by J. V. Jones
In any event, Gull liked to honor the custom of the seeds. Just this evening he had stocked his apron pouch with long, stripy rye seeds—the best they had in the market. Now he found himself hesitating to use them.
“Go ahead. You will not offend me.”
Taken aback, Gull stared at the stranger’s face. The copper eyes glinted for a moment, sharp as tacks, before he veiled them.
How could he know what I’m thinking? Gull wondered if perhaps the stranger had seen him reach briefly for his apron pouch. But no, that couldn’t be. No one watched anyone that closely.
Anyway, he had to do it now. As he scooped up a dozen seeds and sprinkled them over the two thumb cups, the first strains of Clyve Wheat’s song filled the tavern. Clyve was not a great thinker and couldn’t hold his drink, yet no one could deny he had a talent for music. Nothing fussy or complicated, mind, that wasn’t his style. He knew the simple shepherd songs and played them well. This one, Gull recognized, was an old cradlesong.
Sleep and in the morning all will be well, my daughter.
Sleep and all will be well.
Abruptly, the stranger reached forward and grabbed his cup. Without waiting for the customary toast, he threw the malt down his throat. He did not breathe for a moment, Gull realized, simply tipped his head back and waited. When whatever relief he was waiting upon failed to arrive he returned the empty cup to the table.
“My name is Angus Lok. And I am looking for my daughter.”
What was it Burdale Ruff had called him? Half-skinned, that was it. Gull had seen many men in many states during the thirty years he’d spent running Drover Jack’s, but this man was different. He lived but he was also dead.
Gull took a mouthful of the malt. It was warm, peaty and golden, and it made him very sad. For a moment he thought of saying many things to this stranger before him, telling him that he too had lost a daughter; that not four weeks ago his Desmi had run off with some freebooter from the Glaive. Silly, head-strong girl. Barely seventeen. Also Gull thought of showing the stranger to the door and telling him, I have enough problems. Do not bring me any more.
Instead, he said, “How can I help?”
Angus Lok searched Gull’s face with such force that Gull felt as if his skin were being pulled across the table. “What do you know of a man named Thurlo Pike?”
Gull was surprised at the question. “Thurlo? He used to roof around here last winter. Haven’t seen him in a couple of months.”
“What sort of man is he?”
Although he did not normally speak ill of former patrons, Gull told the stranger the truth. “He was a dishonest roofer and a short-tempered man. Caused trouble here last time I saw him. Insulting the good name of my tavern, asking all sorts of questions, spilling ale.”
Angus Lok leaned forward in his chair. “What sort of questions?”
Gull shrugged. “About some women, I think. Women living alone or something. You’d really have to ask Maggy that. She’s the one who spoke with him.”
Something happened to the stranger’s face as Gull spoke. His mouth tightened and a muscle in his cheek began to pump. “Where is this Maggy?”
“Gone. Went missing a couple of days after Thurlo. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her since.”
“What was her full name?
“Maggy Sea. The best tavern maid ever to set down a tankard in Ille Glaive.” Gull couldn’t seem to stop himself from lauding her, and would have continued singing her praises if it hadn’t been for the strange, dangerous look in Angus Lok’s eyes.
“What do you know of this woman?”
Gull opened his mouth to speak and then closed it as he realized he knew absolutely nothing about Maggy Sea.
Angus Lok rested for a moment, as if Gull’s lack of words were a blow he had to absorb. Gull took the opportunity to refill his cup.
“How long did she work here?”
For a reason he could not understand, Gull was reluctant to give the answer. “Thirteen days.”
Angus Lok sucked in breath. He had not shaven in a month and his beard was growing in. The hair on his head was lighter than the beard stubble. “Tell me what she looks like.”
Now, here was a question Gull could answer. Maggy Sea had simply appeared one day in the tavern and set about cleaning his copper bath. As he remembered it he had need of help and she was willing, and he hired her on the spot. Best thing he ever did. Maggy Sea had been a treasure, a fine woman who knew the value of hard work. She’d cleaned his pumps, mended his roof and cooked a lamb stew so fine and dense that it just about ate itself. “Well Maggy’s tall, but not really tall. More medium height, now that I think of it. But she’s definitely slender—except for her shoulders and hips which are round.” Gull couldn’t understand why he was fumbling. The picture he had in his head of Maggy Sea was crystal clear. It just wasn’t easy to describe it, that was all. Gamely, he tried again. “She was certainly comely, but more often than not she looked plain, if you understand what I mean. And her eyes—”
“It does not matter.” The finality with which the stranger spoke made Gull jump.
“Gull. I need your help. I can’t get the tap in the keg.” Liddie Lott drew abreast of the table. Sweat was beading above her upper lip and she looked a little frayed around the edges. She had never been left to work alone for so long.
“He will help you later.”
Both Liddie and Gull turned to look at the stranger. Liddie raised an eyebrow and then turned to Gull.
“Go on, Liddie. If anyone complains that they can’t have their preferred beer give them a free pint of something else.”
“But—”
“Go.” Gull shooed her away.
Angus Lok waited until she was out of earshot before he said, “The woman’s voice, was it unusual?”
At last. Here was something Gull Moler could get his teeth into. “Yes. Yes. Golden, like maple syrup. Made you start nodding your head before she’d even asked a question.”
Angus Lok reached for his sword. It was a beautiful weapon; the blade forged from patterned steel that scattered light, the single, central fuller cut so unusually deep that it looked as if it might bisect the blade. Resting it across his lap, Angus ran a finger along the trench. “What do you know of the people who died in the farmhouse fire a day east of here?”
Here it was, Gull realized. The reason why this man had come. The reason he smelled like a wild animal and the normal sense of time and place was missing from his eyes. He could be sitting anywhere at any point in the day, Gull realized, and would mark it solely by what he learned about his family. He was a clock who kept striking the same time.
Gull glanced back at the tavern, checking. Clyve Wheat had finished playing his song and Liddie was bringing him the traditional payment: a measure of malt and a wedge of blue cheese. Gull was glad to see she had remembered the old custom. Burdale Ruff was sitting with his chair swung back against the wall so it rested on its back two legs. Still watching. He was an imposing sight, Gull reckoned, dark and big and armed, but Gull didn’t think he had a pat of butter in hell’s chance of defending himself against this man.
Angus Lok waited. Gull spoke.
“Happened about two months back now. Was a bad business. Family of girls, as I heard it, working the farm while their father was away. By all accounts the chimney had been causing them trouble—that’s why Thurlo Pike was called in. Those bad storms last winter had cracked the flue and smoke was coming back down into the house. Of course, no one will ever know for sure what happened that night, but the magistrate from Keen rode over the day after. Said it looked as if the family was trapped inside the house while it burned and by the time they figured a way out it was too late.” Unable to help himself, Gull made the sign of the Three Tears against this chest. God help them.
“The bodies were in no state to identify. Blackened bones, the magistrate said. He ordered them to be buried twenty-five feet from the house and posted a warning that no one was to enter the farm
until further notice.”
Gull could have said more, gone on to mention current speculation about the deaths, or the fact that the magistrate was anxious to locate the owner of the farmhouse, but he stopped himself. Something had caught his eye whilst he was speaking and the thought that formed after it set him spinning.
This man had dug up the graves. The dirt was there to see, under his fingertips. The truth was in his copper eyes.
Of course. How else could he know that one of his daughters might still be alive? He would have had to view the remains.
Gull’s throat began to ache. What a life this is. What a terrible, terrible life.
Angus Lok regarded Gull with a steady gaze. He had seen Gull glance at his fingernails, watched as the revelation took place behind his eyes. “My daughter’s name is Casilyn Lok. We call her Cassie. She’s eighteen, tall for her age, with hair . . .” he took a breath to steady himself, “hair the same color as your tavern maid, and hazel eyes.”
“I have not seen her.” Gull spoke quickly, to kill false hope. “Nor have I heard of a young girl traveling alone.”
Angus Lok accepted this, unsurprised. He stood. “One day you may hear of something. If that happens send word to Heritas Cant in Ille Glaive.”
“Heritas Cant in Ille Glaive,” Gull repeated, anxious to show this man that he did not take the task lightly.
Sheathing the sword in a soft buckskin scabbard, the stranger gave Gull no thanks. Gull had not expected it. He was struck with the idea that this man was on a journey into hell.
And few ever made it back.
“The farmhouse,” Gull said, speaking to delay him. “If the magistrate is unable to locate the owner within a year he’ll claim it as revenue for the Glaive.”
Angus Lok threw on his cloak and made his way toward the door, his last words to Gull Moler, “Let them keep it.”
Wind howled across the tavern as he left.
About the Author
J. V. Jones was born in Liverpool in 1963. When she was twenty, she began working for a record label and was part of the Liverpool music scene of the early eighties. She later moved to San Diego, California, where she ran an export business for several years and was the marketing director for an interactive software company. Her interests include cooking, gardening, reading, playing RPGs, watching old black-and-white movies, and pottering around the house.
A Sword from Red Ice is J. V. Jones’ seventh novel. Her first three, making up the Book of Words trilogy, were The Baker’s Boy, A Man Betrayed and Master and Fool. These were followed by a stand-alone novel, The Barbed Coil. A Cavern of Black Ice and A Fortress of Grey Ice are the first two volumes in her latest Sword of Shadows series. For more information on J. V. Jones and her books, please visit www.jvj.com
You can also find out more about J. V. Jones, and other Orbit authors, by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net
If you enjoyed
A SWORD FROM RED ICE,
look out for
FEAST OF SOULS
The Magister trilogy: Book One
by
Celia Friedman
PROLOGUE
IMNEA KNEW when she awoke that Death was waiting for her.
She had been seeing the signs of his presence for some time now. A chill breeze in the corners of the house that wouldn’t go away. Shadows that seeped in through the windows, that didn’t move with the light. The icy touch of a presence upon her skin when she healed the Hardings’ little girl, that left her shuddering for hours afterward.
The mirror revealed little. Of course. It wasn’t the way of witching folk to age and die like normal people. The fuel within them was consumed too quickly, like a fire into which all the winter’s wood had been placed at once. What a blaze it made! Yet quickly gone, all of it, until it smothered in its own ash.
How long ago had the dying begun? Did it start in her youth, when she first discovered she could do odd things—tiny little miracles, hardly worth noting—or not until later? Did Death first notice her when she made tiny points of fire dance on the windowsill, with a child’s unconscious delight (and how her mother had punished her for that!), or not until she reached deep within herself with conscious intent to draw strength from her very soul—from that central font of spiritual power that mystics called the athra—and to bend it to her purpose? When and where was the contract with Death sealed, and what act marked its closing? The healing of Atkin’s boy? The calling of rain after the Great Drought of ’92? The day she had cleansed Dirum’s leg of its gangrene, so that they wouldn’t have to cut it off?
She was thirty-five. She looked much older.
She felt eighty.
Soon, Death whispered, his voice disguised as the whisper of falling Soon . . .
With a sigh she fed some more wood into the stove and tried to stoke its dying embers to more radiant heat. It had been more than a year now since she’d last used the power. She’d hoped that if she stopped, some of her strength would return. Surely whatever internal energies created the athra in the first place could restore it to strength, if it was no longer used for witchery. But even if that were true, how much of her life was gone already? Each time she had used the magic to heal a child, cast out a demon, or bless a field against the onslaught of locusts, she had drawn upon her own life force for power. The supply wasn’t endless. All the witching folk knew that. Just as the flesh became exhausted in time, so did the fires of the spirit bank low, smolder, and finally extinguish. Use the fuel for things other than staying alive and the fire would be extinguished that much sooner.
Yet how could you have the power to heal, and not use it? How could you watch a child turn blue before you and not clear out its lungs and give it life again, even if the cost was a few precious minutes of your own life?
Minutes had seemed like nothing in the beginning. What do young people know of time, especially when the power is pounding in their veins, demanding expression? By the time you became aware that minutes combine to make hours, and hours add up to days, and days to years ... by then Death was already knocking on your door.
No more witchery, she had promised herself a year ago. Whatever time she had left, it would be her own. She had let the village know she wouldn’t be able to do healing for them anymore, and that was the end of it. Let them hate her for it if they wished. It would be a poor answer to her years of service if they did, but she wouldn’t be surprised. Human nature was remarkably ungrateful when it came to expecting sacrifice of others.
And already it had begun. She had heard the whispers. Every child that died of the pox now died because of her inaction. Every injury that led to death now was due to her callousness. Never mind that illness and injury were a natural part of life that only costly miracles could defy. Never mind that for two decades she had expended her own life-energy to provide those miracles. Never mind that Death was breathing down her neck now because of those very acts. This year she had turned them all away, and that was all that anyone seemed to care about.
Human nature.
She leaned forward over the fire, trying not to ask herself the question that all the witching folk did, in the end. Was it worth it? Too much danger in that internal dialogue. Answer no, and your last days would be filled with regret. Answer yes, and then your dying was your own damned fault.
Suddenly a knock on the door drew her from her reverie. Who on earth was visiting her in these final days, when all the town was treating her like a pariah?
She walked to the heavy oaken door and pulled it open. By the dying light of the winter day she could see two figures standing outside. No need to ask what they’d come for. One of the figures held a small bundle in her arms, and from its size and drape she guessed it to be a child, swathed in blankets. A pang of emotion stabbed her in the heart, guilt and anger hotly combined.
Isn’t it enosvgh that I refuse you in the marketplace, in the temple, in the very streets? Must you bring your sick ones to my very door, to be turned
away?
For a moment she almost shut the door in their faces, but a lifetime’s habit of hospitality proved too strong to overcome. Grunting, she stepped aside for the two to come in. By the stove’s dim light she could see them better: a tall, gaunt woman, peasant-born, who had clearly seen better days, and a young girl by her side, hardly looking better. The kind you healed and sent home knowing that Death might claim them the next year anyway, from starvation or abuse or any one of the thousand things no witching power could heal. The girl had a hard edge about her, as if she had already seen the rotting underbelly of the world and become inured to its stink; it was a frightening look, in one so young. The woman ... looked merely desperate.
“Mother,” the woman began respectfully. “I’m sorry to bother you....”
“I don’t do healing anymore,” Imnea said curtly. “If you want a cup of tea to warm you before you set on your way again I’ll give you that. I might have a scrap of bread. But that’s all.”
She expected the woman to argue with her and she was braced for it. Gods knew she’d been through this before, a hundred times over, it seemed. But instead the woman said nothing, merely lowered a corner of the blanket wrapped around her child. The glimmering green pustules on his fevered face spoke volumes in that moment, before she covered them up again.
