A Cavern of Black Ice (19 page)

No more words came from below, but she
could hear twigs snapping and oilskins creaking. One of the horses
stamped its hooves. A breath was sharply taken, then the clear sound
of a belt buckle unsnapping chimed through the air like a bell.

Down on her belly in the snow, Effie
pushed herself along by her knees and feet. Her heart thumped against
the ground. She was listening so hard her jaw ached.

More sounds. Oilskins, mostly, and
crunching snow. Someone or something grunted: Effie couldn't tell
whether it was Mace Blackhail or one of the horses.

Easing her head into the tangle of
stems and leaves that marked the edge of the ridge, she peered into
the clearing below. She saw Mace Blackhail's roan first, then Mercy.
Red bearberries, cold and almost frozen, tapped against her cheeks
like glass beads. Tiny little thorns snagged at her sleeves as she
moved closer to the edge.

Hard breaths sounded, and Effie's gaze
found Mace Blackhail's back. It was moving up and down. Effie
frowned. Where was Raina? That was when she noticed Mace Blackhail's
hand; it was pressed hard against Raina's mouth. Raina was beneath
him. On the ground. In the snow. Her oilskin was spread open about
her.

Effie's chest tightened. What was he
doing to her? Even as she looked, she saw Mace Blackhail lean forward
and
kiss
Raina's face. Raina jerked her head back. Mace
continued moving up and down. He was breathing very hard now.

A glint of silver on the ground near
the horses caught Effie's eye. Raina's knife. From where she lay,
Effie could just make out three blotches of blood sunk deep into the
surrounding snow. Her gaze was drawn back to Mace Blackhail. He
shuddered, issued a hard cry like a cough, then slumped onto Raina's
chest. Raina's eyes were closed. Mace no longer had his hand over her
mouth, but she made no move to cry out, simply lay there with her
eyes closed, perfectly still.

Mace said something to her that Effie
didn't catch, then he rolled to the side and picked himself off the
ground. Still Raina did not move. Her skirt was hitched up about her
waist and her tunic was open, revealing her linen underbodice
beneath. Effie averted her eyes: like the oak roots, they were things
not meant to be seen.

Mace Blackhail belted and fastened
himself up. His sword swung at his waist, held in place by a doeskin
scabbard dyed black. As he returned to his horse, Effie saw a line of
bright blood on his cheek and a second on his neck. When he
approached Raina's skinning knife, he kicked it hard, sending the
silver blade shooting into a tangle of snowy gorse. He spat, smoothed
back his hair, and then mounted the blue roan. The gelding shook its
mane and switched its tail, but Mace pulled hard on the bit, taking
command of its head.

Turning the gelding, Mace Blackhail
took a moment to regard Raina as she lay on the ground. Raina still
had not moved. Effie could just see the rise and fall of her chest.
Her eyes were closed, but as Mace looked on she opened them.

Mace's mouth twisted. "Tidy
yourself before you return," he said, we are to be wed—as
this surely means we must—then I will not have my wife arrayed
like a coarsehouse wench for all to see." With that, he kicked
the roan into a trot and rode from the clearing.

Effie watched him go. The left side of
her face was numb, and her entire body was colder than she could ever
remember it being before. Even her heart felt cold. For a reason she
didn't understand, she began naming the Stone Gods. Inigar Stoop said
they were hard gods and they answered no small prayers.
Never
ask anything for yourself, Effie Sevrance
, Inigar's hard old
voice reminded her.
Ask only that they watch over the clan
.
To Effie, Raina Blackhail
was
the clan, so she spoke the
nine sacred names of the gods.

As she named Behathmus, who was called
the Dark God and was said to have eyes of black iron, Raina began to
stir in the clearing below. Her legs came upward and her arms slid
inward and her chin came down to her chest. She shrank as Effie
watched, her body closing around itself like a dead and curling leaf.
No noise left her lips, no tears spilled from her eyes, she just drew
herself smaller and smaller until Effie thought her back would break.

Effie cried for her. She didn't know
that she was crying until the wetness reached her mouth and she
tasted salt. Something bad had happened. And Effie wasn't sure what
it was, but she knew two things without question: Raina was hurt.

And she, Effie Sevrance, could have
stopped it. Her lore had known. It had wanted to tell her. It had
tried
to tell her. It had pushed and pushed, but she'd
refused to listen.

Scrambling free of the bushes, she
brushed snow and ice from her oilskin, hood, and skirt. She didn't
know if she was still crying; her cheeks were too numb to feel tears.

She could have stopped Mace Blackhail
from hurting Raina. She could have taken the lore in her fist and
held it until she saw the bad thing. It had happened like that with
Da…

A deep shiver worked its way up her
spine. Suddenly anxious to be away, back inside the small enclosed
space of her cell, she ran along the ridge and down the slope.

She didn't know how long it took her to
get back to Raina—a quarter, perhaps; no longer—but by
the time she reached the clearing Raina had become herself. Her hair
was newly smoothed, her skirt free of ice, and her oilskin fastened
tightly all the way down to her knees. She smiled briefly as Effie
approached.

"I was just about to come looking
for you. It's time we were home. Come on. I'll put you on Mercy's
back." Her voice was level with just a slight strain to it. Her
eyes were dead.

Effie didn't speak. A lump had come to
her throat.

The Dhooneseat

Vaylo Bludd spat at his dog. He would
have preferred to spit at his second son, but he didn't. The dog, a
hunter and wolf mix with a neck as wide as a door, bared its teeth
and snarled at his master. Other dogs leashed behind it made low
growling noises in the backs of their throats. The wad of black curd
spat by Vaylo Bludd landed on the first dog's foreleg, and the dog
chewed at its own fur and skin to get it off. Vaylo didn't smile, but
he was pleased. That one definitely owed more to the wolf.

'So, son," he said, still looking
at the dog, "what would
you
have me do next, seems you
ill like the plans made by your father?"

Vaylo Bludd's second son, Pengo Bludd,
grunted. He was standing too close to the fire, and his already red
face now glowed like something baked in an oven. His spiked hammer
trailed on the floor behind him like a dog on a leash. "We must
attack Blackhail while the win is still upon us. If we sit on our
arses now, we miss our chance to take the clan-holds in a single
strike."

Sitting back on the great stone
Dhooneseat that formed the center of the mightiest and best fortified
roundhouse in the clanholds, Vaylo Bludd considered spitting again.
With no black curd in his mouth, he worked up a dose of saliva by
jabbing his tongue against his teeth. Stone Gods! But his teeth
ached! One of these days he was going to find a man to pull them out.
Find a man, then kill him.

Vaylo Bludd swallowed the spit. He took
a moment to look at his second son. Pengo Bludd had not shaved back
his hairline in days, and a bristling band of hair framed his face.
The longer hair at the back, with its braids and twists, was
similarly ill tended. Bits of goosedown and hay were caught in the
matted strands. Vaylo Bludd made a hard sound in his throat.
Legitimate offspring were born to complacency and arrogance. You
wouldn't see such sloth on a bastard!

"Son," he said, his voice as
low as a dog growl, "I have lorded this clan for thirty-five
years—a good five of that before you were born. Now I daresay
you'd think it boastful of me to point out just how far Bludd has
come under my lording, but I say I don't care. I am clan chief. Me,
the Dog Lord. Not you, lord of nothing but what I choose to give
you." Pengo's eyes narrowed. The hand that held his leather
hammer loop cracked as it curled to a fist. "We have Dhoone. We
can have Blackhail as well. The Bailsmen—"

Vaylo Bludd kicked out at the wolf dog,
making it jump back and yowl. "The Hailsmen will be expecting us
to attack. They'll have that roundhouse of theirs sealed as tight as
a
virgin's arse the minute we break their bounds. Hailsmen
aren't fools. They won't be found slacking like Dhoones."

"But-"

"
Enough
!" The Dog
Lord stood. All the dogs leashed to the rat hooks skittered back.
"What advantages we had here will not be easily got again. They
come with a price, as such things do. And it will be for me to say
when and if we use such means again. We have Dhoone. Make use of it.
Go, take Drybone and as many of those useless brothers of yours as
you can muster afore noon, and ride out to the Gnash border and
secure it. All the Dhoonesmen that rode away are likely there, and if
an attack is going to come, then it will more than likely start at
Gnash." Vaylo smiled, showing black aching teeth. "While
you're out there mayhap you can claim what land you see fit for your
steading. I heard it said once that a chief should always house his
sons on his borders."

Pengo Bludd snarled. Tugging on his
hammer loop, he raised his hammer from the floor and weighed its
limewood handle across his chest. The spiked hammer head bristled
like a basket of knives. Eyes the same color as his father's burned
coldly like the blue inner tongue of flames. Without a word he turned
on his heel, his braids and twists swinging out from his skull as he
moved.

When he reached the chamber door, Vaylo
stopped him with one word. "Son."

"
What
?" Pengo did
not turn around.

"Send the bairns to me afore you
leave."

Pengo Bludd snapped his head, then
continued his journey from the door. He slammed it with all his might
behind him.

The Dog Lord took a long breath when he
was gone. The dogs, all five of them including the wolf dog, were
quiet. After a moment Vaylo bent on one knee and beckoned them as
near as their various leashes would allow. He tousled them and
slapped their bellies and tested their speed by grabbing their tails.
They snarled and snapped and nipped him, wetting his hands and wrists
with their frothy saliva. They were good dogs, all of them.

Unlike most hunters and sled dogs,
whose fangs were filed to stop them chewing through leashes and
ruining pelts by tearing at game, Vaylo's own dogs still had fangs of
full length and sharpness. They could rip out a man's throat on his
say. None of them had names. Vaylo had long ago stopped keeping track
of all the names of those around him. A man with seven sons who all
had wives and in-laws and children of their own soon gave up keeping
tally on what people were called. What they
were
was the
only thing that counted.

Feeling separate pangs of pain in each
of his remaining seventeen teeth, the Dog Lord stood. Bones in his
knees cracked as they dealt with his weight. The Dhooneseat, carved
from a single slab of bluestone as tall as a horse, beckoned him
back. Vaylo moved away from it, picking a plain oakwood stool close
to the hearth. He was too old for stone thrones and too wary of
growing used to them. A bastard learned early that he always had to
be ready to give up his place.

Glancing toward the door that his
second son had slammed moments earlier, Vaylo frowned. That was the
problem with all of his sons: None of them knew what it was to give
up their place to another. They knew only the politics of take.

Behind his back, Vaylo could hear the
dogs scrapping among themselves. He heard the wolf dog's low
distinctive growl, and he knew without turning to look that the dog
was being attacked by the others because of the favor its master had
showed it. Vaylo made no move to interfere. Such was the way of life.

So, he thought, stretching out his legs
before the fire as he looked around the room,
this is the great
Dhoone roundhouse
. Men calling themselves kings had lived here
once. Now there were only chiefs.

A smile spread across Vaylo's face as
he remembered the last time he was here. He had not been invited that
time either. Thirty-six years ago it was now, in the dead of night
while Airy Dhoone, the clan chief at the time, and his sixty best men
were away. Vaylo slapped his thigh. That bloody guidestone had been
murder to move! Old Ockish Bull had ended up with a hernia as big as
a fist! And of the other four dozen clansmen who had helped pull it
free from the guidehouse, only two were able to move the next day,
and none could mount their horses for a week.

Vaylo chuckled. The whole operation had
been without
a
doubt the most misguided, ill-planned,
fool-stupid thing fifty grown men had ever conspired to do. They
never did get the guidestone farther than Blue Dhoone Lake. It was
still there today, at the bottom of the copper-tinted lake, resting
amid the silt and the sandstone, sunk within three hundred paces of
the Dhoonehouse itself.

None but the fifty knew that, of
course. When they returned to the Bludd roundhouse twenty days later,
all swore blind that the collection of rocks they arrived with,
pulled by a team of mules in a war cart, was none other than the
broken-down guidestone itself. Not some quarry-purchased rubble and a
bucket of ground glass. And it
had
made such an excellent
outhouse…

Vaylo Bludd leaned forward on his
stool. Those were the days! Jaw was all that counted. Jaw had taken
him, a bastard son with only half a name and enemies for brothers, to
the chiefship he held today. Take, he had. But it wasn't an assuming,
born-to-expect-it kind of take. It was take hard learned and hard
won. He hadn't gone to his father for a handout. Gullit Bludd had
said but a handful of words to his bastard son from the moment he'd
acknowledged him as his own. And a good half of them were curses.
Knocking.