A Cavern of Black Ice (66 page)

"Don't settle yourself by the
door, Halfman. You're coming with us." Hood dragged Marafice Eye
across the threshold. The Knife himself did not speak. Perhaps
delirium had set in. Veys hardly cared.

"My master calls me. I must speak
with him."

The words had a profound effect on
Hood, who like all the barbarians in the Rive Watch feared sorcery
like the Skinned One himself. His hand rose to touch the grangelord
insignia at his breast, and he muttered the Maker's given name under
his breath.

"Go," hissed Veys, pleased by
the man's superstitious dread and well aware that it would do him no
harm to play to it. "You would not want to risk standing here
when his fetch appears before me."

Hood worked the latch quickly for a man
with eight fingers. In his haste he trapped his cloak tails in the
door, and Veys heard a tearing sound come from the other side as the
man decided it was better to lose a fistful of leather than reopen
the door and risk seeing a fetch.

Veys smiled with spite. Fetches,
wraiths, scantlings: They were always good for scaring children and
witless men.

The smile faded as quickly as it came
as Veys steadied himself against the cabin's exterior wall and laid
himself open to the one who called him.

Shock and pain took his breath.
Penthero Iss was there, suddenly inside him like a new heart. Every
hair on Veys' body bristled, every pore opened and exuded sweat. How
could he do such a thing? The power it took to perform such a drawing
from such a distance was unthinkable. This wasn't simply
far-speaking, this was the breaching of another's flesh. And then
there was the threat of the backlash. True, he had invited Iss in,
but the mind and the body did not always work together in matters of
sorcery, and the instinct to protect oneself was greater than any
given thought. What if the drawing snapped?

Calm yourself, Sarga Veys. Did I
not tell you that I would speak with you along the way?

Veys shuddered so deeply bones cracked
in his spine. Fear burned with a pure and fierce flame, like alcohol
igniting on his skin.
What do you ask of me
?

Is Asarhia with you?

No.
She travels north to Ille
Glaive. The Knife tried to take her yesterday on the lake, but the
ice broke beneath us and she escaped
.

And the sept?

The sept is gone. The Knife suffers
from frostbite; Hood has lost fingers on his swordhand. The rest are
dead
. It did not occur to Veys to lie. Iss was inside him; what
else could he do?

I
will send another sept to you.
Make your way to Ille Glaive and await them there
.

But we must return to Spire Vanis.
The Knife needs-See to him, Sarga Veys. That is why you are there.
Asarhia must be followed north. She must be brought back. Angus Lok's
family lives near Ille Glaive; he will not pass that close without
seeing them. Find them for me also.

Veys knew he could not argue. Penthero
Iss seemed so much
more
than he was. His power was potent,
foreign. It tasted of another world.

Do
not fail me
. The words
stretched southward across a continent as Iss withdrew to Spire Vanis
and the craven warmth of his flesh.

Veys slumped against the cabin wall,
his shoulders scraping the skin of rime ice from Ihe timbers. The
vestiges of Iss' drawing had left a gritty film in his mouth, but he
did not like to spit, so he swallowed it instead. How did Iss get the
power? He was a weakling; Veys had known that from the day they'd
first met, when a discreet and gentle probing had told him all he
needed to know. Now this.

Running a hand across his jaw, Veys
worked to calm himself. A day's growth of beard made his mouth shrink
in distaste.

"Get in here, Halfhan!"

Hood's call made Veys flinch. Taking a
series of fast, shallow breaths, he pushed himself off from the wall
and made his way inside the cabin. Marafice Eye waited there, his
foot made yellow by frozen bile, the chilblained skin on his face
shedding in strips as wet and slippery as vegetable scrapings. Veys
gathered power to himself, fear leaving him as quickly as for
did
leave a man who was angry and eager to prove himself to those who
considered themselves his betters. So Hood would kill him he failed,
eh? Well, who was to say that one day Hood wouldn't wake to find his
remaining eight fingers gone the way of the other two? Then who was
to say that one day Penthero Iss wouldn't wake to find his
own
body invaded and the secret source of power he tapped into taken over
by a better man than himself?

Such thoughts stayed in Veys' mind only
long enough to calm him. He had a job to do, and although he hated
Marafice Eye with bright malice, his pride demaided that he perform
no drawing that wasn't equal to his best.

Suppressing a shudcer of revulsion,
Veys entered the frozen canals of the Knife's frostbitten flesh.

Ille Glaive

Raif recognized the Dhoonesmen at five
hundred paces. War dressed in the blue and copper of Dhoone, mounted
on fully laden shire horses, spears so highly polished they shone
like glass, they rode south along the Glaive Road, forcing farmers
and cart boys from their path. Two men only, there were, yet they had
a power to them that drew the eyes as surely as a mountain made of
steel. They sat high in their saddles, backs straight, eyes forward,
left hands on the shafts of their couched spears, blue tattoos
pulsing like veins beneath their Dhoonehelms.

Angus said something, perhaps a warning
to keep eyes down as the Dhoonesmen approached, but Raif had no mind
for it.

Clansmen, here in the Glaivehold
.
Without thinking, Raif reached behind his neck to the leather strip
that held his hair. The Blackhail silver was long gone. Even the
black thread on his elkskin coat now lay concealed beneath a layer of
muck. All he had left to tell of his clan was the silver cap that
sealed his measure of guidestone in his tine, and the bit of silver
wire around the grip of Tern's sword. Soon even his hair would
outgrow his clan. Hailsmen kept their hair shortest of all clans,
scorning the intricate plaitings, braidings, oilings, and part
shavings that were as much a part of the clanholds as the white
heather that bloomed on the fellfields each spring.

"Raif. Ease to the side of the
road and let them pass." Out of the corner of his eye, Raif was
aware of Angus pulling the bay's reins and setting the Sull horse on
a path to lead its riders from the road. So
even Angus makes way
for Dhoonesmen
. The thought made something ache in Raif's chest.

The heavy-shod hooves of the shire
horses set the packed-earth road ringing. The late afternoon sun
shone directly onto the Dhoonesmen's faces as they rode toward Raif
at a trot. Raif saw their eyes flick to him, then just as quickly
flick away. Even though Raif held the center of the road, they made
no motion to alter their path and continued to head straight for him
as if he were nothing more than a speck of dust.

Abruptly Raif kicked Moose into a turn
and headed off the road. Even before horse and rider gained the
ditch, the Dhoonesmen claimed the space they'd left behind. Heads
held high, never once looking back, the Dhoonesmen continued south.

Minutes passed. Flecks of gray snow
kicked up by the Dhoonesmen floated back down to earth. Raif could
feel Angus' gaze upon him, yet he did not turn to look at him, even
when his uncle spoke. "Let's head back onto the road. I want to
reach the Glaive before dark." Raif breathed and breathed, and
after a while he nodded. After turning Moose out of the ditch, he
took the road ahead of Angus, deliberately setting a pace that would
keep him well ahead of the twice laden bay.

He had been less than nothing to the
Dhoonesmen. Raif bound Moose's reins around his fist as he rode the
winding curves and humpbacks of the Glaive Road. The Spill lay below
him, its oily surface turned the color of bird blood by the first
real sun to shine in days. Farms, mills, smokehouses, stovehouses,
broken watch towers and fortifications, and crannogs extending out
over the lake on stilts, all lay within a short distance of the road.
Other people traveled the road, mostly carters, drovers, and market
traders, but occasionally a fine lady dressed in scarlet velvet and
sables, accompanied by her men-at-arms, or a pair of Forsworn
knights, wearing iron scale gleaming with bone oil, cloth-of-skin
cloaks, and the thorned collars known as the Penance, would pass by
or overtake them.

Raif paid them little heed. Angus
shouted ahead, informing him that the city itself would likely come
into view any moment, yet Raif made no effort to search for it. The
blank, disinterested gazes of the Dhoonesmen filled his sights. He
wasn't one of them now. Somehow, though his clothes hadn't changed
and his hair had barely grown, the weeks spent with Angus had changed
him. A month ago the Dhoonesmen would have hailed him, asked what
news he had of Dhoone year-men fostered at Blackhail, what lakes had
frozen on the Hailhold, what he was doing so far from home, did he
need help or food or company. They would have seen him as one of
their own. Instead they had seen nothing but a man on a horse who had
no status or due respect in their world.

Raif breathed heavily. With an effort
he loosened his grip on Moose's reins and set his mind elsewhere.
Lowering himself in the saddle, he concentrated on guiding the
gelding up the steep slope to the headlands that lay high above the
lake.

The surface of the road was especially
bad on the incline, and mud broke away in frozen clumps as Moose
searched for hoof holds in the ice. Five hours' worth of sunlight had
melted parts of the surface, and Raif's gaze had settled upon a
particularly treacherous-looking ditch filled with loose stones and
wet ice, when Angus whistled softly at his back. Straightaway Raif
looked up.

Ille Glaive rose before him like a
cliff of golden light. He saw stone walls and slate rooftops and
needle-thin towers, all transformed in the sunset to gleaming metal
things. A thousand tear-shaped windows collected shadows the color of
dark amber, and a network of bridges, ledges, and battlements glinted
like human spines dipped into gold. At the foot of the southern wall,
the lake reflected a smaller, smoky version of the city, a mirror
image seen through old glass.

As Moose topped the slope, Raif studied
the lakeshore, wondering how many men it took to break and clear the
ice. Then he noticed the steam and bubbling water forming a stewpot
along the bank.

"Natural springs," Angus
said, pulling alongside him. "Ille Glaive was built on them.
They feed the lake year-round."

Raif nodded. Following his trip to
Spire Vanis he had no love of cities, yet he couldn't help but admire
Ille Glaive's golden sandstone walls. Savagely he scratched the scars
on his chest. The skin was fully healed now, but the ghosts of the
Bluddsmen's swords would not leave him. Two mornings ago he'd awoken
to find dried blood driven deep beneath his fingernails and the scars
scratched raw and peeling.

"I think we'll take the beggar's
entrance," Angus said, squinting ahead. "We should be safe
going through the market at this hour." Making a small movement
to indicate Ash, who was riding at his back, he added, "The
sooner we get our wee lassie here to Heritas Cant, the better."

Raif made no reply. Cities were Angus'
affair. It was up to him to say how they entered and where they
stayed. As long as Ash was seen to quickly, little else mattered to
him.

Glancing over, he saw she was still the
same. She sat, slumped against Angus' back, her eyes closed, her
eyelids pale and unmoving, her hair pressed flat where it rested
against Angus' shoulders, and her small pink mouth open just enough
to let in air. She had not spoken since the night by the white oaks.
Both Raif and Angus had tried to wake her many times in the past four
days, yet although her body seemed to respond, sometimes cringing or
pulling away from a harsh or unpleasant touch, her eyes seldom
opened. Angus had taken great pains to force her to drink, holding
her jaw apart and pouring clear broth or water down her throat. Yet
he could not make her eat.

Sometimes, as this morning before
they'd broken camp, she became agitated and her arms would slowly
rise from her sides. Whenever that happened, Angus would force her
wrists behind her back and bind them together with sheepskin,
hobbling her as if she were a dangerous horse. Sometimes he wadded
shammies in his fist and thrust them so deeply into her mouth that
they rested against the back of her throat. Raif hated to see it.
What within her was so terrible that she had to be bound and gagged?

Running a hand over his week-old beard,
Raif frowned. Even now, when he wasn't looking at her and they were
separated by twelve paces of air, he was aware of her presence
pushing against him. Always he felt her in his lore. Somehow she
pushed herself into his mind, claiming space that belonged to Drey
and Effie and Tern.

With a violent shake of his head, Raif
stopped his thoughts from moving farther past that point. Last night,
when he had taken a damp cloth from the fire and cleaned the road
grime from Ash's face, Angus had said, "You treat her as gently
as if she were Effie." Raif had had to stop what he was doing
and walk into the shadows beyond the fire. Asarhia March was no
Effie, and he hated Angus for putting them in the same sentence and
linking them. He looked after Ash because that was what he and Angus
had done since the moment they had saved her at Vaingate. It was a
necessary thing, like brushing down the horses and lighting a drying
fire for their clothes each night. Ash was not kin. She would never
replace Effie or Drey in his heart.