A Cavern of Black Ice (97 page)

"But you and Drey must have made
the clan see the truth."

Raif smiled bitterly, the skin on his
face pulling tight. "You haven't met the Hail Wolf. He was born
a Scarpeman. His tongue moves faster than his blade."

"If Bludd didn't carry out the
raid, then why didn't the Dog Lord simply deny it?" 

"You've met him. What do you
think?"

Ash pushed a hand through her hair,
thinking. "Pride. He liked the idea of taking credit for such a
thing."

Raif tasted the bitterness in his
mouth. "Spoken like the Dog Lord himself."

"He told you that?"

"Yes." Raif stood. "What
did he tell you about me?"

She didn't blink, though the silver in
her eyes quickened. "He said you slaughtered women and children
along the Bluddroad. He called you a murderer."

Raif made no answer. He would not speak
against his brother or his clan.

When it became clear to her that he was
not going to deny the charge, Ash gathered her cloak about her and
began to make her way west through the trees.

Raif watched her go. New snow had begun
to fall, and the wind sent the heavy white flakes swirling in the
spaces between the trees. After a few minutes Ash's figure was lost
to the storm, and Raif mounted the gelding and wound through the
spruces to catch her.

The storm followed them deep into the
taiga, dislodging snow caches from branches, bending saplings double,
and roaring like a river over rocks. Riding took more concentration
than walking, as ruts and sinkholes hidden beneath the snow were a
constant danger to the horse. Drifts were impossible to predict in
unsettled snow and forced many stops while Ash ran ahead to test the
snow depth with a whip-thin stick of spruce. In the end, both he and
Ash decided to walk, heads bent low against the wind.

Light faded rapidly, and the taiga
shimmered blue and gray as it darkened. Raif became aware of Drey's
tine banging against his hip from step to step. It seemed to weigh
more than it should, and soon he could think of nothing at all except
the piece of horn and the powdered guidestone within it.
Please
gods, let Drey be all right
, he thought.
Let the wound heal
cleanly, and let it not cause him pain
.

It was hard to turn his mind to finding
shelter for the night. Part of him wanted to walk and walk and never
stop. Only the thought of a warm fire, of holding his hands above
yellow flames and feeling their heat upon his face, was enough to
tempt him away from the storm.

No one lived in the taiga in winter.
Trappers, woodsmen, and loggers spent spring and summer in the woods
but retreated to the shelter of stone houses in the cold months. They
often built summer huts, but Raif didn't hold out much hope of
finding one in white weather. He settled upon a grove of newgrowth
pines occupying a narrow flood basin and set about stripping the soft
lower branches from the surrounding trees to use as thatching for the
den. Ash saw to Mule Ears, then came to help him fix the crude thatch
roof over the frame of bent newgrowth he'd erected. The wind drove
against them as they worked, tugging whole branches from their grip.
Every time Raif closed his hands around a shoot to strip it, pain
made him catch his breath.

The storm was dying by the time they
got the shelter to hold firm. Raif's mitts were sticky with white
resin, and beneath the goatskin gloves his fingers were raw. Ash's
hood was no longer protecting her head and lay against her back,
filled with snow. She was breathing with quick shallow breaths so
Raif ordered her to rest while he built a long fire across the
entrance to the den. The fact that she didn't protest, merely sat on
the pine needle floor without saying a word, worried him. The skin
around her eyes looked bruised.

He packed the fire loosely in his
haste. Built well, a long fire could burn through the night, with
timbers packed on poles so they could drop into the flames as the
poles burned down. Yet Raif was more worried about Ash than he was
about a full night's warmth, and he kindled the fire quickly, blowing
to make it take.

Shredding the fisher meat with the bald
knife, he set about turning snowmelt into a stock. He talked to Ash
as he worked, anxious that she stay awake long enough to eat and
drink. It was winter and it was cold, so he spoke of spring, telling
her about the Hailhold after first thaw, about the carpets of white
heather that pushed up overnight and the rings of darkwood violets
that flowered amid the melting snow. He told her about the birds,
about the blue herons that stood as tall as men, and the horned owls
that could take to the air with full-grown rabbits in their beaks,
and the little dun-colored swifts that hung upside down from branches
like bats.

He didn't know how long he spoke, only
that once he started he kept remembering other things that seemed
important to tell her. Ash listened in silence, and after a time her
breathing grew shallow and her eyes began to flicker, then close.
Raif took the stock from the fire.

Leaning over, he touched her arm.
"Here. Drink this before you sleep."

She took the bowl from him and held it
to her chest, letting the steam roll over her face. After what seemed
like a very long time she said, "I don't believe what the Dog
Lord said about what happened on the Bluddroad. I don't think you
killed anyone in cold blood."

Raif nodded. He told himself he felt no
better for hearing her say it, yet it wasn't quite the truth.

They spoke no more after that and ate
and drank in silence, the flames of the long fire dancing before them
and the tail end of the storm sending gusts of winds to rattle the
den. Ash fell asleep while Raif was nursing the last of the stock in
his cracked and aching hands. He covered her as best he could, making
sure that no part of her skin came in contact with snow, and then
settled himself down before the fire.

He could not sleep. He was weary beyond
telling, yet he could see the night sky through the flames. A
moonless, starless night in midwinter; not the sort of night a sane
man would choose to be out in. Then perhaps he wasn't sane, for Raif
found himself rising from his place by the fire, pulling on his
goatskin gloves and leather boots, and leaving the warmth and dryness
of the den. It took him less than a minute to find a wedge of
greenstone to his liking: jagged and shot with lead. Brushing it
clean of snow, he entered the dark cathedral of the forest. The storm
had passed and the night animals were feeding and he was Watcher of
the Dead.

*** The Listener woke to the hiss
of the runners. His heart beat like a snow goose in his chest. His
old mouth was as dry as tanned hide, and his eyes, once a dark brown
color and now turned blue with snow blindness, took a very long time
before they allowed him even the dimmest view of the surrounding
world. The sky above the sled was dark and full of stars: The long
night of winter had begun.

He'd been having the old dream again,
the one where Harannaqua guided him to a dark place where the old
Sull Kings were waiting. Lyan Summerled and Thay Blackdragon and Lann
Swordbreaker were there, along with the Sull Queen Isane Rune. Not
his
kings, the Listener reminded himself, yet they haunted
him all the same. They were not dead, not truly, for flesh still hung
to their bones in places, and they moved like men, not ghosts.
Isane's smile had been beautiful to behold until the instant her
spread lips parted, revealing a mouth of bloody teeth. Lyan
Summerled, he who had once been the most glorious and golden of all
kings, had laid a skinned hand upon the Listener's shoulder and
breathed a single word in his ear.

Soon.

Sadaluk shivered. "Nolo," he
said, turning around and calling to the man who drove the sled. "We
must stop and turn back. This is not a good night to ask for blessing
from the god who lives beneath the sea ice."

Nolo's brown face registered not one
mote of surprise; perhaps he had felt the badness, too. Calling to
his team, he pulled on the standers and began driving the sled in a
great turning circle on the gray shore-fast ice. Sadaluk, sitting at
the front of the sled, wrapped in bearhides and wearing a squirrel
cap, watched as the dogs slowed and changed their course. They were
fat dogs—Nolo fed them too much—yet the Listener felt
less inclined to criticize now than when he and Nolo had set off.
Overfed dogs were a sign of a kind heart, and after the darkness of
his unasked-for dream, the Listener found much to value in the
kindness of a man who loved his dogs as if they were kin.

The sled, formed from a ladder of
driftwood and horn and bound with seal sinew, skimmed to a halt as it
completed its turn. The dogs, harnessed together in a line, broke
formation and began worrying on their traces. The edges had been
filed from their teeth, so they could do little but suck and gnaw.

Nolo pulled off his heavy sled gloves
and walked to where the Listener sat. He was out of breath, and his
chest rose and fell rapidly. "Are you ill, Sadaluk? You were
quiet for a very long time."

The Listener shook his head. "I
dreamt," he said.

Silence followed. Nolo looked guilty,
as if his sled were to blame for the dream. The Listener saw no
reason to argue otherwise: Perhaps if the sled
hadn't
run so
smoothly and silently, he might well have stayed awake. Instead he
said, "Once, many lifetimes ago when the winter lasted many
seasons and the Gods Lights burned red, our people had to eat their
skins and tents to survive. All the dogs were slaughtered. Mothers
killed their children to relieve them of the hunger that ate from
inside out. Old men like me walked out onto the sea ice and never
came back. Young couples, newly wed, sealed themselves in their ice
houses and starved in each other's arms.

"By the time the warm winds came
and the sea ice broke, only twelve were left alive. One man,
Harannaqua, who had lost his wife and his three children, was angry
at the gods for not sending a warning.
We could have stored more
food if we had known
, he cried.
We could have eaten less at
summer's end
.

"The gods listened to him, for
even though they hate flesh men pointing out their failings, they
knew that he was right.
From this day forth you shall be the
warning, Harannaqua of Four Losses
, they replied.
We will
strip your body from you and carry your soul with us, and whenever
hard times come to the Ice Trappers we will send you down to warn
them in their dreams
. And so the gods took him and kept him and
bound him to this task."

The Listener looked sharply at Nolo. A
cloud of frosted breath lay between them like a third man. "Yes,
Nolo of the Silent Sled, today I dreamt of Harannaqua, him and four
kings."

Nolo nodded slowly. He thought long
before he spoke. "What must we do, Sadaluk?"

The Listener made an impatient gesture
with his hand. "Watch ourselves. Be vigilant. Feed our fat dogs
less." The words made Nolo blush, but Sadaluk found little
satisfaction in his young friend's distress. He was afraid, and the
dream worried him, and he had spoken from fear and spite. "Run
the sled."

The dogs took much whipping and cursing
before they would reform themselves into a line. Nolo had to put on a
harness and pull like one of them to remind the beasts what they must
do. Sadaluk drew his bearskin close as the sled shuddered into
motion.

Four Sull kings. Not
his
kings, he told himself again, as if that could make it so. They
shared blood, but that blood was old,
old
. Blood could thin
to water over the space of thirteen thousand years. True, the Ice
Trappers and the Sull came from the same place beyond the Night Sea,
but that was far in the past. The great glaciers had receded, deserts
had been baked to glass, and iron mountains had risen from seeds of
rock and stone. All this and more had come to pass since the Sull and
the Ice Trappers had once called themselves kinsmen. Why then should
their fates still be linked?

The Listener frowned at the stars, the
snow, the shimmering blue landscape of sea ice. Where were the Far
Riders? A raven had been sent two moons past; they should be here by
now.

This was their fate unraveling, not
his.

"Lash the dogs, Nolo. Lash them!"
The Listener tried to set aside his dreams as he watched Nolo punish
his team. Eloko had promised to show him the third secret use for
whale blubber on his return and had set her stone pot to warming over
the lamp even as he and Nolo packed the sled. Sadaluk had liked the
first two secret uses very much, and he could think of nothing more
pleasant than being introduced to the third. Yet even as he tried to
conjure Eloko's wide, smooth face in his mind's eye, the face of
another came to him.

Thay Blackdragon, the Night King,
looked at him with eyes that were the perfect Sull blue: dark as the
sky at midnight and shot with veins of ice. Strips of flesh hung from
his cheeks, and the Listener could see white ridges of bone beneath.
He was riding a horse that was all shadow, a dark beast made of
muscle and black oil that quivered with every touch of its rider's
hand. Thay Blackdragon pulled the reins, and the beast opened its
mouth, revealing a bit of razored steel. The Night King smiled as
Isane Rune had before him.

Soon, he hissed.
Our thousand years
have all but passed
.

For the first time in his hundred-year
life, the Listener didn't know if he was sleeping or wide awake.

Clothes off a Dead
Man's Back

They were on the move before dawn,
walking through the hills and valleys of snow that had formed around
the bases of pines like skirts of spent wax around candles. Light
came slowly, sparkling for brief moments on pine needles scored with
hoarfrost and the whites of Ash's eyes and teeth. A wind, soft and
cold, blew south. Somewhere beyond the horizon a ptarmigan screamed
at a rival who drew too near to its roost.