhaps it warded the
Sull, too. And perhaps the ravens he had passed on the archway and on
the riverwall had been
guarding
, not showing, the way.

Swiftly he plucked it from him. "Ash."

She turned her head toward him.

"Wear this." He held out his
lore.

"'I can't. It's part of your
clan."

"You are my clan. And you have no
lore to protect you."
And ravens always survive to the end
.
"Take it."

Something in his voice compelled her,
and she took it from him and fastened it about her neck. It looked
dark and savage there, on its cord of sweat-rotted twine. Yet
something deep within him eased at the sight of it lying flat against
her skin. He could let her go now.

She walked from him in silence, the hem
of her skirt trailing across the ice. The cavern shuddered with every
step she took and the voices hounded her like dogs.

Hate you, mistressss, slash your
pretty face.

Pull you down with us, make you
burn.

Ash's chin stayed high, though the
threats were terrible in their violence and hatred, and the black ice
was colder than a tomb. He felt the power cumulating in her, felt her
pull
what she needed from the air. Her belly swelled, and
her breasts rose and fell, and muscles in her shoulders began to
work.

The cavern glittered like dark fire,
its borders and knife edges flickering between worlds. Into its
center walked the Reach. Firmly she stepped, ice winds blowing her
hair and the sleeves of her dress, the corner of her lip moving as
she bit down upon it. The air around her thickened and warped, and
slowly, very slowly, a fine nimbus of blue light grew about her
shoulders and arms. Raif felt his face burn with coldness. He had
seen light like that before, on the blades of clansmen making kills
in moonlight and in the cold inner hearts of flames.

As black ice creaked and shivered
around her, Ash March
reached
. Later Raif would remember her
beauty as she stood there limned in blue light, her fingers rising
first, then her hands and her arms, as she reached out toward a place
that he would never, ever, know firsthand. Later he would remember
that… but for now he felt only fear.

Up came her arms, spreading wide to
encompass a world beyond his own. Her mouth fell open and a terrible
dark substance poured from her tongue and blasted against the ice.
The cavern shook. The mountain rumbled with a deep bass note that
sounded like the Stone Gods shattering the world. Yet the black ice
remained intact. The walls
bent
to her power, yielding like
saltwater ice, yet they did not let it pass. The ice stretched and
contorted, forming grotesque black bulges and pressure sores where
the ice was stretched so thinly it was almost white. The cavern
hummed with tension. And the voices screamed, higher and higher,
wailing a song of terror and damnation that rose from a place far
deeper than any hell.

On and on the power flowed, exiting
Ash's body with the force of steam venting under pressure and
bursting against the cavern walls. The black ice flashed under the
bombardment, turning as transparent as polished glass. Within it,
Raif saw things he wished never to see again.

A charred landscape. A nightmare world.
A slithering, jerking mass of dark souls.

Ash stood against them all. He saw that
now, clearly; he also saw that the change that had begun the moment
she'd entered the cavern was still taking place within her. She was
becoming what had been only a word to Raif before. A Reach. It would
never be over for her, not truly, even after she left this place.
Heritas Cant had said as much, yet Raif had not wanted to understand.
He had wanted to believe that the Cavern of Black Ice marked the
end. Now, seeing the air rippling with heat from her power and the
skin of black ice
straining
to contain what she unleashed,
he knew it was just the start.

Ash's eyes were focused on some far
distant point beyond the ice. Briefly he glimpsed a sea of shifting
gray waters… or was it clouds or smoke? Heritas Cant had
called it the borderlands and said that Ash was the only person
living who could walk there without fear.

Sobered, Raif watched her face. He
wanted it to end.

The cavern walls ground against each
other as Ash's power continued to drain. Sweat ran in rivulets down
her neck and the high curves of her breasts, and wet hair clung like
chains to her face. Words had failed the voices now, and all that was
left to them was the awful bleating of herd animals penned for the
kill. Raif hated to hear them. He thought they would drive him
insane.

Finally the noises faded to grunts and
whimpers, then died completely. The air stilled. Dust drifted to
earth as the milling of the cavern walls ground to a halt. The black
ice glowed silver for a moment and then faded to matt black. It was
used up now. Raif imagined that one quick stab with a pickax would be
enough to shatter it like glass.

Ash was left standing in the center of
the cavern, her arms held wide before her, the light surrounding her
body dimming into thin air.

Nothing moved for the longest moment.
Raif felt as if he were alone in the cavern; it hardly seemed as if
Ash were there at all. Her back was rigid, and her eyes were far
focused, and even the bit of lip she had chewed on had paled. The
only thing upon her that seemed wholly in this world was the ugly
piece of raven around her neck.
That
was solid: dark with
oils from Raif's skin, worn thin in the places where he handled it,
its ivory as cracked and flawed as an old man's fingernail. It
belonged in the earth or in the remains of a burned-out fire. It did
not belong in the land beyond the ice.

Raif waited. He wanted to smash the ice
to splinters with his fists and snatch Ash away like a man kidnapping
a child. Yet he did not want to hurt her. She was so thin, like Effie
almost; if he handled her roughly, he could break her bones.

Slowly, breath by breath, she returned
to him.

Her mouth closed, and after many
minutes she blinked, and when her gaze refocused it came to rest on
something that both of them could see. It seemed difficult for her to
relax her arms, and she made awkward little movements as she drew
them to her sides. After a moment she raised her hand to her throat
and touched the raven lore. She looked at it with her new silver blue
eyes, brought it to her lips and kissed it. "It guided me back,"
she said in a voice drained of strength. "I was lost and it
guided me back."

Raif closed his eyes. His heart had
been so long without joy, he did not know what it was that filled
him. He just knew he had to go to her and take her from this place.

Heart of Darkness

Retaining the thought was the hardest
thing of all. He could wait in silence, unmoving, barely breathing,
betraying not the slightest reaction as the caul flies fed on his
flesh. That was easy. Such was the measure of his life. It was the
nursing of the thought that took it from him.

When he is gone I will return to
the place where I took him. And this time I go there alone.

The Nameless One ran the words through
his head, sounding each slowly, testing their meaning, afraid that at
any moment he might lose the sense of one or all. Words were as water
to him. He grasped and cupped, yet he still could not hold them in
mind. He had waited here before, in his iron chamber, feigning
senselessness or fatigue. Yet though his body served him as well as a
wheel-broken body could, the words always left him in the end.
Without words he had no intent. Without intent he was every bit as
senseless as he feigned.

This time would be different, though.
This time I go there alone
.

The Light Bearer watched him, suspicion
sharp as needles in his eyes. He had not liked being yanked back from
that place. Anger and exhaustion made him shake. The Nameless One
smelled urine that was not his own. The Light Bearer was weak in many
ways.

The blow when it came was hardly a
surprise. "Wake, damn you! I know you can see and hear me. I
know you brought me back too soon."

The Nameless One allowed his head to
slump back against the iron wall. His rotted chains rustled like dry
sticks.

The Light Bearer watched his every
breath. "You think to play games with me? You, who exist only on
my say?" Silk slithered over metal as he drew closer. "Perhaps
I have left you untouched for too long. Perhaps I should have Caydis
warm his hooks."

The Nameless One did not fall into the
trap of fear. Fear lost him words. Unblinking, he focused his gaze
upon the Light Bearer's left shoulder and the image of the Killhound
emblazoned there.

Time passed. The Light Bearer felt it
more keenly than he, shifting his weight from foot to foot, breathing
harshly, and finally pushing himself away from the iron chamber. He
was not satisfied, but what more could he do? He could hardly beat
the creature who was the source of all his power.

"I will be back tomorrow," he
warned as he retrieved his stone lamp and headed up the stairs. "And
next time I will pull two flies from your back." With the last
of his words the light faded and darkness came to the apex chamber,
rising from the ground to the ceiling as always.

The Nameless One did not move. When a
measure of time satisfying to him had passed, he closed his eyes.
This time I go there alone
.

It was easy, really. The Light Bearer
had shown him the way. Power enough he had, for he had learned the
ways to keep a poor man's portion for himself. The Light Bearer
suspected this, but truth was hard to extract from one who had lost
all fear of pain.

With the soft clack of bones dropped in
a pot, the Nameless One forsook his flesh. Up he traveled through
layers of rock and surface tiles, up through the Inverted Spire.
Pushing his insubstance forward to meet the night sky, he tested his
attitude to freedom. It was dark here, and cold as ice smoke, and the
horizon stretched and curved, stretched and curved, as far as the
eyes could see. He could not say it pleased him. He was still one man
alone with a broken body and no name; a blue firmament above him made
no difference. Fleeing his despair, he journeyed to the place where
the Light Bearer had taken him.

This time I go there alone.

The gray landscape of the borderlands
was still in turmoil, roiling and steaming like a sea settling down
from a storm. In his excitement the Light Bearer had sucked the caul
fly dry, wanting to go deeper, farther, see if he could find the
source. The Nameless One took some small portion of pleasure in
recalling how he had wrenched his master back. It had been worth the
examination and the rage. And now well, now he had the power to
search this place himself.