A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (90 page)

When he came to a circular building, intricately wrought with statues set deep into stone niches, he knew he’d found the heart of the fortress. The statues were half shadow, half man: they were in process of being unmade.

Raif took a breath, waited to see if his body would stop shaking. It didn’t. For some reason he thought of Addie Gunn as he entered the temple.
We can be more.

The
shifting
in things that had begun outside was accelerated in this place. The air was unstill, blooming patches of darkness like blood dropped in water. Raif’s sword became fluid in his hands, its weight running from one end to another as he lifted it. And something else was stirring, something he had no name for. He went to take a step and as he took it, it felt sharply familiar, as if the step had already been taken.
Time
, he supposed.
Time is stirring.

The temple had no windows, yet some kind of light drifted in. The circular walls were fused onto a crater of mountain rock. The violence of their binding could be read in the scorch lines that blazed along the join. Great force had come to bear here. Someone had wanted to make sure nothing got out. A central altar dominated the space, and Raif moved slowly toward it. He could already see the dark space beneath the capstone and knew it could be lifted off.

The altar was hewn from black quartz threaded with gold, and touching it was like touching ice. Raif felt his skin cleave to it, felt the chill of it travel inward to his heart. He waited for the moment to lift as he had waited for the wind to rise before loosing Divining Rod. Just as wind shifted on the mountain, weight shifted in this place. When he felt his sword lighten he set it down, positioned both hands on the lower edge of the capstone and pushed up with all his might. The stone cracked in two as it slid to the floor. Raif heard himself make a sound, something halfway between a laugh and a sob. No going back now.

There never had been.

A narrow flight of steps led down through the altar and Raif picked up his sword and descended. He could smell the inside of the mountain now, the iron and sulfur and dampness. As he reached the final steps the earth began to shake once more. A low and terrible howling sounded. Raif’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. The chamber before him was rolling like a ship in uncalm seas. Patches of darkness deepened, holes within the black. A shadow form came into view, faded.

Raif felt his mouth go dry.
Shatan Maer
, the outlander had named it. The most powerful creature that had ever lived. Strange how you could be told something, listen to what was said, and still not hear it. But wasn’t that exactly what the outlander had counted on? Who would come here with full knowledge of what was to be found? No one. One glimpse, and it was enough to know all. One sword wasn’t enough. One man wasn’t enough. The outlander should have sent an army . . . but the outlander didn’t have an army to send.

So he’d sent a fool instead.

Raif found he was baring his teeth, like a wolf. The madness was there below him, just another hole in the black.
Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance.
Wasn’t that exactly what he was doing—one Hailsman at a time?

He laughed then, bitterly, as he imagined his life stretching on. More deaths. More friends betrayed. Three people in this world he loved, yet he’d never get to see them again.
Drey. Effie. Ash.
What good was life without those you loved? It was a shadow, and perhaps the outlander had seen this in him, and had sent one shadow to battle another.

Raif took the final step into the chamber, and immediately felt as if he’d taken it seconds earlier. All things were in flux here. The chamber itself was strangely ill-defined, its walls fluid. Part of the floor was tiled in intricate mosaics depicting beasts changing into other beasts, dragons becoming shadows, and serpents lapsing into unseeing, but most was bare rock. This was where the fortress ended and the mountain began, and as Raif moved across the floor he heard the ring of unspeakable hollowness beneath him. The mountain had been cleaved in two here. Raif Sevrance now stood upon the fault most likely to give.

The patches of darkness were quickening. Something dread thrashed in the shadows, howled and then faded away. The chamber was a blur of movement and shifting time now, the floor buckling like wet wood. Dimly, Raif was aware of great crashing sounds filtering down from above as the spires of the fortress fell.

Taking a two-handed grip on the Forsworn sword, he began to chant.

“
Though walls may crumble and earth may break
He will forsake.
”

The Shatan Maer rippled into existence, held, and then melted to black. Deep within the mountain, rock began to tear.

“
Though night may fall and shadows rise
He will be wise.
”

Time echoed the word
wise
back to Raif. A crack opened up in the floor, and the smell of another world came through it. All the shadows and patches of blackness in the chamber began to coalesce on a single point.

“
Though seals may shatter and evil grow
He will draw his bow.
”

The crack widened and Raif felt the cold breezes of hell. The single point of darkness was swelling, shaping itself into a portal. The Shatan Maer stood behind it, thrashing and flailing, a monstrous beast beating against its chains.
Imagine your worst nightmare, then reckon it tenfold.
Who would have thought a cragsman would be so good with words? Teeth bared, Raif moved into position.

“
Though a fortress may fall and darkness ride through
Wthe gate
He will lie in wait.
”

A violent wrench shook the chamber. Something integral to the nature of time and being snapped, and in that instant Raif saw things that no man should ever see. A hundredfold of nightmares, a thousand lifetimes’ worth of horrors: all moving forward,
pushing
to get out. And riding amongst them were the nine horsemen. The Endlords on their black stallions, their swords forged from an absence of all things, the substance of souls ground to hold an edge. They felt Raif’s attention upon them, and turned slowly to meet his gaze. Their eyes were holes leading to a place beyond hell, and they pulled their lips back and smiled at him.

Soon
, they promised.
Soon
.

In that instant the Shatan Maer stepped through the breach. A monster from another Age, born in shadow form. Raif adjusted his sword, searched the black void of the creature’s body for some semblance of a heart . . . and found one. An immense primitive pump that moved the shadowblood around its body, keeping it Unmade. Raif felt its powerful suction pull him in, and fought against it. He could not afford to lose himself in this muscular blackness. It was the second gate to hell, lying in wait.

“
And when the Demon emerges and all hopes depart
He must take its heart.
”

Raif lunged forward, touched shadowflesh with the point of his sword, heard it
hiss
. A deep roar sounded. The Shatan Maer moved. Raif did not see the blow that felled him. He lost time. Blinking awake he saw a faint shadow of himself being felled. He reached for his sword.
Where was the sword?
As his hand scrambled over rocks, searching desperately, the Shatan Maer turned toward him. Its eyes were forked with black veins, and they were filled with hateful yearning. Raif pushed himself back with his heels. Suddenly he wanted very much to live.

As he regained his feet, he saw another faint glimmering of himself finding the sword, and just as his glimmer self raised it, the Shatan Maer fell upon him. Raif saw his own death there, saw his leg torn off like a twig. He grinned insanely. At least he knew where his sword was now.

Probably not a good time to fetch it, either. He still had the Sull bow and some arrows on his back and he slid them off as he walked backwards, away from the Shatan Maer. For some reason the sight of the bow agitated the creature and it sprang straight forward. Raif rolled back, cracked his head on a rock. Rolled back, cracked his head on a rock again. Time was splitting. As he came to his feet he drew the bow, released the string. The arrow bounced off the monster’s thick, flaking hide.

The Shatan Maer howled in rage. Raif caught sight of his sword, waited a beat to see if time was warping around it. No shadow selves claimed it and were killed. That was good. As he lunged toward it, the Shatan Maer struck. Raif felt claws puncture his jaw and rake down his neck. Blood filled his mouth. The terrible cold odor of the monster filled his nostrils, like a small taste of death. Before he could move, another blow struck. His head snapped back, and he swallowed his own blood. Time spooled, showing him many outcomes—too many to track. The Shatan Maer struck again. Raif scrambled back, felt icy claws pierce deep into the meat of his shoulder. Pain bloomed, but he was too confused to translate it properly and he thought it felt pleasantly hot.

The sword was his. The last blow had propelled him toward it, and as the Shatan Maer sprang forward for its final strike his hand closed around the hilt.

The heart was his.

“
For Bitty!
” Raif screamed, as he drove the sword up through the Shatan Maer’s ribcage to the heart.

Noooooooooo
. . .

Deep down, in the place where worlds met, creatures howled. An Endlord rode up to the shrinking portal and laughed without making a sound. A rushing noise filled the chamber as the darkness was sucked out. The portal collapsed into nothing, leaving only a memory scorched in thin air.

Raif lost time. Shadow selves piled on top of him, slowly sinking in. The Shatan Maer lay collapsed across his chest, and Raif didn’t know if he possessed the strength to move it. Each time he exhaled, the weight of the beast robbed a fraction more space from his lungs. Shadowblood soaked into his shirt, burning like acid. All things considered, he felt pretty good.

We can be more
, Addie had said, and Addie had been right. Pity he wasn’t here right now; he could have helped lift this great monstrosity off Raif’s chest.

More time lost. He really needed to get going now. Experimentally, he tried shifting his weight to the side. Straightaway, things began hurting that hadn’t hurt before. Grimacing, he made an effort. Sometimes the pain was worth it. The pain meant you were alive, and right now that seemed precious to him.

With a mighty heave, Raif rolled the Shatan Maer off his chest.

It was time to fetch Bear, and find himself a better sort of life.

Outside the sun was shining, of course. You had to give it to the Want: it had no end of tricks. Bear came running up to greet Raif as he reached the gate, and together they headed east. Or was it south? With the Want you could never be sure.

EPILOGUE

A Trail of Flowers

A
ngus Lok stopped off at the Three Villages to purchase some spring flowers. He knew it was a fool thing to do, what with Darra having a whole garden’s worth of flowers at her disposal, but he felt in a courting mood. The sun was high and it might even have been a bit warm—it was difficult to tell with all his layers on. Lambs were in the fields, and the sight of them darting under their mothers’ fleecy skirts as he cantered past on the bay made him smile.
We were all so young and frightened once.

His smile vanished when he thought of Darra and the girls alone for the lambing. They were good girls, hard-working, but lambing was a man’s job. Too many things could go wrong, and though he knew for a certainty his wife was a more able person than he would ever be, he wished he could spare her the distress of it. He wished a lot of things recently, none of them for himself.

The little market held every tenday in the village square was winding down as he approached. All the sorry-looking vegetables were left: green beans with black spots, loose cabbage heads, and some remarkably slimy leeks. Anyone venturing into the Ewe’s Feet for a noonday meal had a good chance of seeing those leeks again. The vegetables concerned might even be able to walk there on their own.

Spying a young girl holding a big basket of snowdrops and sweet peas, Angus reined in his horse and hailed her. “How much?” he asked her as she came running toward him.

“A copper a bunch.”

“No. For the lot.”

Her eyes widened. Angus guessed she was younger than Cassy but a bit older than Beth. A pretty lass. But not as pretty as his girls. His request had sent her into a confusion of risky mental calculations and uncertainty, so he solved it by handing her a gold piece. “Tie the basket to the saddle bags with some fancy ribbon and we’ll call it done.”

She had the sense not to argue. Her hands, he noticed, were rough and callused, the skin toughened by farm work. “What’s your name?” he asked when she’d finished securing the basket.

“Bronnie.”

“Split the gold piece before you go home, Bronnie,” he told her. “Take half home to your Da, and buy yourself some fancies with the rest. No one but me and you need ever know the price you got for the basket.” He rode away, knowing from the worry in her face that she wouldn’t do it.

Shrugging gently, Angus kicked the bay into motion. Home. He could smell it, he was quite sure of that. Smell rabbit in Darra’s cook pot, and some sticky honey monstrosity cooked up by Beth on the hearth. Gods, but you knew a man was a fool and in love when he ate his women’s burned cooking!

He couldn’t get there soon enough. Caution demanded that he work his way around the oldgrowths and the stream, but caution could go to the nine spiraling hells. He’d been cautious for too long. It was time to get to his family by the quickest, shortest route.

Some of the flowers were lost in the gallop and he grinned, imagining the trail he left. Some poor fool might follow it, believing there must be a princess at the end of such a scattering of blooms. He’d get an ugly middle-aged bordeman instead. Angus slapped his thigh. He hoped there wouldn’t be kissing.