A Sword From Red Ice (91 page)

Rising higher, Raina applied more force. "Look
at me," she whispered. "You waited too long, Scarpeman.
Should have killed me the same day you murdered Anwyn. Should have
watched your back. The Hail Wolf returned and you didn't even know
it."

She spoke other things then, dark words that
spilled out of her like poison, words that had been trapped inside
her body ever since the day in the Oldwood when she had been raped by
her foster son. Mace Blackhail. She spoke and sawed as blood rolled
across the floor and pooled around her knees and the lamplight beyond
the door flickered and waned. Mace, she named the dying man. Mace.
Mace. Mace.

When his heart began seizing she reached behind
her back and pulled Dagro's silver ceremonial knife from her belt.
Probably she was damned forever for what happened next, for she took
the knife in both hands and stabbed him through the heart. She was
smiling.

Rising, she left him there: a corpse in the
chief's chamber, a chief's knife sticking out from its chest. She
felt wild and filled with power.

Released.

One more job to do and she was done. Hieronymus
Buck, a tied miner, had once told her what they did to open seams in
the mine. "Light fires we do. Heat up the rock face so it nearly
glows. Then we pumps the water from the Bluey. Water hits the rock
and it's the mother of all explosions. I've seen thirty feet shatter
in a single go."

Raina Blackhail wiped the blood from her hands as
she made her way through the roundhouse. She'd be lighting a fire
under the Scarpestone this night.

The Dark of the Moon

"Khal Gora," Lan Fallstar said as they
crossed the last stretch of causeway leading over the sunken fields
of brown and black sedge, dwarf pine, and hackled ice. "Fort
Defeat. Its ruins stand here. There is good water. We will spend the
night."

Ash looked ahead to where the headland rose from
the saturated tundra. Charcoal gray limestone bluffs, deeply fissured
by running water and pulverized by tree roots, led up to a tableland
that on first glance seemed overrun by cedar and silver pine. As her
gaze followed the ridgeline she spied a blank rampart of stone
partially concealed by the crowns of the trees. The fort wall
appeared to be slightly domed, and it was smooth, without windows,
arrow slits or battlements of any kind on its southwestern face.
Three towers, all broken and fallen in, rose to heights not much
higher than the fort itself. The tallest was open-walled and Ash
could see the square-shaped shadows of its inner chambers. Frozen
blue snow glowed in the corners.

She shivered. The air was raw here in the
lowlands. 'Why is it named Fort Defeat?"

They were riding in single file on a narrow path
of piled stone and Lan did not look around as he replied. "In
the Time of Maygi it was called Khal Hark'rial, the Fortress of the
Hard Gate. A battle was fought and we were defeated at great cost. A
thousand years later we re-manned the fortress, believing our
ancestors' previous defense to be at fault. It was a mistake. We were
overrun and tens of thousands of lives were lost. The fortress is
flawed. No one who holds it is safe. After the defeat He Who Leads
decreed that its name should be changed so that future generations
would never forget."

Ash gathered her loose hair in her fist and tucked
it beneath the collar of her cloak. Winds cutting through the open
fields had been making it blow in her face. She would have liked to
ask Lan more questions about the fortress, but knew better than to
push her luck. Ask something else and she risked him turning cold;
this way they could ride in amiable silence and she wouldn't have to
endure being belittled or ignored.

Stupidly she had thought that after the night Lan
heart-killed the unmade creature in the woods, things would change
between them, become easier. That night he had seemed almost tender
when he held and entered her, and later when he ran his fine golden
fingers through her hair. Yet since then he had been colder than
ever. She supposed it was just his character, and decided she did not
like it very much.

The attack had taken place seven days ago and
they'd been traveling hard ever since. East and then south, through
ancient forests overgrown with moss and ghostvines, along worn stone
roads that ran alongside icy green rivers and blackwater lakes,
through hills milky with pale winter grasses, and past the valley of
blasted trees. That had been the only day when they had seen other
people, when they had ridden along the valley's rim and looked down
upon square leagues of flattened and blackened pines. The valley was
a perfectly shaped bowl and the trees had fallen in a radial pattern
as if blasted from a central point. Their trunks were black and
greasy and some had crumbled into sections like fallen pillars. An
open mine was being worked in the valley's center, and Ash saw the
distant figures of men and women digging with picks and working
machines. The chink and rumble of their labors was amplified by the
valley's steep walls.

She could smell the stale char of the trees.
"What's happening down there?" she had asked Lan.

Lan had been maintaining a brisk pace along the
ridgeline and did not slow to answer her. "It is Scara'il Ixa. A
Hole Made By God." He would say no more.

Ash had the sense that he wanted to be gone as
quickly as possible. He did not acknowledge the faces that turned
upward to look at them, or the two horsemen armed with longbows who
patrolled the head of the valley. She wondered if he had been
nervous. He held the reins more closely than normal and his gaze
continually scanned the spaces between the trees.

"Where are we going?" she had asked him
later that day as he crouched by a stream of snowmelt to fill his
waterskin. "The Heart Fires are to the south." She didn't
know this for a fact but she stated it like one anyway. "And we
are heading east."

"Tomorrow we turn south," he had said.

She had decided she would leave him if they did
not head south in the morning.

That night she did not sleep in the tent and had
bundled in her blankets by the fire. The sky had been diamond clear
and crushed with stars. As she watched the constellations turn, the
horses wandered over to check on her. The stallion held itself at a
companionable distance and began nosing the snow for grass, while the
gelding stood right over her and blew on her face. She'd had to push
him away in the end, but it had felt good to know that both horses
had offered their company.

As she settled down to sleep, she glanced over at
the wolfhide tent. The entrance flap was moving back and forth. Ash
watched it come to rest, and then waited to see if a stray gust of
wind might sat it into motion. It did not. Had Lan been watching her?
Or had he simply heard the horses stirring and put out his head to
check on them? Uneasy, she had fallen asleep.

Her dreams were of the gray, unsettled place, and
the armies of creatures that suffered within it. They roiled with the
smoke, hissing, arching their spines, jerking back their heads and
clawing at each other and themselves. To be there was a torture. And
they wanted out. Something dark and infinitely evil moved along the
edge of her perception. It was the calm in the rage, the master of
the chaos. Mistressss, it warned. Do not come here in the flesh.

Ash snapped awake. Cold sweat had pooled in the
hollow of her throat and it totted down her dress as she sat upright.
Dawn was a silver line on the horizon, and woodcocks were performing
their strange slow mating flights above the trees. The horses were
asleep; their elbows and stifles locked in place, their eyelids
fluttering but not completely closed. Ash knew that if she were to
stand she would wake them.

Smoky red coals were all that was left of the
fire. Reaching for a stick to poke some air in them, she glanced at
the tent. The hide was [missing] to remember their movements last
night. The stream was behind the tent. They had come in from the
north. The footsteps led south.

She stood. The horses' ears tracked the movement
and their heads came up. Cutting toward the trees, she felt for her
sickle knife. She was still sweating, and when she blinked she saw
images from the dream. Claws uncurling. Limbs writhing. Eye sockets
filled with the cold black substance of space. It occurred to her
that she should call Lan's name and look inside the tent, but she did
neither. She had some knowledge of path lores and once she saw the
footprints close up she decided they were fresh. The surrounding snow
was icy, but the little lumps kicked up by the boot heels were soft.
They would have hardened if they'd been left overnight.

Camp had been made in a small depression in a
sloped woodland of mixed hardwood and pine. Old and swollen oaks lay
dormant beside ladders of purple hemlock. Ash headed into the trees,
following the path created by the footsteps. It never occurred to her
that Lan might be in danger; later she would think about that.

As she waded her way through a tangle of burdock
and cloudberries, the Far Rider appeared on the path ahead. His bow
was braced and he was carrying a lean and bloody coon by its ringed
tail. When he saw her he blinked in surprise. Ash felt heat rush to
her face. It looked as if she was spying on him. Silently, he held up
the coon for her to see. There was a smear of blood on his forearm,
but it was probably from the animal. She backed out of the bushes,
feeling ashamed.

Later that morning they'd headed south.

Ash watched Lan Fallstar as he rode ahead of her
on the causeway. She suspected she did not know enough about the Sull
to accurately judge him. Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer might have
appeared more forthcoming, but they had kept their silence on many
things. Neither one would tell her what it meant to be Reach. She
recalled Ark warning her once that she was in danger unless she
became Sull. He had not told her why. Perhaps this was the way it
would be with all of them. She was an outsider, not to be trusted
with their deepest secrets. The color of her eyes might have darkened
from gray to midnight blue that night in the mountain pool, but
nothing else on the outside had changed. She did not look Sull, so
how could she expect Lan Fallstar to treat her as an equal? She had
known all along the Sull believed themselves to be superior to men.

Reaching the end of the raised path, Lan slowed
his stallion to a walk. Without any signal from Ash, the gelding
followed his lead. Wind moaned in her ears as the horses climbed up a
narrow and crumbling stair cut into the bluff. Pale weeds grew in the
cracks in the steps, and icy streams trickling along their edges had
deposited streaks of green algae and calcium salts. The horses moved
slowly, placing their hoofs with care. Ash spotted a footprint
stamped half in the snow and half in the algae. Did Sull still come
here?

Light faded as they passed into a tunnel mined
deep into the crenellations of the cliff. Water dripped and plonked
in the darkness. Ash smelled tree roots and the faint tinge of
sulfur. Quite suddenly she realized she had never opened a vein and
paid a toll for passage; she did not possess that Sull instinct. Yet
as she moved through the tunnel something within her thought, Now
would be a good time to let blood. When light from the exit came
sliding along the walls, she saw marks tattooed into the rock. Star
maps, tailed comets, meteor showers, eclipsed suns and the moon in
all its phases had been carved into limestone and filled with a
cloudy white substance that was slowly moldering to green. Seeing the
markings Ash had a sense that finally she was drawing close to the
heart of the Sull. They had fought and lost major battles here. Khal
Hark'rial. The Fortress of the Hard Gate.

They emerged on a circular stairwell whose ancient
stone floor was speckled with calcium deposits and lichen. The
patches looked like bird droppings. A spring gurgled over the raw
rock wall before passing into an underground channel. Lan headed up
more steps and Ash followed him. She could see the sky again now.
Clouds were fleeing west with the sun.

Finally they reached the plateau, climbing onto
land that was flat and green with trees. Fort Defeat was a massive
and featureless curtain wall built from dressed ashlar that was paler
than the limestone bluffs. It was larger than she had imagined, its
ramparts rising fifty feet. The walls were curved outward like
barrels and nothing had been done to add grace or bring relief to its
primitive form. Earthworks mounded at its base were overgrown with
burdock, nettles and white thorns. A full-grown cedar grew straight
out from a crack in the wall, its pale roots grasping the stone like
claws.

Lan spoke a word in Sull she did not know and
dismounted. A stone path led through the woods and around to the
northern face of the fortress. Ash remained in the saddle as they
took it. The wind was high here and it blew the fur on her cloak
flat, revealing the pooled pink skin of the lynx.

As they rounded the northern facade Ash spied the
first of the towers and the arched gate. The tower was the tallest of
the three, and had no exterior walls on its remaining top floors. The
gate was a gaping and undefended hole in the curtain wall. Some of
the capstones had gone, and others were smashed and crumbling. A
relief carving of a raven in flight that surmounted the gate had been
broken into shards. Its wingtips and feet were missing, and its head
and bill were a spiderweb of cracks. Ash felt some slight hesitation
from the gelding as she guided the horse underneath it.

The fortress was doubled-walled, and as she passed
through the gate she could clearly see the dark passageway that led
between the exterior wall and the jacket wall. The temperature
dropped as they moved into the fort's collapsed outer ward. All
ceilings and interior walls had fallen and giant heaps of debris had
been claimed by ivy, burdock, moss and scrub pine. Mature cedars grew
in the center of the open space. Ahead a second, smaller gate led to
the inner ward, but Lan came to a halt by a waist-high section of
standing wall. "We will set camp here," he said.