A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  The mountain fought the Inverted Spire, chewing through whole sections of granite facing like oak roots through earth. Even breached as they were by the white knuckles and bones of Mount Slain, the walls remained intact. The facing had been mined from the Towerlode at Linn, and there were said to be blood spells and sorcerers’ curses set deep into the stone. Robb Claw, great-grandson of Glamis Claw and builder of Mask Fortress, had once claimed that it would take an act of God to break the Spire.

  Shivering, Iss drew the netting to his chest. The cold had made the caul flies torpid, and not one of the dozen females now moved. A few would die; he was prepared for that. Once, several years earlier, in the middle of one of the coldest winters Spire Vanis had ever known, all of the laying females had died. It had been messy, but he had managed to extricate their eggs. Though regrettably a much smaller portion than normal had gone on to hatch and survive.

  With one hand holding the lamp and the other clutching the netting, he found the descent slow and difficult. Iss had long since mastered the art of not looking down, yet the knowledge of the deep chasm below lay like clothing next to his skin. Each stair was three feet wide—a goodly length—yet the steps began in pressure-formed granite as slick as glass and ended in fresh air, and a man couldn’t be too careful where he stepped. Iss kept to dead center and turned his mind to matters he found pleasing.

  Take the servant girl Katia, for instance. Such a sly, bright girl. Too good by far to be penetrated by the Knife. Iss had no interest in bedding her himself, though it would be interesting to see just how far she would go, just what she would do to free herself from the threat of the kitchens.

  Iss smiled with all the satisfaction of a jeweler setting a gem. That was Katia’s weakness: her fear of ending up in the kitchens, broken veined and red faced, her once high breasts resting like drained waterskins upon her belly, her once bright hair turned to gray. Fortress born and bred, Katia had grown up seeing the exact same thing happen to every other woman who worked there: Mask Fortress took and took but seldom gave. Now the sharp little minx was afraid that the same thing would happen to her.

  Once Iss discovered a person’s fears they were his. Katia was his now. The girl loved Asarhia March, admired and protected her. Yet she was also envious of Asarhia. Deeply so. Envy and love warred within her heart, yet the fear of returning to the kitchens always won the day. Take tonight. The girl had clearly not wanted to tell him that her mistress’s chamber, bedclothes, and hair were in disarray; that Asarhia’s skin was hot, yet the sweat that lay upon it was as cold as water wept from ice. Yet Katia had told all that and more. Her mistress wasn’t the one who could save her from a life in the kitchens. Iss made sure the girl knew that.

  As for the other matter—the possibility that the girl had told Asarhia what she had overhead the other day in the Red Forge—well, that really didn’t matter at all. The Knife watched Asarhia day and night, even when she left her chambers and didn’t realize she was being watched. Iss’ steps slowed for just a moment. He did not relish taking such measures against his almost-daughter. Asarhia was normally such a sweet and trusting girl, yet she was beginning to get frightened. And Iss knew from experience that people who were frightened did foolish things.

  Feeling a gust of warmer air puff against his cheeks, Iss made his final adjustment of the lamp. The first chamber couldn’t be much farther down now. The Inverted Spire had only three chambers, all lying close to or just above apex. By the time one descended to the first of them, the spire had narrowed to the width of a bullpen. The second chamber was smaller still, and the final chamber was barely the size of a well shaft. Cupped within a seam of black rock, its base ended in a needlepoint of steel.

  Not for the first time, Penthero Iss found himself wishing the stone lamp could better light his way. The curve of the stairs was more pronounced lower down and the gradient sharper. Stepping from one worn and sloping step to another was a danger of the worst kind. Iss knew he could use sorcery to draw forth light, yet he also knew it wasn’t a cost he cared to pay. The speck of frozen urine currently thawing against his thigh was reminder enough of that. He was not a man of great ability, like some. He had enough. Only enough. His strengths lay elsewhere . . . as in his ability to choose men.

  Marafice Eye was one of his chosen. The Protector General of the Rive Watch was dangerous; he could inspire loyalty in fighting men. Iss had realized this early on, in the days when Marafice Eye was a lowly brother-in-the-watch, with a new-made sword at his thigh and the muck of Hoargate still caked upon his boots. Iss had been protector general then, always on the watch for rivals. Another man might have made it his business to destroy Marafice Eye, slay him before he grew into a threat. Iss had made it his business to draw him close. He saw a man who could be useful to him, one who had qualities of dominance and brutality he lacked. When the time came to storm the fortress and overthrow the aging and sickly Borhis Horgo, it had been Marafice Eye who had commanded the Rive Watch; Marafice Eye who’d slain a dozen grangelords and Forsworn on the Horn’s icy steps.

  It had been a bloody ten days. The Forsworn had been expelled from the city; and their walled keeps, which they called Shrine-holds, had been stormed and broken. When it was done, Penthero Iss, kinsman to lord of the Sundered Granges, had taken the title of surlord for himself. Marafice Eye has stood at his side, his protector general and Knife.

  Fifteen years later, and they were still surlord and Knife. Iss had little cause to regret his choice. With Marafice Eye at his back, keeping the Rive Watch loyal, his hands were free to deal with the grangelords.

  The great houses of Spire Vanis were a thorn in his side, braying constantly for land and titles and gold. Thirteen years ago a bargain had been struck, and the grangelords never let Iss forget it. “You promised us the chance to win land and glory,” the Whitehog had said just six days ago in Iss’ private chamber. “That’s the only reason why you’re surlord today. Forget that, and we just might forget that we spoke oaths in the Blackvault to protect you.”

  Iss had almost smiled as the Whitehog spoke. Threats from seventeen-year-old boys had that effect on him. Still, he had seen enough to realize that the young and ambitious grangeling who stood before him, wearing the white and gold of Hews and carrying a five-foot greatsword on his back, might one day make a bid for his place. The boy had already taken to calling himself the Whitehog, in honor of his great-grandfather who had led the Rive Watch to victory at High Rood. It didn’t take a seer to know that he held similar dreams of glory for himself.

  Well, Iss thought, peering into the darkness below, perhaps the Whitehog might get the chance to lead a force sooner than he thinks. Perhaps he just might find a clansman’s ax thrust into his porcine heart.

  Spying the top of the first stone ceiling beneath him, Iss allowed himself to relax a little. Now if he fell, he wouldn’t break his neck.

  The ceiling stretched across the Inverted Spire like a great stone valve across a pipe. Over the centuries debris had collected on the topside, shaken down from the walls above. Rock fragments, facing tiles, and odd pieces of masonry lay in disjointed heaps amid the yellowing bones of rats, pigeons, and bats that had gained entry to the spire by means Iss couldn’t guess. Human bones were down there, too. Two rib cages could clearly be seen peeking through mounds of rock dust like spiders hiding in sand. Iss had made it his business to search once, yet he’d only ever found one skull.

  Bits of food, strips of netting, and a few other scraps had fallen from the Surlord’s own hands. Last summer during Almsfest, he had brought a basket of soft strawberries with him, only to find they had slipped from his hand halfway through the descent. They were still there now, spread across the stonework like spattered blood. Red and glistening and smelling like perfume on a filthy whore, they were only just beginning to turn. This deep within the mountain’s core, things took years to decay.

  Ahead, the staircase ducked below the stone platform and into the chamber below. Iss minded his head. The
air stilled immediately, no longer subject to the chasm’s winds. Increased warmth came with the calm. The flame within the stone lamp shivered and darted, lighting a circular chamber with polished walls. Dog hooks and metal rings had been hammered into the stone. Chains ran through a series of loops and then ended abruptly, hacked off in midlink. If one looked closely, one could see scraps of brown fabric caught within the chains. Untanned leather, it might be, yet if Iss had to put money on it he’d guess human skin.

  Descending on a curving slant along the perimeter of the chamber, he barely spared a passing glance for the chamber’s contents. Soon, very soon, he would have Caydis remove the wire cage and the weightstone and the cracked and greasy wheel. Pretty things would be brought in their place: plump cushions, silkwood chests, and tapestries woven with blue and gold thread. Things that would please a girl.

  Descending into the apex chamber, Iss shrugged away all thoughts but those he needed. The air down here was as thick and heavy as still water at the bottom of a lake. No matter how many times he neared the final chamber, the sudden change always took him by surprise. His lungs had difficulty expelling air, and deep within his ears two sharp points of pain pushed inward. The Surlord swallowed hard, prayed that his ears wouldn’t pick this time to bleed.

  The stone facing here was thicker than anywhere else in the Spire. Pressure-formed granite, whorly and knotted like the bark of a tree, defied breaking by all but the most violent convulsions of Mount Slain. Flecks of bastard’s gold shone within the stone.

  Unhooking the packs containing honey and yellowbeans from his belt, Iss took the final seventeen steps and descended into the apex chamber. The Bound One waited there: hungry, broken, desperate for light, perfectly insulated from the outside world by the structure and peculiar properties of the Inverted Spire.

  Iss took out his silver tweezers and uncovered the caul flies. He would draw power beyond his means tonight.

  SEVEN

  The Great Hearth

  Effie, you know what you said the other day when Drey and I came home, when we first met you outside the roundhouse?” Raif waited until his sister nodded. “Remember what you said?”

  “Yes. I said I knew you and Drey would come back.” Effie Sevrance regarded her older brother with serious blue eyes. “I tried to tell the others, but no one would listen.”

  Raif shifted his weight from one leg to another. He was crouching in the shadow of the clan guidestone, in the dark and smoke-filled structure of the guidehouse. A full twelve tapers were lit, but the guidestone soaked up light and heat like a black body of trees at the center of a snowmelt. The stone’s granite surface was rough and unfinished, and only jagged edges shone. Sometimes the chiseled edges looked like ears, sometimes like chips of bone and teeth. Veins of graphite formed bruises around the newer chisel marks, forcing beads of greasy ink to the surface. No guidestone liked to be cut.

  No matter what time of day he came to the guidehouse, Raif always thought it felt like night. Built adjacent to the roundhouse, the guidehouse was not as well protected or insulated from the cold. Some clans kept their guidestones inside the main building, fearing that raiding clans might make off with them under cover of darkness. Looking up at the massive slab of folded granite that was the size of a one-room cottage, Raif couldn’t see how any but a band of giants equipped with rollers, pulleys, and levers could ever hope to steal it away within the space of a single night. And Blackhail’s stone was only half the size of some.

  Still, thirty-six years earlier Clan Bludd had managed to steal Dhoone’s guidestone, forcing the mightiest of the clans to send their guide south to the stonefields of Trance Vor in search of a replacement. Raif had heard many of his own clansmen speak about the incident, talking in the hushed voices they normally used around bloodshed. All of them held that Clan Dhoone had never been the same since.

  Clan Bludd had broken the Dhoonestone down into rocks and built an outhouse from it. The entire operation—the raid, the movement of the stone, and its subsequent breaking and rebuilding—had been planned by the Dog Lord, Vaylo Bludd. A yearman at the time, Vaylo Bludd had been a bastard son of the clan chief, Gullit Bludd. Within that same year Vaylo killed his two half-brothers, married his half-sister, and usurped his father’s place. To this day it was said that Vaylo Bludd made it his business to use the outhouse every night before he slept.

  Raif frowned. Sometimes he didn’t know what to make of all the stories surrounding the Dog Lord. Mace Blackhail came up with new ones by the day.

  Feeling a hot sting of anger in his chest, Raif pushed aside all thoughts of Mace Blackhail. Now wasn’t the time for them. Effie was sitting cross-legged before him, her pale face made old by shadows, her lovely auburn hair tangled, her skirt damp from sitting beneath the stone bench where he had found her. In her hands and littered across her lap were her collection of rocks and stones. She played with them while she waited for him to speak, moving one piece and then another in sequence. For some reason Raif found himself wishing he could brush away the entire collection.

  “What made you so sure Drey and I would come back, Effie?” he asked softly. “Did you feel something bad”—Raif jabbed his stomach—“here, inside?”

  Effie thought about the question. She pushed out her bottom lip, fixed her gaze in midair, then slowly shook her head. “No, Raif.”

  Raif looked at Effie a long moment, then breathed a sigh of relief. Effie hadn’t felt anything similar to the sensation he’d experienced the day of the raid. That was good. One outsider in the family was enough. Effie’s words had been on Raif’s mind for days. He had been meaning to talk to her about them ever since he’d returned from the badlands, but the first night hadn’t been a good time, as the clan wanted nothing more than to hear the story of what he and Drey had done to the bodies of their kin. The day after was given over to mourning. Inigar Stoop had split a heart-size chunk from the guidestone, cracked it into twelve pieces—one for each man who had died at the camp—and then laid them upon the earth in place of bodies.

  It had gone hard on everyone. When Corbie Meese and Shor Gormalin had sung deathsongs in their fine low voices, and all the women who had lost husbands, including Merritt Ganlow and Raina Blackhail, cut widow’s weals around their wrists, Raif had not been able to think of anyone except Tem. The only time the silence was broken that night was by Mace Blackhail swearing vengeance against Clan Bludd.

  The following day Raif had looked for Effie but found her only when it was too late for anything except sleep. Now, finally, he had her here. Shor Gormalin had told him how he often saw Effie slipping out to play in the guidehouse when it wasn’t in use. And sure enough Effie had been here, sitting in almost-darkness, hiding beneath the bench where Inigar Stoop normally sat grinding stone, playing with her bits of rock.

  Raif looked at Effie. She had lost a shocking amount of weight while he and Drey were away. Her eyes were huge and dark, blue as their mother’s had been before her. Such a serious little girl, she never smiled, never played with other children. It was easy to forget she was only eight years old. Raif held out his arms. “Come here and give your old brother a hug.”

  Effie thought a moment. “You won’t be wanting to kiss me, will you?”

  It was a serious question, and Raif treated it as such. He thought a moment. “No. Just a hug will do.”

  “Very well.” With great care Effie laid her collection of rocks on the packed earth floor, then shuffled over to Raif. “No kiss, mind,” she repeated as she let herself be hugged.

  Raif grinned as he held her in his arms. Effie had reached the age when she didn’t care to be kissed by any men, even her brothers. Still, she made no move to pull away from him and nestled close to his chest, resting her head on his shoulder. “Da will never come back,” she said. “I knew that all along.”

  The grin slid from Raif’s face. Effie spoke with such quiet certainty it chilled him. Unconsciously he hugged her closer. As he did so, he felt something hard press against
his ribs. Gently he edged Effie back. “What have you got there?” he asked, nodding toward her neck.

  Effie looked down. “My lore.” Small hands fished inside the neck of her dress and pulled out the plum-size stone. It was gray, featureless, by far the plainest rock in Effie’s collection. A tiny hole had been bored close to the edge, and a strand of coarse twine had been threaded through. “Inigar made a hole for me last spring,” she said. “So I could wear it next to my skin like everyone else.”

  Raif took Effie’s lore from her hand. It wasn’t unusually heavy or cool to the touch. Just plain stone. Abruptly he let it go. Easing Effie from his lap, he stood. “I say we go and find ourselves some supper. Anwyn Bird has been boiling bacon all day, and unless someone stops her soon we’ll never get rid of the smell.”

  Effie began gathering her rock collection into a pile. The bones in her arms showed through her skin as she reached forward to scoop up a handful of pebbles. Raif hated to see them. He’d make sure she ate well from now on.

  With her rocks in her little rabbit pouch, Effie took Raif’s hand and together they left the guidehouse. It was good to get out of the smoke. The short tunnel that led through to the roundhouse was lit by a series of overhead slits. The sky outside was turning dark. Noon had passed less than two hours earlier, yet that never mattered much in winter. Within a month there would hardly be any daylight at all, and everyone who lived on the clanhold in crofts, strongwalls, farms, or woodsmen’s huts would come to the roundhouse to sit out winter’s worst. Numbers had already begun to swell, yet Raif didn’t think it had much to do with the season.