by J. V. Jones
Built solely as a buffer between the roundhouse and the cold earth, the foundation space had not been designed for walking. Raina reckoned the ceiling height was under five feet, and looking ahead she could see it was dropping. The strange thing was she wasn’t as afraid of this place as she had been in the past. Old fears were falling away. Fear of rats and other small things now seemed like a silly luxury, like wearing a lace bonnet on a windy day. Vain too, a demonstration of delicacy, an announcement that one has managed to steer clear of the hardships of everyday life. Same with spiders and darkness and thunderstorms: girlish fears for girls who did not know the real things they should fear.
Raina could tell them. Sometimes she would like to yell them out loud just to get them off her chest.
Spying a T-junction ahead, Raina took a moment to rest the weight and run over the directions in her head. She did not want to make a wrong turn. Effie Sevrance had shown her this place. That girl knew the roundhouse like the back of her hand. Strongrooms, crypts, wet cells, mole holes, clay pits, ice pits, well heads, dungeons: Effie knew all the dark and secret spaces beneath the roundhouse. She would go missing for entire days and no one, not even her brothers, could find her. When she finally emerged, blinking and baffled at all the fuss, she would say simply, “Sorry. I forgot.” Raina had come down hard on her after the time she’d gone missing for three whole days. “You will stay here in my chambers, within my sight, for the next ten days. And you’ll spend that time composing apologies for all those you have worried and inconvenienced.” Poor Effie had done just that.
Raina became aware of the water in her boots, lukewarm and turgid, congealing like jelly. Effie was alive; she had to be. Raina was sure she would know if it wasn’t true. A messenger had come from Dregg only two days ago, and the word was still the same: no sign of the cart containing Effie Sevrance, Clewis Reed, and Druss Ganlow. Raina understood that something must have happened on their journey—a detour, a mishap, a mistake—but it didn’t mean that Effie was dead. Just waylaid.
Breathing heavily Raina took the turn. How am I going to tell Drey? She had put off sending a message to Effie’s brother three times now. Between his responsibilities defending the Crab Gate and his heartache over his brother’s treason, Drey
Sevrance had enough on his shoulder. Besides, she owed it to him to deliver the news in person, to look into his eyes and accept the blame. I was the one who thought Effie would be better off at Dregg.
Besides, Drey was gone now, called to war. It was not a good time to give a Hailsman bad news. The rumors from Ganmiddich were worrying: whispers of city-men armies on the march from the south whilst Bludd forces were cracking down from the north. Hailsmen would die. Drey might die. If the gods truly loved her Mace Blackhail would die.
Raina shivered at her own coldness. Her clan was marching south to defend the Crab Gate, and here she was wishing that some steel-plated city man would thrust his blade through her husband’s heart. What was it Bessie Flapp always said? Be careful with wishes. Once in a blue moon a god will grant them and show us just how selfish we are.
Bessie was right. The clan would not benefit from losing its chief. Not now, with wars against Dhoone and Bludd to be fought. It wasn’t even certain that she, Raina Blackhail, would benefit from her husband’s death. If Mace were to die in battle his title would be up for grabs. She had told exactly two people of her plans to be chief—Orwin Shank and Anwyn Bird—and their support, while gratifying, was hardly enough to claim the prize. Anyone with enough jaw could step ahead of her.
Shaking her head in frustration, Raina set the matter aside. She could not afford to be distracted. Her destination was drawing close and if she wasn’t alert she would miss the entrance.
After Effie’s three-day disappearing act, Raina had forced the girl to show her the paths she took below the roundhouse. That way, if Effie ever went missing again, Raina would know exactly where to find her. Effie had frowned and tutted and looked critically at Raina, before finally saying, “It will ruin your dress.”
A ruined dress was a small price to pay for an education. Effie moved around the roundhouse like a mole in a set, diving beneath footstones and through holes in the walls, and scurrying between cracks. Raina had been afraid to blink lest she lose sight of her. She had still been afraid of rats back then, and remembered getting cross and a little bit shaky and commanding Effie to Slow down. Still, it had been worth it. Blackhail was the oldest clan in the North and it had the oldest roundhouse, yet most of the time when you were aboveground you didn’t see its age and its history. Belowground was different. There were no plastered panels or tapestries concealing the rough stone walls, no wooden boards laid over floors. No chief, dissatisfied with what he saw, had ordered its halls to be knocked down and rebuilt. The underlevels of the roundhouse had been left alone and disregarded. Oh some clansmen stubbornly maintained cells here and the great open space of the cattlefold was still in use, but mostly this was dead space. Rats swam in the standing pools. Bats nested overhead between the ceiling groins. History lived here, quiet as dripping water.
If she had taken a left turn instead of a right one at the T-junction Raina knew that she would have ended up in a room full of grave holes. Nearly two hundred people had been interred in the dome-shaped chamber, their bodies inserted head first into narrow, deeply dug holes. Stones so heavy Raina wondered how they had been transported here capped every grave, and if you walked into the room with good lighting you could discern a pattern in their placement. The stones formed a map of Bannen’s clanhold.
Fifteen hundred years ago the great Bann chief Hector Bannen had launched a surprise assault on the Hailhold. Blackhail was in decline and infighting had left it vulnerable; Hector had seen an opportunity and seized it. That wasn’t his sin though, and no one judged him for it. No, what Hector had done to deserve being buried on his head along with his two hundred best warriors was break his oath to Blackhail. Only five years earlier Hector had sworn allegiance to the Hail chief Dowerish Blackhail. Dowerish was still chief at the time of the assault—though his younger brother Eagon was pursuing that position for himself—and with a cleverly staged mock-surrender Dowerish had lured Hector’s front line into the roundhouse, cut them off, and then cut them down.
It had not been a proud moment for either clan, and most current histories did not include it. But the stones did not lie. Raina had stood and watched as Effie Sevrance skipped between them, attempting to locate the stone under which Hector Bannen had lain for fifteen hundred years.
Feeling her thigh muscles begin to shake, Raina picked up her pace. The lode was digging into her back and it was becoming difficult to inhale two full lungs of air. She couldn’t go much farther. Where was the opening?
A breeze hitting her cheek made her turn to look down a corridor. Iron bars, thickly crusted with rust, flickered in the light from the safelamp. Down that way lay Blackhail’s ancient and derelict dungeon, the Hellhold, and that meant she was getting close. Another breeze confirmed it: the narrow passage to the left led to the chief’s chamber. Effie said it didn’t look like it would, but if you took the ramp instead of the stairs it led straight to a secret entrance. Raina shook her head. How could Effie have possibly learned such a thing?
Taking small, slow steps through the water Raina began to study the sandstone walls. Every few paces brick stanchions stood out from the stone at right angles, bracing the great weight of the roundhouse. The shadows and hollows they created had to be carefully inspected. Not all sunken panels were as they seemed.
Spying the faint outline of a palmprint on an inset block of stone, Raina halted. This was it. She placed her hand on the palmprint and was glad to see it matched perfectly—no one else had been here since Dagro’s death. Pressing firmly against the stone, she pushed her hand sideways and drew the stone aside. It was a tile set on a track lubricated by superfine sand. Once it was in motion it moved with ease. A line of sand spilled from the edge of the track as air trapped in
the darkness for five months rushed through the opening.
Am I doing the right thing? she wondered, knowing there was no one to give her an answer. Sometimes she imagined there weren’t any right answers, just things men and women did and the talk they used to justify them. Could she justify this then? Yes, she could.
The opening was at hip height and Raina realized she could not climb through it with the load on her back, so she set down the safelamp and shouldered off the pack. It was a lot heavier in her arms than it had been on back and as she lifted it through the opening her arm muscles wobbled. Quickly, she lowered the pack to the ground.
The water in her boots ran up her thighs as she hiked into the room. It was not a pleasant sensation. By some unexpected piece of luck the ground here was dry. Good. Turning, she slid the tile facade back in place and then took a moment to enjoy the relief of no longer bearing a five-stone weight on her back. She would pay for it tomorrow, but right now she felt strong and capable.
She, Raina Blackhail, had carried the largest remaining piece of the shattered Hailstone to safety whilst thirty feet above her Scarpemen were working to grind the remains down to nothing and dump them in Cold Lake.
It was an outrage and she was powerless to stop it and the only way she had of fighting back was to steal a piece of the stone before it was destroyed and hide it in a place where Scarpes would never find it. Here, in this ancient strongroom outfitted by the Silver chief Yarro Blackhail to conceal his treasures, was where the last piece of Hailstone would come to rest.
Raina did not know much about the gods, had never understood their secret motives, and had not once in her thirty-three-year life felt touched by them, but she had been moved to act by a strong sense of wrongness. Stannig Beade, the new clan guide from Scarpe, had not wasted any time asserting his power. “The Hailstone is dead,” he had told the crowd assembled on the greatcourt five days back, “and just like a corpse we must mourn and bury it.”
The word bury had been a mistake. This was Blackhail, not Scarpe, and a Blackhail corpse was left to rot above ground in hollowed-out basswoods, and the crowd had grown restive. Stannig Beade had a sharp eye and a subtle mind and had quickly realized his mistake. “Just as a slain Blackhail warrior is left in sight of the gods, we will do the same with the stone. We will grind it down to powder and scatter it over the earth. I know it is hard to hear. I look before me and see good men and women who loved the Hailstone like a god. But make no mistake, the Hailstone was never a god. It was a place where the gods rested, and now it has been shattered they have nowhere to dwell when they come to Blackhail. Do you want that, Hailsmen and Hailswomen? Do you want the Stone Gods to pass by your roundhouse and your clan?”
No they had not, and many in the crowd began to nod their heads in agreement. Stannig Beade was a clever speaker; his voice had been sharp and rasping, but his words had got him exactly what he wanted.
Already he had made a lie of them. The remains of the Hailstone were being dumped in Cold Lake, not scattered on open ground as he had claimed. The first cartload had been hauled west yesterday at dawn. Raina had seen it leave. She had asked questions and got no answers, so she had saddled Mercy and followed the tracks left by the cart. Tarp had been roped over the rubble, but a wormhole in the cartbed leaked dust. Raina was not given to fancy, but there had been a moment when she had first spotted the trail of granite powder lying lightly amid the yellow winter grass where she felt as if the Hailstone was letting her know where it was and what she must do.
The trail of Hail dust led all the way to the east shore of Cold Lake. She had watched from a careful distance, concealed by the boughs of a two-year hemlock, as the Scarpeman driving the cart had backed the bed up against the lake, released the tailgate and let the cart roll down to the shore. The rubble had gone crashing into the water. Raina had not waited to see the dust cloud settle and had promptly turned Mercy and galloped home.
At first she had wondered about the lie. Why would Stannig Beade risk being discovered in such an obvious deception? The answer came when she got back, and it surprised her. There were people in the roundhouse—Hailsmen and Hailswomen—who were already aware of what Stannig was doing. Merritt Ganlow was one of them. “Oh come on, Raina,” the head widow had said after Raina informed her of what she had seen. “Of course the Hailstone was never going to be scattered—it’d cause dust storms for a week. Best place for it is the lake. That way it’ll stay in one place. Whole almost. Stannig told me that after he made the announcement to the clan he spent time with Scarpestone, alone, and the gods told him he’d made a mistake. The Hailstone wasn’t a corpse and should not be treated like one. The remains should be shown deeper respect.”
Raina had actually laughed, a bitter sound not much to her liking. “You don’t actually believe that, Merritt? Stannig Beade doesn’t care about the Hailstone. He wants to see it destroyed so thoroughly it can never be resurrected, and all its power becomes his.”
Merritt Ganlow had jumped on her words. “The Hailstone is destroyed. He didn’t do that. We did, as a clan. All Stannig’s doing is trying to dispose of the remains in a decent manner. Tell me, Raina, what else is he supposed to do?”
They were both shaking. They had been standing outside the closed door of the widows’ hearth and Raina felt weary and exposed. She had not expected this from Merritt. Edging farther away from the door, she said, “Why does he insist on grinding every bit of the stone to nothing? I’ve seen what’s he’s doing, not even a chip as big as an apple core will remain by the time he’s through.”
The head widow had already begun shaking her head whilst Raina was speaking. “We are clansmen. We grind our stone. That’s what we’ve done for centuries. Stannig Beade is doing what every guide since Ballard the Scared has done before him: he loads the stone in his mill and breaks it.”
“No,” Raina protested. “It’s not the same.”
Merritt Ganlow raised her chin. “Tell me why.”
She could not. The words needed to convey the complex and ephemeral ideas in her head were beyond her. What Stannig Beade did was wrong, she felt it in her gut—he’d come here and looted the heart of clan—but if she said that she would sound like a peeved child.
All the while Raina was thinking Merritt watched her with keen green eyes. When the silence had stretched overlong, she said, “Your nose is put out, Raina. Simple as that. With your husband away you thought the mice would play, but now there’s another cat in the house.”
Raina had to give it to Merritt: the woman was sharp. It was true, Raina had been hoping to run things while Mace was away. Return some order to the house, banish the Scarpes to outbuildings, make plans of her own for Hailstone. She’d wanted the chance to guide Blackhail back . . . to clan.
Breathing deeply, Raina tried to replace her waning strength with air. A woman whom she had trusted and called friend had been cleverly turned against her. Almost it was too much.
She tried one last time. “You are right, Merritt, I’m not happy that Stannig came here. He’s Scarpe’s guide—let them have him. We’re paying tribute to a foreign stone whilst Scarpemen are grinding down the Hailstone and carting it away.”
Merritt must have heard something close to breaking in Raina’s voice, for she was gentle in her reply. “Who better to do that job? Name me one Hailsman who would relish breaking down the ruined stone? Stannig hopes to spare, not deceive us.”
How had he got to her? Raina wondered. What tales had he spun? What promises had he whispered in her ear? Whatever he had done it was subtle, for Merritt was too clever to fall for obvious ploys. Did he know how close Merritt was to Raina herself? Was he trying to isolate the chief’s wife? Raina tucked that thought away for later consideration. To Merritt she said the only thing she had left. “Stannig Beade is a Scarpe. I thought you were my ally against them.”
Tutting softly, Merritt shook her head. “Think clearly, Raina. My position on Scarpes in the Hailhouse is unchanged. Tomorrow, through that ver
y door, two hundred Scarpes will come and kick me out of my hearth. They’ve done some sort of swap-around with the tied Hailsmen who were due to take it. It’s a disgrace, and you underestimate me if you think that Stannig Beade can convince me otherwise. He hasn’t tried to. I doubt if he’d dare. What he did do was come to me and ask my opinion on some things. And for a wonder he actually listened to the answers. That, I respect. It’s fitting that a new clan guide acquaints himself with matters of clan, and also fitting that he takes the time to introduce himself to its widows. He knows there are things wrong in this clan. But right now he doesn’t have time for that. His priority is the new guidestone—and rightly so. We must be settled as a clan before we can move forward, have a heart beating before we can breathe. You know that and if you would look beyond his colors, you would see that Stannig Bead is guide first and foremost. Not a Scarpe.”
Raina felt a little stunned, as if someone had knocked her with some force on the head. How on earth was she to deal with this? At least now she knew how Stannig Beade had got to Merritt: he had flattered her and opened up a channel to power. It was telling that Stannig Beade had made no such overture to the chief’s wife, no cozy little talk, no confessions of uncertainty, no delicate request for information. He wouldn’t dare. Five days ago on the greatcourt they had met eye-to-eye, and she had seen through him and he through her. Stannig Beade knew the chief’s wife for his enemy, and Raina Blackhail knew that before her stood a man who coveted Blackhail’s power.
It was then, looking into Merritt Ganlow’s superior face, that Raina had decided to steal the Hailstone. She’d be damned if she’d stand by and let some clever, scar-faced Scarpemen have his way with the remains. And Merritt could go to hell too.
Now, one day later, Raina had lost the bravado she’d felt outside the widows’ hearth. Strange, but when she had actually stolen the stone from the rubble that was heaped against the roundhouse’s east wall, things had begun to change for her. She had chosen her moment carefully, for the night crews were still working on the wall and her only opportunity to be alone was when one of Anwyn’s kitchen girls had called the crews inside for ale and supper. Oil lamps and guarded candles had been left burning on poles and on makeshift pedestals of piled stones. A big vat of tar was bubbling on a slow green flame and buckets of white lime had been arranged in a loose half-circle around it. Timber boards and split logs were strewn across the ground, and Raina could smell the itchy, dry-skin odor of sawdust. A second scaffold was now in place, bridging the gap between bare ground that had once held the guidehouse and the shattered remains of the stable block. Raina had to be careful to duck her head as she crossed toward the scrap pile of granite.
