A Cavern of Black Ice (14 page)

Take the servant girl Katia, for
instance. Such a sly, bright girl. Too good by far to be penetrated
by the Knife. Iss had no interest in bedding her himself, though it
would be interesting to see just how far she would go, just what she
would
do
to free herself from the threat of the kitchens.

Iss smiled with all the satisfaction of
a jeweler setting a gem. That was Katia's weakness: her fear of
ending up in the kitchens, broken veined and red faced, her once high
breasts resting like drained water-skins upon her belly, her once
bright hair turned to gray. Fortress born and bred, Katia had grown
up seeing the exact same thing happen to every other woman who worked
there: Mask Fortress took and took but seldom gave. Now the sharp
little minx was afraid that the same thing would happen to her.

Once Iss discovered a person's fears
they were his. Katia was his now. The girl loved Asarhia March,
admired and protected her. Yet she was also envious of Asarhia.
Deeply so. Envy and love warred within her heart, yet the fear of
returning to the kitchens always won the day. Take tonight. The girl
had clearly not wanted to tell him that her mistress's chamber,
bedclothes, and hair were in disarray; that Asarhia's skin was hot,
yet the sweat that lay upon it was as cold as water wept from ice.
Yet Katia had told all that and more. Her mistress wasn't the one who
could save her from a life in the kitchens. Iss made sure the girl
knew that.

As for the other matter—the
possibility that the girl had told Asarhia what she had overhead the
other day in the Red Forge—well, that really didn't matter at
all. The Knife watched Asarhia day and night, even when she left her
chambers and didn't realize she was being watched. Iss' steps slowed
for just a moment. He did not relish taking such measures against his
almost-daughter. Asarhia was normally such a sweet and trusting girl,
yet she was beginning to get frightened. And Iss knew from experience
that people who were frightened did foolish things.

Feeling a gust of warmer air puff
against his cheeks, Iss made his final adjustment of the lamp. The
first chamber couldn't be much farther down now. The Inverted Spire
had only three chambers, all lying close to or just above apex. By
the time one descended to the first of them, the spire had narrowed
to the width of a bullpen. The second chamber was smaller still, and
the final chamber was barely the size of a well shaft. Cupped within
a seam of black rock, its base ended in a needlepoint of steel.

Not for the first time, Penthero Iss
found himself wishing the stone lamp could better light his way. The
curve of the stairs was more pronounced lower down and the gradient
sharper. Stepping from one worn and sloping step to another was a
danger of the worst kind. Iss knew he could use sorcery to draw forth
light, yet he also knew it wasn't a cost he cared to pay. The speck
of frozen urine currently thawing against his thigh was reminder
enough of that. He was not a man of great ability, like some. He had
enough. Only enough. His strengths lay elsewhere… as in his
ability to choose men.

Marafice Eye was one of his chosen. The
Protector General of the Rive Watch was dangerous; he could inspire
loyalty in fighting men. Iss had realized this early on, in the days
when Marafice Eye was a lowly brother-in-the-watch, with a new-made
sword at his thigh and the muck of Hoargate still caked upon his
boots. Iss had been protector general then, always on the watch for
rivals. Another man might have made it his business to destroy
Marafice Eye, slay him before he grew into a threat. Iss had made it
his business to draw him close. He saw a man who could be useful to
him, one who had qualities of dominance and brutality he lacked. When
the time came to storm the fortress and overthrow the aging and
sickly Borhis Horgo, it had been Marafice Eye who had commanded the
Rive Watch; Marafice Eye who'd slain a dozen grangelords and Forsworn
on the Horn's icy steps.

It had been a bloody ten days. The
Forsworn had been expelled from the city; and their walled keeps,
which they called Shrineholds, had been stormed and broken. When it
was done, Penthero Iss, kinsman to lord of the Sundered Granges, had
taken the title of surlord for himself. Marafice Eye has stood at his
side, his protector general and Knife.

Fifteen years later, and they were
still surlord and Knife. Iss had little cause to regret his choice.
With Marafice Eye at his back, keeping the Rive Watch loyal, his
hands were free to deal with the grangelords.

The great houses of Spire Vanis were a
thorn in his side, braying constantly for land and titles and gold.
Thirteen years ago a bargain had been struck, and the grangelords
never let Iss forget it. "You promised us the chance to win land
and glory," the Whitehog had said just six days ago in Iss'
private chamber. "That's the only reason why you're surlord
today. Forget that, and
we
just might forget that we spoke
oaths in the Blackvault to protect you."

Iss had almost smiled as the Whitehog
spoke. Threats from seventeen-year-old boys had that effect on him.
Still, he had seen enough to realize that the young and ambitious
grangeling who stood before him, wearing the white and gold of Hews
and carrying a five-foot greatsword on his back, might one day make a
bid for his place. The boy had already taken to calling himself the
Whitehog, in honor of his great-grandfather who had led the Rive
Watch to victory at High Rood. It didn't take a seer to know that he
held similar dreams of glory for himself.

Well
, Iss thought, peering
into the darkness below,
perhaps the Whitehog might get the
chance to lead a force sooner than he thinks. Perhaps he just might
find a clansman's ax thrust into his porcine heart
.

Spying the top of the first stone
ceiling beneath him, Iss allowed himself to relax a little. Now if he
fell, he wouldn't break his neck.

The ceiling stretched across the
Inverted Spire like a great stone valve across a pipe. Over the
centuries debris had collected on the topside, shaken down from the
walls above. Rock fragments, facing tiles, and odd pieces of masonry
lay in disjointed heaps amid the yellowing bones of rats, pigeons,
and bats that had gained entry to the spire by means Iss couldn't
guess. Human bones were down there, too. Two rib cages could clearly
be seen peeking through mounds of rock dust like spiders hiding in
sand. Iss had made it his business to search once, yet he'd only ever
found one skull.

Bits of food, strips of netting, and a
few other scraps had fallen from the Surlord's own hands. Last summer
during Almsfest, he had brought a basket of soft strawberries with
him, only to find they had slipped from his hand halfway through the
descent. They were still there now, spread across the stonework like
spattered blood. Red and glistening and smelling like perfume on a
filthy whore, they were only just beginning to turn. This deep within
the mountain's core, things took years to decay.

Ahead, the staircase ducked below the
stone platform and into the chamber below. Iss minded his head. The
air stilled immediately, no longer subject to the chasm's winds.
Increased warmth came with the calm. The flame within the stone lamp
shivered and darted, lighting a circular chamber with polished walls.
Dog hooks and metal rings had been hammered into the stone. Chains
ran through a series of loops and then ended abruptly, hacked off in
midlink. If one looked closely, one could see scraps of brown fabric
caught within the chains. Un-tanned leather, it might be, yet if Iss
had to put money on it he'd guess human skin.

Descending on a curving slant along the
perimeter of the chamber, he barely spared a passing glance for the
chamber's contents. Soon, very soon, he would have Caydis remove the
wire cage and the weight-stone and the cracked and greasy wheel.
Pretty things would be brought in their place: plump cushions,
silkwood chests, and tapestries woven with blue and gold thread.
Things that would please a girl.

Descending into the apex chamber, Iss
shrugged away all thoughts but those he needed. The air down here was
as thick and heavy as still water at the bottom of a lake. No matter
how many times he neared the final chamber, the sudden change always
took him by surprise. His lungs had difficulty expelling air, and
deep within his ears two sharp points of pain pushed inward. The
Surlord swallowed hard, prayed that his ears wouldn't pick this time
to bleed.

The stone facing here was thicker than
anywhere else in the Spire. Pressure-formed granite, whorly and
knotted like the bark of a tree, defied breaking by all but the most
violent convulsions of Mount Slain. Flecks of bastard's gold shone
within the stone.

Unhooking the packs containing honey
and yellowbeans from his belt, Iss took the final seventeen steps and
descended into the apex chamber. The Bound One waited there: hungry,
broken, desperate for light, perfectly insulated from the outside
world by the structure and peculiar properties of the Inverted Spire.

Iss took out his silver tweezers and
uncovered the caul flies. He would draw power beyond his means
tonight.

The Great Hearth

"Effie, you know what you said the other
day when Drey and I came home, when we first met you outside the
roundhouse?"

Raif waited until his sister nodded.
"Remember what you said?"

"Yes. I said I knew you and Drey
would come back." Effie Sevrance regarded her older brother with
serious blue eyes. "I tried to tell the others, but no one would
listen."

Raif shifted his weight from one leg to
another. He was crouching in the shadow of the clan guidestone, in
the dark and smoke-filled structure of the guidehouse. A full twelve
tapers were lit, but the guidestone soaked up light and heat like a
black body of trees at the center of a snowmelt. The stone's granite
surface was rough and unfinished, and only jagged edges shone.
Sometimes the chiseled edges looked like ears, sometimes like chips
of bone and teeth. Veins of graphite formed bruises around the newer
chisel marks, forcing beads of greasy ink to the surface. No
guidestone liked to be cut.

No matter what time of day he came to
the guidehouse, Raif always thought it felt like night. Built
adjacent to the roundhouse, the guidehouse was not as well protected
or insulated from the cold. Some clans kept their guidestones inside
the main building, fearing that raiding clans might make off with
them under cover of darkness. Looking up at the massive slab of
folded granite that was the size of a one-room cottage, Raif couldn't
see how any but a band of giants equipped with rollers, pulleys, and
levers could ever hope to steal it away within the space of a single
night. And Blackhail's stone was only half the size of some.

Still, thirty-six years earlier Clan
Bludd
had
managed to steal Dhoone's guidestone, forcing the
mightiest of the clans to send their guide south to the stonefields
of Trance Vor in search of a replacement. Raif had heard many of his
own clansmen speak about the incident, talking in the hushed voices
they normally used around bloodshed. All of them held that Clan
Dhoone had never been the same since.

Clan Bludd had broken the Dhoonestone
down into rocks and built an outhouse from it. The entire
operation—the raid, the movement of the stone, and its
subsequent breaking and rebuilding—had been planned by the Dog
Lord, Vaylo Bludd. A yearman at the time, Vaylo Bludd had been a
bastard son of the clan chief, Gullit Bludd. Within that same year
Vaylo killed his two half-brothers, married his half-sister, and
usurped his father's place. To this day it was said that Vaylo Bludd
made it his business to use the outhouse every night before he slept.

Raif frowned. Sometimes he didn't know
what to make of all the stories surrounding the Dog Lord. Mace
Blackhail came up with new ones by the day.

Feeling a hot sting of anger in his
chest, Raif pushed aside all thoughts of Mace Blackhail. Now wasn't
the time for them. Effie was sitting cross-legged before him, her
pale face made old by shadows, her lovely auburn hair tangled, her
skirt damp from sitting beneath the stone bench where he had found
her. In her hands and littered across her lap were her collection of
rocks and stones. She played with them while she waited for him to
speak, moving one piece and then another in sequence. For some reason
Raif found himself wishing he could brush away the entire collection.

'What made you so sure Drey and I would
come back, Effie?" he asked softly. "Did you feel something
bad"—Raif jabbed his stomach—"here, inside?"

Effie thought about the question. She
pushed out her bottom lip, fixed her gaze in midair, then slowly
shook her head. "No, Raif."

Raif looked at Effie a long moment,
then breathed a sigh of relief. Effie hadn't felt anything similar to
the sensation he'd experienced the day of the raid. That was good.
One outsider in the family was enough.

Effie's words had been on Raif'smind
for days. He had been meaning to talk to her about them ever since
he'd returned from the badlands, but the first night hadn't been a
good time, as the clan wanted nothing more than to hear the story of
what he and Drey had done to the bodies of their kin. The day after
was given over to mourning. Inigar Stoop had split a heart-size chunk
from the guidestone, cracked it into twelve pieces—one for each
man who had died at the camp—and then laid them upon the earth
in place of bodies.

It had gone hard on everyone. When
Corbie Meese and Shor Gormalin had sung deathsongs in their fine low
voices, and all the women who had lost husbands, including Merritt
Ganlow and Raina Blackhail, cut widow's weals around their wrists,
Raif had not been able to think of anyone except Tern. The only time
the silence was broken that night was by Mace Blackhail swearing
vengeance against Clan Bludd.