by J. V. Jones
Ash heard tent poles and cook pots tumble onto the road behind her, heard Ark’s stallion jumping them so lightly he never lost his pace.
Her own horse suddenly found new speed and sprinted forward, passing Mal’s blue. The Floating Bridge was so close now she could see the spillway in its center. Kicking her mount frantically, Ash headed straight for it.
The two Sull Far Riders had stopped keeping pace with her, she realized as she reached the boarded ramp at the shore. Turning in the saddle, she called to Ark.
“Go on!” he cried. Behind him she could see a wolf shape closing distance, see the fluid ripple of shadowflesh as muscles bunched and unbunched around its neck. Its eyes burned red like coals, and its teeth were black ivory set in wholly black gums. Howling eerily high, it sprang upon Ark’s horse.
The Sull stallion reared its back legs, trying to buck the wolf off its rump, but the creature’s fangs had sunk deep and its jaw was locked. Ark Veinsplitter drew his sword. Meteor steel slid into shadowflesh with the sizzle of hot metal entering cold water. The wolf’s jaw sprang open and, just like the packhorse’s saddlebags, the beast fell away.
Ash breathed, realized she hadn’t done that in minutes. Her horse had led her onto the fixed span of the bridge and was now trotting forward. Hollow wood rang out beneath its hooves. Ash could feel river breezes working her skin. More wolves were breaking from the trees. Two. Three. Five. Oh god.
“GO ON!” screamed Ark, motioning at the bridge with his sword. The gray’s rump was washed in blood, but it held its head high and showed no fear.
The Naysayer gained the ramp to the bridge, drew his mighty six-foot sword, and turned to face the Unmade.
Feeling a fluid buoyancy beneath her, Ash realized she had passed onto the floating span of the bridge. She reined in her horse and reached within her furs for her sickle blade. She’d run long enough. It was time for this Daughter of the Sull to make a stand.
She quested for the flame, sucking air between her teeth as if somehow that would ignite it. Quite suddenly it was there. Tiny as a baby’s tooth. But there. Sliding from her horse’s back Ash March searched for a wolf to kill.
A battle was raging at the ramp. Mal Naysayer stood there like the gatekeeper to hell, a fearsome sword in constant motion in his hands. As Ash stepped forward, Ark rode past Mal and onto the bridge. A thrill of fear made her shiver as he reined in his horse and dismounted. Ark and the Naysayer weren’t like her: they didn’t need to dismount to wield their weapons. Perhaps in time she wouldn’t need to . . . but she hadn’t learned that lesson yet. Suddenly Ark crouched down by the edge of the fixed span, his hands reaching for something. Had he dropped his sword? No. It was there, laid across his knees.
Ash took the chain in her hands and began to spin the weight. She could not count the wolves now, and still more were tearing from the trees. They bayed and howled, snapping at Mal Naysayer with breathtaking speed. As he plunged his sword into one creature’s chest, another streaked past him and onto the bridge. Ash thought, This one will do. The chain and its weight were thrumming over her head, moving so quickly nothing but the green halo scribed by the peridots could be seen.
Her wolf was leaping toward Ark’s throat. Ash saw the flame, blue and cool. I cannot miss here. Adjusting the chain’s torque, she waited a tiny fraction of a second, and then released it. The chain flew forward, reeling through her fist like a fishing line, and snaked around the throat of the wolf. Ash yanked with all her might, heaving back and out, and whipped the Unmade creature into the water. As it crashed through the surface, she twisted sideways with her wrist, unreeling the chain to reclaim it. The weight shot back toward her like an arrow, and she lost the flame for a moment when she thought it was going to hit her. A hasty bit of sidestepping was called for.
When Ash recovered her footing, she saw Ark Veinsplitter watching her, his eyes shining. “Daughter,” he said. “You make this Sull proud.”
She wished with all her might she had laid her hand on his shoulder then . . . for she never got the chance to do so again. Not in this world.
Ark had something in his hand, something he had pulled from the board of the bridge. A lynchpin, long and large, and even as Ash realized what it was she began to float away from him. Ark Veinsplitter had set the Floating Bridge adrift.
There was a moment when she might have jumped the distance between them. That was something she would hold with her for the rest of her life. That moment, its passing. And then the distance was too great and the swift black water opened up between them, and Ark Veinsplitter rose to fight. His hass battled alone, and he must join him.
If there was a nightmare so terrible as watching the people you love battle for their lives, unable to help them, Ash March never heard of it. She had to watch, it was the only currency she had to pay with: watch and bear witness to the Stand at Floating Bridge. The night was long and the battle dread, and when it was over no wolves and only one man was left standing. And still the horrors weren’t done, for the Naysayer knelt by his hass and took him in his arms and screamed terrible words to his gods. When his anger was gone he kissed Ark’s eyes and took a knife to Ark’s throat and performed Dras Morthu.
The Last Cut.
Ark Veinsplitter went to the Far Shores that night. Ash March knew this because she watched his soul depart.
FORTY-NINE
The Gates To Hell
The fortress glowed red beneath the Gods Lights, like something built from frozen blood. Raif led Bear toward it, feeling a strange sense of calm. It should have been dark in the Want by now, yet light persisted. The clouds had withdrawn and the sky was clear, and the stars turning within it were clustered into giant constellations shaped like wolves. Raif did not know these stars; he wasn’t even sure what world he was walking on any more.
Ahead lay the curtain wall, rising sheer from the mountain’s face. It towered before them, casting a shadow so absolutely black that it looked like a hole in the earth. The path leading toward it had been hewn from live rock, the granite expertly finished to be smooth yet still provide traction for travelers. A series of tiered steps raised the path every hundred paces or so. The climb was not difficult, but Raif took it slowly. He was in no hurry to reach the fortress. The light would hold, he was sure of that. Light did whatever it chose to in this place.
Massive plates of ice lay strewn across the valleys like wreckage from a hurricane. One piece was as big as a roundhouse, and it took them minutes to pass it. Chunks of granite were suspended in the ice like flies in amber. Raif was glad he had enough water with him to last a day or two. The last thing he wanted to do was melt and drink this ice.
As they rounded a curve in the path Raif saw the gates to the city. Rising as tall as ten men and wrought from silvered iron, they commanded a break in the curtain wall. Iron dragons stood rampant to either side of them like sentinels, protecting the entrance to the city with hooked talons and razor jaws. The Gates to Hell.
Raif shivered, looked back. The mist had risen along with him, and he could no longer see the path leading down. The Want was playing tricks, reminding him that he could not leave the way he had come in. Shaking his head gently, he continued on. He had to think of Bitty, that was the thing. Even this kind of life was better than no life at all.
Bear grew uncharacteristically reluctant the nearer they drew to the gates, slowing her pace and then tugging against the reins. Raif halted to look at her. The little dun pony lowered her head, and regarded him with wariness. It was time to go on alone. They were passing through a field of smashed ice and granite boulders, and he led her a little way off the path to where an outcropping of rock offered some protection from the wind. Pouring out a portion of oiled grain on the rock face, he told her not to worry. He’d be back to fetch her in a while.
It was hard to leave her there. Not wanting to see her disappear into the mist, he did not look back.
The curtain wall stretched ahead of him, a rampart of unscalable stone studded with de
adly reefs of quartz. Nothing moved upon it. This city was dead. Drawing the Forsworn sword from its sheath, Raif headed for the gates.
The earth shook as he approached them, a single violent rolling motion that made the iron posts grind together with a piercing squeal. Something deep within the city smashed with the force of an explosion. Raif flinched. As he waited for silence to fall again, he glanced down at his sword. It seemed too small a thing to protect him here. The Gods Lights burned green as he put his hand on the gate within the gate. The smaller gate was inset into the larger one, mimicking its dragon design precisely. It wasn’t secured in any way, and swung back when Raif pushed it. It didn’t even creak.
Raif swallowed, his earlier calmness gone. If he had been Sull he would have opened a vein before entering this place. If he had been clan he’d have drawn a guide circle and called upon the Stone Gods. He didn’t know what a Maimed Man would have done, so he did nothing at all. Holding his sword in one hand and his raven lore in the other, Raif Sevrance entered the Fortress of Grey Ice.
It smelled of Ages long past and glaciers, and it was like no other place Raif had ever seen. It looked spun from molten glass. Translucent spires, hundreds of them, reached skyward, no two the exact same height. Bridges as delicate as ropes of pearls spanned the summits, creating a spider’s web of passageways and stairs. Lower down, arched and domed roofs capped vast, windowless halls, and lower still the mountain thrust its bedrock through the ground in vast primitive humps that formed the base of all buildings. It was as if the city had been savagely fused onto the face of the mountain.
Raif found himself in the gateyard, a vast circular space paved with flagstones of darkly glimmering schist. Mountain rock broke through in places, forming graceless saddles of stone. Raif’s footsteps echoed sharply, and some caution he didn’t understand made him place his feet with care. The Forsworn sword felt heavy and lifeless, and he couldn’t find its balance. Looking ahead he saw many paths he could take; stairways and arches, doorways and passages. Choosing one at random, he headed inward.
The light was shifting, favoring blue and gray tones, and dimming slightly. Raif watched his shadow circle his body and then come to rest behind him. Nothing seemed fixed here. His sword’s weight felt in flux, and the tones of his footfalls lengthened and shortened. Who had lived here? It didn’t merely feel abandoned, it felt . . . lost. He walked past an empty arena circled with stone benches that showed no wear. A fountain hewn from speckled limestone held no water, nor did it have any moss stains around its bowl. What had the Listener said? This was the final fortress built by the Old Ones. They might have built it but they couldn’t have lived here. Not long.
Raif picked a building to enter, a great hall with arched columns of stone. A floor tiled in black and white marble stretched away across empty space. The walls were bare except for one, at the opposite end of the hall, that had been painted. He walked over to inspect it. It was a rendering of the mountain and the surrounding landscape done in miniature. Water flowed through the river, and green plains stretched wide in all directions. Raif couldn’t see the fortress depicted on the mountain, so he leaned in for a closer look. Then froze. The artist had pained a vast gap in the mountain, right at the point where the fortress now stood. And something was coming out of it.
Raif turned away. The outlander had been right: the Old Ones had built this fortress out of fear, fusing it to the mountain’s core as if by doing so they could seal the gap. Perhaps they had sealed it . . . but all seals were meant to be broken.
As Raif moved to leave, the entire building shuddered. The floor warped, sending mortar dust spewing upward. Raif ran. A stone headpiece from the ceiling fell as he passed beneath it, crashing onto the tile right behind him. This city had been preserved in sorcerer’s ice for thousand of years, and now it was ready to come down.
Raif ran until he was winded, not caring what route he took. His lungs felt itchy with dust, and no amount of coughing could clean them. Crouching on his haunches he caught his breath.
One of the quartz spires must have fallen here, for the ground was littered with shards of crystal. Looking up, he decided he needed to be somewhere else. He didn’t fancy being impaled if another spire went. It was time to find the center of the city. He was done with looking around.
A wide avenue led him past open arcades and a series of lead-domed buildings. The stonework was becoming more ornate, mounted with relief-work dragons and other, stranger beasts. Stone columns had been shaped into tightly coiled serpents’ tails and likenesses of creatures changing from one form into another. Raif felt the temperature dropping. The fortress was in continual motion now, swaying and jittering. His sword, which had seemed heavy ever since he passed through the gate, suddenly felt too light.
When he came to a circular building, intricately wrought with statues set deep into stone niches, he knew he’d found the heart of the fortress. The statues were half shadow, half man: they were in process of being unmade.
Raif took a breath, waited to see if his body would stop shaking. It didn’t. For some reason he thought of Addie Gunn as he entered the temple. We can be more.
The shifting in things that had begun outside was accelerated in this place. The air was unstill, blooming patches of darkness like blood dropped in water. Raif’s sword became fluid in his hands, its weight running from one end to another as he lifted it. And something else was stirring, something he had no name for. He went to take a step and as he took it, it felt sharply familiar, as if the step had already been taken. Time, he supposed. Time is stirring.
The temple had no windows, yet some kind of light drifted in. The circular walls were fused onto a crater of mountain rock. The violence of their binding could be read in the scorch lines that blazed along the join. Great force had come to bear here. Someone had wanted to make sure nothing got out. A central altar dominated the space, and Raif moved slowly toward it. He could already see the dark space beneath the capstone and knew it could be lifted off.
The altar was hewn from black quartz threaded with gold, and touching it was like touching ice. Raif felt his skin cleave to it, felt the chill of it travel inward to his heart. He waited for the moment to lift as he had waited for the wind to rise before loosing Divining Rod. Just as wind shifted on the mountain, weight shifted in this place. When he felt his sword lighten he set it down, positioned both hands on the lower edge of the capstone and pushed up with all his might. The stone cracked in two as it slid to the floor. Raif heard himself make a sound, something halfway between a laugh and a sob. No going back now.
There never had been.
A narrow flight of steps led down through the altar and Raif picked up his sword and descended. He could smell the inside of the mountain now, the iron and sulfur and dampness. As he reached the final steps the earth began to shake once more. A low and terrible howling sounded. Raif’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. The chamber before him was rolling like a ship in uncalm seas. Patches of darkness deepened, holes within the black. A shadow form came into view, faded.
Raif felt his mouth go dry. Shatan Maer, the outlander had named it. The most powerful creature that had ever lived. Strange how you could be told something, listen to what was said, and still not hear it. But wasn’t that exactly what the outlander had counted on? Who would come here with full knowledge of what was to be found? No one. One glimpse, and it was enough to know all. One sword wasn’t enough. One man wasn’t enough. The outlander should have sent an army . . . but the outlander didn’t have an army to send.
So he’d sent a fool instead.
Raif found he was baring his teeth, like a wolf. The madness was there below him, just another hole in the black. Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance. Wasn’t that exactly what he was doing—one Hailsman at a time?
He laughed then, bitterly, as he imagined his life stretching on. More deaths. More friends betrayed. Three people in this world he loved, yet he’d never get to see them again. Drey. Effie. Ash. Wh
at good was life without those you loved? It was a shadow, and perhaps the outlander had seen this in him, and had sent one shadow to battle another.
Raif took the final step into the chamber, and immediately felt as if he’d taken it seconds earlier. All things were in flux here. The chamber itself was strangely ill-defined, its walls fluid. Part of the floor was tiled in intricate mosaics depicting beasts changing into other beasts, dragons becoming shadows, and serpents lapsing into unseeing, but most was bare rock. This was where the fortress ended and the mountain began, and as Raif moved across the floor he heard the ring of unspeakable hollowness beneath him. The mountain had been cleaved in two here. Raif Sevrance now stood upon the fault most likely to give.
The patches of darkness were quickening. Something dread thrashed in the shadows, howled and then faded away. The chamber was a blur of movement and shifting time now, the floor buckling like wet wood. Dimly, Raif was aware of great crashing sounds filtering down from above as the spires of the fortress fell.
Taking a two-handed grip on the Forsworn sword, he began to chant.
“Though walls may crumble and earth may break
He will forsake.”
The Shatan Maer rippled into existence, held, and then melted to black. Deep within the mountain, rock began to tear.
“Though night may fall and shadows rise
He will be wise.”
Time echoed the word wise back to Raif. A crack opened up in the floor, and the smell of another world came through it. All the shadows and patches of blackness in the chamber began to coalesce on a single point.
“Though seals may shatter and evil grow
He will draw his bow.”
The crack widened and Raif felt the cold breezes of hell. The single point of darkness was swelling, shaping itself into a portal. The Shatan Maer stood behind it, thrashing and flailing, a monstrous beast beating against its chains. Imagine your worst nightmare, then reckon it tenfold. Who would have thought a cragsman would be so good with words? Teeth bared, Raif moved into position.
