A Sword from Red Ice

by Julia V Jones

  The man's gaze flicked to the clarified hide tents, where his fellow lamb brothers were sleeping, Raif shook his head. "Leave them."

  The lamb brother seemed to understand and fell in step beside Raif. He handled the nine-foot spear well, Raif observed, balancing it lightly at his waist. Raif's own weapon felt strange in his hand. Plunged deep into shadowflesh, the Forsworn sword's weight had shifted downblade. He knew he should probably knock out the crystal mounted on the pommel to restore balance, but he couldn't bring himself to deface the Listener's gift. Besides, he had the Sull bow. Slung crossways over his back, the six-foot longbow slapped against his right shoulder blade and buttocks as he walked. The horn case containing his arrows should have been suspended high on his left shoulder for ease of draw, but instead hung from the gear belt at his waist. The shoulder wound still bothered him. He could feel it now. It was tight.

  Heading away from the tent circle, he tried to make sense of what was happening. The raven lore, given to him at birth by the old clan guide Beardy Hail, felt like a chunk of fuel ice at his throat. Here it is, Raif Sevrance. One day you might be glad of it. Beardy's words echoed in the hollow space between Raif's thoughts.

  Drawn, that was the word. He'd been woken by something and drawn outside.

  Back at the tent circle one of the mules began to bray. Raif glanced at the lamb brother. Easy, he mouthed. Again, probably to himself. Cold muscled in to his chest, freezing the little pockets where air waited to slip inside the blood. Underfoot the pumice dunes were as soft as flour. Every step raised a puff of dust.

  Starlight blued the Want. Raif looked over a seabed landscape where shadows did not exist It occurred to him that he should be afraid of walking too far from the camp, but his mind was rationing fear. Odds were he would need it later. If he was unable to return to the tent circle then so be it. There was no choice here. The raven lore had called.

  At his side, Raif could hear the lamb brother breathing hard. In cold this intense it took effort to expel the breath. Raif was glad the man was here, grateful not to be alone in the twilight world that had become his life. Tallal had said the lamb brothers search for the lost souls of the dead. Morah, he called them. The flesh of God. Raif did not know whether that meant tracking down rotting corpses and defleshed bones, or hunting ghosts. He did know they were here to do their work. Tallal had told him as much yesterday as they had walked the perimeter of the camp looking for driftwood. Raif had asked him why they called themselves the lamb brothers, and Tallal had replied, To my people the lamb is a symbol of hope. Lambing season is a time of celebration. Spring comes and life is renewed after the long hardship of winter. Without lambs there would be no milk, no wool, no meat. Our bodies would perish. We who seek morah honor the lambs. Every morning we when he leave our tents we offer thanks. May the nourishment they provide give us strength to continue our search."

  Rait found it surprisingly easy to imagine why the lamb brothers were here. The Want seemed as good a place as any to find lost souls. "Shayo!"

  The lamb brother's urgent whisper cut off Raif's thoughts. The word was unknown to him, but the meaning was clear. Following the lamb brother's gaze, Raif peered into the eerie blue landscape of dunes.

  Nothing moved. Both men came to a halt. The lamb brother held his breath. The silence was immense, unlike any other silence Raif had experienced. Stand and listen long enough and you might hear the stars burning.

  Firming his grip on the sword, Raif scanned the horizon. At the far edge of his vision the mounded pumice gave way to rubble and crum-bling cinder cones. The cones' shapes reminded him of frost boils in the Badlands. Tem said boils were formed by frozen earth pushing up rock. They were hollow tn the center, Raif knew that much. As boys he and Drey would play charge the castle in them, and a game they'd made up themselves called double death to Dhoone that involved, as far as Raif could recall, a lot; at shouting and throwing sticks. Raif swallowed the memory before it could hurt him, and replaced it with something else.

  What came to mind was the frost boil Sadaluk, the Listener of the Ice Trappers, had shown him many months ago in the west. Sadaluk had made him scrape at the ice that had collected in the hollow center of the boil. Something dread had died there. A creature from a time of nightmares, its grotesquely enlarged jaws sprung open and packed with ice. Raif shook himself. While his mind was wandering he had not blinked and his eyeballs ached with cold. Blinking now made them sting.

  As his eyesight cleared he spotted a movement at the base of one of the dunes. A puff of powder rose from the surface. The skin across Raif's back pulled tight. At his side the lamb brother flexed his spear. They watched the dust mushroom lazily in the still air. Raif wished for more light. The Want was as dim as murky water. Where was the damn moon?

  Something glinted. A beam of starlight ran along a straight line and disappeared. The lamb brother spoke the name of his maker and began to move forward. Raif made his best guess of the distance between himself and the puff of dust. A hundred and sixty paces.

  He remembered the Shatan Maer. Sword or bow? The Listener had advised him to learn how to kill with a sword, look his victims in the eyes as he took their lives. Raif had learned. He could list the men he had killed with his sword. Chokko of Clan Bludd. The Forsworn knight. Bitty Shank. Deep in his core Raif knew the Listener had been right. It was too easy for him to kill with a bow. It was swift and unin-volved and he could do it from a distance of a hundred and sixty paces. Yet the Listener had been speaking of men. Raif had slain the Shatan Maer with his sword. It had been sickening and exhausting, and it had not made him a better man. Heritas Cant had told him the Unmade were already dead. They might look like men, but they were not men. Their flesh had been claimed by the Endlords, and changed in ways Raif did not understand. They had hearts, he had learned that for himself, but those hearts did not pump blood.

  A tingle of pain sounded in the muscle of Raif's shoulder. Ignoring it, he sheathed his sword. As he reached for the Sull bow he glanced briefly at that lamb brother walking woozily across the dunes. The man had his spear lightly balanced above his shoulder, but his mind was on his footing and he'd allowed the point to droop. Better to stay put, Raif decided. Let whatever was out there come to you.

  "To me!" he called out, running numb fingers over the finely waxed twine that braced the bow. When the lamb brother's course failed to change, Raif yelled, "Get back." The lamb brother heard him this time, acknowledging the noise with a slight sideways motion of his veiled head, but he did not stop. He'd halved the distance between his original position and the puff of the dust, and was accelerating down a dune. Raif guessed the lamb brother had understood the instruction well enough, and had chosen not to heed it.

  He did not know then; had no experience to warn him what might be out there. Raif thought starkly, Who has?

  Unable to warm the wax with his fingers, he settled for smoothing the twine. The Sull bow felt as light as a stalk of grass. Out of habit he flexed the belly before drawing. Nights as cold as this killed bows. Self bows, those made from a single stave of wood, could simply snap. Built ones would curl and come unglued. The Sull bow was a built recurve, constructed from layers of horn laid down in alternating strips. If it were a clan-made bow it would have felt stiff and brittle and a clansman might think twice about using it. The Sull bow bent as easily as a dancer's spine, ticking once as the recurve popped out. Made for nights like this, it was ready.

  Raif slid an arrow from the case, laid it against the riser. The action calmed him, and he found himself remembering his father's voice. uSo, will you be a hammerman like your brother Drey?" "No, Da. 1 choose the bow."

  Hooking the twine with his three middle fingers, he pulled back the Sull recurve. Straightaway his focus shifted. Background blurred. Individual stars bled into stripes. The outlines of the dunes sharpened. Raif searched for and found the foot-size mound of settled pumice that seconds earlier had been dust in the air. Fist on level with his right shoulder, he held a full
draw as he tracked the surrounding space. The lamb brother was approaching the mound, caution slowing his pace. Hard breaths made the cloth panel covering his mouth move like bellows. Raif briefly sighted the man's heart. Its rhythm was unfamiliar to him, but he could still read the fear. With a small mental tug, he pulled away.

  Raising his sights he scanned the cinder cones beyond the dunes. He did not expect to spot anything amongst the ancient, deteriorating vents. That wasn't the point. Something was waiting in the dunes. Until it moved it could not be spotted… and it would not move until it could strike. The cones were still. The peculiar quality of starlight made it impossible to accurately gauge their height or distance. To Raif they were evidence of the doom that had been laid on the Want. The earth's crust was not stable here. Fissures undermined it, molten rock charged it and things had a nasty habit of forcing their way out. Kahl Barranon the Fortress of Grey Ice, had been built on flawed mountain rock. It could be a thousand leagues from here, or maybe less than ten. Slowly, Raif was coming to understand that distance didn't matter in this place. What mattered was the Want was wounded. Its skin was riddled with cracks and the Shatan Maer had tried to push itself through the largest. Raif had sealed that breach, but looking out across the cones he guessed it was not the only one, "Go no further," he murmured, dropping his gaze to the lamb brother on the dunes. The man was about twenty paces from the dis-turbed dust. Both hands were on his spear and he was moving forward slowly, stabbing air. Raif scanned the space directly in front of him. Nothing. As he panned wider, muscles in his draw arm started to quake as the twine began to slice into the joint of his index finger. Ballic the Red had once told him that holding a longbow at full draw was the equivalent of lifting a grown man one-handed "Release quickly," the master bowman had advised. "Every second you wait power and accuracy are lost."

  At the edge of his vision something moved. A section of air rippled and for an instant a shape was revealed. Behind the lamb brothel's back, dust smoked from the dune.

  "Watch out!" Raif screamed, angling his bow. As the lamb brother spun around, the dunes exploded. Dust sprayed up in a footstep pattern heading straight toward the lamb brother. Pumice glittered in the air, making it difficult to see. Raif glimpsed something dark and not quite human. As soon as he had it in his sights it was gone. The lamb brother's robes began to flap as air rushed against htm. Bracing himself he distributed his weight evenly between his legs, stabilizing the spear at his waist.

  A high metallic screech sounded, and then everything was obscured by whirling.dust. Raif fought down panic. He couldn't see. Part of him wanted to run away, save himself while he still had time. Noises spat from the dust cloud like sparks. Something grunted. A wailing gasp was followed by the weird harmony of metal meeting metal on a sweet spot. Blades clashed. Raif spied the shadowy outline of a head between curling lanes of dust. Dropping his sights, he searched for a heart.

  An invisible line spooled from the center of his eye, slipping effortlessly through the swirling pumice. Straightaway it found a heart. Hot and red, it hammered in imperfect time. Raif recognized it and switched his gaze. The lamb brother. Both combatants were moving frantically, their torsos jerking back and forth. Raif felt the sickening suction of an unmade heart, but as he tried to lock it in his sights, the lamb brother stepped across his line of view.

  Move, he mouthed, experiencing something close to shock as utter cold was replaced with heat.

  Suddenly the hot heart faltered. A thin cry sounded, and for a moment all fell quiet. Raif knew he could not afford to think about what it meant. Pushing his awareness forward, he locked on to the second heart. It was like plunging into icy black water. He could not see or breathe; just feel the coldness seize his chest. His first instinct was to get out—this was not a living organ and he had no place here— but the suction he'd felt earlier pulled him in.

  A river of darkness flowed through the heart's malformed chambers, its slow, muscular current animating the meat and teeth and membranes of the Unmade. Raif s own heart fell in time so quickly it was as if it had been waiting all along to match the rhythm of the dead. The moment loosened. He thought of Drey and Effie, and could not imagine a time when loving them wouldn't hurt. Follow the current and it would no longer matter. He wouldn't have to feel or think.

  Ma-dum. Ma-dum. Ma-dum. The current tugged him under. Downriver all was shadow, a darkly welcoming place. Raif's middle and index fingers twitched, easing his grip on the arrow. All he had to do was let go.

  "Will you come back?" Stillborn's question, spoken all those weeks ago at Black Hole, broke the rhythm.

  Raif blinked. He was bone cold, almost frozen in place. The unmade heart contracted strongly, powering the surrounding flesh. Raif smelled the raw blackness of the void…and remembered what he had to do.

  Closing his eyes he released the string. The twine whipped forward and lashed his wrist. Concussion from the recoil passed through his left arm and into his shoulder. Pain jabbed at the scarred flesh. It barely registered. The arrow had entered heartmeat. The creature from the Blind buckled and collapsed. Hitting the dunes, it raised a coffin-shaped cloud of dust Raif thought he heard a noise, a sort of sucking crackle, as its heart collapsed.

  In the quiet seconds that followed Raif stood and breathed and did not think. Coppery saliva collected in the bottom of his mouth. Behind him he was aware of movement as the remaining lamb broth-ers crossed the dunes. Directly ahead, the dust began to settle and two fallen bodies emerged. Scrubbing a hand over his face to brush off ice crystals that had accumulated on his eyelashes and facial hair, Raif made his way toward them. Deep within, he fought the impulse to name the Stone Gods. He would not claim the comforts of clan.

  The first body was part sunk into the pumice. The lamb brother had fallen on his stomach and a small wet slit in his sable robe was his only visible injury. It was an exit wound; he'd been gored through the gut Raif dropped to his knees and gently turned him. The body was already growing stiff. Dark vapor curled from the wet and ragged hole that had been torn in his lower abdomen. The impact of the fall had dislodged his headpiece and Raif got his first look at the lamb brother's face. His youth came as a shock.

  "Leave him," Tallal ordered, approaching. "It is forbidden for jinna to touch our dead."

  Raif bowed his head, not understanding fully what the lamb brother meant, but hearing enough in his voice to realize he was upset. With an effort, Raif rose to his feet. He was exhausted, and the pain in his left shoulder was rapidly draining what little strength he had left. He did not want to look at the second body, but didn't know what else to do. All three lamb brothers were on the dune now, silent men wrapped from head to foot in dark wool robes. They did not want him here, he could tell that from the way they moved to separate him from the body. Perhaps they blamed him for their brother's death. Perhaps they were right.

  The creature from the Blind had fallen on its knees, and by some strange alignment of its spine its both still knelt upright. As Raif drew near he detected, the same raw, alien odor he'd smelted earlier. The creature was naked and its head and part of its chest were covered in fine scales. It was not quite human. Oversized blood vessels running along is arms and legs fed bulbous humps of loosely slung muscle. A bone spur on one side of its jaw protruded through its skin. Raif shud-dered and moved away.

  The creature's weapon had landed a small distance from its body and he walked over to inspect it. The thick, night-black sword was burning a hole in the dune. It had already sunk two feet. The walls of the hole gleamed softly as pumice was transformed into glass. Voided steel.

  Raif glanced at the lamb brothers; two were kneeling by the body while the third was prayer-walking at the base of the dune. Raif crossed over to Tallal. The lamb brother was rewinding the cloth around his slain brother's face.

  Not knowing how to soften what he was about to say, Raif coughed to get Tallal's attention. "We must burn the body. Quickly."

  Tallal's long, slender hands ceased moving.
"Leave us," he replied without looking up. "Return to the camp while we prepare Farli for the journey."

  Farli. Tallal had slipped and spoken his brother's name. Raif repeated it to himself, committing it to memory. You did not forget a man you had fought alongside. When he spoke, his voice was hard. "Your brother has been killed by voided steel. The metal does not belong in this world. If you leave your brother's body intact it will be consumed by dawn, claimed by the same evil that created that thing over there. He will become one of them, and once that happens I cannot say how long he'll be damned."

  All three lamb brothers looked at him. The elder brother who was prayer-walking stopped midstep.

  Raif pressed on. "I have seen it with my own eye. Forsworn knights, slain by the same make of weapon. Their bodies were stripped. Despoiled." He halted, remembering the Forsworn redoubt, the black stains the four bodies had left on the floor. "We must destroy the body. Now."

  Tallal shook his head. "We do not burn our dead." "If you do not burn him I will."

  Raif did not know whether it was the words or the threat behind them that got through to Tallal. The lamb brother looked first at the elder and then at the brother who was kneeling on the other side of the body. Both men nodded almost imperceptibly, letting it be known they acceded to whatever decision Tallal made.

  Tallal closed his eyes, took a breath, and then opened them. In the seconds that it took he had aged. "We must cleanse him first." "Be quick," Raif warned, before heading back to the camp. The mist began to rise as he traced the lamb brothers' footsteps to the tents. Darkness held. The animals were quiet as he approached, the cookfire dead and smoking. Raif slipped inside his tent. Sitting on the mattress he pulled the wool blankets around him. He just wanted to get warm. After a while, he rose, fearful of falling asleep.