A Sword From Red Ice (97 page)

Vaylo took it and wrested it into jerking motion.
He had forgotten all it took—the balance, the space, the wrist
and arm coordination—to wield such a blade. Gamely, he drove
his horse forward. Dry must be shielded while he found himself a
weapon.

It was hell. The oily black forms of the horses.
The screeches. The snarling of the wolf dog and the bitch as they
danced around the only two people they cared about in the melee,
tearing shadowflesh, launching themselves at throats, shaking their
heads like the insane. Snow was everywhere, in Vaylo's eyes, on his
sword blade, jammed in the cavities between his bared teeth.

When one of the dark riders made a lunge for
Drybone, Vaylo punched his sword forward and twisted it into
shadowflesh. It was possibly the ugliest move ever made with a
longsword, more suited to knife brawls than swordcraft, but somehow
the tip entered at exactly the right angle to slide the blade into
the heart.

"Chosen!" Vaylo screamed, suddenly
filled with mad joy. "We are Bludd."

Dry came to his side, now armed with a sword a
foot and a half shorter than his old one, and the two men swapped
glances through the chaos and the snow. Cluff Drybannock rarely
smiled, and he did not smile now, but later when Vaylo recalled this
moment he believed he saw something close to contentment on his
fostered son's face. This was what he wanted most in life. Not just
to fight shadows, but to fight them at his father's side.

The old soft pain sounded in Vaylo's heart. He
loved Dry so much and so completely he thought it might break.
Already his decision was made.

Vaylo never knew how long the battle lasted. Time
ceased to pass at normal rate, rhythms were found, a longsword
mastered, men died, hearts imploded, voided steel burned sword-shapes
in the ground snow. Finally there was a time when the dark riders
were dead and Drybone was the only man still fighting. Chasing down
the last of the beast horses, he slew it in the Field of Graves and
Swords.

Vaylo dismounted. His legs were shaking like
leaves. The bitch came over and pushed against him, mewling and
anxious, her tail down. The wolf dog was with Dry in the field.
Unclasping his sable cloak, the Dog Lord went to aid the Bluddsmen
who had fallen. Others helped him in this, but it fell to the Bludd
chief to take those whose injuries were fatal. He kissed the men on
the foreheads, brushed snow from their cheeks, named them Bluddsmen
and sons. Cluff Drybannock's sword was a blessing, its perfect
sharpness. Vaylo's eyes were dry, his chest tight.

When he was done he cleaned his sword in the snow
and waited for Drybone to join him. When he drew close, Cluff
Drybannock dismounted. He would never sit a horse while his chief
stood. Snowflakes whirled between them. The wolf dog began to howl.

It knew.

And then Drybone knew. Nothing changed in his
stance or face, but Vaylo knew his son.

"Dry," he said. "I leave for Bludd
tomorrow. Come with me." A moment passed where Vaylo was filled
with reckless hope, and then Cluff Drybannock shook his head. "I
cannot, my father. I am Bludd and I am Sull. This is where I choose
to make my stand." The wolf dog keened in the darkness. Its
sound broke Vaylo's heart.

The Red Ice

It was the eye of the storm and they were heading
toward it, the peace at the center of a vast and unsettled underworld
of clouds. Hail blasted their faces, coming at them head-on. Wind
howled, ripping off tree limbs weakened by days of frost and sending
them flying through the air. They walked bent forward against the
onslaught, face masks pulled up to their eyes, mitted hands snatching
their cloaks taut across their bodies. If the wind got under them it
could tear the cloth off their backs. The flap of Raif's daypack made
a sound like a whumpfing of a large bird taking flight.

Lightning shot through the darkness in massive
gridlike forks. The entire north smelled like something just ignited.
The membranes in Raif's ears began popping as air pressure switched
back and forth and thunder rumbled.

He wondered if one of the definitions of insanity
could be "anyone who talks to leeches." That was what he
was doing, muttering words that were not intended for either Addie or
himself. Give me another hour, another hour, another night. The leech
was with him, a good strong biter on his back. A parasite feeding on
his blood.

The attack by the Unmade at the stand of red pines
had altered the position of the claw next to his heart. Shadow homed
to shadow. Something felt different; there was the smallest possible
delay in the completion of a beat of his heart. It was muscle, he
knew that. He of all people knew that. And it contracted in rhythm
and that rhythm had been changed.

You did not know when you died. Perhaps that was a
blessing, that short but untrackable distance between life and death.
If he fell dead on this hillside all oaths would be null and void.
Yet he did not want to die. He did not want to leave the world where
Drey Sevrance, Effie Sevrance and Ash March existed. Drey, who had
taken his swearstone that morning on the greatcourt, was the center
of all things. Raif could still remember his brother's last touch on
the rivershore west of Ganmiddich. We part here. For always. Take my
portion of guidestone . . . I would not see you unprotected.

Raif Sevrance would not see Drey unprotected
either. If he found the sword. If he lived. Any unmade man or beast
he slew with it would be one less evil in the world, one less threat
to his family, and his clan. The circle of clear sky was close now.
Mish'al Nij. The hillside leading toward it was steep. Long spines
of red rock pushed through the ground and snow. White pines and
cedars crowded the spaces in between them. The wind was bending the
trees, revealing the silvery underside of their boughs. Addie had
given up on a path. A ditch-like springbed cut deep into the slope
was the best he could manage. The spring was dry of water, but scree
and pinecones bounced downstream. When they reached the springhead—a
lens of thick blue ice that was leaking rust—they were forced
back into the trees. Raif lost sight of the sky. Cedar branches
swiped his cloak and face mask and all he could see were green
terraces of pine. Addie had the lead and Raif followed his small and
lightly stamped footprints in the frozen snow. Lightning struck.
Hailstones sizzled into puffs of steam.

"I see the ridge ahead," Addie shouted.

Raif concentrated on his feet. The sandstone was
cracked and loose here and days of thaws followed by frost had left
every surface slick. He wouldn't think about the Red Ice until he saw
it with his own two eyes.

The cragsman disappeared into the green. Raif
found himself remembering the night on the rimrock when the Forsworn
sword had given way. Was that the moment his future had been lost,
the instant the blade had bent? If the sword had stayed true would he
be here today? Traggis Mole would not have been torn open by the
Unmade serpent, and a new oath would not have been spoken. A dying
man's request. Behind his hareskin face mask, Raif cracked a dark
smile. Request was hardly the word for it. Traggis Mole had demanded.

Swear it.

Noticing the trees had begun to clear, Raif picked
up his pace. The wound he'd taken back at the camp pulled at the skin
on his gut as he straightened upright. He'd been bent against the
wind for so long it had begun to heal. Ahead, Raif saw Addie standing
on the ridgeline.

The cragsman had released his hold on his cloak
and the brown wool billowed out like a boat. Five minutes earlier it
would have been ripped from his throat. Yet the wind wasn't dying;
Raif could hear it below him in the trees. It was as if the storm
could not reach beyond Addie Gunn. He stood on a barrier it could not
pass.

The cragsman did not turn as Raif drew abreast of
him. He had removed his face mask and gray stormlight lit the side of
his face. His jaw was moving. He was naming the Stone Gods.

"Ganolith, Hammada, Ione, Loss, Uthred, Oban,
Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus."

Loss.

The fourth Stone God. And the name of the sword.

Raif looked down into a valley framed by steep and
wooded hills on three sides and by a dam of mist on the fourth. The
mist wall spanned the space between hills to the north, a towering
rampart of white and shifting haze that plumed and curled, switching
between states. The mist rivers of the Want lay behind there, Raif
realized. This was the border between worlds.

Raif thought of the lamb brothers, and touched the
piece of stormglass tucked between the trapper skins at his chest.
They had not been as far from their goal as he, and possibly they,
had imagined. If he was right and the Want lay beyond that dam they
could be just a short walk away on the other side.

Or so far they would never reach it in a million
years.

Lightning lit up the sky to the east as Raif
Sevrance looked down upon the Red Ice. Hills rose steeply from the
lake, denying it shoreline on all sides. It was roughly circular and
perhaps a league across, and he could not tell exactly where it ended
in the north and the wall of mist began. Its surface was covered in a
fine crystalline powder of snow, but you could still see the true
color of the ice. It was as the lamb brothers had said: a lake of
frozen blood.

Seeing it Raif understood Addie Gunn's impulse to
name the old gods. The cragsman had broken no oath and perhaps he had
a claim to that comfort. Raif knew he had no such claim himself.

Pushing aside his face mask, he set off down the
slope. The woods were not as dense on this side of the valley and it
was easy to make a path. The ground snow was lighter, crisper. If you
looked directly overhead you could view the night's first stars.
They seemed familiar, but Raif was on guard against the Want and no
longer wholly believed what he saw. Flawless had told him that
Bluddsmen rode right past this valley and did not see it. He had been
doubtful of that claim. Now he was not.

The nearer he drew to the ice the deeper its color
became. Light was failing strangely, staying close to the ground as
it drained. Around him he was aware of the storm waging a war upon
the north, but here in its eye all was calm.

"Night falls and the shadows gather, and to
watch you must grow accustomed to the dark. Bide where I stand, Raif
Twelve Kill—alone and armed in the darkness—and ask
yourself is this a prize worth winning, or a hole without end that
will suck away your life?"

Traggis Mole's words seemed to steal out of the
mist, snaking toward him like the Want. They contained truth without
hope. The sword's name promised more of the same. Loss.

Raif steeled himself against the bleakness of his
thoughts. He had come this far. Ahead, somewhere in that dark expanse
of Red Ice, lay the chance to fulfill his oath to Traggis Mole. And
arm himself against the Endlords.

Grow wide shoulders, Clansman. You'll need them
for all of your burdens.

About a hundred feet above the ice he stopped and
pulled off his pack. Addie was closing distance through the cedars
and Raif waited for him. The air was well below freezing here and his
breath crackled into clouds. How long had this lake been frozen? How
many thousands of years?

When the cragsman reached him, he said, "You
have been a good friend to me, Addie Gunn."

Addie knew all that this meant. As he went to
stand by Raif's pack there was sadness in his eyes, but no surprise.
"Think I'll try some of that tea. Good luck to you, lad."

Their gazes locked. You seconded my oath, Raif
wanted to tell him. Like Drey. He remained silent though, and left
the cragsman alone on the hill as he headed down to the Red Ice.

All trees stopped thirty feet above the lake and
nothing grew on the bare rock, Raif was careful as he descended.
Things were happening to his body. Old wounds and new wounds were
stretching his skin tight like nails hammered into a canvas. His
fingertips were tingling.

He realized the ice was groaning when he neared
the shore. When he had first heard the sound he had mistaken it for
thunder. Now he could tell it was the low moan of a substance under
pressure. Cautiously he slid down the rocks toward it.

The instant he slid his toe upon the Red Ice, the
leech dropped from his back. Its slimy, rubbery body landed with a
squelch on the surface of the lake. It was the same color as the ice.

Oh gods. Raif moved past it and took his first
steps upon the lake. Ice whitened in starbursts where it took his
weight. He looked down and could see nothing beyond the iron-dark
surface. Stilling himself, he waited for lightning to strike close
by. When three bolts hit in quick succession over the eastern hills,
he used the flashes of brightness to search the lake's depths. The
ice was opaque, blacky red and partly frosted. Nothing could be seen
beneath the surface. Raif let his gaze circle the lake. He reckoned
it would take him a quarter hour to cross from one side to the other.

And there was no telling how deep the ice ran. He
would never find the sword unless he knew exactly where it lay.

Although he didn't much want to, he forced himself
to consider the vast dam of mist. If he walked toward it at what
point would the Want grab him and not let go? He had entered the Want
before and the one thing he knew for certain was that you were never
aware when you passed the point of no return. It was like death that
way. That same short but untrackable distance.

Feeling the soft give of pain in his shoulder,
Raif set out to cross the Red Ice. He scanned west and then east and
wondered if it might be as simple as locating the lake's exact
center. Four worlds meeting in the middle. It wasn't a bad idea, but
instinct told him it wasn't right. The Want was in play here. Even if
half the lake lay in Bludd territory and the other half in Sull lands
there would still be something else.