A Cavern of Black Ice (15 page)

The following day Raif had looked for
Effie but found her only when it was too late for anything except
sleep. Now, finally, he had her here. Shor Gormalin had told him how
he often saw Effie slipping out to play in the guidehouse when it
wasn't in use. And sure enough Effie had been here, sitting in
almost-darkness, hiding beneath the bench where Inigar Stoop normally
sat grinding stone, playing with her bits of rock.

Raif looked at Effie. She had lost a
shocking amount of weight while he and Drey were away. Her eyes were
huge and dark, blue as their mother's had been before her. Such a
serious little girl, she never smiled, never played with other
children. It was easy to forget she was only eight years old. Raif
held out his arms. "Come here and give your old brother a hug."

Effie thought a moment. "You won't
be wanting to kiss me, will you?

It was a serious question, and Raif
treated it as such. He thought a moment. "No. Just a hug will
do."

"Very well." With great care
Effie laid her collection of rocks on the packed earth floor, then
shuffled over to Raif. "No kiss, mind," she repeated as she
let herself be hugged.

Raif grinned as he held her in his
arms. Effie had reached the age when she didn't care to be kissed by
any men, even her brothers. Still, she made no move to pull away from
him and nestled close to his chest, resting her head on his
shoulder. "Da will never come back," she said. "I knew
that all along."

The grin slid from Raif's face. Effie
spoke with such quiet certainty it chilled him. Unconsciously he
hugged her closer. As he did so, he felt something hard press against
his ribs. Gently he edged Effie back. "What have you got there?"
he asked, nodding toward her neck.

Effie looked down. "My lore."
Small hands fished inside the neck of her dress and pulled out the
plum-size stone. It was gray, featureless, by far the plainest rock
in Effie's collection. A tiny hole had been bored close to the edge,
and a strand of coarse twine had been threaded through. "Inigar
made a hole for me last spring," she said. "So I could wear
it next to my skin like everyone else."

Raif took Effie's lore from her hand.
It wasn't unusually heavy or cool to the touch. Just plain stone.
Abruptly he let it go. Easing Effie from his lap, he stood. "I
say we go and find ourselves some supper. Anwyn Bird has been boiling
bacon all day, and unless someone stops her soon we'll never get rid
of the smell."

Effie began gathering her rock
collection into a pile. The bones in her arms showed through her skin
as she reached forward to scoop up a handful of pebbles. Raif hated
to see them. He'd make sure she ate well from now on.

With her rocks in her little rabbit
pouch, Effie took Raif's hand and together they left the guidehouse.
It was good to get out of the smoke. The short tunnel that led
through to the roundhouse was lit by a series of overhead slits. The
sky outside was turning dark. Noon had passed less than two hours
earlier, yet that never mattered much in winter. Within a month there
would hardly be any daylight at all, and everyone who lived on the
clanhold in crofts, strongwalls, farms, or woodsmen's huts would come
to the roundhouse to sit out winter's worst. Numbers had already
begun to swell, yet Raif didn't think it had much to do with the
season.

Even as he and Effie walked through to
the main entrance hall, a group of crofters were being greeted by
Anwyn Bird. The stout-bellied matron wasted no time in ordering the
men to strip down to their soft-skins and felt boots. Raif took note
of the snow on the crofters' shoulders and hoods. He also noticed
that all three men had their bows braced and ready. The oldest man, a
great red-haired giant who Raif recalled was named Faille Trotter,
had a donkey basket on his back crammed with arrow and spear shafts
and a bucket of neat's-foot oil hanging on a rope around his neck. It
was a point of honor among all tied clansmen that they never came to
the roundhouse empty-handed.

Suddenly uneasy, Raif raised his hand
to his neck and searched out the hard smoothness of his raven lore.
This was the first year he had ever known a crofter to bring weapons,
not food, to pay for his winter keep.

"Now go and warm yi'selves by the
small hearth and I'll send a girl in with some peas and bacon.
There's no blackening left, mind, only meat and soft lard."
Anwyn Bird's tones dared any of the crofters to find fault with the
offered fare. None, including Faille Trotter, who was twice Anwyn's
size and had a face fierce enough to scare bears, had the nerve for
it. Anwyn Bird nodded, well used to cowing all who stood before her.
"Go on with you, then. You'll find a skin of good ale warming by
the fire."

The crofters, looking slightly
embarrassed in their softskins and felt boots, were quick to do
Anwyn's bidding.

Anwyn Bird, grand matron of the
roundhouse, head cook and brewer, expert on all things including
childbirth and bowmaking, turned the considerable force of her
attention upon Raif and Effie Sevrance. "And where might you two
have been?"

Seldom asking a question that she
wasn't prepared to answer for herself, Anwyn Bird gave neither of
them the chance to speak. "Been dawdling in the guidehouse, I'll
swear!" She nodded at Effie. "You, my girl, are coming with
me. Everyone else round here might dither about, 'fraid that you'll
run off again and never be found. But I for one intend to see that
you get a good hot supper, some oatcakes, and a sop full of butter.
If you get any thinner, I swear Longhead'll mistake you for a sapling
and plant you in the graze."

"Longhead plants the saplings in
the rise, not the graze," Effie said matter-of-factly. "And
it isn't the season for them anyway."

The loose skin under Anwyn Bird's chin
wobbled in indignation.

Raif bit his lip to stop himself from
smiling. Raina Blackhail and Effie Sevrance were the only two people
in the guidehouse who could render Anwyn speechless.

Muttering to herself about young girls
today, Anwyn Bird grabbed Effie by the collar and marched her toward
the kitchen. Effie's rock collection knocked together as she moved,
and just before Anwyn passed out of earshot, Raif caught the phrases
"lot of nonsense" and "fuss about old rocks"
puffing from her lips.

Glad that Effie had fallen into the
hands of someone who would see her fed, Raif let out a breath of
relief. At least for tonight that was one less thing to worry about.

Spinning around, he took a moment to
think where Mace Black-hail would likely be at this hour. Despite the
eleven-day mourning set by Inigar Stoop, events were moving fast.
Crofters were coming early to the roundhouse, bringing arms and bow
grease, the guidehouse windows had been boarded up and barricaded
with pullstones, and just this morning Raif had woken to the clang
and shudder of the clan forge—and it hadn't even been dawn.
Clan Blackhail was preparing for war, and they were doing so under
Mace Blackhail's orders and supervision.

Raif pressed his lips into a white
line. The man was worse than a murderer. He had ridden home from a
killing field with his mouth full of lies. Even before he had made a
decision where to go, Raif exited the entrance hall. He had to find
Mace Blackhail, see for himself what the man who would be clan chief
planned next.

The interior of the roundhouse was a
vast warren of stone. Tunnels, ramps, and dug steps led down to
windowless chambers, grain cells, root cellars, arms locks, and
vaults where enemy bones had once been laid facing north to rot. Way
down, two full stories belowground, Longhead kept a wet cell and grew
mushrooms year-round. All chambers were stone walled and barrel
ceilinged, supported by massive bloodwood stangs sealed with pitch.

Nothing was locked, not even the
strongroom. A clansman who stole from his own was considered as good
as a traitor and promptly staved and skin hung. Raif had seen it
happen only once, to a soft-spoken luntman named Wennil Drook.
Wennil's job as luntman was to keep all torches lit in the
roundhouse. He had access to all chambers, could go wherever he
chose, unnoticed and unquestioned. When Corbie Meese's fine silver
handknife went missing one night after supper, the entire roundhouse
was searched. Mace Blackhail found the knife a week later wrapped in
dockleaves at the bottom of the luntman's pack.

Raif forced his teeth together as he
ran down a series of short ramps. Early the next morning Wennil Drook
was taken onto the court and laid facedown upon the clay. One sharp
pole was inserted under his skin from shoulder to shoulder and a
second from hip to hip. Wennil Drook was then lifted by the staves
and suspended between two horses. The horses were ridden by their
riders over the fellfields and onto the Wedge. Wennil Drook only made
it halfway. The skin on his back tore off in a single piece, and he
fell to the ground and was dead before dark.

Corbie Meese was given the skin off
Wennil Drook's back. He had used it once to clean his hammer, then
thrown it away.

Frowning, Raif took the steps down to
the fold, the great chamber that lay directly beneath the entrance,
where all horses and livestock were held during hard frosts and
sieges. It was empty. Not one clansman stood in the center, training
his dogs, nor one clanswoman leaned against the enclosure wall,
letting her children run and play. Raif halted by the entrance. The
fold was the largest cleared space in the roundhouse. On days as cold
as this it was usually heavily used.

Raif punched the stonework with the
heel of his hand. It was time he paid a visit to the Great Hearth.
How long had he been in the guidehouse with Effie? Less than an hour?

The tunnels and ramps of the roundhouse
were built narrow and winding so they could be easily defended if the
main gate was breached. Raif found himself cursing every twist and
curve as he ran. A man could get nowhere fast. Passing alongside the
kitchen wall, he heard children's laughter bubbling against the other
side. The sound did little to settle his mind. Children playing in
Anwyn Bird's kitchen? Wasn't the deepest spiraling hell supposed to
freeze over first?

The Great Hearth was the roundhouse's
primary chamber above-ground. Yearmen, visitors, and all male
children old enough to find food and beds for themselves slept there
each night around the fire. Most clansfolk ate supper at the curved
stone benches lining the chamber's east wall. In the evenings
everyone gathered about the fire to keep warm, tell tales, sample one
another's homebrew, smoke pipes packed with dried heather, court,
sing, dice, and dance swords. It was the Heart of Clan; all decisions
of weight were made there.

Even as he rounded the last of the
steps, Raif knew something was wrong. The Great Hearth's oak doors
were closed. Not pausing to smooth his hair or brush down his coat,
he pushed against the oak planking, forcing his way through.

Five hundred faces turned to look at
him. Corbie Meese, Shor Gormalin, Will Hawk, Orwin Shank, and dozens
of other full clansmen were gathered around the vast sandstone
hearth. Raina Blackhail, Merritt Ganlow, and a score of other women
with due respect also had places close to the fire. Sitting around
the edge of the room on curved benches were the yearmen: the two
middle Shank brothers, the Lyes, Bullhammer, Craw Bannering, Rob Ure,
who was fostered from Clan Dregg, and dozens of others.

Raif felt a hard lump rise to his
throat. Drey was there too, sitting beside blue-eyed Rory Gleet, his
hands resting upon the newly scored hammer in his lap. Raif looked
and looked, but his brother wouldn't meet his eyes.

"You weren't called to this
meeting, boy." Mace Blackhail stepped out from behind a
bloodwood stang and walked five paces forward before coming to a
halt. "You won't be made yearman till next spring."

Raif didn't care for the tone of Mace
Blackhail's voice. He also didn't care for the fact that Mace
Blackhail was wearing his foster father's Clansword. Steel skinned,
black as midnight, and hilted with human bone packed with lead, it
was kept in the roundhouse at all times and worn only by the clan
chief when he was called upon to pass judgments of death and war.

Glancing around the Great Hearth, Raif
took full count of the group. More clansmen than he had seen together
in one place since spring Godsfest had gathered for a meet. Even a
few tied clansmen—crofters, pig farmers, and woodsmen—had
been given places near the door. The only full-sworn clansmen who
weren't present were those manning the strongwalls and borderholds,
the hundred or so standing nightwatch, and those away on longhunts in
the far northern reaches of the clan.

Raif's eyes narrowed. "If you have
met to speak of war," he said, glancing from face to face and
ignoring Mace Blackhail completely, "then I demand to be
present. Before the first battle is joined, Inigar Stoop
will
hear my oath."

Corbie Meese's large head, with its
hammer dent, scar, and bald spot, was the first to nod. "He's
right, you know. We're gonna need to bind as many yearmen as we can,
as soon as we can. And that's no mistake." Bailie the Red and
several others nodded right along with him.

Mace Blackhail cut the nodding short
before it had chance to spread. "We must decide upon a clan
chief before we speak of war."

Raif shot Drey a hard glance, boring
through his brother's skull until Drey was forced to look up. Mace
Blackhail had called a meeting to decide on the next clan chief, and
his own brother hadn't even told him. Raif scowled at Drey. Didn't he
realize he was playing right into Mace Blackhail's hands?

"So," Mace Blackhail said,
taking the last few steps toward the door and pausing before he
opened it. "As war isn't our main purpose here, I say we let
this boy go." He smiled almost sweetly. "Delicate matters
such as these would more than likely bore him."