Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (11 page)

“The bride price was fair,” the woman said, squaring her shoulders and meeting the dark-haired man’s gaze defiantly. She had the raw-boned build of a farmwife, with hardship and sorrow etched in the lines of her angular face. Blaine guessed her to be somewhere in her third decade, which placed her among the elders. Few in Edgeland lived much beyond four decades.

“It’s not about the damned coins,” Von said, anger and frustration clear in his voice. “Dilan’s a brawler and a drunkard,” Von said with a contemptuous look at the groom, who had emerged from the fight unscathed but had inflicted serious damage to Von. “She’s afraid of him, afraid to turn him down. You’ve got to stop this,” he said, looking to Blaine and then to the wise women in appeal.

Essie, the young bride, stood between the two men. “It’ll be all right, Von,” she said, an edge of desperation in her voice. She cast a worried look back toward Dilan, who glowered in response. Essie dropped her voice and moved closer to Von. “You can’t protect me from him, Von. He’ll get what he wants, marriage or no marriage.”

Blaine and Piran exchanged a glance at her words. Blaine stepped in front of Dilan, his hunting knife still in his hand. “I killed the man who took advantage of my sister,” Blaine said in a low voice. He fixed Dilan with a cold gaze. “I don’t much like men who don’t treat their women well. I can make sure the problem doesn’t go any further.”

Dilan’s gaze flickered between the knife in Blaine’s hand and the hard set to Blaine’s jaw. Piran still stood behind Dilan.

“I wouldn’t push your luck, laddie,” Piran muttered to Dilan.
“What’s one more dead man when he’s done time in Velant for murder already?”

Dilan glared at Blaine. “What I do in my own household is my own business.”

Blaine shrugged. “Maybe. But out here in the wilderness, ‘accidents’ can happen very easily. Might be me, might be someone else, but we’ve all got warning now what you’re up to. If Essie turns up hurt, Von won’t have to come after you by himself. Do you understand?”

One of the wise women came forward. She gave Essie a shrewd look. “Bad enough to have been Prokief’s prisoner, without being forced into another prison,” she said. “Say now if you want no part of this.”

Essie was trembling, but she shook her head. “No. I don’t want to do this.” She looked at Dilan. “He told me—”

“Shut your mouth!” Dilan commanded. Blaine moved forward to thrust the knife under Dilan’s chin.

“I’d like to hear what the lady has to say,” Blaine drawled, meeting Dilan’s eyes. Dilan glared, but said nothing.

Essie straightened and collected her courage. “He told me that if I didn’t marry him, he’d find me and kill me,” she said, looking defiantly at Dilan.

The wise woman took out a small pouch of coins from her apron, and forced it into Dilan’s hands. “Here’s your bride price. The marriage is undone.”

Dilan scowled at the wise woman. There was a killing glint in his eyes. “This isn’t over,” Dilan muttered.

Piran laid a hand on Dilan’s shoulder, poking the point of his blade into the man’s back. “Oh, yes it is,” Piran said quietly. “The guards don’t go looking for missing colonists. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave the young lady alone and go about your business.”

Dilan jerked free of Piran’s hold. His friends had already melted away in the crowd, but more men had come to stand behind Von. With a curse, Dilan turned away and strode off into the night.

Blaine did not sheath his knife until Dilan was gone. Piran and Dawe came to stand beside Blaine as the onlookers drifted back to the festival and Verran’s musicians struck up a lively tune.

“How in Raka do I always end up in the middle of these things?” Blaine muttered to no one in particular.

“You’ve earned a reputation for a cool head and a hard fist,” Dawe said with a shrug. “And surviving six winters up here is no small feat.”

“I could use another drink,” Blaine said, heading off with Piran and Dawe behind him. A small crowd gathered around the wagon where the tavern master had his barrels. Blaine glanced back toward the newlyweds, who were dancing in the center of the clearing with their friends, but Dilan had withdrawn to the edges of the crowd.

“Been no word of them at all,” a man dressed in the skins and furs of an Edgeland trapper was saying as the tavern master poured him an ale. “They should have been back by now, since they left before my party went out onto the ice.”

“Missing some hunters?” Blaine asked as he waited for his drink.

“It’s more than that,” the trapper said indignantly. His skin was rough and reddened by the harsh winds, and his dark hair was greasy, held down under a fur hat. “The lead trapper on one of those teams is married to a friend of mine. Amren is a good man, and a fine tracker. He knows the ice out there like a fox. So when he didn’t meet up with us like he promised, we went looking for him.” The trapper leaned forward. “We found their tracks. They went so far and just ended.”

Piran frowned. “Fall into a crack in the ice?”

The trapper shook his head. “No cracks to be seen. No animal tracks, either. I’ve seen the great bears wandering the ice. They come across the sea on the ice floes, and leave the same way. But that’s what I’m telling you—there were no tracks at all.”

“That’s not possible,” Blaine said as he accepted a full tankard of ale from the tavern master.

“Aye, that’s what we said. But it’s grown strange out on the ice. I’ve been hunting here for five years now and I thought I had seen all that the wilds of Edgeland had to show me,” the hunter said. His eyes had grown wide, and real fear tinged the man’s voice. “We camped near where Amren and the others had disappeared. We thought they might come back, or that we’d get some idea what happened to them. That night it was as if the world went wild around us.”

Blaine leaned forward. Something about the man’s tale prickled at the back of his mind.

“The lights in the sky were red that night. Gods bless me, I’ve never seen the like of it. Looked as if all the world was aflame. And it wasn’t just the lights. It was the magic.”

“Magic?”

The trapper nodded. “I’ve got no more than a hedge witch. I have a bit of tracking magic that helps me find the animals and a wee bit that can stop a fox or a rabbit in its tracks to get off a shot. But that night, Yadin strike me if I lie, I could feel so much magic around me I thought I’d suffocate. Truly, I couldn’t draw breath. I don’t know what the others felt, but I could feel the air crackle and the ground under me shake.

“We gathered our things and ran,” the trapper said, taking a large gulp of his ale. “I’ve never run like that from anything, not even the guards who sent me to this godsforsaken rock. But
we all ran—and that’s when we found out what became of the other ones.”

“How?”

The trapper looked from face to face before he spoke. “The lights took them.”

Blaine leaned back, skeptical. “The lights took them?”

The trapper nodded. “There were eight of us who went looking for Amren. All eight of us made camp at the place where we saw the lights. But only six made it out.”

“What happened to the others?”

The trapper’s face was tense, and his jaw tightened. “We don’t know. Sure as the gods are my witness, we were all together when the lights started and the magic thickened around us. I saw all of my men when we began running. But when we reached a point where the magic felt like it lifted, two of the men were gone.”

“No shouts, no calls for help?”

The trapper shook his head. “Nothing. But I couldn’t help wondering, since the magic went away at the same time that they disappeared, whether it got what it wanted.”

“The magic?” Blaine pressed.

“Aye.” The trapper nodded. “The magic. It took the slowest of our group, the two who fell behind the others. And then it disappeared, just like they did. Just like Amren’s group.”

The crowd around the ale wagon peppered the trapper with questions, but Blaine turned away. Dawe and Piran caught up to him. “Some story,” Piran observed. “Any truth to it, you reckon?”

Blaine shrugged. “Could be.”

“Prokief would love to get his hands on magic that could make people disappear,” Dawe muttered. “I wonder if the warden-mages have felt anything strange.”

“Not that we’re likely to hear about it,” Piran added.

Blaine grimaced. “True. But Prokief would know about it. He already imagined that everyone was out to get him—”

“We were,” Piran muttered.

“So if he finds out there’s strange magic afoot, or worse, if people begin disappearing…” Blaine said.

“He’ll blame it on the colonists,” Dawe finished. “He won’t care how it happened, he’ll be looking for someone to take it out on and he’ll figure it’s a plot to unseat him.”

“Then we’d better have a plan,” Piran said. “Because I have a feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

T
HINGS ARE GETTING WORSE INSIDE VELANT.”
Verran Danning put his case with his pennywhistle and his flute down on the table. “I heard the guards talking down at the tavern. The warden-mages haven’t been keeping the new convicts in line, so the guards have had to crack down.”

“Is it just Prokief’s mages?” Blaine mused. “I’d love to know if something’s affecting all the magic, or just the warden-mages.”

Verran shrugged. “I use a small amount of magic when I play. It’s not much of a talent, but I can put the crowd at ease and give them a pleasant feeling toward me.” He grinned. “You’d be surprised how much of a difference a little thing like that can make in the coin I get for the night.” Verran licked his lips. “The last couple of times I’ve played, the magic felt ‘slippery.’ Sorry that I can’t explain it better.” He paused. “I did get it to work, finally. But in all the years I’ve used magic, I’ve never had that happen.”

Dawe leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs. “You know, I was working with some heated copper out in the shed a couple of days ago, and got a nasty burn for my trouble.” He held up his right hand with a half-healed burn on the palm.
“I’ve worked with hot silver since I apprenticed at twelve years old, and I never did that before.” He bit at his lip as he thought.

“When it happened, I blamed myself for not being careful. But like Verran, I use a touch of magic in my work—always have. Oh, it’s not big magic, not like the warden-mages or even the healers, but it helps me do just a bit more than talent or skill would allow. It’s so much a part of me that I rely on it. And I remember thinking, when I burned myself, that it was just like the magic slipped away from me for a moment.”

Blaine had been leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. He pushed himself away and began to pace. “From what I’ve seen down in Bay-town lately, it’s like there’s been a full moon every night. People are on edge, acting crazy. Ifrem, down at the tavern, told me there’s been more fights in the last few weeks than he remembers in all of last year.” He shook his head. “I’ve had a headache for a week that won’t go away, and I must have heard a dozen people down at the tavern say the same thing.”

A loud cry broke the night stillness.

“That sounded like Kestel,” Blaine said, pushing back from the table so quickly his chair nearly fell.

Piran also was on his feet. “Was that a scream?”

“Sounded more like a battle cry to me,” Dawe said. They ran for the door, each grabbing something to use as a weapon.

“This way,” Blaine said, leading them toward the barns.

They found Kestel standing in the open space in front of the barn. Her clothing was torn and her lip was split. A long knife with a bloody blade was held tightly in her right hand.

“Someone jumped me,” she said, her voice breathless. “He got away, but he’s hurt.”

“We’re on it,” Piran said, taking off at a run toward the forest, with Dawe close behind.

Blaine realized Kestel’s left arm was cradled close to her body and that her sleeve was dark with blood. He turned to Verran, who had followed them out of the kitchen. The minstrel held a frying pan in one hand and a small dirk in the other.

“The pan was handy, and I had the knife on my belt,” Verran said with a shrug.

“Take Kestel in and get her cleaned up,” Blaine said. “I’m going with the others.”

Before long, they filed into the kitchen, cold, snow-covered, and discouraged. “We lost him,” Blaine said, hanging up his sodden cloak. “Without torches, we couldn’t go far into the trees, and finding someone in a black cloak in the deep brush is damn near impossible.”

Kestel sat at the table with her injured forearm on a piece of cloth as Verran carefully stitched closed a gash. A glass of whiskey sat next to Kestel’s left hand, and she tossed back what remained of the amber liquid, then cursed fluently, her face taut with pain.

“How bad?” Blaine asked.

“I’ve had worse,” Kestel replied.

“Not too deep, but it will heal faster with a couple of stitches,” Verran replied. Kestel winced. “Sorry,” Verran said. “I’m a better musician than tailor.”

“Do you think it was our ‘friend’ from the wedding?” Piran asked, exchanging worried glances with Blaine.

Kestel shook her head before Blaine could reply. “No. This was a professional.”