A Cavern of Black Ice (18 page)

"What's the matter, Effie? Has the
rock scratched your skin?" Raina was walking alongside Mercy,
looking up at Effie, her face all creased and pale.

Leaning back in the saddle, Effie
reached back with her hand to feel for one of the saddlebags. When
her mitt slipped under the leather lid, she released her grip on the
lore and let it fall to the bottom of the bag. A tight itchiness
prickled through her stomach as it dropped. She took a breath, told
herself it was silly to be afraid of a rock no bigger than her nose.
"I'm fine, Raina. Just… cold. The rock felt cold against
my skin."

Raina nodded her head in a way that
made Effie feel bad. She hated to lie.

They walked in silence after that.
Raina led Mercy over the ridge and into the bottomlands beyond. Old
elms, basswoods, oaks, and dog birches began to spike the path, their
bare limbs clutching at the sky I with every gust of wind. Gobs of
frozen sap shone like eyes in the places where branches split into
twigs, and deep within their hollowed-out boles, wet ice glittered
like teeth.

Effie shivered. Normally she liked old
trees, yet today she found herself seeing only the bad things: the
wood ear fungus eating into the bark, the slimy green moss growing on
south-facing trunks, and the tubes of rootwood poking through the
earth around the bases of the old oaks. Surely roots weren't meant to
be seen? Just looking at them made Effie feel queer, as if she were
catching a glimpse of hidden things, like the pale wingless insects
that lived under the roundhouse floorboards and deep within its
walls.

Feeling her heart begin to patter
again, Effie looked away. Fixing her gaze on the space between
Mercy's ears, she tried not to think of her lore lying at the bottom
of Raina's saddlebag or the roots of the old oaks. She wished she
didn't have her mitts on and could touch Mercy's neck. She knew it
would be warm and soft and nice. "Good girl," she
whispered, needing to hear the plain sound of her own voice. "Good
Mercy."

The Oldwood crept up on one slowly.
First there was just a softening of the ground underfoot, a few bushy
birches and alders, and a string of old elms. Then the ground snow
thinned, revealing the broad leaves of winter ferns and stripped
shoots of milkweed. A little later there were rounded boulders
speckled white with bird lime and yellow with withered moss. Then
every time you took a step,
years
of dead and frozen matter
crackled beneath your feet. The light dropped, then later the wind.
The smell of damp earth and slowly decaying things sharpened. And
finally, after you walked a while longer past rotten stumps and
needle-thin streams, you were there, surrounded by a shuddering,
creaking forest of basswood, elm, and oak. The Oldwood.

Effie was glad to get out of the open
spaces of the valley, pleased that she could no longer see more than
a short walk ahead. Still, it was very quiet and the wind didn't
quite blow through the trees: It hissed. Effie glanced at Raina,
wishing she would speak. Raina was quiet, though, her face tilted
down toward the path. There was a ring of mud and snowmelt around the
hem of her woolen skirt, and ice crystals had formed along the
breathline of her hood.

Effie dearly wanted to say something to
Raina, something funny or interesting or clever, but she wasn't very
good at talking. Not like Letty Shank and Mog Wiley.

In silence, Raina led them through the
north corner of the Old-wood and onto the west fringe. The
temperature had risen slightly, and the snow underfoot was no longer
as brittle as it had been. A few winter birds, mostly robins and
grouse, called to each other from places Effie couldn't see. Every
now and then she felt something
push
against the base of her
spine. It was a metal buckle or a hard lump of leather in the saddle.
It had to be. Her lore couldn't push right through the saddlebags
and
Mercy's rump. It couldn't.

The west fringe of the Oldwood was best
for traps. Many clans-women trapped animals here, and all had their
own territories and secret places. Effie knew Raina's places well.
Raina had exclusive rights to the stream between the two sister
willows and the bluff, and to the bluff itself, where bearberries and
blackberries grew high atop the ridge. Effie didn't know much about
trapping game, but she knew that the berry bushes were a good thing.
All sorts of creatures came to eat the fruit.

They arrived at Raina's trapping ground
while the sun was still rising. Effie slid down from the filly's back
as Raina hiked up the bluff. Reaching the top of the bank, Raina
ducked beneath a bearberry bush to inspect one of her traps. After a
moment she made a pleased sound. "I've got one, Effie. A fox. A
big one with a beautiful coat. It's still warm.

Effie walked a little way up the ridge,
deliberately putting some distance between herself and the saddlebag
containing her lore. She wished the fox hadn't been warm. That meant
Raina would stop and skin it before it froze. You couldn't skin a
frozen fox.

Raina emerged from the bush holding a
blue fox by the scruff of its neck. Its yellow eyes were still open,
but there was no fox cunning spilling out. "Effie. Fetch the
skinning knife from my left saddlebag."

Effie wasn't very good at her left and
rights. She needed to have both her hands in front of her to work it
out. Making a little weighing movement with her mitted fingers, she
frowned. The left bag was the one containing her lore. Heart beating
just a little bit quicker than moments earlier, she weighed her left
and rights again.

"Effie! Hurry now! I want to be
back by noon."

Raina's voice was sharper than normal,
and Effie ran the short distance back to Mercy. Eyes closed, lips
pressed firmly together, she thrust a mitted hand into the saddlebag.
Even as her fingers found and closed around the cool metal of the
skinning knife, her lore
pushed
against the back of her
hand. Effie jumped. Her lore wanted to be picked up and held…
like the time in the small dog cote just before Shor Gormalin came.

"No," Effie whispered.
"Please. I don't want to
know
."

"Effie, the knife!"

Grabbing tight hold of the knife, Effie
yanked her arm free of the saddlebag. She spent the next moment
standing perfectly still, her face all scrunched, the knife held out
at arm's length, waiting to see if anything terrible would happen.
Only nothing did. Trees creaked. An owl that didn't know what time of
day it was hooted. Breathing a sigh of relief, Effie ran up the slope
and joined Raina.

Raina had already cut the trap wire
from the fox's snout and was busy brushing away bits of leaves and
snow from its coat. Effie handed her the knife, but as she did so the
temptation to lean in close and hug Raina was overpowering, and she
wrapped her arms around Raina's waist.

"Little one. Little one."
Raina pulled down Effie's hood and stroked her hair. "I
shouldn't have brought you all this way. It was wrong of me."

Effie didn't much care that Raina had
misunderstood things. The sound of Raina's voice, gentle, good, and
completely familiar, was all that counted. Just to hear it made Effie
feel better. She hugged her for a bit longer and then pulled away.
Raina let her go. The fox hung by its brush from her free hand, and
Effie could tell she was eager to skin it and be gone.

"I know," Raina said, making
a small gesture indicating that Effie should pull up her hood against
the cold, "why don't you go and check on the other side of the
bushes for those shiny stones we were talking about? Right between
the two oaks, under the bearberry."

As Effie nodded, snow and earth
crackled in the bushes below. Branches moved. A jackdaw took to the
air, screaming at the sky as it flew. Metal jingled softly.

Raina beckoned Effie to her. She had
already made the first incision along the fox's snout, and there was
a film of blood on her blade. As Effie came forward, she let the fox
drop to the ground.

Mace Blackhail emerged from the bushes
below them, leading his blue roan by the reins. The gelding was
lathered, its coat steaming in the cold air and its nostrils
frothing with mucus. Mud was sprayed over its belly and legs, and the
skin around its saddle was patchy and chaffed. Mace Blackhail looked
little better. His fox hood was matted with muck and ice, and his
cheeks were burned red by snow glare.

"Foster Mother!" he called.
"I arrived back at the roundhouse a quarter after you left."

Raina made no reply. Her fingers dug
into Effie's shoulders.

Mace Blackhail shrugged. Coming to a
halt, he tied the roan's reins to a whip-thin birch. Effie heard
metal things—weapons, she supposed—clink beneath his
oilskins.

"We need to talk, you and I,
Foster Mother." Mace shot a glance Effie's way. "Alone and
in private."

Not releasing her grip on Effie's
shoulder or the skinning knife, Raina began to descend the slope.
"Effie's but a child. She won't—"

"She's a Sevrance," cut in
Mace Blackhail. "She'll go running back to that dark-eyed
brother of hers, sniveling and telling tales."

"You mean Raif?" Raina's
voice had a catch to it that Effie didn't understand. "As you
and Drey seem to get along well enough. He seemed eager enough to
pledge his hammer to you the same night Bron came from Dhoone."

Mace Blackhail pulled down his hood.
His face was dark, thin from long days in the saddle. "Get rid
of the child, Raina."

Effie kept herself still. She imagined
she could still feel her lore pressing against her mitted hand.

Raina took a small breath and patted
Effie's shoulder. Lowering her head, she spoke words for Effie's ears
alone. "Run along and find those stones behind the bushes like
we talked about. I'll keep watch. I won't leave without you. I
promise."

Effie twisted her head around so she
could look at Raina's face. What she saw frightened her. "Raina?"

"Go, Effie." Raina patted her
shoulder—harder this time. "Go. Everything will be fine
here. There's nothing to worry about. It's just me and Mace."

Effie scrambled down the slope. Mace
Blackhail watched her descend. When she drew level with the horses,
Mercy whickered, and Effie reached out to touch her neck.

Push.

Snapping her hand back, Effie bit hard
on her lip to stop any noise from leaving her mouth. It couldn't be
her lore. It
couldn't
. Turning on her heel, she found
herself face-to-face with Mace Blackhail. Before she could move away,
Mace grabbed her chin with a gloved hand.

His hair dripped snowmelt onto his
cheeks as he angled her face one way and then the other. He smelled
of skinned animals. His voice when it came was as smooth and cold as
ice. "As it is you'll be no great beauty. Though you're liable
to end up worse if you go telling tales."

"Leave her alone!" It was
Raina, coming down the slope. Effie noticed she still had the
skinning knife in her hand.

Mace Blackhail smacked Effie's
buttocks. "Don't come back until I'm gone."

Effie dashed away into the bushes,
hardly caring where she was headed. She heard Raina call out to her,
some sort of warning about not going too far, yet Effie could barely
hear it over the fast beating of her heart. A finger of oak scraped
along her cheek. Ferns slapped at her boots and skirt, and snow and
twigs crackled beneath her feet. She hardly knew if she was running
from Mace Blackhail or her lore.

When the ground finally steepened,
Effie slowed. Her hood was down, but her face didn't feel cold at
all. Breath fogged as it left her mouth. She glanced over her
shoulder, but all she saw were oaks and elms barricading the way. Oak
roots peeped out above the snow line, pale and fat like worms.

Effie looked away. Up the slope and off
to the left lay the backs of the bearberry bushes where Raina kept
her traps. Effie frowned. Going that way would almost be the same as
going back to the clearing. But Raina had told her not to go far.
Unsure of what to do, she hesitated; her hand stole up to her neck,
searching for the lore that wasn't there. Funny how she always held
it when she had decisions to make. Laying her mitted palm flat on her
chest, she tried to still her heart instead. She wished Raina were
here.

A light wind blew through the trees and
up the slope, making top-snow ruffle like an animal's coat. Effie
chewed on her lip. She didn't like Mace Blackhail, and it made her
stomach go all tight to think of him alone with Raina.

With a small flick of her head, she
started up the slope. She didn't need an old piece of rock to make
decisions for her. She was old enough to make them herself.

The back of the bluff was harder to
climb than the front. Littered with loose rocks and fallen logs
all slippery and green, the south slope was normally used by foxes
and Hissip Gluff's goats. The snow made everything worse, hiding
brambles, sinkholes, and rootwood. Effie plucked up her skirt and
held it high above her knees. Somewhere below her she could hear the
willow stream running over sandstone. She didn't look down. By the
time she reached the top of the slope her skirt was black with snow
and mud. Ahead she saw the line of bearberries and the two oaks Raina
had mentioned earlier. Although she didn't much feel like it, Effie
turned her mind to stones. Shiny ones, Raina had said. Beneath the
bushes. "
Get away from me
!"

Effie stopped dead at the sound of
Raina's voice. She wondered if snow hadn't worked its way inside her
collar, for something liquid and icy slid down her spine.
Raina
.

Thrashing through snow and ferns, Effie
dashed to the far side of the ridge where the bushes grew. One of
Raina's traps could clearly be seen on the ground beneath the densest
cluster of stems, its lip open, waiting to be sprung. Swinging away
from it, Effie fell to her knees and crawled the rest of the way.