A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (10 page)

The Listener rested his weight on the yellow and twisted horn of his staff. His face was dark and knowing, lit by the farthest edge of the sun. When he spoke again there was anger in his voice, and his breath crackled in air that was suddenly still. “Days darker than night lie ahead; that is the truth here. That is the answer to your question. The girl has gone and you cannot follow her. How can you track someone in utter darkness? What good would it do to find her, when you can no longer see her face?”

“Where have they taken her?” Raif heard the stubbornness in his voice. He could not let this man’s words distract him. It was a trap, like the
oolak
. Fine drink. Fine words. He just wished they sounded less like the truth.

“Better ask
why
, not where, Clansman. Follow me.” The Listener raised his staff to the hummock wall and began the final ascent to the rim. He moved like a spider, light and skittering, stepping sideways more often than forward. Raif envied his technique. The little tribesman was full of surprises.

The frost boil was a crater of raised rock, forced upward by earth that had expanded as it froze. Raif had seen their like in the badlands. They were good places to set camp by, and Tem said that clansmen used to fight duels in their hollows as they were reckoned a worthy place to die. When Raif gained the rim he saw the crater’s basin was filled with snow-crusted ice. Hard black basalt ringed the core.

The Listener wagged his head toward the ice. “Drop down and scrape off the snow.”

Raif had half a mind to tell the Listener to go to one of the nine spiraling hells. He was getting tired of games. And he feared another trap.

“I am an old man,” snapped the Listener, “and the women tell me I must save my strength for winter’s end. So if I had a mind to kill you I’d have done so closer to home.” He bared tiny brown teeth. “Save myself the trouble of hauling back your body for the dogs.”

Raif let out a breath. Why was it that all holymen thought they had a right to taunt him? Inigar Stoop had been no different—but at least he was clan. Laying a mitted hand on the crater’s rim, he vaulted onto the ice. He landed hard, ten paces below the Listener, on a basin of ancient water that was frozen to its core.

“Here. Use this.” The Listener dropped a flat-bladed knife onto the ice. “
Ulu
. Woman’s knife. Should serve a clansman well.”

Raif stabbed at the snow. The top layer was hard and brittle, but softer grains lay beneath. The little knife, with its center tang, had been designed for scraping skins, and it made good progress toward the underlying ice. Raif decided it wasn’t worth thinking about why he was being made to do this. The Listener reminded him of one of those spiteful little imps who always guarded bridges in crib tales: they’d never let you cross until they’d humbled you first.

Fumes rose from the ice as he worked. When he reached the final layer of snow, a chill went through him. Something was casting a shadow on the ice. Turning, he looked up at the Listener and the twilight sky beyond. Neither the sun nor the moon had risen high enough to cast shadows. Yet it was there, a darkness upon the ice.

“Finish what you started, Clansman.” The Listener’s voice was thin and hostile. “You wanted answers; dig for them.”

It occurred to Raif that he could kill the man standing above him. Raif was armed now, and though the Listener possessed a wily sort of strength, he would be no match for a fitter, younger man. A blow to the heart would finish him. Not sure if he was comforted or unnerved by the thought, Raif turned back to his task and resumed scraping. The final layer of snow was hard and frozen, stuck fast to the ice by frequent thaws. The knife blade bent as he worked, and he could feel the sweat trickling between his shoulder blades as he put the force of his body behind each blow. The area he was clearing was roughly circular, the size of a man’s chest. When he’d chipped away enough of the surface crust he set down the blade and brushed off the loosened snow.

Something deep inside his spine, the nerve that Tem said was the first thing of a man’s to grow within the womb, sent Raif a warning of pure fear.

The darkness was not upon the ice, it was
within
it.

Instinctively, his hand rose to his waist. Only the tine containing his measure of powdered guidestone wasn’t there. He experienced a moment of panic as he slapped his hip, searching for the hardness of elk horn, before remembering he had used his last portion on Ash. It had summoned the Sull for her.

Oh gods.

Raif bit off his mitts and spat them away. Holding his hands to his face, he blew warm air upon them. He was aware of the Listener standing above him, perfectly still now, his breaths coming slow and silent. Raif put his hands upon the ice. He felt the coldness leap toward his fingers, questing for fluids to freeze. Quick frost fastened to his skin, but he pushed against it, dragging his palms across the small area he’d cleared, turning opaque ice transparent.

He saw the teeth first. A dark mouth gaped wide beneath the surface, lips pulled back to reveal a jaw of broken teeth. Raif recoiled. Something lay dead and frozen beneath him, something that could not be called a man.

Slowly, he returned his hands to the ice. He was shaking now, and there was little heat in him, yet he had no choice but to carry on. He would not let the Listener see his fear.

An eye socket was revealed next, the skin black and mummified, the eyeball long exploded with the pressure of the ice. Evil was frozen in the densely layered muscles of the face. The shadowy mass of the creature’s body was buried deep beneath the surface, its shoulders and chest receding into grotesquely twisted shapes. Raif told himself the distortions were due to ripples in the ice; he almost believed it until the Listener spoke.

“
Thaal Sithuk
,” the Listener said, his voice soft with hunter’s awe. “From the War of Shadows. Xaluku of the Nine Fingers killed it with a spear thrust to the heart.”

Raif struggled to find his voice. Beneath his fingers, the last portion of darkness waited to be revealed beneath a crust of white snow. “How long has it been here?”

“Five thousand years.”

Raif closed his eyes. The time seemed too vast to comprehend.

The Listener waited until Raif’s gaze returned to him before saying, “There are many things more terrible hidden beneath the ice.”

I don’t want to know
, Raif thought.
I just want to find Ash.

“Men and kings, and weapons they forged and cities they built and beasts they slew in the darkness. Ages have passed and most think only the legends remain . . . yet most never look beyond the surface of the ice. All things that die fall upon the earth. The musk ox is eaten by the wolf, the shored whale is plucked apart by gulls, the warrior is found and burned or thrust deep within a tomb. Yet sometimes the ice finds them before scavengers or the hands of men do. Sometimes the ice claims them and bears their bodies away.”

Raif pushed his hands across the snow, clearing the last of the crust. He didn’t want to hear this. His fingers ached, and patches of skin around his knuckles had started to yellow with frostbite. He wanted his clan, and Drey and Effie . . . and Ash. Yet even as he wanted them, he polished the ice under him so he could see what lay beneath.

A hand, with thick black talons that ended in razor points, reached out toward the light, its fist packed with ice. It was so close to the surface Raif could see the fine dark hairs that ran along the skin. Suddenly cold, he said, “Why are you showing me this?”

The Listener jabbed the point of his staff into the snow. “Because telling the truth is seldom enough. A man must see it with his own eyes. The shadows are rising, and beasts and taken men will walk this earth once more. Now is no time to be chasing after things you cannot have. The girl has gone. The Sull have taken her, and what the Sull take they never give back. She’s theirs now. Let her be. Save your strength for the battles you can win. The Long Night has come, and those who thrive in darkness must step forward to fight.”

Raif felt his face stiffen at the Listener’s words. He wanted to deny them, but the little tribesman thrust out a hand to stay his reply.

“Yes, Clansman. I know who you are. I have seen the raven riding on your back. I have heard the sound of footsteps at your heels. Death follows you. She named you. Watcher of the Dead. Yes, you are cursed. But you are young and whole, and I am old and have no ears and can find little sympathy for you. We cannot choose our skills. A boy with a gift for nets and lines must fish. A man with a hunter’s eye must hunt. If you’re born to the darkness, claim it. Find yourself a weapon and fight.”

Raif pushed himself upright. He was stirred, but didn’t want to be. This was not his world, this place of shadows and darkness and beasts held in ice. He had no weapon, no training. How could you banish shadows except with light? Kicking the mound of snow at his feet, he scattered dry crystals across the clear and gleaming ice.
Ash, think of Ash.
Where was she now? Had they harmed her? Was she waiting for him to come?

He said simply, “Where are they taking her?”

The Listener watched him closely before answering. “They will carry her east to the Heart of the Sull.”

“Then I’ll go east.”

“Men have died searching for the Heart of the Sull. The ways are long and twisting, and there are forests where every tree looks the same. Some say time itself is woven into the paths, but the Ice Trappers know little of that. We know the legends, some of them. And I can tell you that although Bluddsmen have been known to cross the borders of the Sull Racklands no clansman has ever entered the Heart.”

“Then I’ll be the first.”

The Listener almost seemed to smile. “You are young, and your arrogance becomes you so I won’t tell you all the reasons why you are wrong. Know this. I have walked this land for a hundred years, from Wrecking Sea to Endsea, from the Ice Horn to the Lake of Lost Men, and not once in that time have I found the Sull ways. They ride for the mountains—I know because I have watched them, even followed them in my youth—but as soon as they pass into the foothills they cease to be. Now your eyes may be good, but mine were better, and I never discovered where they went.”

Raif bowed his head. He couldn’t argue with the Listener’s words; he knew all about Sull ways. He wouldn’t be here if the two Far Riders hadn’t deigned to leave a trail. Still. He could make his own way east. Softly, almost to himself, he said, “I
will
find her.”

“What makes you think she
wants
to be found?”

Raif glanced up at the hard ice-tanned face of the Listener. What he saw made him wary. “She was taken against her will. Drugged, snatched away in the night, forced to ride east to gods know where. Of course she wants to be found.”

The Listener tapped snow from the tip of his staff. “
Oolak
is bitter and stringy, and stinks like dead fish. Only men are fool enough to drink it.”

Again, Raif felt a stab of wariness. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Your friend was not drugged. She only took one sip of the
oolak
. She went of her own free will.”

“No.”

“They did not force her. She is the One With Reaching Arms. She knew she had to go.”

Raif shook his head savagely. She wouldn’t leave him without saying a word, not after all they’d been through. Not after the Cavern of Black Ice. He said coldly, “You lie, old man.”

The Listener nodded. “Often, about many things. The kind of truths I know destroy men. Mothers do not want to know that the child they carry will be born dead, or that their sons will die before they do, and that their husbands will be maimed during the hunt. You cannot be a Listener without knowing how to lie.” As he spoke, the old man reached into the soft inner furs that lay beneath his sealskins and pulled something out. “But to you I speak the truth.”

Opening his fist, the Listener let something small and dark fall upon the ice. “She asked me to return this.”

Raif stared at the object by his feet. Black and hooked, as long as a child’s finger, with a hole bored through the bridge for threading string. Raven lore.
Here it is, Raif Sevrance. One day you may be glad of it.
No matter how hard he tried to lose it, it always came back.

It changed everything, and both he and the Listener knew it. Calmly, because there was nothing else to do, Raif bent and picked up his lore. It felt thin and brittle, like something he could crush in his fist. Instead he pulled a short thong from the Orrl cloak and fastened the lore around his throat. It was his and he would wear it . . . and he would not think of what Ash had done.

“She made her choice,” the Listener said. “Now it’s time you made yours.”

Raif found himself looking at the ice, at the dark and monstrous shape rippling beneath him.
Guard yourself
, she had said, her last words. How could he do that when the things that cut the deepest couldn’t be fought? After a moment he crossed to the crater wall and began to pull himself up. His choice was made.

FIVE

Into the Fire

E
ffie Sevrance crouched behind the great copper distilling vat and watched as Gat Murdock sampled the low wines. The low wines were the halfway point in the distillation, Longhead said: too weak to be named a full malt, but strong enough to send a man to his knees if he sampled too often and too long. Effie wished Gat Murdock would drop to his knees . . .
soon
. It was hot and dark in the distilling well, and vapors bubbling from the cauldron made everything clammy and damp. Effie could feel the heavy wool of her dress sticking to her back like wet oats.
Stupid thing.
Why hadn’t she thought to wear her linen shift instead?

Gat Murdock closed the spill hole on the bell-shaped vat and held his final sample up to the lamp. The sea-glass cup glowed green, revealing liquid still cloudy with dregs. Effie willed him to swallow and be done. She was on a mission for Bullhammer and Grim Shank, and she didn’t want to disappoint them. They’d chosen
her
to brew the iron juice. There were a score of boys in the roundhouse, all doing nothing more than waiting around the Great Hearth each day in the hope of sanding the rust from a hammerman’s chains or mending the shearling that couched the hammer itself. Yet when it came to the matter of the stain for the hammermen’s teeth, Bullhammer had decided that Effie Sevrance would do a better, quieter job than any one of them.