A Sword From Red Ice (67 page)

Yesterday Effie and Chedd had played a game of
dams, which meant that whenever you saw a beaver dam you cried,
"Damn!" It had been extraordinarily satisfying at first,
the cussing without seeming to, but there were just so many dams
along the river that within a matter of hours the game had gotten
old, and Chedd had started repeating the word so quickly it made a
noise like buzzing flies. Damndamndamndamndamn. She had poked him in
the back to make him stop, which of course just made him do it more.
Then she had to think of another game to distract him, but nothing
quite matched the—if she did say so herself—sheer
brilliance of dams, and the only thing she could come up with was
bear naked. Chedd had sniggered at this, and she wished straightaway
she could take it back. Naked was not a word you used around
eleven-year-old boys. She hadn't known it then. But she did now.

"Otter," Chedd Limehouse said now,
swiveling his fat neck toward her. "Naked!"

Effie glared at him. There was no otter. This was
the second day she'd had to put up with him naming nonexistent
animals and declaring them naked. As they were paddling through a
narrow stretch of the Mouseweed in broad daylight, Effie had some
hope that Waker would silence him, but the Grayman appeared
distracted. His large bulbous eyes were fixed on the way ahead.

They were making good time, Effie observed. The
channel was deep here and the current logy. Good paddling conditions,
she thought, taking some pleasure in the knowledge and vocabulary she
had picked up from traveling with Waker Stone and his fiercely odd
father, who might, or might not, be named Darrow.

They let her paddle now, and she was surprised by
how hard it was and how much she needed to rest after even the
briefest series of strokes. The pain in the back of her shoulders and
forearms would strike quickly and once it was there it nagged
continually. Waker told her she would grow into it as long as she
paddled every day. Effie had taken him at his word, and had fallen
into the rhythm of brief paddles followed by long rests. Three days
now and the pain just got worse.

At least she didn't fake-paddle like Chedd, who
could be seen even now rotating his paddle as it entered the water so
that it sliced more than it pushed. Waker's father must have known
what Chedd was up to. Manning the back of the boat he could keep an
eye on all three of them—Waker, Chedd and herself—yet he
never did anything to correct Chedd's idle ways, and Chedd had the
good sense never to look around and catch his eye. Effie decided she
must have less good sense, for sometimes she couldn't seem to stop
herself and spun around in her seat to look at the tiny old man.
Every time without fail he was ready for her, triumphantly, malignly,
staring back.

The night she had been saved from drowning by
Waker, the old man had told her his name. Or at least she dreamt he
had. The name was hiding in her memory like a flea in a crease, and
she told herself that if she just waited long enough it would spring
right out. Darrow didn't ring any bells, she knew that much. Chedd
had come up with that one, and now she came to think on it he might
simply have overhead Waker telling his father, "Da, row."

"Naked," Chedd said for no good reason.
"As a bear."

Effie watched his shoulders chuffing up and down
with delight. It was enough to put you off boys for life.

More paddling was called for, and she took the
wooden paddle from her lap and plunged it deep into the brown water.
She might have splashed Chedd on the first stroke, but not on the
ones following. Paddling was too serious a business.

It was a calm but cold day and the sky was
uniformly white. The Mouseweed was passing through a series of gorges
and high-cut banks, and thin, silvery talk emptied into the river at
every bend. The cliffs were red sandstone, mined with hollows and
crevices, and grown over with chokeberries, black birch and vine.
They had left the main artery of the Wolf three days back, following
a long camp whilst Effie recuperated from the near-drowning, and
without a doubt they'd passed beyond the Dhoonelands and into
territory protected by Bludd.

As far as Effie could tell they were heading
southeast. The Bitter Hills were a slowly lowering barrier to the
south. Stony and jagged, their chutes pocked with new snow and their
stiffs dark with hemlocks, they cast long shadows on the river as
they dumped snowmelt into its depths. The most easterly section of
Bitter Hills was called the Stone Hills by city men, and Effie had to
admit it was a pretty decent name. When she was resting between
paddles she imagined the city on the far side, Morning Star. Having
no experience of cities whatsoever, she fancied it as a grand
collection of roundhouses with many outbuildings and several towers.
The people would wear liners and silk, not wool and skins, and their
voices would be high and fluting.

Ahead and to the north lay the Bluddsworn clans:
HalfBludd, Haddo, Frees, Otler and Gray. Chedd said the only
roundhouse they'd be likely to spot was Otler's and that was days
east of here, but Effie thought he might be wrong. HalfBludd shared
borders with Morning Star; depending upon what river branch they were
on they might see it once the hills shrank away.

The Mouseweed felt different to Effie than the
Wolf, older and more secretive. Last night she had seen a lynx
withdrawing through the trees behind the camp. The wild and beautiful
cat with its pointed ear tufts and blue-gray pelt did not seem to
belong to the world of clan. She had tried explaining this to
Chedd—who had matter-of-factly informed her the lynx was
female—and Chedd had surprised her by agreeing. "It's the
Sull who wear their pelts," he said. Sometimes he could say
things that were exactly right. Clan did not wear lynx because they
did not know how to trap or hunt them. Those skills belonged solely
to the Sull.

Deciding she'd had enough of paddling, Effie shook
the water from her oar and rested it against the gunwales. Hands
free, she reached for her lore.

It was something she always did, that absentminded
checking, that quick motion upward to see how things stood in her
world. Stupid. Stupid. You'd think by now she'd have gotten used to
the fact that her lore was gone, gobbled up by the pike that was more
than a pike, lost for ever and eternity in the Wolf.

She had tried to make them go after it—spread
nets, dive into the river, build dams—and in fairness to Waker
Stone he had not dismissed her pleas out of hand. "It's gone,"
he had told her firmly. "Even if I dived for it how would I know
the difference between that and a thousand other stones?"

She had not told him about the pike. She had lived
for a month with Mad Binny on Cold Lake, and knew the importance of
sounding sane. The words, A pike ate my lore were too close to, My
sheep knows how to fly for comfort. Instead she had commandeered
Chedd Limehouse, forcing him to search the rivershore and set fishing
lines. Guilt had prevented him from asking too many questions about
the fishing lines—if he hadn't vomited the boat would never
have capsized—and he had worked diligently for two whole days
on the task of locating Effie's lore. On the third day she'd felt
well enough to join the search and had waded thigh-deep into the
now-calm water, but her restored health had worked against her. When
Waker saw her chastising Chedd for setting the lines in the wrong
place, he had decided she was fit enough to return to the boat, and
they were out upon the river by midday.

She held no ill feeling toward Waker for his
haste. He had saved her life, and although she knew that he did so
because she was in some way valuable to him—like gold—it
didn't alter the fact that her life was saved. Effie was very much
fond of her life. She wasn't one of those silly girls who heedlessly
put their lives in danger by riding horses over high hedges, or
sticking their heads underwater and counting how long they could hold
their breath. Tree climbing, rock scaling, bridge swinging, roof
walking, pool diving and even the wearing of insufficient layers in
the cold were not things that Effie Sevrance did. Granted she used to
sleep with the shankshounds, but even if they had torn out people's
throats, they were good as lambs around her.

Waker had treated her a little differently since
the near drowning and she had treated him a little differently back.
She understood now that the abduction and journey were nothing
personal. Waker Stone was doing his job. She and Chedd were cargo,
and what a man wanted in his cargo was simply that it be easy to
stow. If she did not fight against the stowing, which by her
reckoning was the equivalent of getting into the boat promptly each
morning, Waker was satisfied. Freedom could be had in a sideways kind
of manner. She and Chedd could do whatever they wanted at the camp—as
long as they remained in sight. They could now talk in the boat—as
long as woodsmoke wasn't in the air. Nothing much was expected of
them—they weren't even forced to paddle—and that meant
they were free to enjoy the river and its sights. And as long as you
ignored old crazy Waker Senior and forgot that you were being hauled
east against your will the journey wasn't bad. She had even begun to
think that she owed it to Waker to be good, what with him saving her
life and all and she being precious cargo.

It was this realization that she ought to behave
well that had made all the difference. Waker had recognized this
shift in her, which was mostly detectable in the quickness she
responded to his requests and her determination to show him she was a
good paddler, and he had responded in some kind back. Just this
morning he had thrown her a small pouch of dried spiced peas. No
word, barely any warning that she needed to get her hand ready to
receive a catch, just a white bag chucked at her chest. Spiced peas
were strange and set your gums tingling, and it took her a while to
realize they were meant to be a treat. Once she understood their
specialness they began to taste better.

She had the feeling now that if Waker had
possessed a pick with the correct bore to knock out the pins in her
leg irons he would have freed her.

"Stoney broke. Brokey stone. What's it like,
girlie, to be all alone?"

Effie spun around in her seat and glared at
Waker's father. He was sitting on the stern seat, calmly pulling his
paddle through the water. His lips were closed and his green eyes
sparkled with spite. He was wearing the shaggy brown otterskin jacket
he always wore, but today he'd thrust a bunch of clubmoss though one
of his string holes.

"I know what you said," she told him.

He looked at her and started moving his mouth like
a fish. Spittle wetted his lips as his old pink tongue jabbed out.

Disgusted, she faced front.

"Nothing to like about pike."

She did not turn back. Suddenly cold, she decided
to warm herself up with another bout of paddling. Mounds of hackled
snow capped the rocks and gorges, and the river water had that
thickness to it that meant it wasn't far above freezing. Chedd had
fallen asleep in his seat and was snoring. Effie used her own paddle
to hook his back in the boat. The clump of wood hitting the gunwales
roused him, and he shook his head like a dog shedding water. Within
five minutes he was back asleep.

Effie tried not to think about her lore, but
Waker's father had a way of getting under her skin. Stoney broke. It
was considered the worst kind of luck to lose your lore, like a doom.
Inigar Stoop told chilling stories of those clansmen unfortunate
enough to lose their lores. Jon Marrow had accidentally dropped his
squirrel lore down a well shaft east of the Wedge. He was jumped by
Dhoonesmen the next day, so the story went, and while he was
defending himself against their hammer blows something horrible
happened to his man parts. Effie thought they might have frozen. Then
there was the tale of little Mavis Gornley, who had lost her lore
whilst riding to the Banhouse to wed her betrothed, a dashing Bann
swordsman with teeth filed to points. As soon as she realized her
grouse lore was missing, Mavis had dismounted and retraced her
steps, carefully inspecting every hoofprint made by her horse. Mavis
was so intent upon looking down that she hadn't see the big grizzly
who came loping out of the woods and tore off her head. The only way
to save yourself from similar misfortune was to rush back home to
your clan guide and beg him to replace the missing lore. This was a
tricky business apparently, and could take several months. During
that time you were left vulnerable and unprotected and were advised
to stay inside.

Well, Effie thought, glancing up at the crumbly
red walls of the gorge and the hemlock forests that lay beyond them.
There's exactly nothing I can do about that.

In a way the stories didn't bother her. Bad luck
was something she didn't believe in. It was the actual missing of the
stone that felt bad. She hadn't realized how much she had relied upon
the ear-shaped chunk of granite until it had gone. Her uncle Angus
had once told her how bats were able to fly in the dark. "They
listen for their cries bouncing back off trees and walls."

"But they don't make any sound," she had
replied. "Not any that you can hear," he had countered.
She'd thought about that conversation many times since, as it seemed
to her that her lore was a bit like bat ears: able to detect sounds
that no one else could hear. Vibrations caused by changes. Stirrings
in the air. 'Course when you put it into words it also sounded a bit
. . . pikish, but Effie Sevrance knew what she knew. And she missed
knowing it. That was the worst thing, the absence of reassurance, the
forewarning of danger. Now bad things could happen and she would only
know about them at the same time everyone else did.