A Sword From Red Ice (93 page)

They stepped to meet her: pack shadows armed with
two-handed swords. Starlight ran along the edges of their blades.
Breath fogged. Ash felt a muscle high in her right arm spasm as it
fought the weight of the rock.

Grayness merged with darkness, and as she moved
forward she crossed into Glor Rhakis. No-Man's-Land.

All was the same. The swordsmen came toward her,
stepping apart as they prepared to take her from both sides. The
stars burned blue. The fortress still stood. It was the edges that
were different, the margins, the shadows, the cracks in the walls.
They became charged with the energy of another world.

The ancient and evil presence was here, sliding
along the deeply black shadows cast by Fort Defeat's double walls.
Turning the huge millwheel of its awareness toward her, it murmured
an instruction.

Reach.

Ash dropped the rock. Swords came for her.
Weightless, her right hand drifted up. A breach existed in the
Blindwall, but it had never been big enough. They had always wanted
more.

Aid me, she commanded them.

As her right hand drew parallel with her left she
heard a word spoken in a dread and terrible voice.

"Daughter."

Mal Naysayer, Son of the Sull and chosen Far
Rider, rode through the fortress's main gate. His six-foot longsword
with the raven pommel was drawn and in motion. Galloping forward, he
swung it in a great arc and severed the first man's head. Hot blood
sprayed across Ash's belly and breasts. The head came bouncing toward
her and hit her shin. The eyes were blinking.

The Naysayer spun his huge blue stallion and
kicked it into motion. His teeth were bared and his eyes burned
colder than ice. Dropping the reins, he wrapped both hands around the
grip of his sword as he charged. The second man hesitated, torn
between standing his ground and defending himself, and running. The
hesitation cost him more than his head. Mal Naysayer's fearful blade
ripped trough the muscle and organs in his stomach, cleaving his body
in two. The pieces thudded dully as they fell into the snow.

Ash heard a noise beyond the wall; the drum of
hooves on stone. Lan was riding away. The Naysayer heard it too, for
his head tilted for a moment as he listened.

There was never any question that Mal would go
after him. She had a sense that it would not be the last either of
them saw of Lan Fallstar. For now, though, the coward could wait. The
Naysayer slid from his horse and unhooked his wolverine greatcloak.
He was breathing hard and she thought she saw tears sparkling in his
eyes. His sword was streaked with blood and stomach chyme and he laid
it on the ground before he approached.

"Daughter," he said, his voice rough as
he slipped the cloak around her naked and bloody body. "I have
come."

Ash fell against him. She was shivering intensely,
and her arms were burning with pain. The world of shadows had gone
now, dissolved like salt in water. What had happened just then, she
wondered. Had she reached?

Mal Naysayer picked her up with great gentleness
and carried her through the gate.

A Place of No Cloud

The night after they left the trappers' camp the
sky cleared and the temperature began to drop. The thaw had reversed
while Raif and Addie slept, and when they woke in the morning oozing
snow had been frozen into glasslike mounds. Addie took one look at
the sky and deemed it a "nosebleeder." All clouds had gone
and there were none on the horizon. Suddenly the north had turned to
ice.

"Pray the clouds don't come back," Addie
said, warming his hands around a steaming cup of tea. "If warm
air hits this freezing ground we'll be in for the devil of a storm."

"It's spring," Raif replied, knowing his
voice sounded strained yet forcing himself to speak anyway. It had
not been easy for him to talk to Addie last night and this morning.
"You'd think we'd be due some mild weather."

The cragsman frowned at him thoughtfully. "I'm
not sure spring's going to come, lad. Not this year."

They were quiet after that. Sitting on opposite
sides of the crackling and fragrant cedar fire, blankets pulled tight
across their shoulders, they supped on hot, spicy tea.

The remains of the young deer Raif had brought
down at sunset had frozen into pink chunks. He'd done a hasty job of
the butchering and had not skinned the carcass. Addie had helped, but
there was only so much you could do after dark. Neither of them had
expected the hard frost, and now most of the meat would have to be
either cached or discarded. The pieces were too large to carry and
could no longer be divided into smaller parts. They had the liver,
which Addie had sliced into squares before he went to sleep, and the
remains of the hind leg had been roasted with some of the
Trenchlanders' sharp and soapy-tasting herbs. Looking at the frozen
hunks of meat with the deer hide still attached Raif wondered if he
was any better than the bear trappers. Even the ravens wouldn't be
able to feed on it until it thawed.

"I'll put some of it in a wee bag and haul it
up the tree," Addie said, showing that he had been following
Raif's gaze. "But first we'd better check on those little
suckers on your back."

It was not a pleasant few minutes for either of
them. Addie had slept with the jar of leeches and had to travel with
them close to his body all day. The risk of freezing was too great.
Maybe a frozen leech could be revived, maybe it couldn't, but neither
of them were taking any chances. They were already down to twenty-one
and counting. Twenty after Addie rolled his fingers in the snow to
cool them, spoke the three-worded prayer, Gods help me, and stuck his
hand in the jar of black worms. He did not have Flawless' knack for
it and gripped the leech mid-belly, rather than below either of its
sucking heads, and that meant he had to move fast. Two sets of mouth
parts wanted a go at him. Raif could do nothing but pull his new
rawhide tunic around his shoulders and present his back to Addie
Gunn.

The cragsman's breaths were telling: short and wet
with disgust. "Keep still," he cautioned, though in truth
Raif had not been moving. "Sweet mother of gods."

When it was done the skin on Addie's face was
tinged green. "You're gonna need to get that whole mess seen
to," he said. "There's half a dozen wounds back there
leaking blood, skin's peeling, something's turned black." He
shuddered. "We'd better get a move on."

While Addie cached the meat—for no purpose,
it seemed, other than treating the slain deer with some respect;
neither of them expected to be back here again—Raif broke up
the camp.

They had made good time yesterday and were now
deep into the rolling cedar forests northwest of the Trenchlanders'
camp. Once Raif had brought down the deer, Addie had attempted to
locate some kind of meaningful clearing for setting camp, but had
been forced instead to call a halt in a fallen timber gap between the
trees. The ancient cedar that had toppled had provided partially
seasoned wood for the fire and they'd had good, hot flames for
roasting and tea-making. The embers were still firing as Raif covered
them with snow.

He wished Addie had kept his opinions to himself
about his back. With every movement he made he could feel the
wrongness; the tight skin where the plaster had been attached, the
bloating, the wounds. The teeth. Last night he'd slept on his back
and when he'd risen two bloated leeches had dropped onto the
blankets. They were slimy with his blood.

"Here," Addie said, startling Raif.
"Eat."

Raif took the frozen cube of liver and popped it
in his mouth. He sucked on it as they struck a path north through
cedars the size of watch towers. It didn't please him very much, but
he appreciated Addie's care. Blood for blood.

The rising sun was piercingly bright, illuminating
individual ice crystals floating in the air and bringing out the red
and purple tones that lay beneath the dark greens of the cedars. The
trees had shed their snow and now had frozen moats around the bases
of the trunks. If the temperature held the trees would be lost.
Sudden frosts after thaws could split pines clean in two.

Raif and Addie did not speak as they hiked up the
rise, and this suited Raif well enough. He had some thinking to do.
Woodpeckers were the only birds making noise in the forest and the
sound of them drilling tree bark sharpened and clipped his thoughts.

The Red Ice. The Valley of Cold Mists. Mish'al
Nij. The place where he was headed had many names. North, the
Trenchlander had said, seeming to think that was instruction enough.
Thomas Argola had been even less helpful. "The Lake of Red Ice
exists at the border of four worlds and to break it you must stand in
all four worlds at once." Raif had found the words so vague and
self-important that he had barely thought of them since. To him they
were just another of Argola's games.

Yet now he went over them again. Both the
outlander and the Trenchlander had mentioned borders. Flawless had
said the Red Ice lay on the border of Sull land and Bludd land. The
clanholds and the Sull: they were two separate worlds.

Could the Want be the third?

Raif ducked his head to avoid a low slung cedar
bow. Out of habit he glanced over at Addie, reassuring himself that
all was well with the little cragsman. Addie's gaze was focused on
the way ahead, reading the paths between the trees, searching out all
potential routes.

Perhaps there was a point where Bludd, the
Racklands and the Want met? Addie had said the Bludd borders were
uncertain this far northeast; and Raif himself had firsthand
knowledge of how intangible the margins of the Great Want could be.
Perhaps here it dipped south? That might explain why the lake was
difficult to find. If any part of it lay within the Want then it was
no wonder Bluddsmen could ride right past it. If they didn't there
was a chance they would never be seen again.

Feeling one of the leeches stir against his back,
Raif shivered and spat out the grizzly remains of the liver. He was
wearing two layers of Trenchlander skins beneath the Orrl cloak, and
he had tucked neither of them beneath his gear belt. That way when
the gorged leeches disengaged they'd end up falling onto the ground,
and not hanging around his waist. Like yesterday. It was possibly the
strangest piece of wisdom he'd ever learned.

Knowing he had a short tolerance for leech
thoughts, Raif turned his mind back to the Red Ice. If there was a
possibility that Thomas Argola's words were right, then there should
be a fourth border. Sull. Bludd. Want. What was the fourth? Was there
something he was missing? The Racklands stretched from the Breaking
Grounds to the Sea of Souls; the Trenchlands were contained within
them. Did that mean something? Did the Trenchland border come into
play?

"Addie," he said. "Where does the
Trenchlander border lie?"

The cragsman shrugged. He was in the process of
subtly adjusting their route, turning them due north into a mixed
stand of spruce and white pine. "Trenchland's just a name. The
lowlands around Hell's Town have been carved by the Flow—that's
where it gets its name. There's no border as such."

Raif nodded, disappointed. "Is there any way
we can tell when we're on the border between Sull and Bludd?"

Addie looked at him. Flawless had given the
cragsman the same directions as he had given Raif, and Addie had
probably already considered this problem himself. "In this part
of the world the only way to know for sure whose land we're standing
on is if someone steps out from the trees and attacks us. If that
happens we should be sure to take a real good look at them."

Raif fell silent. He felt stung by Addie's tone.
Had he insulted the cragsman by asking the question? It was hard to
judge things with Addie now.

They stopped three times before noon for leech
duty. One of the creatures wouldn't attach itself to Raif's back; it
looked as sick as a leech could look. Addie returned it to the jar,
but they were both thinking the same thing: Spoilage had not been
factored into the equation.

At noon they had a good meal of roasted venison
and salted hard-bread that had been traded from the Trenchlanders.
The cold was numbing so they ate with their gloves on. Afterward they
greased their skin and slid on face masks. As they headed out, the
first of the cedars exploded in the valley below them. The
woodpeckers fell silent and the only sound was Raif's and Addie's
boots crunching frozen snow.

After a few hours the land began to rise and warp,
and bare rock broke through the forest duff. The cedars were not as
tall here, and enough light penetrated the canopy to support
groundcover; hagberries, bearberries, and balsam. Raif perceived
animals denning beneath rotting logs and between cracks in the rocks.
Their heartbeats were faint and winter-slow.

Raif tried not to think about his own heart, tried
not to recall how easily it had failed him. One moment beating, the
next stopped. A blink of an eye, a failure of muscle to contract:
that's all it took to kill a man.

He forced his mind elsewhere, and ended up
considering the name Yiselle No Knife had given to the Red Ice.
Mish'al Nij. A place of no cloud, yet the lamb brothers had named it
the Valley of Cold Mists.

More trees exploded as the sun moved into the
west. One cracked right on the path, its trunk fracturing from the
crown to the base as if it had been hit with a giant ax. The sudden
release of pitch and gases made the air smell like a primed
firestack.

As the sky grew dark Addie began to rest more
heavily on his stick, and Raif thought about calling an early halt.
Progress had not been good; nearly every hour they'd had to stop to
apply leeches and Addie was getting no quicker with practice. His
hands froze, Raif's back froze, the leeches were starting to get
sluggish. Just as Raif opened his mouth to speak, Addie raised his
stick.