A Cavern of Black Ice (6 page)

'Raif?"

Looking round, Raif saw Drey standing
at the entrance to their father's tent, carrying a bundle of supplies
pressed hard against his chest. "What are you doing?"

'I'm drawing a guide circle. We're
going to burn the camp." Raif hardly recognized his own voice as
he spoke. He sounded cold, and there was a challenge in his words he
had not originally intended.

Drey looked at him a long while. His
normally light brown eyes were as dark as the walls of the firepit.
He knew Raif's reasons—they were too close as brothers not to
know each other's minds—but Raif could tell he was not pleased.
He'd had plans of his own for the bodies.

Finally the muscles in Drey's neck
began to work, and after a moment he spoke, his voice hard. "Finish
the circle. I'll load these supplies by the horse posts, then find
what oil and pitch I can."

A deep band of muscle in Raif's chest
relaxed. His mouth was dry—too dry to speak. So he nodded once
and continued walking. Raif felt Drey's gaze upon his back until the
moment the circle was joined. And he knew with utter certainty that
he had taken something precious from his brother. Drey was eldest. He
should have had first say with the dead.

Drey Sevrance did what was needed to
start a good fire. He worked thoroughly and tirelessly; chipping and
shredding firewood, stripping nearby trees of their needles to kindle
the bare ground between the tents and the pit, spreading great heaps
of moss around the bodies, and lacing everything with wads of
rendered elk fat and ribbons of oil and pitch. The tent hides he
doused with the hard liquor that was always to be found in Meth
Ganlow's pack.

Through all the preparations, Raif did
only those things Drey asked of him, nothing more; suggesting
nothing, saying nothing. Giving Drey his due.

Ravens circled closer as they worked,
their long black wings casting knife shadows on the snow, their harsh
carrion calls a constant reminder to Raif of the thing he wore at his
throat.
Watcher of the Dead
.

When it was all done and the two
brothers stood outside the guide circle, looking in at the primed
firetrap they had created, Drey took out his flint and striker. The
circle Raif had drawn was not visible to the eye. The powder was fine
and the colt grass thick, and the wind had carried much of it away.
But it was there. Both Raif and Drey knew it was there. A guide
circle carried all the power of the guide-stone it had been drawn
with. It was Heart of Clan, here, on the frozen tundra of the
badlands. All those within it lay upon hallowed ground.

Tern had once told Raif that far to the
south in the Soft Lands of flat-roofed cities, grassy plains, and
warm seas, there were others who used guide circles to protect them.
Knights, they were called. And Tern said they burned their circles
into their flesh.

Raif didn't know about that, but he
knew a clansman would sooner leave the roundhouse without his sword
than without a flask, pouch, antler tine, or horn containing his
measure of powdered guidestone. With a sword, a man could only fight.
Within the hallowed ground of a guide circle, he could speak with the
Stone Gods, ask for deliverance, absolution, or a swift and merciful
death.

A wolf howled in the distance, and as
if its call had woken him from a trance, Drey pushed back his hood
and stripped off his gloves. Raif did the same. All was still and
quiet. The wind had died, the ravens landed, the wolf silent, perhaps
scenting prey. Neither brother spoke. Words had never been the
Sevrances' way.

Drey struck the flint. The kindling
caught, flaring fiercely in Drey's hand. Drey stepped forward, knelt
on one knee, and lit the run of alcohol-laced moss he had laid.

Raif forced himself to watch. It was
hard, but he was clan, and his chief and his father lay here, and he
would not look away. Flames raced toward Tem Sevrance, eager yellow
fingers, sharp red claws. Hellfire. And it would eat him as surely as
any beast.

Tem…

Suddenly Raif could think of nothing
but stamping the blaze out. He stepped forward, but even as he did
so, liquid fire found the first tent, and the primed elkhide burst
into a sheet of flames. Sparks flew upward with a great gasp of
smoke, and a thunderous roar of destruction shook the badlands to its
core. Flames so hot they burned white danced in the rising wind.
Pockets of ground ice melted with animal hisses, and then the stench
of burning men rose from the pyre. Rippling air pushed against Raif's
cheek. His eyes burned, and salt water streamed from them, running
down his cheeks. He continued to look straight ahead. The exact piece
of ground Tem lay on was etched upon his soul, and it was his Stone
God-given duty to watch it until it had burned to dust.

Finally there came a time when he could
look away. Turning, he looked to his brother. Drey would not meet his
eyes. Drey's hand was bunched so tightly into a fist it caused his
chest to shake. After a moment he spoke. "Let's go."

Without glancing up to check his
brother's reaction, Drey crossed over to the horse posts, picked up
his share of the supplies, and hefted them over his back. From the
bulky look of the packs, Raif guessed Drey had chosen to carry the
heaviest bundles himself.

Drey waited by the post. He would not
look at his brother, but he would wait for him.

Raif walked to meet him. As he
suspected, the packs Drey had left were light, and Raif shrugged them
on his back like a coat. He wanted to say something to Drey, but
nothing seemed right, so he kept his silence instead.

The fire roared at their backs as they
left the badlands campsite and headed south. Smoke followed them,
fire stench sickened them, and ashes settled on their shoulders like
the first shadows of night. They crossed the floodplain and the sedge
meadow and headed over the great grasslands that led home. The sun
set slow but early, lighting the sky behind them with a lingering
bloody light.

Drey never mentioned continuing the
search for Mace Blackhail, and Raif was glad. Glad because it meant
his brother saw the same things he did along the way: a broken pane
of ice on a melt pond, a horse's hoof clearly stamped in the lichen,
a ptarmigan bone, its end black from the roastfire, picked clean.

When exhaustion finally got the better
of them, they halted. An island of blackstone pines formed their
shelter for the night. The great centuries-old trees had grown in a
protective ring, originally seeded from a single mother tree that had
matured in the center, then later died. Raif liked being there. It
was like camping within a guide circle.

Drey lit a dry fire and pulled an
elkhide over his shoulders to keep warm. Raif did the same, and the
two brothers sat close around the flames and ate strips of hung
mutton and boiled eggs gone black. They drank Tern's dark, virtually
undrinkable homebrew, and the sour taste and tarlike smell reminded
Raif so strongly of his father it made him smile. Tem Sevrance's
homebrew was the worst in the entire clan; everyone said so, no one
would drink it, and it was rumored to have killed a dog. Yet Tem
never changed his brew. Much like heroes in stories who poisoned
themselves a little each day to protect against attacks from artful
assassins, Tem had become immune to it.

Drey smiled, too. It was impossible not
to smile when faced with the very real possibility of death by beer.
A soreness came to Raif's throat. There was just three of them now:
he, Drey, and Effie.

Effie
. The smile drained from
Raif's face. How would they tell Effie her da had gone? She had never
known their mother. Meg had died on the birthing table in a pool of
her own blood, and Tem had reared Effie on his own. Many clansmen and
more than a few clanswomen had told Tem he should remarry to provide
his sons and daughter with a mother, yet Tem had flatly refused. "I
have loved once, completely," he would say. "And that's
blessing enough for me."

Suddenly Drey reached over and cuffed
Raif lightly on the cheek. "Don't worry," he said. "We'll
be all right."

Raif nodded, glad to his heart that
Drey had spoken and comforted by the realization that the same
thoughts sifting through his mind were sifting through Drey's as
well.

Sitting back, Drey adjusted the fire
with
a
stick. Red-and-blue flames danced close to his gloved
hand as he turned out charred logs. "We'll make Clan Bludd pay
for what they did, Raif. I swear it."

A hand of pure ice gripped Raif's gut.
Clan Bludd? Drey had no proof of what he said. The raid could have
been mounted by any number of parties: Clan Dhoone, Clan Croser, Clan
Gnash, a band of Maimed Men. The Sull. And then there was the nature
of the wounds, the stench of badness, the feeling that something more
than death had taken place. The warriors of Clan Bludd were fierce
beyond telling, with their spiked and lead-weighted hammers, their
case-hardened spears, their partly shorn heads, and their greatswords
cut with deep center grooves for channeling their enemies' blood; yet
Raif had never once heard either Tern or Dagro Blackhail say that
Clan Bludd was involved in…

Raif shook his head. He had no words
for what had happened at the campground. He just knew that any
clansman worth his lore would turn his back on such a thing.

Glancing over at Drey, Raif took a
breath to speak. Then, seeing how viciously Drey poked at the fire
and how the stick he held was bent close to breaking, he let the
breath out, unused. In five days they would be back home. All truths
would come out then.

A Raven Has Come

Angus Lok was receiving kisses. Fourteen of them,
to be exact, one for each halfpenny that Beth and Little Moo would
cost him. It was Beth's idea, of course; she wanted new ribbons for
her hair, and she was prepared to do anything—kissing
included—to get them. Little Moo was far too young to have
formed any opinion on ribbons other than that they were good to chew
on; yet she was kissing her father anyway, giggling wildly and
wetting Angus' face with sticky, ever-so-slightly gritty kisses that
tasted of oatcakes.

'Please, Father.
Please
,"
Beth said. "You promised."

'Pweez, Papa," echoed Little Moo.

Angus Lok groaned. He knew when he was
beaten. Slapping a hand on his chest, he cried, "All right! All
right! You've torn your poor father's heart out along wi' his purse!
Ribbons it is! I suppose I should ask what colors you'll both be
wanting?"

'Pink," said Beth.

'Noos," said Little Moo.

Angus Lok picked up Little Moo, lifted
her from his lap, and planted her gently on the fox pelt rug at his
feet. "Pink and noos it is, then."

Beth giggled as she laid one last kiss
on her father's cheek and stood. "
Blue
, Father. Little
Moo wants blue."

'Noos. Noos," echoed Little Moo
happily.

'Angus."

Angus looked up at the sound of his
wife's voice. Two syllables, yet straightaway he knew something was
wrong. "What is it, love?"

Darra Lok hesitated a moment in the
doorway, as if reluctant to move forward, then took a small, resigned
breath and walked into the farmhouse kitchen. Coming to join Angus by
the fire, she paused to push a stray strand of hair from Beth's face
and deprive Little Moo of a hairy bit of oatcake that the child had
just plucked from the depths of the fox pelt rug.

Sitting down on the oakwood bench that
her father's steward had made for her as a wedding gift eighteen
years earlier, Darra Lok took her husband's hand in hers. Checking
first that the two youngest of her three daughters were caught up in
their own worlds of ribbons and oatcakes, she leaned close to Angus
and said, "A raven has come."

Angus Lok took a deep breath and held
it. Closing his eyes, he spoke a silent prayer to any and all gods
who might be listening.
Please let it not be a raven. Please let
Darra be mistaken and it be a rook, a jackdaw, or a hooded crow
.
Even as he wished it, he knew he was wrong. Darra Lok knew a raven
when she saw one.

Angus raised his wife's hand to his
lips and kissed it. He knew the gods didn't like it if a man asked
for one thing straight after another, so he didn't pray that his fear
wasn't showing on his face. He simply hid it as well as he could.

Darra's dark blue eyes looked into his.
Her normally lovely face was pale, and little lines Angus had barely
noticed before were etched deep into her brow. "Cassy spotted it
this morning, circling the house. It didn't come to land until now."

'Take me to it."

Darra Lok let go of her husband's hand
and nodded. She stood slowly, reluctantly, brushing imaginary dirt
from her apron. "Beth. Watch your sister. See she doesn't get
too close to the fire. I'll be back in just a minute."

Beth nodded in a movement that was so
similar to the one Darra had just made, it turned Angus' heart to
lead. A raven had come to his house, and although the massive blue
black birds with their long knife wings, powerful jaws, and human
voices meant many different things to many different people, to Angus
Lok they meant just one: leaving home.

Darra walked ahead of him out of the
kitchen, and Angus paused a moment to run his hand over Beth's
cheek. "Pink and blue," he mouthed as he left, so she knew
he wouldn't forget about the ribbons.

It was raining outside, a steady
drizzle that had begun just before dawn, and the grounds around the
Lok farm were turning to mud. Darra had spent most of the morning
harvesting the last of her herb garden before first frost, and the
small patch of ground just below the kitchen window was stripped
bare. To the side of the herb garden, the chickens clucked nervously
in the coup, built in a lean-to against the kitchen chimney. They
knew all about ravens.