A Cavern of Black Ice (90 page)

It took Veys several minutes to locate
the man's knife. The tip of a broken rib pressing against his lungs
made Veys wary of quick movements. To add to his difficulties, Hood
had fallen awkwardly on his side, and his body had to be levered
before Veys could gain access to his equipment belt and knife. Hood's
tunic had ridden up, and his bare belly was in contact with icy
ground. Already the rolls of flesh hanging from his gut had taken on
the yellowy gray stiffness of frozen flesh.

Veys found nothing to be concerned with
as he raised the knife to Hood's throat.

Frostbite was not a problem for a
corpse.

Meetings

Gull Moler, owner and sole proprietor
of Drover Jack's tavern, was cleaning up the mess from last night's
fight. He had a good broom in his hands, but even the stiff shire
horse bristles weren't enough to scrub the dried-on vomit off the
floor. Gull shook his head in exasperation. Fistfights were bad
enough. But why was there always some damn fool who kicked someone
else in the knackers? Guaranteed to make a man lose his supper, was a
blow to the knacks. Right disrespectful to the owner of the
establishment. Right disrespectful when that owner had to get down on
his hands and knees and scrape rubbery, partially digested oatmeal
off the floor.

It was all Desmi's fault, of course. It
usually was. If that daughter of his had one talent in life it was
surely for starting fights. She was just too comely for her own good.
Who would have guessed that she would have turned out to be a head
turner, especially with her dear departed mother looking the way she
did? Not that Pegratty Moler hadn't been a good woman and an
excellent wife. Heavens, no! She just wasn't known for her beauty,
that was all.

Feeling a small twinge of guilt, Gull
put down the broom and headed for the stove. He needed a bucket of
warm water for the floor and a dram or two of malt for his soul.

Drover Jack's was a one-room tavern.
Kitchen, beer cellar, dining tables, gaming tables, minstrel's stoop,
and great copper bath were all crammed into an area the size of a
modest vegetable garden. It had occurred to Gull that he could in all
honesty remove both the stoop and the bath and suffer no ill effects
to his trade. Thirty leagues northeast of Ille Glaive as he was, in
the shadow of the Bitter Hills, deep in the heart of ewe country,
Drover Jack's received few musicians stopping by to play for their
supper. And those who did never showed an interest in performing from
the stoop. Preferred to sit close to the stove, they did, or—even
worse—walk among the customers while they were playing! Still,
even in the face of this traitorous disinterest Gull couldn't bring
himself to part with the stoop. His was the only tavern in the Three
Villages that had one.

Same with the bath. Drover Jack's was
strictly a tavern; it sold food, drink, and warmth. It did not sell
beds for the night. Heavens, no! That was one trade Gull Moler did
not want. Travelers. They were trouble, paid in foreign coin, spoke
with accents Gull's one good ear had trouble deciphering, and they
always started fights. True, Three Village locals had been starting
enough of their own ever since Desmi came into bloom, but that was
beside the point. Locals were locals; they fought in ways Gull knew
and understood. They never damaged the stove, the beer taps, or the
proprietor. Travelers damaged everything in sight.

Which brought Gull to the copper bath.
No one except Radrow Peel had used it in the fifteen years it had
been sitting in the far corner below the hung meat and drying herbs.
And even then he hadn't bathed in it himself; he'd used it to thaw
out a sheep. Even so, a copper bath was a copper bath, and Gull was
inclined to keep it. Not only did it glow like a freshly struck
penny, casting a warm, reflective light upon a corner that had once
been dark, but it gave him boasting rights as well.

Drover Jack's could warm-bathe a
frostbitten limb, cold-bathe a fever, and sulfur-bathe anyone with
sheep ticks, scrofula, or the ghones. Overcome with feelings of
affection and pride, Gull crossed to the bath and patted its curled
rim. His sharp proprietor's eyes picked out telltale blue flecks
around the lip. Gull Moler's soft well-fed belly jiggled in
consternation.

Tarnish!

Desmi had sworn she had polished it
last week, yet Gull Moler knew a month's worth of neglect when he saw
it. That girl was turning out to be nothing but trouble. The fights
among her suitors he could stand, the girlish tantrums he could
stand, but sloppy care of Drover Jack's furnishings and fittings was
where he, as owner-proprietor, drew the line. The girl needed to be
talked to in the most serious terms. Her own good looks had turned
her head!

"Desmi!" he called, raising
his head toward the oak-and-plaster ceiling. "Come down here,
daughter!"

No response. And it was already noon!
Gull Moler looked from the ceiling to the bath. He could climb the
steps and bring her down, but while he was doing that the tavern
would not get opened, and the bath would not get scrubbed, and those
hateful blue flecks would remain.

For Gull Moler it was an easy choice.
From the back of his prized bloodwood serving counter, he took his
basket of cloths, soft and coarse, fuller's earth, pine wax, powdered
pumice, white vinegar, and lye. He loved and honored his daughter,
but he treasured his bath.

He did not hear the woman enter. He was
kneeling on the dark oak-plank floor, his attention given wholly to
the task of removing the rust from the bath, when a voice said:

"Milk steeped in phosphorus would
do the job better, and a few drops of tung oil rubbed into the
surface when you're done will stop the blue scale from coming back."

Gull Moler turned his head and looked
into the face of a short, no, average-size, woman of an age he
guessed to be about thirty. His first reaction was one of
disappointment. From the golden loveliness of her voice he had
expected someone extraordinary. Yet the woman was plain of hair and
face and clad in a shapeless dress of dove gray.

"I'm sorry if I distracted you,"
she said. "The door was open, so I let myself in."

Gull Moler looked at the door. Surely
he hadn't pulled the latches yet?

"I thought of knocking, but then I
said to myself,
What if a man, an owner-proprietor, is at work
inside here? What right have I to pull him from his tasks?"

Gull Moler put down his soft cloth and
smoothed his collar, all thoughts of latches forgotten. He stood
upright. "Such consideration does you credit, miss."

The woman, whose hair he had first
thought dark and graying but now saw was a delicate shade of ash
brown, nodded in a polite way. "Thank you, sir. And it's not
miss, by the way, it's madam. I'm a widow."

"Oh. I am sorry to hear that,
madam. Can I offer you a dram of malt?"

"I never drink."

Gull Moler began to frown. Experience
told him never to trust abstainers.

"Anything stronger than fortified
wine."

Gull's frown turned itself into a nod
of approval. Such moderation was fitting in a widow woman.

When he returned from the counter
bearing two cups of strong red wine on a limewood tray, he was
greeted by the sight of the woman crouched on her hands and knees,
polishing the copper bath to a glorious sheen.

"I hope you don't mind," she
said, continuing to buff the metal with a wrist action so smooth and
firm that watching her, Gull felt a guilty blush of sexual
excitement. "But it seems to me that a busy and important
owner-proprietor such as yourself must have plenty more pressing
things to do than spend his time scrubbing blue scale from a copper
bath."

"My daughter normally tends the
polishing, but—

"She's reached the age when she'd
rather tend herself than the tavern."

Gull sighed. "Exactly."

The woman's eyes darkened. Gull could
not tell what color they were, just that they darkened. "What
you need is someone to work for you a few days a week. Take the
strain off you and your daughter. A young girl can hardly be blamed
for acting like a young girl, can she? And an owner-proprietor such
as yourself should be concentrating on the higher points of his
business."

Gull nodded as she spoke. He wasn't
sure that a tavern like Drover Jack's
had
any higher points
of business, but that didn't stop him from agreeing with her all the
same.

"And a little help at the tables
at night would save both your and your daughter's feet."

Suddenly catching the real meaning of
the conversation, Gull laid the tray down on the nearest table. For
some reason he felt as if he'd been duped. "I couldn't take you
on, madam. It's just been me and my daughter since my wife died. I
couldn't afford to pay another set of hands. The business doesn't
warrant it."

The woman dipped her head in
disappointment. "I've heard such good things about Drover
Jack's. And now that I've come here and seen for myself this
beautiful copper bath and the fine minstrel's stoop…"
Abruptly the woman laid down the polishing cloth and stood. "Well,
I'd best be on my way."

Gull looked from the woman to the
copper bath. The metal shone more brightly than the day Rees Tanlow
had brought it on his cart from Ille Glaive. Even the reliefwork
around the hand rings had been scraped clean of all the gummy
remainders of previous waxes and polishes. Gull glanced at the
ceiling. Desmi was becoming a problem—just look at last night:
Burdale Ruff had kicked Clyve Wheat in the knackers because he'd
thought Clyve was looking at Desmi the wrong way.

Gull's glance came to rest upon the
woman once more. She was plain enough to inspire no fights, yet not
so ugly as to send customers away. And she
did
look so very
honest and hardworking. "I'll pay you five coppers a week."
It was a pitifully small amount, so small that Gull felt his cheeks
color as he said it.

"Done." The woman, who he had
first thought was of short or medium height, suddenly looked tall.
"I'll get to work on those table-tops; whoever cleaned them last
used too much wax. Then I'll pin on my apron, ready to serve the
midday trade. Your customers come from all over the Three Village
area, don't they?"

Gull nodded. "Yes, madam."

"Good." The woman smiled,
displaying teeth devoid of saliva. "It wouldn't be fitting for
you to call me madam anymore. I'm Maggy. Maggy Sea."

*** Ash rode north, then northwest.
When she came to the banks of the Wolf River, she forced the horse
into the black icy water and made him swim it. The horse was a shaggy
gelding with thick legs and ears like a mule, and he had no love of
moving water. Ash hardly cared. If she'd had a crop, she would have
whipped him. She could not allow herself to stop and think. Stop and
she might turn and ride back to the pass and take a count of the men
she had killed. Think and she might slide her feet from the stirrups,
push herself out of the saddle, and let the river's dark currents
take her to hell.

As it was, horse and rider were buoyed
by the thick black water, carried a league downstream by its force.
Ash let her hand trail upon the surface as the gelding swam beneath
her, watching grease and light ripple along her fingers like strange
gloves. Her dress floated around her, growing ever and ever darker as
it soaked up the substance of the river. Strangely, she wasn't cold.
Perhaps she should be… but then she
should
be feeling
a lot of things, yet she was feeling nothing at all.

When she reached the north bank, Ash
dismounted and took the wet saddle from the horse. The gelding shook
itself, thrashing its mane against its neck and kicking its hind legs
into the air. Ash looked at the sky. The storm had long passed, and a
late day sun sent shadows stretching for leagues. Even the wind had
stilled itself, and all was quiet except for the sound of rotten ice
cracking on distant ponds.

The terrain north of the river was
hard. Upstream, Ash saw oaks and green meadows, apple groves and dark
tilled earth. Downstream, where she was headed, lay a landscape of
conifers and trap rock, spawning ponds and spider moss. On the
northwest horizon, Ash saw the red and green needle foliage of resin
pines, trees that held on to their seeds for a lifetime, waiting
until forest fire or death to bear their young. On the southwest
horizon, if she looked back, she could see the dark green finger of
the Ganmiddich Tower. Night-dark smoke, the kind that was released
from burning pitch and petrified wood, poured from the topmost
chamber.

Blackhail. Ash had known that from the
moment she had first turned the mule-eared horse north and ridden
from the camp. There were few places from which the tower could not
be seen and nowhere to hide from the smoke. The red fire of Bludd had
been snuffed, and now a smokestack smoldered in its place. No flames
burned black, so the Hailsmen had chosen to send their message in
smoke instead.

Ash wasn't sure what the taking of
Ganmiddich would mean to Raif. Almost it didn't concern her. Raif had
already left, that she knew, and he was somewhere west waiting to
meet her. She did not question where the knowledge came from. She was
a Reach. Raif had sworn to see her safely to the Cavern of Black Ice,
and they were bound by that promise and the touch they had shared
outside Vaingate.

She remembered calling his name while…
while hands were
touching
her and everything was foggy and
she couldn't think, and her arms had been so hard to move, like lead,
and she'd heard someone say,
If she's waking, it'll make better
sport
. Ash stiffened. She thought she had called Raif's name out
loud, but somehow her lips wouldn't open and her tongue wouldn't
move, and the cry had sounded
inside
instead. Then she'd
opened her eyes and seen the face of the man kneeling above her, his
breath coming all ragged and short, his eyes… his eyes…