A Cavern of Black Ice (5 page)

Ash shivered.

Iss closed the spillhole, snuffing the
lamp. Holding open the fossil-wood door, he stepped into the column
of cold air that rushed in from the corridor beyond. "There's
nothing for you to be worried about, almost-daughter. You're just
catching up, that's all. Surely Katia must have told you that most
girls your age are women in
all
senses of the word? Your
body is simply doing those things that theirs have already done. One
would hardly expect such changes to occur without some small measure
of pain."

With that he moved into the shadows of
the corridor, swiftly becoming one himself. The metal chains sewn
into his coat chimed softly like faraway bells, and then the door
clicked shut and there was silence.

Ash fell back onto the bed. Shaking and
strangely excited, she pulled the covers over her chest and set her
mind to thinking of ways she could find answers for herself. Her
foster father's words only
sounded
like the truth. She knew
she wouldn't sleep, could absolutely
swear
she wouldn't
sleep, yet somehow, unbelievably, she did.

Her dreams, when they came, were all of
ice.

*** The Listener could not sleep. His
ears—what were left of them—pained him like two rotting
teeth. Nolo had brought him fresh bear tallow from the rendering pit,
and it was good and white and looked creamy enough to eat, so the
Listener had done just that. Waste of good tallow—using it to
plug up two old black holes that had once been ears. Waste of good
muskox hair to warm them, too. But there was little to be done about
that: Nothing needed warming as much as an old scar.

Nolo's footprints formed a visible line
to and from the rendering pit and then over to the meat rack in the
center of the cleared space. Looking at them, the Listener made a
mental note to have a talk with Nolo's wife, Sila: She wasn't filling
her husband's mukluks with enough dried grass. Nolo's booted feet had
melted snow! Sila would have to get chewing.

The Listener spent an idle moment
imagining Sila's plump lips chewing on a tuft of colt grass to make
it soft enough for stuffing into the space between her husband's
outer and inner boots. It was a very pleasant moment. Sila had
unusually fine lips.

Still, he was old and had no ears, and
Sila was young and had a husband, and together they had four good
ears between them, so the Listener nudged aside the image of Sila and
turned to the matter at hand: his dream.

Sitting on a stool carved out of
whalebone, with his old brain-tanned bear's hide around his
shoulders, the Listener sat at the entrance to his ground and looked
out at the night. Heat from his two soapstone lamps warmed his back,
and cold from the still, freezing air chilled his front: that was the
way he liked it when he was listening to his dreams.

Lootavek, the one who listened before
him, swore that a man could only hear his dreams
as
he was
having them, yet the Listener thought him mistaken. Much like Nolo's
boot lining, dreams needed to be chewed on.

The Listener listened. In his lap he
held the hollow tip of a narwhal's tusk, a little silver knife that
had once been used to kill a starving child, and a chunk of sea
salt-hardened driftwood from a wrecked ship that had been beset then
stoved in by the cold blue ice of Endsea. Like all good talismans,
they felt right in the hand, and as the Listener's body heat warmed
them in varying degrees, they released his mind into the halfworld
that was part darkness and part light.

Fear gripped at the Listener's belly as
he fell into his dreams.

Hands reached. Loss wept. A man
with an impossible choice made the best decision he could…

'Sadaluk! Sadaluk! You must awaken
before the cold burns your skin."

The Listener opened his eyes. Nolo was
standing above him. The small, dark-skinned man had his prized
squirrel coat tucked under his arm and a bowl of something hot and
steaming in his hand.

The Listener shifted his gaze from Nolo
to the night sky. The pale glow of dawn could clearly be seen across
the Bay of Auks. Stars faded even as the Listener looked away. He had
been listening to his dream for half the night.

Nolo tucked the squirrel coat around
the Listener's shoulders and then held out the steaming bowl. "Bear
soup, Sadaluk. Sila made me swear to watch you drink it."

The Listener nodded gruffly, though in
truth he was quite pleased—not about the bear soup, which he
could get from any fire around the rendering pit, but for the fact of
Sila's attention.

The bear soup was hot, dark, and
strong, and bits of sinew, bear fat, and marrow bobbed upon the
surface. The Listener enjoyed the feel of steam on his face as he
drank. The warmth of the bone bowl soothed the joints in his black,
hard-as-wood hands. When he had finished he held out the empty bowl
for Nolo to take. "Go now. I will return the squirrel coat to
you when I am rested."

Nolo took the bowl with all the usual
carefulness of a husband handling one of his wife's best dishes and
made his way back to his ground.

The Listener envied him.

After what his dreams had shown him
this night, the Listener knew that such a base and mortal emotion
should be beneath him. But it wasn't, and that was the way of the
world.

The Listener had seen the One with
Reaching Arms reach out and beckon the darkness. And that meant only
one thing.

Days darker than night lay ahead.

Pulling hides across his doorway, the
Listener retreated into the warmth and golden light of his ground.
His bench was thick with animal skins heaped high with fresh white
heather, and he lay down upon it and closed his eyes. He had no wish
to dream and sleep, so he turned his thoughts to Sila and imagined
her and Nolo sledding across the frozen margins of Endsea. He
imagined the rime of ice beneath the sled runners wearing thin and
Nolo calling a halt so that his wife could make new ice by the
quickest way she could.

This pleasant image held the Listener's
attention for only a short spell. There was work to be done. Messages
had to be sent. Days darker than night lay ahead, and those who lived
to know such things needed to be told. Let no one say that Sadaluk,
Listener of the Ice Trapper tribe, was not the first to know.

A Circle of Dust

Are you sure you checked the rear of
the horse corral?" The freezing wind made Drey Sevrance squint
as he spoke. Ice crystals glittered in the fox fur of his hood, and
pine needles clung like matted hair to his shoulders, arms, and back.

Raif thought his brother looked tired,
and older than he had ever looked before. Dawn light was showing
yellow on the horizon, and it cast pits of sulfur shadow on his face.
"I checked," Raif said. "No sign of Mace."

'What about the alder swamp and the
stream?"

'Swamp's frozen. I walked along the
stream bank. Nothing."

Drey stripped off his gloves and ran
his bare hands over his face.

'The current might have carried the
body downstream."

Raif shook his head. "There's not
enough water to carry a bloated fox from one bend to another, let
alone a full-grown man clear from the camp."

'It would have been running faster
yesterday at noon."

Raif took a breath to speak, then
thought better of it. The only time that stream would ever be strong
enough to carry a body was during the second week of spring thaw when
the runoff from the balds and Coastal Ranges was at its height—Drey
knew that. Suddenly uneasy but not sure why, Raif reached out and
touched Drey's sleeve. "Come on. Let's get back to the firepit."

'Mace Blackhail is out here somewhere,
Raif." Drey pushed a hand through the frozen air. "I
know he's more than likely dead, but what if he isn't? What if he's
wounded and fallen?"

'There were those tracks—"

'I don't want to hear about those
tracks again. Is that clear? They could have been left by anyone at
any time. Mace was standing dogwatch—he could have been
anywhere when the raid came. Now either the raiders got to him first
and he's lying frozen in some draw on the floodplain, or he made it
back to the camp, warned the others, and we just haven't found him
yet."

Raif hung his head. He didn't know how
to reply. How could he tell his brother he had a feeling that no
matter how long and carefully they searched, they would still find no
sign of Mace Blackhail? Shrugging heavily, he decided to say nothing.
He was dead tired, and he didn't want to argue with Drey.

Drey's face softened a fraction. Frozen
colt grass cracked beneath his feet as he shifted his weight from
left to right. "All right. We'll head back to the firepit. We'll
search wider for Mace come full daylight."

Too exhausted to hide his relief, Raif
followed Drey back to the tent circle. Wind-twisted hemlocks and
blackstone pines thrashed against the sky like chained beasts.
Somewhere close by, water trickled over loose shale, and far beyond
the horizon a raven screamed at the dawn. Hearing the rough and angry
cry of the bird the clan called Watcher of the Dead, Raif raised his
hand to his throat. With his thick dogskin gloves on he could barely
feel the hard hook of the raven's bill he wore suspended on a length
of retted flax. The raven was his lore, chosen for him at birth by
the clan guide.

The guide who had given Raif the raven
lore was five years dead now. No one had been more deeply honored in
the clan. He was ancient and he'd stunk of pigs and Raif had hated
him with a vengeance. He had saved the worst possible lore for Tem
Sevrance's second son. No one before or after had ever been given the
raven. Ravens were scavengers, carrion feeders; they could kill, but
they preferred to steal. Raif had seen how they followed a lone wolf
for days, hoping to snatch a meal from an opened carcass. Everyone
else in the clan, men and women alike, had fared better with their
lores. Drey had been given a bear claw, like Tem before him. Dagro
Blackhail's lore was an elk stag, Jorry Shank's a river pike, Mallon
Clayhorn's a badger. Shor Gormalin was an eagle, like Raina
Blackhail. As for Dagro's foster son, Mace…

Raif thought for a moment. What was his
lore? Then it came to him: Mace Blackhail was a wolf.

The only person in the entire clan who
had a lore stranger than
a
raven was Effie. The guide had
given her nothing but an ear-shaped piece of stone. Raif grew angry
just thinking about it. What had the Sevrances ever done to the old
bastard to deserve such short shrift?

Raif tugged at the raven's lore,
testing its oiled binding. When he was younger he had thrown the
thing away more times than he could recount, yet somehow the guide
always found it and brought it back. "It's yours, Raif
Sevrance," he would say, holding out the black piece of horn in
his scarred filthy palm. "And one day you may be glad of it."

All thoughts of ravens flew from Raif's
mind as he and Drey approached the tent circle. The first rays of
sunlight slid across the frozen tundra, illuminating the campsite
with long threads of morning light. Already the six
hide-and-moose-felt tents, the horse posts, the firepit, the drying
racks, and the chopping stump had the look of ruins about them. Tem
had once told Raif a story about a great dark deathship that mariners
swore guarded the entrance to Endsea, keeping all but the blind and
insane away. That was what the tents looked like now: the sails of a
dead ship.

Raif shivered. His hand dropped from
his neck to the hollowed-out antler tine that was attached to his
gear belt by a ring of tar-blackened brass. Sealed inside the tine
was hallowed earth: dust ground from the guidestone that formed the
Heart of Clan. Every clan had a guide-stone, and every clansman
carried a portion of it with him until he died.

The Clan Blackhail guidestone was a
massive slab of folded granite as big as a stable block, shot with
veins of black graphite and slick with grease. Clan Bludd's
guidestone was also folded granite, but it was studded with seams of
red garnets that shone like drying blood. Raif had never seen the
powder that came from the Bluddstone, but he thought it must look
pretty much the same as that ground from the Hailstone: smooth gray
powder that ran through the hand like liquid smoke.

As he neared the firepit, he plucked
the tine from his belt, breaking the brass ring. The tine was sealed
closed with a cap of beaten silver, and Raif ran his thumb along the
tine's length, feeling for the edge. Twelve men had died here, and
only two remained. And two men without horses, carts, or sleds could
never hope to bring back the dead.

The roundhouse lay five days' hard
travel south, and that was more than time enough for scavengers to
tear the bodies to shreds.

Raif wouldn't have it. Ravens were in
the sky already, turning circles a league across, and soon wolves,
coyotes, bears, and tundra cats would harken to the sound of their
kaawing
. All beasts that fed upon dead things would be drawn
to the camp, in search of one final meal to gorge on before winter
started true.

Shaking his head with a single savage
blow, Raif flicked the cap from the tine. It popped open with a small
hiss. Fine powder from the guidestone streamed in the wind like a
comet's tail, bringing the taste of granite to Raif's lips. After a
moment of utter silence, he began walking the circle. Around the
firepit, the drying racks, the tents, and the bodies he moved,
carving a path of air and dust. The gray powder sailed long on
winter's breath, riding the cold eddies and swirling up-drafts before
sinking to its frozen bed.

Nothing was ever going to take Tern
Sevrance. Ever. No ravens would pick at his eyes and his lips, no
wolves would sink their fangs into his belly and his rump, no bears
would suck the marrow from his bones, and no dogs would fight over
scraps. He'd be damned to the darkest pits in hell if they would.