A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  Old Scratch’s eyes were dimming when he found her, yet the same thing she had seen in them before was there. Faith. He thought she could save him. Even now.

  Effie felt tears run down her face as the last of the dog went to the fire. Something hard and terrible was growing within her, and she felt the first stirrings of rage. Eyes darting, she studied the men who formed a circle around her. Their attention was given fully to the thrashing thing alive with flames. Slowly, slowly, she moved two paces to the side, put her foot on Bitty’s flint knife, and sent a hand down her leg to scratch her knee. In an instant the knife was hers. Straightening, she checked the two Hailsmen behind her; their gazes hadn’t shifted from the smelting chamber.

  As the smell of singed fur and roasting meat filled the room, Effie found her grip on the blade. Men were shifting now, rubbing their eyes as if they had woken from a dream. When Stanner Hawk turned to face her she was ready.

  “Witch. May the fire go no gentler on you.” He motioned to the two Scarpemen, Uriah Scarpe and Wracker Fox. “Seize and bind her. Let her go awake and repentant to the flames.”

  As the two Scarpemen moved to flank her, Effie showed her knife. Sweeping the blade in a circle in front of her, she spoke in a shaky voice. “Stay back. You’ll not find me as defenseless as a dog.”

  Someone close to the door snorted. Uriah Scarpe stretched thin weasel lips to a smirk. Wracker Fox danced back in mock fright. “Well, well, my little Blackhail hellcat. I see you’ve a fancy for a fight.”

  Stanner Hawk wasn’t amused. “Burn her and be done.”

  “Aye,” added Turby Flapp. “Allow her no chance to do more witchery this night.”

  Effie felt her face burn. Stupid, stupid. How could she have thought they’d be afraid of a girl with a stone knife? That was when she saw Uriah Scarpe’s gaze return to her lore. The granite stone was twitching with force, moving the wool fabric of her dress. She watched fear enlarge the Scarpeman’s pupils . . . and then she knew what she must do.

  Remember, they think I’m a witch.

  Still holding the knife firm, she swept down and grabbed the bowl of iron juice from the floor. Before any clansman had a chance to react she dipped the blade of her knife into the swirling fluid. A thousand pores in the flint soaked up the black. The blade emerged glistening and smoking, like a piece of frozen night. Almost when she saw it she felt afraid herself, for the look of it stirred memories within her that she did not know she had. But then Da’s smell was upon it; the smell of barley too old and honey nearly off and peat that had been burned, not smoked. It gave her strength and heart, and when she spoke all fear was gone.

  “This,” she said, holding up the coated blade for all to see, “is dark magic I distilled myself. One drop upon your skin and your soul is mine. Your teeth will rot and your sword hands will wither, and your man seed will come out black.” She paused, sending a silent prayer of thanks to Letty Shank for inspiring that particular horror, and then carried on, imagining Anwyn Bird in a rage over something to help her voice come out right. “If you value your lives you’d best let me walk free from this place, or I swear I’ll cast this bowl down and splash every one of you, and take your souls with me to hell.”

  Silence. Someone coughed. Turby Flapp started to speak, then was still. Some of the younger men began to edge back. Uriah Scarpe brought his sword hand down to protect his man parts. Effie waited, knife in hand, bowl tucked into the crook of her arm . . . and stared every one of them down.

  Stanner Hawk’s face was a tight mask. Of the twenty-four men in the room he was the only one who knew she was no witch. She saw him weigh all possible outcomes. Call her a trickster and everything that had taken place here was voided. She was either witch or trickster; she could not be both. To speak up would be to contradict himself. And then there was the distinct possibility that they’d pay him no heed. Real fear lived in this room; if Effie could see that so could he.

  In the end his decision was taken for him. Wracker Fox stepped away from her, saying to Stanner, “You take care of the Hailish bitch. I’m not going to touch her.” As soon as he spoke, murmurs of agreement passed through the room, and the four men securing the doorway moved aside. Other clansmen stirred and within moments a path toward the door had cleared.

  Something terrible must have been showing on her face when she walked between the ranks of clansmen for not one of them would meet her eye. Turby Flapp let his poorly weighted sword clatter to the floor and grabbed the tine containing his measure of powdered guidestone with both hands. The Scarpemen made gestures she did not recognize, strange wardings in the shape of poison pines. As she passed Stanner Hawk he whispered, “Never sleep in this roundhouse again, Effie Sevrance, else my knife will find you the moment you shut your eyes.”

  She said nothing in reply. She did not trust herself to speak. Everything in her was intent on making it toward the door. Thoughts of Old Scratch kept her hands steady and made her eyes blaze with their own kind of fire.

  Later she could remember nothing of the journey along the Dry Run and out of the roundhouse. Only two thoughts held her: Old Scratch’s faith that she could save him, and the dull and terrible certainty that the Stone Gods would send ice into the heart of the Hailstone for the wrongs done by clansmen this night.

  SIX

  Becoming Sull

  They entered the mountain on the fourth day and, although it was virtually impossible to tell in which direction they were moving, Ash had a feeling they were no longer traveling east.

  “We head east to the Racklands, then south to the Heart,” was all Ark Veinsplitter had said about the journey. Ash had not questioned him. It had been the morning of their departure, when the sun barely showed itself on the eastern horizon and starlight lit the ice and turned it blue. There had been no sleep for her the night before in the Listener’s ground, just terrible hours of wakefulness, knowing that she would soon leave Raif, and knowing also that she could not explain why. Speak to him of it and she would have been undone. He would have argued, persuaded, changed her mind. And he would have done it because he loved her. And it would have been a mistake.

  She was Sull now; their battles were hers. Her flesh was rakhar dan, reachflesh. And it owed a debt for what it had done.

  She could not bring Raif with her on this journey. The Sull Far Riders would not have it; they had no love for the man they called the Clansman. Yet their reasons were not her reasons. She would not have Raif because he had already done enough, risked enough, and she was traveling into darkness . . . and she would travel that road alone. She would not endanger him. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

  She knew he could not follow her. Ark Veinsplitter had only contempt for clannish tracking. “Clansmen see only what is there. They do not see what has been. Like children they look only at their feet. Does an eagle leave footprints as it flies, or a squirrel as it leaps from tree to tree? No. They leave trails that must be smelled and tasted and heard. Clansmen track with one sense, the Sull use five.”

  Ash slowed for a moment, weariness suddenly weighing her down. He cannot track me. The thought almost broke her heart. He’d protected her for so long, carried her in his arms when she could no longer walk. Yet all his strength and determination meant nothing in the face of the Sull. They’d fooled him as easily as if he’d been a green boy . . . and they’d make sure he could never find her again.

  Ash breathed deeply, controlling the hurt. She just wished she could stop herself looking for him whenever she first awoke.

  Noticing that she had slowed her pace, Ark Veinsplitter slowed his own to match. Nothing went unobserved by the Far Rider; she had to remember that and guard herself closely. “How much farther before we make camp?”

  Although they had been inside the mountain for a full day, Ark Veinsplitter was still wearing pale, milky scale armor beneath his wolverine cloak. The armor gave off light, shimmering in the darkness of the mountain as if it stored radiance from the moon. Ash had seen the
armor up close when the Veinsplitter cleansed himself with stone-heated water; it was warm to the touch, and strange—rings of fire flickered within each scale. It was bone, that much she guessed, sliced in cross sections so thin they should have been easy to break. But when Ash had held one piece between her fingers she felt steel-hardness there.

  Ark Veinsplitter turned to look at her, his scale armor rippling like silk. His ice-tanned face picked up little light from the torch Mal Naysayer bore several paces ahead, yet his eyes were plain to see. Something was hidden there. “We journey late this night.”

  What time was it? Ash couldn’t be sure. Her only guide was the sense of hours passed walking beneath rock. The mountain muffled time and light. Narrow tunnels twisted through the rock, winding down through granite and glistening ores, past pools of standing water and caverns where small bulb-eyed creatures scattered from the light. They moved down, always down. Sometimes the ways were so low they had to double back to find a path for the horses. Other times the Naysayer had to guide the mounts over stone bridges and crooked stairs. Echoes followed them like shadows. No sound ever left the mountain; instead it circled round, bouncing from wall to wall, growing lower and deeper and splitting into fragments of itself. Once Ash stopped and listened. She heard her own voice, eerily distorted, saying quite clearly, “I’ll take a piece of the waybread.” Words she had said half a day earlier, when they had stopped for their mid-morning meal.

  Suddenly chill, Ash drew her coat about her. Ahead, Mal Naysayer led the horses through a natural archway stippled with quartz. The giant Sull warrior hadn’t spoken in hours. It fell to him to find whatever path Ark Veinsplitter sought, and to bear the torch that lit the way. His broad back was spanned by the diagonal slash of his longsword, holstered across his shoulders due to its extraordinary length. He was cloaked in differently pieced furs to those of his hass, but the armor beneath them was the same shimmering scale. On his left hand he bore a great leather mitt, like a falconer’s glove, that shielded his fingers and wrist from the spitting tar of the torch. As if aware Ash’s gaze was upon him, the Naysayer turned. Always his ice-blue eyes were a shock. They pierced you. Knowledge—and knowing—burned within them, and Ash wondered what tragedies had happened in his past.

  “Is the path open?” Ark asked, moving forward to where the Naysayer stood in the archway.

  The great Sull warrior shook his head. “Nay. The rock ceiling lowers, and there is uncertain ground ahead.”

  Ark nodded, but not lightly. He regarded his hass with eyes that were almost black. Ash could see him thinking. Five days ago they had left Ice Trapper territory, traveling through ice storms and whiteouts, across black hackled ice and snowbound foothills, and in all that time she had seen nothing but certainty on his face. Now there was something else.

  “Settle the horses. We go on alone.”

  As the Naysayer pulled rope from one of the packs, Ash forced her way through the arch and regarded the territory ahead. Shadows were deep, and concealed much. A stair had been cut into the rock, but she could not see where it led, only that it spiraled down into the mountain’s depths. A breeze lifted the hair from her face, and she caught the unnerving scent of copper ore. Like blood. Suddenly uneasy, she returned to Ark Veinsplitter’s side.

  The Far Rider was studying markings tattooed into the archway’s vault. Ash recognized Sull signs; full moons and half-moons and diagrams of night skies. Everywhere that is deep and lightless they have claimed. Ash shivered. She knew so little about the Sull. How could she ever hope to become one?

  Ark must have seen some of the uncertainty on her face, for he drew close enough for her to see the letting scars on his cheekbones, ears and jaw, and said, “The night’s journey will soon be done.”

  “We’re not going to camp, are we?”

  “No.”

  Something warned her not to ask the next question. She studied the Far Rider closely. He had the ability to be perfectly still, to stand unmoving and unblinking, biding his time between breaths. Since they had left the Ice Trappers’ territory little had been said between them. Talk had been of food and weather and other small matters between travelers. Nothing had been mentioned about the reason for the journey. As with each carefully measured breath, Ark Veinsplitter was biding his time.

  She surprised herself by saying, “The skin on your neck, below your jaw, why are there no letting scars there?”

  Muscles in Ark’s face shifted, and when his voice came it was so low she had to strain to hear it. “Dras Morthu. The Last Cut.” He touched the unblemished flesh. “When it is time for me to depart for the Far Shore I will cut the last great vein.”

  “And if your life is taken by another?”

  “Then my hass will not rest until he has found me and made the Last Cut himself.”

  Ash looked down. Something too private was showing in the Far Rider’s eyes.

  “The horses have been fed and watered. Let us go.” Mal Naysayer pulled the torch from its mooring between two rocks. The Sull stallions and the packhorse stood their ground. Tall and proud, they needed no hobbles to prevent them from fleeing. Ash knew without question they would wait for their riders’ return. As she passed through the archway she scratched the gray’s nose. “Good boy,” she whispered. “One day I’m going to find out your name.”

  The going was slow and treacherous, the steps wildly uneven and slick with graphite. Ash slipped many times, and many times the Naysayer put out a hand to steady her. The great Sull giant saw things that she could not: fissures and slicks of oil and crumbling rock. She wondered if he needed the torch. The rock was dark and grotesquely folded, and at every opportunity it ate the light. Shadows flickered and lengthened, and soon Ash could see no farther than a few paces ahead. Yet the Naysayer never slowed.

  The two men were bearing light packs. A few days’ food, blankets and medicine, she guessed. Why had they brought her here? At first she’d thought they meant to pass through the mountain, a short cut that would protect them from the ice. Now she knew they had a specific location in mind, a place nestled beneath a mountain of rock. Raif, I wish you were with me.

  At first she could not quite believe it was getting warmer. Time passed as they made their descent, and Ash became aware of a prickly film of sweat above her lip. She brushed it away, and it came back. Soon she had to remove her cloak and haul it over her back. And it wasn’t just growing warmer, she realized, glancing at a rock beaded with moisture; it was getting damper, too. The two Sull warriors appeared impervious to the changes, yet they had to see the tendrils of mist creeping up the stairway to meet them. And they had to hear the sound of dripping water.

  Down they went, their footsteps muffled now, their echoes nearly silent. The mist stayed low, washing around their ankles like foam. Every so often Ash would see signs etched in the rock. Once she thought she saw a raven, and didn’t know whether to be comforted or afraid. Exhaustion made her stumble, and the Naysayer offered his arm for support. Leaning on him she reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the mountain chamber.

  The chamber was dark and alive with shadows and it stretched farther than she could see. A pool of green water lay in its center, the source of the smell and the mist. Great piers of glistening rock rose around its banks, their bases barnacled with deposits of copper ore.

  “Hass, light more torches.” Ark Veinsplitter did not sound like a man happy to reach his destination. For some reason Ash thought that he might open a vein and pay a toll, but he did not. Instead he walked heavily toward the pool. The Naysayer made sure Ash was steady on her feet and then went about the task of lighting sticks. Ash had little choice but to follow Ark to the water.

  By the time she reached the pool’s bank, the Far Rider had already laid down a blanket for her. “Sit,” he said. “Rest.”

  Ash did just that. This close to the pool the mist was stifling, and she realized for the first time that she was sitting by a natural hot spring. Suddenly she was taken with the desire to w
ade, fully clothed, into the water and let its warm waters soothe her aches. They haven’t brought me here for a bath, she reminded herself, snuffing the small spark of joy.

  “Ash March, Foundling. Drink this.” Ark Veinsplitter was holding out a ram’s horn filled with clear liquid. When she didn’t immediately reach out to take it, he said, “It will not make you sleep.”

  They were both thinking of the night in the Listener’s ground, of the oolak that had rendered Raif senseless. She said, “Will it harm me?”

  “No. It will lend you strength.”

  She took it but did not drink. The Naysayer was moving in a circle around the pool, planting torches between rocks. This simple act woke fear in Ash: why did they need so much light? Because she was afraid she spoke. “Will we have a fire? I could roast the last of the goat.”

  Ark shook his head slowly, and for a moment she saw sadness in his eyes. “We do not eat this night, Ash March. Tonight you become Sull.”

  The words echoed once around the chamber, and then stopped. Ash felt as if they had entered her, like a knife. She found she was trembling. Liquid from the horn splashed her leg, and she forced herself to be steady.

  Ark Veinsplitter continued in his softly powerful voice. “We cannot bring you to the Heart unless you are Sull. You are rakhar dan and you are needed for the long night to come. We are the only ones left who fight the darkness. Whilst clansmen and city men feud amongst themselves over land once claimed by the Sull, we will ride out and battle with the Endlords and their taken. Make no mistake, Ash March, I offer you little in return for your soul. Maer Horo lies ahead—the Age of Darkness. It is not a good day to become Sull. If we are lucky we shall fight until we die; if we are not we shall be taken and our souls will walk lost into the grayness.

  “Much I cannot say to you now. Such things that I know cannot be spoken to an outlander and a stranger to our ways. Our secrets come at too great a cost, like our blood, and whenever we speak them out loud we risk much.