A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  “So, Nan,” he said to her. “What have they left us?”

  “Some livestock. A little grain.” She grinned at him. “All of the eels.”

  Vaylo barked a laugh, and instantly felt better than he had all day. His grandchildren were here. Nan was here. His dogs were on the court, making themselves sick. At his side Glen Carvo’s face was like stone. Glen and his late brother had been much alike: strong warriors, and loyal but serious men. Vaylo missed Strom every day. He missed every Bluddsman who’d died since he’d made chief.

  “Is there enough to make do?” Vaylo asked Nan.

  “There’ll be enough. I’ll see to that.”

  Vaylo nodded, understanding all she had not said. Nan Culldayis was claiming this worry for her own; she would not let him share in it. “I’ll be in the stables if needed,” he said to her. And then, to the stable boy: “If you’re coming with Glen and me you’d better get a move on, lad.”

  The stable boy couldn’t quite believe his luck. He looked hopefully at Nan, who nodded her consent and told him to leave the broom against the wall.

  The small party of three left the kitchens and headed west through the darkening corridors of Dhoone. Hammie hadn’t yet returned with a head count, but Vaylo could tell it wasn’t going to be good. He was taken with the feeling that he, Glen and the stable boy were rattling around in an abandoned ship. Still. He couldn’t blame the clansmen who rode south; they were following their hearts rather than Pengo Bludd. They simply wanted to fight.

  I waited too long to punish Blackhail. I held on to Dhoone when I should have been visiting the gods’ own vengeance upon every Hailsman in the North. Vaylo puffed out a great quantity of air. Glancing around, he noticed they were passing through the King’s Quarter of the Dhoonehouse. He could find little to like in its cavernous halls and meeting chambers long stripped of furnishings and other comforts. Some ancient blue velvet curtains hung on a wall that had neither windows not doors, and that seemed to sum this place up. Faded finery without purpose.

  Yet it was his. And he must keep it, else it make a mockery of his life. He had traded part of his soul to gain this place, and if he lost it there was no getting any of that missing soul back.

  Last night’s tremor had released great quantities of dust, and Vaylo roused clouds of gray powder as he quickened his pace. That was another thing that weighed upon his mind: why the earth had shaken. Vaylo recalled one summer nearly a lifetime ago when he and Ockish Bull had laid a wall. It was punishment for some misdemeanor or other, and Gullit had sent them both to Gamber Hench to do his backwork for a month. Gamber was old, but still the best mason in the clan, and he had taught Vaylo and Ockish some things worth knowing. Vaylo had learned that a dry wall could never be laid quickly; stones needed time to settle. Gamber held the earth they walked on was much the same as one of his walls in progress, still settling. That had made sense to Vaylo, and ever since then, whenever he’d felt a slight shift in the land beneath him, he’d think of Gamber Hench and be satisfied there was no reason for fear. Yet what had happened last night had seemed the opposite of that. An unsettling. And Vaylo was unsettled.

  Yet what could he do about it? He wasn’t a Stone God, just a chief.

  By the time he reached the stables his mood had darkened, and it was an effort to keep the blackness hidden from his men. First things first. “How many horses are still boxed?”

  The stable master had ridden south, but one of the grooms had already taken the initiative and was busy walking the remaining horses to stalls closer to the doors. “Pengo ordered all the boxes to be cleared,” the youth said, gulping. “But the master wouldn’t do it.”

  A kind of loyalty there, Vaylo thought, even though the man had deserted him. “And how many did the master leave us?”

  “Three dozen, not counting the ponies.”

  Oh gods.

  “They didn’t take Dog Horse,” the groom added quickly, catching sight of Vaylo’s expression.

  No one would, unless they fancied a swift kick to the vitals. Seeing the groom still watching him, half anxious and half hopeful, Vaylo made an effort. “You’ve done well, lad. Just be sure to keep these beasts well tended.” The groom nodded. “And for now Glen’ll be needing his mount.”

  As the groom went to fetch and saddle the swordsman’s horse, Vaylo turned to Glen Carvo.

  “I need you to ride at haste to the Dhoonewall. Cluff Drybannock stands there with a hundred and eighty men. We need them home.”

  Glen left within the quarter, the only man in Dhoone that day heading north. Vaylo watched him leave. It was going to be a long eight days until he returned.

  FORTY-TWO

  Into the Want

  The frozen earth was weeping. The small white badlands sun had warmed its skin, and now the first Thalf-foot of ice was melting. Water oozed around the pony’s hooves, and then sank back when the weight was lifted. Black flies hovered in great clouds above the tundra, and Raif couldn’t see anything else for them to feed on but him and his horse.

  As best he could figure out he was in the badlands north-east of Blackhail. It was a bleak place, ridged and boiled, seeded with plants that looked as lifeless as dry bones. Ground willow, spike grass and fever thorns grew in treacherous clumps along the elk path. Every stone he passed was crusted with lichen or salt, and sometimes when the pony stepped onto one it crumbled like chalk.

  The pony was hurting. Its legs hadn’t healed properly from the bashing they’d taken at the rock slide, and some of the cuts were still open. The stout little creature soldiered on, but Raif had noticed a slight hesitancy in her step the past few days and guessed walking was causing her some pain. She ate whatever lay close at hand—thorns, grass, some of the wild sorrel and sage that sprang up overnight on the damp fringes of muskegs— and wasn’t at all fussy about her water. Raif could see why the Maimed Men valued these horses. A clan stallion would have been showing its nerves by now.

  They were close to the edge, Raif felt it. Close to the place where the Great Want leaked into the badlands. No clansman would come this far north, for fear of being lost. Raif had looked into himself to find the same fear, but there were some dead spots in his emotions now, and though he retained fear of many things the Want wasn’t one of them.

  To be lost, to wander forever north into the great white vastness that covered half a continent . . . there were worse things. Raif Sevrance could name them.

  His lips stretched into something. It couldn’t have been a smile because it hurt. The skin on his face was absolutely dry, covered with winter scale. His knuckles ached deeply where Bitty’s sword had cut. At first the wound had been a straight line, slashing across the highest three bones, but the edges had dried and curled, the scar tissue pulling the joints apart, and now the cut was shaped like an oak leaf. It was not infected; trust Bitty to use a clean blade.

  Bitty Shank had fought fairly. The question was, had Raif?

  He needed the answer to be Yes, but he found his memory wasn’t clear. Had he heart-killed Bitty? Or had he simply placed his sword well? It seemed something he would never resolve. He couldn’t go back and tear the moment apart until it gave him what he needed. That would be using Bitty’s memory to relieve his guilt.

  And he hadn’t sunk that low yet.

  Tell that to Blackhail, snapped a hard voice inside him, and though it was cold Raif felt the shame-heat burn him. How many days had passed since the raid. Three? Four? Someone with a swift horse and little need for sleep could be at the roundhouse by now. It was, quite simply, an unbearable thought.

  He could not bear it.

  What had the Listener said to him? Grow wide shoulders, Clansman. He had, but they were not wide enough. Just to imagine Drey’s face as he heard the words Your brother has turned Maimed Man caused a stab in his heart. This time there were no excuses, no misunderstandings. Raif Sevrance had killed members of his own clan. The blackest of all evils, and he had done it.

  Gently, Raif guided the pon
y up a bluff littered with rocks. Scratching the soft skin behind her ears, he encouraged her to place her feet. Black flies were bothering both of them: there were pinpricks of blood on the pony’s neck and corresponding stings on his own. If they were lucky the wind might pick up and drive the pests away; he wished it more for the horse than for himself.

  The day was halfway through, and the sky was open but pale. When they reached the crest of the bluff a sea of drowned grass spread wide before them. The top ice had melted for leagues and the water just stood there, unable to drain. Raif grimaced and eased the pony toward it.

  He had nearly not brought her. After he’d left Stillborn and emerged from Black Hole he’d had little thought except to get away. Some things had been sharp in his mind, others not. I have my sword, my bow, and Divining Rod, he remembered thinking. All three things had been in his possession as he left the tunnel; he could not recall taking stock of any other need. Yet here he was with the pony and a fair portion of supplies.

  It had been the outlander’s doing, not his own. “Mor Drakka,” he had called from the shadows by the lake. “Do not walk into the darkness unprepared.”

  Raif remembered the voice quite specifically. Something in its pitch had halted him at a time when he had been determined not to be halted. It made his skin crawl even now, that feeling of being gripped.

  The outlander’s eyes had been strangely bright, and blood was leaking from one of them. Now that the mist had gone the night was clear and the wind raised snake tracks on the water. “Take the pony,” the outlander said, pulling the reins and making the little horse trot out in front of Raif. “It’s a hard journey north.”

  Raif had not questioned him. In a night full of terrors it had seemed such a minor one: that anticipation of his purpose. Now Raif knew it for the cold-blooded horror that it was. The outlander had loaded the pony with fresh water, blankets, a flint and striker, hoof grease, a quarter-weight of oiled grain, and the sum of his own food rations for the past fifteen days. The raid party had consumed the last of the cheese during the storm, yet there was cheese. They’d run out of honey by the fifth day, yet there was a pouch of it wrapped in greased hide in Raif’s pack. Lardcake, raw pheasants’ eggs, even dried and roasted chestnuts: these were all things the raid party had eaten with haste and to hell with planning—there was always hardtack and dried meat for the journey back. Yet someone had planned ahead. Someone had set his rations aside for another purpose.

  The outlander had known all along where Raif was headed.

  Laying his aching hand on the pony’s neck, Raif took comfort in her living, breathing warmth. Had the slaying of Raif’s own clansman been part of the outlander’s plan? Had the outlander raised the mist, hoping to add to Raif’s confusion? And if so, what did it change?

  Nothing, was the answer, and Raif tried to push the subject aside. The outlander was just like Heritas Cant in Ille Glaive: not interested in people for what they were, just in how they fitted into long-laid plans. Cant had been Phage, too.

  Having reached the shallow sea of standing water, Raif dismounted. Water oozed over the top of his boots as he led the pony forward. Ahead, the land ran flat and uninterrupted for leagues. It would take them hours to cross this place. Raif took some lardcake from his pack and split a portion between himself and the pony. The pony lipped against Raif’s palm to get at the last of the goodness. More black flies were hatching from the water, rising up in a buzzing mist. The pony swiped them with her tail, and Raif batted them away with the back of his hand. His toes were beginning to tingle. The top ice might have melted, but the water temperature was only a beat above freezing.

  What was he doing here? Only a part deep within him knew. He’d had to flee the mine, he’d been sure of that, and it had seemed his only option was to head north. Raif shook his head a bit, scorning the hollowness of that last excuse. It took too much effort to lie to yourself in this place. He had come north because he chose to. He was here because from the moment Ash March had left him his life had been leading toward this moment and place.

  Raif slid the Listener’s arrow from the pouch rigged atop his bow case. Take this arrow named Divining Rod that has been fletched with the Old Ones’ hair, take it and use it to find what you must. The arrow always surprised Raif with its lightness, the sense that the slightest draft of air could carry it for leagues. Raif believed now it had been inevitable that he would win it back from Stillborn. Perhaps even Stillborn’s claiming of it had been inevitable. A delay, until Raif was ready to do what he must. The same with the Forsworn sword; Raif had not been prepared to wield it until now.

  The sword’s weight felt good, lying in its sealskin scabbard against his thigh. Right. Natural in a way it had not felt before. The chunk of rock crystal set in its pommel flickered with brilliant light. For a moment, Raif wondered what had become of its brother-sword, the one held by the head knight. Its edge had been blackened and warped, he remembered, as if something stronger than acid had burned it. He hoped no one had dared enter the knights’ redoubt and take it. A man could lose his soul by such an act.

  We search, the knight had said. For the city of the Old Ones. The Fortress of Grey Ice.

  Raif returned the arrow to its case. Suddenly it seemed there were too many things he didn’t fully understand. The answers were like objects balancing on the edge of his thoughts; the slightest turning of his mind toward them was enough to send them plummeting into an abyss. If he could just sneak up on them, that was the thing. Sneak up on his own thoughts.

  That was why the gods had invented dreaming, he supposed.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Raif calculated how far he’d come across the shallow sea. Farther than he’d imagined, for he could no longer see the lip of rock marking the bluff. His trail had gone, of course, sucked away by the standing water. The sky and sea stretched endlessly in all directions.

  A chill went through Raif, and he pulled the Orrl cloak tight across his chest. Tem Sevrance had been the best tracker and huntsman in the clan; he had taught his sons and daughter to navigate through grasslands, forests and high country, how to follow and blaze trails, how to read winds and the moss on trees, and how to watch the sun and stars for bearing. Yet for the first time in fifteen years Raif was no longer sure where true north lay. It had to be ahead, for the sun lay behind him, but there were many ways ahead, many subtle degrees of difference. And now he found it impossible to gauge the movement of the sun. It hung there, cool and lifeless, a silver disk in a silver sky. Raif stood and watched it, guarding his eyes with his hand. Its light scorched ghost rings into his retinas that he saw even when he blinked.

  The thing didn’t move. Raif grinned insanely at that. Of course it moved . . . it just wasn’t letting him know it. Turning his back, he took careful note of the alignment of his pony’s head. She hadn’t moved all the time he’d been standing here, working things out, and now she was the sole indicator of the direction in which he’d been traveling.

  “Good girl,” he said softly, leading her forward. “This means you’ll get chestnuts tonight.”

  It was getting colder, he realized. For the first time that day his breath whitened as it left his body. After an hour or so had passed he noticed the shallow sea was quickening, its water growing turbid and losing its ability to mirror light. Almost as a reflex action, Raif bent at the knee and ran his hands along the surface. Its temperature was shocking. When he brought his fingers to his lips and licked them, he tasted the brackish-ness of dissolved salts.

  On he walked, with the sun like a fixed point behind him. When he calculated it was close to the time when light began to fail he monitored the sun’s reflection in the sea. The disk skimmed over the freezing surface, and then suddenly the water clouded and the image was gone. Light dimmed. Raif slowed but did not halt. He wasn’t sure he wanted to look over his shoulder again. Curiosity got the better of him after a while and he stole a glance. Gray clouds now covered a third of the sky, masking the sun and any path it car
ed to take toward the horizon.

  Not wholly satisfied, Raif turned back . . . and saw the way ahead had subtly changed. Confused, he swept his gaze in a half-circle. Something about the shallow sea was different, and even as he tried to discern exactly what had changed, the pony’s hooves made a cracking noise as they hit the first of the ice. The water had frozen. Thin blades of spike grass jutted through the hard surface, trapped.

  “Easy now,” Raif said to the pony, wondering if the words were wholly for the horse.

  Quite suddenly, he realized that the black flies had gone and he couldn’t recall when he’d last been aware of them. Now the only thing hatching was mist. Threads of it rose delicately from the ice, grazing the pony’s hooves and sliding along the salt stains on Raif’s boots. Watching it, he decided it was best to keep moving forward and not think too much.

  Some measure of light still held, and he and the pony struck a fair pace. It was easier now the water had gone.

  Time passed, and the new moon appeared in a quarter of the sky he would not have expected. The light stretched on. A handful of stars winked into existence, and Raif was relieved to see he recognized their formation. He fed a handful of chestnuts to the pony, and by the time she’d swallowed them the light had gone. To reassure himself Raif looked again for the known stars, the formation known as the Hammer. Something else now shone in its place.

  He couldn’t say he was surprised. He had realized some time back that he’d entered the Great Want.

  No going back, he told himself. Tem had once told him that the way you entered the Want was never the same as the way you left it. You either found another way out or died trying.

  A strangled laugh escaped Raif’s throat. He was in the hands of the Old Ones now.

  In a way night was less challenging than day. Losing your way in darkness was to be expected. It was easier to relinquish control. Raif found he wasn’t so particular about the pony’s heading any more, and let her wander where she chose. Sometimes she stopped to sniff the frozen grass. Once she tried eating it, but found it little to her liking and let it fall from her mouth in chewed tafts. When she increased her pace with no prompting from Raif, he guessed she’d caught a whiff of something worth investigating.