A Sword From Red Ice (2 page)

Meanwhile, Ash had become Sull. In a deep mountain
cavern east of Ice Trapper territory, the Far Riders drained her
human blood to make way for Sull blood. Ash learned the Sull were an
ancient race whose numbers and influence were in decline. At one time
they had occupied the entire Northern Territories; now they had been
reduced to a region of land in the east. The Sull believed it was
their destiny to fight the Endlords and the Unmade, and by becoming
Sull Ash agreed to take on this fight. As they made their way south
to the Heart of the Sull, they were pursued by the Unmade. Just north
of the River Flow, they were attacked by unmade pack wolves. Ark was
killed and Mal continued fighting as Ash floated to safety on an
unhitched bridge. "Daughter" had been Ark's last word to
her. The endearment almost broke Ash's heart.

Penthero Iss, the Surlord of Spire Vanis and Ash's
foster father, had been planning to use Ash's Reach-power to seize
control of the clanholds. With his daughter gone, he decided to send
an army to attack the clanholds and chose Marafice Eye as its leader.
While the army marched north, bent on attacking rich and vulnerable
Ganmiddich, the surlord was left unguarded and vulnerable in Spire
Vanis. Rival grangelords sharpened their knives. Yet it was not a
rival for the surlordship that brought down Iss: it was Crope, the
faithful servant of the sorcerer who was enslaved beneath the
Splinter. Crope and his lord had been separated seventeen years
earlier when Iss had captured Baralis. Crope himself had been seized
by slavers and sent to work in the mines. It took him seventeen years
to escape. As soon as he was free he traveled across a continent to
save his lord. Crope had giant's blood in his veins and he brought
down the Splinter, killed the surlord, and carried Baralis to
safety.

Meanwhile, Effie Sevrance, Raif's eight-year-old
sister, had been forced to leave her clan. Effie had been born to the
stone lore and was able to tell when bad things were about to happen.
She was present when Raina was raped by Mace, and Raina feared this
knowledge made Effie vulnerable. Seeking to remove the girl from
Mace's sights, Raina sent Effie to Clan Dregg. As she traveled south
in the company of gold smugglers, Effie began to master her lifelong
fear of being outside. When her wagon was attacked by Dhoonesmen she
was able to hide until the danger passed. The smugglers were killed
during the attack, and Effie was left to fend for herself. Finding a
secluded clearing near the Wolf River, she settled down to catch
fish and live alone for a while. However, she was soon spotted by a
chance predator, who swooped in and kidnapped her.

The gold the smugglers had been transporting had
come from a Blackhail mine, Black Hole. Traggis Mole, believing that
Raif's loyalties still lay with his former clan, not the Maimed Men,
ordered Raif to participate in a raid on the mine. The raid was a
success. Quickly overcoming the miners' defenses, Raif's party
entered the mine and seized the stockpile of gold. As he climbed to
the surface, Raif encountered his childhood friend Bitty Shank.
Bitty was now a sworn Blackhail warrior, and he refused to let Raif
leave with the gold. Raif had little choice but to fight and
heart-kill his old friend.

Bereft and believing he was damned, Raif headed
out alone into the uncharted territory of the Great Want. He had
learned from the Maimed Man Thomas Argola that a long-deserted
fortress lay hidden in the depths of the Want. By finding it he hoped
to stop the formation of a second crack in the weakened Blindwall.
The Great Want was filled with flaws, and a Shatan Maer, an unmade
creature of terrible power, had found one such flaw and was pushing
against it. The flaw lay beneath Kahl Barranon, the Fortress of Grey
Ice. Using the arrow given to him by the Listener, Raif located the
position of the fortress. Once there, he quickly found the flaw and
waited for the Shatan Maer to emerge. The battle that followed was
long and grim. The Shatan Maer possessed inhuman strength and
quickness . . . but Raif Sevrance was Watcher of the Dead. He had
deserted his clan and slain a fellow clansman. He was forever damned
and had little to lose. And there was no other living man who could
heart-kill as he could.

The Shatan Maer fell, the flaw in the Blindwall
was sealed, and the North was freed from danger for a while . . .

The Hail Wolf Returns

Inigar Stoop opened his eyes and blinked into the
darkness of the guidehouse. The smoke fires had gone out while he
slept, and it took him long moments to make sense of the unfamiliar
shadows of deepest night. Something in his chest wasn't right. His
heartbeat was the same as ever, but there was a vague soreness
beneath his ribs, a sense that muscle had been working while he
slept.

Indistinct forms loomed around him, their edges
bleeding into the darkness like ink spilled on cloth. To calm himself
Blackhail's clan guide named the forms in his head—the little
stone font where he drew his water, the hog-backed coffer where he
kept his ceremonial robes, the statue of lone that had been carved
from a riven fragment of the guidestone by the great warrior-guide
Harlec Sewell—but the ache in his chest persisted. Raising a
hand to knead his rib cage, Inigar became aware of the great
stillness he disturbed. The guide-house was as cold and quiet as a
grave dug for a horse. The smell of damp earth had pushed through the
sandstone walls, and Inigar could feel its coolness moving through
his lungs. Fighting the desire to shiver, he swung his legs over the
side of the pallet and rose to standing.

Something is wrong here.

Rock dust crunched beneath his bare feet as he
crossed toward the fire pit. He had not swept here in many days, and
debris from the guidestone lay thick on the flagstone floor. The time
for spring tilling was fast approaching and every farmer in the
clanhold would soon demand a measure of this dust to scatter in his
fields along with the grain. Night soils to fertilize the earth;
stone soils to hallow it. Nothing shed from the Hailstone was wasted.
Sometimes Inigar thought he was as much butcher as shaman—dividing
the carcass of the monolith, grinding down its bones.

But a carcass meant death, and this guidestone had
to be alive.

The gods shed part of their souls here.

Inigar brought his hand to his forehead, pressed
fingers deep into his pulse points and almost succeeded in halting
his thoughts. Please Gods, do not withdraw from this clan.

Yet hadn't the retreat already begun? Frost had
been living in the Hailstone since the Eve of Breaking, when good
clansmen had turned against their own, sending a hound to the fire
and trying a child as a witch. It went back farther than that,
though. Frost could not enter a shored-up house. Blackhail's house
had been vulnerable for half a year, ever since its chief had been
slaughtered in the Badlands by nameless raiders. Something evil had
punched a hole through clan walls that day. Something immense and
calculating, whose age was greater than the earth he stood upon and
whose purpose Inigar feared to name.

I cannot dwell on it. A guide blunted by fear is
no good for his clan. Sharp of mind and sharp of chisel: that is the
way we must be.

Working from touch alone he slipped on braided
leather sandals and pulled a polished pigskin cloak across his
shoulders. Air was quickening. The short gray hairs at the base of
Inigar's scalp rocked in their follicles like loose teeth. Once as a
seven-year-old he had climbed down a wellshaft on a dare. The well
had been known as Witch's Cunt, and a collapsed embankment upcountry
had poisoned its water with tar. It was old beyond knowing, and so
deep that as Inigar had descended, probing for toeholds in the dark,
the very nature of the air had changed. Saturated with groundwater,
it resisted exhalation. That sense of aliveness, the sudden
revelation that air had a will of its own and there were some places
in this world where it would rather not be, had haunted Inigar's
dreams for fifty years. He had felt it two other times since then:
the day on the great court when Raif Sevrance had sworn his oath to
his clan; and here and now in the guidehouse at the hangman's hour
before dawn.

The guide's swollen fingers sifted for a flint and
striker along the workbench. Ice growing in the heart of the
Hailstone made the guide-house colder by the day. Fires could not
warm it, and the dour and god-fearing masons of Blackhail had insured
sunlight never entered this place. As Inigar knelt before the firepit
and struck a light, he found himself wishing for a single window in
the south wall so that he could throw back its shutters and let in
the glow of the moon. The great bodies that circled the earth had
powers to combat darkness that no man-struck flame could match.

Still. He felt some easing in his chest when the
kindling finally took and the red glow of a smokepile seeded with
iron filings lit the room. Yet even as he took his first deep breath
since waking he became aware of the presence of the guidestone.

The great turning-wheel of its awareness, the
sense of seeing and knowing, was gone. What was left was something
forceless, an ember flickering after a fire. A year ago Inigar could
not lay a hand upon the monolith without feeling a jolt of life. Now
the stone would rip off his skin if he touched it without the
protection of padded gloves. Ice had spread through the guidestone
like cancer; cumulating crystal upon crystal, sparkling, sharp and
irreversibly cold, gnawing away at the rock. Two weeks ago the
guidestone might have sent out a flare, a feeble attempt at
communion, a weak assertion of power. Touch it tonight and Inigar
knew what he would feel: something dying beneath the surface.

Reaching for the bellows, Inigar returned his
attention to the fire. The first thing he had been taught as an
apprentice was how to tend a smokefire. The old clan guide Beardy
Hail had been uncle to Dagro Blackhail, the chief. Beardy never
explained things more than once and never gave praise for a job well
done. Every morning when he took possession of the guidehouse he
would inspect the smokefire for flames. A flame of any sort was not
permitted. The smokepile had to smolder, not burn. Inigar had spent
most of those early days attending the fire; chopping green wood,
breaking coal, filing iron. Too much fuel and flames would ignite,
too little and the fire would die. For years Inigar had wondered why
it mattered—smoke resulted either way—yet one day, when
Beardy was laid up with the gout and unable to check the smokepile,
Inigar had come to an understanding.

Any fool could build a fire; stack logs, lay
kindling, strike a flint and blow. Once lit, the fire would burn hot
and die out in its own time. But a smoke fire was never done. You
could not walk away and leave it unattended. A smokefire had to be
fueled and doused, stacked and banked, raked and poked and pumped.
Most of all it must be watched.

It was, Inigar decided, the most important lesson
Beardy had ever taught him. A clan guide must be vigilant. He could
not afford to turn his back and let his clan burn or die. A smolder
must be maintained. And the watch never cease.

Inigar's dry old lips cracked a smile. Beardy had
been, without a doubt, the most foul-smelling clansman in Blackhail.
He kept pigs for a reason Inigar had never fathomed and took a bath
only once a year. The smile turned into a wheezing cough, and Inigar
slapped a palm against the floor to steady himself. Fifty years of
inhaling smoke did that to a man, addled the lungs. As he crouched by
the glowing smokepile and waited for the hacking to stop, an impulse
he didn't understand made him reach for more wood.

Tonight he wanted light, not smoke.

Aahooooooooo.

The skin on Inigar's hands tightened so quickly
with gooseflesh his fingers jumped. A wolf howl, close and to the
north. Yet the wolves had long since abandoned the territory around
the Hailhouse and its man-smelling forests and fields. What did it
mean?

Inigar held his swollen hands over the flames,
glad to feel the heat. The light in the guidehouse was increasing,
but instead of calming it unsettled him. The flames flickered wildly,
yet he could detect no draft. The shadows they created swung crazily
around the room. He took his time turning his gaze to the guidestone.
A wolf had howled in the Hailhold and he feared what he might see.

The monolith steamed. So vast it pulled motes of
dust from the air as surely as the moon pulled waves onto the shore,
it stood black and still and wounded. Deep fissures dissected it like
forks of frozen lightning. Pores once brimming with shale oil were
now filled with lenses of ice. The narrow cane-and-timber ladder that
Inigar used to access the carving face was white with hoarfrost. Only
yesterday he had stood on those rungs and chiseled out a heart for a
fallen clansman. A young woman in this very house awaited delivery of
the fist-sized chunk of granite. Widows without bones needed stone.

So much work to do in times of war, so many calls
upon the stone. I best get to it then. Stop fussing over a
late-season cold snap and get down to the business of men's souls.

As Inigar stood to fetch himself water, he caught
sight of the northern face of the monolith. A crack as wide as his
forearm and as tall as two men had opened up overnight. Dear Gods,
help us. Could he have done more? Mace Blackhail was a strong leader,
a fine warrior; and a fiercely ambitious chief. The Stone Gods
demanded jaw, and Mace Blackhail had so much of it he could barely
keep his teeth from springing apart. Jaw had landed him the chiefdom
and driven him into war. Under Mace's leadership, Blackhail had
seized control of Dhoone-spoke Ganmiddich and was now challenging
old boundaries in the east. Mace had rallied Blackhail warriors and
reclaimed the Hailish badge. He'd fired up the sworn clans with talk
of glory, making weary and jaded allies eager to fight at his side.
Bannen had been Hail-sworn for a thousand years but it had ever been
a weak alliance. The clan that called itself "the Ironheads"
did not follow others lightly. Somehow Mace had managed to do what
other Blackhail chiefs could not—gain the respect of that proud
and grudging clan. Now there was talk of Bannen and Blackhail riding
out to meet swords with Dhoone.