Watcher of the Dead (3 page)

The night was at its coldest and the
snow began to steam as the moon snake closed distance on the elk.
Reading the exhaustion in its breath, she moved downwind and picked
up speed. Back in the cage, a blow dart pierced Raif’s neck.
The impact did not register. Within seconds his body was limp. Raif
felt the familiar pull to return to the cage as his mind dimmed along
with his breaths. He fought it, holding fast to the moon snake’s
heart. She flicked her consciousness toward Raif, touched him, and
then returned to the hunt.

Raif felt it as an act of kinship. He
had been allowed to maintain his hold.

As the Sull lowered the cage containing
Raif’s unconscious body, Raif’s mind ran with the snake.
Moving on a tangent to intercept the trotting elk, she accelerated
like a bolt shot from a crossbow. Ice mist dampened the sound of her
belly whipping against the snow. The elk’s form brightened and
clarified, its details rendered in silver and white. The moon snake
observed the motion of its forelegs and hindlegs, calculated the
pattern, switched a valve in her heart like a trap so only fresh red
blood pumped through her arteries, and then struck.

There was an instant when the elk
understood everything. Veins in its eyes ruptured. Its bladder failed
and the musk of fear seeded the air. Quarter of a second later, the
moonsnake closed her jaws around her front hoof. With perfect
violence, she wrenched off the leg at the shoulder. Blood jetted onto
the snow. The elk moaned, a terrible low wail that Raif would
remember for the rest of his life. Briefly, he had a glimpse of its
heart: the rhythm he had become familiar with earlier that night was
gone. In its place was a fluttering, fading pulse.

Raif discarded the elk and refocused on
the moon snake. Flinging aside the severed limb, she set upon the
fallen elk. No heart-kills for the moonsnake, she tore her live prey
into parts. Raif felt a cool flicker of satisfaction as she began to
feed.

She took the limbs whole, disconnecting
her jaw and gorging. Her heart slid back and to the side to make way.
Her senses tracked the nearing of pack wolves, drawn by the smell of
carrion. She was alert but unafraid. After swallowing two limbs she
nosed through the torso and detached the elk heart. Sending a single
glint of awareness to Raif she devoured it.

Raif shivered.

Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance.
Death’s words echoed in his head. Somehow they were now
connected to his father. Da was dead. He, Raif Sevrance, was the only
person who knew the killer. And that made him the only person who
could avenge Tem Sevrance’s death. Why hadn’t he done it?
He had slain four Bluddsmen at Duff’s for less. He had slain
Bitty Shank at Black Hole for less. Death promised him he would kill
an army: wasn’t the only death that mattered Mace Blackhail’s?

Raif fed on this thought as the muscles
in the moon snake’s abdomen pushed the elk heart into her gut.
She was still for a moment, tasting the air. Picking up a whiff of
dawn, she withdrew from the elk carcass. She was heavy now, swaying
like a pregnant mare. The pack wolves danced nervously as she cut
into the territory. The top dog howled as if he’d caught sight
of the moon. Ignoring him, the snake homed. A deep languor was
setting in. She needed to sleep and rest. Hunting did not strain her
heart, digestion did.

Sidewinding north, she began to shut
down. Her movements and responses slowed. Her heart engorged, sending
enriched blood to her gut. Raif experienced her lassitude as his own.
Even now, she possessed no fear. She inhabited a world where nothing
could challenge her.

That thought stayed with Raif long
after she burrowed through the snow to her den and slept.

“Wake.â€

A Maiden’s Head

THE TOWN OF White Kiln was located six
days’ foot travel east of Ille Glaive. Pottery made from a
composite of local clay and ground dog bones weighed the banquet
tables of lords and merchants across the North. The kilns fired day
and night, reaching temperatures so hot they melted rock. Giant
plinths of basalt had been floated upriver from the west as bases for
the kilns. The native sandstone buckled under the relentless heat.

You could tell the kiln workers from
the burns on their hands and faces. Angus Lok walked the market
square and watched them, strong men dressed in their God’s Day
best, bearing the scars of their work with something like pride.

Unremarkable in a brown deerhide coat,
squirrel skin hat and scuffed boots, Angus drew little attention in
return. His weaponry was smaller now. Leaner. He no longer had use
for the implied threat of a sword. The hat was the one item that had
become indispensable. Brimmed with a wedge of squirrel fur, it
prevented casual observers from seeing the hell in his eyes.

As he approached a glovemaker’s
stand Angus made himself smile. The midmorning sun did the glovemaker
no favors, sending light into the interior of his mouth, illuminating
the rotten stumps and black absences that resulted from a poor diet
over a long life.

“Day, sir.â€

Enemies All Along

“YOUR MARE HAS Sull in her,â€

Deadwoods

HE HAD NEVER liked them, but as a boy
he had learned the paths through them—to this day he’d be
hard pushed to say why. He’d been an ornery child, no doubt
about it. If someone said, “Don’t do this,â€

Names

ASH STRIPPED OFF her dress and waded
into the lake. Underfoot the lake bed was muddy and each step raised
a swirl of brown muck. When the water reached her thighs, she sucked
in a breath and dove. Kicking hard, she swam submerged toward the
center of the lake. It felt good, icy and shocking, the water filling
spaces around her body that nothing but air and clothing ever
touched. Something brushed against her leg and she opened her eyes.
Pondweed floated in the murk. An ancient cannon-shaped catfish fled
ahead of her into the depths. The lake bed dropped sharply and the
catfish disappeared from sight. Ash was tempted to follow, swim into
the place where deep water and darkness met, into that coolly
shadowed world and never come back.

She floated a moment on the marchlands,
her thoughts slowing to in-comprehension as the freezing water closed
down her mind. A spark of life-force firing deep within her core
roused her, and pushing her toes into the mud she propelled herself
toward the light.

March, that was the name her foster
father had given her. Not his own name, Iss, but something he’d
made up. A march was a border, neither in one land nor the other. She
had been named in anticipation of her abilities. She could move
between worlds, or that’s what the broken man in Ille Glaive
had told her. The Blind, the place where the Endlords and their
Unmade bided in the darkness, was hers to enter. She still didn’t
really understand. In the Blind they wanted to touch her, to be
chosen and summoned by her, but in this world she could destroy them
with a single touch. One hair from her head was enough.

Enough, she told herself, breaking the
surface. A name is just a name.

Her body felt heavy as she waded back
to shore. Afternoon light filtering through the cedars dappled her
skin. The air smelled milky and damp. As she toweled herself dry, she
could hear mosquitoes humming. She did not hurry to get dressed.
Insects never bit her.

Green sheep bones and shards of egg
shells littered the bank. The Naysayer said moonsnakes fed here. They
were solitary feeders, he told her, except on nights where there was
a full moon when they formed covens to hunt large game. Ash shivered
and slipped on her dress. She had once seen a stuffed and mounted
moonsnake in her foster father’s collection: a thirty-foot-long
monster with pale iridescent scales.

I wonder if it’s mine now. Should
I march back to Spire Vanis and claim everything Iss owned?

Frowning at herself, she tied her
laces. The linen and whalebone bodice that cinched her dress was
deteriorating. Stitches had come unraveled and one of the eyelets had
torn. Continual washing had shrunk the fabric and it was tight around
her belly and chest. Securing the final knot forced her breasts
toward her chin.

Ash’s frown deepened. Katia would
have approved.

If Katia hadn’t been dead.

Katia. Ark Veinsplitter. And now
Penthero Iss. Dead.

Snatching up her lynx fur, Ash headed
for the trees. The Naysayer had chosen a site in the woods. He would
not set camp near open water. Cedars as big as watch towers instantly
cut down the light. Walls of wet snow circled the trees, and Ash
kicked them down with her boots. Her foster father was dead and there
was a hollow place in her chest where feelings should have been. Not
numbness, she decided. Absence.

When the Naysayer returned from his
ride this morning he had told her the news. “The Surlord is
dead. Another has been made.â€

In the Star Chamber

THEY FED. THEIR great jaw detached and
their teeth ratcheted on to the newborn foal and began pulling it
down their gullet. Saliva jetted from the roof of their mouth to
grease the motion, and when the head reached their throat banks of
muscle contracted in waves. As the muscle drew the foal deeper, they
began constricting its spine. When the head reached the digestive
tract they allowed themselves to relax. The largest section was
through. Everything else—shoulders, hips, legs—could be
crushed.

They settled into a languor as the full
length of the foal was enclosed. A half-moon was up and its perfect
blue light provided a second, no lesser, nourishment. They felt heavy
and overstretched and content. Horse blood pooled at the back of
their throat and they would taste it later with relish. The night
world was theirs. They owned and controlled it.

Sidewinding across sparkling snow, they
returned to their den to sleep.

Cold water thrown at force onto his
face woke him from profoundly strange dreams. He felt himself being
peeled away from Moonsnake and grafted onto another life.

It was hot here. The world was crammed
with too much color and movement. All stillness and purity was gone.
Someone touched him and he lashed out. A startled cry informed him of
the success of the contact. He received a single jab of pain to the
meat of his upper arm in return.

The world immediately blurred. A word
floated to him. Drugged. He blinked, remembered some things he had no
desire to remember, then watched as they prepared him to fight.

Two Sull worked with the economy of men
who had performed their task more than once. They pulled him upright,
toweled him dry and strapped armor plates to the planes of his chest,
arms and legs. It was like being buried alive. They ran a line of
grease around his neck and plugged the helm against his face. Straps
were cinched at the back of his head. Indignation was a fury in his
blood, but his body would not obey the command to hurt the men who
did this. Among the memories he recalled one that was useful: this
state wore off quickly. Soon it would be possible to strike.

The Sull returned him to the pallet and
left. A clangor of rusted iron echoed through the chamber as a bolt
was engaged behind the door and then silence. Raif, for he recalled
his name now, lay flat on his back and stared at the traprock
ceiling, waiting for the numbness in his limbs to wear off.

They, Moonsnake named the Sull. In the
world of moon and stars they were beneath her. They claimed to own
the night, but they could not see in the darkness as she could see in
the darkness. They could not move and strike in perfect silence and
live month after month upon the moon-blued snow. Her contempt fueled
Raif’s anger. How dare they hold him. He was Mor Drakka. They
needed him to fight the Unmade.

Kill them and we will feed.

Current passed along Raif’s body.
His legs twitched and the tendons in his fingers contracted. Objects
floating across his vision began to slow. His body was becoming his
own again. They drugged him in different ways, he’d noticed,
sometimes forcing sleep, other times subduing him while they worked
on his body. He wondered if they still poisoned his water. His piss
always smelled like the chemicals his mother used to soften hides.

Da.

The word helped hold him in place. It
was the reason not to return to Moonsnake. Da was dead. Mace
Blackhail had killed him. Through his, Raif Sevrance’s own
negligence, Mace Blackhail still lived and ruled in the clan.

Kill him and we’ll swallow him
whole.

Raif turned his head a fraction and
looked around the chamber. Traprock blocks, blackened with age and
damp encased the tomb-like space. Moonholes in the upper wall and
ceiling let in circles of pale gray light. Part of the chamber was
sunk belowground, and water seeped through cracks in the mortar. The
dome of the night sky had been deeply carved across the ceiling and
walls. The quarter moon rising in the east was the only feature he
recognized. The stars and constellations might have been from a
different world.

A thunk sounded on the far side of the
door as the bolt was drawn back. Raif looked wildly around the room.
Where was the mark? Hadn’t he kept a record of the time that
had passed? He had a clear memory of scoring lines with his
thumbnail—one for every day. Had they scrubbed it clean from
the wall?

The door opened and the two Sull who
had battle dressed him earlier entered. This time they did not need
their hands free to tend him. Swords were drawn and the brilliant
white light of meteor steel sent sparks across the room.

“Up.â€

The Lost Clan