A Cavern of Black Ice (91 page)

Ash swallowed. She wouldn't think about
that now. Wouldn't. Holding the dripping saddle against her side, she
led the horse downstream. The light faded slowly, over hours, and the
first stars came out even before the sun had fully set. The moon
shone behind her, pale and not quite full. The land surrounding the
river became flatter the farther west she traveled, and from time to
time she spied the square outlines of farm buildings amid the trees
and freshly stamped hoofprints in the snow. Ash found herself little
concerned about the possibility of being spotted by outlying clansmen
or drovers. She didn't know if it was weariness or a sense of her own
power that made her unafraid. Who could harm her now? Who dared?

Ash stiffened her back as she walked.
They would be able to track her now, magic users, Sarga Veys, anyone
else her foster father sent to fetch her. Yet next time when they
came they would be wary,
prepared
. Suddenly she wished very
much that she had demanded more answers from Heritas Cant. She knew
nothing about her own power, couldn't even guess what she had done.
Killed men
, said a small voice inside her.
Killed them
with only a thought
.

Raif saw her before she saw him.
Slowly, over the course of an hour, she had worked her way around a
damned lake that bulged from the river like something about to burst.
Now, as she returned to the main body of water, she became aware that
she was drawing close to him. Gooseflesh puckered along her arms, and
for the first time since she'd left the camp at dawn she felt the
cold. Her stomach ached with anticipation. As she scanned the water's
edge, hoping to catch sight of him in the reflected surface light,
she heard her name spoken out loud. Turning her head in the direction
of the sound, she saw a dark silhouette emerge from a stand of resin
pines fifty paces ahead of her to the north. For an instant she was
afraid. The figure was tall, dis torted, the darkest object in sight.
She pulled back minutely, drawing closer to the horse for
reassurance.

The figure raised his hands from his
side. "Ash. It's me. Raif."

Fear fled as she saw his face. Her
chest tightened. The saddle slid from her grip, hitting the ground
with a soft crunch.
What have they done to him
? All the
quiet strength that she had filled herself with during the ride
evaporated, and a wave of exhaustion made her legs shake like straw
as she ran through the snow to reach him.

Raif was silent as he pressed her
against his chest. He smelled like ice. Hard nubs of scarred flesh on
his neck and hands scraped her cheeks, and tiny flecks of desiccated
blood sifted from his hair to hers. His body was so cold. Ash had to
stop herself from shivering.

He pulled away first, keeping both
hands on her shoulders while he studied her. Ash saw then the
leanness of his face and chest, the lack of spare fat or tissue on
his body. He looked older, but something more than older as well. The
raven lore at his throat glinted blue black in the moonlight…
it was the only thing on him that looked new made.

Dark eyes searched her face. After a
long moment he said, "Let's find some shelter."

His voice was weary but gentle. Ash
wondered what had happened at the Inch yet dared not ask.

He went back for the horse and the
saddle. Watching him, seeing how thin he was, how he moved like a
wraith by the water's edge, Ash felt the slow burn of anger in her
chest. She could kill the men who had done this to him, gladly and
without regret.

When he fell in by her side, she
offered him the blanket that covered her shoulders, yet he shook his
head. In silence he led her north from the river. The moon rose
higher as they climbed the bank, forming pools of blue light upon the
snow.

"Do you know the area around
here?" she asked after a while.

Raif shook his head. "Ganmiddich
is a border clan, sworn to Dhoone. Blackhail has little use for it."

Ash thought back to the black smoke
pouring from the tower. "Until now?"

"Until now."

It was the end of the conversation.
Raif led them across a field of eroded slate, lately grown over by
tufts of urine-colored bladdergrass and dog lichen. Snow cover was
light, as the wind dried the top layers to powder and then blew them
south to the Bitter Hills. Ice smoke boiled off the fields, swirling
around the horses' cannons as they climbed to the high ground above
the river. When they reached the top of the bluff, Ash spotted a
farmhouse and half a dozen farm buildings scattered in the valley
below. The farm's walls had been cut from the same green riverstone
as the Ganmiddich roundhouse, and its roof was blue gray slate. Raif
guided the horse toward it, crossing a series of tarred fences
erected to contain sheep.

"Won't someone be living here?"
Ash whispered.

"No. Blackhail would have cleared
it first, before they took the roundhouse."

"Why? What threat is a farmer to
an invading force?"

"When one clan takes another, it
takes it wholly."

"What about the people who lived
here, the clansfolk?"

Raif shrugged. "Dead. Captured.
Fled to Bannen or Croser."

"What becomes of their livestock?"

"It's lost either way. If a farmer
is killed or captured, his animals are taken. If he's lucky enough to
escape, then most of those animals will go in Refuge Purse to the
clan who takes him in."

Ash frowned. "I thought Croser was
a sister clan to Ganmiddich? Wouldn't they take Ganmiddich clansmen
in out of a sense of honor?"

Raif's eyes darkened at the word
honor
.
"It's war. All clans must do what they must do."

The words reminded Ash that she and
Raif came from different worlds. He was a clansman, grown in the
wind-stripped spaces of the clanholds, brought up to fear nine gods
who lived in stone and gloried in war. Ash frowned. Her god lived in
thin air and spoke of peace—not that anyone in the Mountain
Cities ever heard him. She glanced at Raif. His gods meant something
to him. Hers meant almost nothing at all. She thought for a moment,
then said, "If you need to stay and fight for your clan, I will
not stop you."

"I have no clan."

Ash shivered at the tone of his voice.
She waited, but he said no more.

The farm outbuildings consisted of a
series of stone sheds and paddocks connected by walled sheep runs
sunk partly underground. The main building was missing its door, and
many of the shutters had been left to bang loose in the wind. As they
approached the entrance, Raif stopped to pry a broken roof tile from
the frozen mud. Ash tried not to look at the tattered and bloody skin
on his hands, the nail turned black, the white edges of bone poking
through knuckles that looked half-skinned. Hefting the slate against
his chest, he bade her wait outside while he checked the building for
armed men.

As the minutes passed Ash felt herself
growing colder. The night was dark now, thin in substance like cold,
dry nights always were. Frozen weeds crunched beneath her boots as
she stamped her feet.

So
cold tonight, so cold. Warm
us,
mistressss, pretty mistresses. Reach for us. We're close now.
We smell you, smell of warmth and blood and light
…

"Ash!
Ash
!"

Rough hands shook her awake. She was no
longer standing by the mule-eared horse, but in the timber-framed
doorway of the farmhouse. Raif stood before her, his lips tight as
stretched wire, his arms supporting her weight.

"How long?"

"Seconds."

Ash looked away. She felt as sick as if
she'd taken a blow to the head. Heritas Cant's wards were gone.
Whatever she'd done at the campground had blasted them clean away.
Nothing was standing between her and the Blind.

"Let's go inside." Raif's
voice was quiet, his hand on her arm firm. "There's no one here.
We'll be safe tonight."

Ash let herself be guided into the
dark, strong-smelling interior of the farmhouse. Raif made her sit as
he broke down a chair with his booted feet then tore a mangy
sheepskin rug into strips to light a fire. The force of his actions
made her flinch. She watched as he searched the black mouth of the
hearth, looking for something to strike for sparks. He found an old
iron pot with a rough base and built a mound of wool tufts and fabric
scraps around it, then struck the base hard with a wedge of slate.

It took a lot of coaxing and blowing to
turn the quick flashes of light into flames. Ash concentrated on
Raif's actions, afraid that if she let her mind wander in the
darkness, the voices would take her to a place she did not want to
go. The muscles in her arms ached as she kept them pressed tightly
against her sides.

When the fire finally took and
yellow-and-white flames spilled over the broken chair spindles,
releasing smoke that smelled of pines, Raif went outside to search
for food. Ash did not move for a long time after he'd gone. She
feared to step away from the flames. The farmhouse kitchen was a
broken shell: charred timbers here, cracked masonry there. Shadows
danced on walls black with soot. Ash shivered. She missed Angus…
and Snowshoe and Moose. Where were they now? Did the Dog Lord still
hold them, or had Blackhail claimed them for its own?

She closed her eyes for a moment, then
set herself to working on her dress. The bodice was ripped and dirty,
the hem stiff with ice. She tugged on the torn bits of fabric, tying
knots and unraveling threads from the blanket to bind the bodice
closed. She didn't want to have to look at her breasts for a very
long time… not until the bruises had healed. The skirt was
easier to deal with; she simply stripped it off and beat it against
the wall.

Raif returned as she was feeding the
fire with the last scraps of wood. He carried with him a pan packed
with powdered snow, a long-leafed chicory plant with its roots still
attached, and an animal carcass that was warm but not bleeding. The
animal was the size of a small dog, with sharp, opaque claws, a fox's
snout, and rich black-and-gold fur. At first Ash couldn't work out
how Raif had killed it, as she knew he had no weapon. Then she saw
the fist-size clot of blood directly above the creature's heart.
Raif's eyes met hers. Ash tried to hold his gaze, but in the end she
looked away.

Even without a bow he can do it
,
she thought.
Even with a jagged chunk of slate.

Raif made short work of skinning and
dressing the carcass. He told her the creature was called a fisher
and its pelt was highly valued by Dhoonesmen, "for the Dhoone
Kings wore cloaks of fine-spun wool, dyed as blue as thistles, with
collars of fisher fur." Ash liked listening to Raif speak and
was infinitely glad he didn't ask for her help in preparing the
carcass for roasting. Somehow, with only a thin piece of slate, he
managed to open and drain the thing, remove the organ tree, and
quarter the bones. The blood he saved for gravy.

While the meat was browning on the tin
platter, he stripped leaves from the chicory plant and rolled them in
his fists until they were broken and leaking sap. That done, he
emptied the leaves into the pot of melting snow and stirred the
contents until the liquid turned green. After a few minutes he
emptied the cooked blood and meat juices into the pot. The fat
sizzled and spat as it hit the water, belching out steam that smelled
of roasted meat and bitter licorice.

Ash's mouth began to water. "You're
used to cooking, aren't you."

Raif shrugged. "Camping. Cleaning
kills. In the clanholds, before a boy takes his first yearman's oath,
he's pretty much at the mercy of any sworn clansman. Clansmen hunt,
bring the kills to camp, then leave the dressing and roasting to
those without oaths. It's the way it's always been. Men who have
sworn to die for their clan deserve respect."

Ash would have liked to ask Raif if he
had spoken a yearman's oath, yet something about his movements as he
spoke warned her away from the subject. Instead she said, "Do
you know what's happened to Angus?"

Raif stiffened. A moment passed before
his words came. "He may have been captured by Blackhail; I can't
know for sure. Even if Bludd still holds him, he should be safe. He's
more valuable alive than dead."

Ash wanted to believe him. "What
do we do now?"

"We head west at first light."

"But we can't leave tomorrow,"
Ash cried. "What about Angus? And
you
. You're in no
state to travel. Look at your hands, your face…"

Raif started shaking his head before
Ash had finished speaking. "There's no time to wet-nurse wounds
or look for Angus. Cant's wardings are gone. The creatures in the
Blind have already begun calling you, and if Cant is to be believed,
then that's not the worst of your troubles. He said you would die,
remember? He said that it costs you to fight them. They've already
taken you once today. What if they take you tonight or the next night
or the night after that? How long will it be before I can't pull you
back?"

Ash could find no words to fight with.
He was right, yet she didn't want him to be. She wanted to wait, at
least a day, just one day, to sit and think and put the horror of the
campground behind her. Unconsciously she ran a hand down the front of
her dress. "What about clothing? Supplies? We've got a horse,
but precious little else."

Raif gestured toward the fisher pelt
hanging high above the fire, the raw face of its flesh side facing
the flames. "It should be dry enough to use tomorrow. It'll make
a good pair of mitts or a collar once I've scraped the fat. Come
first light I'll look around, see what I can find. There's bound to
be something here we can use."

"And food?"

Raif showed a cold smile. "I
should be able to see to that."