A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  Iss gave the matter no more thought. The executioner—brought overland from Hanatta in the Far South at great cost—was taking his place by the block. The man’s skin was dark as night and his bared arms were thicker than most men’s thighs. Still, it wasn’t his strength that made him famous; it was the fact that he had no eyes. Barbossa Assati needed no executioner’s hood to shield him from the sight of death. The exotic gods of the Far South had done that for him, bringing him into the world with two empty sockets where most men had eyes. Watching him, Iss wondered what Marafice Eye must be thinking. The Knife had lost an eye himself, and surely, upon seeing the hollow orbits dominating Barbossa Assati’s striking face, he must value his remaining one eye all the more.

  Marafice Eye showed nothing but hard efficiency as he commanded his guards to take charge of the prisoner and escort him to the block. Six red cloaks flanked Maskill Boice, never once laying a hand upon him. Condemned flesh was cursed—everyone in the city knew that.

  The block was hewn from a hundred-year oak, rectangular in shape and cut with a curved depression for the laying of a head. As Iss looked on, some aging grange widow brought forth a cloth-of-gold and draped it over the wood. When the prisoner drew close she held out a hand and named him: “Son.”

  The crowd was so quiet now, Iss could hear the breath wheeze in their throats. Barbossa Assati had drawn his sword from its felt-lined scabbard, and the sight of the heavy fern-curved blade sent a ripple of excitement through all present.

  Maskill Boice would not look at it, though he did press something—a gold coin or a jewel—into the executioner’s hands. “Take me in one stroke,” he murmured.

  Barbossa Assati spoke one word in his beautiful, strangely accented voice. Iss thought it sounded like “Always.”

  And then Boice knelt on the black-stained cobbles of the Quarter Square, and laid his head upon the block. As his hands reached out to steady himself against the cloth-draped wood, his throat moved in prayer. Grange ladies, viewing from the safe distance of the Quarter Court’s balconies, sighed with the tragedy of it all.

  Barbossa Assati found his place and settled his weight evenly between his straddled legs. One powerful black hand came down briefly to bare Maskill Boice’s neck. Then the executioner raised the sword with two hands, and let it fall. Steel chunked into wood. Blood fountained. The head rolled, for no one had thought to place a basket to catch it. The crowed Aahed. Maskill Boice’s torso jerked once, then slumped at the executioner’s feet. The great dark blindman spoke words over it before hefting his sword free of the block.

  Within his mask of black iron, Iss felt curiously removed from the scene. He saw the looks of horror in the grangelords’ faces, watched as the little beetle-like gallows-master retrieved Boice’s head and dipped the stump into a pan of salt before impaling it upon a pole. All around, women were wailing and wringing their hands, yet the men in the crowd seemed strangely restless, exchanging glances and short comments as if they had expected more.

  Very well. I shall give you one last thing.

  Iss turned to face Marafice Eye and commanded, “Bring out the traitor’s gravegoods and distribute them amongst the people.”

  A huge cheer shook the crowd. They had not expected to share in the grangelord’s wealth and this was unheard-of bounty. Jostling for positions close to the front, they shouted Iss’s name in praise.

  At the Knife’s word, four pages struggled down the steps of the Quarter Court, bearing a heavy litter suspended between two poles. Armor and jewels and fine silks were heaped upon it, glittering gold and crimson in the failing afternoon light. Cries of outrage united the grangelords: How dare Iss send a nobleman’s wealth to the crowd! It was unthinkable. Yet one look at the front ranks of the mob, their faces dark with greed, hands twitching in readiness to seize bounty, was enough to know that it could not be stopped. Even before the four pages had set down the litter, the crowd surged forward.

  What happened next was ugly and bloody, as grown men fought tooth and nail over scraps. People slid in Maskill Boice’s blood, kicking and screaming, beating each other in their frenzy to grab gilt cups and bolts of cloth. One man seized a sword and ran into the crowd, running a small child through in his haste to get away. Iss stood above it all in the Killhound Mask, holding everyone—Marafice Eye and his red cloaks, John Rullion, the priests in the viewers’ gallery, the women on the balconies, and the Whitehog on the Quarter Court’s steps—in their places. None could leave until he dismissed them, and it suited him to have them watch.

  He held power in this city, and as the weeks wore on and he lost influence in other spheres, it was important to demonstrate that power for all to see. Asarhia had gone, fleeing to the north and taking her Reach strength with her. The Nameless One was growing weak and had withdrawn to the dark spaces inside himself where beatings and isolation could not reach him. More and more it was growing harder to use him, and Iss knew that the day was fast approaching when he would smother the Nameless One with a soft cushion and take the life from him. A bound sorcerer was only useful as long as he had strength to steal. And this one, in his weakness and madness, was keeping every last drop for himself. It had been many weeks since Iss had visited the twilight world of the Gray Marches, and he no longer had sway over what happened there. Influence had been lost. Knowledge had been denied him. He knew the Blindwall had been breached, but after that nothing.

  The future was uncertain once more, and the only advantages he had were earthly ones. Today had been a demonstration of those powers, and a warning to his enemies. Dark times were coming: land would be lost and claimed, and great lords and clan chiefs would fall and be made. Marafice Eye thought to make himself Surlord by winning success in the clanwars; Garric Hews thought to do the same by treachery. Well, let them both look upon this ravenous mob . . . and know who knew it best.

  Stepping down from the platform, Iss walked into the heart of the looting. Men ceased fighting as he passed, jeweled buckles and silver boxes in hand. One old man bowed, and then another, and then the entire crowd fell to their knees. Iss moved through them, feeling no fear. He was wearing the Killhound of Spire Vanis and he was filled with the great bird’s power.

  The mob closed around him as he made his return to Mask Fortress, letting no one else through.

  Deep down beneath a mountain, in a space carved and blasted two thousand years before, a man awakes. This far below the surface, the cold of the firmament gives way to the warmth of the earth’s core. It is humid, and although the sky is sealed off five thousand feet above, the man can remember times when accumulated moisture has dropped like rain on his back. The memory brings delight and pain, as all his memories do. It is a slow, painful process, this reclaiming of his life.

  Shifting in his iron pit, he seeks comfort that custom has long taught him he will never find. Not here. He smells his own shit. The chains that shackle him chafe his raw flesh, drawing lines of watery blood. He is less well tended now, and has not been fed in several days. It has been even longer since a hand tended his sores and cleaned his skin.

  Sometimes he despairs, since it seems he has traded memory for life. What good is owning a name when you are slowly starved?

  Baralis, he mouths, using the word as a charm to drive away the monsters in his thoughts. Once a continent turned upon my deeds. Or did I dream it? Uncertainty plagues him. It is difficult to tell where dreams end and truth begins. Almost he has forgotten how to think. Eighteen years bound and broken. How can I be sure I am sane? Surprisingly the thought makes him smile. He remembers someone once telling him that any man capable of asking himself that question is already saner than most.

  The man’s smile fades, and the loneliness returns with such force it is like a dagger in his heart. Hours stretch ahead in the unchanging darkness. Days pass and he does not know it. When will the Light Bearer come and bring him food and touch and light? He sleeps and wakes, then sleeps again. Sometimes caul flies eat their way through his skin, and crawl over
his face in search of light. They will not fly in the dark, he has noticed, and soon tire and die. Sometimes he saves his strength by not moving, gathering power to him bit by bit, like beads upon a thread. When he has enough he looses himself, letting his mind rise to a place where his body cannot follow.

  Once it had been still in those gray places, like mist hanging above a lake. But now dread creatures walk there, stirring the calm. When you are dying it is difficult to be afraid of anything except death, yet still the man feels fear. Those monstrous shadows know his name. Baralis, they call. Heart of Darkness. You are ours and we want you. Wait for our touch.

  The man shivers. He had done many terrible things in his life, but cannot decide if that makes him evil. His past hardly seems to belong to him anymore; can he still be judged by it? He recalls a sprawling castle peopled by kings and queens. The touch of a child’s thigh. Poison slipped into red wine. And fire, always fire, catching on the corner of his robe and igniting in front of his face.

  Still shivering, the man rests his head against cold iron. How long before the creatures who own the voices come? What will he become if he allows one to touch him? Already they lure him with promises of revenge. Your enemies are our enemies. Burn their hateful flesh. Such words are tempting to a helpless man, and he does not know how long he can resist them. If it hadn’t been for one certainty he might already have given in.

  Someone, somewhere is searching for him.

  How he knows this he cannot say. Where the knowledge comes from is something he will never learn. He just knows that he is loved and searched for, and it gives him the will to carry on. Slowly his eyes close and sleep takes him, and he dreams he sends a message to the one who loves him. I am here. Come to me. And the one who loves him hears and comes.

  ELEVEN

  The Forsworn

  Raif looked down through the blasted remains of a dying forest, down to a lake where lines of charcoal had been laid upon the ice, and he knew that he had entered the territory of living men. He had seen lines like that before. Once, during the Long Freeze ten years back, when all running water in the clanholds had frozen, clansmen had laid lines of soot upon the ice. The darkness of the soot absorbed the heat of the sun’s meager rays and the ice beneath the black lines had melted over several days, opening precious leads. Raif had not expected to see such a thing here, only five days east of the mountains, and he felt the first stirrings of fear.

  No one was supposed to live in these pale twisted forests that bordered the Western Want. Clansmen called them the White Wastes, and said that only elk and caribou dared pass through on their way to the purple heather fields of Dhoone.

  Raif shouldered his pack, shifting the weight so it was borne evenly on his back. It had taken him many days to cross the mountains—even with the help of Sadaluk who had directed him toward a pass. He counted himself lucky that the weather had held, and that the only storm he’d been forced to sit out was one that had hit at altitude just east of Trapper’s Pass. The wind had been his greatest problem, for it blew continuously, stripping him of warmth and strength. It blew now, rolling the edges of his Orrl cloak and raising the hair from his scalp. The Listener had given him many precious gifts of dressed skins, and three layers of seal hides protected his chest from the cold, yet the biting deadness of the Want still got through.

  It lay out there, to the north, stretching farther than any clansman had ever seen, stretching as far as time itself, unknowable, uncrossable: the Great Want. Raif shivered. Of all the maps Tem had ever drawn for his children, not one had contained any details about the Want. It was a place of ghosts, clan said, dead and freezing and dry as a desert, and not even the Gods knew what walked there.

  From his position above the lake, Raif turned his gaze north. Since he had left the mountains he had noticed the peculiar clarity of the landscape. There was no dust or warmth to warp the air. Faraway trees and rocks looked close enough to reach in half a day. But they weren’t. Distance was distorted here, and Raif was beginning to realize that landmarks on the horizon might take weeks, even months, to reach. When he’d first spotted the lake from a position high in the pass, he’d thought he’d gain the shore by sunset. It had taken nine days: six to clear the mountain’s skirts and a further three to cross the tree line.

  Now he was here he felt no satisfaction of a goal reached. The Great Want disturbed him. It was too close, and too vast. League upon league of nothingness, broken only by tortured rock formations, glacier tracks and calderas.

  And now there was evidence of strangers, lately here, settled enough to spread charcoal on lake ice for access to fresh water. Raif studied the lake, scanning the shore and surrounding woods for further signs of life. No smoke rose from among the trees. No piers or boats were frozen into the ice. He was too far away to spot footprints. Should he descend the slope and search for them? Or should he turn south and move on?

  Uncertainty made him hesitate. He was beyond his bounds now—he knew it plainly by the look of the trees. Nothing so dry and twisted could live in the clanholds. One spark and they’d go up in flames. So who was down there? Not Maimed Men; they lived closer to the clanholds, in the badlands north-east of Dhoone. Raif peered into the tree cover, deciding. It was growing late and he could feel the willpower draining from his limbs. He had not rested since mid-morning, and his knee joints ached with the constant strain of descent. Drey had once told him that descending hills was more tiring than climbing them, and he hadn’t believed it until now. Drey . . .

  Abruptly, Raif started down the slope.

  He told himself there was a good chance that whoever was down there had already spotted him—a lone traveler on the rise above the lake—and he drew his mitted hand inside his cloak, feeling for the makeshift sealskin scabbard that held his sword. He’d scraped the rust from it as best he could, using the dull gray emery stone that could be found freely in the high mountains. Without a millstone he could do no better. And he found a grim kind of pleasure in imagining that whilst the blade might enter a man well enough, it wouldn’t so easily come out.

  Resting his hand upon the sword’s grip, he wound his way down through the trees. Pine needles and ice crystals crackled underfoot, and somewhere to the south an owl called out at the approaching night. Darkness rose as slowly as mist, hovering close to the ground while the sky still glowed red with the fading sun. Stars winked into existence. First a few dozen, then thousands . . . more than Raif had ever seen in his life. The wind dropped, and then suddenly it was quiet enough to hear the lake ice groaning. Raif grew cautious, deciding against walking the open land at the lake’s shore.

  Silent now, he skirted the lake, keeping to the cover of the trees. Dimly he was aware of his hunger, sucking his insides tight. The air was perfectly still. No tree limb moved. When he stepped on something warm he nearly cried out. Fox, he told himself, rolling the carcass over with his foot. Dead less than a day. Wetting dry lips, he walked on. When he reached the foot of an ancient dragon pine, he spied two dead crows lying in the debris beneath its twisted lower limbs. And then he saw the footprints. Many pairs, some fresh from the look of them, stamping a trail that led to and from the lake.

  Raif was not aware of drawing his sword. It was just there, in his fist, its blade running silver in the starlight. Ahead, the trail widened into a makeshift path, and there were signs of men and horses upon it: a thrown hoof-iron, a mound of frozen dung, a piece of trail meat crooked like a finger. Raif suddenly wished he wasn’t so tired. Weeks of hard travel had taken their toll, and it seemed as if his thoughts and his reflexes were moving a beat too slow. He thought he smelled something, a coldness filled with potential, like air charging before a storm.

  The edge of a building loomed ahead. As he drew closer, Raif made out the eerily pale form of a palisade raised from timber and then sprayed with water to form a protective wall of ice. He’d seen such winter-built strongwalls in the city holds, and admired their simplicity—the ice repelled fire and rendered the wall
almost unscalable—yet he had never known clan to build one.

  Abruptly, the path rose, and he saw what lay beyond the palisade. A rock-and-timber redoubt, square-shaped with a roof of hammered logs and the rough beginnings of a battlement ringing its northern wall. No light showed through the narrow, defensive windows. A lone shutter had come loose from its mooring, and it creaked back and forth on rusted hinges. Raif smelled old fires and cook oil. And then he saw the first body, lying facedown in a trench where there was a gap in the palisade to make space for a gate.

  Fear dried Raif’s mouth. Cautiously he approached the body. Already he could see the man was well-armored, in a backplate of painted steel. Some design had been beautifully worked in purple and gold. An eye. And then suddenly Raif realized what he was looking at: a Forsworn knight, with the Eye of God upon him.

  The man had been slain in a single thrust, run through with such force and such an edge that both breastplate and backplate had cracked open. Turning the body over Raif saw where the jagged edges of the punctured breastplate had been driven deep into the meat of the knight’s heart. He had never seen such an entry wound before, not even that day . . . that day in the badlands with Tem. The flesh was black and seared, as if it had been cooked, and something dark oozed from the wounds.

  Raif turned away. He thought he might be sick. The purge fluid stank of the same alien odor he’d smelled earlier. The knight had been lying facedown, and yet fluid had not drained off. It hung in his mouth like smoke. Instinctively, Raif reached to touch the tine at his waist . . . and felt emptiness instead. He would give his sword to have it now, the comfort of gods and clan.