A Cavern of Black Ice (95 page)

Penthero Iss, Surlord of Spire Vanis,
Lord Commander of the Rive Watch, Keeper of Mask Fortress, and Master
of the Four Gates, ascended to a place where he could no longer hear
the Bound One scream. Power pumped from the caul fly's body like
blood from a cut vein. Iss looked down and saw his hair and robes
blowing wildly below him. He took a breath with a body he no longer
inhabited and tasted his own remains in the air.

Higher and higher he rose, the roar of
the drawing filling his abandoned ears. The midnight blue arc of the
firmament dipped to meet him, curving with the slow guile of
infinity, inviting him to come and play in the cold land beyond
death. Iss shrank from its gleaming edge. Follow that road and there
was no going back.

As he turned inward toward himself,
seeking the dark path that would lead him to the borderlands, the
color of the firmament stayed within his mind. He'd seen that
particular shade of blue once before… stretched across the
bellies of the Sull the day they'd sent twelve arrows into Ediah Iss'
spine.

A world and a half below him, Iss' body
shivered upon its seat of iron and stone. Pushing his insubstance
forward to meet the swirling gray shadows of the borderlands, Iss
paid his own flesh and blood no heed.

The borderlands had many names. The
Phage called it the Gray Marches, the priests in the Bone Temple
called it No Man's Crossing, and the Sull had a name for it that was
better left unsaid. The Listener of the Ice Trapper tribe called it
nothing at all and said only that it was a place
where a man
could steal dreams
. That was what Iss felt like as he approached
its pale borders: a thief.

A line of light, pink as newborn flesh,
marked the threshold to the borderlands like a false dawn. Smoke
fingered its edges, curling and uncurling, reaching and drawing back.
There was no sound or smell, yet the silence was the kind that
brought no peace. Without noise or odor to divert his senses, Iss
found himself looking with the same single-mindedness of heretics in
the Far South, who were pegged out on the desert floor and left for
dead. For the sin of disbelief, the dark-skinned priests sewed the
eyes of heretics open, pinning back their eyelids against their brow
bones with cross-stitches of black silk, so that the heretics might
see the face of God as they died. Iss felt as if his own eyelids were
sewn open. Blinking or averting his gaze was impossible. He had no
choice but to
see
.

The borderlands stretched ahead of him,
a landscape of gray mists, iceberg peaks, and shadow-filled troughs
stretching into distant darkness. Iss knew many things about the
borderlands, knew that its outskirts could be visited by a handful of
people in every generation, that different people came for different
reasons, and that some, like the Listener of the Ice Trappers, could
see the future written here. Even with the Bound One's power fueling
his journey, Iss' abilities were limited. He was a trespasser, a
thief. He had no place here, not even on the threshold. If the future
hung like ripe fruit around him, he could not pluck it. If he
glimpsed a pathway leading inward, he had no choice but to turn away.

Asarhia March, Foundling, mountain
born, spire bred, was the one person alive who could enter the
borderlands without fear. It was her element. Her body was shaped for
it. Her mind could perceive paths through it. Her hands could touch
the Blindwall and come away unburned.

It was out there, the Blindwall, far on
the other side where grayness gave way to darkness and where even the
most powerful sorcerer and Listener could not tread. All worlds
bordered here, all dying souls passed through on their way to final
resting or ruin. Iss had once heard that people sometimes
dreamed
their way here in the dead of the night. Unlike the Listener, who
made dreams his business, these people had no knowledge or ability to
help them find their way. Their sleeping selves drifted here like
mist, pushed by dreams filled with longing for a loved one now gone.
The newly bereaved did not hold power here, only Asarhia March and
the gods held that, but their loss brought them kissing close to
death.

Iss floated above the threshold, held
in place by power stolen from another man, and cast his gaze over all
that lay below him. He did not know the borderlands well, yet he had
been here a half dozen times before, and his cool Surlord's eyes saw
straightaway that something had changed.

Asarhia had been here.

Leads had opened up in the smoke. Cold
currents blew with the same intensity as before, but crosscurrents
cut through them, creating a rippling mesh of flaws. The gray mass of
the borderlands swelled and shifted, sending great lobes of matter
rising above the surface and dragging other things under so quickly
that they left comet tails of smoke. Beneath the surface, pockets of
quiet existed as dark smudges in the grayness. And beneath them,
writhing like the hide of a vast and muscular serpent, ran a river so
dark that it swallowed light.

Iss shivered. Averting his gaze, he
looked out across the expanse of the borderlands. The leads Asarhia
had opened stretched inward toward the center of the grayness. Iss
searched the visible horizon, straining to see some detail of the
Blindwall beyond.
How far did you reach, almost-daughter? There
is not a sorcerer in the North who did not feel your power yesterday
at dawn
. No
one can stand against you, I know that now, not
the Phage or the Sull or the First Gods themselves. For sixteen years
I kept you from them, treasuring and protecting you, and now you
think you can run away and leave Spire Vanis behind. Yet know this,
Asarhia March
. No
matter how quickly you run and how far you
travel, when you reach you will be doing my work
.

As Iss spoke the word
work
, a
gust of wind sliced deep into the grayness. Smoke parted. For one
instant his eyes focused upon a solid form. It was huge, towering,
the wall of an ancient fortress, completely smooth, and dark as
night…

Iss gasped. Back in the apex tower, his
body slumped forward as the Bound One's power wavered sharply. Iss
forced his jaws together, sucking the caul fly dry. He had the
Blindwall in his sights. It was vast, breathtaking, but had he seen a
tiny flaw at its base? He had to know.

The Bound One screamed, higher and
higher, as if he might shatter glass. Iss crushed the head of the
caul fly with his teeth, releasing a broth of blood and curds. A rush
of air and light stripped away all he could see. The Blindwall was
gone. The borderlands were gone. The power released was not enough to
hold him in place, and his flesh pulled him back.

He entered his body with a jolt. A
clumsy limb banged against the wall. Teeth bit through tongue meat.
The nausea that always came when he returned to his flesh hit him
hard, and he spat out a wad of saliva speckled with fly parts. For
some time he could do nothing but sit with his head slumped over his
knees. Minutes passed before he could look up. With a gaze slower and
more ungainly than the one he'd left behind, Iss contemplated the
Bound One.

He lay lifeless in the iron apex, his
body bathed in sweat. His eyes were open, yet his eyeballs were
rolled back and nothing but white showed. Pressure sores from the
manacles around his wrists were slick with blood, and the metal walls
of the apex were streaked with claw marks. His chest moved…
barely.

Iss struggled to his feet. The stench
of his own body was unbearable to him. He smelled like an old man.
The apex chamber reeked of urine and shit. Always when he returned to
his body and took command of his five senses, it was the smells that
appalled him the most. How could people live with them? Anger and
disgust made him drive his fist hard into the Bound One's chest. The
Bound One jerked reflexively, sliding farther down into the apex. A
series of quick breaths animated his face for a few short seconds,
and then he fell back into oblivion.

Iss watched him closely. What had
happened here? The Bound One's power did not usually drain so
quickly—even in the borderlands where such things counted for
less. Iss considered aiming a second blow to test him. Could he be
faking his insensibility? Had he withdrawn his power on purpose? Was
it possible that he had seen the Blindwall, too? Yet what if he was
sickening? He was old now, his body yellow and stiff. It was natural
that his power should weaken over time. Still.

Iss returned to his sorcerer's seat and
sat and watched and waited. Only when an hour had passed without the
Bound One moving as much as his little finger did Iss feel satisfied
enough to take his leave.

For the first time ever, the Bound One
did not grieve as Iss removed the light.

A Journey Begins

Raif woke in the freezing darkness
before dawn. He knew he would not return to sleep, so he rose and
took himself outside. He urinated against the barn wall, then scooped
up a handful of snow and scoured his face. The shock of coldness
passed quickly. Overhead the sky was black, but far on the eastern
horizon, above the tree line and slate crags of Ganmiddich, the ice
mist glowed pink with dawn.

Raif turned away. He made himself busy,
binding a nick on the gelding's foreleg and then tending his own
stripped and bloody skin. His hands smelled like raw beef. They
burned like hot coals as he thrust them into the snow to clean and
numb them before he bandaged them tightly against the cold. In winter
the worst danger to broken skin was frostbite. Gat Murdock had lost
his bowfinger to a dog bite no deeper than a pockmark just because
he'd not thought to bandage it one night when it was icy cold. And
last winter Arlec Byce had spent Godsfest with pig lard slathered
over his face because he'd ridden out to the Oldwood within an hour
of taking a close shave.

Hard frosts worried Raif. Ash needed to
be well protected. She was underweight, and a diet of ice hares and
fishers wouldn't be enough to help her fight off the cold. A person
could starve on lean meat. Two summers ago Drey and Rory Gleet had
returned from a ten-day hunting trip to the balds doubled up with
cramps and indigestion. The hunting had been poor, and they'd lived
on nothing but flat ale and rabbit meat for a week. Raif remembered
standing outside the outhouse with Bitty Shank and Tull Melon,
singing,
Nothing runs faster than a man with rabbit runs
, at
the tops of their voices while Drey and Rory relieved themselves
inside.

Raif smiled at the memory… and
somehow, as he did so, the freezing wind brought tears to his eyes.
Drey had not waited.

Yesterday, when Raif had walked away
from the shore of the Wolf River, the final thing he did before the
path veered north and hid him from sight was to turn and look at his
brother one last time. Only Drey wasn't there. Drey had already moved
on. Raif had caught a glimpse of his slow-moving shadow slipping
eastward through the rocks, on his way to meet with the Hail Wolf.

Raif stood in the snow and breathed and
did not think. After a while he turned and made his way back to the
farmhouse, filling his mind with the dozens of things that needed to
be done before he and Ash could begin the journey west.

Ash was awake, sitting tending the fire
and rewarming the remains of last night's meal. She smiled shyly at
him as he entered, and he did not have the heart to tell her that he
had wanted last night's stock left cold so he could skim the
congealed fat from the top and use it to protect their faces from the
wind. The fisher meat had been cut into strips and left to dry
overnight, yet Raif could tell from the look of it that it was only
partially cured. It would have to do. The pelt was stiff, but there
was no time to soften it with urine, so he showed Ash how to roll it
on the hearth as if it were a long piece of dough and work the
stiffness out with her fists.

He left her doing that while he
searched the house for clothes, knives, and food. It was bitterly
cold. The few rugs and blankets he found in the storm cellar were
stiff and shaggy with ice. He picked the best two blankets and beat
them until they were dry. In the bottom of an old bloodwood chest he
found a pair of goatskin gloves. They'd been packed away while still
wet and were mottled with blue black mold, yet Raif pulled them on
all the same. They were barely wearable and smelled of mange, but
they fitted well enough.

By the time he returned to Ash he'd
found an ancient wool cloak with a kettle burn close to the shoulder,
a child's sheepskin hood, a tin cup filled with lanolin and beeswax,
and a handknife with a corroded iron blade. The farmhouse had been
looted with great care, possibly by both Bludd and Hailsmen, and
anything of use or value had been taken. No foodstuff of any sort
remained.

Raif watched as Ash pulled on the cloak
and hood. She'd been busy in his absence, wrapping the fisher meat in
dock leaves, melting a new batch of snow, and airing her boots and
stockings above the fire. "You haven't got a cloak for
yourself," she said.

"I'll make do with a blanket. Once
I put an edge to this knife, I'll cut the fisher pelt down to a
hood."

Ash frowned. "I should have taken
the supplies from the camp. All the saddlebags were there, scattered
in the snow. I could have had whatever I wanted."

"'It doesn't matter," he
said, and meant it.

Her gray eyes regarded him for a short
moment and then looked away.

Raif wanted to say,
If anyone
touches you again, I will tear them apart with my bare hands
.
Instead he said, "Pour the snowmelt on the flames and kill the
fire. I'll be outside saddling the horse."

It was full light now. The rising wind
smelled of glaciers. The snow underfoot was rotten in places, part
melted by a midseason thaw. Raif laid the blankets over the gelding's
back, then strapped the saddle in place. His hands felt big and
awkward. When he gripped the handle of the knife to sharpen it
against the rise of the step, pain made him gnaw his cheek.