A Cavern of Black Ice (114 page)

Hours passed in silence. No wind
disturbed the air in the tunnel, and the only sound was the shifting
of the ice and their own booted feet grinding dried and frozen pine
needles to dust. The riverbed rose steadily as they moved upriver,
and the ice ceiling grew closer with every step. Raif was constantly
aware of the fragile mass above him. Tons upon tons of frozen water,
suspended above his head. After a time it became impossible to walk
near the bank, and Raif set a course close to the river's middle,
where the ice crust was at its thinnest.

From time to time the dark, gaping
holes of tributaries breached the granite wall of the bank. Most
channels were choked with clumps of gray ice that spilled out onto
the riverbed in rubble heaps several feet high. Pools of frozen water
lying flat beneath the rubble told of late-season thaws and water
running
after
the channel had hard-froze. Raif dismissed
each channel as he came upon it; the one he was looking for had to
run from the west and be clear enough to let a man and woman pass.

The passage of time was difficult to
gauge. Raif felt his body growing colder and his mind moving slowly
from thought to thought. He forced Ash to eat some strips of cured
salmon, but he had no stomach for food himself. The air in the
drained riverbed was becoming thicker and more condensed. The river
itself was shrinking, and soon Raif found himself walking with his
back and neck partially bent. The ice crust was so close he could
reach up and touch the hard glassy surface, see the flaw lines and
pressure whorls within. Tiny bubbles of trapped air shone like
pearls.

On and on they walked, following the
bends and bow curves of
Kith Masso
as it skirted the
mountain's base. Raif watched Ash constantly, finding a dozen excuses
to touch her in small unassuming ways. Her face was gray and tightly
drawn. Too often her eyes were focused in a place he tried to but
could not see. At some point she had stripped off her mitts, and her
bare hands were now closed around the lamp so tightly it looked as if
she were trying to crush it. Her knuckles showed white and jagged
like teeth.

He spoke to her little, and received
few responses, yet he feared to do much more. She was fighting the
voices, and even Tern's hammer would have proven useless against
those.

Eventually they entered a stretch of
the river where the granite walls were jagged and twisted as if
something had been wrenched from them at force. Stone ledges broke
through the ice crust. Great piers of black iron rock jutted from the
walls, and troughs gouged deep into the riverbed were filled with
dark ice. Raif turned his head sharply as a cry that came from
nothing human ripped through the tunnel like a blast of cold air. The
flame within the soapstone lamp wavered. Ash inhaled sharply. Her
eyes met Raif's and she nodded, once. "They draw nearer,"
she said. "Their world touches ours in this place."

Raif closed his eyes. He had used up a
lifetime's worth of prayers the night the ice wolves had attacked
him, and he knew better than to ask the Stone Gods for more.

In silence they continued walking. Ash
could no longer stand fully upright, and Raif wondered how long it
would be before they'd have to get down on their hands and knees and
crawl. Time passed. Progress was slow over the warped and
concentrated granite that formed the river's floor. Fear grew in Raif
slowly, filling the hollow places in his chest. A second cry came:
high and terrible, almost beyond hearing. Listening to it, Raif
wished he were back on the snow plains, facing wolves. Other sounds
followed: hisses and broken whispers and the wet snarls of things
with snouts. As he rounded a bend in the river's course, Raif
breathed in the faint odor of charred meat and singed hair. When he
breathed again it was gone.

Noooooooooo.

The hairs on Raif's neck pricked up all
at once. Something
other
had spoken, yet it reminded him of
another time and place. When he realized what it was it made him
sick. The Bluddroad. The Bludd women and children. The sound of
desperation was the same in both worlds.

With his back bent almost double and
his stomach heaving, he almost missed the gash in the far bank. He
thought at first it was just shadows, as there was no telltale gleam
of ice on the surrounding riverbed, but the darkness ran too deeply,
and the surrounding rocks were too flat to cast shadows of any depth.

"Ash. Bring the lamp." He
waited until she reached his side before crossing the riverbed. The
river was barely the length of three horses now, and the ice ceiling
dipped to chest height in parts. Light in the tunnel dimmed
noticeably as Ash crouched to set down the lamp.

The gash in the rock was bell shaped,
tall as Ash's shoulders, and completely clean of ice. Raif stepped
through to check the way. Here the air was different: colder, drier,
shot with the smell of iron ore. No ice ceiling stretched overhead,
just a barrel curve of rock. The tunnel led west into the mountain,
disappearing into darkness so complete, it gave Raif a chill to see
it.

"Raif. Here."

Raif backed out of the gash. Ash was
crouching by the lamp, her right arm extending outward, her hand flat
upon the riverwall.

"Look."

Raif quested for his lore. A raven
etched in stone marked the way.

A Cavern of Black
Ice

Cassy Lok woke to the smell of smoke.
Beth
, came the thought straightaway.
She's been up
making honey cakes again and forgotten how many she put on the fire
.
Cassy huffed in her pillow, determined to go back to sleep.
I'm
not saving her this time. I don't care how many honey cakes have
fallen through the griddle and caught light… and I hope she
gets fat from eating the ones that turned out Fat and spotty with big
rot holes in her teeth
.

Cassy closed her eyes as tightly
as she could, then scrunched up her face for good measure. Just this
morning she'd caught Beth trying on the good blue dress Father had
brought back with him from Ille Glaive.
Her
dress. And she
wouldn't have minded much—well, not
that
much—if
it hadn't been for the fact that Beth was prancing in front of the
looking glass at the time, pretending to be a fine court-bred maiden,
nibbling on sweetmeats rolled in gold leaf and sipping wine through a
crust of rose-scented ice. For sweetmeats Beth had used hazelnuts
coated in cinnamon. For wine she had used plum juice.
Plum juice
!
Cassy gritted her teeth. And when this fine court bred maiden had
found herself caught in the act, the first thing she'd done was twirl
around to face her elder sister,
holding the cup of plum juice in
her hand
!

It didn't bear thinking about. Mother
said the stain would come out. And Beth
had
spent the rest
of the day following her around with a kicked-dog expression on her
face. But still. Father had bought her that dress, and it fitted so
well, and it was a grown-up dress, without any of those silly
girlish frills that Father knew she hated, and it didn't really
matter that she had nowhere special to wear it until spring.

"I'll take you dancing in it when
I return from the North, Casilyn Lok," Father had said as he'd
handed her the package. "And that's a promise as binding as I've
made to any man."

Cassy unscrunched her face.
Perhaps she'd been a bit harsh on Beth earlier. The smell of burning
was growing worse, and if she didn't know better, she'd imagine a
whole tray of honey cakes had fallen onto the fire.

The
chimney
. Cassy sat bolt
upright. What if more bricks had caved in and blocked the flue? It
was windy enough for it. And the roofer hadn't come today, as he was
supposed to, and the whole stack was held up by only a couple of
pinewood struts.

Quickly and in complete darkness, Cassy
found her slippers and shawl. As she stepped toward the door, a
sleepy voice spoke out from the deep shadows at the far side of the
room. "Cassy? Is that you?" Beth.

A small shift took place in Cassy's
chest: not fear exactly, but the first stirrings of it. There
were
no honey cakes on the fire. "Beth, put your coat and slippers
on. Quick now."

Sheets rustled in the darkness. "You're
not still mad at me, Cassy?"

Cassy shook her head. Then,
realizing her younger sister couldn't see her, she said, "No.
Not much," out loud.

"What's burning?"

"I think the chimney's caved in."

"But-"

"No buts, Beth. Do as I say."
Cassy was surprised at how sharp her voice sounded. Bare feet thudded
onto the floor. More rustling followed. A moment later she felt
Beth's shoulders knock against her arm. "Here. Take my hand."
Beth's hand was warm and sweaty: She always fell asleep with her
fists clenched. Cassy led her toward the door. "You didn't put
anything to cook on the hearth tonight, did you?"

"No, Cassy."

"Good girl." Cassy lifted the
latch and opened the door. A wave of smoke and heat puffed through
the room, making the shutters rattle behind their backs. "Come
on. Let's wake Mother and Little Moo." This time she made sure
her voice sounded calm.

Its hot.

Cassy felt her way through the
darkness, her hand now closed tightly around her sister's. "I
know. Let's just get to Mother's room and you can tell her how you
found your way in the dark." Even as she spoke, Cassy felt heat
push against her face. A cracking noise sounded from the floor below.
Beth flinched. Cassy pulled her sister firmly in the direction of
their mother's room.

Mother and Little Moo slept in the room
directly above the kitchen. Heat from the fire warmed the floor
through the cold months of winter, and two large windows let in great
squares of sunlight in summer and spring. Cassy felt a wave of relief
roll over her as she saw the pale corona of light around the door:
Mother had kept a lamp lit. Little Moo didn't like to sleep in the
dark. She said something called
beemies
lived under her bed.
No one but Little Moo knew what beemies were. Cassy suspected that
Beth had frightened Little Moo with tales of beasties and monsters
and other fey things, and Little Moo had taken this information and
invented a whole new class of baby peril from it.

Cassy's fingers found the latch on
first try. Warm air rushed past her as the door opened, pressing her
nightgown flat against the back of her legs. Light stung her eyes.
Smoke rolled into the room, greasy and nearly black. Cassy felt its
hot little fingers slip around her ankles, grasping like hands
without bone. Beth began to cough.

"Cassy?" Darra Lok sat up in
bed. The beautiful honey-colored hair that she normally kept pinned
in a simple knot spilled over her shoulders like dark fire. For the
first time ever, Cassy noticed gray strands within the gold.

"Mother. I-"

Darra Lok nodded her eldest daughter
into silence, her eyes on the smoke. Reaching over, she plucked the
sleeping form of Little Moo from the opposite side of the bed. Little
Moo's head rolled onto her mother's shoulder, and she made a soft
gurgling noise but did not wake. Darra spoke soft words to her anyway
as she kicked the blankets from the bed and rose to her feet. Beth
tugged on Cassy's arm, wanting to go to her mother, but Cassy held
her firm. Darra Lok sent her eldest daughter a look that said many
things. Cassy nodded.

"Come on, Beth. Let's go
downstairs." It was easier to sound calm now that Mother was
here. As she pulled Beth from the room, she heard Darra Lok take the
lamp from the washstand and follow behind with Little Moo.

Beth shivered as Cassy guided her into
the smoke that rolled up the stairs like a wave of black foarn. Cassy
felt like shivering too, but Mother had sent her a look saying,
Be
strong now, for Beth and yourself
. So instead of shivering she
tugged her younger sister forward and said, "This is no worse
than looking for mushrooms in the mist. Remember that time you found
those big brown ones under the dogwood, and everyone else had already
looked, but you were the only who could see them? Remember that?"

Beth nodded. Her small face looked
pinched.

Cassy continued guiding her down
the stairs, one step at a time. "And you said that no one could
spot mushrooms better than you, and even Father agreed."

"He said we couldn't eat them.
Said they were rabbits bane."

Cassy managed a dim smile. She
could clearly hear the low roar of fire now, coming from the front of
the house. Wood snapped and popped as it burned, and Cassy imagined
fang-shaped flames eating away at the house.

"Cassy. We're going to the back of
the house, to the kitchen." Darra Lok's voice was firm but calm.
"Can you see the way ahead?"

"I can! I can!" cried Beth.

"Good. Stay close to your sister
and help her find the way."

Smoke was gouting along the corridor
that linked the front entrance to the kitchen. Scorched bits of
matter sailed on the warm currents of air that blew around the house.
Flaming embers, ducking and darting like little red fishes, floated
past Cassy's face. The fire sounded like one long continuous roll of
thunder now, a storm bearing down on the house. Still she could see
no flames. Perhaps the fire was burning from the outside
in
.
Perhaps the chimney flue had collapsed and the wind had showered
sparks over the roof.

Little Moo woke as Cassy and Beth made
their way through the chest-high smoke in the corridor. The baby made
a frightened, snuffling sound and cried the words, "
Mize.
Mize
." Cassy hoped her eyes weren't stinging. Mother hushed
her, and she was quiet for a while, but her breaths came in hard
little wheezes.