A Sword from Red Ice (Book 3)

by J. V. Jones

  Meanwhile, Effie Sevrance, Raif’s eight-year-old sister, had been forced to leave her clan. Effie had been born to the stone lore and was able to tell when bad things were about to happen. She was present when Raina was raped by Mace, and Raina feared this knowledge made Effie vulnerable. Seeking to remove the girl from Mace’s sights, Raina sent Effie to Clan Dregg. As she traveled south in the company of gold smugglers, Effie began to master her lifelong fear of being outside. When her wagon was attacked by Dhoonesmen she was able to hide until the danger passed. The smugglers were killed during the attack, and Effie was left to fend for herself. Finding a secluded clearing near the Wolf River, she settled down to catch fish and live alone for a while. However, she was soon spotted by a chance predator, who swooped in and kidnapped her.

  The gold the smugglers had been transporting had come from a Blackhail mine, Black Hole. Traggis Mole, believing that Raif’s loyalties still lay with his former clan, not the Maimed Men, ordered Raif to participate in a raid on the mine. The raid was a success. Quickly overcoming the miners’ defenses, Raif’s party entered the mine and seized the stockpile of gold. As he climbed to the surface, Raif encountered his childhood friend Bitty Shank. Bitty was now a sworn Blackhail warrior, and he refused to let Raif leave with the gold. Raif had little choice but to fight and heart-kill his old friend.

  Bereft and believing he was damned, Raif headed out alone into the uncharted territory of the Great Want. He had learned from the Maimed Man Thomas Argola that a long-deserted fortress lay hidden in the depths of the Want. By finding it he hoped to stop the formation of a second crack in the weakened Blindwall. The Great Want was filled with flaws, and a Shatan Maer, an unmade creature of terrible power, had found one such flaw and was pushing against it. The flaw lay beneath Kahl Barranon, the Fortress of Grey Ice. Using the arrow given to him by the Listener, Raif located the position of the fortress. Once there, he quickly found the flaw and waited for the Shatan Maer to emerge. The battle that followed was long and grim. The Shatan Maer possessed inhuman strength and quickness . . . but Raif Sevrance was Watcher of the Dead. He had deserted his clan and slain a fellow clansman. He was forever damned and had little to lose. And there was no other living man who could heart-kill as he could.

  The Shatan Maer fell, the flaw in the Blindwall was sealed, and the North was freed from danger for a while . . .

  PROLOGUE:

  The Hail Wolf Returns

  Inigar Stoop opened his eyes and blinked into the darkness of the guidehouse. The smoke fires had gone out while he slept, and it took him long moments to make sense of the unfamiliar shadows of deepest night. Something in his chest wasn’t right. His heartbeat was the same as ever, but there was a vague soreness beneath his ribs, a sense that muscle had been working while he slept.

  Indistinct forms loomed around him, their edges bleeding into the darkness like ink spilled on cloth. To calm himself Blackhail’s clan guide named the forms in his head—the little stone font where he drew his water, the hog-backed coffer where he kept his ceremonial robes, the statue of Ione that had been carved from a riven fragment of the guidestone by the great warrior-guide Harlec Sewell—but the ache in his chest persisted. Raising a hand to knead his rib cage, Inigar became aware of the great stillness he disturbed. The guidehouse was as cold and quiet as a grave dug for a horse. The smell of damp earth had pushed through the sandstone walls, and Inigar could feel its coolness moving through his lungs. Fighting the desire to shiver, he swung his legs over the side of the pallet and rose to standing.

  Something is wrong here.

  Rock dust crunched beneath his bare feet as he crossed toward the firepit. He had not swept here in many days, and debris from the guidestone lay thick on the flagstone floor. The time for spring tilling was fast approaching and every farmer in the clanhold would soon demand a measure of this dust to scatter in his fields along with the grain. Night soils to fertilize the earth; stone soils to hallow it. Nothing shed from the Hailstone was wasted. Sometimes Inigar thought he was as much butcher as shaman—dividing the carcass of the monolith, grinding down its bones.

  But a carcass meant death, and this guidestone had to be alive.

  The gods stored part of their souls here.

  Inigar brought his hand to his forehead, pressed fingers deep into his pulse points and almost succeeded in halting his thoughts. Please Gods, do not withdraw from this clan.

  Yet hadn’t the retreat already begun? Frost had been living in the Hailstone since the Eve of Breaking, when good clansmen had turned against their own, sending a hound to the fire and trying a child as a witch. It went back farther than that, though. Frost could not enter a shored-up house. Blackhail’s house had been vulnerable for half a year, ever since its chief had been slaughtered in the Badlands by nameless raiders. Something evil had punched a hole through clan walls that day. Something immense and calculating, whose age was greater than the earth he stood upon and whose purpose Inigar feared to name.

  I cannot dwell on it. A guide blunted by fear is no good for his clan. Sharp of mind and sharp of chisel: that is the way we must be.

  Working from touch alone he slipped on braided leather sandals and pulled a polished pigskin cloak across his shoulders. Air was quickening. The short gray hairs at the base of Inigar’s scalp rocked in their follicles like loose teeth. Once as a seven-year-old he had climbed down a wellshaft on a dare. The well had been known as Witch’s Cunt, and a collapsed embankment upcountry had poisoned its water with tar. It was old beyond knowing, and so deep that as Inigar had descended, probing for toeholds in the dark, the very nature of the air had changed. Saturated with groundwater, it resisted exhalation. That sense of aliveness, the sudden revelation that air had a will of its own and there were some places in this world where it would rather not be, had haunted Inigar’s dreams for fifty years. He had felt it two other times since then: the day on the great court when Raif Sevrance had sworn his oath to his clan; and here and now in the guidehouse at the hangman’s hour before dawn.

  The guide’s swollen fingers sifted for a flint and striker along the workbench. Ice growing in the heart of the Hailstone made the guidehouse colder by the day. Fires could not warm it, and the dour and god-fearing masons of Blackhail had insured sunlight never entered this place. As Inigar knelt before the firepit and struck a light, he found himself wishing for a single window in the south wall so that he could throw back its shutters and let in the glow of the moon. The great bodies that circled the earth had powers to combat darkness that no man-struck flame could match.

  Still. He felt some easing in his chest when the kindling finally took and the red glow of a smokepile seeded with iron filings lit the room. Yet even as he took his first deep breath since waking he became aware of the presence of the guidestone.

  The great turning-wheel of its awareness, the sense of seeing and knowing, was gone. What was left was something forceless, an ember flickering after a fire. A year ago Inigar could not lay a hand upon the monolith without feeling a jolt of life. Now the stone would rip off his skin if he touched it without the protection of padded gloves. Ice had spread through the guidestone like cancer; cumulating crystal upon crystal, sparkling, sharp and irreversibly cold, gnawing away at the rock. Two weeks ago the guidestone might have sent out a flare, a feeble attempt at communion, a weak assertion of power. Touch it tonight and Inigar knew what he would feel: something dying beneath the surface.

  Reaching for the bellows, Inigar returned his attention to the fire. The first thing he had been taught as an apprentice was how to tend a smokefire. The old clan guide Beardy Hail had been uncle to Dagro Blackhail, the chief. Beardy never explained things more than once and never gave praise for a job well done. Every morning when he took possession of the guidehouse he would inspect the smokefire for flames. A flame of any sort was not permitted. The smokepile had to smolder, not burn. Inigar had spent most of those early days attending the fire; chopping green wood, breaking coal, filing iron. Too much fuel and
flames would ignite, too little and the fire would die. For years Inigar had wondered why it mattered—smoke resulted either way—yet one day, when Beardy was laid up with the gout and unable to check the smokepile, Inigar had come to an understanding.

  Any fool could build a fire; stack logs, lay kindling, strike a flint and blow. Once lit, the fire would burn hot and die out in its own time. But a smoke fire was never done. You could not walk away and leave it unattended. A smokefire had to be fueled and doused, stacked and banked, raked and poked and pumped. Most of all it must be watched.

  It was, Inigar decided, the most important lesson Beardy had ever taught him. A clan guide must be vigilant. He could not afford to turn his back and let his clan burn or die. A smolder must be maintained. And the watch never cease.

  Inigar’s dry old lips cracked a smile. Beardy had been, without a doubt, the most foul-smelling clansman in Blackhail. He kept pigs for a reason Inigar had never fathomed and took a bath only once a year. The smile turned into a wheezing cough, and Inigar slapped a palm against the floor to steady himself. Fifty years of inhaling smoke did that to a man, addled the lungs. As he crouched by the glowing smokepile and waited for the hacking to stop, an impulse he didn’t understand made him reach for more wood.

  Tonight he wanted light, not smoke.

  Aahooooooooo.

  The skin on Inigar’s hands tightened so quickly with gooseflesh his fingers jumped. A wolf howl, close and to the north. Yet the wolves had long since abandoned the territory around the Hailhouse and its man-smelling forests and fields. What did it mean?

  Inigar held his swollen hands over the flames, glad to feel the heat. The light in the guidehouse was increasing, but instead of calming it unsettled him. The flames flickered wildly, yet he could detect no draft. The shadows they created swung crazily around the room. He took his time turning his gaze to the guidestone. A wolf had howled in the Hailhold and he feared what he might see.

  The monolith steamed. So vast it pulled motes of dust from the air as surely as the moon pulled waves onto the shore, it stood black and still and wounded. Deep fissures dissected it like forks of frozen lightning. Pores once brimming with shale oil were now filled with lenses of ice. The narrow cane-and-timber ladder that Inigar used to access the carving face was white with hoarfrost. Only yesterday he had stood on those rungs and chiseled out a heart for a fallen clansman. A young woman in this very house awaited delivery of the fist-sized chunk of granite. Widows without bones needed stone.

  So much work to do in times of war, so many calls upon the stone. I best get to it then. Stop fussing over a late-season cold snap and get down to the business of men’s souls.

  As Inigar stood to fetch himself water, he caught sight of the northern face of the monolith. A crack as wide as his forearm and as tall as two men had opened up overnight.

  Dear Gods, help us.

  Could he have done more? Mace Blackhail was a strong leader, a fine warrior, and a fiercely ambitious chief. The Stone Gods demanded jaw, and Mace Blackhail had so much of it he could barely keep his teeth from springing apart. Jaw had landed him the chiefdom and driven him into war. Under Mace’s leadership, Blackhail had seized control of Dhoone-spoke Ganmiddich and was now challenging old boundaries in the east. Mace had rallied Blackhail warriors and reclaimed the Hailish badge. He’d fired up the sworn clans with talk of glory, making weary and jaded allies eager to fight at his side. Bannen had been Hail-sworn for a thousand years but it had ever been a weak alliance. The clan that called itself “the Ironheads” did not follow others lightly. Somehow Mace had managed to do what other Blackhail chiefs could not: gain the respect of that proud and grudging clan. Now there was talk of Bannen and Blackhail riding out to meet swords with Dhoone.

  Thanks to Mace, Blackhail warriors stationed across the clanholds this very night were filled with the passion and terror of war—and was that not what the Stone Gods loved best?

  A thin film of ice had formed over the water jug and Inigar punched it with his finger and drank. The bald-eagle foot resting against the apple of his throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed.

  Jaw was a tricky thing. It was courage in all its forms from bravery to recklessness. It was seizing the moment and acting without hesitation, and being brazenly sure you were right. Mostly it was sheer bloody-minded audacity: pulling off something no one else thought could be done.

  It was not cunning or deceit. Inigar closed his fist around his eagle lore and weighed it. A bald eagle saw much and so did he. Mace Blackhail was not a perfect man, Inigar had known that all along. Yet a chief had been slain and a new one needed anointing, and Mace Blackhail had been the first to stake a claim. That was jaw and it counted for something. Now Inigar wondered if it counted for enough. Half a year later questions about the raid remained unanswered. Mace had returned from the Badlands, claiming he had barely escaped the hell-forged swords of Clan Bludd, yet Raif Sevrance had also been at the campground that day and swore he saw no evidence of Bludd.

  And then there was Raina, Mace’s stepmother and wife. Inigar claimed little knowledge of women—they did not fight and so mattered little to him—but he had been struck by the changes in Raina Blackhail. She hid them, as was fitting for a chief’s wife, yet eagle lores could not hide from their own kind and Inigar observed things that others did not. She hated her husband, and shrank back whenever he touched her. It was a little thing, easily covered by other movements, yet Inigar had made a note of it. He’d seen such behavior before: in women who had been raped or beaten.

  Imagining he had heard a sound, Inigar set down the water jug and listened. Nothing. Where was the dawn? Where was the kitchen boy with fresh bread and ewe’s milk still warm from the teat? Aware he was becoming agitated and feeling the soreness shift strangely in his chest, Inigar tried to calm himself. The wolf had not cried out again. He was just hearing echoes in his head. Eagles had never been known for the ears.

  The air was growing unstable. Flames began leaping free of the fire, and mist ceased rising from the monolith and began to cumulate around the base. The crack in its northern face suddenly looked to Inigar like a newly opened vein. Something vital was pumping out.

  “What happened on the Eve of Breaking?” Inigar cried, suddenly needing to hear the sound of his own voice. “Did Mace order the killing of the girl?”

  Had it been enough, that order to murder Effie Sevrance? Or had the guidestone been keeping tally all along and judged it one misdeed too far? Inigar had heard the whispers: Mace had killed the swordsman Shor Gormalin, ordered the slaughter of innocent children on the Bluddroad, and arranged the murder of the Orrl chief Spynie Orrl.

  There was that noise again. Inigar’s head whipped around as he tried to hear. For a moment he thought he detected something, almost knew what it was, but then it was gone. Cold made his eyes slow to focus, and it took him a moment to realize that he could no longer see the Hailstone clearly. Mist folded in on itself, twisting and swirling, mushrooming outward in quiet lobes before being sucked back by the monolith.

  Inigar pushed his fist against his rib cage. Thirty years he’d attended the stone, and not one day missed in all that time. He knew the lay of the stone; knew that its northern face was the hardest, and that its southeastern foot was deeply veined with silver and did not take well to the grindstone. He knew where the greatest concentrations of quartz could be found, and the best places to tap for sacred oil. He knew its cavities, its lines of cleavage, its rusts and lichens and flaws.

  History was carved on its many faces like text in a book. The iron ring on its northwestern corner where the kingslayer Ayan Blackhail had been chained whilst awaiting judgment still stood, immovable now and swollen with rust. A series of blunted steps cut into the east face told of the time when the monolith had stood ten feet taller and had lain on the greatcourt, exposed to rain and frost. Clanwives had once climbed those steps and watched as their husbands returned from the War of Sheep. Every chief since Stanner Blackhail had left his ma
rk upon the stone. Black Harald and Ewan the Bold, Mordrag, Gregor, Duncan, Albor and his son also named Albor, Theobad, Allister and more. The line of marks was long and uncannily telling. Black Harald had chosen crossed swords as his mark, but at some point during his chiefdom he must have ordered the clan guide to take up his chisel and change it. The points and hilts of the swords could still be seen, but the blades had been hewn away, replaced by a thickly carved dram cup: the sign of parley. Mordrag’s mark was a deeply bored hole, fitting for the man who called himself the Mole chief; Ewan’s was a half-closed fist, poised to crush the Bloody Blue Thistle of Dhoone; and Albor the Second had chosen a horseshoe, just like his da.

  Dagro’s mark was unfinished, the stag and swords he’d chosen mere tracelines in the stone.

  Inigar’s gaze lapsed upon the circling mist as his thoughts fell inward. I know this stone like the back of my hand, but do I know this clan?

  Should he have looked further after Dagro’s death? One event, two differing stories: had he dismissed Raif Sevrance’s account too soon? The boy had called Mace a liar, said that Dagro had fallen by the rendering pit, not by the tent poles as Mace insisted. Even Raif’s brother Drey, who was a staunch supporter of Mace, had agreed with his younger brother’s version of events. Yet Raif Sevrance was just a boy, barely seventeen and without an oath. His father had been slain at the same time as Dagro, and he was simmering with rage and grief. The murderers had escaped, unchallenged and unpursued, and Inigar knew what kind of feelings that stirred in a man. Someone had to be made to suffer. Inigar had assumed that Raif’s anger toward Mace was simple misdirection. A raw boy looking for someone to blame. Had he been wrong?