A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  Ash looked up. The sun had fallen below the tree canopy, but the sky was still a deep, cloudless blue. On a rise in the distance she could see a break in the forest, a thick tract of burned stumps and charred tree skeletons that stretched beyond the horizon. She had so many questions for Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer it was hard to know where to start.

  Nodding her head toward the tract of scorched land, she asked, “What happened there?”

  Ark did not follow her gaze, but said in a harsh voice, “Trenchlanders burn the forest. It is their way. Their hunters set fires to flush game. If they are lucky the wind aids them, and the animals flee toward their spears. If they are unlucky the wind forms a storm and the fire escapes their control. Tens of thousands of trees and animals are destroyed. Hunters die. Only the cindermen profit, for it is their task to walk the smoking earth and claim carcasses.” His nostrils flared in anger. “Often beneath a charred pelt the meat is good.”

  Ash shuddered. “Why do you put up with them on your land?”

  At last Ark turned to look at her, his sable eyes hard. “Because they are Sull, part of them. We share ties of history and blood. And even one drop of Trenchlander blood is worth more than a sea of clan or city blood.”

  They fell into silence as the low boughs of a silver fir forced them to duck. Ash felt ice-cold needles tickle the back of her neck. Mal had ridden on ahead while they were speaking, drawing his bow from the marten-fur case slung over the blue’s rump. He braced it now as Ash watched, and then pulled an arrow from a hard-sided cylinder attached to his gear belt. Turning in the saddle, he raised the arrow in signal to his hass. He was off to hunt.

  “Are the Trenchlands dangerous?” Ash asked, her eyes following the Naysayer’s blue as it effortlessly accelerated to a gallop, its hooves churning up clouds of snow.

  “Daughter,” Ark Veinsplitter said, cutting into her thoughts. “Every land we walk in is unsafe.”

  The day cooled quickly as the sun began to set. Ash heard unfamiliar animal calls coming from deep within the forest. The trees creaked, and sometimes vibrations from the horses’ hooves made them shed their loads of snow. Ark seemed to be heading for a particular place to camp, for he had ceased following Mal’s path and had taken a sharp turn north between two massive paired spruce. After a short climb they crested a ridge and the trees began to thin. Ash caught a glimpse of standing water, and then Ark led the way into a clearing and called a halt.

  Lacebark pines, their trunks a patchwork of flaking silver and gray bark, ringed a gently sloping glade. The snow had shrunk back into islands, exposing patches of velvety moss and dark ferns. Tiny plants with leaves like needles had forced their heads through the snow; most were in bud, but a few had opened to reveal violet flowers shaped like stars. Ash’s gaze was drawn toward the far side of the clearing where a length of broken wall, not much higher than her waist, rose starkly from the snow.

  Ark dismounted, and walked toward the wall. The light was fading quickly now, and the snow was glowing blue. The Sull warrior raised his arm, in readiness to touch the stone. He had his back toward Ash so she couldn’t see his face, but for a moment his shoulders were very still. Muscles in his neck moved as he spoke a word. Ash thought he might open a vein, but his silver letting knife remained at his waist, its chain glimmering softly as he breathed.

  He turned abruptly and walked back, and soon they were busy stripping branches for the fire and raising the corral for the horses. The Naysayer returned not much later, leading the blue. An eviscerated whitetail-deer fawn was laid over the horse’s back. When Ark came forward to help with the quartering, Mal crossed over to the broken wall.

  Watching them, Ash made a decision, and before both Far Riders could get their hands bloody with the butchering, she said, “The wards, that night in the Deadwoods. Why did they fail?”

  Ark and the Naysayer exchanged a glance. Ash knew her voice had been a bit too loud, but she pressed her lips together and stuck by her question, looking from man to man. They owed her answers. And she was going to get some. Pointedly, she sat on a rug by the fire and waited.

  They left the deer carcass in the snow and drew near the fire. Ark crouched on the opposite side of the fire, but the Naysayer chose to stand.

  “Ash March,” Ark said, reaching beneath his cloak. “No fail-safe exists to ward against the creatures of the Blind. When the maeraith broke the circle I awakened. This Sull gives thanks to the First Gods for that.” He pulled out the cloth pouch that held the wards, and handed it above the flames to Ash.

  As she took the pouch, Ash caught another glimpse of Ark’s bandaged wrist. The stain had spread, separating into rings of color that bled from black to red.

  The pouch was made of soft shammy, and was surprisingly heavy. When she emptied the contents onto the rug she was disappointed to see little chips of gray rock run through with white veins. They felt like rock, too, rough and inert. Ark watched her turn them in her hand, hold them to her ear, and rub them together like flints before he finally spoke.

  “All the pieces come from the same wellstone. A maygi shattered it, and when the pieces are separated the memory of their wholeness remains. Yet they are stone and cannot move. Place them at a distance from each other and you may feel their attraction.”

  Ash took the two biggest pieces and placed one to either side of her, then passed her hand through the space separating them. Something, a faint tingling like the beginning of numbness, traveled across her palm . . . and then was gone. It was so tenuous a sensation that she doubted she’d really felt anything at all, and tried it again. This time, even though she knew what to expect, she barely registered the weak prickle along her skin. She looked at Ark. “Do you feel this, when the space is broken?”

  He shook his head. “Only when I complete a circle with the stones.”

  Ash looked from Ark to the Naysayer as she gathered the fragments and emptied them back into the bag. They had revealed one of their secrets, but she wondered quite suddenly if it had been a distraction, to lure her away from all the others. Abruptly, she let the bag drop. “What happened to the body of the maeraith? It was there when I finally slept, but it had disappeared when I awoke.”

  Again, the Far Riders exchanged that glance. Ash had seen the stain the thing’s body had left on the frost, the outline of itself drawn in mottled black, and the deep trench burned by its sword. Ark said, “The Naysayer dragged the remains away to a place where it would not disturb you. When a creature of shadow is slain its flesh is consumed by flames. Shadowflesh burns cold, one cell at a time, from the inside out. The flames consume the interior, but never the shell, the skin. After maer dan is burned the outer shell fades over time. Every sunrise robs substance from it until it becomes nothing more a shadow on the earth.”

  “And the sword?”

  Ark’s eyes showed surprise.

  “I saw the trench,” Ash insisted. “The voided steel burned a foot of earth.”

  It was the Naysayer who answered her. “Voided steel is forged from an absence of matter and light. Its potency continues after its wielder is slain. It burns through the earth, sinking deep like gold in a furnace. How long it continues sinking before its power fades is something this Sull does not know. I took the sword from the soft earth it had fallen on and set it to rest on a saddle of hard rock. This Sull cannot do more than that.”

  Ash found she had to look away from Mal Naysayer’s ice-blue eyes. There was something she hadn’t seen before within them, and it unsettled her. He didn’t possess the infallible strength and knowledge her imagination had bestowed upon him. He had limits . . . and he knew it. Both the Far Riders were vulnerable, and she wished with all her heart that they were not.

  They had done so much for her. Mal surely hadn’t slept that night in the Deadwoods. He had stood watch, slain the maeraith, and then dragged away the body so she wouldn’t have to look upon it when she awoke. And Ark. Ark had been the one who had asked Mal to do it. Take it from this place, hass, sh
e could hear him say. Our daughter has been through enough this night.

  Ash looked beyond the Far Riders to the clearing. It was full dark now, and the stars were out, silvering the trees and the edges of the standing wall. A snowy owl was proclaiming its territory with a deep three-note call. Who-who-who. She had a choice here, she decided. She could leave the subject of the maeraith, or she could force them to tell her more. There was something about being here, this first night in the Racklands, that had freed the Far Riders from normal constraints. She did not know if this would last, so she hardened herself against her feelings and spoke.

  “What killed the maeraith? I saw it take many blows from Ark without slowing . . . and yet . . .”

  “The Naysayer put steel through its heart,” Ark finished for her. “Only that will halt them.”

  Oh gods. Raif. Ash could still see him, that night in the Copper Hills. Three Bluddsmen heart-killed. And then there was the day she had first set eyes upon him, outside Vaingate. Four brothers-in-the-watch slain with arrows to their hearts. She felt her own heart racing as she thought on it. How calm he had been, how it seemed as if he had been born for it. Slowly, her understanding of events began to turn, like a great stone wheel grinding on its axle. Raif.

  Raif.

  Almost she could make sense of it. But the harder she tried to grab hold of it the more it turned away from her, and she was left with little but the certainly that Raif had a part to play in this thing she had started.

  Ark and the Naysayer were quiet, watching her. The deer carcass had bled out while they’d been speaking, dyeing the surrounding snow black.

  “What is happening?” she asked them. “I need to know more.”

  Ark nodded, heavily. The time had come. “You are Mas Rahkar, the Reach. You were born to break the boundary between worlds. We first heard of your existence from He Who Listens, but we had been expecting you for many years. Every thousand years the shadows rise and the long night descends. Ice caps grow and recede, oceans rise and fall, lands dry to deserts and others sink beneath the sea. All things lie in balance, and all must change. We have lived through ten hundred years of light, and now dusk falls.

  “As Sull we know and accept this, and stand ready to fight. But we grow few. Our lands diminish. Four thousand years ago every blade of grass in the Northern Territories was ours. We could ride for months in any direction and see no end to our bounty. And before that we held the Soft Lands to the south, and twenty thousand years before that everything between the Horn of Little Hope and Time’s End was ours. Man was young then, and we did not deign to notice him. We let him claim the places we did not need—the deserts and edges and mountains—and let him drink the water we judged unclear and hunt the beasts we held unsound. Some say we should have known better, for we are Sull, the oldest of living races, and nothing is new in our history.”

  Ark paused for a moment to stir the fire. Five paces behind him stood the Naysayer, proud and unmoving, lit solely by starlight. When Ark’s voice came again the pride in it was woven with sadness.

  “The First Gods birthed us to fight the darkness. That is our destiny and our curse. The Old Ones in the Time Before had fought and failed, and even as we launched our ships from the Far Shore they lay wasted. As we prospered they grew weak, and we moved into the lands they abandoned and took on their battles as our own.

  “Yet we are just one people, and the darkness grows ever stronger. Every new assault is more terrible than the last. More and more souls are added to their reckoning, and the armies of the Endlords swell. They have taken our kings and queens and our greatest warriors, and each morning we pray to the God of Creatures Hunted that today we may not meet our ancestors in battle.

  “The maeraith who attacked us the night in the Deadwoods had once been a mighty knight, but he was not Sull, and for that we give thanks.”

  Ash realized Ark held a small carving in his hands, a chunk of rock crystal with smooth edges that he warmed in his fists as he spoke. It was one of the talismans they laid around the fire each night.

  “Ash March,” Ark said, looking her straight in the eye. “When we found you in the Storm Margin we knew what you were. We had a choice: Kill or save you. You were not Sull and you were not bound to us, but we knew you searched for the Cavern of Black Ice, and I asked the Naysayer if we should put steel to your throat and he said Nay. She tries to discharge her power safely. Let us aid her. And so we did. We feared many things at that time, but we did not think to fear that the worst had already happened. The Blindwall had been cracked prior to our meeting. You had discharged your power earlier. Perhaps it was nothing to you, a simple lashing-out, but it was enough to weaken the substance of the wall.

  “Creatures worked upon that flaw and work upon it still. Already what was a hair-thin split has been forced wider. The Taken can force their way through one by one . . . but things are stirring in the Blind, dread creatures who once walked the earth and possess the power to tear it open.

  “Not all things in the Blind are men or Sull. The Endlords have existed as long as the gods, and together they have overseen many Ages. Dragons, giants, igols, behemoths, basilsks, krakens, shadowchangers, wralls . . . and the shatan. The shatan when they are unmade become Shatan Maer. They lose nothing of their shape or strength, and we fear one moves toward the flaw.”

  Ash felt her mouth go dry. Had she heard accusation in Ark’s voice? She couldn’t be sure. “What will happen if one breaks through?”

  Ark’s smile was sweet and bitter all at once. “Ash March, this Sull believes you ask the wrong question. It is not if but when.”

  “When, then?” She heard the tremor in her voice.

  “When they break through, the number of unmade creatures escaping from the Blind will increase. Each successive passing will tear the rent wider until whole armies can march through the breach.”

  “And the Endlords?”

  “There are nine Endlords, and though we know their names we will not speak them. Never, in the history of all our battles, have all nine ever ridden out from the Blind. We believe it would mean the end of the world if they did.”

  “But—”

  “Nay, Ash March,” cautioned the Naysayer, the first time he had spoken to her since entering the glade. “Some things are best not said. To speak of the Endlords draws their attention, and that I would not wish upon any here this night.”

  “Are we not safe here in the Racklands?” Although Ash had asked almost the same question earlier of Ark Veinsplitter, she couldn’t help herself. But straightaway, she regretted it, for Mal Naysayer only ever gave one answer to any question ever asked.

  “Nay.”

  She waited, but he said no more.

  The night had cooled and deepened, and the stars were turning above them. The little sliver of moon was back, and Ash watched it for awhile. Finally, she looked to Ark Veinsplitter. She had one question left, but she was almost afraid to speak it. “The touch of an Endlord is enough to make a man unmade?” Ark nodded. “Then how do the maeraith unmake one?”

  He did not look at his wrist. “If we are killed by voided steel we are unmade.”

  “And if one is wounded?”

  Again came that bittersweet smile. “One fights.” Ask stood to quarter the carcass, and the conversation was done.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Chief-in-Exile

  Bram sometimes thought he was going mad. He had been bought and sold to Castlemilk, but was now heading west to Gnash—at the head of his own company, no less. It was all Robbie’s idea, of course. Who better to send a message to Skinner Dhoone than the Thorn King’s own flesh and blood?

  The company was a small one, and Bram didn’t fool himself that he was anything but its token leader. Guy Morloch and Diddie Daw and two other swift horsemen rode with him, and Bram seriously doubted that they’d listen to him if he shouted “Bluddsmen on the road!”—let alone issued an order.

  Guy Morloch rode at the fore, his Dhoone-blue cloak spreadi
ng wide in the rising wind. They had been on the road for over two days and had just crossed bounds into the Gnashhold. A well-traveled road ran between Castlemilk and Gnash, and once the Milk was forded they’d made good time. The land here was lightly forested with old hardwoods—a good hunting ground for deer and boar—and every so often they caught glimpses of the River Gloze as it ran east to join the Flow. The storm that had shaken the clanholds ten days back had left everything green and moist. New grasses had sprung up overnight and bluebells were in flower around the feet of ancient oaks.

  Even the sun was attempting to shine, though truly it was bitterly cold. Bram’s cheeks were hot from riding at gallop into the wind. He was glad of the cold and the haste, glad of the long days in the saddle and the dry, six-hour camps, glad because it left him too exhausted to think.

  Here. Bram. Take this. I had Old Mother weave it for you.

  No. He wouldn’t think of Robbie. Yet even as he tried to push the thought of his brother from him, he could still see Robbie’s hands on the cloak. Dhoone-blue it was, just like Guy Morloch’s, only a little bit shorter and shabbier. No fisher fur, or thistle clasps. Bram had held it to his face and smelled it; it smelled of Old Mother’s sweat and Robbie’s guilt.

  What was the point of giving a Dhoone cloak to someone who had been sold to another clan? Don’t worry, Robbie had said to him that night after the negotiation with Wrayan Castlemilk had been completed. I told her she can’t have you till Dhoone is won, and who knows what may happen between now and then? Robbie had cuffed him then, grinned one of his charming grins, and walked away. Two days later there came the cloak.

  Bram frowned, trying hard not to give in to weariness. He knew Guy Morloch and the others had not expected him to keep up with them, and had been surprised by his skill in the saddle. Part of Bram had discovered he liked surprising people, and he was determined he wouldn’t fall back.