A Sword from Red Ice

by Julia V Jones

  Raif followed him into the cave. Two copper lamps set on recesses in the wall were glowing with smokeless light. The cave was small and nearly round. Its ceiling was strikingly uneven, the rock dipping low in concertina-like folds and then muscling into high vaults. A natural flue had formed at the apex of the tallest vault and Raif could feel its draw. At least two other chambers led from the cave where the rock wall bored down into the cliff. Their entrances were screened with lengths of faded gold and green brocade. One of them was moving. The girl was gone.

  "Sit." Thomas Argola spread a long-fingered, olive-skinned hand toward the cushions and rugs arranged around a small brass brazier set at knee height.

  Raif resisted the direction, preferring to move about the space, looking at glazed boxes, straw baskets, frayed silk rugs and tarnished metal bowls piled with rolled parchments, hollow eggs, cards of silk thread and dried yarrow heads that lay on the cave floor. He was too keyed up to sit.

  Realizing that Thomas Argola was was waiting for him to speak, Raif searched for a way to start a conversation. The girl had thrown him off center. "We're lucky the storm didn't stay longer."

  Thomas Argola executed a movement that looked like a controlled drop, collapsing his body onto one of the silk cushions. "Our luck is someone else's misfortune." He spoke the words with a pointed lightness that Raif suspected was intended to convey meaning. He waited, and the outlander spoke again. "The storm was disturbed, its course deflected south."

  Raif halted by the brocade screen that had been moving when he entered. A design of dragons and pear trees was woven into the cloth. "How is that possible?"

  "It very nearly isn't." Thomas Argola bit each word as he said it.

  Feeling his skin cool, Raif turned to face the outlander. Argola's expression was flat and challenging. A speck of blood was caught between his cornea and the white of his eye. Seeing it Raif abandoned the hope they were talking about natural forces.

  "We live in dangerous times," Argola said in confirmation. "Sit and I will pour us some broth."

  Raif sat. It was hard to comprehend what he had just heard, and he took the small bone cup offered by the outlander without acknowledgment. A storm could be made to alter its course? Surely not.

  "To our health," Argola said, raising his own cup, "and sanity."

  They seemed good things to toast just then. Cups struck, Raif and the outlander drank deeply. The broth was well made, salty and rich with marrow and thyme. The outlander seemed pleased to pour Raif a second cup.

  "Mallia makes it, though she must do without the ginger from our homeland. Thyme serves as its substitute."

  Raif drank and did not speak. He told himself he wasn't waiting, but he didn't think he fooled Argola.

  "My sister,"the outlander revealed eventually.

  Now he had said it, Raif saw the resemblance; the coloring, the hair. But not the eyes. They were different. Needing to change the subject, he asked, "What do you know of Traggis Mole's… health?"

  Argola set down the cup by his foot and watched as the liquid it contained steamed. Seconds passed, and then he said, "He has shown you the wound?" "No."

  "Be glad of it," Argola retorted quickly. "I have treated it and continue to dress it, and it is not a sight I would wish on anyone."

  Shuddering, Raif felt a twinge of pain in his shoulder. A little icy jab. "How bad is it?" "Answer that and I give you the keys to this city."

  Raif worked his way through the outlander's words, caught off-guard by their slyness. Remember the mist, he told himself. The man sitting before him had pulled fog from a lake on a still dry night at Black Hole. While everyone else in the raid party was fighting to gain entry to the mine, Thomas Argola had been packing Bear's saddlebags with enough supplies to carry Raif into the Want. It's a hard journey north, he had said, knowing that for every hundred who went there only two or three ever returned.

  And here he was now, breaking the confidence of his chief and arming his rival with information. Raif stopped himself and forced a correction. The outlander was not clan and Traggis Mole was no clan chief; the expectation of loyalty did not exist.

  The cushion Raif sat on had tassels on its corners and he caught one in his fist. So Traggis Mole was in a bad way. "What happened?"

  Argola made a movement with his hand. "The thing that got onto the rimrock that night was never human. Even when it lived in flesh it had been some kind of monstrosity. More dog than man. It barely knew how to wield a blade, but it was strong—and fast. No one could get near it. Eventually the Dancer caught its blade in his sword-breaker, and as Linden Moodie came in to attack its unarmed flank, Traggis Mole took the side bearing the sword. Something happened. The creature's blade slid free of the breaker and it whipped around and tore through the Mole's side. Moodie cut off its arm. But it was too late. The damage had been done."

  Raif nodded softly to himself as he compared Addie's account of the attack to Argola s. "The Mole kept the severity of his injuries hidden." "Wouldn't you?"

  The flatness in Argola's voice irritated Raif He stood. "What happens when someone is injured by the Unmade?" As he spoke he heard the false note in his voice—the forced casualness of the question—and he imagined Argola would hear it too. The outlander looked at him carefully. "It depends on the extent of the injury. The Mole took a hit to the chest with voided steel. The blade missed his heart but passed through some of his lung. It didn't kill him….but it will. Not from infection, not as you and I know it. The wound is clean, if you can call it that. It's what the voided steel left behind … some of itself. It's a blackness eating away at him, incinerating his flesh like acid. I can only suture the wound so far. It needs to" He hesitated, "vent."

  Raif closed his eyes and took a breath. It was the same as the Forsworn knight in the redoubt; the dark, silky substance leaking from his wounds. Half liquid, half smoke.

  "Traggis Mole is being taken. The wound is too deep. He is strong and fights it, but his flesh is cankered with a substance beyond evil and to cut it out would kill him."

  The outlander rose from the pile of cushions. "You'd better show me what you've got."

  Raif stepped back. His heel struck one of the metal bowls, producing a note that vibrated through the cave.

  Argola regarded him with some impatience. "It's why you came here, is it not? Something in the Want injured you?"

  Again, Raif felt himself irritated by the outlander's assumptions. The fact that they were correct only made it worse. He had nothing to lose now—certainly not privacy as this meeting so far had been a demonstration in how little Thomas Argola valued discretion. With a snap, Raif unhooked the Orrl cloak. Yanking his undershirt and sealskin up around his neck he showed his back to the outlander. "It's low on the left shoulder."

  Argola approached him. He looked and said nothing.

  The pull from the flue lifted hairs on Raif s skin. After a while he could stand the silence no logger. "What is there?"

  "Three puncture wounds. All are scarred over and dry. The middle one looks to be the worst of them. May I touch it?"

  No. Out loud, Raif said, "Go ahead."

  Two things happened then. First he felt a bite of pain where Argola's finger touched him, and second he saw that the cloth screen with the dragons and pears had been pulled partway back and Argola's sister was standing behind it, watching him.

  Raif tugged down his shirt. He could feel his color rising and wanted nothing that moment except to be gone. The outlander shooed his sister with a flick of his wrist. He did not seem much concerned.

  "They were not made with voided steel," he said to Raif, a question in his voice.

  Glancing at the screen, Raif saw that Mallia Argola had disappeared He wondered if she was just beyond the screen. Listening. Coming here had been a mistake. He started toward the door.

  Argola moved with him. "Stop," he said, his voice flat yet somehow compelling. "If you will not speak hear me out."

  Raif halted by the door; the farthest point
from the dragon-and-pear screen. Argola understood him and edged close, and for the first time it occurred to Raif that the outlander appeared whole. No obvious abnormalities or cuttings marked his flesh. What was his place here? Maimed Men would not tolerate an undamaged man or woman in their realm. The outlander did not hunt and was not well liked. Raif supposed he had his uses. He had tricks; the revealing of the suspension bridge across the Rift, the raising of mist during a raid.

  The speck of blood in Thomas Argola's eyes floated toward his iris as he said quietly, "Underlying the middle wound there is some discoloring and a small pocket of inflammation. I thought it would be soft, but when I touched it I found it hard. I'm assuming something raked you with its claws—it's what it looks like—and I'm also assum-ing that the creature who did it was unmade." A pause while Raif nodded. "I believe you were lucky and unlucky. Lucky that it was maer dan, shadowflesh, not voided steel that punctured you. Unlucky in that a small piece of claw broke off in your flesh."

  "Cut it out," Raif said.

  Thomas Aigola was already shaking his head. "It's embedded in the muscle. Cut it out and you will loose function in your arm and shoulder. It must be drawn, not cut"

  Raif did not understand why the outlander was playing games with him. "Then draw it out"

  "That skill is beyond me."

  More games. "You tend Traggis Mole."

  "And I can do nothing for him. He dies."

  Raif punched the meat of his hand against the door. Left shoulder. Left arm. Two hundred pounds of pull in a fully drawn longbow and the left shoulder and arm must brace against it. "Why do you manipulate me?"

  "You know why."

  Raifs gaze met the outlander's. At least he did not bother to lie. "Who are you?"

  "Thomas Bireon Argola, from a city you've never heard of called Hanatta. I lay small claim to the old skills and have some experience as a healer. I came north three years ago with my sister, for reasons that are not yours to know. And I do not lie about the drawing of the maer dan. It is an art practiced by races older than mine and the Sull." "Are you whole?

  "Do not make me show you all the ways that I am not." Raifs anger collapsed. Suddenly he felt tired and out of his depth. His shoulder seemed to ache more now than it did before Argola's pronouncement, and he remembered that he had hurt his ankle. And now it hurt.

  Argola looked tired too, the corners of his mouth were turned down, the lips pale. Raif wondered if his thoughts were similar to his own: It would be good to have some peace.

  "Can I live with the maer dan inside me?"

  "You do," Argola said, almost gently. Then, in a stronger voice, "It is situated in the muscle above the back of your heart. If it moves inward there is no bone to stop it." Oh gods.

  "The closest Sull settlement is due east of here, in the great taiga where the Deadwoods meet the Sway."

  Here it was, the manipulation. Raif felt it in the hollow center of his bones. It was a funny thing, manipulation; even when you knew someone was doing it and they admitted to doing it, it could still work. It is a hard journey north, he had said last time. Now east. "Have you heard of the Lake of Red Ice?" "I have."

  "Do you know where it is?" "All I know I have said."

  Raif looked at the blood in Argola's right eye and imagined how it had got there. "Look for me," he commanded.

  The outlander's face registered surprise, and then—Raif would remember for the rest of his life—satisfaction.

  "If you are to watch you must be prepared when they come." Raif thought about all these words revealed. Argola knew about the sword. Knew also about the name he had taken for his own. Mor Drakka. Watcher of the Dead. How did he learn these things? What did he know that Raif did not?

  Thomas Argola's small, sharp-featured face gave nothing away. His plain brown robes reminded Raif of what the monks in the Mountain Cities wore to demonstrate they had no interest in worldly things.

  "Did they tell you the name of the sword?"

  It was as if the outlander had a stick and kept poking him harder and harder to see what he might do. Raif s back was against the door; he could not be driven any farther. "No they did not."

  Argola received the warning, seemed pleased by it Again there was that lip stretch of satisfaction. "The sword that lies beneath the Red Ice is named Loss."

  Loss.

  "There are some things in the Blind that will not fall by any other blade."

  It was too much. Raif punched back the door bolt and let himself out. He did not look back or close the door.

  Sunlight streamed against his face and he could barely make sense of it. Bouncing off the snow on the ground, it came at him from every direction. Bright, razoring light. It should have dispelled the dark seizures in his brain, yet it just seemed to feed them.

  Loss.

  He headed toward the upper ledge. A knotted rope hung from the ledge he had jumped and he yanked himself up it He had left behind his gloves and cloak in the outlander's cave, and the cold and the rope burns added to strange energy of pain and twitching thoughts he had become.

  I will not slit your throat I will defend the Rift Brothers. I will become lord of the Rift. Every time he spoke these days he seemed to take on another oath.

  He had given none to Argola, though. Yet he had allowed the man to push him. Releasing his hands from the rope, Raif landed on the rimrock. Snow crunched as he flattened it. Had he allowed Stillborn to push him too?

  Deciding no good would come of knowing, he switched his mind away from all of it. Argola's motives. The puncture wound. The sword. It was just past midday and the sun was at its highest point above the clanholds. Raif walked to the edge of the broad table of rock and sucked in the sight of his homeland. Seven hundred paces, that was the distance that separated the clan-holds from the Rift in this place. A man could cross it in a matter of minutes—east of here there was a hidden bridge. Yet there might as well be a wall as tall as the sky. Raif Sevrance could never go back.

  He stood and let the sun warm him and the snow cool him. And when he was ready he looked down into the Rift.

  For the first time ever, Raif was aware of beating hearts deep within its depths.

  TWENTY-SEVEN A Castleman for a Year

  Dalhousie Selco, the swordmaster at Castlemilk, kept an hourglass slung around his neck on a chain and used it as a torture device. If you as much as glanced at it he'd grab the chain and twist it, turning the hourglass from vertical to horizontal. Stopping time. Only when he was satisfied that you and the other young men he was training had been suitably punished did he twist the chain back and let time run.

  Bram was learning fast: Best not even to look at the swordmaster, let alone his glass. That path led to double trouble. Trouble from Dalhousie now. Trouble from the other boys later. You made him give us an extra fifteen minutes—in the snow.

  It was true enough. They were training on the smallest of the three swordcourts at the rear of the roundhouse, and when they'd trudged out before noon and Dalhousie had directed them to the only court that had not been cleared of snow they all thought he'd made a mistake. No one had dared say so. Though Enoch had whispered to Bram, "Either Housie's off his nut or he's going to make us shovel snow." Whispering was a grave error in the swordmaster's presence. If he heard you he would whack your shoulder with his wooden scabbard. Luckily for Enoch there was snow: five pairs of feet crunching through it on their way to the swordcourt had provided sufficient noise to camouflage his offense.

  Even when it had become obvious that Dalhousie had not made a mistake and did indeed intend to put them through their forms while making them stand in two feet of snow, the full extent of his evil plan had yet to be revealed. Bram had trained with Jackdaw Thundy, the old swordmaster at Dhoone, and he knew that any swordmaster worth his salt was tough and demanding. He hadn't known they were capable of torture.

  "Castlemen," Dalhousie had shouted when they were all assembled on the court. "Pull off your left boots and let's get moving."
<
br />   Bram Cormac, Enoch Odkin, Trorty Pickering and Shamie Weese, known as Beesweese, had looked at each other, round-eyed and blinking.

  "Now!" roared Dalhousie.

  At first Bram had been glad he had his socks on—tube-shaped sheaths of rabbit skin rendered bald by constant use—but after five minutes of plunging his foot in and out of the snow the material had become wet and icy and he ended up pulling it off. At least the bare skin could dry off a bit between dunkings. Dalhousie had set them in pairs—Bram against Enoch, Trotty against Beesweese—and made them stand opposite each other while they took turns executing and defending forms.

  "Swan's neck! Bluddsmen's farewell! Hammer cut! Harking's needle!" Dalhousie Selco marched from one end of the court to the other, shouting out the forms. Every so often he would explode into motion, and his chosen victim would have to defend himself against a series of attack forms while screaming out their names. Occasionally Dalhousie would throw in a new form, and Gods help you if you mistook it for something else.

  "If you don't know it cover you body and step backl"

  It left Bram's ears ringing. Dalhousie had the loudest voice he had ever heard.

  "Cormac. What's the difference between a swordsman and a man with a sword?"

  Bram had been moving through a series of high blocks, defending against Enoch's head blows, while trying to keep his bare foot out of the snow. He was still not accustomed to being called Cormac and it took him a moment to realize that Dalhousie was addressing him. The rule on the swordcourt was that you never broke away from an engagement to answer questions. You shouted out as you fought. Training," screamed Bram.

  "No," Dalhousie belllowed. "Experience. A man knows nothing until he's been in a genuine blood-spurting, puke-making, knuckle-bursting sword brawl. You can train every day between here and damnation and you'll still be a fool with a sword. You have to get out there and fight, see a man's eyes and know he's scared shitless, and realize he's seeing the exact same thing staring back." With that Dalhousie launched himself at Bram.