A Cavern of Black Ice (65 page)

After a few seconds the sickness
lifted, leaving him feeling little better for it. His head throbbed,
and his legs felt swollen and full of water.

The smell of his own body disgusted
him, the drowned-man's stench of fish oil and algae and fear.

Veys exhaled softly. He very nearly
had
drowned out there, in that greasy body of water so rightly named the
Black Spill. The first shock of the cold had been breathtaking. He
remembered freezing water seizing his throat and his groin, and utter
darkness robbing his thoughts. It had been a kind of hell. Cold hell.
The screams, the cracking ice, the horses… Veys shuddered. It
had made animals of four grown men.

But, he thought.
But
. It had
been a trial of ice and darkness that he had passed. Surely now he
must be stronger? He, Sarga Veys, son of no man willing to claim him
and a mother who had taken her own life by slashing her stomach a
dozen times with a jeweler's knife, had swum in the Black Spill in
midwinter and
survived
.

He should not have been able to do it.
Only minutes before the ice cracked he had spent everything within
him opening a corridor in the mist. Such drawings never came cheap.
Sarga Veys could do a hundred things more showy and more impressive:
little tricks with fire and smoke guaranteed to make children and
goodwives fear him. Yet parting mist, which impressed no one, most
especially not the Knife, had a cost far above such japery. For five
long and excruciating minutes, Sarga Veys had set his will against
nature.

It had left him barely enough strength
to breathe and think. When the ice cracked and day turned into night
and black water rose to take him, he had been as limp and powerless
as a man made of straw. Yet fear of death had woken something in him.
A tiny spark of hidden strength had ignited close to his heart. It
wasn't much, but he was Sarga Veys, the most brilliant sorcerer born
in half a century, and he could turn
not much
into quite a
lot.

The horse was close to death when he
had taken it. Bereft of strength of will, it could do little to fight
the drawing. As its insides had kindled and horseflesh had cauterized
then cooked, the carcass had floated upward toward the light. Sarga
Veys had ridden it to the surface like a wraith riding his ghost
horse from hell. The heat from its flesh had warmed him, and the
buoyancy of its gas-filled body had been more than sufficient to
float his own. Clinging to the black, stinking flesh, he had paddled
with his legs and feet toward the nearest ledge. Raped of power and
strength, he had hauled himself onto firm ice.

How he had crawled across the lake and
up the bank to shelter was an ordeal he would sooner forget. The skin
on his elbows and knees would grow back. Chilblains and frost sores
would fade. The burns on his hands were another matter, but he had
read the secret histories of all the brilliant sorcerers, and such
scars and deformities were common among them. All who were born to
greatness were marked in some way.

Only when he had found the trout
guddler's cabin and stripped the stiff, icy clothing from his back
had he given himself over to exhaustion. Judging from the light
slicing under the door, he had slept for close to a day.

Overcome with thirst and the sudden
need to relieve himself, Veys tested his strength by extending his
leg across the salt-encrusted floor. Weakness made him cringe like a
child. Hate for Penthero Iss filled him. How dared that man send him
north again! His talents were wasted here on the east shore of Black
Spill, chasing the Surlord's errant daughter and the Phage's trusty
sheepdog Angus Lok.

Anger succeeded in rousing Veys
sufficiently to the point where he could stand, and he gathered the
coarse hide around himself and stumbled toward the door. Of course,
the very fact that Iss had sent him north in a sept with Marafice Eye
told of just how important the task of returning Asarhia March was.
She was dangerous, that girl. Veys had felt the truth of it the night
Iss had summoned him to the Red Forge and bade him travel from the
city to find her. Power had been drawn that night. Dark and
unfamiliar, it had switched against his skin like a draft of air from
a mineshaft or the deepest, driest well. It had come from Iss'
almost-daughter, and it excited him in ways he hardly understood.

He had been following its aftermath
ever since. It wetted his tongue even now. She was moving north
again. He knew it without even probing outside himself, so strong was
the trail she left behind.

Reaching the door, Veys steadied
himself against the jamb, taking a moment to regain his strength. He
cursed the loss of his saddlebags. Drugs, waxed bandages, oil of
cloves, blood of the poppy, eyebright, handknives, coiled wire,
combs, wax candles, flints, honey, sweetened milk, spare clothes, and
clean linen had all been lost. All things except food he could do
without, yet he had little liking for making do. A childhood spent
living in the filth and glossy mud of Dirtlake had seen to that.

Glancing back at the frozen, greasy
heap that was his clothes, he shuddered. The action pulled muscles in
his chest and groin. He needed a ghostmeal badly. He craved warm milk
thickened with honey and the soothing sap of eyebright dropped from a
hollow needle into his eyes. His eyes were not troubling him now, but
they would soon enough. Weak eyes prone to redness and infection were
his curse. "It is their color," a man in Ille Glaive had
once said. "So unusual… startling, even. In a woman they
would be celebrated, painted. In a man they are considered ill luck.
Either way you will have much trouble with them. Purple is the color
of the gods."

Not displeased by the memory, Veys
unhooked the latch and stepped outside.

Cold air blasted his face, and the
sharp tang of snow filled his nose and his mouth. A white landscape
presented itself to his watering eyes. He saw the lake down below
him, cloaked in mist, saw tall spruces and white oaks glittering with
hoarfrost, and his own bloody trail stamped into the snow. He had not
come as far as he'd thought. The trout gud-dler's cabin was a mere
forty paces from the water, set in a crown of man-high birches above
the bank. Veys shrugged tightly. He told himself the distance hardly
mattered; it did not detract from his feat.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught
a movement. Instinctively he stepped back, into the shadows provided
by the door. Shifting his gaze to the left, he saw the movement
again. There, down by the shore, something gray moved. Sarga Veys
licked dry lips. It was a man… no,
two
men. One lying
down on the shore ice, another kneeling, tending him. Veys' stomach
twisted into a knot. The kneeling man's outer cloak wasn't gray…
it was black leather crusted with snow. The Rive Watch. He had
thought he was rid of them.

A long moment passed where Veys
contemplated the shore-fast ice, speculated how thick it was and
whether there would be sufficient water underneath to drown two men.
Yet ice was a mystery he knew little of, and he set aside the idea of
murder before it was fully formed.

"Halfman! Over here!"

Startled, Veys focused his gaze upon
the kneeling man. He had his hand raised over his head, and Veys saw
immediately that something wasn't right with it. Two bloody stumps
waggled where fingers should have been. Perceiving the weakness made
Veys' heart beat more calmly, and he stepped from the shadows into
the light.

The man's name came to him as he
treaded through the snow toward the bank. Hood. A filthy guardsman
with dirt under his nails and shredded food between his teeth, who
claimed kinship to Lord of the Straw Granges and as proof wore a
grangelord insignia—arms set in a cruciform—at his chest.
Veys detested him. He was Marafice Eye's creature—all the sept
were—but he more so than the rest. He could not open his mouth
without speaking filth.

"Help me get him to the cabin. His
foot is hard froze."

Veys paid little heed to Hood's words
as he picked his way across the rutted and frozen mud along the
shore. He now had a better view of the second man, and his heart had
started beating wildly once more. The huge head, the fine light brown
hair, and the shoulders the size of sheep: It was Marafice Eye. Sarga
Veys' skin paled. He had thought the Knife dead, lost to the black
waters of the Spill.

"Aye, Halfman. You left me to the
devil, and the devil threw me back." A small eye, perfectly
blue, regarded Sarga Veys with something akin to satisfaction. The
Knife was lying on his side, half on the bank, half on the ice. The
skin on his face was yellow and waxy, his cheeks and nose split by
tissue expanding as it froze. Strips of flesh hung from his small
mouth, flapping as he breathed and spoke. One eye was frozen shut.
One hand was curled like a bird's claw, yellow and scaly and
twitching. The frozen foot was still booted, resting on the ice like
a shovel.

Marafice Eye smiled, a terrible sight
to see on a frozen face. "You may well look frightened, Halfman.
I saw you with Stagro's horse. I clawed after you in the water,
watched as you pulled yourself onto the ice.

"I looked for you, but the ice was
churning. It was impossible to see—

"Save your lies for those who need
them, Halfman." Marafice Eye winced as Hood began to cut the
boot free of the frozen foot. "The only thing that matters to me
is whether you acted from cowardice or spite. Did you wish me dead,
eh? Or were you so involved with saving your own skin that you didn't
give me or my men a second thought?"

Veys shifted ground. He saw Hood slow
down with the sheath knife, awaiting his reply. Marafice Eye breathed
steadily, good hand clenched to control the pain. Two men, both
injured but still dangerous. Veys swallowed bile then spoke. "I
do not wish you dead, Knife. You cannot doubt that. The ice was not
under my control. It was the girl's fault it broke… she led us
too far. Her horse was more lightly burdened, and it knew how to
dance. When I fell into the water I had no mind but to get to safety.
I was hardly thinking… Stagro's horse was close… I did
what I had to. By the time I crawled from the water I had no strength
for anything else."

"Yet you made it to the cabin,"
said the Knife. "And stripped the frozen clothes from your
back," added Hood. "I did these things without thinking.
I—"

"Hush, man. You bother me like
jiggers at my crotch. You claim to be a coward, not a murderer. Then
you must prove that by using your foul magics upon me. I will not
lose my foot and my hand. I will not. You will save them for me."

"But-"

The Knife slammed his good hand onto
the ice. "I saw how you were with the horse. You took its flesh
and warmed it. Now you must do the same for me, only gently, without
scorching. Hood will stand by. He will see you do no harm."

Hood smiled pleasantly, displaying
filaments of trail meat packed between his teeth. "Devil help
you if you hurt him, Halfman."

Veys actually took a step back. To
perform a healing—on the
Knife
. The idea was
horrifying to him. He was not a physician, he had not been trained in
the ways of blood and organs as some sorcerers were. Sickness and
disease were abhorrent to him. Marafice Eye's yellow swollen flesh
repulsed him as surely as the sight of maggots at a corpse. And then
there was the loss of strength. How could he be expected to draw
power after all that had happened yesterday? He needed to rest,
sleep.

"Come. You must help Hood carry me
to the cabin."

"I cannot heal you. It's
impossible. Impossible." Marafice Eye shook his head. The strain
cost him dearly, pulling tissue and ligaments that should not have
been pulled. "Nay, Halfman, I'm not giving you a choice. Four of
my best men have died. One with an arrow in his liver, another with a
blade-sized hole in his heart. The other two died here"—he
punched the lake ice with his fist—"in the Spill. And if
you'd had the balls, you could have saved them. Mind me well, Sarga
Veys, for I know the blackness in your heart. You meant to walk free
from this place, travel back to Spire Vanis and your master Penthero
Iss, spin a tale with you as the hero and me and my men as victims of
the lake. That will never happen. Hood may have lost two fingers, but
he's still a better man with eight than you are with ten. He'd kill
you now on my say, and do not think I'm not tempted. Your only use to
me now is as a healer. So heal me, and perhaps Hood will forget the
loss of his sworn brothers and let you live."

Veys looked into the Knife's open eye.
Even lying prostrate on the ice, he was a dangerous beast. Veys
believed him capable of any sort of violence, and he was just the
sort of man to survive if abandoned in this frozen waste.
He
pulled himself free of the lake
! That act alone told of the
strength of his will.

"Ready to weep, Halfman?"

Veys glared at Hood and had the
satisfaction of forcing the thick-necked badger of a man to look
away. This was not the first time one of the sept had passed comment
on his red and stinging eyes. Savagely he wiped away the tears.
"Let's get him to the cabin."

The Knife said nothing as they carried
him up the bank. Hood took most of the weight, and Veys was left to
haul the legs and feet. It was a difficult journey and Marafice Eye
must have suffered much in the handling, yet he did not cry out or
curse or show any but the briefest signs of pain. Veys supposed some
men would call such stoicism bravery, but he had little care for it.
Dread of the task that lay ahead weighed like lead upon his chest.

When finally they arrived at the trout
guddler's cabin, Veys became aware of a new pressure pushing against
his mind with the steady throb of a sore tooth. "Take him
inside," he said to Hood, "and strip him. Pry up the
floorboards for firewood. We will need a quick fire."