by J. V. Jones
At first the nightmares did not come. She floated in darkness, insulated. Something sissed softly. Laughter tinkled then faded away.
Mistressss.
The word roused her and she swung away from it. Far in the distance water lapped against rock.
A massive and unknowable presence turned in the darkness, watchful, cunning, waiting. It had bided in the shadows for hundreds of years, and its time was drawing close.
Wake.
Ash inhaled deeply, opened her eyes. All was dark and still. Memories slid into place and she realized she was in water. The sun had set and the sky holes let in no light. “Lan?” she called, not expecting an answer. Kicking, she propelled herself to the edge of the bowl. The stone felt cool against her palm. Cool and good. She waited a moment, gathering her strength, and then pulled herself out of the pool.
Water streamed down her body. Her legs felt like wet sticks, barely able to take her weight. Tentatively, she took a step across the stone in the direction of the entrance, seeking a flat surface with the pad of her toe. She knew the direction of the stairs, but she and Lan had been bathing in one of the middle wells and that meant that other wells stood between her and a way out. Crouching, she felt her way along the rim. The pressure on her knees made them shake in spasms, and she doubted if she could hold her weight this way for long. The hot water had robbed her strength.
Slowly, she edged between the pools. Mist purled under her chin. Water bubbled. The blackness was absolute, but she found she wasn’t afraid of it. She just wanted to be gone from the wells. An enchantment had been practiced here. Twelve of the thirteen wells: Lan had tricked her with a spell to make her sleep.
Finally her toes and fingers detected a broad shelf of rock. Collapsing onto her butt she just sat for a while to think. She decided she had been very stupid. After seeing what was wrapped around the tang of Lan’s arrowhead she should not have entered the water. She should have been afraid, not flattered.
The thick lock of hair she had given to the Far Rider had been divided in two, and half of it had been bound to the arrow. And she thought she knew what had happened to the other half.
It had made a creature of the Blind explode. There had been no heart-kill. Lan’s second and third arrows had penetrated shoulder flesh. She had made the mistake of assuming that his first shot, the one she had not seen, had hit the creature’s heart. She had been dead wrong. Lan Fallstar was no Raif Sevrance.
He had been experimenting that night in the woods, testing to see if the girl he had stumbled upon on the south bank of the Flow could really be what he suspected: the Reach. He had never been interested in her safe passage to the Heart Fires. The only thing he cared about was whether or not she was useful. And he had wanted to keep her isolated until he knew for sure.
Now what?
Ash rose to standing. Her body was cooling and she felt some of her physical strength returning. She would not think about their lovemaking, the betrayal of her flesh. I initiated it, she reminded herself sharply. The fault was mine.
Casting around in the darkness, she attempted to locate her clothes and weapons. Nothing was there. Not even her boots or dress. This had been carefully planned, she realized. Right down to the dark of moon. He might have been planning it from that very first night, when he had paid a terrible toll in burned flesh. Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer had never put red-hot knives to their arms—and they’d had many costly tolls to pay.
The burned flesh was the price of killing a Reach. The hair on her head alone had to be worth five hundred Unmade deaths.
Do not come here in the flesh. The creatures themselves had warned her. She was rakhar dan, Reachflesh, and they loved and feared her above all things. Ark Veinsplitter had predicted that Sull would come after her. Now she understood why. Her flesh destroyed maer dan. It was the other side of the double-edged sword. She brought them into the world by creating a breach in the Blindwall. She could send them back.
They had never attacked her directly. Not the unmade wolves on the bridge, nor the carrion feeder in the woods. Why had she not realized that until now? Perhaps their swords of voided steel could harm her, but she no longer believed their flesh could.
Was she worth more dead then alive? How many Unmade could her blood, teeth, hair, and nails destroy? She did not know the answer. Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer could have slain her, yet they had chosen to protect her instead. Daughter, Ark had called her. It was not the word of a man who wanted her dead.
Ash crossed toward the stairs. Hands and feet probing the darkness, she searched for edges, walls, the risers of steps. A leathery shuffling sound came from above; the bats were taking flight. They did not touch her as they flew up the stairs, though she felt the air they displaced riffle against her naked body. Their silent calls pricked the membranes in her ears.
As she reached the top step, she became aware of a slight increase in light. She was on the ground floor of the fortress now and her eyes could make out the dim and blocky forms of walls. No moon may have risen but the stars provided a thin blue veil of light. When she looked up she could see streaks of cloud and constellations, and the strange, leaflike forms of the bats.
Her nipples hardened in the raw air and every hair on her body rose upright. The snow beneath her feet did not seem cold and she walked easily upon it, barely making a sound. She was moving along a corridor framed by tall walls. When the side of her foot hit a fallen stone, she crouched and pried the square piece of rock out of the snow. Her thoughts were oddly calm and disconnected. He will try to slay me. He is probably watching as I walk along this corridor. All the advantages are his.
Yet she was a Reach and she was just beginning to understand that was something to be feared. She, Ash March, was something to be feared.
Could she call them forth, the creatures of the Blind? What could she do that would make the Sull fear her?
Weighing the rock in her fist, she stepped into the open space of Fort Defeat’s inner ward. Nothing moved in the blue-black darkness. No wind penetrated the double walls. No mist snaked across the ground. The snow glowed dully as it froze. Ash cut toward the gate that led to the outer ward. Nothing within her wanted to stand still.
The gate was a black hole in the wall. As she passed through it her gaze searched for the place where Lan had made camp. He had cleared the snow earlier and the patch of dark ground caught her eye. The horses were gone. The packs were gone. Lan Fallstar was nowhere to be seen.
Her body was growing cold now. Water in her hair was stiffening to ice, and she could feel the gooseflesh tightening her skin. Slowly she walked toward the circle of cleared ground. Something was happening in her stomach; muscles were contracting and relaxing in strange ways. Her left arm began to feel light, as if it were still in water. The right one was weighed down by the rock.
Two men stepped from the shadows to meet her. Metal slithered against leather as they drew longswords. They were silhouettes in the darkness. She could not see their faces or details of their weapons and dress. Two men. Two swords. This was a ceremonial slaying.
Neither warrior was Lan Fallstar; she knew it for a certainty. He had summoned others to do what he would not do himself. Had he invoked them that first night? Or the other morning when he returned to camp with the coati?
No matter, Ash said to herself, feeling her left hand begin to float from her body. I will destroy them all.
They stepped to meet her: black shadows armed with two-handed swords. Starlight ran along the edges of their blades. Breath fogged. Ash felt a muscle high in her right arm spasm as it fought the weight of the rock.
Grayness merged with darkness, and as she moved forward she crossed into Glor Rhakis. No-Man’s-Land.
All was the same. The swordsmen came toward her, stepping apart as they prepared to take her from both sides. The stars burned blue. The fortress still stood. It was the edges that were different, the margins, the shadows, the cracks in the walls. They became charged with the energy of a
nother world.
The ancient and evil presence was here, sliding along the deeply black shadows cast by Fort Defeat’s double walls. Turning the huge millwheel of its awareness toward her, it murmured an instruction.
Reach.
Ash dropped the rock. Swords came for her. Weightless, her right hand drifted up. A breach existed in the Blindwall, but it had never been big enough. They had always wanted more.
Aid me, she commanded them.
As her right hand drew parallel with her left she heard a word spoken in a dread and terrible voice.
“Daughter.”
Mal Naysayer, Son of the Sull and chosen Far Rider, rode through the fortress’s main gate. His six-foot longsword with the raven pommel was drawn and in motion. Galloping forward, he swung it in a great arc and severed the first man’s head. Hot blood sprayed across Ash’s belly and breasts. The head came bouncing toward her and hit her shin. The eyes were blinking.
The Naysayer spun his huge blue stallion and kicked it into motion. His teeth were bared and his eyes burned colder than ice. Dropping the reins, he wrapped both hands around the grip of his sword as he charged. The second man hesitated, torn between standing his ground and defending himself, and running. The hesitation cost him more than his head. Mal Naysayer’s fearful blade ripped through the muscle and organs in his stomach, cleaving his body in two. The pieces thudded dully as they fell into the snow.
Ash heard a noise beyond the wall; the drum of hooves on stone. Lan was riding away. The Naysayer heard it too, for his head tilted for a moment as he listened.
There was never any question that Mal would go after him. She had a sense that it would not be the last either of them saw of Lan Fallstar. For now, though, the coward could wait. The Naysayer slid from his horse and unhooked his wolverine great-cloak. He was breathing hard and she thought she saw tears sparkling in his eyes. His sword was streaked with blood and stomach chyme and he laid it on the ground before he approached.
“Daughter,” he said, his voice rough as he slipped the cloak around her naked and bloody body. “I have come.”
Ash fell against him. She was shivering intensely, and her arms were burning with pain. The world of shadows had gone now, dissolved like salt in water. What had happened just then, she wondered. Had she reached?
Mal Naysayer picked her up with great gentleness and carried her through the gate.
FORTY-THREE
A Place of No Cloud
The night after they left the trappers’ camp the sky cleared and the temperature began to drop. The thaw had reversed while Raif and Addie slept, and when they woke in the morning oozing snow had been frozen into glasslike mounds. Addie took one look at the sky and deemed it a “nosebleeder.” All clouds had gone and there were none on the horizon. Suddenly the north had turned to ice.
“Pray the clouds don’t come back,” Addie said, warming his hands around a steaming cup of tea. “If warm air hits this freezing ground we’ll be in for the devil of a storm.”
“It’s spring,” Raif replied, knowing his voice sounded strained yet forcing himself to speak anyway. It had not been easy for him to talk to Addie last night and this morning. “You’d think we’d be due some mild weather.”
The cragsman frowned at him thoughtfully. “I’m not sure spring’s going to come, lad. Not this year.”
They were quiet after that. Sitting on opposite sides of the crackling and fragrant cedar fire, blankets pulled tight across their shoulders, they supped on hot, spicy tea.
The remains of the young deer Raif had brought down at sunset had frozen into pink chunks. He’d done a hasty job of the butchering and had not skinned the carcass. Addie had helped, but there was only so much you could do after dark. Neither of them had expected the hard frost, and now most of the meat would have to be either cached or discarded. The pieces were too large to carry and could no longer be divided into smaller parts. They had the liver, which Addie had sliced into squares before he went to sleep, and the remains of the hind leg had been roasted with some of the Trenchlanders’ sharp and soapy-tasting herbs. Looking at the frozen hunks of meat with the deer hide still attached Raif wondered if he was any better than the bear trappers. Even the ravens wouldn’t be able to feed on it until it thawed.
“I’ll put some of it in a wee bag and haul it up the tree,” Addie said, showing that he had been following Raif’s gaze. “But first we’d better check on those little suckers on your back.”
It was not a pleasant few minutes for either of them. Addie had slept with the jar of leeches and had to travel with them close to his body all day. The risk of freezing was too great. Maybe a frozen leech could be revived, maybe it couldn’t, but neither of them were taking any chances. They were already down to twenty-one and counting. Twenty after Addie rolled his fingers in the snow to cool them, spoke the three-worded prayer Gods help me and stuck his hand in the jar of black worms. He did not have Flawless’ knack for it and gripped the leech mid-belly, rather than below either of its sucking heads, and that meant he had to move fast. Two sets of mouth parts wanted a go at him. Raif could do nothing but pull his new rawhide tunic around his shoulders and present his back to Addie Gunn.
The cragsman’s breaths were telling: short and wet with disgust. “Keep still,” he cautioned, though in truth Raif had not been moving. “Sweet mother of gods.”
When it was done the skin on Addie’s face was tinged green. “You’re gonna need to get that whole mess seen to,” he said. “There’s half a dozen wounds back there leaking blood, skin’s peeling, something’s turned black.” He shuddered. “We’d better get a move on.”
While Addie cached the meat—for no purpose, it seemed, other than treating the slain deer with some respect; neither of them expected to be back here again—Raif broke up the camp.
They had made good time yesterday and were now deep into the rolling cedar forests northwest of the Trenchlanders’ camp. Once Raif had brought down the deer, Addie had attempted to locate some kind of meaningful clearing for setting camp, but had been forced instead to call a halt in a fallen timber gap between the trees. The ancient cedar that had toppled had provided partially seasoned wood for the fire and they’d had good, hot flames for roasting and tea-making. The embers were still firing as Raif covered them with snow.
He wished Addie had kept his opinions to himself about his back. With every movement he made he could feel the wrongness; the tight skin where the plaster had been attached, the bloating, the wounds. The teeth. Last night he’d slept on his back and when he’d risen two bloated leeches had dropped onto the blankets. They were slimy with his blood.
“Here,” Addie said, startling Raif. “Eat.”
Raif took the frozen cube of liver and popped it in his mouth. He sucked on it as they struck a path north through cedars the size of watch towers. It didn’t please him very much, but he appreciated Addie’s care. Blood for blood.
The rising sun was piercingly bright, illuminating individual ice crystals floating in the air and bringing out the red and purple tones that lay beneath the dark greens of the cedars. The trees had shed their snow and now had frozen moats around the bases of the trunks. If the temperature held trees would be lost. Sudden frosts after thaws could split pines clean in two.
Raif and Addie did not speak as they hiked up the rise, and this suited Raif well enough. He had some thinking to do. Woodpeckers were the only birds making noise in the forest and the sound of them drilling tree bark sharpened and clipped his thoughts.
The Red Ice. The Valley of Cold Mists. Mish’al Nij. The place where he was headed had many names. North, the Trenchlander had said, seeming to think that was instruction enough. Thomas Argola had been even less helpful. “The Lake of Red Ice exists at the border of four worlds and to break it you must stand in all four worlds at once.” Raif had found the words so vague and self-important that he had barely thought of them since. To him they were just another of Argola’s games.
Yet now he went over the
m again. Both the outlander and the Trenchlander had mentioned borders. Flawless had said the Red Ice lay on the border of Sull land and Bludd land. The clanholds and the Sull: they were two separate worlds.
Could the Want be the third?
Raif ducked his head to avoid a low slung cedar bow. Out of habit he glanced over at Addie, reassuring himself that all was well with the little cragsman. Addie’s gaze was focused on the way ahead, reading the paths between the trees, searching out all potential routes.
Perhaps there was a point where Bludd, the Racklands and the Want met? Addie had said the Bludd borders were uncertain this far northeast, and Raif himself had firsthand knowledge of how intangible the margins of the Great Want could be. Perhaps here it dipped south? That might explain why the lake was difficult to find. If any part of it lay within the Want then it was no wonder Bluddsmen could ride right past it. If they didn’t there was a chance they would never be seen again.
Feeling one of the leeches stir against his back, Raif shivered and spat out the grizzly remains of the liver. He was wearing two layers of trenchlander skins beneath the Orrl cloak, and he had tucked neither of them beneath his gear belt. That way when the gorged leeches disengaged they’d end up falling onto the ground, and not hanging around his waist. Like yesterday. It was possibly the strangest piece of wisdom he’d ever learned.
Knowing he had a short tolerance for leech thoughts, Raif turned his mind back to the Red Ice. If there was a possibility that Thomas Argola’s words were right, then there should be a fourth border. Sull. Bludd. Want. What was the fourth? Was there something he was missing? The Racklands stretched from the Breaking Grounds to the Sea of Souls; the Trenchlands were contained within them. Did that mean something? Did the Trenchland border come into play?
