A Sword From Red Ice (17 page)

"No Sull has ever counted how many trees grow
there. We do not concern ourselves with such things. But know this:
The birch way is just the start. We are Sull and we are hunted, and
we will not make it easy for our enemies to harm us."

Lan Fallstar turned away from her and began
stowing the carpet and other items in his stallion's saddlebags. Ash
watched him pull on his gloves and mount his horse. When he clicked
his tongue and headed east she was not surprised. He knew she had no
choice but to follow him.

The Lamb Brothers

The dreams were like deep wells; once you stepped
into one you kept falling. The sense of dizziness and suspension of
thought as you waited for the landing, was the same. Most of the time
Raif knew he was dreaming. Dreams had a texture to them, a vivid
thickness, as if you were viewing them through an inch of clear
glass. And they always had an edge, a point beyond which you could
not see. Most of the time Raif didn't even think to look. He fell.
Days passed, or perhaps they only seemed to, as he plunged deeper and
deeper into a floorless world.

All the people he loved were there. Da and Drey,
Effie, Ash, Uncle Angus. The world made no distinction between those
who were alive and those who were dead. Bear was there, watching with
solemn interest as she chewed a mouthful of grass. Da told him never
to leave his boots wet overnight. Shadows ebbing and swelling formed
a cycle, not unlike night and day. When the shadows lifted, people
came to visit him. Some watched, others spoke. Angus Lot usually had
something to say. "A pretty shot," he offered more than
once. "What's next?" None of it made much sense, but it was
not unpleasant, just vaguely frustrating Raif seldom had the chance
to answer back.

When the shadows gathered and deepened, the nature
of his dreams changed. Drey left, that was how the nightmares began.
His brother would be there, at his side, and they'd be facing the
danger together and it felt scary yet somehow good. They were
brothers, and that was how it was between them. Then Drey would
leave. One moment he would be there, his shoulder brushing against
Raif, and the next he would be gone. Disappeared. Raif's gut would
clench. His hand would map out to the darkness, and his fingers close
around air.

He felt alone after that. Head spinning, fingers
splayed like pinion feathers, he plunged deeper into the darkness.
There was no going back, that was the true horror that lay waiting in
the shadows.

Drey had gone, and there was no going back.

Time passed. Sometimes Raif would experience a
deep bone-numbing cold and grow frightened as he lost sensation in
his hands and feet. If the cold continued he would become certain
that his hands and feet had broken off and his limbs now ended in
stumps. Panic came then. Without hands, how could he break his fall?

An eyeblink could change everything. Cold could be
replaced by heat, silence by animal howls. Things huffed and grunted
on the far edge of his perception. Feeding. Shadows ebbed and
swelled, creating an undertow that sucked him down.

Raif saw things he did not understand: a face
staring up at him through a foot of pressure-formed ice; a wound
smoking like a piece of kindling about to burst into flame; a thick
and unlovely sword without fullers or decorations sinking to the
bottom of a lake. Clan and kin loomed from the darkness, then fled.

Effie called out his name, and Raif's heart jumped
in his chest. Where was she? He could not see her. Effie, he screamed
at the darkness, EFFIE!

Bitty Shank came then, smiling with a closed
mouth. He was dressed in armored plate bossed with iron studs and
mounted with hammer chains. The chains rattled as he approached. He
was shambling slightly, as if he'd had too much to drink or wasn't
well. Raif smiled back at him. Bitty spread his lips in a death grin,
revealing teeth pointed like fangs. Suddenly he lunged forward, and
as his hand shot from his chest Raif saw a fist-size hole in Bitty's
armor. The skin and rib cage were gone, and something black and
gristled and not quite heart-shaped beat in Bitty's chest. Raif
turned and tried to flee, but Bitty's hard, pincer-like fingers
grabbed hold of his shoulders and bit into his flesh. Corpse breath
pumped along Raif's cheek. Bitty hissed, "Where you running to,
Raif? I've got a new heart for you to kill."

Stop! Raif cried, trying to wrench himself free.
Bitty's armored fingers sank deeper and deeper, ten knives slicing
his muscle like cheese.

From somewhere far in the shadows Angus asked
calmly, "What next?"

Bitty jumped on Raif's back. Stumbling forward,
Raif struggled to keep his footing and failed. Air punched from his
lungs as he landed hard on his stomach. Bitty clung to him like a
spider, strong and inhumanly fast. Panicking, Raif bucked against
Bitty's hold. Every time he took a breath Bitty squeezed him harder.
Bitty's knife-fingers slid through the spaces between Raif's ribs,
and Bitty was laughing, laughing, and Raif could feel the
heart-shaped thing in Bitty's chest thumping against his back.

Leave us. The voice that spoke was chilling, an
icy wind blowing through an open door.

Bitty froze, yet even as he stilled he became
something other. Something dark and malleable, a heavy shadow
spilling over Raif's shoulders and rolling across his face. Gasping
for breath, Raif sucked in the shadows and breathed in the substance
of Death.

Air crackled as she approached. Light failed her,
sliding off her presence like dark wine poured over glass. The
sweetly corrupt scent of spoiled pears preceded her as she leaned
forward and laid a kiss on Raif's brow.

I believe I will call you son.

Noooooo, he screamed at her. NOOOOOOOO!

"Sshh."

Raif moved his head, tracking the new voice. As he
shifted his attention one way, Death withdrew. Chuckling softly, she
pulled her nightmare robes behind her, beckoned the darkness, and
left. She always had the last laugh.

Droplets of lukewarm water pattered across Raif's
face. As he scrunched his eyes tightly closed, he became aware that
he was no longer falling. Somehow he had landed on solid ground.

Light filtering through his eyelids flickered as
something moved between Raif and the source. I am awake, he said to
himself, testing, his mind carefully calibrating each word. When
water began to patter against his face a second time he cracked open
his lips and let it fall into his mouth. His tongue soaked up the
droplets like a sponge, and there was some pain as parched flesh
expanded. As if that first pang had opened a door marked "Pain"
Raif's mind began receiving signals from his body. His throat felt
raw and scratchy, and his back and rib cage were stiff. A deep,
unsettled ache in his left shoulder seemed the worst thing. It moved
through his muscle like liquid.

Noises began to register. A strange chittering was
followed by a rattling sound, like stones being shaken in a jar.
Then footsteps, or rather footfalls for the sound was soft, subtle,
owing more to the yielding of floor than the striking of feet.

Raif wondered whether he should open his eyes.
Caution made him hesitate. The same instinct that told him his memory
was working even though he had not probed it, told him his position
here—wherever "here" might be—was vulnerable.
So he listened and waited.

Time passed. The quality of light changed, the
colors filtering through his eyelids shifting from blue to red. Air
cooled. A sharp burnt odor reached Raif's nose, followed by the scent
of unfamiliar cookery. Bittersweet spices, licorice, clove and sumac
floated upward with the scent of pungent smoke. Footfalls sounded
again. A light was struck, then silence.

Raif waited, limbs still, body cooling. After a
while it seemed to him that the silence had an expectant quality to
it and he began to imagine he was being watched. As the hour wore on
he grew more and more certain that someone was waiting for him to
make a move. Raif wondered how long the watcher could keep silent,
how long he or she could play the game.

More time passed, and aches and needs began to
assert themselves. A muscle in Raif's damaged shoulder had tightened
and needed to be flexed. Thirst gnawed at his throat, and he became
aware of the fullness in his bladder. Quite suddenly he had to move.

He opened his eyes, and blinked against the light.
It took him a moment to understand what he saw. He was lying in a
small, high-roofed tent braced with slender yellow bones that were
double-curved like sycamore wings. The tent canvas was made from
clarified hides; skins of stillborn animals that had been melted to
the point of translucence. Clan did not have the knowledge to prepare
them, and Raif imagined he was looking at great wealth. Rays from the
setting sun shone through the hides, illuminating whorl patterns
where fur had once grown. Raif could not guess what animal they came
from.

Lines of silky blue smoke rose from three seaglass
lanterns raised on longbone poles. To his left Raif saw a loose pile
of saddle blankets dyed in colors of yellow: saffron, ocher, wheat.
The tent floor consisted of thickly piled pelts and fleeces. Raif
recognized the curly-haired fleece of a bighorn sheep and the dappled
white pelt of a snag cat, but he did not recognize the others. One
was orange with black circles, another was horse-shaped and striped
black-and-white, and another still was stiff and ridged and green as
pondweed. He was lying on a mattress or mounded earth overlaid with
sheepskin, and he was covered by a single blanket woven from a wool
softer and lighter than musk ox.

When he was ready, Raif turned his attention to
the figure standing by the roped-down tent flap. The man was tall and
lean. Sable-colored robes so dark and richly dyed they absorbed light
were wrapped around his head and body in loosely twisted folds. The
headpiece consisted of tiers of fabric hung from a curved hood. A
single bow-shaped slit revealed his eyes.

The man bowed his head slowly but did not speak.
He had been waiting, Raif decided, allowing his visitor time to grow
accustomed to his surroundings. Squatting, the man poured green
liquid from a copper pot into a glass cup with a copper base. The
liquid steamed as he crossed the small, circular space of the tent
and laid the cup on the hides by Raif's bed. The man's eyes were an
inky brown and his eye whites had a faint bluish tinge to them, like
a bird's. His skin was ash brown and there were three small black
dots spaced evenly across the bridge of his nose that might have been
tattoos.

Nodding once toward the cup and then to a wooden
bowl close to Raif's feet the man withdrew. Night air purled through
the tent slit as he raised the guide rope and disappeared. Raif
watched the tent flap spool back down. Thick raw air circled the
tent, dragging down smoke from the seaglass lamps as it sank.

Raif sat up. Pain shot along his left side,
spiking in his shoulder. Blood rushed to his head, making his skin
flush, and then rushed back down, leaving him faint. Planting his
feet on the strange green hide, he rested for a moment before
standing. A question that had been waiting just beyond the radius of
his thoughts came sharply into view. How long have I been here? He
had no answer, he realized, no experience to relate his body's
condition to time.

Standing brought on a wave of dizziness, and he
clung to one of the yellow bones as he waited it out. The bone echoed
when he tapped it with his knuckle; hollow as a birdbone. When the
tent stopped spinning, Raif reached for the green drink. It smelled
of licorice and something his memory couldn't find a name for. He did
not taste it, simply drank in deep gulps, swallowing rhythmically.
Done, he glanced down at the wooden pot. Shaking his head, he decided
to go outside rather than piss in a bowl.

He was still in the Great Want. The knowledge came
to him the instant he stepped upon the gray, powdery earth. Overhead,
the great wheel of stars blazed and turned. Knowing better than to
gauge the passage of time in the Want by lunar phases, Raif ignored
the rising moon. A light wind was gusting, shifting the dust into
dunes and carrying the smelted-metal scent of new-formed glaciers.
Raif was standing within a circle of five tents, all similar in shape
and size to the one he had slept in. Outside the circle a corral
consisting of tanned leathers hung from ivory tusks sheltered woolly
mules and a single saffron-fleeced milk ewe. Inside the circle, at
its center, four men squatted around a cook fire, spearing food from
a black pot with sharpened sticks. No one spoke. All four glanced
Raif's way before returning to the business of eating. They were
dressed in similar robes of varying shades and it was impossible for
Raif to tell which one of them had been in his tent. One of the four
had plunged a lean copper spear into the soft earth, and it stood,
point-up, within reach of his left hand.

Raif walked to the far side of the tent and
urinated. From what he could make out the Want looked flat here, with
only dunes and boulders casting shadows against the moon. On impulse
he bent down and scooped up a fistful of earth. The soil was
pulverized pumice, and it poured through his fingers like cool, dry
sand. Watching it he was struck with the idea that the Want had
allowed him closer. Closer to what he could barely put into words.
Something had happened long ago in this place. Sadaluk, the Listener
of the Ice Trappers, had told how the Want had once been like any
other land. It had a North and South and stars that could be relied
on. Water flowed, trees grew, animals grazed and others hunted.
People had lived here; if not Men, then perhaps another, older race.
Raif had stood in one of their cities: Kahl Barranon, the Fortress of
Grey Ice.

He shivered. Placing a hand on his left shoulder,
he worked away at the pain.