A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

It was the softest Raif had heard Drey speak since he had burst into the cell what seemed like a lifetime ago. Raif looked into his brother’s eyes one last time, then turned away.

  As he took his first step, he felt Drey’s hand capture his trailing fist. Something small and cool was pressed into his palm. Feeling it, Raif thought his heart would break.

  The swearstone. Drey had kept it whole and safe until today.

  Lowering his head against the storm, Raif headed west.

  FORTY-TWO

  Ganmiddich Pass

  Sarga Veys lay beneath the overhang formed by a shelf of compressed and buckled slate. The great glacier tongues that had once reached from the Breaking Grounds to the Bitter Hills had churned up entire quarries of bedrock from the earth as they withdrew. Even now, thousands of years later, the violence of the glacier’s retreat could still be observed in places. The northern slopes of the Bitter Hills, just below the Ganmiddich Pass, was one such place. A few lichen had sunk their root anchors into the hard glassy crust, yet no trees or shrubs of any kind had managed to take seed amid the rocks. The wind would have their heads off in an instant.

  Wrapped in blankets spun of the softest goat’s hair, Veys endured the wind now. Hood had wedged his strong, fleshy body behind Veys’ back, claiming the deepest refuge—the crease directly beneath the overhang—for himself. Veys was distressed by the man’s nearness, repulsed by his own physical reaction to the warm, respiring body next to his.

  It did not occur to him to move. Here, lying beneath a broken plate of slate, feigning sleep in the face of a storm, he could watch both Marafice Eye and Asarhia March closely.

  After taking his leave of the Dog Lord yesterday evening, Marafice Eye had driven his party of eleven through the night. A spare pony had been purchased in Ille Glaive to carry Asarhia’s drugged body back to Spire Vanis, yet the Knife had chosen to ride with the girl himself. He was determined to make the best time that he could. “Put the stench of clannish inbreeding behind me.” Veys was inclined to agree with him.

  A storm thundering down from the north had stopped their journey two leagues short of the pass. At first the Knife had tried to ride with it, declaring that no clannish storm could slow a brother-in-the-watch, yet when a hellish gust of wind had ripped the saddlebags from his horse’s rump, he’d had little choice but to eat his words and call a halt.

  Camp had been made in the deep rocky draw between two opposing ledges of slate. Veys supposed it was the best place to be found under the circumstances and had wasted no time staking out his own claim beneath the narrowest and least desirable ledge. He had assumed that no one would be willing to share space with him, yet Hood had found it amusing to force himself into the dark airless cavity at his back. “As long as I’m behind him and he’s not behind me, I reckon I’ll be safe.” Much laughter had followed Hood’s declaration, and Veys had felt his face heat in the darkness. Thoughts of revenge had followed him to sleep.

  Now it was dawn, and a red and weary sun was rising in the east, and the sept that had found Hood so amusing the night before was stirring with the increase in light. Their leather cloaks were poor cover for a storm, and such lambskins that had been hastily purchased in Ille Glaive were wet and stinking. One sworn brother, a brawny giant with a slow eye, was melting a cake of elk lard in a tin cup. The smell nauseated Veys.

  Marafice Eye was awake. He had relieved himself some distance from the campground and had now returned to his place by the wool-and-alcohol fueled fire. He poked the fire with a stick for a while, managing to coax some real heat from the flames, before turning his attention to Asarhia March. The girl lay on the bedroll next to his, covered by sheepskins and cloaks. Something unpleasant happened to Marafice Eye’s face as he beheld her, and Veys thought it likely that he was considering the men he’d lost by the Spill. The Knife was strange like that. My men, he called his brothers-in-the-watch. Last night when the wind had dragged the saddlebags from his warhorse, two red swords had clattered onto the slate. Veys knew what they were in an instant: Crosshead’s and Malharic’s swords. The Knife meant to carry them back to the forge, heat them in that great black furnace, and return their steel to the Watch. As if that could do Crosshead and Malharic any good.

  Veys snorted softly as he watched Asarhia March’s face for signs of waking. The poppy blood the girl had been given last night in the Ganmiddich roundhouse was a strong agent of sleep. Veys had distilled it himself, turning liquid that was normally thinner than water into something that poured as slowly as cream. It was more potent than the Dog Lord knew, a fact that Veys congratulated himself on later when he found his saddlebags had been rifled and his supply of henbane seeds, so carefully concealed within the handle of his cane-and-leather horsewhip, gone.

  The Dog Lord had thought to protect the girl on her journey home.

  Veys smiled, allowing icy drops of rain to tap against his teeth. The small quantity of poppy blood he had on him—barely enough liquid to sauce a lamb chop—was more than enough to render Asarhia March senseless all the way to the obsidian deserts of the Far South.

  The smile on Veys’ face shrank as he noticed Asarhia March’s gloved hand fall free of the sheepskin. Did the fingers contract?

  Marafice Eye was oblivious of the movement. He was busy working on the girl’s chest, whipping bodice strings through eyelets and pushing back the collar of her dress. His mouth was pulled tight like a sphincter muscle. The sworn brother heating the elk cake turned to watch.

  Veys reached down beneath his blankets, questing for the vial of poppy blood. Even as his physical self was bent on the task, he probed out toward Asarhia with his mind. If she was waking, he needed to know. Normally a girl her age and size could be expected to sleep until noon on the dose of poppy blood she’d been given. Yet the more Veys learned of the Surlord’s almost-daughter, the more he realized there was little normal about her.

  Cold air buffeted his thoughts as he pushed his mind against her skin. Quickly in and quickly out, he cautioned himself, fear rising within his spine like cold water. A gasp exploded from his lips as he entered Asarhia’s body and ran with her blood. Her chest cavity was riddled with opposing forces. Hard strands of sorcery were coiled about her organs like snakes made of glass. Wards, Veys realized, subtle ones cast by a master. Pushing from the outside in, they exerted control over her liver, lungs, and heart.

  Yet something was pushing the other way.

  Veys perceived something . . . a soft, malleable force, shining dully like the skin that formed over cooling magma.

  Pure darkness.

  Externally, Veys did not move. Not one fiber on the goat’s-hair blanket shivered as he withdrew his insubstance from the body of Asarhia March. Slowly he went, like a servant backing out of a throne room. As he slipped the last tendrils of self through the upper reaches of her skin, the force that pressed from the inside out raised a finger of darkness toward him.

  Veys did not recoil. Reverence and fear tightened his chest. Raw power, clean of emotion, filled him with the complete opposite of light. His mouth watered. The tendons supporting his scrotum ached with sweet pain. Here at last was something worthy of Sarga Veys.

  Too soon the connection was gone. Veys’ neck strained forward, trying to hold on to the last filament of power for as long as he could. Yet even as he did so, he was aware of something cold dripping through his fingers. Rain, he thought, annoyed at such an earthly intrusion at that moment. He wanted the power back.

  It was gone, though, the connection broken, and Veys had no choice but to return to his flesh. Pain tugged at his mind as he settled himself back into his cage of bones, and his gaze was drawn to his hand, where a streaky pink substance, part blood of the poppy and part blood of Sarga Veys, dribbled along his wrist. Spikes of glass were embedded in the meat of his palm. Veys hissed. The vial had broken!

  Breathless from his contact with darkness and irritated by the potential loss of such a crucial drug, Veys barely noticed what was happening at the cent
er of the campground. More sworn brothers had gathered around Asarhia March and the Knife. One man was laughing in a hard self-conscious way, yet the others were uncharacteristically silent. Veys hardly cared. Turning his arm slowly, he let the pink emulsion roll around his wrists like honey around a jar. As long as it didn’t drip into the snow or smear on his clothes or blanket, it could be saved. Once it had dried sufficiently he could scrape it off, store it like whore’s rouge between two squares of waxed paper.

  Veys was content to wait. The revelation of darkness filled his thoughts. So much power . . .

  For the taking.

  Hood shifted at Veys’ back, still fast asleep and snoring softly. Sarga Veys edged minutely away.

  The darkness within Asarhia March explained many things: why Penthero Iss had been so desperate to find her, why he had sent the Protector General of the Rive Watch to bring her back, and why he had isolated the girl from the sharp eyes and nails of the Spire Vanis court. The girl was dangerous . . . and powerful in ways Veys could hardly comprehend. Whoever controlled her could have that power for himself.

  Veys turned his arm, allowing the last pink droplet to run flat, as he recalled the last time he and his master had spoken. The force with which Iss had taken control of his body had left Veys feeling dirty. Raped. The memory of the domination made the sweet ache in Veys’ groin turn to something bitter and wanting. He glanced in the direction of Asarhia March. Iss already had one special access to power. Why should he have two?

  “Strip her.”

  Veys’ heart chilled as he heard Marafice Eye’s spoken command. He looked up but could no longer see Asarhia March due to the crowd of sworn brothers that surrounded her. Marafice Eye stood in the center of the black-and-red coven, his face all shadows and hard lines.

  “She killed our brothers-in-the-watch,” he murmured. “Iss wants her alive, and that’s well and good, but I know one way to destroy a life without actually taking it.”

  A taut murmur of agreement united the sept. Two brothers pushed toward the girl, cheeks sucked against their teeth, eyes glinting with wind tears, hands already forming the shapes needed to hold her down.

  “No!” Veys screamed, scrambling to his feet. He had a vision of Asarhia March waking and blasting them all to hell. The wards that shored up her body were nothing compared to that . . . thing that lived within her. If Marafice Eye tried to harm her in any way, there was no telling what she would do. “Stop! She’ll kill us all.”

  Marafice Eye and his sept turned to look at him. For one moment Veys saw himself through their eyes: a narrow-shouldered figure dressed in cleric’s white, with fine eyes and fine hands, clutching a blanket to his chest like a baby. Veys stood tall, let the goat blanket drop to the ground.

  The Knife said something to his men. All laughed quickly. The two sworn brothers who were working on the girl straightened their bent backs. The Knife touched both men on their shoulders in turn, encouraging them to carry on. Veys caught a fleeting glimpse of the girl’s body, saw pale skin peeking through wool. Raindrops fell upon her closed eyelids, gray and frothy like spit.

  Marafice Eye said, “This does not concern you, Halfman. You are not one of us. If the manner of such things offends you, turn your back.”

  Blood colored Veys’ cheeks. “Fool! Haven’t you taken notice of anything I have said? The girl is dangerous. Sorcery—”

  “Hood.”

  One word spoken by the Knife was enough to waken the eight-fingered man. Veys heard footsteps crunch wet snow. He smelled Hood’s ripe breath at his back.

  “Take him in hand. Mind he sees nothing that his mam wouldn’t be glad to show him.”

  Hood slapped Veys’ shoulder blade with something akin to affection. “Looks like you and me will be sitting out the storm, Halfman.” Then, to Marafice Eye, “Save me a portion of the girl.”

  The Knife nodded. A command was spoken, and the sept turned back to their business. Marafice Eye stood and watched as Hood led Veys back to the overhang.

  “The drugs have worn off,” Veys cried, making a feeble attempt to break away from Hood’s three-fingered grip. “She’ll kill us all!”

  “Hush him.” Marafice Eye peeled off his black leather gloves as he spoke.

  Hood punched Veys in the spine. “You heard the Knife, Halfman. No whining.”

  Veys tucked himself back into the space where he had slept. Pain from Hood’s blow made his eyes water, yet pride kept him from crying out. Hood stood directly in front of him, his fleshy drinkingman’s body blocking the view.

  The wind carried the metallic snap of a belt buckle. Nervous laughter followed, then silence. Veys felt the hairs on his arm rise one by one. Through the space between Hood’s legs, he watched as Marafice Eye walked a short distance from the group, found himself a section of slate to lean against, then settled down to watch the show. Of course, Veys thought, the Knife is doing this just for his men. He won’t take part himself. Everyone knows he prefers to keep his own whoring private. Veys did not know why.

  All thoughts except those concerned with self-protection left Sarga Veys as the first man fell upon the girl. The wind pattern changed. Gusts began swirling round and round in the space between the ledges . . . and then suddenly there was no wind at all.

  Raif!

  Veys heard the girl’s cry plainly, but not in the way a man normally heard sound. The cry passed through his skin, not his eardrums, making his flesh pucker and turn cold. Hood shifted position, and Veys saw the sept standing tense, eyes focused hard upon the girl. No man among them had heard her cry.

  Stop! Veys wanted to shout. Can’t you see what is happening? Can’t you feel it?

  The stench of metal filled the air. Frost glittered on the surrounding slopes like a thousand winking eyes as the first brother fell upon the girl. Veys felt the first push of her power; it was nothing, a mere nudge as she struggled to wake. Yet it was enough to turn the breath in his lungs to ice.

  Quietly, discreetly, he began work upon a drawing of his own. He had caught a glimpse of the darkness that was inside her, and although it fascinated and attracted him, he knew he would be a fool not to fear it. Slowly, over the course of many seconds, he drew small shavings of power to him. He could not stand against her, that much was clear, so he concentrated upon the only thing that mattered: Saving Sarga Veys’ neck.

  He knew the instant she became fully awake. A quarter second of pure quiet followed as she opened her eyes and gazed into the face of the man who knelt above her.

  Terror threatened to crush Veys then. Sorcery had been his sole advantage for as long as he could remember, the one thing he held over every man, woman, and child he had ever met. Even Penthero Iss, magic user and Surlord of Spire Vanis, could not better Sarga Veys when it came to drawing power. It was the source of his arrogance and his pride. No matter what humiliations Marafice Eye and his like heaped upon him, Veys could always console himself with the thought that when the time came for out-and-out conflict, the advantage would be his. A man could not fight when his corneas were snapped from his eyes like badges from his chest. He could not focus his mind on winning when the air froze in his lungs like a ghost made of ice.

  Now, though, sensing the terrible pull that Asarhia March created, the way the wind, the air, even the light itself, seemed to bend toward her person, Veys knew that his one advantage was gone.

  There was no fighting the darkness inside her.

  He thought of calling out one last time, warning the sept to take cover or run, but he was quick to remember their spiteful laughter, and in the end he saved his strength for himself.

  “Let me go!” the girl cried, her voice high and panicky.

  Veys saw pale fists pounding the sworn brother’s chest, heard fabric rip, then a man’s voice, low and distracted, murmur, “Shut up, bitch.”

  It was the last sound the man ever made. Veys had no words for what happened next. Panic and terror reduced him to a cowering child. Light and air split, tearing open the fabr
ic of the world. Darkness of an alien kind bled through the rents, smelling sweet and cold and wholly corrupt, rippling like black oil. A mushrooming band of air blasted into the sept, sending bodies crashing into walls of slate.

  Horses squealed and thrashed, bucking their hindquarters and throwing their heads from side to side. Men screamed and screamed . . . and then fell silent. A cloud of churned snow rose high into the sky, where the storm dogs tore it to shreds.

  Veys thought he was prepared, but he wasn’t. Hood’s body slammed into his, cracking his ribs like dry sticks. All breath left him, and the clever little drawing he had devised to save himself came out half formed, ill timed, and without force. It was barely enough to shield his brain and his heart. His mouth and nose filled with rushing snow. He tried to keep his eyes open to see what would enter through the rents the girl’s power had torn open, but ice crystals scoured his violet retinas, and in the end his eyelids were forced shut.

  The force of the blast wedged him into the rear of the overhang, Hood’s body pinning him in place. Fear, so complete it was like a wholly new emotion, robbed all moisture from his throat

  This was what he wanted. This.

  His eardrums popped as air that had been moving outward began to contract. A breeze exactly the same temperature as body heat ruffled his hair, then his clothes, then the hair and clothes of Hood.

  She’s pulling it back.

  Something howled, high and terrible, almost beyond hearing. Veys knew then that the creature issuing it came not from this world. No animal or beast he had ever heard of made a sound that could stop a man’s heart.

  Then everything ceased.

  Silence followed. The snow that had been churned up in a great white cloud fell again, gently, floating to earth as if for the first time. Wind picked up, pushing here and there, unsure of which way to blow. Veys stole a breath. His rib cage was on fire, but he dared not move to relieve the pain. Hood’s thigh was crushing his foot, and ice crystals were working their way down his throat. Still he did nothing but open his eyes.