by J. V. Jones
The idea of having the Knife camped outside her chamber frightened Ash nearly as much as her dream. Marafice Eye scared her—he scared at lot of people in Mask Fortress. That was, she supposed, the main reason her foster father kept him around. “Can’t we call Katia instead?”
Iss began shaking his head before Ash finished speaking. “I think our little Katia might not be a wholly reliable guardian. Take tonight: You said you drank wine, yet she swore you didn’t, and of course I must take my daughter’s word over that of a common servant. So I have no choice but to conclude the girl reported wrongly and might easily do so again.” A cold smile. “You are not well, Asarhia. Ill dreams trouble you, headaches plague you. What sort of a father could I call myself if I did not watch my daughter closely?”
Ash bent her head. She wanted to sleep, close her eyes, and not have to dream. Her foster father was too clever for her. Lies, even small ones, were as silken rope in his hands. He could pull and distort them, use them to tie their speaker up in knots. She had gotten herself into enough trouble tonight. The best thing to do would be to say nothing more, nod her head meekly, and let her foster father bid her good night. He was already making his way toward the door; another minute and he would be gone.
Yet . . .
She was Ash March, Foundling, left outside Vaingate to die. She had been abandoned in two feet of snow, wrapped in a blanket stiff with womb blood, beneath a sky as dark as night in the twelfth storm of winter. She had been forsaken, yet somehow she had lived. She had been weak, yet some tiny spark of life within her had proven strong. Straightening her spine, she looked her foster father straight in the eyes and said, “I want to know what’s happening to me.”
Holding her gaze, Iss reached for the kerosene lamp. The iron base was stamped with the Surlord’s seal: the Killhound rampant, the great smoke gray bird of prey sinking claws the size of meat hooks into the tip of the Iron Spire. Ash remembered her foster father telling her that although killhounds fed on spring lambs, bear cubs, and elk calves, they were known for killing hunting dogs that ranged too close to their aeries. “They never feed upon the hounds they kill,” Iss had said, a gleam of fascination firing his normally cold eyes. “Though they do make sport with the carcasses.”
Ash shivered.
Iss closed the spillhole, snuffing the lamp. Holding open the fossilwood door, he stepped into the column of cold air that rushed in from the corridor beyond. “There’s nothing for you to be worried about, almost-daughter. You’re just catching up, that’s all. Surely Katia must have told you that most girls your age are women in all senses of the word? Your body is simply doing those things that theirs have already done. One would hardly expect such changes to occur without some small measure of pain.”
With that he moved into the shadows of the corridor, swiftly becoming one himself. The metal chains sewn into his coat chimed softly like faraway bells, and then the door clicked shut and there was silence.
Ash fell back onto the bed. Shaking and strangely excited, she pulled the covers over her chest and set her mind to thinking of ways she could find answers for herself. Her foster father’s words only sounded like the truth. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, could absolutely swear she wouldn’t sleep, yet somehow, unbelievably, she did.
Her dreams, when they came, were all of ice.
The Listener could not sleep. His ears—what were left of them—pained him like two rotting teeth. Nolo had brought him fresh bear tallow from the rendering pit, and it was good and white and looked creamy enough to eat, so the Listener had done just that. Waste of good tallow—using it to plug up two old black holes that had once been ears. Waste of good muskox hair to warm them, too. But there was little to be done about that: Nothing needed warming as much as an old scar.
Nolo’s footprints formed a visible line to and from the rendering pit and then over to the meat rack in the center of the cleared space. Looking at them, the Listener made a mental note to have a talk with Nolo’s wife, Sila: She wasn’t filling her husband’s mukluks with enough dried grass. Nolo’s booted feet had melted snow! Sila would have to get chewing.
The Listener spent an idle moment imagining Sila’s plump lips chewing on a tuft of colt grass to make it soft enough for stuffing into the space between her husband’s outer and inner boots. It was a very pleasant moment. Sila had unusually fine lips.
Still, he was old and had no ears, and Sila was young and had a husband, and together they had four good ears between them, so the Listener nudged aside the image of Sila and turned to the matter at hand: his dream.
Sitting on a stool carved out of whalebone, with his old brain-tanned bear’s hide around his shoulders, the Listener sat at the entrance to his ground and looked out at the night. Heat from his two soapstone lamps warmed his back, and cold from the still, freezing air chilled his front: that was the way he liked it when he was listening to his dreams.
Lootavek, the one who listened before him, swore that a man could only hear his dreams as he was having them, yet the Listener thought him mistaken. Much like Nolo’s boot lining, dreams needed to be chewed on.
The Listener listened. In his lap he held the hollow tip of a narwhal’s tusk, a little silver knife that had once been used to kill a starving child, and a chunk of sea salt-hardened driftwood from a wrecked ship that had been beset then stoved in by the cold blue ice of Endsea. Like all good talismans, they felt right in the hand, and as the Listener’s body heat warmed them in varying degrees, they released his mind into the halfworld that was part darkness and part light.
Fear gripped at the Listener’s belly as he fell into his dreams.
Hands reached. Loss wept. A man with an impossible choice made the best decision he could . . .
“Sadaluk! Sadaluk! You must awaken before the cold burns your skin.”
The Listener opened his eyes. Nolo was standing above him. The small, dark-skinned man had his prized squirrel coat tucked under his arm and a bowl of something hot and steaming in his hand.
The Listener shifted his gaze from Nolo to the night sky. The pale glow of dawn could clearly be seen across the Bay of Auks. Stars faded even as the Listener looked away. He had been listening to his dream for half the night.
Nolo tucked the squirrel coat around the Listener’s shoulders and then held out the steaming bowl. “Bear soup, Sadaluk. Sila made me swear to watch you drink it.”
The Listener nodded gruffly, though in truth he was quite pleased—not about the bear soup, which he could get from any fire around the rendering pit, but for the fact of Sila’s attention.
The bear soup was hot, dark, and strong, and bits of sinew, bear fat, and marrow bobbed upon the surface. The Listener enjoyed the feel of steam on his face as he drank. The warmth of the bone bowl soothed the joints in his black, hard-as-wood hands. When he had finished he held out the empty bowl for Nolo to take. “Go now. I will return the squirrel coat to you when I am rested.”
Nolo took the bowl with all the usual carefulness of a husband handling one of his wife’s best dishes and made his way back to his ground.
The Listener envied him.
After what his dreams had shown him this night, the Listener knew that such a base and mortal emotion should be beneath him. But it wasn’t, and that was the way of the world.
The Listener had seen the One with Reaching Arms reach out and beckon the darkness. And that meant only one thing.
Days darker than night lay ahead.
Pulling hides across his doorway, the Listener retreated into the warmth and golden light of his ground. His bench was thick with animal skins heaped high with fresh white heather, and he lay down upon it and closed his eyes. He had no wish to dream and sleep, so he turned his thoughts to Sila and imagined her and Nolo sledding across the frozen margins of Endsea. He imagined the rime of ice beneath the sled runners wearing thin and Nolo calling a halt so that his wife could make new ice by the quickest way she could.
This pleasant image held the Listener’s attenti
on for only a short spell. There was work to be done. Messages had to be sent. Days darker than night lay ahead, and those who lived to know such things needed to be told. Let no one say that Sadaluk, Listener of the Ice Trapper tribe, was not the first to know.
THREE
A Circle of Dust
Are you sure you checked the rear of the horse corral?” The freezing wind made Drey Sevrance squint as he spoke. Ice crystals glittered in the fox fur of his hood, and pine needles clung like matted hair to his shoulders, arms, and back.
Raif thought his brother looked tired, and older than he had ever looked before. Dawn light was showing yellow on the horizon, and it cast pits of sulfur shadow on his face. “I checked,” Raif said. “No sign of Mace.”
“What about the alder swamp and the stream?”
“Swamp’s frozen. I walked along the stream bank. Nothing.”
Drey stripped off his gloves and ran his bare hands over his face. “The current might have carried the body downstream.”
Raif shook his head. “There’s not enough water to carry a bloated fox from one bend to another, let alone a full-grown man clear from the camp.”
“It would have been running faster yesterday at noon.”
Raif took a breath to speak, then thought better of it. The only time that stream would ever be strong enough to carry a body was during the second week of spring thaw when the runoff from the balds and Coastal Ranges was at its height—Drey knew that. Suddenly uneasy but not sure why, Raif reached out and touched Drey’s sleeve. “Come on. Let’s get back to the firepit.”
“Mace Blackhail is out here somewhere, Raif.” Drey pushed a hand through the frozen air. “I know he’s more than likely dead, but what if he isn’t? What if he’s wounded and fallen?”
“There were those tracks—”
“I don’t want to hear about those tracks again. Is that clear? They could have been left by anyone at any time. Mace was standing dogwatch—he could have been anywhere when the raid came. Now either the raiders got to him first and he’s lying frozen in some draw on the floodplain, or he made it back to the camp, warned the others, and we just haven’t found him yet.”
Raif hung his head. He didn’t know how to reply. How could he tell his brother he had a feeling that no matter how long and carefully they searched, they would still find no sign of Mace Blackhail? Shrugging heavily, he decided to say nothing. He was dead tired, and he didn’t want to argue with Drey.
Drey’s face softened a fraction. Frozen colt grass cracked beneath his feet as he shifted his weight from left to right. “All right. We’ll head back to the firepit. We’ll search wider for Mace come full daylight.”
Too exhausted to hide his relief, Raif followed Drey back to the tent circle. Wind-twisted hemlocks and blackstone pines thrashed against the sky like chained beasts. Somewhere close by, water trickled over loose shale, and far beyond the horizon a raven screamed at the dawn. Hearing the rough and angry cry of the bird the clan called Watcher of the Dead, Raif raised his hand to his throat. With his thick dogskin gloves on he could barely feel the hard hook of the raven’s bill he wore suspended on a length of retted flax. The raven was his lore, chosen for him at birth by the clan guide.
The guide who had given Raif the raven lore was five years dead now. No one had been more deeply honored in the clan. He was ancient and he’d stunk of pigs and Raif had hated him with a vengeance. He had saved the worst possible lore for Tem Sevrance’s second son. No one before or after had ever been given the raven. Ravens were scavengers, carrion feeders; they could kill, but they preferred to steal. Raif had seen how they followed a lone wolf for days, hoping to snatch a meal from an opened carcass. Everyone else in the clan, men and women alike, had fared better with their lores. Drey had been given a bear claw, like Tem before him. Dagro Blackhail’s lore was an elk stag, Jorry Shank’s a river pike, Mallon Clayhorn’s a badger. Shor Gormalin was an eagle, like Raina Blackhail. As for Dagro’s foster son, Mace . . . Raif thought for a moment. What was his lore? Then it came to him: Mace Blackhail was a wolf.
The only person in the entire clan who had a lore stranger than a raven was Effie. The guide had given her nothing but an ear-shaped piece of stone. Raif grew angry just thinking about it. What had the Sevrances ever done to the old bastard to deserve such short shrift?
Raif tugged at the raven’s lore, testing its oiled binding. When he was younger he had thrown the thing away more times than he could recount, yet somehow the guide always found it and brought it back. “It’s yours, Raif Sevrance,” he would say, holding out the black piece of horn in his scarred filthy palm. “And one day you may be glad of it.”
All thoughts of ravens flew from Raif’s mind as he and Drey approached the tent circle. The first rays of sunlight slid across the frozen tundra, illuminating the campsite with long threads of morning light. Already the six hide-and-moose-felt tents, the horse posts, the firepit, the drying racks, and the chopping stump had the look of ruins about them. Tem had once told Raif a story about a great dark deathship that mariners swore guarded the entrance to Endsea, keeping all but the blind and insane away. That was what the tents looked like now: the sails of a dead ship.
Raif shivered. His hand dropped from his neck to the hollowed-out antler tine that was attached to his gear belt by a ring of rusted brass. Sealed inside the tine was hallowed earth: dust ground from the guidestone that formed the Heart of Clan. Every clan had a guidestone, and every clansman carried a portion of it with him until he died.
The Clan Blackhail guidestone was a massive slab of folded granite as big as a stable block, shot with veins of black graphite and slick with grease. Clan Bludd’s guidestone was also folded granite, but it was studded with seams of red garnets that shone like drying blood. Raif had never seen the powder that came from the Bluddstone, but he thought it must look pretty much the same as that ground from the Hailstone: smooth gray powder that ran through the hand like liquid smoke.
As he neared the firepit, he plucked the tine from his belt, breaking the brass ring. The tine was sealed closed with a cap of beaten silver, and Raif ran his thumb along the tine’s length, feeling for the edge. Twelve men had died here, and only two remained. And two men without horses, carts, or sleds could never hope to bring back the dead. The roundhouse lay five days’ hard travel south, and that was more than time enough for scavengers to tear the bodies to shreds.
Raif wouldn’t have it. Ravens were in the sky already, turning circles a league across, and soon wolves, coyotes, bears, and tundra cats would harken to the sound of their kaawing. All beasts that fed upon dead things would be drawn to the camp, in search of one final meal to gorge on before winter started true.
Shaking his head with a single savage blow, Raif flicked the cap from the tine. It popped open with a small hiss. Fine powder from the guidestone streamed in the wind like a comet’s tail, bringing the taste of granite to Raif’s lips. After a moment of utter silence, he began walking the circle. Around the firepit, the drying racks, the tents, and the bodies he moved, carving a path of air and dust. The gray powder sailed long on winter’s breath, riding the cold eddies and swirling updrafts before sinking to its frozen bed.
Nothing was ever going to take Tem Sevrance. Ever. No ravens would pick at his eyes and his lips, no wolves would sink their fangs into his belly and his rump, no bears would suck the marrow from his bones, and no dogs would fight over scraps. He’d be damned to the darkest pits in hell if they would.
“Raif?”
Looking round, Raif saw Drey standing at the entrance to their father’s tent, carrying a bundle of supplies pressed hard against his chest. “What are you doing?”
“I’m drawing a guide circle. We’re going to burn the camp.” Raif hardly recognized his own voice as he spoke. He sounded cold, and there was a challenge in his words he had not originally intended.
Drey looked at him a long while. His normally light brown eyes were as dark as the walls of the firepit. He knew Raif’s
reasons—they were too close as brothers not to know each other’s minds—but Raif could tell he was not pleased. He’d had plans of his own for the bodies.
Finally the muscles in Drey’s neck began to work, and after a moment he spoke, his voice hard. “Finish the circle. I’ll load these supplies by the horse posts, then find what oil and pitch I can.”
A deep band of muscle in Raif’s chest relaxed. His mouth was dry—too dry to speak. So he nodded once and continued walking. Raif felt Drey’s gaze upon his back until the moment the circle was joined. And he knew with utter certainty that he had taken something precious from his brother. Drey was eldest. He should have had first say with the dead.
Drey Sevrance did what was needed to start a good fire. He worked thoroughly and tirelessly; chipping and shredding firewood, stripping nearby trees of their needles to kindle the bare ground between the tents and the pit, spreading great heaps of moss around the bodies, and lacing everything with wads of rendered elk fat and ribbons of oil and pitch. The tent hides he doused with the hard liquor that was always to be found in Meth Ganlow’s pack.
Through all the preparations, Raif did only those things Drey asked of him, nothing more; suggesting nothing, saying nothing. Giving Drey his due.
Ravens circled closer as they worked, their long black wings casting knife shadows on the snow, their harsh carrion calls a constant reminder to Raif of the thing he wore at his throat. Watcher of the Dead.
When it was all done and the two brothers stood outside the guide circle, looking in at the primed firetrap they had created, Drey took out his flint and striker. The circle Raif had drawn was not visible to the eye. The powder was fine and the colt grass thick, and the wind had carried much of it away. But it was there. Both Raif and Drey knew it was there. A guide circle carried all the power of the guidestone it had been drawn with. It was Heart of Clan, here, on the frozen tundra of the badlands. All those within it lay upon hallowed ground.
