A Sword from Red Ice (Book 3)

by J. V. Jones

  “Addie,” he said. “Where does the Trenchlander border lie?”

  The cragsman shrugged. He was in the process of subtly adjusting their route, turning them due north into a mixed stand of spruce and white pine. “Trenchland’s just a name. The lowlands around Hell’s Town have been carved by the Flow—that’s where it gets its name. There’s no border as such.”

  Raif nodded, disappointed. “Is there any way we can tell when we’re on the border between Sull and Bludd?”

  Addie looked at him. Flawless had given the cragsman the same directions as he had given Raif, and Addie had probably already considered this problem himself. “In this part of the world the only way to know for sure whose land we’re standing on is if someone steps out from the trees and attacks us. If that happens we should be sure to take a real good look at them.”

  Raif fell silent. He felt stung by Addie’s tone. Had he insulted the cragsman by asking the question? It was hard to judge things with Addie now.

  They stopped three times before noon for leech duty. One of the creatures wouldn’t attach itself to Raif’s back; it looked as sick as a leech could look. Addie returned it to the jar, but they were both thinking the same thing: spoilage had not been factored into the equation.

  At noon they had a good meal of roasted venison and salted hardbread that had been traded from the Trenchlanders. The cold was numbing so they ate with their gloves on. Afterward they greased their skin and slid on face masks. As they headed out, the first of the cedars exploded in the valley below them. The woodpeckers fell silent and the only sound was Raif’s and Addie’s boots crunching frozen snow.

  After a few hours the land began to rise and warp, and bare rock broke through the forest duff. The cedars were not as tall here, and enough light penetrated the canopy to support groundcover; hagberries, bearberries, and balsam. Raif perceived animals denning beneath rotting logs and between cracks in the rocks. Their heartbeats were faint and winter-slow.

  Raif tried not to think about his own heart, tried not to recall how easily it had failed him. One moment beating, the next stopped. A blink of an eye, a failure of muscle to contract: that’s all it took to kill a man.

  He forced his mind elsewhere, and ended up considering the name Yiselle No Knife had given to the Red Ice. Mish’al Nij. A place of no cloud, yet the lamb brothers had named it the Valley of Cold Mists.

  More trees exploded as the sun moved into the west. One cracked right on the path, its trunk fracturing from the crown to the base as if it had been hit with a giant ax. The sudden release of pitch and gases made the air smell like a primed firestack.

  As the sky grew dark Addie began to rest more heavily on his stick, and Raif thought about calling an early halt. Progress had not been good; nearly every hour they’d had to stop to apply leeches and Addie was getting no quicker with practice. His hands froze, Raif’s back froze, the leeches were starting to get sluggish. Just as Raif opened his mouth to speak, Addie raised his stick.

  “Stand of red pines beyond the rocks.”

  The sign of the Bludd border. They headed west toward it, their spirits lifting. Here was a marker that could help them. The trees were planted along a north-south axis in single file along a south-facing slope. It was dark by the time they reached them, and you could no longer tell they were red pines.

  “Let’s set camp,” Addie said, smiling for the first time in two days. “I think this calls for a spot of tea.”

  They set camp hard against the pines, both fearing that if they didn’t the trees might disappear in the night. A new leech was applied, a fire built. Roasted meat was set to warm on rocks.

  As they sat, bending their heads toward the searing heat of the fire and enjoying the dregs of the tea, Raif’s raven lore stirred. It had been so long since the hard, black piece of bird ivory had moved he had not spared it a thought in weeks. Some disturbance in his heart or blood triggered the leeches, and the two that were attached to him dropped off. Raif stood, his hand feeling for Traggis Mole’s longknife.

  Addie rose a moment later, and both men pulled their bows and arrowcases from the gear pile that had been lazily heaped on broken-off cedar boughs. Swiftly they pulled off gloves. Neither spoke. Things had changed between them. But not this.

  With his gaze facing out from the fire, the cragsman tugged at the cedar boughs, tumbling packs and blankets into the snow. Without looking at the flames he fed them. Raif faced north, toward a slope he could barely see. The stars were out in cold lightless force. There was no moon.

  Crack.

  Both men swung to face the sound of an exploding tree. In Sull territory: they could say that with conviction now as the noise came from east of the red pines. Addie Gunn and Raif Sevrance trained drawn bows into the darkness. Addie’s sturdy self-made yew ticked with a reassuring sound as it held tension. The Sull longbow made no sound.

  When a soft crackling noise came from the west neither one was expecting it. Addie swung around and immediately loosed his bow through the pines. Raif perceived the damning suction of an unmade heart.

  And then felt its small and deadly echo a hair breadth away from his own. The Shatan Maer’s claw was trying to home.

  Leeches are my friends, he thought inanely, his gaze searching for forms in the blackness. Addie raised a second arrow to the plate, and as he pulled back the twine Raif became aware of a second heart. Back in Sull territory, moving forward from a position not far from where the tree had exploded. Quickly he made a calculation. Swinging his attention fully east he left the creature on the other side of the red pines for Addie Gunn.

  East was where the greatest threat lay. He could feel it in his lore and his plagued and punctured heart.

  A shape rippled into existence, then disappeared. It was big and man-shaped and Raif did not want it near him. Ever since the night on the rimrock he’d had no trust in hand-to-hand combat with blades. Let the Sull bow and the case-hardened arrowheads do the work.

  Keep away, he murmured under his breath. Keep away.

  Suddenly there was a series of crunches to the west. Addie loosed a second arrow, fumbled, replated. The footfalls accelerated, smashing the frozen snow with their force. Raif could no longer stand it and swung to second his friend.

  Both men loosed their arrows in perfect time. A single thuc sounded with the depth and richness of a musical chord. The arrowheads converged . . . and slammed together in the unmade heart. Sparks shot out of shadowflesh. Something not human jerked upward and then collapsed. A sound on the edge of hearing sizzled through the forest air.

  Pivoting east on the balls of his feet, Raif reloaded and drew his bow. The cragsman was a half-second behind him. Flames shivered at their backs, casting fans of jittery shadows at their feet. Clouds of bitter-smelling smoke pumped outward from the fire stack; items from their gear pile were going up in flames.

  Raif scanned the darkness for the man-shaped thing’s heart. His own heart was fluttering queerly, and he could feel the shadowflesh burning through it like a hot ember set upon wax. All was still. Addie’s breaths were ragged, but his grip on the bow was rock-firm. The moon began to rise above the treeline, its light beaming in their faces and moving between the trees. Without realizing it both men edged away from the camp. Addie was taking Raif’s lead, and Raif was moving in the direction he’d last seen the Unmade.

  The fire went out. Darkness was sudden and complete. Flattened coals popped and spat. Something hot landed by Raif’s heel. He and Addie swung back to face the killed fire. Addie let an arrow fly into the swirling blackness of night and smoke. Raif understood the impulse but held. He knew exactly how long it took him to reload and draw a bow. It was too long. An eyeblink, that was the difference between life and death.

  The man-shaped thing rushed them. It pushed its own shape before it in smoke. Moonlight bent toward its thick diamond-shaped blade. Raif loosed his arrow. Even before the twine recoiled he had thrown down the bow. The arrowhead had penetrated heart muscle but it had not
gone deep enough into the gristle and the thing still came at them.

  “Addie. Get back,” he heard himself scream as Traggis Mole’s longknife scribed the quarter-circle from his hip to a position at right-angle to his chest. Raif saw the creature’s hollow, craving eyes. Heard the explosive crack of its weight coming down upon pine needles suspended in ice. Its blade had to be four feet long. Raif’s was two.

  Raif leaped forward, feinted right. The man-shaped thing swung his sword at him like a club. It was screeching like a seagull. Raif stepped behind it, made the thing turn. Voided steel came at him: its edge the glistening razor where chaos and destruction met. It stunk like the absence of all things. Raif rolled ahead of it, felt it touch his lower rib. Life heat sucked from the hole. Springing up Raif braced the Mole’s longknife against the hard plate where muscle met bone in the exact center of his ribcage. The man-thing was yanking back its blade for another strike. There was air around its chest.

  Traggis Mole’s longknife was inhumanly sharp, sharper than any sword Raif had ever wielded in his entire eighteen-year life. It seemed to take no pressure at all to puncture shadowflesh, no effort at all to slide between the dark ventricles of the grossly inhuman heart. Voided steel came up, touched real steel with a queer vibrating tone. That carried no force.

  Raif yanked out the blade, rolled clear onto the snow. Embers and pine needles crackled as his spine crushed them. The man-thing rocked like a wedge-cut tree about to topple, and then went crashing to the ground.

  Deep and perfect silence followed. Neither Raif nor Addie moved. The cragsman was standing upslope from the camp by the tallest of the red pines. Moonlight made his face blue. A great gray owl calling out across the forest broke the silence. Hoo. Hoo. Hoo. Addie was the first to move, rushing toward Raif. Raif thought he’d like to stay awhile lying down in the snow and did just that.

  “C’mon, lad.” Addie’s voice was hard, angry. His finger poked at Raif’s ribs like sticks. “Get up now. Get up.”

  Raif blinked at him and thought, Leave me be, old man. I’m tired.

  Addie Gunn would not let Raif Sevrance be. He was a cragsman and he knew how to leverage his weight to haul sheep, and that’s what he did to Raif. He hauled Raif up over his shoulders and carried him clear of the camp. When he found a bed of tender yearling spruce he deposited Raif upon it. Two layers of rawhide were yanked up. The leech jar was opened. Curses were sworn, and then Raif felt the circle-bite of a fresh leech on his back.

  “Wait here,” Addie said, unclasping his cloak and laying it over him. “I’m going back to get the gear.”

  Raif waited and then slept.

  Two times in the night he was roused by Addie, yet Raif managed to submit to the cragsman’s ministrations while not fully waking. His dreams were all of death, of that moment that divided this world from the next. The eyeblink. The thin line. The failure of the heart.

  When he awoke fully and properly it was light. He was still lying on the spruce, curled up on his side. A new pain in his lowest rib just above his spleen throbbed with dull persistence. He supposed he should be grateful the voided steel had touched bone.

  Addie was sitting by a fire the size of a horse, toasting a piece of liver on a stick. He had a wild, disheveled look about him. His hair was sticking up and some of it was frozen. A pine needle was embedded in his cheek. The corner of one of the blankets that hung across his shoulders had been scorched. When he heard Raif move he looked over and said, “Ain’t getting no easier.”

  It was the closest Addie Gunn had ever come to complaining.

  Raif stood. It took a moment for all the various hurts and bruises to settle themselves into place. Some kind of order was being established, a hierarchy of pain. A snap of dizziness hit as he crossed to the fire, but he forced himself to walk through it. “Breakfast?” he asked, coming to a halt by the wall of yellow flames.

  “Aye. Tea’s gone. Liver’s dry. There’s hardbread on the rock.”

  Raif took a drink of hot water and forced himself to eat the liver. The hardbread had been placed on a rock in the embers and was slowly turning black.

  The heat from the fire was intense. After a while Raif had to step away. The cragsman must have been up all night building and tending it. As he walked around the hastily set camp that lay about a hundred feet above the old one, Raif wondered what to say to Addie. Sleep, I’ll stand watch. Sorry about worrying you sick. Sorry I didn’t offer the stormglass for trade that day by the campfire. All apologies were too late, he comprehended, running a gloved hand along an icicle that hung from one of the red pines. And Raif Sevrance did not have the time to watch Addie Gunn while he slept.

  Returning to the fire, he asked, “How many leeches?”

  Addie rose to his feet. He understood what the question meant—time to get moving—and by making himself suddenly busy he could duck the need for an answer. They had to be down to the last ten by now: not enough to outlast the day.

  The sack containing the tea had been lost to last night’s fire, along with one of Addie’s mitts and some spare clothing. Addie cut the toe off one of his socks and declared it a glove. Raif threw snow on the flames and watched it turn to steam. It took ten precious minutes to kill the fire. The sun was already visible above the forest canopy; a slender disk circled by mirages. They’d already lost an hour and a half of daylight. What was Addie thinking, leaving him to sleep?

  Raif set the pace north. Even when the stand of red pines was hidden behind the crest of the slope the path was clear. They had to keep heading along the same axis. If the red pines marked the true border between the Racklands and Bludd then all they had to do was maintain their bearings and eventually they’d cross the Red Ice. If what the Trenchlander said was true. It had to be true. Raif didn’t have time for it not to be.

  One border. Four worlds. If they went far enough north would they enter the Want? And if they did would they know it? Raif looked down at the forested valley that lay below them, the spires of cedar, the knuckles of red rock, the frozen streams, the kitty hawk circling for prey. It looked too full of life to be named the Great Want.

  “Clouds are coming in.”

  Raif saw that Addie was right. A dark crack had opened up on the edge of the horizon. A blackness in the silver of the sky.

  They spent the morning crossing the valley, eating on foot and stopping only to apply new leeches. The air was raw and changing, and the wind started to show its teeth. Raif walked huddled in the Orrl cloak, slightly bent at the waist to relieve the pressure of the wound. Addie had cleaned and bandaged it in the night; he said it was shaped like an X.

  Raif found his thoughts kept returning to the moment the fire had gone out. If the Unmade had extinguished it then that meant they were capable of cunning. And that was something new and dangerous. Creatures that could plan as well as fight.

  By the time they reached the valley’s northern slope the clouds were moving with force. Sharp gusts broke icicles and brittle branches from the pines. Addie and Raif walked against the headwind, shoulders hunched. When they came across two big trees with boughs interlaced they stopped to shelter from the weather and apply another leech. They were down to one at a time now. As Addie took the jar from his gear pouch, Raif saw how few were left. And not all of them were moving.

  The cragsman had trouble getting the leech to bite and prodded Raif’s back several times. When he took his hand away his fingers were red with blood. “It’s hanging,” he said grimly. “Gods help it to stay in place.”

  To change the subject, Raif told Addie about Thomas Argola’s words. “Four worlds?” Addie pondered, wiping his hand on his cloak. “Clanholds. Sull.” He frowned. “The Want?”

  Raif shrugged. “What could be the fourth?”

  Addie tugged on the sock with force, quickly losing his patience with puzzling. “How the hell would I know that, lad? I’m a sheepman not a scholar. If it’s land I know it. If it’s fancy worlds dreamed up by Argola then I can’t see that either of us h
as much of a chance of figuring it out.”

  Raif considered this. “I think you just insulted me.”

  Addie harrumphed. “Well I insulted myself as well.”

  The day darkened quickly as the thunderheads charged the sky. Raif felt wire-drawn and full of energy. His thoughts thrived in the gray stormlight, rippled along with the trees. He saw Traggis Mole take his final breath, sucking air through his nose hole, heard Yiselle No Knife ask quite clearly Do you know how to start a stopped heart? And smelled the emptiness of the space between the stars, the stench of voided steel.

  Soon, something promised within him.

  Soon.

  “Well would you look here.” Addie’s voice seemed to come from a great distance, and Raif had to force himself from the dreamworld to understand it.

  The cragsman had stopped. They had reached the lip of the valley and a landscape of crags, rocky hills, and swaths of evergreen forest lay before them.

  But Addie Gunn wasn’t looking ahead. He was looking at a shrubby dried-up plant by his feet. “Trapper’s tea, I swear it.” His voice was filled with quiet awe. He plucked off a leaf, chewed on it, and then nodded with satisfaction. Squatting he pinched the stem of the plant close to the base and plucked the entire thing, roots and all, from the snow. “I’m a happy man,” he said as if he meant it.

  Raif murmured something. As Addie was chewing he had been looking east. Far in the east a break in the stormheads allowed sunlight to pour down onto a circle of heavily wooded hills.

  Mish’al Nij.

  A place of no cloud.

  It had been a mistake to imagine the border between Bludd and Sull would run straight south to west.

  Addie tucked the shrub inside his game pouch, and applied the last of the moving leeches to Raif’s back. As he led the way due east, the first bolt of lightning split the air.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Chosen by the Stone Gods

  It was a Bludd sunset, firing the entire breadth of the sky from north to south, the cloud banks glowing like rubies, the sun shimmering like a bronze disk. Vaylo wasn’t given much to fancy, but he was sure he could feel the sun’s brilliance on his face. You couldn’t call it warmth, as it was cold enough to freeze the spit on your teeth if you smiled, yet he had the sensation that he could feel individual waves of light bouncing off his skin.