by J. V. Jones
When he fell in by her side, she offered him the blanket that covered her shoulders, yet he shook his head. In silence he led her north from the river. The moon rose higher as they climbed the bank, forming pools of blue light upon the snow.
“Do you know the area around here?” she asked after a while. Raif shook his head. “Ganmiddich is a border clan, sworn to Dhoone. Blackhail has little use for it.”
Ash thought back to the black smoke pouring from the tower. “Until now?”
“Until now.”
It was the end of the conversation. Raif led them across a field of eroded slate, lately grown over by tufts of urine-colored bladdergrass and dog lichen. Snow cover was light, as the wind dried the top layers to powder and then blew them south to the Bitter Hills. Ice smoke boiled off the fields, swirling around the horses’ cannons as they climbed to the high ground above the river. When they reached the top of the bluff, Ash spotted a farmhouse and half a dozen farm buildings scattered in the valley below. The farm’s walls had been cut from the same green riverstone as the Ganmiddich roundhouse, and its roof was blue gray slate. Raif guided the horse toward it, crossing a series of tarred fences erected to contain sheep.
“Won’t someone be living here?” Ash whispered.
“No. Blackhail would have cleared it first, before they took the roundhouse.”
“Why? What threat is a farmer to an invading force?”
“When one clan takes another, it takes it wholly.”
“What about the people who lived here, the clansfolk?”
Raif shrugged. “Dead. Captured. Fled to Bannen or Croser.”
“What becomes of their livestock?”
“It’s lost either way. If a farmer is killed or captured, his animals are taken. If he’s lucky enough to escape, then most of those animals will go in Refuge Purse to the clan who takes him in.”
Ash frowned. “I thought Croser was a sister clan to Ganmiddich? Wouldn’t they take Ganmiddich clansmen in out of a sense of honor?”
Raif’s eyes darkened at the word honor. “It’s war. All clans must do what they must do.”
The words reminded Ash that she and Raif came from different worlds. He was a clansman, grown in the wind-stripped spaces of the clanholds, brought up to fear nine gods who lived in stone and gloried in war. Ash frowned. Her god lived in thin air and spoke of peace—not that anyone in the Mountain Cities ever heard him. She glanced at Raif. His gods meant something to him. Hers meant almost nothing at all. She thought for a moment, then said, “If you need to stay and fight for your clan, I will not stop you.”
“I have no clan.”
Ash shivered at the tone of his voice. She waited, but he said no more.
The farm outbuildings consisted of a series of stone sheds and paddocks connected by walled sheep runs sunk partly underground. The main building was missing its door, and many of the shutters had been left to bang loose in the wind. As they approached the entrance, Raif stopped to pry a broken roof tile from the frozen mud. Ash tried not to look at the tattered and bloody skin on his hands, the nail turned black, the white edges of bone poking through knuckles that looked half-skinned. Hefting the slate against his chest, he bade her wait outside while he checked the building for armed men.
As the minutes passed Ash felt herself growing colder. The night was dark now, thin in substance like cold, dry nights always were. Frozen weeds crunched beneath her boots as she stamped her feet.
So cold tonight, so cold. Warm us, mistressss, pretty mistressss. Reach for us. We’re close now. We smell you, smell of warmth and blood and light . . .
“Ash! Ash!”
Rough hands shook her awake. She was no longer standing by the mule-eared horse, but in the timber-framed doorway of the farmhouse. Raif stood before her, his lips tight as stretched wire, his arms supporting her weight.
“How long?”
“Seconds.”
Ash looked away. She felt as sick as if she’d taken a blow to the head. Heritas Cant’s wards were gone. Whatever she’d done at the campground had blasted them clean away. Nothing was standing between her and the Blind.
“Let’s go inside.” Raif’s voice was quiet, his hand on her arm firm. “There’s no one here. We’ll be safe tonight.”
Ash let herself be guided into the dark, strong-smelling interior of the farmhouse. Raif made her sit as he broke down a chair with his booted feet then tore a mangy sheepskin rug into strips to light a fire. The force of his actions made her flinch. She watched as he searched the black mouth of the hearth, looking for something to strike for sparks. He found an old iron pot with a rough base and built a mound of wool tufts and fabric scraps around it, then struck the base hard with a wedge of slate.
It took a lot of coaxing and blowing to turn the quick flashes of light into flames. Ash concentrated on Raif’s actions, afraid that if she let her mind wander in the darkness, the voices would take her to a place she did not want to go. The muscles in her arms ached as she kept them pressed tightly against her sides.
When the fire finally took and yellow-and-white flames spilled over the broken chair spindles, releasing smoke that smelled of pines, Raif went outside to search for food. Ash did not move for a long time after he’d gone. She feared to step away from the flames. The farmhouse kitchen was a broken shell: charred timbers here, cracked masonry there. Shadows danced on walls black with soot. Ash shivered. She missed Angus . . . and Snowshoe and Moose. Where were they now? Did the Dog Lord still hold them, or had Blackhail claimed them for its own?
She closed her eyes for a moment, then set herself to working on her dress. The bodice was ripped and dirty, the hem stiff with ice. She tugged on the torn bits of fabric, tying knots and unraveling threads from the blanket to bind the bodice closed. She didn’t want to have to look at her breasts for a very long time . . . not until the bruises had healed. The skirt was easier to deal with; she simply stripped it off and beat it against the wall.
Raif returned as she was feeding the fire with the last scraps of wood. He carried with him a pan packed with powdered snow, a long-leafed chicory plant with its roots still attached, and an animal carcass that was warm but not bleeding. The animal was the size of a small dog, with sharp, opaque claws, a fox’s snout, and rich black-and-gold fur. At first Ash couldn’t work out how Raif had killed it, as she knew he had no weapon. Then she saw the fist-size clot of blood directly above the creature’s heart. Raif’s eyes met hers. Ash tried to hold his gaze, but in the end she looked away.
Even without a bow he can do it, she thought. Even with a jagged chunk of slate.
Raif made short work of skinning and dressing the carcass. He told her the creature was called a fisher and its pelt was highly valued by Dhoonesmen, “for the Dhoone Kings wore cloaks of fine-spun wool, dyed as blue as thistles, with collars of fisher fur.” Ash liked listening to Raif speak and was infinitely glad he didn’t ask for her help in preparing the carcass for roasting. Somehow, with only a thin piece of slate, he managed to open and drain the thing, remove the organ tree, and quarter the bones. The blood he saved for gravy.
While the meat was browning on the tin platter, he stripped leaves from the chicory plant and rolled them in his fists until they were broken and leaking sap. That done, he emptied the leaves into the pot of melting snow and stirred the contents until the liquid turned green. After a few minutes he emptied the cooked blood and meat juices into the pot. The fat sizzled and spat as it hit the water, belching out steam that smelled of roasted meat and bitter licorice.
Ash’s mouth began to water. “You’re used to cooking, aren’t you.”
Raif shrugged. “Camping. Cleaning kills. In the clanholds, before a boy takes his first yearman’s oath, he’s pretty much at the mercy of any sworn clansman. Clansmen hunt, bring the kills to camp, then leave the dressing and roasting to those without oaths. It’s the way it’s always been. Men who have sworn to die for their clan deserve respect.”
Ash would have liked to ask Rai
f if he had spoken a yearman’s oath, yet something about his movements as he spoke warned her away from the subject. Instead she said, “Do you know what’s happened to Angus?”
Raif stiffened. A moment passed before his words came. “He may have been captured by Blackhail; I can’t know for sure. Even if Bludd still holds him, he should be safe. He’s more valuable alive than dead.”
Ash wanted to believe him. “What do we do now?”
“We head west at first light.”
“But we can’t leave tomorrow,” Ash cried. “What about Angus? And you. You’re in no state to travel. Look at your hands, your face . . .”
Raif started shaking his head before Ash had finished speaking. “There’s no time to wet-nurse wounds or look for Angus. Cant’s wardings are gone. The creatures in the Blind have already begun calling you, and if Cant is to be believed, then that’s not the worst of your troubles. He said you would die, remember? He said that it costs you to fight them. They’ve already taken you once today. What if they take you tonight or the next night or the night after that? How long will it be before I can’t pull you back?”
Ash could find no words to fight with. He was right, yet she didn’t want him to be. She wanted to wait, at least a day, just one day, to sit and think and put the horror of the campground behind her. Unconsciously she ran a hand down the front of her dress. “What about clothing? Supplies? We’ve got a horse, but precious little else.”
Raif gestured toward the fisher pelt hanging high above the fire, the raw face of its flesh side facing the flames. “It should be dry enough to use tomorrow. It’ll make a good pair of mitts or a collar once I’ve scraped the fat. Come first light I’ll look around, see what I can find. There’s bound to be something here we can use.”
“And food?”
Raif showed a cold smile. “I should be able to see to that.”
Ash made her face show no reaction. For a while the only sound was the snort of burning wood as it released small pockets of moisture to the flames. Raif speared the roasting heart with a stick, turned it so the side with all the veins showed.
“What happened today at dawn?”
Ash looked up. “Why do you ask?”
“I felt something, after I left the tower. It was like the day my father died . . . only different. The river swelled and broke its shore ice, and I smelled metal, like when steel’s taken hot from a furnace.”
“You knew it was me?”
“Yes.” Raif’s eyes rose to meet hers. “If anyone hurt you, I will kill them.”
A chill took her. Anyone else, and those words would have meant nothing; but coming from Raif Sevrance they sounded like absolute truth. She thought carefully before speaking. “I think I was drugged. I don’t remember leaving the roundhouse. I remember feeling cold and a bit sick, and all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. And then I had all these dreams . . . and they all got mixed up. And then there were hands on me . . . and I thought it was part of the dream. Only it wasn’t.” Ash found some small piece of gravel on the floor to look at. “Then I panicked. There were all these men around me, and I just wanted them to go away . . . and I got angrier and angrier . . .” She shook her head at the piece of gravel.
“What happened then?”
“Do you really need to know that? Do you really need to know what I saw?”
“I need to know if you reached.”
Ash swallowed. Suddenly the scent of roasting meat was enough to make her sick. When she spoke her voice was quiet. “I felt Cant’s wardings snap. And at that point, that one point, I didn’t care. I wanted those men gone. I wished them dead. I wasn’t thinking about the Blind. I don’t know if I reached or if I didn’t; it happened so fast and my mind was on just one thing.” She paused, taking a quick moment to glance at Raif’s face. “Then I felt something spill out with the power. I heard a noise, high, like the sound of a knife drawn over glass. Something tore open . . . the air . . . I don’t know what. There were things waiting on the other side, Raif. Terrible things. They were men, but not men, with eyes that burned black and red and bodies that were all shadow. I saw them. I knew what they were.” She shivered. “And they do not fear me.”
Fat hissed as it dripped onto the flames, giving off fine dark smoke. Raif moved from his place near the fire, and a moment later Ash felt a warm arm wrap around her shoulders and a second encircle her waist. She heard Raif murmur, “Stone Gods help us,” and even though the clannish gods weren’t her gods, she repeated the words to herself.
Quickly, before she lost nerve, she told him the last of it, how she’d panicked and pulled back, how the dark fire in the creatures’ eyes had dimmed, and how they’d screamed and screamed as she’d sent them back to whatever hell they’d come from.
As she spoke, she felt the hairs on Raif’s neck lift away from his skin. She counted the seconds until he pulled away from her. She thought he would turn his back, cross to the fire, and busy himself with the cooked meat there. She did not expect him to stay and meet her eyes. But he did.
Incredibly, she saw he was smiling. The sort of gentle, crazy smile that came from shared troubles, from bad news heaped upon more bad news, and the unasked question, What next? His eyes were dark, but warm, too. And the fear was almost hidden. He took her hands in his, wrapping them carefully in his fists until he had covered all her flesh.
“Are you afraid of me yet?” she asked him.
“No. But I’m getting close.”
Their laughter was on the edge of desperation, yet no less for it. When it was done, Raif released Ash’s hands and stood. “You’re not alone in this, Ash March. Know that. We will make it to the Cavern of Black Ice, and we will bring an end to this nightmare. I swear that on the faces of nine gods.” Ash nodded. She watched as he made his way to the fire, took the stock of snowmelt, meat juices, and chicory from the flames, and set it to cool on the floor. Next he moved the tin platter containing the roasted fisher carcass and its edible organs from the heat and began to section it as best he could with his sharp piece of slate. For the first time Ash noticed the silver-capped tine at his waist. It was larger than the one he normally wore, the horn darker, the tip sword bashed and peeling. She had been present when Cluff Drybannock had torn Raif’s tine from his belt, yet now another hung in its place.
It meant something, yet Ash knew it wasn’t the time to ask questions.
It was time to eat, then sleep.
FORTY-FOUR
Something Lost
Effie Sevrance had misplaced her lore. She’d looked everywhere for it, all her secret places like the little dog cote, the space under the stairs in the great hall, and even in the strange-smelling wet cell where Longhead grew mushrooms and mold. She was certain that she’d had it yesterday when she awoke, as she clearly remembered pulling it from her neck and dropping the little gray stone in her fleece bag along with the rest of her collection. She was sure about that.
What she wasn’t sure about was what happened next. She remembered carrying the fleece bag with her most of the morning, could almost swear that she’d had it with her while she ate her blood pudding at noon. Trouble was, Anwyn Bird had kept her so busy all day, running around doing all those chores that needed doing with a full half of the sworn men away, and she’d been to so many places and done so many things, that everything had got mixed up in her head. Now, thinking about it, she couldn’t really be sure if she’d had blood pudding at supper, noonday, or dawn. Possibly she’d had it thrice. Certainly it had been cold and greasy and had to be chewed to death before it went down her throat.
Effie didn’t mind the chores at all . . . as long as they didn’t involve going outside. It was good to feel useful. Some things came easily to her, such as keeping tally of the oil and wood stores, divvying up eggs and milk quarts, and running messages word for word among Raina, Anwyn, and Orwin Shank. Sometimes whole hours went by where she forgot about her lore and all the bad things it showed her. It was a good thing to walk into a room where you
knew you had purpose, where people were waiting upon your message or your tally, and where they listened to what you had to say. There was less time to worry and think.
Just yesterday morning ancient, liver-spotted Gat Murdock had stopped her in the kitchen doorway and told her that she reminded him of her mother when she’d first married Da and come to live in the roundhouse. “Aye. You should’ve seen Meg Sevrance then,” the old swordsman had said. “As clever at figuring as any man, yet comely enough so you clean forgot it and thought about her dark eyes instead.”
Effie mouthed the speech to herself for the hundredth time. She did not want to forget it. Her mother had been good at figuring. Just like her.
“Effie! You wouldn’t be dallying on those steps now, would you?” Anwyn Bird’s voice rose up the staircase like the call of a rusty horn. Effie peered down, but the grand matron of the roundhouse was not in sight. Her graying yellow braids and barrel-shaped body were hidden by a block of bloodwood stangs. “As you know what happens to those who stop and daydream on the stairs.”
Effie thought for a moment. “They get trampled if there’s a fire.”
Anwyn Bird’s snort of indignance was enough to send roosting pigeons into flight. Effie sensed much shaking of the great yellow head. “You, my girl, are going to be a problem come the courting years. You don’t say but two words a day, and when you do, you come out with something that stops all talk stone dead.”
“Sorry, Anwyn.”
Some distance below Effie’s feet, air puffed from Anwyn’s lips. “Don’t sorry me, young lady. Sorry’s a word for faithless husbands and bad cooks.” More puffing followed. “Run along now and find Inigar Stoop. Tell him Orwin Shank’s called a meeting in the Great Hearth, and his council is needed.”
“Yes, Anwyn.” Effie started down the steps. She knew Anwyn wasn’t mad at her really, not in a special way. Anwyn was mad at most people most of the time; it was how she managed to get so much done. By the time Effie reached the final turn in the stairs, the roundhouse matron was already on her way back to the kitchen, her voice cracking orders to anyone unlucky enough to cross her path.
