A Cavern of Black Ice (92 page)

Ash made her face show no reaction. For
a while the only sound was the snort of burning wood as it released
small pockets of moisture to the flames. Raif speared the roasting
heart with a stick, turned it so the side with all the veins showed.

"What happened today at dawn?"

Ash looked up. "Why do you ask?"

"I felt something, after I left
the tower. It was like the day my father died… only different.
The river swelled and broke its shore ice, and I smelled metal, like
when steel's taken hot from a furnace."

"You knew it was me?"

"Yes." Raif's eyes rose to
meet hers. "If anyone hurt you, I will kill them."

A chill took her. Anyone else, and
those words would have meant nothing; but coming from Raif Sevrance
they sounded like absolute truth. She thought carefully before
speaking. "I think I was drugged. I don't remember leaving the
roundhouse. I remember feeling cold and a bit sick, and all I wanted
to do was lie down and sleep. And then I had all these dreams…
and they all got mixed up. And then there were hands on me…
and I thought it was part of the dream. Only it wasn't." Ash
found some small piece of gravel on the floor to look at. "Then
I panicked. There were all these men around me, and I just wanted
them to go away… and I got angrier and angrier…"
She shook her head at the piece of gravel. "What happened then?"

'Do you really need to know that? Do
you really need to know what I
saw
?"

"
I
need to know if you
reached."

Ash swallowed. Suddenly the scent of
roasting meat was enough to make her sick. When she spoke her voice
was quiet. "I felt Cant's wardings snap. And at that point, that
one point, I didn't care. I wanted those men gone. I wished them
dead. I wasn't thinking about the Blind. I don't know if I reached or
if I didn't; it happened so fast and my mind was on just one thing."
She paused, taking a quick moment to glance at Raif's face. "Then
I felt something spill out with the power. I heard a noise, high,
like the sound of a knife drawn over glass. Something tore open…
the air… I don't know what. There were things waiting on the
other side, Raif. Terrible things. They were men, but not men, with
eyes that burned black and red and bodies that were all shadow. I saw
them. I knew what they were." She shivered. "And they do
not fear me."

Fat hissed as it dripped onto the
flames, giving off fine dark smoke. Raif moved from his place near
the fire, and a moment later Ash felt a warm arm wrap around her
shoulders and a second encircle her waist. She heard Raif murmur,
"Stone Gods help us," and even though the clannish gods
weren't her gods, she repeated the words to herself.

Quickly, before she lost nerve, she
told him the last of it, how she'd panicked and pulled back, how the
dark fire in the creatures' eyes had dimmed, and how they'd screamed
and screamed as she'd sent them back to whatever hell they'd come
from.

As she spoke, she felt the hairs on
Raif's neck lift away from his skin. She counted the seconds until he
pulled away from her. She thought he would turn his back, cross to
the fire, and busy himself with the cooked meat there. She did not
expect him to stay and meet her eyes. But he did.

Incredibly, she saw he was smiling. The
sort of gentle, crazy smile that came from shared troubles, from bad
news heaped upon more bad news, and the unasked question,
What
next
? His eyes were dark, but warm, too. And the fear was almost
hidden. He took her hands in his, wrapping them carefully in his
fists until he had covered all her flesh.

"Are you afraid of me yet?"
she asked him.

"No. But I'm getting close."

Their laughter was on the edge of
desperation, yet no less for it. When it was done, Raif released
Ash's hands and stood. "You're not alone in this, Ash March.
Know that. We will make it to the Cavern of Black Ice, and we
will bring an end to this nightmare. I swear that on the faces of
nine gods."

Ash nodded. She watched as he made his
way to the fire, took the stock of snowmelt, meat juices, and chicory
from the flames, and set it to cool on the floor. Next he moved the
tin platter containing the roasted fisher carcass and its edible
organs from the heat and began to
section it as best he
could with his sharp piece of slate. For the first time Ash noticed
the silver-capped tine at his waist. It was larger than the one he
normally wore, the horn darker, the tip sword bashed and peeling. She
had been present when duff Drybannock had torn Raif's tine from his
belt, yet now another hung in its place.

It meant something, yet Ash knew it
wasn't the time to ask questions.

It was time to eat, then sleep.

Something Lost

Effie Sevrance had misplaced her lore.

She'd looked everywhere for it, all her
secret places like the little dog cote, the space under the stairs in
the great hall, and even in the strange-smelling wet cell where
Longhead grew mushrooms and mold. She was certain that she'd had it
yesterday when she awoke, as she clearly remembered pulling it from
her neck and dropping the little gray stone in her fleece bag along
with the rest of her collection. She was sure about that.

What she
wasn't
sure about was
what happened next. She remembered carrying the fleece bag with her
most of the morning, could almost
swear
that she'd had it
with her while she ate her blood pudding at noon. Trouble was, Anwyn
Bird had kept her so busy all day, running around doing all those
chores that needed doing with a full half of the sworn men away, and
she'd been to so many places and done so many things, that everything
had got mixed up in her head. Now, thinking about it, she couldn't
really
be sure if she'd had blood pudding at supper,
noonday, or dawn. Possibly she'd had it thrice. Certainly it had been
cold and greasy and had to be chewed to
death
before it went
down her throat.

Effie didn't mind the chores at all…
as long as they didn't involve going outside. It was good to feel
useful. Some things came easily to her, such as keeping tally of the
oil and wood stores, divvying up eggs and milk quarts, and running
messages word for word among Raina, Anwyn, and Orwin Shank. Sometimes
whole hours went by where she forget about her lore and all the bad
things it showed her. It was a good thing to walk into a room where
you knew you had purpose, where people were waiting upon your message
or your tally, and where they listened to what you had to say. There
was less time to worry and think. Just yesterday morning ancient,
liver-spotted Gat Murdock had stopped her in the kitchen doorway and
told her that she reminded him of her mother when she'd first married
Da and come to live in the roundhouse. "Aye. You should've seen
Meg Sevrance then," the old swordsman had said. "As clever
at figuring as any man, yet comely enough so you clean forgot it and
thought about her dark eyes instead."

Effie mouthed the speech to herself for
the hundredth time. She did not want to forget it. Her mother had
been good at figuring. Just like her.

"Effie! You wouldn't be dallying
on those steps now, would you?" Anwyn Bird's voice rose up the
staircase like the call of a rusty horn. Effie peered down, but the
grand matron of the roundhouse was not in sight. Her graying yellow
braids and barrel-shaped body were hidden by a block of bloodwood
stangs. "As you know what happens to those who stop and daydream
on the stairs."

Effie thought for a moment. "They
get trampled if there's a fire." Anwyn Bird's snort of
indignance was enough to send roosting pigeons into flight. Effie
sensed much shaking of the great yellow head. "You, my girl, are
going to be a problem come the courting years. You don't say but two
words a day, and when you do, you come out with something that stops
all talk stone dead."

"Sorry, Anwyn."

Some distance below Effie's feet, air
puffed from Anwyn's lips. "Don't sorry me, young lady. Sony's a
word for faithless husbands and bad cooks." More puffing
followed. "Run along now and find Inigar Stoop. Tell him Orwin
Shank's called a meeting in the Great Hearth, and his council is
needed."

"Yes, Anwyn." Effie started
down the steps. She knew Anwyn wasn't mad at her really, not in a
special way. Anwyn was mad at most people most of the time; it was
how she managed to get so much done. By the time Effie reached the
final turn in the stairs, the roundhouse matron was already on her
way back to the kitchen, her voice cracking orders to anyone unlucky
enough to cross her path.

Effie took the stairs and headed for
the small stone corridor that linked the main building to the
guidehouse. It was late afternoon, not the time of day she'd normally
choose to visit the guidehouse. Inigar Stoop was always there until
sundown, and although Effie loved the dark smoke-filled quiet of the
guidehouse very much, she always felt cold and itchy around the man
who called it his home. Inigar smelled funny. Ever since the war
started, he butchered hogs with his own hands and poured their blood
on the smoke fires to make them burn thick and long. And his eyes
were so dark they were like mirrors, and when you saw yourself in
them you looked very small. Effie ducked to avoid a bloodwood beam
leaking pitch. Inigar had a way of looking at you with those dark
eyes that made you
sure
he knew all your secrets and bad
thoughts.

The great clang and hiss of the clan
forge could be heard throughout the roundhouse day and night ever
since Mace Blackhail had ordered Brog Widdie and his crew to turn
every bit of metal in the roundhouse into an arrow or a hammerhead,
yet as Effie approached the green-stained door of the guidehouse the
noise receded to the distant clamor of a kitchen at mealtime. Effie
didn't like the forge. It was hot and bright, and the roughest of the
tied clansmen worked there under Brog Widdie's Dhoone-blue eyes. Yet
she had grown accustomed to the noise. Things seemed too quiet when
it was gone.

Like many outlying parts of the
roundhouse, the guidehouse corridor had ceded to damp. There were no
longer enough men to plaster and rechink the walls, and Raina
Blackhail had forbidden any woman to spend a moment plugging leaks or
repairing cracks when she could be tending to war needs instead.
Supplies were the biggest problem. Even with the tied farmers and
free crofters yielding their livestock and grain to the clan's keep,
they were stretched for fresh eggs, butter, and milk. So many of the
spring lambs had been slaughtered for meat that it was impossible to
find a room in the roundhouse that was not hung with airing hides.
Raina had fought many fights with the tied farmers. "Would you
send your clansmen to fight on lard and oats?" she had cried
when Hays Mullit threatened to drive his forty blacknecks back to his
croft. Raina had shamed him and others into staying, though Effie
only had to walk through the lower levels of the roundhouse to hear
the sheep farmers nursing ill feeling toward the clan.

Effie frowned. Just this morning Raina
had ordered one in every five yearlings slain. With no clansmen free
to hunt and no migrating elk butchered and rendered this season,
meat was in short supply. And yearling lambs ate their weight in hay
and feed once a week.

All thoughts of war slipped from her
mind as her hand came up to work the latch upon the guidehouse door.
She took a breath, like a diver before entering the water. Smoke as
blue as ice trickled through the opening, bearing the smells and
shadows of the guidestone to Effie's nose and eyes. Instinctively she
brought her hand to her chest to touch her lore. Only it wasn't
there.

"Not wearing your lore, Effie
Sevrance?" Inigar Stoop emerged from the shadows, his body
breaking strands of smoke as he moved. Smudges of black paint beneath
his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks made him look like someone
wasted by disease and ready to die. The cuffs of his pig coat were
singed in recognition of the war: He was the clan guide, and he would
not fight or raise a weapon in his own defense, yet every time he lit
a smoke fire, guided a clansman's prayer, or chipped a warrior's
portion from the guidestone, he did so with hands ringed with death.
"Step inside. Close the door. Approach me."

Effie did as she was told. The smoke
was stinging her eyes. Suddenly she wished very much she had not
taken her lore from around her neck.

Inigar Stoop stood silent as she walked
the length of the guide-house. At one time Effie would have run her
fingers along the guide-stone as she passed it… but that was
before the war. The stone was different now. Colder. Its surface was
wet with pale seeping fluids that collected in ruts and hollows and
hardened like tiny teeth. Even the great blocky profile of the stone
had changed, and its many faces and creases were now misshapen by
chisel cuts. Many clansmen had died far from home, their bodies
claimed by enemy soil, leaving Inigar Stoop no choice but to cut
surrogate remains from the stone. Families needed something to grieve
over. Widows without bones needed stone.

A thick litter of stone dust and soot
hushed Effie's footsteps as she came to stand in front of the guide.
Inigar was always grinding these days, grinding and burning and
speaking with the dead.

"You have not answered my
question, Effie Sevrance. Why do you not wear your lore?"

Effie looked for a moment into the
guide's black eyes, then thought better of it and took to studying
her feet. "I have lost it."

"Did the twine break?"

"No."

"So you took it from your own
neck?"

"Yes."

Inigar Stoop chose silence for his
reply. Effie felt her cheeks heat. The guide's gaze was like a hand
around her neck. It forced her to look up to receive the next
question.