A Sword From Red Ice (90 page)

For a wonder, the lamp was still burning. Raina
thought about that as she reached the top of the ramp, recalling
something Effie had said many months ago, when asked how she made her
way through the underlevels. Don't know. Never seem to need a light.
You just see after a while. And no one can sneak up on you.

But you could sneak up on them.

Raina turned the lamp key. Her steps grew more
certain . . . and more hushed. The passageways appeared to her as a
series of shadowy frames, and after a while she could walk without
brushing against the walls. Effie had told her about the route to the
chief's chamber while Dagro was still alive, but a sense of propriety
had forbidden Raina from taking it in until now. It had been Dagro's
domain, and she'd had no wish to violate his privacy. Later, when
Mace had become chief, her overwhelming desire had been to avoid any
place where she might encounter her second husband. With Stannig
Beade it was different. The Scarpe guide could—and would—go
to hell.

On impulse, Raina set down the lamp. She had no
need of it now. She had remembered something that old, turkey-necked
Gat Murdock had said the morning of the Sundering while dust from the
Hailstone still blew in the air. "The Hail Wolf has returned."
She had paid no attention to it at the time. Gat was Gat; known for
his good riddances, not his good sense. Now she realized she had
missed an essential truth. The badge of Blackhail wasn't two swords
crossed in parley. It wasn't a she-bear suckling her cubs. It was a
lone wolf, scribed in silver on a black field. She, Raina Blackhail,
had to become that wolf.

The darkness was her black field. She moved
through it toward the chief's chamber. When she passed beneath the
entrance hall she heard footsteps and voices. A strong, rumbling
vibration shook the walls. It took her a moment to realize it was the
great clan door being drawn closed for the night. Good. It meant
sworn clansmen would retire to the greathearth to game and sup.
Clanwives would retire to their chambers with their bairns, and
Scarpers would lie low and await opportunities to do whatever
mischief weasels did.

It must be getting colder, Raina decided. She was
shivering, and her feet were growing numb. Halting for a moment, she
pulled off her boots. A cup of water swilled out from each of them.
Leaving the boots in the center of the passageway, she moved on.

She padded as quietly as a wolf after that.

Effie had told her little about the passageway
leading to the chief's chamber, save that it passed beneath the
entrance hall and then led down. Raina took the turn she needed and
descended a series of steep, low-ceilinged ramps. Now that she'd
heard the clan door being drawn on its track, she had a sense of
where she stood in relation to the above-ground spaces. The knowledge
that she was approaching the chief's chamber worked upon muscles in
her throat. Her airways tightened. An artery in her neck beat a
pulse.

When she saw a band of light ahead, she slowed.
Crouching, she touched her maiden's helper, made sure it was there.

The light was coming from an opening at the top of
the ramp. The opening was a quarter of a foot high and over twice
that in length. As Raina crept toward it she saw that a slim brass
grille was fixed over the aperture. The light coming through the
opening was faint and softly orange. Smoke snaked between the bars of
the grille. Glancing around, Raina tried to make sense of it. The
ramp had come to an end by a corner where two walls met. At first she
thought the passageway had ended also, but as her eyes grew
accustomed to the light she spied a narrow ledge winding around the
corner.

The ramp's angle meant that she approached the
opening from below. Rocking forward she switched from a crouch to a
kneel. Her damp skirt hem sucked against her calves. Raising her face
so that it was parallel to the opening, Raina peered through the
grille.

And saw four wood poles and a pair of feet. The
feet were sandaled and pointed away from her. They were a man's feet;
there was no doubt about that. They were large and covered with
coarse black hairs. The right little toenail was crusty with fungus.
Realizing she would see more if she altered her perspective, Raina
lowered her head. The singed and ragged hem of Stannig Beade's
ceremonial robe slid into view. It was hiked up to shin height. He
was sitting, she decided. That explained the four wooden poles: chair
legs. And now that she could see further, she understood that he was
sitting behind the Chief's Cairn, the big chunk of iron-gray granite
that Hail chiefs used as a worktable. As she watched, tendons in his
ankles relaxed and his heels rose up from the soles of his sandals.
Scratching sounds followed, and Raina guessed Stannig was leaning
forward to write.

Raina used the opportunity to breathe. The opening
was probably a drainage conduit, cut to prevent flooding in the
chief's chamber. Excess water would drain down the ramp. Had Effie
crouched here, she wondered, watching Dagro's feet as they moved back
and forth across the chamber? It was a bewildering thought. Raina
remembered herself as an eight-year-old girl: men's feet had not
figured in her interests.

Suddenly tendons in Beade's ankles sprung to life.
His heels came down and his robe hem dropped to his ankles. He was
standing. Swiftly, he moved across the chamber. The farther away he
walked, the more Raina could see of him. Soon she could see as high
as his waist. His hands were at his sides. Big, scarred, and covered
in the same coarse hairs as his feet, they twitched as he moved.
Abruptly he passed out of sight, screened off by a corner of the
Chief's Cairn. Sounds followed; rustling and soft thuds. Two slaps
were followed by a ripe-sounding fart.

And then the lamp was snuffed. Of course, he
sleeps here now.

Raina's nostrils flared as she drew breath down
constricted airways. She waited and did not move. Time passed. Dust
settled. Little tingles of pain racked her knees. Mice scurried on
the ramps below her; busy, aware. The roundhouse groaned as it
cooled, shifting and shrinking through the night. All was quiet in
the chief's chamber. Beade slept as soundly as a man with no one to
fear.

When a mouse streaked across her legs, Raina
didn't make a sound. Instead, she began to rise. The mice no longer
knew she was here. It was time.

The transition from kneeling to standing took
minutes as she allowed her body the opportunity to adjust to its
change in state. Once upright, she padded across the ramp to the
ledge. This was her darkness now. She could smell it and taste it.
Her pupils felt as large as wells.

The ledge was two and a half feet wide. A drop of
varying depth lay below it. Raina had some fear of it—it was
not as harmless as mice, after all—but she did not let it slow
her. She had found a way of moving, a rhythm, that propelled her
forward without sound.

The ledge turned a perfectly square corner and
ended twelve feet later. No openings here, nothing that could be
peered through and used to gather intelligence. Raina did not need
it. She knew the chief's chamber well, knew exactly where the end of
the ledge stood in relation to the interior space. Close to the
door, and opposite Beade's sleeping mat. Raising both palms to the
wall, she searched for a mechanism that would allow entry to the
chamber. She did not know what to expect. There was nothing on the
interior of this wall that gave anything away—certainly not a
panel of tile that slid on a track. Tiny pills of mortar crumbled as
she touched them. She had started the search at chest height and now
moved higher. Fingertips ghosting across stone, she walked the length
of the ledge. Nothing. She searched higher, raising her hands over
her head. More nothing. Why hadn't she thought to ask Effie for
details? Because she had been appalled at the thought of spying on
her husband; that was why. Virtuous Raina scuttling herself yet
again.

Raina continued searching. Effie, Effie, Effie.
Such a strange and endearing girl. What mischief had brought her here
and kept her coming back? It was not slyness—Effie Sevrance was
not that sort of girl—so it must have been curiosity. She was a
child who liked to know things.

Lifting her hands away from the wall, Raina
stopped in her tracks. A child. Effie had been five when she'd found
this secret entrance. A wee little thing, barely three feet high. She
probably hadn't been looking for anything—just trailing her
hand across the wall. Raina crouched, approximating a height of three
feet. Bending her arm to shorten its length and letting her fingers
idly bounce over the stone, she walked along the ledge once more. No
luck. Raina deepened her crouch, and let her hand drop all the way to
the base of the wall.

A foot from the end of the ledge she found it.
Four fingerholes. One large hole on the bottom, three smaller ones
above it. Raina inserted her thumb into the large hole and her three
middle fingers into the smaller ones. Her fingertips quickly passed
from stone to wood to air. This part of the wall was nothing more
than a veneer; stone facing fixed to wood. A hollow core lay in its
center. Raina hooked her fingertips around the lip of the wood and
tugged gently. A section of wall, two feet long and a foot high,
began to slide back onto the ledge. If it had been solid sandstone it
would have weighed twenty stone. Yet as a hollow wooden block faced
with sandstone on two sides it had to weigh under twenty pounds. And
it moved freely. Something—perhaps a thin pad of felt or
suede—had been fixed to the base of the block to allow ease of
movement.

Raina drew it back slowly. The edges of the hollow
section chinked softly against the solid wall. When the block was
free she slid it along the ledge. Stale smoke wafted through the
opening. All was dark and still on the other side. Hearing the faint
piping of Stannig's breath, she waited. Listened. Once she was sure
the breaths were evenly paced, she drew her maiden's helper. A wolf,
she told herself as she bellied through the hole.

Raina knew this space. An old Hailish banner
depicting a silver hammer smashing the Dhoonehouse was suspended
above the opening. Raina's head brushed against its base as she
passed into the chamber. Some chief's wife famous for her constancy
had embroidered the damn thing over a period of five years. All the
details of the Dhoonehouse were said to be technically correct and
rendered in perfect scale. It was a clan treasure now, albeit a
lesser one. Raina wondered about its placement. It seemed convenient
that its base covered the join where the fake wall and real wall
met. Good for her, though. It meant there had been one less
discrepancy capable of catching Beade's eye.

Raina stood. The chamber was a fraction brighter
than the passageway. A torch burning in the adjacent stairwell sent a
ghostly plane of light under the door. After hours of near-total
darkness, Raina found it easy to see through the gloom. The chamber
was sparsely furnished: a single chair, the chief's cairn, various
weaponry suspended from the ceiling and walls. Beade's sleeping mat.

The clan guide of Scarpe and Blackhail lay asleep
and naked on his back. A light-colored blanket was twisted around his
legs. His head had lolled to the side and his mouth was open. Drool
rolling toward his left ear shone faintly in the borrowed light.
Raina took in all the details: the hands resting on the belly, the
eyelids twitching as he dreamed, the dense, graying mat of pubic
hair, the water jug standing close to his shoulder. It was power she
felt, not fear or bravery. A cold and joyless satisfaction that spoke
to her and said, He's mine.

Was this how chiefs felt when they rode to war
with superior numbers and weapons? No pleasure, just an emotion that
lived between pride and contempt? Was this how Beade felt as he
waited to murder Anwyn?

No. Raina shook her head as she glided toward him.
Because I feel fury as well.

Anwyn Bird was the single best clansman in
Blackhail; its solid, dependable heart. A protector to a
thirteen-year-old newly arrived from Dregg. Girl, you will stay in
the kitchen with me and I'll hear no fussing about it. Those had
been Anwyn's first words to her; the beginning of a twenty-year
friendship that had been the most complicated and long-lived
relationship of Raina's life.

I failed you, Anny. My dear one. My love.

Do wolves weep as they kill? Raina did not think
so. Forcing herself not to blink, she kept her eyes dry. She had a
job to do and moved into position to accomplish it.

Claiming power.

Becoming the Hail Wolf.

Leaving the old Raina behind.

When she was ready, she picked up the water jug in
her free hand and emptied its contents over Beade's face. His eyes
snapped opened and his head jerked upright. Several things happened
quickly one after another then. He recognized the person kneeling
over him, instantly understood her intent, felt the blade of the
maiden's helper enter his throat, reared up his shoulders in an
instinct he was powerless to stop—the desire to be upright when
facing danger—felt the blade go deeper, coughed in panic and
swung his big right hammerman's fist up toward Raina. She took an
angled blow to the underside of her jaw. Her teeth were firmly
clamped together and the force was transferred to her skull.
Vertebrae in her neck crunched together as her head traveled
sideways and back. Her vision rippled like a stone dropped into
water. But her grip on the knife's handle held firm.

Beade watched as she murdered him.

There were hard sinews and thickly walled tubing
in a man's throat and Raina had to saw with the knife to sever them.
Blood pumped from the ragged hole, coating her hand. It was as warm
as bathwater. Beade was losing strength. His hands and lower arms
flailed, yet he could no longer lift his upper arms from the sleeping
mat. His teeth were bared. Surprise and panic had left his eyes. The
eyelids fluttered, preparing to close.